She herself hadn’t painted for years. Years and years. The longing, the urge had simply disappeared, round about the time Huguette was born. It wasn’t something, then, that she had missed. It was Jacques who had commented upon her lack of productivity, and at first she made excuses – she had no time, with the baby, it was impossible to settle down, to concentrate. But she knew this was not the case. Lack of time had had nothing to do with it. She had simply felt no desire to be painting. She was content. And so it had gone on, with the birth of the boys. It didn’t make her sad no longer to think of herself as an artist, so perhaps she never had been one. All she’d done was amuse herself with the little talent she had shown. She didn’t feel that maternity had robbed her of the chance to exercise this talent but that rather she had discovered another which satisfied her more. There was no resentment in her.
But now, there was a new need in her. Could she start to paint again? The idea seemed almost embarrassing, but as the first cautious thoughts entered her mind she felt a little surge of excitement and wondered if they were telling her something she rather wanted to hear.
*
Gillian felt she should take a present, but it was difficult to think of one when Mme Verlon was so obviously rich and had everything. Flowers were always safe, but she wanted to be more original. She wondered if she dared take one of her own paintings, or whether that would be like boasting. She’d done some small oils, studies of a jug she had found in a flea market, and they had turned out well. But she didn’t have the confidence to present one to a connoisseur and so she fell back on flowers after all. She was particular about them, though, searching everywhere until she found primroses and then buying six little bunches of them and having them tied with white ribbon. The effect was pretty.
Mme Verlon’s apartment was in what had once been an hotel – and was quite alarmingly luxurious, situated as it was in the Rue de Rivoli with its views over the Jardin des Tuileries. Gillian was awed by the grandeur of the building. There was a concierge in uniform who seemed doubtful about letting her go up in the lift at all and insisted on ringing Mme Verlon to see if she was expected. Alone in the lift – fitted out like a room, with a carpet on the floor and two chairs – Gillian thought how impersonal and formal this place felt, but when she was welcomed into Mme Verlon’s apartment she was surprised to find it not in the least stiff or opulent. She admired the room she was taken into, but Mme Verlon said it was not finished – she meant the furnishing – and now never would be because she was moving soon. ‘My husband died, you know, soon after we came here.’ Gillian said how sorry she was, but Mme Verlon made a dismissive gesture, indicating that she didn’t want to discuss it. ‘I want somewhere smaller, somewhere more interesting,’ she said.
There was an uneasy silence which Gillian could not think how to break, or whether indeed she should be the one – the visitor, the younger – who should break it. Mme Verlon sat on the edge of the sofa, straight-backed, hands clasped in her lap, dignified and a little forbidding, just as she had been in the Chelsea house. She seemed to be waiting, but what for? Gillian asked if she was glad to be back in Paris and was told that in some ways she was, but not in others, which led on to a stilted conversation about the rival merits of London. Then she was offered wine, and left alone while her hostess went to get it. Mme Verlon brought in olives, too, glistening in an oddly shaped pottery bowl, which Gillian admired. Mme Verlon said she had made it herself, many years ago, when she was an art student; Gillian asked where she had trained; and that in turn brought Mme Verlon to enquire about Gillian’s present education … it was all very polite, very awkward. The sooner it was over, the better, Gillian thought. The glass of wine, she was relieved to see, was quite small. Two or three gulps, and it would be drunk and she could start to leave.
But Mme Verlon surprised her, by asking if she would like to see the painting again. Gillian knew at once which painting she meant. ‘Where is it?’ she asked. Mme Verlon got up and led the way through another room into a kitchen and then to a small room opening off it. They stood side by side, as they had done in the Chelsea house, looking at the painting.
‘So it’s back where it started,’ Gillian said. ‘If you’re right, if Gwen John painted it in Paris.’
‘Yes, but this is not the Paris she knew, I am sure. She would not like to think of it here, in this apartment.’
‘How many years is it,’ Gillian asked, ‘since it was painted?’
Mme Verlon shrugged. ‘Perhaps nearly a hundred, something like that.’
‘A long time. Will you keep it?’
‘I will keep it, yes, of course, how could I not? I try to live by it. But I do not intend to leave it to my children. They would not appreciate it: it means nothing to them.’
‘So where will it go? To a gallery or a museum?’
‘Perhaps. It might be best, it might be right.’
‘It would look lost, hanging on the wall of a museum.’
‘There is that to think about. Yes, it would not be happy on such a wall, it would be diminished, I think. There would be no time for those who see it to gain from it. They would look, they would pass on, they would think it pretty but insipid, rather dull. It would be a pity.’
