Painted Ladies

by Lynn Bushell

  There’s no one in the hotel under fifty, other than the daughter. Pierre does not encourage anyone’s familiarity. He is polite, but distant. They would have done better staying in a pension where no one bothered who they were or where they came from. Here the atmosphere is so respectable, it’s stultifying.

  Renée has twice passed the man outside her room. She’d sensed an interest in the way he looked at her and as he takes the fob from her and fits the key into the lock, she knows that this will be the prelude to a series of ingratiating overtures that will eventually finish with him pressing her against the wall in one or other of the hotel corridors and fumbling underneath her dress.

  He pushes the door open and holds up the key. She has to reach for it and, when she does, he moves it fractionally away.

  ‘The doors in the hotel are very stiff,’ he says. ‘I often have to struggle with the key to get mine open.’

  ‘I find this one opens fairly easily,’ says Renée. He must have seen Pierre walk out of the hotel that morning after breakfast. She reclaims her key and turns to go into the room, but he is in the way. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘You and your . . . er . . .’ he looks innocently at her with his eyebrows raised, ‘are finding your stay here in Rome enjoyable?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘I was here before the war. I know the city well. I would be happy to advise on places of interest, even possibly to act as guide.’

  ‘That’s kind but we’ve already planned our stay.’

  ‘But you have different interests possibly. My wife and daughter are content to spend the whole day shopping. I find shopping a horrendous bore. And I’m the one who has to pay for it.’ He looks at her in mock despair. ‘There is a charming little cinema on Via Reggio that shows the latest films. I know how young girls love the cinema.’

  It is the kind of banter she was used to on the perfume counter. Every day she would be fending off attention from men just like this one. She’d felt threatened in the gardens of the Villa Ada but here she was well within her depth.

  ‘Shall I come inside for a moment? You may care to take my card.’

  ‘No, thank you. In a few days we’ll be moving on to Florence.’

  ‘Florence? I know Florence very well. Before the war . . .’

  ‘Goodbye, Monsieur. I hope you have a pleasant stay.’

  He still has one hand flat against the door. As Renée shuts it after her, his wrist cracks. He lets out an ‘Ouf’. She leans against the door and listens, conscious that the man is listening from the other side. Eventually she hears his footsteps going back along the corridor.

  This time she doesn’t tell Pierre what’s happened. They are sitting on the terrace of the hotel later on that day. He is describing an encounter he’s had with an artist painting in the square, when he breaks off and stares at her.

  ‘You’ve taken off your ring.’

  ‘It’s on the other hand.’ She brings her right hand up to show him.

  ‘But I thought the whole point of the ring was to tell people you were spoken for.’

  ‘It didn’t seem to make much difference last week in the gardens.’ She sits back so that the waiter can refill her glass. ‘It’s better if we stop pretending. People here are gossiping about us anyway. It makes it more humiliating if they think we’re trying to convince them we’re respectable.’

  He reaches for her hand. ‘I’m sorry if it’s spoilt your stay here.’

  ‘Who cares what they think?’ She gives a bright smile.

  ‘Maybe we should have let people go on thinking that I was your father.’

  ‘You said you had never wanted children.’

  ‘I said artists made neglectful parents.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m neglecting you?’

  ‘I’m saying I don’t always want to be your daughter.’

  Pierre is looking at her curiously. ‘I’m afraid I might have been a touch insensitive when you came back to the hotel and told me you’d been pestered that day at the Villa Ada.’ He sits back. ‘You’ll tell me, won’t you, if you run into that sort of thing again?’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiles.

  Pierre takes out his pocket watch. It’s half past six. The gong for dinner goes at seven thirty. Renée takes an olive from the saucer. ‘Did you want to have a walk down to the river before dinner?’

  ‘I feel rather tired. I thought we might go back up to the room and have a nap, unless you’re keen to have a walk.’

  ‘No, I’ll be happy with a nap too,’ Renée says. She takes another bite out of the olive. She had never tasted one before she came to Italy. She’d found the first one bland and bitter. Pierre is right; it’s an acquired taste. She quite likes the combination now.

