Conversations With Mr. Prain

by Joan Taylor

  She opened a cupboard and extracted a small packet of pretzels, which she held up invitingly.

  “OK,” I said, and she threw them to me across the room.

  I sat up on a bar stool and opened the insufficient packet, while she began to wipe down the mottled marble surfaces around the double sink and hob.

  What should I say? A part of me felt amoral and careless. There was something rather frightening about this mood; it was the kind of state in which one could raise matters that would otherwise never be mentioned. I tried stamping on this aspect of myself, while munching on the pretzels, and could think then of nothing very important to say at all. “England is very beautiful in summer. It must be nice living here in the countryside,” I said, which must have been about the sixth time I had expressed this sentiment that day, and it was sounding tired.

  She smiled in an amused way. “Yes,” she said. “But the French countryside is beautiful too.”

  “You miss it?”

  “Of course. It is my homeland. I come from the Auvergne. Do you know it?”

  “No. I only know Paris.”

  “Ah well. You have to go to the Auvergne one day. It is beautiful. I love the green hills, and all the villages and old churches, with red roofs. My family is there. I want to go back now.”

  “You were in Paris when Edward discovered you, weren’t you?”

  “Ah yes, but an artist must live in Paris, I thought. I hated it. I know … that is crazy … to hate Paris! But it was very hard for me there. I was not happy. I was starting to ‘make my name’, but personally it was not good. So I met him and he asked me to work for him, and he would pay for materials, and for a small salary, and transport, and it seemed very good to me. I wanted to be in England and to see my teacher again, before he died. I had not been here before.”

  “You couldn’t work in the Auvergne?”

  “Not enough people buy sculpture there, and my work is too heavy to move cheaply. Do you want something to drink?” she asked. “I have opened some wine.” She had completed her cleaning operations and now held up a bottle of blood-red pinot noir.

  I accepted. “Thank you.”

  “But you are from New Zealand, I hear. That is far away, and also beautiful.”

  “True.”

  “And why did you leave New Zealand?”

  I shook my head. “I wanted to find something that was missing. I wanted creative stimulation, and the excitement of living in a large city like London, where there are so many cultural things happening. I had to expand my experience somehow. I suppose I felt like Katherine Mansfield when—” I stopped myself. “I do miss New Zealand sometimes,” I said, a thought that I had not admitted to anyone else, a thought I was not really aware of having. “It’s a very scenic country and all that and it’s clean and wild, but I guess more than anything I just miss that sense of home. Here I am always an alien. I don’t know how the English mind works.”

  “Yes. I understand what you mean,” she said, pouring the wine.

  Did she? I didn’t know if I did. I felt a bit as if I was brainstorming, freewheeling through an idea I was not sure of at all. She handed me a glass. “But I’ve never thought of a good enough reason to go back. My life is here now really.” I sipped the wine and then said, “Cheers.”

  “A votre santé,” she said, sitting down on a bar stool opposite me. “It is not enough just to go home because you want to?” Her manner had become friendly and rather open. Perhaps she was relieved that things were now clear and she did not have to continue to hide and play games. She had been doing it out of loyalty to him, but now she could relax and be more herself.

  “No,” I said, and sipped again.

  She seemed thoughtful at this reply and stared into her glass for a moment.

  “You’re going back to France simply because it’s home?”

  “Yes. La patrie, we say. The homeland. She calls me back.”

  “You’re not leaving to escape from him?” Now I had to ask what I really wanted to know.

  “No, no. Not at all.” She smiled a little at the odd question. “You must understand. He rescued me. I owe him very much. But there is no problem between us.”

  “He’s never tried to exploit you?”

  “No.”

  “I mean … you know what I mean.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “He is my patron and my employer, but not my friend … and not my lover. I know the gardener has told you this.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Eh bien. He tells the local people such things, and that I am taking all his money. And yet I think Monsieur Prain prefers they believe this. I knew from the beginning that my place is here.” She drew an imaginary line in the air. “And he is here.” She drew another as far up as she could reach. “He is a very rich English gentleman and I must respect certain things like this.” She smiled slightly, realising that the rules did not seem to apply to me. “And then … perhaps I should tell you. It is not to men that I am attracted.”

  Oh my God, I thought. I know you are always supposed to take such revelations without any show of surprise or timidity. But oh my God. I saw myself in her studio, standing there in Venus pose, naked, one leg slightly bent, arms carrying a robe that I had removed from my body. I felt a tinge of concupiscence rushing around my skin. What would she do? I imagined her moving me, changing my pose, as artists and photographers sometimes did, running her fingers over my arms and back. I had always gone along with that kind of thing—even though artists were not supposed to engage with you—because when you are a life model you start to see yourself as an object, and your real self is somewhere else.

  “And I had finished with a woman who was my lover for five years. I wanted to be alone,” she said.

  “You’ve been alone ever since?”

  “Of course. It is good for me, and for my work. A woman can waste so much time on love.”

  “And also a man,” I said, ambiguously, thinking of him, wondering if he loved or not.

