by JH Fletcher
She still did most of her work in the open, but had taken note of Lucien Henry’s comments and was now finishing her paintings in the studio. She felt it improved their quality but was still dissatisfied. More and more, she thought her work was too derivative, unadventurous.
She spoke to Neil about it but he was no help. Since they’d got back together, he had said nothing to her about art or painting although, from time to time, she had jogged his elbow.
‘How’s your own work going? Don’t you have anything to show me?’
Apparently not. ‘There’s nothing ready.’ It was inconceivable that he should not want her to see his work; he had always been quick enough to do so in the past.
‘But —’
‘I said I don’t have anything to show you.’ And gave her his do-you-mind look. ‘When I do, I promise you’ll be the first to know.’
She’d heard about artists who became blocked, although she’d never experienced it herself. If that were Neil’s problem, it was too close to home for comfort; she crossed her fingers and said no more about it.
Instead she discussed her problems with Lucien Henry. He thought she might be right, but warned her not to change her style until after the exhibition.
‘Give the public what they want. When you’ve got a name, you can think about doing something new.’
She took to visiting him regularly. They discussed her work for hours. One day he offered to introduce her to a man he thought might help her.
Stanford Harris was an agent. All the artists knew about him; he was plump and autocratic and, when Lucien mentioned him, Marie’s first instinct was to run a mile. Lucien prevented her.
‘He is autocratic, but only because he knows what the market wants. And he’s plump because he’s successful. He could be just the man you need.’
So Marie gritted her teeth and met him, smiling politely while he looked down his fleshy nose at her work.
‘Hmmph,’ said Stanford Harris, and left without another word.
Marie could have slapped his fat chops. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Hmmph?’
‘He’s impressed,’ Lucien told her.
‘What’s he do when he doesn’t like something? Spit?’
There was nothing to be done. She waited, out of sorts with herself and the world, but unable to suppress the first treacherous slitherings of hope.
Impressed …
Perhaps. But days passed, and neither of them heard a word. Then, one day, while she was finishing off another of her studies of the slum dwellers who had so impressed and terrified her when she first met them, someone knocked at the door.
‘Bloody hell!’
Whoever it was had chosen a particularly tricky moment. She considered ignoring the knock. Perhaps it was Neil, having mislaid his key. Or his father. The knocking came again, vociferously, filling the room with thunder. Definitely his father. Oh God.
She wiped her hands on a scrap of cloth and jerked open the door before the caller could knock it down.
‘Do you mind?’ she was saying as she threw it back. ‘Have a bit of patience.’
And stopped, the words throttled in her throat.
Stanford Harris.
10
Marie had learned to be cynical of outside help. Lukas Smart had flourished his faith in her talent like a flag, awakening her to precarious hope, yet nothing had come of it.
She had sold two paintings at the Society of Artists Exhibition; nothing had come of that, either.
Lucien Henry was promising her the earth, the one-man show that would anoint Marie Desmoulins in the eyes of the world as one of Australia’s great, or potentially great, artists.
‘When they see what you’ve done, they won’t know what’s hit them.’
Hope, once again, treacherous and futile. Would she never learn? Without the thought that one day, it would be impossible to face life, yet hope could destroy, too. Hope betrayed could be death. So, despite Katie’s uproarious party, Marie had nursed the latest flourish of hope like crystal, afraid that it, too, might fracture between her hands. After so many disappointments, she would find it hard to trust the reality of success if it were thrust diamond-edged into her arms.
For all her resolution, she stared at the figure of Stanford Harris upon her doorstep, while the thought perhaps now, perhaps today flowed unbidden into her mind.
At the same time she could not forget his earlier rudeness.
‘Yes?’ As though he were peddling brushes. Or more false hopes, that might destroy her.
‘I have come to visit you —’
‘So I see.’
‘May I come in?’
Courtesy at last. She opened the door wide. ‘Please do.’
Inside the cluttered room, Harris did not know where to put his hat, or himself. Marie remained determined to permit hope no opening, but there was no sense in rudeness. She chucked some junk in a corner, clearing a space at one end of a moth-eaten sofa blotched here and there with paint.
‘Have a seat.’
‘Thank you.’ He did not immediately take it; instead he eyed the painting upon which she was currently working. He glanced at her questioningly. ‘May I?’
‘Go ahead.’
He did so, for several minutes.
‘Hmmph.’
He walked to the sofa and sat, gingerly, while Marie — unable to help herself — laughed.
He stared at her.
‘A private joke,’ she explained, and laughed again.
Stanford Harris clearly had no idea what to do with other people’s jokes. ‘I have come to see you,’ he said again, ‘to discuss your work.’
‘And there I was, thinking it was me you were after.’ She had not known she was about to say it. The words, like the laughter, swept like an explosion between her unguarded lips.
His expression mimed distaste. It made her laugh more helplessly still, while tears ran. It was unseemly, she knew, yet was unable to help herself; it was what happened when hope broke through your defences.
