The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 12

GUARDIAN WOMEN Friday March 23 1979 13 LEFT: Jean-Louis Gcromc's Corinth; right: Charles Dana Gibson's "Design for wallpaper suitable for a bachelor apartment" 1003 and far right. Theda Bara as The Vamp in 1918 Derek Malcolm reviews Patrick Bade's book Femme Faiaie published this week sag vaimp AT A TIME when sex is supposed to have lost its mystery, the very idea of a femme fatale seems something of a hoot. Isn't that, after all, what Dame Edna" thinks she is "Vamp is the nearest contemporary approximation, and the most cursory look at the pop w.orld determines that there are as many men as women to whom that word applies. Of the women, Bette Midler springs to mind quicker than any of Patrick Bade's lugubrious-looking ladies in Femme Fatale, Images of Evil and Fascinating Women (Ash and Grant, 5.95), published this week. Less than a century ago, however, the femme fatale was a major preoccupation of artists of the Pre-Raphaelite, Symbolist and Art Noveau movements.

And the book shows them in all their sometimes gory glory, festooned in the sort of elaborate trappings that would nowadays be sooner used for curtain material or duvet coverings. But put Maxwell Armfield's Faustine in contemporary gear and what have we got Not the pallid lady of Swinburne's imagination who made the po-faced Ruskin all hot like pies with the devil's fingers in them" but a lady of quite interesting piety. up. It illuminates a time when women1 needed something to protect them in a male-dominated society and when artists, expressing conceptions of perversity, sexuality and fate, handed them mystery on a plate. Repulsion and fear seemed a large part of that mystery, together with the extraordinarily prevalent view that women somehow defused the power of art, rather than enriching the artist (who, of course, was almost always a man).

Perhaps we are now in a healthier age. It just seems more feeble, now that artists look at women merely as harmless decoration. As for Jean-Leon Gerome's Corinth, a sacred prostitute sat atop a 'tall column, she could become in modern dress merely a rather sulky waitress chips are off, dear. Above all, Theda Bara's The Vamp now looks more li'ke someone out of Monty Python than an erotic dream. Perhaps it is just that any latter-day translation of these ladies would leave the threat out and underline the mostly banal imagery.

Yet the book, equipped with a very literate essay to support its profuse illustrations, is no coffee table vacuity, fashionably tarted Realty will call with a summer renter for us. I feel like the mother of a daughter called to court by Henry VIII. We took possession of our bijoux plywood bungalow with trash compactor and three bathrooms American renters do not share a john ten months ago. It is time it went to work for us. From Memorial Day to Labour Day, May 28 to September 3, it must be hired to the highest bidder.

That is the law of the Hamptons. A house is not a home; it is an investment. So, like all sensible Hamptons' houscowners, we have already had an estimate for repainting the inside in October one is not optimistic about renters. We have contacted Alperts about storage charges for everything of sentimental or other value. The moment has come to tell the house-sitter to move on.

House-sitting is a pecu-larly American way of life. Once the cowboys pack their worldly belongings behind the saddle and rode off to bed down in the next barn on the trail. Now they pack all into the Honda and move on to a bigger icebox. It has been no little annoyance to our house-sitter that we have provided only a 19 inch television without Home Box Office (the super-feature cable service) to amuse him during the long winter months that he has lived free in our home. There were weekends that I longed to go out to Quogue 1 good dash Tabasco A oz good aspic pmcder 2 eggs peeled prawns Skin the mackerel and remove any small bones.

Flake the fish and place in the blender with lemon juice, the egg yolks, cream. Tabasco, and the melted butter. Dissolve the aspic powder in hot water and, with a little, line the bottom of a ring mould. Allow to set and arrange the prawns on the aspic. Pour the rest of the aspic into the blender and blend smooth.

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and turn all into the mould. Allow to set and turn out to serve. SATURDAY HACOS ROLL i lb good short pastry, made with dripping and 1 egg 1 lb collar of bacon, skinned and minced 2 onions finely chopped 1 tablespoon tomato puree 1 teaspooti nibbed tarragon Ground black pepper. Roll out the pastry into a thin oblong. Mix the onions, bacon, tarragon, tomato puree and pepper.

Spread the mixture on the pastry and roll up, sealing the edges Make a couple of slashes in the crust, brush over' with beaten egg and bake at Gas 4 350 deg. F. for 45 minutes, then raise heat to Gas 6 400 deg. F. for about 20 minutes.

Serve with a good gravy and spinach if available. Make a pie Saturday and keep until Monday. With any luck, as summer time has begun, you might be able to eat it cold in the garden (or take it racing). RABBIT AND SALT PORK PIE: lb good pastry (made uith dripping) 1 lbs cut rabbit i lb salt pork 4 mushrooms 1 pint stock or bouillon Black pepper 1 sprig rosemary I bay lea; Put the rabbit and pork into a saucepan and cover with the stock. 'Bring to the boil and skim.

