Headline

by Imogen Robertson

  After an hour she managed to get out of bed and dress and spent a little time with her sketchbook until it was time to have her lunch; she then left the boarding house to spend the rest of her Sunday in the Louvre. Monsieur Pol was there in the gardens as always with his birds, and she thought of Rose Champion as she stopped to watch him whistling his songs. The birds settled on his outstretched arms and shoulders and they chirruped insistently back to him. Sparrows pretending to be canaries. She closed her eyes and hoped for deliverance.

  On the Monday morning Maud took rather longer than usual making herself ready before she left for Lafond’s. She tried to make her dress as neat as possible and brushed and bound up her hair three times before she was content with what the ragged glass could show her. It did no good when she tried to tell herself to be calm; her imagination had begun to rage. What if M. Morel and his sickly sister did not like her? Might she seem too young? Perhaps a more matronly woman would be more suitable to be a companion for the sister. She thought of the elderly relatives – the ‘cats’ – who guarded Tanya. Perhaps she could say she was twenty-four rather than twenty-three. She smiled into the mirror. ‘Delighted to meet you,’ she said to herself then turned from the glass with a groan. She felt like a child about to be interviewed by a strict headmaster. And what if the Morels themselves were not quite right? What if they were vulgar or unpleasant? Rude or off-hand? She tried to decide what level of respectability or otherwise would be acceptable for her comfort, what would the shy small-town miss in her think? Perhaps he would smell of drink. Perhaps she would. The thoughts argued and twitched at her all the way to the Académie then through the first hour.

  At the first break in their work she stayed at her easel, too nervous to eat and too distracted to exchange pleasantries with her fellow students. Tanya had yet to arrive. She studied the portrait in front of her and thought of those strange cut-up bodies at Miss Stein’s. It seemed to her they were about the painter not the subject, a painter trying to see everything at once and consume it, rather than know one thing and communicate that. She dipped her brush in linseed oil and then in the purple madder on the palette and with it began to thicken the shadows so that Yvette’s pale skin would seem more fragile by contrast. When Yvette spoke to her she started.

  ‘Miss Heighton? I was hoping you’d look a bit more cheery this morning. I passed by Miss Harris’s yesterday afternoon and heard they might have something to suit.’

  ‘Oh, good morning, Yvette.’ Maud blinked and turned away from the painting, becoming aware of the continuing bustle and chatter around her. The model held her tatty silk dressing-gown around her, her weight all on one jutting hip and a cigarette in her hand. There was something childlike about her thin face, a quickness, those large eyes that seemed to draw everything in, shivering with an animal glee. More fox than cat. ‘Yes, I am to go along and see a Monsieur Morel this afternoon with Miss Koltsova. Perhaps they won’t like me.’

  ‘They will. You know English is all the rage. Half the girls I know who normally make their money looking after kiddies can’t get work at the moment, because every mother wants their little ones to learn “proper cockney”. Any Frenchman would love to get his sister a real English miss as a companion.’

  Yvette leaned forward to study the picture of her on Maud’s easel and blew a long lungful of smoke over the depiction of her own naked skin. ‘You’re coming on, Miss Heighton.’ She suddenly straightened and set her feet more widely apart, clasping her hands behind her back. The collar of her dressing-gown opened and Maud could see the bluish tint to her skin. ‘Your tone sense improves, but watch your lines around the model’s elbow, Miss Heighton. Anatomy! Anatomy! Is Yvette a human or a horse? For that is the joint of a horse, not of a beautiful Frenchwoman.’

  Maud laughed. It really was a very good impression of Lafond. She put out her hand. ‘Call me Maud.’ Yvette shook it and gave a little bow, still in the character of Lafond. ‘I understand it was you who suggested Tanya take me to see Miss Harris. Thank you. If this Mr Morel and his sister like me, you’ll have made my life a lot easier.’

  Yvette wrinkled her nose. ‘He’ll like you, and Tanya will be able to tell you if it’s a proper establishment for a lady like yourself. Her aunts have drilled that into her well enough, I think. It’s being poor she doesn’t understand. She sees in straight lines sometimes, and only looks for the pretty and charming. Not a bad way to be, but she assumes because she’s well fed, everyone who speaks nicely is well fed too. She never thought what a difference a bit of respectable work might make to someone like you. And never noticed you were too proud and lonesome to go and look for it yourself.’

