by Primula Bond
Now each picture is labelled with the legend I had carefully stored on my camera and thought I’d lost. My name and the title of the collection – Halloween – are all signed in cool, lower-case font and they’re the first things you see when you come out of the lift.
I’ve been home to the flat and chosen a long red sheath dress of Polly’s to wear for the private view. It’s pretty daring and vampish, a halter neck slashed between my breasts to the navel, then draped across the hips in the style of a Grecian goddess.
Gustav has been absent all day, but the instruction he’s given the tall spiky lady from downstairs, whose name I now know is Crystal and who told me earlier that my jacket and dress and boots were not suitable for evening wear, is that I must appear in something extremely glamorous.
Crystal is here, too. Her guise tonight is as a waitress, hence her uniform of tight black skirt and starched white blouse. Dickson the chauffeur is serving drinks, too, in his shirt sleeves. He looks as if he’d be more comfortable manoeuvring machine guns rather than ferrying hors d’oeuvres. As the evening takes over, prompting lights to come on all over London, the three of us bustle about stocking up the temporary bar that has been set up by the window. Boxes of wine and champagne, trays of canapés have all materialised while I was back at the flat getting ready.
Across on the South Bank the theatres and restaurants and galleries light up one by one, and the London Eye slows to a halt. I take a picture of it, and of the gallery, and wish Polly was here to see this.
‘Exactly as I would have designed it. Everything shown off to its best advantage. Good work, everyone.’
The lift opens like the curtains of some grand stage, and Gustav marches out across the poured concrete floor, rubbing his hands against the cold. He seems to suck all the air in the space towards him, leaving everyone else stunned and waiting, like a row of night creatures mesmerised by oncoming headlights.
His black hair is slicked back like the Godfather this evening, making him look positively sinister and intimidating. Film-star bad guy, not low-life Mafioso. His charcoal pinstripe is cut slightly looser than the sharply tailored grey one of yesterday. My stomach twists and turns like an autumn leaf because I know what lies beneath that suit. What was deep inside my mouth last night.
Snared by sudden nerves I start stacking a pile of catalogues to hide the urge to go to him and as I do so the column of prices catches my eye. They have not been fixed to the pictures themselves and I gasp with greedy delight. Gustav has priced each of my prints at more than two thousand pounds. Some as much as five thousand. Not so expensive as to be off-putting, but way above anything a humble graduate could normally command.
‘Good evening, Miss Folkes.’
He comes up to me and calmly, right in front of Crystal and Dickson and any guests about to arrive, snaps the chain from his watch back onto my bracelet. No-one bats an eyelid. Maybe that’s because if you are at any distance you can’t see the silver chain joining us.
‘Good evening, Mr Levi. I can’t thank you enough for this opportunity. The exhibition looks superb.’ I lean back against the desk to look at him. He’s tossing a small key up and down in his hand.
‘As do you. I can’t wait to see the reaction of all our guests.’
‘What’s that you have there?’
He holds the key up like a talisman, his black eyes glittering wickedly. ‘It’s the key to my house. I want you to have it. I missed you when you left this morning.’
I gaze at him, my stomach in a knot. Remembering what we did to each other.
Polly would try and fail to keep a straight face if I told her. You stayed over, but you didn’t go the whole way? What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with you?
‘It – it was a lovely evening, Gustav. Who knew you could cook like a dream?’
We smile secretly. Who knew you could make me come like that, just licking me? Yes, Polly. You’d be proud. Because I swallowed, just like you told me.
I glance across at Crystal and Dickson, polishing glasses and holding them up to the window. Above the lift the lights come on.
‘The private view is about to start,’ I stammer. ‘Did you want to discuss anything?’
He presses me back against the desk so that the glass edge of it digs into the back of my thighs. His breath blows across my face as he pushes my legs open beneath my red dress, moves his hand gently beneath the material to the top of my thighs.
‘Not discuss. Tell. I want you to come and live at the house with me. Starting from tonight.’