Cover with the lid and until tender, about It hours. Remove the moat and pork and put to cool. Thicken th; stock with a little flour and water. Bone out the rabbit and dice the pork fairly sm.il! Put the rabbit and pork into a suitable d-sh ami slice the mu'-hrooms over. Allow to cool and pour over the thickened stock.

Cover with the pastry aid brush over with beaten en. Bake at Gas fi 400 cleg. F. for 45 minutes. Cool quickly and it will easily keep until Easter Monday.

And now something special for Sunday OSSO BUCO 2 veal hocks (saint into 4 piece each) Flour 70 dredge 1 or butler 1 carrot 2 onions finely chnjrped 1 tablespoon chopved parsley Grated rind, 1 lemon 1 heaped tablespoon tomato puree 1 sprig thyme 1 sprig rosemary 1 glass dry red icine 1 bay leaf 1 pint stock or bouillon Salt, pepper Shake the flour over the veal and fry in the butter a casserole. Add the carrot, onions, and tomato puree. Moisten with the slock and wine. Put the herbs and Cover and simmer for 1-1 iiours. Sprinkle with the parsley and lemon mixed and serve with plenty of your favourite pasta.

SHERRY 1 if. DUTY GOES Us im TE BUDGET OTHER SPIRITS AND LIQUEURS Smirnoff Vodka 4.39 Three Barrels 4.59 French Grape Brandy Courvoisier 6.85 Glenfiddich 6.89 Malt Whisky Warninks Advocaat 3.19 AH prictartUttto bonis tiztincptwt)f KING SIZE CIGARETTES 5 m.f.p. for 20 ho OipiCmtinti WARMS! our SUPERBUYS! to ut-r the country: there's not enough Baby-Bio to feed the plants, the cleaning woman hasn't turned up again, the air conditioner, has broken down. All requests to send on-mail will be ignored until the point is taken that the sitter, not content with a freebie in the city, wishes to be invited out to the country for the weekend. For some reason, house-sitters are men while apartment-sitters are women.

The female of the species is by far the most deadly. This is not sexism but mere observation. Her curiosity is sharper: no drawer, file, or wardrobe is safe from her prying, no bottle safe from her acquisitive nature. The house-sitter is- a wanderer, in search of shelter and comfort. He will disappear leaving no forwarding address.

She is an adventurer, in search of a way of life. She makes friends of telephone callers, insinuates herself into her hosts' circle, never lets go even when she's moved three apartments on. In time, she's passed around acquaintances and it is forgotten that she hasn't always lived among them. They will thank her for looking after their apartments when they take off for Europe or Los Angeles. And, of course, they all invite her to the houses they have rented for the summer in the Hamptons.

It is possible to live well very cheaply in America. All you need is enough gall. exposed the ridicule of saying that a man must be strong and a woman easily influenced. We found that there were aggressive women amongst us as well as unaggressive men." One of the men said he used to be scared to respond to an assertive female because of fear of rejection hut now his fear base was diminished. He would expect to be received and not be chucked out.

I was able to sweat all over with anxiety and fear and at the same time feel safe." This brought up a very real criticism for debate We're in laboratory conditions. It's not the same in real life." And the counter argument Yes, but it can spread. The confidence is inside the person even if the conditions are different." Other criticisms emerged The all-women's group had lingered too long over the pain of being a woman." I'm a woman: I don't feel pain about it. In fact I like it." said one. "But no one wanted to know.

There was too much emphasis on the neurotic." Some however appeared to find much comfort in examining their vulnerabilities and losses as wives, mothers, professionals. Female anger seemed to 'get too little a hearing, and male pain likewise. The problem of burying sexuality in order to maintain professional distance wasn't discussed. But many got a great deal out of meeting other professionals informally. Some ex-toughies did go home less proud of their toughness and more open to an incipient tenderness.

Some stereotypes were abandoned; shv souls found themselves. Peter Willis's hope that what was learned will be passed on to others could come true. As an outsider looking in I must admit to mixed feelings. The sensitivity business tends to attract a positive wallowing in self-revelation. And then there's the jargon and the pressure to conform to fixed theories all those blocks and defences, pains and unexpressed angers which no sensitive person should be vMthout.

PS to the South-east region of the probation service: It might improve your malefemale relations no end if you did something about your promotion statistics. Senior officers number 220 male to 56 female despite the fact that they are from a pool of ordinary officers numbering a bit over 600 male and a bit under 600 female. but two squirrels, clawing, gnawing and hysterically demolishing. The- burly, bodybuilding, marathon-running sitter, part of whose function was to offer protection against any murderous intruders, soon showed up. That he hid ia the shower clutching a broom, shrieking periodically, was perhaps understandable.