‘But why not leave it to your daughter? It needs to go from woman to woman, to be part of their lives, affecting them every day.’
Mme Verlon looked at Gillian with astonishment and a new interest. ‘That is well put,’ she said. ‘It has a power all its own. I have felt it. But you are young, it cannot have the same meaning to you. You are young, beautiful, happy – it has nothing yet, perhaps never, to do with you. It is just a painting you like, you admire.’
‘No,’ Gillian said, ‘it has a history. I don’t know what it is, not even my grandmother’s part in it, but something is there, more than the paint on the canvas. Don’t you think so? Don’t artists want to put more than the paint on the canvas?’
After Gillian had gone, Mme Verlon felt quite stunned. The girl had articulated what she felt herself. She had expressed exactly her feelings about the painting, and now that they were out in the open, as it were, they made her decision as to its future harder. A museum of modern art would not do. The painting needed to go, as Gillian had said, from woman to woman. But how could she make sure that it did? She would leave it to Huguette, but then what? Huguette would not sell it, if instructed that it must not be sold, but who knew what she would feel about it? And who would she pass it on to? Maybe she ought just to let the painting take its chance, as it had been obliged to do when it left the artist’s hands. Maybe she should leave instructions in her will that it was to be sold, on condition it was not sold to an institution but to an individual woman who would keep it in her home. Impossible to enforce such a condition, perhaps, but it would be fun to try.
Meanwhile, she had it to herself. She would take it with her, wherever she ended up going, and it would be part of her life still, as it had been part of the lives of others, and she would benefit from it. Had that not been its purpose? To keep the world away, for a few precious moments at least, every time it was looked at?
*
Gillian walked the long way home very slowly, back down the Rue de Rivoli, past the Louvre, over the Pont Neuf and into the Rue Dauphine which led, via two streets she did not know the names of, into the Luxembourg Gardens and through them, finally, into Montparnasse and the Rue Froide-vaux. She would not see Mme Verlon again, unless they had another accidental encounter. There had been no rapport between them – their only point of contact was the painting, and that was not enough to give them a future as friends.
It was a beautiful evening, and now at last she appreciated Paris and relished its difference from London. Her French was still halting, but she was picking up the slang fast and she understood most of what she heard. There were subtle advantages, she was learning, in being a foreigner in a city, a matter of seeing things differently from the way the resident population saw them. She felt the shock of th
e new every time she turned a corner she did not know and was surprised. Her mind filled with sudden glimpses of people and places which fed into her imagination and sparked off ideas. This excited her and made her want to paint more than ever, to let this thrill run down her brush and onto canvas. She had meant what she had said to Mme Verlon: she wanted to put more than paint onto her canvases, something that could always be felt if the onlooker knew how to identify it.
All the way up to her apartment, she was hoping none of the others would be there so that she could set to work immediately.
*
It was easy enough to arrange. Mme Verlon made an appointment with her solicitor and her will was put in order. She bequeathed the painting described as ‘oil painting, untitled, possibly by Gwen John, of the corner of an attic’ to Gillian Mortimer, with the wish that she in turn should bequeath it to another woman of her choice who would appreciate it. The solicitor thought the painting ought first to be authenticated, since if it was by the alleged artist it would be of serious monetary as well as artistic value, but Mme Verlon declined to have this done. She had told her children whom she was leaving the painting to, and they had no objections, whatever its value – they were all very well provided for already.
It pleased Mme Verlon every day after that, simply to think of how the painting would carry on its life, with women who would respond to its simplicity and yet who would not be fooled into imagining there was neither passion nor longing within it.
The artist would think that enough. She had painted it to keep the world away. If it helped others to do the same, her purpose was fulfilled.
Acknowledgements
Gwen John, Mary Taubman (Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1985).
Augustus John, Michael Holroyd, revised edition (Vintage, London 1997).
Gwen John, Alicia Foster (British Artists series, Tate Publishing, London, 1999).
Gwen John: A life, Sue Roe (Chatto & Windus, London, 2001).
Gwen and Augustus John, catalogue for the 2004 Exhibition, ed. David Fraser Jenkins and Chris Stephens (Tate Publishing, London, 2004).
Gwen John: Letters and Notebooks, ed. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan (Tate Publishing, London, 2004).
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Copyright © Margaret Forster 2006
Margaret Forster has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
Whilst some of characters portrayed in this novel actually existed, the events described therein are entirely imaginary.
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by
Chatto & Windus
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ISBN 9780099496861
Keeping the World Away Page 37