Paris Kiss (9 page)

Chapter 14

It was gloomy in the museum after the brightness outside. I stopped a sigh and tried not to think about an afternoon cooped up with bones and stones. But when we stopped at a glass case full of rocks, I was surprised to see how beautiful they were, split open like pomegranates to reveal whorls of astonishing purples, pinks and blues.

William leaned in for a closer look at an agate. ‘Look, Jess, crystals, forged by unthinkable heat in the very belly of the earth. The Greeks weren't so far off the mark when they imagined Hephaestus hammering away underground – no man-made forge could create these gemstones.' He was filled with awe in the same way I was when looking at one of the Masters. William was passionate about unravelling the mysteries of the physical world and like many men of science in those days, he wrote poetry, exploring the wonders of the universe in verse as well as with beakers and experiments. Much as I admired his fervour, after the fourth case of agates – none much different from the other as far as I could tell – I stifled a yawn. When William fell into conversation with another chemist, I realised that a long scientific debate was about to ensue. I'd heard too many of those and I wasn't about to endure another. Not in Paris.

I started to move away. ‘If you'll excuse me, I want to sketch some of the animals in the menagerie.'

‘I'll find you there,' said William, turning back to his discussion about the saponification of fats.

There were already some artists at work at the
Fauverie
,
the cages where the big cats – their pelts bedraggled and eyes dulled – paced back and forwards in the tight enclosures. A lion lay panting in the heat, one giant paw protruding between the bars. Its spine was arched and quite different from Landseer's lions in Trafalgar Square, which have dipped backs like crouching greyhounds. At such close quarters, the wild civet smell from the wet straw was overpowering. A chimpanzee from the monkey house began to shriek dementedly and throw itself against the bars. Menageries are invaluable for teaching us about animals we would not otherwise see, but I've never liked the thought of a wild creature trapped in a cage, aand the screeching monkey and the frenzied pacing of the big cats were too much for me. I tore off my gloves and felt my brow. It was clammy.

I began to faint but felt an arm go round my waist as someone caught me. ‘Jessie, Jessie,
qu'est-ce-que tu as
? You are so pale. Are you unwell?'

A tang of lemon verbena cologne sharpened the air. A face came into focus, brow furrowed and lips so close I could feel their breath on my cheek.

‘Georges, what are you doing here?' I said.

‘Rosa – who else? – dragged me to this appalling place. I find this obsession of hers with the animals tiresome.' Georges placed a cool brown hand on my forehead. ‘You look a little better now. It must have been the heat in here.' He still had his arm about my waist and I leaned into him gratefully.

‘What little butterfly have you trapped now,
mon vieux
? Jessie, is that you?' Once more, Rosa broke the spell of our embrace. She waved away the small knot of curious artists. ‘
Allons-y
, move aside you lot. Give the girl room to breathe.'

I had recovered enough to be amused by today's outfit on Rosa: jodhpurs, a tweed hacking jacket, riding boots and whip, her short hair tucked under a flat cap. She looked as if she'd left her horse tied up outside.

When Rosa dispersed the crowd, I could see William hurrying towards us and stepped away from Georges.

‘Jessie,' William said. ‘One of the attendants who spotted us together earlier told me you had fainted in the menagerie. Are you all right? What happened?'

‘Don't fuss, I felt a little queasy, that's all. Silly of me, I'm not given to fainting in coils like Alice's Mock Turtle. Dearest, these are two of my new friends.'

When he heard the endearment, Georges shoved his hands in his pockets and grimaced.

Rosa stepped forward and put out her hand. ‘Rosa Bonheur.'

William looked confused.

Rosa laughed. ‘Don't know whether to kiss it or shake it, eh? With our friend Georges, however, there can be no room for doubt.' She slapped Georges on the back and he coughed and looked annoyed.

Georges took his hands out of his pockets. With a bow that was barely perceptible, he clicked his heels.

William looked amused. ‘Ah, you're a military man, I see. My uncle is in the Diehards. He's never taken to the new name – The Middlessex – insists on calling it the 57th. But I don't suppose that'll mean much to you chaps over here?'

I elbowed him, more sharply than necessary. ‘William, Monsieur Duchamp is an artist, not a soldier.'

Georges brushed a piece of invisible lint from his sleeve. ‘Jessie is right. No regiment in its right mind would have me. I've picked up some rather irritating affectations from a Cossack with whom I share an
atelier
. But the Russians aren't all bad. Where we would be without their exquisite caviar, after all?'

