Painted Ladies

by Lynn Bushell

  She turns out the lights in all the other rooms and goes into the bathroom. She enjoys the sound the boiler makes when she turns on the tap. The noise of water in the pipes has often been her only company. The bath looks like an altar with the candles at each end of it. She takes the portrait of Pierre and props it up against the mirror, tilted slightly so it looks as if he’s gazing down at her. The bath is half full. Normally she’d turn the taps off now. Pierre said she could take baths twice a day if that was what she felt like, but you can’t shake off the habits of your youth.

  This evening she won’t stint herself. She keeps the water running till it’s nearly at the top before she lowers herself into it. She looks at Pierre’s portrait. For the first time he seems to be looking back at her, or is that wishful thinking? Pictures can’t look back at you; the traffic’s all one way. She wouldn’t want to be forgotten. Nor would she want someone looking at a picture of her in a hundred years’ time, wondering what he saw in her. It matters not just that he should remember her as beautiful, but that the world should think she is.

  The world. Now she sounds really like those women in the madhouse who insist they’re Josephine. Five years ago, the perfume counter was her world. If Pierre hadn’t come along, she’d probably have married someone Tonio approved of and had half a dozen children. Or she might still be with Marguerite. She was right in the end. She gave her good advice. But what use is advice when you’re in love?

  She might have gone on living here in the apartment, waiting for another lover to take over from Pierre. She’s been ‘kept’ all this time; what difference would another year make? When you love someone, it doesn’t matter which of you is making sacrifices. But it matters when you don’t. The minute Pierre stopped loving her, he started paying for her. She was little better than a whore then. She was never that before, no matter what her brother said. What Pierre took from her wasn’t just his love; it was the value that she put upon herself. So no, she can’t continue living here, especially now he’s married. Did he do that just to show her that he wasn’t coming back, or was it Marthe who insisted? She’d have done the same in her place.

  She turns on the hot tap and there is another gush of water. The steam rises round her in a cloud. She’s thankful that she can’t see anything too clearly. As the water closes over her, she hears the blunt sound of the street bell. So few people call on her now that she has forgotten what it sounds like. She hears voices on the ground floor and then, seconds afterwards, the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They come up to the next floor and the next, until they stop outside her own door.

  For an instant it occurs to her that it might be Pierre. He has a key although he always rang the bell to let her know that he was on his way up. If it were him, he might save her, swooping down and gathering her up into his arms, his voice sad and distracted, murmuring ‘Oh, Renée, Renée.’

  Somebody is hammering on the door. There is a pause and then it comes again. It’s odd what happens when sound has to pass through water. She remembers, in the park once, seeing two swans frozen to the surface of the lake and, as their bodies thawed the ice and it began to crack, it was as if the sound was all around her and the earth was breaking up under her feet. This time the sound is very far away, but she is very far away, too.

  She’s surprised that there is no last-minute struggle; that she doesn’t rise up gasping to the surface and have to go through it all again until she wears herself out. If she’d known it was so easy, she might not have waited. I must tell someone, she thinks. I ought to tell Pierre that in the end, it wasn’t hard at all. I ought to tell him, but I can’t. Because I’m dead.

  The days we spend in Antibes are among the happiest I’ve ever known. We go for long walks in the country and one day we take a picnic and a rowing boat out on the water and stay there until the evening. Pierre is sleeping better, tired out from the walks and wholesome food – rich soups and bouillabaisse, veal cutlets with wild mushrooms, salad laced with chervil.

  Renée isn’t far from either of our minds, but she’s the one thing we don’t talk about. It’s like pretending that there’s not a war on. I know dreadful things are happening out of sight, but whereas they would haunt me if I were in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, here they seem too far off to matter.

  We don’t see a lot of Manguin. He stays in his own part of the house. We sometimes ask him round for dinner and then he and Pierre stay up half the night discussing art or politics. Pierre thinks that the Allies are demanding too much in the way of reparations. Manguin thinks the Germans should be screwed for every penny. Both of them are Communists and all that either of them really cares about is painting.

