Keeping the World Away

by Margaret Forster

  It was a relief that there was a small room in the apartment which she had been able to claim straightaway as her own. It had once been an annexe to the kitchen, perhaps even a walk-in pantry, but there was a window in one wall, quite large, and out of proportion to the dimensions of the room itself. She hung her favourite painting here, in solitary state. She did not even furnish the room – when she came to look at her painting, she would stand in front of it. The room was more like a tiny chapel than a boudoir.

  Looking at the painting here she concluded that for many years she had been misinterpreting it. Casting aside all her complicated theories as to the significance of the empty chair, the parasol, the flowers, she decided that all it said to her eyes now was ‘Let life be simple’. Let everything go, all the striving, all the tension, keep the world away. Eat, drink, exercise, be grateful to live and breathe. When she was alone with the painting, this seemed to make sense, but when she was not there, it could sound banal. Her life now was simple. Very little was required of her. She had nothing to do except see that her husband was taken care of, and that was not difficult. He was happy, back in Paris; he had forgotten that he hadn’t wanted to return. He had taken up with his old friends and pastimes and required little of her.

  But she thought the painting lied. She knew that because she had tried to do it once, a long time ago. She was very young, only eighteen, and desperate to get away from home where all she seemed to do was have violent rows with her father who criticised her relentlessly – her appearance, her alleged laziness, her impertinence, all enraged him. Her mother never took her side. She wept during the arguments and said it was like living in a madhouse. Claudette thought this an accurate description – her father, she was sure, was mad. There was no other explanation for his belligerent, aggressive behaviour (though her mother was forever blaming his ill-health and money worries).

  So Claudette left. She wanted to sever all connection with her parents, at least for the immediate future. She answered an advert in a newspaper for a job as a general help to an elderly lady who lived in a remote part of Corsica. It was a mistake. She knew that very quickly. Her employer hardly left the house and expected Claudette to stay by her side except for a weekly trip to the nearest village for provisions, in a cart pulled by an ancient horse that barely moved. Claudette made an effort to appreciate the intense silence and the wildness of the landscape, which she tried to draw, but the lack of human contact depressed her. It wasn’t the answer, to withdraw from the world. All she had wanted to do was withdraw from her father and the feeling of being trapped. But in Corsica she was in another kind of trap. Her life was peaceful and simple but it was also sterile. She needed people. She needed to love and be loved. She needed a real life. The simple life was not enough. The world could not be kept away, not entirely, if one wished to be happy.

  *

  It happened more or less as Gillian had anticipated. She did make friends, she did move into an apartment with them (not telling her father until she’d done so), and she did find the Paris she had hoped for. Her text messages to friends in London filled them in on the various attempts to pick her up, but in her letters and phone calls home she concentrated on the exploring she was doing, the long walks along the Seine and down the Champs Elysées and through the Bois de Boulogne. She tried to get across how she felt she fitted in, in a way she had never expected – ‘There must have been something Parisian about me all along,’ she wrote. People spoke to her in French because they assumed she was French, and if she could get away with it she tried to keep the illusion intact, communicating in smiles and nods and hand gestures. She loved the flea markets, especially the slightly seedy ones, and picked up there all kinds of unusual objects she planned to use in still lifes. She was quite happy, at first, to be on her own, except for sharing the odd espresso or citron pressé with young men who came and sat at her table, but then she made some real friends.

  These friends were unexpected ones, though. None of them was an art student. Carole was Australian, doing the Aussie thing of working her way round Europe, and Gillian had met her on a boat going down the Seine. Gillian had been sketching the river-bank near Meudon and Carole admired her drawing – an encounter as simple as that, which led to others. Françoise was French, working as an attendant in the Louvre (where Gillian went regularly) before beginning at the Sorbonne in the autumn; and Gérard was her boyfriend. What he did remained mysterious to Gillian, but it was he who found the apartment in Rue Froide-vaux and suggested that the three of them should share it. But even split between three, the rent was too much and so they needed a fourth, which was where Carole came in.

