[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris

by Fliss Chester

  Fen walked down the street a few steps ahead of James, clutching the handle of her suitcase in one hand, and the other she let trail along the rough, rusticated stone walls of the buildings. It was her way of connecting with her surroundings, ‘seeing’ something with her fingertips, almost as if she was reading the buildings as Braille. Stone would give way to glass, which would in turn change to wood… and even though she could see the street had shopfronts and doorways, she could feel it this way, too. Arthur hadn’t laughed at her when he’d caught her doing this one afternoon down Midhurst’s High Street (although Mrs Simpson from the bakers had given her a very strange look), as he said it all tied in with her love of cryptic crossword clues. ‘Seeing’ something in a different way, that was how puzzles were solved.

  She pulled her hand back as they approached two large grey-painted doors, each eight or nine feet tall and easily three feet across. Together they made up one massive doorway. To either side of the building, there were private art galleries, the one to the left was already open for business, but sadly the one to the right was boarded up and closed. The name painted in beautiful gold curling script above the window was Jacob Berenson… a Jewish name, if Fen wasn’t mistaken. Was that why this gallery, and not the one next door, was empty? Fen said a silent prayer for the absent owner, hoping that he hadn’t been driven too far from his premises by the Nazis, or for too long.

  James set his kitbag down and looked to Fen for confirmation before pressing his shoulder to one of the large grey doors, while turning the sturdy-looking cast-iron ring.

  She nodded and the massive door shuddered open, scratching its well-worn arc across the encaustic tiles, and revealed the communal hallway behind. The daylight helped show the intricate patterns of the floor tiles, and as Fen’s eyes adjusted to the darkness of the vestibule, she noted the set of tidy mailboxes, all named and numbered for the apartments and their occupants. A door the other side of the hallway led to a courtyard, which she remembered from her youth and attempts Rose had made to get her to ‘draw from nature’ by studying a bit of bark of one of the old lime trees. Now, though, Fen pointed James towards the cantilevered stone staircase, with its ornate cast-iron handrail that swirled and seemed to grow organically from the tiled floor.

  ‘Ready for the climb?’

  She picked up her suitcase and led the way, James following on behind as she swiftly made it up the first few storeys. By the fourth floor, she had started to slow down, and she was gratified to hear James’s breathing deepen and quicken too as they climbed.

  ‘A few more to go, I’m afraid,’ Fen pointed up to where a ceiling lantern illuminated the landings of the uppermost floors.

  By the time they reached apartment five, they were both a little out of breath. Fen paused before pressing the white button next to the door, wondering how old Madame C managed this climb every day. A moment later though they both heard the flat buzz of the electric doorbell sound in the apartment, followed by a rapid barking that was, in its turn, followed by a shushing and a voice calling out in a melodious tone, ‘It’s open!’

  Fen pushed the door open and had barely got her foot over the threshold when the scampering sound of claws over wood parquet floor greeted them. She looked at James. ‘Ah, yes, I forgot. I hope you’re at home with dogs?’

  ‘Dogs I’m fine with,’ James muttered as the miniature poodle-like thing jumped up and clawed his knees, ‘rats less so.’

  ‘Bonjour, Tipper,’ Fen leaned down and picked up the squirming little ball of fluffy energy. ‘You’re not a rat, are you, little one? Don’t listen to the frightful man.’ She was rewarded by a swift few licks to her nose, which made her laugh and James recoil in disgust. ‘Tipper here is some sort of poodle crossed with… well, with whatever fancied his mother in the back alley. Maybe a Cavalier King Charles? He’s a sweetie, though, you’ll get used to him.’

  ‘I’ll probably end up sitting on him…’ James was interrupted by the sight and sound of Rose, who appeared in the hallway to greet her guests.

  ‘Fenella!’ She approached, and Fen caught the familiar aroma in the air that she so associated with the older woman, that of floral ylang-ylang perfume teamed with turpentine and oil paint, and just a hint of some aromatic tobacco. ‘Welcome, welcome.’

  ‘Rose, it’s so lovely to see you again. I’m so sorry we’re so terribly delayed.’ Fen met her hostess with a kiss on each cheek and then turned to introduce James. ‘This is my friend Captain Lancaster.’

