The Lovers

by Catherine Rey

  Yes, I sat for Ernest in his studio, up in that tower. What a place! You haven’t been in his studio? It’s unbelievable! On the first floor, he has a small bed and a sink. He sleeps there sometimes. Then you find a narrow winding staircase that takes you to the second floor. That’s where Ernest works. The studio is always locked up. There is no phone. Ernest doesn’t want to be disturbed… Can you imagine a place with a glass pyramid for a roof, overlooking the forest? You see the tree-tops all around like a green ocean, rolling from the valley to the ridges of the hills that surround the house. In winter the mist rises up from the gullies. Sometimes the fog wraps the house up to the first floor. It gives you the impression of floating above a cloud. It’s quite magical. And the smell is wonderful too. Such an inspiring place for an artist…

  I like to go there with my daughter. It’s healthier than living in Petersham. Just cars here, traffic noise and fumes. Still, I wonder why they built such a beautiful house in that dark hollow. Ernest told me once that the guy who built the house, a German if I remember correctly, was fond of rowing and fishing. He fancied having a lake and figured he could source water from a nearby creek at the bottom of the valley. Years ago, Ernest found a series of blueprints in the attic and that’s how he worked out that the lake is artificial. In that grand old house the only spot to catch good light for painting is in the tower.

  I’ve sat a dozen times for Ernest. He made two portraits of me, both in the nude. No, I’ve never seen them. Ernest doesn’t show his work unless it’s completely finished, and he paints very slowly. That’s the Renfield technique. Very slow, very meticulous, small brush strokes. He mixes each colour, he never prepares them beforehand. He takes his time.

  How did we go? You mean how did the sittings go? When Ernest asked me to lie on a leather couch, I recognised the red leather couch I’d seen in so many of his paintings… You wouldn’t believe how important I felt. I realised I was going to be immortalised. Ernest Renfield is a renowned painter, you know. I didn’t see his retrospective in Canberra last year, but I flicked through the catalogue. That’s how I recognised the red leather couch… Anyway, it took him a long time to find the right pose. The arms this way. The legs that way… Ernest is very fussy. Then he stood behind his easel, prepared his colours. He looked so powerful, so manly, so impressive. He took a long breath. He was concentrating, silent, grave, staring at me, though at the same time not really looking at me, and then he started fighting with the work, growling, mumbling, sitting down on a stool, standing up. Such an imposing man, so tall and heavy, not young, and then he suddenly seemed lighter, moving like a ballet dancer. It went on for hours. I begged for a break. I was frozen to the bone. My legs were going numb. But Ernest put more wood into the stove; he didn’t want a break. He kept on painting as if in a trance. Yes, very intense for both of us. He’s a very passionate man.

  So no, I didn’t see the final product, but I saw the two he did of Lucie… A couple of canvasses were turned against the wall. One day, when he’d gone to the toilet, I quickly took a look. Honestly, I think you should check them out too, because they’re kind of unsettling. And compared to the work I’ve seen in the catalogue, they’re definitively not good portraits… Yes, both are nudes. How could I describe them? It looks as if Lucie’s body is being pulled apart like a piece of meat, stretched like a vivisected toad pinned down on a board… I’m sorry, Officer Lawson, what I’m saying is gross… really gross, but that’s the only way I can describe it.

  I should also tell you that, well, Ernest tried his luck… He had a go, if you know what I mean… He put his brushes down without warning, walked up to me and fondled my breasts. I pushed him away. I’m not the sort of woman to open my legs on request. He got the message, believe me… No, of course I never told Lucie. She would have been hurt, especially after he announced he wanted to marry her. Can you imagine, if she knew about him trying it on with me? No, he tried twice before realising he was wasting his time.

  Why did I call the police last Wednesday? Lucie and I got into the habit of calling each other on Mondays or Tuesdays. And last week she didn’t call me. I found it unusual. Tuesday, I waited all day for her to give me a buzz. Wednesday, I called Longland and asked Ernest if I could talk to Lucie. Ernest said Lucie wasn’t in Longland… That’s why I called the police on Wednesday… Do I fear that something has happened? Yes, I do… Lucie isn’t erratic, she’s quite the opposite actually, she’s a together person, and it’s not like her to disappear without warning.

