by JH Fletcher
‘Remember what Katie told us?’ Brett reminded her. ‘How the time is coming when mankind can enjoy peace and fulfilment, without fear or pain or want? Well, now it’s come, and I intend to be a part of it.’
She had forgotten nothing that Katie had ever told her. But what had she to do with Russia?
‘I’ve never been political in my life,’ she objected. ‘You know that.’
Dragging in Katie’s name had been no better than blackmail, but Brett was not finished. Easygoing in most ways, he was ruthless in his determination to get his way in this. ‘What did you say after Edith died?’
Edith Cavell … The name stopped Marie in her tracks.
They had been introduced to the famous English nurse by their friend Jules Sauvage, an art dealer who was an ardent fan of Marie’s work. They had got on well; Marie had been impressed by Edith’s idealism and had cried out in anger and distress when they had heard in 1915 how the Germans had shot her as a spy.
‘Idealism and sacrifice,’ she had exclaimed. ‘Surely they are the answer to the world’s needs?’
‘Idealism and sacrifice,’ Brett reminded her now. And waited.
‘Katie and Edith are dead.’ Marie, too, could be ruthless, when it was necessary.
‘And idealism? Is that dead, too?’
She was weakening, but still unsure. ‘What about my garden?’
The garden had become truly important in her life. Three years earlier, when their new prosperity had made it possible, they had moved into a house overlooking the river, a few miles downstream from Paris.
It was a beautiful house, its pink stucco walls set with green shuttered windows. To one side was an orchard that in spring was heavy with blossom; behind it, a softly-rounded hill was set to vines. The land ran down to the river and, when Marie walked along the bank, she could see the wavering outlines of fish feeding among the weed.
There was room for them both to have studios, they could afford servants to do the chores and Marie began the second great project of her life, the creation of a garden.
In truth it was not another project, but a continuation of the obsession that occupied her whole life: to Marie, art, emotion and the physical creation of beauty, whether in paint or the form of a garden, were one.
Now Brett wanted her to leave all this and plunge into the unknown.
‘Read that letter again.’
He did so; it was as she had thought.
‘It’s you they’ve invited. There’s no mention of me.’
‘We can take it for granted —’
‘I’m taking nothing for granted. If I don’t get a specific invitation, I’m not going.’
‘You’re not suggesting I should write and tell them that?’
‘If you want me to go with you.’
‘They’ll never agree.’
Nor did they. Brett wrote, despite his protests, but had no reply.
‘It’s perfectly normal for a man’s wife —’
‘I am not your wife.’
Enraged, Brett spent days stamping around the house. ‘Russia’s got nothing to do with it! Admit it: it’s me you want to get rid of!’
Was it?
Certainly she did not want to go; as she had told him so often, she had no interest in politics and could not relate to what was happening in Russia. Yet she knew that she would have gone without question had she truly loved him.
We have been friends and lovers, she told herself. But to turn her back on art, on everything of value in her life, for the sake of a friend, even a lover … No.
Would she once again be compelled to betray a friend, for the sake of art? Out of selfishness? Surely she owed loyalty to this man, who had been good to her?
She spoke to Jules Sauvage about it, despairing of herself for being so selfish, so hard.
He told her she was talking nonsense. ‘The truth is that you are not hard enough. That is why you feel such pain. You owe him nothing, you hear me? Nothing. Whose idea is it to abandon everything you have worked to achieve? Brett’s. And why? So that he can indulge himself in this sentimental rubbish of going to Russia, a country he has never even seen. And for this he expects you to give up everything? You, one of the finest artists in France? What is there in Russia for you? It is a country where they eat bears, and women. And you say you are the one who is selfish?’
So, once again, Marie was faced with a choice that was no choice at all. She said she would not go. She had thought that Brett would give up the idea, once he understood that she meant what she said. That was what had happened during the strikes in England, but England was not Russia, and Brett did not.
‘You must come! I insist!’ And he seized her by the shoulders, shaking her until she, too, lost her temper and slapped his face as hard as she could.
At once he was still. For a moment he stared at the stranger she had become. His cheek was scarlet with the force of her blow. Slowly he raised his hand to it. He caressed the place then, eyes fixed on hers, put his fingers to his lips and kissed them. The gesture tore her heart, but she remained still; to yield, even over this, would be fatal.
She still believed that he would change his mind, but he did not; his dreams of glory were stronger than his love. On 20 April 1919, the day that the Bolshevik First Army laid down its arms in the Ukraine, she stood on a railway platform in Paris, ashes in her heart, and waved forlornly as Brett’s train left for Petrograd.
7
In July of that year, Hibou told Marie that he was retiring.
‘One gets old, you understand? The world has changed and the market with it. It is time for a younger man to take over.’
She was sad, but he was right: the market was changing. ‘Who is buying your business?’
‘A friend of yours. Jules Sauvage.’
Which was good news, indeed. The next day he came to see her. They had lunch on the terrace overlooking the garden, with the Seine tracing its sinuous path along the valley floor below them.
