I let him walk past me, hands outstretched in the attitude of Parsifal approaching the Holy Grail. Certainly I remembered her, sometime international model and epitome of eternal youthfulness, with her melancholy, gamine face recreated by a dozen plastic surgeries. Raine Charming was a macabre relic of the 1970s and its teenage cult. Where, in the past, elderly screen actresses had resorted to plastic surgery to lift a sagging cheek or erase a tell-tale wrinkle, in the case of Raine Charming a young model in her early twenties had surrendered her face to the scalpel and needle in order to recapture the child-like bloom of a teenage ingenue. As many as a dozen times she had gone back to the operating theatre, emerging swathed in bandages that were rolled back before the arc lights to reveal a frozen teenage mask. In her grim way, perhaps she had helped to kill this lunatic cult. For some years now she had been out of the public eye, and I remembered only a few months beforehand reading about the death of her confidant and impresario, the brilliant couturier and designer of the first bio-fabric fashions, Gavin Kaiser.
Although now in her late twenties, Raine Charming still preserved her child-like appearance, this strange montage of adolescent faces. Her gaze reflected the suicides of Carole Landis and Marilyn Monroe. As she spoke to Georges in her low voice I realized where I had seen her, dancing with the beachcombers in the deserted nightclub at Lagoon West.
When I bought the boutique the faded fashion magazines had been filled with her photographs… Raine with her wounded eyes, looking out above the bandages around her remade cheeks, or wearing the latest bio-fabric creation at some exclusive discotheque, smiling into Kaiser’s handsome gangster face. In many ways the relationship between Raine Channing and this twenty-five-year-old genius of the fashion houses summed up a whole disastrous epoch, of which Raine’s mutilated face was a forgotten shrine. One day soon, before she reached the age of thirty, even that face would dissolve.
However, as she visited our boutique this grim prospect seemed a long way distant. Georges was delighted to see her, at last meeting on equal terms one of the too-bright luminaries of his apprenticeship. Without a thought for our disturbed stock, he opened the windows and display cases. Curiously, everything had quietened, the gowns stirring gently on their hangers like docile birds.
I waited for Georges to enjoy his moment of reminiscence, and then introduced myself.
‘You’ve calmed everything down,’ I congratulated her. ‘They must like you.’
She drew her white fox collar around herself, rubbing her cheek against it. The fur slid around her neck and shoulders, nestling her in its caress. ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Do you know, though, a few months ago I hated them? I really wanted everyone in the world to go naked, so that all the clothes would die.’ She, laughed at this. ‘Now I’ve got to look for a whole new wardrobe.’
‘We’re delighted you’ve started here, Miss Charming. Are you staying long in Vermilion Sands?’
‘A little while. I first came here a long time ago, Mr Samson. Nothing in Vermilion Sands ever changes, have you noticed? It’s a good place to come back to.’
We walked along the displays of gowns. Now and then she would reach out to stroke one of the fabrics, her white hand like a child’s. As she opened her coat a sonic jewel, like a crystal rose, emitted its miniature music between her breasts. Velvet playtoys nestled like voles around her wrists. Altogether she seemed to be concealed in this living play-nest like a bizarre infant Venus.
What was it, though, about Raine Charming that so held me? As Georges helped her select a brilliant pastel gown, the other dresses murmuring on the chairs around her, it occurred to me that Raine Charming resembled a child-Eve in a couture-Eden, life springing from her touch. Then I remembered her dancing with the beachcombers in the deserted nightclub at Lagoon West.
While the young chauffeur carried out her purchases I said: ‘I saw you last night. At the nightclub by the beach.’
For the first time she looked directly into my face, her eyes alert and adult above the white adolescent mask. ‘I live near by’, she said, ‘in one of the houses along the lake. There was music playing and people dancing.’
As the chauffeur opened the door of the car for her I saw that the seats were filled with playtoys and sonic jewels. They drove off together like two adults playing at being children.
Two days later I heard music coming again from the abandoned nightclub. As I sat on the veranda in the evening this faint night-music began, the dry metallic sounds muffled by the powdery air. I walked along the shore through the darkness. The beachcombers had gone, but Raine Charming wandered through the tables of the nightclub, her white gown drawing empty signatures in the sand.
