by Stacy Gregg
I scanned the horizon for Pierre, but there was no sign of him anywhere. The storm was raging, the waves kept rising and I was alone, surrounded by an endless sea.
The next morning at dawn, I went to the newsagent across the street and bought a copy of the International Tribune. Claude, my painting and I were the cover story, our photograph above the article by David Fisher with a headline that read:
TRAGIC END FOR HERO HORSE
In the story, David Fisher wrote about how Claude had saved the life of more than a hundred tourists inside the Louvre who had been in the path of the terror attack.
Now, he wrote, we are repaying this national hero, this icon of French resistance, by ending his life.
By mid-morning, the public outcry had reached a fever pitch. The radio news stations were filled with nothing else. Everybody was talking about the bravery of Claude and the injustice of his fate.
Nicole’s phone started ringing at that moment. It was Augustin at the Paris Art School.
He had seen the picture on the front of the paper, he said. My portrait of Claude, from what little he could see in the newspaper photo, was quite different from my previous paintings. He liked it very much. And wouldn’t it be appropriate and fitting if we were to move the auction schedule of lots and make space for it so that it could be sold tonight at Lucie’s?
Yes, Nicole told him, yes it would. Her plan was coming together. She spoke again to David Fisher and he got busy writing a news update straight away. By midday the International Tribune had put a close-up picture of my painting on their website with the announcement that the painting of Claude the Hero was to be one of the lots in tonight’s auction at Lucie’s.
By afternoon the international media had picked up on this story too, and it had gone around the world. My dad phoned me.
“Your painting,” he said, “is on the cover of The Times.”
It’s funny to think now that once upon a time, this would have mattered to me. I mean, what artist wouldn’t want to see their painting make headlines around the world? But my art career was not what mattered now. I was still thinking about Claude and hoping that the rest of Nicole’s plan would succeed.
Nicole had told me that Lucie’s would be very fancy. I didn’t have any clothes good enough, but Françoise had come to my rescue and lent me a dress. It was black with silver threads that frayed at the hem. She lent me shoes too, so I looked very much like the rich women who crammed the front rows of the auction room to take their seats. Except they held their bidding paddles in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.
“It’s good for the bidders to have champagne,” Françoise muttered to me as a gaggle of rich old ladies fanned themselves with their paddles, “Maman says it loosens the purse strings.”
In a cloud of blond-haired socialites on the far side of the room I saw Augustin. He was looking very arty and serious this evening. He wore a beret without a hint of irony, and while everyone else was in suits he was in paint-stained overalls, just to prove the point, I think, that he was a proper artist. It seemed quite pretentious to me. When he saw me across the room, he hastily drew the conversation with the posh ladies to a close and hurried over.
“I have been backstage to see Claude up close,” he told me. And I thought for a moment that he meant the horse, but then I realised he meant the painting.
“Do you like it?” I asked him.
Augustin hesitated. “No,” he said. And there was a vacuum, an airless moment between us. “I don’t like it,” Augustin said. “I don’t think one can ‘like’ a work as powerful and important as this painting. I don’t like it. I am in awe of it. It is the most exciting work of art any of my students has ever produced in the entire time I have been teaching at the Paris School.”
At first I thought he might be mocking me. But then I realised Augustin had never made a joke in the entire time I’d known him. He was deadly serious.
“All this time,” he said to me, “if I was hard on you Maisie, it is because I knew you had this inside you. You had such technique, such natural composition. Now you have found the grit and beauty that separates true art from mere decoration. I look at Claude and I feel the full impact of what it means to be alive, and to face down death and look it in the eye without fear. This work you have produced marks your potential as a future artist of greatness. I am humbled to have taught you.”
I really didn’t know what to say. Augustin, who had made my life so difficult since I had got here, was one of the good guys after all? As it turned out, I had no time to reply because the auction was now underway, and the auctioneer was announcing the first lot. As they carried the painting on to the stage I felt sick with fear that if I said another word or raised my hand I might end up buying something by mistake!
And so I kept my hands glued to my sides and my mouth zipped as Monsieur Falaise worked his way through the catalogue. He was so swift! The Lucie’s auction staff had only barely finished carrying a lot up on to the stage to place on the easel before he got underway. First he would explain the work, naming the artist and making a few comments of his own about the art, then he would begin his mellifluous and rhythmical chanting, the auction patter, and the paddles would start rising and the numbers would keep climbing. And Françoise was at my side, driving me mad, translating anything I didn’t understand, her own pattern echoing the auctioneer.
“What am I bid? Over there, sir! Well done, madame! Go higher, mademoiselle!”
Sometimes it was clear to me which works were worth the big money. The patrons in this room were here to buy statements that emphasised their own wealth – massive works that would look good in gilt frames hanging in their palatial drawing rooms. So the art that got the highest bids was big, bold and glamorous. Or at the very least it would look good matched up with your sofa.
