Sitting up and stretching, I welcome the day and whatever it may bring. James might be beyond my control, in thrall to Anne, but I am a free agent and I need to take advantage of my enviable position, my stroke of luck – being paid to basically do bugger all the whole day long.
I dress and head out to the same coffee shop as before. Over a buttery pain au chocolat and a large latte, I scan the pages of the Time Out I bought on the way, trying to decide how to fill my day. As usual, I get overwhelmed by the sheer choice of things to do in London. It’s almost paralysing. By the time you’ve deliberated on all the options, there’s no time left to do anything.
I’m ashamed to say that I’m not so familiar with this city, despite calling it home. When I was at Vron’s, I saw ridiculously little of it. OK, I was broke, but I knew even then how many things are free here – the Tate galleries, the British Museum and countless other venues. Yet still I didn’t go, stupidly. I don’t think I’m the only one, though – I guess when you actually live in a city you put things off, promise yourself you’ll go sometime but never do, whereas a tourist jams it all into a week, and so paradoxically sees more than the person who lives there.
Giving myself a mental kick up the arse, telling myself that now is the time to see all this, I slap closed the magazine, drain the dregs of my coffee and head out onto Queensway. Anne is right, of course, when she says a novelist needs to get out, experience the world. How could I have expected to find anything to write about when all I did was mope about at Vron’s or sit in cafés? I wasn’t nourishing myself as a writer.
I’m planning to go to the Tate Modern and wondering whether to take the Tube or the bus, when suddenly I see Anne walking along the Bayswater Road at its junction with Queensway. Unable to stop myself, I walk in the same direction and see her come to a halt at the bus stop. Thoughts of the Tate forgotten, I stand with my back to the stop, feigning interest in the contents of a travel agent’s window. When a bus comes and she boards, I wait a few minutes and then get on too. I’m lucky in that she headed up the stairs; I take a seat on the lower deck, at the back, and grab a discarded copy of Metro that I can use to shield my face when she comes down.
I laugh inwardly at the silliness of it all, but part of me is deadly serious. This too seems paradoxical, but happening on Anne outside of the house that we share may offer me a glimpse into who she really is. Perhaps she is meeting someone, or doing some research. Perhaps she is even going to see James, and I will get chance to eavesdrop on their conversation and find out what this is all about.
Part of me squirms as I think that. What might they say to each other about me, when I’m not there? Do they laugh about what an easy lay I was, how quickly I allowed myself to get caught in the web, like an indolent fly, drunk on summer heat and sweet things, heedless to the danger? Do they discuss, in detail, the things that James and I did to each other’s body, give me marks out of ten for technique?
The bus rattles along the Bayswater Road and into Oxford Street, and I keep my eyes fixed on the bottom of the staircase lest I miss Anne coming down. Suddenly I’m boiling with hatred for her and the way she has co-opted me, without regard for my feelings. The way she is taking advantage of my need for money and my ambition to write. She holds this in front of me like the juiciest of carrots, and I am helpless to escape. Is it worth it though?
We’re nearing Selfridges when Anne appears at the bottom of the stairs and glances towards the back of the bus. I jerk the newspaper up in front of my face. The doors open as we reach the stop and she steps out, rather jauntily I think. She seems to be in a good mood. I am wondering if she’s going shopping. Maybe she’s heading for Selfridges’ lingerie department, looking for something new for me. Now that would be a laugh, spying on her as she leafs through the rails, imagining me in this or that flighty little number.
I hop off too, and follow her as she takes a side street alongside the department store and continues to a place called Manchester Square. I’ve never been here before, but I soon find out that it’s home to the Wallace Collection, an art museum housed in a glorious townhouse overlooking the square. Anne breezes inside, seemingly very familiar with the place: she heads straight up the stairs to the first floor with barely a glance around her.
I keep on behind her, feeling foolish, wondering what I think I am doing. There I was, bemoaning Anne’s attempted transformation of me into an acolyte, a follower, and here I am literally following her, like some spook. A stalker, that’s what I am, what she’s made me into. So much for going out seeking writerly inspiration.
