Painted Ladies

by Lynn Bushell

  ‘Why do you suppose they do that when they know they’ll die?’ she’d asked Pierre.

  ‘Because their love of light is greater than their fear of death.’

  He bunches up his hand in case the open palm is misinterpreted. ‘Did you hear what I said?’ He doesn’t turn his head towards her, but his eyes have shifted. She nods meekly. ‘I don’t think this place is doing either of us any good.’

  It’s not the place, she thinks. It’s us. ‘But we’ve had such a lovely evening.’

  ‘Yes. I’m pleased that you enjoyed it. I did too. It would have been a pity to have ended on a bad note.’

  ‘When did you decide?’

  ‘I’ve been considering it since you told me you’d been pestered at the Villa Ada. Rome is wonderful but I’m afraid Italian men are volatile. A woman on her own – young, beautiful, fair-haired, is something they find irresistible.’

  ‘It only happened once.’

  ‘You only went out on your own once.’

  ‘Are you saying that’s the reason why we’re leaving?’

  ‘I’m frustrated, and you’re bored. There’s no point in our staying.’

  ‘Why are you frustrated?’

  ‘I suppose because I want to work and I’m unable to.’

  ‘Is that because of me?’

  He looks away. ‘No, I’m not blaming you. I thought that Rome would be the same as it was thirty years ago. Of course it’s changed and so have I.’

  ‘We could go somewhere else.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘I don’t know. We were happy in Assisi.’

  ‘Yes, let’s not forget that.’

  She is standing on the carpet with her hands clasped and her head bent. ‘I did want to please you.’

  ‘Dear girl, yes, I know you did. I’ve said it’s not your fault. You need someone who’s younger and less self-obsessed, a man who’ll give you the attention you deserve.’

  ‘You’re saying that it’s over?’

  ‘We can’t make each other happy, Renée. We’ve discovered that much while we’ve been here.’

  ‘You want me to be in Clichy on my own?’

  ‘Until a reasonable alternative presents itself.’ He looks away.

  She wonders what a ‘reasonable alternative’ would be.

  She’s sitting at the dressing table, staring at her own reflection. She lifts up the towel he’s draped across her shoulders. There’s a dark bruise on her right breast and another on her upper arm, but it’s her face that frightens her. There’s a distracted air about it. It’s the face of somebody emerging from a nightmare to discover that the dream is real.

  She can remember lying next to him the night before, the pillow pressed against her mouth, and crying silently until it felt like she was drowning on the inside. She had heard the clock down in the square strike three, then four. She had got out of bed to fetch a handkerchief and stubbed her toe against the chair leg. Suddenly it was as if the pain in her had found an outlet and was pouring through the gap. Rage, misery, humiliation, all of it came tumbling out. She gave a wail and heard the bed creak as Pierre threw back the covers and rushed over to her.

  ‘Don’t scream!’ he begged. ‘If somebody hears, we’ll have the patron up here.’

  ‘You said you would never leave me!’ she shrieked, throwing herself at him, bunching up her fists and pounding them against his chest. ‘You promised!’ She was clawing at his face and as he tilted back his head to save his eyes, she heard the skin tear on his cheek, like linen when you put a knife through it.

  ‘For God’s sake, Renée, stop this!’ He was scrabbling to secure her wrists. She stumbled, giving him the opportunity to twist her round and push her down onto the floor. He sat astride her, pinning her arms by the wrists above her head. The only bit of her that she could still move was her mouth.

  ‘I wish that Tonio had killed you. I wish I had! You’ve destroyed me. Bastard!’

  He let go of one wrist, clamping his free hand across her mouth. Her teeth closed round the hand and she bit into it. He shrieked. She’d bitten him down to the bone. She tasted blood inside her mouth.

  Pierre leant forward. ‘Renée,’ he said, menacingly. ‘I shall take my hand away now, but if you cry out, I’ll put it back and keep it there and if you choke, so be it.’ She heard noises coming from her throat. His hand was covered in a sticky blend of blood and mucus. As she breathed, a pink froth bubbled on her teeth. Her body shuddered with a last involuntary spasm.

