The Restoration Artist

by Lewis Desoto

  “I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I was leaving. It was a sudden impulse. And then there was no time to wait for the tide.”

  “Yes, Simon told me. I assumed something important called you away. But I knew you would be back since your work in the chapel isn’t finished.”

  Turning to the woman, whom I judged to be in her late sixties, the priest said, “Leo is the painter who is making a new picture for Notre-Dame de la Victoire.”

  “What a good idea,” she said. “The chapel could certainly use something other than that dark old picture that hangs over the door.”

  “And Leo is the man to do it,” the priest said. “He is going to surprise us with something magnificent.”

  “What’s the occasion tonight?” I asked. “Someone’s birthday?”

  “It’s a celebration for the arrival of the moules de bouchot. We have it every year at this time, on the full moon.” Père Caron pointed, indicating a brick outdoor stove on which two enormous copper pots rested over the flames. The woman tending the stove used her apron to remove a lid and reached through the steam with a long wooden spoon to give the contents a stir. Then two men lifted the pot and carried it to a table, where Ester Chauvin began to spoon heaps of steaming mussels into bowls.

  Jeanette DuPlessis, who had been regarding the festivities with a look of fondness, now spoke up. “Ah, here are our musicians. Just in time for dinner.”

  A dignified man with wavy white hair, dressed in a beige linen suit and holding a violin, appeared at the table.

  “Bravo, Armand,” Madame DuPlessis said, clapping.

  “The praise should go to my talented accompanist.” The man stepped aside and made a mock bow towards the woman behind him. Lorca.

  I couldn’t help giving a start—of surprise and pleasure. Our eyes met, and I tried, unsuccessfully, to read her expression. She wore a low-cut dress with a single black pearl on a silver chain around her neck. Her lipstick was red and so were the thin leather straps of her sandals. She had fastened one side of her hair up with a tortoiseshell comb and over her shoulder she’d draped a black crocheted shawl. She was holding her clarinet.

  Madame DuPlessis said to me, “I believe you’ve met Lorca already, but not her husband, Armand.”

  The man leaned across the table, stretching out a hand, gold cufflinks showing on his white shirt. I saw the thin gold wedding band on his finger, identical to the one Lorca wore. His name had come as a shock, but I had enough composure to stand and shake Armand Daubigny’s hand.

  “Leo Millar,” I said.

  Père Caron said to Daubigny, “Leo is a painter from Paris. He’s staying over in LeBec while he works on a new picture for the chapel.”

  Further conversation was forestalled by the arrival of Ester Chauvin bearing a large tray. The bowls of mussels were passed around the table, a basket of roughly cut baguette chunks was distributed and our glasses were replenished with foaming cider.

  “Bon appétit!” Ester told us, bustling away.

  I used an empty mussel shell as a set of pincers to remove the flesh from a large specimen. The taste was garlic and onion, cream, with something fruity underlying the tang of the sea.

  “You haven’t had our moules de bouchot before, have you, Monsieur Daubigny?” Père Caron asked.

  “Never. And they are truly sumptuous.”

  “See, the flesh is orange.” He extracted a plump morsel from its shell. “And they are smaller than the usual mussels. But you will never find any as flavourful. The secret is the cider and Calvados. You splash a bit of both in when you add the mussels to the broth. More cider than Calva, of course.”

  The dusk had faded to a deep blue darkness and someone brought a big wrought-iron candelabra to the table. Père Caron used his matches to ignite the candles, and a warm yellow light bathed our faces. My eyes kept returning to Lorca. Her black hair was lost in the blackness of the surrounding night, her eyes were pools of shadow, her cheekbones sharply defined. I watched an orange mussel being raised to her lips, her white teeth taking it, the mouth closing, the tip of her tongue licking away the creamy sauce from her upper lip. I looked away.

  One of the farmhands trundled a wheelbarrow from table to table, tipping in the empty mussel shells. The bowls and cider bottles were cleared away, to be replaced by pichets of red wine. Cuts of grilled lamb were served with small boiled potatoes.

