Painted Ladies

by Lynn Bushell

  ‘Like this.’ She’d bent forward, and her lips brushed Caro’s. Caro’s lips drew back obligingly, and Renée moved her own across them. She experienced the damp interior of Caro’s mouth with its faint aura of vanilla. When she sat back, Caro was still gazing at her vacantly.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I see.’

  It wouldn’t matter what I said to her, thought Renée. I could tell her anything. And, as the days passed, she confided more and more to Caro. It was an alternative to going to confession.

  Caro offered little in return and Renée wondered whether there was anything to Caro other than a love of ice cream and her look of wide-eyed innocence, based not on ignorance but an acceptance of whatever human beings did to her or to themselves. Perhaps that was why Roussel kept her on and maybe that’s why Renée needed her as well.

  They wander past the counters on the ground floor and then take the staircase to the upper storeys. Renée wants to see the scarves and jewellery. They sift through clothes and lingerie and try out lipsticks on their wrists. An hour later they are sitting in the café. Caro scoops the white froth from her coffee cup into her mouth.

  ‘What happens when you finish working for Roussel?’ asks Renée.

  Caro shrugs. ‘I’ll probably move on to someone else.’

  And would you sleep with them? This is the question Renée wants to ask. She doesn’t think that Caro would resent the question, but she feels shy about asking it. ‘You wouldn’t mind, then, if it wasn’t Roussel you were with?’

  ‘I’d miss the ice creams. Some of the painters in that set are really mean; the girls don’t even get a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Does he ever hit you?’ She’s remembering the argument that day outside the studio. Roussel behaved to Caro generally like an indulgent father, but his moods changed in an instant.

  ‘Sometimes; if he’s cross.’

  ‘And you don’t mind that?’ She already sees that this is something Caro takes for granted and it’s something Renée understands, this need for violence. It’s what separates them from the other girls that painters bring into the café. No one speaks to Caro. It’s as if they recognise her as a different species and are wary. There is something sphinx-like in her.

  ‘Are you Roussel’s muse?’ says Renée. From the blank stare she receives, she gathers that if Caro is his muse, she’s not aware of it.

  ‘His what?’

  ‘His muse. It’s like a model but it’s more than that.’

  ‘How, more?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly.’

  ‘Do you get paid more if you’re a muse?’ The look that Caro’s giving her reminds her of a woman who’d once helped her mother carry Alys in her baby carriage up the steps into the Gare du Nord and then demanded money from her.

  ‘I think you might have to be with someone for a long time.’

  ‘It’s a kind of pension, do you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She suddenly feels foolish. For the first time it would seem that she knows more than Caro but that neither of them knows enough.

  Once she sees that the waiter isn’t looking, Caro tips her satchel out onto the table. Inside is a brooch, a jar of cold cream and a scarf and more incongruously, since she has no money of her own, a leather wallet. Renée is appalled. ‘You stole them,’ she says. Caro smiles. She puts the jar of cold cream next to Renée.

  ‘You can have that if you want. I wouldn’t use it anyway.’

  ‘Why did you steal it, then?’ says Renée, mystified, but Caro’s blank expression tells her this is something else she’s never thought about.

  When Pierre complains a few days later that his pocket watch is missing, Renée helps him look for it, but she’s remembering when she invited Caro to the studio one evening and they had dropped off to sleep. When Renée woke up she found Caro trying out the colours in a box of chalks, a sheet that she’d torn out of Pierre’s sketchbook on her knees. Although she had the freedom of the studio when Pierre wasn’t in it, Renée knew he didn’t like his paints and sketchbooks to be touched and she made sure that anything she moved was put back where she’d found it. She can’t mention it to Caro without seeming to accuse her. Caro has no scruples when it comes to theft and Renée worries that she might see no distinction between robbing friends and robbing strangers.

  ‘Let’s go back to yours,’ says Caro, when they’re walking back the following weekend from an excursion to the cinema.

  ‘Not this time,’ Renée says. ‘Pierre would rather not have other people in the studio. He says we move things and then when he comes back on a Monday morning, he can’t find them.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Just things.’

