Mrs Midnight and Other Stories

by Oliver, Reggie

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Charles! That’s enough!’

  Charles turned to me and said: ‘Fuck off, Robert,’ not with venom, but firmly and with intent, then he went back to his victim. ‘Oh, Gloria. Would you be a sweetie and do something for me? I left my tripod up at the folly. Go and fetch it for me, would you?’

  ‘Which folly?’

  ‘You know perfectly well which folly. The tempietto on the hill.’

  ‘Oh, do I have to?’

  ‘Yes, you do have to, my darling. Sit down, Robert. This is something I want Gloria to do.’

  Gloria rose slowly from her seat and then began to run—a rather pathetic ungainly run—towards the folly. Charles watched her with detached curiosity.

  ‘Athletics obviously not a priority at her place of education,’ he said. ‘You liked my pictures of her.’ I nodded. ‘I think they’re pretty brilliant too, but there’s something missing. I’ve got a feeling I could do more with her.’

  ‘Hence the Pygmalion business?’

  ‘What the hell are you on about, Robert? Talk English.’

  I had forgotten that Charles’s education, though expensive, had been truncated. At that moment Gloria returned with the tripod, still at a run and gasping for breath. Her face was white, her eyes wild with terror. I could see what Charles meant about fear giving a kind of life to her face that it did not otherwise have. When I came to draw her the following morning I tried to give her eyes the same expression. I think I succeeded.

  III

  A few months later I had my first major exhibition at the Talbot Gallery in Cork Street. For it I had borrowed my drawings of Charles and Gloria, and several others, but the major source of attraction was some oils I had done in Morocco: street scenes and the like. They sold well. One in particular attracted attention. It was a group of female heads. They were strikingly beautiful and unusual because all Moroccan women, of course, go about covered and are not easy to acquire as models. The truth was, I had paid a number of prostitutes to pose for me in their leisure hours, a fact I kept concealed from the general public and even my wife. The picture was bought by an American dealer who said to me: ‘You know, you ought to paint Mahalia Doone.’

  Mahalia Doone was then at the zenith of her beauty and her career as a singer. Her extraordinary height, her superb figure, that incredible bone structure, the wonderful bronze sheen of her skin made her someone every self-respecting portrait artist longed to paint. At the time I thought that the dealer was simply tantalising me for purposes of his own, but it turned out that he was being serious. Only a fortnight after the exhibition the dealer rang up from New York to say that he had sold Mahalia the Moroccan heads and that she was very interested in meeting me. ‘She’s coming to London in a few weeks’ time for a concert tour, and she wants you to paint her.’

  Not long after that two tickets for her concert at the Hammersmith Hippodrome arrived with a note from the dealer to the effect that I was expected to go round to see her after the show. My wife Jenny, who had an unconquerable aversion to the talents of Mahalia Doone, elected to stay at home, so I invited Charles to come with me.

  Charles and I had met several times in London since the weekend when I had drawn Gloria and I felt, quite unnecessarily Jenny told me, an obligation towards him. Not only had he loaned me the two drawings for the exhibition—and, incidentally, had paid me £200 for the Gloria portrait—but he had more than once lavishly entertained me at his club, Whites.

  Lord Charles in town was a different being to Lord Charles in the country; he was a kind of mirror image of Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest. (When I pointed this out to him, he failed to appreciate the allusion.) In London, he wore suits, occasionally had his hair cut at Trumper’s and often sported his old school tie to which, strictly speaking, having been chucked out, he was not entitled. He stayed at his club, went to drinks parties and flirted with the kind of girls who were still being referred to as ‘debs’. I knew of at least two upper middle class mothers who had high hopes for Lord Charles and their daughters.

  The performance he put on in London was no more and no less of an act than his more bohemian pose at Stanhill. Like most people who are, deep down, rather conventional, he played parts because he had not yet discovered his real self. That, at any rate, was my view at the time.

  He seemed delighted to come with me to see Mahalia Doone, and, I have to admit, I thought it would do me no harm to show off the son of a Duke to Mahalia. The average American is far more susceptible to a title than an Englishman who has a better idea of how these things have been come by. But then, Mahalia Doone was not your average American.