That I had to apologise to him for the shock he had suffered and keep apologising while clearing up the house, was something of an irritation. That he "waited until I was scrubbing squirrel exre-ment off the floor to out that we had obviously left the flue open when we were last out there, some months before, was distinctly unwelcome. But that is the way with sitters. They know that come the summer they will move on, driving the Honda west into the sunset, minding chalets, villas, penthouses as they go. See them in May, packing up the car, looking with mild contempt at ncwly-arrived renters and wondering who would pay out (5,000 dollars for the season to live where they have stayed all winter and spring for free.

And do not think the renters will not read that look and understand it. The country house-sitter is a mere amateur compared to the apartment-sitter they will have left behind for the summer in New York. To leave an apartment empty in the city is to invite burglary. Thus there will be long, complaining telephone calls to but having five days makes it possible to develop trust and open people up and then support them so they don't go home raw and vulnerable." Judging by reactions at the final plenary session, most of them went home fairly intact and pleased with their week. Probation officers have a tough and not always rewarding, job.

They deal with outsiders, the delinquents and criminals nobody wants to know about. They have to maintain a balance between loyalty to the client and loyalty to a society whose laws have been violated. They spend muoh energy trying to keep their clients heads above water only to see many becoming submerged in deeper and murkier depths. Hearing the same old tales of deprivation, neglect and misfortune can blunt the sensitivities. "There's no feedback.

you're like a sponge," said an ex-business man who runs a hostel for what he calls damaged people. "No one tells you you're any good, all they do is take. It's a breather to come here and look at your own feelings, and to learn to cooperate as an equal instead of always being the powerful one in charge." A recently married man who described himself as "slightly bisexual talked about the relief of being allowed to tell people this. I wasn't burning with guilt, I have learned to live with it, but it was refreshing to be able to say it in front of other people and to be allowed to be a sensitive, receptive male instead of the usual stereotype of the typically dominant male. It itivity but stayed instead in Manhattan.

There is only one thing worse than a house-sitter who lets you know that you are in his way and that is being trapped in your own home with a stranger on whose goodwill you depend. During the winter months, the Hamptons' house-sitter is the monarch who rules over all that does not belong to him. The. savage-winter is the greater enemy. To be in Quogue with the wind howling and the snow piled deep is to know its threat.

Floods, frozen pipes, shattered windows, trees crashing onto roofs the punishments are Thus one bears with the sitter wiho complains that the wardrobe in the best bedroom (his, of course) is not big enough or that the lighting isn't adequate. He can always find a bigger, better house to live in. The incident of the squirrels nearly caused a revolt against this servitude. The sitter called New York one Friday lunchtime to pass on the information that a snuir-rel had enme down the chimney. Since he was late for a basketball match at the public school at which he teaches (sex.

drugs and othfr sidelines-of health) he would have to leave. He merely wanted to renort that the damage was extensive. Anyone who has tried to rush to Quogue on the Long Island Railroad (known to its admirers as the Long Island Snailroad) will imagine the unpleasantness of arriving five hours later to discover no housesitter and not one the most amazing number of "situations" being experienced, not only ongoing ones but gender identity ones, confrontational ones, blocking ones (a lot of those). There was much emphasis on getting in touch with one's feelings and keeping anxiety levels down, and if there was a silence naturally it was because people were on the defensive. Unfair, considering the way leaders of therapy sessions seem to think a lot and say little.

After all, most people who come to groups have done less thinking than the leaders on the given subject and so have less to say until stimulated. There was a tendency to see the pathological where it didn't necessarily exist. This criticism apart, the workshop did seem most accurately to meet the description "refresher course and to send people home with sharpened perceptions. It must have been a bit of a shock to those who came expecting a series of lectures (apparently there are always a few who do), not to mention those seeking sexual adventures or a free week away from the office, two of the less acknowledged reasons why people attend conferences of any nature. "When you first meet them you are anxious and wonder what you'll achieve in a single week," said Peter, who has been in the staff development section for six years.

