Headline

by Imogen Robertson

  She yawned. ‘It pays. As you so cleverly observed, being poor is difficult. Though when my looks have gone I’ll end up scrubbing those rooms I’ve modelled in for forty centimes an hour. If I’m lucky.’ She shrugged and bit her knuckle.

  ‘I told Maud I always sew money into my clothes in case of emergency.’

  ‘She listens, she learns.’ Both women were silent for a while, listening to Maud’s painful, dragging breaths.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ Tanya said, and began rummaging in her purse.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Blast, I know I have it. Sylvie Morel wrote to me. It arrived this morning. I couldn’t bear it, so I just . . .’

  Yvette was on her feet at once and almost grabbed the bag out of her hand. ‘How the hell could you have forgotten until now!’

  Tanya looked up. ‘I thought Maud was dead. I brought it to show you, didn’t I? Oh, get your hands off, you’re not helping.’

  Yvette lifted her palms and backed away. At last Tanya pulled out a blue and slightly crumpled envelope. ‘Oh, look. She uses the same stationer’s as I do.’

  ‘Tanya!’

  ‘All right. You may as well come and read over my shoulder.’ Yvette scurried round behind her and leaned on the back of her chair.

  ‘Move your head, will you, and hold it steady.’

  Tanya straightened the pages with a vicious snap. ‘Better?’

  ‘Much.’ For a few minutes they were silent. Tanya turned the page and read on. Four sheets in all. They reached the end and Yvette whistled. Tanya’s neck had turned an angry red. ‘It is just the same story the Countess told me. But I don’t believe it. They are lying.’

  ‘What’s their game?’ Yvette said. ‘Why make her out to be a thief?’

  ‘I don’t know. They gave back the tiara, so what could they possibly . . .’ Tanya read part of the letter out loud. ‘“My brother and I visited the Countess the same afternoon she returned to Paris, yesterday” – New Year’s Eve, in other words, “and returned the tiara. She most generously agreed never to repeat the story of the theft publicly in order to safeguard Miss Heighton’s reputation. We feel though that you, as a friend of poor, lost Maud, deserve the fullest explanation.” Well, that’s nice of her. Oh, Yvette, what are we going to do? Can’t we go to the police?’

  Yvette hunched her shoulders. ‘And say what? Someone took the tiara and the Morels gave it back. Maud’s poor. She’d be in prison before she even wakes up. Let’s stay out of the way for now until she can tell us what happened. You just look sad and say nothing.’

  ‘What about our host?’

  ‘Valadon? She won’t say anything. Too bound up with her lover boy and enjoying her freedom. She’s been giving dinner-parties in the suburbs for the last year, so she needs it. Says she can’t stop painting.’

  Tanya nodded. The door was pushed open and Sasha reappeared with a basket over her arm, uttering a stream of complaints in Russian about the shopkeepers of Paris. Then she began to unpack her cures.

  CHAPTER 4

  2 January 1910

  The first time Maud woke and was sure it was not a dream, she found herself staring into the eyes of a woman; a square-faced stranger with chestnut curls of fringe hanging over her fierce black eyes. She blew a lungful of smoke out of her nose like a dragon.

  ‘The mermaid wakes!’ Her voice was dark and low. ‘Got all your senses this morning?’ The face did not wait for an answer but retreated, leaving Maud looking up at a low ceiling supported by heavy blackened beams. She could not see properly. Her lips were dry and her throat ached; her head was thick with pain that struck her skull from within with every beat of her pulse. She tried to think. The tiara, the river. Then she had been on a boat with a smoking stove in the corner; there had been scolding and questioning, another ugly and suspicious-looking woman with a baby tied onto her back watching them, then she had been taken somewhere else in noise and darkness. Lights seemed to blister and break in her eyes.

  Maud tried to lift herself onto her elbows. The iron springs of the bed groaned and fought against her. She saw a room, the woman standing against the wall with a cigarette. She seemed very far away now. There was a bunch of holly in a bottle near to her. Something warm moved next to her and she started, only to see some huge tawny dog was sharing the bed with her. He stirred as Maud moved and wagged his feathery tail a couple of times before settling against her again. She reached out to touch his warm flanks.

