Painted Ladies

by Lynn Bushell

  ‘What?’

  ‘Such a nonentity. Oh . . . get out.’

  Renée grips the handle of the suitcase and attempts to drag it the few yards towards the door. It comes to rest against the rug. She tries to hoist it up over the edge and then gives up. Collapsing on her knees, she pounds her fists against her sides and wails. She feels her shoulders being shaken.

  ‘Stop it, Renée!’ Marguerite’s face peers into her own but Renée is immune to anything that Marguerite can do to her now.

  ‘Calm yourself! We’ll have the people downstairs beating on the door. ‘Stop crying, Renée.’

  Renée wraps both arms around herself. She’s rocking back and forwards and begins to retch. ‘I feel so ill,’ she gasps. She puts a hand out to support herself and ends up clawing at the carpet. ‘I can’t breathe. There’s something happening in my chest.’ She’s listing sideways and then suddenly she’s on the floor, her knees bent underneath her.

  Marguerite leans over, shaking Renée’s shoulder, but less violently this time. She draws Renée’s hair back from her face and looks at her intently. Renée hears the note of triumph in her voice. ‘What has that bastard done to you?’

  The newspapers are full of it. The whole of Paris was out on the streets. I spent the day re-potting the geraniums.

  ‘You saw the march past after all, then?’ There is something in the air so rank that I can almost touch it. He’s brought back a copy of Le Figaro. The Champs Elysées is awash with faces. There are thousands of them. I can hear the noise, just looking at the photograph. ‘I thought you hated crowds.’

  ‘I do, but this was different.’ He sits down and then gets up again. ‘You sensed that history was being made. It was exciting. I wish you had been there, Marthe.’

  ‘Eleven million dead boys and it’s called a victory celebration. Tell that to the mothers. Pity their sons couldn’t have been there to celebrate.’

  He makes a little hissing sound. I’ve spoilt it for him. ‘There’s not much that we can do for them and people have a right to celebrate the victory; they’ve waited long enough for it.’

  There’s plenty that we don’t agree on, Pierre and me, but I thought we were of one mind about the war. I hand him back the paper. ‘I doubt Monsieur Clermont will be celebrating; he lost two boys. Or the Canvilles. Their son’s missing.’ He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge above his nose. ‘You must be tired,’ I say. ‘Out all night on the streets.’ I’m waiting for him to say what has happened, even though I know.

  He starts to pace the room. He jerks his head from side to side to ease his neck. The energy is pulsing out of him. He’s giving me the fidgets. ‘Oh for goodness sake sit down,’ I feel like saying. He keeps sniffing, as if he has caught a cold.

  He doesn’t say much over breakfast, although once or twice I have the feeling he’s about to. Afterwards I take the string bag from behind the door. ‘I have to go down to the market. I need brisket for the casserole.’

  He sniffs. ‘We could afford a better cut of meat, you know. It’s not as if we’re that poor . . .’ He stops.

  Oh my, I think. He knows better than to interfere in household matters. ‘Brisket’s good enough,’ I say. ‘Unless you want me to get something different.’

  He looks sheepish. ‘Brisket will do very well,’ he says. ‘I’m not ungrateful, Marthe. I just wish that sometimes you could be a little more adventurous.’

  Adventurous? It wouldn’t do for both of us to go down that road. What if he came home one day and found I’d bought a pair of stays – the sort with ribbons that you tie in bows to make yourself look like a Christmas present? There would be no point in me at all if I were just like her, but older.

  ‘Now the war is over, it’ll be much easier to travel, for example.’

  ‘Into Paris, you mean?’

  ‘I was thinking of abroad.’

  ‘Abroad?’ I don’t have much time for ‘abroad.’ Why bother going somewhere else to do what you’d be doing here? It’s not as if Pierre would draw the landscape. He would sit inside and sketch the kitchen table and the vase of flowers on the windowsill, the way he does now.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be interested to see Morocco or Tunisia? You’ve barely left this house in ten years. There’s a whole world out there waiting for you.’

  I don’t think it’s me the world is waiting for, somehow. ‘I’ll see if there’s a tarte aux pommes at the patisserie.’