  She watched Pierre get up and stagger over to the sink. He took a hand towel from the rail and ran it underneath the tap. He bathed her face, attempting to remove the dirt and blood still sticking to her cheeks. His hand was bleeding and he rinsed the towel again and wrapped it round his fist.

  She lay there without moving while he brought a blanket from the bed and put a pillow underneath her head. She heard him stumbling round the bedroom, picking up the fallen chair and straightening the carpet, rescuing the opera programme that had fallen on the floor and gathering the stray shards of a broken tumbler before tipping them in the waste-paper basket. In the dull light of approaching dawn, the room seemed drained of colour. He’d sunk down into the armchair. Outside in the square the clock struck half-past five.

  She’d drifted off into a troubled sleep and when she woke the next time he was leaning over her. His face looked odd. There was a red line down his cheek and where it cut into the beard the hairs were missing.

  ‘You look funny. Something’s happened to your face.’

  She put her finger out to touch it. He stepped back. ‘You’d better have a wash. We have to leave soon.’ He picked up the eiderdown and put it back onto the bed.

  Her throat felt dry. It was as if her body had been drained of liquid. ‘Could I have a glass of water, please?’

  He filled up the decanter. ‘There’s no glass; it’s broken. I’m afraid you’ll have to tip the jug.’ As it came level with her mouth, she felt the bruises on her lips. ‘There was a struggle; you remember?’ He returned it to the shelf above the wash-hand basin.

  B

  Renée stares at her reflection in the glass. She looks round at the rumpled carpet and the pillow and then slowly takes in the waste-paper basket with its bloodied towels.

  He lifts the nightdress up over her head. She gives a little shudder. For the first time since they met, she feels ashamed of being naked. Pierre soaks the flannel and begins to wash her, starting with her face and neck, then holding out each arm in turn and wiping it. The flannel passes underneath her breasts, across her stomach. As it dips between her legs, she closes them instinctively. ‘It’s all right,’ Pierre says. Once she’s dry, he wraps the towel around her shoulders. Reaching for the hairbrush, he makes an attempt to tidy up her hair. She leans her head against him. ‘Can you put your clothes on now, or shall I help you?’

  ‘I can do it,’ she says in a small voice.

  He bends down to kiss her forehead. ‘While you get dressed I’ll go down and settle up the bill. I think it’s better that we don’t go in to breakfast. I’ll bring back some coffee if I can.’ He puts his jacket on. ‘You ought to start. The train leaves in an hour.’

  Is this what it’s like when you go mad? She is afraid of being shut away. She knows what homes for the insane are like – dark corridors that echo, rooms with lights directly overhead so that you can’t go anywhere to get away from them, cold water poured onto your head until the thoughts inside it are so jumbled up you don’t know what’s real any more. She must sit quietly so that when Pierre comes back, he’ll know the person who did those things isn’t her. She’ll be his little girl again, obedient and biddable, not wilful and destructive. She gets dressed. She hears him coming up the stairs and down the corridor. He’s brought up coffee on a tray and there’s a plate of madeleines.

  She lifts the cup obediently to her lips and winces. Pierre pours himself a coffee. While she’s sipping hers, he takes the last of her belongings from the close
t, adding them to the valise.

  ‘I’ve made sure all your things are in a separate case so that you’ll have them with you when we drop you off at the apartment.’ He’s pretending that he’s doing this for her, but Renée knows he’s doing it so that there’ll be no need to go back later to return belongings that have got mixed up with his.

  He drains his cup and puts it back onto the tray. She’s hardly touched hers, but he says they can’t wait any longer. They’ll be sending up a porter any minute.

  ‘We must go.’

  She puts her cup down on the tray and Pierre takes her arm.

  He lowers his valise onto the mat and stands there staring at me. ‘Could I sit down?’ he says, finally.

  He sits down opposite me at the table. Now the light is shining on him, I see just how tired he is. His hair is matted and his beard’s unkempt. He has the scent of someone who’s been travelling for nights on end; the rancid smell of railway carriages and dining cars.