Wineglass in hand, Jules contemplated the view, then smiled ironically at her. ‘I am sure you much regret having to put up with such squalor when you could be fighting for the Reds in Russia.’ The patchy news from there was anything but good.
She told him the truth. ‘In some ways, I do regret it.’
‘It was never your war.’
‘I think perhaps it is everybody’s war.’
‘Then why didn’t you go?’
‘I was afraid that, in Russia, I would be unable to paint. Brett told me I was selfish. I thought that myself, remember? But I came to see that it was only by being what he called selfish that I could be truly nurturing, because it is only through my art that I can give the world what is in me to give.’
‘Yet you still regret not going?’
‘I regret missing what would have been a great experience, the greatest experience of all, perhaps. The challenge of re-creating society … Think of it!’
‘They will have to re-create it,’ said Jules scornfully. ‘There will be nothing left of the old one, the way they are butchering people. Have you heard from Brett?’
‘Nothing.’ She might have felt sorry for herself, had she not accepted that the turmoil in Russia made communication impossible.
‘Do you miss him?’
She avoided a direct answer. ‘I am alone, now.’
‘But need not be.’ Jules gave her a straight look.
Marie was not ready for another entanglement and liked him less for speaking, and looking, in such a way. ‘I am too busy to think about these things.’
Jules was not a man to be embarrassed. He leaned forward and cut himself a wedge of gruyère. ‘We should discuss your work,’ he said.
He told her that the world was sick of horrors and of the realism that during the war years had been synonymous with horror. ‘Forget grey, black, brown. People want bright colours, something to bring joy into their lives. What they are looking for is the exotic’
‘Escapist art.’ The idea disco
mforted her; she was prepared to be dismissive.
‘No!’ He would have none of it. ‘There is more to life than sorrow and hatred. Tell me,’ he asked her, ‘do you have faith in humanity? The future?’
‘Yes.’ She was sure she did, although there were times when one had to doubt.
‘Then show it in your work. There are places outside Europe. Less war-worn, less tired. You have lived in one of them, yourself. Give me pictures of Australia, I’ll guarantee to sell them as fast as you can paint them.’
After Jules had gone, Marie spent the afternoon in the garden, as she did every afternoon. The garden was beginning to fulfil all the hopes and dreams that she had had for it. It gave her joy yet, as always since Brett’s departure, also a feeling of discontent. To be playing with gardens when, a thousand miles away, a new world was being forged …
Yet to create something beautiful was surely also to touch the sublime? She remembered her mother’s words after she had left Neil, accusing her of sacrificing her woman’s destiny to be an artist. Remembered, too, her reply:
My art is myself. It is in every part of my being. Without it, I do not exist. My destiny, both as woman and artist, is to be myself.
Yes, she thought, it is so, although doubts remained.
In the execution of her paintings there was, nowadays, a greater freedom from anxiety, as though she were at last coming to terms with the idea that she might have talent, after all.
She produced several Australian landscapes, creating out of her memory the green and liquid world of the Murray, the secret essence of stillness. To provide variety, she also painted her recollections of the Snowy Mountains, which she had visited as a child: the peaks under snow, the sky a blaze of cerulean light, a group of climbers in red anoraks spilling brilliance across the canvas.
‘I love it,’ Jules declared. In his fashionable gallery off the Champs Elysées, it had pride of place. Three days later, he telephoned Marie to tell her that a Madame Talbot had been enquiring about it, and about the artist.
‘She is also Australian, married, I understand, to a wealthy Englishman. She wishes to meet you. They have a very fine collection: Monet, Picasso, Modigliani … It could be a wonderful opportunity for you.’
Greta Talbot arrived in a motor car that she had driven from Paris herself. Marie showed her around the garden before taking her into her studio, where she exclaimed over the paintings that she inspected, one by one.
‘You have a treasure trove here …’
Marie, pleased with her first efforts and mindful that there was growing interest in mountain scenery, following rumours of a French expedition to the Himalaya, had painted several other snow studies; Mrs Talbot was especially interested in these.
‘On your way to Europe from Australia, did you by any chance visit the mountains of Northern India?’
‘No.’
‘My brother-in-law tells me they are very fine.’ And smiled complacently, as though wealth, and her brother-in-law, had given her prior claim to the mountains, as to her place in the world. ‘He considers they have a deep spiritual significance. He should know; he lives in the middle of them.’
‘In the Himalaya?’
‘In Kashmir. Which I understand is especially beautiful.’
‘Why does he live there?’ Although Europeans did, of course, with India part of the British Empire.
‘I have asked him the same, but men do not always explain their motives.’ Mrs Talbot laughed indulgently, yet was perhaps a little vexed. ‘I suspect they do not always know, themselves. Of course, I have my own theories.’
And posed, prettily, holding a sketch at arms’ length. ‘The light —’
‘What is your theory?’ Although Marie could not understand why she should be interested enough to care.
‘What it always is. A love affair.’
‘Oh.’ What a letdown; a love affair was too mundane a reason for living among the high mountains.
Mrs Talbot laughed, redeeming herself and her brother-in-law. ‘Not with a woman. With the mountains themselves. I invited him over, once, but he said he couldn’t bear to be parted from them. That was when he mentioned their spiritual significance.’
