Pagan and her parents

by Michael Arditti

  ‘What are you making?’

  ‘I’m making a statement.’

  ‘You’re making a mess.’

  I remove her and return to your retrospective, where there are enough pictures to satisfy the youngest critic. It is a shock to see so much of your life laid out, and in the confines of one room. I look at the early Soho portraits and wonder how many of those women are still alive. I try not to recognise their faces; I try not to remember their stories; I rename Brewer Street Acacia Avenue as I invest us with post-Cambridge careers that would placate even your parents. But the women are more real. They may be stripped of glamour but never of dignity. The straining dress over padded hips, the caked make-up over pitted skin, the smudged lipstick over rotten teeth are never the whole story. The light with which you suffuse their features is no mere trick of the trade … you had a very different trade; the sexual sympathy shines through.

  ‘What is it you do?’ There is a lull in the dining-room chatter.

  ‘I photograph brothels.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it.’

  ‘I did. I was on the game myself. For fun, I took pictures of some of the other girls. One of my punters worked for the Criterion. He arranged my first commission. Now, there’s barely a red light from Berlin to Bangkok that hasn’t been filtered through my lens.’ Conversation chokes. Your eyes meet mine in triumph … the truth is dangerous, Leo; you must only admit it when you can be sure that it won’t be believed. Our hostess wipes her mouth and turns to her husband.

  ‘Ask a silly question, darling …’ He slaps his forehead.

  ‘I know; I’d be hopeless on What’s My Line?’ You break the tension with a titter.

  ‘So, are you on the Criterion staff?’

  ‘No, freelance. I go with anyone who’ll pay me.’ All lingering doubts are dispelled by the obvious metaphor. Regular small talk is resumed.

  ‘Candida’s just been invited to join the Magnum Agency. She’s had spreads in dozens of magazines. Not only prostitutes.’

  ‘Leo’s afraid it might rub off on me … my darkroom a private backroom. But they remain my trademark. I am to tarts what Cézanne was to apples.’

  ‘She’s just come back from Manila.’

  ‘Are any of your pictures for sale?’

  ‘Oh yes. Prurience pays.’

  The scene fades into inconsequentially; and I look again at the Filipino girl standing next to her one-eyed pimp, his proprietorial hand emphasising his missing ringers, her inane grin her abject youth. What strikes me most is the lack of prurience. This is no tourist tut-tutting, no pictorial equivalent of fish on Friday and sins of the flesh the rest of week. As the couple stare boldly at the camera, gazes drop and certainties shift. Who will throw the first stone? He who threw the first coin? One man’s transgression is another’s transaction. I know; thanks to you, I was there.

  His missing fingers haunt me. Just as you offer no easy morality, you allow no painless pleasure. This is sex on the knife-edge, a dance to the music of mutilation, blood streaming down the legs as it rushes to the brain. These are pictures from a war-zone … ravaged faces in a rictus of horror. Where I once saw documents of others’ desperation, I now see only your own.

  ‘Who are those ladies?’ Pagan points to a pair of bleary-eyed, bloated Spaniards.

  ‘Actresses,’ I reply, and recall an earlier excuse in a Soho strip joint. ‘She’s just doing it to get her Equity card.’

  ‘Let’s look at those,’ I say, ‘they’re in colour.’ And I rush her away from the backstreets of Barcelona, just as I brush aside our own Soho nights.

  Question: when is a call-girl not a prostitute?

  I give up; when is a call-girl not a prostitute?

  When she’s my best friend.

  The faces change; the gaps in the teeth narrow; the pores close. The clever call-girl reinvents herself as actress, aristocrat and magnate’s mistress; and you match her progress with your own. Film stars guying their fame, countesses clinging to the wreckage, tycoons glorying in excess: no wonder they all clamoured for your treatment. You made their profligacy heroic, their vulgarity ironic, their frivolity wit. People were your forte; which is strange, since you never seemed to like them that much. Or did the camera contain them? I think of the Africans who feared that it would steal their souls. You had no truck with souls; but you did control their image. You were the eyes of the eighties … In the decade of the morally myopic, the one-eyed woman is queen.