“Ugh! Who would want that staring back at them?” Françoise said when the bidding went wild for a painting where a man had been given the head of a pig in place of his own face. Beside her, the art patrons turned to glare at the young girl with such loud opinions, but Françoise didn’t care. She was fearless in the auction room and thought the whole affair was hilarious. A couple of times, she even raised her hand and placed a bid! At one point she ‘borrowed’ a paddle from a lady and nearly bought a painting by mistake – which I found terrifying and she found funny. Françoise, of course, had been attending these Lucie auctions since she was a baby in her mother’s arms. To her they were entertainment to be enjoyed. But to me, it was so stressful! Lot after lot, I felt my pulse rising as I waited for them to reach my painting, and all I could think about was Claude.
What would selling his painting achieve now? The public outcry had been huge on his behalf, but the Célestins had been unwavering. It was not their policy to care for a permanently injured horse. Even with the groundswell of public opinion against them, they had held firm to their position that the humane thing to do would be to end Claude’s life. It appeared that Nicole’s plan to get the public behind us and demand that the Célestins change their mind would fail anyway. And now, here I was, spending Claude’s final hours in a stupid room filled with rich, snobby women and their well-leashed husbands about to pay too much for paintings of squiggles and blobs and …
“Lot number sixty-seven!” Monsieur Falaise’s cry silenced the room around me. “This substantial work, in oil on canvas, is entitled, Claude.”
I could feel my heart hammering like mad in my chest. This was it! The moment had come at last.
“Who will open the bidding at five thousand euros?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Five thousand euros? All the other works so far had fetched no more than two or three thousand. To open the bidding at this sum was –
“I have five thousand bid! Alors! We are underway who will give me six thousand?”
I was craning my neck, trying to peer round the backs of the people standing front of me to see now who was doing the bidding, but all I could catch was a
glimpse here and there of a paddle being raised, and then the auctioneer pointing his long bony finger across the room to identify a new bid.
“With you, madame, at twenty-five, and with you now, sir, at twenty-six. Madame? You want to go higher? Thank you we have twenty-eight. Now twenty-nine …”
With each new bid I felt my heart thumping harder in my chest. Françoise was tugging at my sleeve now, gaping at me open-mouthed. Neither of us could believe what was happening in the room at that moment. And then, there was a brief lull, and the auctioneer surveyed the crowd and as he did so, the two men who had been standing in front of me blocking my view parted a little so that I had the painting of Claude clearly in my sights, and I saw my horse, the pain and agony in his deep, dark eyes. And I realised that what was happening in this room right now, it was ridiculous to me. I didn’t care in the end how much money my painting made. All I cared about, all I had ever cared about, was Claude. So why was I here now when I should be at his side?
It was only once I turned to leave that I realised just how full the auction room had become. Behind me people were crammed in all the way to the door. There was no room to squeeze through and nobody looked like no one was going to move aside for me either.
“I’m sorry! I have to go!” I tried to elbow and push my way through but they barricaded me in! One woman glared at me and said something in French in a snooty tone. I could feel my blood boiling. I tried to part the crowd again, in French this time. “Je suis desolé! Pardon, pardon …”
Oh, come on! Move! “Please! I have to go!”
I was having trouble breathing now, the claustrophobia had kicked in and I was about to completely lose my mind and begin clawing at people like a wild animal when, like a miracle, the crowd directly in front of me suddenly parted and I saw Nicole.
“It’s OK, Chou-chou!” She grabbed me by the wrist. I mean really grabbed me. I felt her long scarlet nails dig into my flesh a little as she pulled me forward, easing me through the crowds. “Come with me now. I have you!”
She put her arm around my shoulder and I felt a bit like a celebrity being ushered through the paparazzi by their bodyguard. Nicole cut a slender figure, but her presence was formidable and there was something about her haughty demeanour that made people fall back and let us through. In a moment she had me out of the auction room and we were in the grand foyer and then on the marble stairs and tumbling together out through the elegant glass doors of Lucie’s to emerge into the outside world.
Even out here, the pavements were busy, thronging with people who hadn’t been able to fit inside the auction house. The café beside Lucie’s was overflowing onto the pavement, with elegant couples sipping drinks.
“Take deep breaths, that’s it,” Nicole told me as I crouched with my head between my knees trying to get my equilibrium back. Then she grabbed a waiter from the café, spoke charmingly to him, and I saw him scurry off. A moment later he’d brought us back a chair for me to sit on and a tall glass of fizzy water for me.
“Here, drink this.” Nicole passed me the glass and I knocked it back in a single gulp.
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
“Oui, oui, Petit Chou-chou Anglaise,” Nicole soothed, “but take a moment first to catch your breath.”
“Do you feel well enough to go back inside now?” Nicole asked me. “This is your moment of glory. Your work is going to fetch a record price, I think.”
