A Meeting of Minds

How Pauline Boty met & painted Christine Keeler

        The blonde woman replaced her telephone receiver into the cradle. She stands alone in the sitting room of a rundown studio flat situated in London’s west end. The flat had been recently purchased by her theatrical agent husband for her to use as an artist’s studio. The blonde stood smoking a cigarette reflectively, slowly turning over in her mind the syntax of a recent telephone conversation. It had been an unexpected conversation, and she was left with a tingle of excitement at a meeting now due to take place. The feeling had started to grow during this conversation with her husband and had caused a knot to grow in the pit of her stomach. Now that the conversation was over she was left with the notion of proceeding down a road for which there had no route map.

‘Darling,’ her husband had said, his smooth educated voice rising slightly with his own sense of pleasure, ‘I’ve got her to sit for you,’ theatricality adding, ‘I didn’t really have to work for it, apparently she already knows about you.’

‘Oh really?’ she had found herself asking, ‘I wonder where on earth she could possibly know me from?’

            ‘Well, darling,’ said Clive his voice warming to his favorite subject of the media, ‘apparently she had heard you on the Public Ear, who would ever have thought of that?’

The blonde could not tell whether her husband’s surprise was that this particular woman would listen to an über BBC Home Service arts programme, with a rather small and very exclusive audience, or that anybody should have listened at all.

She had found herself taking the defense about Public Ear knowing that Clive views regarding what her called the ‘great unwashed’ in modern British society always made her feel uneasy.

‘It does have a very loyal audience Clive darling,’ her voice had been strained with a flash of annoyance.’

Despite these comical comments, Clive had at first been keen on the idea when he had heard they were looking for a new face for the opening programme. He had persuaded his wife to take part in that first programme because unusually for the male dominated television world in the early 1960’s, a female face was being considered to front the project. She had proved to be so successful that the BBC had asked her back more than once, although this had later cooled after the more extreme of her paintings had been exhibited.

The programme had at first been described as ‘iconoclastic’ by the weightier of the Sunday papers. Clive, of course, had hooted with laughter at the review, saying it meant that no bugger actually had listened to it. Now it apparently appeared that Clive had managed to find at least one person, not in their immediate circle of friends, who had tuned in, maybe not to the first programme, but at least at some point. How strange though the Blonde women that it should have been Christine Keeler of all the women in London. Although she never considered that this particular women, whom she had wanted to sit for her, would be a fan of such an arty programme. Pauline wondered if this was due to her own snobbery, or because she listened to Clive’s family and over educated friends.

The blonde reflecting that her own family were not exactly doyens of the arts scene, they had even objected to her attending St. Martins Arts School. Even now, after finding some fame, if not fortune as Britain’s only female Pop Artist, they were still completely in the dark as to the importance of her work to the world of Pop Art, still finding the success of this new genre of art impossible to understand.

‘Yes Pauline darling, I know all about the audience figures,’ Clive had then said, breaking into her thought, tetchily adding, ‘The point is darling, that she knows about your political views and about the art you produce.’

 

Pauline wondered what this woman did really think about her art, or even the art scene as a whole. Perhaps she would want to talk about the arts in general way, not just making polite conversation, but showing a real knowledge and interest. Strangely perhaps, this had never crossed her mind earlier, even when the idea had come to her about using Keeler as a sitter, for the painting she had been planning about the Profumo Scandal.

             ‘Mind you,’ Clive had continued, his voice now trampling over her thoughts again, with a sigh the blonde tuned her husband back in to her head. At this point the conversation he was adopting his business tone, ‘she still asked for twenty bloody quid, I call that downright brassy.’

‘Brassy,’ was Clive’s favorite word for anything he thought of as common, uneducated, or even working class, part of the great world of the unwashed, as he liked to say. This word, Pauline was sure had its deep dark roots in Clive’s public school education.

‘All sitters get paid Clive,’ now it had been her turn to get tetchy tone in her voice, adding, ‘There is no need to negotiate my sitting rates, I can manage my own rates quite nicely, thank you Clive.’

Pauline had felt her voice beginning to rise and stretch in her annoyance, why had she felt the need to defend this woman? Maybe it was a reaction to how she had felt when her husband, like all the men in her, life felt that they should be able to have women under their personal control. Like the puppets on that new television series from America ‘Stingray’ that had been all over the newspapers recently, all had want to be the one to pull her strings. Even at St Martins, her fellow students, mainly being an all-male crowd, had liked to act towards her as big brothers would do to their little sisters. Well, thought the Blonde, she was her own boss, that she’d made clear from the beginning of her second term. Pauline Boty, she thought, was a match for any man, painter or otherwise and that included her own husband.

‘Yes darling, I do know all about models,’ Clive had answered primly. Pauline wondered how exactly, he had got to know about them.

