Free Conversations With Mr. Prain by Joan Taylor

asked themoment I stepped through the front door.
    “Did you read my work, Mr. Prain?”
    “Oh do call me Edward,” he replied. “There’s no need to be so formal.”
    “Edward,” I repeated, like a compliant child, hoping that the next request would not be for “Eddie” or “Ted.”
    He smiled a trifle unnaturally, but as if he had set something to rights that had caused him vexation for a considerable time. We were to be on first names. If we were speaking French, would we now be saying
tu
to one another? I remembered once making a mistake with the phraseology in a school test: I had people using the word
tuer
, to kill, rather than
tutoyer
. “Shall we not kill each other now?”
    “Yes, I did. It’s quite good,” he said.
    My jaw dropped. I was half expecting him to evade the question, after his detour into how he wished to be addressed.
    “I must say, though, that it intrigues me how old-fashioned you are in your fictional style, considering … well, how you are. I thought of Proust once or twice. To be frank I leave the vetting of manuscripts to my editors, and they only give me things that have some problem or some special interest, so I may be gaining an unbalanced picture. But you are much more classical than I expected.”
    “It’s quite good,” came the echo in my head. “Quite good.” “Proust?” Forget about the photo, I thought. He is now going to discuss my writing. Then I can go.
    “How am I classical?” I asked.
    This appeared to Mr. Prain a very strange question. “How are you?”
    “Yes.”
    “You relish style, structure, and words. You believe in the power of words.” The puffball of tension he had held within him had exploded. I was in my proper place again.
    “Don’t all writers?”
    “No.”
    I waited for him to say something else. He did not. He looked at his nails. “Is that all you’re going to say about my work then?” I asked.
    “For now, yes.” Then he smiled a little tentatively and added, “If you don’t mind.”
    I looked away, confused. So this was not the time to exit. I could not go until he had returned my typescripts and said all he had to say. I could not. I shifted back in my chair, and as I did so I noticed a tiny sense of relief, a minute sigh, as if a part of me did not mind staying, as if it did not want our conversation to end. But I did not want him to think I was willingly surrendering to him and his plans for the day. “You have a nerve,” I said coolly, “to bring out that photo, and then to say only this.”
    “For the moment. I have your typescripts elsewhere, and it’s better we wait till I have looked again at my notes. Wouldn’t you prefer I show you the house?”
    “No, actually,” I said. “But if that’s what you want, then so be it.” About time I was stroppy, I thought.
    A timorous smile on his lips. A flash of insecurity. I stared at him. I studied him, trying to fathom what wasin his mind. I made him into a learned monk, a fifteenth-century friar in Italy. He would philosophise about politics, theologise about art, shun sex, think of it constantly. He would be a secret practitioner of alchemy. He was a man who might, because of the whim of a prince, become a court official, or else be burnt at the stake. The image covered him for a moment, and then was drawn away, and I saw him again sitting as he was in his leather chair. He was looking at me, and I was looking at him. I knew then that he felt that, despite certain anxieties, this was all going very well, and our conversation was taking the path he intended. But I withdrew. I gazed down at the floor momentarily embarrassed by the fact that we had been looking at one another. The air in the room seemed stale. I wanted to thrust open the window. He continued to fix me with a stare that I felt upon my skin like a draught.
    And then Monique was there. Enter Monique, centre stage, with grace, with hesitation, with charm. “Excuse me,” she said. “Would you like fresh