Conversations With Mr. Prain (7 page)

Beyond the bookcase and the other window there was a collection of antiquities from ancient Greece and Cyprus, a few small Egyptian gods and scarabs, Hellenistic coins, a black-on-red glazed Athenian vase, odd pieces of glass, gold, bronze, a pottery figure of a man on a horse with his arms raised up, a painted Anubis, a Roman portrait head and a huge, decorated iron knife that seemed rather Nordic. It had an intricate snake design on its scabbard. There were a few paintings near this, and a framed tapestry: a sampler, aged and faded, of the alphabet.

I moved to a place in front of the double doors, looking back down the long room. At the far end, to the west, there was a marble fireplace surmounted by a mantelpiece strewn with Asiatic items: a wooden dragon and two
famille jaune
Chinese vases, jade figurines and a roaring tiger. The misericord that had so disturbed me was hidden from view by an array of Crusader armour on a model. There were small marble statues of Hermes and Pan, the latter with penis erect. Our round table, and the two armchairs, waited nearby, illuminated by the dismal light of the north-facing window. There were other armchairs, side-tables, lamps, and a chaise-longue, which indicated that the room was supposed to be used. Moreover, to the left of the door there was a sheeny desk and chair, a standard lamp and a bookshelf full of files. There was also a drinks cabinet. Perhaps Mr. Prain used the room as a
study, I thought. Perhaps he felt most at home in this dark den, in the company of curios which seemed by their intrinsic qualities to conspire to remove this room from the rest of the house and place it in a timeless zone in which the outside world was peripheral and unimportant. Certainly, he preferred to be here. Why else would he bring me to this room?

My attention was then caught by a large painting on the southern wall, left of the portrait of Mrs. Marshall, reminiscent of Claude. At first, the painting appeared to depict a group of trees, which dominated the foreground, but the subject of the painting lay beyond, over the side of a cliff or ridge. Mountains rose in the distance behind a dark sea. The outline of a castle with numerous round towers was silhouetted against the dusk sky. In the middle foreground a path wound down from these hilly slopes through groves of trees. A cottage, with pigs, sheep and chickens scattered about it, was in the middle ground. At the centre of the painting the small, animated figure of a woman, arms flailing as she rushed along the path, contrasted with the peace of the rest of the picture. And yet, as I looked at it, the whole scene became strange and ominous. The woman rushing down the path was the only human being represented. She was quite alone, abandoned. Gradually, it seemed to me that she was overpowered by the dreadful sky above her. It pressed down on the pastoral landscape, as if suffocating the breath of a summer day, and the woman was not hurrying home but dashing, oblivious, to a murky fate that awaited her beyond
the confines of the frame. Was she escaping? Was she meeting her lover? Bruised black and blue, the delicate pink sky was fading, and a darkness was coming, a darkness without stars or moon. A blush of light clung to the long horizon of the sea, but it was being squeezed dead by an oppressive pillow of clouds. I sensed the cold silence as the birds stopped singing, a silence disrupted only by hissing waves along the shore. The hills undulating down toward the ocean were like a sleeping female form, heavy and unsuspecting. I was watching, hidden by a cluster of trees, from a vantage point high above.

I was standing before this painting when Mr. Prain returned. I heard his footsteps coming down the hall, and then the door swung open. I stood there with my arms behind my back and my heart racing, managing, I hoped, to appear composed. He seemed to be the sort of man who appreciated cool women. I tried to smile without tremor. It is one of my most perfected illusions, a strategy of survival to cope with a mind that ducked into fancy at the slightest nudge, and a tendency to over-react to paintings and films. Despite people believing me easy-going, this is in fact the last thing I am. It is not fashionable to feel too much. This is not a romantic age.

“You have so many interesting things here, Mr. Prain,” I said. “Have you collected them all yourself?”

He smiled a relaxed smile. “Good Lord, no. My grandfather collected a few odds and ends, but a lot of it has been in the family for generations. My grandfather was the
main one interested in amassing old books.” He gestured with a nod to the bookshelf. “I have a man who bids for this and that occasionally.” Before, at the Market, I would have teased him about saying this. Mr. Prain had “a man.” Mr. Prain has many people who do things for him, I thought. Monique, for example.