There is a flurry of voices over by the lifts. Crystal and the chauffeur glide about with trays of glasses. Music starts to play, echoing round the space like a night club. More elegant jazz, soothing the day away. Gustav clicks the key onto my bracelet and with a slow wink he moves away, tucking a few catalogues casually under his arm like a priest master about to deliver a sermon.
And of course, because we’re chained together, I must follow.
Several people swarm over to me at his introduction. Reviewers, mostly, magazine columnists, one or two other gallery owners. I have to swerve subtly as I greet them shyly, so the silver chain doesn’t get entangled. Or snap.
Soon the entire gallery is full to bursting. Crystal has been positioned by the lift with a stack of catalogues, but now she glides up to me and Gustav.
‘Already five sold!’ She announces triumphantly, jabbing her fingernail at my catalogue.
‘That’s fantastic, Crystal!’ I try to focus on the big bold ticks she’s marked against the relevant items, then I stare round at the images themselves. Soon they will be adorning someone else’s wall. My babies, let loose on the world.
‘What a great way to start! Let’s see if we can’t shift a few more before the evening’s out.’ Gustav leads me back towards the window, ostentatiously holding his hand up for silence. I’m still dazed by this early success. I can see the silver chain winking in the sharp lights cast by the spots, but I don’t know if anyone else can tell that I’m chained to him.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’
Gustav claps his hands and achieves instant, glass-tinkling silence in the room. He tugs at the chain so that I am even closer.
‘I want to introduce you to Serena Folkes, a previously undiscovered talent who has, to say the least, been hiding her light under a bushel.’
There’s a murmur of amusement around the room.
‘It would be politically incorrect of me to admit, out loud, that it was her unusual fey beauty that piqued my interest when I bumped into her on Halloween night, so I won’t go on about how gorgeous she is. A living, breathing installation in her own right!’
There’s another murmur, and one or two press lift their big cameras and take pictures of me.
‘Actually it was the subject she was stalking and working on that interested me, but then she left two of her cameras in my, ah, safekeeping for a night and I took the liberty of having a scroll through the other images still stored there. I realised that she was telling the truth when she told me she was a young professional starting out. A burgeoning talent, coupled with a fierce determination. But then, when I managed to persuade her to let me showcase her work and we’d signed the paperwork, I never dreamed what else she had tucked in her arsenal.’
He sweeps his arm around the walls, winking at the veiled obscenity, then everyone turns obediently to examine once again what I have put on show.
‘I reckon I’ve stumbled on a gold mine here. I think you’ll all agree that she marries stunning natural lighting and composition with sheer beauty and originality of subject. Her pictures all have the look of work that has been painstakingly developed in a dark room. And within the apparently subtle and delicate framework I think you’ll be as astonished as I was when I unearthed frame after frame of these erotic images of people who thought they were alone, unseen. Those lovers. Those sunbathers. And the pièce de résistance, those nuns.’
A titillated titter ripples round the room.
‘I’m sure you’ll agree that this young woman, not twenty-one yet, doesn’t hold back. I hope the way we’ve laid out the exhibition has led you on, that you’ve all been taken in by the apparent innocence of some of her work, particularly the Venetian convent pictures. She took these illicitly and they are breathtaking in their voyeuristic content.’
The murmuring hushes slightly. Several people push out of the crowd to look at the pictures he’s pointing at, which they haven’t seen before. I prickle with pride when I see the women raise their hands to their flushing cheeks when they see the content. The men shift their legs apart like cowboys, shove their hands in their pockets.
Is that a gun, or are you just turned on by my pictures?
‘Perhaps instead of Halloween we should have called it Flagellation.’
Everyone is staring back at Gustav now. Those who aren’t ogling my Venetian series. He really holds an audience, like one of those sham preachers who brainwash their congregation with sheer charisma. ‘Anyway, I give you Serena Folkes. The girl with a great future.’
