Mrs Pargeter 06; Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour

∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧

Ten

The room looked like the first attempt of a tyro set designer to produce the studio of a tortured artist. There was a bit too much of everything – too much paint spilled on the floor, too many dirty buckets, battered paint pots, spattered palettes, cracking easels and paint-hardened rags. The room seemed to boom out in over-elaborate shorthand: I reflect the image of a nonconforming bohemian.

The actual artwork on display amidst the cluttered chaos confused the image even further, prompting the suspicion that perhaps this was not the studio of one individual artist, but of a collection of artists, all working in different styles. Every school of painting from the old masters onwards seemed to be represented. Pietes and altarpieces rubbed shoulders with blurred impressionists; Russian icons faced up to pop art swirls; titled ladies in eighteenth-century frocks stared dubiously at twentieth-century abstracts. All the paintings looked to be genuine representatives of their schools; the only detail that cast doubt on their validity was that most of them were unfinished.

The artist whose personality these conflicting images presumably reflected also looked a bit overdone. One might have accepted the wild matted hair, the beret, or the filthy smock; the presence of all three seemed a bit over the top. His manic-depressive manner, in which moods of gloom alternated suddenly with wild bursts of elation, was also a little too studied. As he sat at a paint-spattered table, a half-empty bottle of red wine clutched in his desperate hand, he seemed an assemblage of artistic cliches rather than someone whose eccentricity was a spontaneous expression of personality.

He looked across at his guests with malevolent despair. Mrs Pargeter and HRH perched gingerly on dilapidated armchairs. Though she had shown no qualms about sitting on the dust in Truffler Mason’s office, Mrs Pargeter looked less certain of the hygienic standards of this place. She had no wish to add further smudges of colour to the vibrant pattern of her fine silk dress.

“So… I’m ‘VVO’. Welcome to my humble studio.” The artist flung out a despondent gesture which encompassed the whole room, and slopped more of his wine bottle’s contents into a chipped enamel mug.

“Thank you,” said Mrs Pargeter politely. “One thing HRH wouldn’t tell me… he said I should ask you myself… is what ‘VVO’ stands for…?”

Hamish Ramon Henriques smiled quietly, as the artist shrugged another gesture of despair. “Huh,” he grunted bitterly. “It’s a joke that was made at my expense by some of… some of the people HRH and I work with from time to time.”

“Yes?” Mrs Pargeter prompted.

The bitterness grew deeper, as VVO went on, “just because I take my art seriously… just because it matters to me… they nicknamed me after one of the great geniuses of my profession – Vincent Van Gogh.”

“I see.” Mrs Pargeter was silent for a moment before asking the inevitable question. “Then why aren’t you called ‘VVG’?”

“I told you. They made a mockery of me.” The misunderstood one took another angry slurp from his mug, as he spelled out the detail of his humiliation. “They called me ‘Vincent Vin Ordinaire’.”

Hamish Ramon Henriques ran a hand through the luxuriance of his moustache to prevent his smile from becoming too overt, and Mrs Pargeter was glad she wasn’t in eye contact with him, as she soothed the injured genius with the meaningless words, “Oh. Oh well, that’s nice.”

But VVO’s well of bitterness was far from dry. “They’re always making fun of me,” he moaned on, “laughing at my aspirations to be a great artist… dismissing my paintings as mere imitative daubs…”

“Oh, come on,” HRH protested. “We always respected what you did best.”

The artist was incensed. “No, you didn’t! You respected my hack work!” Fuelled by anger, he rose from his seat and started to circle the room. “You respected me when I produced a Rubens.”

As he spoke, he picked up a canvas of a buxom nude whose bottom blushed appealingly. Mrs Pargeter, who had seen a similar sight in the bathroom mirror earlier that morning, could not restrain herself from murmuring, “Oh, that’s very good.”

“Or a Goya,” VVO went on vindictively, picking up a lady wearing a black mantilla whose authenticity was only let down by an unpainted patch of canvas in the top corner.

Though this picture struck no personal chords, Mrs Pargeter could still recognize the skill of its execution. “That’s smashing too,” she said.

“Or a Jackson Pollock.” On this third canvas, however, she could express no opinion. Mrs Pargeter had always found it tricky to tell a good Jackson Pollock from a bad one – or indeed from an accident in a paint shop.

The tortured genius let all three canvases clatter to the floor, as he struck his chest in impassioned misery. “But what happens when I express myself… when I do a painting that is a true Reg Winthrop?”

To reinforce his words, he picked up a picture which had stood facing the wall. It was fixed in a gold frame, and was quite definitely the ugliest work of art Mrs Pargeter had ever seen. No weekend painter, suffering from a terminal overdose of sentimentality, could ever have produced worse.

