I shook my head, quite unable to answer. She turned away abruptly and placed the brandy glass on a small table to her left; and the manner in which she did this seemed to suggest – I don’t know why – that she felt rebuffed and was now clearing the decks for action. I waited, rather uncomfortable in the silence that followed, and because I had no conversation left in me, I made a great play about smoking my cigar, studying the ash intently and blowing the smoke up slowly towards the ceiling. But she made no move. There was beginning to be something about this lady I did not much like, a mischievous brooding air that made me want to get up quickly and go away. When she looked around again, she was smiling at me slyly with those little buried eyes of hers, but the mouth – oh, just like a salmon’s – was absolutely rigid.
‘Lionel, I think I’ll tell you a secret.’
‘Really, Gladys, I simply must get home.’
‘Don’t be frightened, Lionel. I won’t embarrass you. You look so frightened all of a sudden,’
‘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 th
em 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 listen.’ She reached for the brandy glass and settled back comfortably in the far corner of the sofa. ‘I suppose you know John Royden 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!”’