“Have you sorted out the problem?” I enquired.

“Oh.” He smiled again, a little nervously. “For the time being. It’s a trifle really. The gardener has been here since I was a boy, but he has developed, with age, a bit of a temper.”

We were speaking of the man who walked from the lawnmower in a fury. I put the two together. “Can the mower be fixed?”

His gaze froze in response to the fact that I had understood the substance of his conversation with Monique, which of course I had not. It was as if I had trespassed. He had, correctly, assumed my French would not be up to the standard of the language they had employed so fast and fluently, and perhaps things had been said that it was improper for me to have overheard. I felt that I should quickly put his mind at rest. “I saw the gardener through the window,” I said. “He seemed to be very upset about the machine.”

Did I detect relief in his face? He turned away. “The lawnmower is in perfectly good order. It’s only a year old.” A curious thing, I thought, sympathising with the gardener. Mr. Prain would not credit him with knowing when a new lawnmower was required. “He does it out of spite,” he added, strangely.

I was about to ask for further explanations, when he strode back toward the tea table saying, “Sorry to be so long. Has the tea gone cold?”

The last thing I wanted to do was once more sit down on that chair to be force-fed another cream pastry and to indulge in further conversation about writing that would tie me up in knots. I felt like a bird provided with swings, seeds and a bath, with permission to twitter but not to fly. I had not been there for more than an hour. It struck me that I could babble some excuse and speed quickly back to London if I wanted. But did I?

“You’ve eaten your cake. You must have another one,” he said.

“Why don’t you give me a tour of the house?” I suggested, shuffling unwillingly to the misericord and the tea set.

“Oh yes. I want to. But not yet,” he said, sitting down on his chair.

“Not yet?” I yelled inside my head.
“Not yet?”

“There’s something I want to show you,” he said.

I attempted to suppress a surge of panic with an expression of cheerful expectation. I disliked this feeling of Mr. Prain being in control. I wanted to sit on the floor, lean against a wall, anything so that I did not have to face him over the table. Now I had to wait for the item to emerge, to be docile, to be the audience as he pulled the rabbit out of his hat. Gingerly, I sat down upon the armchair, perched at the edge as if ready to spring up and away at the slightest provocation.

Fortunately, he did not keep me waiting long. He leaned down to the side of his chair and picked up a framed picture that had been lying there with its back to the room. I could not remember if I had noticed it before. If I had, I had given it no thought. It was glass plated, and as he passed it over the table to me the light from the window cast a reflection over its surface, so that it was only when I held it right before me that I saw who it was.

I stared at it. He stared at me.

“Is it a striking resemblance, or—”

Christ, I thought. “No, Mr. Prain. It’s me from about five years ago. I’ve always liked this print. Denis Johns.” My voice was cream. And what did he want me to say? Did he expect me to redden, cringe, protest that I only did it for the money, or for a friend? Was he expecting me to be struck speechless that my body, naked and nubile, should be flashed across the tea table, the shadows playing against my round breasts, the curve of my stomach and thighs, arms, pubic hair? I felt chilly inside, and knew suddenly that I was impervious to whatever he said to me on this matter. Indignation made me stone. What was he up to? Blackmail? His gaze was just as clinical as before, but now I met it, confident that my manner was truly unruffled. I was not at all embarrassed or ashamed of the picture of my nude body. I had given him my stories, poems; to bear my naked imaginings to such a man now seemed a far more horrible thing. “I used to model for life classes at Slade,” I said. “I have always known a lot of artists and photographers who I’ll sit for.”

He looked as if he was listening, but it was to the machinations of his own mind that his attention was drawn. He was thinking. Presently, he said, somewhat brusquely, “Interesting.” Was this a fitting response to the news that I posed naked for artists?

“Why interesting?”

“Nothing,” he said, flapping away the query like a fly. A sharp, quick smile. “I bought this print at Denis Johns’ exhibition at the Waterside Studios.”

“A year ago?”

“Indeed.”

