Painted Ladies

by Lynn Bushell

  ‘That’s not including Marthe, naturally.’ He pauses. ‘But then Marthe isn’t just a model.’ He regards her steadily above his glasses.

  Renée turns and walks out of the café. Roussel calls out after her. ‘That’s always been the problem with Pierre. He’s stuck. He can’t move on. His pictures haven’t changed in thirty years – the same old tablecloths, the same old tin bath on the same old rug. That vase of asters has been on the windowsill since 1890.’

  As she steps outside onto the pavement, Renée hears their laughter.

  She has barely gone ten yards before the sirens go off. People rush for the arcades. She stops and gazes up and down the street. Those buildings in the city centre that have cellars large enough to take in extra people have a stroke of white paint on the door, but there are none that she can see. A shell explodes nearby. A woman carrying a child bumps into her and Renée is shoved back against the wall. There is a sudden deafening explosion. For a second it’s as if the space around her has been torn in half. Then shards of stone come pattering across the cobbles. Someone grabs her arm.

  ‘Pierre!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Renée, why are you still on the street? You heard the sirens go off, didn’t you?’ He ushers her along the pavement to the shelter of a doorway. The shop signs are rattling on their hinges like a tinny orchestra. She squats down and Pierre leans over her, his head against the door so that she’s wedged into a triangle. There is a sharp crack as another shell lands and the sickening rumble of collapsing buildings half a mile away.

  ‘I came up to the studio. You weren’t there.’

  ‘I’ve been there since eight o’clock this morning. I was on my way down to the shelter when I saw you.’ There’s another thump and then a screech. A dog runs past them, its eyes white with terror, skittering from one side of the pavement to the other, like a clockwork toy. ‘The door was open. You could just have walked in.’

  Squatting with her neck in its uncomfortable position and her face pressed up against his jacket, Renée’s glad he can’t see her expression. ‘You weren’t there last week.’

  ‘The terminus in Saint-Germain got a direct hit. There weren’t any trams at all for several days. I couldn’t let you know. I’m sorry.’

  Renée tilts her face. His head is black against the sky. ‘I didn’t think the Germans bothered dropping bombs on Saint-Germain.’

  ‘That one was probably a stray. I dare say it was meant for Belleville.’ They wait for the all-clear. Renée gets up stiffly and her knees crack. ‘Are you all right?’ Renée nods. She dusts her coat down. When she looks up, Pierre is staring hard at her. ‘I was afraid that when I wasn’t there last week you might not come again.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want me to. I thought . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought maybe you were telling me you didn’t need me any longer.’

  He frowns. ‘I would hardly do it that way.’ They start walking down the street towards the studio. Pierre has looped his arm through hers. ‘Where were you coming from?’

  ‘The café.’

  They climb up the stairs in single file. Pierre takes out his key. ‘Was anybody there?’

  ‘I spoke to Caro. Roussel came in later.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He stands back to let her in first. ‘I’m surprised he ever gets a picture finished; he spends so much time there. Did he speak to you?’

  ‘He offered me a drink. I said no.’

  Pierre takes off his topcoat. ‘That was sensible.’

  ‘I didn’t want to stay.’

  ‘I’m simply saying that you did the right thing.’ He takes out his pocket watch and flips the lid back irritably. ‘There’ll be no more visits to the café, I’m afraid. I need to catch up on the work I’ve missed.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ Renée slips her things off. If she never sees Roussel again, it will be too soon. She takes up the pose. It takes her seconds, normally, to distribute the weight so that she doesn’t feel the pain, but she can’t get into the right mode. Her left leg still aches from squatting in the doorway and there is a dragging in her stomach which reminds her that her period is due. After the tensions of the past week, she feels agitated. This is where she’s longed to be, but she can’t settle. She’s not in the mood for standing still.

  ‘Does Caro live in Roussel’s studio?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘She’s always in the café, isn’t she? As if she’s nowhere else to go.’ He doesn’t answer. ‘Did you know that Caro cuts herself? She’s got marks up her arm. She does it with a razor blade.’