  ‘James, please.’ He stuck out his hand and was slightly nonplussed when Rose cocked her head on one side and proffered her hand as if to allow James to kiss it.

  Fen noted how quickly James adapted to Rose’s left-field greeting, bringing her hand close to his lips, but not too close, before gently letting her go. He has been brought up the right way, Fen thought to herself, as Rose arched her neck and brushed some unseen speck of dust off the front of her housecoat. She also couldn’t help but observe how masculine and large James appeared in comparison to the supremely feminine apartment. The hallway was narrow and his frame seemed to take up most of its width. Just next to him was a spindly console table, painted white with delicate gold ring handles on its drawers, its puny legs like matchsticks compared to his bulk. The walls were painted a soft shade of pink and a delicately patterned Persian carpet covered a short length of the geometric parquet flooring.

  ‘Do come through to the studio, my dears,’ Rose beckoned them as she wafted off down the corridor, her voluminous velvet housecoat in the most jewel-like shade of amethyst purple, flowing out behind her.

  Fen looked back at James and gestured for him to leave his kitbag with her suitcase where the hall widened.

  ‘Quite the welcome,’ James whispered to her, his eyes twinkling.

  Fen raised a brow. ‘Oh, James, you just wait.’ She winked at him as they followed Rose into the light-filled room at the front of the apartment.

  Three

  In most apartments of this size and style, the room they entered would have been a spacious salon or parlour. Here, however, the light streaming in from three floor-to-ceiling windows meant it was the perfect place for an art studio. Canvases were stacked up against the wall behind two large easels that faced one of the windows, while in between them sat a small table that was home to a couple of jars of dirty greyish-green-looking liquid, a precariously balanced palette and plenty of well-used paintbrushes. Some of the brushes were soaking in the jars, others were teetering on the edge of the table and looked as if they were about to join some of their fellows, which were lost in the ruched-up folds of a dust sheet, which was doing its best to protect the beautiful wood floor beneath it.

  The smell of oil paint, turpentine and tobacco smoke was stronger in here and it instantly transported Fen back to a time when she would spend lazy hours reading Rose’s art books and playing with jigsaws on the floor while Rose painted something or other at her easels. Nothing, it seemed, had changed from all those years ago, except that even more framed paintings now crowded the walls, hung between the panelling in a haphazard way, vying for attention and space, much like those at the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy.

  Rose waved them past the tools of her trade to the other side of the room where a chaise longue and two comfortable-looking armchairs were placed around a low table.

  ‘No need to apologise for the delay, Fenella dear. I was quite at one with the muse last night in any case. And it’s simply marvellous to see you again. And meet your… friend.’ She looked James up and down and indicated the oldest and saggiest armchair for him to sit on. ‘Let me bring some refreshments through, make yourselves comfortable, dears.’

  ‘I don’t think she likes me,’ James whispered to Fen.

  ‘You’re doing marvellously,’ Fen reassured him, keen to alleviate his obvious concern that he might have put a foot wrong. ‘She’s just wonderfully eccentric. My brother and I used to play Madame Coillard Bingo, you know, after that game they play in Am
erica? If she said or did something silly or funny then we’d shout “bingo” to each other and roll around laughing. She must have thought we were feral animals.’

  James chortled to himself and settled into the armchair and gazed around the room.

  Fen looked around too, taking in the apartment’s architecture and decor for the second time in as many months. The floor was parquet wood, smooth and bleached by the sunlight that filled the room from the three great windows. The walls were painted a pale eau de Nil with that beautiful light sea-green colour barely visible behind all the paintings.

  ‘She is really quite the artist,’ Fen explained to James. ‘She was artist in residence at some rather smart château down in the Loire in the early twenties, then she started at the École des Beaux-Arts at about the same time as we moved here. That’s where we met her. She knows everyone… Don’t get her started on Picasso though. She still thinks he’s a double agent apparently.’

  James chuckled to himself again and shook his head. ‘She does seem like quite a character.’