  Lights flash, as my own image is captured for the morning papers. I raise a glass of champagne to their breakfast orange juice: a buck’s fizz uniting the new two nations, celebrity and crowd. I exchange a few words with a journalist and picture the inevitable captions: TV’s Leo pays tribute to Candida’s candid camera … Lonely Leo says life will never be the same. And, as I sell my soul for a few squares of newsprint, I realise that the Africans were right.

  Much to her annoyance, I remove Pagan from the line of fire. She has kissed enough cheeks and eaten too many ‘alcoholic cherries’, so I send her home with Susan and turn my attention to our friends. The Cambridge contingent is so strong that, for a moment, I find myself back at the Freshers’ Squash … belts are tightened, the Guccis become Levis, and the gallery dissolves into the Corn Exchange, filled with posters enticing us to every kind of activity. The Cambridge Stamp Collecting Society catches my eye … and sticks in my mind; it seems such a contradiction in terms. Stamps are for simple-minded men like George V and my father, not the intellectual elite to which I aspire. I find it disturbing; you find it intriguing. ‘We must join at once,’ you say, ‘and make it chic.’

  My old insecurities erupt like acne. You have no idea how alien your Cambridge is to me. I would be happier downing a pint of Abbot at the Baron of Beef with the choirmen; but I am flattered into restaurants with you and Robin and your ‘chic’ friends. You don’t know how often I fail to order what I want because I am afraid of mispronouncing it … or worse.

  ‘Don’t let’s go to Don Pasquale tonight.’

  ‘I thought you liked Italian food.’

  Half the time I am not even sure what it means and play safe with spaghetti. Or else I try to attract your attention by dropping my napkin (née serviette). ‘Psst, what’s zucchini?’

  ‘Courgettes.’

  I sit up, none the wiser. What are courgettes?

  It is another world from the meat and two veg of my mother’s guest-house where ‘c’ stood for cabbage, cauliflower or carrot, not calabash, chicory or courgette. Forget the social whirl; I am in a social maze where everyone seems to be related, so much so that I wonder whether cousin might be a courtesy title like esquire. And, even when I learn to put names to faces, it is impossible to put them to college lists because they all have nicknames that have been given to them by nannies – and stuck. I didn’t have a nanny; I had a nan. I loved her with the one uncompromised emotion of my life. Until I met you and it was compromised by language. Now I cover my embarrassment – and the word – with a cough.

  You move through the maze as though each dead end were an opening. I used to think it was that you were well connected; I know now it is that you are well read. Mix two parts Sally Bowles and three parts Becky Sharp with a dash of Zuleika Dobson; and there you have her – you – Candida Mulliner. I am never sure how carefully the ingredients are calculated; but the effect is intoxicating. Cambridge laps you up like an exotic cocktail. And yet the discerning palate picks out the strong taste of bitters underneath.

  ‘Dear heart’ … a hand strokes my spine; I turn to confront Imogen. ‘Don’t look at me,’ she squeals coquettishly; ‘I’m a fearful mess.’ I try hard not to nod, as I take in the bird’s-nest hair, the face that is the visual equivalent of a giggle and the Cupid’s-bow lips which look more like a pantomime pout. She cloys me in an embrace. We discuss life (hers], death (yours), and the universe. Her thesis is now twelve years overdue, but she blames that on Morgan le Fay. ‘She’s afraid of my research, and so she does
all in her power to thwart me. She’s placed a hex on my love life. Why else would so many men vanish into thin air?’ My self-control is as great as her self-deception. ‘I speak as one witch of another.’ Girth aside, she seems scarcely to have changed since she cornered me on the Bridge of Sighs after the John’s May Ball.

  ‘Don’t you like me?’

  ‘I like you like a sister.’

  She rips open her dress and bares her bust to the dawn. ‘Does you sister have breasts like these?’

  My hands reach to screen her décolletage from the gallery’s gaze and the embarrassment from my memory. She seizes my fluttering fingers and presses them to her lips. ‘I worry about you, Leo. You’re letting life pass you by.’

  ‘I lead a very full life.’

  ‘Not a sexual life. No, allow me to speak. You mustn’t neglect it. You’re a very sensual man.’

