Wicked Pleasures

by Penny Vincenzi

  Max was just slamming the door behind him when a cheerful-looking young man, dressed in jeans and with a shock of untidy black hair, pushed past him. He was laden with bags and a large silver umbrella. Max scowled at him and walked away; thirty seconds later he heard a shout: ‘Hey! If you’re Max, come back.’

  Max turned; it was the cheerful-looking man.

  ‘Are you Joe Jones?’

  ‘Yup. Sorry I was out.’

  ‘That’s OK. Your secretary wasn’t exactly helpful.’

  ‘Who, Sula? Oh, she’s OK. Looks after me all right. Look, stay there, and I’ll do some shots now in the street. Then I’ll do a few in the studio.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if I’ve got time now,’ said Max. He was still feeling sulky.

  Joe Jones looked at him and grinned. ‘If you’re going to model,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to do an awful lot of hanging around. You’d best start getting used to it. Stay there, I’ll get my camera.’

  They went out into the designer-styled streets and patios of Covent Garden. Joe told Max to lean against a pillar in one of the arcades, and shot off a roll of film there; he did another one of him standing in the middle of some stalls; yet another with the buskers as a background, and then a final roll in front of the Opera House. Some Japanese tourists formed a small crowd, following them round, giggling, pointing, smiling at Max.

  ‘Ignore them,’ said Joe.

  ‘They don’t bother me,’ said Max, and it was true. He was enjoying himself more than he could remember for a long time, moving easily and naturally from one frame to the next, gazing into the camera as if it was some very pretty girl. ‘We should do a shot with them. They’re half my size. It’d look great.’

  Joe told him he was a cocky little bugger and did the shot.

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Now then, let’s go into the studio. Did you bring anything else to wear?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK. You look all right. And they’re only tests. But if they turn out all right, could you work tomorrow? I have a job to do for the Evening Standard and the guy I’d booked has gone sick. I really need someone.’

  Max thought fast. Tomorrow he was supposed to be going for an interview at the sixth-form college in Swindon. But he had no intention of going there. There was no point even turning up.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  Joe rang him at nine that night.

  ‘They’re great. You look terrific. Be at the studio by eight, OK?’

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ said Max.

  ‘Why the fuck not? You said you could work.’

  ‘Well, I’m in the country. I don’t think I can get up to London by eight.’

  ‘Haven’t you got a car?’

  ‘Well – yes.’

  ‘Well get your arse into it and drive it here. OK?’

  ‘Yes, OK.’

  Max put the phone down. He would take Georgina’s car. She had gone off for two days with Simon. OK, so he hadn’t passed his test. He wouldn’t get caught. And if he did, his father would bail him out. Or rather, he thought, with the now familiar slightly nauseated feeling, the man who was supposed to be his father. It’d be a good laugh. And he’d earn – what was it Joe had said – a hundred pounds? He could use a hundred pounds. Money for old rope. Or rather new dope, Max thought, smiling at his own wit. Much more rewarding than talking to some moron about what A levels he could do.

  No one in the family saw the pictures in the Standard, being very much ensconced in the country that week, but one of Nanny’s nieces who lived in Bromley had recognized Max and sent the paper to Nanny with a note saying how excited they all must be.

  Nanny looked at the three pictures of Max, wearing white tie and tails, helping various pretty girls out of punts. The article was about dresses to wear at balls which, the writer said, were making a comeback for the very young. She didn’t think Alexander would be in the least excited, except in a manner rather different from the one her niece had meant. She put the pictures in her pocket and went to find Max, who was ostensibly studying in the library and was actually reading The Sun.

  ‘I’ve got some pictures of you,’ she said briefly.

  ‘Oh Nanny, have you? Let me guess. When I was four or when I was five?’

  ‘When you were sixteen.’

  Max looked at her face. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes, oh.’

  ‘Well, let me see them. Do I look nice?’

  ‘You look all right. I suppose that was the day you took Georgina’s car?’

