Conversations With Mr. Prain (12 page)

I looked up at the house, and Mr. Prain became a real lord, a friend of the king, a man of power. I became his mistress, a peasant girl he had dressed up and placed in his bedroom. Ah yes, I was bound to him for fear of what he might do to me or my family if I did not allow him to take advantage. There I was, walking alone in the garden, dressed in fine fabrics of the sixteenth century, my hair coiffured, my limbs swathed in fragrance, while my mother and father, sisters and brothers, ploughed his land in rags. Now I had slipped out of the house, while he attended to some business, but there was no escape, not really. He owned me. When I no longer pleased him would he release me to an uncertain fate in the world outside, perhaps with a child to protect, or perhaps the child would be kept as his own? And what did I feel for him? What does a toy feel? He was playing with me, entertaining himself, and what good were feelings in such circumstances? I was a lapdog who was well-groomed and fed, but only as long as I was amusing.

Then I stopped, and saw us both standing close by on the path. He pulled me slowly to him and lightly bit my neck.

Quickly, I turned away from the image, rubbing that part of my neck. Stop it, I told myself. I should not think of such silly things. I should not let imagination intrude.

And then I saw something else. A musical group was playing in the shade of the house, and around it sat pale-skinned, elegant ladies and gentlemen. Lutes and flutes. Was this appropriate for the time? He was there among them,
listening, but I sat alone, away, on a garden bench, looking towards the woods, batting my fan on my knee. Discreetly, he would show me off to his friends, this flower he had plucked from the ditch. They would look at me covetously, knowingly, waiting for the moment he would grow bored. Their wives saw nothing. For them, I would not exist.

I shook myself from this fantasy, loaded as it was with sexual interactions and surrender to powerlessness.
Why
did I find it erotic? This was so not p.c.

I tried to determine what was happening. Did I
like
the way he was in control? No, that could not be it. Was I infatuated with him? I had never believed myself to be particularly attracted to Mr. Prain. He was not my type at all. But then why the fantasy, the stickiness of this image of concubine to him, the master? Why, earlier, the image of us making love on his great green bed?

What if, after all this, he really did want me, crudely, for my body? Maybe this was all a web of sexual harassment that I was willingly accepting. What if he suggested that he would see to it that my novel would be published if I granted him sexual favours? Did that really happen these days, in publishing? No. Movies, maybe; theatre, maybe, but not in books! Oh no, no, no.

Or would he just lead me on and pretend he would publish something, when that was the last thing on his mind? He had explicitly stated that his intentions were not dishonourable, but should I have believed that? Why trust him at all, in anything?

What did he want? Did he know? What a shock it must have been to see the woman in the photograph made flesh. No wonder he had stared at me in that way. He would not have believed his eyes. It would have seemed as if someone had worked witchcraft. I had thought he liked to talk with me, but he was drawn to an image, my physical form.

Did he hope I might be similarly drawn to him? No. It seemed not to have entered his head that I could possibly be interested in him in the same way. He seemed detached from his own body. When he spoke of his brother as a “sporty type” his expression held a sense of loss, of apology. It was as if he understood that his brother had monopolised all the benefits of physical prowess between them. Edward Prain had retired to interiors, to libraries and drawing rooms, to offices where he could use his superior intelligence and gain a different kind of power. Yet he was still a man, and a man who had relationships. He had been engaged twice. He did not give the impression of being gauche; quite the opposite. I had the feeling he could charm, though this was perhaps superficial, part of his good breeding. I sensed he expected to
manage
a woman, but that he felt women could be either difficult or inadequate in numerous ways.

But what did I know for sure? It was all intuition and guesswork. I began walking again, engrossed in fathoming out the causes of Mr. Prain’s strange behaviour and my own, perhaps stranger, responses, until, after turning around a box tree cut into the shape of a cone, I encountered the
gardener. He was carrying a spanner and smelled strongly of oil and human perspiration. His grey overalls were soiled with the same, as well as paint and dried bits of mud.

I had startled him. He looked at me without friendliness, with pale grey eyes. “Good afternoon,” I said.

