Painted Ladies

by Lynn Bushell

  Renée doesn’t answer. Margo does occasionally go to concerts on her own, but this time Renée knows she’s doing it to get her own back.

  ‘That’s good,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you’ll be doing something.’

  It’s not often she gets letters. When she moved into the flat with Marguerite, her mother used to write to her. She’d put the letter in the post on Tuesday so that it arrived on Wednesday. Renée sometimes wished it could be less of a routine. She often left the letter lying on the mat, or opened it at breakfast but then didn’t bother reading it until the next day. There was never much inside that could be called news: stuff about the girls, what Alys had brought home from school, the nice girl Tonio was seeing. ‘Nice girls’ were what Maman talked about, as if by dint of constant repetition something of the niceness might rub off on Renée.

  ‘Look what’s come.’

  ‘What is it?’ Marguerite is sitting at the table toying with a croissant.

  ‘It’s a letter.’

  ‘I can see that.’ Marguerite dips one end of the croissant in her coffee. Renée weighs the letter in her hand. It’s not official but her name is printed in block capitals, the way a child writes when it hasn’t learnt to join the letters up. Some instinct tells her not to open it. She wishes that she hadn’t been so quick to boast to Marguerite that somebody had written to her. Who would write a letter to her, after all? Apart from Pierre, the only people she knows are the people Marguerite knows too. She slides a knife under the flap. There is a single sheet of paper in the envelope. The message on it has been printed. ‘FILLE SALOPE’.

  ‘Let’s have a look, then.’ Marguerite is holding out her hand.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Renée quickly slips the sheet of paper back inside the envelope, but Marguerite still has her hand out.

  ‘Nothing?’ She laughs nastily. ‘I paid the rent to Monsieur Huppert last week, so it can’t be that, but looking at your face it might be.’

  Renée pushes back her chair. ‘I need to go. I’m going to be late for work.’ She thrusts the envelope into her bag and turns away, but Margo grabs her arm. She reaches for the bag and delves inside it.

  ‘So it’s comes to this.’ She scans the letter and then lets it drop. She flicks it with her finger like a piece of dirt.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? It’s a bit late to be sorry. Who’s it from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you telling me there are so many people who know what you are, that anybody could have sent it?’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone who’d send it.’

  Margo picks the letter up again. ‘I knew that you’d been up to something. You do realise it’s a warning? This is just the start. It won’t end here.’ She lets the implication dangle in the air between them.

  ‘Should I take it to the police?’

  ‘Oh yes, why not. Let’s put a notice in the paper, just in case there’s anybody left who doesn’t know.’

  ‘There isn’t anything to know. It’s not fair. Why is everyone so horrible?’

  ‘You’re telling me that you have no idea why anyone would say that you’re a fille salope?’

  ‘I’m not a fille salope!’

  ‘Well, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.’ Marguerite gets up. ‘When you’ve decided what it is the writer is referring to, perhaps you’d let me know.’

  She leaves the letter lying on the table as she goes out. Renée puts it back into her bag. If she had really spent her afternoons at tea-dances or music halls – those places where girls were traditionally picked up, she would have confessed by now. What Renée hasn’t yet considered is the possibility that Margo might already know her secret and is simply waiting for her to confirm it.

  For the next five days, she takes the letter with her everywhere. Now she’s told Margo she is going on the trip to Bercy, she will have to leave the flat, but she can’t face the outing. She’s not even able to confide in Gabi. Gabi is the only one who knows enough about her to have written it. They had been thrown together simply by the fact of working on the perfume counter. All the girls had backgrounds that were similar; it wasn’t automatically a bond.

  That Saturday, once she and Margo have had breakfast, Renée walks down to the river, buys herself a magazine and sits there on a bench until it’s time to go back to the flat. On Sunday evening, Margo goes off to her concert. When she gets home, she finds Renée playing patience.

  ‘Did you have a nice time at the concert?’

  ‘It was most uplifting.’ Marguerite smiles briefly.

