The Exchange (Mischief Books)

by Williams, Carrie

  When I was sure I was safe from harm, I took a few pictures of her as she strode purposefully down the street, apparently oblivious to the admiring looks from men. Even dressed down, like this, she was stunning. It was a just a shame she didn’t have what it took on the stage – she could have been pure dynamite, if she wasn’t so stilted.

  After crossing the Pont de la Concorde, she turned left. I would like to have paused on the bridge, and not just because I was getting out of breath. I wanted to appreciate the incredible views, and also take some photos. I didn’t really do much general photography, but occasionally I’d supplement my income by selling a few images to glossy travel and in-flight magazines. And there was no doubt that this was quite some view – the Obelisk of Concorde behind me, and then the Grand Palais, and in front of me the blue ribbon of the Seine unfurling to the east, with the Louvre on one bank and the Musée d’Orsay on the other, and ahead the pointed prow of the boat-shaped Île de la Cité with Notre-Dame rising majestically to the far end of it.

  But I hurried after Béatrice, promising myself to come back later and do the scene justice. I’d become too snobby, I realised, and too focused on the dark side of life. Here I was in one of the world’s most gorgeous cities, wilfully closing my eyes to its beauty. I needed to get out more.

  By now, Béatrice had reached the Musée d’Orsay, and it was clear that she intended to go inside the otherworldly former railway station, now a world-class art museum. I was happy enough about that – I’d never been, and it felt good to be doing something cultural for once. It fitted in with my new resolution to explore the good, wholesome side of Paris. And it also justified, at least in my own mind, my following Béatrice.

  The building was as sensational inside as out, and I floated past elegant sculptures, wishing I wasn’t following Béatrice after all and that I could just do my own thing and stop and look at artworks that called out to me. But Béatrice was very definitely making a beeline for something specific. It was obvious too that she knew the museum very well.

  Before long we were in Salle 14 towards the rear of the ground floor, which an initial glance revealed to contain a handful of works by Manet and several more by Cézanne. Béatrice removed a notebook and pencil from her bag and walked over to a large painting within an elaborate gilded frame that I immediately recognised from my art-school days as Manet’s Olympia. In the oil painting, Manet depicts a naked courtesan being handed a huge bunch of flowers by her fully clothed black maid. Presumably a gift from an admirer, they appear to be disdained by Olympia as she stares back at the viewer.

  The painting was a complete reworking of the traditional female nude, both in terms of subject matter and style, which was why it had caused a scandal at the 1865 Salon at which it made its debut. The Venus of Manet’s forerunner and artistic influence Titian has become a prostitute – and one who dares to challenge us with her confrontational gaze. In essence, Manet is profaning the idealised nude of academic tradition.

  Béatrice stood in front of the painting for a long time, giving me the opportunity to study it in the flesh at length. It was strange being so familiar with something and then seeing it in real life, and realising how much more power it holds. That was not least because of its size – when we see reproductions in books or on the Internet, we very rarely know how big the actual work is. I was sure a lot of people felt the same shock, in reverse, at the tininess of the Mona Lisa just down the river at the Louvre.

  Béatrice jotted rapidly in her notebook and I just looked, taking in the wealth of detail that had signalled to Manet’s original audience that Olympia was, shockingly, a demi-mondaine or courtesan – the symbolic black cat (replacing the faithful dog of the painting’s model, Titian’s Venus d’Urbino; the orchid in her hair; her bracelet; her pearl earrings; and the Oriental shawl on which she lies. These markers of affluent sensuality are underscored by a black ribbon choker that contrasts dramatically with her pale skin, and by her cast-off slipper.

  I was so caught up in all of this and in trying to decode Olympia’s provocative gaze that I didn’t notice that Béatrice had put her notebook and pen back in her bag and turned towards the door. I was directly in her line of sight. Her gaze washed over me and then her eyes flitted back, surprised.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, stepping towards me. ‘Don’t I know you?’

  I tried not to flush.

  ‘I – I’m not sure.’

  She clocked the camera dangling from my neck. ‘Of course,’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re the photographer from the club.’

