Although the maître is a difficult man, I can’t say I regret my decision to attend his academy and not another school. Our focus here is limited—there are no classes in sculpture, for instance, as the maître says it bores him. He doesn’t much care for watercolors or pastels, either, and so those classes, which began last week, are being taught by others. But he is a very good drawing master, and I know I have made progress, even if he has yet to tell me so.
I am rather nervous about his class in oil painting techniques. Each year he chooses only twelve students for the class, and I have a terrible feeling I won’t be one of them. It’s not that the maître dislikes me or my work—the problem is that he doesn’t seem to notice that I exist.
But that, I must admit, is a small problem set against the joys of my life here. Auntie A is a delight, as ever, and I’ve made some wonderful friends, all of them students at the academy. My health is even better than it was before my illness—all that swimming in the Med, and now the long walks I take each day from home to school and back again.
In response to your question—no, I haven’t yet written to Mr. Howard, and now I rather regret having told you about meeting him. He is a perfectly nice man but he is not, no matter what you may be thinking, a potential beau. While I’m not opposed to furthering my acquaintance with the man, I have no intention of embarking on any sort of romantic entanglement, so please do put that idea out of your head!
I’ve enclosed a little portrait of Hamish that I thought the boys might like to see when they’re next home from school—isn’t he a dear old thing?
With much love,
Your devoted sister,
Helena
She did have every intention of writing to Mr. Howard. Once or twice, she had very nearly asked her aunt for a petit bleu postcard, for she had seen Agnes using them when arranging visits or appointments. But something had stilled her tongue. What if the man she remembered from that day on the beach was a concoction of her memory? What if he had only been making conversation, and was himself uninterested in furthering their acquaintance?
She had warned him that she would be busy; a few weeks here or there wouldn’t make much of a difference. Besides, she was busy enough with her friends from school. Unsurprisingly, Étienne had become the star of their class, and while he clashed with Maître Czerny nearly every day their teacher seemed to like him all the more for it. Mathilde was another favorite, and his criticism of her work was mild at best.
It was poor Daisy who most frequently attracted the maître’s ire, which Helena thought horribly unfair. Her friend had made terrific progress in the last month, but Czerny didn’t seem to notice or care. Daisy’s problem, he told the class on more than one occasion, was her lack of passion.
“Miss Fields has no fire in her belly. I see nothing in her work that engages my imagination, nothing that seizes me by the throat and shouts in my face. She might as well be creating wallpaper.”
As for what he thought of Helena’s work? As she had said to Amalia in her letter, he had yet to notice her. The terror she had first felt, when he roamed the aisles of the salon searching for prey, had faded once she realized he simply wasn’t aware of her presence in his class. She had improved, she knew she had, but her drawings attracted neither his praise nor his anger. She, and they, were invisible to him.
She knew she ought to say or do something—anything to make him see, but fear stopped her throat time and time again. It was silly, and childish, to let one man’s indifference push her from the path she had chosen, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to address him directly or, even more terrifying, challenge him openly as Étienne often did.
She simply needed more time; that was all. She would learn, and improve, and when she was feeling more confident she would make sure that he noticed her. For good or for ill, by the end of the year he would know her name.
In the meantime, there was the problem of her studio, or, more precisely, her lack of one. Agnes’s house was large, but every room was crammed full of artworks and antiques, and the only space suitable for a studio and its attendant mess was an unheated garret.
Agnes had arranged for the contents of the studio in Antibes to be set up in the garret, and in September, when the days had been long and mild, she’d been happy working there. In recent weeks, however, her makeshift studio’s failings had become all too apparent. It was cold, and would only get more so as winter approached; and the light that had seemed so abundant in the late summer was waning by the day.
Her friends were also desperate for studio space. Étienne’s landlady had taken to complaining about the smell of turpentine and linseed oil, going so far to as warn him that he would be out in the street if he didn’t find another place to work. Daisy’s father, from what little she had said, disapproved of her “hobby” and discouraged her from practicing at all when she was at home. And Mathilde simply agreed that she, too, needed some room in order to work without distraction. What those distractions might be, Helena had no idea, and the Frenchwoman’s reserved, dignified manner discouraged curious questions.
Their mutual need for a studio soon became an obsession, although they never got very far with their discussions. The difficulty, as ever, was money. Studios, even grubby, rat-infested, and terminally damp ones, were expensive; and landlords, according to Étienne, were disinclined to rent them to students who had no visible means of support beyond their art.
If she’d had enough money to rent a studio for them all, she’d have done so; but the allowance she received from her parents, though perfectly generous, didn’t stretch to such an expense. And there was no question of asking them for more, as they would never agree to such a proposal. “But we don’t know these people,” her mother would be sure to say. “We don’t know anything about them.” True enough, for Helena knew almost nothing about her new friends. She hadn’t met their families, hadn’t been to their homes, and couldn’t honestly say that anything they had told her was, in point of fact, true.
She considered dipping into the money her grandmother had left her, but to do so she would have to consult with her father’s solicitor, and he would be certain to tell Papa. Never mind that she was a grown woman and perfectly capable of deciding what to do with her own money. Papa would object, Mama would fuss, and she would be forced to admit the truth.
