by Robyn Sisman
Now they were in a restaurant, small and intimate, with exquisite food. It was extraordinary how well they got on. He was intelligent and charming; she had never been so witty, so sparkling, so articulate. It turned out that he was in the same business as herself, though he had been based in Italy for many years, and only rarely returned to England. Molly asked him about Italy—naturally, she had traveled extensively abroad—but began to notice that the conversation kept coming back to herself.
He wanted to know everything about her—school, jobs, childhood. What was odd was that the more she told him, the more agitated he became. Eventually he interrupted her in mid-sentence. Exactly how old was she, if she didn’t mind him asking? Twenty-one? He thought so. And was her mother’s name Frances? Astounded, Molly could only nod dumbly.
And then he put his hand on hers, and told her he was her father. He had been searching for her all his life, but had never been able to discover where she lived. It was a miracle that, by sheer accident, he had found her tonight. He had never dreamed she would be so talented and beautiful. He begged her to come back to Italy with him, just for a few months. Of course, he understood that her work was important, but they had so much time to make up, and Tuscany was so beautiful at this time of year.
“That’s good,” Fabrice murmured, in an abstracted voice. “Stay like that.”
Molly blinked. The studio snapped back into focus. She felt the lumpy mattress under her hip-bone, an ache in her flexed wrist, and gave a tiny, inward sigh.
It was all nonsense. She would never be thin, and never win an award. Her father did not think she was worth finding, or he would have done so long ago. Probably he wasn’t even aware that she existed. He might be dead. She didn’t know. That was what gnawed away at her: she didn’t know.
She could hear Fabrice’s brush dabbling stickily in paint, rustling across canvas. The linseed smell tickled her nostrils.
In her first year at school, the teacher had told the class that they were all going to make a Father’s Day card. Molly was just learning to read and write. She’d found it exciting to copy the chalked hieroglyphics from the blackboard onto her sheet of bright paper, on which she’d painted a huge head with a smile like a U-bend and legs looping straight down from the chin. “How lovely!” her mother said, when Molly proudly brought the card home, and pinned it without further comment to the corkboard in the kitchen. But there was something tense and over-bright in her manner that had made this moment stick in Molly’s memory—the moment when it had first occurred to her to ask, “Where’s my daddy?”
“Oh, he lives a long way away, darling.”
“Why?”
“I expect he likes it.”
For the time being this satisfied her. Gradually she came to understand that many of the parents of her schoolfriends had split up or divorced or remarried. It wasn’t uncommon for “Daddy” to be replaced by a series of boyfriends. But the other children knew who their daddy was. Even if they didn’t see him, they had a vague idea of his job and where he lived. They knew his name. But Molly always got the same smiling evasion, so breezy as to make her feel foolish even to have asked. “Oh, sweetheart, what does the name matter? He’s never going to be a part of our lives. We don’t need anyone else. Aren’t we happy just as we are?”
Yes, they were happy. They told each other so, often. Mummy and Molly. M and M. They had their special games, their silly jokes, their domestic rituals and favorite foods. Within the cozy confines of the cottage, it never seemed important that Molly couldn’t produce a competitor for the Fathers’ Race, or a name to fill the blank in My Family Tree.
But the outside world was tougher. Already, Molly was aware of being different. Her mother spoke “posh,” listened to Radio 4 instead of watching television, disapproved of supermarket food and package holidays in Tenerife, and drove a diesel van full of plant-trays and spilt earth with a “Save the Barn Owl” sticker on the rear window. And, of course, she was beautiful, in a gypsyish, outdoorsy, barefoot way, which other mothers weren’t. It was impossible for Molly to admit publicly that she didn’t know who her father was. That’s when she began to make things up.
