Conversations With Mr. Prain (24 page)

Pure hyperbole. And I didn’t care.

He indicated left, braked, and pulled to a gentle halt along the grassy verge.

Without a word, or a look in his direction, I opened the door, picked up my bag and box, and exited. I swung the door shut, and marched off behind the car, furious, expecting to see the Porsche smoothly disappear into the distance.

I kept looking at the back of the car, which stayed exactly where it was. Then I peered through the window, and could see Edward’s bowed head. The engine was turned off.

In another few seconds, the door opened and he stepped out.

He walked towards me with a look of ominous intent, his eyes locked on mine, and stopped in front of me, a metre away.

With a sudden flurry in my belly, I realised that this road was very quiet. We had yet to reach the junction, and passing cars were very few. I had ordered him to stop in an uninhabited area. He could suffocate me, and bundle me into the boot. No—he could bundle me into the boot, and then drive to an even more remote location, a forest where he could bash my brains out, leaving my body to be discovered, decomposing, by a man walking his dogs ten days later.

These were not thoughts one should have about a person with whom one has just spent a night of torrid sexual adventure.

I took a step back.

“Stella,” he said firmly, opprobriously, taking a step forward.

“Don’t come any closer,” I said, putting out my hand, wishing it had a gun in it.

“God Almighty!” he exploded, then, gesturing to Zeus.
“I am not going to leave you on the side of a country road
.” Each word was pronounced as if he was talking to a very irritating mentally retarded person with hearing difficulties.

“Well, that’s very gentlemanly of you, Mr. Prain,” I replied, curtly.

“And I was not exploitative.”

Of all those adjectives, it was “exploitative” that had stung him.

“You said you wanted me to seduce you,” he said.

“I didn’t know you’d just lied to me about the most important thing in my life!”

“I did not intend to make love with you, after that. I should have resisted,” he continued.

“So that was your big mistake,” I retorted. “That was where you came undone, literally and figuratively.” I stared widely at him, amazed at the way his mind worked. “It was all right to lie, but you should not have slept with me after lying. How honourable of you!”

I wanted to throw something at him, to hit him full in the heart. The urge was so strong, it was irresistible.

With all my strength, I hurled my box straight at him, like an Olympic javelin-thrower, emitting some kind of guttural grunt as I did so. He caught it, slapping the lid shut before the contents spilt out all over the asphalt and grass.

Frustrated, I stomped off towards the trees, scaling a shallow ditch with flourish, until I got to a trunk wide enough to hide behind. I just wanted a moment’s peace now, to be alone, away from him, unseen.

He gave me that moment, more than a moment. I heard the car door open and close, and presumed he was sitting there inside, making phone calls to tell his staff he would miss his appointments. I relished the thought that I had wrecked his carefully organised day. Nemesis.

And so there I was standing in the woods, watching red admiral and white butterflies jitter beside yellow wild flowers, brilliant blue dragonflies hover over a streamlet, and wasps whirr around a hole in the ground. How absurd.

Minutes passed. Many minutes. A long time. And my anger started to curl up around the edges like the dry leaves of the woodland floor, leaving in its place something much more thin and vulnerable.

“You bastard,” I said, watching a little sparrow pick at the earth.

No Prince Charming to my Cinderella. Indeed not. This was another story.

God, how I wanted to go home. My room. My messy flat. My regular world. I could not stay all day in a wood, like a Little Red Riding Hood petrified of the wolf.
But the thought of returning to the car was diabolical. It would be capitulation.

Then I was hijacked by images of the night. I remembered the feeling of his kisses and the touch of his hands on my skin, and it was like Venus blew her breath on me. I shifted uncomfortably, and pulled down my skirt. This is not an age for her, I thought, remembering Monique’s words. This is an age for Mercury. Stealing and lies, I thought. If I am Aphrodite’s girl, then he is Mercury’s boy, and a very bad boy at that. And it is very dangerous for her, said Monique. Very dangerous indeed.