  “I enjoyed the music,” I said, addressing the space between Lorca and Daubigny. “In fact, it drew me here, from across the fields. I had no idea there was a fête in progress. I’ve just returned from Paris.”

  “It was composed by Lorca,” Armand Daubigny said.

  “It’s nothing,” she replied. “A variation on Un premier amour. Which is not my composition at all.”

  “I thought there was something familiar to it,” I said to her. The song had been a big hit for a while, sung by Isabelle Aubret and played on radios everywhere.

  “But you are composing other things, my dear,” Jeanette DuPlessis commented, leaning forward into the candlelight. “Important things.”

  Daubigny smiled at Lorca. “And you have made some progress, haven’t you, chérie? That’s why you came here, not so?”

  “Do we have to talk about it now? It’s bad luck to talk about something before it’s finished.”

  “As you wish.” Daubigny sat back and withdrew a cigarette case from an inside pocket. He offered it around. Lorca and Père Caron each took a cigarette.

  I wondered if Madame DuPlessis was referring to that music I’d heard coming from Lorca’s cottage.

  “It doesn’t even have a title yet, anyway,” Lorca said.

  “What about Nocturne?” Jeanette DuPlessis suggested, waving her hand to encompass the night around us.

  Lorca was silent. Then she said, “Yes, Nocturne. Why not?” Leaning forward into the glow she lit her cigarette from a candle flame. “A Nocturne for Lovers.” Then she sat back, her face claimed by shadow again.

  The way she had said this, almost harshly, left a moment of uncomfortable silence. I remembered the music she’d been playing when I arrived at her cottage, how melancholy and inward it had seemed.

  “Well now,” Père Caron said. He took the pichet and topped up the wineglasses.

  Daubigny sipped and then said, “This wine is very suitable. Although, for lamb generally, there is nothing better than a Coteaux du Languedoc. Lamb is essentially a southern meat, so you need the Spanish influence in the wine.”

  For a moment I was reminded of Serge Bruneau, who also liked to make pronouncements at dinners, but in no other way did this man remind me of my friend.

  I studied Lorca and Daubigny. They didn’t seem like a married couple at all, yet neither did there seem to be any ill feeling between them. But there was some kind of tension. So why was Daubigny here? For a reconciliation? Questions and doubts rushed through my mind. I had to talk to her alone.

  From the far side of the courtyard, music started up again, accordion and fiddle. Under the red and green lanterns, figures were coming together in a waltz. A grog station had been set up near the grill, where the local men were pouring hot water from a battered old kettle into clay cups of Calvados and topping these with a cube of sugar. Père Caron lit a hand-rolled Caporal and the smell of the black tobacco mingled pleasantly with all the other aromas. The moon drifted into sight behind the farmhouse, full and round and yellow.

  “What about it, chérie?” Daubigny said to Lorca, nodding towards the musicians. “Shall we join in again?”

  “You go ahead. I want to digest my meal.”

  “I think I will. It’s not often I get to make music in such rustic surroundings.” He took up his violin from where he’d placed it on a vacant chair and left the company with another little formal bow.

  “Armand usually plays at the Salle Pleyel,” Jeanette DuPlessis said. “He leads the Orchestre de Paris.” Leaning across the table she touched Lorca’s hand. “And Lorca is his star soloist.”

&
nbsp; “Or his second fiddle.” There was a note of bitterness in her voice. “But he won’t ever play the compositions I write.”

  “He will, he will. That is why you must finish your new piece.”

  “My unfinished Nocturne for Lovers?” She stood abruptly, steadying herself on the chair back. “I think I will dance now with Mr. Millar instead.”

  “Of course.” I moved around the table and let her take my arm. “Excuse us, please,” I said to Madame DuPlessis and Père Caron.

  On the edge of the paving where the lantern light was soft, she placed her hand in mine and let me draw her close around the waist. That hour I’d spent with her in her cottage, in her bed, had become dreamlike in my recollection, as if it were something that I had longed for and imagined, but that had not really taken place.

