Headline

by Imogen Robertson

  Maud stumbled back into her bed and pulled the blankets round her. Her eyes closed, and with terrible familiarity she found herself returning to the scene of her drowning. The waters and darkness surrounded her as soon as she slipped into sleep. The shock of the cold never lessened. Her confusion was as complete as it had been in that first moment. Horrified, betrayed, stupid and trapped in her useless body. ‘It will be over soon,’ the dark water said to her. ‘Breathe me in and you will never be lost again. Let go, and be with me.’ For a moment in her distress she did let go: warmth, peace soaked through her and pulled her down. Then her self called out to her. Images and sounds. She saw her mother dead, her father drunk. She held her little brother Albert in her arms and whispered him promises, she threw dirt into her father’s grave and watched her step-mother ride out of town, blowing kisses and waving like a spring bride. She tried to move in the water, close her mouth to it. The lonely warehouse full of rotting cast-offs. She cheered the flames chewing up the walls, roaring and ripping apart the humiliation of the place with their red and yellow teeth. Not like this. She would not die like this.

  She pushed against the black waters, broke the surface and sucked in air and water – one breath, two – before the drug and the cold pulled too hard on her and took her down. Once more she fought, once more for the hours spent sketching in the Louvre, for every moment she had been hungry, for the loneliness and the fear; once more for the betrayal, the cruelty, the easy violence. Rage lifted her, the phoenix on the opium box. Another breath, and she was spent and fell again. If she heard the shout from the boatman, the flurry of activity from her rescuers, she did not know it. She drowned; she slept.

  When she woke, Valadon was standing by the painting of Sylvie. Maud shifted in her bed and Suzanne looked over her shoulder.

  ‘This yours?’ Maud nodded and stretched her fingers. They were sore and stiff every time she woke. ‘You’re not as shit as I thought you would be.’ Valadon whistled and her wolfhound trotted in from the corridor. She crouched to greet him, taking fistfuls of his fur in her hands and shaking him while she shoved her face into his neck. The dog panted and wagged its tail. She looked back at Maud. ‘I’m going out. There’s coffee there and more of your soup. God, I love that old maid. What a face!’ She stood back up and lifted her arms above her head. ‘No rain this morning. I shall run up the hill and down again before I pick up a brush today.’

  ‘Suzanne? Thank you.’

  The older woman lowered her arms and smiled crookedly. ‘Don’t think of it. We are at home to every waif and stray here. You’re just the latest. When I die I shall go to Saint Peter and he will say, “Suzanne, you’ve been a very bad woman, but I have to let you into heaven anyway because you are kind to outcasts”.’

  Maud smiled. Her head felt clearer today. ‘And because you are a great artist.’

  Valadon lit a cigarette and walked towards the door. ‘That should count for something, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Suzanne, I need to write a letter.’

  ‘Can you make it down to Le Rat Mort on Place Pigalle? They’ll have all you need there.’

  Rain oil on board 35 × 25 cm

  It would seem from the fountain, just glimpsed in the background, that the painting is seen from the perspective of the interior of Le Rat Mort café on Place Pigalle, Montmartre. The café was a favourite for the artists and models of the area during the Belle Époque. Note the strong sense of movement from right to left across the secondary frame of the café window; figures dash past the viewer, sheltering under umbrellas or with their coats pulled over their heads. Note as well the heavy yellow light in the atmosphere and how the rain shows itself in the disturbances in reflections, the thinned and distorted edges of the gutters and figures seen through glass. Rain is a tour de force that makes us feel we too have just escaped a cataclysmic storm.

  Extract from the catalogue notes to the exhibition ‘The Paris Winter: Anonymous Treasures from the de Civray Collection’, Southwark Picture Gallery, London, 2010

  Maud should not have left her bed, let alone the house in Impasse de Guelma. She paused from time to time as she dressed to sit a moment and wait for the faintness to pass. She had only the clothes she’d been drowned in. They had been laundered and pressed, but she seemed to put the waters on with them and shivered. There was a broken mirror propped up behind the washstand. She wiped it on a corner of the bedsheet and looked at herself. Strange, she looked much as she remembered, only thinner in the face and with dark circles under her eyes. The good effects on her health of her stay in Rue de Seine had been wiped out when her hosts tried to kill her. She almost smiled at the thought then began to pin up her hair. The movements were familiar and mechanical and she wondered at them. How could anything be the same? Yet her fingers twisted her dark hair into the usual neat pile on top of her head and the pins held.