  When I asked him whether he was anxious to get back to Paris, Pierre said that it wouldn’t bother him not to go back at all. He’s even thinking we might buy a little house in Antibes as a summer residence. It will take years for Paris to get back to what it was before the war, but here you wouldn’t know there’d been a war.

  We’ve been there nearly two weeks when the telegram arrives from Édouard. I know when the boy delivers it that what is inside will destroy the peace Pierre and I have been enjoying here. He’s gone across to Manguin’s studio to help him choose the pictures for the Paris Salon next month.

  It’s Pierre’s name on the telegram, but I could open it. We don’t have secrets from each other any more. I don’t, though. When I hear Pierre’s steps on the gravel, I arrange my face so that it doesn’t give away the terror I already feel. ‘The boy came by this morning with a telegram,’ I tell him.

  He stands looking at it. He would rather that I opened it, but after all it is addressed to him. He slides his finger underneath the flap. There is a silence that seems to go on for ever, then he gives a sharp cry, like a rabbit when a weasel has it by the neck. He leans against the wall, his eyes closed. I uncurl his fingers from the telegram and smooth the creases out so I can read it. What is printed there, appalling as it is, is not entirely unexpected. Renée Montchaty has killed herself.

  B

  The line is bad and Édouard’s voice is rasping, so that every time he says a word with ‘s’ in it, it’s followed by a whistle. Pierre is leaning on the counter for support. The cashier’s giving him odd looks. He’s listening in to this side of the conversation and imagining the other side. He’s also trying to add up the price of stamps and weigh the parcels handed to him.

  ‘Do you know what happened?’ Pierre says.

  ‘I don’t have the details, but the rumour is she drowned herself. ‘

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘My dear chap, I appreciate that it’s a shock. The girl must have been mentally unsound.’ He knows this could have happened countless times in his life, but I don’t suppose he ever thought that it would happen to Pierre. ‘There’ll have to be an inquest, I’m afraid. It’s usual in cases where the cause of death is not established.’

  ‘But you say she drowned?’

  ‘She did, but they will want to know if it was accidental. Damn it, Pierre, you’re a lawyer.’

  ‘You said she had killed herself.’

  He sighs. ‘There’s not much doubt about it. She had rigged the bathroom out as if it were a chapel – candles everywhere, your portrait propped up on the washstand . . . It’s not looking good, Pierre. I wanted to get hold of you before the police did.’

  ‘Are they going to arrest me?’

  ‘No, of course not. There’s no evidence that you had anything to do with it. How could you have? You’re at the other end of the country. But they’ll be wondering if she had any reason to be suicidal. You need to prepare your story.’

  ‘I shall have to tell the truth.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be in too much of a rush to do that, old chap. It’s not your fault, what she’s done.’

  ‘Whose fault is it?’

  ‘She got the wrong impression. She exaggerated the importance of the love affair. It’s not unusual for women to convince themselves that they’ve been promised something when th
ey haven’t.’

  ‘I said I would marry her.’ He knows I can hear everything that’s said between them, even if the cashier isn’t able to. Of course he isn’t saying anything I didn’t know. It’s strange that, hearing it again now is as painful as it was the first time Renée told me.

  ‘That’s just it, Pierre. By all means say you were her lover, but for God’s sake don’t imply that you agreed to marry Renée. Don’t say anything unless you have to. Let them ask the questions, but don’t volunteer the information. Marthe’s sensible. I’m sure that she’ll agree with me. You’re in shock. Give yourself time to adjust. I’ll let you know as soon as I have any information.’