  Pierre suggests they take a train out to Assisi. Renée’s face falls. ‘Are we looking at more paintings?’

  ‘I think these are pictures you’ll like looking at. They’re all about Saint Francis and his miracles. They’re set out like a story book along the walls of the basilica.’

  He’s been there once, she thinks. Why should they need to go and look at them again? But she enjoys the train ride through the gently rolling hills of Umbria after the stifling atmosphere of Rome. They walk through dusty medieval streets and climb the hill to the basilica. Inside, she finds the same hill she has just climbed, with the same basilica on top. She sees Saint Francis in his friar’s cassock, feeding birds and exorcising demons with the raddled faces of Italian peasants and the scaly legs and wings of dragons. This is art that she can understand.

  There is a painting showing kitchen porters scraping food into a bowl for an emaciated dog, while Jesus and the twelve apostles sit in an adjoining room and argue about which of them is going to betray him. Renée thinks the dog’s a mongrel, but Pierre insists that it’s a terrier. She likes it that they’re both more interested in what is happening off-stage. For an instant, she is totally absorbed, the line between them open because all their energy is flowing in the same direction. Sometimes, as they’re looking at the pictures, he assumes the role of professore talking to a pupil. Often they discover they’ve attracted a small audience. When Renée sees what’s happening, she giggles. He pretends he hasn’t noticed.

  ‘Do you think that in a hundred years’ time somebody will stand in front of your work and explain it?’

  ‘My work doesn’t need explaining.’

  ‘It makes me feel shuddery to think that I’ll be dead and so will you, but people will be looking at me in your pictures. It’s like being dead and not dead.’

  ‘Only half-dead, do you mean?’

  ‘But in a way we shall be more alive than ever.’

  ‘Only if they tell the truth about us.’

  ‘Better if they don’t,’ says Renée.

  ‘Is the truth so terrible?’

  She sighs. ‘They wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Perhaps the world will be more liberated in a hundred years’ time. They won’t blame you, anyway, my darling.’

  ‘Yes, they will.’

  ‘What matters, Renée, is how well you fit into the picture, not how well you fit into the world.’

  ‘You think so?’

  On the homeward journey, she is tired. He puts his arm around her and she dozes. When she wakes up, Pierre is leaning on her shoulder with his free hand resting in her lap. She sees the way his fingers jerk involuntarily when he’s asleep. His hands are never really still. Like sentries they remain on duty even when the rest of him is sleeping. She looks at the hand and wonders whether it can sense her looking at it. While they’ve been in Rome, the skin has coarsened and the knuckles have turned brown. It doesn’t look like his hand any more. She feels a frisson of excitement at the thought that this hand could belong to anyone. Or even that it’s not a hand at all, it’s a gigantic stag beetle nestling in her lap. She feels a stirring in her loins. The insect rises on its six legs and sinks down into her lap again.

&nb
sp; At the far end of the carriage is an old man with a crate of guinea fowl perched on the seat beside him. Renée takes her shawl out of the basket next to her and drapes it casually across her knees. She feels the bony segments of the creature’s body underneath the silk and presses lightly on it. There is no response.

  She makes an effort to distract herself by concentrating on the rhythm of the wheels over the tracks. She looks out at the landscape rushing past them, children playing in a field, a peasant herding cows along a dirt road. This is what she’s seeing, but what she is feeling is the throbbing pulse between her thighs that’s turned the flesh to liquid.

  She spreads out her hand and presses harder, clawing at the shawl. The creature underneath, alert now to its situation, gives a series of small jerks. It scrunches up her skirt and slides in underneath it. Renée feels its tentacles brush lazily across her skin. She’s thinking of the night she lay with Margo’s hand across her thigh. The creature carries on with its exploratory sorties, pressing gently down on her, refusing to be hurried, moving at its own pace. Renée bunches up her fists. She doesn’t care now if the old man at the far end of the carriage knows what’s going on. She hears the squawking of the guinea fowl, the flutter of their feathers on the cage bars. She lets out a little sob.