  Maud looked down at her palette, the grain of the wood as familiar as her own hands. ‘You seem to know us very well, Yvette.’

  The model stretched her shoulders. ‘I spend half my mornings up there watching you all, and I know how hard Paris can be.’

  Maud frowned suddenly, realising. ‘Yvette, did you try to help Rose?’

  The model winced as if Maud had hurt her and twisted her body away slightly, looking tangled and upset. ‘I told her about Miss Harris, but I mucked it all up and she just swore at me.’

  ‘That’s why you asked Tanya to speak to me? You didn’t think I would swear at you, did you?’

  ‘No, but . . .’ She scratched her neck. ‘I could see you admire Tanya and I thought to myself, if she spoke to you, it might do some good. Would you really have taken advice on how to live from someone like me?’

  Maud tried to imagine what she would have done if Yvette had spoken to her. She would have been offended, certainly. ‘I almost told Tanya to go to hell, so no, probably not,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ll try not to be so stupid in future.’

  Yvette gave her a small, tight smile. On the other side of the room Mademoiselle Claudette clapped her bony hands and the students began to return to their places. Yvette dropped her cigarette and wound her way back to the dais. Maud watched her go. She was still a young woman – not more than twenty-five, Maud guessed – but thin as a boy around the hips and shoulders, and there was a wary edge to her that Maud normally associated with much older women. A certain guardedness even when she was teasing. Perhaps not always. When, a little later, Lafond arrived and during his progress round the room told Maud to watch the structure of the upper arm, she glanced at Yvette. The model was biting on the material of the collar of her dressing-gown to hold back her giggles. Maud only managed to keep her own composure by looking down and fixing her attention on her teacher’s shining black shoes.

  CHAPTER 5

  Christian Morel was a handsome man of some years past forty, judging by the lines around his eyes; clean-shaven, though his dark hair reached to his shining white collar. From the moment he opened the door to Tanya and Maud he gave the impression it was he and his home that were on trial, that he was campaigning for the privilege to have Maud with them. Her nerves leaked away under his quick smile, his concern for their comfort and air of sincere supplicant.

  He began by apologising for the very beautiful apartment. He had meant to stay at his club, but his cousin, with whom his sister was supposed to lodge while he was away had become ill, so they had little time to find somewhere suitable for them both in town. Tanya sympathised, but to Maud the accommodation looked palatial. The drawing room was narrow but long, with high windows draped in lace that let in the winter light, and a fireplace at each end of the room. Starburst mirrors hung above both. The south end of the room was occupied by a chaise longue, a piano, and a few armchairs upholstered in yellow; the other end was dominated by a round, lace-covered dining-table and dresser. All the light-coloured wood in the room was worked into long supple lines; electric lamps were dotted around on the occasional tables. Maud thought of the heavy dark furniture in her father’s house; every piece of it had seemed hulking and angry. Here everything was cheerful but not overwhelming, comfortable without being oppressively rich. She was delighted.

  ‘There is a ma
id’s room,’ Morel was saying, ‘but we’d rather not have a servant live in. The house girl comes in every morning and prepares our lunch. In the evening we order up from the café on the corner.’ He looked at Maud, gently questioning. ‘They have a good chef. It’s not the Café Anglais, but who can eat like that every night? We live simply and dine early. I hope that is acceptable, Miss Heighton?’

  ‘Oh, quite,’ Maud said politely. As Morel led them out into the main corridor, Tanya pinched Maud’s arm. Maud turned and made her eyes wide. Tanya stifled a giggle. Morel had reached a door, the first in the corridor from the entrance to the apartment. He pushed it open gently with his fingertips.

  ‘If Miss Heighton were willing to stay with us over the winter, this would be her room.’ With a bow he invited her to walk in ahead of him; as she did so she was shocked by the pricking of tears in her eyes. Stupid to be so sentimental, but it was just as she had imagined her room in Paris might be when she had climbed onto the train in Alnwick two years ago. It was a large room. The bed was brass, wide and covered in white linen, the washstand was ash, the floor carpeted with thick rugs in red and brown. Soft shadows rested comfortably in the corners and draped themselves over the bed. Mr Morel was watching her anxiously.

