‘You almost had it ‒ for seventy guineas.’
He shook his head. ‘Sure, there’d be no sport in a thing like that ‒ it would have been too easy to all but steal it from you.’
‘And if there had been some sport in it?’
He smiled again, mockingly, and with a deliberate air of faint wickedness. ‘Oh, I’m always ready to take a chance on a horse ‒ or a woman.’
‘Lucky for them, isn’t it? It’s nice of you to give them a sporting chance.’
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you’re after making fun of a poor country boy from the bogs.’ With those words his accent thickened into a caricature of itself; he carried a kind of half-covered bitterness with him as well as those scarred hands.
‘I’m here to help customers, not make fun of them.’
‘Aye …’ His expression had seemed to darken. ‘I was forgetting that I was a customer, and you’re Blanche D’Arcy’s daughter.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing ‒ nothing at all. Now, I believe I owe you three guineas. And since I’m not a millionaire collector, I’d better clear out of here and stop taking up your time.’ He was rapidly counting out the money on the desk, making up the exact amount ‒ three pounds, a half-crown and a sixpence ‒ so that, I thought, I wouldn’t have to make change for him. I left it where he put it.
‘Did you know my mother?’
‘No, I never knew Blanche D’Arcy. And now … good-day to you.’
He turned and walked down the length of the shop. ‘Good-bye,’ I said, but I didn’t know whether or not he heard me. The glass fragments crunched under his feet, followed by the click of the door. Then he halted, and faced back to me. I took a few steps towards him, expectantly.
‘Oh ‒ another thing. Your father ‒ he’d be dead too, would he?’
I gave a little gasp at the question. I called down the length of the shop to him, angrily, ‘Is that some concern of yours?’
He seemed to consider the question for a moment. ‘No ‒ I suppose you’d hardly say it was.’
The door snapped shut, and I could see his tall figure darting across the road to the bus stop. I moved at a half-run down to the front of the shop and was just in time to glimpse the flying tails of the raincoat as he leaped and lightly gained the back platform of the number eleven bus as
it moved off.
The rest of the morning I was depressed and restless. One of Blanche’s old customers came in and bought a Spode tureen. But I was absent-minded with her, and must have seemed offhand. I knew that she hadn’t enjoyed the buying very much; probably she wouldn’t come any more. But I
had two things on my mind; Lloyd Justin’s letter and the man who had told me about the Culloden Cup.
I spent the afternoon pretending to smoke a cigarette before a camera ‒ which was my real job. It was a long, tiring afternoon; we went through the motions over and over again, so difficult to attain is that look of sheer spontaneous enjoyment that makes the cigarette advertisement ‒ or any
other kind. It was through at last, though, and I was about to leave when the telephone rang and Rudi’s secretary said it was Claude, my agent.
‘Maura?’ Claude never wasted his time on unimportant things like ‘how are you?’
‘Listen, I want to see you right away. I’ll meet you at the White Hart at half-past five. Something’s come up.’
He hung up without waiting to find out if the arrangement suited me; that also was typical of Claude.
II
The White Hart was one of those Chelsea pubs currently in fashion ‒ one could always trust Claude never to be seen anywhere that was passé. It was just opening time, and it was almost empty; he made a faint motion that passed for standing up as I came to his table. Women weren’t Claude’s line; he tolerated the models whose lives he controlled because that was the way he made a living. He was very polite to fashion editors and film directors and handsome young men. There wasn’t much left over for the rest of us.
‘Two things, actually,’ he said as I sat down. ‘First there’s ‒’
‘Claude ‒ do you mind? First I’d like to order a drink. It’s been a long afternoon.’
He clicked with impatience, and signalled to the bartender. I asked for Scotch, and I knew I would have to pay my share; Claude didn’t take his models out on his expense account.
‘Well ‒’ he took up again. ‘First I’ve got a job for you. A walk-on part’s become available in a film Peter Latch is making in Spain ‒ you know that one there’s been all the publicity about. There’s nothing to it, really. The part’s only a couple of lines. But the girl wears some fabulous clothes. He particularly asked his people to see if you were available.’