  Paula Rieter

  Cours de l’Intendance

  Bordeaux

  France

  Yes, Lucie is my best friend, Inspecteur Agnelli. She’s like a sister to me. You know, we haven’t exchanged a bad word in twenty-four years… We always speak on the phone on Sundays. I call her every fortnight, sometimes every week, between nine and ten, morning here, evening in Australia… Just over a month ago, must have been Sunday 30 September, I remember that Lucie kept repeating she’d made the right decision… She sounded very cheerful on the phone. It seemed that her relationship with Ernest was going great. He’s the kind of man who never runs out of ideas to keep one entertained. They’d driven all over New South Wales. One day off to the beach. The next to an art gallery. The following to a posh restaurant. Or the Opera House. Ooh, it sounded like she’d been having an incredible time.

  It sounded like a fairy tale, Inspecteur Agnelli, but she hasn’t contacted me in eight days; and I’ve been mulling things over. Eight days is a long time when you worry yourself sick for your best friend. And I’m gathering that perhaps life wasn’t as great as she’d pretended it to be.

  I’ve known Lucie for a long time. We met as first-year university students at Poitiers. When we last spoke on the phone, she didn’t hint at any particular problem, but I’ve had a closer look at what she’s written lately… Lucie writes, yes… She’s been serious about writing for a while now. She’s written articles for classical music magazines and she’s had a go at novels, short stories and poetry. She started when she was a student in literature… I really think she’s talented. No, her novels haven’t been published, but she’s persisting in finding herself a publisher.

  About five months ago she sent me a short story she was about to submit to a literary magazine. As usual, she wanted me to read it before sending it… I’ve always been straightforward with her and she appreciates that… Anyway, I read it… Her story was macabre, just the opposite of what Lucie is. Yes, very dark and distressing. Her mother’s death last year saddened her deeply… There was a terrible thing seeping up from that story that made my flesh crawl. After reading it, I immediately picked up the phone. I didn’t bother checking the time difference. It might have been the middle of the night in Australia, I didn’t care. I was worried, I had a very bad feeling. Is everything alright, I asked. She wouldn’t open up. Lucie, talk to me, I said again, are you okay? She took on a reassuring voice, saying that she was fine. Everything was going well. She lived in a beautiful country. Yes, she said life was good over there. We chatted for a while longer. But still I couldn’t piece things together. Her charmed life in fairyland and her dark story didn’t match.

  Then I worked it out… Yes, over the last eight days, I’ve become convinced that she’s been deceiving me. Her entire tale has been a long-running lie… Look, she told me Ernest had driven her to a sunny beach to have a swim, right? I know she lives in Australia, still, winter is winter, especially in New South Wales. I watch the international weather report every day, and it’s cold down there in winter. It doesn’t make sense… When Lucie lived in Bordeaux, she wouldn’t take a dip in the Atlantic Ocean on a hot summer day, she found the water too cold… And as for the art show, another lie… She said they had gone to the Rupert Bunny exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I checked. Yes, I did… I wanted to be sure… I found out that the exhibition had closed before Lucie even moved to Australia. It doesn’t add up, does it?

  Ernest? Do I know him?
Oh, yes, I do… I met him last September, when he and Lucie stayed here with me in Bordeaux. My flat isn’t big but I have a spare bed in the lounge room. Joël Fargue, from Les Editions Fargue, read Lucie’s series of articles on the composer Olivier Messiaen and approached her to consider a biography of Jean Lucien. You might know of Lucien, the famous violinist from the Orchestre de Paris… He would be in his nineties now… He had made himself available to be interviewed by Lucie that September. Lucie was over the moon. Here was her chance to finally have a book published… It’s almost impossible to get the attention of a Parisian publisher… They’re like Olympian Gods. If you get to see or hear from one of them in your lifetime, lucky you!

