Miss Claudie

The First Interview

I was on a cruise when I found out. On that first night in Juneau, my cleaner sent me a WhatsApp message, telling me that Claudie had ‘crossed over,’ as she put it.

Is Alaska an unusual choice? Not for me, dear. I dislike hot countries. They always look unfinished.

If I may, might I help myself to my wine and cigarettes? At eighty, I can’t help believing that to give them up now would kill me. Help yourself to the kitchen, and come and go as you please. If you want to leave your equipment here, it will be perfectly safe. I am long incapable of feeling alarmed, but I can assure you my home is.

We were both born to privileged Devonshire families. Claudie’s mother, God corrupt her soul, was a minor heiress, and Claudie’s father was what was termed ‘gentry.’ Claudie was born on the day Hitler shot himself. Myself, two months later.

When we were both twelve we were sent to the same boarding school in Surrey. It was about this time that my family sold the Devonshire home and moved permanently, as they thought then, to London. To this very house.

She was a striking girl. I’ve put all the photographs in a file on the hall table. If you looked at Claudie square on, she had a perfectly aquiline nose, plump lips and a very compelling green-eyed gaze. She had a cleft, a dimple on her chin, which I always admired, and her hair was thick and auburn. She was very Christina Rossetti in those days.

And yet, her profile could disappoint. Her nose, in that aspect, looked sharper and longer and there was evidence of a nascent double-chin even then. Her figure was always solid, but of course when you are young, nature fights hard to maintain the perfection of its creation.

She continued to look rather beautiful, and was perhaps at her peak in the mid-60s. The Rolling Stones weren’t getting any satisfaction, but Claudie was. She was very much a part of that zeitgeist.

Again, I go too far ahead. From ’57 until ’63 we shared a dorm. She showed huge talent in art classes, so during holidays her father would arrange for tutors to come to the house. Most times I would stay with Claudie, although I disliked the setting of her family home. It was on Dartmoor, not far from the prison, and I loathed the landscape. Claudie was looking for Heathcliff in those days, whereas I was looking for escaped murderers.

Not far from their family manse was a village, a horrible settlement of dreary homes, rendered in grey with unexplained pock-marks, as though the Nazis had come one day and shot them all. The church gave me horrors. It was all dreadful, and I’ve no idea why she loved it so much. I was raised on the coast. Both my parents avoided the moor whenever they could.

There were always arguments in that house. Claudie’s father was eagerly supportive of his daughter’s art and had already agreed that she could study at the RCA, whereas the mother, Vanessa, was dead set against it. She felt that Claudie was too masculine already. I think she disliked Claudie immensely, and certainly thought that her daughter was a lesbian. Of course, it was me who was the lesbian, although I had no attraction towards Claudie beyond the dimple in her chin.

Yes, of course you can mention it, although I don’t see the relevance, especially these days. If you want to know whether Claudie and I had a sapphic relationship, the answer is no. I have had very few of those in my life, preferring the idea much more than the actuality. I have mostly been a celibate queer, one of the loneliest outposts on earth.

The Second Interview

The brother? Anthony is still alive. He was at the funeral, although we didn’t speak. That was awkward, given we were the only two people there. Where? Some anonymous crematorium in Somerset. He was three years our junior and she doted on him, twice casting his likeness in bronze. Yes, bronze is expensive, which is why you won’t find a poor sculptor. Her father would watch the markets, and when the price of base metals dropped he would acquire some. The process? The lost-wax method, and you can look that up. I’m a writer, a person of strictly two dimensions.

If I may, I think you are overlooking Claudie’s skills as an etcher and painter. Yes, many were destroyed, but there are several that survived. I have photographs of the lost ones. They’re all in the file, and I’ve no doubt the art markets will be very excited to see them, especially now. She was drawn to an artist whom few will have heard of: a renaissance man called Albrecht Altdorfer, a contemporary of Da Vinci, although unlike Da Vinci, he was poor at drawing the human form. In an act of profound self-awareness, he became the first plausible landscape artist, and by that I mean a landscape without a rich benefactor or a biblical parade running through it. I’ll leave you arty types to discuss their merits.

That is a very interesting question, Mr Smith. Oh! Just Smith? Yes, I see. Very clever. In answer to it, I can honestly say that I hated Claudie’s sculptures. I liked her paintings and the two busts of her brother, nothing else. Yes, I often told her so.

At eighteen, Claudie went to the Academy. For context, I was simultaneously learning the craft of writing in various seminaries, and so we shared a flat in Pimlico. That period, in the early sixties, marked a seismic change in fashions, and Claudie threw herself into the look, although she lacked the skeletal frame the styles demanded. When we reminisce about those days now, our images come through the lens of a fashion photographer. Out on the streets you would have seen plenty of girls of little physical merit, squeezing their plump calves into white plastic boots.

