Some afternoons, Sylvie rebelled against sketching and demanded that they take a turn through the Jardin des Tuileries then along Rue Saint-Honoré so she could peer in at the windows. The displays were becoming more splendid by the hour as Christmas approached: sweet shops filled with great banked displays of pastel-coloured macaroons or truffles like scrunched scraps of silk peppered with flakes of gold; stationers, their windows heaving with reams of butter-coloured writing paper and glistening silver fountain pens; haberdashers plumed in an explosion of lace.
On one such expedition Sylvie claimed she was still not tired as they reached Place de la Madeleine, and despite the threatening weather insisted on turning down Rue Royale. It was a confusion of dark umbrellas as on the crowded pavements the shoppers of Paris protected themselves and their purchases from the sudden squalls of rain. The clanging of metal wheels against the stone cobbles seemed louder than usual, and Maud felt the strangeness of being on the wide streets of Paris with such a fragmented view. When she looked behind her, the towering colonnaded frontage of the church of the Madeleine appeared occasionally through the stormy sea of oiled silk like a fevered dream of Ancient Greek temples.
‘Here.’ Sylvie took her arm to lead her into the relative calm of a jeweller’s shop halfway down the street. The interior was a different sort of dream, mirrors and wood painted white, gold and pale green, and carved in places to imitate drapery. The light from above was stained turquoise and pale yellow. The clerk stood behind a small circular station in the centre of the room, and at his back a mosaic peacock spread its wings over the wall.
Sylvie went at once to a case held up on narrow curving wooden legs that contained a single necklace of opaque glass. It looked as if it had been fashioned out of snow. There were three other women in the shop, all moving with the slow graciousness of wealth. They were as magnificent and polished as the shop itself. The clerk stepped out from behind the desk and approached Maud. His polite smile did not reach his eyes. ‘Miss, is there anything I can show you?’ Maud felt the expensive gaze of the other women settling on her, her black merino dress and the loose arrangement of her hair. She straightened her back and answered with a not-quite smile of her own: ‘I doubt that, Monsieur. Your goods are a little too gaudy for my taste.’
The smile was fixed and he remained in a half-bow as if carved by the same snaking hand that had created his surroundings. ‘And all so terribly expensive!’ he said very quietly. ‘A number of English ladies remark on it every day. I wonder why they come in at all.’ He let his eyes travel over her poor dress and her unpowdered skin, pink from the cold. ‘They do not seem to understand Paris fashions.’
Maud would have dearly liked to slap his face but she could not help seeing herself over his shoulder in one of the many mirrors. She looked like a country wife at court.
Sylvie left her contemplation of the frosted-glass necklace on display and glided across the mosaic floor towards them. ‘I am sorry to keep you waiting, Maud dear,’ she said, and then turned to the clerk. He took in the sable collar of her winter coat and bowed a little more deeply. ‘Brooches, please, Monsieur. I need a little something to cheer me up now the weather has grown so dull. Will you oblige me with a selection?’
Maud waited by the door watching the people pass outside while Sylvie examined whatever Monsieur offered. The other women circulated, more came in or out and Maud observed them admiring themselves and examining each other until Sylvie was ready to leave. She and the clerk both had a vague air of disappointment clinging to them. It seemed they had concluded there was nothing quite right for her among the blue and gold and enamel. They shook hands with mutual expressions of esteem and regret then Sylvie took Maud’s arm and led her back onto Rue Royale then down towards Place de la Concorde with her shoulders slightly drooping.
Maud was expecting her to suggest they returned home until they rounded the corner and found themselves outside the new Hôtel de Crillon. At that point, Sylvie suddenly put her head back and laughed – a deep, throaty laugh Maud had never heard from her before and liked. She pulled Maud under the shelter of the colonnade. The afternoon shadows were lit by crystal chandeliers blazing inside the hotel dining room. She opened her palm and Maud saw sitting on her white glove a brooch the size of a hen’s egg. It was an oval of turquoise enamel, edged in gold with lotus shapes in a darker blue fanned around it and a milk-white opal pendant on a single stripe of gold.
‘Ha!’ she said, grinning so her small white teeth showed. ‘That will deal with the nasty little invert. How could he be so rude to my friend? He will have to work a month to pay them back for losing this.’ She spoke in French and there was a vicious edge to her voice.
Maud looked around her, terrified. ‘Sylvie, you did not steal this?’
The other girl slipped it into the deep pocket of her coat. ‘Yes, I did, and I was very brilliant too. He won’t know a thing about it for hours, the disgusting wretch.’ She returned to English, sounding like herself again. ‘Now, will we take some tea at Smith and Sons? You may read The Times while we drink Earl Grey and I shall imagine myself in London.’
She made to move, obviously delighted with herself. Maud put a hand out to detain her. ‘Sylvie, you cannot steal. You must take it back at once.’
‘I don’t want to! Maud, I did it for you, after all. Now do come and have tea.’
‘I shall have to tell your brother, Sylvie.’
‘I do not care what you do as long as you come along now. I shall freeze to death if you keep me talking here a moment longer.’