‘Me? Why me?’
Claude shrugged, as if he couldn’t see why either. ‘Didn’t you meet him at the Thompson party? After all, you’re not going to star. It’s just to wear clothes.’
I had, of course, met him at the Thompson party. I thought of that ageing, clever face, the watchful eyes, the few drawled words he had spoken to me. Film directors as famous as Peter Latch rarely had much to say to models; they were always surrounded by beautiful women who were also actresses. It surprised me that he had remembered my person, much less my name.
My drink came. After I took the first sip I said, ‘When?’
‘Well, that’s it. He wants you right away ‒ end of next week at latest. The part’s just been written in, and it belongs with the location shots. It fits very well, since you’re going on holiday on Sunday.’
‘Well, it doesn’t fit, does it? I mean ‒ I was going on holiday, not to work.’ I had meant to take my car and let myself wander on down through the spring sunshine of France, sit warm by lakes and look at the snow on the mountains, taste the spring cherries, sip the wine, slip on through to the Mediterranean if that was where my whim finally took me. It would be the first time away from London since Blanche had died, the first break in the greyness. I wanted it very badly.
Claude’s mouth dropped open slightly. He blinked behind his heavy glasses. For once I had shattered his preoccupation with his own affairs.
‘You can’t mean to refuse! Maura, this man is a starmaker! And he’s asked for you. Believe me, you won’t get this chance twice.’
‘I didn’t say I was going to refuse. But it is my holiday.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, of course if you’re going to look at it that way … I’m sorry Latch even bothered about you ‒ I’m sorry I bothered about you. My girls always take my advice. They never let anyone down.’
‘Claude, I’m tired,’ I suddenly snapped at him. ‘I suppose I’ll go and do the job, and wear Mr. Latch’s clothes, and do as I’m told. But don’t expect me to be delighted about having to do it right now. After all, I’m a model, not an actress. And Mr. Latch hasn’t promised to make a star out of me.’
‘Who knows, Baby, who knows?’ Claude said, sparing a frosty smile for me. ‘You can never tell about these things. Now, what you need is another drink,’ he added, prepared to pamper me a little now that I was looking at things his way.
‘I’ve not finished this one,’ I pointed out.
He didn’t pay any attention, but signalled the bartender again. The place was beginning to fill up, and the bar was getting busy. Claude had to go to the bar himself and get it, which meant he had to pay. That he didn’t seem to mind should have warned me that something else was coming.
‘That was the first thing,’ he continued, sipping at his vermouth. Claude never drank hard liquor. ‘And I’m very pleased about it because it should do you a lot of good where it counts if you make the right impression. But the real thing came up this afternoon too. Never rains but it pours, as my
old mum used to say.’
I was warned, finally; he was being too nice. ‘What is it?’ I wondered why I sounded wary.
‘Well ‒ I suppose, you heard about Rosemary Parks being in that car smash? Poor thing, they
say she won’t be able to work for at least six months.’ I could tell he wasn’t sorry; somehow Rosemary’s loss was going to be Claude’s gain. ‘Well, of course, this leaves the Wild campaign dead. She’s got the contract, you know, to be the Wild girl.’
I nodded. It was one of the more exciting plums that had come to a young model that season ‒ being chosen as the only model for a new line of cosmetics, a line designed exclusively for the young, and for the money that was tumbling out of their pockets. It literally had meant, until Rosemary had been involved in her accident, that for a whole year she could be certain of seeing her own face almost wherever she looked. ‘Yes?’ I said.
He twirled his glass in triumph. ‘Uncle Claude,’ he said, ‘has been busy, and now you are going to be the Wild girl. Fabulous, isn’t it?’
My face stretched in an aching smile. ‘Fabulous,’ I echoed. ‘How did you do it?’ It was Claude’s accomplishment, not mine; he would expect to be invited to tell it all.
