Once there, the boy gave a sigh and turned his head to nestle against her. Doing her best to swallow down the bile that rose to her mouth at the terrible stench of him, Bel sat rocking him in her arms, hugging him to her breast.
‘Izabela,’ a voice came from behind her. ‘What on earth are you doing sitting in the grass?’
‘Shh!’ she hushed Laurent as she stroked the boy’s sleeping face to reassure him. ‘You’ll wake him.’
‘Where did you find him?’ Laurent returned the whisper.
‘Under the hedge. He can be no more than seven or eight, but he’s so thin he weighs less than a toddler. What do we do?’ She looked up at him, her eyes agonised. ‘We can’t leave him here. He has a bad injury to his leg which needs attending to. It could turn septic and the poison might seep into his blood and kill him.’
Laurent looked down at Bel and the filthy child, and shook his head.
‘Izabela, surely you understand that there are many such children on the streets of France. Most of them come illegally across the borders from Russia or Poland.’
‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘And it happens in Brazil too. But this boy is here with us now, and it is I who have found him. How could I possibly leave him, dump him on the roadside outside Landowski’s land and let him perish? It would be on my conscience for the rest of my life.’
Laurent watched as tears coursed down Bel’s face, her eyes alight with pain and passion. He bent down next to her, then reached a hand to tentatively stroke the sleeping boy’s matted hair.
‘Forgive me,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps the sights I see on the streets of Paris every day have made me immune to suffering. God has put this child in your path and of course you must do what you can to help him,’ Laurent agreed. ‘It is too late now to disturb the Landowskis. For tonight, he can sleep on a pallet in the kitchen. I have a key to the door and I can lock him in, safely away from Landowski’s precious Christ. Sadly, one never knows the state of mind of a stray like him. I’ll sleep here tonight in the atelier and keep guard. So, can you carry him inside?
‘Yes,’ said Bel, gratefully. ‘Thank you, Laurent.’
‘I’ll go and warn your driver you may be some time yet.’ Laurent helped Bel to her feet, the boy still sleeping in her arms.
‘He’s as light as a feather,’ Bel whispered, as she looked down at his innocent young face, trusting her to take care of him, simply because he had no alternative.
Laurent watched her as she carried the child carefully, tenderly, into the atelier so as not to wake him. And as he went to speak with Bel’s driver, his own eyes brimmed momentarily with tears.
She was waiting for him on the chair where she sat every day as he sculpted her, the child still in her arms.
‘I’ll prepare a pallet for him in the kitchen,’ said Laurent, wondering what on earth Landowski would say when he arrived to find a filthy street child in his atelier at sunrise tomorrow. But nevertheless, he wished to help.
A few minutes later, Bel carried the child through to the kitchen and gently laid him down. ‘At least I should wash his face and perhaps try to clean his wound. Have you some cloth and antiseptic?’
‘Somewhere,’ Laurent said, and he began searching in the cupboards until he found the antiseptic. Disappearing from the room, he arrived back with a piece of white cotton netting, more commonly employed in the studio for plaster of Paris moulds, so Bel could use it to clean the child’s wound.
‘Have you a bandage?’ she asked, and when Laurent said there were none in the cupboards, he watched as she gently bound the wound with the netting to protect it. The boy flinched, but remained asleep.
‘Even thought the night is warm, he is shivering with fever. We need a blanket,’ she ordered and Laurent duly brought the one that he would have wrapped around his own shoulders that night.
‘I will sit here for a while, bathe him in cold water to bring down his fever and make sure he feels safe,’ she said, as Laurent stood above her in the tiny kitchen. Nodding, he left and went to prepare his own pallet in the atelier next door.
‘Sweet child,’ she whispered as she wiped a water-soaked rag across his forehead and stroked his hair. ‘When you wake up tomorrow, I won’t be here, but don’t be afraid. I promise when I return, I will make sure you are safe. But now I must leave you. Sleep well.’