  The woman was dressed like a respectable bourgeoise. She wore an apron over her blouse and skirt, and her over-sleeves showed traces of paint. There was a twist to her mouth.

  ‘I think Hugo was a monk in his past life,’ she said, indicating the dog. Her voice sounded to Maud as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. ‘One of those who used to patch up the knights when they were off crusading. He finds whoever is sick in the house and stays with them while they are in danger.’ Maud lay back down again, her belly cramped with nausea. ‘There’s water there. Can you hold your glass?’ Maud turned and saw it and reached over the dog’s head to take the glass and drink. It took all her strength. The light fell in through a single smeared window. It was a grey, comfortless sort of room but it was not Rue de Seine and it was not a prison cell and it did not move under her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said. The effort of speaking set off a fresh cascade of pain.

  The woman came closer and Maud saw that her long fingers were stained with nicotine.

  ‘I am Suzanne Valadon, Artist. And you are Maud Heighton and either a dull little student of the Académie, a victim of terrible injustice, or a rather pathetic thief. Which is it?’

  ‘I didn’t steal anything,’ Maud managed to say.

  Valadon dropped her cigarette and ground it out on the floor. ‘Your friends don’t seem to think you’re a thief.’ She folded her arms in front of her and studied Maud’s face. ‘The Russian princess, the French model and the English miss. Sounds like the start of a bad joke or a good brothel.’ Maud said nothing and Valadon laughed. ‘They think your friends in Rue de Seine set you up. Yvette tells me they’ve been saying you’re an opium fiend. Perhaps I am harbouring a dangerous criminal.’

  Maud reached for the water glass again and finished what was in it. Criminal. Opium. Thief. ‘It doesn’t seem to worry you.’

  Valadon gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘Why should it? I have nothing to steal.’ She walked round the bed and took the glass from her hand before Maud dropped it, then filled it up again from the jug. She was older than Maud had thought at first. There were lines around her eyes.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘My house. You’re my first lodger. We’re in Impasse de Guelma on the Butte.’ She gave Maud the glass and this time she drank greedily but the burning pain in her head and throat continued.

  ‘Montmartre?’

  ‘With the drunks, apaches and the only artists worth a damn. Thrilling, isn’t it?’

  Maud felt sick. Her stomach ached and her mouth tasted of riverwater; pain pressed into the side of her head. She handed the glass back to Valadon. ‘I didn’t steal anything,’ she said again.

  Valadon replaced the glass on the side-table. ‘No. I think if you stole something, you’d hang onto it, wouldn’t you? Till they broke your fingers to get it away.’ She put her head on one side, watching her. ‘I think that they made a mistake, your friends in Rue de Seine.’

  Maud lay back on her pillow and turned her face towards the wall. ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  That low gravelly laugh again. ‘Oh, I do. It’s my job now to watch you while your nursemaids are out pretending to mourn you. It is the second of January, by the way. You missed New Year. Welcome to 1910.’ She sat down on the cane chair. ‘Did you throw yourself in the river?’

  ‘No. I was thrown in.’

  ‘How calmly you say it. Interesting girl. They didn’t know who they were trying to kill, did they? I’ve seen you sleeping with your jaw clenched so tight the muscles on your neck st
and out and your fists pulling the sheets apart. There’s a little fighter in there under the English manners. A little demon. Your friends in the Rue de Seine would never have risked throwing you in the water if they’d seen you sleep.’

  Maud stared at the plaster on the wall by her head. It was unpainted, but in the pale grey were a hundred points of colour. Mud browns, ochre, yellow, moments of titanium white . . . they shifted and blurred and she closed her eyes.

  ‘What is it like to drown?’ Valadon asked.

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Liar.’ She stood again and went to the stove. ‘The Russian’s maid left this soup. I’m to spoon it down your throat whenever you are awake or Yvette will scream at me. Sit up a bit, will you?’