  ‘I don’t have a sister.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You have deep, dark forces welling inside you; they need release. Are you afraid of your orgasms?’

  ‘Imogen, you’re spilling wine on your dress.’

  ‘Always so practical. But there’s darkness in you; there’s danger. I can tell.’

  ‘I don’t have a sex life. I know that defines me as somewhat more deviant than a serial killer, but I have all the love I need in Pagan.’

  ‘What are you trying to hide?’

  ‘I’m a boringly transparent person.’

  ‘This is me, Imogen. I know you of old.’

  I’ll try to explain … to you, not to her. I see myself in Pagan’s eyes and I feel a glow. I catch myself in the unexpected mirrors of chance encounters and I am repulsed. You know that sex is not important to me. That is why you trusted me with Pagan. ‘The thing about Leo,’ I hear you say, ‘is that he isn’t interested in women, men or dogs.’ I will not let your confidence be misplaced.

  ‘Find yourself a boy,’ she is saying. ‘Better still, find two.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Trust Duncan Mossop to sniff out any sexual snippet. But then he is acting true to form and even to physiognomy … with his sharp eyes, aquiline nose and pallid complexion, he looks more than ever like Sherlock Holmes.

  ‘I was just telling Leo to find an amenable boy.’

  ‘It would hardly go down well at the Beeb: Aunty’s favourite nephew doing the dirties. Besides, I always thought you were above all that. I remember Candida telling me you weren’t interested in boys, girls or dogs.’

  ‘That was you?’

  ‘It made me feel a bit iffy. I mean I’m there with Mrs Pat: anything that doesn’t scare the horses. But dogs … Though that was Candida all over: putting ideas in your head. From then on, every time I saw a borzoi …’

  The coincidence is unnerving. I am confused; he must have mentioned it first. Or is it a sign? I connect everything with the Brighton hearing. I have grown as superstitious as a widow with her only son at sea.

  Anecdotes abound, as everyone tries to pull rank in intimacy, basking in reflected aphorisms … she made her wittiest riposte/ played her most outrageous trick/dealt her most devastating blow when she was with me. Duncan describes how you took a white stick to the Henry Moore exhibition, ‘so that she could fondle the sculpture, and was only found out when she began to take photographs. Even then, for a few moments, the guard believed that her camera had been specially adapted for the blind.’

  Brian ffoulkes tells of an invitation to the Ritz in the days when it was as remote as Rio. ‘She insisted that I ordered the most expensive dishes and, as I became increasingly uneasy, explained that she had no intention of paying. “Drink up,” she urged, as I turned the colour of my Chartreuse, and then threw the remains of her dessert at me. Screaming insults, she chased me onto the street and halfway across St James’s. No one followed. The only expense was removing the crème brûlée from my suit.’

  In the ensuing laughter, my own rings somewhat hollow. I am disconcerted to discover so many unknown stories about you. Are they true? They sound in character; but the outlines of your character are covered in myth. Legends accumulate like lichen; I am left scratching the surface. Why did you never stage such stunts with me? Did you think me too stuffy? Or am I too poor an actor to carry them off?

  Duty draws me to Edward and Melissa, both so tall and trim and tanned, like founder members of an exclusive gym. Carefully dressed-down in matching designer denim, they stand examining your Palestinian camps. ‘It’s a magnificent display,’ he says; ‘she was a genuine artist.’

  ‘A talented craftswoman, I grant’ … she grants; ‘their composition is striking. But they remain arid.’

  ‘Well they are set in the desert.’

  ‘Don’t try to be clever, Edward; you know very well what I mean. Candida the humanitarian just doesn’t ring true. She slips on the role along with her flak jacket. There’s no engagement.’

  ‘Well I admire them.’

  ‘You respond to them; you’re in the same game. They are to art what your columns are to literature.’ I look the other way, into the void. ‘I never feel she cares about people. Except the whores. She showed real sympathy with whores. Otherwise she never gives herself.’

  ‘As I recall, she gave herself quite liberally.’ He grins at me complicitly. Her glare checks him and sets my mind racing. I resent their conscripting my memories in their private warfare. I have reached a consensus with the past that is now threatening to explode. They dig up old bones – the relics of youthful folly – which I have long since buried … which you have long since buried. They scatter them over the well-kept lawns on which we have walked for years. They turn my garden of remembrance into a field of contention. They have no right; they forget the meaning of ‘friend’.

