by Lynn Bushell
She’s been walking back along the Boulevard du Montparnasse and has come out on rue Delambre, metres from where Roussel has his studio. She hasn’t seen him since she moved to Clichy. It would have been easy, once upon a time, to knock on Roussel’s door with the pretence of asking after Caro. She had done it once. But she can’t do it now. She is an exile here, too.
Then she sees him, talking to another man outside a bar across the road from her. He doesn’t look as run down as he did the last time Renée saw him, though he’s not as dapper as he was when she first met him. She’s walked on another fifty yards when he calls out to her. She stops and waits for him to catch her up.
‘It is you!’ He stands back to look at her. ‘I was afraid we’d seen the last of you. It’s months since anybody saw you in the café.’
‘I don’t often go there these days. It’s too far to walk.’
‘I haven’t been in there myself much, lately.’ He draws Renée in under the awning of a shop where they’re less likely to be jostled. ‘It changed after Caro went. I learnt a lot about my so-called friends after she disappeared.’ He offers her a cigarette. His eyes take in the modish coat she’s wearing and the leather bag over her shoulder.
Renée wonders why she doesn’t tell him that she’s just seen Caro sitting in the window of a café. Any other time she would be bursting with the news, but somehow what this tells her is that nothing’s changed, whereas a week ago it seemed that everything had been about to alter. Caro vanishing without trace had a certain grandeur to it. Caro simply moving from one minder to the next did not.
Roussel has that familiar smell of oil and turpentine about him. She’s been missing that. ‘Have you been working?’
‘Like a black. My dealer Hoffstadt sold two pictures this week – both of them in what they call my “new style”.’ He grins.
‘Caro brought you luck, then?’
‘You’re the one who brought me luck.’
‘Me? What did I do?’
‘It was you who told me to stop working on that picture.’
‘Without Caro, there was nothing else you could have done with it.’
‘Let’s say it was a happy accident.’
‘I’m glad it’s all worked out for you.’ She goes to move on.
‘What about you, Renée? Has it all worked out for you, too?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘A lot seems to have happened since we last met.’
‘You’ve got famous, for a start.’
‘As I said, I got lucky. It won’t last. The critics will find someone else to write about. It helped me through that business over Caro and it helped to compensate for the divorce. I’ll never get over the loss of Lisel and Annette but that’s another story.’ Roussel throws the cigarette away. ‘Why don’t you come and have a look at what I’m doing?’
‘Oh no, I don’t think so. It’s too late.’
‘How long have you been walking?’
‘I lost track of time.’
‘Lose track of it again. Another half an hour isn’t going to make any difference.’ Roussel takes her arm. ‘It’s not the first time you’ve been up there, after all.’
‘Did Caro tell you that?’
He laughs, and she knows suddenly that everything she ever said to Caro has been passed on. Caro has betrayed her not once but continually, all the time they’ve known each other.
In the studio there is a range of pictures stacked against the walls, all painted in the rather hazy style that marked the Caro painting, though without its ghostly presence.
‘Rumour has it that Pierre has set you up in an apartment.’ Roussel puts out glasses. ‘Clichy, isn’t it?’ He gives a snide laugh. ‘Quite the little princess. Are you happy?’
‘It’s a lovely flat.’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’
‘Of course I’m happy. What girl wouldn’t be?’
‘A girl who wanted more from life than sitting in a gilded cage and waiting for her lover to stop by two afternoons a week. It’s not what I would have expected of you.’
‘Why can’t you accept that Pierre and I just want to be together?’
Roussel pours a measure into each glass. ‘But you aren’t together, and you never will be. He’s not going to leave Marthe. He could never reconcile it with his conscience.’
‘If you must know, Pierre is buying me a ring.’ She knows she should have kept it to herself. To blurt it out like this is madness. It will be all round the café by tomorrow night. ‘He’s making plans for us to go to Rome together and when we get back we’re going to be married.’ She says it defiantly, but in her head she’s feeling shaky. She’s been wondering if she misunderstood him.
