Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (21 page)

‘This is really an ironic comment on Andy’s work,’ said Artie. ‘He was doing these images of famous people, right? We are saying you can make an icon out of anyone. They don’t have to be like Marilyn or Mohammed Ali or whoever. Like Andy said, everyone can be famous for fifteen minutes.’

I said: ‘I’ve never really understood why Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame remark is supposed to be so witty and profound.’

‘You’re right, Robert,’ said Artie. ‘It’s a dumb-ass comment. In fact, that is what we’re saying in these silk-screens: that Andy is actually a dumb-ass guy.’

I could not quite follow his argument, but I let it pass.

To me perhaps the most beautiful things based on Gloria were a series of ceramic masks glazed and painted in delicate pastel colours. Artie told me they had been modelled on a plaster cast of her face. The eye sockets were empty, the lips slightly parted to reveal the darkness beyond. They suggested, without being too heavy or obvious about it, a mask of Tragedy. I complimented Artie on these.

‘Yeah. As a matter of fact, they were my idea.’

I asked if Gloria was around.

‘Yeah, she’s out in the back yard with Lord Charles. You want to go see?’

I found them by the lake. Charles had had a lichened baroque statue of Pomona removed from its plinth and on it had placed Gloria in the goddess’s stead. She had been draped in robes similar to those of Pomona, with one bare breast showing, and her skin and hair had been tinted and made up to resemble the colour and texture of the statue. Charles was taking photographs of her in a variety of poses.

When he saw me coming Charles said to Gloria: ‘Okay, you can take a bit of a break now,’ but he let her scramble off the plinth by herself. I was in time to give her a hand and she embraced me warmly. She clung to me in a way that I found puzzling. I didn’t know her that well.

‘Well, what do you think, eh?’ said Charles. ‘We’re having a big exhibition at the Whitechapel Cube next month and we expect you and your wife to be there at the private view. It should be a big event. The buzz is terrific. Already.’

Gloria was shivering in my arms. I said: ‘I think Gloria is cold. It is rather chilly out here. Shall we go in and have a cup of tea.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Charles, setting off towards the house ahead of us. ‘But don’t smudge that make-up, Gloria. Bloody Ada! It was a business getting that right. As for getting Pomona off her plinth, it was a frigging nightmare! We damn near broke her in half.’

‘Are you all right, Gloria?’ I asked as we watched Charles striding ahead of us towards the house.

‘Oh. Yah! Fine’ The vocal transformation from South London girl to upper class debutante was complete.

‘I hope they’re paying you properly for all this.’

‘Oh, yes! I’m going to get a share of the profits.’ We walked for a while in silence. The fact that I could understand—or thought I could understand—so much more than she did about her situation made me feel protective and close, like an elder brother.

Suddenly she said: ‘I want to get out of here.’

For a moment I considered telling her to get into my car and driving her back to London. Then I thought of how Jenny would react if I arrived home with a beautiful bare-breasted woman dressed as a statue. As I hesitated my instinctive reaction evaporated, but I was still troubled. I wrote my telephone number on a page of my diary, tore it out and gave it to her. I told her that she was to ring me if ever she needed my help. Her cold little hand squeezed mine, but she said nothing.

Back in the hall no-one took the slightest notice of Gloria. Their attention was too fixed on the fabrications of her image, so we made our own way to the kitchen and boiled a kettle on the Aga.

I watched Gloria as she went busily to and fro in the kitchen, fetching cups, and milk from the fridge, quite oblivious of her bizarre appearance. She seemed almost at home there.

‘Charlie used to have a housekeeper,’ she said, ‘but she’s gone now. She couldn’t stand all the people and stuff. God, this place is a mess. I think there are some biscuits somewhere.’

We sat at the long deal kitchen table and drank our tea.

She said: ‘Charlie keeps wanting me to go up to the folly again. He wants to take pictures or something. I’ve told him no way. I am
not
going.’

‘What is it exactly you are afraid of?’