  “Yes.” She looked at me seriously, knowing what I meant. “I understand he has told you everything?”

  “Has he? He told me what you suggested, when you saw the photograph.”

  She made a face. “You know, I have known him for three years, and he has had lovers who came here for weekends sometimes, but they did not change him, and he was bored with them very soon. Then a few months ago he started not to come here so much, and when he came I saw that he was unhappy. I thought it must be for a woman—he was not made unhappy like this by his business. So I thought—ah, this one is special. Then one day he was here I saw him with the photograph of you. He was sitting in the room where you drank tea this afternoon, and he had gone to sleep with the photograph on the knees. I was coming to ask him a question, but when I saw this I did not disturb him, so I went out. I knew the photograph came from the gallery. So, a little later, when he was here again, I asked for us to play our game of chess in that room for a change, to refresh the brain.

  “So we set up the board in the gallery, and he was … he was very unhappy. He could not play. He was drinking. I saw him look sometimes at the photograph. So, then, while I was waiting for him to move, I got up to walk and I stopped in front of it for a closer look. He asked for my opinion, and I said this was like the goddess Vénus. I saw that he was impressed by what I said. And then he told me about you. Perhaps he would not have done this, if he was not drinking.”

  “Did you say the photograph was like Venus because you meant it, or because you thought it was something he wanted to hear?” I was suspicious. She was not so loyal to Edward Prain as to confess she had seen him with the photograph before now.

  “I meant what I said.” She cast a sidelong glance at me, at which point I felt a weird discomfort and wondered again about the state of my un-aphrodisiac hair. “When I said to him that I would like to make the sculpture of Venus, it was true. I was not proposing that because I believed he wanted it. You see, I had in my mind that
I would make the Venus, and get a model, sometime, but it would be not in the way he wants it to be. When he told me you may be the model in the picture, I said, ‘Well, if she will model for me, I will use her for my Venus.’ He liked the idea. I thought maybe this will help him. Perhaps he can cross these lines for you.” She drew them in the air again.

  Cross the lines.

  “Why do you want to do a sculpture of Venus?” I was testing.

  She leaned ever so slightly closer to me. “Well … why? She is the goddess of love. She is important. She is a woman and she is more. She is nature, vitality, erotics, and love. But this is not an age for her. This is the age of Mercure.”

  “Mercury?”

  “Yes. Mercury. Hermes. He is the god of commerce, stealing, eloquence, and the media. Venus is under threat. Do you know the pictures and sculptures by Jim Dine, of the Vénus de Milo?”

  “No.” I knew Dine was a pop artist.

  “Everywhere, he has her with saws and hammers. Hard colours. A red heart, and yet it is death.” Monique frowned deeply, seeing it all in her mind’s eye, looking past me, and gesturing. “He made her into a doll and painted her with violent colour. Sometimes she is large, on her own, and sometimes small, like a mass production. But, of course, he makes cheap things important and important things cheap. What I understood, for myself, was that it is a great danger for her. I want to show that in my work, but not to show that she is violated or degraded. She must be beautiful, mysterious and strong.”

  She was now looking at my lips. I noticed hers, reddened by the wine. “And is it dangerous for me here, Monique?”

  She shook her glass in small circles and watched the wine swirl around. “I do not know,” she said. “That is for you. That is not for me to say.”

  “You said before he was lonely.”

  “Yes. He is lonely. When you are lonely some things become … too big in the mind.”

  “But you have used this … obsession of his, then? You suggested to him that you would give him the sculpture, and then return to France.”

  “Ah no, not exactly,” she said. “He said that if I do this sculpture then I will not need to try to sell it—he will buy. So I agreed. I will make my own sculpture, but I will also give him another that he wants. Then I will have repaid him a little, and I can go. So you can stay in the house during the week and be my model. He wanted you to be away from your friends, so you could work, because he thought you had real talent, and he could help you. Well, this is practical for me, of course, so I like the idea. And then he told me how he wanted things to happen today, because he did not want to frighten you away.”

  “He almost did,” I said. “You both did.”

  “Well … but what could I do?” She gave me a look that indicated she had been given no choice. But that was not quite true. She was in this for herself, surely. It was not simply a question of loyalty. She was playing a certain game with him too, standing on his side in some respects, but not in all. Perhaps she was not so loyal. I felt now she would draw closer to me at his expense if I would let her. I decided to tell her more, still testing, to establish a certain women’s intimacy, yet cautious of what I now recognised as something desirous on her part as well.

  “Do you know that he wants the sculpture more than he wants me?”

  She smiled. “He says this?”

  “Yes. Not perhaps in so many words, but … he’s an English gentleman, as you said, and I suspect they can be rather peculiar.”

  “But maybe after this evening—”

  “Oh, I don’t think it will change anything. He wants to put everything between us into a box, completely separate from his real existence. That’s how it seems. And if I were living here, I would be brilliantly contained. He likes privacy. You must know that.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But then you may like privacy too. It has suited you to be here. You have done some wonderful work in the peace of these surroundings. I wonder if I could do wonderful work. It isn’t the same for us, is it? We’re very different.”

