Ladies From Hell (2 page)

It’s a great conversion job, I was lucky to get it. I don’t think old Ardkinglas was all that keen, he’d have taken Tranter or Merriman if he’d had the choice, but Lady A’s been a fan of mine for years. She’s buying Coventina; she’s going to hang in the Big House, on the landing halfway up the main staircase. There’s a picture light already fitted, and she’s even moving a little de Momper to make room for her. Fame indeed! I had a bit of a problem with her at first over the daisy but she saw the point in the end. Very fairminded woman, Lady A.

From the lounge there’s a little panelled passage with the loo and bathroom opening off; you can see through it down the length of the Tithe Barn. I sat and had another stare at Coventina. A shaft of sunlight was hitting the easel foot, bright as a horn note. She heard the war horns too, the trumpets of the Legions; it’s in her eyes. And perhaps a soldier gave her his cloak; a great rough Tyrian cloak, that smelled of urine. She was already old when he named her though. She was the Nymph of All the Springs; the Pretani brought her with them, from the Land of Summer.

The Overseer wasn’t back by six, which was most unusual for him, so I took a stroll down to the brook. It’s my favourite place on the Estate. It comes meandering through the fields, set with reed beds and big Rackhamy willows; it has its deeps and shallows, there are sandy banks where the
crayfish have their holes and in places the current’s slow enough for the Water Plantain to grow. There’s a plank bridge with a handrail, and the dragonflies beat forward and back in summer. It’s the sort of place to see Coventina, if she’s still around.

I went and sat by one of the willows, leaned back on the turf. I was lucky: I’d only been there about half an hour when she came wading along the brook. She was hip-deep, stepping carefully; she stopped nearly opposite me and stared across with those huge grey eyes. I didn’t move, and after a time she climbed out on to the far bank. Bits of old leaves were stuck to her thighs and her fur was slicked down into a little dark duck’s tail; it gave me an idea for another painting. After she’d gone I walked down to the bridge, crossed it and came back along the other bank. I searched about where she’d stood and found an old U-bolt in a tussock of dried grass. It was half rusted away, with a lovely dark red patina. I wrapped it in a handkerchief. I couldn’t imagine how it had got there; it was a really lucky find.

When I looked up the Overseer was coming down from the Tithe Barn. You couldn’t mistake that hundred-knot walk. His shoulders were hunched too, which meant he was worrying about something. I sat on the bridge rail and waited for him.

He was breathing hard when he arrived. He said, “I thought you’d done a bunk for a minute.” He grinned at me though, to take the sting out, and his gold tooth winked. It’s always surprising how well it matches his hair.

I grinned back. I said, “You know I wouldn’t do that to you. Get held up?”

He nodded, but he still wasn’t happy. Apparently things hadn’t gone too well in the big city. Some clown in Central had fed him the wrong comp time; he’d had to wait two hours for another slot, then been given a bollocking anyway for being late. They’d nearly turned the Thought Police out. He asked me what I was doing down by the brook and I showed him the U-bolt. He looked a bit baffled. Suspicious too, though he ought to have known I’m a Trustie. Anyway, he calmed down after a bit. He said he’d put a kettle on, so we walked
back up to the Barn.

He wasn’t a bad bloke really as Overseers go, except for the auriferous gnasher. It always bothered me slightly; either he was too young for it, or it was too old for him. Though he’d obviously felt it was right for his Image. He was a snappy dresser, like most A grades, and certainly a looker; though he was getting worry lines from thinking too much. I was afraid I’d given him some of them.

We had our tea, after which he retired to write his daily Report. I expected he’d be gone for some time; I could imagine him chewing his stylus a bit, wondering whether to put in about the U-bolt or not. I played Bach on the Sony system I was buying on the drip-feed. I’d set it up in the Tithe Barn; I put Coventina between the speakers to give a visual focus. The hi-fi was a negatax perk of course. It gave George a right twinge when it first turned up, but it was all above board. I smoked a pipe, my first for a week, in celebration of the U-bolt. Afterwards I got all the bits and pieces out and arranged a selection of them round the chain. It looked as if I’d nearly got enough to make a start; I wondered if I could get Am to do some model shots next time she came down.