‘Renée.’ Roussel sits beside her on the chaise longue. He takes Renée’s hands in his and brings his face up close to hers. ‘You really think Pierre will marry you?’
‘I told you, he’s already said he’s buying me a ring.’
‘That isn’t quite the same thing, is it?’ Roussel moves his face so that he has her in his line of sight. ‘Believe me, I’m not saying it to hurt you. I’d just hate you to be disappointed.’
‘Why would you care? You just want to spoil it for me.’ Renée tries to tug her hands free.
‘If Pierre leaves Marthe he will hate himself and in the end he’ll hate you too. You know that what I’m saying is the truth.’ She feels tears rising in her. ‘Is this really how you want to live?’ He waves an arm towards her that encompasses the coat she has on and the handbag she’s just looped over the chair back. ‘All these “trappings”,’ he throws back his head, ‘that’s what they are. They give you the illusion of security, but they entrap you.’
‘I’ve got everything I want. I’m all right.’
‘Everything? What have you got? A box to live in. I imagine it’s a very nice box, but it’s still a box and when the lid comes down, you will be in it on your own. Pierre has taken you away from everything you know and what he’s given you is nothing.’
‘What would you know?’ Renée wrenches her hands free. She stands up, pulling her coat round her. ‘I don’t want a drink. I’m going.’
‘Can I ask what you were doing here in Montparnasse this evening? If Pierre’s in Clichy, why are you here?’ Renée doesn’t answer. ‘But he isn’t, is he? He’s in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.’
‘He’s going to come back. I know he is.’
‘He wasn’t there to start with, Renée. I know Pierre better than he knows himself. Whatever passion he possesses goes into his work. There isn’t anything left over.’
‘You must be a bit like that, too. You’re both painters.’
‘I could never be that single-minded. I’m a man and women matter to me. Human beings matter to me.’
‘No one matters to you. You’re the same. You’re all the same. You take what you can get and afterwards you couldn’t give a damn. No wonder Caro left you.’ Renée needs her exit from the studio to be dramatic. She can’t bear to creep away humiliated for the second time. Roussel is sitting on the chaise longue with his legs apart and his hands draped between his knees. Now that it’s just the two of them, she might have talked to him. But she remembers how he treated her that day when she was in the café and how Caro has betrayed her. She gets up and flounces out.
He doesn’t follow her. She pauses on the landing to do up her coat and rearrange her hair. Inside the studio, she hears the clink of glass as Roussel pours himself another drink. She grips the bannister and feels her way downstairs. There’s no light in the stairwell. She steps out onto the pavement.
She has no idea what time it is. The rain has stopped but there’s a chill wind. She had kept her coat on in the studio and now she feels the difference. She pulls up the collar and heads for the Boulevard du Montparnasse where she can take the tram or find a cab.
The key to her apartment is inside the pocket of her coat, but as she nears the tram stop Renée realises she’s left her bag inside the studio and
in it is her purse. She has no choice now but to walk the six kilometres from Montparnasse to Clichy. She takes refuge in the doorway of a shop. Her anger has used up whatever energy she had.
She whimpers with frustration. It’s not just the prospect of the walk. She wonders if Roussel will look inside the bag. Of course he will. She would if it were her. There’s nothing in there of importance: lipstick, rouge, a metro ticket, maybe, and of course, the purse. Then she remembers something else. There is an inside pocket, with a zip, in which she keeps her carte d’identité and which contains the letter she received while she was living in the rue des Peupliers with Marguerite, the one that told the whole world what she was.
She’d told Pierre she had destroyed it. Now she wonders why she didn’t. Did she keep the letter to remind her what could happen to a girl like her unless she took care to secure her future? She occasionally took it out and read it. It was like a hair shirt that she wore in private under the expensive blouses and the camisoles. But once Roussel has found it, it will not be private any longer. In her mind’s eye, Renée sees the painters in the café passing round the note and laughing. Caro had betrayed her. Was there any reason to suppose that Roussel wouldn’t, too?