  While we were having a drink before the show I asked Charles about Gloria. He was rather offhand. She had gone back to her parents in High Wycombe, apparently, but, he added, ‘I haven’t finished with her yet.’

  The performance was remarkable. Mahalia had an artistry which transcended the big band glitz of the production. There was a certain amount of modern pop, but she sang the Gershwin and Cole Porter standards with a silky perfection that rivalled Ella Fitzgerald at her best. I remember in particular a rendering of Coward’s ‘Mad About the Boy’ which was so full of the humiliation of sexual yearning that it made me shiver. It was a relief, though, to find that one could go back stage and be sincerely admiring.

  After we had negotiated our way past several rather menacing minders, we reached the inner sanctuary of Mahalia’s dressing room which was ablaze with light bulbs and cellophaned flowers. At the door stood the final obstacle before access to the star was achieved, a balding, thickly spectacled young man in a dinner jacket who bore a faint resemblance to Groucho Marx. He proved to be quite affable, especially when I introduced Charles. He said his name was Artie Katzenberg and that he was Mahalia Doone’s ‘manager’.

  My memory of Mahalia off stage left behind an even stronger impression than it did of her on it, sheathed in closely fitting purple satin and clutching the silvery phallus of a microphone. In her dressing room before a mirror framed by light bulbs, she was a monarch holding court. Her hair was swathed in a turban and she wore a floor-length dressing gown whose pattern was a confusion of coloured sigils and symbols. While she sipped champagne from a cut glass goblet she was idly laying out an array of cards face downwards on her dressing table. I recognised the formation she was making with the cards; it was the ‘Celtic Cross’, so I concluded that she was using a Tarot pack. There was something too about her costume and manner which suggested the shaman. We were introduced.

  ‘So,’ she said in her low, caressing voice. ‘You are the young genius who painted my Moroccan Heads. What is your astrological sign?’

  I told her and she nodded sagely.

  ‘That figures. Remember, always to trust your instincts. Do not listen to false friends.’

  I said that I would take her excellent advice.

  ‘You will paint a great picture of me,’ she said. ‘It will be your masterpiece. Talk to Artie here about arranging a sitting.’ That seemed to be the end of my audience with Mahalia because she then turned her attention to Charles.

  ‘Mahalia,’ said Artie Katzenberg, ‘allow me to present Robert’s friend, Lord Charles Purefoy.’

  Charles stepped forward and allowed Mahalia to take his right hand in both of hers while she stared deep into his eyes.

  ‘So. You’re Lord Charles. That means you’re the younger son of an Earl, a Marquess or a Dook, am I right?’

  ‘A Duke, as it happens.’

  ‘A Dook. So! Just like Lord Peter Wimsey, huh? I just love that Lord Peter Wimsey stuff. See, I know a thing or two about aristocrats, being one myself. I’ve got royal blood. My ancestors were Kings and Queens of Dahomey.’

  ‘Was that before or after they had been slaves?’ said Charles.

  Something about the insolence with which Charles asked the question stunned even Mahalia. Artie Katzenberg, fidgeted, obviously desperate to find a way out of the situation. At last he said: ‘Wel
l, we’re all your slaves now, Mahalia, are we not?’

  ‘You bet your ass,’ said Mahalia.

  Then more celebrities came in and we were relegated to a corner of Mahalia’s dressing room where we were plied with champagne. Artie Katzenberg and Charles struck up a conversation: their rapport, as I remember, was instantaneous.

  In fact that evening was chiefly notable for being the occasion of the first meeting of Artie Katzenberg and Lord Charles Purefoy. It was the beginning of what I can only describe as an intense love affair. I do not mean this in a sexual sense because, though Artie may well have been gay, Charles most certainly was not. It was the kind of mutual fascination which occasionally springs up between two supreme egoists. They saw in each other the same yearnings for artistic fame and success and the possibility of its fulfilment in their collaboration.

  Nothing came of my Mahalia portrait commission, partly, I suspect, because very soon after our meeting Artie ceased to be Mahalia’s manager. Whether he quit or was sacked I never knew, but I always suspected that the title of ‘manager’ had been something of a misnomer. Anyone less in need of a manager than Mahalia I could not imagine.