  In the early evening Tanya arrived and exclaimed to see Maud open her eyes. Maud managed to squeeze her hand and the Russian burst into tears. She found herself being fed again, this time by the Russian maid. For the next three days her periods of consciousness were still short and painful. She was aware of Yvette from time to time curled at the bottom of the bed, reading. The dog continued to share her bed, leaving only occasionally, and when she woke she was grateful for its animal warmth. Valadon flitted in and out, taking her turn at feeding her when the others were away, and other footsteps hammered up and down the stairs outside her door. There always seemed to be people laughing or arguing in Valadon’s studio from late afternoon until dawn. The daylight hours passed in moments, a series of shaking snapshots. The nights were long and suffocating. Then at last the hours began to mean something. The dog returned to Valadon, and Maud realised that this, as much as anything else, meant she would live.

  That afternoon, when Yvette and Tanya arrived, she began to ask questions and Yvette told her the story of her rescue, the doctor. Tanya told her about her meeting with the Countess on New Year’s Eve.

  ‘Do they not miss me at Lafond’s?’

  Tanya hesitated and for the first time the name Morel was spoken in the room. He had been to see Lafond with the same story. At first her teacher was sceptical, but he had visited the pawnbroker’s office and the shop in Petits Champs, and the Countess herself. After that, he was just amazed. Tanya had suggested they say Maud had been called home over Christmas and Lafond had agreed.

  For the first time, Maud told them what she could remember of that last evening in Rue de Seine; the accusation, the strange heaviness in her limbs and her collapse.

  ‘Laudanum, probably,’ Yvette said quietly and continued to bite her nails. About those last moments by the river Maud could say nothing, and her friends, watching her carefully, did not press her.

  At first Tanya would not read her the letter from Sylvie that described Maud’s crime and suicide, but Maud insisted, and Tanya, seeing the fierceness in her eyes, felt afraid and relented. Valadon had drifted in, escaping the chaos of her studio to listen. Her son Maurice and some of his friends had been drinking since the previous evening and she had grown bored with them and come to look at the women instead. She lounged against the doorframe smoking, her wolfhound at her feet while Tanya read the letter with her rolling Russian accent. Sylvie wrote that a number of small items of jewellery had gone missing in the weeks since Maud had arrived. Her brother had successfully traced them to a pawn shop near Rue Croix des Petits Champs, and the man remembered Maud. She mentioned the sweet, sick smell of opium that they had tasted in the air coming from Maud’s room. They said they had tried to speak to her, but she had denied everything. Only when they found the tiara had she become wild, and fled the house in spite of their efforts to restrain her. Christian had gone out in pursuit, only to see her throw herself from the quayside. He had raised the alarm, but the river had already swallowed her. Sylvie concluded by saying that the tiara had been returned and the Countess was deeply sorry that poor Maud had been tempted.

  Tanya put her hand on Maud’s shoulder. Her body was stiff, rigid.

  ‘Maud? Sweet-one? Did you go to the pawn shop?’

  She closed her eyes. ‘Yes. Sylvie was the opium addict. Morel told me the first day. I went for her, to the pawn shop, to get money to buy the drug.’

  ‘Of course she went there,’ said Yvette. She was sitting on the floor with her back to the bed and her knees drawn up. ‘They wouldn’t write it if they couldn’t prove it. “Oh Maudie dear, could you just pop in with this” and little Maud does it because she’s so grateful to the nice rich people for feeding her.’

  ‘Sylvie needed it,’ Maud said. ‘She’d thrown away her supply and was suffering for it. I was trying to help.’ She felt her heart clench tight like an angry fist. ‘How was I to know?’

  ‘Needed it, did she? Was she throwing up? Doubled over in pain? Cramps in all her bones? Covered in snot and shaking so hard you could hear her teeth rattle?’

  ‘No,’ Maud sighed. ‘It was not like that.’

  The French girl shrugged. ‘Then she was faking a nice polite version of needing it for you, Maud, to set you up. If you’d seen what needing it really looks like, you would have run away.’

  Tanya gave a little gasp. ‘Yvette, you’ve . . .’

  ‘No, I’ve never been that way. But I’ve seen it and it’s enough to stop me from visiting those places most days.’ She scratched the back of her neck. ‘People die.’

  ‘But why did they do all that?’ Tanya said, still holding the letter in her hand. ‘What was the reason? They gave the tiara back. Why go to all this trouble and expense to make Maud look guilty of a crime then give it back?’