  At this point I realised we were not alone. Without coming through the door, Edward Prain had appeared, looking much less dishevelled than I. He was wearing the same trousers as before, but now only a thin knitted pullover on top, and he confronted the sight of me and Monique talking together over a bottle of wine with a mixture of feelings that seemed to include anxiety, humour and vexation.

  I jumped and gasped. How much of this conversation had he heard? Monique did not look so surprised, but she was clearly piqued that our tête-à-tête would now have to stop.

  “I think I told you there is a secret passage between the study and the kitchen,” said Edward Prain.

  One of the kitchen cupboards was a door? Again I had a peculiar feeling of déjà vu. Was it something about this?

  “You do keep slipping away from me,” he said, with a tinge of censure. “I think you must be telling me something.”

  “I was wide awake,” I said, attempting no defence.

  He sat down beside me. “You should have woken me,” he said, casting a questioning glare towards Monique. She looked back at him with an expression of complete confidence and calm, as if to say that he had nothing to worry about, and then got up.

  “I will leave you in peace now,” she said. “Bon appetit.”

  “Monique has made dinner,” I said. “Ratatouille,” I added, in the best French accent I could muster.

  Monique walked to the dishwasher and placed her empty wineglass there. She turned to me and asked, “Will you go back to London this evening or will I see you tomorrow?”

  “I have no idea of the time,” I said.

  “About ten-thirty.”

  “Enough said,” said Edward Prain.

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight.” She left.

  “And what have you been talking about?” said Edward Prain, immediately after the door had closed.

  “I’m sure Monique will tell you,” I said. “There’s no need to be worried.”

  “I’m not worried. I’m curious. What did you learn?”

  I didn’t want to tell him that I was now aware of Monique’s sexual orientation. But it did change things. I could understand why he would have wished to ignore it. Would it affect my decision? Would it make my modelling just so carnal, to pose for a woman who might also find me attractive? What sort of a dissipated lump of flesh would that make me? But she was an artist. That’s the point he wanted to make. Don’t worry about it. Art for art’s sake. “That you’re an English gentleman.”

  “Oh yes, very peculiar.”

  He had heard me say this. “Please can we eat. I’m starving,” I said. I got up and removed two dinner plates from the oven, a casserole of ratatouille, and some bread rolls. We arranged ourselves. There was no passionate kiss of greeting, or physical contact at all. I realised I had wanted him to show me some affection, but there was nothing. He poured out a glass of wine for himself and topped up mine. “Are you intent on keeping me tipsy?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s good for you.”

  “Is it?” I smiled. “Anyway, to literature.”

  He raised his glass silently, eyeing me, suspicious.

  We drank, and then, ravenously hungry, I plunged into eating, sweeping aside all considerations of table etiquette. It felt as if I had not eaten anything substantial all day, and I greatly relished this meal. Edward Prain picked at his plate. He clearly decided we should stay on safe territory as far as conversation went, and ran through his busy schedule for the following day, which began at 11 a.m. with an important meeting with share-holders and finished at midnight after a book launch, as if this might have a bearing on our future. I nodded and chomped through several more mouthfuls, imagining without conscious reason coming into play a beetle scuttling along a narrow passageway, and then a kind of nest of beetles, and then a bird.

  After toying with a piece of green pepper for a little while, he added, “I don’t know what y
ou want.”

  I thought about my statements in the bed, and decided against repeating the one most likely to be true now.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to rush you, but it depends on what you decide on the offer I outlined.”

  “But that is separate, isn’t it?”

  He thought for a moment, looking at me a touch resentfully. “Yes and no.” He went on to move a piece of aubergine onto his fork. “But are you expecting we will … continue?”

  “I’m not expecting anything tonight. I’m only doing what I feel like doing at the present time. We’re not so different about one thing, you know. Neither of us wants to be attracted to the other. You represent many things I don’t like. You don’t value the things I believe are important. You’re from another universe as far as I am concerned. And you have power, because you’re a wealthy publisher, and I’m a poor aspiring writer, and lovers shouldn’t have that sort of dynamic going on.”

  “You know I would never publish anything of yours out of … at any rate, I’d need to consult with my editors. It’s not up to me. I wouldn’t have such autocratic authority. I couldn’t guarantee that I would publish what you wrote, as part of my offer. I am only giving you an opportunity.” He was obviously uneasy, and felt he needed to make his position clear, except it didn’t sound very clear at all. “And that goes for …”

  Oh God don’t say it, I thought. I felt irritated by the idea he could have thought me capable of such a thing.

  He was aware of this, and added, “I didn’t think that’s why you—”

  “Yes. I know,” I said. I went back to eating and felt we should close the subject. “I wanted you. I made a move because I felt like it. For no other reason. It was instinctive.” I did not look at him.

  The fact that I was eating and he was not eating made me momentarily uncomfortable, and I stopped. Then I looked into his eyes, which were worried.

  “You haven’t decided then?” he said.