  I’d left angry with her, and I’d left the island disillusioned with myself. But being in Paris had given me some clarity and I felt that I’d come back with a better perspective. I had told myself that I was coming back for Tobias; there was no reason to have expected that Lorca would still be on the island, although I had just assumed it. Now, holding her in my arms again brought back such an intense physical feeling that it was all I could do not to kiss her right there in front of everybody.

  I glanced over her shoulder and saw her husband with the musicians, and my desire was replaced with the need for some answers.

  “How long has he been here?”

  “Since yesterday,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Is he staying with you in La Maison du Paradis?”

  “I told you I was married, Leo.” She was silent a moment, then said, “He’s staying at the hotel. They both are, even though the house I’m in belongs to Jeanette.”

  We passed under the coloured lanterns strung overhead, her face ruddy, then green, then orange, and back into the flickering candlelight on the edge of the dance floor.

  “Why is he here?” I asked. “To take you back?”

  She laughed. “To make sure I’m not drinking and smoking too much. To make sure I haven’t fallen into the ocean. I’m supposed to be composing.”

  “Is he staying long?”

  “They are leaving tomorrow afternoon.”

  Père Caron passed us, protesting as Ester Chauvin led him among the dancers. We moved back into the shadows again.

  She said, “Why did you smear paint all over my portrait and then just leave without a word? Was I that cruel to you?” I didn’t answer and she continued, “I’m sorry for what I said, about your wife.”

  “Did it mean anything to you? Being with me.”

  “Of course it did.” Then she shook her head. “The whole thing is so complicated, Leo. For you as well as for me.”

  “Are you going back with him?” I asked.

  “I thought you had left for good. I looked for you, in the chapel and at your house. Nobody knew where you were these past few days.”

  “It wasn’t me who disfigured your portrait. I’m pretty sure it was Tobias.”

  “Tobias? But why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he saw us together. Maybe he was jealous.”

  She laughed, but with irony. “All these jealous men!”

  “Have you seen Tobias around at all? Has he come back to play your clarinet?”

  “Yes, actually. Once. I let him play a bit. He didn’t stay long.”

  “Well, it’s obvious then that his anger was directed at me and not you.”

  We took another turn around the dance floor.

  “Where did you go?” she asked. “To Paris?”

  “I had to buy paints. And take care of a few other things.”

  Linda and Victor from the hotel swirled by light-footedly. “Bonsoir, Leo! Bonsoir, madame.” I nodded to them.

  I pulled her close again so that the softness of her body was against me. Her mouth brushed my cheek. Across the dance floor, Armand Daubigny was concentrating on the other musicians, seemingly unaware that his wife was dancing with me.

  “I want to see you, Lorca. Tomorrow.”

  “I need to sit down for a minute,” she said. “I’m a little dizzy.”

  “Come to my cottage in LeBec,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said in a low voice.

  “I want you.”

  She glanced over my shoulder towards the musicians. “Oh, Leo.” Her eyes searched my face. “All right. But not in the village. And don’t come to my house.” She thought a moment. “I’ll meet you at the lighthouse. Tomorrow at eleven.” Her hand briefly slipped into mine, squeezed, and then she moved around the table and sat down next to Madame DuPlessis.

  I didn’t remain much longer. The fatigue of the long journey had caught up with me and it was all I could do to suppress my yawns. When I saw Armand Daubigny approaching the table, mopping his brow with a blue handkerchief, I said good night and walked home, hearing the fading rhythms of the fiddle and accordion coming across fields of corn and wheat bright under the moon.

  She had said it was complicated, and I realized that I was on the verge of complicating things even further, possibly even bringing pain to all of us. But it didn’t matter. I wanted the moon to fade and the sun to rise and bring morning, so that I could go to her again.

  CHAPTER 25

  IN THE MORNING, THE BEDROOM SHUTTERS WERE rattling from a wind and the room was chilly. Pulling on jeans and a thick wool sweater, I hurried downstairs and got a fire going. From the stone jug on the counter I drank two glasses of water in quick succession, then lit the stove to make coffee.