  He puts his hand up to his eyes. His hands have aged, too, in the last month. I look at the finger of his left hand where the wedding ring would be. There isn’t one. They didn’t marry after all then; I suppose that’s something. He would not deliberately lie; he’s not like me.

  ‘Pierre?’

  He makes a little gesture with his hand to wave away the question. I can’t think I’ve ever seen a human being looking so defeated. Even when the lines of soldiers passed through Paris after being routed in the north they still had some life left in them, some hope. I feel indignant, as if someone’s borrowed something from me and then broken it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marthe.’

  ‘You had better go to bed.’ His jacket’s wet with mist; he’s shivering inside it. I get up and take his arm to help him up the stairs. I peel the jacket off him and undo his tie. I kneel in front of him and carefully release the buckle round his waist. He goes on staring into space. I feel rage start to bubble up inside me. Rage because what Renée has sent back to me is no more than a husk. I wrench the buckle and he gives a little start.

  ‘Get into bed.’ I lift the covers up and he falls sideways. He’s asleep before his head lands on the pillow.

  I lie with my body folded round him, wedging my knees in behind his so that he’s protected all the way down. His hands fumble blindly in the dark for mine. I put my own hands over his. We’re locked together now so tightly that there isn’t room for anything to come between us.

  ‘Marthe,’ he says in his sleep.

  At least he’s got my name right.

  When he comes down in the morning, I have coffee ready on the hob. He’s shaved his beard off. There’s a moment, as he stands there in the doorway, when I want to laugh. His face is pink and raw around his chin, brown where the sun has weathered it over the past month and white underneath the glasses, like an owl’s. I notice there’s a scar across his cheek.

  I wonder what the bathroom looks like. Madame Hébert’s due this morning. I don’t want to give her any ammunition that she hasn’t got already. Earlier, when I came downstairs, I looked in the right-hand pocket of his jacket for the sketchbook. It was in the left-hand pocket. Somehow, more than anything, this tells me that Pierre has lost his way. There was a drawing of a cat among the ruins, several views through open shutters and a stray dog on a dusty road – no more than half a dozen drawings. He would have done more than that here in a morning. At the end, loose, was a pencil drawing of a square. There were two women in the foreground and another in between them holding up a set of scales. He took us both to Rome, then, after all.

  He looks around the kitchen, takes in Juno lying on the carpet underneath the chair and Poucette riffling through her fur for fleas. When he came back, he wasn’t certain I would be there. What he’d hoped for was exactly what he got – me sitting at the table where he’d left me. Did he think I’d been there waiting for him all this time? I curse my own stupidity. I could at least have picked a different place at table.

  ‘I’m glad nothing’s changed,’ he says. The silence after that is longer, as if both of us are struggling to get over what he’s just said. He sits down. ‘Of course, I don’t mean . . .’

  I look dumbly at the coffee pot. He thinks that everything’s the way it was before. It’s not, of course. You can’t break someone’s heart and then expect to glue the bits together. Like a milk jug, it might look the same, but you won’t dare put milk in it again.

  Suppose he had come back last night and found my body decomposing in the bathtub with the skeletons of Juno, Blanco and Poucette splayed out across the tiles? Nobody to take off his jacket, tuck him up in bed, no sleep for him to sink down into. Just a nightmare that had no end.

  ‘It was terrible,’ he whispers.

  ‘It can’t all have been like that,’ I say, although a part of me is hoping that it was, that he at least was suffering a bit of what I felt that morning as I ran a bath and wondered what would take more courage – getting out of it again or letting myself slide under the water.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Marthe, I don’t know what happened.’

  I do. ‘You’re a middle-aged man in his fifties,’ I could say. ‘You fell in love with someone young enough to be your daughter. It’s a common tale. It happens all the time. Don’t bother giving it another thought.’ But knowing that it happens all the time is not much consolation to the woman who’s been left.

  ‘I was afraid you might have gone,’ he says.

