by Jean Stubbs
‘The bond of artist and sitter, mam’selle. Did you know there was one? Oh yes, indeed. So very close, and so very far. The immediate and the untouchable. That should suit us both.’
He was back in an old and delicious habit, speaking partly in English, partly in French. For Gabrielle’s command of the language had never been more than adequate, and he had learned her tongue out of love, so that he might explain himself fully. Claire, stumbling, guessing, correcting herself, followed him. He sensed there was no coquetry in this. She was unlike that imperious deity, his stepmother, who had accepted his tribute and never sought to improve herself. Claire was trying out words and phrases, to catch up with him. ‘Who buys your clothes, mam’selle?’
‘My sister. You knew that? Then why do you ask? And my perfume, that you say is wrong, she buys that too. So that the gentlemen think I am silly and pretty. A pretty fool. Is that what you paint, m’sieu? Pretty fools?’
‘I did,’ said Carradine, ‘but I’ll try to change. Perhaps that was part of my problem.’
‘Perhaps my problem is not to be a pretty fool.’
She was as absorbed, as contemplative of this idea, as he of his work. She had puzzled about herself and her place in the scheme of things, and found no solution. ‘They will hope,’ she said, warning him. ‘They hope you will take me away, and then they need not keep me.’
‘That will be their amusement. Are we agreed on friendship?’ And he held out his hand.
Half-smiling, half-frowning, she took it and pledged herself in an English handshake. Now that he had promised not to court her she wanted to make him betray his interest in her as a woman. But he bowed and bade her goodnight.
By herself, she wandered over to the glass and scrutinised her reflection. The silk rosebud struck her as ridiculous. She unpinned it, in a leisurely fashion, tried it in different positions. Then moved away and sat with it in her hand for a long time. She had not wanted him. At one point she had despised and upbraided him. Yet she resented his taking her at her word. For six years she had played the part, however sincerely, of a woman who was both desirable and unobtainable. For six years other men had played a supporting role to this remote princess. The rules had been broken in a matter of moments, and she must find herself in another role, that of a friend.
Natalie, seeing her bemused and softened, said, ‘So you like our impractical M. Carradine?’
‘I think him interesting.’
‘Keep your head, bijou. This is one who runs away from reality and from women. Make sure that his gifts are not all flowers and compliments. Ah! what it is to have an honest man who accepts the truth about himself and you, and pays for it.’
She meant Émile Roche.
CHAPTER NINE
‘I came over to see the Incoherent Group, as they were nicknamed, some thirteen years ago. They were exhibiting in a cafe on the Champs-de-Mars. Gauguin, Émile Bernard, young painters who had worked with them in Brittany. They were one of the attractions of the Great Fair of 1889, and in my opinion surpassed the more popular attraction of the Eiffel Tower. I prefer internal views to external ones, and in any case I detest iron skeletons ... am I boring you?’
No, she was expanding as he talked, realising he was well away from her.
‘Have you seen Paris from the top of the Tower, mam’selle?’
‘Oh, yes!’ As part payment for her company, with a man she preferred to forget.
‘How much does art interest you, mam’selle? How much do you know about it?’ Sketching rapidly as he spoke.
‘I like my portrait to be painted. I like to hear you speak. I visit exhibitions. Some I like, some I do not. I cannot remember names of artists and pictures.’
‘As a matter of interest, and purely for my entertainment, what did Madame Picard say to you before you left today?’
‘She sends you her affectionate remembrance,’ Claire replied, with a caution strange to her.
‘Oh, come on!’ said Carradine grinning. ‘She told you not to be a fool. She reminded you that you were no longer a child. She underlined security, in the form of jewels. She advised you to be compliant at least, and responsive at best.’
Claire was silent.
‘I thought we were supposed to be friends,’ he continued, ‘and friends speak the truth — a commodity which your establishment regards either with suspicion, or as a future investment.’
He had recovered from the smart of being manipulated by Émile Roche, and even enjoyed it in retrospect.
‘I am never afraid of the truth, m’sieu,’ with a touch of temper.