I had thought she understood. “I’m not going back in,” I explained. “I don’t care about the painting. I want to go back to Claude,”
Nicole gave my hand a squeeze. “I understand completely,” she said. “Who cares about a room full of bourgeoisie? Tonight of all nights, you should be with him, no?”
I felt bad to be running away. “I’m not being ungrateful, Nicole … I know how much this means to you …”
“Don’t be silly, Chou-chou!” I felt her arms around me, smelt her heady oriental perfume as she embraced me. “Go to him now! We have done what we can but if these are truly to be his final hours, you should be at his side.”
And then I was running, my legs like jelly underneath me, lungs feeling like they would burst. All the way down the boulevard Henri IV to the gates of the Célestins.
Alexandre, of all people, was on guard duty.
“Maisie?” He dropped the newspaper he’d been reading. “I thought you were at the auction?”
“Alexandre, please? May I come in?”
Alexandre frowned. “You shouldn’t be here, Maisie, not now … They will be coming for him soon.”
He gave a sigh and reached beneath the desk of the sentry box, pressed the button and the automatic doors swung open.
“If the guards come, you make yourself invisible, yes?” Alexandre said. “You are not here.”
“I am not here,” I confirmed. “I am a shadow.”
“That’s my girl,” Alexandre said. And then, with a wave of his hand, “Hurry now! A shadow moves quickly! Go to him!”
There was a moment, outside Claude’s stall, when I could not bring myself to open the door. But what kind of friend would that make me if I could not confront whatever I found in that room? And so I slid the bolt and stepped into the gloom.
He was alive! And at the sight of me he raised his head and gave a nicker. I fell to my knees beside him, saying his name, cradling his mighty head in my arms.
“I know you’re in such pain, Claude,” I whispered as I stroked his forelock. “But you won’t need to be brave for much longer. I promise you, when they come for you, no matter how much it breaks my heart, I will stick by you. I’ll be with you in the end. I promise, I promise …”
Footsteps outside in the corridor! Alexandre’s voice and that of the vet and another man. I knew him by sight when the three of them appeared. He was the Maître de Chevalier. The Horse Master of the Célestins.
“Please …” I was about to beg them for more time, for one more chance to change things. But before I could, Alexandre was telling me something, words that took a moment to register.
“We’re not here to harm him, Maisie. There has been word from above, from no less than the President of France himself. We’ve been instructed that Claude is to be taken immediately to the vet hospital and all their resources are to be placed at our disposal. The horse is to be saved at any cost.”
I couldn’t believe it. The publicity around the auction must have worked.
“Are you serious?” Tears were running unchecked down my cheeks. “Alexandre, is this for real?”
Alexandre dried my eyes, helped me up from the floor.
“It’s for real,” he said. “You did it, Maisie. You and Nicole and that journalist at the International Tribune.”
He smiled at me. “Claude is a symbol of Paris now. Our eternal flame. And this is the will of the people of Paris. Claude must survive.”
When the seawater had reached my waist, and the waves that kept coming now struck me as high as my chest, I became so cold that I couldn’t feel my fingers any more. And the rain! It had been torrential before, but now it was driving down in a bleak grey cloak that smothered us. The rush of the wind and the roar of the sea was so loud that it filled my ears. So much so that I truly didn’t hear the horse galloping hard towards us until it was almost too late. Then my ears pricked at the sound of the hoof beats and the cries calling my name, straining against the wind, Pierre’s voice anguished and grief-stricken.
“I’m here!” I called back. “I’m alive! I’m here!”
And then, through the rain and the gloom, Pierre appeared. His horse was still in motion as he threw himself from her back and ran to me, picking me up with his hands around my waist, dragging me out of the water. I must have weighed twice my usual amount, my clothes were drenched through and sodden with seawater. Thank God at least I don’t wear foolish skirts and layers of petticoats, I was heavy enough to carry in my trousers. Pierre held me in his arms like a baby, clutching me close to him.
“You�
�re freezing!” he said.
“I know that!” I stammered in reply. And he laughed at this, but it was a high-pitched anxious laugh. Because now that he had found me, our troubles were clearly not over yet. The waters were still rising.
“Where is Babette?” I asked. For I could see now that this horse was another grey mare from our stables.
“Babette is wounded,” Pierre said. “It all went wrong. The bulls … I had trouble with them. They went wild. I was trying to control them and they charged us down. Babette got gored by one of them as we drove them through the gates. I had to ask one of the gardians to exchange horses with me and take her back to Flamants Roses while I came to look for you.”
As he told me this he was holding me tight to his chest, trying to use his body heat to thaw my cold bones. It was working. I could feel his heart beating hard against my own and little by little the feeling was flowing back into my fingers once more.
“There’s no basket on your saddle,” I observed.
“Can you ride astride, do you think?” Pierre asked hopefully. “I’ll double you in front of me. This horse is a good one, she will get us home …”