  I nodded. ‘Lisette’s friend.’

  She nodded in turn, looking back towards Olympia. ‘Taking in some art as well?’ she said, and it seemed she’d forgotten that she’d been cross with me at the club for wanting to take her picture.

  I exhaled in relief. It seemed I’d got away with it; she didn’t suspect I’d been stalking her. Why, after all, would I? It was a question I was still unable to answer.

  ‘One of my favourite works,’ she said, gesturing back towards the painting. ‘Still incredibly powerful after all this time. Zola thought it was Manet’s masterpiece. He said that while other artists corrected nature when they painted Venus, Manet wanted to tell the truth. This is no smooth, idealised nude. This is a real woman, starkly lit. And do you see how the broad, rapid, modern brushstrokes that he used emphasise that?’

  I smiled. ‘I think all real artists want to tell the truth, don’t they? Only sometimes it’s not so easy. You often don’t realise how hidebound you are by convention and by what people expect. It takes guts to break out of the mould.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Béatrice, regarding me intently from behind her heavy-framed glasses. ‘I’m sorry if I snapped your head off about asking me to pose at the club. I know you’re not exactly the paparazzi. I know you have an artistic vocation. But – well, it’s complicated.’

  She looked back at the work. ‘What just struck me for the first time is how Olympia is asserting herself by the way she’s placing her hand over her pussy – she’s protecting it, but not from view, like Titian’s Venus, who covers it out of modesty. Olympia is protecting it from ownership – and in doing so, showing her admirer, and the viewers, who is boss.’

  I studied the painting anew. Béatrice’s evaluation was sharply insightful. Again I found myself wondering who she really was. Clearly, though, my stalking of her was over. Clearly I was no Sophie Calle. It was time to admit defeat. Béatrice’s mystery would remain intact.

  ‘Are you done here?’ said Béatrice, interrupting my thoughts, and my heart lifted. ‘Fancy a coffee?’ she asked.

  I smiled self-deprecatingly. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘We photographers lead pretty aimless lives. I had nothing much planned besides wandering around taking random pictures.’

  Béatrice smiled back, and I realised it was the first time that I’d seen her beautiful face relaxed and open.

  She steered me out of the museum and back along the Quai d’Orsay towards the Pont de la Concorde, questioning me about my work – what I specialised in, where I exhibited, and so on. She seemed genuinely interested and knew all of the photographers I referenced, even the very obscure ones. I burned to find out what she’d written about Olympia in her notebook, and to what end.

  My face must have given away my panic when, having led me across the Place de la Concorde, she pointed towards the fairytale-like Hôtel de Crillon at its northern end.

  ‘Don’t worry, my little treat,’ she said as we reached it and the doorman welcomed us with a bow.

  ‘Coffee’ turned out to be a feast of pistachio and raspberry cake, grape and orange-blossom Kugelhopf and chocolate cake plus a pot of fragrant tea in the hotel’s Jardin d’Hiver tea-room with its chandeliers, plush red sofas and armchairs and gilded furniture. It was like nowhere I’d been before, and I wouldn’t say I felt exactly comfortable there, but I tried to just relax and take it all in as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Béatrice, on the other hand, looked totally at home, desp
ite not being dressed up.

  ‘So if you’re from London,’ she said, graciously pouring me a cup of tea, ‘then you must have seen Manet’s Un bar aux Folies Bergère at the Courtauld?’

  I nodded, teeth sinking into a piece of luscious green and pink cake.

  ‘Mmmm, that’s good,’ I said, when I’d swallowed my mouthful. ‘Yes, I have seen it – many times in fact. I did an MA at the Courtauld, before deciding to specalise in photography.’

  ‘How wonderful,’ she said. ‘I’m envious.’ She took a bite of her own cake. ‘Mmm, that is delicious,’ she concurred. Then she leaned forwards in her seat, looking at me earnestly and a little conspiratorially.

  ‘I think that’s my real favourite Manet,’ she said. ‘In fact perhaps my favourite painting in all the world. I once made a day-trip by Eurostar to see it in London. And it wasn’t even the first time.’