A black Scottie dog, with an anthropomorphic smile and a tartan bow about its neck, sat coquettishly in front of a little humpbacked bridge over a tinkling stream. Spotted toadstools poked up through the grass. Bluebirds circled aimlessly overhead. The painting could have won a Queen’s Award for Winsomeness. Even a chocolate-box manufacturer would have rejected it as too coy.

“Hmm…” said Mrs Pargeter awkwardly. “Well, yes…”

“See!” VVO let the painting slip from his hand and hurled himself histrionically back into his chair. “You’re just like all the others. You can’t appreciate what I’m really trying to say. You can’t see through to the soul of my art. Ah, is it always the fate of genius to be misunderstood?”

Hamish Ramon Henriques decided that pursuing such speculation would be fruitless. It was time to get down to business. “VVO, in fact the reason we are here is that –”

But the artist’s list of grievances was not exhausted. “Not only does nobody appreciate my painting, I’m also excluded from all the exciting bits when we’ve got a job on. I’m always left on the sidelines. While the rest of the lads are having fun, out and about breaking and entering, I’m always stuck back here knocking out another Rembrandt.”

HRH waved an impatient hand. “Yes, VVO, I’ve heard all this before. Listen, we need your help for a job.”

“Painting again, I suppose?” the artist sneered. “No breaking and entering. No immobilizing burglar alarms. I’d be good at all that! You’re wasting the talents of a criminal genius, you know!”

But HRH was impervious to these demands for sympathy. “The job,” he confirmed, “is, as you guessed, painting.” At these words, VVO slumped even deeper into his chair. “Quite a lot of painting. Some old masters and some more modern works of art need to travel abroad. We want cover paintings for them.”

The artistic worm turned. “Oh, no! Have you really got the nerve to ask me to do that kind of stuff again?”

“It is,” HRH pointed out discreetly, “for Mrs Pargeter.” He let the words sink in before adding, “Widow of the late Mr Pargeter.”

Her husband’s name worked its customary magic. After a baleful look at HRH, the artist conceded, “Oh, all right, I’ll do your pathetic little job – even though it’s a prostitution of my art.” Then he slumped back again with his eyes closed.

“Everyone has to make compromises in this life, VVO.”

All that got was a “Huh.”

“And I’ll tell you what… the modern art covers can be anything you want…” One of VVO’s eyes flicked open. “You could even make them Reg Winthrops, if you like…”

Though it went against the character he had created for himself to show it at all fulsomely, this news clearly pleased the artist.

Hamish Ramon Henriques rubbed his hands together briskly. “Anyway, you’re forgetting your manners. Aren’t you going to offer us a drink?”

VVO looked at his guests with renewed truculence. “Do you want something?”

Mrs Pargeter didn’t want to put her host to any trouble. “I’m happy with some of that wine if you –”

“No, no!” As if his artistic integrity was being impugned, the painter clutched his bottle to his chest. “The wine’s mine, all mine!”

“Oh very well. A cup of tea’d be nice then.”

VVO immediately shouted to some unseen presence outside the room, “Tea, woman! Bring us tea!” He turned grumpily to HRH. “When will you bring me the paintings?”

“Next couple of days. There are more than thirty of them. You think you’ll be able to do the covers within the week?”

After the animation of the shouted tea order, the artist had slumped back into apathy. “What does it matter what I think?” he asked from the recesses of his chair. “Of course I can do them. Like any true genius, I work fast.”

There was a silence. Mrs Pargeter wondered who would bring the tea. With what kind of woman would someone like VVO cohabit? Which stereotype of the artist’s muse would it be? Some sluttish student with fiercely dyed hair and nose-jewellery? A former life model, blowsy and gone to seed? A hippy trailing scarves and wispy skirts?

The interior door opened to reveal none of the above. The woman who stood there with a neat tray of tea things was neatly dressed as a neat, ultra-conventional suburban housewife. The decor revealed behind her showed a neat, ultra-conventional suburban sitting room.

“Good afternoon,” said the woman politely. “I’m Deirdre Winthrop, Reg’s wife.”

She cleared a space on a cluttered table, put down the tea tray and turned with hand outstretched.

Mrs Pargeter shook it. “Good afternoon. I’m Mrs Pargeter.”

HRH went through the same social routine. Shaking his hostess’s hand, he identified himself as Hamish Ramon Henriques.

“Pleased to meet you both, I’m sure.” Deirdre Winthrop smiled graciously. “Tea was it you said you’d like?”

“That’d be lovely, thank you,” said Mrs Pargeter, with an equally gracious smile.

Deirdre lifted the wine bottle out of her husband’s unprotesting hands. “And you want some more of your blackcurrant juice, love?”

Reg Winthrop grinned at his wife, very calmly and with great fondness. “Yes, please, my angel,” he replied, the picture of meek suburban domesticity.

Mrs Pargeter and Hamish Ramon Henriques exchanged looks, but made no comment.