  ‘She is. Pa always suspected she might be Le Faussaire, the art forger who was flooding the market with cheap, but seriously good, fakes in the thirties. I never bought that theory, but I did hear that some students called her lessons the École des Faux d’Art… She has a real eye for it though. Here, look at this,’ Fen moved towards the windows and pointed to a small framed canvas that was hung between two of them. ‘It’s by an Impressionist. Deluca or Deland, or something. She’s told me a hundred times, but I’m such a dunderhead at remembering artist’s names.’

  ‘One of the lesser-known ones, eh? Doesn’t trip off the tongue like Monet or Manet.’

  ‘I suppose so, that’s my excuse anyway.’

  Fen laughed and stepped back from the small painting, which, to the untrained eye, looked nothing more than a swirling mess of pastel-coloured paint strokes, devoid of composition or structure. To the more discerning viewer, however, it was a pretty little painting of a cherry tree in full blossom, verdant greenery around it.

  ‘Gosh the light is stunning in here, isn’t it?’ Fen had wandered over to the middle of the three floor-to-ceiling windows and was caught in a trance by the view over the rooftops opposite. ‘I think I can make out the dome of Saint Sulpice, and just behind it is the Luxembourg Gardens of course. Oh, I’ve missed Paris.’

  ‘You had a happy time here?’ James asked.

  ‘Yes, rather. Slightly bohemian perhaps. And I was never really “one of the girls” at school. They called me Lily L’Étranger… Lily the Foreigner. But I learned the language and love the city. Did lose the gerbil in the catacombs once though, which upset Ma a bit. Ah, here she is…’ Fen moved back towards the small table and perched on the edge of the elegant chaise longue as Rose flounced into the room carrying a brightly varnished papier mâché tray, on which was a small ornate silver teapot and three delicate teacups.

  Tipper jumped up next to Fen on the daybed and snuffled his little nose into her lap.

  ‘Afraid I don’t go in for breakfast much myself. But I grow my own mint. Desperately good for the digestion and of course free, which is undeniably a bonus.’ Rose sat herself down in the other armchair and began to pour the steaming liquid into the teacups. She passed them around and Fen inhaled the sweet, fresh aroma of the mint tea. ‘It looks a bit insipid, but come the cocktail hour it goes marvellously well with a tot of rum and some molasses, if you can ever come by that sort of thing these days.’

  ‘Oh Rose,’ Fen reached over and gently touched her friend’s arm. ‘It is so lovely to see you.’

  ‘And you, my dear,’ Rose replied. ‘Now, you must fill me in on what you got up to in Burgundy. You mentioned a murder?’

  Fen sighed, and looked across at James. He gave a slight nod of his head, and she settled down to telling Rose all about what had happened since she’d last seen her.

  ‘Tell me, dear, how long do you think you’ll be staying?’ Rose asked, once the conversation had moved on from Fen’s most recent adventures. Condolences over Arthur’s death had been offered and gratefully accepted and Fen had explained how she’d met Captain Lancaster.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to impose, but I’d like to visit a few of my old haunts,’ she sighed. ‘Hopefully, the city won’t all be changed and boarded up like some of those galleries on the street below.’

  ‘Same, same, but different, as they say in the Far East.’ Rose twisted her long rope of pearls, which hung down from her neck, around her fingertips. ‘It might not be quite what you remember, but then you were but a child, Fenella dear, an ingènue, a débutante!’

  Fen laughed. ‘And innocent as a babe in arms is what you’re saying? Tell me, is it business as usual at the Deux Magots?’

  ‘Oh Fenella, what do you know of that old dive?’ Rose winked at her. ‘But, yes, you’ll still see Sartre propping up the bar if you’re unlucky.’ She placed her teacup down and from a pocket of her voluminous velvet housecoat drew out a long, black cigarette holder. She leaned forward, her pearls clanking onto the silver teapot, and pulled a cigarette from an open packet on the table. ‘Don’t mind, do you?’ she asked, not waiting for an answer as she flicked open an American-style lighter and took a deep drag.

  ‘Rose…’ Fen paused.

  The older woman raised her eyebrows and beckoned Fen to carry on.

  ‘I was wondering, only because I never heard back from you, did you read all of my letter?’

  Rose nodded as she exhaled a tight plume of smoke.