‘Oh ‒ I keep my ear to the ground,’ he answered, letting me know how hard he worked for his clients. ‘I knew they had already shot the photos for the first series in the campaign. It was due to start in the autumn. And then came this thing with Rosemary, and I knew they would be way off schedule. So I just went along and hit them with those photos Max Arnott took of you, and they couldn’t resist.’
‘Max’s photos …?’
‘Well, of course, they were a natural. They were exactly what they wanted ‒ the girl-in-the-autumn-woods thing. Better than the ones they already had of Rosemary. And ready for them. No time lost.’
‘You mean they’re going to use …’
He wouldn’t let me finish. ‘Of course, Max had to be part of the deal. And he’s agreed to do it because it will mean so much to you. A big concession from Max, since he’s stopped doing that girlie stuff years ago. Of course, the Morton agency is tickled pink that the great Max Arnott will do the whole series ‒ a real feather in their caps. Marvellous, isn’t it?’
This time I couldn’t quite bring out the dutiful echo. I wasn’t thinking of the Wild campaign, or of what it was going to do for me; I was thinking of the photos. Of all the hundreds of photos of myself I had seen in the three years I had worked as a model, of all I ever would see, these were burned in my memory. They had been taken on a Sunday of last autumn by Max Arnott; he had rung Blanche in the morning to say that he and Susie were taking a picnic into the country, and Blanche and I were to come. By then we had known, all of us, because Max and Susie were Blanche’s closest friends, that Blanche was going to die, probably quite soon. The morning had been rainy, and so beyond London there hadn’t been much traffic, and the woods where we had picnicked had been empty of people. In the afternoon the sun had appeared and the golds and reds of the autumn had come out strongly. It had been hard to keep our eyes off Blanche’s face as we had walked, with the wet leaves underfoot; she was looking with the intensity of a person whose looking was to last the rest of a lifetime. Suddenly she said, ‘Take some photos of her for me, Max? I want to remember …’
We knew what it was she meant, but it was we who would do the remembering. I had shaken off my grieving because I had not wanted to give her sad pictures to look at in what time remained to her. So I had thrown myself into a mood of zany humour, had pranced and postured beneath the tall trees where the shafts of sunlight had struck. The wind had come and blown my loose hair and my skirt; I had thrown back my head and laughed, so that she would see no grief in those pictures. And Max had struck the mood himself, urging me on, so that between us we had found a puckish madness.
It was the first really professional piece of acting I had done, and of course, when he had seen the pictures, Claude had recognised it at once. The colours of the day had prompted Max to use colour film, although he preferred black-and-white. Claude’s eyes had widened at the accidental harmony of my russet skirt, the thick, knee-length socks, the orange sweater and the tangle of my dark-blonde hair; he had begged a set of prints, much enlarged, from Max. And now, all these months later, with Blanche dead and the original purpose of the pictures fulfilled, he had used them to pluck this plum for me.
‘Max has really agreed?’ I asked, finally.
Claude grew cautious; we both knew that Max was too great a photographer, too big a name, too tough a man to tolerate Claude’s little stratagems; he didn’t dare to lie outright about him. ‘Well ‒ he’s agreed, as long as you do. As I said, he’s willing to do this just to help you along. Damned generous of him, I think.’
I was remembering the photos again; it all came back, the golden colours of the autumn day, the borrowed mood of dizzy youthfulness, the grieving that had sharpened my senses and made me responsive to every half-expressed command from Max. It wasn’t so much that I doubted I could do it again; what I doubted was that I even wanted to try.
‘Do they have to use those ‒ those particular ones? I mean, wouldn’t it do if they started with the first of a new series Max shoots?’
An irritated note came into Claude’s voice. ‘Of course they’ve got to use them. How do you think I sold you to them? Without pictures for the autumn campaign ready at this stage, they’re in a mess. They’re buying Max’s pictures, that’s what it amounts to. Naturally they want to have the same girl through the first year’s series.’ He looked at me sharply. ‘It really doesn’t have to be you, sweetie. Max could photograph any girl and make her look great. So count yourself lucky. For a year you’ll be the Wild girl. At the end of that year you’ll be able to name your own price. So just do as you’re told and leave everything to me.’