Not only had Georges used my first name, casually, but, to my horror, he also winked at me when he mentioned the caviar. Thankfully, William didn't seem to pick up on Georges' outrageous behaviour, because he smiled pleasantly and shook his hand.

‘William Elbourne. You're clearly a friend of, er, Jessie.'

Georges took out his cigarette case and offered it to William, who shook his head. He took his time fiddling with matches and exhaling. ‘This place is getting on my nerves,' Georges said. He waved his hand wearily and I wondered what William would make of him. He hated affectations of any kind and I could see a frown appear between his eyes. ‘I can't believe I let Rosa talk me into coming here. May I suggest a little champagne to revive the ladies? There is a delightful little bistro on the quai Saint-Bernard.'

William put his arm around me with such a proprietary air that I had to resist the urge to shake him off. An odd thing was happening: the more insouciant and French an air Georges affected, the more uptight and English William became. They were both being impossible.

‘I'm afraid we don't have time,' William said in a clipped voice I didn't recognise. ‘We're expected shortly at Jessie and Camille's
atelier
.'

But Georges was not to be deterred. Rosa was right about his love of the chase – William's presence on the field only seemed to sharpen his appetite for me.

‘We'll come with you, won't we Rosa?' he said. ‘I'm absolutely consumed with desire to see Jessie's work.'

Rosa tapped her boot with her whip. ‘I too must admit to a certain curiosity. Jessie has hidden depths we'd both to like to explore, eh Georges?' She winked at me and I shook my head at her, furious at her indiscretion. ‘In a strictly professional sense, of course,' she said with an innocent smile at William. ‘Besides, Auguste is always talking about the genius of Camille, his little pot of gold he discovered.
Alors
, no more chit-chat! To the
atelier
, my dear Monsieur Elbourne,
tout de suite!
' She grabbed William's arm and marched him away. William looked over his shoulder at me with a helpless look.

I laughed and called after him, ‘There's no use fighting, William – Rosa has a will of iron. You go with her; I'm feeling much better now anyway.'

Georges smirked and took my arm. ‘Don't worry, Elbourne, I'll look after Jessie.' I pulled away and glowered at him. I was not a toy to be snatched from another child.

We walked through the reptile house where coiled and looped snakes flicked their tongues and crested lizards lay fatly on rocks. A turtle poked its nostrils at us from a foul-smelling terrarium and a black and yellow spotted snake spiralled slowly beside it in the cloudy water. The stench was appalling and I was glad to come out the other side. The Seine ran swiftly past and a cool breeze carried its river smell to us. We stopped at a small enclosure where moth-eaten yaks and bison mournfully chewed the cud, gazing at us with big, stupid eyes.

‘It's like being watched by gaping onlookers while you paint,' Georges said with a shudder.

Rosa climbed up and leaned her elbows on the railing and made a kissing sound. One of the beasts ambled over and she scratched its mighty head. ‘We ate some of these during the Paris Siege,' she said. ‘The mob broke in here and carted off anything that looked remotely like a cow or a horse. Zebra
en daube
became quite a feature in Parisian households for a while.' Some people walking past turned their heads and frowned at her flippant remarks.

‘Lower your voice, Rosa, no one talks about those times,' Georges said. ‘Do you want to get us lynched?'

‘Georges, don't be a bore. I lived through it so I've earned the right to joke. What are you getting your pantaloons in a knot about? You weren't even born then, pretty boy.' She gave the bison a final pat and jumped down. ‘Let's find a cab. Jessie still looks a little pale, and she's so quiet, she can't have recovered fully.'

William hailed a cab with one arm and reclaimed me from Georges with the other. They were as bad as each other. I shook him off and climbed up myself. When the cab arrived at the studio an argument began between William and Georges, as they vied to pay the fare. I left them to it and ran up the stairs to the studio. The door was locked so I had to use my key to enter. When I pulled back the curtain that separated the marble studio from the clay studio, I froze.

Chapter 15

Camille was pinned to a wall by a man, her bare legs wrapped around his back, her ankles crossed where her high, buttoned boots began. He groaned and called her name. I recognised the voice at once. How dare he touch my beautiful Camille? I was filled with a molten jealousy that rose up from my core and erupted as I shouted his name: ‘Rodin!'

They stopped and looked at me. I clapped my hand over my mouth and stared back at them. There were voices in the stairwell; I knew Rosa wouldn't turn a hair, but the men would be shocked, or worse. Camille would be ruined. I had to act quickly.

I called down: ‘Could you go back and catch the cabby? I think I've left my favourite gloves on the seat.' Footsteps clattered down the stone steps and I heard Rosa whistling and shouting in the street. I pulled back the curtains again.

