She thanked him and he sat on the floor in front of her. ‘Take off your shoes,’ he ordered. ‘I will draw your feet.’
‘But I thought you were going to carve them?’
‘Not here. I only carve in my own place. Here I will draw them.’
They both worked silently for about an hour and then he rose, stretching his long arms and legs like a black panther. ‘I need coffee,’ he said and disappeared.
He did not come back that day, or the next. When he did reappear she was genuinely pleased to see him and pointed her paintbrush at the coffee pot on the stove and said, ‘There’s coffee here if you want it.’
He poured two cups, bringing one to her and holding it out in such a way that her hand had to go over his as she took it. The contact made every nerve in her body jump and Tadi smiled.
‘May I draw your legs, up to the knee?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she whispered and very gently he lifted up the hem of her skirt to reveal first her calves and then her knees.
‘As I thought, exquisite, so pale, so fine, so elegant. You have the legs of a fine horse…’ he said, letting his hand linger, cupping one of her knees and holding it softly. He drew for about an hour and then slipped away without saying goodbye.
That evening, when she was preparing her supper, he turned up again. His hair was tousled and his shirt open at the neck. She thought he looked handsome and wild, as Murray would have if he could have shed his restricting ambitions and polite Edinburgh manners.
Tadi came prowling over the floor towards her. She could neither speak nor move.
‘Lie down,’ he whispered and she walked to the bed where he helped her onto the mattress and arranged the coloured cushions around her.
‘Show me your legs,’ he told her.
She lifted her skirt and draped it over her knees. He stepped backwards and gazed at her.
Her racing heart was beginning to calm a little and she asked him, ‘Are you going to draw me now? It’s very late…’
He shook his head. ‘No, I am going to make love to you.’
She made no protest while he climbed on the bed beside her and kissed her on the lips. His practised fingers loosened her clothes and slipped them off her till she was completely naked. Crooning gently as if to a child, he soothed her, relaxed her, made her yield herself to him and became her first lover.
The violence of the feelings he awoke in her surprised her. It was as if he had opened a capped well inside her heart, and all the love she had felt for Murray, all the frustrated passions of her life, came flooding out and overwhelmed her.
She was completely without shame or artifice. Because he told her how much he enjoyed her body, how he loved lying with her, she thought that by making herself available to him at any time she would keep him, she would win him away from his other women, for he made no secret that there were other women, many of them.
The thought of where he went when he left her made her want to scream and she clung to his arm pleading, ‘Don’t leave me, stay with me.’
Sometimes he cursed her and told her she was too easily seduced but he never stayed away from her for long and when he came back she received him with delight. When he found out about the money she kept in the room, he asked for some and she gave it gladly, not as a loan but as a gift. She thought that if she gave him money, he would always return to her. She would have done anything he asked.
If days passed without him coming to her, she was inconsolable, pacing her room like a caged animal, weeping and heartbroken. When he did turn up, she threw herself at him, tearing at his clothes, pulling him into her bed. He could not believe that such an ice-cold, virginal-looking woman, who had been so reluctant to yield in the first place, could turn into such a demanding, abandoned mistress.
He tried to caution her when she cried aloud in passion, ‘Keep quiet. No one must know about this or Thérèse will stab you. Keep quiet for God’s sake.’
He was not coming to her so often now and his cooling terrified her. She began following him when he left the building, running along behind him, begging him to take her with him. Her insatiable passion and uncontrollable behaviour began to repel him. It was as if he’d let a genie out of a bottle and could no longer control it.
He said cruel things to her, comparing her unfavourably with other women, turning away from her when she reached out for him, deriding her, taking money and then telling her he’d used it to entertain one of her rivals.
Nothing worked. The more he abused her, the more eager she was for him. He began to wish he had left her alone and wondered about her sanity.
Pierre knew what was happening. She did not tell him but it was impossible to keep a secret in Mancini’s building and Marie had no guile in her.
