Conversations With Mr. Prain (6 page)

I had fallen into a snare. He had glanced away at my word. Silence for a moment. I looked up at the misericord, and when I looked back at him I realised that instead of looking prim and offended at my language he wore an amused expression, an expression which displayed some definite satisfaction. He had wanted to excite me, provoke me into animation, so I would forget to be serious and controlled. He would induce too much emotion in me, and I would forget my genteel politeness. He would trick the Eliza Doolittle to make a slip, to remind me that I was not a respectable English lady, but something altogether inferior. I felt I had to say something else quickly to cover up this mistake.

“Writers can never be sure of their own work, no matter how much they believe in it. That’s why we all crave positive feedback.”

And this was an opportunity for him to say, “Yes, Stella, and let me give you positive feedback right now. I’ve read your work and it’s stupendous.” But instead there was a stark silence in which a question mark hung sneering in the air, a silence that was broken at last by Mr. Prain offering more tea and asking why I had not eaten my cake. I looked again to the ogre’s face in the misericord and shivered.

“Are you cold?” asked Mr. Prain, observing my discomfort.

“No, thank you,” I replied, putting up a semblance of fortitude. In fact, the room was a little cold. The luxuriant warmth of the August day did not penetrate the bricks of this vast old house, and the sun was shining at the front, not here at the north-facing back of building, where we were sitting in one of the shadiest rooms. I was wearing a summer dress, one which I had bought at the Market from an antique clothes stall, a short 1960s shift dress made from a floral cotton print fabric. Such a nostalgic image was not quite my style. I had worn it especially for the occasion, and had forsaken a cardigan positive that I would have no need of it. I had swept my hair up into a kind of fat, wormy roll, and the nape of my neck was therefore exposed to the air. I had not imagined we would sit indoors on a day like this. Mr. Prain was wearing a cream cotton suit, brown shoes and socks, a cream and brown tie and an off-white shirt. Perhaps this was casual attire for
him, though it did not seem so to me. We must have appeared to belong to another decade. The room would not have given us away, full as it was of the past. I had had no prescience of this scenario when I had set off from Camden. I had imagined tea on the lawn, a walk through the grounds. I had not expected to be cold.

A couple of twittering sparrows landed briefly on the outside windowsill of the open window, seeming to me like two giggling children you might pass in the street, two city children you fear may be laughing at you as you walk by.

It was all very well discussing writing and its role, I thought, but this was not what I had come to tea to talk about. In my eagerness to impress him as a serious writer I had not been honest. I wanted to be put out of my jitteriness. It was impossible to feel normal when he would not give me a clue as to what he felt about the typescripts I had given him to peruse. I sensed now that he was stalling. I had again that uneasy feeling that we were working at cross-purposes, that something else was going on. This time it was stronger, more conscious, and yet I could not put it down to anything in particular that he had said or done. I felt the way out of the quagmire was to confront.

I looked directly into that face, those dark, scientific eyes, and said, “Mr. Prain, we’re not talking about my typescripts.”

His face gave nothing away. “No.”

He would not be prompted. I had an uneasy feeling that I had been lured into a thicket by a false promise, and
was now in peril. Doubt made me bold. Rumbling up from a deep pit of suspicion, there was a question I surprised myself by asking, “Then why did you invite me here today?”

As if this line had been the cue for an interruption, Monique entered. There were a few creaks and muted footsteps outside the great double doors at the far end of the room, while Mr. Prain gazed at me. There was a rap of gentle knocks, and one of the brass handles wriggled and turned. Mr. Prain twisted around in his chair with an air of grateful curiosity. I realised then that he did not wish to answer my question, not immediately anyway. He would not tell me the real reason he had invited me to tea on that Monday afternoon, but it was not merely to discuss my work.