  She pulled out the suitcase from under the bed, took out the sketchbook and turned to the last empty pages. It was still there, Madame Prideux’s carte de visite. She tucked it into her pocket, along with one of the fifty-franc notes.

  On the Boulevard Clichy a man sat on an upturned tea-chest playing a violin. On his knee perched a little monkey in a red jacket with its own tiny instrument and bow. A long chain ran from its neck to the man’s waistcoat pocket. It watched him, copying his movements, checking and chattering. The trams rang their bells all the way along the road in front of them. The sky was an orange-grey and Maud was not sure if it was the weather or her own illness, but the air seemed to press on her. She looked up.

  ‘Find cover, miss,’ the violin player said. ‘There’s a storm not a minute away.’ He started to pack up his instrument as he spoke. He stood and the monkey clambered swiftly up from his lap to his shoulder and crouched under the rim of his broad-brimmed hat. The man touched his forefinger to it in salute and sauntered up the road.

  Maud crossed the clanging and blaring boulevard in the crowd, protected from the motor-cars by the mass of people around her, and found a place in the interior of Le Rat Mort just as the first fat raindrops began to fall. She sat in the warmth and comfort of the interior, listening to the civilised murmuring of the morning customers behind her, the snap of newspapers being opened and the chink of spoons on china cups as the readers stirred sugar into their bitter black coffees. All the surfaces were freshly polished and glowed with reflected electric light. Before the writing materials and her coffee had arrived the street outside was washed with rain, the gutters choked and plashed. The atmosphere outside was strangled with a thick yellow glow and the people fled past as if the thunder had let demons loose on the streets. She looked at the paper in front of her, let her head clear and began to write.

  Maud was worse that afternoon, and when Sasha was told her patient had been out wandering the streets in the morning and got caught in a shower on her way home, she let forth a stream of Russian that Tanya refused to translate. Yvette grinned up from the floor. ‘I think we get the idea.’

  Maud pulled herself up in the bed and drew the blankets around her.

  ‘Tell her I’m sorry, but I had my reasons,’ she said. For the first time she told them about the strange visit of Mme Prideux to Rue de Seine, Morel’s bloody story of the Commune and Sylvie’s casual announcement that the lady had died in a traffic accident.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me then, Maud?’ Tanya said. She looked upset. Maud shook her head, not knowing how to answer.

  ‘They had you all tied up, didn’t they, sweetie?’ Yvette said sadly. ‘“Sylvie smokes opium – but don’t tell. Here are more of our secrets about the crazy lady because we trust you.” You weren’t going to gossip once they had you all grateful and helpful. I’d lay money that was why she pretended she’d chucked her supply that day – same day that she told you Prideux was dead. Nothing like making people feel part of your secrets and troubles to keep them quiet and loyal.’

  Maud hugged her knees. ‘You’re probably right. Anyway, I wrote to Prideux’s son at
the address on the card this morning. I told him I had met Mme Prideux and gave a hint at what Morel said of her. Then I wrote that I was thinking of investing money with Morel, but what she had said before her accident gave me pause. I mentioned that she called him Gravot too.’ Tanya had been softly translating for Sasha and the old lady looked startled and afraid, tutting and crossing herself as she listened and worked the stove.

  ‘Could that be done? To kill someone in traffic? Do you think Morel killed her?’ Tanya asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Maud said, wondering what it felt like to be well, to be free of this creeping sickness in her stomach, the pain in her head. ‘Tanya, I wrote the letter in your name. I’m sorry. That means the answer will come to you.’

