by Lynn Bushell
The hoardings put up in the last months of the war to try and offer some protection to the city’s monuments are being taken down, but scaffolding still masks the entrance to the Louvre. Renée delicately picks her way among the planks of wood and sandbags.
They stroll down to the Renaissance galleries. She isn’t interested in the paintings; it’s the outing she’s enjoying and the prospect of the tea to follow, but she makes an effort to appear engaged.
‘Will your work be here one day?’
‘I doubt I shall ever be that famous.’
‘Aren’t you famous now?’
‘You’d never heard of me when I approached you that day on the perfume counter.’
‘Till I met you I had never heard of Michelangelo. I only know of him because you’ve got his picture on the wall.’
‘That isn’t Michelangelo. It’s by him.’
‘I’m just saying that before we met I’d never heard of either of you.’ She looks up. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘I’m not laughing. To be classed alongside Michelangelo is very flattering.’
‘You’re making fun of me.’
He looks at her a moment. ‘I would never dream of making fun of you.’
They pause before Mantegna’s Saint Sebastian, his body pierced with arrows and his flesh grey. Renée makes a face. ‘Why couldn’t he have painted something nice?’
‘He wanted what he painted to be meaningful.’
‘You’re saying if it’s nice, it can’t be meaningful?’
‘It doesn’t need to be nice in order to be meaningful, is what I’m saying.’
She walks on. The Saint Sebastian is not a painting you would want to spend much time in front of, meaningful or not. ‘Those bunches of chrysanthemums you did a picture of last week; could they be meaningful?’
‘They could and naturally I hope they are. I hope that everything I paint has meaning.’ He knows what she wants to ask. ‘It isn’t only the chrysanthemums you’re interested in. You’re wondering whether Renée Montchaty is “meaningful”.’ He smiles. ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to sit for me unless I thought there was at least a chance that what resulted would be meaningful.’
‘And if it turned out that it wasn’t?’ She’s remembering the conversation they had after they had spent that first night in the studio.
He is remembering as well, perhaps. ‘I’d put the painting to one side and come back to it later.’
‘And if it was still not meaningful?’
‘Then I suppose I might consider painting over it.’
‘But you’d have nothing to remember me by!’
Pierre looks round. A couple walking through the gallery glance curiously their way. Pierre takes her arm, but Renée stands her ground. ‘There would be nothing left of me without the pictures.’
‘Hush, dear. You’re forgetting that before you came to me there were no pictures of you.’
‘But it’s different now there are.’
‘Well, what would you remember me by?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You would remember me the same way that I hope I would remember you. Up here.’ He taps his forehead. ‘You would go on influencing future paintings.’
‘Even if I wasn’t there?’
‘You would be there. Perhaps as . . . well, a still life or the pattern on a tablecloth.’
‘That’s silly. It’s like saying someone you pass in the street could end up as a shrub.’
‘That isn’t what I’m saying. What I mean is that if there’s a meaningful connection between people in the first place, it will influence whatever happens afterwards.’
She tosses back her head. It doesn’t sound like much to her.
She’s thankful when they’re outside on the path again, although she is aware of Pierre’s eyes flitting nervously across the faces of the people passing by. He takes her elbow suddenly and turns her in towards the verge.
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve seen somebody I know.’
‘Another artist?’
‘Yes.’
An artist won’t think anything of seeing them together, Renée thinks, but when she looks in the direction Pierre is indicating, what she sees is a stout, middle-aged man, dressed impeccably with a cravat and a Malacca cane, who’s waddling as opposed to striding down the path ahead of them. ‘It’s Édouard,’ Pierre says. ‘Roussel’s married to his sister.’ Now she can’t help staring. ‘We’ll stand here a moment till he’s gone.’ They turn towards the gardens. Édouard is now fifty yards away, but then he stops to take out a cigar and with his hands around the match he turns back to protect it from the breeze and sees them.
‘Pierre!’ He gives a bluff wave and comes back along the path towards them. Pierre lets go her arm, but it’s too late now to pretend they aren’t together. He comes up to them.
‘Dear chap!’ He shakes Pierre’s hand. Renée’s first impression is of someone with a very large head and a coarse beard. There is something gingery about his whole appearance. She had been concerned that anyone they met might snub her, but when Édouard reaches her, he bows. He takes her hand and lifts it to his mouth. His brown eyes twinkle. This is someone who likes women.
Once Pierre has introduced them, they do not immediately turn away from her and start another conversation. Édouard asks her courteously if she lives in Paris, which arrondissement, is this the first time she’s been to the Louvre and what does she think of it? He leans towards her, nodding as if what she says is of supreme importance; he congratulates her on her dress, her hat, the colour of her hair. She feels herself bloom underneath his gaze and when she catches Pierre’s eye she registers a touch of envy at the ease with which some men can make themselves agreeable. When they eventually walk on, Renée glances back over her shoulder.
‘I like Édouard,’ she says. Pierre has looped his hand around her arm again and Renée feels him nudging her along the path a little faster than before. He doesn’t want to run the risk of meeting someone else. For Renée on the other hand, it’s been the highlight of the afternoon.