  ‘And the friend who went with you, did he enjoy it?’

  ‘We agreed that the viola player wasn’t quite up to the standard of the rest, but all in all it was a wonderful performance.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Renée takes the ten of Spades and lays it on the Jack. She’s not sure how long she can carry on like this. She knows that in the end, however well she keeps up a pretence of ignorance, she will confess. And from that moment there will be no corner of her life that Marguerite does not have access to. She wonders what her punishment will be. Once, Marguerite had shut her in the wardrobe and gone off to work after an argument. She’d stayed there all day. By the time she was released, she’d passed out. When she came to, Marguerite was shaking her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she was sobbing. ‘O God, Renée, I’m so sorry.’

  Renée kept her eyes closed, partly out of curiosity to find out just how ‘sorry’ Marguerite was, partly because at that moment she would have been perfectly content to stay deliciously suspended between life and death for ever. As a child, she’d liked to hide in cupboards in the darkness. Putting out her hands, she felt the boundaries of the space that she was in. She felt safe. Outside, life went on as usual. She heard her mother shouting in the kitchen, Alys crying, Antoine yelling at them all to shut up. None of it impinged on her. The harder it became to breathe in there, the more she liked it. She felt dizzy with the lack of oxygen, intoxicated by the notion that unless she made an effort to get out, she could stop breathing altogether.

  ‘Renée, say that you forgive me.’

  ‘I forgive you,’ Renée murmured. She had even hoped the punishment might be repeated. She would have preferred it to a slap or the discovery that Marguerite had sliced through all the clothes inside her wardrobe after she’d decided Renée had been flirting with the boy who punched their tickets on the tram. She was afraid that Marguerite would hurt her, but that she might kill her didn’t bother her at all.

  There is a raid that night. They hear the distant pop of gunfire and when Renée looks out from the window of the flat she sees smoke trowelling across the sky, illuminated by a holocaust of crimson flame as bombs fall to the north. An hour later it is their turn. Echoes of the detonating shells shunt down between the houses and they hear the crackle of the fires like dry crusts crumbled in a fist.

  The next day she goes down to the patisserie as usual and finds it is no longer there. While her side of the road does not seem to have suffered any damage, on the other side a block of six or seven houses has imploded. In the smoking ruins, women wearing coal sacks on their shoulders to protect them from the dust and rain pick through the wreckage of what was a kitchen or a living room for anything that they can salvage.

  Two young men with scarves over their mouths are lifting something from the debris. It’s a meat safe, once an object to be prized, although of less use now that there is no meat to be had and nothing bought that isn’t eaten straightaway. Between them they manoeuvre it onto the pavement, walking crab-like with the safe between them. They look slyly at her. Renée knows she should report them, but she won’t.

  She turns the corner onto rue des Cascades and sees what remains of the Patisserie Renard. She’d often wondered what lay on the far side of the swing door separating the Renards’ apartment from the shop. A basket with the burnt remains of last night’s bread lies just inside the door. All Renée glimpses of their living quarters is a heap of rubble and a sq
uare of velvet tacked onto the far wall. Underneath it, with its seat collapsed and both arms touching, is the carver in which Monsieur Renard sat to take his meals. A part of the dividing door stands upright in the ruins, still defiantly protecting land that is already lost. Glass crunches underneath her feet. One cabinet remains. The rest have shattered in the blast.

  She picks a length of ribbon from the rubble and discovers it still knotted in a bow around one of the cardboard boxes used in the patisserie. The box is scorched a light brown and the ribbon’s curling at the edges, but the seal is still intact. She eases up the flap. It’s full of freshly baked chouettes, the pastry delicately caramelised in the heat. She slides her hand into the box. The crystals cling onto her fingertips. She puts them in her mouth. She can’t smell burning, she no longer feels the grit that seems to permanently linger underneath her eyelids and in all the secret places of her body, she’s unconscious of the mist that hangs above the streets as if embarrassed by the carnage and determined to conceal as much of it as possible. She is aware of nothing other than the agonising sweetness on her tongue.

