Clare drew more and more surely, following the line of the girl’s profile, her neck, the clavicles, gleaming through the almost transparent skin. She rubbed in two smudges just below the throat, the pale shadows cupped there, then traced the childish breasts, the rib cage, the sunken navel, feeling light, humming with a faint current, as if what she saw passed through not just her eyes, but her whole body, before re-entering the world, as a drawing.
Jane was working on a complex study of the girl’s feet, filling the whole page, as if they were the feet of a giantess.
Elsie chewed her lip as she toiled over the woman’s face. Halfway through the class, she looked at her watch fob and got up from her easel. She had to go to a dress fitting, she apologized to Mary.
Jane tore off the moment Mary dismissed them. “Don’t forget,” she called to Clare over her shoulder.
Clare stayed to work on her plein air painting of the other day. She primed a canvas with sienna, then squeezed white, black, ochre, French ultramarine, cobalt blue, Hooker’s green, lemon yellow, and cadmium red onto her palette, along with a puddle of turpentine and stand oil. She unwrapped her brushes from their oily cloth and wiped her hands on her apron.
She worked for hours, scraping the painting down to start afresh again and again, until she finally sank down on the easel bench in frustration.
“You’ve used too much white too soon,” Mary said. She had just begun working on her own canvas. It was late in the afternoon and as often happened, Clare was the only student still there.
“That’s why it’s chalky. Lighten by moving up through values of pure colour and mixes, rather than simply adding white,” Mary added.
“There’s so much to learn. It will take years!” Clare’s frustration was like ammonia salts. It made her breath catch and her eyes tear. How to capture light, its weight and temperature, its sizzle and glimmer? She understood that much of painting was simply the mastering of craft but if she could achieve what she saw in her mind, what she admired in Mary’s and Arthur Lismer’s work, in the paintings of Henrietta Mabel May, it would feel like sorcery.
“Anything worth learning takes years, my painting master in Europe said.” Mary wiped a brush with a rag.
“I can’t just run off to Paris,” Clare said, blinking back tears.
Mary put her brush down on her palette. She sat and planted her hands on her knees. “There were many, many students who came to study in Europe, who learned nothing, Clare. When I left for Europe, I was glad to be free. My husband Edwin was very charming, but I had been too young when I married him to see that he was a spoiled child. In the end, especially when we remained childless, he wanted a mother rather than a wife. I assumed I couldn’t conceive.” Mary rubbed a bony knuckle. “When I went to Europe I loved the student life, the unlikely alliances, the sense that we had no responsibilities to our new cities, their people, hardly even to each other — we were citizens of art. And then I got pregnant.”
“You had a baby?” Clare said.
“I know it may be hard to imagine, but I was young and beautiful in those days. And in love.”
Clare looked at Mary. Yes, she could see that beauty. Her hair, pulled up in a bun, was still thick. Her face, with its wide jaw and grey eyes, was strong. Sometimes when she smiled, it was possible to see a younger woman, carefree and passionate.
Mary stood up and resumed cleaning her brush, dipping it in turpentine, wiping it dry. The grey of her eyes catching the light, faded. “It happened more often than you might think. Everything was different there. Or at least we thought it was. But there are things that you pay a price for, no matter how free you feel.”
“What did you do?” Clare, painting forgotten, was remembering her own fears, waiting for her period. At home, women who got pregnant were sent to live with an aunt or a cousin in another town until the baby was born. And then the child was given up, to a farming family or distant relatives who had no children. The thought of giving up Leo’s baby was so painful that she had simply refused to think about it. And then she didn’t have to.
“It was a boy. I gave him up.”
“That must have been so difficult,” Clare said softly.
“Only working hard could justify that choice. I spent the next fifteen years devoted to painting, spending long hours in damp ateliers, living on my dwindling savings, until my paintings were finally recognized.” Mary examined the bristles of her brush and laid it down to dry.
