Twelve
Fen closed the door behind the Bernheims, having promised Magda that they would find a time to visit some of their old haunts together, and went back into the studio. Rose was straightening the small, Impressionist painting and muttering something about it never hanging properly when there was rain on the forecast. Fen shook her head at her friend’s little eccentricity and sat back down on the chaise longue.
‘Was she a good student? Magda, I mean.’
‘Oh so-so. Better than you, I dare say, though perhaps with less raw talent.’ Rose sat down on the saggier of the armchairs and twiddled her beads around her fingers. ‘You were always too practical to be a true artist, though you had flair. Magda was a good student though, she practised and sketched and drew all she could, but she never accomplished a great deal beyond what you might call holiday art.’
‘Holiday art?’
‘You know, the sort of souvenir watercolour you might bring home from a sojourn in Italy? But she was a good student of mine. She was never one for coming up with her own compositions and she enjoyed the tasks I set of copying the greats. I wouldn’t be surprised if she does indeed have a rather robust version of my little Delance.’ She waved her hand towards the painting on the wall. ‘I do enjoy the challenge of taking something and copying it. Even if I do add my own artistic flair sometimes. What was it your father always said about me?’
Fen wasn’t sure it would be polite to mention all the things her father had said about his flamboyant colleague at the école, so just widened her eyes in curiosity at her old teacher.
‘He said, “Rose, I would as soon have your sunflowers on my wall than that Van Gogh chap’s. He might have pushed the boundaries of fine art, but your copies allow time for the soul to catch up”!’
Fen laughed. Her father’s specialisms were Florentine architecture and draughtsmanship, and he rarely talked about the more emotive side of art, but she loved that he had made Rose feel special, which was so typical of his generous spirit.
‘And on that cheery note,’ Rose winked at Fen, ‘shall we have another, what you English might call, cuppa?’
‘Oh yes, let’s,’ Fen replied and helped Rose clear up the tea tray.
A few moments later and the pot of mint tea was refreshed and Rose had brought out some garishly pink wafer biscuits from the back of a cupboard, saying, ‘Contraband no doubt. But a very grateful ex-student of mine sent them from Holland. Now, dear girl, let’s sit down and have a proper catch-up. Tell me all about your dear parents and that dashing brother of yours…’
A couple of hours later and the mint tea had morphed into champagne (‘a payment in kind’, Rose had explained, from a grateful portrait client) and the teacups replaced with crystal coupe glasses.
Simone had come home from her work at the atelier and Fen had enjoyed the half-hour they’d spent wafting in and out of each other’s bedrooms, deciding what to wear for their evening jaunt. James’s kind words in the gallery earlier had persuaded her that joining them could be rather fun after all and as she hadn’t packed much in the way of fancy clothes, Rose had lent her a brightly coloured tea dress, which Fen now cinched in at the waist with the matching fabric belt. The gaudy red roses on the yellow background made Fen feel cheered, and she didn’t care that it was probably a few years out of date, and possibly a few sizes too big. She pulled on the sleeves to make sure they puffed out like they should and she set her hair in the victory rolls she’d learned to do for the dances at The Spread Eagle in Midhurst.
‘You should try this colour,’ Simone said, nudging Fen out of the way in front of the bathroom mirror and pouting as she applied the deep red tint to her lips.
‘It’s rather fabulous,’ agreed Fen, pursing her own lips and accepting the lipstick from Simone.
With her hair done, lipstick on and new dress just about fitting, she felt like a different person. A person still grieving, but one who would enjoy seeing a new side of Paris; a Paris liberated and full of hope, a Paris that she was old enough now to experience properly, but also a Paris that might hopefully remind her of the simpler days of her youth.
James buzzed the doorbell and caused Tipper to yap at him.
‘Shush, you little brute,’ Rose slurred slightly as she wobbled in front of one of her paintings, a paintbrush in one hand, a champagne coupe in the other. ‘Come in!’
Moments later, James was in the studio, having picked up the squirming little ball of fluff that was Tipper and winced as his teeth dug playfully into his forearm.