  She stands there in the rubble, stuffing one after another of the pastries in her mouth. The keen edge of her hunger lessens, and the scent of caramel reminds her all at once of something else. One morning she had passed the bombed-out barns behind the butcher’s shop and smelt the carcasses of pigs mixed with the pungent odour of their swill – a mix of turnip, urine and whatever the charcutier had not been able to incorporate into his patés. Renée bends with one hand braced against her knee, the other holding back her scarf, and vomits everything she’s eaten back into the dust.

  After a week that seems to have gone on for ever, Wednesday comes around again. At midday, Renée leaves the store and takes a shortcut through the gardens of the Luxembourg to Montparnasse. The street door to the studios is open and she climbs the dingy staircase, littered as it always is with screwed-up newspapers and bits of rubbish. It feels unfamiliar, like a house you’ve lived in for a long time but no longer have a stake in. She stands at the door and listens. If the door is locked, there will be no point in her coming back again. But if Pierre is there, she’s worried it might look as if she’s desperate to be taken back.

  She is still dithering outside the door when there’s a movement on the floor above. The man who rents the top-floor studio comes out onto the landing and she hears him coming down the stairs. He glances at her. Renée’s fingers are still curled around the doorknob. As he passes her she gives the knob a slight tug, as if to make sure she’s locked it after her, and then she tucks her bag under her arm and follows him downstairs. He holds the street door open for her.

  Renée wonders which direction she should go in, to avoid him, and turns right. He turns right too, but then somebody calls him from across the street. She can’t go back immediately or she runs the risk of bumping into him again, but she can’t bear to leave like this. The thought of going back to the apartment where she will be spending hours on her own again appals her. When there’s nobody to talk to, it’s like looking in a mirror; she sees nothing but her own reflection.

  She goes past the café. There are fewer people in there now. The luncheon crowd are back at work and, while it’s light, the painters will be in their studios. She sees that Caro is there by herself. It would be an extravagance she can’t afford, to buy herself a pastry, but if she sits down with Caro she won’t need to. She goes in. The dog is curled at Caro’s feet. It wags its tail as she approaches.

  ‘Mind if I sit down?’ She curls her fingers round the chair back. Caro shrugs. ‘It’s freezing out there.’ Renée keeps the two flaps of her coat wrapped round her. Caro finishes the boule she’s eating, scooping off the cashews for the dog. He jumps onto her lap. Like Caro, he weighs almost nothing. He has small, bright eyes and three teeth missing from the right side of his jaw. The dog is basically a terrier but there is nothing pedigree about him. He and Caro are well matched in that respect. She strokes the dog’s head absently.

  ‘What do you call him?’

  ‘Sweetie.’ Caro shifts his weight onto her other leg. ‘He turned up at the studio one day after a raid.’ She stares into the empty glass dish and then runs her finger round the rim again in case she’s missed some. There is a disturbing vacancy about her.

  ‘Why do you eat ice cream all the time?’

  ‘It hurts my throat to swallow. And my teeth are wobbly.’ She is scratching at her lower arm and as her sleeve rides up around the elbow, Renée sees that there are scratches there.

  ‘You’ve cut yourself,’ she says. The cuts are each about eight centimetres long. ‘It must have hurt.’

  ‘It did,’ says Caro. She draws up the sleeve. ‘I did it with a razor blade.’

  ‘You did it to yourself? Why?’

  ‘I feel better afterwards.’ The look that Caro gives her is defiant. This is something she has done before, thinks Renée, and now she can see the faint incisions further up the arm. She’s curious. Whatever pain she’s suffered in the past has been in consequence of other people. It had not occurred to her that pain was something you could use.

  ‘You’re always in the café, aren’t you?’

  ‘I live in the studio.’ She pulls the empty bowl towards her so that Sweetie’s near enough to lick it out. The waiter looks in her direction and then turns away.

  ‘Do other girls live in the studios?’