He leaned back in his chair, satisfied; he had got it all settled, all in order. For a year I was going to be the Wild girl, with my pictures on vast hoardings, staring at people from along railroad tracks, from superbly coloured showcards in chemists’ windows, and from every magazine and newspaper a young woman might read. The thought of it should have elated me, but oddly it didn’t. I had heard of models who had started out as a something-girl, and hadn’t known how to stop. And besides, they were going to use Blanche’s pictures, the pictures that had been private, not meant for chemists’ shop windows.
Claude got himself another vermouth, and then took out his pad and began to write down what I was to do about contacting Peter Latch’s film company in Spain. ‘The main office is in Madrid, but they’re shooting north of there … you’ll save yourself time by …’
I was only half listening; part of myself was standing off and watching me being committed to something I wasn’t even sure I wanted completely. It was, as Claude said, fabulous luck ‒ two strokes of fabulous luck in a single day; it would push me a long way towards the place which all models were supposed to covet ‒ the top place. I looked around the room that was now crowded, every seat taken, and people packed three deep around the bar. I fidgeted with my glass while Claude wrote, wishing I felt happier about the thought of going to Spain to play my bit part for Mr. Latch, wishing I felt happier about being the Wild girl. I tried to draw some excitement from the seeking, restless faces of the crowd about me, but they gave me nothing ‒ nothing but the assurance that to be a clothes-horse for Mr. Latch, to be the Wild girl spelled a kind of success that was understood and applauded here, in this world, and what right had I to ask for anything else? I would be envied and admired, and that would be enough. The babble of the voices, rising every minute as the room grew more crowded, seemed to shriek at me that I was mad to want to be happy when I could be successful. Perhaps Lloyd Justin’s letter lying on Blanche’s desk promised me something ‒ a fixed way of life, a certain security, a shining new-pin house complete with swimming pool and the endless sun of California. But who could promise me happiness? At least Claude was honest; he only offered me success. So I put Claude’s piece of paper into my bag, and turned once more to look at the people about me, feeling as bright and restless and discontented as any of them could be.
Then I saw him, the man who had been in the shop e
arly that morning, the Sheridan man, I called him ‒ he with the too-beautiful face and the work-seamed hands.
I sat and watched him, feeling the same sense both of exhilaration and disquiet I had experienced that morning. Our second meeting in a day, wasn’t, I suppose, too strange; the pub wasn’t far from Blanche’s shop, and he probably was staying somewhere in the neighbourhood. The White Hart was mentioned often in the newspapers, and most likely he had come to see what the Chelsea set looked like, how they behaved. But this time, I thought, I wouldn’t let him go, not let him disappear as he had done that morning. This time I would answer any question he asked ‒ about my father or anything else. I suddenly knew what had seemed so shocking in what he had said to me; he had asked a personal question, and in London that was rarely done, at least not on a chance meeting; no one had the time, and no one cared enough. So I sat and waited, expectant, knowing he would turn and see me, knowing he would come.
He was standing at the bar, on the fringe of a group of young people, but he did not belong with them. He listened openly to their talk, and they knew he was listening, the way a man alone in a pub might do, hoping to be drawn in. Then I saw one of the men of the group speak to him ‒ ask for a match ‒ because he at once produced a lighter. It wouldn’t be long, I knew, before they allowed him to buy them all a round of drinks; I had seen it done so often, when they knew the stranger was an outsider. It happened quite soon, and he seemed complaisant about being allowed to pay. I saw him take up his own glass, nod and half-smile to the only one of the group who had raised a glass to him in brief thanks ‒ it was a girl, of course ‒ but almost at once he was closed out again, on the fringe, his attempts at conversation practically ignored. For a few minutes he persisted in his effort to participate, but he was completely an outsider, with only the price of a round of drinks to commend him. The knowledge grew on him; I watched his expression darken with anger and a return of that swift bitterness he had shown briefly to me that morning. He stepped back, and I prepared myself, ready to smile whenever he turned his head and saw me. Eventually, staring over the heads of the group because of his height, his gaze locked on mine.
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