She was famously apprenticed to Dante Isherwood, christened Derek. Artists!

I’m afraid I can’t answer that. I have no idea if he became jealous of her work. Claudie certainly came to think so, but she was an unreliable narrator. It was all a dreadful cliche; the ingenue, soon to become the enfant terrible, falling for her mentor. I used to put wet cotton wool in my ears to muffle the sound of their lovemaking. It’s bad enough listening to the foxes.

Isherwood was married, and the affair was hardly a secret. His wife publicly ignored it, although I can’t speak for the rows they might have had behind closed doors. Perhaps I am being unfeeling, but why disrupt the gravy train for a young girl?

The Third Interview

When the affair fizzled out, Claudie assumed indifference. She stopped having sex sometime before the moon landings, and whether she was fully conscious of cause and effect, her body began the transition from siren to gorgon shortly afterwards.

She remained on cordial terms with Isherwood, but without his patronage the commissions dried up. One night Claudie got the phone call from Dartmoor, telling her that her father had died. Regrettably, the funeral and internment took place in that dreadful church against a backdrop of howling gothic anguish. Vanessa behaved appallingly, as if she blamed Claudie for the carcinogens that took her husband away. We left the next day, and she never saw her mother, or the moors, again.

Two Hours Later

We gave up the flat and moved here. My parents had gone to Portugal by then, Claudie had inherited a large sum, and my third novel was selling well. It became clear that she would need the ground-floor rooms due to the mess she made with her materials, and I was happy to take the first floor. I only needed a room with a typewriter in those days.

But something had happened to Claudie. She had become a stranger to me. I suppose they’d call her bi-polar now, but I’m no expert. On the one hand, she had relied on two strong men, in her father and Isherwood, and now they were both gone. On the other, she hated that dependence and, certainly in Isherwood’s case, she began to dismantle the men who had raised her. She talked herself into despising them both, but it was all based on a false premise. They had not helped her because she was a woman, but because they recognised her talent. Claudie could not make the distinction.

And this is where she lived for twenty years, creating art a diminishing number of people wanted to buy.

Sometimes I would take a photo of her, those dreadful Polaroids. I keep them in a box to stop them fading. You may use them. I think the viewing public, if you are commissioned, will find the difference between the black and white beauty and the bloated, coloured monster she became quite shocking. For me, it was a gradual process, but even I, her greatest friend, became reluctant to meet her gaze.

Claudie had it in her mind that Isherwood was copying her work, and that he was trying to poison her so that he could sign his name on her pieces. She gave up drinking anything but vodka and tonic water, ironically poisoning herself in the process. And the quinine in the tonic made her obese.

Her hygiene was poor. Her fingers and nails yellowed, and she took to wearing sandals, even in the winter. She didn’t bother with socks or tights, so her blotchy legs, swelled by oedemas, were on display even during a rare appearance of London snow. She would go out once a day, to the corner shop. Beyond that, she never left this house. She behaved, in all ways, with a general air of madness, letting cats in from the garden and throwing nothing away. I had to let myself in when she was at the shops, discarding what I could in a guilty hurry. The next day there was always more.

Do I look tired? Then I should be quicker. You’ll want to speak to Anthony. I am sure he’ll give you an entirely different perspective, but I had lived with Claudie for almost forty years before they put her away. I think it’s fair to say I knew her best.

The crisis came in ’95, a week or so after Claudie turned fifty. I woke in the night to a clamour coming from her rooms; this room in particular. She was taking a hammer to all her pieces. Yes, the sculptures and the paintings. I called Anthony. It was about one in the morning, but he was still up. Did I go down to her? Ah! No, I did not. The truth is that I was frightened. She had a hammer. I have never had my bravery tested, not really, and that night I understood the scope of it, what little of it I had. Anthony called the police, and they took her away for psychiatric evaluation. Needless to say, she failed their tests. Or passed, depending on the purpose of them.

This was when Vanessa reappeared. She came with Anthony to survey the wreckage, or perhaps to gloat, on her daughter’s downfall. I won’t repeat her exact words, but it’s fair to say she thought me a poor custodian. They found a place in Somerset called Barrow. I think it was originally built as a sanitarium for TB, and sometime in the late 40s it became a place where distressed gentlefolk went. Not quite an asylum, more of a hospital which consisted of red brick Edwardian blocks, each of which had different functions. But it was a beautiful setting in an ancient woodland, and I rather liked it there. The canteen did wonderful food with generous portions. I always took Claudie ‘to lunch’ when I visited. She liked that very much.