She left Morel a polite note before she went to bed, and found him waiting for her the following morning in the living room. He wore a long dressing-gown of patterned silk and the remnants of evening dress. His face was a little grey in the lamplight and Maud realised he had not yet been to bed. She explained what had happened while standing in front of him in her working dress, ready to leave for the studio. She thought that if painted, the pair of them would appear as some sort of allegory of Dawn – she all upright industry and he jaded decadence.
Christian sighed deeply when he had heard her out. Then, to Maud’s surprise, he shrugged. ‘Rue Royale, you say? Very well, I shall call there today, explain the mistake and pay for the thing.’ He looked up at her, a cautious smile on his face. ‘I think you are shocked, Miss Heighton?’
‘I’m afraid I am, sir.’ She had her hands clasped in front of her. She felt like a governess.
‘Then please accept my apology on Sylvie’s behalf. I feared that as she started using less of the drug she might take these odd fits. You are doing her good.’
‘The drug, sir?’
He looked up at her with his eyebrows raised. ‘She has been spending more hours of the day with you than resting, I think. The hour when she starts to smoke is gradually being pushed back, and so a little more of Sylvie returns.’
‘That may be so, but you cannot condone theft, Monsieur Morel!’
He looked amused, as if she had done something charming. ‘Naturally I do not, but I do welcome her recovery. After all these years of her being only half-alive, caught in her dream and hardly seeing the world outside . . . Whatever the inconvenience, I delight in seeing her take interest in life again.’
With that Maud had to be satisfied and she left him to make her way to the Académie in distracted mood. Her work did not go well in the first hour, and she was still brooding about Sylvie’s larceny when Tanya arrived. Perhaps that was why she did not notice the Russian’s dangerous mood until the next rest period in their work. As they gathered round the stove complaining of the damp, Francesca said something to Tanya. She replied in a high cracked voice though Maud did not catch the words, and then fled out of the room, already in tears. Her maid Sasha sighed and began to pack up her knitting but seemed to be in no great hurry about it. Maud put down her cup.
‘Francesca! What on earth did you say to her?’
The Czech was a little red in the face, but looked angry more than
ashamed. ‘Nothing! Only she’s been sighing for the last hour about how hard her life is in Paris and how long her fitting took yesterday and I said perhaps she’d paint better if she spent more time working and less shopping. I know she’s your friend, Maud, and there’s no malice in her, but I couldn’t think for her complaining.’
Mademoiselle Claudette was looking at her questioningly. ‘I shall go,’ Maud said. As she left the room and lifted her skirts a little to climb down the narrow stairs, she noticed that Tanya’s maid had taken out her knitting again.
She found Tanya sheltering in the lobby of the Hôtel Chopin. She was collapsed in one of their deep leather armchairs and crying her eyes out. The man behind the desk looked relieved when Maud went across and sat down beside her.
‘Tanya? My dear, what is the matter?’
Tanya sniffed and struggled with her handkerchief. ‘Oh, nothing! How could anything be the matter?’ She turned away from Maud so that all she could see was the quivering lace across her shoulders.
‘Now Tanya, don’t be foolish. Something has upset you, so do stop crying for a moment and tell me what it is or I shall fetch your maid. Have your aunts been unkind? Come now – I promise not to be angry with you for being rich and beautiful for at least half an hour.’
The crying slowed down a little. Maud lifted her hand and the nervous young man behind the desk hurried over and bent low to hear whatever she commanded. ‘A little brandy and water for my friend.’ He reversed away from them before standing up with a quick shimmering step to rush away and do her bidding. Maud wished Tanya had seen it. By the time he had returned with the brandy in a balloon glass the size of her head, on a silver tray perched on his fingertips, and made his obeisance, Tanya’s crying had given way to the occasional damp sniff. She drank a little of the brandy, which made her sneeze like a cat.
‘Now can you speak?’ Maud asked. ‘Is it your aunts?’
‘Everyone says I am to marry Mikhail Pavlovich Perov,’ Tanya said very quietly, and tucked her handkerchief back into her sleeve. ‘He has written to my father to ask permission and my aunts are taking it as a settled thing. We were at supper at the house of one of their ghastly cronies last night and they were dropping hints to everyone there.’
Maud remembered. ‘Oh, not that young man with the horrible laugh?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘His father is very rich too – grain import like my father, so it would be a merger more than a marriage. Mikhail Pavlovich told my aunts it would suit him to continue living in Paris while he learns the business. Then in five years we will return to St Petersburg where I can show off my Parisian polish. He actually said that to them. They thought it was charming, though he laughs at them behind their backs, the dirty hypocrite.’
Maud remembered him staring at the dancers at Maxim’s but not even pretending to look at the paintings at Miss Stein’s house.
‘You can’t possibly marry him,’ she said.
Tanya turned towards her with her eyes black and wide. ‘No one has thought to ask me, Maud. What can I have to say? He is rich and I am rich and he will let me shop all I want. After all, that is all I am good for, is it not? Shopping and a way . . .’ she waved her hand in the air, ‘a way for men to give money to each other. I am not a woman at all. I am a saddlebag filled with gold.’