  Valadon straightened and the dog immediately scrabbled up and yawned. ‘Stop asking questions and send that girl home,’ she said. ‘They wanted her dead. She’s alive. She was strong enough to live through the fever and the police aren’t looking for her. That means she’s winning, as far as I see it. And whatever scheme the Morels had – who cares?’

  ‘But . . . ?’ Tanya protested.

  ‘Who cares?’ Valadon said again. ‘We live, we die. You’ve got deep pockets, Tanya. Pawn a bracelet yourself and put her on a train tonight. She’s got family. Send her back to them and let the rest lie where it lies.’

  ‘They told the Countess I was a thief,’ Maud said thickly.

  ‘What? The nice Yankee Countess? Yeah, I know her and I can just imagine.’ Valadon bunched her fists and rubbed her eyes. ‘“Oh no, that nice English girl was a thief! I am so sad! Now what shall I wear tonight?” And the Académie? The girls are wasting good colour and fat old Lafond is grateful the scandal’s not going in the papers to scare away his shit-eating sycophants.’ Tanya blushed.

  Valadon swept her eyes over them. ‘Go home, Maud. You’ll never be artists, either of you. Princess, you want everything to be pretty and Maud, you want everyone to think well of you so neither of you will ever tell any truth worth a damn.’

  ‘Leave me alone, Suzanne,’ said Maud. ‘Madame de Civray was kind to me.’

  ‘Oh, you moth,’ Valadon answered, her voice cool. ‘Now I shall leave you babies and go back to my work.’ She looked at Tanya. ‘God, women are stupid sometimes.’

  CHAPTER 5

  10 January 1910

  If it had been a fine day Tanya would have had some warning, but the rain had been falling steadily, thin and unbroken all morning, so Passage des Panoramas was unusually full when she left Lafond’s at midday. There was a slightly low feeling in the air. The shop windows were offering discounts on Christmas goods and everything seemed a little shabbier, more grey than was usual in Paris, but still the Parisians came out in flocks to shop and crowd into the covered passageways to hunt for pretty bargains out of the rain. At times like these, when the gold and black shop-fronts and the polished mosaic floors were hidden by crowds of silk-lined coats, and the thick low bodies of the men seemed to press near to her, Tanya felt smothered.

  Now she was free of the distractions of her work, the image of Perov in evening dress making his proposal returned to her. Thinking of it was like pressing on a bruise. He had come to dinner with
her and her aunts as a close family friend, as if the thing were settled already. He had enjoyed his port and cigar, then as soon as he came into the drawing room to join her and her aunts at the tea-table, Vera and Lila had remembered urgent errands in other parts of the house and left them alone. Perov took a seat next to her, made himself comfortable and began to speak as if their marriage were already agreed. He spoke of where in Paris they might live and the size of house he thought suitable; it was some minutes before Tanya could interrupt him.

  The memory was strongly tainted by the smell of cigar smoke, the stale sweetness of wine on his breath. Eventually she managed to break in and ask for more time before committing herself to be his wife. He was offended, pursing his lips and blinking rapidly. Only when she forced herself to smile shyly and ask submissively for his patience and understanding did he seem mollified. At no time did he express any sort of feeling for her. He was telling her the result of his negotiations with her family, not asking for her love. Tanya thought of her father and her aunts, the comforts and security of her life. The idea of being without them made her afraid. She had never met a problem before that could not be solved with money. How could she make problems go away without it?

  Paul Allardyce she had seen only once since New Year, once again while walking in the Bois and with her aunts on either side of her. She could only thank him for the roses and look at him with a sort of desperate appeal, but he looked at her as if she was something he had already lost. At this thought, she turned her eyes upwards to the glass and ironwork roof of the passage, the light grey and the glass rain-spattered, trying to convince herself there was air here, there was space, but she felt caught in some low deep current.

  Some of the men tried to get out of her way, others did not seem to notice her in their hurry to peer in at the shop windows, and her world was crowded with high shoulders in dark cloth. She was starting to pant. It had been useful to her many times in her dealings with her father, her ability to make herself faint when the drama of the moment required it, but it meant she was now liable to faint when she really didn’t want to at all. She was just about to break free into the rainswept freedom of Boulevard Montmartre when she felt a touch on her arm and turned to find herself face-to-face with Christian Morel. She stared at him, horrified. His smile became uncertain.