Celandine knew her mother would certainly not approve of her going to a pavement café, so of course the invitation was simply irresistible.
‘Oh, very well,’ she whispered back.
Outside he put up a large umbrella against the light, early summer rain and walked carefully along beside her, keeping her on his inside, shielding her from the mud and debris that was flying near the edge of the pavement, not to mention the all too present gentlemen’s pissoirs that dominated the sides of the roads.
‘Have you been in Paris long, Miss . . . ?’
‘Benyon. Celandine Benyon.’
‘Those sound to be French names.’
‘My father was French, my mother is American.’
She smiled briefly up at him. It was a challenging smile and they both knew it.
‘And you, monsieur?’
‘Well, as I dare say you might have guessed, I am English, and Irish. Or Irish and English, depending on where I am at the time of speaking.’
Celandine carefully lifted her skirts as they approached a road crossing. ‘And your name is?’
‘Sheridan Montague Robertson.’
‘How do you do, Sheridan Montague Robertson.’
‘How do you do, Celandine Benyon.’
He stepped in front of her briefly as they came to a bustling roadside café. ‘Pierre? Pierre?’ He looked round, clapping his hands lightly.
‘Monsieur Robertson—’ The waiter was at his side in a moment.
‘A table for two, Pierre.’
Sheridan nodded at the money in his hand, and Pierre, quite obviously well used to the routine, took the money with practised ease and showed him to a table from which he deftly removed the notice of occupation, concealing it in the pocket of his garçon’s apron. A look of quite false concern came into his eyes as he pulled out two chairs for Sheridan and Celandine.
‘Your usual, monsieur, coffee and ice cream for two?’ he offered.
‘You know me too well, Pierre,’ Sheridan told him, as the waiter scribbled on a piece of paper.
‘You obviously come here quite often, Monsieur Robertson.’
Sheridan smiled a smile that seemed to Celandine to be meant to be enigmatic but which she felt she could interpret all too easily. The waiter had been too practised in his greeting, too assiduous in his attentions. It was immediately obvious that this was Mr Sheridan Montague Robertson’s lair, somewhere he could lure young artistic ladies of his acquaintance.
‘To be there when the sun is up, to be there when the moment is right, to be there when love strikes, but most of all to know it, that is the secret of life,’ Sheridan announced to Celandine as he quickly stepped in front of the waiter and pulled out the rounded back of the café chair for his companion.
‘That is a quotation from someone?’
‘From no one. It is just my belief.’
Celandine decided to ignore this. ‘Well now.’ She stared across the table at Sheridan’s bulging artist’s bag. ‘You have seen my drawing of you; it is only fair if I see your drawing of me.’
‘I do not know you well enough, Miss Benyon.’
‘If you know me well enough to draw me, then you know me well enough to let me see the result of your efforts. After all, you have the advantage of me.’
Sheridan frowned. ‘I do?’
‘Yes. You have been working on your drawing a great deal longer than I have been working on mine.’
‘Oh, very well.’ Sheridan bent down and produced his sketchbook. ‘It will probably reveal more of me than it does of you,’ he said, smiling, and at the same time flicking through his drawings until he came to it. ‘Ah, here we are.’
Celandine found her heart sinking just a little. After all, if he made her look more plain than she felt herself to be, or more cross than she knew herself to be, it might be difficult to eat an ice cream in front of him, but rather more easy to tip it into his lap. So it was with some apprehension that her eyes dropped to the page in Sheridan’s sketchpad to see herself as Sheridan Montague Robertson saw her.
Later she found herself creeping into the apartment, hoping against hope that no one would be about. She paused, listening, only for her heart to sink, not simply at the sound of feminine laughter from the salon but also at the sound of other voices – and not just any voices, but boys’ voices. Her heart sank at the realisation that Agnes’s sons had arrived, bringing with them not just their mother, but also their conviction that the world had to stop for them, or else they would know the reason why.
