Keeping the World Away

by Margaret Forster

  She was ready and eager, though at first he mistook her trembling for apprehension and began to withdraw his hands, but she took hold of them and placed them where they had been, on her naked breasts. To be enfolded in his strong arms gave her such relief and she sighed with the pleasure of it. Her body responded to his as she had known it would. There was nothing awkward or shy about it. The thrill made her heart race and she instinctively put a hand to her breast to calm it, which made him look anxiously at her. Did he see how willing and hungry she was? Did he see at last that she was no demure English girl? She thought she saw some sense of astonishment in his expression, and she smiled. She was not in the least astonished. This capacity to love had always been there, waiting. At last it had been found and used.

  *

  He wanted her to have a proper home, somewhere where she could work, somewhere he could visit and be with her, and she wanted this too, but lack of money was still the stumbling block. She had less money now, not more, because she had spent some on herself. She had been to Bon Marché and bought a new dress, and combs for her hair, and a ruinously expensive shawl which delighted her. ‘It is wonderful,’ she wrote to Ursula, ‘the influence upon the mind clothes have.’ Renting a better room was not possible. But it grieved him to visit her and find she lived in what he thought of as squalor; he looked disdainfully at the mess of clothes and paints around her. An artist, he said, must have order and calmness in his surroundings, and she lacked both. How could she produce good work in those conditions? But, suddenly, alarmingly, she had no desire to produce any work at all. She no longer wanted to paint. Why should she? She was happy and fulfilled without striving to convey emotion and feelings to canvas. It was enough to pose for her master – she liked to call him that, mon maître – and make love with him afterwards.

  Sometimes they were not alone. Rodin watched her carefully as he said there was something he needed help with and wondered if she would provide it. She was at once eager, he only had to ask. What he requested was that she should pose naked with another woman, the sculptress Hilda Flodin, one of his assistants. Gwen knew her already, she had earned money posing for her, and it was easy to agree. But she had not understood precisely what she was agreeing to. Rodin wanted them to embrace, to touch each other, to adopt extraordinarily erotic positions while he sketched them, and though she obeyed and held and touched Hilda as instructed she could hardly restrain herself from calling out to him to take Hilda’s place. The tension exhausted her but it inflamed him and in front of Hilda he came and took hold of her and made love to her, both of them worked into a state of desire ravenous enough to seem almost ugly in its ferocity. How Hilda could bear to watch, Gwen did not know.

  He was her secret. Others in the Dépôt des Marbres knew, but outside it she told no one, not even Gus, or Dorelia who had gone back to him, the Leonard adventure over, and was living with him and Ida in Essex. Then they came, all of them, the children too (and now Dorelia had a baby boy to add to Ida’s four) to Paris. They visited her, but still she kept silent as she entertained them, telling only of her work for Rodin and not her love. She did not want to share him with them – they all had each other, she had only him, and even then she did not have him completely and never would. Within the joy he brought her there was a kernel of bitterness because he already had a wife. She had seen Rose. Unable to resist the temptation, she had gone to Meudon, to find her master’s house. It was on a hillside, sloping down towards the Seine, with a landing stage at the foot of the hill from where Rodin could catch a boat into Paris. It was quite a grand house, bigger than she had expected, three storeys and with a large garden. She had seen Rose in the garden; she had spied on her. There seemed nothing remarkable about her, but Gwen knew that Rodin had been with her many years and would never leave her. It was foolish to make herself wretched over this but the tiny hard bit of wretchedness was there.

  Rodin felt it and was disturbed by it. He tried to teach her to be tranquil and let all distressing thoughts go. She must strive for harmony in her life, and begin with the small, unimportant details, like her diet and her routine. It was laughable how his advice contradicted everything she had thought an artist’s life should be, but she tried to please him by adapting herself to his standards. When she woke up now, she lay for a few moments taking deep breaths, telling herself to relax, not to rush, not to roll out of bed and stare vacantly out of the window, then reach for an apple to eat, but instead to rise in a deliberate fashion and walk to the sink and wash herself, and dress carefully (clean clothes) and brush her hair and pin it back and then sit down properly at the table and eat a breakfast of bread and fruit. It was true, it made her feel better, not so constantly distraught, but the effort to keep to these rules was gigantic. She began to draw again, only a little, but her sketches of her cat pleased him. Outwardly, she was more composed and serene, as he wished her to be, but inwardly she felt volcanic, as though burning lava filled her and would explode with the force of what was beneath it, her overwhelming passion for him.

