Artscape

We emerged from the ocean, Sophie paused to wash the remnants of our lovemaking from between her legs, and strolled back along the beach carrying our clothes, not caring to hide our nakedness. "What do you think Giles would say if he could see us now?" Sophie asked.

"It wouldn't surprise me if he wasn't watching everything that we've been doing."

"Lunch should prove interesting then."

Being novices at this sort of thing, we spent the time before lunch making arrangements for our wedding. We first rang a Celebrant to find out what we needed to do to get the necessary licence and to arrange for the ceremony. She was a very helpful lady and, apart from signing the forms and paying for it, she did all the work, even to arranging for witnesses. She took down the details and we drove into town to do our bit. The ceremony was set for the following week. We would have to act as if nothing was happening until we were married.

Lunch did prove to be interesting for a couple of reasons. There were rumblings amongst the men who had discovered that the promised young ladies were not forthcoming with their services. A deputation had approached Giles to find out what had happened. Then there was an interesting discussion with Giles. "What were you two doing on the beach this morning?" He asked us.

"We were strolling along the beach to recharge our creative batteries."

"You were doing more than that, I saw you."

"I was doing what you asked me to do, I was mentoring Michael. You made it perfectly clear what you wanted me to do, I was following instructions."

"By the look of things you were getting carried away, going over and above the call of duty."

"Just doing my job to the best of my ability. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Of course not, although I think that you could be a little less enthusiastic."

"Make up your mind."

The other women there were looking at Sophie, trying to work out how it was that the very person who had stated quite clearly that she was not going to comply with Giles' orders, and now she had been exposed doing that very same thing.

"I feel that I need to clarify my position here. I know that I stated my opposition to what Giles had established here was to be standard practise, what I hadn't counted on was to meet someone that I felt so much empathy with. We like the same things, we have the same methods of recharging our creative batteries, it is almost as if we were somehow related, although I know that's not the case. If Michael was any of the other men here he would have stood no chance of getting to know me as well as he now does."

I was summoned into Giles' office after lunch. "Your project for me, how is it progressing?"

"Slow to begin, but it is gathering momentum. I have a story line sketched in, now all that I need to do is to flesh out the details."

"When can I see something?"

"When I have it in a state fit for review."

"I want to see something by the end of next week, otherwise I might have to review your tenure here. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly."

Sophie was the next to be summoned. "What are you doing?"

"What you asked me to do, mentor Michael."

"Don't get smart with me young lady. I invited you here for the purpose of presenting you, and others, to influential people who could move your careers forward. That is the main purpose of this gathering. Because you are a non-paying participant in this, I expect you to carry out certain chores to help me in my endeavours, and that is to be able to provide a service for these influential people. You don't realise how difficult it is to find enough suitably wealthy people for all of the up and coming artists that I Have brought together here. There has to be a substantial carrot dangled in front of them."

"So, what you are asking me to do is to forget all about the values that have guided me through my life to date, and prostitute myself for your benefit?"

"Now that you have grasped the situation, yes."

"I need some time to think about this."

"Then don't take too long, I have several men specifically asking to be introduced to you."

"Well then, you'll be able to charge them even more for my services, won't you?"

"Your attitude is beginning to irk me."

"Not my problem. Is that all?"

"Begone." Sophie was dismissed.

I spent most of the afternoon fleshing out my storyline and thinking about next week. I didn't see Sophie until dinner. Giles attempted to manipulate the seating arrangements so that She and I sat as far from each other as possible. It mattered not that we were far apart, I sensed that she was bothered by something and manoeuvred myself so that I could speak with her. This did not sit well with Giles.

"Something is bothering you."

"You could say that. I was summoned before his majesty and informed that I was here for, and at, his pleasure, and that I am to encourage the paying customers to part with their ready cash."

"And how are you to do that?"

'I'll leave that up to your imagination. I also get the impression that he may make another attempt to have sex with me."

"I'll come to your room and we'll set up a trap to catch him out if he tries anything with you."

"What do you have in mind?"

"A spot of blackmail might be in order." What I had planned wasn't so much to extract money from him, but to force him to change his operations.

I quietly tapped on Sophie's door and she turned off her light before she let me in so that there was no silhouette of me as I entered, just in case someone was watching. I set up a tripod and screwed a camera to it. The camera had a remote shutter release with a long cable so that I could hide in the closet and release the shutter without being in the room itself. I was hoping that he would think that his movement past a point actuated the shutter.

We sat and discussed our plans for next week before turning out the lights and me slipping into the wardrobe. Some fifteen minutes later I heard the noise of a key being inserted into her lock and a slight creak as the door opened and closed. I didn't see him enter Sophie's bedroom, but I smelled his aftershave, he had really gotten a little over-zealous with it. It almost made me sneeze. I heard the rustle as he removed an item of clothing and dropped it to the floor. Her bedsprings creaked as he climbed into her bed. "Who's that and what the fuck are you doing in my bed?" Sophie screamed. That was my cue to release the shutter.

