It did not matter. She told herself this frequently. Some people were tone-deaf and could not enjoy music – a far worse affliction. Let Edward and Charlotte trail round art galleries, going into ecstasies, doubtless, over pictures in which she would have been able to see nothing whatsoever beyond paint on canvas (and often not too carefully applied). People were what mattered, not paintings. But once, when she had said this to Edward in a moment of defiance, he had replied that paintings lasted, they spoke for ever. People did not. They were soon silenced.
That had made her cry, though he never knew.
*
Charlotte had never expected, among all the many things she did expect, to be tired. Tired? How could she be, when every day was exciting and so unlike her life at home? She felt, from the moment she awoke, as though an engine throbbed inside her head running at a merciless rate. Up she jumped and rushed to the window to gaze out on the roofs of Paris and convince herself that being in the city was not a dream she had made come true through the fearsome power of her imagination. But she could not have imagined this because it was all so different. Nothing she had read of Paris had adequately prepared her for the reality, for the sounds and aromas, as well as the sights. She stood for ages, the window (such an odd window) open, trying to analyse what seemed to be in the air – she could smell lemon somewhere, and coffee and smoke, and something baking, and heat, and it made her head whirl. Joining her father and going out to eat petit déjeuner was strangest of all – she loved the cafés they frequented, laughing at the thought of the dreary dining room at home.
But by the third day, she was exhausted, and simply could not keep up the momentum. Her feet hurt and her legs ached and her head was sore. Miles she had walked, miles and miles along the galleries and around the city, having this, that and the other pointed out to her by a father who did not seem to tire at all but was more energetic than she had ever known him. She tried so hard to keep up with him not just by matching his pace but by responding to his enthusiasm. He took her to see Rodin’s statue The Thinker and talked for a full half-hour to her of its brilliance, and for once she felt like her mother, unable to see more than a man in bronze slumped in thought. It was because she was tired, she was sure, that the power and magic her father found in it eluded her.
‘Papa,’ she ventured later, as they ate, ‘do you think it matters how one is feeling when one views a work of art?’
‘Well, of course.’
‘But should it? Should responding to what the artist is saying be dependent on one’s mood?’
Sir Edward paused in the eating of his perfectly delicious boeuf en daube and smiled. ‘This is about the Rodin,’ he said.
‘I was tired,’ Charlotte said. ‘It seemed to me …’
‘A lump of bronze, nothing more.’
‘I could see it was very well done, but …’
‘One cannot be ecstatic about every work of art, my dear.’
‘But you said The Thinker is magnificent, you said …’
‘Charlotte, I see what I see, you see what you see, the artist saw what he saw, and we can all see differently.’
‘But what if someone, Mama even, sees nothing except bronze? How can that be? If it is magnificent?’
Sir Edward was half-amused, half-exasperated by the doggedness of his daughter’s questions but he neither laughed nor sighed. He could see the child was exhausted and near to tears, turning her failure to be entranced by The Thinker into a sign that she lacked artistic appreciation. He had been too authoritative, making her doubt her own taste and feel at fault. And they had seen too much too quickly. Because Charlotte looked strong and was full of impatience to be shown all Paris had to offer he had forgotten her age and inexperience and demanded too much of her. At this rate, she would collapse before they reached Rome and grow to hate the mere prospect of a gallery.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we will look at nothing. We will take a boat and go on a trip down the Seine, and look at the scenery and think about what we have seen. It will be a rest day, and we will take our own sketch pads and idle away the time sitting on the boat with our feet up. Now, eat your dinner, and then we will retire very early and tomorrow rise disgracefully late and you will feel much better.’