As Bel began to rise, a hand suddenly reached out from beneath the blanket and grabbed at her skirt. The boy’s eyes were open wide as he stared at her.
And in perfect French, he said, ‘I will never forget what you have done for me tonight, mademoiselle.’ And then, with a sigh of contentment, the child rolled over and once again closed his eyes.
‘I must go,’ Bel said to Laurent as she emerged from the kitchen. ‘Where is the key to lock the prison door?’ she added, sarcasm in her voice.
‘Izabela, you know I only do it to protect the professor and his family. This is their house, and his great work of art,’ he reminded her as he indicated the half-formed sculpture of Christ.
‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘But you must promise me that when the boy wakes tomorrow, you will tell him he is safe here? And I myself will speak to the professor and explain, as it was me who has caused this trouble. Now, I must leave. God knows what wrath I’ll face from Senhora da Silva Costa in the morning.’
‘Izabela . . . Bel . . .’ Laurent grabbed her arm as she made to walk to the door. He pulled her towards him suddenly and wrapped her in his arms. ‘You are truly beautiful, inside and out. And I can’t bear any longer to continue with this masquerade, this pretence between us. Please feel free to tell me to release you from my arms, but God help me, seeing your compassion tonight . . .’ He shook his head. ‘At the very least, I want to feel the touch of your lips on mine.’
Bel stared at him, knowing she was on the precipice and that not a single part of her cared if she leapt off it.
‘I am yours,’ she murmured. And his lips fell upon hers.
And in the kitchen next door, the young boy slept peacefully for the first time in months.
25
When Bel arrived back at the atelier at five the following evening, she was full of trepidation. Not only for the fate of the young boy, but also to discover whether Laurent’s declaration and kiss had merely been a reaction to the high emotion of last night.
‘Aha!’ said Landowski, who was cleaning himself up after a day’s work. ‘It’s Saint Izabela herself!’
‘How is he, professor?’ she asked, blushing at his comment.
‘Your foundling is currently sitting down to supper with my children,’ said Landowski. ‘Like you, when I called my wife in to see him sleeping like an emaciated rat on the kitchen floor, she immediately took pity on him. She insisted he have a good hosing-down outside in the garden and scrubbed him from head to toe with carbolic soap for fear of lice. Then she wrapped him in a blanket and put him to bed in our house.’
‘Thank you, professor. I’m sorry to put this trouble on your household.’
‘Well, if it was me, I’d have kicked him out on the street where he belongs, but you women, you all have soft hearts. And us men are thankful for them,’ he added gently.
‘Has he said yet where he’s from?’
‘No, because he hasn’t uttered a word since my wife took charge of him. She thinks he is mute.’
‘Monsieur, I know he isn’t. He spoke to me just before I left him last night.’
‘Did he? How interesting.’ Landowski nodded thoughtfully. ‘Well, so far he has not chosen to share his gift of speech with anyone else. He also carries a leather pouch slung around his body, which my wife discovered when she stripped off his filthy rags. He growled like a mad dog when she tried to remove it from him to wash him, and refused to let her take it. Well, we shall see. My guess is, from looking at him, that he is from Poland. It takes one to know one,’ he added soberly. ‘Goodnight.’
When Landowski left the atelier, Bel turned and saw Laurent smiling at her, his arms fold
ed.
‘Are you happy, now that your little waif is being taken care of?’
‘Yes, and I must thank you for your part in helping him too.’
‘How are you today, my Bel?’
‘I am well, monsieur,’ she whispered, averting her eyes.
‘Not regretting what passed between us yesterday evening?’ He held out his hands to her. And shyly, she lifted her own to meet them.
‘No, not even for a moment.’
‘Thank God for that,’ he breathed, pulling her into the kitchen so they could not be seen from the windows, and kissing her equally passionately again.
And so their love affair began, innocent apart from the touch of their lips, both of them knowing the risk they were running if they were caught by Landowski, who had taken to returning to the atelier at odd hours to study his half-finished Christ. Laurent’s hands worked faster on her sculpture than ever before, as he hurried to shape her face so there would be more snatched minutes together afterwards.