  ‘Well – sort of, yes. How did you know?’

  ‘I’m only seventy-two,’ said Nanny.

  ‘Ah,’ said Max. ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Maximilian. You missed your interview, didn’t you? What are you going to do if you don’t get into college? Go into that the deal, I suppose?’

  ‘The dole, Nanny. No, I’ll do more of this,’ said Max, gazing enraptured at himself. ‘I look older, don’t I?’

  He did; he gazed moodily out of the page, his blond hair slicked back from his elegant, rather bony young face. He looked very tall and slightly more heavily built than he actually was. ‘Joe said it would put half a stone on me.’

  ‘Who’s Joe?’

  ‘The photographer.’

  ‘I see. Well it’s no job for someone like you, Maximilian.’

  ‘But Nanny,’ said Max, looking at her oddly, ‘I don’t think we can be sure about that. Can we? It might be exactly the job for someone like me. Um – you won’t show them to Dad, will you?’

  ‘I will,’ said Nanny, ‘if you don’t rearrange that interview. You’re lucky no one else spotted you. Including the police on the motorway,’ she added grimly.

  ‘I suppose so. All right, Nanny. From this moment forward, I’ll slave night and day. Would you like to be my agent? You can have twenty per cent of everything I earn.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be enough,’ said Nanny. For once her meaning was rather clear. ‘Anyway, how much money did you get for those pictures?’

  ‘A hundred pounds,’ said Max.

  ‘That’s much too much,’ said Nanny, ‘I hope you’re going to invest it properly, Maximilian, not waste it.’

  ‘No, I’m not going to waste it,’ said Max. ‘I’m going to buy an air ticket to New York with it.’

  The day after the pictures had appeared in the Standard, Dick Kreis had called from Models One in London.

  ‘Come and see me. I’m starting a men’s agency here. I think we might be interested in you.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Max. ‘I’ll be in town tomorrow.’

  ‘Good. Do you have any shots, other than those in the Standard?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. But Joe Jones has a few. Some tests he did.’ He was learning the jargon already.

  Dick Kreis was a thoughtful, intelligent man; Max liked him.

  ‘I think we can talk business. Are you readily available for work?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Have you left school?’

  ‘Er – yes.’

  ‘Not going back to do any more exams? Or to university?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Would your parents be happy about you modelling?’

  ‘My mother’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry. And your father?’

  ‘No, he thinks it’s a great idea.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to him, really. As you’re so young.’

  ‘Well, he’s away at the moment. On a business trip.’

  ‘OK. Ask him to call me when he gets back, OK?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘Now then. We’ll take twenty per cent of your earnings. If you’re desperate for cash until you get going, we’ll take five per cent and you can repay us later. Advertising rates are four hundred to five hundred pounds a day. Editorial by arrangement. If it’s Vogue or Harpers & Queen it’s something ridiculous. Maybe forty pounds a day. You’re working for the honour of it. The others around
twenty pounds an hour. It’s pathetic, but it gets your face known.’ It didn’t sound too pathetic to Max. ‘Now you’ll need a good basic wardrobe. A dark suit. Black shoes, black socks, dinner jacket, some white and blue shirts, an assortment of ties. Can you manage that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll need to get some cards done.’

  ‘Cards?’

  ‘Yes. With several pictures on them. We’ll get that done, dock it off your money. It’ll also say your name and your measurements. Anything you can do that might be interesting? Do you ride or anything?’

  ‘Yes, I can ride.’

  ‘Well?’ Dick had been assured by countless limp-wristed young men that they could ride; a swift encounter with anything more spirited than a seaside donkey had them whimpering back to him.

  ‘I hunt a bit,’ said Max.

  ‘Fine. Anything else? Unusual, that is?’

  ‘I can tap dance.’

  ‘Oh really? Who taught you that?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘She sounds like a fun lady.’

  ‘She was OK,’ said Max briefly.