‘Good. Then tell me about yourself — and no fibs. I shall know if you’re fibbing. I am an expert fibber myself.’
‘Tell me what you wish to know, and I tell you!’
‘Don’t point your finger at me, Claire, it spoils the position. Thank you. Tell me about your childhood, your parents, why you are so different in character from your sister.’
‘You shall not tell Natalie what I say?’
‘Certainly not. Friendship implies trust.’
She had been formal in her amber velvet gown, consciously posturing. Now, little by little, she relaxed. Her careful prettiness gave way to intelligence. Her dress ceased to wear her.
‘Of course, we are orphans together as long as I remember. Natalie knows our parents, but I am very small when they die. So we go to the orphanage, and Valentine is there too. Always, Valentine was the servant. Natalie made her fetch our boots and button them, though this is not allowed.’
Kneeling in a worship that dared not admit of envy or anger, the button hook grazing her knuckles as it sprang back. They had made a compact against the tight world of nuns, and looked to the world outside for freedom and pleasure. It was to be their oyster, and Natalie would find the oyster knife.
‘They made us all wear the same clothes. A blue uniform, very plain, very coarse. Our hair was scraped back in plaits, our faces were scrubbed with soap until they shone, so that we should not be vain. There were no looking glasses. Natalie found a piece of broken mirror once, and hid it. She would let us use it if we pleased her. She was always the chef de bande — how do you say that?’
‘The ring-leader.’
He crumpled the first Rossetti-like poses and concentrated on this new person. As a model she was fascinating, as a woman he had been right to ignore her. That pointed chin suddenly insistent, that soft mouth suddenly incisive, those dark eyes narrowing in recollection. Not Natalie, certainly, but a woman with a mind and wall of her own which might well not be his mind or his will. A prospective thrower of tantrums, an arguer, an acute observer and recorder (and with a memory for unpleasant facts). She would be an intolerable nuisance as a mistress, but as a companion she delighted him. He admired her, too. He had to admire the long years of subordination, the tenacity which opposed Natalie’s plans for her future.
‘What did they intend to do for you, at the orphanage, Claire? I may call you “Claire” may I not? And you must call me “Nicholas”.’
‘But of course.’
She had forgotten to copy Natalie’s Madame Récamier attitude, and leaned forward, hugging her knees, head bent.
‘Valentine is simple and good, so they would keep her in the kitchen. I am quite clever. I do as they tell me, not because I want to but because it is easier like that. So they will make me a governess. But Natalie, they called her the bad one, they did not know what to do with her. Always, from sixteen, she has love affairs. Once, a soldier climbs into the bedroom through the window. How we were afraid! I pull the blanket over my head so I shall not see them. Natalie was a — voluptueuse.’
‘Even in a dormitory full of Catholic orphans?’
‘Even there.’
‘What a woman!’
‘You like her to be like that?’
‘From a distance, yes. For myself — not in the least. What happened?’
‘She run away with another soldier, a captain. I do not know what becomes of him. For two, th
ree years we hear nothing. We think she has forgotten us. Valentine works in the kitchen. I work in the schoolroom. I wished to go, not with a captain but by myself. I do not like what Natalie does with the soldiers.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Carradine, comprehending, and he put down his stick of charcoal. ‘Natalie has probably warped a whole dormitory full of impressionable virgins. How did she manage to avoid becoming pregnant?’ He saw her shocked hesitation. ‘I really shouldn’t have asked that, mam’selle. I was speaking as I would speak to a friend, and I forgot that you were a lady. You see how quickly friendship brings barriers down!’
She glanced from him to her clasped hands, pursed her mouth.
‘The soldiers know how not,’ she said finally, making up her mind to pursue friendship in all its curious forms. ‘Later, Natalie knows how not — and she tells me. I do not like that either.’
‘No, well, it’s a pity she didn’t inform Valentine. That would have saved a heap of trouble.’
She laughed as they had laughed together, some evenings ago, and he watched her in pleased astonishment. Friendship obviously suited her temperament. He reflected that she had probably gone very short on friendship. Alliance through necessity, even leavened by affection, was not the same thing.