  Once the coffee had bubbled up in the percolator and the room was aromatic with the scent of the strong brew and the pine cones were crackling in the fireplace, I opened the seaward-side windows. Beyond the harbour, where the masts of the fishing boats were jerking from side to side above the quay, the sea was slate grey, rough with broken spume whipping off the waves, and the sky was only marginally lighter than the water, grey on grey.

  I looked at my watch. Too early for my rendezvous with Lorca at the lighthouse. Would she even come in this weather?

  And what of Tobias? I knew I had disappointed him in some way, but I had no real idea what he expected from me. Neither did I know exactly what Père Caron had communicated to him about painting lessons. His removing his little flower picture and defacing the sketch of Lorca were obvious signs of anger, though. Maybe he was just jealous of me having another attachment. Piero had been like that for a period. Whenever visitors came to the apartment he would glue himself to Claudine, wanting to sit in her lap, or hang onto her hand, demanding attention. But I would make it up to Tobias.

  I dressed for the weather in a woollen hat and a fisherman’s raincoat that I’d found hanging in the wardrobe. The air was moist as I made my way along the route des Matelots and down the path from the ridge that overlooked the chapel, wet air blowing in from the sea and mixing with the drizzle falling from the grey sky. Towards the horizon a threatening bank of cloud was slowly spreading. I wondered if it would reach La Mouche, and if it would be a passing squall or a full storm.

  A light was on in the chapel. I halted at the top of the path, surprised, studying the white glow framed in the windows. Other than during Sunday Mass, the building was mine alone and not even Père Caron disturbed me. My first hope was that Lorca had come to meet me. But that made no sense when we had a rendezvous in an hour on the other side of the island. It was probably the priest, come to attend to some business or other. I hoped it might be him since there was something important I needed to discuss.

  With my head bent against the wind, I hurried across the causeway. I opened the door into the light and the familiar smells of stone and oil paint to find Armand Daubigny standing in front of the big canvas. He turned towards me.

  “Bonjour,” he said. He was wearing tweed trousers and sturdy boots and a thigh-length brown leather coat. A plaid scarf was knotted around his neck and he wore a soft cap on his head. Very much the country gentleman,
I thought.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Daubigny said, waving a hand at the painting. “Père Caron told me about your intention to redecorate the chapel and I was curious.”

  “I’m hardly proposing to redecorate. Mostly I’m making an attempt to restore that painting.”

  “Ah yes, the Asmodeus. He mentioned it.” He crouched and looked at the area I had cleaned, the woman and the man revealed now, as if illuminated by a beam of light in their landscape of darkness.

  “‘Love and the Pilgrim,’” I said.

  “And which is which?” Daubigny asked, looking up at me, holding my glance a moment. He turned back to the painting. “But then, we are all pilgrims when it comes to love.”

  He rose to his feet and moved over to the other painting, the big one I was working on, a building and two figures, one of them partly erased. He leaned forward as if trying to discern the identity of the face hidden in the smudges of charcoal. And then he saw the small portrait of Lorca, which still had the smear of red across it.

  Standing with his hands behind his back he bent and studied the portrait. “Well. Unusual. And is my wife to be your model?”

  When he glanced up at me, I shrugged.

  “It’s very lifelike,” Daubigny said. “But you’re not pleased with it?” He pointed at the red streak.

  “I didn’t do that. A local boy is responsible.”

  “Ah yes, Lorca mentioned a mute boy. Something of a tragic figure.”

  I tilted the picture so that it caught the light better. “Of course, I haven’t been totally accurate in this rendition of Lorca,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “I didn’t paint the black eye she had when I first met her.”

  He laughed.

  “I don’t see the joke,” I said.

  “Did she tell you that I gave her that black eye?”

  I glared at him. He held up his hands defensively. “I don’t blame you for wanting to beat me up, Monsieur Millar, assuming that you do, but before it comes to that, I should tell you that Lorca got that black eye from walking into a lamp post.”

  “Isn’t that what your type always says? That or a cupboard door. Why should I believe you and not her?”