She took a deep breath, managing to snatch fragmented decorum from the air. ‘It is kind of you to take the trouble,’ she said, sober now.
Harris inclined his head, no doubt thankful to dismiss hysteria from their discussion. ‘I have looked at your work. I have also taken the liberty of discussing it, and yourself, with Mr Lucien Henry. Who gave me your address. I hope that is in order.’ He was obviously more at home with details and dust than the eccentricities of artists, yet Lucien had told her he was the leading fine art agent in Sydney.
‘That is quite in order,’ Marie said, ordering her sober expression to remain clamped upon unseemly laughter. Yet could feel it bubbling underneath, as hot and potentially explosive as lava.
For God’s sake, don’t offend him, she told herself. Not now.
Which helped.
‘I am of the opinion,’ said Harris, ‘that you have a remarkable potential.’
‘Thank you.’
But he had not come to pay empty compliments, or to be thanked, but to talk business. He took a sheet from an inner pocket. ‘I have here an agreement.’
He spread it on his knee and read it aloud, a precise finger underscoring the text as he did so.
Whereas Stanford Harris, herein referred to as THE AGENT, and Marie Daymoulins, herein referred to as THE ARTIST —
‘Desmoulins,’ Marie said, craning to read over his shoulder.
Frost settled; contracts were serious business. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My name’s spelt wrong. It’s DESmoulins, not DAYmoulins.’
Harris’s lips were white with vexation that he, or whoever had typed the draft on his instructions, could have made such a mistake. How typical of the French to mispronounce their own language! Des, indeed … How could that be pronounced Day?
‘I shall have it changed.’
‘Why not use a pen? If you’ve got one.’
Harris had; and did. And read on, his prim voice scratching the air, whil
e Marie listened. Irresponsible and irreverent she might be, but she was not about to sign away her heritage to a stranger, however prim.
He finished, and waited.
‘Leave it with me,’ Marie said. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Which Harris had clearly not expected. ‘I had thought, if we could sign it now …’
‘Later. If I’m happy with it. We’ll need someone to witness it, anyway.’
From his expression he was unfamiliar with artists who were also businesslike, and was unsure whether he liked it. He tried to persuade her, but Marie remained rock-solid.
‘I’ll let you know in a day or two. This is too important to rush.’ She escorted him to the door. ‘Don’t forget your hat,’ she said kindly. ‘And thank you very much for coming.’
A belated courtesy that, from Harris’s expression, did little to appease him.
PART VII
FACING THE CHALLENGE
He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will soon be reduced … to the poorest of all imitations.
— Joshua Reynolds
Alan
The agreement with Stanford Harris was the first great step in my grandmother’s career. Pedantic he may have been, but Harris, tipped off by Lucien Henry, saw in Marie’s early work a potential that few others recognised. By the terms of their agreement, which Marie signed two days later, without seeking anyone else’s opinion about it, she assigned to him all rights to sell her work over a five-year period. In return, he agreed to pay her an immediate advance, payable weekly, against commissions on sales of her work.
It was a wonderful thing for her, giving her money in her pocket — money that she had, or would, earn herself— for the first time in her life. It gave her a sense of liberation that was completely new. It bound her, too, of course: she had to produce two new works a month, and she quickly discovered that Harris was a man who expected agreements to be carried out.
‘What happens if I paint more than two a month?’
Harris pointed to a clause in the agreement that covered additional paintings. He was not about to let her use another agent, or sell her work privately in competition with himself, however many paintings she produced.
On the other hand, she persuaded him to reduce the original term of the agreement from ten years, which was what he had wanted, to five: she wasn’t going to let him lock her up for the rest of her life.
She told me that it was then, for the first time, that he gave her a wintry smile. Perhaps, now that he was getting used to the idea, he was coming to appreciate the value of an artist who, like himself, understood the importance of an agreement. It must have been something like that: she even talked him into putting up some funds for the one-man show that was assuming such importance in all their lives.
Marie
1
T‘his is your best work,’ Lucien said, staring at the booze-and poverty-ravaged faces of her subjects. ‘This is where you show your soul.’
Marie couldn’t see it. ‘Why’s it better than the others?’
‘Because it is socially significant.’
It was what Katie had told her, in the early days. It is your duty: to humanity and yourself.
Even at the time she hadn’t thought much of that argument; she didn’t now, but Lucien was adamant. ‘You’re a socialist at heart, like all right-thinking people. You must be true to your principles.’
‘You’re wrong. I’ve no interest in politics at all.’
‘You care for the deprived people of the world,’ Lucien told her. ‘It’s there, on the canvas. You show us things that few people ever see, even when they’re looking.’ His eyes glowed, this socialist who believed in the resurrection of humanity from want. ‘It will awaken the world to a need for action.’
Marie, non-political and non-committed, a young woman with no knowledge of socialism or political thought, knew that this was rubbish. The blind would remain blind, whatever paintings of poverty she flourished under their nose: it was human nature.