She walked quickly down the corridor, hoping to get to her bedroom before seeing Agnes, and passing on the way the chaos of what was obviously a very recent arrival. Her half-sister’s portmanteaux, opened, with dresses already draped over the bed; her nephews’ suitcases, their toys already set about the floor; cups of milk on trays, half-eaten biscuits left on the dressing table so carefully laid out by Marie.
She hurried into her own room. It was too terrible. They had only just received Agnes’s letter, and yet here she was. Celandine sat down hard on her bed. The weeks of summer in deserted Paris seemed to stretch ahead of her in an acre of unrelieved boredom accompanied, without any doubt, by the inescapable sound of Agnes’s voice. She could see herself walking in the Bois de Bologne, not having a moment to sit and draw, being forced to admire the boys, endlessly and pointlessly – while listening to her sister talking the kind of trivia to which Celandine found it so difficult to respond. It was as if they were thinking and speaking entirely different languages, which of course they were.
Not that Celandine imagined that art was more important than the bringing up of children, or being the wife of a provincial doctor, for of course she could quite see that, certainly as far as Agnes was concerned, it was not. It was just that she found it impossible to speak that particular language, a language that centred on vague rivalries over children’s achievements, or husbands’ monetary success.
Agnes on the other hand could not be expected to be in the least fascinated by a conversation which examined the new influence of the Japanese style on French painting, or to become exercised over whether being rejected for exhibition by the all important Salon – the great grand arbiters of French artistic taste – could in reality be construed as a backhanded compliment, for Celandine was only too aware that Agnes had always considered her half-sister’s art to be faintly absurd.
‘Women artists, as everyone knows, can never sell a painting, for everyone knows that a man would never wish to hang a painting signed by a female on his wall. He would know that to do so would be to invite ridicule from his friends, and suspicion from his wife.’
At the memory of this warning, repeated by Agnes on all her previous visits, Celandine’s stomach contracted. It was difficult enough having a half-sister at the best of times, but having Agnes as a half-sister was a dire warning never to marry, for it seemed to Celandine that everyone who married became like Agnes.
Whenever Agnes came to stay with her stepmother and sister, which she regularly did, Celandine had noted that in her half-sister’s presence everyone was finally reduced to a dull, accepting silence. It was shaming, it was embarrassing, but it was the truth. Neither Mrs Benyon nor Celandine possessed the kind of moral fibre that could summon enough energy to fight Agnes’s unending criticisms, silent or otherwise, or even her sometimes quite open spite.
It was always the same sequence of events. Agnes would arrive full of bonhomie, looking, and quite obviously feeling, radiant – in sharp contrast to Mrs Benyon, who, long before the visit, would have become pale with exhaustion and anxiety from constantly wondering what, if anything, would or could please Agnes. It was not that Celandine’s mother was a weak character, it was just that Agnes seemed to exert some sort of awful power over her when she willed the older woman to stand up and fight for herself, something which Mrs Benyon, for her own reasons, resolutely refused to do.
Dinner on the first night of Agnes’s visit was, more often than not, cheerful. Every
one determined that things would be different this time, that this time Agnes would not find fault, that Marie’s choice of menu would be perfect, that the wines accompanying the food would be at just the right temperatures, and the cheese à point.
Today, it was a warm evening and Marie and her newly hired acolytes issued forth from the kitchen with the hors d’oeuvres, a plate carefully arranged with mixed delights, varying from olives to specially prepared cold meats and hard boiled eggs stuffed with mayonnaise and chopped parsley. A slight breeze was blowing the dark dining-room curtains. Outside, the Parisian pigeons cooed on the rooftops of neighbouring buildings. In the courtyard below there was a low murmur of voices; probably a party of people from some neighbouring apartment going out to dinner. For a fleeting second Celandine felt a dart of envy. How nice it would be to be going out with a party of friends rather than sitting waiting for Agnes to help herself from the proffered plate, while Marie’s youngest protégée reverentially offered her the appropriate serving spoons.