Monique moved gracefully through the door, with the kind of delicate and yet assured style of the French that Anglo-Saxon women have seldom managed to cultivate. I knew she was Monique from that walk, that gait. She was in her late thirties, and wore slim-fitting clothes that could be described as classic: a knee-length russet skirt, and a fawn blouse, with low sandals. Her face was a little flushed, I guessed from the heat of the afternoon kitchen, and a few strands of her chestnut hair had come loose from the hair slide that gathered the rest into a sleek ponytail. She was handsome, erect and alert, with dark, equine eyes and a strong neck. She smiled at me indirectly and went to Mr. Prain, saying,
“Je m’excuse
.” She then proceeded to explain something in exceedingly rapid French, to which he responded in the manner of a lord listening to a portent
that told of a rebellion amongst his serfs: with slight anxiety and irritation, but with the sure recognition that this could be forestalled by proper handling.

Monique leaned down, resting her hands on her knees, as she bent towards his ear. He twisted around and stretched up. They both looked uncomfortable and vaguely sculpturesque. I was quite sure he was in no hurry to abbreviate Monique’s explanations. He replied in elastic French, slow and fast, considered and lucid, which bespoke a long stay in France during his formative years, sufficient to acquire more than the public school smattering of the tongue. They were quite absorbed in discussing the situation, and did not look at me for a few minutes. It seemed a long time, especially with my pointed question unanswered. I tried to understand the gist of the conversation, but failed through an inability to distinguish more than about five words. At any rate, I was not in the mood for an oral comprehension test. I felt as if I had been left perched on the top of a fence I had been in the process of climbing over. Mr. Prain was supposed to help me down the other side, and instead he was blithely chatting in French, while I sat there looking at the blue sky framed by the window.

I still played host to the pastry, which suddenly grinned at me from my lap below, indicating that it might be an opportune moment, without conversation, in which to sink my teeth into it. My companions were too engrossed in their problem to notice if I squirted cream down my arm or rained icing sugar on the Persian carpet.
But before I lifted the cake towards my lips, Mr. Prain rose, Monique returned to her erect posture, and both appeared apologetic.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you for a moment,” said Mr. Prain. “A domestic problem has arisen which requires my immediate attention.”

The cliché! People actually said such things. I had to chase away a smile.

“Please take as long as you need,” I said. “Would you mind if I snooped about the room in your absence? There’s quite an interesting collection of things here.”

“By all means,” replied Mr. Prain, graciously.

I smiled at Monique, whose manner suggested that she was solitary and capable. But was she his mistress as well as housekeeper? She had, however, used
“vous”
to him, and her attitude suggested both respect and distance from her employer. Standing there together, they made an attractive couple: not unlike in physical appearance, both with the same self-contained air. Then, all at once, I recognised there was a complicity here beyond that of master and servant. There was something in the way that Monique looked at me, something in her soft mouth, something in her eyes or in her hand as it slowly approached her face to pull back the fallen strands of hair, that made me think she was cognizant of an important fact of which I was unaware, as if she had heard me ask that question and knew the answer, and perhaps could tell me something. I felt I had to make contact.

“
Ces pâtisseries sont trés bonnes
,” I said, valiantly, half-wondering if I had said, “These cake-shops are very righteous,” in an effort to compliment her on her pastries. Monique smiled in an amused and yet grateful way while Mr. Prain seemed a touch uncomfortable. My accent was hardly that of a Parisienne, after all, more like that which my sixth form teacher described as “somewhat deliberate,” since I always have a feeling that if I run foreign words together in a manner that I myself would not easily understand, then a native speaker might have equal trouble.

I fancy that Mr. Prain found my comment a little false, considering that I had not yet sampled Monique’s fare. Indeed it was. Nevertheless, I was glad to have said something to her, and I had the feeling that this development pleased her as well. They left the room, speaking again in French as they went to the door. It was closed behind them.

I sank back into the armchair and sighed. This afternoon was an effort. I had said to a friend that I would view it as a joke, but that was sheer bravado. How could I be glib about it when Mr. Prain had read the typescript of my novel, my stories, my poems? I had given him the best of my work, and now he had power over me: the power of refusal or acceptance. I was at his mercy no matter how well I tried to appear impassive. I had not been concerned that he was in that British class one step off aristocracy, not titled, but with little to gain by one. The fact that we sat in a room chock full of antiques and antiquities did not impress me either. His wealth, his house, his land: this was
all irrelevant. It was the fact that he was a publisher that made me squirm. Things were different now.