She has been standing in the doorway for the past ten minutes and twice men have slowed down as they walked past. She can’t stay like this. She turns and looks back down the street in the direction she’s just come from.
It is less than a quarter of an hour since she left the studio. Roussel is sitting on the sofa with his back to her. She waits until she’s sure he hasn’t heard her coming up the staircase. He remains hunched over with his head bent. Renée sees her bag still looped over the chair back.
She creeps over to the chaise longue. She has never looked at Roussel from behind. His hair is flecked with grey and while the shirt he’s wearing is expensive, Renée sees that it is threadbare at the neck. Since leaving Isabelle he clearly hasn’t bothered keeping up appearances, but he seems more at home in his run-down atelier than Renée is in her apartment in rue Clapeyron. ‘A box’ is how Roussel described it and this is exactly what it’s come to feel like.
Rather than risk going round in front of Roussel, she leans over him. She has secured her fingers round the strap and is about to ease it off the chair back when his hand darts out and closes round her wrist.
‘Well, if it’s not the little princess. Changed your mind?’
‘I left my bag behind. That’s all I’ve come for.’ Renée struggles but he holds on.
‘There’s no need to rush back to your gilded cage. The door won’t close until the bird’s inside.’
‘Why would I spend time in a dump like this when I’ve got four rooms to myself in Clichy?’
‘You know you could cut yourself to ribbons on that tongue of yours.’ He lets her go.
She slots the bag across her shoulder ‘Let me leave, then. You won’t have to listen to it.’
‘I like listening to it. It reminds me what it was like living with a woman. Are they programmed to complain from birth?’
‘Yours probably had plenty to complain about.’
‘Ah yes, I had forgotten all those little tête-à-têtes you had with Caro.’
‘What about the ones she had with you?’
‘She took a childish pleasure in revealing secrets. I suppose it gave her some control over her life.’ Roussel goes over to the workbench and begins to squeeze paint out onto the palette. Renée watches as he riffles through the brushes till he finds the one he wants.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Since I haven’t got a home to go to, I sleep in the daytime now and work at night. I’d just come back from having breakfast when I saw you.’
‘If you’re going to ignore me, there’s not much point in me staying.’
‘I thought you weren’t staying anyway.’
‘I’m not.’ She takes a step towards the door.
‘So Pierre is taking you to Rome,’ says Roussel without looking up. ‘I wonder why.’
‘Why shouldn’t he?’
‘I’m just surprised that he’d choose Rome.’
‘He didn’t. We were looking at a drawing of the Colosseum. I said I would like to see it.’
Roussel nods. He squeezes out a worm of cadmium and adds a touch of yellow and a scoop of lead white, mashing them into an oyster pink. He starts to hum.
She lowers herself down onto the sofa. ‘It’s not what you think.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘That girl. When I asked him, he said he’d forgotten all about her.’
‘Did he?’ Roussel turns back to the easel. ‘You’re afraid that’s what all this has been about; that it’s not really you we’re fighting over?’
‘Why should I care? It was years ago.’
‘You do, though, don’t you?’ he says, quietly.
Renée doesn’t answer. Roussel reaches underneath the workbench for a rag.
‘Be careful, Renée.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘You’re not like Caro, but there’s one respect in which you are like her. You let things happen to you.’
‘What did she let happen to her?’ Inside the expensive shoes, the blisters on her toes feel raw. She wishes she could kick the shoes off, but she’d never get them on again. Has Roussel found out Caro’s whereabouts himself? she wonders.
‘My guess is that Caro will have found herself another minder.’
‘She’s all right, then.’
‘She’s all right. But you’re not.’
‘I don’t need another minder.’
‘You need someone to look after you.’
‘I told you . . .’