  Melissa runs her hand through her mop of greying hair – its mass strangely at odds with its colour – and claims to be missing you, which, considering how little she liked you, I find somewhat bizarre. But perhaps your case is proved … ‘Even old friends are expendable, but no one can replace the enemies we make in our youth.’

  I am back there now in conversation – in Clare Gardens. We are rehearsing As You Like It. Melissa is giving her Rosalind, Edward his Orlando and you your Celia. I am Amiens, on account of the songs. Only Robin is missing. Having failed in his bid for an all-male production, in which to recapture the magic – and the wardrobe – of his schoolboy Imogen, he has rejected Silvius in a sulk. We explore the scene. Julius is frustrated by the chastity of expression; he is adamant that it is a play about passion, not pastoral, and proposes an exercise where we form a line according to the last time that we had sex. I make for the safety of the middle; even though honesty requires the rear. But that is occupied by Isabel Leaver, who tearfully declares herself a virgin. Julius takes her in his arms … did he learn how to hug in California? ‘That’s great,’ he tells her; ‘that’s really something special. You’re a truly beautiful woman. Any man would be glad to have you. I myself would be honoured …’ At which point she shrieks and runs off through the bushes. Julius deputes the props mistress to follow her and turns to us.

  ‘That’s it; that’s the kind of emotional honesty I want. This is a play about losing your virginity. It hits you here and here.’ He gestures anatomically. ‘It’s a rite of spring. Blood, sweat, sperm.’

  ‘And comedy?’ someone asks.

  ‘Sure. Sex is funny. It’s the funniest thing in the world.’ Is that where I have been going wrong? ‘Two bodies squealing and squelching in absurd positions: it’s pure slapstick. But, if we’re to bring out the humour, we have to be honest … OK?’

  He walks down the line as if inspecting troops. You, needless to say, are at the head. You see me ranked between Stuart Coley-Brown and Phil Sharman and smile at my self-assessment. My knees knock like a classroom cheat’s. I expect exposure; but Julius begins to speak.

  ‘Now, one by one, we’re going to say when we last had sex, what we did, how it felt and what it meant.�
� There are murmurs of mutiny. ‘Trust me. Only this way can we strip off our inhibitions and reach to the heart of the play. You want to be actors; you are actors.’ No, I am not; I am a choral scholar. I am a novice when it comes to acting, let alone sex. ‘You have to be true to Shakespeare; you have to be true to each other; and, dare I say it, you have to be true to me. I love you all; don’t betray me.’

  My mind blanks as I try to think up a story that will titillate but not humiliate and worry that, if the production fails, it will be the direct result of my mendacity. I wish I had stuck to the choir and blame you for coercing me. Even climbing the tower on Ascension Day is less frightening than this. My attention returns to Julius.

  ‘Candida, you’ve assumed pride of place. Let’s see if it’s merited.’

  ‘It’s the only thing about her that is.’ Melissa’s off-stage whisper whirrs in the wind.

  ‘When was the last time you had sex?’

  ‘About half an hour before rehearsal.’

  Melissa snorts. If the point of the exercise is to bind the ensemble, it is going sadly awry.

  ‘Tell us about it.’

  ‘If only I could. It was just an after-lunch quickie. Not even wham-bam, more flop-plop. I wasn’t in the mood, but a friend came round – that’s the trouble with being in King’s; one’s so central – and, well, tendresse oblige.’

  ‘No wonder you’re known as the college bicycle.’ Melissa has left Rosalind way behind.

  ‘Oh, last week, it was the college tandem.’ This creates a genuine frisson; Julius is delighted. Is it a passing cloud or does Edward turn grey?

  ‘Tell us more.’ Julius squats by your side … a calf-crippling position which he feels duty-bound to maintain.

  ‘First, you tell me something,’ you target Melissa, who stands beside Edward in all the misplaced confidence of confirmed coupledom. ‘When did you last have sex?’

  ‘Saturday, if you must know. We don’t all feel the need to go at it every hour of the day and night.’