I picked up the cream cake and bit into it, allowing the cream to spew out onto the plate, slop after slop, while the icing sugar puffed all over my frock and the armrests of the chair. I devoured the cake voraciously, stuffing it into my mouth, spooning the fallen cream up with a finger. The deed was done. I swallowed, relieved. I wiped myself down with a fine linen napkin.

Then I stood up and looked through the low window, following the line of the wood to the place where it was obscured by the west wing of the house. The tractor lawnmower sat immobile where it had been abandoned, the lawns half done, half striped, half plain. There was a patio below and wide steps flanked by urns which led down to the garden, and all around the house were parterres dotted with colour and rose beds. Box and privet trees cut into platonic solids bore witness to a skilled topiarist and gave the garden an eighteenth century appearance, which matched the date of the main part of the building. The scene was empty, as if it was the beginning of a film. Here was the perfect backdrop to the titles:

For some reason it had to be French: gold letters on a green background, the camera still, while the titles showed the names of the leading actresses and actors, the editor,
the main cameraman, sound engineer, producer, director. The music: Mozart. And then it begins. The camera follows two figures who have emerged from the eastern side of the house, though we must erase the outbuildings with sophisticated computer technology. There is a woman with a parasol, and a man. They are of the mid-eighteenth century, possessing the confidence of the privileged before the French Revolution. Rosinde is visiting her cousins in England, and he is a friend of family. He is in love with her, but she finds him irritating. She wants more from life than to marry this boring Englishman. She walks coquettishly and yet with determination, quite enjoying the attention of the man, and yet despising him. They amble slowly across the lawn. He tries to entertain her with a circuitous joke, but she is barely listening. She is noting how warm the day is, how the sparrows flitter, how the gentle breeze flutters her clothing. Rosinde is full of vitality and hope. But what will become of her?

The figures vanished suddenly as if someone had torn the film from the projector. Damn, I thought to myself. What was the good of all this imagining? Why did I do it? I had always done it. A search for truth, I had said! But why be a writer if not to harness all the dreams that might otherwise drive me mad? Should anyone pay me for it? Why should anyone read these dreams, these silly fantasies?

I turned away from the window, the closed window, and plodded to the centre of this museum of a room. I counted ten Persian carpets of mixed sizes laid out to cover the parquet floor, some very old, some recent.
Mrs. Oliver Marshall’s frustrated gaze permeated the atmosphere of my mind, and I wanted to finger things, accidentally-on-purpose break that Roman glass bowl, or the Royal Copenhagen china pieces in the walnut cabinet, or do something irreverent, disdainful. There was a deep, dark aroma of furniture wax and wood blended with other kinds of cleaning liquids and polishes. Someone spent a lot of time in here bringing to a shine all the bits and baubles. Monique, perhaps. I caught sight of myself in a small, round mirror with scenes from the New Testament in relief on a frame. My expression was a glaring one, judgmental and austere, with a slight frown, the sort of look one never gives to a mirror unprepared.

The room was a complete clutter of objects and furniture, the fruit of someone’s labours at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, or else the inheritance of an antiquarian. Since the room was very full, it seemed smaller than it was. Along the northern wall, in between the two long windows which faced the back garden, there was a huge bookshelf stretching from floor to ceiling, containing old volumes: Byron, Tennyson, Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall
, travel books dating from the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, Galileo, a whole run of classical writers like Cicero, Livy and Aristotle, nineteenth-century picture books illustrating life in Biblical lands, biographies of people unremembered, novels, volumes of verse, first editions of Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Darwin, volumes of early archaeological texts about Egypt and Mesopotamia, books containing etchings of paintings
by Dürer, Rembrandt, Michelangelo. But then I knew Mr. Prain liked antiquarian and second-hand bookstores.