The spoons were taken up; they hovered over the large blue and white patterned plate, only to be finally lowered after only a few seconds. All eyes followed Agnes’s hands as she helped herself to a mere half of an oeuf mimosa.
‘Is that all you are having?’ Mrs Benyon’s eyes registered frozen fear. Such summary rejection on the first evening was unusual, even for Agnes.
Agnes gave her well-practised pained smile.
‘That is all I can manage, really. I have to watch my avoirdupois.’ She looked across pointedly at her stepmother’s burgeoning figure. ‘My darling husband does not like me to gain weight. He thinks it so bad for the heart. Besides, the hors d’oeuvres in Avignon is unsurpassable.’
Celandine looked across the dining room at Marie, whose face was a picture of suppressed fury. Noting this, Celandine, when her turn came, quickly helped herself to something of everything.
‘Gracious me, Marie,’ she called across the table to the infuriated housekeeper. ‘This looks so good I am afraid I shall be coming back for more.’
She saw a bead of sweat appear on her poor mother’s upper lip, which Mrs Benyon wiped away with her heavy linen napkin, before she too carefully helped herself to a liberal amount from the serving plate.
‘Celandine is right, this looks so good,’ she murmured hopelessly.
Agnes made a point of toying with her egg half, staring at it in a concentrated way as if she was quite sure that the egg was probably Chinese and very old, or the recipe imperfectly executed. After which, since the others were busy eating, she stared round the room at the furnishings.
‘What a pity you could not rent a more elegant apartment, but I dare say you left Munich so quickly, in such a hurry, that you were forced to take the first one offered to you,’ she murmured as she sat back to watch her stepmother and sister still gamely attacking what was on their plates. ‘The Countess de Charbonne de Molinaire, whom I shall be calling on some time during my visit before she leaves for her château at St Cloud, now she has a beautiful apartment. Really beautiful. Not dark like this, but full of light, and of course the furnishings are ravissants.’
Agnes always pronounced the French word for ravishing in a particular way, splitting it into three very separate syllables: ‘ra – viss – ant’.
Celandine avoided looking at either her mother or Marie, principally because she still had so much on her plate that she knew if she did not carry on eating they might all still be at table at midnight. Nevertheless the exaggerated pronunciation, the bored sigh as the other two women, already suitably chastened by Agnes’s implied criticism, fell to silently chewing their way through each course to the accompanying sound of Agnes’s feet moving, restlessly and audibly, under the table – it was all so horribly predictable.
Celandine sighed inwardly, and very heavily. Agnes’s attitude was already so hostile. The prospect of a whole fortnight of such behaviour held about as much attraction for her sister as being flung into a bullfighting ring without cape or sword. Course after course, in the French tradition, now followed, all of it only picked at with exaggerated fastidiousness, and without comment, by Agnes. Finally, after the coffee had been taken into the main salon, the dining-room door was slammed with awful finality.
Mrs Benyon’s eyes flew to Celandine’s. Marie never slammed a door behind her. It had never happened before, not even during a visit from Agnes. Marie was meticulous about such matters. They both immediately suspected what such a sound might mean: that unless Celandine followed her out to the kitchen and placated her, Mrs Benyon would shortly lose her devoted maid-cook-confidante, upon whom she depended for so much companionship and comfort.
‘Marie . . .’
‘Mademoiselle?’
The dialogue inevitably began with Marie handing in her notice, which Celandine accepted, before telling her that the dinner had been above reproach, each course more marvellous than the last. Celandine, a food lover, carefully commended the choice of sauce to go with the beef, the exquisite taste of the haricots verts. Every aspect of the dinner was gone into and carefully praised. The dialogue inevitably ended with Marie rescinding her notice, and Celandine retiring to her bedroom with a pounding head, for what with the food and the wine, with Agnes and Marie, with her poor mother taut with nerves, the whole experience had been horrid.
The following morning Celandine bathed and dressed at some speed, and bolted out of the door without seeing either Mrs Benyon or Agnes, for the thought of having breakfast with Agnes and her boys was tantamount to torture.
