D’Arcy sank into a chair, sipped her coffee with closed eyes and felt the kind of contentment wash over her that was an infrequent visitor in her life.
‘Would you like anything else?’ Célie asked.
‘I think everything is perfect,’ D’Arcy replied, the French her mother had always spoken with her rolling off her tongue as familiarly as the English she ordinarily spoke.
It was very tempting to sit on the balcony all morning and drink too much coffee and eat too much pungently oozing cheese and fresh baguette. No bread in the whole of Australia ever tasted as good as the bread in France. But she had work to do so she threw on her version of jeans and a white shirt – her choice of shirt being a once lemon-coloured, now faded to cream 1970s Ossie Clark chiffon blouse, with a bow at the collar and the bleached-out lines of a Celia Birtwell print still visible. She eschewed yesterday’s cowboy boots in favour of a pair of scuffed vintage boots with the traces of once bright embroidery.
Before she went downstairs, she telephoned her mother to let her know she wouldn’t be back in Sydney any time soon.
‘Hello, darling,’ Victorine Hallworth said as soon as she picked up, and D’Arcy smiled.
‘You’ll never believe me if I tell you how fabulous this chateau is. And I’m staying for two weeks,’ D’Arcy crowed. ‘It’s like a dream job. Delicious food. Amazing views. And photographs I adore.’
‘You sound happy.’ D’Arcy could hear her mother smiling down the line.
‘I am. In fact, I might write a piece about it. I’ll send a pitch to Maya tonight.’
‘I’m sure she’d love to have another piece from you. You haven’t written for her for a while,’ Victorine said.
‘I haven’t,’ D’Arcy agreed, freelance writing being just one of the many things she dabbled in over her peripatetic existence. ‘But this place is just begging to be written about. You’d love it. It’s the France of everyone’s dreams.’
‘The France of my dreams is probably a more tarnished vision than the one you have in front of you now. Although you’re making me want to come out and see you. Where exactly are you?’
‘Not far from Reims.’
‘Not my favourite part of the country.’ Her mother’s voice seemed to catch on the words.
‘How can it not be your favourite part?’
Her mother paused before replying. ‘Just memories. From a long time ago. You have a wonderful time and enjoy it for both of us.’
‘I will. I love you, Maman.’
As D’Arcy hung up the phone, she frowned. They hardly ever spoke about her mother’s childhood in France, a country Victorine hadn’t visited since she was in her twenties, even though she’d insisted on D’Arcy learning French and had always encouraged D’Arcy’s own visits there, from exchange trips in high school, to university in Paris. Despite that, her mother had told her to enjoy herself, so she would. She went downstairs, jumped in her car and drove to the nearest quincaillerie – the hardware shop – for supplies.
Back at the chateau, she carried everything inside and almost beheaded Josh with a piece of plywood. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you,’ she said after he’d leapt out of her way.
‘I didn’t need that ear anyway,’ he said, mock-rubbing the side of his head.
‘You’d better tell me where to put everything before I injure anyone else. I don’t want to risk hurting Célie and not having that divine breakfast tomorrow.’
‘Oh, but I’m expendable.’ He actually smiled.
‘Naturally.’ She smiled back. Perhaps he’d just needed coffee yesterday. He seemed much nicer today. Although he was still wearing a perfectly pressed shirt and the trousers of an expensive suit, so perhaps the stiffness of demeanour to match would soon reappear.
‘Follow me. The salon de grisailles might work.’
He led the way through the chateau to an enormous room, a sitting room now, although it looked to D’Arcy as if it must once have held elegant receptions or balls, the columns proudly arching up to the ceiling indicating its history. It had the same view as D’Arcy had seen from her balcony that morning, the grounds rolling away in a riot of colour and perfume down to a canal. The room was furnished as tastefully as D’Arcy’s, the soft blues and greys that had lent the room its name present here also in the panelled wood walls, inset by boiserie, which arrested D’Arcy’s attention. They were painted in silver, pearl, black and white and depicted a child in a forest of strangely stunted and twisted trees; D’Arcy couldn’t tell if the child found the trees’ presence haunting or soothing.