Agnes would have offered up the money for a studio without hesitation, but her aunt had already been far too generous. So she said nothing of her dilemma, and after dinner most evenings, sitting in the petit salon at home with her aunt, she avoided the subject of her classes at the academy, and instead talked about her new friends and their talents and interests. Before long Agnes was insisting that she invite them for dinner.
“I won’t take no for an answer, Helena. I simply won’t. In every one of her letters, your mother persists in asking me if I approve of your friends—but how can I answer if I haven’t met any of them? What if she should take it into her head that I’m hiding something? You know how she can be. No one is better than her at sniffing out a lie or half-truth.”
“Fine, Auntie A. I’ll ask them tomorrow.”
Agnes would charm them, she knew, but it still gave her pause. While she knew little of her friends’ lives, they knew even less about her. Would meeting her aunt, and seeing where she lived, change how they thought of her? It was all rather antediluvian, but she’d never been friends with ordinary people before. Her childhood friends had all hailed from the toploftiest branches of the aristocracy, just like herself.
None of those friends had proved faithful or true, however, and she had no reason to believe that Étienne, Mathilde, or Daisy would be envious or jealous, or even disconcerted by her background. They would surely discover the truth one day, so better to be honest with them now.
She didn’t say anything until Friday, when they had gathered for lunch at a cheap and nameless café on the rue Delambre that was marginally less expensive than its grander cousins on the boulevard du Mont
parnasse. Rain was pelting down outside, as it had all morning, and after their one-franc meal of soup, bread, saucisson, and cheese they lingered over their coffees.
Helena had nearly finished her café crème, which she had almost learned to like, Daisy was lost in her thoughts, and Étienne and Mathilde were smoking like chimneys, as usual. She hated the smell, which clung to her clothes for hours afterward, but since nearly everyone else in the café was smoking it didn’t seem right to ask them to refrain.
“You know I live with my aunt,” she said, after waiting for a pause in the conversation. “She is, ah . . . she’s keen to have all of you to dinner. Or to lunch on a Friday, if that’s better.”
“I’d love to meet her,” said Daisy, glancing at Louisette, who perched as grim as a gargoyle on a nearby chair, “but Daddy likes me to be home in the evenings.”
“I can’t manage dinner,” said Mathilde. “Lunch is better.”
“Étienne?” Helena asked.
“I am at your disposal, my dear Hélène.”
“Shall we say next Friday? We can walk there after school.”
“Where does your aunt live?” asked Étienne.
There was no way around it. “Her house is on the Île St.-Louis.”
“A house, you say? Not a flat?”
The man was relentless. “Yes, Étienne. An entire house.”
“Who is this aunt of yours?” Mathilde asked, her curiosity piqued.
“Her name is Agnes Paulson, although that’s . . . well, it’s a translation. Her husband was Russian.”
“Go on,” said Étienne, his eyes sparking with interest. “I can tell there’s more.”
“He was a grand duke. There. Happy now? But he was killed in an airplane crash several years ago.”
“Interesting. What was your aunt before she married him? A cancan dancer?”
The mental image this provoked was decidedly bizarre, and enough to bring a smile to her face. “No, silly. She was just an English lady.”
Mathilde leaned across the table. “Does ‘lady’ mean a woman, or does it mean the relative of a lord?”
“The latter,” Helena admitted.
“And are you . . . ?” Mathilde pressed, not unkindly.
“My full name is Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr, but I prefer to use only the last part of my surname. My father and Agnes are brother and sister.”
“Who is your father?” Mathilde persisted.
“The Earl of Halifax.”
“So that makes you Lady Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr, does it not?” Étienne asked.
“Yes, but I don’t use it. The title, I mean. To my friends I’m Helena. Even Ellie, if you feel like teasing me.” She held her breath, waiting and worrying. Wondering if this would change things. America and France were republics, after all. They’d had revolutions to rid themselves of such pretensions.
“Ellie,” Étienne said at last. “I like it.”
“That’s all? You’re not going to tease me?”
“Why? Paris is filthy with aristocrats. Do you know how many people I’ve met with a ‘de la’ in their surname? And none of them have two sous to rub together. So—lunch with the grand duchess this time next week?”
“Oh, please don’t call her that. She honestly prefers Agnes.”
“Then I shall call her Agnes, but in the French fashion. ‘Ahnyess.’ Far more elegant that way.”
“Mathilde? Daisy? Will you come, too?”
“Yes,” said Mathilde, meeting Helena’s gaze squarely. “We will be there.”
Chapter 11
A week later, they set off together for the walk to the Île St.-Louis. Helena had spent the entire morning in a welter of nerves, her hands so clammy she had difficulty holding her pencils, and the drawings she’d produced in their only class of the day—a two-hour life drawing session with Maître Czerny—had been fit only for the bin.
Her friends hadn’t seemed affected at all by her admission regarding her background, and no one had mentioned it since. Even Étienne hadn’t teased her about it. But Agnes’s house was so very grand, and it was hard not to worry that they might find it intimidating, or be moved to think of her differently as a result.
