‘Not again,’ he said in broad Australian vowels, which immediately mollified the effect of his costume. ‘Gretel is so unreliable. This is the second time she’s done this and she swore solemnly it would never happen again. The ladies will be so disappointed. They were looking forward to a woman this week. We had a bloke last week.’
I had no idea what he was talking about but it seemed wise to behave as if I sympathised with whatever inconvenience Gretel’s absence had caused him.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, but Gretel isn’t the most reliable girl in the world.’
As soon as I’d said this, I realised I was quoting Paul Clutterbuck.
‘But she sent me instead.’
Mr Wilks sighed. ‘Well, you’d better come up and get ready.’
He stood back and looked me up and down.
‘You’ve got a broken arm. I suppose that might be quite interesting. You’re not fat, which is a pity. It would be so much easier for them if you were fat.’
I thought it strange that he hadn’t formally introduced himself, and he hadn’t yet asked my name. I followed him up the stairs and into the room from which he had emerged. There were eight ladies there, each seated behind an easel and each wearing the loose clothing of the amateur artist. One of them had tied a scarf around her head in what I presume she thought approximated fascinating bohemianism. It was evident from the perfume that hung in the air and from the various pieces of jewellery I glimpsed that none of these women was so poor or unconnected that they would need to consider the grim possibility of taking on a war job.
‘Our model has done a bunk,’ Mr Wilks said. There was a collective groan. ‘She has, however, done us the courtesy of sending a replacement. It wasn’t what we were hoping for, but what is art without sacrifice, struggle, and disappointment? I’m sure Mr … I’m sorry,’ he said, turning to me, ‘What is your name?’
‘Power,’ I said. ‘William Power.’
‘I’m sure Mr William Power will provide us with enough dramatic poses to get our creative juices flowing. If you would like to step behind that screen, Mr Power, and prepare yourself, we will begin.’
It was with some relief that I now understood the nature of Gretel’s work here. These ladies were gathered for a weekly drawing class, for which Mr Wilks no doubt overcharged them. It was almost quaint. They had obviously progressed from the tedium of still lifes to the discipline of the figure. Whatever costumes were waiting for me behind the Japanese screen would have been chosen with a female model in mind, but I knew I could adjust them into something resembling a toga or a tunic. I imagined that the standard modelling outfit for a woman was a shapeless but diaphanous bolt of cloth designed to be wrapped about the body in simulation of a figure on a frieze somewhere. I would have to make do, and think of this as a performance piece with gestures, but no words. When I ducked behind the screen, there was nothing there but a chair. I poked my head around and said, ‘There’s just a chair here.’
‘Do you need a second chair?’ Mr Wilks asked.
‘Well, no, but the … the costumes. There’s no costume.’
‘Why would you need a costume, Mr Power? You have done this sort of work before, haven’t you?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I thought Gretel mentioned a costume, that’s all.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘We did that once early on with Gretel, but we draw the body now. You can’t draw the clothed figure properly unless you know how the body is moving beneath. As I’m sure you are aware.’
My eyes circuited the room. The eight ladies, the oldest of whom looked to be approaching sixty, and the youngest barely in her twenties, were watching me expectantly, but not lewdly. They each had the carefully studied look of the professional artist, even though they probably were no more than bored socialites indulging in a daring hobby.
‘Are there any particular poses you would like me to strike?’ I asked Mr Wilks.
‘We’ll decide as we go along. If you could get ready now please,’ he said, a little testily.
I began undressing and draping my clothes over the chair. I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the screen.
‘I wonder if you would mind taking your socks off, Mr Power. They are distracting and we need to see your feet.’
I peeled off my socks and stood before the half-circle of easels, physically naked, but mentally armed.
‘The first pose will be ten minutes. If you would strike an attitude, Mr Power?’
I placed the hand with the cast on it on my hip and raised the other towards heaven, like a languid Grecian athlete. If it had been carved in marble, it might have been labelled ‘After Praxiteles.’ The ladies began to concentrate and there was a scratching of charcoal on paper. Mr Wilks walked among them, scrutinising their lines and scrutinising me to determine the discrepancies. After ten minutes he said, ‘Next pose please. Another ten minutes.’
I turned my body as if throwing a discus. This proved uncomfortable after only a few minutes and I took my hat off to the chap who must have modelled for Myron in Ancient Greece. Two more ten-minute poses — one of which had to be changed when I was asked if I could not, on this occasion, bend over in quite that way — and two twenty-minute poses followed, and suddenly it was all over. The ladies packed away their charcoals, I got dressed, and Mr Wilks pressed ten shillings upon me saying that he hoped Gretel wouldn’t let him down again the following week.
I made a noncommittal movement of the shoulders, and said, ‘Is this your place?’
‘Of course not,’ he snorted. ‘I take drawing classes here because Lady Bailey pays me to do so. It’s her house. She’s a widow and I’m teaching her how to draw. She invites her circle and it’s her ten shillings in your pocket. Very generous, wouldn’t you say?’
I had to admit that, after the initial awkwardness, the work wasn’t very demanding. It didn’t require skill, just immodesty. I wondered if Mr Wilks wasn’t hopeful of Lady Bailey’s patronage, or matronage, extending beyond its current generosity. It may have already done so for all I knew.
Mr Wilks took off his beret and his smock.
‘I hate these,’ he said. ‘Lady Bailey thinks I should look the part.’
‘Was she there at that session?’
‘Of course. She was the oldest of them. On the end. The oldest and the least talented. Not that any of them have any real talent, except for Nigella Fowler. She’s got something. She’s good at likenesses and she can draw hands and feet.’
It took a moment for the name to register with me.
‘Nigella Fowler was one of the students?’
‘Do you know her?’
‘No. I’ve heard the name, that’s all. I don’t know where.’