She tore her gaze away from the panels. ‘I’m going to be making a bit of a mess,’ she said doubtfully.
‘You can work on the terrace if you like.’ Josh opened the doors at the back of the room. ‘Or there’s the winter garden over there.’ He pointed to a windowed enclosure that would be ideal on a cooler day but most likely roasting in summer.
‘I’ll take the terrace,’ D’Arcy said, exiting through the doors. She dropped her equipment onto a table that she could use as a workbench. ‘I’ll build a crate for each photograph that isn’t already packed,’ she said, ‘but they’ll need to be double-crated. You must have some insulated crates somewhere?’
He nodded and disappeared, and D’Arcy began to saw and hammer. She did build crates occasionally; certain clients were fussy and D’Arcy had a reputation for being able to take care of an artwork from start to finish. She knew how to pack and how to transport and how to negotiate with customs brokers and sometimes couldn’t believe that a fine arts degree had led to her becoming a kind of glorified babysitter for priceless artworks. But she also knew she loved it, even the carpentry that was her job right now.
Once the first crate was ready, she started on the condition report for the accompanying photograph. Josh arrived back with the insulated crates just as she’d finished.
‘I need your autograph,’ she said, passing him the paperwork.
He read it over, frowning, glancing at the photograph referred to and eventually seemed to concede to her description as being accurate.
‘I’ll work in the salon this morning so I can read each report and sign as you go,’ he said.
‘It’ll be noisy. Sawing and hammering are hard to do quietly.’
‘I don’t mind noise. I used to work in the bullpen of a law firm in Manhattan; twenty associates are probably a lot noisier than a saw.’
‘Wow, this must be a huge change of pace,’ she said.
He shrugged, not elaborating any further.
The morning went on with D’Arcy fashioning crates, completing condition reports, having Josh sign them, which he did wordlessly, but at least never disagreeing or asking her to change what she’d written. In between the whirr of her saw or her drill, she could hear Josh speaking on the phone in impeccable French. It felt as if hardly any time had passed before Célie appeared with food and D’Arcy realised it was after two o’clock. More baguettes. Cheese. Tomatoes. Charcuterie. Her stomach growled loudly.
‘I’m starving,’ she said to Célie in French, who smiled.
‘Wait until you try the tarte tatin I have for dessert,’ Célie said.
D’Arcy groaned. ‘I’ll be sure to leave room for it.’
Josh came out onto the terrace as D’Arcy sat down. ‘You speak French much too well for an Australian,’ he said.
D’Arcy finished chewing her mouthful of bread. ‘Are Australians not known for their linguistic skills?’ she asked innocently.
‘Not generally, no. You’re an island in the middle of nowhere. There’s no pressing need to speak anything other than English.’
‘And Americans are somehow different? You have a pressing need to learn French because Canada’s on your doorstep?’
‘Touché,’ he said, that hard-to-provoke smile reappearing. ‘What I meant to say is, why do you speak French so well?’
‘My mother is French. And your mother is …?’ she guessed, knowing that to speak the language so well, he must have
learned as a child too.
‘French Canadian.’
‘Aha.’ She reached for more bread. ‘So tell me about the bullpen. How did you get from there to here?’
‘Preventing corporations from being sued for obscene amounts of money, while guaranteed to give you a short-term, fist-pumping high, is pretty soulless,’ he said flatly. ‘I did a degree in law and art history – the bizarrest combination, but that’s what I wanted to do. When an artists’ agency was looking for agents with legal and contractual expertise, I applied, not really expecting to get it. But I did. Then, because I could speak French, I was asked to run the French office for the agency after a year or so.’
‘Which means you mustn’t be too bad at being an agent. But shouldn’t you be in Paris, rather than here?’
‘I come here at least once a week. The photographer was my first and most important client. And when the photographer’s work is travelling across the oceans, it’s doubly important that I’m around to make sure it goes safely.’
