Friday's Girl

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘First we must breakfast.’

  Napier put out his hand and led her to the table. Edith followed him dutifully and sat down. He still had not said what he thought of her in his choice of gown.

  ‘Do you have an appetite?’

  Edith heard her own voice replying ‘No’, seemingly coming not from her, but from far away in another part of the room.

  ‘Try to have an appetite,’ Napier commanded her, frowning, and he reached forward and placed some ham on a plate for her. Seeing her look of despair, he touched her gently on the arm to encourage her.

  It was the first tender gesture that he had made towards her for some time, and, as was perhaps intended, it had a particular effect on Edith. It made her tremble. It also made her long, not to ask him, but to beg him to tell her what was wrong with her that he had not touched her. It made her long to ask him if she pleased him more in this eccentric form of dress than in the pretty gowns and costumes that she herself so loved. But he turned away so quickly, applying himself assiduously to the sumptuous breakfast being brought to them by Betty, that the moment passed, and Edith, her eyes fixed to her plate, set aside her longings and tried to eat the home-made porridge richly heaped with clotted cream, the home-cured ham and the other accompaniments. Napier ate heartily, but not so heartily that he did not spare a moment to appreciate Edith’s efforts.

  ‘You will need to eat if you are to sit to me for the long hours that I intend – and no prattle, please. I want none of your girlish chatter.’

  Edith nodded. She had been brought up to be seen and not heard, so she knew her place. She just had never thought that you had to go on knowing your place after you were married; that the role of dutiful daughter and maid was merely to be swapped for the role of dutiful wife and model.

  It had not occurred to Edith – as why should it – that painters posed their models. She had somehow formed the idea that every artist worked from real life, so that if she saw a painting of a man ploughing a field she had always imagined that the artist had seen a man ploughing a field, and painted him. Now, as Napier wheeled a harp towards her, and sat her down on a gold-painted chair against a black drape, she realised in a rush that not only was she to pose with a harp, as she had somehow suspected as soon as she saw the voluminous gown, but she was to pose as someone else.

  As Napier showed her how he wanted her to hold her hand, she realised with shock that paintings were not real at all, that the people in them were just dressed up to seem to be other than themselves, that they were all just pretending.

  As Napier started to mix colours on his palette, Edith gazed round the studio at all the different objects, feathers and flowers, mirrors and hats, pieces of silk, busts of Roman emperors or Greek gods – she would not know which. What she did know was that she was just like them. She was just an object waiting to inspire Napier. For the next few hours she really might as well be made of marble.

  She struggled with this thought until another more cheerful one followed it. Of course! Napier only wanted her to wear such a horrid dress and have her hair arranged about her shoulders as if she was going to bed because he was not painting Edith Todd, his wife, but some sort of saintly girl with a harp; perhaps someone from the Bible, or a favourite book, but someone quite other, no one to do with Edith herself.

  She realised that it might take hours and days and months for the painting to be finished, but she resolved not to mind, because if she could help Napier achieve his painting in every way, once it was finished she could go back to being his wife, not his model, and he would surely feel then that he could love her as a husband was meant to love his wife? As Edith loved him, with all her heart.

  She turned at a sound behind her, just in time to see Napier opening both the large double doors which led back to the courtyard.

  ‘I need a good breeze, a nice draught, to make the material move,’ he called to her from the open doors.

  Edith turned back as Betty passed in front of her.

  ‘You’re one of the lucky ones, Mrs Todd. Believe me, some of them have been made to pose in the snow.’

  Celandine would always remember the way Sheridan had laughed at the expression on her face as, following his gleeful announcement that they were to share rooms, she turned smartly on her heel and started to make her way back to the door of the suite with every intention of going straight downstairs and asking Madame Cécile for another set of rooms.

  ‘Oh, if only I could have drawn you at that moment,’ Sheridan teased her later when she came downstairs to join them in the restaurant at the side of the small hotel. ‘The shock on your face!’

  He stared at her and for a moment it was his turn to look shocked, for Celandine had changed from her travelling clothes, and was now looking magnificent in a dark blue two-piece with a high collar and deep lace cuffs. It was not an evening dress but it was excessively pretty. She had restyled her thick, dark shining hair to go with some new tortoiseshell combs found in a small boutique off the rue de Rivoli, so what with her white skin and green eyes, her tall figure and tiny waist, it was little wonder that not only Sheridan but every other man she passed gave her a second glance, glances which it has to be said she hardly noticed, for it was not in her nature to pay attention to flattering looks.

  ‘You were very lucky I had left my umbrella downstairs in the hall. You only narrowly missed being hit over the head with it,’ Celandine told him, while the men all rose from their seats at the supper table as she sat down.

  ‘Would you really have hit him?’ Alfred asked her with a sly look, lighting his pipe, seemingly impervious to everyone else’s sensibilities as he puffed acrid smoke all over the table while Sheridan refilled their wine glasses.

  ‘Of course. That is what an umbrella is for.’ Celandine smiled. ‘As is a parasol, naturally. But an umbrella is best, because it’s heavier.’

  ‘How many people have you hit with your umbrella, Miss Benyon?’ Tom asked.