  ‘But I am so foolish, you cannot see a thing.’ He crossed the room and opened the shutters. Light and air tumbled into the room and seemed to wake it; Maud felt it greet her as a friend. She went to the window and looked out. It gave onto a courtyard at the rear of the building where white-washed walls gathered the afternoon sun and flung it into the room. There was a lean-to by the entrance to the communal cellars and a girl was sitting on a rough stool outside it. She was plucking a chicken for the pot, her red apron a sudden splash of colour over the earth floor. Maud looked down on her, resting her hand on the windowsill.

  ‘Naturally, this room is a little shaded in the mornings, but I understand you ladies work elsewhere in those hours.’ He looked at his feet. ‘Miss Harris explained to me you have lessons every morning, Miss Heighton. I wish you to know that would be no difficulty, no difficulty at all if you are content to live here. My sister keeps to her bed in the mornings.’

  Maud realised they were waiting for a response from her. ‘It is a lovely room,’ she said. ‘Absolutely lovely.’

  Morel looked relieved, then started as he heard a clatter of cups from the drawing room. ‘Ah, our tea. Let us go and refresh ourselves.’

  Over tea, served in the English fashion, Tanya set about questioning Morel. Maud watched her surreptitiously. Yvette had been right about her willingness to sniff out any threat to Maud or her reputation. She was polite but thorough, smiling as she asked questions about the background of the Morel family and nodding as they were answered. Her aunt would have been proud of her.

  Morel was born in 1867 in Luxeuil-les-Bains, the only son of a prosperous merchant in the town and his first wife. This lady had died in 1871 but Morel’s father had eventually remarried and was blessed with a daughter in 1889, Sylvie. Morel spoke with the dignity and restraint of an Englishman when telling them of the carriage accident that killed their father and Sylvie’s mother in the year 1904. Sylvie had been with her parents at the time and the injuries she had suffered had made her health delicate. She was easily tired even now. Morel had taken on her care and support. Then, having given the two young women the facts of the case, he moved the topic on and spoke of how impressed he had been by Miss Harris and her good works. He hoped Maud and Sylvie would speak English together. He wished to go to America in the spring, he informed them, to pursue some promising business opportunities, and wanted to take Sylvie with him. To have her English fluent and practised would make her life there much easier.

  This gave Tanya the chance to enquire as to what his business was. He smiled and waved his hand. ‘Moving money! Trains and planes and automobiles, the telegraph and now telephones. Money has to learn how to keep up in this modern age. But it is dull business in comparison with yours. Let us talk about you young artists instead.’ He turned towards Maud. ‘You are an artist, Miss Heighton? Tell me what your family think of you living so independently and so far away from them. Do your parents approve of your coming here?’

  Maud put down her cup. ‘My father was an auctioneer in the north of England, Mr Morel. He died three years ago. My mother died when I was twelve.’

  ‘An orphan like my poor sister and me? But not alone in the world, I hope.’

  ‘My elder brother James is a solicitor in Darlington. I have a younger brother too, only six years old, from my father’s second marriage. He lives with James and his wife now.’

  ‘Perfect woman!’ he said, lifting his hands and looking upwards as if thanking heaven. ‘You understand then the bond between Sylvie and myself.’

  She thought of Albert, his round face always dirty and his wide blue eyes.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And there is no better man to do business with in my opinion than an English solicitor,’ Morel continued. He seemed more at ease now than when the girls had first arrived. He picked up his teacup again and arched one eyebrow. ‘One always knows exactly what they are going to say. I think I can quite easily imagine what they are likely to say about a young woman living in Paris alone.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Or am I being unfair?’

  Maud shook her head, trying not to smile. ‘No, you are quite right. James thinks Paris a very dangerous place, and his wife thinks any city a mortal danger, and art only ladylike if taken in moderation. Perhaps they are right. However, they have little to say on the matter. My father’s property was insured and the money divided equally between the three of us. It is not enough to provide an income, but enough to support me during my training until I can earn money of my own.’