“Afternoon,” he replied. “You a guest of the governor?”

“Yes,” I said brightly.

“Makes a change.”

“Does it?” I said, keenly interested. “You mean, he doesn’t have many guests?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” he replied, “but then it’s not like he’s around much neither. He’s in London, isn’t he.” The last statement was not a question but a matter of fact.

“In London,” I repeated blankly. “He works there.”

“He lives there in his flat in Chelsea. Up here in the summer for the weekends if we’re lucky. Whole house opened up every May but fat chance if he cares. He’s got his business to attend to and his social life and he’s not interested in Walton, not like his mother and father. The farm manager looks after the farm, but there’s more to life here than that. If he wants a garden, it needs work and resources.” The gardener flailed his hand holding the spanner around as he spoke, and looked explosive. He was clearly not one to hide his feelings.

It struck me that I should have realised quite some time ago that Mr. Prain had an apartment in London, but he had spoken only of Walton Hall, and I had not taken the time to question whether or not it was probable that
he drove down from Northamptonshire on the M1 every day or commuted from Banbury railway station. I had heard of people who did precisely this, and had presumed that Mr. Prain was one of their number. Admittedly, he did not say he dwelt in this house. He must have calculated that, since I come from a slightly more egalitarian land in which even rich people would rarely have several residences, apart from a holiday home, I would assume he lived in his house and make no objection.

When he had asked me if I wanted to come to tea, he had made it sound as if it was no problem at all to take a Monday off and have me visit in the afternoon. But, according to the new information I had learnt, he had requested that no telephone calls disturb our time together. He had said that he was a very busy man, and yet he had set aside all these hours to have me come to his
country
house, not to his usual city apartment, which would have been easier for both of us. Or was tea at his flat in Chelsea not proper?

“How often does Mr. Prain come here?” I asked the gardener bluntly. He did not seem to mind. He seemed to enjoy the opportunity to let off steam to someone.

“Oh … once or twice a month, I’d say, during the summer. On a weekend. Used to be every weekend, but not this year. Never on a Monday, not like this.” He looked at me with suspicion, expecting me to furnish a reason. “You visiting England then? You’re Australian, aren’t you?” The gardener looked as if he did not care much for foreigners.

“I’m a New Zealander.”

“In publishing are you?”

“Well, in a way. I’m a second-hand book-seller. Mr. Prain just wanted to show me some of his collection here,” I said, thinking that was partly true, and trying to sound nonchalant, as if I knew what was going on.

The gardener nodded ponderously, sizing me up. I could see now why Mr. Prain and he would not get on. Mr. Prain would turn up irregularly to deal with the business of his family estate in the country, when time permitted. The gardener was the person who really kept things in order. He put in requests for new machinery, while Mr. Prain had little idea about these operations and could not understand why anything needed replacing if it still looked new. He was out of touch with the day to day running of the place.

“I saw you were having trouble with the lawnmower,” I said.

The gardener sighed and lifted his eyebrows in an if-you-only-knew manner. “It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, I tell you.
He
thinks it should have lasted twenty years but he doesn’t have the wink of an idea the kind of use it’s put to and, you can tell him,
she’s
been nicking things. I fixed it two weeks ago, and it was working all right, good as gold, just like it was new. Then when I looked at it today there were screws gone right, left and centre.”

She? Monique? I realised there was an anomaly. If Mr. Prain was in London most of the time, why would he need a cook and housekeeper? He did not entertain here,
obviously. He did not have many guests, if any. She would have to keep the place in order, and supervise cleaners from time to time, but then, if the house was only opened up in May, it would be closed up in September. And why on earth would she be taking screws from the lawnmower? I remembered what Mr. Prain had said. The gardener was saying this “out of spite”?

“Who do you mean by ‘she?’ ” I asked.

“Her.” He pointed towards the outbuildings. “That French female he’s got in.”

“Monique,” I said. “But why should she want to take anything from the lawnmower?”

“For her monstrosities,” he said, as if stating the obvious. “Haven’t you seen them? They’re all over the place, over there.” Another gesture in the same direction. “If you ask me she’s bloody bonkers. I’m surprised she doesn’t take the whole ruddy lawnmower and exhibit it at the Royal Academy.”