Camille was calmly working on a sculpture. Rodin stood in the shadows, both hands on his cane, watching her.

I pulled off my gloves and tucked them into my sleeves. ‘I'm sorry we're early.'

Camille did not look up from her work. ‘Did the others see?'

‘No.'

She came over to me and put her arms around my waist. ‘
Merci
, Jessie,
merci
.' Her curls had come undone from the knot on top of her head. I smoothed them from her eyes and shook her skirts free of dust, like a maid of honour attending to a bride. The curtain moved and we turned to face it, side by side. William stepped into the room. He must have sensed the tension in the air and he looked at us for a long moment.

‘No sign of your gloves, Jessie, I'm afraid. Camille, lovely to see you again.'

‘Hello, William,' she said with a warm smile. ‘There is someone I want you to meet.'

Rodin emerged from the shadows.

Chapter 16

I still have the photographs William took that day in the
atelier
, preserved under tissue paper in an album alongside postcards of Paris, with passes to the Louvre and the Luxembourg Museum and a lock of Camille's hair tied with a faded navy ribbon. William had brought his pride and joy – one of the new portable Kodaks – and took pictures of Camille and me working and later on a break with our chipped cups of tea and cigarettes. He had shown me how to work the camera and I took a picture of Rodin's reflection in a mirror that hung in our studio. I wish I'd kept that photograph, but I sent it to Rodin years later.

The noisy arrival of Rosa and Georges and their idiotic banter had eased the tension. Rodin and William hit it off immediately and were soon laughing and slapping each other on the back and calling each other ‘my dear fellow'. I was gratified at first, but the heartier and louder they grew, the more I began to resent William's intrusion. Rodin was my tutor and this was my time, my place. This was my and Camille's studio but they were treating it more like a man's club. Georges had passed around cigars and they were all puffing away, Rosa included. Any minute now I expected a steward to come out with a tray of brandies and ask Camille and me to step into the ladies' sitting room.

‘A scientist?' Rodin was saying to William with his arm around him. ‘I find this extremely interesting. We are both fascinated, you see, by the physical world, how the body works, how light plays on a surface, by density and perspective – it's all there in the natural world. I adore scientists – science is at the core of everything we do, don't you find?' William nodded eagerly and I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. Camille didn't seem to mind this show of male camaraderie and was listening to them intently as she perched on a stool and worked on a piece of clay. Rodin was in full flow and talking about Darwin now. ‘I believe that Monsieur Darwin is right – we are animals with animal instincts and we must procreate or die; it is the urge that drives us. After all, what is sculpture but the art of the hole and the lump?'

Georges coughed on his cigar smoke and looked at me, his eyebrows raised. I shook my head slightly at him. I wasn't shocked but, perversely, I liked him being worried about me. William, on the other hand, was so entranced by his new friend that he merely gazed at Rodin in wonder, nodding enthusiastically in that irritating way young men suck up to older men.

‘It's always a pleasure to meet a fellow Darwinian, sir,' he said, and this time I rolled my eyes.

Rodin planted a loud kiss on the side of William's face and beamed at me. ‘I like this man, Jessie. Once again you have demonstrated you have excellent judgement. Monsieur Elbourne, I'd like to hear your opinion on the work here.' William looked bashful for a moment and I ground my teeth.

‘I'm no judge, of course, but I would like to see Jessie's work.' He looked at me steadily. ‘I'm keen to find out what you've been up to in Paris.'

I returned his look, keeping my expression neutral. ‘You must look at Camille's work first,' I said. ‘You're familiar with mine already.'

Georges had been listening. ‘
Hein,
Elbourne, why don't you try to guess which work is by Jessie and which is Camille's?'

William loved a challenge. He nodded at Georges. ‘You're on.'

‘Let's see you try. I'll bet you ten francs I can tell which is which better than you,' Georges said.

‘Let's make it twenty. I know my Jess.'

Camille came to stand beside me. ‘This is ridiculous,' she whispered to me.

‘Absurd, isn't it? Let them have their childish game. I wonder if they'll be able to pick out our styles,' I said.

She shrugged. ‘That should be easy.'

Rodin laughed. ‘A bet, excellent!' He gestured with his stick at my mother and child group. ‘What is your verdict?'

William didn't hesitate. ‘This is yours, Jessie.'

He walked around my mother and child group. ‘This is definitely Jessie's. The woman's expression is tender and the infant trusting, most affecting. The detail is so exact you would think they were about to move. Am I right?'