‘He’s a feisty chap, isn’t he?’ James said to Rose, who had put her paintbrush and glass down and was pouring James some champagne.
‘Like all men, he bares his teeth to get what he wants.’
James let Tipper jump out of his arms and accepted the proffered glass from Rose. ‘Are we all so bad?’ He raised his glass to his hostess, who in turn arched an eyebrow at him.
‘Oh women are quite, quite worse.’ She winked and grinned at him. ‘Thank you for a splendid lunch today, Captain. I do hope the bill wasn’t as painful as one of Tipper’s little love bites.’
‘Not at all, my pleasure.’ He raised his glass again and then took a sip. ‘Ah, this is the good stuff.’
‘I didn’t know you were a connoisseur?’ The voice was Fen’s, who had emerged from her bedroom, the first of the two young ladies to finish her toilette.
‘I’ve had my share.’ James smiled at her. ‘You look very nice by the way. Like the dress.’
Before Fen could make a joke about him being a real Champagne Charlie, Simone opened her bedroom door and Fen wondered, if she had had a yardstick handy, if she could have measured to the eighth of an inch how far James’s jaw dropped at the sight of the beautiful young woman.
‘Good evening, Mademoiselle Mercier,’ James blurted out slightly and Fen watched with increasing embarrassment on the poor man’s behalf as he accidentally spilt a few drops of champagne on himself as he reached over and took Simone’s hand to kiss it.
Rose winked at Fen and gave the pair a withering look, before pouring the dregs of the bottle into Simone’s glass, which she’d brought with her from the bedroom. ‘Now drink up you three and be off with you,’ she said, barely concealing the almost maternal smile. ‘And don’t wake me up when you come in falling over yourselves later.’
Thirteen
The bar was noisy and boisterous, and mostly, Fen noticed, full of men. James led Simone and Fen through the fug of cigarette smoke and Fen wondered if it was the smoke or the language that turned the air a certain shade of blue. Simone seemed unfazed and walked tall, and Fen guessed that she was just pretending not to notice the eyes of the men follow her as she gently nudged them out of the way.
‘Here,’ James pointed at a booth-style table, where two men were already sitting.
Fen furrowed her brow as she felt something wet against her leg but accepted the slurred apology of the drunk man with a tilted glass who had filled the space she’d left in her wake as she’d followed her friends through the bar. She wasn’t sure if the two men sitting at the table looked any more salubrious than the other chaps in this bar. Not that it would take much to be so, she thought to herself as she smiled at them and let James introduce them all.
‘Fen, this is Gervais Arnault and his brother Antoine—’
‘Or should that be the other way around?’ the taller of the two men, who was wearing a grubby cloth cap, said in mock indignation before James could complete the introductions. ‘I am the elder Arnault brother.’
‘And the uglier,’ countered the shorter, fatter brother, who did, to his credit, have the more handsome face, even if it was slightly smudged and dirtied with what looked like engine oil and grease. His blue denim dungarees were similarly dirtied, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows to reveal arms covered in tattoos, those also obscured by streaks of grease.
The brothers play-fought while Fen and Simone slid into the banquette seating opposite them. Jame
s took drinks orders and left Simone to finish off the introductions.
‘Fenella, you must ignore the children over there,’ she winked at the men, who both threw their arms up in mock disgust at being so tarnished.
‘We are both old enough to be your father, young Simone.’
‘And bald enough,’ she answered back, tartly, before laughing at poor Antoine, who now rubbed his pate and jammed his cloth cap back over his bald spot.
‘It’s OK for you,’ he said back to her, ‘you are young and beautiful and can make a living doing fancy things, whereas I am stuck in the warehouse all day—’
‘Getting balder and balder!’ laughed his brother Gervais.
Fen was slightly bemused by this buffoonish pair, yet her natural curiosity took over and she asked them about themselves.
‘I have a fleet of lorries,’ Gervais announced proudly, ramming his thumbs under the straps of his dungarees and pushing his chest out.