  Rodin was, he said, going to pay her rent, for the first three months at least. All she had to do was find the room: it was an order. She obeyed, searching daily until she found a place in the appropriately named Rue St Placide. He was away from Paris when she found it but she wrote and described the beauty of it, with its red tiled floor and pretty wallpaper and the courtyard outside where her cat could play. It was clean, but she cleaned it again, down on her knees to scrub the floor, the window flung open to air it. She bought a wickerwork chair and made a cushion for the seat, and a simple wooden table with a drawer in it, and a bed. Coming back to the room each day filled her with pride as well as pleasure – who would have thought she could be such a good housewife? Rodin, when he visited, was satisfied. He could see how she had absorbed the lessons he had tried to teach her, and now he expected to see other results. But she could not paint yet, so intense was her longing for him. Every day she waited for him to come to her and when he did not she could hardly contain her impatience. All her energy went into making love when he was with her and yearning for him when he was not. The hand that stroked him could not hold a paintbrush, and her eyes were so concentrated on images of him, they could see nothing else. She was helpless, in thrall to him. He began to tell that he was tired and that she must not expect him to make public their liaison. He had his own life to lead, the life he had before she came into it, and she had hers. But he was mistaken. She had no life without him. She did not want one. He was her life, he had given her life.

  The room in the Rue St Placide, much as she loved it and kept it spotless and adorned it with flowers, was a lie. She stood in the doorway, looking, admiring it, yet thinking that its harmony was a clever exercise in deception. It was not her, this room. It was an image of how her lover wished her to be, and how she had tried to be. All the violent tumult in her was supposedly stilled here. But the struggle went on, and no one, not even Rodin, knew how she was losing the battle. Sometimes, she was afraid of the power of the room she had created. She loved it, but it could make her want to scream and wreck it, hurl the chair out of the window, tear the curtains to pieces, smash the flower pots, and then say to Rodin, Look, behold, this is me.

  But she never did. She went on straining to match herself to the room and make herself a true reflection of it. Gradually, this led her to paint it, the room on the courtyard, the room as he would have her be.

  The lie.

  *

  But coming home to her new room could be a delight. She stood in the doorway, with the door pushed as wide as it would go, and she stared and stared into it until she felt dizzy and had to lean on the wall. She always left the window overlooking the courtyard slightly open so that the lace curtain blew inwards, a froth of mist in front of her, and the thicker material of the other curtain billowed like a cloud. The wickerwork chair, positioned near the window, with its cushion of apricot silk, took on its own beauty in the light that filtered through, seeming fragile (though
it was sturdy) and its criss-cross pattern looked like a cobweb which might at any moment be blown away. She hardly dared to enter the room. The minute she did so, the feelings of inadequacy rushed out of her and fought with what had been total harmony before she stepped into it. She could barely breathe for fearing she was contaminating the peace. She tiptoed across the red-tiled floor and laid her coat on the chair and then at once removed it because it ruined the grace of the chair. To paint this room she would have to empty it of herself.

