Katherine Keenum (19 page)

“I own nothing, nothing,” moaned Sonja, after introductions were made. “How can there be this chaos?” Edward was amused by the genuine perplexity on her face.

“A little crockery, a teakettle,” said Amy, mimicking her moan. She still held last summer’s terra-cotta bust of herself ready to wrap in a canvas rag.

“A saucepan, spoons,” crooned Jeanette.

“A broom, a mop, a pail,” keened Emily, in a thin wail.

“They laugh at me. I tell them this is all I own, and it is true. A little crockery, a broom. Except, of course, tools of my trade.”

“Profession; we are professional artists, not artisans,” corrected Amy. “But of such tools, there are rather a lot, and some of them very large.”

In the crates she used for furniture, Sonja had put her scanty wardrobe, the bits of costumes she had acquired for models, and the few domestic implements her friends teased her about; but then there were all the paints and canvases, the stretchers, her turntable and finished terra-cotta pieces, a tub of clay. The plan had been to set off at noon, but the work of loading carts had not even begun.

“How do you do, sir? My name is Dolson,” said Robbie, who had pushed off from the wall to follow Emily over. He held out a hand. He was at his most golden and innocently insolent.

Edward took the hand. “Murer,” he said. He was not fooled; this man Dolson was complicated. As Effie joined them with a dot of pink pleasure in each cheek, the shade of insolence melted out of Robbie’s face, to be replaced by merriment. Edward lifted his hat.

Jeanette had not missed the instant of scrutiny and veiled challenge between the two men nor the contrast in their demeanor when Effie arrived. She wondered which face she would rather paint. Dr. Murer’s was the darker, the more forbidding (something very wrong there, or pained), but kinder; an imposed stillness over turmoil. In Robbie’s case, you would need to catch a different kind of shadow, like bruises under the bloom of a piece of fruit.

“I’d say we’re ready to start loading the carts,” said Amy, to cut short any further chitchat. Slow as progress had been that morning, without her habit of taking charge, everything would have taken four times longer.

“Not without a break first,” said Robbie, always ready to contradict her. He took Emily and Jeanette each by an arm. “Fortification required before heavy lifting. Midday repast, everyone?
Le déjeuner?
Come along, Wee Willie, mustn’t miss lunch.

“Our bonnie lad’s strength exceeds his height tenfold,” he said to Edward. “Allow me to introduce you. Winkham is studying at the École de Médicine. I believe you practice in the inspiringly named Cincinnati?”

Edward met short Mr. Winkham’s long-suffering eye and liked him. “The
Doctor
was conferred on me by customers,” he said, as they shook hands. “I’m a dispensing pharmacist.”

“Do more good than many a quack with a diploma,” said Winkie. The two men fell easily into discussion of botanicals and synthetic alkaloids as they walked among the others.

The break ran longer than intended. Fourteen people walk slower than one; fourteen diners talk as well as eat. By the time they returned to the studio, two hours had elapsed. In the interim, the windows of the building had been boarded up from inside and Sonja’s padlock had been replaced by a new one. There were indignant calls for a mallet—“Two can play at this game!”—but Robbie stepped forward and crouched in front of the door. He took the lock in his left hand to test its weight and wiggled the fingers of his right hand.

“Ah, Jasper,” he said, with satisfaction, invoking the old reprobate who had taught him to poach. Without looking around, he held his hand palm up behind him. “Emily, dearest, a hatpin.”

“I haven’t got one.”

Jeanette saw Emily’s face close but was too excited to care. “Will this do?” she asked, pulling out one of hers. She felt the same gleeful recklessness as on the night she had impersonated Abigail McLeod—a compound of fear that they might be caught at any moment and an unquestioning certainty that it was in a good cause.

“Winkie, keep a look out,” said Robbie over his shoulder as he probed the lock delicately. Already he was absorbed in listening and feeling for subtle adjustments in its tumblers. Mr. Winkham and one of the burly sculptors slipped away to post themselves at the two approaches to the yard.