  ‘I think that Caro is a lost cause,’ Pierre says, mildly. ‘She strikes me as someone who is crying out to be destroyed and if she doesn’t find someone to do it for her, she will do it to herself.’

  ‘You don’t think Roussel is to blame, then?’

  ‘Roussel should have left her where he found her – on the street. At least there she had friends. You’d do well to keep clear of both of them.’ He goes on making alterations to the picture, but it isn’t going well. She knows because he keeps on reaching for the rag and using it to wipe off what he’s done. Eventually he gets up and goes over to the bench where he has left the keys. He takes one off the ring and puts it down beside her wrap. ‘You ought to take this. If you have a key and I’m not here, you can at least be comfortable while you’re waiting. Wouldn’t that be more convenient?’

  She stares. The way he says it makes it sound as if the key is of no real significance, but Renée knows it is. He’d talked about ‘convenience’ before, once, when she had been getting dressed after a session which had twice been interrupted by the sirens.

  ‘You know you could stay here sometimes if you don’t like going back to your apartment in the dark. There’s always the chaise longue,’ he’d said then.

  Renée had been drawing up her stocking, one leg stretched, the toes extended, gently easing the silk up over her calves. She’d gone on pulling up the stocking as if she was only half-attending to the conversation.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do it for convenience,’ she’d said, a hint of sharpness in her voice. She smoothed the stocking up over her thigh and reached under her shift for the suspender belt.

  ‘What would you do it for?’

  She looped the stocking-top over the buckles and pulled down her shift.

  ‘I wouldn’t do it for convenience,’ she’d said again.

  ‘Convenience’ on this occasion meant that he could guarantee her being there on Wednesday afternoons. It meant he wanted to continue painting her. The studio is like the inner sanctum of a temple; no one enters without invitation. He is trusting her and in return she feels she has to trust him. In the break, she takes the letter from the pocket of her coat and shows it to him.

  He is silent for a moment. ‘Do you have the envelope?’ She hands it over. Pierre squints at the postmark. ‘It was put into the box at Belleville.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know anyone apart from you who lives there?’ Renée shakes her head. ‘Who do you know who might have sent it?’

  ‘No one, really.’

  He regards her patiently. ‘Could it be Marguerite?’

  She’s toying glumly with the sleeve of her kimono. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Why would Marguerite say you’re a slut?’

  ‘I take my clothes off, don’t I?’

  ‘You’re a model. That’s what models do.’

  ‘Try telling that to Marguerite.’

  He folds the letter up and lays it on the worktop. ‘I think you should tear this up. Why carry it around with you? Ignore it. Throw the thing away.’

  ‘It’s different for you.’

  ‘Of course, if you would feel more comfortable not coming here again, then I shall understand. I wouldn’t want to make your life more difficult.’

  ‘This is the only time I feel alive.’

  He looks at her a moment and then takes his glasses of
f. He smooths his thumb across the rim. ‘I didn’t realise it meant such a lot to you.’

  ‘It does. I couldn’t bear it if I had to give up coming here.’

  There is a pause and then he pulls a chair up and sits down in front of her. He takes her hands. ‘You realise, Renée, that there’s very little I can offer you, apart from what you have already.’

  ‘I’m not asking you for anything.’

  ‘But I still feel responsible. You shouldn’t have this happen to you.’

  Renée sniffs. ‘It’s just a letter.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. What it says is slanderous. It’s completely unacceptable. Whoever wrote it hasn’t got the least idea what working for an artist means.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘You’re part of a tradition that goes back two thousand years. Those pictures on the pinboard over there would not exist if someone like you hadn’t modelled for them. You’re a vital part of the artistic process.’

  ‘Like a muse, you mean?’ She didn’t mean to sound sly.

  It’s as if the safety curtain has come down belatedly between the actors and the common people in the stalls. ‘If you prefer to call it that.’ He’s giving her the sort of look you might give someone who’d come begging at the door.