  The train journey back to Paris seems interminable. By the time we get to Roussillon the skies have clouded over. We stare mutely at the devastated landscape outside Paris, blighted trees and shell-scarred meadows, sodden ditches and a cold wind riffling the grass beside the tracks. The cab is waiting outside Montparnasse to take us on to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

  It seems that Renée had been found by police when water started dripping through a neighbour’s ceiling. She had left the hot tap running to prevent the water going cold. My first thought is, how dare she kill herself like that? Now every painting of me in the bath will give rise to the same snide comments. Is the woman Pierre has painted me or Renée, or a combination of the two of us? Had he been hoping I might die like that and leave him free to marry Renée, or perhaps by taking up the same pose I was showing callous disrespect of someone else’s suffering? I might have been the injured party at the start, but I can hardly claim the role of victim now.

  The morning of the inquest, Édouard helps me bundle Pierre into the cab. He started smoking cigarettes when we got back to Saint-Germain, as if he didn’t have the patience any more to light the pipe, and he starts fumbling in his pockets. Édouard lights a cigarette and gives it to him. We exchange a glance. I haven’t always had a lot of time for Édouard in the past but in the last two weeks I have relied on him to help me bolster up Pierre. I don’t think I can do it on my own. It’s different from the situation we were in when Pierre came back from Italy. There was a problem to be solved then. It was action that was needed. Now we have to come to terms with the result of what we’ve done. I feel guilt just as keenly as Pierre. If I had had no dealings with the girl, I could have coped more easily with what is happening now, but I feel like a man with scarlet fever asked to nurse another man with measles.

  I know, having contemplated suicide myself, that it’s a thing you do without consideration for the people round you. There is no more selfish act than suicide. She must have known what she was doing. She was making sure she wouldn’t be forgotten. Not a day would go by when Pierre would not wake up and think about her.

  I see Roussel at the inquest, sitting hunched up in the public gallery. He’s like those buildings you see everywhere in Paris now the war is over, their façades apparently untouched but without anything behind them. He’s not being called, but it seems that the evening Renée died he’d gone to her apartment. He had seen the notice of our marriage in the paper and had been afraid for her, he told the police. Perhaps he thought he stood a chance with her himself with Pierre no longer in the running. Luckily for him, the man downstairs had heard him beating on her door. He said that Renée hadn’t answered and ten minutes later he’d heard Roussel coming down the stairs again. Without his testimony, Roussel might have found himself in trouble – one girl missing and another dead. A man soon gets a reputation.

  Monsieur Mauberger, from the apartment underneath, when asked if he’d had any contact with her, said she’d taken in a parcel for him some months earlier. When he collected it, she had invited him into the flat. He had declined. Why? ‘I sensed she was lonely,’ he said, as if loneliness were a disease.

  The inquest brings a new shock. She was pregnant when she killed herself. How could she do that? Not just kill herself but kill her child. I think of Suzanne and how much I wanted her. It’s fortunate that we’re a good way into the proceedings before this is mentioned.

  ‘The deceased was known to you in what capacity?’ Pierre is asked.

  ‘Professionally, to begin with. I employed her as my model. I’m an artist.’

  ‘The apartment Renée Montchaty was living in was in your name, according to the leasehold documents.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It wasn’t merely a professional association, then?’ It starts to look as if it’s Pierre’s own reputation that he is defending. This is the conclusion that the coroner has come to, anyway. ‘Is it correct that this young woman was your mistress and you’d set her up in this apartment?’ Pierre looks round for me. ‘Please answer.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘When did you last see Renée Montchaty?’

  ‘It was the evening of 23rd April. We’d returned from Rome and took a cab to the apartment. We’d decided not to see each other any more.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  ‘We realised we weren’t suited.’

  ‘How long had you been together?’

  Pierre frowns. ‘Four years.’ He turns one hand palm up as if reading from a script. ‘No, on reflection it was nearer five years.’

  ‘Your relationship was such that you had set her up in an apartment. After all that time you suddenly decide the two of you aren’t suited. What took place in Rome to lead to that decision?’