It was a stout padlock but simple in its mechanism; no trouble at all. Not to an experienced housebreaker, thought Edward. He knew that in principle, as a man of property, he ought to side with the landlord; as a longtime boarder, he did not. Men who profited on sties like this had to take their lumps, especially if they allowed rain to damage the means of a tenant’s livelihood. Moreover, license must be granted to anyone who could sculpt a portrait as alive as that bust of Miss Richardson. He was less sure about a license to pick locks, but Dolson did the job too quickly to allow time for scruples. The lock came off; the door was opened.

“Women inside, men out,” ordered a stonecutter whom Sonja had enlisted to help pull the carts. Edward’s seniority and limp exempted him from the human chain that quickly formed to bundle out Sonja’s possessions helter-skelter, but he took up a position beside the cart and pitched in to help straighten and pack things in more scientifically after they were hastily deposited.

From his watch post, Winkie gave a whistle and came hurrying back. His face expressed regret at ever having gotten mixed up in this prank. “Two henchmen with staves,” he reported to Robbie. “We’ve got to get Emily out of here.”

“That way,” nodded Robbie, in the direction the other guard was watching.

Too late. A man in a hairy checked suit and bowler hat with two toughs at his heels was in the yard. Robbie ducked inside to guard Emily as Sonja came to the door of the studio. Disdain rather than fear pursed her mouth. With her chin in the air, she pushed up a sleeve, sniffed loudly, and deliberately turned her back again, as if daring her antagonists to try to stop her from returning to work. She looked like she might duck around again to throw the first punch. Edward admired her courage and theatrical instincts but agreed with Mr. Winkham: With women involved, things must not be allowed to get out of hand.

“
Bonjour, monsieur
,” he said, pleasantly, coming forward from behind the cart. He halted at a little distance, which compelled the landlord to divert his eyes from the doorway. As Edward suspected, the presence of someone like himself was a surprise.

“
Qui est-ce c’singe à soie?
” one of the muscle men muttered. Who’s the swell?

Edward explained with deliberate calmness that he was a visitor to Paris who had heard through a friend that Mlle. Borealska was moving; he had been invited to come along to help. He had seen her work for the first time today. She was very good. It must have been a privilege to provide space to so talented an artist.

The landlord grimaced derisively. He had buildings full of talent such as this. Edward lifted his cane and pointed it over the man’s shoulder toward the wall of studio windows behind him. He bobbed the point of the cane lightly, controlling it with his forefinger and thumb: There, there, and there? he inquired.

A henchman shifted his staff from one hand to the other and started forward. Immediately, Edward swung the tip of the cane around at him and drilled him with a hard stare. Behind him, the burly stonecutter shifted weight. The landlord stretched out an arm to stop his men. A little bullying, a little rough stuff to force payment or confiscate goods was one thing. It was quite another to come up against a bigger crowd than he had bargained for and to find this
type
, someone entirely outside his reckoning. With a last warning gaze at the subordinate, Edward lowered his cane and said politely to the boss: “You were about to remark on your many tenants . . . ?”

“Cuckoos and cheats, most of them,” grumbled the man.

“But not Mlle. Borealska. I was on the point of offering her two hundred francs for a terra-cotta bust.” An astonished murmur ran through the yard. It was not a princely sum at a time when a new canvas by Meissonier sold for thirty thousand, but it could cover several months’ rent.

Only Sonja frowned. “If you think I pay
him
out of these two hundred francs, save your money.”

“On the contrary,
mademoiselle
, I was going to suggest that he negotiate to settle your differences by retaining a piece of your art. As an investment, I assure you,
monsieur
. I believe this lady’s work will rise in value—though not the water-damaged pieces, of course.”

The two men stared at each other. The landlord backed down, then reasserted himself. “If I wished to be a honey pot, I’d never lack for flies,” he grumbled. “They all try to barter their
crottes
for rent. I could open a gallery.”

“Which might prove amusing. But come now, admit that you would not be in this business if you did not care a little for artists—and you and I,
monsieur
, we could not stay in business at all if we did not know when to cut our losses.”

Whether a change in Edward’s tone was persuasive or the landlord had already arrived at the same conclusion, he suddenly gave way altogether. “
Eh, bien, Cosaque, va-t’en avant le coucher du soleil
,” he said, insulting her with the familiar
tu
. He turned heel. Be gone by sunset.

“Long before sunset!” Sonja jeered to his back, then added resentfully to her friends, who were crowding out: “Does he call me a Cossack,
me
?”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” said Amy, giving her a prod in the back. “Let’s finish up.”