Once outside she fairly ran down the street, pausing only when she came to the corner of the road, where she slowed down. It was as if she was being pursued by Agnes’s ego, an ego as large as the Louvre museum, but unfortunately a great deal less interesting.
The whole of my life I have had to contend with Agnes’s ego, she silently told the already bustling street. Agnes, always Agnes! I want so much to love her as I should, but I can’t because really— She stopped suddenly as she found herself standing outside the café where she had enjoyed ice cream and coffee with Sheridan Robertson the day before. I can’t love Agnes, she went on, speaking silently to herself, imagining each word being slowly articulated, I can’t love Agnes because – she – does – not – love – me. The realisation, as well as perhaps a possible solution, sank slowly into her head, before seeming to make its way down through her whole body. How silly of me! Of course! I can’t love Agnes because she – does – not – love – me. Or Mother. She possibly does not even like us, now I come to think of it. So why does she come and stay with us? Because she doesn’t like us. It’s her way of making sure that we feel unsure, lowered in our opinions of ourselves.
A voice spoke behind her, but since she was still so preoccupied with her own thoughts it was a few seconds before she turned.
‘So, you too come here for breakfast?’
It was Sheridan, busily lifting his artist’s hat, his smiling face exuding what, even after such a short acquaintance, Celandine realised was his own particular form of warmth and exuberance. As if he too had been up much earlier than usual, and as a reward had found out the secret of life.
‘Mr Montague Robertson.’
‘Miss Benyon.’
Celandine wanted to look serious, already concentrating on the day ahead, on the study of, as well as the copying of, the old masters in the Drawing Room, but instead she found herself smiling, and a great deal more broadly than she would have thought possible after an evening with Agnes and her barely veiled contempt.
‘You are here for breakfast? How civilised.’
He stepped back to allow Celandine to go ahead to the table at which they had previously sat, and which, yet again, had the ‘occupied’ notice on its top.
Sheridan nodded towards it, and the waiter carefully placed the notice on another table.
‘I have them under my large painter’s thumb here,’ he confided, as they both sat down. ‘Now, for your breakfast you will have the same as
me, no?’ He did not wait for Celandine to reply. ‘You will have yards of black coffee and a brioche and butter with honey, n’est-ce pas?’
Celandine shook her head firmly. ‘No.’ She looked up at the waiter. ‘I will have a bowl of hot chocolate and a petite baguette with no butter, no jam. Just on its own.’
The waiter nodded. ‘For Mademoiselle then, the breakfast of les enfants,’ he noted without sarcasm.
Sheridan frowned. ‘A child’s breakfast? Now what does that say about you, I wonder?’
‘It could say that I am in a particularly childish mood.’
‘Or it could say that you are in need of comfort.’
‘That is quite true.’ For a second Celandine looked so thoughtful that Sheridan would have liked to take her on his knee.
‘I am glad you looked more cheerful when I drew you,’ he told her, opening his newspaper and glancing at the headline.
‘You made me look far too pretty.’
‘I did not make you look anything, Miss Benyon, I drew you as I saw you, I do assure you.’
‘You drew me as you saw me, and I drew you as I saw you.’
Sheridan raised his eyes from Le Figaro. ‘You made me look too intelligent – no, you did,’ he went on before Celandine could protest. ‘You made me look as if I was the sort of fellow who could understand Le Figaro, which I know very well I cannot. I follow five words in ten in written French, whereas my spoken Frenchy is perfect.’
To distract herself from the concentrated look in her companion’s eyes, Celandine reached down into her artist’s bag and took out her drawing book.
‘One should never talk at breakfast,’ she told him, ‘particularly not to a person who is trying to improve his French.’
She nodded at the newspaper a little in the manner of a schoolteacher encouraging her pupil to re-apply himself to his homework, and started to draw him once again, this time while he was too busy reading his newspaper to pay much attention. She became so engrossed in her work that the arrival of her hot chocolate and baguette seemed to act as nothing more or less than an interruption.
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