‘Nothing. . . . No, you don’t understand. Nothing is what I am afraid of. Of being nothing. Of there being nothing. All my life, ever since I was a little kid I’ve been scared of certain places where there seems to be nothing. I don’t like being alone. It’s like I’m not there when I’m alone. I hate that.’

Artie and Charlie came into the kitchen. Charlie moved up behind Gloria and began casually to fondle her exposed breast.

‘So there you are, Gloria Munday!’ said Artie. ‘We’ve been looking for you all over. Were you going to run away with Robert? Well, you can’t have her, Robert, do you hear me? She’s ours.’ He laughed, as if he had said something very witty. ‘Is there any more tea? You’d better get going, Robert or it’ll be dark before you arrive back in London.’

IV

The following month Lord Art’s first exhibition at the Whitechapel Cube, entitled
Objet D’Art
, was a
succés fou.
Jenny and I attended the first private view, the one at which far more people claim to have been present than were actually there. The title of the exhibition—Artie’s idea, or so he told me—was as ingenious as it was apposite. All the artefacts on display were in some way representations of, or related to Gloria Munday.

I had seen many of them before, or in preparation: the porcelain masks, the silk-screen prints, the photo realist paintings of her as the statue of Pomona. But there were two items that I had never seen before, one necessarily so.

In the centre of the main room was a table draped in black on which rested an oblong perspex casket with holes perforating its upper surface. Inside the casket lay the apparently sleeping form of Gloria. She was naked but had been rendered sexless by the fact that every part of her was covered with silver body paint and her hair had been dyed platinum. Throughout the entire three hours of that private view she barely stirred, her silver eyelids closed. Only the rise and fall of her breasts told you that she was alive and breathing.

The other item was a large monochrome canvas, evidently taken from one of Charles’s photographs because, if you looked closely, you found that it had been composed of minute grey and black dots meticulously painted in oils on the white primed canvas. It showed Gloria’s body, from the waist up, naked, her hands raised above her head which looked as if it were in the act of turning away from the camera. The hair was slightly disordered as if it had not caught up with the moving face. The background was one of vague grey shapes which looked like columns. I suspect that the original photograph had been taken with a flash. What was unforgettable about the picture was the look on Gloria’s face. It was one of abject terror, not fleeting fear, but the kind born of utter hopelessness. If Gloria had faked that look, then she would have been a great actress, but I knew that she wasn’t.

The image, which was three or four times life size, dominated the room in which it had been hung. I watched people, as they entered the room and first caught sight of the image, suddenly stop talking and simply stare, all the fashionable private view sociability knocked out of them as if by a physical blow. I myself was stunned and found my eyes swimming with unwelcome tears.

Suddenly a voice beside me said: ‘I can’t take another minute of this. For Christ’s sake let’s get out of here.’ It was my wife Jenny.

When we were outside on the steps of the Whitechapel Cube I found that she was shaking. Was it with fear or anger? I could not be sure. I asked her what was the matter.

‘Are you thick or something? Can’t you see what they’re doing to that girl?’

I knew better than to argue with Jenny when she was in this frame of mind so I didn’t, but I still felt rather feeble for not doing so. In retrospect I am glad I didn’t.

The show almost sold out after the first two private views. The critics were full of praise and even the conservative-minded among them had good things to say. ‘Here at last is a Modern Art of passion and purpose,’ one of them remarked. A few thoughtful questions were raised about Gloria’s role in all this, but these were generally swept aside in the Gadarene rush to acclaim the newly fashionable before it was commonplace to do so.

Gloria was frequently put forward by Charles and Artie as the third person of an artistic Trinity. ‘Gloria is our Holy Ghost,’ said Artie. She was interviewed on radio and television, but the answers she gave to questions were stilted and artificial. On one occasion she gave only two answers alternately to every question she was asked in a television interview. They were: ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea,’ and ‘You have nothing to fear but fear itself’. She frequently made appearances at premieres and private views dressed in unusual costumes, both masculine and feminine. Nobody seriously doubted that she was little more than a talking puppet in the hands of the men, but feminist protests were kept at bay by Artie who, at every opportunity, praised Gloria’s contribution to this unique artistic collective. Perhaps what really stifled objections was the project’s immense commercial success. Gloria’s image was everywhere. She was even allowed to return, under strict supervision from Artie and Charles, to her initial career as a model. She became, presumably, rich.