  There were three bedrooms and a living room, with an alcove which pretended to be a kitchen. Since none of them had any intention of serious cooking, this did not matter. The unsatisfactory bathroom mattered more, but they put up with the ridiculously small tub and the lack of a shower because everything else was so pleasing. The living room was huge and virtually empty and had a magnificent view (they were on the fourth floor) over rooftops, just as Gillian had imagined. Françoise and Gérard shared one room, and she and Carole had a room each. Carole took the smallest room, saying it didn’t matter to her, it was just such heaven to get out of the hostel she’d been in, and Gillian had the one next to it, a much more attractive room overlooking the leafy cemetery opposite.

  Gérard, whatever he did, was rarely there. He often did not come back at night, but this did not seem to upset Françoise, who shrugged and said, ‘He’s busy.’ All their hours of work or study were different, so Gillian was often alone in the apartment and had plenty of time and space and privacy to paint. She tried to paint the living room, with its high ceiling, long windows, superb light. There were two sofas, old pieces of furniture, made of a dark wood with carved arms and high backs. They had cushions of dark crimson velvet which gave off small puffs of dust when anyone sat down. The sun coming through the unshaded windows one day onto the red of the sofas’ cushions excited Gillian – it was like a fire burning amid the cool grey of the walls and the black wood of the floor. She set her easel up at the far end of the room. Naturally, the others when they were at home wanted to look at what she was doing, and she had to let them. They were silent after inspecting her work, except for Gérard. He contemplated her canvas day after day – her progress was slow – and eventually commented.

  ‘The spirit of the room, huh?’

  She nodded. Exactly.

  ‘You think rooms have spirits?’ he asked.

  ‘This one does,’ she said.

  ‘So, what do you think has happened in it?’

  ‘Happened?’

  ‘To give it its spirit. These sofas, eh, what have they seen? Who has sat upon them? Who chose them?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It doesn’t?’

  ‘No. That’s not what I mean. It isn’t about the history of the room, it’s about now, just about the feel of the room now, what it makes me feel, and think.’

  Maybe she spoke too quickly, maybe her French was not up to what she wanted to say, but Gérard made no other comment. A week or so later, when he came home unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon, he stood once more and looked at what she was painting.

  ‘You are an Impressionist, then,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect it.’ She made no reply, hoping he didn’t need a response. He went on staring until his attention began to irritate her. Abruptly, she stopped, and began cleaning her brushes. He sat on one of the sofas and smoked and went on watching her clear up. ‘How old are you, Gillian?’ he asked. ‘Eighteen? Nineteen? Twenty?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘And never in love, huh? Today, that is rare, very sweet.’

  She frowned, feeling that he was inviting either protests or confessions, so she turned away from him and busied herself with tidying up.

  ‘And now I have offended you, no?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. It’s your painting, it shows feelings, j
ust as you wanted it to, but maybe not the feelings you thought it would, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gérard, sorry, you’ve lost me.’

  ‘Paintings,’ Gérard said, slowly, ‘are feelings. It doesn’t matter what the eye sees, the heart must feel, or it is useless.’

  ‘Very profound,’ muttered Gillian. She badly wanted to laugh, but his expression was so solemn she didn’t dare.

  He was staring at her, quite openly, waiting for some reaction she couldn’t provide. She began to whistle, to show her lack of concern, and knew she was disappointing him by failing to engage in any discussion. She couldn’t imagine what pretty Françoise saw in him.

  *

  Two months after their return to Paris, Mme Verlon’s husband died. An apparently fit, healthy sixty-six-year-old man, who did not smoke, or drink too much, he had a heart attack one night shortly after dinner with some friends. Mme Verlon was not with him. The friends were old colleagues of his, the dinner at their dining-club. She was called, at 11 p.m., by one of them and told that he had been rushed to hospital. What shocked and appalled her was her own reaction. She did not scream or weep but neither was she rendered speechless. ‘How dreadful,’ she said, quietly, and ‘Where is he?’ She went to the hospital where he had been taken and met her daughter there. Huguette was distraught enough for the two of them. Her elder son arrived half an hour later, white-faced, and embraced her, offering words of comfort he was more in need of himself. Her younger son was in America, on business, and had not yet been contacted. So there they were, a group of three, standing in the bare little hospital room, looking down at the dead body. It was Mme Verlon who said, eventually, ‘Shall we go?’