‘Well, there’s talent there, but she’ll waste it. She’s got herself engaged to some bloke no one knows anything about. Her father isn’t happy about it apparently — so Lady Bailey told me at any rate, and she should know. She’s in with all that crowd. Her husband was a cousin of Nigella’s father. I think that’s right.’
I couldn’t figure out what relation this made Nigella to the widow Bailey, something with ‘once removed’ appended to it probably, and I never understood what that was all about. It made no difference to my situation. I was due to have afternoon tea with a young lady who had spent the morning staring hard at my naked body. This discombobulating thought made me determined to get the information I had come for.
‘How did you meet Gretel?’ I asked.
‘At the National Gallery School. She was modelling there for a class I was teaching. I haven’t seen you there. Have you done work for them?’
‘I don’t do this sort of thing for a living, Mr Wilks. I’m an actor.’
‘I see. Between engagements, as they say.’
‘I’ve just returned from engagements interstate.’
‘If you need the work, I can fix you up with a few jobs at the Gallery School. They’re a bit prudish there. You’d have to wear a posing pouch. And it doesn’t pay as well as Lady Bailey does.’
‘May I be frank with you, Mr Wilks?’
‘Is there something you need to be frank about, Mr Power?’
‘It’s about Gretel Beech. It’s a sensitive matter.’
He stopped gathering up bits of broken charcoal and looked at me.
‘Miss Beech isn’t suggesting that she has been the victim of inappropriate behaviour while under my tutelage, is she?’
‘No,’ I said, and knew instinctively that something intimate had occurred between Gretel and Mr Wilks. I didn’t for a moment think that it had been forced intimacy.
‘No. Certainly not,’ I said. ‘I actually don’t (I almost said
didn’t
) know Gretel very well, but she spoke highly of your classes.’
This didn’t sound like anything Gretel would ever say, but I was making it up as I went along. He raised his eyebrows when I said it, and I knew that he’d detected my slight miscalculation.
‘She owes me money,’ I said. ‘She’s been avoiding me for the last couple of days. I was hoping that you might know where she meets her friends. That sort of thing.’
From the expression on his face I knew that I had hit upon something that he recognised as being a likely consequence of knowing Gretel.
‘So she owes you money,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll find that there are quite a few people with a prior claim. How much?’
‘Only two pounds, but still, I don’t have two pounds to spare.’
He laughed.
‘You’re way down the pecking order, Mr Power. Forget your two pounds. As to where she might be …? You might find her in the Petrushka café, or the Alexander Hotel. The Australia Hotel might be worth a look, too. I think she does quite well out of the Yanks.’
‘You don’t know the names of any of her friends?’
‘I wasn’t on social terms with Miss Beech. I can tell you that the fellow she sent along in her place last week was named George. He didn’t give a last name. Just George. He had a very large penis, if that helps with your identification further down the track. I’m sure if you asked at the Petrushka for George with the big cock somebody would be able to help you. It’s that sort of place.’
With nothing more to be learned from Mr Wilks, I thanked him and made to leave.
‘As I said, if you ever need work, contact me. We’re always looking for models.’
It was too late to do any further investigation into Trezise and his connections. I wanted to call into Mother’s place to check on the situation there before joining Clutterbuck and the Fowlers for afternoon tea. I suppressed any consideration of how I’d greet Nigella Fowler, given that she already knew more about me than I was ever likely to know about her.
Brian wasn’t at home, having been obliged to return to teaching, misplaced wife or no misplaced wife. Mother’s eyes were red from weeping.
‘Don’t mind me, dear,’ she said. ‘I always cry when the postman fails to bring a letter from Fulton. It’s how I manage. It’s a sort of ritual.’
‘He’s fine, I’m sure. If something had happened you would have been told by now.’
‘It depends where he is though. If he’s out in the sticks somewhere there mightn’t be a way of getting a message through. I went to Darwin once, you know. With your father. Before you were born. It was an awful, awful trip and when we got there it was hideous. There was practically nothing there and I had never been so hot and uncomfortable in my entire life.’
Mother had never mentioned this little autobiographical detail before.
‘What on earth were you doing up there?’
‘Your father had business interests there. In Broome, too. We must have spent the best part of a year in Broome and in Darwin. If I hadn’t been young and in love I would have high-tailed it out of there, I can tell you, even if I’d had to walk through the Tanami Desert to do it. I really can’t abide the tropics. One never looks one’s best. The humidity does dreadful things to one’s hair. I’m sure I’ve told you about our year of heat. I’m sure I have. You probably weren’t listening, darling. When you were growing up you never actually listened to what you were being told. It was one of your most annoying qualities.’
I let that pass. My mother had not told me the story of what she’d called her ‘year of heat’, despite her claims to the contrary. This wasn’t the moment to contradict her.
‘Perhaps you could tell me about it again some time, and next time I’ll give you my full attention.’
‘Yes dear,’ she said, ‘but I’m sure you’ll be far more interested in the news one of those detectives brought me today. They have the results of the blood they analysed and they’re rather puzzling. It isn’t human blood.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ I said. ‘It is Darlene we’re talking about after all.’
‘Don’t be catty. The blood is bullock’s blood.’
I lifted my eyebrows to indicate that I had always known that Darlene was more bullock than beauty, but allowed this satisfyingly amusing reflection to persist for only a moment.
‘Do the police have a theory?’ I asked.
‘If they do, Will, they didn’t share it with me.’
‘Why would someone kidnap Darlene and splash bullock’s blood around the kitchen?’
‘Well,
I
have a theory,’ Mother said. ‘I think Darlene is still alive. Whoever took her has no plans to kill her. Yet. The blood — they must have known it would be analysed — is a sort of warning on the one hand, and a reassurance on the other.’