Early on, she’d been caught out in stupid, embarrassing lies: the new bicycle her father was sending for her birthday, which never arrived; her trip with him to Disney World one summer holiday, when it was obvious to everyone that she’d never traveled further than Minster Episcopi. Quickly, she learned that it was easier, in fact almost glamorous in a spooky way, to tell people that he was dead. Molly didn’t believe this for a moment. She talked to her father secretly, at night. She met him in dreams, though afterward she could never remember his face. She imagined how they would meet, and made up names.
Jackson Carruthers: a ridiculous name, though Molly was still fond of it. At various times there’d also been the Count of Montepulciano, a cross between Max de Winter and d’Artagnan, whose exotic name she’d read on a wine label (alas, he was already married and could not endanger the succession to the Montepulciano estates by acknowledging his bastard daughter); Doug Michaels, a Wall Street zillionaire with an uncanny resemblance to Michael Douglas (too busy for babies, although there would turn out to be a very surprising clause in his will); Ricky Radical, a seventies rock guitarist of stupendous talent and charm (tragically OD’d at the Glastonbury Festival). For many years her favorite had been Tex, who bred Appaloosas on a ranch in America, where she galloped across the plains on a stallion no one else could tame, and watched as much television as she liked. (Her mother had refused to move to a place with no Radio 4 reception.) In the election fever of 1997 she had even briefly toyed with the notion of Tony Blair as her father, on the flimsy basis that he was the right sort of age, had a connection with Edinburgh (where Molly’s mother had spent some time as a student) and would be understandably reluctant to admit to an illegitimate daughter.
At one level she recognized that these were fantasies; at another she believed in them passionately. (The scene in which she was smuggled into Downing Street, nobly forgave Blair for choosing politics over paternity, and swore to carry their secret to her grave, had once moved her to tears.) Each new book she read, each film and newspaper story fueled her imagination. Was her father in prison, like Roberta’s daddy in The Railway Children? Was he living in America with her long-lost identical twin, as in The Parent Trap? Would a mysterious seafaring man turn up in the village pub one day, inquiring about Miss Molly Clearwater? Great Expectations became a favorite book, read and reread. A great sigh would escape her at the end of the scene in which Pip tells the dying Magwitch that Magwitch’s lost daughter lives, that she is a fine lady, rich and beautiful, and that Pip loves her.
But Molly did not want to wait for a death-bed revelation. Nor did she want a convict for a father, though the older she got, the more fearful her speculations became, erupting in violent dreams of masked men leaping from the shadows. “Why won’t you tell me?” she raged, in her early teenage years. “I need to know.” But by some sleight-of-hand her mother made it seem quite normal to keep this knowledge to herself, and insensitive of Molly to ask. Wasn’t she loved? Didn’t she already possess the really important things in life? Molly saw how hard her mother worked, how heroically she held together their fragile existence, how proud she was of their female independence. It seemed disloyal, ungrateful, to ask for more. Imperceptibly she, too, was drawn into the conspiracy of silence. When, at fifteen, she sent off for her birth certificate, she did so in secret. “Father: unknown,” read the vital line.
Molly was sure her grandmother—her mother’s mother—had known something. Once or twice, when they had been alone together, there had been the tiniest hints, no more than the intensity of an expression or an extra vibration in the air, that had made Molly hold her breath. But six years ago Granny got cancer and died. Even so, Molly had half expected the arrival of a letter—perhaps even a lawyer, like Mr. Jaggers—to unravel the mystery. But her eighteenth birthday, then her twenty-first, had pas
sed without revelation. There was no Grandpa to ask: he’d run off to London with another woman when Molly’s mother was ten, causing such unhappiness and financial ruin that his name was mentioned rarely, and always with scorn. Thanks to him, the beloved family house had been sold, her mother expelled from its paradise of green meadows and sun-gilded, tick-tocking rooms, and her gentle grandmother forced to find a job while her grandfather played hide-and-seek with his creditors, and partied away the family money. That was how fathers behaved. Perhaps it was how all men behaved. Molly didn’t know. She didn’t know . . .
“Voilà. It is finished.”