  I saw my opening and tried to chisel my way in delicately. ‘It’s that whole fascination with the underbelly of Paris, isn’t it?’

  She nodded slowly, a strange smile appearing on her lips, but she didn’t reply, leaving me to fish.

  ‘From what I remember,’ I struggled, ‘the Folies Bergère was one of the great Parisian cafés-concerts. Yet the girl behind the bar isn’t part of the jollity – she’s sad and detached.’ I studied Béatrice’s face as I spoke, but her half-smile remained inscrutable.

  ‘It was unusual, back then, to portray someone at work. But what’s most odd is that the majority of what we can see on the canvas is actually a reflection in the mirror behind the barmaid, and it’s blurred and unstable. But on top of that, Manet didn’t even attempt to match up the real things that we can see and their reflections – in fact, many critics have interpreted the “faults” to be fundamental to the painting’s meaning in that they offer up a double reality.’

  Béatrice’s eyes glittered at me. She raised the teacup to her lips for a few seconds, then placed it back on the table in front of her.

  ‘It’s like Paris is a hall of mirrors in that painting,’ she said. ‘It’s like a modern version of Velazquez’s Las Meninas – you must know that work?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you’ll know how it’s resisted all analysis. How it continually questions us about the relationship between reality and art. How it fucks with your mind as a viewer, throwing your relationship with it into confusion, transforming you into a disturbing presence.’

  We’d both stopped eating our cakes now, and I realised I was staring at Béatrice.

  ‘You’re wondering who I am,’ she said, not taking her eyes from mine.

  I looked down at my hands in my lap. ‘Look, it’s none of my business,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to explain or to justify yourself.’

  ‘And nor do you,’ she said enigmatically.

  I looked back up at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that you don’t have to justify yourself for following me.’

  I held back a cry of terror at being found out and unmasked. But before I could start to apologise, she held up one hand to stop me.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to explain. I’m not mad. I haven’t brought you here to unveil and humiliate you. The thing is, Rachel, we are both artists, and I understand you very well.’

  At my arched eyebrows, she continued: ‘I’m a writer, Rachel, and my whole ridiculous attempt to dance at Club GaGa has been in the name of research.’

  ‘What kind of research?’

  ‘Well, I’m an art historian like you, by training. It seems we have a lot in common. For a while I worked as a curator and also wrote books about art.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, I wrote a book about Manet’s women, for instance – his wife, and his models.’

  ‘Holy shit – you’re not Camille Bernard, are you?’ I said, and then I shot a worried glance around me, hoping no one had heard my coarse language.

  She smiled modestly, her eyes shining.

  ‘Oh my god, that is one of the best books on art I’ve ever read. Everyone I know has read it. Well, you know, in the art world.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, picking up another piece of gateau between her slim fingers and bringing it to her lips. ‘I was very pleased with it.’

  I gazed at her in awe. No wonder she lived on the Champs-Élysées. She was one of the foremost art critics and curators of our time, with a professorship at the Sorbonne and many well-known books under her belt. Then I frowned.

  ‘So forgive me if I’m being dense,’ I said, ‘but what has Club GaGa to do with Manet?’

  Camille sat up straight, delicately swabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin. ‘This is top secret,’ she said, ‘but I’m writing a novel. It probably won’t go out under my name.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Surely with a name like yours, you’d get a head-start on a publishing deal and bags of publicity and reviews. It couldn’t not sell.’

  Her laughter tinkled like glass amidst the polite hush of the Jardin d’Hiver. ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘it did start out that way. But it got … derailed.’

  ‘What do you mean, “derailed”?’

  ‘Sex,’ said Camille. ‘God, I need a cigarette. Shall we get out of here?’ She gestured for the bill, which came promptly, and then hurried me out through the hotel’s glorious lobby and back onto the whirling Place de la Concorde. As we headed back up the Champs-Élysées in the direction of her apartment, she explained:

  ‘Sex took over. It wasn’t supposed to be like that, but I found myself writing these long, graphic sex scenes and enjoying it. And not only that, but I’m good at them.’ She laughed. ‘It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it turns out I’m a damned good erotic writer. But I can’t be “out”. There’s no way my academic publishers would countenance it.’