  ‘Right. You’ll have to do the rounds with your book.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘The book with your pictures in. We get prints made of any particularly good shots, tearouts from the magazines, that sort of thing. And you’ll have to get some test shots done straight away. I’ll send you over to Rich Fuller later this morning. He does a lot of our tests. Got any other clothes with you?’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’d better do your tests another day. How’s your physique?’

  ‘Pretty weedy,’ said Max.

  ‘Well, never mind. You’re young. And because of that you’ll get mostly fashion work for now anyway. It’s not big money, but it’ll teach you. The odd commercial, probably. And maybe some shows.’

  ‘Shows?’

  ‘Fashion shows.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Max, ‘I don’t think I’d like that.’

  ‘I’d advise you to do it,’ said Dick lightly, ‘if you’re going to do well in this game, I’d advise you to do everything you can. Learn. It would probably be abroad, rather than here. Milan. Paris.’

  ‘Oh, well that’d be OK,’ said Max hastily.

  ‘Got a passport?’

  ‘Of course.’ Max was surprised.

  ‘Well, lots of boys your age don’t have. Look, I’ll fix now for you to see Rich one day next week.’

  Rich Fuller had taken one look at Max and recognized that this was more than a few fashion shots, a couple of commercials; this was a whole new trend. What Max had, what Rich saw, gazing at him out of the developing tray in his darkroom on a few sheets of contact prints, was something exciting, something rare, an original quality, one that had not been around before. He was good-looking, he was photogenic, he was graceful and he wore clothes well, but so did dozens, maybe hundreds of boys. What was important was the quality he projected, an extraordinary combination of class and – Rich groped in his head for the right word – riffraff. Sexy riffraff. Max was a high-born slut. He stood there, arrogant, well bred – and patently available. For sale, and quite cheaply for sale, to anyone who engaged his sexual interest. Just take the trouble to intrigue me, arouse me, said those rather contemptuous, just slightly blank large eyes, that full, frankly sulky mouth, and I’m your man. It was a look that was not so much about sex as about discovering sex: raw, hungry, curious. It would sell anything, that look: clothes, products, moods; but most of all it would sell Max. To the very highest bidders.

  Rich picked up the phone and called Dick Kreis. ‘This boy is going to be huge,’ he said.

  Max was packing to go to New York when Dick Kreis rang.

  ‘These shots are quite good,’ he said, ‘I can have you working soon, I think. Can you start right away? Going to see people and so on?’

  ‘Well,’ said Max, ‘I’m going to the States for a couple of weeks at the beginning of September. But after that I’m free.’

  ‘Good. Well, you won’t get much work now anyway. It’s very dead in August. But you may as well start doing the rounds. No other plans? Not going to college or anything?’

  ‘No,’ said Max. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Fine. What are you going to be doing in the States?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Max, ‘nothing much. Just staying with my grandmother.’

  ‘Grandma, can I ask you some questions about Mummy?’ Max sat looking very soberly, very respectfully, at Betsey; they were on their own in her small upstairs sitting room at East 80th Street, after Fred III had left for the bank.

  ‘Darling, of course you can. There’s nothing I like better than talking about her. It brings her back somehow.’ Betsey forced a bright little smile. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, you know. First of all I’d like to know what she was like as a little girl.’

  ‘Oh well, now that’s easy. She was just the most darling little girl. So beautiful. But always in trouble.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Max, ‘so I get it from her. Being so naughty.’

  ‘Well maybe you do, dear. But it wasn’t so much that she was naughty, just that she always got caught. And your Uncle Baby just never did somehow. And she was very brave, she used to stand up to your grandfather. I probably shouldn’t say this, but he was a little hard on her. And she tried so much to be good, too, she worked so hard, and of course was very very good at her dancing, and in fact she wanted to go on the stage, just as Melissa does, only of course she was a very different personality from Melissa, less – confident. Now did I ever tell you about the time she ran away and –’ Her voice poured on, warm, affectionate, alive; Max listened, patiently bored. He had not the slightest interest in his mother as a child. Almost half an hour had gone by and they had reached her presentation as a debutante when he was able, with grace, to interrupt.