  At Tiburtina station they walk out into the sunshine arm in arm, the artist and his muse, the fallen woman and her lover.

  ‘You should not be going through my pockets, Renée.’

  ‘It fell out when I was hanging up your jacket.’

  He comes over to her, takes the sketchbook, slots the card inside the cover and replaces it inside his pocket. On the back, there is a sketch of the Borghese Gardens. Underneath, he’s scrawled, ‘A wilderness. Love Pierre.’

  She can remember when he bought it. They were in the square outside the Vatican. He’d asked if there was anyone she’d like to send a card to and chose half a dozen for himself. ‘They serve me as an aide-memoire,’ he’d told her.

  ‘It’s the postcard that’s upset you, I suppose?’’

  ‘I’m not upset. I wasn’t looking for it. How could I know it was there?’

  ‘That’s why it’s better not to look in places where you might find things you’d rather not see.’

  ‘Better to be in the dark, you mean?’

  ‘I tell you what you need to know. I’m trying to protect you, Renée.’

  ‘I wish you’d stop treating me as if I were a child.’ She wishes that she didn’t always feel the need to answer back.

  He reaches for his jacket. ‘Let’s go down to dinner?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  He regards her patiently. ‘Why don’t you come down with me? Who knows, once you’re there you might be tempted.’ He goes over to the door and stands there holding out his arm.

  As they go through the dining room, they pass the table with the man who she’d encountered in the corridor outside her room. He nods to her. The woman glances their way and then lifts her eyebrows to her husband. ‘It’s the painter and his whore.’ That’s what they’re thinking.

  ‘Will you send it?’

  ‘I expect so.’ Pierre dips his spoon into the soup. At least they have stopped playing games. He knows what she’s referring to.

  ‘Have you said when we’re coming back?’

  ‘I don’t think even we know that.’

  It was supposed to be a month and it’s been less than three weeks so far. She feels panic. ‘Will you go to Saint-Germain-en-Laye when we return?’

  ‘I think I’ll have to. There are things I need to sort out.’ He puts down the spoon and wipes the serviette across his mouth. There is a flake of parsley clinging to his beard. Once she would have leant over, scooping it onto her tongue and offering it back to him. He would have laughed.

  ‘You’ve got a bit of parsley in your beard.’

  He wipes it off.

  Once they’re in bed, she cuddles up to him and they make love in a desultory way. A minute later, he’s asleep. She lies there wondering if Marthe – plain, old, shabby Marthe – nonetheless has something she lacks. She puts up with things. She doesn’t make a fuss. She would not search his pockets and then challenge him because she found a card in there addressed to someone else.

  He’s up before her in the morning, leaning out over the balcony. When he comes back into the room, he stands beside the bed and she pretends she’s still asleep. She doesn’t have to look to know there’s something merciless about the glance he’s giving her.

  It seems as if the energy that’s channelled into everyday things has been blocked and now it’s ready to explode. That evening in the restaurant, she’s picking at a sliver of prosciutto on her plate, not eating it but shifting it from one side to the other. When the waiter takes Pierre’s plate and then leans across to pick up hers, she makes a grab for it. ‘I haven’t finished.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Pierre exclaims. ‘You’ve spent the last half hour toying with the food.’

  The waiter hovers. She puts down the fork.

  Pierre draws breath. ‘I’m sorry. That was rude. I didn’t mean to rush you. Obviously, you take whatever time you like to eat your meal.’

  She wants to leave the table and go out into the street, but they are stuck here until both of them have finished or at least done justice to the meal. She feels obliged to eat now, rather than provoke another scene. While they wait for the next course to arrive, she traces round the pattern on the side-plate with her index finger.