  She felt his eyes examine her threadbare cuffs, but he made no comment and when he found he was being watched, smiled at her warmly.

  ‘Ah! You are one of the new women. Independent in thought and deed. Excellent.’

  ‘Christian? We have visitors?’ A woman’s voice. They stood and turned towards it and Maud saw Sylvie Morel for the first time.

  She was much lighter in colouring than her brother, with white-gold hair loosely tied up and pale skin. She leaned against the doorframe looking as if she had just stepped out of a Burne-Jones painting. Her afternoon dress of ivory silk suited her slim figure and had some suggestion of classical drapery about it. It was as if Canova’s marble sculpture of Psyche in the Louvre had woken and dressed herself. Maud looked away, suddenly shy.

  ‘My dear, we have woken you,’ Morel said. ‘I’m so sorry. Please, come and join us.’ She approached slowly, not quite looking at either of them. ‘This is Miss Koltsova. Miss Koltsova, my sister.’

  ‘Delighted,’ Tanya said, putting out her hand. Miss Morel took it with a smile and repeated the word, drawing it out as if she were enjoying the taste of it.

  ‘And this is Miss Heighton,’ Morel continued. ‘I hope, if you think you might like each other, that Miss Heighton will spend this winter here as our guest.’

  Mademoiselle Morel turned towards Maud and after a moment smiled with more warmth. Maud put out her hand and for a moment held Mademoiselle Morel’s fingers between her own. They were dry and cool. ‘I think I should like that,’ Sylvie said. ‘Will you come? It might be very dull for you, but we will do our best to make you welcome.’

  ‘Then I shall come,’ Maud said, and released her hand.

  ‘Very good, come tomorrow if you can. I get so bored with Christian away all hours. Forgive me, I must go back to my room. This is not one of my good days.’ She turned to go at once, then looked back over her shoulder. I wonder if she will model for me, Maud thought. One would have to thin the paint so as to create only a suggestion of colour. ‘May I ask your first name?’

  ‘Maud.’

  ‘A proper English name, I am glad. Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls . . .’ she quoted in English, her accent giving a heavy new fragrance to the line.


  ‘My mother was a great admirer of Lord Tennyson.’

  ‘It suits you. My name is Sylvie.’ She left them, her slippers whispering across the hardwood floor.

  ‘Then it is settled!’ Morel said, looking triumphant and relieved. He hesitated as if to say something more, then looked uncertainly between his guests. Tanya at once put out her hand to him.

  ‘There is a darling little bookshop on the corner I noticed as we came in. Would you think me terribly rude if I take the chance to have a look at what they have? I can see myself out. Maud, I’ll be waiting for you when you are ready.’

  Morel bowed over her hand and did not speak again until the door had clicked behind her. ‘What a charming woman! Are you very good friends?’

  Maud smiled. ‘I hope so.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I should like to offer you a consideration of five louis a week, Miss Heighton, as well as your board. Would that be acceptable?’

  ‘You are too generous,’ Maud replied sincerely. She lived on that amount a month.

  ‘Do not be too quick to say so,’ he said. ‘Please, sit with me a moment more.’

  Maud took her place in front of the cold teacups again. Morel reached into his pocket and produced a cigarette-case, blue enamel and decorated with a tiny circle of brilliants. He asked her permission with a raised eyebrow and she nodded her consent. She found she was holding onto her little purse quite tightly on her lap. The fear that something would deny her that room, this company elegantly balanced between champagne or gruel, reared up again. It was so comfortable here.

  Morel lit his cigarette and then exhaled; the smoke curled upwards in the light. ‘My sister . . . Sylvie . . .’ He crossed and uncrossed his legs. ‘This is a matter of some delicacy. My sister has a weakness that I know is tolerated in some parts of Paris, but I cannot condone it. I was not perhaps the guardian I should have been to her during these last few years, and she was introduced to bad influences in my absence. I hoped bringing Sylvie to Paris might break these connections with certain corrupting influences, but I find she cannot now manage yet without . . .’ His voice trailed away and he scratched suddenly and hard at the underside of his chin.