A Fine Profession (The Chambermaid's Tales Part One) (11 page)

The walking tours thing was quite a good distraction in actual fact. Though I was much younger than most taking part, this did not bother either me or them. Most of the time I exchanged pleasantries with some of the old biddies and then lost myself reading a map or listening to the tour guide. We did the caves on one excursion. That was interesting, because we got to visit some places not normally open to the public. I fancied the guy showing us around and pictured him ravaging me behind a crevice. I actually might have initiated such an assignation if I hadn't decided that I now had respect for myself and that romance, for me, was well and truly dead. A passion-killing cocktail. I had surreptitiously started watching porn at the end of my shifts, in hotel suites that had satellite. I would sneak into a room and sit on the bed, protected by a pillow against my waist, grimace at the depravity but be unable to stop myself getting a little turned on. I found the depictions artless and totally male dominated. The women were mostly doing things that turned men on, but I knew other more simple things turned women on. Although, as I sometimes sat there contemplating the scenes, I decided that perhaps society had lost sight of the simplistic ways in which men and women achieved arousal and that this wasn't necessarily gender specific. I guess this was my way of chastising my own desires – watching depraved porn, I mean. There was nothing I could do to relieve myself. The thought of masturbation was irksome, always really had been. It never worked for me. And so, the palpable frustration grew within me. This was a bubbling, chemical situation that would inevitably have to resolve itself.

That secret realms existed below ground was roman
tic to me and the thought of that tour guide's penis growing erect at me brushing against his arm was a hopeless pursuit. Truly. Really. Oh, who was I kidding? I had obviously decided after Alex, that I loved sex and wanted it. All the time. I had gotten it too, but it was easy to lose yourself in a quick, meaningless shag. Really allowing someone to take their time over me was something else. Nothing I had encountered so far had ever really satisfied me. It was always a bit quick. With Alex, it was amazing, but he was too exacting. I wanted ridiculous, outrageous, off-the-cuff, spontaneous fucks that were rampant and wild but were long enough to finally help me hit my peak. As women, we want it all, but I wasn't sure if we could ever have both a charming, dependable man as well as an animal in the bedroom. But what was I saying? Nutcase that I was! I'd convinced myself that the love of my life was a gay man!

It was the height of summer. The walk was around Welbeck Abbey. It was an unusually sweltering day and I wore my long denim shorts and a plain black vest. We all broke off to go and do our own thing and I stumbled on a group of artists in the landscaped gardens who were painting the topiary. I couldn't help but stop to look.

T
he teacher walked over to me. She was dressed in an oversized tent resembling a kimono without all the padding and belts. The cloth was white and heavy but she still looked cooler than I, walking the grass in her bare feet. She was late thirties I guessed and wore her long black hair in pretty ringlets tucked to one side. I remember wondering whether she twisted and tied up her hair with old bits of torn cloth before bedtime to achieve the effect. Seemed strange. A mature woman pretending to be girlish, perhaps. She spoke with a stiff upper lip, a Counties accent straining through the cluck of her tongue against her partially buck teeth.

“
Hullo, would you like to observe?”

I gazed into her almost jet-black ey
es and saw the most disturbing, confident stare looking right back at me. She examined my figure without shame and smiled. There was something reassuring about her grin, something, I don't know, comforting and wise behind her expressions. I grinned back and she directed me around the artists' pitches. Some were very bad and kind of modernist while others were quaint and delicate, in watercolours rather than thick, gloopy oils. I nodded and smiled. I felt a little uncomfortable with the woman seemingly leading me against my will. I knew nothing of art nor the skill involved and I would certainly have much rather been dipping my feet in the fountain by that point. She drew me toward her own easel and told me to sit on her stool. Each time the notion of protesting entered my mind, her solid focus on my eyes would force me to throw off my natural urge to run a mile.

She took a charcoal pencil and started to draw an outline on a fresh sheet of canvas. I was dying to leave. She got to work and was already outlining my eyes. I was trapped. Ten minutes later, she had drawn quite a lovely little sketch of my face and shoulders. She offered it to me but I refused. I said I couldn't.

“Please, please take it, and if you want, make a donation to the house instead of paying me.”

I felt her generosity was too much and reluctantly took it, placing the rolled paper inside my over-arm bag. When I was
about to walk away, she said, “Oh, hang on…”

She handed me a card.
“If you ever consider life drawing, let me know. I am short on candidates with curves like yours.”

“
You mean…?”

“
Yes, you pose for me nude. If you'd like. You can keep a copy or two for yourself, or, for your boyfriend.”

“
Oh, no, there's…”

Her eyes lit up.

“Really, you never know, we might discover a side of you that you never even knew existed. Trust me. It's art.”

I nodded and shrugged, walking away with the disconcerted feeling of having just been tricked into following up on something that could fill me with regret or finally rid me of the issues that still haunted me.