‘Anyway she will be with you around three o’clock today, sorry for the short notice, darling’, his voice relaxed now again, happy to be in control again, adding, ‘but that was the best I could do,’ adding, ‘Oh, don’t forget to watch out for the Special Branch,’ finishing the call with a brief ‘Cheery ‘O’ the receiver gone dead.

Now sitting alone and smoking another cigarette, this parting remark started to play on her mind. There had been a piece in the papers about the poor cow still being followed whenever she went out. There I go again, thought Pauline, why is Keeler now ‘a poor cow,’ I’m starting to sound like Clive.

 

 ***

In a different part of the same London skyline, another woman, this time with striking red hair, was also considering a recent telephone conversation. She sat quietly smoking a cigarette watching as the smoke curled idly towards the living room ceiling. Finishing her smoke, the women got up and peered out of the front windows of a small mews flat. Outside was quiet and still, hardly a soul moved. The only sign of life like came from the two regular plain clothed detectives who were still keeping a not too inconspicuous eye on the flat.

The ‘Profumo Scandal’ had been over now for some months, and the redhead had spent some of that time in prison for perjury. Upon her release she had described the experience to her parents as it being much like school which, she had also hated. Now however the world had moved on and the busy new Labour government of Harold Wilson had far more important issues before it, but still the policemen had remained.

Any idea of the government was quite abstract for the red head, it belonging to a new jumble of faces and names most of which she could never match up. However brief her passing fifteen minutes of fame she had still enjoyed for a brief time ‘being somebody.’ In her life, as far back as this redhead could recall, she always had wanted to be ‘somebody.’

 

Turing her thoughts back to the telephone conversation, she realised that she hadn’t liked the man who had introduced himself to her as Clive very much. All Home Counties accent and brought up in a cosy atmosphere of old money and good education. There hadn’t been much money or education in her background. She had been brought up in a caravan with a single parent of a hard working mother and a lay-a-bout of a stepfather. Escaping their misery while was still in her late teens, she only found another, in the arms of pimps, losing a baby before turning twenty. Consolation from that experience had come only with her belief that any half cast bastard born into class conscious Britain would never have had much in life.

Escaping again, she had found herself in a London still recovering from the Second War. Working in a series life destroying topless clubs, the redhead soon grew tired of being pawed at by their drunken clientele. By the time she met Ward her mind was already resolved to chuck it all in. When Ward had offered her a way out, she hadn’t thought twice about it, grabbing at this escape ladder with both hands. Of course, it hadn’t turned out to be the different life she had been searching for. Ward had turned out to be no more than an upmarket pimp, who was soon busy introduced her to his upper class wealthy clients. Being embarrassed by her accent, forced Ward to pay for the redhead to have elocution lesions and gradually over time she had become a different person. The new Christine had risen one day, out from the ashes of her former self, even as she had lain dead beneath her own feet. 

Gradually, and with Ward’s help, Christine had caught brief glimpses of that new person which, not just he, but the redhead had wanted to become. This experience had left her wondering why men, no matter what background they came from, had to mould their woman into an image. The angel, or the a tart, beloved mother figure for their children, or their slut in bed, men always had to be in control of the lives of their women. Well now, she had been no angel in her life, but over time Christine had grown to hate those rich men as much as the low-life’s she had met in the strip clubs. That’s why Christine hadn’t liked that man who had called himself Clive she wasn’t going play the tart for anyone not anymore. Sighing, the redhead stubbed out her cigarette, moving away from the window.

***

 

The watchers below saw her shape disappear into the gloom of the flat, turning back to their murmured conversation, each one inclining his head slightly towards the others, as if in prayer. Their years spent huddling in back alleys and doorways had left each with his particular remedy for extreme cold or heat. Almost silently the voices audible only to each other, they returned to their conversation.

             ‘I telling you Frank’, the smaller man said while lighting a cigarette automatically cupping his heavy hands around the naked flame, ‘She is a right goer, the Sund’y papers said she’s up for anything’, he was grinning at his taller thinner companion. 

 

***

The sun was getting low in a washed out wintery sky over her flat in London’s fashionable West End. Pauline looked around the studio lighting yet another cigarette, two plumbs of smoke exiting her nose moving up towards the cloud of smoke that hung over her head. Looking out of her studio window on to the bustling street below, she caught sight of a man cleaning a car outside one of the Georgian town houses opposite. Like the building she was look out from it too had been converted into flats by, what had seem like press-gangs, of Irish labourers. Frowning at the sight of a car outside a house were see was sure none were owned, Pauline thought of her husband’s words about policeman and spies. Standing on tip-toe right in front of the window and turn her head as far as it would go around to the right, Pauline could get a look down the other end of the street. As she did so her blonde hair fell over her face covering up one eye. Pushing the hair back she could see two GPO men setting up a sort of a tent on the pavement. 

