A Thing of Blood by Robert Gott Page B

minutes. If you would strike an attitude, Mr Power?’
    I placed the hand with the cast on it on my hip and raised the other towards heaven, like a languid Grecian athlete. If it had been carved in marble, it might have been labelled ‘After Praxiteles.’ The ladies began to concentrate and there was a scratching of charcoal on paper. Mr Wilks walked among them, scrutinising their lines and scrutinising me to determine the discrepancies. After ten minutes he said, ‘Next pose please. Another ten minutes.’
    I turned my body as if throwing a discus. This proved uncomfortable after only a few minutes and I took my hat off to the chap who must have modelled for Myron in Ancient Greece. Two more ten-minute poses — one of which had to be changed when I was asked if I could not, on this occasion, bend over in quite that way — and two twenty-minute poses followed, and suddenly it was all over. The ladies packed away their charcoals, I got dressed, and Mr Wilks pressed ten shillings upon me saying that he hoped Gretel wouldn’t let him down again the following week.
    I made a noncommittal movement of the shoulders, and said, ‘Is this your place?’
    ‘Of course not,’ he snorted. ‘I take drawing classes here because Lady Bailey pays me to do so. It’s her house. She’s a widow and I’m teaching her how to draw. She invites her circle and it’s her ten shillings in your pocket. Very generous, wouldn’t you say?’
    I had to admit that, after the initial awkwardness, the work wasn’t very demanding. It didn’t require skill, just immodesty. I wondered if Mr Wilks wasn’t hopeful of Lady Bailey’s patronage, or matronage, extending beyond its current generosity. It may have already done so for all I knew.
    Mr Wilks took off his beret and his smock.
    ‘I hate these,’ he said. ‘Lady Bailey thinks I should look the part.’
    ‘Was she there at that session?’
    ‘Of course. She was the oldest of them. On the end. The oldest and the least talented. Not that any of them have any real talent, except for Nigella Fowler. She’s got something. She’s good at likenesses and she can draw hands and feet.’
    It took a moment for the name to register with me.
    ‘Nigella Fowler was one of the students?’
    ‘Do you know her?’
    ‘No. I’ve heard the name, that’s all. I don’t know where.’
    ‘Well, there’s talent there, but she’ll waste it. She’s got herself engaged to some bloke no one knows anything about. Her father isn’t happy about it apparently — so Lady Bailey told me at any rate, and she should know. She’s in with all that crowd. Her husband was a cousin of Nigella’s father. I think that’s right.’
    I couldn’t figure out what relation this made Nigella to the widow Bailey, something with ‘once removed’ appended to it probably, and I never understood what that was all about. It made no difference to my situation. I was due to have afternoon tea with a young lady who had spent the morning staring hard at my naked body. This discombobulating thought made me determined to get the information I had come for.
    ‘How did you meet Gretel?’ I asked.
    ‘At the National Gallery School. She was modelling there for a class I was teaching. I haven’t seen you there. Have you done work for them?’
    ‘I don’t do this sort of thing for a living, Mr Wilks. I’m an actor.’
    ‘I see. Between engagements, as they say.’
    ‘I’ve just returned from engagements interstate.’
    ‘If you need the work, I can fix you up with a few jobs at the Gallery School. They’re a bit prudish there. You’d have to wear a posing pouch. And it doesn’t pay as well as Lady Bailey does.’
    ‘May I be frank with you, Mr Wilks?’
    ‘Is there something you need to be frank about, Mr Power?’
    ‘It’s about Gretel Beech. It’s a sensitive matter.’
    He stopped gathering up bits of broken charcoal and looked at me.
    ‘Miss Beech isn’t suggesting that she has been the victim of inappropriate