AS CLARE WAS LEAVING, Mary said, “It hasn’t been announced yet but Mr. Lismer has just wrestled some money from the board for scholarships. He gave such an inspiring speech about the power of art to elevate society and the school’s responsibility to make it available to not just the rich, they had no choice but to approve his motion. I’m sure some of them have had second thoughts since, but it’s done. You should apply. You are doing well, despite your … impediment.”
“Perhaps I could convince them I am a symbol of Halifax resiliency,” Clare said, only half joking.
“I will put your name forth,” Mary said.
“Thank you,” said Clare. What she meant was, thank you for telling me about your past. That she was grateful for what Mary was teaching her, not just about painting.
Mary looked at her thoughtfully. “Now, you should be going. I hear you are expected for tea with Mrs. Biggs this afternoon.”
THE PETALS from the magnolia in the Biggs garden lay like pale shells on the lawn. Mrs. Biggs answered the door. It seemed she had to use all her strength to open it. Jane’s father had died ten years ago in an accident at his lumber mill. Jane never talked about him and she resembled her mother so strongly that it seemed as if he might not have existed. Mrs. Biggs looked fragile. In Grafton, the strongest farmwomen weren’t always the plump radiant ones. They could be like roses, lush at first but needing too much nurturing to thrive. No, often the strong ones were more like tansy: spindly and resilient, good at taking root wherever they landed. Still though, there was something in Eleanor Biggs’s face that was different from those practical women. Perhaps she was married young and somehow never quite grew up. Could a person marry, have children, grow old, and not really change? Clare had never asked her own mother that. It was not the kind of thing people talked about at home. Unlike Mary and the other women artists, who stopped by the school from time to time. They spoke freely. They studied their own thoughts.
“Come in, Clare.” Mrs. Biggs ushered her past the grandfather clock and the curiosity cabinet to a drawing room that looked like it never got used. Two Queen Anne’s chairs crouched discreetly on either side of a red velour-covered Victorian couch. A silver tea service and a plate of white cake waited in the middle of a polished round table with feet of enormous lion paws.
Clare looked past Mrs. Biggs, expecting Jane to come clattering down the stairs. Mrs. Biggs, as if reading her mind, said, “Jane is out visiting her great aunt this afternoon.” She pushed a strand of hair from her temple. “Please have a seat. Tea?”
Clare sat in one of the Queen Anne chairs, her teacup balanced on her lap, waiting a trifle nervously to hear why she had been summoned.
“I wanted to thank you for your friendship. On Jane’s behalf, that is,” Mrs. Biggs began, cutting into the cake. “She can be trying. I hear that she tried her best to drown the other day.”
Clare laughed. “Well, she is enthusiastic.” What she wanted to say was that Jane made all the other girls in the class look dull. “I came into the class late and she made me feel welcome. It’s I who is grateful for her friendship.”
“Good. Because I have a proposition for you.” Mrs. Biggs slid a cake knife under the wedge and lifted it onto a plate. “Jane wants more than anything to have a proper art training. Mrs. Hamilton tells me that she has some talent. She could benefit from a year of training in Paris. And it looks like this war is almost over.” She pushed the plate towards Clare. “My mind would rest easier if someone accompanied her. I can’t go because of my health. Mrs. Hamilton has
recommended you.” She picked up the teapot. “More tea?” She refilled Clare’s cup then sat back and regarded her. “I would be willing to pay for both of your expenses if you agree.”
Paris! Clare’s thoughts leapt about as if her domestic mind was for the first time roaming the wild world. Paris! She’d talk to Mary right away. Mary would know where to go, what to do, how to live in Paris.
Jane was coming up the stairs when Mrs. Biggs opened the front door as Clare left. Jane rushed to Clare and grabbed her hands. “What do you say? Isn’t it a splendid plan?” The two of them twirled around the porch while Mrs. Biggs stood in the doorway, smiling indulgently.