  ‘I don’t mind what they say as long as you still want to go on painting me.’

  ‘I’ve said I do.’

  But later, when the session ends and she is getting dressed, she finds her money – which he usually leaves discreetly in an envelope inside the cubicle – is not there. Renée hovers by the door. ‘I’ll see you next week.’

  He looks up and smiles, then pats his pocket and takes out his wallet. ‘Wait. You mustn’t go without your money.’ He counts out the notes onto the workbench. Gathering them up into a pile, he hands them over to her.

  ‘Must you go?’

  He half-turns in the door. I hear that little click of irritation in his throat.

  ‘You’re being foolish, Marthe. It’s not like you. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t see why you would want to travel into Paris every day when all the Germans use it for is target practice. You could work here.’

  ‘When the terminus was bombed I had no choice, but now I need to get back to the studio. I’ve work to finish.’

  ‘Can’t you bring it back?’

  ‘I’d have to wait for it to dry and since it’s going straight into an exhibition there’s no point in bringing it here just to take it back again.’

  When Madame Hébert came on Tuesday, she said there’s a rumour that if the Americans do come into the war it could be over in a month, but that the Germans plan to raze the city to the ground first. I know I’m not going to persuade him, but I go on chivvying him anyway. ‘They say the shells from this new gun rise thirty-five kilometres into the air before they come to earth. Suppose a bomb drops on the studio?’

  ‘I’d count myself exceedingly unfortunate.’

  ‘I’d say that you were asking for it.’

  ‘Don’t let’s quarrel, Marthe. I can’t spend the whole war hiding out in Saint-Germain. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.’

  Tell that to the Germans, I think. Maybe if he asks them nicely they’ll drop bombs on someone else.

  That night, I see the jagged lights of the artillery and hear the cracks as bombs explode and debris flies into the air. The city has been targeted for five nights in a row. It goes on hour after hour, till I wonder whether by the morning anything will be left standing. I imagine factories manufacturing the bombs as quickly as they are released into the air.

  Pierre is terrified of being suffocated. The idea of being underneath the rubble haunts him. He’d be whimpering with terror, calling for me. He once said he couldn’t come to terms with the idea of death. Not even the idea of it. So how does he think he would cope with the reality? Of course he wouldn’t have to, I think. ‘I’m the one who’d have to cope with the reality.’

  As Renée comes out of the Underground on rue de Ménilmontant, she sidesteps the soldier squatting at the entrance. It’s beginning to get dark and he’ll have finished for the day. The first time Renée saw him, she thought he was standing guard outside the Metro. He stood to attention with his head back and his chin stuck out. She was preparing to slow down and give her hair a little toss as she went past. It wasn’t until she’d drawn level with him that she realised one side of his face was missing. Where there should have been an eye, there was an empty socket and the flesh and bone on either side of it was raw and scarified. He held his tin cup like a rifle butt in front of him, with both hands curled around it.

  Paris swarmed with beggars. Many were the same age as the boys she’d been at school with. Usually she gave them something. This one wasn’t more than eighteen. Even with his terrible disfigurement, the left side of his face suggested he had been a handsome boy. His mouth had not been damaged and the lips were full and soft. As she was fumbling in her purse she’d felt a hot flush creep up from her neck. She heard the shiny jingle of the centimes as they dropped into the tin cup.

  He had looked at her expressionlessly. ‘Merci.’

  ‘De rien.’ She felt the hunger kept in check behind the tin cup, which was now his only weapon. She wished she had not put lipstick on that morning.

  Since he didn’t ask for money, people didn’t always notice he was begging. They assumed, as she had, that he was on duty to protect them. She’d have liked to ask him how much he could count on being given on a good day, where he went at night, if he had anybody to look after him. But still, she was relieved when every time she dropped the centimes in the cup, she got the same reaction.

  ‘Merci.’

  ‘De rien.’

