Conversations With Mr. Prain (21 page)

“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 you 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.

“No.” I raised my glass to him again and drank.

He looked at me with a concerned frown. “You know, I never thought you had a personal interest in me. You seemed rather detached, until you learnt I was a publisher.”

“Well, there you are,” I said, a throwaway statement covering sharp thoughts. Why hadn’t he kissed me, now we were together alone in the kitchen? Why no affection? I had to work at keeping back all sorts of things I wanted to say. I had felt so sensitive all day, and now I felt truly like a warrior, wanting to challenge him. My words could be a spear. Fuelled by food, and provoked by irritation, I was incited to grab this spear and throw it.

“Strange, isn’t it?” he said.

This comment irritated me further. I imagined responding: “Strange, because you have made it strange. Strange in a very English way.”

“Why very English?” came his imagined response.

“Because it could not have happened in many other places. There aren’t the same social divisions—differences
in money and power, yes, but not like here. People say the British class system is dying, but it isn’t dead, and it’s ingrained in you. It’s possible for me to forget about it in my circles, but once I go out from them I realise how much I am in a foreign land. I am ‘beneath you’ in a way I could never be beneath anyone in New Zealand, and you’re someone from a different tier in society that I should never have met if it wasn’t for a coincidence. There are upper class people who have descended to live in Camden—they have rejected the laws you respect and you would rather not think about them. But you belong to the old order. You will allow yourself to make conversation with me, even sleep with me, but then there is a barrier. It would be embarrassing to you to include me in your social set. If we had an affair, I would always be someone you kept hidden and never wanted to talk about.”

Now this could all have been a subtitle to my actual words, which were a vague, “Yes, I suppose so,” followed by silence, or else you can imagine a divided film screen, with our actual conversation on the right, and the imaginary one on the left. In the imaginary one I was suddenly fiery and confrontational. In actuality, I was careful, and conciliatory. We spoke in short bursts, punctuated by silences.

I put down my fork. I was no longer able to eat with this complex division of conversation in my head, with all the dialogue of my imagination and the awkwardness in reality. I was being jerked in different directions.

“You would rather have a work of art than me?” I asked, though it was not really a question. That was what I had said to Monique. Perhaps he had already heard me express this assumption.

Edward Prain, I thought, you really are so decadent. And you could never have existed in New Zealand. We do not have such heights from which to fall. You could not exist anywhere but in Europe, and perhaps nowhere other than in England. It’s that mixture of culture, class, money, cleverness, arrogance even. It feels as if I have travelled twelve thousand miles to find you. I never could have found you anywhere else.

He was not looking at me. He had long since dropped making a pretence of eating. He was leaning his elbows on the bar and pressing his index fingers against his lips, in his prayerful aspect, and looking down at his wineglass. He suddenly looked rather sad, and not at all powerful or in control. I have won, I thought. I have won. God Almighty.

And then I too felt rather sad, as if we were two people who had become lost in some terrible maelstrom, and had just happened to find each other, but did not know where to go, or what to do, or even whether we liked each other very much.

“Any cream pastries left over?” I asked.

He brightened a fraction, and put something of himself together. “Perhaps … in the fridge.”

I got up and looked, miraculously chose the right cupboard as the fridge, and found a few cakes on a small plate. I took them out and placed them in front of him. “You have to eat one of these. It’s compulsory.”

He smiled. “You wouldn’t let me see you eat one this afternoon.”

“You were a voyeur. I was trying to be a lady. Ladies can’t eat cream choux pastries unless they’ve learnt the art at finishing school.”

He was smiling, despite his sadness. “I didn’t want you to be a lady. I’m tired of ladies.”

“I know,” I said, liking him a little.

And then he pulled me over to him and put his arms around my waist. He kissed my belly and my breasts, all those floral motifs of my dress, and moved his hands then under the fabric to feel my skin. This effect he had on me sexually was appalling! What kind of mutual admiration society was this? Oh stop, I partly wanted to say. I can’t take this kind of feeling. Nothing came out of my mouth but a kind of gaspy moan. So then he kissed me on my lips, reaching up and pulling me towards him, so that I was melting into him, a fusion of metal and stone, annihilation.

The next morning, I opened my eyes to find I was alone in bed. I felt lead-headed. Sleep had been sporadic, interrupted by further sexual engagements with Edward Prain. I had woken once in some sort of shock, and been completely unable to remember where I was or how I had got there, and who this man was in bed with me. I had become hungry again. Then I had been aware that at some time very early in the morning he had gone, but I was too sleepy to worry about why or where, and dozed fitfully.