Just in that moment, as she was trying to connect these images to the thought of something sinister that had buried itself in her memory earlier, her telephone rang. In the still silence of her studio the shrill noise made her jump, and the cigarette fell from her hand that had been supporting her weight against the wall. Ordinarily this would not be an issue except on occasion the cigarette fell onto her new cream rug, ‘Shit’, she exclaimed grabbing the telephone receiver and the cigarette end at the same time managing to both speak into the ear piece and burn her thumb on the still lit cigarette.

Turning the receiver around the correct way, and stubbing out the offending cigarette Pauline heard the ‘pips’ of a call box then as the money was excepted came the words, ‘Hello, Hello!, can you hear me?’ It was a female voice which, she failed to recognise.

            ‘Yes, hello’, bellowed Pauline down the line, anxious now to know who this strange voice belonged too.

            ‘Alright you don’t need to shout for god’s sake, I’m down the road from your flat, not in Outer…,’ was the rather grumpy reply. ‘Hello is that Pauline?’ said the voice adding, ‘it’s Christine’.

Instinct now took over in Pauline and years of a good middle class upbringing and education took hold, even without her realising this at the time.

‘Oh, hello Christine’, she answered without a clue who this women was, but not wishing to give offence.

‘Look, can you tell me your address again please, when I took it down from your husband the other morning he said it so quickly, that I afraid I just sort of scribbled it down without really bothering looking at it’, the middle class accent was fighting with an underlying Northern burr, but as yet had not quite gained the upper hand

For Pauline recognition had final dawned, ‘Yes of course Christine, I’m so very sorry, he really is the limit isn’t he?’ Not waiting for an answer she rushed on with her address.

‘OK, pet…um, I mean, yes…thank you Pauline, very much I’ll be with you presently,’ Christine said quickly replacing the receiver, hoping to gloss over her nearly calling a famous artist ‘pet.’

Something about the telephone conversation hid away in Pauline’s brain, waiting to raise its head, the funny little clicking after Christine had hung up. 

Pauline absently wondered were Christine had picked up a phrase like presently, the word came from her Father’s generation, not their own.  Then looking again at the burn hole in the new rug she quickly discontinued from that train of thought. Imagining Clive’s reaction was not hard, Pauline knew he would not be at all happy about her burning a hole in one of his High Street Ken’ boutique purchases. Bugger she thought, you are a clumsy cow, wondering if she could just paint it white to blend the hole in?

Lighting yet another cigarette she blow a smoke ring which gave her such a childish pleasure she thought of Peter Blake and how had taught her how to blow smoke rings when they were student’s together at St Martins. Pauline was still close to Blake, looking upon him as the founder of the Pop Art movement in Britain which, she herself now belonged.

Laughing to herself, out loud she said, ‘Oh bugger you Clive and your ridiculously expensive rug, what’s it doing in my studio anyway?’

            She supposed it was Clive’s idea that an artist should be surrounded by beautiful and expensive things in their studio, providing inspiration no doubt. Well, bugger him, and bugger all the bossy men in her life for that matter too, she would do just as she pleased. Blowing another satisfactory big smoke ring, she then padded off to find some white paint. 

 

***

Sometime later, Pauline was uncertain exactly about the time as she had lost herself in a fight with the expensive rug, the bell went down stairs. Collecting her winkle-picker shoes she slipped each one in turn on as hopping toward the mirror to check her make-up. Here Pauline found that somehow, during the fight with the rug some white paint had got itself attached in her hair. Still picking the paint of stains of her blonde hair she opened the front door to be confronted by a slightly built woman wearing a head-scarf and dark glasses. The women stood quite still taking in the sight of Pauline, with her hands still raised to strands of hair. The idly wondered if the blonde facing her had nits. After both taking each other in, without a word Pauline stood to one side and the other women still wearing her scarf and dark glasses moved slowly past her into the rather ramshackle old hall. They walked back up the creaking stairs into the studio together without breaking their mutual silence. Once inside the flat Christine took off the head scarf, glasses and removed the cigarette from her mouth. Shaking the flaming red hair she was rightly infamous for with one hand, she offered the other out for a formal handshake saying, ‘Pauline Boty I presume?’

            ‘Christine Keeler I suppose’, said Pauline they awkwardly shook hands each not used to such displays of formality. Both women stepped towards each other the ice having been broken and exchanging kisses on each cheek just like the French. Laughing at their shared joke the women immediately became friends with each other. Pauline grabbing two wine glasses pouring into each a generous splash of last night’s house plonk from Oddbins, and started the story about an expensive rug, a cigarette burn and a tin of white paint.