It’s splendid to have another woman to talk with. Outside of Sally, Vivienne didn’t have any real friends in America—well, maybe Edwin, but he wasn’t exactly the kind of friend you could pour out your heart to. What a strange time it had been. Telling Tante her stories, listening to herself as she speaks, she understands what she hadn’t fully grasped while she was living through it: she was a very lonely girl. No wonder she’d enjoyed George’s company in Philadelphia.
When they reach the train station in Brussels, Oncle Liam is waiting for them. He greets Vivienne with a warm hug and arranges for her bags to be sent to the house. Then they walk through the streets of the Old Town, Tante’s hand resting on Oncle’s left arm and Vivienne’s on his right.
She takes in the sights the way a canvas drinks paint: the Grand-Place, the Gildehuizen sparkling with gables trimmed in gold, the Hôtel de Ville. When she was a little girl, the family frequently came into Brussels—as she did later with her friends—and the city has always been a part of her. She’s home. Her actual home.
Tante and Oncle moved into a new house while Vivienne was in America, but when she sees it for the first time, it’s already familiar to her. A generous townhouse in a commune filled with old trees and other stately homes, near where her mother grew up, where her grandparents lived when she was a child. She used to play in the park down the street.
Vivienne falls into a large damask chair in the parlor, exhausted by her trip and her emotions. She’s as awash in feelings as she was devoid of them in prison. Relief. Nostalgia. Fear. She’s come so far, regained so much, and yet the things that have driven her for the past eight years are still very much in question.
Tante’s maid draws her a warm bath, and she climbs into the tub, soaking there until the water turns tepid. By then her luggage arrives, and she pulls a nightgown over her head, crawls into the four-poster bed in a pretty gabled room, settles under a thick feather comforter.
But sleep won’t come. Thoughts of Papa and Maman and Franck and Léon. Of Henri. Of how terrified she is to face them.
44
Vivienne, 1929
Three days after she arrives in Brussels, Vivienne tells Tante that she thinks she’s ready to see her father. Tante sends a telegram to Stuttgart before Vivienne can change her mind, and a response arrives a few hours later. Papa and Franck will be at the house by noon the next day. Vivienne paces the floors all evening and sleeps even worse than she did the previous nights. Papa, her baby brother. Despite Tante’s assurances and the obvious fact that they are coming to see her, she can’t shake the fear that they’ll turn away from her.
When the bell rings a little after eleven, Vivienne races down the stairs and yanks the door open. She freezes there, stares at them in wonder. Franck has grown at least another six inches since she saw him in Paris, and he towers over their father, who’s rounder, grayer, his hairline receding a bit. But he’s her dear papa, and he’s smiling up at her. She throws herself at him.
Franck wraps his long arms around them both. She closes her eyes, breathes in the familiar smell of them, and begins to cry. They both hold her even tighter.
“My girl, my little Paulie,” Papa says into her hair. “I despaired that this day would never come.”
“So . . . so did I,” she sobs into his chest. “It . . . it almost didn’t.”
“Come in off the street,” Tante scolds. “Do you want the whole city to know of your affairs?”
Vivienne doesn’t care and clearly neither does Papa or Franck, but they all go into the house just the same. As Tante leads them to the parlor, Vivienne holds on to her father and brother, presses into them, kisses them each on both cheeks. When they enter the room, she chooses the settee, placing each of her men on either side of her, holding their hands, grinning so hard that her cheeks ache.
“Papa, I’m so sorry,” she begins, but he shakes his head vigorously.
“I am the one who is sorry,” he says, his voice wavering. “You made a child’s mistake, and we should never have sent you away. We were wrong, very wrong. You were just a girl. I was the one who decided to invest with Everard, and the fault for what happened is mine alone. It was entirely—”
“Papa, it’s—”
“No. Let me say what I must say. A few weeks after you left, I was beginning to return to my senses and was ready to come for you. But then we heard that you were seen with him in Paris, hugging him, I think I went mad. It—”
“I wasn’t hugging him,” Vivienne cries. “Or . . . or I was, but that was because I thought he’d come to explain, to make it right. As soon as I realized . . . when I realized, I slapped him and sent him away. I promise you, I knew nothing. Had no idea what he was up to. I hate him. Will always hate him.”