Simone laughed and shook her head. ‘A fleet? Is that what we’re calling it now?’
Antoine interrupted and introduced himself in similarly flattering terms. ‘And I am the boss of a large team of workers.’
‘You’re both liars,’ Simone wagged her finger at them. ‘But I shall forgive you as I know you’re only doing it to impress a pretty stranger.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Fen felt a bit flustered. ‘Please don’t exaggerate anything on my account.’
‘Antoine works in a warehouse in the north of the city and Gervais is a lorry driver—’
‘And mechanic!’ the plump Gervais chipped in.
‘And a mechanic,’ Simone added to appease him. ‘So I assume you two met Captain Lancaster last night?’
‘We did,’ Antoine replied, beating his brother to it. ‘And we shared a good few drinks with him.’
‘You mean you fleeced him for a few drinks?’ Simone asked, a note of disapproval in her voice, but a smile playing across her lips.
Fen thought this all rather amusing; a young slip of a girl telling off two burly much older men. But the two men seemed to take it all in their stride and laughed at her joke. Perhaps she proved herself during the war, Fen thought, made herself their equal?
Just then, James came back to the table and set down a round of beers for him and the men and a glass of wine each for Fen and Simone.
‘To our British friends and allies,’ Antoine led the toast once James was seated, having found a chair to bring to the head of the table.
‘To friends and allies!’ They all chinked their glasses and finished the toast with a few ‘saluts’ to each other too.
As James talked cars with the Arnault brothers, Fen asked Simone how she knew the two men.
‘They are just local characters. I’m not surprised James bumped into them last night. They could probably sense the very moment when his wallet opened…’ she raised her eyebrows and then laughed when Fen did. ‘I think they mean no harm though.’
Fen nodded. ‘Did you grow up around here then, on the Left Bank, I mean?’ She asked her, wondering how their paths might have crossed.
‘No, no. I was raised in the north of the city. But Antoine and Gervais are pretty friendly to all the new faces round here.’
‘Especially a pretty one, no doubt,’ Fen said and took a sip of her wine. It was only when she put her glass down did she realise that Simone was looking at her.
‘As you yourself have just found out. Tsch, really, Fenella, you are very pretty too. I assume that’s why Captain Lancaster is here with you, non?’
‘Oh, no.’ Fen could feel the blush rising in her cheeks. ‘It’s not like that between us at all. No, no. We’re just chums. Sort of thrown together.’
Simone grinned, then seemed to check herself and brought her lips back into a much sexier pout. ‘That’s good. So you won’t mind if I, well, if we…’
‘Oh no, absolutely. Crack on.’ Fen hid herself in her glass of wine again and wondered why everyone seemed to think she and James Lancaster were a couple. Nothing could be further from the truth. All that muscle and slightly unshaven look did nothing for her. But that combination was obviously like nectar to Simone, who turned away from Fen almost as soon as she’d received ‘permission’ and commandeered James’s attention away from talking about cam belts and air-cooled engines.
Fen knew when she was dismissed and instead struck up a conversation with the brothers. ‘So, what did you both do in the war?’ It wasn’t the most original of conversation starters, but a fairly ubiquitous one, she’d realised over the last few months.
‘Ah, this and that,’ Antoine said, smiling slightly as he did so.
‘I kept France moving,’ Gervais puffed out his chest again, ‘single-handedly fixing the French army’s vehicles.’
‘As long as those vehicles were never any further than 200 yards from your garage, brother!’ laughed Antoine.
‘Hey! So what if I have flat feet and cannot fight,’ Gervais looked like he might have taken offence as his brother’s slur, but then laughed. ‘But I could drive and I drove all sorts of things to freedom.’ He tapped his finger against his nose and winked at Fen.
‘How interesting,’ she replied, ‘do tell?’
‘Well, it’s not a well-known fact that the Louvre needed its paintings moving around—’
‘Oh yes,’ Fen interrupted, ‘to Montauban and Chambord…’ She was cut off by Antoine’s laughter.