  ‘More wine?’ Pierre tilts the bottle and she shakes her head. She looks towards the window. Outside it’s still light. ‘Shall we miss out on the dessert and take a walk?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Outside the hotel is a gypsy selling sprigs of lavender. ‘Good luck,’ she says. It’s bad luck not to buy one, is what she’s implying. Pierre buys a sprig for Renée and attaches it to her lapel. She sniffs her fingers and then holds them out to him.

  ‘That smell reminds me of the house in Dauphiné where I grew up,’ he says.

  She sniffs at it again. ‘You’ve never told me anything about your childhood.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell. I have an older brother and I had a sister.’

  ‘Don’t you still have one?’

  ‘She died.’ He takes her arm and they walk on. ‘She wasn’t very old. She had a daughter who is only fourteen.’

  ‘Not the mother of your niece . . . the one who has my name?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She stops. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘I said I’d been at a funeral.’

  ‘Not hers.’

  ‘You’d never met her. I suppose I didn’t want to make you sad.’

  She stares at him. She’s thinking of the woman she saw step out of the cab that afternoon on rue de Rennes, the tender way that Pierre took her in his arms and kissed her on the cheek; his sister.

  ‘Don’t you miss her?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. She was the only person in my family I felt close to.’

  ‘Aren’t there other people you feel close to?’

  ‘Not in that way.’

  They walk on. There is a moment in the south where once the sun goes down, the city seems to hold its breath. The heat of day has not yet given way to the first chill of evening, but you feel the promise of it in the air. She stumbles suddenly and grabs his arm. The heel has broken on her shoe. She bought them last week on the Via Borgognona. Pierre takes the shoe and turns it over in his hand.

  ‘Can it be mended?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but at least it’s not the same foot as it was the last time. You can make a pair with the survivor of the other two.’ He smiles. Has he discovered that she kept the broken sandal as a keepsake to remind her of the day they met?

  In the hotel he puts them side by side against the wall, his own shoes, scuffed and battered, next to them. He hates new clothes. He says he has to wear them in and it distracts him from the things he needs
to concentrate on. It’s true, when he does wear something new it always looks as if it’s meant for someone else. She’s staring at the shoes. The left one, with the broken heel, looks cowed beside its partner. The toe faces outwards as if it intends to creep away as soon as they’re not looking.

  ‘They were so expensive,’ Renée whispers. ‘How can they be broken?’

  ‘Money doesn’t guarantee a long life, I’m afraid.’

  ‘They were the nicest shoes I ever had.’

  ‘We’ll buy another pair just like it.’ Is she really going to get so upset over a pair of shoes when there is so much else to grieve about? ‘I’ve bought two tickets for the opera tomorrow. Have you ever seen an opera?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Italians are huge opera lovers.’ Carefully he hangs his suit up on the rail. ‘I’m taking you to one of Verdi’s operas, Rigoletto. It’s the story of a father who is treated like a clown but loves his only daughter to distraction. Everything he does, he does for her.’

  ‘What happens?’

  ‘Love destroys them both.’

  ‘So it’s a tragedy?’

  ‘No, dearest, it’s a comedy, Italian style.’

  ‘It was amazing, wonderful.’ Pierre has given her the programme as a souvenir. She wishes Gilda hadn’t died. She hoped it would end happily, but Pierre says there’s no such thing in opera as a happy ending. Someone always dies. ‘At least they do it beautifully,’ he says.

  Pierre begins to get undressed, but Renée wants to stay out on the balcony and watch the stars. ‘You’d better come to bed,’ he says.

  ‘Can’t I stay here a little longer?’

  ‘We’ve a busy day tomorrow.’

  ‘Have we?’

  ‘I’ve told the patron we shall be leaving after breakfast.’

  She’s not certain that she’s heard him properly. She stands there looking out over the street. It’s quiet again. Somewhere a dog barks, someone calls, a man laughs. When she turns into the room, he’s lying propped up on the pillows, one arm folded on his chest, the other lying by his side, palm up, the way that beggars wait for alms. She shuts the doors onto the balcony. It isn’t only the mosquitoes; moths come in, attracted by the light, and throw themselves against the lamp until their wings are shredded.