She shook her head; the ways of some men, like the peace of God, were beyond understanding.
‘What does he do there?’
‘Nothing. He’s ex-Indian Army, so there will be a pension, one or two investments. And I daresay Kashmir is cheap. But to live so far from civilisation …’ She shuddered at the idea.
Greta Talbot left, promising to speak to Jules Sauvage about the paintings she wished to buy. After Marie had seen her safely on the road back to Paris, she phoned the agent herself.
‘She’s talking of buying three or four paintings.’
‘Magnificent! You must have impressed her, very much.’
‘We talked about the mountains. And their spiritual significance.’
Jules chuckled. ‘If she’s buying so many paintings, I daresay we can permit her to be as spiritual as she likes.’
After she had put the phone down, Marie walked out into the garden. It had become her refuge from the turbulence of her emotions, although why they should be turbulent now she did not know. She stood amid the rose beds while, beyond the sweet flow of the river, rose ramparts of ice and rock. She felt the tang of the alpine cold, heard the roar of distant avalanches. There was a quality in the vision, powerful yet serene, a conviction that there, amid those far peaks … A song, ringing sweetly.
They have a deep spiritual significance.
To be at peace … All her life she had moved on. She could not imagine how it must feel to be so deeply attached to one place that one never wanted to leave it. Mrs Talbot had shuddered at the idea, yet to Marie, transfixed amid the roses, it was a lodestone, drawing her home.
‘What nonsense!’ she declared briskly, and continued her walk. But she bustled rather than strolled, as was her normal custom, and tranquillity evaded her. The mountains shone like beacons, four and five miles high above the peaceful French countryside.
* * *
She could not settle. Her house, even her garden, gave her no satisfaction. She painted, and was dissatisfied with what she had done, and tried again, and liked that even less.
She took to visiting the libraries. She read everything about the Himalaya that she could find. She consulted Younghusband’s books on Everest and Kashmir. She had thought to satisfy herself by reading; all it did was fan the flames.
‘You need a holiday,’ said Jules, to whom she confided some, although not all, of her feelings.
‘More than a holiday,’ she told him. ‘I need to move on.’
Tentatively, then with greater confidence, she spoke to him of the mountains that drew her, even in her dreams.
‘Go to Chamonix,’ he suggested. ‘To the Alps. There you will see all the mountains you want.’
It made sense. She caught the train; Jules came to see her off; he presented her with a heartache of roses, red and luscious. She sat in her compartment and watched the speeding countryside; it was all very civilised.
She got to the mountains. They were beautiful, as Jules had said. They filled the sky with grandeur. They did nothing for her at all.
And if I go to the enormous expense and inconvenience of travelling to the Himalaya, she thought, how do I know that I shall find anything there, either? Mountains are rock and ice; where is the spiritual dimension in that?
She was determined to stay out her holiday and did so. She painted nothing. Out of habit, she took a sketchbook with her on her walks, but did no work. In the evenings, she sat in the dining room of the hotel and ate, and ate. On one occasion she welcomed the attentions of a man claiming to be an Albanian Count — welcomed them because she found it amusing to fight off advances that were never more than verbal, to observe his petulance at being sent packing by this woman whom, no doubt, he had thought to enjoy as an after-dinner snack. None of it meant anything.
Bac
k in Paris her life was as disjointed as ever.
‘It’s no use,’ she told Jules. ‘I shall have to go there and find out for myself.’
‘To the Himalaya Mountains?’ He stared as though she had told an elaborate joke that made no sense. ‘You speak as though it were like crossing the road.’
‘I know how far it is, how inconvenient. It is something I feel I must do.’
‘Damn that woman,’ he said viciously. ‘She has unsettled you with her talk of mountains.’
He was right, yet Marie’s feeling towards Greta Talbot was one of gratitude rather than indignation. She knew that her life needed to be shaken up, that she had been getting into a rut, complacent and ultimately inconsequential, ever since Brett had left for Russia.
She did not regret not having gone with him. Their relationship, too, had been a rut, and to go to Russia with a man for whom she cared so little, who in fact had filled her with restlessness, would have been a catastrophe, indeed. Yet she admired him for going, for caring enough about something to go. To put his life on the line … It was better by far to try and fail, she thought, than give up without trying. And that was what she would be doing if she turned away from the vision that drew her now: to refuse the summons of the mountains because they were inconvenient, or too far away, would be unforgivable.
And what would happen if she became ill again? It was a question that needed to be asked; she would not be going on a picnic. But life had its own imperatives. If she were afraid to live, she thought, she would be better dead. In every way that mattered, she would be dead.
Jules was horrified when she told him. ‘Paris is your home. Your civilisation. Your parents came from here. You, yourself, were born here. How can you think of going?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she teased him. ‘You’ll still act for me in Europe.’
‘That is not the issue,’ he told her with dignity. ‘You are a great artist. You have a responsibility to the civilisation that created you.’
‘I have a responsibility to art. To my art.’
‘To yourself, too,’ he insisted.