  That night, lying in bed unable to sleep, Mme Verlon for some reason found herself thinking of the widow from whom she had bought the Chelsea house all those years ago. She remembered having the distinct impression that Mrs Mortimer was not exactly grief-stricken about her husband’s death, or that she had recovered remarkably quickly. She had thought how odd that must feel, not to be intensely sad when it was expected of one, and she had known, then, that she would not have been able to bear life without her husband. But now, when he had been taken from her, she understood Mrs Mortimer better. Grief could, it seemed, come in strange forms. She was sure that she was full of grief, because she had loved her husband and they had had almost forty years together, but that it was buried and had not yet surfaced in any acceptable form. She felt too calm, too clear-headed (but that could be shock). She did not for one moment imagine that she could not go on with her life – her husband’s had come to an abrupt end; hers had not.

  What she supposed no one had realised, not even their children, was how, over the last few years, their lives had become separate within what was, and always had been, a happy marriage. They had not really seen a great deal of each other during the day, though every night, or almost every night, they had slept in the same bed; and their sex life had continued, though it bore no comparison to what it had once been – how could it, after so many years together and considering their age, with such a loss of energy? But what had increasingly struck Claudette as odd was how remote she had become from Jacques, in spirit, that is. She had often wanted to ask him if he felt strangely remote, and yet still close, but had never done so. This was another thing that had changed. Feelings were assumed but not expressed. She had felt incapable of communicating all sorts of fears and hopes (more fears than hopes) and had told herself that this was because there was no point in worrying Jacques.

  And there were often trivial things, which she no longer told him. Once, she would have enjoyed telling him about Gillian Mortimer’s visit, would have made an entertaining story out of it, and Jacques would have shared her interest in the girl and the connection with her grandmother and her Gwen John painting. But she had not mentioned the unexpected visitor. Her silence was more remarkable, considering that she now had rather empty days, with little to recount. She just, somehow, could not be bothered. Maybe Jacques had experienced the same ennui about such ordinary matters. They had each become locked into their own spheres, and yet, peculiarly, were not uncomfortable with this situation. But it had meant that when death came, there was not the same terror there would have been even five years before. It was as if she had already served a long apprenticeship, and she was almost grateful for it.

  She could not speak about any of this. There was the funeral to get through, and the messages of condolence to deal with. She was dutiful, replying to every single letter herself. Huguette stayed with her but was more hindrance than help, crying at regular intervals and full of remorse for not having appreciated her father enough. Claudette found it a strain having to be endlessly sympathetic and reassuring, but successfully hid this. Her sons – the younger one had returned for the funeral – suffered no such qualms of guilt and tried their best to be useful. They dealt with the solicitor over their father’s straightforward will and handled other practical matters. Their mother was pleased with them. The younger son, clearly influenced by his time in America, assured her one day that ‘It’s all right to cry, you know, Maman.’ She said she knew that, but liked to keep her tears private. That seemed to satisfy him.

  When everything had settled down, which is to say that all three children had gone back to their respective lives and she was alone, Mme Verlon toyed with the notion of returning to London. But, obviously, she could not go back to the beloved Chelsea house, and it was too daunting to think of finding a suitable place. Besides, her children would be upset, and she was touched by their concern for her. She had never been emotionally demonstrative with them – she was not that sort of woman – but she cared about them and enjoyed their company, so it would have been foolish to deprive herself of it. Her elder son’s wife was expecting a baby and she was surprisingly (she surprised herself) interested in becoming a grandmother. No, she could not return to London.

