Island of Demons (33 page)

Oh gladly. I took him on my knees and adopted a pose somewhat after that of the grieving Virgin in Botticelli's
Lamentation over the Dead Christ
– one that many critics at the time felt excessively odalisque. His white headcloth suggested a bandage so I untied it, wadded it into a pad and pressed it tenderly to the wound. Another man came up, apparently solicitous, then – grinning – tried to drag Rawa to his feet by the hair as he lay limp and dropped him like a broken doll back on my lap and laughed. Walter shooed the madman furiously away. A priest finally strode up, splashed cooling holy water, fumed incense. Men dropped to the ground like stones, lay still or struggled groggily to their knees. Then consciousness returned with a rush and Rawa too sat up, stared down, not badly hurt after all, but amazed at his own defilement and pain.

“I must,” announced Jane pushing past, “interview this man.”

Soon I could hear her say, bending over Rawa “And just what word would you use for that? Uhhuh. And when you say that word how does it make you feel? Really? Oh my.” Scribbling, scribbling. She was always scribbling. My knees ached and my hands were sticky with Rawa's hot blood and sweat. I was not in a trance. I felt pain quite vividly where he had been dropped on my knees. But of course no one concerned themselves with me.

11

Walter had a natural empathy with aristocrats and they immediately regarded him as “one of us”. That is not to say he was snobbish and despised us peasants, quite the reverse. It has always been the mark of true aristocrats that they are socially unassuming and spread their friendships widely. Like the English Prince of Wales, indeed, Walter saw himself as empathetically in harmony with ordinary villagers by some kind of social short circuit, enjoyed their company and was keen to help them in any way he could. And like an aristocrat, he seldom paid his debts, for any infusion of cash was seen as a windfall, something to be profligated on making the moment special before it leaked away, not to be spent on the dull and everyday. But he disliked the aggressive mediocrity of colonial life, with its invidious social distinctions and petty acquisitiveness and always favoured the special few who sought spiritual rather than worldly wealth – especially if they had plenty of money and their first impulse was to give lots of it to him. After all, the sensation of having Walter's hand in your pocket was, in many ways, not wholly disagreeable.

Barbara Hutton would, in a few short months, come of age and be quite simply the richest woman in the world and, though not an aristocrat herself, had a similar taste as Walter for them. She would soon embark on a lifelong series of failed marriages with failed European princelings – tirelessly repeating the same mistake – interrupted solely by one with Cary Grant who puzzled her by neither abusing her nor stealing her money. Consequently, he bored her. The present candidate was one Alexis Mdivani, a soi-disant Georgian prince and fortune-hunter whose relentless attentions were the motive for this world trip. Although she had good lawyers, in contrast to the Woolworths stores on which her fortune was based, in love she bought expensively and sold cheap. Her mother had committed suicide. Her father had abandoned her. Homing in on her tragic private life, the newspapers had started calling her the ”poor little rich girl” after Noel Coward's song. Bing Crosby had recently driven her into hiding with his popular offering of “I found a million dollar baby in a 5 and 10c store”. She was dumpy and shy and insecure and might as well have been walking around with a large target painted on her back. She talked with that odd honking accent that used to be the sound of Fifth Avenue but has now, I believe, entirely disappeared from the world apart from the call of the Canada goose. Her companions were the Kinnerleys – Jean and Morley – wealthy Anglo-Americans in their late thirties, she from a titled English house, he a successful publisher. Slim, sophisticated, assured, they knew everyone by their first names and assumed everyone else held the key. “David” was the Prince of Wales, “Mary” the English queen. Morley talked constantly of some new poet – “Eliot” – whom he considered a personal discovery, though I never found out his surname.