  ‘Gone?’ I say with a little laugh. ‘As you once pointed out, where would I go?’

  He holds his hand out. I would like to reach across to him and take it, but there’s more than two cups and a coffee pot between us.

  I call Dr Dolbecq in to look at him. The doctor comes from Isigny, so he’s a man of few words and I know that he will not waste any of them gossiping.

  ‘Home cooking and a warm bed,’ he says. He prescribes some chloral for Pierre to take at nights. Most people take a passing interest in the pictures when they come into the house, especially those in which I’m standing naked in the bathtub. Dr Dolbecq walks straight past them. He is not a man who sees much.

  ‘Dr Dolbecq says you’ll live,’ I say. ‘He’s given you a sleeping draught.’

  I pour some water for him from the jug and leave it on the windowsill. The sun is catching on the glass. I brought a bunch of the mimosa in, this morning, so that Pierre could see it from the bed. A bud drops down into the glass and floats across the surface. I bend down to scoop it out.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Pierre says. ‘Stay like that.’

  It’s over, I think. He’s come back.

  ‘You have to help me. Please.’ She has both hands around my arm. The basket tilts and plums roll out across the cobbles. People turn and stare. They might not know her in the market, but they know me. ‘Talk to me!’ she says. ‘I have to talk to someone.’

  ‘Talk to someone else,’ I tell her. ‘I can’t help you.’ Tears are running down her face. Her eyes are red and swollen. She’s been wandering up and down between the stalls.

  ‘I’m going mad,’ she whispers, putting her face up to mine.

  She’s clawing at my arm. Her face is streaked with dirt and tears. Dear God, to think I envied her. I back into the alleyway that runs down one side of the market square. I’ve been through this once with Pierre and I don’t want to go through it again with her. But looking at the wreck in front of me, I can’t help feeling sadness. This could be Suzanne come back for comfort with a broken heart, her dreams in ruins, all her hopes dashed. ‘Pull yourself together, girl. You think he wants to see you in this state?’

  ‘He won’t see me at all,’ she sobs. ‘He doesn’t want to see me any more.’

  So he left her. In spite of everything, I dared not think that he could willingly have given up on so much beauty. ‘You’re not doing yourself any favours,’ I say. ‘Dry your eyes. You’ll be arrested if you carry on like this.’

  ‘I can’t bear to be on my own,’ she wails. ‘I’ll k
ill myself.’

  ‘Tch. You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ I say. ‘That’s just the sort of talk that scares men off. Have you no pride, girl?’

  ‘Do you think I’d be here if I had?’

  There is a café nearby and I bundle her inside. The coat she’s wearing isn’t thick enough to keep the cold out and she’s shivering. I order her a bowl of soup. She says she isn’t hungry. ‘Warm your hands around it then,’ I say. She follows my instructions, grateful to have somebody to tell her what to do.

  ‘How did it come to this?’ I ask, when she’s stopped shivering.

  ‘I don’t know. It was lovely to begin with. Rome was wonderful. I didn’t mind him working, but I felt shut out from it. It wasn’t like it had been in the studio. The more I clung to him, the more remote he seemed. I felt I’d lost him. I was jealous, I suppose.’ She looks at me. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  Oh yes, I think. I understand. The people at the other tables have begun to listen to the conversation. They’ll be wondering who this woman is and in the end they’ll find out. I can see why Pierre was frightened of her. It’s as if she’s got a spring wound up inside her. It’s so tight that once it starts unwinding, she can’t stop it. ‘He said he was sorry if he’d hurt me; he had never wanted to. “I’ve only loved two women in my whole life,” he said, “and I’ve ruined both of them.”’

  ‘You don’t think I can change his mind for him? You think I would have let him leave me if I’d had a choice?’

  She’s weeping, but more quietly now. ‘I feel as if I have no value,’ she says, sniffing in her handkerchief.

  ‘Of course you have a value. What sort of a woman lets a man decide her value? You’re young. On a good day, you’d be beautiful. You’d have men falling over one another for a chance to woo you.’