  ‘She sounds as if she was really fun. I wish I’d known her then. And the other thing I’m interested in is her work. Because, you know, I did wonder about doing something a bit similar myself.’

  ‘Did you, dear?’ Betsey was surprised; Max had never seemed in the least artistic. ‘Well, she didn’t start that, you know, until a while after she left college.’

  ‘Oh really? And do you know who trained her, who she worked with, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Well it’s a long time ago, Max, of course. I don’t remember all the names. She didn’t go to college, she started as an apprentice to a Mrs – what was her name? Adamson, that’s right. Oh, she was a nice woman, and from one of the very best families, that was how she got so much work of course, people knew they could trust her. And she knew Virginia was also from the same type of background, it’s very important, you know. So that was how it began. I remember the very first job that Mrs Adamson let her do, it was an apartment on Sutton Place and she had to do the nursery, and she did such a beautiful job …’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure she did,’ said Max. He was beginning to wonder how much more of this he could take. ‘Er – did she work from this house ever? Might she have had an address book, or something like that, that I could find some names in?’

  ‘No, darling. She kept all her books and files in England with her. I do know that. And more recently, she worked from hotels. She said she needed to feel really independent.’ Betsey’s voice sounded strained; she had obviously found this hurtful. ‘It was sad, because I always found her work so interesting, and I loved to hear about it, make little suggestions. You know.’ Max tried to look sympathetic. He could see exactly why Virginia had wanted to work from her hotel room.

  God, this was boring. But he did have to find out. He had to know what his mother had been doing in the spring of 1966. Who she had been seeing. She had been in New York – or at least in America, on an extended business trip. Max did know that. He had been through the diaries. As his sister had before him.

  ‘So – who were her friends in New York? I somehow feel –’ he hesitated carefully – �
�I sort of feel I would know her better if I knew her friends. I’m trying to bring her to life for myself. If you see what I mean. Men, as well as women,’ he added, as casually as he could manage it.

  Betsey thought for a bit. Then she said, ‘Well, there is someone who probably could help you. With learning about her work, as well. His name was – oh now, what was it, my goodness my memory is getting so bad. Just give me a moment, Max darling, would you –’

  Max sat in an agony of frustration. He wanted to jump up and down and scream and he didn’t even move in case he disturbed his grandmother’s meandering train of thought. Here he was, maybe moments away from knowing who his father was, and the old bat couldn’t remember his name. He fixed his concentration on the pattern of the carpet and waited.

  Betsey suddenly leant forward and patted his hand, beaming at him triumphantly. ‘Dusty. That’s it. Dusty Winchester.’ Even in his frenzy, Max found himself hoping to God he didn’t have to have a father called Dusty. ‘He used to say he was her rival, he’s in the same business, you see, but it was only a little joke, he was in it in a much bigger way than her, but he helped her endlessly. They were very fond of each other. They used to skate together at the Rockefeller Center. And go to Radio City a lot. They both loved that kind of thing. He was a little strange, but very nice.’

  It didn’t sound right to Max. He wasn’t sure why even, but it just didn’t. He hoped not. He certainly didn’t want to be the son of someone a little strange who liked ice skating. But clearly the guy had to be seen. And at least he could give him some more clues.

  He put off phoning Dusty Winchester straight away. It was too scary. He was surprised how scared he was. He seemed to be getting deeper and deeper into his own nightmares. He would do it tomorrow. But he had had to get away from Betsey. She was going to drive him crazy. He had something else important to do anyway. And it would distract him, cheer him up. He wanted to visit a New York model agency. It had been Dick Kreis’s idea.

  ‘Go to Zoli,’ he had said, ‘it’s the hottest agency in New York at the moment. They probably won’t use you, but you never know. It’s all experience.’