  ‘And the club?’

  ‘Ah yes, the club. Well, I auditioned and they accepted me. I did do ballet well into my teens, so it’s not as if I’m a total klutz. But well – you’ve seen me. They must have been desperate.’

  ‘If your heart’s not really in it …’

  ‘It’s not my heart, it’s my damned body. God knows I like sex – when I’m having it, which I’m not right now. But it’s that whole showing yourself off, pouting and preening and showing yourself to best advantage. It’s just not in my nature.’

  ‘I looked at her in an amused way. ‘It didn’t seem like that when on your balcony this morning.’

  For a moment she looked at me blankly, then she burst out laughing. ‘Oh Christ,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think anybody could see me.’ Then her eyes bulged a bit. ‘Hey, you little stalker! You were outside my apartment? How… but… So that wasn't a chance meeting, in the Musée d'Orsay? You followed me there?' She eyed me darkly. 'But how did you know where I live?’

  I looked down, avoiding her probing gaze. 'I – I followed you home from the club last night,' I confessed.

  'Why on earth would you do that?'

  'I – I found you fascinating. You seemed so ill at ease. I wanted to know your story.'

  For a moment I thought she was going to get cross, but then she linked her arm through mine. ‘I guess we’re kindred spirits,’ she said. ‘We’re both lying, deceitful bitches.’

  I smiled at her and thought how wonderful it would be to have a soul mate at last.

  Chapter 14: Rochelle

  For me that night in the hotel was it. I woke up hungover, dirty and full of self-hatred, and this time I was adamant that I would have nothing more to do with Tatiana and her crowd. I’d been complicit in my debasement, but this was an end to it.

  Soaking my sins away in the bath, my face coming back to life under a creamy mask, I wondered again about calling off this life-swap and going back to Paris early. London had brought me nothing – nothing but these people to whom I was sport and diversion. To whom I was some kind of living doll.

  I thought about Paris. I’d thought I was through with dancing, but now
that I wasn’t doing it, I felt a kind of emptiness. I simply didn’t know what to do with myself, and my idleness was leading me into situations that really didn’t make me happy, even if they gave me a thrill at the time.

  I thought of my ‘interview’ with Lulu, the day I’d gone out to lunch with Tatiana in Holland Park. She’d never got back to me, and I hadn’t chased up. I’d been distracted. I hadn’t done anything about the songwriting course, so there had been no immediate urge to earn money after all – I wasn’t thinking about my Vivienne Westwood debt to Konrad, knowing he wouldn’t press me to pay him back anytime soon.

  I told myself that when I got of the bath I’d call the music college about making an appointment to go and look around, but I knew in my heart I wouldn’t. I felt a sudden void yet there was no impetus in me to do anything to fill it. Calling Lulu was pointless – in all likelihood she’d gone away already, having filled the role. And then there was the uncomfortable fact that she constituted a link between me and Tatiana. Maybe it was time to return to dancing, and to Konrad.

  I spent the day nursing my hangover in front of crap TV, flicking through a crap magazine filled with cheap, disposable fashion and gossip about celebrities I’d never heard of. All the ads were full of airbrushed, too-perfect women. Everything was manufactured. All sexiness had gone out of it. Women looked like Barbies; breasts were plastic, unreal, uninviting. It was depressing as hell.

  I thought of the club. Of course, there too, unreality held sway, but it felt like a more honest unreality. There, most of the girls had their own assets. A few had had enhancements, but nothing major. They were essentially themselves, even when they donned their make-up and costumes. On stage, within arm’s reach of the front row of the audience, they shone with sweat. You could smell them – cheap, floral eaux de colognes mixed with perspiration.

  The club was selling a dream, but it was a dream of ordinary girls. Everyone knows that that’s what they were, beneath the veils or the bunny outfits. And that was surely the point – they were attainable ‘girls next door’. They weren’t supermodels, and many of the clientele could feasibly aspire to be with a girl like this.