‘But how if you tell Valentine?’ she cried, hands over mouth like a child. ‘She forgets! She forgets — everything.’
‘We’ll leave it at that, mam’selle. Friendship has its limits. We were at the orphanage and you wanted to leave, by yourself.’
‘I am a coward. Always I tell myself I am a coward. I am afraid to go. I am afraid to trust myself.’ She was sobered by her apparent cowardice. ‘So, we wait. Then one day Natalie comes back.’ In a carriage, elegantly gowned and discreetly painted, with unimpeachable credentials from M. Émile Roche. Offering the post of maidservant to Valentine, of a governess for his ward to Claire. Natalie told the nuns she was Madame Roche’s personal companion. ‘I do not know how much they believe her, but they cannot doubt the letter. We come to Paris, to the apartment in Étoile. We stay here ever since.’
‘What an incredible disappointment you must both have been!’ Carradine remarked, amused.
She considered this, frowning. ‘I should like to be free,’ she admitted, ‘but how can that be? I tell you I am a coward. With Natalie I am nothing, but if I am a governess I am nothing also.’ She observed his irony with resentment. ‘There are worse lives,’ she said defiantly. ‘Natalie is hard, you think? That is not true. She loves us. We love her. We are a little afraid of her, but we love her. And so we live.’ She shrugged. ‘Is your life so much better, M. Nicholas?’
‘I work. That is infinitely better.’
Her brows drew together. The work threatened her as a woman. It could and did replace her in his estimation. And she was facing a totally new problem in his detachment. She did not want him as her lover, but she wanted him to want her as his mistress. Not to have but to want. For what else could she offer any man? And what could any woman offer this man, whose work lay always between himself and her?
‘Perhaps you should make love to a lady who paints?’ she offered.
‘God forbid!’
‘You are afraid that she paints better than you?’
‘I’m afraid that lady painters bore me to death.’
‘I am tired now,’ she cried. ‘I wish to rest. Let me see what you have done to me. Ah! how ugly you find me!’ She worried over the intent woman, hands hugging her knees, whose formal gown seemed both costume and contradiction.
‘Not ugly, highly interesting. In fact,’ said Carradine, holding the sketch at arms’-length, ‘I find it an improvement on my usually vacuous efforts.’
‘But she is so sad,’ said Claire sadly. ‘Why do you not draw me nice?’ And immediately she smiled, and became ravishing. ‘Do you not draw nice things?’
‘I always draw nice things. Come and look.’
She was his old public: exclaiming over past joys.
‘Do you paint what is real, or do you make them up?’
‘Oh, they’re real enough. They’re things I remember. This one, for instance, was an afternoon many years ago when my stepmother took us to the park outside the Hotel Carnavalet. I went back to draw the square, for accuracy, and then put us all into it. Here is Gabrielle, and Odette in her baby carriage, and there am I.’
Sunlight and leaf shadow, the repose of the young mother, the sleeping baby, the abandonment of the small boy chasing his hoop with a stick.
‘How happy you must have been, Nicholas. Are children so happy?’
The blue uniform, the plain diet, the prayers and suppression, the sudden terror of two urgent bodies beneath a dormitory blanket.
‘I certainly was.’
‘What is this picture called?’
He was staring at it abstractedly, and answered with a reluctance he could not explain, ‘The Children in the Square.’
And it was all wrong. Something to do with gravel, with a badly-grazed knee, with a perfumed handkerchief bound round his leg, with interruption, with shattering. The picture stopped short before that man entered it, otherwise it would have become a terrible thing. It had not been the first time he was there, apparently by chance, in a public square or park. His manner was always correct. He addressed Gabrielle as ‘Madame’, he patted Nicholas’s head, he bent over the baby carriage and said Odette would be almost as beautiful as her Mama. He kissed the extended hand in its little glove, he chatted. ‘Play your hoop, my Nicki!’ What did they talk about as he glanced over his shoulder jealously? Something which constricted his breathing, even though he could not hear it, something only for the two of them, something so important that he felt himself barred. An invisible circle was about them, they shone from within it, unreachable. A magic circle from which his physical body would rebound if he tried to enter it. An electric current whose touch would shock him.