*
The boat they took went from Montparnasse to Meudon. It was quite a large bâteau, with a covered deck on top where passengers sat on the shiny and uncomfortable slatted wooden benches. It moved slowly down the river and was soon passing through meadows grazed by black and white cows, which Charlotte tried to draw. Her father concentrated on the people in the boat, doing quick little caricatures of anyone who took his fancy. They were both watched intently by a small, slim woman, wearing a black hat with a bright green ribbon in it, who carried a portfolio of her own. Sir Edward shielded his sketch pad with his arm, but Charlotte, though knowing she was making a poor job of the cows, was unconcerned. Soon, she gave up entirely trying to draw. The sun was hot and she was not quite enough in the shade but the heat made her feel happy. With her sense of contentment went faint feelings of guilt – she knew she was enjoying this rest day more than the previous days spent looking at pictures and statues. It was pleasant to drift and have nothing asked of her.
‘Shall we get off?’ Sir Edward asked her, as the boat drew near to Meudon. ‘Walk awhile, find somewhere to eat, return later? The woods are pretty, I’m told. Or we can stay on the boat and go back with it now.’
They got off, together with the woman in the black hat and carrying the portfolio. The landing stage was at the foot of a sloping hill which they walked up slowly, looking round at fields now empty, and down onto what looked like chalk pits. It was a relief to reach the woods, and they sat down to watch the boat turn round for the six-kilometre journey back to Paris. Suddenly, everything was almost oppressively quiet, so quiet that a rabbit hopped close to Charlotte’s foot and regarded her without any sign of alarm before lazily moving away. Sir Edward pointed to where he said Versailles lay, though it was too far away to be seen, and told Charlotte that the wood they were sitting on the edge of was really a forest which stretched for miles and had lakes in it. But they were not going to explore it. He was hungry and wanted to see the village and then sample the local fried fish, a speciality of the region. So they made their way round the edge of the wood, Sir Edward pointing out chestnut trees and oaks and wild cherry trees, and then they took a steep lane leading down towards houses. It wound round and round, passing a convent (which intrigued Charlotte) and a church, where little girls, wearing black dresses with little white collars and black hats with white ribbons round them, were coming through the doors. Charlotte stared at them but not one of them stared back. She felt conspicuous, but when people appeared, in what she thought must be the main street, they did not stare either, merely nodded their heads in an unspoken greeting. ‘Imagine,’ she whispered to her father, ‘living here.’
‘Very peaceful,’ her father said. ‘Very pretty. Would you not like it?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. It would depend.’
‘On?’
‘Who I was with, what my life was. I would never fit in, but then I do not fit in anywhere, that I can see.’
‘Oh, come, Charlotte. What do you mean, “fit in”?’
‘I mean, I would feel awkward here, foreign. I am foreign, of course, but being here would make me feel even more so.’
‘Yet you say you like to be alone, you do not wish to mix. Being foreign you would be safeguarded from company.’
‘But I want not to be noticed, to be comfortable alone, and if I were living here that could not be.’
They were back near the Seine, an hour later, where Sir Edward had seen the sign outside La Pêche Miraculeuse. The restaurant was nearly full, but a table was found for them near the window and they settled down at it, surrounded by a hubbub of French. Charlotte tried to listen to the conversations around her but could make out only individual words. But one of the words, she was sure, was ‘Rodin�
��. She whispered as much to her father, who nodded, and appeared to be listening intently to the two men dining behind them, even though this transgressed, as Charlotte knew, good manners. They spoke little until, the meal over – it had taken a full two hours – they were outside the restaurant and on their way to the landing stage to catch the boat back to Paris. ‘Rodin lives here,’ Sir Edward said on, ‘on that hillside.’ And he gestured behind them. ‘He travels each day to his studio in Montparnasse on this very boat.’ Charlotte thought about this all the way to Paris, constantly looking round her to see if anyone bore a resemblance to the pictures she had seen of Rodin. It made her shiver to think of being in the presence of so famous a sculptor, perhaps even sitting next to him, brushing arms with him, the arms he had sculpted The Thinker with. But there was no likely candidate among the men on board. The boat was much less full on the return journey and they had a whole row of seats to themselves. ‘Will you not sketch?’ her father asked. She shook her head. ‘Then I will draw you,’ he said. ‘Keep quite still, look straight ahead, at the bank. There.’