One of the blocks was for women who’d been incarcerated for falling pregnant out of wedlock. Of course, there was no public appetite, not for a long time, for them to still be there, but they had become so institutionalised it was felt a kindness to let them stay. This was where Claudie was kept, with these women. And I suppose she inhaled the same anaesthetic.

Listen, boys. Would you mind if we extended this by one more day? It isn’t the talking. Not really. It’s just thinking of Claudie. No, please. There is no need to leave it here. There is more to say. I am simply an old device whose battery needs recharging more often than it used to. That is all.

The Fourth Interview

No, she didn’t. From the moment she set foot in Barrow, she turned her back completely on art. And, of course, she wasn’t supposed to have alcohol, so I expect she spent a dreadful time coming off that. It takes one to know one. So yes, you’re right. Her surviving works are pre-1995. Apart from those pieces which are already in museums or private collections, ninety per cent of Claudie’s work was destroyed on that night. The remaining ten percent? I think I should just mention that Claudie probably didn’t realise that anything survived at all.

Rumours about Barrow’s closure had been circulating for several years. Oh! Yes, you’ll want to know this. I visited her every week for thirty years, on a Thursday. A two hundred mile round trip, which I took by train and taxi. Sometimes Claudie was engaging and at other times she just looked at me blankly and asked me what was on the menu in the canteen. Sometimes she asked me what she was still doing there. I’m sure you’ll want to know the answer to that too. She’d been cleared for release several weeks after admission, but at the time, the place was something of a hybrid. The NHS ran the drug addicts and those who couldn’t afford to go private, and the wealthier depressives were there by either charity or family money. In Claudie’s case, it was the latter. By the time this approach was no longer acceptable, she didn’t want to leave. I am really not sure of the financial arrangements in latter years. You could ask Anthony, but I’m not sure how truthful he’ll be. In my mind, he and his mother put her there and they kept her there. Although he once told me that if I wasn’t happy with the arrangement, his sister could come back and live with me. Clever Anthony.

I realised my own hypocrisy. I couldn’t live without Claudie, but I no longer wanted her on my ground floor either. So I settled on once a week and the gift of vodka. If the staff knew, they didn’t mention it. Claudie once drank several bottles a day, so one a week was trifling. I think the calm measuring of the liquid, eking it out, focused her mind. The only time I missed my Thursdays was when I went on holiday, but I always made up for it after.

So, we reach this point. The hospital was scheduled for closure. The corridors and wards were emptying. What to do about Claudie? Anthony wanted nothing to do with it. He suggested, again, that I take her back, but I am not by nature a caregiver. Claudie began to exhibit the stubborn, erratic behaviours of old, and told the staff that she wasn’t leaving. She was still insisting on this when the builders began surveying the site.

Yes, I suppose you would think it timely, her going when she did. Best thing all round. I don’t suppose you’ve read any of my books, have you? I’m out of print now, but I was a queen of the plot twist in my time, especially where old ladies and emptying hospitals are concerned.

I visited Claudie the day before I went to Alaska, and by the time I boarded the plane, Claudie was already dead. I know what you must be thinking, but she asked me to. She didn’t want the world any more. And they were closing down the canteen. No doubt you think my tiredness is the byproduct of old age, and whilst that may be partly true, I saved a lot of my tablets for a month or so before my holiday. I couldn’t repeat my prescription without them asking questions about the sharp rise in my dosage, so I’ve had some sleepless nights. Well, that’s done now. The pharmacy is dropping more off this afternoon, so I shall sleep. Yes, I shall sleep.

We shared a bottle of vodka, looking out through the grimy windows at the ancient trees, and the few lost souls still pecking away at life, waiting to be placed elsewhere. We talked about our younger days, before Isherwood. And then she took them, and I put her to bed, all tucked up with the TV on. As she was drifting off, I traced her dimple with my finger. Silly, but I had always wanted to do that. Nobody was going to autopsy Claudie. Why would they? No motive. No imperative. No witness.

Well, it has been such a pleasure! I wish you so much luck with this. Imagine! Smith & Cyrus Productions! I don’t think you’re really very shocked, are you? No, I didn’t think so. I don’t need to justify myself, and neither should you. I am happy to go on the record, so as the editor says to the typesetter, let it stand.

I have left you two of Claudie’s surviving pieces, which I hope will help with your documentary expenses. They will be worth a hundred times more now, after all. Perhaps you would be so kind as to ring the police tomorrow afternoon. I don’t wish to inconvenience the cleaner when she comes.