‘You see, brother,’ he said, jabbing Gervais in the shoulder, ‘everyone knows about that. You would have made a useless Resistance agent, your secrets are so well known!’ He chuckled again and took a long slurp from his beer.
‘It’s not my fault Monsieur Renaud told me it was a secret.’ Gervais shrugged his shoulders, but Fen could see he looked a little crestfallen.
‘You’re friends with Henri Renaud?’ she asked, directly to Gervais, to try and build up his ego a little again.
‘Yes, of course. I know you wouldn’t think it, as we are, how would you say… from different sides of the track,’ he laughed. ‘But we are good friends.’
Fen’s ego fluffing had worked. Gervais all of a sudden looked very pleased with himself.
‘And did you work with him throughout the war?’ she asked, innocently enough.
‘Yes, I did. I drove the lorries that took art everywhere, to the galleries, from the galleries, to the auctioneer, to the warehouse, from the Jews’ apartments…’
Fen suddenly got a shiver down her spine and remembered that not all of Henri Renaud’s war work had been on behalf of the French Resistance.
Antoine must have picked up on her sudden change of countenance and interceded on his brother’s behalf. ‘We were not all lucky enough to have the ability to stand up to the oppressors,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes you just had to get by. It was an honour for us to work with a man like Monsieur Renaud, though, the war at least gave us that. Gervais would drive the lorries and I worked – I still do – in his warehouse. There were times we had to kowtow to the Nazis, but in the end, I think we did the best we could, to do the best we could.’
‘Amen to that,’ James added and they all clinked glasses again.
Simone, who had been leaning in very close to James, turned her attention back towards Fen and changed the subject. ‘Fenella, why don’t you come and visit me tomorrow, at the atelier. It would be fun, no?’
‘Oh, rather! Thank you. What a treat.’
From that moment onwards, the talk that evening kept to the lighter side of life, albeit each person’s stories were tinged with the scent of the war. It had been such a large part of everyone around that table’s lives, whether they’d fought, spied, dug the fields or kept the engines ticking over, that it was hard to ignore it. One person’s laughter, however, became infectious and by the time the barkeep called for last orders, they were all flushed with the warmth that good humour and good drinks bring to the table.
Fourteen
Fen awoke the next morning to the sound of
the front door of the apartment closing. She sat up in bed and swung her legs out, stretching out the last of her sleepiness as she did so. Once the curtains were open and her old land girl jumper slipped on over her nightdress, she ventured out of her room and into the light of the studio. Rose was already at her easel, the curtains long drawn back and the morning light streaming in through the tall panes of glass.
‘Good morning, slug-a-bed! Can I put the wireless on now? I do so like some jazz while I work.’
‘Good morning, Rose, and yes, I’m so sorry, of course – fire her up!’ Fen headed towards the bathroom but paused and asked, ‘Did I just hear the front door go?’
Rose sighed and dragged her eyes away from her canvas and met Fen’s own enquiring look. ‘Young Simone has just returned. I thought you both might have come home together, but…’
Fen rubbed her eyes again and tried to remember what had happened after the fourth or fifth glass of wine. She remembered all three of them trying to get the big grey door open downstairs, but perhaps it was just her on her own who practically pulled herself up the banister to the fifth-floor apartment.
‘I’m sure James looked after her,’ Fen said, by way of an explanation.
‘It’s not his hospitality I question, dear girl.’ The look in Rose’s eyes implied she knew all too well what two young people might get up to alone in a hotel room and Fen nodded, before leaving Rose to carry on with her painting as she headed into the bathroom.
‘Ah good morning, young lady,’ Rose eyed up her lodger as she rather sheepishly left her room and closed the door behind her. Fen looked up from the daily paper and Simone winked at her. ‘I’m not sure I should condone this sort of behaviour…’ Rose continued as Simone walked into the centre of the room and helped herself to a cup of coffee from the pot.
‘Urg,’ she swallowed it in disgust. ‘It’s the chicory stuff again.’
Night Train to Paris Page 7