  ‘Good. Splendid.’ He starts whistling.

  ‘Shall I buy food for tomorrow, too?’

  He stops his pacing and stares out over the garden. He won’t look at me. ‘No, I’ll be going back into the studio tomorrow. I have work to finish off.’

  ‘No partying tomorrow, then?’ He gives me one of those quick looks of his. ‘There won’t be anything else left to celebrate.’

  ‘The peace is something we’ll be celebrating for a long time, hopefully.’

  ‘Unless some silly bugger shoots another archduke.’

  ‘There aren’t many archdukes left,’ says Pierre. He sinks into a chair. The energy seems all at once to have leaked out of him, like air escaping out of a balloon. ‘I do feel quite tired, actually. I think I’ll have a bath. I feel as if I’ve got the city underneath my nails.’

  That’s not the only thing, I’m on the point of saying, but I’ve learnt to curb my tongue. He doesn’t like baths, normally. He doesn’t share my love of water. When we lived in rue de Douai, I would offer to heat up the water on the stove and scrub his back for him, but no, he didn’t like the feel of it all round him. This time, I don’t offer. My adventure will be buying brisket from the butcher and a bit of offal for the dog. ‘You won’t mind filling up the bath yourself?’

  ‘Of course not. Thank you, Marthe.’ He comes up behind me, putting both hands on my shoulders. ‘I don’t mean to criticise, you know that.’

  So why do you? I think. But I know it isn’t me he’s criticising; it’s himself. I take the string bag and the purse of money and leave, closing the door quietly after me.

  B

  When Renée comes around, she’s wearing a thin linen nightdress and there is a jug next to the bed with water and a flannel in a bowl. The fever is so all-enveloping that it’s as if she’s wrapped up in a blanket.

  ‘Take these.’ Marguerite holds out two tablets broken into four. ‘I got them from the pharmacy. They’ll help to bring your temperature down.’ She holds the glass to Renée’s lips while Renée tries to swallow them. ‘You’ve been a naughty girl. You disobeyed me and you’re being punished for it. You got back to the apartment just in time. Imagine if you’d been out on the street. I could be looking for you in the morgue now.’

  Renée feels the dry hand on her forehead and sinks back onto the pillow. Marguerite returns the glass of water to the bedside table and tucks Renée’s hands under the sheet. ‘Sleep.’

  Later, she feels Marguerite slip into bed beside her. She rests one hand on her shoulder. ‘Renée.’ She lies with her mouth to Renée’s ear. ‘You’re very ill, pet, but I’m taking care of you. From now on it will just be you and me. I love you.’

  Renée feels a wave of gratitude sweep over her. ‘I love you too.’

  The next day Pierre puts on a clean shirt. Yesterday he told me it was time he got some new ones – I don’t need to go on darning cuffs and collars. He stands at the mirror while he loops the scarf around his neck. It used to be the outside world he looked at; he preferred to be invisible himself. Now suddenly he spends his whole time looking at his own reflection. It must be hard work at his age, to have so much to live up to. I see that he’s trimmed his beard as well. I usually do that for him. Pierre has never visited a barber. I’m the one who cuts his hair and clips his nails. I even took a tooth out for him once.

  I tell myself he’s following the ‘normal’ path for men of his age – feeling insecure about themselves and looking for a woman who will make them feel young, or at least a woman who will take their minds off be
ing old. I’ve seen enough of it to know the way these things go: the excitement, then the blind infatuation, months when you can think of nothing else. And then a gradual return to normal. All I have to do is wait. But that’s not easy.

  He goes back into the studio the next day and the next and each time I think maybe this will be the last time. Maybe this time he will go and not come back. But every evening he sits opposite me at the table, toying with his food. I ask him how his work is going. Nothing usually gets in the way of that. But he’s distracted, locked inside his head. The silence used to be companionable. Now it’s filled with questions that I dare not ask and secrets he won’t share with me.

  I see him staring at the water jug and whereas in the past I’d know he was imagining what it would look like in a painting, now he’s simply staring at it, like a drowning man stuck in the middle of the ocean with a lifeboat fifty metres off. He isn’t urging me to have adventures any more. The one he’s having doesn’t seem to be affording him much satisfaction.