  Pardon? Ernest Renfield? What do I think of him? Well, at first, I was very impressed. Such a personality. Brazen, funny, charming, well read… The age difference? No, it didn’t seem to be an issue. Besides, he and Lucie looked very much in love. At least, that’s what I perceived. That being said, I only spent three days with them… I drove them to the ocean. We took walks on the beach. We ate mussels in a seaside shack. Ernest found that exotic. He was happy, yes, very happy, until the third day…

  I drove them to the museum of contemporary art in Bordeaux. I love going there. I thought Ernest would too… But he got in a state when he saw Daniel Buren’s palisade, and then later when he watched a video by Marc Alder. It’s a museum of contemporary art after all… They were hosting a retrospective on the Arte Povera movement. Anyway, one look at that Kounellis and he flew into a fury, storming off. We hurried after him, ran up the street, caught up with him and apologised. I thought he’d have appreciated the place. This museum is highly regarded in France. But he kept on thundering… All this stuff is bogus, it doesn’t induce any questioning or discomfort, it’s a sham, wrecked cars piled up, dirty old jackets hung on a rusty hook! I cannot see art, but a bloody piano painted red or white or whatever colour the “conceptual artist” fancies. As for Marc Alder’s videos? Oh, the videos. They’re pure shit! The guy shoots the arse of a hippopotamus having a crap in psychedelic colours and that’s it? That’s what conceptual art is, a total con job consecrated by museums, art critics, the big shots and the market. Ha-ha, the market! He kept ranting and it was pointless trying to calm him down. People stopped to stare at us. I was mortified.

  By the evening, he had calmed down. Lucie said he had a nap and felt better. He behaved in a pleasant manner during dinner. He didn’t mention his fit of anger or apologise. I thought that was very rude… And they left Bordeaux the following morning. I drove them to the train station. They were going to Paris to meet Jean Lucien.

  How did I feel when Lucie left France to live in Australia? Well, I encouraged her… I thought it was brave… Lucie’s friends, her family, everyone was prompting her to leave. She’d broken up with a married man after a relationship of five years. He ran the typical dual life of a married man who cheats on his wife, pretends to go on work trips while spending the weekend with his mistress. He made a pledge to Lucie that he would eventually divorce his wife. His children were too young, maybe when the children had grown older, he’d speak up, pack his suitcase and go. Blah, blah, blah… Lucie waited. When the wife got wind of the story, she told her husband their marriage was over and asked him to leave, which he did. In his next move, he dumped Lucie… Some guy! She was devastated, but anyone could’ve guessed from the start their story wouldn’t end well. Married men never leave their wives for their mistresses.

  Lucie is a romantic. She believes in love. And each time she falls in love, that’s it, she stops thinking straight. It’s always marvellous, she always finds the man of a lifetime. But she’s never had a happy love life. When she first met Ernest, Lucie hadn’t completely recovered from her break-up with the married man. She was sick of Bordeaux, sick of her job and writing articles that required a lot of effort for very little money. She wanted to get away, to be by herself and dedicate more time to her writing. Yes, leaving France, I thought, would be good for her. You need guts to go to the other side of the world. I know I couldn’t… Mind you, leaving was probably the best way to get away from her family because they’re such a bunch of lunatics. I met them all one Christmas. Lucie was invited to her older sister Mathilde’s and was reluctant to go on her own. We drove to Pointilly. Sylvia, her other sister, and her husband and children were there too. They were all very polite and well mannered but I could feel hatred between them.

  Three times a year, at Easter, Christmas and New Year, Lucie was invited to Mathilde’s. She always whinged about it, but always went. How many times have I tried to persuade her not to go? Each time you see them, it makes you sick, I would tell her. You know they’ll hurt you, they’ll drop some dirty comment you’ll take to heart. Still, she would go. And each time she came back crying. I know it might sound terrible, but I reckon Lucie can’t differentiate between love and hate… It sounds terrible but it’s true… On the one hand, she’s gets attached to people who blatantly harm her, on the other, she distrusts people who genuinely care for her.

  See, she is the youngest of three girls. She’s always claimed that her mother hated her, but it worked both ways. They always detested each other. True her mother very much cared for her two older daughters and shunned Lucie, who was an “accident”. When her aunt and uncle, that is her father’s brother, offered to have Lucie live with them, her mother was more than happy to unload the burden… So, in many ways, when Lucie decided to leave for Australia, it was an opportunity to break free from that farrago. She had found herself an outstanding man. She was going to live in a stunning place. What else could you want? I assumed she would be happy with Ernest, start a new life on new ground… That’s what I thought, but neither of us could foreshadow what was in store. Who could?