Anne heads straight into a room called the Boudoir. It’s tiny, and empty, and so I have to linger outside, otherwise I’ll reveal myself. Anne spends a good ten minutes inside but, from my oblique view through the doorway, seems to focus her attention on one particular piece. She studies it for a while then takes a small pad from her shoulder bag and writes some notes. When she’s finished she crosses into the next room.
I shoot into the Boudoir, so named, I learn from one of the wall panels, because it was the first of Lady Wallace’s private apartments. There’s certainly nothing illicit on show here – the paintings look as if they probably date from the eighteenth century and depict mainly classical and moral themes. There are also several imposing writing desks and secretaries.
I go straight to the canvas in front of which Anne tarried. It’s called Innocence, and it’s by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. I frown at it. The innocence in question, that of a young girl with her robes falling down from her shoulders to reveal peachy flesh, seems precarious, perhaps even feigned. Or is that the point?
I don’t have time to ponder it too much, aware that I might be losing Anne. I peep round the doorway into the next room in time to see her making her way into a larger gallery. Here it’s some miniatures that hold her attention; again, I hold back, curious but not daring to get any closer. Only when she enters the next gallery do I step inside the large one and inspect the works. They’re all, I notice, by a French artist called Charlier, and nearly all mythological in theme: The Birth of Venus, The Toilet of Venus, A Muse and a Cupid, Venus and Cupid in the Clouds and Pan and Syrinx. There’s lots of pink flesh on display. I wonder if Anne’s novel is somehow linked with mythological themes.
Just as I’m looking at the last work, unfamiliar with the myth, a very familiar voice rasps in my ear, and I almost leap out of my skin.
‘Do you know the story of Pan and Syrinx?’ it says, and I whirl around, my face puce.
‘Anne!’ I exclaim. ‘What a coinci–’
Her knowing smile arrests me in my charade. She touches me lightly on the forearm, as if to reassure me that it doesn’t matter – that she knows I’ve followed her here, that I was spying on her and that she doesn’t care. That it doesn’t even surprise her.
I wonder at what point she became aware of me, and think of the moment on the bus when she looked towards the rear and I whipped up my newspaper. As I do, I become convinced that she noticed me then, and that I’ve been making a total fool of myself.
‘It’s a fascinating story,’ she says, and I wonder what she’s talking about. She gestures back at the miniature. ‘Pan and Syrinx,’ she reminds me.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know it.’
She smiles, but she’s not looking at me. Her eyes are on the picture, and her voice seems to come from far away. ‘Ovid’s Metamorphoses,’ she says. ‘You obviously haven’t read it.’
‘Greek mythology wasn’t my thing at uni. Or Roman, whatever it is.’
‘Greek and Roman, actually … Anyway, the story has it that Syrinx, a nymph, was pursued by Pan to the Ladon River.’ She pauses. ‘I presume you know who Pan was …’
‘Er, some kind of nature spirit.’
She sighs, as if saddened by my unending ignorance, and shakes her head. ‘You’re getting confused with pantheism, which is Greek but means “God is all”. As in, God is the same thing as Nature, the Universe, or however you want to describe it, rather
than a personal deity.’ She pauses, then continues: ‘Pan is the god of fields and forests, and so symbolises human lust and savagery in Man. You usually see him with goats’ features. Anyway, Syrinx begged her sisters, the river nymphs, to help her escape Pan and his lascivious advances, and they turned her into reeds, from which the god later made his famous pipes. You’ve heard of those at least?’
She looks at me in silence for a moment. ‘In case you think I’m having a jolly day off,’ she says coolly, at last, ‘I’m actually doing research.’
‘For your next novel?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Am I allowed to know what it’s about?’
‘Allowed? You are my assistant. It would be hard to keep secrets from you.’