  But the apartment she now lived in was not the place for a woman on her own. It was too spacious, almost too grand, with its huge rooms and high ceilings. She kept wanting to retreat into the kitchen and the little room off it, to hide and pretend the rest of the apartment did not exist. It was not like her to want to do this – she had always liked and needed generous spaces to live in – but she concluded with relief that it was a sign of missing her husband. He had been such a loud, convivial man that being in small rooms with him would have been oppressive. When, very occasionally, he had joined her when she was looking at her painting, she had been eager for him to leave her alone. His presence overwhelmed the picture.

  She wanted to move, but where? She still wished to be in central Paris … near to art galleries and all the other cultural centres which were her chief source of pleasure; but she wanted peace and quiet too. She needed advice, and turned to one of her late husband’s friends who owned a rather grand estate agency. He came to see her to get a clearer idea of what exactly she was looking for, what kind of apartment, though he thought he had grasped the sort of location, central but quiet, etc. She took him into the little room off the kitchen and, to his bewilderment, showed him the painting.

  ‘There,’ she said, ‘I want a room like that.’

  ‘An attic?’ asked Bernard, horrified. ‘You want to give this up to live in an attic?’

  ‘No,’ Mme Verlon said, ‘I don’t want to move into an attic but into an apartment with an attic as part of it. I want what this painting shows, the life it represents.’

  Bernard stared. ‘But, Claudette, there is no life there, that I can see. There is an absence of life, no?’

  ‘Then maybe I want a place where there is an absence.’

  Embarrassed, Bernard said no more. Mme Verlon could see that he thought grief had unhinged her. But he did his best to be cooperative. He would get one of his employees on the job straightaway. There were plenty such attics in Paris, and there might be just the thing in a bijou apartment on the Ile Saint Louis. He would send round Gérard Mar
itain to talk to her the next day. Gérard was an artist himself, but, in the way of so many artists, had had to turn to business to support himself. He would find what she wanted, she could rest assured.

  *

  Their meeting was entirely by chance, if one believed in chance, which Mme Verlon was not entirely convinced that she did. Was life random? There was enough evidence to suggest so, but it went against her own orderly nature to credit this. Some coincidences were so extraordinary that they unavoidably had about them that feeling of having been ‘meant’.

  So, it was chance, a coincidence, that as she went into the Louvre, Gillian Mortimer was coming out. That day, there were no crowds. It was raining torrentially. Mme Verlon stepped from a taxi, umbrella at the ready, and made a dash across the courtyard. She paused at the entrance to shake and then fold up her umbrella just as Gillian, coming out, stopped to zip up her jacket and put the sketches she had been doing in her bag. They each recognised the other at the same moment. Of the two, Gillian was by far the most surprised and found herself saying, ‘Mme Verlon, isn’t it? You’re in Paris now?’ which afterwards she thought a bit ridiculous. Mme Verlon said yes, she was, she’d been living here a few months. ‘And you?’ she asked, ‘you are studying here?’ Gillian said yes, she was, she was on a short course, and had been copying Murillo’s The Young Beggar as part of her homework. ‘I remember such homework well,’ said Mme Verlon.

  After that, what was there to say? Mme Verlon felt that she must take the lead. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you would care to visit me and take a glass of wine?’ Gillian said she would be delighted, it would be such a pleasure, and Mme Verlon produced a card with her address on, suggesting an evening, the following Friday, when she would be at home. The moment the girl had taken the card, and said goodbye, Claudette wondered what she had done. She had done no entertaining since her husband died, with the exception of giving Bernard coffee when he came, and she had no real desire to make the effort. But she had issued the invitation, and since she had not asked for Gillian’s address she could not cancel it. All the time she was in the Louvre, she felt distracted. She didn’t know why she had come. Boredom with being at home. A boredom, a pointlessness to her days, which was growing and about which something would have to be done. Drifting around the Louvre, or any other museum, was not enough. The immense building depressed her, its grandeur overwhelmed her, and whereas once, as a student, she had leapt up the various staircases, eager to get where she was going, now her legs ached and her feet needed persuasion to carry on. What was she looking for? Comfort? Distraction? Neither. She wanted, she thought, to be uplifted in some way, to feel her spirits rise, as once they had done when she stood in front of those paintings.