She was worried about Étienne, too, for he’d shown up with a black eye and a deep cut across the bridge of his nose. She’d been horrified, of course, but he had insisted he was fine, and had only slipped on some wet leaves. And yet . . . would a simple fall explain the injuries to his right hand, which was so bruised and swollen he could scarcely hold a brush?
Agnes must have been watching out for them from one of the upstairs windows, for she was at the front door, waving gaily, as they came over the Pont St.-Louis and walked the short distance north to her town house.
“Hello, hello! Welcome to my home!”
Introductions were made, cheeks were kissed, and Agnes announced her intention to give everyone the grand tour before sitting down to luncheon. “I have a few bits and pieces you might like to see—nothing particularly fashionable, but they were considered quite avant-garde at the time they were painted.”
With Hamish trotting at her heels, she led them first to the grand salon, which had been expensively decorated in a style Helena privately thought of as “steamship nouveau” and did little for the magnificent seventeenth-century architecture of the space. Above the hearth hung a full-length portrait by John Singer Sargent, painted when Agnes was in her late twenties and at the height of her beauty. On the opposite wall, between two lacquered cabinets, was a smaller portrait, also of her aunt, by Augustus John. Agnes’s gaze was so bold, so sensually inviting, that the painting had caused a minor scandal when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1907.
“Come with me into the dining room—I want to show you my favorite. It’s the only portrait I have of dear Dimitri.”
She led them to the hearth at the far end of the room, above which hung a modestly sized painting that depicted Dimitri and Agnes, dressed in the fashions of a decade earlier, their heads framed by a bower of roses in full bloom.
“Is that a Bonnard?” Étienne asked reverently.
“It is. He painted it in the garden here. Wasn’t my Dimitri handsome? He was a great patron of the arts, I’ll have you know, and Monsieur Bonnard was a particular favorite. We used to have any number of his paintings, but after Dimitri died his dreadful relations stole nearly everything from me. Ghastly people.”
They were saved from a longer discourse on the greed and duplicity of Dimitri’s family by the arrival of Vincent, who advised them that luncheon was ready and they might take their seats. It was a simple meal by Agnes’s standards: lobster bisque to begin, followed by roast capon, braised celery, and souffléd potatoes, with poached pears in Riesling to finish.
The conversation was animated, dominated in the main by her aunt’s stories of adventures abroad with Dimitri. Only when they retired to the petit salon for coffee and petits fours did the discussion turn to their classes at the academy.
“I’m sure Hélène is too modest to tell you,” Étienne said in a confiding tone, “but she has done some marvelous work so far. We are all of us in awe at her abilities.”
“I knew it. I simply knew it,” Agnes trilled, clapping her hands in delight. “All she needed was a bit of encouragement and practice.”
“Precisely,” said Étienne, and there was something in the intent look he directed at her aunt, or perhaps the way he leaned forward, capturing Agnes’s gaze, that convinced Helena he was up to something.
“Although,” he continued, “it would be so much easier for her if she had a studio in which to work.”
Agnes turned to Helena, her brow wrinkling with concern. “Isn’t the space you’re using upstairs agreeable? I was worried there might not be enough light, but you said—”
“I think the difficulty, Madame Paulson, is that her little garret, or rather her studio, is rather cold. And I’m sure you don’t want her to catch a chill . . .”
“Of course not,” Agn
es agreed. “Could I have the furniture cleared out of a spare bedroom? Would that do?” she asked, turning to Helena.
“I suppose . . .”
“I think perhaps Hélène has been too shy to say anything, but the four of us, we have been talking of trying to find a studio to rent.”
Agnes’s face brightened immediately, her relief palpable, and if Helena had been close enough to kick Étienne under the table she’d have done so. What was he playing at?
“That’s a marvelous idea. Why didn’t you say anything before, Helena?”
“Well, I . . . I wasn’t sure if you’d approve. It would keep me away from home, and I thought . . .”
“Of course I approve. Why wouldn’t I? Now, Étienne, have you begun your search?”
“Not yet, I’m afraid,” and at this he stared wistfully into his empty coffee cup. “We need to save up. Studio space is expensive, alas.”
“Forgive me if I seem impertinent, but how much is the monthly rental for a studio?” Agnes asked.
“Oh, around two hundred francs? Three hundred at the most.”
“But that’s nothing—I can pay it. I will pay it,” Agnes insisted.
Mathilde, only now realizing what was afoot, shook her head, her mouth twisting into a frown. “I am very sorry, and I do not wish to appear rude, but I cannot accept such charity. I do beg your pardon.”
“I quite understand. Shall we say this instead? I will pay for a studio for Helena, and she, in turn, is free to ask her friends to share it. I don’t believe that could be constituted as charity. I am only seeing to the immediate needs of my niece, you see.”
“I don’t know,” said Daisy. “My father is sure to refuse. He’s so very protective, and—”
“My dear girl,” said Agnes, and she reached out and patted Daisy’s hand. “I have every respect for a parent’s finer feelings. Truly I do. But sometimes it is best that we not share every part of our lives with them. Hmm?”
Moonlight Over Paris Page 8