‘You’ll never guess who I saw in the Louvre.’ Pierre sits down and takes his pipe out. ‘Édouard.’ He begins to stuff the bowl with loose shreds of tobacco from the pouch. ‘He asked to be remembered to you.’
Was he with her when they met? Is that the reason why he’s telling me? It isn’t likely Édouard would have given him away. The painters always stick together. I avoid them if I can. Oh, I know. They think Pierre ought to have married someone of his own class and kept me on as his model. As things stand, I’m neither one thing nor the other. They don’t feel they owe me their respect.
I never felt like that with Édouard. He insists his mother is his only muse. I like that. She was nothing special, after all – a corset maker. I thought he had stayed a bachelor out of respect for her, but Pierre said Édouard only falls in love with married women. After that, I wasn’t sure I ought to like him. Still, he was the only one of Pierre’s friends who made an effort to be nice to me.
Pierre is not a cruel man. He tells me things he thinks I want to hear and leaves me to fill in the gaps. He asks me if I’ve had a nice day, did I go to market, what’s the gossip in the village? Pierre’s not interested in gossip. For a long time, we were all the village talked about, but they’ve moved on. Of course, it only takes the slightest breath of scandal for it to begin again.
It’s only ten weeks till the opening of the Salon. There’s a painting of me in the parlour here, which he still has to finish. It’s a view onto the garden with the rhododendrons in the background and me leaning on the windowsill. I wear a loose red shift to match the colour of the walls and on the table in the foreground is a wicker basket full of apples. Every two weeks I replace the ones that have gone rotten, sifting through the apples on the market stall for others of the same size, the same shade of red and green. I even try to match the scent. The stallholder insists they’re all the same, but I know what I’m loo
king for. Not that it’s made a lot of difference to the painting. Every now and then Pierre brings down the canvas, makes a few more brushstrokes, adds a bit more colour to it. But his heart’s not in it. I’ve been leaning on that bloody windowsill for seven months.
I’m standing at the looking glass over the mantelpiece. Pierre comes up behind me and we gaze at our reflections in the glass. ‘What are you thinking?’ Pierre says.
‘I was thinking of that morning when we first met. You asked me where I was going, and I said the dead house.’
‘That’s an odd thing to remember.’
I look back at him a moment. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Where did this come from?’
It’s a china shepherdess. She has pink cheeks and yellow hair. There is a small lamb tangled in her skirts. ‘I found it in the market. Don’t you like it?’
Pierre puts it back onto the windowsill next to the china dogs and the glass figurine with a viola da gamba tucked under its arm. ‘You’re building up quite a collection.’
‘There’s this stall I go to in the Marché aux Puces. The man knows what I like. He keeps them for me.’
‘So we can expect some more?’ Pierre says, lightly. He goes over to the workbench.
‘I thought you might want to paint them.’
He looks back at them a moment. ‘Oh no, I don’t think so.’
‘You paint everything that’s here.’
He starts to ladle paint onto the palette. ‘I expect to someone looking at it with a strange eye this room would seem full of clutter, but the things in it are chosen very carefully. None of it is accidental.’
‘These aren’t accidental either,’ Renée says. ‘I chose them very carefully.’
He looks at her a moment and then smiles again and this time without turning down the corners of his mouth. ‘Yes, I can see you did,’ he says. ‘They’re very nice.’
He bends down to retrieve the stocking she has dropped onto the floor. He stands a moment with it draped across his hand and gazes round him as if looking for a home for it. She takes it from him and returns it to the cubicle. She’s suddenly aware how many of the items in the room are hers. He rarely adds to what is there already, whereas every time she comes back from the market Renée brings a token of her visit – magazines, another ornament to add to the collection, a silk scarf to swell the dozen she already has.
If it was Margo, she might not have noticed, but Pierre sees everything. He sometimes spends a quarter of an hour when he comes into the studio adjusting the position of the flowers so that the reflection is the same as it was yesterday. He likes the skylight to be open no more than an inch so that the light comes through it at the same intensity, the screen is always contre-jour so that it forms a backdrop to the picture.
She takes up the pose, but she can feel the tension in the air. ‘You don’t like what I’ve bought?’
‘It’s not to my taste, that’s all.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Caro loves her water ices; I prefer black coffee; you would rather have a café crème. We all have different tastes. In this case it’s your eyes and not your taste buds that are making the decision.’
‘Shall I keep them in the cubicle?’
‘Of course not, Renée. At the moment this is your home. You have every right to have your own things round you.’
‘But if you don’t like them . . .’
‘I’ll get used to them.’ He takes his brushes and begins to paint again, but they stop earlier than usual and for the first time Pierre leaves without making love to her. She looks on from the window as she always does, until he’s out of sight. It isn’t dark yet; she could go down to the street and find some entertainment there, but she’s not in the mood.
She settles down to read a magazine. She is uncomfortably aware that there are situations where her beauty doesn’t work for her, when it might even be a handicap. She’s worried that her lack of education irritates him, and his moodiness is an attempt to hide his disappointment.
