Completely Unexpected Tales Read online

  I’m not very good at secrets.’

  I’ve been thinking,’ she said, ‘you’re such a great expert on pictures, this ought to interest you.’ She sat quite still except for her fingers which were moving all the time. She kept them perpetually twisting and twisting around each other, and they were like a bunch of small white snakes wriggling in her lap.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear my secret, Lionel?’

  ‘It isn’t that, you know. It’s just that it’s so awfully late…’

  ‘This is probably the best-kept secret in London. A woman’s secret. I suppose it’s known to about – let me see – about thirty or forty women altogether. And not a single man. Except him, of course – John Royden.’

  I didn’t wish to encourage her, so I said nothing.

  ‘But first of all, promise – promise you won’t tell a soul?’

  ‘Dear me!’

  ‘You promise, Lionel?’

  ‘Yes, Gladys, all right, I promise.’

  ‘Good! Now iisten.’ She reached for the brandy glass and settled back comfortably in the far corner of the sofa. ‘I suppose you know John Roydon paints only women?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘And they’re always full-length portraits, either standing or sitting – like mine there. Now take a good look at it, Lionel. Do you see how beautifully the dress is painted?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Go over and look carefully, please.’

  I got up reluctantly and went over and examined the painting. To my surprise I noticed that the paint of the dress was laid on so heavily it was actually raised out from the rest of the picture. It was a trick, quite effective in its way, but neither difficult to do nor entirely original.

  ‘You see?’ she said. ‘It’s thick, isn’t it, where the dress is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But there’s a bit more to it than that, you know, Lionel. I think the best way is to describe what happened the very first time I went along for a sitting.’

  Oh, what a bore this woman is, I thought, and how can I get away?

  ‘That was about a year ago, and I remember how excited I was to be going into the studio of the great painter. I dressed myself up in a wonderful new thing I’d just got from Norman Hartnell, and a special little red hat, and off I went. Mr Royden met me at the door, and of course I was fascinated by him at once. He had a small pointed beard and thrilling blue eyes, and he wore a black velvet jacket. The studio was huge, with red velvet sofas and velvet chairs – he loves velvet – and velvet curtains and even a velvet carpet on the floor. He sat me down, gave me a drink and came straight to the point. He told me about how he painted quite differently from other artists. In his opinion, he said, there was only one method of attaining perfection when painting a woman’s body and I mustn’t be shocked when I heard what it was.

  ‘ “I don’t think I’ll be shocked, Mr Royden,” I told him.

  ‘ “I’m sure you won’t either,” he said. He had the most marvellous white teeth and they sort of shone through his beard when he smiled. “You see, it’s like this,” he went on. “You examine any painting you like of a woman – I don’t care who it’s by – and you’ll see that although the dress may be well painted, there is an effect of artificiality, of flatness about the whole thing, as though the dress were draped over a log of wood. And you know why?”

  ‘ “No, Mr Royden, I don’t.”

  ‘ “Because the painters themselves didn’t really know what was underneath!” ’

  Gladys Ponsonby paused to take a few more sips of brandy. ‘Don’t look so startled, Lionel,’ she said to me. ‘There’s nothing wrong about this. Keep quiet and let me finish. So then Mr Royden said, “That’s why I insist on painting my subjects first of all in the nude.”

  ‘ “Good Heavens, Mr Royden!” I exclaimed.

  ‘ “If you object to that, I don’t mind making a slight concession, Lady Ponsonby,” he said. “But I prefer it the other way.”

  ‘ “Really, Mr Royden, I don’t know.”

  ‘ “And when I’ve done you like that,” he went on, “we’ll have to wait a few weeks for the paint to dry. Then you come back and I paint on your underclothing. And when that’s dry, I paint on the dress. You see, it’s quite simple.” ’

  ‘The man’s an absolute bounder!’ I cried.

  ‘No, Lionel, no! You’re quite wrong. If only you could have heard him, so charming about it all, so genuine and sincere. Anyone could see he really felt what he was saying.’

  ‘I tell you, Gladys, the man’s a bounder!’

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Lionel. And anyway, let me finish. The first thing I told him was that my husband (who was alive then) would never agree.

  ‘ “Your husband need never know,” he answered. “Why trouble him. No one knows my secret except the women I’ve painted.” ’

  ‘And when I protested a bit more, I remember he said, “My dear Lady Ponsonby, there’s nothing immoral about this. Art is only immoral when practised by amateurs. It’s the same with medicine. You wouldn’t refuse to undress before your doctor, would you?”

  ‘I told him I would if I’d gone to him for ear-ache. That made him laugh. But he kept on at me about it and I must say he was very convincing, so after a while I gave in and that was that. So now, Lionel, my sweet, you know the secret.’ She got up and went over to fetch herself some more brandy.

  ‘Gladys, is this really true?’

  ‘Of course it’s true.’

  ‘You mean to say that’s the way he paints all his subjects?’

  “Yes. And the joke is the husbands never know anything about it. All they see is a nice fully clothed portrait of their wives. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being painted in the nude; artists do it all the time. But our silly husbands have a way of objecting to that sort of thing.’

  ‘By gad, the fellow’s got a nerve!’

  ‘I think he’s a genius.’

  ‘I’ll bet he got the idea from Goya.’

  ‘Nonsense, Lionel.’

  ‘Of course he did. But listen, Gladys. I want you to tell me something. Did you by any chance know about this… this peculiar technique of Royden’s before you went to him?’

  When I asked the question she was in the act of pouring the brandy, and she hesitated and turned her head to look at me, a little silky smile moving the corners of her mouth, ‘Damn you, Lionel,” she said. ‘You’re far too clever. You never let me get away with a single thing.’

  ‘So you knew?’

  ‘Of course. Hermione Girdlestone told me.’

  ‘Exactly as I thought!’

  ‘There’s still nothing wrong.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Absolutely nothing.’ I could see it all quite clearly now. This Royden was indeed a bounder, practising as neat a piece of psychological trickery as ever I’d seen. The man knew only too well that there was a whole set of wealthy indolent women in the city who got up at noon and spent the rest of the day trying to relieve their boredom with bridge and canasta and shopping until the cocktail hour came along. All they craved was a little excitement, something out of the ordinary, and the more expensive the better. Why – the news of an entertainment like this would spread through their ranks like smallpox. I could just see the great plump Hermione Girdlestone leaning over the canasta table and telling them about it… ‘But my dear, it’s simply fascinating… I can’t tell you how intriguing it is… much more fun that going to your doctor…’

  ‘You won’t tell anyone, Lionel, will you? You promised.’

  ‘No, of course not. But now I must go, Gladys, I really must.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly. I’m just beginning to enjoy myself. Stay till I’ve finished this drink, anyway.’

  I sat patiently on the sofa while she went on with her interminable brandy sipping. The little buried eyes were still watching me out of their corners in that mischievous, canny way, and I had a strong feeling that the woman was now hatching out some further unpleasan