  ‘Well, I was wondering would you be able to put James up for a few nights, too?’ Fen looked over to where James shifted uneasily in the sagging armchair.

  ‘Ah. No.’ Rose then took another deep drag, eyeing up the man in her apartment all the time. She exhaled. ‘I hate to be the proverbial bearer of… but I haven’t told you another snippet of news.’ She leaned back in the chair, giving Fen and James a masterclass in the dramatic pause. At last she spoke again. ‘I have a lodger now.’

  Fen tried to hide her disappointment and listened to Rose as she described her new paying guest. It wasn’t that she was desperately upset to be separated from James, but she did feel embarrassed that the poor chap now didn’t have a place to stay. Plus, she had been getting used to his company and liked the fact that he was a flesh-and-blood living link to Arthur. A comfort blanket in human form.

  Before James could excuse himself and start looking for his own lodgings, a noise to the back of the room alerted them to the fact that someone else was in the apartment.

  Fen turned to see one of the doors that led off from the studio open and a strikingly beautiful woman entered the room.

  Tipper jumped off the chaise longue and snuffled around her feet.

  ‘Aha! Here she is herself, Simone! Come in, my dear, and meet Fenella and her young man.’

  ‘Oh he’s not…’

  ‘I’m not…’

  Fen and James’s protestations faded into the air as Simone came over to greet them.

  James, who was already halfway to standing, almost fell over himself in getting fully upright. ‘How’d you do?’ He stretched his arm out and the svelte, terribly chic young woman giggled, not understanding the typically English greeting. James said hello again, this time in French and Simone shook his hand.

  Fen looked at her. Her waist can’t be any larger than my thigh, she thought. And that skirt, it’s beautiful!

  Simone turned to face Fen and introduced herself. ‘Simone Mercier, hello.’

  Fen introduced herself in her own near-perfect French.

  ‘Oh this is marvellous, such clever English folk!’ Simone laughed again and went to stand next to Rose, who placed a maternal hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Off to work, dear girl?’ Rose asked her.

  ‘Yes, and I must hurry, I am late again… tch, my bag?’ Simone cast her eye around the room and then sashayed towards James and bent over next to him, retrieving a small leather handbag from next to his chair. ‘
Oop la, here it is!’ She giggled and waved an air kiss to each of them as she left the room.

  Rose looked at James and not unkindly said, ‘So you see, Captain Lancaster, it’s just the most desperate of timing that you’ve both descended when darling Simone is already in residence. She’s a poppet, isn’t she?’

  ‘No, I mean yes, absolutely. Quite understand.’ James fluffed his words a bit and Fen shook her head in disbelief. She’d heard of pretty girls turning men’s heads, but this one seemed to have twisted James’s noggin right off.

  With the excitement of Simone’s entrance, and almost as swift exit, over, the three of them sat back down and finished off their mint tea.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me remarking, Fenella dear,’ Rose said, narrowing her eyes in concentration as she looked at Fen’s face. ‘But you look like death, darling one.’

  Fen touched her cheek and could feel the heaviness of the skin under her eyes. All of a sudden, the lack of sleep on the uncomfortable train caught up with her and she stifled another yawn, then replied, ‘I must admit, I do feel rather tired.’

  James pushed himself out of the armchair. ‘I’ll take my leave then.’ He bowed a goodbye to Rose, and Fen couldn’t help but smile as she noticed Rose slightly incline her head in reply.

  ‘Fen will see you out, won’t you, dear. And don’t let Tipper escape! Tipper!’ Rose called to the little dog as Fen and James left the room.

  ‘Will you be all right – finding somewhere to stay, I mean?’ Fen asked, feeling slightly responsible for his predicament.

  ‘Don’t worry, I can fend for myself. I’ll probably hit the hay all the way through till sun-up anyway.’ He paused in the hallway and picked up his kitbag, giving her a reassuring smile. ‘I must say, though, I’m a bit jealous of the company you’ll be keeping tonight.’

  ‘Honestly,’ Fen rolled her eyes and pushed him out the door. ‘But, James, do call round later or tomorrow morning. And drop me a line to let me know which hotel you find.’