  She decides to wait for Caro to produce the missing watch or evidence that she has pawned it. In the meantime, she hopes Caro might invite her back to Roussel’s studio. She doesn’t want to spend the evening on her own. But Caro just shrugs.

  From then on, they meet outside the studio. She doesn’t want to give up Caro altogether, but the missing pocket watch is dangling in the space between them like a ticking bomb.

  ‘Who is she?’ Renée slips her stockings off behind the screen. She’d been determined not to make a fuss. She didn’t want him thinking she was jealous.

  On the far side of the screen she hears the scratching of the knife as Pierre removes the dried paint from the palette. He’ll be wondering what she was doing in that part of town, if she’s been following him. She would not have minded so much, Renée thinks, if it had been a woman of her own class, someone less well dressed, less elegant, less . . . everything. She’d caught a glimpse of them outside a tearoom on the rue de Rennes. It had been Caro’s turn to choose how they should spend that weekend and she’d opted for an ice cream at Le Vaudeville.

  ‘I can’t afford Le Vaudeville,’ said Renée. ‘Let’s go somewhere cheaper.’

  ‘It’s my birthday,’ Caro had insisted. ‘Ricki’s given me some money.’ She had taken out a wad of notes that she had stuffed inside her satchel.

  ‘Caro, if you’d said it was your birthday, I’d have bought you something!’

  Caro shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. I can pay for both of us.’

  They had been watching from the top deck of the tram when Renée had caught sight of Pierre stepping from a cab onto the pavement with a woman on his arm.

  ‘You told me you were going back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye on Friday.’

  ‘I spend every Friday night in Saint-Germain.’

  ‘And then on Saturday you creep back into Paris.’ She is anxious not to look as if she is accusing him, but that is what it sounds like. ‘Couldn’t you have told me you were meeting someone?’

  ‘With respect, you very rarely tell me how you spend your weekends.’ He is managing to make it look as if it’s her who is at fault.

  ‘I saw you kissing her,’ she throws out.

  Pierre rolls up his sleeves. ‘I kissed her on the cheek.’

  She knows she’s being tiresome, but she’s gone too far to let it go now. They are having their first argument. This is the moment when the battle lines are drawn. It’s been polite till now. It still is, but it’s like the crust you get on top of a crème brûlée. If you tap your spoon on it, it cracks. ‘I don’t care anyway,’ she says. He doesn’t answer. Renée feels a sudden rush of anger. If it had been Margo, they’d be twisting each other’s arms by now.

  He stands back from the easel. ‘Can we start?’

  She flings the wrap aside. The next time he comes to the studio, she won’t be there. She’ll come in later and refuse to tell him where she’s been. Let him know what it’s like. She’s standing with the weight on one leg, bending forward with her hands above the knee. It’s not a comfortable position to be in. Her neck is permanently cricked. ‘Why don’t you start?’

  ‘I’m waiting for you to relax into the pose.’

  ‘I am relaxed. I’ve been stood here for quarter of an hour and you haven’t made a single mark.’ There is a pause.
He puts the brushes down. She feels the air between them tighten like elastic when it has been stretched too far. He comes across to her and cups his hand around her chin. She thinks he’s making an adjustment to the angle of her head but then he turns her face towards him.

  ‘She’s my sister,’ he says.

  B

  ‘This is Gallagher.’ The name is English, but the emphasis is on the final syllable when Caro says it, so it sounds French. Renée puts her hand out. Gallagher just nods. She stands there waiting for them to invite her to sit down. ‘You want something to drink?’ says Caro.

  ‘No thanks. We were going for a walk, remember?’ She hopes Gallagher won’t want to tag along. He sits back in the chair and loops his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. He has mousy hair and pimply skin. She’d put him in his early twenties, although he could pass for seventeen without the weasel eyes, which look at Renée with a guarded curiosity.

  ‘This afternoon, maybe,’ says Caro. ‘Gallagher and I have things to talk about.’

  He curls his lip as if there is some secret that he’s party to and Renée isn’t. Renée doesn’t like him. ‘Right, I’ll walk down to the river by myself, then,’ she says.