  It’s after seven when she comes out of the Metro. He is squatting on the pavement with the cup between his knees and counting out the coins into the palm of one hand, holding them up to his good eye to examine the inscription before slipping them into his pocket.

  He looks up and Renée gives a brisk smile. It’s a smile that has already moved on somewhere else. She’s never had a conversation with him. That would have meant looking at his face and Renée wouldn’t have known what to focus on. If she looked straight into the good eye, wouldn’t that suggest she was disgusted by his wounds, but if she let her gaze move to the right side, wouldn’t that imply a morbid curiosity? The two of them were trapped inside the ghettoes of her beauty and his ugliness.

  She walks on past him, conscious that his head is turned in her direction. She turns onto Rue de Belleville. They’ve had raids on two nights in succession and the soft light is shot through with ash. It leaves a grey smear on her jacket when she tries to brush it off. She passes underneath the archway at the entrance to the alleyway that comes out onto rue des Peupliers. She might have gone the long way round and not turned off the main road. Renée knows already that he is behind her. She can hear the soft thud of his heels against the cobbles. As he gains on her, she hears his breathing. Like the rest of him, it is contained, the kind of breathing that men practised in the trenches before going into battle.

  Renée steels herself. She’s waiting for the breaths to change. This was the moment when they went over the top. A lot of men were sick; some wet themselves or worse and some said afterwards that they felt nothing, just relief that there was no more waiting. She knows there’s no point in running. If she does, her panic will excite him. She is only yards from the apartment, but she knows that she won’t make it to the entrance. She hears what sounds almost like a sob and then she sees the hand as it comes round the front of her. He’s clawing at her breast, but he is hardly touching her. There’s something reverential, almost tender, in the gesture.

  Renée lashes blindly at his face. They tussle for a moment and she sees the tramlines that her nails have left across his cheek. Blood is already seeping from the cuts. He looks surprised, as if he’d suddenly been wrenched out of a dream. He takes a step back and stands looking at her. Then he turns and
runs back down the street.

  She leans against the wall. Her legs feel weak. Her breath is coming in short, wispy little squeaks. She rubs her thumb against her fingertips. There is a rime of dirt and skin under her nails. She feels sick. If he’d only spoken and not simply panted after her like that.

  She wishes she had quietly let him grope her in the street. For once, behaving like a slut might have redeemed her. ‘If you want to, you can feel my breasts,’ she might have said. ‘They’re nothing special. It’s what Marguerite does every night; she never bothers asking. If I can put up with her, why should you be denied?’

  It’s not as if she’d have to look at him. She could have closed her eyes. It would have been her sacrifice, an act of charity.

  The first time there is hardly any blood at all. She has to press the skin on both sides of the cut. It hurts more than she had expected. It had started hurting her before the blade had even touched the skin. She doesn’t want to cut twice in the same place, so she goes a little higher up her arm, but there she finds the flesh more sensitive. She clamps her teeth together while she makes a second cut. This one is marginally deeper, but still she is disappointed. She is conscious of the pain as something shrill but at the same time small and insignificant. The way that Caro had described it somehow made it grander. She puts down the knife and lays her forearm on the table. Caro had made four cuts on her arm. I couldn’t even manage two, thinks Renée. She’s not sure why it should feel so much like failure.

  Where she’s laid the knife, a smear of blood has come off on the tablecloth. She spits into her handkerchief and tries to rub it off. It turns from bright red to a soft pink, but it is still visible and Renée knows that Margo, who is blind to her environment as long as it remains the same, will notice it at once. She bunches up the handkerchief and leans her forehead on the table. Why does she make such a mess of everything she does?

  B

  When Renée finds the cat, she thinks at first it’s still alive. When she was in her other flat, they often got strays coming to the door and Renée always gave them something, but it’s rare, now that she’s living on the top floor, to find animals in the apartment. This one is an alley cat with black streaks, scrawny, as are all the residents of Paris these days. It’s out on the landing, curled up but with all four legs in running motion.