There are pigeons scratting on the skylight, sliding down the glass pane to the gutter and then climbing crab-wise up again like skiers on a steep slope. Pierre’s studio is one floor from the top, but the façade is terraced with a slanting patch of roof above each storey. Renée watches as the pigeons strut and slide, occasionally taking off and fluttering together in the air before collapsing awkwardly again onto the sloping roof.
Somebody in the room above turns on a tap. She finds the sounds that percolate through from the other studios consoling. Having grown up in a family where there were other children, she is used to noise. It doesn’t bother her whereas she knows that Pierre is irritated by it. Noise, crowds, smells – all those things Renée welcomes as distractions Pierre avoids whenever possible. She hears a cough and there’s a tinny sound as something drops. It bounces, and the echo resonates.
There is a footfall on the stairs. A woman sometimes comes to see the painter in the flat below. Once Renée passed her on the stairs. The girl was pasty faced and sour-looking and did not respond when Renée smiled at her. The footsteps reach the landing underneath and start to climb the next flight. She looks up. The door clicks open. Pierre stands there. He keeps one hand on the door. The other hangs beside him.
Renée puts the magazine aside. ‘Did you forget something?’
He doesn’t answer her. Eventually she gets up. ‘Better shut the door,’ she says. She climbs out of her clothes. He doesn’t bother getting out of his. He drops onto his knees and stretches out his hands. She stands in front of him and cups his cheeks in both hands, pressing his face hard against her stomach. She sinks back onto the chaise longue and he climbs between her legs. She feels the terse hair of his beard against her thighs and cries out as his lizard tongue darts in and out between her legs. The hard ridge of the chaise longue digs into her back. She arcs her spine. She’s lying with one foot on either side of him, her knees bent, scrabbling with her toes to get some purchase on the rug. The carpet skids under her feet. She pushes herself forward rubbing herself frenziedly against his mouth until it feels as if she’s drowning in him.
They sink down onto the rucked-up carpet afterwards. Pierre sits hunched up with his arms crossed on his knees, his head bent. She says nothing. She is conscious that what is a victory for her is a defeat for him. She doesn’t want to think of it like that, but she has lived with Margo long enough to know that only one of them can occupy the throne at any one time. For the first time in her life she knows what power feels like.
Pierre pulls himself up. Renée sees him wrestling with the buttons on his trousers and she helps him. There are times when she feels almost motherly towards him; he seems so incapable. When he has finished he stands looking at her.
‘Why did you come back?’
‘I think you know that.’
‘Do you wish you hadn’t?’
‘At the time it didn’t feel as if I had a choice.’
‘I didn’t ask you to.’
‘I know you didn’t.’ He is patting at his pockets as if he’s been robbed.
She smooths her stocking up over her calf. The desperation of the previous half-hour has left both of them with jarred nerves. ‘Would you rather I found somewhere else to live?’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘I don’t know. It’s only that you don’t seem very happy with me being here.’
‘It’s not your being here that is the problem.’
‘Well, what is it, then?’
‘I hate deceiving Marthe.’
‘Are you sure she doesn’t know?’
He rubs the heel of one hand on his forehead. ‘If she doesn’t know, then I’m deceiving her and if she does know, she’ll feel compromised.’ He turns towards the door.
‘Why don’t you stop it, then?’ She says it sulkily, but she can hear the note of panic in her voice.
He turns back. Renée bites her tongue. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
He comes ba
ck into the room and takes her in his arms. ‘Please don’t let’s quarrel, Renée. There would be no point in any of it if I couldn’t even make you happy.’
‘You have made me happy,’ Renée bunches up his shirt front in her fist. ‘I’m happy,’ she insists.
‘That’s good.’ He gently takes her hand and pats it at her side.
His footsteps echo down the stairs and Renée hears the street door slam behind him. When she rushes to the window for a last glimpse of him disappearing down the street, he has already gone.
One weekend Renée crosses town with Caro to the Galeries Lafayette. Pierre has given her some francs so they can have tea in the café. Caro never seems to have the money to buy anything, in spite of Roussel’s generosity. Although she doesn’t class her as a friend exactly, Renée now spends most of her weekends with Caro and because she talks so little, Renée finds herself revealing aspects of her former life that she has not told anybody else. When she let slip that there had only been one bed in the apartment that she shared with Margo, Caro had asked baldly, ‘Did you kiss her?’
Renée hesitated. ‘More than that,’ she said.
The look on Caro’s face was mildly curious. ‘I’ve never kissed a woman,’ she said. ‘What’s it like?’
‘It’s all right,’ Renée said. She hoped that Caro wouldn’t ask her to go into detail.
‘When my sister was at home, we shared a bed,’ said Caro.
‘So did we. I shared a bed with both my sisters.’
‘Did you kiss them?’
‘Not like that,’ said Renée, shocked.
‘Like what?’ said Caro, fixing Renée with her pallid eyes in which the pupils were so small they barely registered at all. This is what gave her that remote expression, Renée thought. Whatever she told Caro would pass fleetingly into her consciousness and out again without inviting either praise or sanction.