A floorboard creaked. Molly turned her head. Fabrice was standing back from his easel, frowning appraisingly at his work. With his hair in disarray and paint-smeared hands, he looked very romantic and stern.
“Can I see?” Molly sat up, rubbing the stiffness in her neck.
“No. Now I want to do some drawings. Take off your clothes.”
“What?” Molly stared in shock.
“Your clothes. Take them off.” There was an edge of irritation to his voice. He barely glanced at her.
Molly stood up slowly, arms hanging at her side. Her bare toes clenched the dusty roughness of the floor. She couldn’t undress here, just like that, with him watching.
Fabrice was gathering up his brushes. He carried them over to the table, poured some liquid into a tin can, dunked a brush. He gave her a sideways look under his lashes, dark and intense. “This is art, Molly.”
“Of course.” Her head bobbed up and down like a nodding dog’s.
“The human body is beautiful. One must not be ashamed.”
“No.” But would one be allowed to keep one’s underpants on?
“You can go in there, if you want.” He indicated the squalid lavatory-cum-basin room.
“Okay.”
She gave a bright, social-worker smile, padded over to the door, opened it and shut it behind her. Once inside, she stood still and stretched her eyes wide at the tiled wall. What was she doing? I’m in Paris, in a horrible loo, taking my clothes off. Right. She drew a deep breath, crossed her arms, grabbed her dress at the hem and peeled it off over her head. There was a hook on the back of the door. She turned the dress the right way out and hung it up. Next she unhooked her bra and slung it over the dress. She looked down. There they were, Gloria and Esmeralda. (Did other girls name their breasts?) Gloria was the sexy one, Esmeralda more reserved. If she kept her shoulders back, maybe they wouldn’t loll too much. Next, her knickers, a white lacy pair not yet sabotaged by the washing-machine, designed to be admired. But how often did one see a life drawing that featured pants? Molly slid them down her thighs, then did a little wriggle until they dropped to the floor. Stepping out of one leg-hole and leaving the other hooked round her ankle, she flicked her foot and caught them neatly in mid-air. They joined the dress and bra.
And there she was. Naked. With Fabrice waiting. Molly wished there was a mirror. She gave her hips and bottom a quick massage to erase any lingering trace of elastic, smoothed down her pubic hair and twirled the ends into a corkscrew curl. She felt exposed, super-sensitive to the caress of air on her skin. But this was art. L’art, she mouthed to herself. Lahrrrrr. She tipped back her head, fluffed out her hair, and before she could think any further about what she was doing, opened the door and stepped out defiantly.
Fabrice had his back to her. He was still by the table, dangling a pad of thick, outsize paper from one hand and choosing charcoal sticks from a tin with the other.
Molly cleared her throat. “I’m ready,” she announced.
“Good, good. I’ll be with you in an instant. Go and sit down.”
Back to the daybed. Fearful of wobbling too much, Molly sneaked past him with a shuffling, pigeon-toed gait, as if her legs were glued together from knee to thigh. She kept one arm crooked across her breasts, the other hand splayed protectively over her crotch. Quickly, she lay down on her front, propped on her elbows. After a moment, she bent one leg and pointed her foot in the air, then the other, then twiddled them about. Fabrice hadn’t even looked at her! Thank goodness. She peered over her shoulder to check that her bottom didn’t loom too enormously.
Oops, he was coming! Molly sank flat on to the bed, crossed her palms and laid her cheek on them. She peeked at him through her hair. He stopped about six feet away, stared at her in silence, then lowered his eyes and spent a lot of time fussily balancing the pad at the correct angle against his hip.
“Okay,” he said. “We can start like that. But I must say to you this one thing. You must rejoice in your body. I want you to move around, do as you feel. This is not a formal pose. I want to make lots of sketches, improve my technique.”
Lots! Move about? Rejoice? “Mmm,” Molly murmured doubtfully.
“Don’t think of me as a man. I’m not looking at you like a man—not the way a man looks at a woman. I am looking at you like an artist. The artist must always be invisible and impersonal, like—like God.”