  ‘Some do.’

  She wonders if the way that Caro lives means she’s a ‘fille salope’ too. If she saw the letter, would she even understand why Renée was upset?

  There is a sudden blast of cold air as the door swings back. A couple come into the café, followed by two men. The couple peel off to a table in the corner and the two men come towards the table occupied by her and Caro. One of them is Roussel. Caro pulls her sleeve down. Renée doesn’t want to be seen talking to Roussel, but he ignores her anyway. The men sit down and go on arguing. Roussel takes out his wallet and they order beers. He waits until they have their drinks and then he nods at her. ‘It’s Renée, isn’t it?’ He doesn’t introduce her to his friend. ‘You want a drink?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  Roussel turns away. She listens to their conversation. Whereas she and Gabi talked about the films they’d seen, the men who’d flirted with them and their hopes for a domestic future, these men talk of politics, the war, the latest exhibitions. Unlike Pierre who never raised his voice, it seems that every conversation with Roussel inevitably turns into an argument. Her nostrils catch the scent of something dense and yeasty.

  His companion glances sideways at her. Renée sits back in her chair. She crosses one leg on the other and her skirt rides up an inch. Although she isn’t in his line of vision, Roussel senses something going on behind him. He turns.

  ‘Isn’t this the day you model for Pierre?’

  ‘He’s not arrived yet.’

  Roussel calls out for another beer and this time he includes a water ice for Caro. He takes out a note and looks at Renée. ‘Let me treat you to a coffee or an iced tea while you’re waiting.’

  ‘No thanks.’ Renée slides the bag across her shoulders. ‘I expect he’ll have arrived by now. I’d better go. He likes to start on time.’

  Roussel looks at the clock but doesn’t comment. He returns the wallet to his pocket. ‘Last time you were here you didn’t finish telling us what you did on the other days?’ She hesitates. Roussel looks round at Caro and his friend and then leans back and stares up at the ceiling. ‘Let me guess. You work behind the perfume counter in a big store in the centre.’

  Colour rushes to her cheeks. She glances at the other man who’s staring at her with an interested expression. Caro’s barely looked at either of them since they came in. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Each time you’ve been in here you’ve had a different scent on you. It’s not cheap so I’m guessing that it’s something you’re exposed to every day.’ He tilts his head towards his friend.


  ‘You think you’re clever, I suppose?’

  ‘There’s no need to get uppity about it. Caro here has never bothered to pretend she’s anything except a little tart.’ He glances sideways. Caro goes on staring vacantly ahead of her. ‘At least she’s honest,’ he adds, carelessly.

  ‘So what does that make you?’ says Renée.

  ‘If you were to ask my wife, she’d tell you I’m a navvy with pretensions just like yours. I don’t deny it. Oh, for Christ’s sake! Here, nobody gives a toss what class you come from. Stay and have a drink.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t want one.’

  ‘Has Pierre told you to stay away from me?’

  ‘He didn’t need to.’

  Roussel snorts. ‘We’re old friends, Pierre and me. We go back years.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to like you much now.’

  ‘Ah.’ He reaches for the ashtray. ‘Shall I tell you what that’s all about? He thinks I stole a girl from him in Rome. It happened years ago. If I had known he was so gone on her, I would have stepped aside. Pierre’s not much good when it comes to courting.’ He looks over at his friend again. The man laughs but she senses his discomfort. ‘Women like men who know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Do they?’ Renée scrapes her chair back.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear what happened?’

  She does want to hear what happened, but she knows that anything she gets from Roussel will come at a price.

  ‘I’m really not that dangerous, you know.’ He turns to his companion. ‘Stefan here will vouch for me.’

  ‘I don’t care if you are or not. I’ve better things to do than sit here listening to you gossiping.’

  ‘The interesting part about it is that every model Pierre’s had since then is the image of her.’

  Renée hesitates. The tantalising snippet hovers in the air between them like a juicy apple with a vein of poison running through the core.