Maud laughed. Tanya looked down at her hands and the corners of her mouth twitched. ‘I must marry someone though, Maud. And there are not many suitable men. My family are all so pleased.’
‘Surely that cannot be enough?’ Maud asked. ‘There must be some liking, some affection?’
‘I don’t know. I must be taken care of. I have never had to look after myself, and perhaps it would not be so bad. There would be children, I suppose, and I think he would let me carry on with painting.’
‘Tanya, don’t say such a thing. Perhaps you should learn to look after yourself. But would your father cut you off for refusing to marry a man you didn’t like?’
Tanya took the great balloon glass of brandy in her hands again. ‘Perhaps not. Though I think he would if I decided to marry a man without money. He fears adventurers, of course – that is why my aunts are so often with me – but he thinks if I enjoy the wealth of the family I have a duty to add to it, rather than take it away.’ She lifted the glass to her lips and took a smaller sip. ‘How many happy marriages have you seen, Maud?’
Maud’s mother had married a man in no way worthy of her and had suffered for it. Maud’s step-mother had married thinking she was taking a step up in the world and found herself saddled with a self-pitying drunk. Though the times she had visited her son Albert, now in James and Ida’s care, she had come with the drover she had married shortly after her first husband’s funeral. The couple seemed affectionate and happy together, although of course, it was early days.
‘See? You have nothing to say,’ Tanya said, ‘so if I cannot have a happy marriage perhaps it would be better to be rich than fall in love with someone who may seem rather wonderful but who would have to work every day, and expect me to work adding things up in notebooks and finding out where to buy cheap clothes. It would be boring and I would be bad at it, and even a very nice man might get impatient with me then.’
Maud watched her drink the rest of the brandy and wondered about the slightly wistful tone in her voice. Some remark of hers from another day crossed her mind. ‘Tanya, have you seen much of Paul Allardyce?’
She blushed. ‘My aunts were driving us in the Bois. They think the atmosphere in the studio is damaging my bloom. He came and spoke to us for a while and asked after you. I told you that.’ Maud nodded. Tanya’s attempt to be casual about seeing the handsome American again had been charming really, but Maud, too busy with learning about the Morels and settling into her life in Rue de Seine, had not pressed her about it. ‘Then he happened to be at the Circus when we went the next night. And I have seen him once or twice at the theatre. He is a writer so he will never have any real money.’
‘That is not what is important, Tanya.’
The other girl put her brandy glass down on the table and straightened her back. Her eyes were still a little red but she was in control of herself again. ‘Would you have said that a few weeks ago, when you were still hungry, Maud?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I think I might do one brave thing in my life, but to live without plenty of money, that would be doing a brave thing every day. Only a fool would think otherwise.’ She stood up and smoothed the long folds of her dress then spoke to the clerk at the desk, her head tilted to one side and smiling. ‘Thank you so much. I will send my maid down to pay the bill.’ He whispered his delight in being of use and as she swept out of the door with her head high, Maud followed like a bruised shadow in her wake.
CHAPTER 9
The Drunk oil on prepared board 45.7 × 40.7 cm
The background is roughly sketched; in places the prepared board is left unpainted and the brushwork is light and loose as if the brush can hardly bear to create the face. Note the lowered brow and the blotched pink and white of the skin, the mouth slightly open and the eyes wide. Its raw power disturbs even now.
Extract from the catalogue notes to the exhibition ‘The Paris Winter: Anonymous Treasures from the de Civray Collection’, Southwark Picture Gallery, London, 2010
15 December 1909
The late-afternoon calm of the apartment in Rue de Seine was shaken by a hard and rapid knocking at the door. Maud closed her book and left her room, then hesitated in the corridor. They never had visitors and the waiter who brought their supper in the evening was not due to arrive for another hour at least. And he never struck the door so violently, rather announced himself with a tap and delivered their food with the gentleness of a ghost. Sylvie’s door remained closed.
The thought that M. Morel might have had some accident decided her. Maud opened the door but instead of the concierge with an urgent message she found herself faced by an elderly woman. She held herself very straight but with her head j
utted forward, her lips pursed tight, and she was frowning so hard her eyes seemed to have disappeared into their sockets. Her coat was threadbare, old-fashioned; her hair was coming loose from its pins and her hat was a little battered. Around her neck she wore a ragged fox fur, the thin head still attached and its black bead eyes glinting. The woman’s expression was one of violent disgust, though in the twitch of her thin lips there was something of triumph.
‘Where are they?’ she demanded at once, peering round Maud into the apartment. ‘Where are the devils? I have found them! I have run them to ground at last, the dirty monsters! Oh, the pretty little devils! How can they sleep so comfortable, knowing they have stolen every penny from a poor widow! Not that I was poor then. Oh no, I was rich when I met them – and hardly a bone to gnaw on now! All charity!’
The creature was obviously insane. ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ Maud said.
‘I want nothing from you, you silly tart. I want Christian Gravot and his bitch childwife!’
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