Nat, after a quick glance around, said, ‘They’ve all come out for Ossie, haven’t they? Anybody who’s nobody is here.’
‘That’s a nice suit you’ve got on,’ said Fosh. ‘What is it?’
‘Mohair and silk. My chap Doug cut it for me. I knew that velvet would be de rigueur this evening,’ he explained, ‘which is why I was determined to wear something else.’
‘The first time I met Nat he was wearing a velvet suit,’ said Freya. ‘A party on the Banbury Road, let’s see, 19—’
‘About two hundred years ago,’ Nat said, flatly dismissive.
‘You were at university together?’ said Sonja.
‘Oggs-ford,’ drawled Nat. ‘Freya was at Somerville.’
‘But I didn’t complete my degree,’ Freya added, looking at Sonja. ‘Nat was the star. Did you know he used to act?’
Sonja’s eyes glittered with interest. ‘Really?’
Nat, a little stiffly, said, ‘I’m afraid so. As a young – younger – man I fancied myself the heir to Olivier. The critics thought otherwise.’
‘But you’re happy to be a writer,’ said Sonja coaxingly.
‘It took me a while to learn that nothing makes a writer happy for very long,’ he said with a mock-rueful smirk. He turned again to Freya. ‘Have you been in the other room yet?’
‘We were on our way.’
‘Ah! Then you haven’t seen it?’
She looked at him in puzzlement, which Nat took as his cue to lead them off. They made their way through the chattering throng to the next room, where he came to a halt in front of a squarish oil. As soon as Freya saw it she felt a little jolt. It was a nude, entitled Pregnant Woman on a Bed. The woman, raised on her elbows, lay on a grubby-looking striped mattress. The painter’s position, at the foot of the bed, allowed a partial view between her long splayed legs. Shadows hung about the scene – it had a nocturnal feel – though the woman’s face was clear to see.
They stared at it for some moments, until Fosh said to Freya, ‘Is that you?’
She nodded, slowly. ‘I’ve not seen it before. He did a sketch of me one evening – that’s all I knew of it.’
‘Interesting,’ Nat mused. Freya could hear in his voice what he was thinking, but said nothing. ‘Here’s a question,’ he continued. ‘What is the most beautiful part of a naked woman?’
‘I’d better not say,’ said Fosh, sniggering.
Nat, ignoring this, looked at Freya. ‘I’ll tell you. It’s her face.’
Sonja, nodding in agreement, said, ‘So you have a child?’
‘No,’ said Freya with a brave smile. ‘Another thing I didn’t complete. It was – I had an accident.’
There was a brief embarrassed pause. Sonja, with a pained expression, put her hand to Freya’s arm. ‘That must have been a thing to break your heart.’ The phrase was simple, something any stranger might have offered. Yet it was spoken with such feeling that Freya, to her own surprise, felt her eyes moisten.
Covering for it she said, with a laugh in her voice, ‘Typical of Ossie, not to even tell me about this. D’you know, when I turned up at his studio that night he was completely naked apart from a pair of boots.’
The others looked nonplussed by this revelation. Fosh said, ‘What were you thinking while he was … drawing you?’
‘I don’t quite recall. Do you ask that because I look rather vacant? I’d smoked a lot of Ossie’s kif, I think.’
‘The virtuosity is astonishing,’ Nat said in a pontifical voice. ‘No one else paints like that.’
‘That’s funny,’ said Fosh, ‘just before you arrived we were discussing that very thing. Freya thinks there’s something missing in Ossie; something that stops him from being a great artist.’
To Nat’s enquiring look Freya said, ‘There seems to me a coldness, at least in his treatment of women. He paints their flesh without really seeing them. Looking at this’ – she nodded to her own portrait – ‘it’s clear who it is. But you couldn’t deduce anything from it.’
‘There’s not much of your personality in there,’ agreed Nat, narrowing his gaze.
‘Or your beauty,’ said Sonja with a half-smile.
‘You’re trying to make me blush,’ smiled Freya. ‘But I never do.’