I laugh inwardly, and more than a little bitterly. Anne is one big secret to me, an utter mystery. It’s me who’s become transparent: having shown her my body, how it gives and receives pleasure, I feel that I have exposed my soul too. I am wholly vulnerable, where she is an impenetrable fortress, or a sheer wall of rock with no footholds.
She shoots a glance at her watch. ‘I’m ravenous,’ she says. ‘How about lunch in the restaurant? On me, of course.’
‘I’d like that,’ I say, and I mean it. I’m apprehensive, for obvious reasons, but I’m also thrilled at the chance to have this face to face with Anne, to get to know the woman beneath that diamond-hard surface.
The restaurant she referred to, it turns out, is a French brasserie in the museum’s gorgeous ground-floor conservatory. We find it empty bar two sets of couples: men and women facing each other, staring into each other’s eyes, fingers entwined. It’s the kind of romantic place where a man might bring his lover to propose to her, or where one might initiate a clandestine affair. Anne and I are the odd couple. No one in their right mind would take us for lovers, and we’re not – not really. Or only via the intermediary of James. No, they would much sooner take us for mother and daughter.
As the thought flickers through my mind, I wonder if there’s not something of that to our relationship after all. Anne is hardly the most motherly of women, and there’s surely some significance in the fact that she’s never had children. But as I sit down across the table from her, it strikes me that the way I look to her as some kind of model, this reverence I have towards her work and the aspiration to write similar novels, makes me, in a way, her successor. Her daughter.
She’s saying something to me now, and I sit up in my seat. If I’m to live up to Anne, make the most of this mentorship, I must pay attention. Must take it seriously, and not get lost in dreams and fantasies.
She’s recommending the oysters from the raw bar, asking me if I’ve ever tried them before, and my thoughts turn inevitably to Sarah Waters and to girl-on-girl action. Anne isn’t a lesbian. I know that from her work, from her preoccupation with relationships between the different sexes. But does she swing both ways when it suits her? She seems to have a voracious sexual curiosity that makes that entirely possible. And she’s certainly not averse to watching girls in action. Could all of this turn out to be some kind of preamble to seduction? Is Anne Tournier trying to get into my pants?
I look her squarely in the eye. ‘I don’t like oysters. I don’t like the idea of them.’
Her face doesn’t register any emotion as she continues to peruse the menu. ‘Well, I’m tempted by the steak tartare,’ she says. ‘Like many of the French, I’m a die-hard carnivore. The rawer the better, that’s my motto.’
I look down at my own menu, choose fairly randomly. ‘Think I’ll go for a Niçoise salad,’ I say.
‘And some wine?’
I shake my head. I don’t want to let down my guard, just in case she does have something fruity in mind. In the wake of recent events, I’m worried about my ability to say no. I have less self-restraint than I thought I had.
After we’ve ordered, Anne leans back in her chair. Without a cigarette in her hand or the corner of her mouth, she looks a little lost, a little incomplete. She regards me, and her expression is slightly inquisitive, as if it’s she who’s trying to figure me out now and not the other way round.
Unable to bear the scrutiny, I return to the subject of her book. ‘So your novel … it’s about Greek mythology? That’s a bit of a departure for you, isn’t it?’
She shakes her head as the waiter places a glass of red wine on the table in front of her. ‘Merci,’ she says, and there’s a twinkle in her eye as she looks up at him. He’s a good-looking bloke, as is often the case with French waiters in classy places like this. I wonder what she’s thinking, if she’s imagining him naked, fucking her, or fucking me. I think of the boy and wonder again where Anne picked him up. Perhaps in a restaurant just like this one? Perhaps – the thought crosses my mind for the first time, scalding me with its implications – she even paid him for his time. Which makes him … Which makes me … My mind reels. I wish I’d ordered some wine after all.
‘It’s not about Greek or Roman mythology,’ she says, picking up the thread of our conversation. ‘But it draws heavily on them for inspiration. It’s … I hate to summarise a book in a few words or sentences. It does it so little justice, makes it sound naive and simplistic. But let’s just say it’s about change – hence Ovid’s Metamorphoses.’