  But then she found she could not do this. She or a version of herself had to be in the picture. She needed to show the tension she felt. She painted a woman in black in front of the window, sewing. The dense black of her long frock told its own tale when everything else was lightness and colour. When Rodin came, she hid what she was working on, fearing that he would see how unworthy she was, not just of her room. He was so pleased with her progress. He smiled and nodded his satisfaction, admiring the cleanliness and order of her new surroundings. He did not like her to be wild in thought, he did not like her to be tempestuous in gesture, and he did not like her to make her need of his love so blatant. She must be composed and calm and let his own tranquillity enter her soul. Only then, he told her, would she do good work. She listened humbly to him and did not argue, but when they made love she wondered how he could hold composure in such esteem. Their love-making was neither calm nor composed. It was frantic and overpowering, the physical sensations transporting her to a kind of ecstasy and drawing from her cries of what to her own ears sounded like anguish, but which was a pleasure so thrilling she felt half mad. He did not tell her to be tranquil then. On the contrary, he appeared to marvel at her passion and even to be nervous of it. It was he who was the experienced lover, but she would never have known. He seemed almost shy, and was hesitant when he touched her. There was even an air of embarrassment about his undressing whereas she had none and tore off any clothes she was wearing, when he arrived, with great haste. She was proud of her body, but he was not proud of his. His belly was big and he was not happy for her to see him naked. Their love-making, though, was vigorous and his awkwardness disappeared during the sexual act itself. Afterwards, she often found she was bleeding but this neither frightened nor disgusted her – she was ready to begin again, when he was ready. He called her voracious and begged her, with a smile, to remember his age – he was sixty-four, an old man, he said. She put her hand over his mouth, silencing him.

  He came to her room only once a week, never for more than an hour. Again and again she waited for him, and he did not come even when he had led her to believe he would. She tried to paint, but could not continue, her senses too alert for his foot on the stairs. Often, he was at home with Rose in Meudon, and her envy of Rose grew and grew until she could not contain it and had to go and spy on her again. That was how she felt, like a spy, a sneak, taking the train to Meudon, walking with head lowered to his house, and then looking through the hedge into his garden, watching for Rose to come out. When she did so, the woman moved very slowly round the garden, hands clasped in front of her, head held high, an expression of deep thought on her face. Gwen had not expected such dignity. It was humiliating to see at once that this woman was what Rodin wanted and would never let go. She had borne him a son, she had lived with him more than twenty years. How could she, Gwen, compete?

  She could have a child, his child. Her cat had had kittens that summer. It struck her that she ran the risk herself of becoming pregnant, though Rodin had, from the first, said he would take care that she did not, and he was more reliable than Gus was with Ida and Dorelia. She did not want a baby (and she drowned the kittens), but she might end up with one and then she would have a hold over Rodin. This crossed her feverish mind but she dismissed the thought. What would she do with a child? All around she saw women artists whose work seemed stopped by giving birth – look at Ida, look at Edna, look at Dorelia. None of them producing anything now except sketches. A child would be a disaster, and would not help her keep Rodin. Nothing would. He had his own life which he intended to preserve, and besides she wearied him. He reminded her that he was old, and could not match her energy. The energy he had he reserved, for the most part, for his work. She must, he said, let him rest.

  But when he did not come to her, it did not always mean he was resting. That, she could have borne. More hurtful was to hear that he was seeing other women. Sometimes, after yearning for him over several empty days, she would go to his studio and find him holding court. He liked sophisticated women who were the very opposite of herself. She felt dowdy and shabby beside them, though she bought new clothes and had thought herself elegant in them. She would stand on the fringe of these gatherings not knowing whether she was about to burst into tears or howl with rage, and he told her later that her very presence made him uneasy. Once, he paid her for her to model in front of these other women and she was humiliated. He said she should not demand so much of him. She should stay in her home and wait for him and paint while she did so. But she could not. She could not keep away from him. When she tried to stay in her room and paint, misery slowed her brush and she had to abandon yet another canvas, and start again.

  Then he told her to leave her room. There was not enough sunshine in it, he said, and it was too stuffy. She should give notice, and move.

  *

  Another room, another beginning, and, at first that same sense of dismay which always filled her before she took possession. How was she to make this space, these four walls and window and door, her own? It was too much, she had been happy eventually in the Rue St Placide and had finally succeeded in owning her room there. She had painted it well, it had grown on her and by leaving it she was afraid that she was abandoning part of herself.