  Caro nods. ‘I’ll catch you up.’ Throughout the conversation, Caro hasn’t looked at either of them. Gallagher is smoking one of those short black cheroots that the Americans brought over with them and which cost a lot unless you’re in the know. The suit, the angle of the hat, the waistcoat and the black cheroot all mark out Gallagher as a black-market racketeer. She wonders what else he is peddling.

  So that Caro won’t think she’s dependent on her, Renée walks down to the river by herself. She buys a postcard of the Mont Saint-Michel and another of the Pont Neuf. She has nobody to write to, but she likes to pin the cards up in the studio.

  She gets back to the café to find Caro on her own. ‘He’s gone, then?’ she says. Caro looks at her as if she’s not sure who she means. ‘Your friend,’ says Renée.

  ‘Gallagher?’ She dips her spoon into the sugar and licks off the crystals. ‘He’s a cousin.’

  ‘With a name like Gallagher? He’s English, Caro.’

  ‘We just call him Gallagher. His real name’s Charlie.’

  Renée wonders whether Caro ever tells the truth. She is like Renée used to be, but Renée likes to think she doesn’t tell lies any more.

  The sketch has been ripped down the centre. The two halves are lying on the bench, the edges lined up as if they’ve been left to knit together of their own accord. On one side is a figure with two sticks for arms and two more for the legs. A cock’s comb on the crudely drawn head with its yellow hair proclaims this as a princess and her dress is spattered with gold flakes that are continuing to moult. It doesn’t look like one of Roussel’s drawings.

  ‘Lisel did it,’ Caro says. ‘She’s Ricki’s daughter.’

  ‘What’s the drawing doing here?’

  ‘He brought it in to put it back together.’ Caro says it carelessly, but Renée knows she should have left the two halves as they were. She tries to match them up again, but the alignment has been lost. ‘Why did he tear it up?’

  ‘He didn’t. She did. He said he was trying to explain how you could make the eyes less starey.’ Caro moves a plate with the remains of couscous on it to the sink but doesn’t wash it up. It sits there with the dirty bottles and the empty plates. A poster tacked onto the wall next to the window replicates the one in Pierre’s studio but here the purple lettering proclaiming that the artist is a Nabi has been bleached a pale grey by the sunlight. There’s a pile of drawings stacked haphazardly at one end of the draining board and Renée notices the top one is already stained with splashes.

  ‘It’s a mess in here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Caro yawns. She flicks a blob of rice into the sink. The air in Roussel’s studio is different from the slightly sweet, decaying atmosphere of Pierre’s atelier. It smells of sex and sweat and anger. It smells powerfully of Roussel. She turns back to the drawing.

  ‘So how do you make the eyes less starey?’

  Caro looks over her shoulder. ‘That dot in the middle of the eye needs to be lower down. If you have white all round it, that’s what makes it starey.’

  Renée puts her thumb over the lower eyelid. ‘How did you find that out?’

  ‘Ricki told me. He talks all the time about his daughters – how intelligent they are, how beautiful.’ She gives a mean laugh. ‘When he tried to tell Lisel how she could make the drawing better, she just ripped it up. I don’t know why he bothers with them. Isabelle won’t give him any money and the girls both hate him.

  Renée wonders what else Caro knows about Roussel’s domestic life, what little there appears to be of it. ‘You’ve met them, have you?’

  ‘No, but I’ve seen pictures of them.’

  ‘Does he paint her . . . Isabelle, his wife?’

  ‘He said he’s never seen her naked.’

  Renée’s shocked. ‘He told you that?’

  ‘She came once to the studio before they married, and he had to put his jacket on the chaise longue so that she could sit down without dirtying her dress. He uses photographs and sketches if he wants to paint her.’

  ‘Why do you suppose he married her?’

  ‘For money, I suppose. She’s rich.’

  ‘But you just said she doesn’t give him anything.’

  ‘Who knows? He said she represented something finer than himself.’ She gives a trilling little laugh.

  This isn’t something Caro would have made up. These are Roussel’s words, not hers. She’d thought of Caro as a sponge absorbing anything that anybody said to her. Until now it had not occurred to her that someone else might squeeze the sponge and water would come pouring out of it.