‘You might fool the others, Renée, but you don’t fool me. We were both tempted by the promise of a more fulfilling life and cast adrift. Believe me, I know what that feels like. You yearn to be better than you are; you look for somebody who’s better educated, more refined, a person who can teach you something. Then you find out they can’t teach you anything. You move on. But each time you leave someone, you leave something behind, you see, until at last there’s nothing left to leave. You’re travelling with an empty suitcase. It’s the only thing you have to barter with.’
Is this what Marguerite meant? She feels almost paralysed with weariness. ‘I must go.’
Roussel shrugs. He turns back to the easel and starts dabbing paint onto the canvas. Renée goes on sitting there. It’s stuffy in the room; the heavy scent of paint and linseed oil seems to have drained the oxygen out of the air.
A door slams somewhere in the building. Renée jumps. She makes a pawing gesture with her hands but there is nothing to cling on to. She sinks back. A floorboard creaks, as if the room is settling down around her. Somewhere in the distance, Roussel is still humming. It’s a tune she’s heard somewhere before. It’s from that opera Pierre is always singing snatches from. The sound is not as far away now. Suddenly it feels as if it’s all around her. There’s an urgency about it that reminds her of a swarm of insects looking for a place to settle. Then it stops.
From the balcony in Saint-Germain you have a clear view of the road. I see her long before she sees me. It’s apparent from the way she’s walking – hesitantly, looking round her all the time – that she’s not just out for a stroll. The clip-clop of her heels goes through my head like tin tacks. As she snips the shadows of the trees beside the road, the yellow flowers on her dress turn black. The hat she’s wearing shades her face, but I can see how young she is.
I step back from the balcony. I could pretend there’s nobody at home. Perhaps she’ll walk on by. But I don’t want her coming up the path. I’m rushing now to reach the gate before she can unlatch it.
‘This is not the house you’re looking for,’ I want to shout. ‘And anyway, he’s not here.’
‘Marthe. Is it all right if I call you that?’ She gives a little smile that wavers at the edges when she sees the look on my face. I may not be married to
him – she will be aware of that – but I will not have her referring to me as if we were equals.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I would prefer it if you didn’t.’ In the space behind her eyes, a door shuts. ‘I shall call you Mademoiselle. My title is Madame.’
The little bit of confidence she had has fallen at the first fence. She looks round. The door behind her is still open. If I were to say ‘Shoo’, she’d turn round and bolt. I’m trying not to look at her, but most of all I don’t want her to look at me. She’s probably already seen me in the pictures. Half of Paris has me on their walls. They know exactly what I looked like a quarter of a century ago. Pierre might not have noticed that I don’t look like that any more, but she can’t fail to.
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Pierre’s floozy,’ I am on the point of saying, but I leave it up to her to introduce herself. I’d hoped that she would have the kind of used look models have in Paris, but I can see straightaway that Renée isn’t one of these, not yet. She’s beautiful; no doubt about it. She has dainty feet in shoes that must have cost a fortune and her stockings are expensive. I stare blandly at her. I’m not giving anything away. ‘Why have you come here?’
She’s begun to wonder that herself. ‘I hadn’t heard from him for several days. I was afraid he might be ill.’
‘A relative of his has died.’
‘Oh.’ Sympathy is battling with relief. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘There isn’t any reason why you should.’
She looks round. ‘So he isn’t here?’
I would have thought that much was obvious. The idea that she is here alone with me is not that comforting, perhaps. ‘He’s gone back to the family home in Fontenay.’
‘I see.’
‘He hasn’t talked to you about his family?’
‘No, only you. He talks a lot about you.’
Now she’s started, it’s all coming out at once. Her cheeks are flushed; she’s nervous and the words are tumbling over one another. She’s afraid that if she leaves gaps in the conversation they might open up and swallow her. Pierre won’t thank her when he finds she’s been here. He might jumble things together when he’s painting, but he doesn’t like his life to be a muddle. He would never have allowed her to walk into our home like this – stray cats, maybe, mice, yes, anything on four legs, but not Renée Montchaty. He will have wanted to keep her at bay.