  ‘Eat something,’ I say. I stand behind him, resting one hand on his shoulder. I can’t bear to see him brought so low. I ask him, ‘What’s the matter?’ He is looking at his hands as if he isn’t sure they’re his. I look at them and feel afraid. I’m not sure they’re his, either.

  In the afternoons, he goes for long walks down the footpath by the riverbank. It’s not the sort of walk you take because it’s pleasant being out there in the fresh air. He walks up and down as if he’s punishing himself – a mile in one direction, two miles in the other, one-two, one-two, back and forth until he’s worn himself out. And he still can’t sleep. At night he lies there with his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling till I wonder if he’s still alive.

  I whisper to him, ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not ill.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  He seems to be considering. ‘No,’ he says, finally, ‘I don’t think that you can.’

  ‘Are you the painter?’ Marguerite peers through the gap. She hasn’t taken off the chain. ‘I thought we’d seen the last of you.’

  Inside the room where she lies wrapped up on the sofa, Renée picks up snatches of the conversation. Marguerite removes the chain and steps outside onto the landing so that now she has to strain to overhear them.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Pierre says.

  ‘She’s gone down with influenza. She’s been very ill. She could have died.’

  ‘Why didn’t someone tell me?’

  ‘Why would anybody bother telling you?’

  ‘There must be something I can do.’

  ‘There isn’t. What’s so hard to understand? She doesn’t want to see you.’

  ‘Margo.’ Renée calls out feebly from inside the flat.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she shouts back over her shoulder and then hisses ‘Go away.’

  ‘I’ll leave after I’ve spoken to her.’ Pierre pushes past her. He comes over to the sofa and kneels down beside it.

  Renée indicates the bowl tucked underneath the sofa with a wrung-out cloth in it. ‘You’d better not come too near. I might be contagious.’

  ‘Half of Paris is contagious. I shall either get it or I won’t.’ He takes her hand. She looks at Marguerite who turns round pointedly and goes into the kitchen.

  ‘How did you find where I lived?’

  ‘I went into the store and spoke to Mademoiselle Lefèvre. I was desperate to know what had happened to you. She refused to give me your address, but your friend Gabi let me have it.’

  Renée sees him taking in the room. The fire is lit but hardly any heat is coming from it.

  ‘You have seen a doctor, haven’t you?’ She shakes her head. ‘For heaven’s sake, you must. I’ll pay.’

  ‘It’s past the worst. My skin turned blue at one point.’

  ‘I was frantic when you didn’t come back to the studio the next day.’

  ‘It was difficult. I didn’t mean to . . .’ Renée sinks back.

  ‘I can’t leave you here in this place, Renée. Let me bring the car next weekend and I’ll drive you out to Bobigny so that your mother can look after you. It’s Christmas soon. You’d rather be there, surely?’

  Renée’s eyes flit past him. ‘Marguerite would never let me go.’

  ‘I’ll speak to her.’

  ‘No!’ Renée clutches at him.

  ‘Dearest, you can’t let her bully you like this.’ He kisses her. ‘I’ll come for you on Saturday.’

  He goes into the kitchen. Renée gazes after him. He takes a wad of notes out of his wallet. ‘I want you to call a doctor in,’ she hears him say.

  ‘There’s nothing they can do,’ says Marguerite. ‘The germ is in the air. It came across with the Americans.’ She looks at Pierre. Behind him, she sees Renée watching them. ‘We don’t need any help from you,’ she says, but her eyes linger on the roll of notes he’s holding out to her.

  ‘I’ve said I’ll take her to her mother’s next weekend. I’ll bring the car on Saturday.’

  The notes are now in Marguerite’s hands. It’s too late for her to give them back. She thrusts them at him, but he wards her off. ‘I’ll come in time to get her there for lunch.’

  ‘Don’t. She’s all right here. I’ll look after her.’

  ‘You can’t object to Renée visiting her mother, surely.’

  ‘She can come here if she wants to see her.’

  ‘But that’s not the point,’ says Pierre. ‘Renée needs to get out of the city. Here, she could pick up another virus and she would be too weak to recover. You don’t want to be responsible for killing her.’ He turns to leave.

