“Don’t get the idea that I just sit at home twiddling my thumbs all day. I sit on a lot of committees, which is damn hard work—mainly because the rest of the old harridans on them are so obstreperous—and I paint. Very well, though I say so myself, although it could be better if George would let me indulge myself on a European tour. But he’s too mean—and too jealous; he imagines I would be pulling every Italian waiter in sight into my bed. Can you imagine?”
From the waiter’s point of view I can. Only too well. If it was me she wouldn’t have to break into a muck sweat to do it.
“I think it all goes back to the perils of Python’s Pesticides,” she continues. “When he was in the first flush of youth, so to speak, he was a most unjealous man—is there such a word? It doesn’t matter anyway. Now that sex has its problems for him, he’s suspicious of his own shadow—that’s rather good. Can you imagine being cuckolded by your shadow?”
I can’t, because I don’t know what ‘cuckolded’ means, but it sounds pretty painful and I nod my agreement.
“What kind of things do you paint?” I ask as we speed back to the E.C.D.S. with me safely behind the wheel.
“Oh, everything. Landscapes, still lifes—or should it be still lives?—nudes. It’s difficult to get models around here, you know. I think most of the locals think it’s ‘a bit orf’ or that I’m going to practise withcraft on them. George sits for me sometimes but he is clearly embarrassed, poor dear, and not very inspiring. Especially when he is poring over his balance sheets and sucking his teeth all the time. I know—” I can feel her eyes flitting over me and I tilt back my hear to tighten up the jaw muscles “—could you, I mean would you sit for me?”
“What? Me?” It is difficult to get exactly the right note of slightly confused amazement into my voice but I think I do it quite well. “I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“No experience necessary. Just keep reasonably still. I’d pay you, of course.”
“Well, I don’t know.” I pretend to be giving the matter serious thought.
“I’m sorry. I can see that you don’t really like the idea. I should never have asked. Look, can you drop me here? I want to pop into the butcher’s.”
“Oh no, I’d like to do it,” I blurt out. “When would you want me to start? I’m free most evenings, or there’s mornings or some afternoons.”
I feel I have overdone it a bit as soon as I close my mouth and Mrs. C. looks appropriately confused.
“Are you sure? You seemed so hesitant a moment ago.”
“Yes, well, I was trying to think what spare time I had in the next few weeks.”
“I don’t intend to cast you in bronze. I won’t be making much of a hole in your time off. Just an hour here and there. How can I get in touch with you?”
“I’m not on the telephone at my digs. You’d better mention it to me when you’re having your lessons.”
“O.K. I can leave a message at the School, can’t I?”
I don’t disagree with her but I can’t see Dawn responding very well to that. She looks me over pretty closely when I report back at the School as if checking that my flies are still done up and that I am not covered in lipstick, but it is Cronk who shows most emotion. He flashes out of his office as I go in and demands almost hysterically where Mrs. Carstairs is.
“Real feather in our cap, that one,” he tells me when he finds I haven’t driven her off the end of the pier. “If we can do a good job with her, we’ll be on the map and no mistake. Once she starts chatting to the top brass at Python’s they’ll all be down here. Directors’ wives, managers’ wives, right down to the shop stewards eventually. It’s up to you, lad. Pull out the stops on this one.”
I give him my plucky ‘do my best sir’ smile, borrowed from all those British war films you see on the telly and wink at Dawn, who scowls and looks the other way. Poor kid, I can understand how threatened she feels and she doesn’t know the half of it: me naked on some rug with Mrs. C. trying to stop the paintbrush dropping from her twitching fingers—my mind races away into overdrive as usual.
In fact, Mrs. C. hardly mentions her painting the next time I take her out and I am on the point of deciding she has thought better of it when a sour-faced Dawn hands me a piece of paper with a telephone number scrawled on it and tells me that “your fancy bit rang and asked you call her this afternoon.” This leads to a lot of leg-pulling from the rest of the lads, which I am secretly very pleased about although I play it all dead casual.
I have nothing on after eleven o’clock so I spin out my pint of lunch and hop round to the nearest telephone box dead on the stroke of two-thirty, which I consider to be sufficiently far into the afternoon not to appear too eager. Of course, it has been stripped by vandals, and so has the next one. The Post Office is shut because it is early closing day and I am half way to Shermer before I find a box that is operational. I know it is operational because there is a bloke inside dialling numbers he has listed on a piece of paper as long as your arm. I don’t know what he is doing—probably making obscene telephone calls—but it takes him nearly half an hour to do it. By this time I am getting fidgety, to put it mildly, and when he comes out without even saying sorry it is more than I can stand.
“Do you mind if I use your phone?” I ask him.
“Yer what?” is all he can manage.
“I thought you were running a business from in there. How much does it cost to rent it?”
“Get stuffed.”
Now he is talking my language and we have a merry little battle of words before he drives off and I ring up Mrs. C., to find that the number is engaged. This is the last straw and I have asked the operator to check it before I eventually hear a harrassed upper-class voice bark “Cromingham 234.” This would be fun if it was a female voice but, to my surprise, it is nothing of the kind. I ask to speak to Mrs. Carstairs and there is a curt “Hang on a minute” before I hear the bod who answered the telephone shouting out to someone.
“It’s some peasant for you, darling. Hurry up and get rid of him, will you, otherwise I’m going to be late for the plane.”
There is a further interchange and then Mrs. C. comes on, all instant charm. “Hello. Julia Carstairs speaking. Who is that?”
“It’s the peasant from the driving school,” I say haughtily. “You asked me to ring you.”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Lea. Thank you so much. I’m awfully sorry about my husband. He’s got to rush off to Stockholm and he’s a trifle out of sorts. Aren’t you, darling?”
There is another little interchange in which I can hear a voice being raised in the background, and then she returns to me. “He agrees with me. Now, let’s see. Where were we? I expect you know why I rang you. The muse is on me fit to bust at the moment and as soon as I’ve run my grumpy husband to the firm’s airstrip I’d like to get down to work. Are you available at the moment?”
I am still smarting at being called a peasant, but of course I say yes and it is agreed that I will report to the Carstairs residence—”You can’t miss it; it’s the only house in the lane”—at six o’clock, with the promise of a drink and some supper should our session go on long enough.
Ever hopeful, I retire to my lodgings and have a bath, carefully anointing my body in strategic places with some Odour (sic. Ed.) Cologne I keep for the purpose. Thus fortified and having swilled half a cup of Mrs. B.’s Dettol round my chops, I lie down until it is time to go into action.
At six o’clock