Ladies From Hell (6 page)

He narrowed his eyes. He said, “You
planned
it. You planned the whole damned thing …”

I looked at him. “How could I?” I said. “I’m not psychic.”

He said, “Sometimes I wonder.” He fumbled a cigarette alight, and shook his head. “How do you do it?” he said. “That’s what I’d like to know. Just how …”

“Same as everybody else,” I said, “as far as I’m aware.”

His temper was getting the better of him again. “You’re short, fat and hairy,” he said. “And sometimes you smell like a goat …”

“That’s probably the answer,” I said. “The satyrs used to get a bit high too, don’t you know. But it didn’t seem to hold ’em back at all. Had rather a good time of it on the whole …”

He slammed his fists on the desk. “But you’re twenty years older than she is!”

I waved a hand. “Baalbek, enigmatic in ruin,” I said. “Carthage, splendid in decay. In any case I’m not
totally
past it, old fruit. They didn’t use to call me the Wolverhampton Walloper for nothing …”

“
Shut up
,” he said. “Just
shut up
.” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t expect you even
washed …
”

I thought. “Course I did,” I said indignantly. “I had a shower. I’m not
uncivilised
you know …”

He rubbed his eyes. He said, “For God’s sake, let it rest …” When he looked up he had a hunted expression. He said, “As a matter of fact I had rather a shock yesterday.”

“Good Lord,” I said. “You mean before—”

“Yes!
Before
!”

Two in a day; it was a wonder he’d survived. I looked enquiringly at the whisky. He wanted to talk, that was obvious; and despite what he thought of me there was nobody else available. But if he wanted me to listen he was going to have to buy my time. Particularly after the episode earlier on.

He slammed a full bottle down in front of me. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about this morning. I wasn’t myself.” He swallowed. “Hannah’s left me,” he said. “Done a bunk.”

I felt my eyebrows lift. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her. “What,” I said, “just upped and gone? No note or anything?”

He swallowed again. “There was a note,” he said. “She’s with her parents. I … spent half the day there. But it was no good …”

I poured myself a drink. “Is there somebody else?”

He waved a hand. “Good Lord no,” he said irritably. “She’s not like that. She just …”

Upped and left, thinks I. Well well, what a turnup. Tired of dusting the fibreglass and watering Nellie Moser while he danced the light fantastic. Good for her. What she really needed now was a randy old get like me to give her some confidence back; but I expected she’d make out.

He’d slumped in the chair. He said hollowly, “What am I going to do?”

That was a good question. What could he do? Run amok with a bread knife? Join the Legion? Scratch a curse on lead, and give it to the brook? “If it was me,” I said, “I should get myself a dolly bird. I can’t think of anything else.”

He stared at me. He said between
his teeth, “You’re a
bastard
. A prime bloody
bastard …
”

I got up. “No,” I said, “I’m not. I’m a painter. That doesn’t automatically make me what you called me; neither does it make me God.”

Clancy arrived a few mornings later. I saw the car coming bouncing toward the Barn and went out to meet it. I’d been expecting something fancy after what she said; but a Beta Estate, Egad … I got the usual Clance-type welcome, and Am pecked me formally on the cheek and said, “Hello, Uncle.” It’s been Richard ever since she was a kid, but Uncle since she started the Change. Little bugger only does it to set me up. I held her at arm’s length and shook my head. Amazing what a difference even a few months can make when they’re that age; I was going to have to get another model to finish the portrait. She’d grown a couple of inches to start with, she was topping her mother.

They’d collected Pete Merriman somewhere on the way, and a brace of Overseers; a tall discouraged one (I think he’d been Attached to a musician) and a short fat merry-looking sod. They’d be great company for George. They were tumbled in the back of the Beta among a fine old clamjamfry; canvases, luggage, satchels full of paints and brushes, crates of hooch, Clancy’s paella pot and a rusty-looking barbecue. Nearly the first thing out though was a trichro laser barrel. My Overseer was already dancing round with a clip board, trying to check everything in; he nearly had a fit when he saw it. “That’s an offensive weapon under the Statute of ’twenty-three,” sez he; but Pete just straightened up and shifted his fag to the other corner of his mouth. “So’s a King Edward potato, if you throw it at some bugger’s ’ead,” he said. He hefted the thing and staggered off toward the Barn with it. Bit forthright sometimes, is Pete; but by God, he can use paint.