Gustav raises his glass to me, a strange new tenderness burning in his eyes. I raise my glass in return and smile, watch and wait for the answering smile, and there it is, transforming his face to stern beauty, and filling me with hot pride. I won’t let him down. These influential people, celebrities, well known faces from the arts and fashion pages, even some academics and, best of all, two famous society photographers, have all come at his bidding because they trust his judgement. And now they’re here to judge me.
I feel my wrist tugging slightly as he unchains it and moves away but I remain where I am by the window. I catch faint noises across the city. Something flapping on the roof of a building opposite. Leathery wings taking flight, the blood-curdling shriek of an animal hunted down, its neck snapped with one tidy bite. Probably foxes, vermin slinking about among London’s rubbish bins, killing mice. Do foxes lurk near the river?
The flapping sound is a jubilant Union Jack left over from the Olympic summer, flying above the National Theatre. I’m so keyed up I swear I can hear applause from the audience.
And in here, the low heartbeat of drum, double bass and breathy sax from the speakers.
Venice is like that silver chain, tugging me back to its watery secrets. I remember that night so well. Wandering through that maze of calles, so thoroughly lost, catching sight of this young nun scurrying out of nowhere. I dashed forward to ask her for directions but she was in such a rush that it turned into a mad chase. Eventually I followed her through a little gate in a long crumbling wall and when she vanished up a big stone flight of stairs I realised I was locked in for the night.
I tiptoed around the silent convent clumsily disguised in an oversized grey habit, but I couldn’t get out, and then I found her again, her and her sisters, all preparing for sleep in their tiny, doorless cells. At first they were praying and then they took out these little whips and started hitting themselves on their bare skin, and that’s what’s on display now. My camera caught the technique my little nun used, a quick flick of the wrist to bring the tails down on her flesh. The sharp tipping of her head after each blow, the licking of her lips, the slow belly dance of secret pleasure.
‘Say something,’ murmurs Crystal. ‘They’re all looking at you, see? They expect you to talk them through it.’
‘Gustav didn’t warn me about this!’ I hiss back, starting to sweat even in my flimsy dress. ‘I’m hopeless at public speaking.’
Crystal hands me another full glass and starts to move through the crowd, who are starting to shift slightly. ‘Who else is going to explain these very naughty pictures?’
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’ My voice is high and girlish, but when I look across their heads to find Gustav, I clear my throat and start again. ‘Perhaps in fact we should have called this entire exhibition Voyeurism.’
I pause there, and the effect is fantastic. Everyone laughs warmly, glasses lifted to cover laughing mouths, but they are all focused on me now.
‘Because that’s essentially what photography is. Voyeurism. Watching. In fact that’s what Gustav Levi called me when he caught me photographing these little witches on Halloween night. A voyeur. And I don’t think he meant it in a good way.’
There’s warmer laughter, glasses waved jovially at Gustav, who raises his glass in return but keeps his eyes on mine. Is he expecting me to slip up?
‘But I hope this exhibition shows my type of voyeurism in a positive rather than salacious way. Or at least constructive, artistic. Even arousing. If that’s not looking for excuses.’ I walk slowly along the wall towards the Venetian series to the accompaniment of more friendly laughter.
One guest holding a mini tape recorder puts his hand up. ‘I don’t know if you’re taking Q and As?’
‘Of course.’ Wow. Where did this smooth professionalism come from? ‘I want everyone to understand my work.’
‘So I’m interested in your influences. They’re obviously very varied.’ The journalist taps his pen against his mouth. ‘But I know everyone’s dying for you to talk us in particular through these convent ones. These Venetian nuns in their cells?’
‘Ah, yes. To be honest I was stunned myself when I walked into the gallery this morning.’ I arrive at the series, firstly of the arched cloisters, then the chapel, then the stone staircase flanked by statues of female saints which led up to the nuns’ sleeping quarters. The arch of the corridor, the punctuation of the little doorless cells. The ghostly figure, slightly out of focus, appearing in the first doorway. ‘I mean, when I saw just how erotic the effect is now that they’re blown up to life size.’