“Hello, God.” She waggled a foot.
“Legs down,” he ordered. “Cross your ankles. Pretend you are sleeping.”
Molly did as he asked. How peculiar this was, to be lying naked in a French attic with her eyes closed, being stared at by a man she hardly knew, listening to the soft sweep of charcoal across paper. Peculiar, but not so bad . . . After what seemed like a minute, but was probably five, she heard a tearing sound as he stripped the paper from the pad and wafted it on to the floor.
“And now?” he said.
Golly, another position. After a moment’s thought, Molly rolled onto her side—with her back to Fabrice—supporting her neck with one hand and discreetly draping the other over the hollow at the top of her thighs. Again, there was silence. Then came the same faint stroking noise, sometimes soft as a cat’s paw, sometimes sharp and scratchy as a claw. Molly had the odd sensation that she could feel the tip of Fabrice’s charcoal on her skin, smoothing its way over the curve of her hip, rippling down her vertebrae one by one. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her breasts, spilling from her rib cage like mounds of whipped cream with strawberries stuck on top. What would she do when the time came to turn round? They weren’t easy things to hide. But Gavin had never paid much attention to them. Perhaps Fabrice wouldn’t notice.
There went the paper again, gummily unpeeling. This time Molly sat up, still with her back to Fabrice, supporting herself with one palm pressed flat and clasping her ankles with the fingers of her other hand. Back straight. No lolling, girls. She hardly dared breathe.
Scritch-scratch. Scribble, scribble. There was the faint squeak of trainers on wood. Then, so unexpected that she jumped, she felt his hand touch her leg, adjusting its position. In a second he was gone again. There was a smudge of blue paint on her calf. She wondered if he had peeked at her front. Damn. She’d forgotten to suck in her stomach.
She was running out of ideas for keeping her back to Fabrice. Any minute, as soon as this sketch was finished, it would be time to turn round. The strange thing was that she was almost getting used to being naked. There was a freedom to it that made her want to stretch like a cat and let the air play on the parts usually hidden by clothes. She told herself that it was no good being coy at this stage, and resolved to come out with all her guns blazing.
There it was, the crackle and rip of paper. A pause. Molly rolled smoothly from one haunch to the other, swung her knees over and rearranged her hands, adopting the mirror-image of her previous pose. But how different it felt! She could see Fabrice, sinuous and dark and beautiful. She could see him looking at her. When their eyes met, it was as though she was sitting in a shower of sparks. They danced and sizzled on her skin, licked into flame, fanned into a forest fire.
Fabrice bent his head to the paper. His movements were bold and sure—a flowing line here, a squiggle of shading there, a semi-circular sweep (could that be Gloria?). He glanced up, then quickly down again, avoiding her gaze. His lips were pressed firm, his ey
ebrows drawn down in an expression of deep concentration: improving his technique, no doubt.
Molly was finding it hard to sit still. Her flesh tingled, her breath came louder in her ears. How could Fabrice act as if she was no more than an intriguing arrangement of iron girders? Didn’t he want to come closer, to touch? Without waiting for her cue, she moved both hands behind her and leant back. Her head tipped back, her breasts thrust forward.
He glanced up, hesitated, then tore off the previous drawing and stood frowning at her from his little island of wood, across white waves of curling paper. She saw his eyes drop to her breasts and linger. So he had noticed.
He started to draw again. “Enfin, Molly, you can’t keep moving around like that.”
“Why not?” She observed that he was holding the pad lower than before, shielding the zip of his jeans.
“The concentration, you understand . . . For a man it is difficult.” The movements of his hand across the paper were becoming jerky. “When one sees a sensational body . . . euh . . . the thighs, the hair, the breasts . . .”
A sensational body! His words coursed down the center of her like warm syrup, spreading outward, spilling over. She stretched her arms languorously, clasped her hands behind her neck, arched her back and smiled at him.