"What the?"

Sophie switched on her bedside lamp. It wasn't Giles but one of the wealthy patrons of the arts who was in her bed.

I stepped out of the closet. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" I asked him.

"I was told that a surprise was waiting for me in this room. I must say this is not the surprise I expected."

"How did you get in here, the door was locked." Sophie asked him.

"Giles gave me a key. This is so embarrassing."

"You could say that again. You were not who we were expecting."

"Who were you expecting?"

"Why Giles himself. It's unexpected that he would send you to a woman that he had not yet been able to bed."

"But he told me that he had, and gave me a very vivid description of what pleasures I could expect. I have to admit to being surprised, but not in the way that I was led to believe."

"So Giles told you that Sophie was waiting here for you to come calling, is that it?"

"Yes, I drew her name from the hat, to the envy of the other participants. They were envious of me."

"Look mate, before we go any further, I suggest that you climb back into that caftan that he gave you to wear. It's hard to keep a straight face looking at your cock dangling there." His face reddened as he hurriedly threw the caftan over his head. "That's better. Now I have to discuss your situation. Your being here will cause you some embarrassment with your wife and friends, not to mention the general public that thrive on this sort of scandal."

"What? Oh no, I recognise you now, your that Michael Grantham, the Journalist. Oh my God." He wilted before our eyes.

"There is a way out of this for you."

"How much is this going to cost me?"

"Nothing mate, just a little of your time and some information."

"And if I do this for you, you won't mention my name?"

"No, but if you wife reads the story and knows that you were here she'll arrive at the obvious conclusion, so I suggest that you come up with an alternative venue for your time out. I can give you the name of a hotel that can give you a receipt backdated to when you got here and covering your time here. They do this for business types who wan to pad their travel accounts."

"I'll do it. What do you want to know?"

"For starters, I'll tell you what we already know, and all you have to do is to confirm the validity of our information. Will you do that?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Giles Featherstonehaugh visits various art schools looking for suitable young ladies who are desperate to make it in the art world, but who have limited financial resources. He offers them the opportunity to come here for the Summer to meet wealthy art patrons who will be able to give their careers a kick start. How am I doing so far?"

"That's my understanding, yes."

"He has the names of art patrons who have the wealth to pay for the stay, and who are looking for a convenient tax write-off. They also have to have either an un-satisfactory home life, or a flexible one in which the partner doesn't mind a casual dalliance."

"That is just about it, yes."

"He arranges for all parties to descend on this 'Artistes' Community' and sets up appropriate introductions. What he doesn't tell any of the participants, is that he sees it as his divine right to bed each of the young ladies, before allowing his patrons access."

"I wasn't aware of that, but go on."

"Sophie repelled his advances and he was a tad put out by that, so he arranged that she should mentor yours truly, reasoning that as soon as she was aware of who I was she would leave, thus saving his ego from the constant reminder of that rejection. What he hasn't counted on is that Sophie and I have both decided that his operation is very wrong in that it exploits the vulnerability of financially strapped young female students. We aim to rectify this situation."

"I see. I wish you luck and thank you for telling me this. I will pack my bags and leave tonight."

"That will leave us in a difficult situation, but one that we can handle."

We had no sooner sat down for the standard breakfast fare of muesli and fresh fruit followed by herbal tea, when Giles came into the Dining Hall. "Has anyone seen Roger?"

"Which one is Roger?" I asked.

He looked at Sophie. "I arranged for him to call on you last night, did you see him?"

"I heard someone trying to get into my room. He was using a key and, when I looked through the curtains, I saw that it was a man wearing one of your lurid caftans, so I thought that it was you, so I yelled for for you, him, to go away and leave me alone. It wasn't you at all, was it?"

"No."

"Did you lend him one of your caftans and give him a key to my room?"

"No!"

"Then how do you explain him wearing a caftan and trying to open the door with a key which worked in the lock by the way. There was a chair propped under the handle of the door that prevented it from opening." Sophie's tone was accusatory.

Giles cast an angry glance around the room and stormed off.

There was a buzz around the room as each of the guests tried to come to terms with this turn of events.

Over the next few days several of the girls found an excuse to leave. Some of the art patrons were 'called back to the city' on urgent business, and had to take their leave of their host.

Giles was becoming less happy by the day, especially when the buzz in town was that there was something not quite right about his operation.

We didn't help by disappearing for two days.

"Where have you two been?" He asked us angrily on our return.

"We had urgent business in town."

"And you didn't think to advise me, or anyone else, of your leaving?"

"No. It was our secret. We went off to get married."

"What? Are you blithering idiots? You two have known each other for less than a week and you go and get married." His incredulity stood out like dog's balls.

"I don't see that as a problem." Sophie said. "We love each other, and know that we are meant to be together, so why should we wait?" She looked at me with those adoring and adorable eyes of hers. "The last two nights were heavenly."

"Look at you! You are a beautiful and very talented young artist, and he's a second rate hack Journalist. Your incompatibility is beyond question. I give your marriage a month tops. You are throwing your life away for what? A life of misery married to a has been before he even is."