Perhaps it was the horse that first attracted her. The equestrian pose is inherently aristocratic. Portrait painters have known that for centuries. And it displays a man's thighs to advantage. I have always noted women to be particularly vulnerable to thighs. Then again there was Walter's Russian accent, the blond smile, the gigolo charm that he instinctively turned on full blast, with too much eye contact, laughing at things that weren't funny and so on. Her laugh, in return, was particularly irritating – a sort of equine snort. In brief, he was as catmint to her and in a few days she was clearly smitten and swept off her feet by the heated exoticism of it all. If only Walter had had a title. I began to wonder whether she had been padding up those stairs to the Kala Rahu door but surely etiquette required that he visit her, that she “receive” rather than “present”. By close questioning, I had established from the boys that no Russian piano music had been played in the house – not that it was any of my business. They all went riding every morning and often ended up at the McPhees'. Inevitably, Bärbli – as she suffered herself to be called though she had spent a life fighting against “Babs” – knew Jane. It seems they had shared an analyst together which is apparently the American equivalent of an in-law relationship.

One morning I was sitting in the garden sketching one of the hornbills as it chewed on its own feet when she came and sat beside me. She had let it be known that she was a poet and had recently published – privately – a book of her poems. They all held themselves to be well-versed in poetry. Morley described the book shiftily as “not entirely devoid of merit” though the process of versification seemed to consist entirely of her wandering around with a pained expression and sucking a pencil. That morning, she was, I confess, radiant, transformed by an inner light. I had an urge – swiftly suppressed – to ask her to pose.

“Hi, Rudi,” she honked, laid down her sucked pencil and replaced it with a cigarette, clearly expecting me to leap forward and light it for her. I ignored that and concentrated on my hornbill's scaly feet. “Tell, me. Why does Walter call you ‘Bonnetchen'?”

“Why does he call you ‘Bärbli'? Walter is like one of those early explorers who feels he has the right to rename everything since it is only when
he
sees it for the first time that it really exists.”

She gave up on the cigarette and stuck out her lower lip like a child. “You don't seem to like Walter very much today. I thought you were his friend. I think he's just darling.”

I pressed too hard and broke the point of my pencil. “Damn and blast!” The bird, reacting to my voice, flew off. I lay down my own pad and pencil, sighing. “Look,” I said, very calmly. “Barbara. You are very young and innocent and there are certain things you may not have realised about Walter.” I took a deep breath. I was not quite sure how I should put this. I groped for thoughts and words to put them in. “Walter is not as other men.”

“You mean,” she finally lit her own cigarette, “that Walter is homosexual?”

“Well, yes.” I was genuinely surprised. She laughed. It was not such a bad laugh really.

“Like cousin Jimmy,” she smiled. “Jimmy is absolutely my best friend in the whole world and he adores the New York theatre – all those costumes and chorus boys and Ethel Merman. He takes me to all the openings and I have to keep him in little presents for his little friends who can be quite cold otherwise. He is devastatingly handsome of course. His father was just the same way. Jimmy says that playing football does not mean you can't enjoy the odd game of tennis. Both are just a matter of ball control.” I was shocked. She was less innocent about Walter than I had been. No wonder she got on with Jane. Perhaps they were both reproducing the wisdoms of that same seedy analyst. I had never played tennis in my life. “It's so peaceful here. You know what drove me away from New York?” I shook my head. “I went to Cartier's with Jimmy. Oh we were very naughty. I spent $150,000 on trinkets, little things that caught my eye, and when we got back to the Rolls there was a crowd of street people, dirty, ragged, thin. They knew who I was and they looked so angry when they saw the Cartier bags. I guess it was a mistake to wear furs and diamonds in daylight. Oh those mean, horrid faces! They started shouting and banging on the roof and spitting and the driver just sat there and – can you believe it? – wouldn't move just in case he knocked a couple of them down. Then, thank God, the police arrived and drove them away with their nightsticks. I fired the driver, of course. But here everyone is happy and well-fed and loved and everyone just adores the princes.” She had met Agung who had charmed her over tea and softpedalled his way into her favour by placing his regal foot gently on hers under the table. “My father hired a detective after that but I soon got rid of him.”

“How did you manage that?”

She laughed again. I now realised she had a whole expensive wardrobe of laughs. This was a nasty off-the-peg snicker, wet with saliva. “I seduced him of course. A very brutal man. Jesus, my fanny was black and blue for a week.”

Oh my God! I began to feel a little sorry for Walter and lit a cigarette of my own, chuckling. “I heard there was another man after you at the moment.”