“I believe you,” her father says, his voice gruff. “And even if I did not, I would not blame you. If I, a grown man running an international business, was taken in by him, then why not a young girl in the throes of first love? I was supposed to protect you, and instead I abandoned you.”
Vivienne puts her finger to his lips. “I accept your apology, and if you accept mine we’ll never have to talk about it again.”
Franck turns to Tante Natalie. “I think this calls for champagne!”
“It is still morning,” Tante begins to protest, then stops. “You are right. This is a momentous event, one we have all been looking forward to for a very long time.” She hurries off to find the maid.
Papa takes Vivienne’s hands in his. “You have turned into a beautiful woman. I am amazed and overjoyed that you have returned to us.” Then he frowns. “But I do not like your dark hair. And it is too short.”
“Don’t be such an old fuddy-duddy,” she tells him, laughing delightedly. “This is much more fashionable.”
“I do not care about fashion,” Papa grumbles. “My little girl’s hair is blond.”
She hugs him and cautiously asks, “Maman?”
Papa and Franck share a glance. “She has missed you,” Papa says slowly.
“But she’s still angry with me.”
“You know how Maman is,” Franck interjects. “It isn’t easy for her to let go of grievances. Léon, too.”
Vivienne presses the spot between her eyes to hold the tears back. That’s what she is to her mother, a grievance.
“It was the loss of standing that bothered her the most, I think,” Franck continues. “More than the loss of the estate or even the money. You know how she’s always cared about appearances, the proprieties, being a Mertens.”
Papa takes her hand. “She will come around. Léon, too. Soon, I believe.”
Vivienne aches for what she did to her mother, to her annoying but dear older brother. “I’m so sorry.”
“No more ‘sorrys,’” Papa reminds her.
She has Papa, Franck, and Tante Natalie with her, more than she could ever have imagined just two months ago. Maman and Léon’s rejection hurts, as does her part in causing it, but she can’t allow this to mar her homecoming. This—these people, this place—is what she’s yearned for. She pulls them both closer. This.
The maid enters the room holding a bottle of champagne and a silver tray with four crystal flutes. Tante is right behind her. “Let’s celebrate!” she cries. And so they do, quickly polishing off the bottle and then opening another, which they drink with lunch.
They’re happy and silly and have a wonderful time. Then they all take naps and meet back in the parlor for tea, where Oncle joins them. Once again she tells her story, and Papa and Franck tell theirs. But she doesn’t tell them everything. There’s no reason for any of them to hear the more gruesome details.
The next morning, Vivienne goes with her father to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, a Beaux-Arts building that reminds her of the Bradley. They wander through the Rubens Room, then into galleries of Flemish painters, taking in Van Dyck and Robert Campin and Brueghel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the inspiration for W. H. Auden’s poem. She tells him about her mapping of p
ost-Impressionism, and he’s delighted, although they still disagree about whether the Cubists are inside or outside the frame. It’s as if no time has passed since they last visited the museum.
They talk about art the way they did years ago, but now she’s instructing as well as being instructed. When she tells him she’s co-written a book about Matisse, he has to sit down on a bench. After they leave the museum, they go directly to a bookstore where he orders ten copies of The Art of Henri Matisse to be sent to Stuttgart.
“It is by Edwin Bradley and Vivienne Gregsby,” Papa tells the proprietor. “And it just so happens that is the nom de plume of this beautiful young woman standing next to me, my daughter.”
The proprietor takes off his reading glasses and peers at her. “You wrote that book?”