  About a month after the concert I met Charles and Artie at a private view in Cork Street. I had heard rumours that they were working together on an artistic project. When something new and innovative is happening in the art world, there is always a preliminary rumble and I thought I had detected this about Charles and Artie. They greeted me cordially; Artie was particularly effusive.

  ‘Say, you just must come down to Stanhill and see what we’ve been doing. It’s pretty neat. We’ve got a real collective down there.’

  A few days later I drove down to Stanhill to see for myself. The Hall had been turned into a British rural equivalent of Warhol’s famous ‘Factory’. Artie and Charles presided over about half a dozen assistants who were making silk-screen prints, sculpting clay maquettes, constructing collages and painting elaborately realistic pictures in oils and acrylics based on Charles’s photographs.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Artie. After I had made the appropriate gestures of admiration, he said, ‘We are a true art collective with an identity all of its own. We have a brand name as I like to call it—though Charles just hates me doing so—we call ourselves Lord Art. What do you think?’

  ‘Very suitable.’

  ‘Isn’t it just brilliant? I thought of that. We sink our identities and egos into the collective of Lord Art and come out with a super-ego and a super-identity, as I like to call it. Of course, as you can see, there is a third main partner in this collective.’

  I could see. Almost every image that I had seen was of Gloria Munday in one form or another. It was not only her face but her hands, her feet, her naked torso that had been copied and represented in a hundred different ways.

  ‘We say that she is not so much the artist as the work of art itself,’ said Artie. ‘We are annihilating these phoney distinctions.’

  I noticed a set of silk screen prints which deliberately aped the Warhol Marilyn series, except that it used Gloria’s head instead of Monroe’s.

  ‘This is really an ironic comment on Andy’s work,’ said Artie. ‘He was doing these images of famous people, right? We are saying you can make an icon out of anyone. They don’t have to be like Marilyn or Mohammed Ali or whoever. Like Andy said, everyone can be famous for fifteen minutes.’

  I said: ‘I’ve never really understood why Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame remark is supposed to be so witty and profound.’

  ‘You’re right, Robert,’ said Artie. ‘It’s a dumb-ass comment. In fact, that is what we’re saying in these silk-screens: that Andy is actually a dumb-ass guy.’

  I could not quite follow his argument, but I let it pass.

  To me perhaps the most beautiful things based on Gloria were a series of ceramic masks glazed and painted in delicate pastel colours. Artie told me they had been modelled on a plaster cast of her face. The eye sockets were empty, the lips slightly parted to reveal the darkness beyond. They suggested, without being too heavy or obvious about it, a mask of Tragedy. I complimented Artie on these.

  ‘Yeah. As a matter of fact, they were my idea.’

  I asked if Gloria was around.

  ‘Yeah, she’s out in the back yard with Lord Charles. You want to go see?’

  I found them by the lake. Charles had had a lichened baroque statue of Pomona removed from its plinth and on it had placed Gloria in the goddess’s stead. She had been draped in robes similar to those of Pomona, with one bare breast showing, and her skin and hair had been tinted and made up to resemble the colour and texture of the statue. Charles was taking photographs of her in a variety of poses.

  When he saw me coming Charles said to Gloria: ‘Okay, you can take a bit of a break now,’ but he let her scramble off the plinth by herself. I was in time to give her a hand and she embraced me warmly. She clung to me in a way that I found puzzling. I didn’t know her that well.

  ‘Well, what do you think, eh?’ said Charles. ‘We’re having a big exhibition at the Whitechapel Cube next month and we expect you and your wife to be there at the private view. It should be a big event. The buzz is terrific. Already.’

  Gloria was shivering in my arms. I said: ‘I think Gloria is cold. It is rather chilly out here. Shall we go in and have a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Charles, setting off towards the house ahead of us. ‘But don’t smudge that make-up, Gloria. Bloody Ada! It was a business getting that right. As for getting Pomona off her plinth, it was a frigging nightmare! We damn near broke her in half.’