  ‘She doesn’t want you,’ Marguerite calls after him. ‘She won’t come.’

  Pierre’s voice drifts up through the stairwell. ‘Saturday,’ he calls.

  He’s calmer. Something’s been decided. It seems what was bothering him isn’t bothering him any longer. Something else is bothering him now.

  It’s been a week since he last went into the studio. Perhaps this is his way of reassuring me that he can live without her. But it doesn’t reassure me. For Pierre it’s not what happens in his life that matters; it’s what happens in the paintings. What’s been said there can’t be unsaid.

  This is different from the other times. Then it was more a case of getting rid of something so that he was not distracted by it. Afterwards he could go back to work. He might have favoured laziness in women, but he didn’t like it in himself. He often said that he felt lonelier than ever after making love and working was the only way that he could deal with it.

  This morning, I went through the pockets of his overcoat. I don’t know what I thought I’d find. There was his pocket diary, which he uses as a sketchbook, several scraps of paper, sticks of graphite and a bill from Maxim’s for as much as I’d spend in the market in a year.

  Tucked underneath the rubber band that stops the loose sheets in the notebook falling out, I find a pencil sketch. It’s just a few lines and so faint it’s like a whisper, but I know at once that this is her. It’s not the sort of face you would expect to see on working-class girls here in Paris. They peak, if they’re going to, around sixteen. The bloom goes off them pretty quickly after that. She looks Italian, though he hasn’t shaded in her hair, so I suppose it could be blonde. Her face reminds me of a figure in Giotto’s Lamentation. My word, doesn’t that make me sound grand? I’ve never been to Italy, but Pierre showed me a picture of the Lamentation. It’s the nose; that’s what reminded me. It’s long and fine and with her head in that position she looks proud.

  He’s hatched the shadow underneath her chin so delicately, I can feel the outline of the jaw. I’d like to ram my fist against it, but instead I press my thumb down on the cheek and when I take my hand away the imprint of my thumb is there. I don’t want Pierre to know that I’ve been going through his things, so with my fingernail I try to scratch the smudge off. But instead I find I’ve scored a ridge across her cheek. She doesn’
t look as wholesome now.

  He says he plans to take the Dietrich into Paris. Since the war began, the car has hardly been out of the garage. ‘I’ll be bringing back some canvasses,’ he says. As long as he’s not bringing her back with him, I think.

  I must run a bath. The rash is getting worse. It’s spread all down my back and formed a crust between my thighs that scuffs and crumbles when I walk. I feel as if a chrysalis is forming round me and that inside I am turning into something else. The creature that I used to be is not there any more.

  ‘She isn’t coming.’ Marguerite goes out onto the landing.

  ‘Let me past.’

  ‘The doctor says she isn’t well enough to travel.’

  ‘That’s not true. You can’t keep Renée here against her will.’

  ‘It’s not against her will. It’s what she wants.’

  ‘You mean it’s what you want.’

  ‘Why can’t you go away?’ There is an edge to Marguerite’s voice. Renée hasn’t dared to pack a suitcase. Margo is determined that if she is going to her mother, it will not be Pierre who takes her there.

  ‘But Pierre has a car.’

  ‘In two or three days you’ll be well enough to take the trolleybus. If you still want to see your mother, we can go together. All that man is interested in is taking you away from me. He’ll drive a wedge between us and then he’ll abandon you, you’ll see.’

  When Saturday arrives, she’s told to stay in bed and Margo brings her hot milk and a madeleine. ‘If he turns up, I’ll deal with it,’ she says. ‘You stay here.’

  Renée tiptoes over to the door so she can hear what’s going on out on the landing. Pierre is standing two steps from the top, so Marguerite has the advantage over him in height. He’s clutching at the rail. He needs to get himself onto the landing so that they are on a level. Marguerite leans forward suddenly and Renée is afraid she is about to push him down the stairs.

  Pierre grabs Marguerite’s arm with his free hand and she pulls herself back, hauling him unwillingly onto the landing after her. They’re face to face now. He lets go of her and turns towards the door.