You get the tough ones who tell you they know their prejudices and don't want you interfering, the shy ones who hold back and then suddenly start blossoming halfway through, and the ones who come to disagree with everything from the start. We don't win them all, Linda Blandford's mm mmm Sitting pretty uTT IS the season of the seaside Each weekend thousands of couples in their Hertz cars pour out of Manhattan to seek out and reserve a summer house in the Hamptons. This is the true rite of spring. Desirable ocean front properties have already gone. Cottages with Har-tru, maintenance-free tennis courts and soft-bottomed, vinyl-lined swimming pools are.

almost all spoken for. The alien hordes are creeping back towards the highway. Anyday now they will spill over this social Maginot Line and patient Jim Malvey of Sea TAKE thirteen, males and thirteen females, incarcerate them for five days in an isolated Victorian mansion (which for good measure is knee-deep in snow and rather fraying at the edges) and what have you got9 Not a somewhat prolonged Agatha Christie whodunnit, but a clutch of probation officers come to explore their male-ness and femaleness at a residential course laid on by the south-cast region of the probation service. Since this raises the question: do probation officers have particular difficulty in exploring their malcness and femaleness, the answer is no. It's just that the south-east region (the service operates in regional divisions) has an active staff development programme for qualified officers, which Includes what they call "person-centred" courses.

The malefemale workshop of- 26 officers showed up at Pendley Manor, near Tring, was a person-centred course, the second of its kind to take place. According to the hand-out literature the purpose of the exercise is to "provide opportunities for males and females to examine their own gender identity and their expectations, assumptions and responses and also to consider with others the significances in work with clients and colleagues." Age range of those attending is 23 to 05, and cost to areas within the region is about 75 per officer. The probation service may not have special gender identity problems, but it is having to make adjustments about its sex balance, which is one urbason for the course. For a 6tart it used to be male dominated, with a ratio of two males to one female. The clientele was male dominated too.

Now in some areas female officers outnumber males. As female crime increases there is also a change in clientele. A fairly new innovation is for male officers to supervise femifle offenders. Staff development officer Peter Willis, one of the supervisors of this second course, sees it as part of an enlightened policy towards training. "We don't necessarily produce better probation officers.

There is no chance that five days will change your life either. We believe that what is learned here is pertinent to the personal as well as professional Jjfe of oourse members, affecting wives, husbands, children, friends. The hope is that what they learn from their own lives they can give to others." Peter was one of four ex ana sens Teacher's Ole Martinis 449 MGsu L47 L49 1 Easter fare Harold Wilshaw ONE OR TWO friends have pointed out, more or less kindly, that I have been living pretty high olf the hog lately, and looking back I am forced to agree, at least with those who were more kindly. So I think we could do with a modest run-up to Easter. Not that I intend to advocate actual privation, or indulge in it myself, but I think that the following four recipes to cover the four main luncheons of Easter will obviate any withdrawal symptoms.

Good Friday is traditionally a fish day, but that does not mean that any old lish dish will do. I would like to suggest a smoked mackerel mousse with French bread and butter and watercress. Recipes for four persons. SMOKED MACKEREL MOUSSE 2 smoked mackerel juice i lemon 3 oz unsalted butter 2 tablespoons cream MrcrcvmncciE; TOCEC TO MARTINI Bianco 75ci 1.39 Bianco 1i litres 2.71 Dry rslitres 2.91 PORT Cockburn's Special Reserve 2.85 SHERRY Harveys Club Amontillado ..1.89 Harveys Bristol Cream 2.19 All items subject to availability, V.A.T. and any other budget changes.

nviilV WF 4J1F unr Min'jL'cnTn cci i AlCOHOLIC'OaiNKSTO ANYONE UNDER 18. OR TOBACCO PRODUCTS TO ANYONE UNDER 1 6, GienRossie 3.99 am aMnoMHHnr. While most men and women are learning to be persons a group of probation officers attended a malefemale workshop. Helen Franks reports -mi per-f: nit ina 0 BEFOER BUDGET! tutors, the other three being a psychotherapist, a freelance counsellor, a senior social worker (two women and another man to maintain the sex equality). Sessions included the various sexual permutations possible groups of men and women together, men only, women only, with tutors to match.

Most of the sessions took the form of a kind of group therapy, discussions in which personal feelings and attitudes were expressed. Sexual stereotypes in the form of dominant males and passive females their appearance. ideas about male superiority came to light when participants were asked whether they felt differently about having, a male or female group leader. (Some apparently always addressed a male leader first till it was pointed out to them.) "The aim is to provide insight within an atmosphere of trust," said Peter Willis. There was also a session called creativity, fun, recharging" which seemed to provide a much-needed let-ting-off of steam.

A collage of bare breasts and penises from nudey magazines was made up and proudly displayed (it later mysteriously disappeared). No opportunity for a ribald remark or sexy innuendo was missed. Afterwards they lay flat on the floor and dozed or meditated or maybe gazed at the cracks in the cx-hallroom ceiling. The sensitivity business, concerned and caring as it is, does have a strong line in jargon. With the snow outside falling thicker and faster, blurring the vision and the landscape, one was inevitably reminded that the language inside was doing much the same.

There were Moscato Veuve rTi" Spumante duVernay con- I.52j 1.99 4.99 Access and Eerclaycard welcome..