CLARE WALKED HOME hardly feeling the ground beneath her, rushing to share her news with Geraldine. There she was, her slender back bent over the roses that grew by the front porch. Hard cold or the fires that had consumed so many houses might have killed the pink Damask rose. But it had flowered extravagantly, as if the winter’s suffering had been rich compost. Its canes were weighted to the ground with blooms. This was, thought Clare, both the comforting and the frightening thing about nature: it went on without them.
“I’ve just had the most extraordinary offer,” she called breathlessly before she even got up the front walk. Geraldine turned with an exasperated look. Thorns had pulled at her wiry hair. The hand that held her clippers was bloody.
“Well, what are you going to do?” Geraldine asked when Clare had blurted out the news.
As Clare had walked home, the year in Paris had formed itself fully in her mind. Paris had become essential. She did a little jig. “I’m going, of course!”
“So, you won’t return to the glassworks,” Geraldine said, disappointment straining her voice. She pushed the strands of her hair back, leaving a smear of blood on her cheek. “At first I thought these art classes were a diversion. Then I realized that they were the only thing that got you out of bed. Now. Oh, I envy you. It must be nice to live a dream.”
“How are things at the factory?” Clare scooped up a corner of Geraldine’s apron and wiped the blood from her cheek. Clare didn’t miss the dreary repetitiveness of the work but she missed the conversations in the private kingdom of the packing room: the gossip and small spectacles of love lives, the rumours from the world at large, through cousins in New York, or American magazines — women smoking, driving cars, and going to jazz clubs. She missed the end of the workday when the girls leaned into the mirrors to fix their hats, cheap perfume rising from their cleavages, and how they linked arms as they walked out the factory gates.
“We’re busy,” Geraldine rubbed her knuckles against her forehead as if a headache pulsed there, “even now that most of the windows of the buildings left standing have been replaced. And good riddance, I say, to some of the old rundown places that were burned to the ground. I think we’re better off for having lost them. Sometimes starting over’s best.” She licked the scratch on her thumb. “I stopped in to visit Nora Little the other day. You remember she took in two orphans, a girl of five and her three-year-old brother? The boy still wets his bed often and wakes in the night. But he calls Nora Mama, and I do believe he’s forgotten his own. Everything, including photos, was lost, so he won’t even know what she looked like.” Geraldine plunked herself down in the dirt. “I just keep thinking about that poor woman, what she would have felt when she was alive, if she knew that she would be totally forgotten. But maybe Nora has a point, that it’s better if they just get on with their new lives and not be bothered with all that sad business.”
“Have you seen Jack Bell lately?” Clare said.
Geraldine sighed. “Oh aye, he prowls around, as ever.”
“Does he seem better?”
“Perhaps a little less thin, but more bad-humoured. The other day I took some papers to the office. Jack was shaking a newspaper at the new secretary, saying something about a senator reminding the premier that several naturalized Germans had been detained on suspicion of collaboration. Ranting that the government needs to make sure any Germans holding sensitive positions be identified. The poor woman said, A glass-blower was hardly the Defence Minister. Why did Baker come here? Jack said, Why leave a good job in Ontario to come to Halifax? What’s here for him? I’ll tell you. Opportunity. And he tossed that paper down. The opportunity to see when every ship leaves in every convoy from this harbour.”
“Fred Baker, a spy?” Clare gasped. “That’s preposterous.”
“It’s hard to imagine. But these are strange times,” Geraldine said. “Though, with Celia around, he doesn’t have time for spying.” She smoothed her skirt. “I just hope Celia’s heart isn’t broken. She’s quite in love with Fred.”
“I thought she was fond of him, but in love? Isn’t she a little young for him?”
“Haven’t you noticed? There are almost no young men around!” Geraldine pushed herself up and began attacking the roses again. “Besides, he’s not that old. What is he? Thirty? She’s only twelve years younger. Lots of good marriages have been made between people with wider differences.”
“Marriage?” Clare said. Fred in love with Celia?
“Don’t worry, nobody’s proposed marriage.”
“I’m not worried,” Clare said, “I’m going to Paris!” She twirled and dashed up the stairs.