Thérèse waylaid him on the stairs when he was going up to see Marie and said, ‘Tell me one good reason why I should not stab that girl.’
He stared at her. ‘Because she’s no danger to you. She’s a very sad person.’
Thérèse sighed. ‘You’re right. That’s why I haven’t done anything to her. It’s Tadi I should stab and you should stab him too.’
Pierre shook his head. ‘What good would that do? It would only make her love him more. She has got to come to her senses alone.’
Thérèse nodded. ‘I’ve told him to leave her but he says she won’t let him. I really do think she’s mad, Pierre. All of those brilliant artists are a little mad.’
When Pierre went into Marie’s room she jumped up and came running to the door but stopped with a disappointed look on her face when she saw who stood there.
‘You were expecting someone else?’ he asked sadly.
‘Yes, I was. I thought you were Tadi.’
Pierre groaned. ‘He’s broken many hearts, that man. He’s without feeling. The only woman who’s able to control him is Thérèse.’
‘Oh Pierre, I love him,’ she said brokenly. ‘I don’t care about his other women. I just want him. I can’t face losing him the same way as I lost Murray. If I’d gone to bed with Murray, I might have kept him. I’m desperate.’
‘He might not come back,’ said Pierre, thinking of Thérèse’s warning to her lover.
Marie shook her head. ‘He must come back. I love him.’
‘But I love you,’ groaned Pierre. He’d never said it before but now it didn’t matter. She wasn’t listening.
‘You’re my friend,’ she told him. ‘It’s different with us. I couldn’t sleep with you. I couldn’t do the things with you that I do with Tadi. He’s my lover…’
He grabbed her arm. ‘Listen, he’ll destroy you. He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t love anybody except perhaps Thérèse and if you don’t stop this, she might do something awful to you.’
His pleas fell on deaf ears. Terrified that things might get out of hand and that Thérèse’s patience might snap, Pierre went to see Mancini and explained the situation.
The big Italian groaned. ‘Oh those virgins! They are so much trouble! The girl’s out of her mind. I’m worried about her,’ he said.
‘She’s lonely. She’s got no one to love her,’ said Pierre.
When Tadi had stayed away from her for two weeks, Marie started drinking absinthe again and fell down the stairs because she was too drunk to walk.
Alarmed by the unpredictability of her behaviour, Mancini told Tadi, ‘Go to Budapest, go to Prague, go to Vienna, go anywhere but get out of Paris till she gets over this. If you’re not here, she’ll have a chance to forget you.’
‘Women do not forget me easily,’ said Tadi.
Mancini spat at him and pushed him out of the door.
One of the other women in the building told Marie that Tadi had gone away.
‘How long for?’ she whispered.
‘Who knows? His family have a castle in the country outside Budapest. But he’ll come back. He always comes back to Thérèse eventually.’
When the mornings were dark and wet she did not bother to get up, but huddled in
bed listening to the rain on the window. Her excursions into the outside world were to get money from the bank so that she could buy absinthe.
One day she made the disturbing discovery that she was down to her last ten pounds. That night she completed a still life with a pineapple and when Pierre arrived she asked him to sell it.
He returned in an hour with five hundred francs and said, ‘Do another. The dealer likes your work. He’ll buy everything you paint.’
She didn’t paint another, however, because five hundred francs would keep her in absinthe for a long time.
Rather than face Isabelle’s disappointed face, she asked Pierre to collect her letters. The little maid was delighted to see that Marie had a respectable-looking male friend and handed over a couple of envelopes. They were both from Tibbie.
Marie put them on the table but never opened them. She did not want to be reminded of home, she did not want to be reminded of anything.
Pierre worried about her. ‘You are ill. You’re so thin. You are not eating.’
‘Yes I am eating,’ she lied, but he did not believe her and hurried to the café, where he bought bread and coffee. With disquiet he saw a line of empty absinthe bottles behind the stove where she was attempting to hide them.