  Celandine thought for a moment. ‘Well now, in Munich I hit a man who had just beaten his dog, and I have to tell you I hit him hard. The man ran off, and I was able to take the poor hound home, bath him and feed him, and we soon found a new home for him. So that was good.’ She paused, looking round with some satisfaction at her all-male audience. ‘And then in Avignon one day there was a robbery at the grocer’s store – that time I managed to put out the end of my umbrella and trip up one of the young thieves. So you see an umbrella is not just to keep the rain off. Oh, no, like the parasol, it is very much a lady’s best friend.’

  ‘How magnificent!’ Tom looked round, first at Celandine, and then at Sheridan. ‘Miss Benyon is obviously so fearless, gentlemen, we can all feel quite safe on the beach tomorrow. No matter what occurs, we know we have Miss Benyon and her umbrella.’

  Celandine smiled, and leaned back against the hard wood of the bench. As she did so, as if at a signal, the men started to talk and drink, which allowed her to fall silent, and gaze around the rural Breton dining room with its walls smoked over the centuries to a saddle-leather brown, its dark furniture and white tablecloths, its red and white checked napkins, its bar with its many wooden racks filled with bottles of many hues. She gave a small inward sigh of contentment. Chez Cécile was everything she had hoped it might be. It was smoky, it was filled with painters eating, drinking and talking. The waiters and waitresses emerged from the kitchens and moved swiftly around the tables as they called out the names of the dishes they were bearing, waiting for swift hands to pluck the air, for the gloriously tasty dishes to be greeted with delighted smiles as they were set down at the relevant places.

  Since Celandine had no desire to join in the wrangling conversation that Sheridan and his friends were enjoying, she found she was happy sitting and watching everyone around them. Happy to take in the rising smoke, the emptying glasses, the black and white tiles of the floor, the flickering candles that played inconstantly, impishly, over the men seated about the dining room. Happy to try to catch the e
xchanges and the banter between the Breton waiters and waitresses and the many diners, all of them in some way or another students or enthusiasts of the summer school.

  A few minutes later the menu lists were presented to their table, and they all gazed in excitement at the large, sloping pale blue-mauve writing that described the dishes of the day, imagining the culinary delights that would soon be winging their way from the small, hot kitchen with its blackened woodburning stove, and even blacker skillets and pans, which could be glimpsed for a few tantalising seconds as the waiters and waitresses pushed in and out of the swing doors.

  At that moment Celandine felt that exquisite frisson of delight that comes from having an unexpected experience thrust suddenly upon you. She was only too happy to embrace this new scene, to wonder at its variety, to take in the warmth and delight of those who, having laboured in the open air at their easels, were now relaxing in each other’s company.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sheridan broke off his conversation to turn to Celandine. ‘Have you just seen someone you know and don’t like? Or are you just fainting from hunger?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Celandine found herself quite against her will chewing her lip in suppressed anxiety. ‘I really don’t understand.’

  ‘You’ve lost colour—’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ignoring the rest of the table, who were still wrangling over some finer point about the new square brush technique that was proving so popular at the summer school, Sheridan leaned forward and murmured, ‘You have gone quite pale. Do you feel unwell, Miss Benyon?’

  ‘No, no.’ Celandine quickly sipped some wine. ‘No, of course not. Who could feel unwell in such a place? No, it’s not that. It’s just—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve suddenly realised why Madame Cécile gave me such a look, almost of – almost of shock, when we first arrived.’

  ‘She gives everyone deep looks, that’s Madame Cécile.’

  ‘No, she gave me a deep, sharp look, and I wondered why.’

  ‘Tell me why, Miss Benyon. If you tell me why, I will immediately tell you why not.’

  ‘It was because I am the only woman here. I am the only woman painter here,’ she repeated in a low voice, looking around.

  ‘But of course.’ Sheridan smiled. ‘That is why I wanted you to come to summer school. I want more women to become painters, so many that in time it will become quite commonplace to see women at summer school, as why should it not? There are far too few women painters, and those that there are . . . well, you know; their talents are really not appreciated. I thought if you came here it would set an example to other women, show them that it is possible to come here, on your own, and not feel out of place. Besides, Madame Cécile needs our patronage,’ he ended jokingly, indicating the room, which was full to bursting. ‘We must help her. There are far too many rival establishments springing up round here and around Cancale. After all, she was the first to encourage the summer school.’

  Celandine was about to say something, but she stopped herself, because really it was too late. She had lied to her mother that she was going on a course with another female student, but only because she had been quite sure that there would be other female students with whom she could quickly become friends. But there were none. If her mother knew she was in Brittany, a woman alone among dozens of males, she did not know what she would say.

  She looked down at the wine in her glass and then up into Sheridan’s reassuringly calm eyes.

  ‘Well, I dare say it doesn’t matter,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘Nothing matters if your heart is set on it. Is your heart set on it?’

  Celandine said nothing.

  ‘Well, is it?’

  ‘Of course, it must be, or I wouldn’t be here.’ Celandine dropped her gaze to the menu. ‘Gracious, I don’t know about all of you, but I am so hungry I think I will start with the crevettes.’