Venus and Mercury were never lovers in classical myth, were they? Venus was always paired with Mars, the god of war, hence all those “Venus and Mars” popular psychology books that alchemically distilled the differences between women and men. Aphrodite really should not be wandering off with the wrong god.

Love! He’d now mentioned the universality and timelessness of the love theme in my novel, and been moved by it. Him moved! Was I to believe that? What did he know about love? “I don’t trust love,” he had said. “I don’t trust passion.”

That was the key, that was why he had wanted a sculpture, not the real woman.

He was prepared to let our pleasure of the night evaporate away into nothing, if I accepted his offer. He had presented me with that option.

“Too strange.” That was an understatement.

Other images entered my head now. I saw Edward Prain sitting in front of the sculpture, alone in an empty room. There I was: all white, made of stone, unmoving, like one of the living sculptures that amaze tourists on the Thames walk near the London Eye. I stared into empty space: eyes blank, lips caught in a tremulous, introspective smile, my body open and inviting, and yet rendered modest by means of an expression I did not recognise on my face. There he was staring, a single votary in the sancta sanctorum, drinking the opium of his personal religion, his private cult of sexual fantasy, so as to escape the pain of his particular brand of loneliness.

Then—after so long—I heard the car door open and close again, and his footsteps treading closer on the twig-covered earth. He appeared a few trees beyond me to my right, stopped, looked, saw me, and walked over. His eyes did not stare confrontationally into mine any more. I did not feel threatened. I had only the sense of a certain sort of personal stupidity.

In his hand, I noticed, was a folded square of paper.

He gave it to me, not saying anything, and not looking into my face, and then went away. His footsteps on twigs became softer, until they hit asphalt. And then there was the car door again. Silence.

I was again solitary, standing under a tree, staring at a piece of folded paper.

I opened it up nervously and looked at his elegant handwriting, written with a blue fountain pen, on quality cream notepaper: words from a poem by William Blake.

Underneath, after a small gap, was written: “Stella, I’ve never been a very truthful person. I recognise that I have behaved shabbily with you, and would make amends in any way you see fit. However, I could well understand why a woman like you would want to have nothing whatsoever to do with a man like me from this point on. I apologise unreservedly. I have no further expectations or requests. Please let me take you to Banbury Station. We needn’t speak. Edward.”

“Oh Christ,” I said aloud, prickled by emotion, and yet irritated at a tone in his letter that made me wonder if he was the sort of man who would go to a dominatrix to be ‘punished.’ How could he manage to give me that sort of image at this moment? Or was it just me? “Bugger,” I said to the trees. “You are so fucked up.”

Then I re-read Blake’s poem, a short piece of verse from his
Songs of Innocence and Experience
. Did Edward know that the “Stella” was a kind of rose, or was it just my dress he was thinking of?

What should I do now?

“Bugger,” I said again, and walked back to the car. There seemed no alternative. I reached the side of it and caught my reflection in the window, looking very much like a Hollywood heroine in a dramatic crisis.

I swung the door open. He did not look around at me. He did not speak.

I sat down, and closed the door. He started the engine, and we drove off.

There was no more anger in me. Instead, I had this bursting bubble feeling of wanting to cry, and looked up to drain my eyes of any tears. How could he do this to me? What had I ever done to him? All I wanted to do was be a writer, run my book-shop successfully, stay true to my ideals and live a happy life. Why did I deserve this horror of being twisted around and deceived, just because I had a hope? It wasn’t fair. I wasn’t some tough corporate city bird. I was just me, brought up in a softer country, born over-sensitive, impulsive and a hopeless dreamer.

I was wounded. I felt like crying.

Crying, because I’d been fooled.

Crying, because I’d lost something.

We drove in silence, and eventually neared Banbury Station. I realised now that my nose was running, which is something that happens when you are trying not to cry, and then you have to sniff, and then the person you are with, whom you do not want to engage with emotionally, will see that you are trying not to cry. I leant forward, got my bag, and scrambled for a tissue I thought I had, but I couldn’t
find it. So I sniffed and wiped my nose with my finger in a haughty, careless fashion I hoped he would not notice.