I nodded and Georges scowled.

William moved to the two busts of Giganti shrouded in damp cloths. I unwound them and he looked from one to the other.

‘I'm sorry, Jess,' he said, shaking his head. ‘For the life of me, I can't say which one is yours.'

‘They are pretty rough,' I said. ‘It's impossible to tell them apart at this stage.'

Georges stepped forward. ‘Impossible? Not for a fellow artist who knows Jessie's work so intimately. This one is by the hand of Mademoiselle Lipscomb. It's obvious,' Georges said.

I was astonished. How did Georges know? Perhaps he was right and we did share a special bond.

Rodin whistled. ‘Well, well, young Duchamp, I'm impressed. Even I could not tell one from the other.' He turned to William. ‘This is why I took him on at my studio in rue de l'Université – he has the keenest eye in Paris.'

Georges smiled and it was William's turn to frown. Rodin led William away to another part of the studio where Rosa was peering at one of Camille's nudes. ‘I take it you've already met the formidable Madame Bonheur,' he said.

Left alone with Georges, I kept my eyes on Giganti's feline smile. ‘How did you know it was mine?'

‘It was the way you were standing next to it, as if to protect it from the viewers. It's a dead giveaway for a card player like me.' Georges winked at me and I punched his arm. He caught my fingers and whispered my name. ‘Jessie, my love, this is agony for me, to see you with another man.'

I pulled free but he looked so pained I touched the back of his hand lightly before moving over to the group gathered around Camille's piece.

Rosa was saying, ‘Exquisite. It would be even more so in marble.'

‘I've picked out a piece from the depot
already,' Camille said. ‘A piece of snowy Cararra, only lightly veined.'

‘Mademoiselle Claudel is the most instinctive stone carver I have come across,' Rodin said. ‘She's far more skilled with marble than I, making the first cut without hesitation. Rosa is right – marble will transform this peasant girl into a nymph.' His hand swept down the curve of the clay figure's back and came to rest on her waist. He smiled at William. ‘My eyesight is poor but to appreciate a woman, the hands are better, don't you agree, Monsieur Elbourne?'

‘Why don't you ask Rosa?' he said with a laddish grin; I wanted to throttle him.

‘Mademoiselle Lipscomb, where did you find this man?' Rodin said. ‘You must let me borrow him. I have some business that takes me to Montmartre. And every red-blooded man who comes to Paris must go to Montmartre. What do you say – are you game?'

‘Well, Jess, am I to be let off the leash?'

William had hardly set foot in Paris and he was heading off to the notorious fleshpots of Montmartre. He was no better than all the other Englishmen who flocked to the cabarets to gawk at cancan girls flashing their bloomers. It was typical of William to be swept up by the prospect of an adventure. And the worst of it was that I'd kill to get the chance to go to Montmartre, to see the bohemian quarter where all the latest, most daring artists and writers met. All this was going on in Paris, right under my nose, but because I was a respectable woman, I wasn't allowed near it. I was furious with William for having that chance instead of me, and going off with Georges, Rodin and Rosa, leaving Camille and I behind like children in the nursery while the grown-ups went out to play. But I was damned if I was going to show him he'd hurt me. Besides, I was also itching to be left alone with Camille to confront her about what I'd seen. I passed my hand over my eyes – I couldn't get the image of them together out of my mind. William was still waiting to hear my response and I tried to remember why I was angry with him. Montmartre, that was right. I shrugged the way Camille did when she was being cuttingly dismissive.

‘You go, I have work to do here,' I said.

Rodin took Georges and William by the arm. ‘It's settled then. We'll throw a bachelor party for our new English friend, eh Duchamp? You're coming too, of course. But Rosa – don't even think about it.'

Rosa was already pulling on her gloves. ‘If you think you can get rid of me that easily, Auguste, think again
.
I've drunk you under the table many a time in our youth, and I'll do it again tonight.'

‘I suppose there are stranger sights in Montmartre than La Bonheur,' Rodin said.

‘But if the
gendarmes
catch her with her hands up a
cocotte's
skirts,' Georges said, ‘she's on her own.'

The three men and Rosa laughed and moved to the door.

William grabbed his hat and blew me a kiss. ‘See you at the Gare du Nord tomorrow, before my train goes.'

‘Don't forget your camera,' I said, holding it out to him. ‘You'll want a record of your adventure.'

He missed the sarcasm in my voice.

‘Thanks, Jess, you're a good sport.'

He ran out of the studio with the others and I turned to face Camille. It was time she told me the truth about Rodin.