  ‘And I too.’ Sheridan nodded. ‘And after?’

  Celandine shrugged her shoulders, lightly, but there must have been just a hint of despair about her, because Sheridan leaned forward and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, Miss Benyon, there will be others of your sex coming along soon; if not this summer, next summer; no doubt of it.’

  Celandine smiled, not really believing him, but realising that she had little alternative. She tried not to think of Paris, of her mother, of Agnes beetling back to Avignon with news of her sister’s going off to Brittany, quite on her own, without a maid, in company with a clutch of disreputable art students – for in Agnes’s eyes all art students would be disreputable.

  ‘You don’t need to call me Miss Benyon,’ she told Sheridan, realising in a rush that such formality in the reality of their new situation was really extraneous.

  Sheridan smiled. ‘Very well, Celandine—’

  Hearing this, Tom, his long blond hair flopping into his eyes, leaned forward.

  ‘I say, can we all call you Celandine, Miss Benyon?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Even me?’ Alfred Talisman’s eyes, perhaps made more brilliant by his short crisp black hair and neat black beard, looked questioningly at Celandine.

  ‘Yes, even you, Alfred,’ Sheridan agreed, leaning forward to block Alfred’s view of Celandine. Alfred promptly leaned back and talked to Celandine behind Sheridan’s back.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course.’ Now Celandine too leaned back and smiled at Alfred. Not to be outwitted, Sheridan leaned back once again, whereupon Alfred, refusing to capitulate, stood up, his long, lean frame towering over the table.

  ‘Sit down, Alfred Trelawney Talisman. The crevettes are arriving, and not even you can eat crevettes standing up.’

  Alfred lowered himself once more, but not before he had smiled his dark smile at Celandine, knowing he had made his point to the only girl in their midst. Sheridan was not going to be allowed to keep Celandine to himself.

  Before Edith had married she had dreaded the coming of nightfall. As darkness crept further and further towards the old inn the noise in the bar and restaurant grew and grew, and the hurrying maids would trip over each other’s feet in their weariness, before falling exhausted into their iron beds in the attic rooms in which they were housed – rooms that were either too hot in summer, or too cold in winter.

  Now it was different. Now, as the early summer light eventually faded, and Napier’s brush at last grew still, and Edith was thankfully allowed to stand up and unfreeze her limbs, dusk had become her friend and ally. As Betty had already hinted, with the doors open, despite the summer weather, the old stone barn was arctic.

  Once she was released from Napier’s artistic aura, Edith would hurry back to the house and lie under a quilt on her dressing-room bed, waiting for life to come back to her body, waiting to become a human being once more rather than a frozen inspiration.

  She often thought back to her life at the Stag and Crown. If it had been hard, it had at least been hard in a way she could understand, and one to which she had been used, which was more than could be said for her present lonely existence. Apart from anything else, and for reasons she could not herself quite understand, she was finding it almost unbearable never to be allowed to see the painting for which she was sitting; not knowing how she was being represented, she felt, in some strange way, as if she might be going to be humiliated, as if the moment she did see the painting she would become the person depicted, vapid, unrecognisable. And then too the silence, upon which Napier insisted when he was working, made her feel as if she was quite alone in the world. The hush in the studio was so endless, lasting for what seemed to be days, not hours, that it made even the sound of Napier’s brushes moving across his canvas seem unnervingly loud.

  One evening, as she lay willing the warmth back into her frozen body, Edith heard a knock at her dressing-room door. Hoping, as she always did, that it might be Napier, she quickly sat up, her auburn hair tumbling around the top
of her tightly held wrap.

  ‘Who is it? Do you want to come in?’

  Disappointingly it was not Napier. It was Mrs George.

  ‘I thought I should call to tell you that poor Betty has been taken ill, I’m afraid, taken ever so poorly, so I have come to help you in any way you might wish.’

  Edith stared at Mrs George. Despite Napier’s frowning on such undemocratic behaviour, the housekeeper still insisted on curtsying to Edith whenever she passed her.

  ‘That is very kind of you, Mrs George, really it is.’

  ‘It is the least I can do for you, madam, after such a tiring day.’

  Mrs George came to the side of Edith’s bed and, seeing her hands clutching her wrap around her, reached forward and gently took one, as a doctor might who is intent on taking a patient’s temperature.

  ‘My, my, but your hands are as frozen as our pond in winter,’ the housekeeper announced in a shocked voice. ‘What has Mr Todd been doing to you?’

  Edith tried not to look embarrassed as the older woman rubbed hard on first one white, cold hand, and then the next, until at last the faintly blue look to them had disappeared.

  ‘Thank you so much. That is so much better.’ Edith smiled her warm, kind smile at the older woman, who frowned in return.

  ‘I shall ask the master why he is not still lighting a fire in his studio. That is ever such a cold room, that is, even in summer. I know all about that room,’ she went on. ‘I should do, seeing as I sat to Mr Todd when the studio was first completed. I was but frozen mittenless, before even an hour was out. Well, finally, even though it was summer, I made it my business to be in there before him, and I laid the fire myself, I did, before he could think of why not; and a lot quicker we got on after that.’