‘You’re at the Slade?’
She guffawed. ‘Can’t you tell?’ She waved at the walls. ‘Let’s see your horrible drawing.’
She didn’t recognize it, but she put her hand through his arm and led him through the crowd, now pretty well filling the space. One or two of the young men were lolling on the pillows now (in the left ear of one of them, a glint of gold — homage to Augustus John); other men and women were sitting on the floor with their backs against the wall, most of them smoking cigarettes. There was a lot of talk, some laughter. Denton found himself bending down, then squatting as people looked at the drawing. There was only one gas lamp, but candles seemed to be everywhere, the photographic print gaining several spots of wax.
‘Oh, I know her,’ a small girl with a cat’s face said. She had furry eyebrows and light-brown hair that was very like a mane. ‘She was in first-year drawing. Tonks made her weep. Of course, Tonks makes everybody weep.’
From across the room, a young man called, ‘He never made me weep!’
‘You just turned white as a sheet instead, Malcolm.’
‘My sheet’s grey.’ More laughter.
Three other girls crowded around. He had lost Caroline. They remembered Mary Thomason — called by one of them first Thomas then, no, was it Tomkins? — but they knew nothing about her. She had been ‘very private’, ‘young, that’s what I kept thinking, she seemed like a child’, ‘really quite stand-offish — you’d never have found her at something like tonight’.
‘Well, nobody ever invited her.’
‘She was stand-offish.’
Denton said, ‘Has anybody seen her in the last two months?’
They talked that over, decided they hadn’t, although they were vague about the idea of two months. They were sure she hadn’t come back for the new term, but most of them had been gone for the summer. They called to others in the room. Nobody had seen Mary Thomason for a long while. One rather languid young woman got up off a cushion and came over to him. She had a cool, appraising stare that he decided was really laziness. ‘She was doing some modelling, if that matters.’
‘Posing?’
They laughed. ‘We call it modelling. It’s extra money.’
‘How did you know she was doing it?’
‘We used to chat. She had something new — a hat, I think. She said she’d made some money modelling for a painter and bought the hat. She didn’t say which one. There are hundreds.’
‘Thousands!’ another girl said. People laughed again.
The languorous girl leaned against the wall. ‘She said she’d been modelling for an RA. She said he was “good”. I don’t think she knew good art from fried plaice.’
By then, Caroline had brought out a parlour guitar and was singing in some other language, sitting on the floor. This evolved into a form of charades when one of the men draped a shawl over himself and said he was John Singer Sargent’s Spanish dancer. People started to make references that Denton didn’t understand. He knew it was time to go.
‘I want to thank you,’ he said to Gwen John, whom he found near the door.
‘Did you learn anything?’
‘A little. She was modelling for somebody.’
She shrugged. ‘We’re going to get thrown out soon.’ The charades had got noisy.
‘I’m going.’
‘Wise man.’
He put out his hand. ‘I hope we meet again.’
‘Perhaps.’
Her steady, genderless gaze reminded him of somebody else. Only when he was in the street did he realize the somebody was Janet Striker.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Actually, they were kind of sweet — more like a church social than an orgy.’
Janet Striker chuckled. ‘What on earth is a church social?’
‘My God, don’t you have those here, either? They’re gatherings, socializings, in the church or arranged by the church so people can meet.’
‘I don’t think the Church of England do that sort of thing.’
‘We were Congregationalists. Sometimes there were box lunches — each woman would make a lunch and then they’d be auctioned off — you got to eat with the woman, sort of a picnic-Why are you laughing?’
‘I can’t picture you at such a thing.’
‘Well, I was a kid. In Maine, before the war.’
‘It sounds so awful!’
‘Well, they weren’t. Anyway, the wild Bohemians were nicer to me than most of the toffs I’ve met, and a good deal more innocent. ’
‘Not as clean, I’ll wager.’
‘It was dark. But they did give me that one fact — Mary Thomason had modelled for an older man, an RA.’
‘“Man”, they said man?’
‘RAs are men, aren’t they?’
‘Oh, of course. Naturally. And they said “RA” and didn’t mean just any older artist, but somebody actually with the initials after his name?’
‘No, she didn’t say that, and it was only the one woman, no “they”. And she was about half-asleep and not, I think, the brightest star in the firmament. It isn’t much, is it?’
‘Every bit helps.’
‘But what does it help?’
They were eating in the Three Nuns in Aldgate High Street because she had insisted she wanted to work late despite being on half days. He thought she was trying to avoid him, not see him every day. Something would have to be worked out soon, he thought; he hated running after her, hated more not being with her. ‘Why won’t you live with me?’ he said.
‘Because I’m not a whore any more.’
‘Oh, Jesus, Janet-!’
‘Don’t ask me, then.’
‘Playing around with trunks isn’t enough!’
‘That’s too bad about you.’ She smiled. ‘That’s what an Irish maid used to say to me when I was little.’
‘You mean I’m not thinking about your side of it.’
‘That’s part of what I mean. What did you mean, “Playing around with trunks”?’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘I’m glad you noticed.’
‘I meant that trying to find Mary Thomason is a mug’s game. I’m grateful to you for going after the trunk, but it’s all too distant and too long ago, and while it’s something we do together, it isn’t like the real thing! Plus Mary Thomason is a distraction; I’ve got better things to think about.’
‘Your book. And me, I suppose. I should be flattered that I’m one of your worries, Denton, but I’m not. I don’t want to be a worry, least of all yours.’
‘And then there’s Albert Cosgrove. I had another letter today — three, all told. One pleading, two threatening. He’s come entirely unglued.’
‘Threatening what?’
‘Oh, mostly noise. Having a tantrum.’
‘You’d think the police could find him.’
‘The police have better things to do. They’re keeping their watchers on me because of the letters, but the truth is they don’t know where to look for him. Or how.’ He hesitated, pushing a rather grey-looking green bean around his plate. ‘I think he saw us together,’ he said finally.
‘You and me?’
‘I think when you took the trunk away in the cab. He mentioned the cab and the house in the latest letter.’
‘But the police were supposed to have been watching!’
‘“The Lady Astoreth likes not rivals.”’
‘Don’t talk mysteries to me, Denton.’
‘That’s what he wrote in his letter. Something about seeing me at my door with — pardon me — my “painted harlot”, and then, “The Lady Astoreth likes not rivals.”’ He speared the bean. ‘My grandmother used to read the Book of Revelation. Cosgrove sounds like it.’
‘And the Lady Astoreth?’
‘Something he’s invented or heard about.’
‘One of his demons?’