41
LUCIEN SUCKED HIS TEETH happily at the sight of the wheat, still green and just beginning to flower. Leo had to support him these days on the short walk back from the fields. He wondered if Lucien had let himself grow weak now that he was here to help.
Lately Leo had also been helping Hugo dig a new well. Some days he walked back from Hugo’s the long way. His back was sore and he was sunburned. He thought of the first sunburns of summer as a child, as if the sun was something he had drunk, a potion which filled him with pleasant lethargy, a hot tingling that made him amnesic for winter. One of the few memories he had of his mother was her rough hand rubbing his skin with calamine lotion after one such day.
LEO SAW THE British military vehicle parked in front of the house, the private stationed outside the door, as he came over the rise. Leo limped towards the house as if at the end of an invisible rope. He tried to gather his thoughts but each time he started to assemble words, a white roar in his ears drowned them out.
The private disappeared into the house and two men appeared at the door. By the time Leo reached them, Natalie had stepped out behind them.
“This is Armand,” she said, “my husband. He doesn’t speak English.” She looked at Leo. “Je leur ai dit que tu es blessé. Montrez-leur ta jambe.” She flicked her eyes down to his injured leg.
Leo leaned down and rolled up his pant leg to expose his injury, which was still red and swollen. One of the men stepped forward to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.” He was an American, tall with sandy hair and a sunburn across the bridge of his nose. “Hope you don’t mind if we set up shop here for a few hours.”
Leo turned to Natalie who said, “Ils restent ici pour quelques heures.”
The other man wore a British uniform. He nodded at Leo. “Hello there.”
The moment hung motionless in the slanting light. Natalie looked at him imploringly. Leo nodded his head.
Inside Lucien sat by the fire, his hands clasped in his lap. He looked up at Leo anxiously. Natalie shot Lucien a veiled look.
Three glasses of brandy and a map sat on the kitchen table. Another American was leaning over, studying it. Natalie joined him. “So, there is a farm here?” he said, stabbing at the map.
“Oui, yes, that is the farm of Hugo Aubert,” she said.
“And here,” his finger traced a line, “is a road?”
“Yes, it is a farm road.”
“And where does it go?” he said.
They continued around the table in this way for a few minutes, discussing tracks and wells and farms.
The Brit said, “We can probably get the machinery on this road now that the weather is drier. Then move you Americans up here. The Canadia
ns are busy at Arras, poor devils.”
“I hear they’re taking a beating,” one of the Americans said.
“They’ve had heavy losses in the last weeks,” the Brit said, leaning on outstretched arms.
Leo left to clean the chicken coup. The moon was just lifting off the hill, inflated slightly in the shimmering heat, like an air balloon, whose ropes had just been loosed.
He came in as darkness was descending. The men were rolling up the map.
“Well, thanks for your hospitality,” the freckled American said. “Sorry we don’t have someone along who speaks French. Where did you learn to speak English?” he said to Natalie.
Natalie flushed. “I learn in the village. When les Anglais are there I talk with them. To practise.”
“Ahh,” the American said, knowingly, flicking a look at Leo. “Where’d you get that?” he pointed to his leg.
Leo searched his mind. Where were the French when he escaped? He looked at Natalie, as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Il demande où tu as obtenu ta blessure,” she said. She turned to the American. “San Quentin.”
The American shook his hand again. “We’re going to do our best to make sure it wasn’t in vain,” he said.
When they left, Leo doubled over on the bed, fingers tightly behind his head, taking deep gulping breaths. Natalie sat beside him, stroking his back. “Two boys from the village died at San Quentin this spring.”
He sat up and looked at her. “Do you know what they do with deserters?”
She said nothing.
“They shoot them.”
“You are not deserter. You were a prisonnier.”
“And now?”
“Now you are my prisonnier,” she smiled at him.
He dropped his head in her lap, inhaling her warm, animal smell.
Dazzle Patterns Page 24