Her pudgy little face looked sly. She tried to throw her hair back dramatically but that gesture doesn't work when the hair is mousey and short. I detected a need for drama in her life. Poor Walter!

“My prince! Alexis. My father hates him, says he's one of the ‘marrying Mdavis'. They just happen to be deathly attractive to rich women. Like I say, why have money if you don't buy what you fancy? And he can't leave me alone. Jimmy has a habit of taking showers in the sports clubs downtown and says Alexis is hung like one of his own polo ponies.” She preened queenily. I was puzzled – shocked too – but more puzzled than shocked.

“But didn't you come here to get away from him?”

She snorted. “Just till his honeymoon with that bitch he married for her money is over. One must observe the decencies. There's also the matter of my coming of age in a few months. That's why we came.”

We were interrupted by a splashing. It was Morley, paddling in the stream. He paused, swaying off balance, nearly tumbled, grabbed a rock.

“I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” he chanted, smiling a greeting. “Did I hear you explaining how we came to be here? Most extraordinary coincidence, really. Jean and Barbara went to this film in New York –
Love Powder
, that was the name of it – and it turned out to be about Bali and Walter was credited. Outside, it was wet and cold and raining and Bali seemed like a good place to run off to – take a powder as we say in America – so the girls made up their minds then and there and here we are.”

“Halloo, dahlinks.” Walter's Russian accent was becoming absurd, a parody of itself. He appeared on the balcony as in
Romeo and Juliet
, wearing multi-spattered shorts and that silly calabash hat he wore for painting. But wait. There had been none of the usual dramas, Ubud had not been required to go into mourning while he was easing himself at the easel, the boys were not walking around on eggs and talking in whispers lest they frighten his muse. “Morley, where is dear Jean?” he called down.

“She went to the market with Resem to buy cloth. Oh yes. I was going to ask. What should she give him as a thank you?” It was impossible that had completed anything in half a day.

Walter leaned on the rail. “I think you usually find a cloth about right for a small service, don't you, Bonnetchen?” Painting always drained him utterly. There was no sign of any of the inevitable exhaustion. And yet, when we arrived upstairs, there were three new paintings, stood in a line like serving maids with their hands out for a tip, not – it must be confessed – his best, in fact rather repetitious with none of the poignancy that comes from leaving something just unsaid. I looked at one showing juxtaposed scenes of village life, men driving cattle, the dark forest beyond, night and day side by side, Rembrandtesque pools of light in between.

“What's this?” I asked suspiciously. Walter looked uppity.

“You know the way I work, Bonnetchen. He winked, slipped an arm Balinesically about my shoulders and squeezed a little too hard for comfort. “I labour away at a painting for months, simply bleeding into it, and then, sometimes, I just can't quite bring myself to kill it off and end the relationship. It is a relationship of the soul.” He looked soulful and touched his heart. “You feel it, Bärbli. You are a poet. So I start another. And before I can finish the first, I have to wait for inspiration to come. I'm sure you know how it is, Bonnetchen.” I knew no such thing. I knew that Walter was like the whole of Bali – nothing was ever quite finished, or, if it was, something else had fallen down in the meanwhile, so the list of things to do never got any shorter. I sneered.

“Well it looks as if inspiration turned up today – by truck – which reminds me why I came.” How many paintings had he got tucked away in that studio that no one was ever allowed into?

“Oh Walter!” Barbara interrupted. She picked one up and twirled. “They're beautiful, the true voice of Bali,” she honked. “Look, there are three of them and three of us. It's as if it were planned. It was meant to be. You must let me buy them all!”

Walter looked bashful, a little boy praised extravagantly by his mother in front of guests. “All three? Well … really … I honestly didn't expect …” I could not stand it any more.

“Walter,” I said. “I really came to say that I'm off to Java. An exhibition. Next week in Batavia. My own works and some of the Pita Maha. Lee King has a truck leaving adventitiously tomorrow and has offered to take us and the paintings on highly favourable terms. I would have asked whether you had anything new you wanted to include but you are obviously quite spent.”