A year went by and then one night at three in the morning Jenny and I were woken by a phone call. The voice at the other end was faint and practically incoherent, but I recognised it eventually as Gloria’s.

‘Help me,’ she said. ‘Please help me.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at Stanhill. I’m alone. God, it’s awful. There’s just nothing here. I’m alone. Artie and Charlie have buggered off to some do in London. I don’t know when they’ll be back. I’ve got no car; I can’t drive anyway. I’m trapped. I’m alone. Please. Please help me.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘I don’t speak to them. Daddy died last year. Please! Please! I’m so frightened.’

‘All right! I’m coming from London, so I may be some time.’

‘What the hell’s going on?’ asked Jenny.

I explained as best I could. My wife was not sympathetic; in fact she was positively suspicious. As I had never given her any grounds for suspicion I began to be indignant. Then I realised that Gloria might be overhearing all this on the phone so I started to reassure her that I was on my way, but she had rung off. This only increased my self righteous anger. I dressed quickly, left the house and embarked on my drive up to Stanhill.

A series of mishaps, which included running out of petrol, meant that it was well into the morning before I arrived in Gloucestershire. As I came down the Stanhill Manor drive I saw ahead of me an assemblage of vehicles and flashing lights.

As I was approaching I made out an ambulance and a police car; I also noticed Charles’s Range Rover. Charles was standing on the drive white and shivering. He wore a dinner jacket.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he said. The man was full of rage and, finding no other outlet, he was turning his anger on me. I explained about the phone call and he said abruptly: ‘Well, you’re too fucking late!’

A pair of ambulance men with a stretcher between them were coming out of the front door. Somehow the red blanket that was meant to have covered the whole of the body on the stretcher had slipped away from the top half of the face. I saw Gloria’s blonde curls, her perfect forehead and her eyes which were wide open in death. There was no mistaking that the last living look in them had been one of absolute terror.

Charles told me that he had arrived back from London earlier that morning to find her in his bedroom, already dead. There was evidence of her having taken tranquillisers and alcohol, but the eyes were open. He had summoned an ambulance at once but he had known that it was too late.

‘Bloody Ada,’ he said. ‘I told the bitch I’d be back. I told her! Well, maybe I was a bit vague. But, I mean, you know! The stupid cow! Why does this have to happen to me?’ Then he burst into tears.

At the inquest Gloria’s death was found to have had ‘natural causes’, heart failure apparently, perhaps exacerbated by drugs and alcohol. There was a furore, of course, in the papers but that soon died down. The funeral was a dreary, sparsely attended affair at a crematorium. Artie was present, but Charles, for some reason, was not.

I am told that Charles and Artie paid to have the words SIC TRANSIT carved on her memorial stone, but this may be a myth.

V

Soon after the funeral Charles and Artie Katzenberg left for America where, after a successful exhibition, they had fallen out. I never discovered the reason, but I suppose it was to have been expected of two egos like Charles and Artie. After their separation both suffered a decline in fortune. Charles got involved with drugs, but when he had lost all his money he made efforts to be reconciled with Artie. However, on the eve of a meeting between the two, Artie was found stabbed to death in his Manhattan apartment. A rent boy with whom he had been involved was charged and convicted of the murder. Not long after this I read in the papers the surprising news that Charles had married Mahalia Doone in America. There were pictures of a very seedy looking Charles hanging on the arm of Mahalia who was erect and staring straight ahead of her with an inscrutable expression on her face. Charles’s famous lopsided grin was there, but it looked fixed, as if presented purely for the benefit of the photographers.

The couple returned to England later that year and in October Charles rang me. I congratulated him on his marriage.

‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘Mahalia more or less saved my life as a matter of fact.’ He sounded as if he were debating in his mind whether this had been a good or a bad idea. Then he added: ‘To tell the truth, I’m still a bit run down. Can’t get about much. Would you mind coming down to Stanhill? One or two ideas I’d like to discuss with you.’