I hauled out a pack of plates and followed him. If I didn’t finish up with holos of Clancy and Am by the end of the Fest I’d want to know why. Next was a bundle of bright-coloured vanes and rods, which meant Clance was back into Mobiles.

I leaned it against the side of the Beta and
got a grip on the first of the canvases. “My God,” I said, “the Glaze n’ Tonk Lieder. I’ll buy you some green.” Always had a thing about green, has Clancy. I expect it comes from being born in Baffinland. It was an unforgettable Image though. I propped it up and stepped back. It was Tytania. Foliage surrounded her, foliage grew from her. The Green Woman, of course; obvious, when you thought about it. But that’s the thing about good design. Like hearing a great piece of music for the very first time, and realizing you already know it.

When I carried it in George was still ticking over the Laser, Pulse-type, Trichromatic. “What does he
want
it for?” he asked despairingly.

“Gone Minimal,” I said. “Despises the Brush. Don’t worry, it never lasts. My word …”

A bag had tipped; something blue-black and glittering came arcing out. I fielded it, pressed it to my forehead; and the Overseer yelped. “That’s a
gun
!”

“Wrong,” I said. “
Zeitgeist
fetish. Shut up, I’m taking its vibes.” I weighed it in my hand. “Walther,” I said. “Nineteen forty-four. Monte Cassino. Norway.
Hakenkreuz
flags in the rain. Linden trees and the smell of petrol.”

He was scribbling furiously. He said, “That’s it, I’m Reporting him. I’m Reporting the lot of you.”

“Why don’t you?” I said. “It’ll work wonders for the negatax. What d’you reckon it’s worth, Clancy?”

“Sixty per cent,” she said promptly. “Seventy five if he’s got any bullets.” George swallowed a few grammes of cyanide and started crossing things out.

She was standing in front of the Nymph. She put her head on one side; then she smiled. She said, “You got there, didn’t you?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

It was dusk, I knew she couldn’t see my face. She was standing beside me, a shadow with bangles and gipsy hair. “I got the wrong Image after all,” I said. “She’s a thousand feet high, all red and black and wounded.
Notre mère de beauté
.”

She put her hand on my arm.
She said, “What happened, Rich?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Something hurt you.”

“Strictly the Line of Duty,” I said. “All my wounds are in my breast.”

She sighed. “Get drunk,” she said. “Get it out. You’ll feel better afterwards.”

“By Jove,” I said. “You know, I think I will …”

The Wellcomes had turned up in the afternoon, and a couple more NeoRaphs I hadn’t seen for years; so it looked as if the Fest was going to break out early. They were all down by the brook, the brazier glowing on the willow branches and sending out little tails of sparks in the wind; the Overseers, five of them now, sat a little apart like discouraged Indians. I joined the group for a time; then I wandered off. Moonlight was squirting through the tall windows of the Barn; I sat and drank for a while, and stared at the pale smudge that was Coventina. If you stared long enough she seemed to float off the canvas altogether, hang in air. Somewhere around ten it struck me that a
beau geste
was about due. I got the stepladder, propped it against one of the rafters. I wrestled about in the dark for some time. There was a lot of stuff up there, and the canvas I wanted was a big one. It came clear eventually; I came clear as well, landed an indefinite distance below with the thing on top of me. If I hadn’t been three parts stoned I’d have broken my neck. I propped it up and turned a light on. There was still a lot I thought needed doing; but I’d been working on it for eighteen months, it was time to call quits. At least the face was right. The rest of the figure didn’t matter so much, it was just a tall, ageless dark pillar. And it was a good face; not snowy, not streaming blood.
Think Sphinx
, I had thought;
think Sphinx …

I got it under my arm, more or less, and tacked through the door. Outside, the wind caught it; I spun round, lost the plot, reoriented and started again. I got to the house and leaned on the Tradesman’s Bell for ten minutes but nobody came. By that time what had started as a stray notion had become a fixation, so I staggered on round the terracing towards the front. The lights were on in the lounge, and the big French
doors stood ajar. I was wondering vaguely how best to announce myself; it coincided with an extra-heavy buffet of wind and there was a thundering great crash and a tinkling. Old Ardkinglas popped out at once like something from a weather clock. “What in God’s name,” he bellowed; then he saw what I was carrying. “I say, Blakeney,” he said. “Great Scott, that’s good. Bring it in man, bring it in, bring it in …”

We propped the offering against the chimney breast, and Lady A got up and stood in front of it. I’d painted her nearly in profile, to get the chiselled-cat look I wanted. The sky behind her was greenish; the winds that blew there were five thousand years old. The face was old too, worn and sculpted by the sand; all except the eyes.

