Paris Kiss (26 page)

Chapter 46

Villeneuve

May 1930

I looked at the name on the piece of paper Camille had given me. ‘I'm looking for Louis Claudel. He would be in his late twenties now.'

The young woman wiped floury hands on her apron and frowned. ‘There's no one here by that name, Madame.'

‘Are you sure? This is the address I was given, the cottage next to the priest's house in Villeneuve.'

She shook her head again and began to close the door. A man appeared behind her.

‘
Qui est là, Francine
?'

‘An English lady, asking for – who was it again?'

‘Louis Claudel. He would be about your age.'

He shrugged. ‘My name is Jean-Luc, this is my wife, Francine. No one else lives here apart from our daughter.'

I drooped. Camille's tale of a stolen child was one of her delusions, like being poisoned by Rodin's gang. I should have listened to William. I had been a fool to come all this way, a fool on a fool's errand. I turned to leave, the box still in my hands.

The young man put his hand on my shoulder and I turned to face him. ‘I'm sorry, you could try the big house outside the village. The family there are the Claudels. My grandmother used to work for them.'

I looked at him again, more carefully this time. He was nothing like Camille, but his chest was broad and his head jutted forward like a bull's. I tried to imagine him with a long, tangled beard, and dressed in a suit stained with clay. Was I clutching at straws to imagine he looked like Rodin?

He gestured me inside. ‘You look tired, Madame. Perhaps you would like to come in and rest and have a glass of wine? It's from our own vineyard.'

I followed him and his wife inside. The cottage was small but the copper pots above the sink gleamed and there were bunches of herbs hanging from the beams. A little girl was drawing at the scrubbed wooden table, her face a scowl of concentration. When she looked up her eyes were navy blue.

‘What's in the box?' she said.

‘Marianne, don't be nosy,' but her mother's voice was gentle as she smoothed the child's dark curls from her forehead.

I put the box on the table. ‘Would you like to see?'

Marianne knelt on her chair and I took out the bust and put it in front of her. A small hand, grubby with charcoal, reached out and ran over the contours of the plaster face.

She put her hands on her hips. ‘Can I have it?'

I picked up her drawing. I looked at her wide mouth and the tilt of her head and my heart contracted.

I nodded. ‘It's yours.'

Author's Note

Camille Claudel died on 19 October 1943 at Montdevergues Asylum after having lived there for thirty years.

Jessie Elbourne always insisted her friend had had a child by Rodin.

In 1951, Paul Claudel organised an exhibition of Camille's work at the
Musée Rodin
, which continues to display her sculptures. She was largely forgotten until a major retrospective of her work in 1984.

Paris Kiss
is inspired by real events, although I used dramatic licence to give Jessie a romantic involvement in Paris and for the women to befriend Rosa Bonheur, Toulouse-Lautrec and Suzanne Valadon, who were in Paris at the same time.

During my research, I consulted many books, too numerous to list here. They include:
Camille Claudel, A Life
by Odile Ayral-Clause;
Camille, The Life of Camille Claudel
by Reine-Marie Paris, translated by Liliane Emery Tuck;
Rodin, The Shape of Genius
by Ruth Butler;
Rodin, Eros and Creativity
,
edited by Rainer Crone and Siegfried Salzmann;
Women and Madness, The Incarceration of Women in Nineteenth-Century France
by Yannick Ripa;
A Wanderer in Paris
by E.V. Lucas;
Jessie: Study of an Artist
by Abi Pirani
(MA Thesis, University of York, 1987);
The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff
, translated by Mathilde Blind;
The Invention of the Model: Artists and Models in Paris, 1830–1870
by Susan Waller;
Women Artists: a Graphic Guide
by Frances Borzello and Natacha Ledwidge;
Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail
by Lucy Johnson with Marion Kite and Helen Persson.

Acknowledgements

I could not have written
Paris Kiss
without my husband Michael who gave me the time, encouragement and confidence I needed.

I'm grateful to my agent Jenny Brown who believed in
Paris Kiss
enough to see me through several rewrites, and to Sara Hunt of Saraband and editor Ali Moore for their expertise and sensitivity.

I'm indebted, too, to the staff on the University of Glasgow's Creative Writing Department for the generosity with which they shared their craft and knowledge. Thank you Laura Marney, Elizabeth Reeder, Zoe Strachan, Kei Miller and Michael Schmidt.

Every author needs readers, so a big thanks to Carmen Reid for her insights, and for the unstinting support, wisdom and laughter I found at G2 Writers, with special thanks to George Craig and Philip Murnin.

About the author

A journalist, Maggie Ritchie graduated with distinction from the University of Glasgow's MLitt in Creative Writing. She won the Curtis Brown Prize for
Paris Kiss
and was shortlisted for the Sceptre Prize and the Mslexia Novel Competition.

Maggie lives in Scotland with her family. You can follow her on Twitter
@MallonRitchie
.

Copyright

Published by Saraband,

Suite 202, 98 Woodlands Road,

Glasgow, G3 6HB

Scotland

www.saraband.net

Copyright © Maggie Ritchie 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN: 9781908643780

ebook: 9781908643797

Publication of this book has been supported by Creative Scotland.

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