One morning Thérèse heard her retching. She paused with her ear to the door. The retching went on and on. The door was unlocked, for Marie always hoped Tadi would come unexpectedly and surprise her.
The girl was bending over a basin beside the bed with her hair falling down like a curtain.
‘You’re pregnant. You’re having his child. You foolish girl,’ cried Thérèse angrily, for she had seen this sort of thing often enough to know what it meant.
Marie pushed her hair back with a thin hand and stared up. ‘Am I?’
‘Of course you are. You didn’t know any better, did you? You didn’t take any precautions and he wouldn’t.’
Marie shook her head. The possibility of a baby had never occurred to her. Thérèse was speaking urgently. ‘He’s been away for over a month and he wasn’t with you for a long while before that. You must do something soon or it will be too late.’
‘I can’t think,’ sobbed Marie.
‘Then start thinking. You haven’t got much time,’ said Thérèse. Next day she appeared again in Marie’s room and said abruptly, ‘Get up. We’ve an appointment with a friend of mine.’
For a moment Marie thought she meant Tadi and sat upright in bed but Thérèse continued, ‘She lives in the next street. It’s not far.’
‘It’s cold. I don’t want to go out,’ Marie protested. But Thérèse would brook no refusals. She hauled off the bedcovers and said, ‘Get up and get dressed. I won’t leave here till you do. God knows why I’m bothering about you but you remind me of my sister who died a few years ago. Get up.’
Marie did as she was told.
They walked without speaking along two streets till they came to a narrow lane. At a green door Thérèse paused and rapped sharply. It was opened by a gypsyish-looking woman with curly black hair and large golden earrings, who gestured with her hand for them to come inside.
The front room was immaculately clean and warm with a glowing stove and stiffly starched white curtains at the windows. There was a gleaming tablecloth and white antimacassars on all the chairs.
‘This is my friend who needs your help,’ said Thérèse, gesturing at Marie. The woman ran her eye up and down the girl, frowned and asked her, ‘You don’t look well. Are you sick? Do you cough?’
‘A little,’ said Marie.
‘Do you cough up blood?’ was the next question.
‘Sometimes.’
The interrogator turned to Thérèse and said, ‘She is fragile. She could be consumptive.’
Thérèse’s face showed consternation, for though she had known Marie was physically low, she had not imagined things were as bad as that. ‘All the more reason for her to get rid of it,’ she said.
Then the woman turned back to Marie again and asked, ‘How far gone are you?’
Marie had not realised they were going to an abortionist. She’d only allowed herself to be swept along by Thérèse because it was too much of an effort to refuse. Now she panicked. ‘I haven’t made up my mind what I want to do about the baby…’ she gasped.
The woman shrugged. ‘From the look of you I’d say you’re at least four months gone. You’d better make your mind up quickly.’
Confusion overwhelmed Marie. She had not considered what it meant for her to have a child. She looked at Thérèse and asked, ‘What should I do?’
The answer was unequivocal. ‘You should let Madame Robert do what she can for you. She is very skilled.’
They told her to lie down on a white-covered bed in the corner and Madame prodded her stomach. ‘She’s so small it’s hard to tell, but it’s four months as I guessed. It has to be done now.’
Thérèse helped the girl to sit up and said gently, ‘Do you have any money?’
‘Yes, I have some. How much does an abortion cost?’
‘Three hundred francs.’
‘I have three hundred francs.’ It was all she had left out of the money Pierre brought her for the painting.
Madame asked, ‘Do you want it done now?’
Marie shook her head. ‘Not today. I’ll come back with the money tomorrow. I want to think about it, to be sure that’s what I want to do.’
When Thérèse took her home, she said, ‘I’ll come back for you tomorrow morning. Tadi will never help you and it’s hard to bring up a child on your own. I know because that’s how my mother brought me and my sister up. It was bad for all of us.’