‘I suppose Ossie’s problem is he’s had so many women they all blur into one,’ said Fosh. ‘Not that I’m suggesting …’
‘There’s something in that,’ said Nat. ‘Mauriac wrote somewhere that the more women a man knows, the more homogeneous becomes his idea of women in general.’
‘Is the artist here tonight?’ asked Sonja. ‘I would be most interested to meet him.’
Nat, feeling a strong reluctance to let that happen, said, ‘When I last spotted him he was preoccupied with a bevy of women. They never learn, you see.’
Sonja shrugged, as though it were of no importance. The four of them moved off to do a circuit of the room. Sonja, slightly in advance with Fosh, glanced back now and then. Nat, on whom very little was lost, remarked, ‘I think you’ve made an impression.’
‘Less forbidding than she appears on-screen,’ said Freya.
Nat, waiting a beat, lowered his voice. ‘Just entre nous, please satisfy my vulgar curiosity about you and the artist.’
‘Oh, Nat! Ossie? Surely you know me better than that.’
‘Well, with your limbs disported on that bed so provocatively, and him in the altogether, too. Hard to believe he didn’t even try.’
‘He may have made an approach. I managed to rebuff him.’
Nat gave a smile of undisguised delight. ‘Ha. The retreat from mons. Not something Ossie’s done very often, I suspect. If ever.’
A few minutes later, having caught up with Sonja and Fosh, they were preparing to make their exit when the crowd parted and the man of the evening approached.
‘Ossie!’ cried Nat. ‘What a show. Congratulations.’
Ossie Blackler accepted this with an unsmiling nod. His dark, feral gaze took them in at once, before he focused abruptly on Freya. ‘I saw you looking at it – the one of you.’ No hello or welcome was offered.
‘I had no idea you’d painted it,’ replied Freya.
Ossie’s eyes widened crazily for a moment, possibly in surprise at such a neutral response. But Freya knew better than to flatter him. Women, in his book, scored no points for pertness or charm. The silence was lengthening awkwardly.
‘So what did you think?’
Freya considered for a moment. ‘It’s very accomplished, of course. But if I hadn’t been there I’m not sure I’d have known it was me.’
It wasn’t exactly what she’d thought, but some complacency in Ossie’s tone had piqued her. At her side she felt Nat’s nervous silent laughter. Ossie seemed to brood on her words, looking away, and Freya wondered if she had offended him. But when he spoke again it was apparent his thoughts were running elsewhere.
‘I shouldn’t have changed the title. It was those long legs of yours that first put me in mind of it. All the time I was painting I thought, yeah, this is the one. Then the gallery advised me to change it to Pregnant Woman on a Bed. I don’t know why I took any notice, it’s not nearly as good.’
He seemed aggrieved at the memory. Nat, with a sense of foreboding, asked, ‘So … what was the original title?’
Ossie’s expression didn’t change. ‘Tits on Stilts.’
There was a shocked little pause before Freya felt herself starting to laugh.
EXT. STREET – DAY.
CHAS walks up the steps of MRS ERME’s house and knocks at the door. GWEN admits him.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY.
CHAS and GWEN sit opposite one another drinking tea. Both have a watchful air, considering the other.
CHAS
(pointing a finger upwards)
How is …?
GWEN
There’s no need to whisper. She can’t hear us. The doctor says she’s very frail. But she’s been this way before and recovered.
CHAS
She doesn’t … suspect?
GWEN
Suspect what? Oh, you mean – of course not! Nor does anyone else, which is how we’re going to keep it.
CUT TO: CHAS looks rather crestfallen.
CHAS
I beg your pardon. I thought you might be –
GWEN
Oh, Charles, don’t look so hurt. I’m engaged to be married, and there’s nothing to be done.
CHAS
You could end it. It’s just an engagement.
GWEN
‘Just!’ I don’t think you understand. George loves me. He’s been a rock while my mother has been ill. I couldn’t throw him over now.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY.
Later. CHAS is reading a newspaper, GWEN is at her typewriter. A knock sounds on the front door, and GWEN goes to answer it.
INT. HALLWAY – DAY.
A postman stands on the step with a telegram. GWEN’s expression is suddenly apprehensive as she takes it. She reads it, with shock. The postman asks if there is a reply, and she shakes her head. He departs.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY.