‘My God, my Izabela, we have so little time left. This time next week, you will be sailing out of my life,’ he said to her one night as she stood in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder as he held her. ‘How will I be able to bear it?’
‘How will I?’
‘When I first saw you, of course I admired your beauty, and I admit to flirting with you,’ he said as he tipped her chin up so he could see her eyes. ‘And then, as you sat for me day after day, and began to reveal your soul, I found myself thinking of you long after you had left. And finally that night, when I saw your compassion for the boy, I knew that I loved you.’ Laurent sighed and shook his head. ‘This has never happened to me before. I never believed I’d feel this way about a woman. And as fate would have it, it has to be a woman who is promised to another and whom I’ll never see again. It’s a tragic situation that many of my writer friends would put in their books and poems. But sadly, for me it’s real.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Bel sighed despairingly.
‘Then, ma chérie, we must make the most of the time we have left.’
Bel floated through her last week in Paris in an ecstatic trance, unable to contemplate her imminent departure. She watched the maid bring her trunk into her bedroom and begin to fill it as if it belonged to someone else. Talk of her passage home and Maria Georgiana’s fears that Bel would be travelling on the ship unaccompanied merely passed her by.
‘Of course, it cannot be helped. You must return in order to prepare for your marriage, but you must swear that you will not disembark from the boat when it docks at any of the ports, especially not in Africa.’
‘Of course,’ Bel replied automatically. ‘I’m sure I will be perfectly safe.’
‘I have contacted the shipping company’s office, and they have replied saying that the purser will find a suitable older woman who can chaperone you during your voyage.’
‘Thank you, senhora,’ Bel responded distractedly, hardly hearing as she pinned on her hat ready to leave for the atelier, her thoughts already with Laurent.
‘Heitor tells me your sculpture is almost finished. So, tonight will be your last night at Landowski’s studio. Tomorrow, our family wish to hold a farewell dinner in honour of you.’ Maria Georgiana smiled at her.
Bel looked at her in barely disguised horror, then realised how churlish she must seem. ‘Thank you, senhora. It is most kind of you.’
In the car on the drive to the atelier, the awful realisation that this was the last night she would ever see Laurent hit her with a jolt of terror.
When she arrived, Laurent was looking pleased and proud.
‘After you left last night, I stayed up until dawn to finish it,’ he said, indicating the sculpture which currently sat shielded from view under a dust sheet. ‘Would you like to see it?’
‘Yes, very much,’ she muttered, not wishing to let her misery spoil Laurent’s obvious excitement. He whipped off the protective sheet with a flourish to reveal it.
Bel stared at her image; as with any subject of a visual study, she was not immediately sure of her reaction. She could see he had caught her shape perfectly and the face that stared back was her own. But what struck her most about the sculpture was the stillness it evoked, as though she’d been captured in a moment of deep contemplation.
‘I look . . . so alone. And sad,’ she added. ‘It’s . . . stark, there’s nothing frivolous about it.’
‘No, which is, as you know, the style Landowski teaches and why I’m here in his atelier. He saw it before he left this evening, and told me it was the best piece of work I’ve ever produced.’
‘Then I’m happy for you, Laurent,’ Bel replied.
‘Well, perhaps one day in the future, you will see it in an exhibition of my work and know that it is of you. And it will always remind you of me, and the beautiful interlude we spent together in Paris, once, long ago.’
‘Don’t! Please don’t!’ she moaned as her control left her and she placed her head in her hands. ‘I can’t bear it.’
‘Izabela, please don’t cry.’ He was by her side immediately, an arm around her shoulder, comforting her. ‘If I could change things, then I would, I swear. Remember, I’m free to love you; it’s you who are not free to love me.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘And tonight will be our last night together, for just as I left the apartment, Maria Georgiana told me the da Silva Costa family are throwing a dinner for me tomorrow night. The following day, I board the ship to return to Rio. Besides, you have finished with me now.’ Bel indicated her sculpture miserably.