“Co-wrote,” she corrects him, blinking back tears. How long has she waited for Papa to hold her book, afraid it would never happen? Fearing that if it did, he wouldn’t know she was the author? Now he will hold her book, and he will know she wrote it.
The proprietor offers his hand. “It is a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Gregsby. I have heard many good things about your work. I am proud to have you in my store.”
Her father beams, and they walk back to Tante’s house.
“I’ve had an idea about the colonnade paintings,” Vivienne tells him as they stroll. “I’m going to contact a lawyer in Philadelphia to try to get them back for you. It might be possible to swap them for the money I’m supposed to receive from the state in the settlement. To pay me in kind rather than in cash. They were stolen from you—”
“There was no thievery involved. I sold them to your Edwin Bradley.” He shakes his head, clearly amazed, once again, by the many threads she’s woven. “I took his money.”
“Because you were swindled and needed to pay off the debts,” Vivienne argues. “You never should have been in that position. George stole them from you the same way he stole everything else.”
“Oh, Everard stole from me, that is true, but not the paintings.”
“They should be with you,” she insists.
“This is not necessary,” Papa declares. “Nor is it what is best. The pictures should stay in the Bradley Museum, where they can be seen.” He brushes a piece of hair from her forehead and kisses her. “It is time to leave the past where it belongs. I have my girl back, and that is all that matters to me.”
Henri arrives four days later. Vivienne goes to the station to meet his train so they can have some privacy—if seeing each other for the first time in almost two years in front of hundreds of people can be considered privacy. She’s wearing a deep red dress with a slightly promiscuous neckline that she and Tante bought just the day before. She knows it flatters her and that Henri loves her in red. If he still loves her.
Henri doesn’t know she’s coming to meet him, and she watches as he steps onto the platform, searching for the exit and heading toward it. His stride is purposeful and his expression determined. Other than a slim case not much larger than a sketchbook under his arm, he has no luggage. Her heart squeezes.
Vivienne takes a deep breath, sidles up to him, and says in a low voice, “Is that you, Monsieur Matisse?”
He turns with a frown on his face, clearly expecting an admirer who’s going to impede his progress. When he sees who it is, he stops, then reaches out his finger and touches her cheek. “You have returned to yourself.”
She nods, unable to speak.
“You were barely alive. A ghost. Perhaps not even that.”
“I . . . I wasn’t me,” she says. “And everything I told you that day was a lie.”
“I believed I would never see you again.”
“And here I am,” she whispers.
“And here you are.” But instead of kissing her, he grasps her shoulders and holds her at arms length, taking her in slowly, almost sadly.
“What?” she asks, suddenly afraid. “What is it?”
“I heard what happened to the Bradley. I am sorry the collection did not become yours and that you are not able to return your father’s paintings.”
Vivienne closes her eyes against his kindness.
“I have brought something,” Henri says. “Let us sit down.”
She numbly follows him to a bench and watches him undo the laces holding together the case in his lap. He carefully removes half a dozen sketches. “These are for you. Or for your father.” He offers them to her along with the case. “That is your choice.”
Vivienne looks down, her vision blurred by tears. Preliminary sketches for The Music Lesson. A lovely, thoughtful gift. A generous gift, but a parting gift, she’s sure. “He, Papa, he will treasure them,” she manages to say around the boulder in her throat. “I will, too. Thank you.”
“Vivienne.”
She shakes her head, unable to meet his eye. “There’s someone else.”
“I am sorry. More sorry than you can know. I thought you were gone. Forever gone. And now she is here and I cannot . . . I just cannot.”
Vivienne puts the sketches back in their case, ties it, and stands. “I’m happy for you, Henri,” she says, her voice steadier than she would have expected. “I truly am and wish you only the best. I’m sad for myself, but so many good things have happened that I know I won’t be sad forever.” She squares her shoulders. “I will not be sad forever.”
He takes her gently in his arms, and Vivienne presses her forehead into his shoulder. They stand that way for a long time, then she pulls away. “Go,” she tells him.