She was looking almost attractive today, the hideous navy blue costume discarded and her hair in a simple plait. She had asked him if he minded her hair not being up and he had said, truthfully, that he preferred it as she used to wear it. There was another truth, of course, but he kept quiet about it. It was her mother who had insisted it was time for Charlotte to put her hair up, like a proper young lady, and her maid had seen to it, skilfully coiling and braiding the girl’s hair all round her head and securing it cunningly with unseen combs and clips. It had looked most flattering, but the child had been too self-conscious, turning her head awkwardly as though she found the weight of her hairstyle a burden, and one she might at any moment lose. Once in Paris, and trying to do her hair herself, the result had been disastrous. His wife had instructed him to make sure he arranged for a maid in the hotel to attend to Charlotte, but he had ignored this instruction. Charlotte could manage a plait, just, and he told her she looked much more natural.
Drawing her, he smiled to himself, thinking how appalled Hettie would be to see what Charlotte was wearing. It was the first garment she had ever chosen for herself, the first shop she had ever entered on her own. At the end of the Rue St Placide, a short busy street, she had seen the Bon Marché department store and out of the doors there came a girl wearing a green-and-whited striped dress over which she had flung a lacy, white gossamer shawl. ‘Oh!’ Charlotte had said. ‘Look, Papa, what a pretty dress.’ It was the only time he had ever heard his daughter express the slightest interest in any garment and the temptation was too strong. The dress was, in fact, gaudy, but he had taken her inside and had a similar dress found for her – and now she would hardly be parted from it. It was rather low-cut, he conceded, but it fitted her perfectly and he had seen how aware it made her of her figure which usually she struggled to hide. She was in Paris, after all, and a different being, not ashamed of her breasts. She would not be able to wear it at home – she understood, he was sure, that there was no question of such a thing.
She had ribbons in her hair too, tied in a bow at the top and the bottom of her thick plait. Drawing her as he was doing, it was difficult to catch the angle of the bows and he thought about asking her to untie them but did not want to disturb her reverie. She was sitting, as instructed, so beautifully still. In profile, the squareness of her face was lost, and the heaviness of her eyebrows, and even her nose looked fine, if large. She had, he noticed, surprised he had never truly registered this before, good skin, pale but not pasty, and without a blemish. If only, he found himself thinking, men would look at his daughter as he was looking now they would see not a beauty but a young woman who repaid close attention and became more appealing the more she was looked at. He hoped such a man would come into her life one day, someone worthy of her who would match her intelligence and sensitivity, and understand what she had to offer. He only had one daughter left, his favourite, and could not bear to see her make the kind of disastrous alliances her sisters had made.
Walking from the boat to the hotel, Charlotte took his arm and squeezed it, telling him how she had loved the day. Passers-by saw her do this, saw her animated face looking up at him and her arm threaded so closely through the crook of his, and he realised how it might look. In her bright dress, and with her plait now coming asunder and her hair flying in the breeze round her head, she could quite easily be taken for something other than a daughter. He ought to have purchased a pretty shawl for her, too, but there had been none in the shop. She needed something to cover her exposed neck and the top of her bosom, and he suddenly began to feel embarrassed. He was, after all, responsible for her appearance. Clearing his throat, he said gently, ‘Charlotte, tomorrow we will return to the Louvre. Your pretty dress will not be suitable. Be sure to wear something more appropriate.’ Surprisingly, she did not demur, nor did she seem in the least hurt. ‘My black skirt and my white blouse?’ she suggested. He nodded. ‘Excellent.’
Entering the hotel, he saw a man looking at Charlotte. He caught his eye, and glared.