A short silence followed, into which a chasm of questions opened. Who is the photographer? Do you speak to her in person? What is she like?
The work D’Arcy was crating bore no name. The artist was known only as The Photographer and, while D’Arcy suspected she was female, nobody really knew for sure. It was a circumstance in which the mystery of anonymity added to the creative genius of the photographs, and created a media storm that hadn’t abated for years. Every now and again it flared up, as somebody pushed a new theory about the identity of the photographer, an interest that had been stirred again as the photographs prepared to leave Europe for the first time ever, touring to Australia and then on to America. And D’Arcy, who’d been working as an art handler and sometimes curator for years, had been the one lucky enough to be chosen to go to France and escort the photographs. Of course, the prospect of getting close to brilliance had been a huge incentive, as had the intimation that she’d been specifically requested.
Célie came in with a platter of tarte tatin that filled the air with the vigorous scent of apples and the decadent sweetness of caramel. D’Arcy reached for a slice, before saying to Josh, ‘You’re not going to tell me anything about the photographer, are you?’
‘I’m not,’ he agreed.
‘You could at least pretend you might drop me a hint to draw out the anticipation.’ D’Arcy forked the tarte tatin into her mouth. ‘Oh, it’s so good.’
‘I don’t play games,’ Josh said simply.
‘I’d worked that much out. Luckily the culinary incentives more than make up for your lack of interest in giving me morsels. How can you not stay here all the time? If somebody made me food like this and gave me a bed like the one upstairs and a view so spectacular …’ D’Arcy flung her arm out to encompass the divine surroundings. ‘I’d never leave.’
‘Is this your way of warning me I’m going to have to evict you at the end of a fortnight?’
‘See,’ D’Arcy stood up. ‘You can be amusing if you try. Now, I’m going to work off my lunch by sawing some wood. And here are two more condition reports for you to frown at.’
She passed him the reports, catching the upwards quirk of his lips and turned around before he could see her matching smile.
The day sped onwards. Towards late afternoon, she felt someone’s eyes on her. She looked up to see Josh, in running gear, watching her.
‘I’m going for a run. You can leave any more condition reports on the table.’
‘Do you mind if I log in to my email on your computer? I have my laptop but by the time I hook up to your modem, it’s probably quicker if I just use yours.’
‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘It’s in the office along the hall.’ Before he turned away, he added, ‘I told Célie we’d have dinner down in the folly.’ He pointed to a structure halfway between the house and the canal, almost lost beneath a clump of startlingly red-leafed beech trees. ‘At about eight. If that suits you.’
‘Well, a girl’s gotta eat. Enjoy your run.’
Eight
Running. Just the thought of it exhausted her. D’Arcy checked her watch and saw that it was after seven o’clock but of course it was still so light, a true European summer. She brushed off the sawdust, located Josh’s office and logged into webmail. The email she’d been hoping for was sitting at the top of her inbox and she clicked on it before she could stop and think about it. As she read the words, she flopped into the nearest chair, shoulders sinking.
She hadn’t been chosen for the fellowship. She’d applied – she’d thought carelessly, unworried if it didn’t come off – for a Jessica May Fellowship for Women Artists. But the rejection hit her with more force than she’d thought it would. It meant the slender hope she’d been holding onto that she might still be able to do something about her dream of being a documentary filmmaker – a dream that had started and been nourished at university but which had since withered under the pressure of finding work that actually paid money – was now something she needed to relinquish. She hadn’t pursued it actively for years, had let it flit around in her head in moments of solitude on plane trips and long truck rides couriering others’ artworks, had told herself the fellowship would be the thing to get her going again. But, with no fellowship, she couldn’t afford to dream.
She finished reading the email, ambitions cruelly resurrected on discovering the sentence: The board thought your project idea excellent and worthy of a fellowship but we found your explanation of the creative process lacking. We encourage you to apply again, paying particular attention to how you will translate your idea into a documentary, and your plans for how the narrative will unfold.