He does.
45
George/Tex, 1930
His home in Monaco isn’t a house, it’s an estate. Much more majestic than Ker-Feal. High on a rocky cliff facing the Mediterranean, the multilevel structure lined with wide terraces juts out over the sea. It’s made almost entirely of marble, and it’s surrounded on three sides by a narrow strip of olive groves. A twenty-foot iron fence runs along the edge of the groves, barring the curious.
He loves his new house and, at the beginning, loved his new gig as Tex Carver, an American from Oklahoma who transcended his humble roots to make a fortune in oil. He wrapped up his art-forgery con last year, making a cool $2 million just before the American economy and everyone else’s turned sour. “Dang,” Tex would say. “A mighty nice haul.” And now he’s taking a well-deserved rest.
The forty-two Bradley paintings as well as the original works he purchased as Ashton King are hanging throughout the mansion. It’s his greatest pleasure to wander from room to room, appreciating his masterpieces, touching them because he can. As most of the pictures are stolen property, he hires only servants who he assumes won’t recognize a Matisse or a Picasso and overpays them to cement their loyalty and silence.
He drives his Mercedes-Benz SSK “Count Trossi” into Monte Carlo for food and fun and women and gambling. Tex is welcome at any table at the casino, where he routinely cleans everyone out, as they consistently underestimate the man with the overly large mustache and booming voice. They forgive him when he uses his winnings to spring for a round of drinks. But it’s too easy, and after less than six months, he’s getting bored.
Often he finds himself sitting at the dining room table, staring at Paulien’s adored Music Lesson, reliving their days in London. How exciting it was to be with her, how much he enjoyed her company, how he’d been so focused on his con that he didn’t notice any of this. It had been the same those last months in Philadelphia. He’s glad it was he who freed her from prison. It’s good to know she’s safe.
He thought he saw her at the casino the other night, and it was as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He leaped from his seat and ran toward her, calling her name. When the woman turned and it wasn’t Paulien, he was crushed. As he ponders these unfamiliar emotions, he realizes that ever since she was arrested, he’s been uncharacteristically concerned about her. He keeps telling himself that she’s nothing to him, but it doesn’t ring true.
He misses her, wants to be with her jus
t because he wants to be with her. No ulterior motive. He wants to make her happy just because he wants her to be happy. Insane. He loses himself for a moment in Music Lesson, remembering Paulien’s stories about curling up in front of this very same painting when she was a little girl. She must have been a pistol. He wishes he’d known her then.
He abruptly stands and leaves the dining room. He’s always prided himself on his ability to remain detached, to withhold emotion and empathy, and definitely not to fall in love. Such weaknesses throw you off your game.
It doesn’t take long to find her. She’s living in Paris, around the corner from Gertrude Stein. Just moved there, in fact. Even though he’s shaved his beard, grown a handlebar mustache, dyed his badly cut hair blond, and he now walks slightly bowlegged like a cowboy who just got off his horse, he was in Paris as Ashton King not that long ago, so he skates in and out of the shadows to follow her.
She’s as beautiful as she was in Philadelphia, and much looser. She and Gertrude go to galleries and parties and dinners. They wander through the city, chatting and laughing. His stomach twists at the sight of her.
He’s relieved to discover that she and Matisse are no longer an item and pleased that she’s going to start her own collection with the $5 million she received for the seizure of the Bradley. But he’s got no interest in her windfall, startlingly so. She should do whatever she wants with that money. She deserves it. He wants her, but not just in a sexual way. He wants her to be with him. He wants to be with her.
One day he spies her alone, sipping tea and reading a book at a small café. He slides into the chair across from her but finds he’s speechless. He’s never speechless.
Paulien raises her eyes from her book, appears less surprised than he expected. She puts a napkin between the pages to hold her spot and lays the book on the table. “I wondered when you’d show up.”
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