George came through a bit later with a bottle of high-priced plonk; Goldener Winklepiss, real hypermart stuff, but the thought was there. We played some more music—he was switching on to Finzi quite well, he even asked for one of the Hardy cycles—and I showed him what I was up to with the chain. He still looked a bit uncertain; but he was doing his best. He’d had an idea a week or so before that he might be getting a posting; I asked him if he’d heard anything since but he shook his head. He was still a bit subdued; he reckoned he’d got at least another eighteen months on Overseeing, maybe two years, so if he was moved on he’d only be reattached. He said he’d as soon stay with the devil he knew. You’ve got to believe it, that really was his way of paying a compliment. I said by that time he’d at least know all there was to know about the art game but it didn’t cheer him up. He hadn’t wanted to come into Overseeing in the first place of course,
none of them do; but it’s still the quickest way to Senior Management. And with a ten thousand a year mortgage and two kids booked for Eton he needed a fast promotion, Class A or not.

You get to know quite a lot about your Overseer; after all, it’s a pretty close relationship. I should know, I’ve had seven of ’em. I knew his kids were Emma and Abigail, though they always called the little one Sandy, and that his wife was Hannah. All good solid Class A names of course. I knew what they’d look like before he got the holosnaps out; the kids pretty as hell with his genes behind them, Hannah a Plain Jane. I wasn’t far wrong; but he’s a type of course. Adonis nearly always marries Plain Jane to keep the home fires burning while he larks about. She had good eyes though; looked as if she’d be a goer if she was given half the chance. Not that she’d ever get it. Trouble with the system is, the silly little bitches usually keep their heads down because they know they’ve made a good catch and they’re scared of losing it. I’ve seen it happen too often for it to be really funny any more.

As it turned out he had another cause for gloom. We were getting an inspection from an Assistant Controller next month, which was always good for the jitters. They never worry me all that much; see one and you’ve seen ’em all, sez I. But of course I don’t have anything much to lose.

Also he was getting an assistant sometime in the summer, a trainee from the Grade below him; which made it my turn to stick my lip out. I’d more or less got used to having one Overseer on my back, but two was coming it a bit strong. I wondered how much they’d expect me to put my income up to cover the extra surveillance; though with the negatax situation that would be funny as well in its way. But he said he wasn’t too concerned, it would just have to sort itself out. He was more pleased it would give him the chance of a weekend or two at home. “Home” was near Sunningdale, I’d seen holos of that as well. I’ve never really felt clematis looks its best round Corinthian columns, particularly fibreglass ones, but it was certainly a hell of a pad.

Anyway I put the best face on it I could; we talked it over
for a bit then he went to warm up a pizza. He made a pot of coffee too, I really was getting him very well trained. After which we made our way to our Lonely Couches. Leastways, I expect his was; I was well enough suited. It was a clear, mild night, with that spring wind blowing and a sky like smoky milk. Coventina was still by the brook, the breeze was bringing her scent. I opened my windows and lay thinking about the new painting. It would need a lot of water plant detail, I could make a start on that as soon as the summer foliage grew up. Am would do the poses for me, it’s just the sort of thing that turns her on. I thought I’d maybe try for a different eye colour this time; sort of a greeny gold, something nearer her own. Also I’d get her to walk through a patch of duckweed so she’d come up all green spangles. It would have to be a Pentax job; everybody’s got their limits, and standing in a pond for two or three hours is no sort of joke anyway. But I could do the main studies in the Barn. And I was thinking about a plain wood frame with a
trompe l’oeil
dragonfly on it. I drifted off to sleep full of ideas. That’s the great thing about painting of course; you never get to the end of it. It nearly makes up for being a Class D sometimes.

I suppose I’d better explain about the tax structure, since though you all live in the bloody country none of you seem to understand it. Still as you’re mostly Class B’s there’s no real reason why you should.

It all started with a man called Hemingway. John Buchan Alexander, or something of the sort. That was back in the last millennium, somewhere round ’97 or ’98. The tug of war Britain had got itself into—the hoi polloi wanting to keep their slice of cake, the Andy Capp fraternity wanting to take it off ’em—had resulted in close on a decade of hung parliaments; and social and economic collapse of course, though nobody worried too much about that. At least not till a few little peccadilloes like the Siege of Notting Hill started bringing the facts of life home to roost. Then everybody let rip. The Russians showed distinct signs of making an investment in North
Sea Oil, while the Americans started muttering about annexing us as their latest and least important State. Hemingway was well in with the Police Federation and the Army, so the King—we even had a King, in the last century—asked him to sort things out.