‘You must concentrate on that,’ Lucien urged. ‘Only on that.’
‘All that’ll do is make sure I never sell my work at all,’ Marie said. She gestured at the painting before which Lucien worshipped, so ardently. ‘How will it help those people if I starve, too?’
Her relationship with Neil went on. She told herself she was happy both with it and with him, but knew already that he was not capable of providing what she needed most from a man: that combination of dominance and kinship that existed, perhaps, nowhere on earth, but which she knew it would be her destiny to seek for the whole of her life.
Then, a week before the show, her mother appeared unannounced upon her doorstep.
‘What brings you to the city?’ Marie asked.
‘Always you used to come and see me. Now I hear you have an Exhibition. I am glad you are becoming famous, but that kind of thing eats you up. I know: I have lived with the problem all my life. So, since you can no longer visit me, I have come to see you.’
Marie was apprehensive; Eugénie had an air of purpose that made her seem formidable, even alarming. She was not the type to make sentimental journeys, whatever she might pretend. No, she had come for a reason and, with the Exhibition only two weeks away and a vast quantity of work still to be done, the last thing Marie needed was distraction from Eugénie or anybody else. Yet she could hardly turn her own mother away.
‘Come in.’ But made no pretence of being overjoyed to see her.
She went back to her easel and tried to concentrate once again on what she had been doing, while Eugénie made a performance out of not intruding, of being still and providing no distraction.
It was impossible; eventually Marie gave up. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘That would be delightful.’ And had to make a performance out of that, too, as though her present circumstances prevented her ever drinking coffee at all. Marie watched unsympathetically, convinced that Eugénie and her husband could not be as poor as they pretended. The house, for a start … But she was determined not to ask the reason for her mother’s visit, so sat, saying nothing while she waited for Eugénie to come to the point. Eventually, she did.
‘Henry is no better.’
‘I am sorry to hear it.’
‘I think he will never recover.’ Her voice contained dissatisfaction with the husband who had lost all courage and all hope. ‘I think sometimes he wishes he were dead.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Marie felt uncomfortable; Eugénie sounded as though she would not object if he were.
‘You cannot imagine what it is like to be tied and unable to do anything about it! I cannot just sit.’
And proceeded to do exactly that, while they drank their coffee, side by side yet separated by all the things that might have united them, but did not.
‘I have considered taking a lover,’ Eugénie said eventually. ‘At least that would occupy my mind, is it not so?’
Spending so much time with Katie had made Marie impervious to shock. Or nearly; it was hard not to be shocked when your own mother, who had barely confided in you in her life, started to talk in such a way. ‘Why don’t you, then?’ Hoping she sounded more casual than she felt.
‘He would have to be young.’ The Gallic shrug that Marie sometimes felt should have been left in France. ‘An old lover — one cannot imagine such a thing.’
A young one, Marie thought, might not be interested, although it was true that Eugénie looked years younger than she was.
‘Why don’t you?’ she said again.
Eugénie stood, and paced about the tiny room, and turned. ‘Because I would be afraid.’
It was something Marie had never thought to hear from her mother’s lips. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It is true. To stay as I am, with Henry as he is … I shall go mad. But to have a young lover is not an easy business. I would be in control of the situation to begin with, no doubt, but for how long? When the man is young enough —’
‘I would have thought it would be exciting to control a man after being the servant of one all your life.’
‘But a young man inevitably takes over, as he becomes more confident. It is nature’s way. Then the woman finds herself more tightly bound than ever, I think. A young man with an aging mistress — I tell you truly, Marie, nothing is more cruel than a man in that situation! No,’ she said decisively, ‘I have decided I shall not take a lover.’
Like someone ordering a pound of tea, Marie thought. Or, in this case, not ordering it.
‘What I want,’ Eugénie said, ‘is to grow closer to you, my daughter. I wish us to be together again.’
‘Is that so?’
Eugénie had obviously thought Marie would be pleased but, in truth, she was wary, suspicious of her mother’s motives.
It was impossible for her to be anything else; Eugénie was a woman of enormous energy and determination. The three of them would hardly have survived the Paris atrocities, to say nothing of those early months in Australia, had she been anything else. Energy and determination were wonderful gifts, indeed, but they came at a price.
All her life, Eugénie had taken things at a run. She had escaped Paris under the noses of the authorities, beating both them and the sea in their flight to Noirmoutiers; had survived the change of plan that saw them embark, not for England, as she had intended, but for Australia, which in those days must have seemed to her as far away as Mars. Speaking only such English as she had learned on the voyage, she had brought them all through the early months in Sydney; she had contrived things so that they could lift their heads again, even live well on top of it. She had let nothing, nothing, destroy her.
And now this: a non-life with a man in whose strength she had placed her trust and who had failed her, eviscerated by the first calamity to befall him. She might have forgiven him had he eventually recovered, but there had never been the slightest sign of that.