  The rain was pouring heavily the day she left France. We had lunch at my flat. I drove her to Merignac airport. Her plane for Paris was leaving in the afternoon. I gave her a copy of one of my favourite books, Soseki’s Three-cornered World. I’d wrapped it in gold paper. She was glad to leave and at the same time scared. We were both scared… We tried to talk but couldn’t help crying… We didn’t know whether we would see each other again. Australia is such a long way away. We stared at each other without a word and I saw in Lucie’s eyes a glimmer of doubt. It was a risky thing to do. I’m strong, she said, I’ll manage, as if she had read my thoughts. A voice called the passengers. First call. Second call. Lucie walked hesitantly through the boarding gate and disappeared. As soon as I left the airport, I burst into tears. I drove home miserable. I spent the next two days travelling with her, flying all the way through Europe, Northern India, South East Asia, having a cigarette at Singapore airport, flying across the equator to enter the Southern Hemisphere, gliding above the Australian desert… and I cried all the way with her. No, we didn’t know what was in store. I can’t figure out what happened to her. Eight days… I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in eight days. I called my boss yesterday to let him know that I wasn’t feeling well… I can’t understand. Eight days… It’s not at all like her.

  Gary Whitehall

  Paddington

  Sydney

  New South Wales

  I left Longland around three o’clock in the morning… Yes, that’s right, shortly after three… Did I see Lucie Bruyère then? No, she wasn’t around… Did I talk to her throughout the evening? Yes, of course, we talked a lot, in fact. Each time she went outside to have a cigarette, we talked. I’m a smoker myself. We smoked a lot that night, so Lucie and I, we ended up chatting a lot.

  What did we talk about? We talked about cleaning. Yes, cleaning. Lucie kept looking at the glass doors, as if she was looking for some speck of dirt on the panes of glass. She looked tired, edgy, and said it had taken her four weeks to tidy up the house and the garden. Luckily, she’d found a local cleaning lady to give her a hand. I frowned. Ernest could have hired people to get the job done, but he didn’t. No surprises there. I know Ernest, he doesn’t like strange face
s around the place. He can easily get paranoid and most of all, he can be stingy. He was certainly glad to have saved a few bucks on the cleaning… Anyhow, Lucie said it was worth the effort. I agreed. A dozen small, round tables draped in white satin had been set around the reception room, with a posy of white asters clumped in the middle of each. It looked nice, fresh, welcoming…

  What else did we talk about? Nothing of consequence. Just small talk… Have I known Lucie for long? I met her shortly after she moved to Australia. About two years ago. She and Ernest came to Sydney one Saturday morning, yes, it would have been two years ago, they were going to lunch at a new seafood restaurant at the Wharf, yes, that’s when I met her for the first time. When it comes to eating and drinking, Ernest doesn’t mind splurging. I heard a husky voice yelling from the doorstep: Gary, old pal, why don’t we organise an exhibition, an unforgettable one this time? I turned around, it was Ernest. He was fired up. He seemed to have got his mojo back. Yes, I could see he was keen to jump back into the ring, but still I couldn’t work out why. I understood when a good-looking woman walked in and Ernest, beaming, introduced Lucie. He looked really smitten. Unlike his previous girlfriends, she didn’t seem the bombastic sort… I thought she could be the right woman for him. She could prompt him back to painting. I was instantly fond of her. I shook her hand, then clasped Ernest’s, saying, I am with you, old chap, that’s good news, and it’s time you did. He nodded. His hand was shaky. We could read each other’s minds. I was glad for him. He had been on his own for too long. I was also waiting for him to get back to serious painting. He’d wasted the last fifteen years recycling old ideas. As for his latest works, honestly, I didn’t have a clue. He always keeps me in the dark. I’m his art dealer and I hadn’t seen a canvass in six years. I’m patient but, still, six years is a long time…