  ‘Nothing easier than killing someone in traffic,’ Yvette put in. ‘Friend of mine died like that last year. I always thought her lover pushed her out into the road. He was so jealous and she liked to tease him.’

  ‘You were right to do that, Maud. And I’ll bring any reply as soon as it comes. My aunts will think I’m getting love letters, but as long as it’s not post-marked Paris, it should be fine.’

  ‘Where do they think you are now, your cats?’ Yvette asked.

  ‘At the Louvre. It is one advantage of Perov proposing – they don’t want to parade me around so much and it makes my request to stay on at Lafond’s seem more sincere if I spend all my free hours in the galleries. I have more time to think now.’

  CHAPTER 7

  14 January 1910

  Yvette woke cold and uncomfortable, her head a little thick from the night before. Tant pis. She had needed a bit of a spree after spending so much of her time in a sick room, but she had not gone to one of the smoking dens and lost a day. That was good. She could be pleased at that, even if her head was pounding. The damp had got into the blankets and it was like trying to warm yourself with fog. She pulled what she could grab around her and shut her eyes, trying to will herself back to sleep. There was a groan next to her.

  ‘Yvette, you demon! I shall freeze.’ An arm snaked round her waist and pulled her back towards the middle of the bed. She could feel the strong lines of his thighs pressing against her own. One hand stroked up from her belly and cupped her breast. She could feel his stubble on her neck. ‘You’d better warm me up again.’

  She was tempted. Then his other hand pressed on her bladder and she wriggled away from him and out of the bed. The floor was icy under her bare feet.

  ‘Oh, warm yourself up! I’m off.’ It was light already. She trotted behind the screen and squatted over the pot while he laughed.

  ‘Why can’t you be like little Marie? Stay here and sit by my side and darn my shirts. Play the housewife. I bet Marie keeps her friends warm in the mornings.’

  Yvette emerged and started looking for her stockings. ‘Why should I care what she does?’ Damn, another hole. Still, it wouldn’t show. ‘Harley? Can I ask you something?’ She sat down on the bed beside him as she put on the stockings and pulled the ribbons tight.

  ‘Anything!’ He propped himself up then looked more serious. ‘My allowance from home doesn’t come for another week, but I do have a few francs still. I’ll share, even if you don’t darn my shirts.’

  She grinned and kissed his forehead. ‘Save your money for paper and ink, there’s a good boy. No one keeps me but me. But I wanted to ask you: why would you steal something, then give it back?’

  He yawned. ‘Depends what it was.’

  Yvette studied him. He was two years younger than her, and at times like these, all tousled and sleep-warm, he looked like a child in a false moustache. He had come to Paris from London to write, but as far as Yvette could tell, whenever he was awake he was in one of the bars that clustered round Place du Tertre, talking and arguing with other young men. When she asked to see what he wrote, he said he was still gathering material. She was always happy to see him and liked talking to him about books. He blushed when he looked at her, which she found more touching than any practised flatteries. When he had money, he was generous and when he was poor, he did not ask her for her cash so sometimes she went home with him even though she knew his room would be cold and there would be nothing to eat.

  ‘Say, like a diamond necklace, something like that,’ she went on.

  ‘You planning to rob someone?’

  She leaned over him to pick up her skirt and stepped into it. ‘Fine, if you can’t think of anything. I just thought, you’re supposed to be a writer, have some imagination or something . . .’

  ‘No – wait.’ He sat upright and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘What, give it back straight away?’

  She sat back down and leaned against him, facing the other side of the room. ‘No, maybe a week later. Say you blame somebody else for it. Say you found it and are now returning it.’

  ‘Like the honest girl you are.’

  ‘Exactly. But you’re not honest. You’re not very honest at all.’

  He put his arm round her waist again; his forearm lay across her narrow belly and she stroked the hairs on it as if he were a pet.

  ‘Maybe you’re not giving it back. Maybe you’re giving back something that just looks like it.’