“That was brilliant, sir,” said Robbie, reemerging from inside with a congratulatory hand held out to Edward. “Picking a lock is as nothing compared to picking a man’s pocket in broad view.”

It was not lost on Edward that under the cover of witty self-deprecation, Dolson was being offensive. Nor was it lost on Jeanette. It exasperated her that Robbie seemed to go out of his way to provoke people when he could be so likeable, but her overriding reaction, like everyone else’s, was admiration for Dr. Murer’s cool handling of the landlord.

“Oh, I’m so thankful you prevented trouble, Dr. Murer,” said Effie. “What a bad turn that could have been!”

“Is it true you want a sculpture of mine?” asked Sonja. “Or was that bluff? In either case, I thank you.”

“Not bluff at all. I do want one—and for the two hundred francs I named. If you agree to part with it, I would be honored to buy your portrait of Miss Richardson.”

“The bust of me!” exclaimed Amy.

“The one you were holding when I arrived,” said Edward. He turned back to Sonja. “It’s a remarkably lively piece, and I think it would please a friend of mine. Cornelia,” he added to Effie in an aside.

“Mrs. Renick,” Jeanette mouthed to Amy.

“I give it to you. No, no, I
give
it to you,” said Sonja, who saw that Edward was about to insist on paying. “It is only a study. You consider it, and if you desire later, you buy something else or commission a new piece.”

“Well, that’s very handsome of you,” said Edward. “My friend has been following your saga, and I think she will treasure the piece.”

“My face in Mrs. Marius Renick’s collection?” murmured Amy. “Well done, Sonja. For your work to be seen there is worth far more than two hundred francs.”

“Dr. Murer,” asked Jeanette, boldly, “do you think Mrs. Renick would like to have the artist and model deliver the piece?”

Effie yelped at her forwardness, but Edward thought it an excellent idea. “Now, Miss Pendergrast, you know how much she enjoys diversion of any sort. I think such a call would be most welcome.”

After that, the removal, which had always been planned as part escapade, part parade, turned into a high-spirited celebration. From a corner heap, Sonja produced a papier-mâché mask of Minerva to adorn the broom and set it atop one of the carts. The mask had a diadem of silver stars, and Emily brought out matching spangles for the ladies to wear. Other bits of costume were also distributed—Jeanette threw a glossy, if moth-eaten, satin shawl around her shoulders; Robbie donned a tricorn hat with a plume. Edward accepted a comically large rosette for his lapel. When they were ready to go, Sonja took the lead, bellowing a Polish marching song. Her burly friends pushed and pulled the carts-turned-float through the streets of the Left Bank. Along the way, a number of tagalongs and extras fell in, including a concertina player. When he launched into an Offenbach galop, Robbie took Jeanette by the hand to pull her in among the livelier members of the group, who were dancing variations on the can-can. He kicked high. She pranced and lifted an ankle to shake. Effie was not one of the dancers, nor Edward, who escorted her with a formal gallantry. But if he did not join in, he smiled broadly at the revelry; with that much approval to go on, Effie grinned, too, and marched along at her ease.

When they reached the impasse on the Rue Madame, Miss Reade was ready upstairs with a dozen bottles of Beaujolais. Miss Isobel had festooned the studio in paper chains. For the six-month trial, Mlle. Tourneau was subletting the apartment furnished, and from somewhere, platters of charcuterie, loaves of bread, and cheeses had appeared to be laid out on the dining room table. Sonja insisted that Effie and Edward go straight up and claim the sofa: “Miss Pendergrast, you find the apartment, and Dr. Murer, you save the day. We make you king and queen of the fête.” Everyone else carried up something, and a few of the new neighbors pitched in. Hauling everything up five flights of stairs was harder work than packing had been, but it went much faster. It was all done in less than an hour, whereupon a violinist from the building added his fiddle to the concertina. There was more impromptu dancing in the large studio and loud song. But as darkness fell, Amy lit candles and the mood became more sentimental; the fiddler’s tunes turned gypsy. It had been, as Effie had promised, a regular Latin Quarter ball.

*   *   *

“Oh, my dear,” said Cornelia to Edward, when she heard the story the following Monday, “how can I ever thank you for including me in the sequel?”