I handed the print back to him, and as I did so I noticed a slight trembling in his fingers. Trembling? Was he afraid of me, or of his own intentions? So he had invited me here for other reasons. There was something about him now, in his moment of slight weakness, that unleashed some ire, truant and vandalistic. I had been misled.

“Why did you buy it?” I asked, my voice hard.

“Oh …” Carefully, he placed the photograph back in its former position. “I’ve collected a number of photographs over the years. I have a rather good collection … an Arbus, and—.” He stopped. He purposely arrested himself, aware that he was not answering the question. His hands went to the expanded prayer position and he looked down. I noted that he kept a close watch on himself, observing his movements as closely as he observed mine. He would not let himself waffle, not as I did. He looked up. “I liked the image. I liked the form and the chiaroscuro. I thought it evoked sensuality, eroticism even, without being too
titillating. It struck the right balance. With Page 3 girls and all the rest, I think it must be increasingly difficult for photographers to use the female form. Johns has succeeded here. Also …” There was slight hesitation. “I thought the woman was very beautiful.”

My wits were like razors ready to slash out across the table top.

“Some photos are more flattering than others,” I said.

I thought he might say something dreadful like “some women are more beautiful than others” that would have made the world groan, but he did not. The tone of the exchange suddenly altered. There was a gravid pause, large with his thoughtfulness, with embryonic ideas of how the conversation should now proceed. The excitement was over. But what had he wanted?

“I keep this upstairs as a rule,” he said, “with other photographs, in a gallery that’s almost devoted to that medium. All these antiques can become stifling after a time.”

“Yes,” I said, with a sidelong look to the ogre.

“So you used to model regularly?” he asked, sitting up to return to a more chatty mode. I felt there was now something disconcertingly abrupt about him. Was it nerves? Outwardly, he seemed composed, but was he? Why the shaking hands? I felt his thoughts racing, but what were they?

“That was how I earned my money when I first came to England, before I began selling second-hand books.” My attitude remained calm. “I also worked as a barmaid. Life modelling for painters was easy, but it’s boring and not that well paid. Photographic work was better because you
can keep moving, and believe me, if you’ve found a pose and you get cramp in your tendon, no one thanks you for curling up in a ball.” Introducing a wry note did not help the peculiar atmosphere between us.

Then, one of those awkward silences that one only really feels at such times gaped between these words and the next utterance. He needed to take stock of his position, and clearly felt no qualms about causing the hiatus. Curl up in a ball like a hedgehog, I thought. That was what I wanted to do. Beware of the spikes.

The silence grew wider and wider. In fact, it was probably not long, but under the circumstances it seemed an eon. Mr. Prain was not perturbed by it. He poured himself another cup of tea. I lifted my hand to indicate I did not want another. He was momentarily lost in pensiveness, lost, that is, to me; down a secret tunnel that I could not peep into, not of fantasy, but of cogitation. I was not musing. I was painfully conscious of the multiple noises of which we are normally not aware: a plane flying overhead, a cat yowling in the distance, my intestines making a pernicious rumble, the birds, and then the sound of someone trying to start a motor. Looking through the window, I saw that the gardener was back. He had placed a tool kit down on the ground, and was giving the motor another try before settling down to take the engine apart.

I snapped a glance back at Mr. Prain’s thoughtful face and saw his eyelids flutter enough in my direction to indicate that his attention had returned to me. I made a decision. Now I would ask what I should have asked the
moment I stepped through the front door.

“Did you read my work, Mr. Prain?”

“Oh do call me Edward,” he replied. “There’s no need to be so formal.”

“Edward,” I repeated, like a compliant child, hoping that the next request would not be for “Eddie” or “Ted.”

He smiled a trifle unnaturally, but as if he had set something to rights that had caused him vexation for a considerable time. We were to be on first names. If we were speaking French, would we now be saying
tu
to one another? I remembered once making a mistake with the phraseology in a school test: I had people using the word
tuer
, to kill, rather than
tutoyer
. “Shall we not kill each other now?”

“Yes, I did. It’s quite good,” he said.

My jaw dropped. I was half expecting him to evade the question, after his detour into how he wished to be addressed.