  ‘Are you all right, Gloria?’ I asked as we watched Charles striding ahead of us towards the house.

  ‘Oh. Yah! Fine’ The vocal transformation from South London girl to upper class debutante was complete.

  ‘I hope they’re paying you properly for all this.’

  ‘Oh, yes! I’m going to get a share of the profits.’ We walked for a while in silence. The fact that I could understand—or thought I could understand—so much more than she did about her situation made me feel protective and close, like an elder brother.

  Suddenly she said: ‘I want to get out of here.’

  For a moment I considered telling her to get into my car and driving her back to London. Then I thought of how Jenny would react if I arrived home with a beautiful bare-breasted woman dressed as a statue. As I hesitated my instinctive reaction evaporated, but I was still troubled. I wrote my telephone number on a page of my diary, tore it out and gave it to her. I told her that she was to ring me if ever she needed my help. Her cold little hand squeezed mine, but she said nothing.

  Back in the hall no-one took the slightest notice of Gloria. Their attention was too fixed on the fabrications of her image, so we made our own way to the kitchen and boiled a kettle on the Aga.

  I watched Gloria as she went busily to and fro in the kitchen, fetching cups, and milk from the fridge, quite oblivious of her bizarre appearance. She seemed almost at home there.

  ‘Charlie used to have a housekeeper,’ she said, ‘but she’s gone now. She couldn’t stand all the people and stuff. God, this place is a mess. I think there are some biscuits somewhere.’

  We sat at the long deal kitchen table and drank our tea.

  She said: ‘Charlie keeps wanting me to go up to the folly again. He wants to take pictures or something. I’ve told him no way. I am not going.’

  ‘What is it exactly you are afraid of?’

  ‘Nothing. . . . No, you don’t understand. Nothing is what I am afraid of. Of being nothing. Of there being nothing. All my life, ever since I was a little kid I’ve been scared of certain places where there seems to be nothing. I don’t like being alone. It’s like I’m not there when I’m alone. I hate that.’

  Artie and Charlie came into the kitchen. Charlie moved up behind Gloria and began casually to fondle her exposed breast.

  ‘So there you are, Gloria Munday!’ said Artie. ‘We’ve be
en looking for you all over. Were you going to run away with Robert? Well, you can’t have her, Robert, do you hear me? She’s ours.’ He laughed, as if he had said something very witty. ‘Is there any more tea? You’d better get going, Robert or it’ll be dark before you arrive back in London.’

  IV

  The following month Lord Art’s first exhibition at the Whitechapel Cube, entitled Objet D’Art, was a succés fou. Jenny and I attended the first private view, the one at which far more people claim to have been present than were actually there. The title of the exhibition—Artie’s idea, or so he told me—was as ingenious as it was apposite. All the artefacts on display were in some way representations of, or related to Gloria Munday.

  I had seen many of them before, or in preparation: the porcelain masks, the silk-screen prints, the photo realist paintings of her as the statue of Pomona. But there were two items that I had never seen before, one necessarily so.

  In the centre of the main room was a table draped in black on which rested an oblong perspex casket with holes perforating its upper surface. Inside the casket lay the apparently sleeping form of Gloria. She was naked but had been rendered sexless by the fact that every part of her was covered with silver body paint and her hair had been dyed platinum. Throughout the entire three hours of that private view she barely stirred, her silver eyelids closed. Only the rise and fall of her breasts told you that she was alive and breathing.

  The other item was a large monochrome canvas, evidently taken from one of Charles’s photographs because, if you looked closely, you found that it had been composed of minute grey and black dots meticulously painted in oils on the white primed canvas. It showed Gloria’s body, from the waist up, naked, her hands raised above her head which looked as if it were in the act of turning away from the camera. The hair was slightly disordered as if it had not caught up with the moving face. The background was one of vague grey shapes which looked like columns. I suspect that the original photograph had been taken with a flash. What was unforgettable about the picture was the look on Gloria’s face. It was one of abject terror, not fleeting fear, but the kind born of utter hopelessness. If Gloria had faked that look, then she would have been a great actress, but I knew that she wasn’t.