‘Bel, I can assure you, I have only just begun.’
She buried her head back into his shoulder. ‘What can we do? What can be done?’
There was a pause before Laurent said, ‘Don’t go back to Brazil, Izabela. Stay in Paris with me.’
Bel drew in her breath, hardly believing the words she was hearing.
‘Listen,’ he said as he took her by the hand and dragged her over to the bench before sitting down next to her. ‘You know I can offer you nothing compared to what your rich fiancé can give you. I have only an attic room in Montparnasse, which is like ice in the winter and a furnace in the summer. And only these hands with which to change my circumstances. But I swear I could love you, Izabela, like no other man could.’
Bel, nestled against him, listened to his words as if they were drops of water pouring into her parched mouth. As she sat there with his arm around her, she glimpsed a future with him for the first time . . . and it was so tantalisingly perfect that, despite all he’d said, she knew she must blank out the image from her mind.
‘Laurent, you know that I cannot. It would destroy my parents; my marriage to Gustavo is the pinnacle of my father’s dreams, what he has spent his life working towards. How could I do this to him, and to my sweet mother?’
‘I understand that you can’t, but I need you to understand before you leave how much I want you too.’
‘I’m not like you.’ Bel shook her head. ‘Perhaps it’s because our worlds are so different, or more simply that you are a man and I am a woman. But in my country, family means everything.’
‘I respect that,’ he said. ‘Although it seems to me there is a point at which a person must stop thinking of others and think of themselves. Marrying a man you don’t love and being thrown into a life you don’t desire – in essence, sacrificing your own happiness – seems to me a step too far, even for the most devoted daughter.’
‘I have no choice,’ Bel replied despairingly.
‘I understand why you think that, but as you know, every human being has free will; it’s what differentiates us from the animals. And’ – Laurent paused as he thought about his next sentence – ‘what about your fiancé? You’ve told me he’s in love with you?’
‘Yes, I believe he is.’
‘So how will he cope with being married to a woman who can never have the same feelings for him? Will your indifference, the fact that he is aware that you’re marryi
ng him out of duty, eventually eat into his soul?’
‘My mother says I will grow to love him, and I have to believe her.’
‘Well then.’ Laurent’s arm dropped from around her shoulder. ‘I must wish you luck and a happy life. I think we’re finished here.’ He stood up abruptly and moved away from her back into the main space of the atelier.
‘Please, Laurent, don’t be like this. These are the last few moments we will ever spend together,’ she begged him.
‘Izabela, I have said all I can. I have declared my love and my devotion to you. I have asked you not to return home, but to stay here with me.’ He shrugged sadly. ‘I can do no more. Forgive me if I can’t bear to hear you telling me that one day you may love your husband.’
Bel’s mind was a blur of powerful contradictions. Her heart was pounding and she felt physically sick. She watched Laurent placing the dust sheet over her sculpture, hiding her from view as one would place a cover over a beloved relative who had just passed from the world. Whether the gesture was symbolic or practical, Bel did not know or care, but it roused her from the bench and she walked towards him.
‘Laurent, please, you must give me time to think . . . I must think,’ she sobbed, as she put her fingers to her temples.
Laurent paused, seeming to waver for a second before he spoke. ‘I know you can’t come here to the atelier again. But please, if it’s the last thing I ever ask of you, will you meet me tomorrow afternoon in Paris?’
‘Is there any point?’
‘I beg you, Izabela. Just tell me where and when.’
She looked into his eyes and knew she was powerless to resist. ‘By the south entrance to the park on Avenue de Marigny and Avenue Gabriel. Meet me there at three.’
He looked at her and nodded. ‘I’ll be there. Goodnight, my Bel.’
Bel left the atelier, for there was simply no more she could say now. Walking through the gardens, she spied the young boy standing alone, looking up at the stars. She walked over to him, and when he saw her, he smiled.
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