  Yvette snorted. ‘I don’t care who she is, a woman will recognise her diamonds.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He sounded enthused, as if the idea had caught him. ‘I mean, what if you lever out a few of the stones and replace them with good glass imitations or something? Then the woman gets her necklace back, it looks the same, feels the same. Most of it is the same and you get to keep a few diamonds.’

  Yvette stopped stroking his arm. ‘You could get a lot of money like that, couldn’t you?’ she said.

  He stretched back out in bed again. ‘I suppose you could, if you knew what you were doing – thousands and thousands.’ He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t know a diamond if I found one in my glass.’

  Yvette sprang up and struggled into her blouse. ‘If one turned up in your glass, you’d swallow it before you even saw it. I need my shoes.’

  ‘Over by the door. Are you really rushing off? I hate to see you go. Perhaps I’ve fallen in love with you.’

  ‘Men fall in love with the woman who is leaving or the one who has just arrived.’ She stepped into her shoes and picked up her jacket from the back of the chair. He was looking miserable.

  ‘Do you like me at all?’

  ‘When you say clever things, I do.’ She bent over the bed and offered her cheek to be kissed. ‘Au revoir, Harley.’

  He took his kiss then rolled on to his side to watch her go. ‘What clever thing did I say? I’ll say it again.’

  Tanya brought the letter to Valadon’s that afternoon.

  Dear Miss Koltsova,

  My thanks for your condolences. As to your questions, I can only say it causes me great pain to reply in detail, but I feel it is my duty both to correct any errors and give you fair warning if possible. I have never heard of anyone named Morel, but the name of Gravot is only too familiar to me. If my mother told you this man you know as Morel is in fact called Christian Gravot, then that is who he is – and a worse scoundrel has never walked the earth. He is a thief and a confidence trickster.

  Forgive the vigour of my expressions, but from your letter I must conclude you have been told a number of slanderous lies about my family, and it grieves me excessively. I am therefore willing to lay before you the true facts regarding our dealings with Christian Gravot and his wife Sylvie, which led to my mother’s sad derangement.

  My father was not a rich man, but he was honest. He worked as a clerk in our town hall from the age of fourteen until his retirement. He was awarded a medal for his distinguished service in 1893 and died in the autumn of 1905. My mother was housekeeper to the Widow Rochoux in our town from her marriage until 1907. She was a loyal servant, and on the death of her mistress she was generously remembered in that lady’s will. That same lady also provided for my education and that of my brother: her generosity has allowed us to become professional m
en. I am now senior partner in our town’s law firm. My brother holds a similar position in his wife’s native city. As these simple facts must make clear we are a family devoted to respectable service.

  It is not the story of my mother and myself you have heard, but that of Madame Claudine Gravot and her son Christian, the snake you know as Morel. He was the child who saw his father’s body defiled, not I. You ask yourself perhaps how can I assert this with such confidence? I shall tell you. He and I are of an age and were school fellows in our youth. He told me the story himself, though I knew his mother beat him for doing so. Gravot wished always to be admired, courted and respected, but as he had neither the station, learning nor character likely to inspire such feeling, he instead told and re-told his lurid stories to gain the attention of the weak-minded and lead his more impressionable fellows on tours of petty and spiteful vandalism in our town. I was glad to leave his company. When he heard news of my improved prospects, he made an enemy of me. He was not unintelligent, and I think resented the opportunities offered to me and my brother. I shall not distress you with the details of his campaign against us; let me just say it confirmed him in my mind as a twisted and malicious child.

  In 1883 at the age of eighteen he stole a diamond necklace belonging to one of the rich ladies who come and take the spa waters in our town from time to time. He was transported to Guiana for the crime. His mother owned a grocery store in one of the less pleasant quarters in town and died, bitter and spiteful before the new century began. I sold the business on his behalf and sent him the money when he returned to France at the end of his sentence. What happened to him between that time and his reappearance in our town in early 1908, I cannot say. He returned here with a wife and some appearance of wealth shortly after the death of my mother’s patron. He made great show of being a reformed character, and as such was welcomed into our community. His wife, Sylvie, was charming and beautiful though very young, and he himself seemed to have acquired a great deal of polish in his years away.