If my jaw dropped, he saw it.

“It’s not what I’d call art neither,” he continued. “I mean, she can do figures all right. I’d even say she had a bit of a flair for it, you know. But then she goes and sticks on all my stuff I use for repairs, and God knows what else. She says she gets it from the ironmonger’s, but then explain why this ruddy lawnmower packed up today, with bits missing. Put two and two together. You tell him that.”

He continued further, explaining the hardships he had suffered as a result of Monique’s use of his bolts and cogs for her sculptures, but I was barely listening. I was trying
to re-order my comprehension of things to accommodate this new and surprising item. It was Monique, then, who had created the sculpture of Perseus and Medusa, the classical and the mechanical. She was “Empty” Martin, or rather M. T. Martin; he had given me initials. Smart, I thought. Mr. Prain had pronounced her name as if it were English. Monique Martin. He had not wished me to guess immediately that she was a sculptress. She was just the woman who made delicious cream cakes. Or did she? What was her role in this curious plot? Was she posing as a cook? Mr. Prain had called her a friend, “a sculptor friend.” Was she some wealthy Parisienne who had a secret passion for sculpting, a French heiress to whom he had lent his country house while he was, in the main, in London, so that she could create in secret, in England, whilst living in the manner to which she was accustomed? No wonder I detected mystery. They were covering up her true identity.
Cherchez la femme!
I had found out. The game was up. Mr. Prain had wanted to see how I reacted to the sculpture as an entertaining diversion with which he could amuse Monique by recounting it over their cosy games of chess, and over what else? Why should they not be conspirators and lovers at the same time? What an ideal combination.

But why all this secrecy for my sake?

“That’s very interesting,” I said to the gardener, not quite sure if this was the correct response to his further unheard complaints. “I think I’ll go and have a word with Monique. She’s over there?” I pointed.

“You won’t get anywhere with her. She suits herself.”

“Well, I’ll just try,” I said, eager to find Monique now before Mr. Prain discovered my whereabouts. “I hope you get the lawnmower fixed,” I added as I walked off. I had a sense that the gardener felt I was making a swift exit. No doubt he could have told me much more, but I wanted to confront Monique alone. I would use my newly acquired knowledge to singe her composure. I would show I was no fluffy-brain.

I walked quickly through the criss-crossing order of the garden paths towards the door where I had seen Monique disappear. Upon reaching it, I hesitated, undecided whether I should knock or barge in. I decided on a surprise entry. I turned the round metal handle and strode into a dingy room full of castaway bits of machinery—engines, pipes and cogs—which seemed like a mechanic’s workshop, whether the gardener’s or Monique’s I could not say.

I closed the door behind me, and eyed the long cobwebs drooping from the corners of the ceiling. An open door in front of me led to a large garage where there was a sizeable tractor, two motor-cycles and other equipment. On the right there was a small closed door leading somewhere else, to another garage or shed at the front of the outbuildings.

I tip-toed through the workshop and opened this door. Noiselessly I entered a large room which I realised must be Monique’s studio. She was there at the far end of the room, partly turned away, wearing a protective mask and white coat, and listening to an iPod. She was carefully
applying an item of hardware on to something complex by means of a soldering iron. I stayed very still for a moment, and looked around.

My immediate impression was that I was surrounded by people, which made me feel inconspicuous, but of course these “people” were fakes. There were old window dummies, some bald, some with wigs, some dressed, some bare. There were wooden figures, small and smooth. There were a number of puppets of all kinds. There were carvings of human forms in stone, bronze figurines, plaster casts, and moulds. Everywhere, in between the figures, were bits of machinery. There were no marble figures like the Perseus. The only pieces of marble were two blocks just inside the door. Huge bits of rope hung from ceiling rafters. There were little windows, but the main light was from fluorescent tubes suspended from the high ceiling. There were figures made from bits of machinery. There was also an easel with a sheet full of sketches, apparently of another Classical god: Mercury/Hermes. He seemed languid and vaguely superior.