Then, fury only to be conquered by speed. He had run and run and run, hoop spinning madly, and at last fallen and lain still. That had been the right thing to do, because Gabrielle flew to him with cries of alarm and took him home immediately, and the man was forgotten. They had left him standing there, hat in hand, forlorn, his power shorn from him. Forgotten.
Claire was forgotten, too. She touched his shoulder, spoke his name. He hardly heard her. She must go away so that he could think this out. He must get rid of her.
As though he had spoken his thoughts she picked up her cloak, dispossessed. Repentantly, he placed it about her shoulders, thanked her, suggested another day. He even suggested she should come back to England with him for a holiday. No, no, not as his light of love, but as a model or a companion, a friend — whatever she wished. Anything, so long as she would now leave him alone with his revelation.
I painted the wrong picture, he reflected.
The simplicity of the solution amazed him. He pursued it further, handing Claire her feathered hat.
I painted what I wanted to think, not what I knew. I’ve always painted the wrong pictures, because the right ones were unbearable. And I prided myself on facing unpalatable truths! I painted tawdry circuses and music halls, to avoid painting the truly tawdry. I painted innocence, to disguise my lack of it. I idealised or denigrated women because women as they are terrify me. And I courted them and slept with them and made them fall in love with me, because I couldn’t have Gabrielle and I wanted her. What did I tell Lintott? ‘I speak not of the flesh — which is another matter — but of the emotions.’ No, I speak of the flesh. She roused me, blast her, as no other woman has ever done.
Who was that man? Her lover, either in fact or fancy? Whichever it was, she was faithless to my father. So I was afraid of faithlessness. I was faithless and uncommitted so that I shouldn’t be hurt again, as she hurt me with him. Who was he?
‘You would like to keep this, Nicholas?’ reaching for the sketch.
‘No, no. Take it away with you if you like. I’ll do several studies before I decide
on the final one. Tell Natalie. She’ll be delighted. Tell her we need time together — a great deal of time.’
Time to digest and absorb, not Claire but Gabrielle. The looking-glass hit and shattered at last. And yet what a sense of freedom rose from the fragments. And pity, too. Pity for the boy who experienced too much, too early. Pity for the father who had been betrayed, and who loved dumbly. Pity for Gabrielle, a trapped thing beating against the glass. What a coil! What a rotten beastly coil for all of them!
And this was why the painting seemed so insipid. He had painted perfection perfectly, and there was no such thing. Wrong colours. Too light, too — easy. He needed a new palette, a darker palette. Sepias, sombre greens — no grass on earth was that luscious shade. The park had been gritty. He must convey the grit, the dust, the heat of that summer afternoon. A heat both moist and heavy. The hatred and the heat had made him sweat. Who was this little fellow with the hoop, so fresh and cool in his sailor suit? Fresh and cool from Berthe’s hands.
Not me, thought Carradine, never me.
‘Thank you,’ said Claire, bereft.
He kissed her hand, and then on an impulse — simply because he knew he was rejecting her, and she knew she was being rejected — he kissed her cheek. The casual affection, the sop, infuriated her. He should not rid himself so easily. She placed her hands lightly on either side of his face, and as lightly kissed first the left and then the right cheek. An expression of Natalie’s left her lips before she could suppress it.
‘We say in French that we kiss all four cheeks, but that is not among good friends, Nicholas.’ She saw the remark had not registered and crossed herself involuntarily. ‘Until we meet again,’ she cried, running down the stairs.
Much later, when Carradine had torn up innumerable sketches of the new square, he felt the kisses as indentations. He even walked over to the mirror and stared into it, almost expecting two hollows. And later still, waking in the early hours with the notion of painting the park as though he observed it from the air, infinitely remote, those kisses were still with him. Two small, warm, invisible sensations.