  ‘You don’t tell Roussel any of the things we’ve talked about together, do you, Caro?’

  Caro looks at her, her face which had been mischievous and full of mockery a second earlier, now blank. ‘Of course not.’

  With the Salon only weeks away, the café’s empty in the daytime as the painters rush to get their pictures ready for the exhibition. Renée has been in the café on a couple of occasions when Roussel has stormed in and dragged Caro off, or shouted at her to put on her clothes and stop behaving like a slut. She sometimes goes down to the café in the middle of a session wearing nothing but a shift and sandals with a thong between the first and second toe to keep them on. The shift sags open at the neck to show the slight curve of her breasts and as her leg jogs up and down, the sandal swings loose at the heel.

  She’s sitting next to Roussel in the café late one afternoon, a hand clamped underneath her chin, a teaspoon dangling from the fingers of the other hand. There is a heated argument in progress between Roussel and Bénard about a painter Bénard likes but Roussel thinks is rubbish.

  Suddenly the teaspoon drops from Caro’s fingers, clattering onto the marble tabletop. The conversation stops abruptly. Roussel glances at the spoon, which is still juddering. He looks at Caro and she gives a shrill laugh.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he says, roughly. Caro pulls her bottom lip in. Roussel turns away and then looks back over his shoulder as a thin wail rises from her throat. She holds her arms out to him like a baby crying for a cuddle.

  ‘I don’t feel well, Ricki.’

  Renée looks on, horrified, as Caro slides out of her chair and climbs onto his lap. There is an awkward silence round the table. Caro loops her arm around his neck. She curls her knees up underneath her chin and sucks her thumb. There’s something not quite right, thinks Renée, about Caro, who admittedly is no more than a child, behaving like one and with someone like Roussel, who isn’t anybody’s idea of a parent.

  Bénard gives a short ‘Tch’. Renée waits to see how Roussel will react. He seems impervious to the discomfort of the other men around the table. He shifts Caro into a more comfortable position and takes up the argument again. When Renée looks at Caro, she appears to be asleep.


  The next time Renée goes into the café, Caro isn’t there. She’s not there on the Sunday, either. Renée waits for Roussel to come back from church.

  ‘I haven’t seen her,’ he says. ‘When I do, she’ll have a lot to answer for. I paid her for the week on Wednesday and I haven’t seen her since. She said she needed money for the clinic. Clinic!’ He scoffs. ‘Heroin’s her medicine. I gave her just enough to get some. More fool me. And she’s been going through my wallet. I suppose she thought I wouldn’t notice, but a couple of weekends ago she helped herself to more than usual.’

  ‘It was her birthday.’ Renée falters. ‘I thought you had given her the money . . .’ She tails off.

  ‘Her birthday? Is that what she told you?’ Roussel snorts. ‘I hope you spent the money wisely.’

  She’s embarrassed, as if she’s the one who’s cheated him, but Roussel looks amused. ‘She always managed to get what she wanted, didn’t she?’

  ‘What will you do about her?’

  ‘If she isn’t back by Wednesday, I’ll ring up the hospitals and check the morgue.’ He sees the look on Renée’s face. ‘It’s not the first time she’s gone off. She comes back when there’s nowhere else to go and she’s run out of money.’

  But the days pass and there’s still no sign of Caro. Renée is surprised how much she misses her. It’s not unusual for models to take off, but it’s not easy to imagine Caro finding someone as accommodating as Roussel to give her shelter and look after her. His popularity is largely based on his capacity for drinking and his readiness to buy rounds. He’d been at the centre of that little crowd, but now what troubles Roussel’s friends is not the fact of Caro’s disappearance, it’s that she’s the same age as their daughters and the same age as his own.

  They start avoiding him and gossiping behind his back. He sweeps aside the rumours with his usual swagger. Word goes around that he is looking for another girl to poach from one or other of the painters. They close ranks against him. Renée waits to see if he’ll ask her to pose. She’s not forgotten his humiliation of her in the café that day and a part of her looks forward to the satisfaction of refusing.