For some reason,
a couple of weeks later, I found myself in that woman's house. She lived on campus at Nottingham University, in a beautiful, Victorian, detached property that had its own driveway and lush green grass as its surround. I had lived in the city all that time and not realised that a village existed within it, landscaped with various parks, gardens, lakes and character houses dotted around acres of fertile space. It was a large place the woman had and she had converted it for the purpose of having a studio and space to entertain, leaving room for only two bedrooms though there should probably have been four or five. The light-pink outer walls were complemented by white wooden beams and terracotta tiles. The property had three floors and large bay windows that seemed as though they might be heavy enough to topple the whole building. There was a set of steps leading up to a grand porch, three large chimneys and an exaggerated, ornate conical spire that sat above what I guessed was the master suite. The artist was a professor specialising in portraiture and certainly seemed to have a reputation as a woman about campus, with lots of pictures in the large, airy hallway of students she had seen through to their own gallery openings. The house was lovely, with lots of chunky dado rails, thick coving and picture rails. It wasn't kept very tidy and I felt an urge to sweep and mop, but I tried to take my mind off that.

It was around
8pm and just turning to dusk outside. I nursed a white wine to take the edge off my anxiety over getting naked.

“
Do you like to be called Charlotte, or something else?”

“
Charley or Lottie are the usual abbreviations.”

“
I like Lottie.”

“
That's what my sister calls me.”

“
Sister?”

“
Yes, she's younger than I. A hairdresser. Much taller and better-looking.”

“
I find that hard to imagine.”

A bit more
chitchat and she showed me through to the studio. It wasn't as decorative as other parts of the house but you could see its bland qualities served a purpose. At the room's centre, there was a small padded bench covered in sheets and odd bits of dried grass. She gestured I was to lay there. Maybe she'd depict me as a fairy in the wood.

“
We agreed on me drawing your body from a rear focus, didn't we? However, if we get into the swing and you change your mind, that's fine too. We'll just see how we go.”

“
Okay,” I said, nervously.

She left the room, saying she'd give me a few moments to undress i
n peace. The lighting was dim but I still felt as though every blemish and imperfection of my body would be glaringly on show. However, this was one of the things I had decided may help me and I felt that whatever the woman had hidden underneath her baggy clothes couldn't be much better than what I had. Besides, art didn't care for people who could be put into boxes – that was one of the things she had told me. I was reminded  of the smear test I'd had a little while ago, and decided to treat this situation as if it could never be as bad as that.

I slipped off all my clothes and sat on the bench but couldn't help cross my legs and cover my breasts with an arm. She breez
ed into the room and caught me bashfully hiding my bits and pieces.

“
Right, lay down then darling, just on your side. Yes, that's fine.”

She didn't stare
or gaze, moving across to her easel as she carried on talking.

“
Just place your left hand on your hip, palm down, perhaps elevate your head with your elbow and hand of the other.”

“
Like this?” I asked, shaking with nerves.

“
Yes, just so.”

I heard the scratching of her
pencil drawing an outline and felt comforted to know she wasn't looking at my body the entire time.

“
Lottie, now, could you please just turn your head slightly so I may get a little of your profile? Just a smidgen. You need not fear that anyone will recognise you. It's just to tantalise the beholder with a little of your face.”

“
Tantalise?” I giggled.

“
Yes, dear, why not?”

“
I really don't view myself like that.”

“
You should do. You should not underestimate your power. Men respond to women who know their power.”

“
I don't care for men.”

“
Oh…?”

“
I mean, well, none of them seem to understand me. And my one true love died.”

“
That's sad. Sorry to hear that.”

“
It was sad. But, his existence had great purpose.”

“
That's noble,” she said, but I think we'd lost each other in separate meanings.

“
I hope you don't think I'm a user.”

“
Pardon?” she gasped.

“
My scars. They're from treatment for leukaemia as a girl. The nurses never could find a vein.”

“
You survived leukaemia? How old were you?”

“
Ten when they diagnosed me. Around 13 when I got the all-clear. Still, it could come back, at anytime.”

“
My mother had breast cancer,” she said.

“
What happened?”

“
She just had it taken off, just the one. I decided to have tests to see if I was at risk.”

“
And?” I asked, eager to know whether she and I had a common complaint.

“
I was fine. No risk. Not much more than the average person, anyway.”

“
Oh.”

“
The cancer debate does fascinate me. It still seems like such a grey area of medicine, though they make progress all the time.”

“
They saved me with someone else's cells. It might have been that coupled with chemotherapy, or just my body recovering itself. I still don't trust science.”

“
People only trust what they understand.”

She was working quickly with her pencil and I had forgotten I was even naked in a stranger's house.
Florence, that was her name. She was dark but with porcelain skin, a slender figure and a little taller than myself. She certainly had the look of an intellectual about her, but the ringlets still seemed odd.

“
No, it's not that, it's that when you're ill, all you hear about is blood tests and charts and drugs. But all you know is what you feel. I was told I was the girl who defied the odds. They wrote papers about my recovery.”

“
Yet, the recovery is ongoing, isn't it?”

I turned and looked at her. I felt her c
omment was a little close to the bone. She had a wry smile, however. I conceded, “Just because you beat it doesn't mean you can ever go back to the way you were before.”

“
And why should you want to? You are clearly stronger for it.”

“
In some ways, yes.”

I didn't really want to talk about it any more than that.

“Sorry,” she said, and carried on drawing. “It's just I decided when I first spoke to you that there was, something…”