The night was long and troubled in spite of the bottle of absinthe that she bought to make her sleep. When she went out to buy it, the man in the little shop eyed her speculatively as he handed it over.
‘You’re young to be drinking so much of this stuff. It’s bad for you, you know,’ he told her.
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ she said.
When morning came she was snoring and was wakened by Thérèse crying out, ‘Get up, fetch your money.’ Marie did as she was told and soon they were out in the wet, grey street heading back to Madame Robert’s.
As they reached the door, Thérèse said, ‘Madame Robert knows what she’s doing. I’ll come back later to take you home.’
‘I thought you’d be angry with me,’ Marie whispered.
Thérèse shrugged her magnificent shoulders. ‘I’m sorry for you. You’re not like the rest of his women, that’s why I’m helping you. If we don’t help each other, nobody will.’
Madame Robert was very business-like, taking Marie’s money first and then making her lie on the bed which was draped with a sheet of oilcloth. A large kettle was boiling on the stove.
Marie was shuddering so badly when she lay on the bed that Madame had to put a hand on her ankles to try to calm her. ‘Let me give you something to soothe you,’ she said and brought a tiny ball of black paste out of a saucer on the cupboard.
‘Chew that,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ asked Marie.
‘Opium. It’ll calm you down.’
The effect was miraculous. Not only was Marie calmed but her mind seemed to clear and she began to see everything in a different light. She even felt optimistic again.
When Madame saw that her patient’s nervousness was abating, she said, ‘Raise your legs and let me feel your baby.’
Before she could do what she was told, however, the child within Marie moved for the first time. It heaved round and kicked her side. She gasped and put her hands on the place where the movement had occurred.
‘I felt it, I felt it!’ she cried. Madame grimaced. She did not like aborting a child that was moving within its mother.
‘Hurry up, raise your legs,’ she urged, turning to fetch her instruments which were sterilising in the boiling kettle.
‘I felt it, I felt my baby,’ said Marie sitting up. All of a sudden the chi
ld became a living person to her. It was within her, depending on her. She could not have it ripped out and thrown away.
‘Lie down,’ said Madame roughly, but her patient was on the floor, barefooted and staring-eyed.
‘I don’t want it taken away. I want to keep it!’ she cried, backing towards the door. She wrenched open the door and ran into the street leaving her cloak, her shoes and her three hundred francs behind.
Chapter Twenty
There was a little furrow of worry between Tibbie’s brows and Emma Jane, sad at seeing her old friend fretting, asked her, ‘What’s the matter? Are you ill?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that. It’s just that I’ve not heard anything from Marie and I’m sure she’s in some kind of trouble. Of course I know I’ve no claim on her. I’m no blood relation or anything like that, but she used to write so regularly…’
‘When did you last hear?’ asked Emma Jane.
‘More than four months ago.’ Tibbie’s face was deeply concerned. ‘She’s not a good letter writer but she’s not left it so long before.’
‘Does she keep in touch with her brother?’ was Emma Jane’s next question but Tibbie shook her head. She did not know the answer to that because she saw David rarely. The last time was a few months after Marie went away when he came to tell her that he was buying Henderson’s Mill in Maddiston from old Adalbert. He’d seen to it that takings dropped for two years before he made his offer and Henderson had been relieved to get rid of it. Since then output had tripled.
Emma Jane said in a decided tone, ‘Our carriage can take you to Maddiston. Go and find out if he knows anything about the girl.’
David was in the mill counting-house when Tibbie arrived and his expression hardened at the sight of her. Nonetheless, he seemed cordial enough as he ushered her into his private office and showed her to a comfortable chair.
She stared around, much impressed by his working place for it was like a gentleman’s library with solid mahogany furniture, well-polished brass firedogs and fender, and gilt-tooled, leather-bound books on the shelves behind his desk. He too looked impressive in a dark suit and very white linen. He seemed much older than his actual years but that had always been his way.
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