  ‘I suppose it was the first time we had been together constantly. We went in preparation for . . .’ He stops, aware of the significance of what he’s been about to say. Beside me, Édouard groans.

  ‘In preparation for . . .’ the coroner prompts, glancing at his watch.

  ‘Our marriage.’

  Suddenly the room falls silent. You can hear a fly up in the skylight, buzzing.

  ‘So you planned to marry Renée Montchaty?’

  ‘At that time, yes.’

  ‘You had proposed to her? She was a party to these plans?’

  ‘Of course. I couldn’t marry her without her knowing.’ Pierre is not deliberately being flippant, but his last remark does not go down well with the coroner.

  ‘This is an inquest. We are trying to determine why a beautiful young woman in the prime of life was seemingly so desperate that she took her own life.’

  Pierre grips the stand.

  ‘I’m right in thinking you already had a common-law wife?’ Pierre nods. ‘Was she made aware of your relationship with Renée Montchaty?’

  ‘She knew about it when we left for Italy.’

  ‘And how did she respond?’

  ‘She wasn’t very pleased.’ There is a titter in the court.

  ‘One might think that if anyone was going to be desperate, it would be her.’

  ‘My wife is an exceptionally strong person.’

  I’m not certain if this is a tribute and in any case it isn’t true.

  ‘Your wife, yes. You were married shortly after your return from Italy, but not to Renée Montchaty?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You decided after thirty years, to marry Mademoiselle Boursin, with whom you had been living prior to your love affair with Renée Montchaty . . . indeed, throughout your love affair with Renée Montchaty.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you imagine the deceased would have reacted on discovering the status you had offered her had been afforded to another?’

  ‘I know she was terribly unhappy.’

  ‘How would you describe her state of mind when you returned from Rome?’

  ‘Excitable. She was erratic – laughing, crying.’

  ‘Had she always been like that?’

  ‘No, she was lively but much calmer, normally.’

  ‘What brought about this sudden change of personality?’

  ‘She thought I was withdrawing from her.’

  ‘And presumably you were. You’d told her you no longer wished to marry her.’

  ‘I hadn’t said that, no.’
r />   ‘She didn’t know that you intended going back to Paris and proposing to your common-law wife?’

  ‘That was not what I intended.’

  ‘But you did go straight back, having left her by herself at the apartment. And that was the last time that you saw her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you have no idea what happened to her in the interval between that evening and her death a few weeks later?’

  ‘Only through my wife. She was approached by Renée Montchaty one morning in the market. Later, she went to the flat and took a letter from me.’

  ‘Your wife acted as an intermediary?’

  ‘She tried to reason with her. Renée was behaving in a way that made us all concerned for her.’

  ‘You didn’t try to reason with her personally?’

  ‘I knew it wasn’t any use.’

  ‘One wonders if it wouldn’t have been more upsetting for one mistress to be told her lover didn’t want her any longer by another.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You will have been aware that Renée Montchaty was pregnant when she died?’

  There is a murmur in the courtroom. Pierre sways. I think he is about to fall. So does the clerk, who hands him up a glass of water.

  ‘No,’ he whispers. ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  I’m afraid the coroner might go on questioning him, but he doesn’t. ‘I think it’s apparent that the reason Renée Montchaty committed suicide was that her expectations had been disappointed. She had been led to believe that she was to become your wife. The trip to Italy took place on that assumption. For whatever reason, you decided you no longer wished to marry her. Not only that, but shortly after your return you marry someone else. One doesn’t have to look far for an answer to the question, “Why was this young woman driven to decide that life was not worth living?”’

  Pierre leaves the court supported between me and Édouard. Outside, standing in a sullen group, is Renée’s family. Her mother has her arms around the younger children. One of them is crying and the other twists the tassels of her mother’s shawl around her finger silently. I catch the woman’s eye and she looks back at me in anguish. As we pass, a young man turns and spits at Pierre. The gobbet of saliva lands on Pierre’s lapel. I don’t know if he’s even noticed.