*
Priscilla’s baby mercifully arrived early. Equally mercifully, the delivery was not the horrific, long-drawn-out affair that she had dreaded. Priscilla screamed and howled and behaved altogether badly, but she only had five hours to do it in. Lady Falconer had anticipated a whole day of drama, and so was immensely relieved. No forceps were needed, and no stitches. Remarkably, her daughter had proved made for childbirth (though when the doctor said this to her she took it as an insult and sobbed and declared she would never, never go through such an ordeal again). Even more gratifyingly, the baby was a fine, healthy boy, which delighted Robert, who apparently had let it be known that only a boy would do. He was to be named Jasper. Lady Falconer said that her father’s Dalmatian had been called Jasper and that it would be unseemly, to say the least, for his great-grandson to share this name. But Robert was adamant. His father and his grandfather were both called Jasper, and Jasper it must be. There was nothing even Lady Falconer could do about it. She knew her husband and Charlotte would laugh but she did not find the coincidence in the least amusing.
The boy was born almost a month early, but was thriving, and within another month Priscilla had recovered sufficiently for her mother’s presence not to be necessary. Within the time she had been in her daughter’s house she had found a competent housekeeper and engaged two trustworthy other servants and, unless Priscilla was very foolish, her difficulties should be over. So Lady Falconer could go back to London and reopen the Hampstead house. She would stay with her friend Pamela in Kensington at first and open her house bit by bit. The arrangements she had made for her sons would still stand – no need for them to come home when the holidays began – and as for her husband and Charlotte, they would not care where she was. They hardly had the courtesy to keep her informed of where they were. Postcards were few and the total of letters was precisely one, and that not very satisfactory. They did not seem to have met anyone of interest, though she knew several people who had just returned from Paris, and no one she mentioned it to had ever heard of the Hôtel de Nice in Montparnasse where they were staying. ‘Montparnasse?’ they queried, looking vaguely horrified.
Lady Falconer herself was unacquainted with Montparnasse. Indeed, she could not claim to be familiar with any part of Paris except for the Hôtel Crillon. It grieved her a little that Charlotte would return able to say (as people did, after only one week) that she knew Paris quite well, though of course it would be the art of the city she would know and nothing much else. The effect of this experience might be startling. Charlotte might return transformed, able to socialise and be graceful in company, with all the rough edges of her personality smoothed over. But Lady Falconer doubted it. In all probability, she and her father would speak to no one and no one would care to speak to them, and no lessons would be learned. Charlotte would come back as gauche as ever.
She frowned heavily as she alighted from the cab i
n front of her house. The frown deepened and never left her face for the rest of the day.
*
On their last day in the Hôtel de Nice another Englishwoman came to stay. Charlotte spent a long time over dinner trying to fathom how she knew this woman was English and thought it something to do with her complexion, which was what she had once heard Priscilla’s described as: ‘peaches and cream’. It had not made sense to her at the time. She had looked at a peach, holding it in her hand and studying it carefully, and could not see any resemblance to Priscilla’s skin. The cream part was easier but still not entirely fitting. But now she found herself looking at the woman’s face and hearing ‘peaches and cream’ in her head. The women she had seen in Paris all week did not have this startlingly fresh complexion, the skin so pearly white and smooth with the faintest blush of pink in the cheeks which clearly was not rouge. Or perhaps her Englishness sprang from her hair, so golden, almost white-gold, piled neatly on top of her head. Most Parisian women seemed to be dark-haired and did not pile their hair up in this rather old-fashioned way.
It might, Charlotte allowed, be simply the clothes. She did not know how but Parisian women dressed differently. They simply did. She knew the word was ‘chic’ but wherein lay this chic-ness she did not know – it was something to do with how garments were worn and not what they were. The Englishwoman was dressed rather oddly. She wore a long blue skirt over which she had what Charlotte could only describe (to herself) as a high-necked shift in a lighter blue. It fell below her waist, where it was cinched with a silver brocade belt. On top of it she wore a velvet jacket with silver buttons. The jacket was purple which, with the blue, looked odd. Pretty, and unusual, but odd. The lady spoke French but it was, Charlotte could tell, the same sort of French as her father’s, which is to say correct and fluent but with an unmistakable accent that was not French.
Keeping the World Away Page 15