GWEN enters, looking as if she’s seen a ghost.
CHAS
(rising)
What’s wrong?
GWEN
It’s from George. A telegram. He’s got it – he’s got it.
CHAS
Vereker? What does it say?
GWEN hands him the telegram, which he reads.
‘Eureka. Immense.’ But … he doesn’t say what it is.
GWEN
How could he, in a telegram? He’ll write it.
CHAS
But how does he know?
GWEN
That it’s the real thing? I’m sure when you see it you just do know.
CHAS
(wonderingly)
Strange that he should have discovered it out there. I mean, in Rome, with all its distractions …
GWEN
Oh, but that’s the way he knew it would come! He knew the change would do it, the different atmosphere. All it needed was a touch – the magic shake – and it would fall into place.
CHAS
I see. (He pauses.) Do you think he’ll go to Vereker, to confirm it?
GWEN
I suppose so. But he’ll write before that. Think of what he’ll have to tell me.
CHAS
About his coming home?
GWEN
Charles! I mean about Vereker – the figure in the carpet. Though perhaps it won’t go in a letter if it’s ‘immense’.
CHAS
Not if it’s immense bosh. If it won’t go in a letter then he hasn’t got the thing. Vereker impressed on me that the ‘figure’ would go in a letter.
GWEN
It’s a nuisance that he doesn’t have a telephone in his flat. (She checks her watch.) He’ll be in the library now in any case. I’m going to send him a telegram.
GWEN goes to the phone, then looks back at CHAS.
Charles, I think perhaps …
CHAS
Of course. I should be going anyway.
CHAS gets up and walks to the door. She has the telephone in her hand, waiting. He makes to go back and kiss her, then thinks better of it. He lifts his hand in goodbye.
EXT. STREET – DAY.
CHAS watches GWEN through the window. She doesn’t notice, being utterly absorbed in the phone call she’s making. He walks on, brooding.
10
The early-summer morning was unsteady with heat, creating a shimmer around the park. A white butterfly toppled and rose on the breezeless air. The brilliant trees seemed to vibrate with their greenness, though Nat couldn’t be sure if that was just an after-effect of his trip. He’d dropped some acid in the early hours and found his vision blotching with colour, then sizzling with it. Time went into an elastic loop. He and Naomi must have listened to Sgt. Pepper all night, on repeat; the tunes were still jumbled in his head. Now he was coming down, and had ambled into Green Park to sit in this deckchair and watch the world go by. He was a little obsessed with tripping at the moment. Everything seemed iridescent, saturated, electric. The tangerine-coloured scarf that Naomi had worn almost blinded him with its hot rays. When he asked her to take it off she told him she already had, which was weird.
It had turned out all right with Naomi in the end. She had come round to Albany for supper – he’d got in two dozen oysters, out of season and somewhat milky – and they’d drunk a bottle of Muscadet with them. Then they’d flopped on the sofa and had a serious talk, or as serious as you could be while smoking that much pot. It had made them both quite frisky, and before he could decide if it was a good idea or not they were tearing off each other’s clothes. It was the first time they’d ever done it without the foreplay of canes or belts or whips; maybe that was why it felt like it would also be the last time. Afterwards, in a voice hoarse with smoke, she told him about a feller she’d been seeing for the last few weeks, off and on, someone who really understood her. Nat supposed the man would have to be very understanding indeed, should he walk into the room right now and find Naomi semi-recumbent in just her bra, him with his prick in post-coital wilt.
No, this was as it should be. They’d had some fun, some fights – some exquisite flogging – and now they would part as friends. She could have her ‘feller’, with his understanding ways. But where to now? Of course he had taken a shine to Billie, who perhaps returned a little tendresse for him. The dinner at her mother’s place was coming up soon. Then his evening with Sonja at Ossie’s show had stirred his loins. Yet she remained aloof, laughing off the invitation to a euphemistic ‘coffee’ back at his place. As for the newcomer, Gina, well, she was Harry Pulver’s moll and thus strictly out of bounds. She was sexier than she’d appeared in her publicity snaps. That she was almost clueless in front of the camera surprised nobody. But she was game, popular with the unit, and sufficiently in awe of Reiner to do what she was told, or as close to it as her talent – and her slight deafness – allowed.