I will say this for J.B.A.: he’d done his Classical homework.
Panem et circenses
was definitely the order of the day; but there was one snag. He wasn’t a politician at all, he was a very, very senior Civil Servant; and by the time the NF had stopped exporting blacks in converted oil tankers, the Cappites had run out of peers to hang from lamp posts and the Bank of England had got tired of printing thousand pound notes we had an Administration that made all the rest look like a Sunday School treat. The tax system is its proudest creation to date.

In practice it’s all dead complex of course, with scores of categories and sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories attached to them; but the theory has a certain nauseating simplicity. There are four main Classes. Class A subscribers, as we call them these days, are rolling in it because they pay damn all. They comprise the élite of the Civil Service—couldn’t let ’em all in of course, they’re sixty per cent of the workforce now—plus anybody else with enough muscle to grind the country to a halt or otherwise make a blasted nuisance of themselves. Which includes the miners and power workers, the oilrig people, the top brass of the TUC and all those inky little sods who pull the tits in Fleet Street. Class B’s, the biggest group, make up for it all by paying tax at sixty per cent basic; that includes the politicians, since the Civil Service still has a death-grip on the reins. Nice to see democracy in action at last. Class C’s a ragbag; teachers, doctors, vicars, anybody with a vocation who can be made to pay through the nose for following it. C’s include hereditary title holders, oddly enough; though old Ardkinglas told me they mostly pay the B rate, sometimes even the A. Seems the Service still has a wild respect for a title. Can’t help itself I suppose; grained in after a few centuries of kowtows.

Class D’s are the untouchables. That means artists, writers, composers, philosophers and anybody on whom the suspicion of creativity falls; the Service always did take a strong line
about people trying to think. We pay at the C rate, seventy per cent, but we get a ten per cent surcharge for being butterflies and pariahs. (I’ve heard both phrases used often enough, so you must take your choice). But being a bachelor I was worse off than most as I attracted another ten for the privilege. The unmarried, as is well known, are child-rapists at best and anti-Establishment at worst, though I could never understand how keeping them short of cash automatically rendered them harmless.

Now, living on ten per cent of my income was an unlikely sort of trick but until the latest fiasco I was managing it. Point one was that I was making a hell of a lot of money; I’d been exhibiting with the rest of the Neo Pre-Raphs and my stuff was fetching top prices. I don’t feel the cold too much, I’d had to give up drinking and smoking and I was living in a grotty old caravan just outside Brixham, so my overheads were zilch. Even the confiscation of Class D property, where it still existed, didn’t make a sight of difference; there was nowhere else to put me, and the van turned out to be too ramshackle to tow away. But then some bright bastard slapped on five per cent across the board for a Mickey Mouse new insurance scheme, and my goose was sizzling nicely when another Department—God bless the lack of liaison—decided Class D’s still weren’t contributing enough to the common weal and upped their loading to twenty per cent.

Now this, when I worked it out, presented an interesting anomaly. It meant that for every hundred Anglos I earned, I owed the State a hundred and five. Which I was sure must be a paradox, even in Civil Service logic; so I hied me along to the local Big Brother bureau to see what they’d make of it. It must have been one of the first negatax cases to be presented. I wasn’t left in much doubt that if I chose to crawl under a bush and turn my toes up it would be fine by them; however I made it crystal clear that if I was going to starve to death it would be noisily, and in public. Since nobody else could come up with an answer the Social Security people got it dropped
in their laps. They made it plain in their turn they weren’t in business for the purpose of supporting undesirables; and I was obviously highly undesirable, otherwise I wouldn’t have attracted negatax in the first place. But a tax levied is a tax that must be paid and they agreed to make up the difference between what I earned and what I would owe, so at least I stayed socially solvent. The obvious thing to do of course was reduce one of the levies; but the Civil Service doesn’t operate like that, it considers any backward step a sign of weakness.