There was a silence that went on. She opened her mouth, shut it, blinked and tried again. Finally she said, “Thank you, Mr. Blakeney. Thank you very much.” She sat down; and the old boy—I wouldn’t have believed it—walked forward and put his hand on her shoulder.

I left some time later, the worse for half a dozen ginormous Scotches. She saw me through the hall herself. They’d got everything there from Black Forest to Benares; I suppose she was afraid I was going to bounce off something rare. “By the way, Ma’am,” I took the opportunity to say, “about the other night …”

She turned to me. “There is no such thing as
free
love, Mr. Blakeney,” she said. “And that you know as well as I. So I have nothing further to say on the matter.” But at the door she paused, and smiled. “It must have been very boring for you,” she said. “Painting me, after all those glamorous young things.”

“My Lady,” I said, “I thank God for their grace. But they are flowers; you are the Tree.” I bowed, and left her staring.

I mulled it over on the way back to the party. I sometimes think I must be the most sententious bastard unhung, it’s always come natural to me. The only trouble is, I never know whether to believe myself or not.

By mid-June everybody had arrived; Evan and Di, Giles Tranter, Archie and Beryl Stockton and a dozen
more. Plus their kids of course; there were voices everywhere, dawn to dusk. Archie brought his costume portrait of Am; he’d started the same time as me, we’d got a side bet on about which would turn out the sexiest. I decided I was winning by a short head.

It was the biggest gathering for years. It caused major problems for the Overseers. Half the rooms in the Barn were piled with bedding, and the morning queue for the bathroom was a sight to behold. Short, Fat and Merry thought he’d got the answer and approached Lady A for billets; but somebody should really have warned him. I happened to be sketching in the summerhouse at the time, so I Heard All. “I am a patron of the Arts,” trumpeted Her Ladyship. “Which does not to my mind include opening my house, or otherwise inconveniencing myself, to suit Administrative layabouts.” And that, as they say, was that.

Clancy sorted it out; when I got back to the Barn she was already setting up more camp beds in the lounge, assisted by a small covey of depressed and flustered Overseers. “’Nother one across the end there,” she was saying. “And two of you can get on the sofa …”

“The
sofa
?” said the tall, defeated man; and she pushed her hair back and grinned at him. “Aw c’mon, Hank,” she said, “ain’t you got no sense of fun?”

I left them to it. They were going to need more than a sense of fun, I reckoned. To start with she’d got the mobile set up in there, the air was full of whirling and clicking rods. They were going to have to catch the thing and hogtie it every night before they stood a chance of getting any sleep.

It was the best Summerfest I could remember. Everywhere you looked you saw vignettes; Clancy in the Barn, blotting away with a wodge of newspaper in one hand and a nicked tube of Hooker’s Deep in the other; Pete Merriman with his yellow mop of hair and jean-clad, rickety-looking legs, loping along with his beloved laser on his shoulder; Am posed on a windy skyline, in a printed sarong and a great coolie hat. Through it all wandered the Overseers, a part yet not belonging; and through it all winked and sparkled a solitary golden star.

After his eruption George had attempted
the classic salve; immersion in his job. I watched the process with interest. For a time it seemed to be working; the forms proliferated, the Reports flew thick and fast. But with the arrival of the group the unrest set in again. It almost seemed he was attempting to follow my equally classic advice; he deferred to Clancy, was courteous to Jill, ogled Beryl and flirted with Di. But it was Am to whom he paid the most persistent court. The vignettes multiplied; Am in the orchard, posed picturesquely in a picture hat while he shook cherries into her lap; Am scotched on the kitchen table, wearing shorts and a suntop and disposing of waffles as fast as he manufactured them; Am on a swing, skirts flying, crying out prettily as the sweating Overseer whirled her higher and higher. I shook my head. It was a rocky path he’d set his feet on, and it led to a high and lonely place. Mornings she’d go to the woods or to the brook, to swim in the one deep pool; nights in the Barn she’d come and lean against my knee, watch him with her long-tailed, long-lashed eyes.