‘Change?’
‘The human ability to evolve, according to circumstances. My characters – well, let’s just say, my aim is to throw them into difficult circumstances and see how they adapt. To investigate change as a survival instinct, if you like.’
‘Is it set in the modern day?’
‘Very much so. In modern-day London.’ She takes another swig of her wine, hungrily eyeing the glistening pyramid of raw beef that the waiter has just set before her, studded with capers and topped by a raw egg. She takes up her cutlery.
‘I suppose I’ve always, through all my books, been fascinated by the idea of how much we can change ourselves, and how much remains innate and static. And by the question of how much we can change other people. They say, don’t they, that you can’t change other people, lovers, for instance? But is that really the case? On the contrary, I think that people are very open to persuasion, very … corruptible.’
As she lays her stress on the final word, she’s looking not at me but at the handsome young waiter. Brazenly, he’s holding her stare, as if challenging her. What does he think she wants of him, a woman of her age, with her looks? She’s not ugly, but she’s time-worn, a little tired. The smoking and the skinniness have done her no favours. Certainly, she’s not on his level. Yet she’s got his attention. He’s flattered, or intrigued. Maybe it’s just adding a bit of spice to a boring shift.
I watch her, and I watch him, and I think about the paintings that Anne sought out upstairs. First Innocence, and then Pan’s lusty pursuit of Syrinx, ending in her transformation into reeds. Reeds that he later, in turn, changed into a pipe. I’m dying to read her work in progress, find out how all this fits into that. But it’s really the Greuze painting that my mind keeps running up against, like a wall. The ‘innocence’ depicted there is an innocence that is begging to be defiled, to be corrupted. The model seems to be ‘asking for it’. Which makes her the very antithesis of innocence.
I push my salad leaves around my plate as I mull all of this over. I wasn’t innocent to start with, but I was unworldly. Thinking back to my interview with Anne and her unconventional avenues of questioning, I’m starting to ask myself if she didn’t choose me for the job precisely because of my relative lack of experience. Am I some kind of experiment, a guinea pig on whom she’s trying out her theories of change and corruptibility?
The waiter is attending to one of the couples at the other tables now, and I realise that Anne is watching me as I play with my food.
‘Is it not good?’ she says.
‘It’s … It’s fine. I’m just not that hungry.’
‘What are your plans for today?’
‘I was going to go to the Tate Modern, bu
t –’
I halt as I realise that I’m about to drop myself in it. Anne must have guessed that I followed her, that our meeting here was far from a bizarre coincidence, but the last thing I want to do is admit that to her.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘There’s only so much art one can take in one day.’
She gestures across the room for the bill and, when the waiter places it beside her on a little silver platter, puts a sheaf of notes down. I notice that she leaves a healthy tip.
We move towards the exit.
‘Do you need a lift back?’ says Anne. ‘I’m getting a cab.’
I shake my head. ‘I think I’ll have a look around Selfridges. Unless you want me for anything, that is?’
‘No, that’s fine.’
We’re outside now, and she’s swivelling her head, trying to spot a vacant taxi. I thank her for lunch, and she smiles, looking at me intently.
‘Next time I’ll try to talk you into oysters,’ she says, and there’s a curious note to her voice, a brittleness, like ice on a winter pond. It’s as if suddenly her voice might shatter into thousands of tiny fragments. ‘Did you say you’d never tried them? Well, you must, you must. Remember –’ A cab pulls up beside her and she steps up to the passenger door, leans in to instruct the driver where to go, then opens the rear door and lifts one foot. ‘Remember what I told you – a novelist must embrace life and all the experiences it offers. All of them.’
And with that she leaves me standing on the pavement, bemused, fearful and exhilarated all at once. It’s a crazy mix of emotions, and I realise I’m exhausted by it all, that I do want to go home after all. I head back to Oxford Street and the bus stop.
The Apprentice Page 13