  The new attic room she found was in a rather grand house and stood on a boulevard that was wide and impressive. There were five floors, reached by a spiral staircase, and her room was at the top, on the left. Getting her furniture up there was an almost impossible task which stretched over a whole day, from seven in the morning until ten-thirty at night, and before it ended she was in a state of collapse. The removal men were drunk and at first would not even try to get her wardrobe beyond the second floor. If it had not been for the other tenants in the house, who emerged to see what the commotion was about, they would never have been forced to persist. She carried her paintings up herself, and then her hats, not trusting the men, hating them for their boorish behaviour and wishing she could have managed on her own. And then, the furniture was at last in the room but looked all wrong. She was so tired. She could not bear to start moving things to better positions and instead suddenly went out, fleeing down the staircase back to her old room in the Rue St Placide where she had left her cat. They went together, she and the cat, to a café, where she had a glass of wine and some lamb and green beans, and felt better. She prayed that she would never have to move again. That night, she stood in her nightdress at the window, listening to a nightingale, and weeping for the beauty of its song.

  In the morning, waking up, she felt strange. Keeping perfectly still, her eyes closed, she tried to analyse this feeling. It was the light, surely, and the air. She opened her eyes and yes, the dawn light was rising through her window, which she had left slightly open, and now the cool air was filling the room. She shivered deliciously, wrapping the coverlet round and round her body. She saw where the wardrobe Rodin had given her should go, and where the chair should stand, and the wooden table. It would not take so long. She would buy some material and make a new cushion for the chair – apricot was the wrong colour for this room, she needed white or cream, some linen or cotton stuff. Her plants would flourish on the table if she put it in front of the window. Slowly, she began to hope. She would put this new room to rights, and her maître would love it and be pleased with her. She would bring out from herself all that he believed precious in her.

  And then she would paint her room.

  *

  Gus and Ida and Dorelia and all th
eir babies were still in Paris, but Gwen did not tell them about Rodin. Perhaps they knew without being told – she felt herself so transformed by love that surely it shone out of her – but they made no reference to it. Ida was near her time again, with her fifth child. Her body was distorted with the weight of it, her eyes lacklustre and her skin without its usual bloom. Gwen felt for her, and shuddered a little at the sight of her, feeling suddenly apprehensive in case by some unlucky chance she herself should suffer such gross interference with her own body.

  The likelihood of this had lessened. Rodin came to her new room, admired it, and made love to her, but he did not come even once a week now, and he did not always promise to come again. There was a change in him and she sensed it and grieved. She wrote to Ursula, telling her that she felt Rodin liked to make her furious and then take her in the middle of her rage. He kept her waiting for a visit for days, because he said he was so busy, and then when he did come he accused her of being lazy and not trying either to work herself or find other work modelling, though all the time he was the cause of her inertia. How could she paint, how could she leave her room and go to pose for others, when she was ever waiting for him? She knew that his excuses were not always true. He was at home in Meudon more and more, with Rose, and he travelled to England and to Germany, but that was not the whole reason for his absences. But she was posing for him again, naked, willingly adopting the erotic poses he required – to prove, she hoped, that he still had need of her – and she tried to silence the resentment that was building up within her towards him. She worked, too, producing portraits she was not ashamed to show him, though it was not his artistic, professional praise she yearned for but a greater share in his life. When she did not see him she could not contain her love, it was too huge, it swamped all other feeling, and so she wrote to him, pleading with him to come to her and accept more fully what she had to offer. But it seemed more and more that what she did have to offer was not what he wanted. He told her he liked her ‘anonymously’, as a body, as a woman, but she appeared not to be able to supply what he wanted emotionally and intellectually. He gave her books to read – Richardson’s novels, Pamela and Clarissa – and she did so but could not see why he wanted her to read them. Increasingly, he made her feel stupid and she knew she was not stupid. It hurt when she found he had told his concierge that she was not to be let into his apartment unless she had a letter from him arranging a visit. It was cruel, humiliating, but she could not do without him. She only had to see him to feel her body on fire.