"Thanks for that vote of confidence, mate. If anyone is going to be a has been it is you."

"Are you threatening me?"

"You betcha, mate."

"But why? What have you got against me?"

"Cast your mind back three years to your summer retreat. Do you remember a young artist by the name of Naomi Rourke?"

"I can't be expected to remember all of them, why should I?"

"I'm certain that you remember her. She called to see you about three months after she was here to inform you that she was pregnant, and that you were the father of the impending infant." Giles glared at me. That was answer enough. "You of course denied responsibility and challenged her to prove that you were the one, from the several that she had sex with, that could be the father. She told you that you were the only one that she had been with." Another glare as the memory of their conversation came back to him. "She asked you to help finance her termination, and you refused."

"So, why should I pay for something that is illegal?"

"It was either that or you would have to pay her child support for the next eighteen years. It was the cheaper of the two options, and her preferred one, she wanted no more to do with you."

"This is all very fanciful, but do you have any proof of this?"

"Only this." I handed him a sheet of paper.

"What is this?"

"Read it. It's her suicide note in which she lays out your conversation and her shame at letting her parents down."

"Where did you get this?"

"From her father. While he had no proof of any of this, DNA testing wasn't possible back then, and she was cremated, so it's too late to do anything about it now. There was no way that they could go to the police and for the police to get enough evidence to prosecute, so there it stands, or stood until now."

"So, what are you going to do about it, what can you do about it?"

"A lot. As far as you knew, I am here to write a 'puff piece' about how wonderful this place is and what a wonderful person you are. The person that arranged this was Dylan Rourke, does that name ring any bells?"

It certainly did. He looked as if he'd seen a ghost. "No, no."

"Yes, yes. Dylan Rourke, my Editor, was the father of that young, incredibly beautiful and enormously talented artist, who took her own life rather than live with the shame of getting pregnant to you, of letting her parents down like that. The sad part about this was, if she had told her parents, they would have given her their unconditional support, they loved her that much. But in her troubled mind she forgot all about their love."

Giles slumped over his desk, so we left him to his thoughts, went to out bungalows, packed our bags and left.

We went home to my place and, while I wrote my story for the paper, Sophie explored my personal world, tried the bed, slept for a while, and when she heard my printer spewing out my finished product, came to me with a cup of coffee for us both, and a kiss for me. "Thank God we don't have to exist on herbal tea any longer, I was suffering from caffeine withdrawal." She took the pages from my hand and sat in my reading chair and read. This is good. I can't see Giles surviving this."

Sophie came with me when I handed my story to Dylan. "Who is this?" He asked, his eyes fixed on her.

"This is Sophie Grantham, my wife. Sophie, this person who can't take his eyes off you, and I don't blame him, is Dylan Rourke, my Editor."

He looked astonished, astounded, and he was speechless for at least a minute. "You're kidding me, right?"

"No mate. It's a long story and one day I'll tell it, but not now. Right now, Sophie and I are going off to continue our honeymoon."

"It'll never last, I'm warning you, both of you. All of the fiery passion, that goes with your first meeting with each other, can hope to over-ride your monumental lack of compatibility."

"You're talking out your arse," I told him. "As usual"

"Get out of here before I find you an assignment in Antarctica!" He had a smile on his face, as if he realised what we already knew, that we could survive as a couple.

That was ten years ago. Sophie and I have a great life. We compliment each other in every way, and are the envy of our circle of friends, who can't believe that two so dissimilar personalities can co-exist in a harmonious relationship such as ours.

We also now own Montpellier which has been transformed into a boutique 5 Star seaside hotel complex, with luxury hotel accommodation, a B & B section and self catering bungalows.

Within weeks of my story hitting the streets, Giles had made the announcement that he was putting Montpellier on the market to pursue other projects. The fact that his clientele had deserted him could have had something to do with it. That and the the state of his finances. After having to refund a lot of money to clients damaged by the outcry my article created, his bank was preparing to foreclose on his mortgage. We approached Sophie's bank with a proposition based on her forward commissions, plus the sale of our respective houses, that would be enough to make a sizable hole in any mortgage that we would have to take out. With a figure that we could manage, we approached the Giles' bank, and made them an offer based on the balance of his mortgage plus a little extra. They were happy to be able to off-load it without going through the hassle of advertising it through an agent, and the subsequent auction, that had no guarantee of exceeding the amount that they needed to clear their books. See what comes of being friends with the Finance Editor of the paper?

We have staff to manage Montpellier, and they do it very well with little interference form us. This leaves us free for our artistic pursuits and the kids. We have our new home further along the headland from Montpellier where Sophie has her studio and I my writer's room. We have a dog that loves us and the kids, and a cat that tolerates us, the kids, and the dog.

Phia, short for Sophia, close to Sophie but not the same, is showing signs of becoming an artist. Her work is very abstract (what more can you expect from a four year old?), while Gareth is already reading, even before he starts school.