The journalist nods. ‘That scenario, well, it’s the stuff of pure fantasy, isn’t it? Did you realise you were appealing to a male audience when you took these?’
‘Male, female. I want to appeal to all audiences, obviously. Especially the one here tonight.’
I wave my arm around the assembled throng and again they laugh kindly. One or two cast suspicious glances at the journalist and I wonder if he’s trying to wrongfoot me for some reason. Gustav has his head down and is writing something on a pad of paper.
I plough on. ‘I studied the work of Helmut Newton, and I think you can see his sado-masochistic mannerisms expressed here, however subconsciously.’ I flatten my hand on my leg and stroke it absently. ‘These women are alone with their masochism. Their impure fantasies. But it’s also a penance. They’re obeying orders.’
‘Would you say,’ interrupts another woman, ‘that such depictions are bordering on the pornographic, no matter how tastefully shot?’
‘That depends on whether you think something occurring naturally in life counts as porn. I’d say it’s a heightened and corrupted version of reality.’
‘Even so. Those little whips they seem to be using, the flagellation,’ coughs the woman, taking a noisy sip from her glass. ‘How did you get such intimate pictures of such secluded, holy women?’
‘If you’ve visited Venice you’ll know that the nature of the place makes every nook and cranny there seem hidden and secretive, but I only stumbled on that convent by mistake when I got lost one evening. I followed this nun who seemed to be in a hurry, I wanted to ask her the way, but she disappeared through this little gate. I learned later that you can get inside the convent from the canal, too, but only if you have a gondola handy. And by then I had all the shots I needed.’
‘Adventurous as well as talented,’ someone else piped up. ‘I can see you come alive when you talk about your travels.’
‘My travels last year are what kept me alive.’
Across the river the inky black clouds scud across the sky.
‘This was an enclosed order of nuns, you say?’
‘There was no speaking to each other in there, let alone the outside world. Apparently once a year or so, they talk to outsiders through a grille.’
‘So you never asked for permission to enter the convent, or spoke to anyon
e?’
‘God, no. They would have chucked me out. It’s a silent order, but they are still very – active.’
The journalist is biting his pen. The others are standing about like deer in the fens, waiting for more.
‘Active? So what made you think there was a photo op in there?’
‘The first thing I witnessed, hiding behind a pillar obviously, was a prostration.’
Several pairs of eyebrows rise questioningly.
‘I think the nun I followed was a novice. One of the reasons I was able to get in so easily was that the entire community was gathered in the chapel to watch this initiation ceremony. Or penance. I couldn’t linger too obviously to find out. No wonder the young nun was in such a rush. She must have been making her initial vows, or she could have been confessing to some heinous sin. Either way they were whipping her.’
Mouths drop open. Crystal is standing next to Gustav, her eyes wide with undisguised admiration. Gustav glances up at me, then back at what he’s writing. Annoyance flares at me. Why isn’t he paying attention?
‘It was hard to see at first because they had this heavy incense pouring out of a large silver basket swinging back and forth on a silver chain. It made my eyes stream and I had to stop myself sneezing. Anyway, it was a beautiful vaulted chapel and in all these pews were rows of nuns, standing so still I thought they were statues. Then this young nun came out, there she is in that picture.’
All heads turn back to the pictures hanging there, at the soft-focus pictures of my favourite nun in her cell.
‘She came in, dressed in a kind of thick linen nightdress. She lay down on the floor, flat on her face, and spread her arms and legs out like a star. The nuns were all singing, fingers telling their rosaries, and singing some sort of Gregorian chant. Some of them were stretching their arms up to the ceiling, others were stretching their arms out sideways as if to embrace something.
‘I’ll never look at The Sound of Music in the same way again!’
I allow a space for some light relief. I glance at Gustav who nods his head for me to carry on.