It was tempting to curse the board – they didn’t know what they were talking about; they wouldn’t recognise talent if it came and sat beside them – but D’Arcy knew, in her heart of hearts, that her explanation of the creative process was lacking. She’d dashed off the application three hours before deadline in her usual whimsical fashion and probably hadn’t provided the rigorous detail required to be truly competitive. Her mother might say that D’Arcy hadn’t really wanted to succeed because then she would have to commit to a twelve-month project, whereas D’Arcy’s life consisted of short-term contracts and minimal obligations. Which was the best strategy for avoiding disappointments like this one.
D’Arcy went upstairs. She almost headed straight for a long soak in the tub but knew she’d feel better if she stretched first. Her yoga mat was one of her non-negotiables when it came to packing for overseas trips; she retrieved it from her room and laid it out on the balcony, moving through a series of sun salutations, stretches and inversions for almost half an hour. Then she let herself sink into the glorious bath.
Célie had left out a tray of Buly 1803 products, with their eccentric vintage-style bottles, and D’Arcy inhaled the scent of lemon, mint and rosemary as the bubbles rose around her. She lay her head back and closed her eyes, feeling the ache in her muscles from hammering and sawing dissolve into the water. She really could stay here forever, which, for someone known for their nomadic habits, was both a confronting and curious thought.
After a very long time, she dragged herself out and dried herself off, using the Buly moisturiser and hand cream liberally. Then she went to her suitcase and discovered that everything had been hung in the wardrobe, and pressed too. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d used an iron, and her clothes wafted lavender and citrus towards her from the bags of herbs strung from the rails.
What did one wear to dinner in the folly of a French chateau? she mused. She pulled out one of her favourite things, a vintage turquoise Courrèges mini-dress that she always took with her when travelling because it didn’t crease, could be dressed up or down and, she thought, suited her. The brown cowboy boots from the day before were pulled back on and she checked her watch. Nearly half past eight. Everything was lazily late in France though. She hoped Josh would be too.
Outside, the night was balmy and not yet dark, a crescent moon
just beginning to show like the curve of a hipbone glimpsed beneath sheer fabric. The folly was lit with candles and D’Arcy could smell the food from a hundred metres away. ‘At this rate, I’ll have to take up running,’ she said as she cast her eyes over the table laden with food, and then at Josh, who looked as delicious as the dinner.
‘I don’t think you have anything to worry about,’ Josh said unexpectedly and she caught the briefest glimmer of something like admiration in his eyes before he poured out the wine.
She couldn’t help asking, ‘Do you normally have candlelit dinners with art handlers who stay in the chateau?’
He shook his head. ‘Art handlers never stay in the chateau. But I often have dinner in the folly, sometimes with the photographer – I usually stay the night when I come down each week and I like being outside.’
‘Well, thank you for asking me to join you.’
‘Like you said, you have to eat.’
Which meant the admiration she thought she’d seen must have been for the wine, which he was staring at intently, not her. He was so hard to read. She sat down and helped herself to the terrine. ‘Who cooks? How many Michelin stars do they have? And can I take them back to Australia with me?’
‘Célie cooks. She doesn’t get to cook for guests very often so, when she does, she goes all out. She also looks after the house and the photographer’s needs. Célie’s husband is in charge of the grounds.’
‘A true family affair. Are they related to the photographer?’ The words came out before she had time to think. She held up her hand. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t trying to pry. It was just the kind of question you might normally ask.’
D’Arcy sipped the wine and almost groaned again. It was so very good. A true feast for the senses, which must be why she was checking out Josh with one side of her brain, while the other side was telling her to behave. He was very good-looking, especially with candles flickering around him, offset by a garden so fecund she could almost hear the buds opening and new shoots pushing forth, and accompanied by a bottle of wine as full-bodied as a burlesque dancer, and paté so rustic and fresh that she wanted to eat it with her hands. Since when did D’Arcy behave anyway? Although she did like to be a little more sure that the other party was interested before she wasted time on flirting.
The French Photographer Page 10