‘I wouldn’t,’ said Troy. ‘Break the line up. But I’ve told you I know nothing about this stuff. I’m a painter. Why did you come and plant yourself here, may I ask?’
‘Thought you wouldn’t mind.’ His voice was muffled and faintly Cockney. ‘I’ll be clearing out in a fortnight. I wanted somewhere to work.’
‘So you said in your extraordinary note. Are you broke?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you going in a fortnight?’
‘London. I’ve got a room to work in.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Somewhere in the East End, I think. It’s an old warehouse. I know a bloke who got them to let me use it. He’s going to let me have the address. I’ll go for a week’s holiday somewhere before I begin work in London. I’ll cast this thing there and then start on the sculping.’
‘Who’s going to pay for the stone?’
‘They’ll advance me enough for that.’
‘I see. It’s coming along very well. Now attend to me, Garcia.’ Troy lowered her voice. ‘While you’re here you’ve got to behave yourself. You know what I mean?’
‘No.’
‘Yes, you do. No nonsense with women. You and Sonia seem to be sitting in each other’s pockets. Have you been living together?’ ‘When you’re hungry,’ said Garcia, ‘you eat.’
‘Well, this isn’t a restaurant and you’ll please remember that. You understand? I noticed you making some sort of advance to Seacliff yesterday. That won’t do, either. I won’t have any bogus Bohemianism, or free love, or mere promiscuity at Tatler’s End. It shocks the servants, and it’s messy. All right?’
‘OK,’ said Garcia with a grin.
‘The pose has altered,’ said Katti Bostock from the middle of the studio.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Watt Hatchett. The others looked coldly at him. His Sydney accent was so broad as to be almost comic. One wondered if he could be doing it on purpose. It was not the custom at Troy’s for new people to speak until they were spoken to. Watt was quite unaware of this and Troy, who hated rows, felt uneasy about him. He was so innocently impossible. She went to Katti’s easel and looked from the bold drawing in black paint to the model. Then she went up to the throne and shoved Sonia’s right shoulder down.
‘Keep it on the floor.’
‘It’s a swine of a pose, Miss Troy.’
‘Well, stick it a bit longer.’
Troy began to go round the work, beginning with Ormerin on the extreme left.
‘Bit tied up, isn’t it?’ she said after a minute’s silence.
‘She is never for one moment still,’ complained Ormerin. ‘The foot moves, the shoulders are in a fidget continually. It is impossible for me to work—impossible.’
‘Start again. The pose is right now. Get it down directly. You can do it.’
‘My work has been abominable since three months or more. All this surrealism at Malaquin’s. I cannot feel like that and yet I cannot prevent myself from attempting it when I am there. That is why I return to you. I am in a muddle.’
‘Try a little ordinary study for a bit. Don’t worry about style. It’ll come. Take a new stretcher and make a simple statement.’ She moved to Valmai Seacliff and looked at the flowing lines so easily laid down. Seacliff moved back, contriving to touch Ormerin’s shoulder. He stopped working at once and whispered in her ear.
‘I can understand French, Ormerin,’ said Troy casually, still contemplating Seacliff’s canvas. ‘This is going quite well, Seacliff. I suppose the elongation of the legs is deliberate?’
‘Yes, I see her like that. Long and slinky. They say people always paint like themselves, don’t they?’
‘Do they?’ said Troy. ‘I shouldn’t let it become a habit.’
She moved on to Katti, who creaked back from her canvas. One of her shoes did squeak. Troy discussed the placing of the figure and then went on to Watt Hatchett. Hatchett had already begun to use solid paint, and was piling pure colour on his canvas.
‘You don’t usually start off like this, do you?’
‘Naow, that’s right, I don’t, but I thought I’d give it a pop.’
‘Was that, by any chance, because you could see Miss Bostock working in that manner?’ asked Troy, not too unkindly. Hatchett grinned and shuffled his feet. ‘You stick to your own ways for a bit,’ advised Troy. ‘You’re a beginner still, you know. Don’t try to acquire a manner till you’ve got a little more method. Is that foot too big or too small?’
‘Too small.’
‘Should that space there be wider or longer?’
‘Longer.’
‘Make it so.’
‘Good oh, Miss Troy. Think that bit of colour there’s all right?’ asked Hatchett, regarding it complacently.
‘It’s perfectly good colour, but don’t choke the pores of your canvas up with paint till you’ve got the big things settled. Correct your drawing and scrape it down.’
‘Yeah, but she wriggles all the time. It’s a fair nark. Look where the shoulder has shifted. See?’
‘Has the pose altered?’ inquired Troy at large.
‘Naow!’ said Sonia with vindictive mimicry.
‘It’s shifted a whole lot,’ asserted Hatchett aggressively. ‘I bet you anything you like—’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Troy.
‘It’s moved a little,’ said Katti Bostock.
Troy sighed.
‘Rest!’ she said. ‘No! Wait a minute.’
She took a stick of chalk from her overall pocket and ran it round the model wherever she touched the throne. The position of both legs, one flank, one hip, and one shoulder were thus traced on the boards. The blue drape was beneath the rest of the figure.
‘Now you can get up.’
Sonia sat up with an ostentatious show of discomfort, reached out her hand for the kimono and shrugged herself into it. Troy pulled the drape out taut from the cushion to the floor.
‘It’ll have to go down each time with the figure,’ she told the class.
‘As it does in the little romance,’ drawled Malmsley.
‘Yes, it’s quite feasible,’ agreed Valmai Seacliff. ‘We could try it. There’s that Chinese knife in the lumber-room. May we get it, Miss Troy?’
‘If you like,’ said Troy.
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Malmsley languidly getting to his feet.
‘Where is it, Miss Seacliff?’ asked Hatchett eagerly.
‘On the top shelf in the lumber-room.’
Hatchett went into an enormous cupboard by the window, and after a minute or two returned with a long, thin-bladed knife. He went up to Malmsley’s table and looked over his shoulder at the typescript. Malmsley moved away ostentatiously.
‘Aw yeah, I get it,’ said Hatchett. ‘What a corker! Swell way of murdering somebody, wouldn’t it be?’ He licked his thumb and turned the page.
‘I’ve taken a certain amount of trouble to keep those papers