He and Reiner had been getting on famously since their first trip together. The two of them had met at Reiner’s suite at the Connaught a couple of weeks ago to discuss the script; they’d ordered room service, and from seven till just before midnight they’d worked over most of the key scenes in the film, including a suggestion of Nat’s that brought a spontaneous eruption of delight from his director. He had for days been circling George’s ‘eureka’ scene – the moment when he finally deciphers Vereker’s secret – trying to find a plausible way for this epiphany to spring out. It had come to him, he had explained, quite by chance, during that lunchtime recital of Sgt. Pepper. When they were talking about ‘A Day in the Life’ in the canteen Billie had compared it to falling down a rabbit hole and finding yourself in a place you couldn’t make sense of, not immediately, but that it didn’t matter because what you’d been looking for was already there. It was a matter not of finding but of recognising.
‘And how is George able to do this? Because he’s been tripping,’ Nat had said.
‘A Henry James acid trip,’ Reiner had said, laughing madly. ‘Brilliant!’ He’d jumped up and kissed Nat’s forehead. Then he was off and running, describing how he could shoot it, the different filters he might use, the sound design. Nat hadn’t seen him this excited since Bayern had reached the final of the Cup Winners’ Cup. He loved this about Reiner, not just his passion for ideas but his urgent resolve to try them out, to make them real. Even now, after a long evening, he’d begun sketching a storyboard of George’s flashback – the humdrum routine of a morning as he unwittingly moves towards his revelation. He’d muttered to himself in an undertone: ‘This will be so … fucking … awesome.’
Nat had mooched around while his host made notes and sketched. He’d smoked a cigarette and called room service for another bottle of wine. Ten minutes later Reiner had snatched the large sheet of paper from his block and flourished it before him. He’d drawn about twel
ve frames, rough but economical, the first of them an alarm clock ringing on a bedside table; of George getting out of bed, facing himself in the bathroom mirror, having breakfast, then noticing with a glance at the clock that he’s running late. The next set of frames had him outside, in hat and coat, hurrying for a bus, going upstairs, lighting a cigarette. The penultimate frame showed his face in dreamy close-up, the last side-on, overhearing a voice behind him on the bus.
‘Then the camera plunges down through the passage of George’s inner ear and into his hallucinating brain. We cut to – the fireworks!’ He’d made an explosive motion with his hands.
Nat had stared at the storyboard. ‘So you’ve drawn the song. This is the middle section, McCartney’s.’
‘Of course it is,’ Reiner had cried. ‘Our own small tribute to the genius of the Beatles. And to the Master.’
The Henry James Acid Trip. It sounded like an avant-garde rock group. ‘Can it be done?’ he’d said doubtfully.
Reiner had smiled. ‘It can. It will.’
Later, they’d dropped a tab each to celebrate their breakthrough, and while they’d waited for it to take effect Nat had asked Reiner whether he’d ever had a bad trip. Only once, he’d replied, from stuff a rent boy had sold him on the street in Munich. ‘Ach, evil, worse than bad. It was a black trip. Everyone I met for the next four hours had heads like rats! Long sharp teeth and whiskers. I was fucking terrified, and that was even before I looked in the mirror. Oh, man. The flesh seemed to be melting off my face, like wax from a candle. Whatever you do, my friend, never ever buy acid on Reichenbachstrasse.’ Nat, still in his wary novitiate with the drug, had assured him that he would not.
They had gone on talking for a while. Reiner had got up to put on a record, not the Beatles, something more jangly and American, the guitars had a gorgeous high chime, like silver bells. He had become aware of Reiner addressing him, in a concerned voice, and then plonking himself down next to him on the sofa. (About thirty seconds later Nat had realised that he’d asked him to sit there.) Objects had begun to blur at the edges, take on a glimmering fringe of light. The kaleidoscope had started up behind his eyes, but it wasn’t scary, in fact it was beautiful: he was transfixed by it. The music, with its seductive crystal tone, flowed around the opened space within his head, a great reverberant cathedral of sound.
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