“There’s a tissue in the glove compartment,” he said.

I found it, dabbed my nose, dabbed the corners of my eyes, coughed, swallowed, and stared with renewed fake concentration at the passing surroundings.

We pulled into Banbury Station’s parking lot, where a callous sign read “Have you paid and displayed?” He found a space, and stopped the car.

“I think there’ll be a train in a few minutes,” he said, and waited for me to get out.

But I did not move. I realised something.

“I’ve decided,” I said, swallowing again, “about the deal.”

There was a short silence, and then he looked at me for the first time since I had returned to the car. “As I put in that note, I have no further expectations or requests.”

“So you’re not going to offer me the deal anymore?” I asked.

He stared away vacantly, thinking it over. “I’m not sure the sculpture would mean quite the same to me now. The main reason to continue with that offer would be for Monique. She wants to produce a final piece with you as the model.”

My stomach lurched at his words. Was I no longer his ideal woman?

“So would you still have me model, and live at Walton Hall during the week, to let her make this sculpture, as her patron?”

“Are you suggesting that it is something you’d be prepared to do?”

“I do like Monique’s sculptures, and I see she’s an important artist. She has passion about her work. I wouldn’t feel this way if I hadn’t got to know her a little. I realise now that it would be an honour to further her art and pose for her. Perhaps I could come out, sit for her, and spend some time at Walton Hall, writing.”

He considered, and then said, very stiffly, “And … um, concerning your writing. I said I would make amends. Can I hand your novel to one of my editors?”

At this suggestion, I found myself almost laughing with amazement. I had not even imagined he meant this, in his note. I had not thought I could use my outraged indignation to get what I wanted. I had decided something completely different. But then, even now, perhaps there was something self-interested in his suggestion. He thought my novel really could be a success, and he would claim the glory for discovering me, and a financial reward. It would also be a control on me.

“Edward, I don’t want you to publish any novel that I write. I don’t even want you to see the next thing I produce until it’s in print, if it ever is. As long as you are the great man who might fulfil my dreams of publication, I would be under your power. Coymans can’t have my writing, not a single word, after what you have done. What I write must be … sacrosanct. It can’t be touched by you. I’ll just keep trying with agents and other publishers. That’s my business.”

He seemed doubtful. “And would you keep your weekday whereabouts a secret?”

“For a time.”

“You know, Stella, I am a very private man. You would have to agree to be quiet about … I would have to trust you.”

I shook my head. He was worried. “How ironic, that you can talk about trust. I don’t know if we can have this conversation.”

I think he squirmed. I felt confused. Maybe this was all a bad idea. No, no. I could be quiet, and take the time and space he was offering. I wanted that too much, after all. My friends might tell me to walk away, never to sully myself again. But I could do this, surely. I just had to be clear about what I would and would not accept. It was like finding a clear path through a wood. I didn’t need to get lost in a moral thicket.

“Edward, I’m a writer. You are a publisher—you know what writers are like. You know that you can’t ban me from using anything that has taken place between us in my work. It cannot be done. My brain would have to cease functioning. I can disguise you, but you’ll recognise yourself in some character or another I will invent, one day. I can re-order things and twist them around, but everything that happens to me becomes a component of my imagination, part of a machine I must dismantle and reassemble and get to run. Even though I might even kid myself I was not touching on the forbidden subject,
it would come out somewhere. I’m a loudspeaker. I’m unable to be any different.”

There was a silence, while he thought, and I swung feelings around myself. Was I really going to do this? The weird thing was that the more reticent he seemed, the more I felt it could work.

“If you want to sit for Monique, accept the time and space at Walton, and promise me you’ll be discreet, about everything, then so be it.”

We looked at each other, doubtfully. Was this the oral agreement, sealed? Our tone had definitely become very businesslike. It was like falling flat on my face. And then I said, “After the sculpture is finished, I’m going home to New Zealand.”