The Restoration Artist (16 page)

From the far side of the courtyard, music started up again, accordion and fiddle. Under the red and green lanterns, figures were coming together in a waltz. A grog station had been set up near the grill, where the local men were pouring hot water from a battered old kettle into clay cups of Calvados and topping these with a cube of sugar. Père Caron lit a hand-rolled Caporal and the smell of the black tobacco mingled pleasantly with all the other aromas. The moon drifted into sight behind the farmhouse, full and round and yellow.

“What about it,
chérie
?” Daubigny said to Lorca, nodding towards the musicians. “Shall we join in again?”

“You go ahead. I want to digest my meal.”

“I think I will. It’s not often I get to make music in such rustic surroundings.” He took up his violin from where he’d placed it on a vacant chair and left the company with another little formal bow.

“Armand usually plays at the Salle Pleyel,” Jeanette DuPlessis said. “He leads the Orchestre de Paris.” Leaning across the table she touched Lorca’s hand. “And Lorca is his star soloist.”

“Or his second fiddle.” There was a note of bitterness in her voice. “But he won’t ever play the compositions I write.”

“He will, he will. That is why you must finish your new piece.”

“My unfinished
Nocturne for Lovers
?” She stood abruptly, steadying herself on the chair back. “I think I will dance now with Mr. Millar instead.”

“Of course.” I moved around the table and let her take
my arm. “Excuse us, please,” I said to Madame DuPlessis and Père Caron.

On the edge of the paving where the lantern light was soft, she placed her hand in mine and let me draw her close around the waist. That hour I’d spent with her in her cottage, in her bed, had become dreamlike in my recollection, as if it were something that I had longed for and imagined, but that had not really taken place.

I’d left angry with her, and I’d left the island disillusioned with myself. But being in Paris had given me some clarity and I felt that I’d come back with a better perspective. I had told myself that I was coming back for Tobias; there was no reason to have expected that Lorca would still be on the island, although I had just assumed it. Now, holding her in my arms again brought back such an intense physical feeling that it was all I could do not to kiss her right there in front of everybody.

I glanced over her shoulder and saw her husband with the musicians, and my desire was replaced with the need for some answers.

“How long has he been here?”

“Since yesterday,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Is he staying with you in La Maison du Paradis?”

“I told you I was married, Leo.” She was silent a moment, then said, “He’s staying at the hotel. They both are, even though the house I’m in belongs to Jeanette.”

We passed under the coloured lanterns strung overhead, her face ruddy, then green, then orange, and back into the flickering candlelight on the edge of the dance floor.

“Why is he here?” I asked. “To take you back?”

She laughed. “To make sure I’m not drinking and smoking
too much. To make sure I haven’t fallen into the ocean. I’m supposed to be composing.”

“Is he staying long?”

“They are leaving tomorrow afternoon.”

Père Caron passed us, protesting as Ester Chauvin led him among the dancers. We moved back into the shadows again.

She said, “Why did you smear paint all over my portrait and then just leave without a word? Was I that cruel to you?” I didn’t answer and she continued, “I’m sorry for what I said, about your wife.”

“Did it mean anything to you? Being with me.”

“Of course it did.” Then she shook her head. “The whole thing is so complicated, Leo. For you as well as for me.”

“Are you going back with him?” I asked.

“I thought you had left for good. I looked for you, in the chapel and at your house. Nobody knew where you were these past few days.”

“It wasn’t me who disfigured your portrait. I’m pretty sure it was Tobias.”

“Tobias? But why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he saw us together. Maybe he was jealous.”

She laughed, but with irony. “All these jealous men!”

“Have you seen Tobias around at all? Has he come back to play your clarinet?”

“Yes, actually. Once. I let him play a bit. He didn’t stay long.”

“Well, it’s obvious then that his anger was directed at me and not you.”

We took another turn around the dance floor.

“Where did you go?” she asked. “To Paris?”

“I had to buy paints. And take care of a few other things.”

Linda and Victor from the hotel swirled by light-footedly.
“Bonsoir
, Leo!
Bonsoir
, madame.” I nodded to them.

I pulled her close again so that the softness of her body was against me. Her mouth brushed my cheek. Across the dance floor, Armand Daubigny was concentrating on the other musicians, seemingly unaware that his wife was dancing with me.

“I want to see you, Lorca. Tomorrow.”

“I need to sit down for a minute,” she said. “I’m a little dizzy.”

“Come to my cottage in LeBec,” I said.

She shook her head. “No,” she said in a low voice.

“I want you.”

She glanced over my shoulder towards the musicians. “Oh, Leo.” Her eyes searched my face. “All right. But not in the village. And don’t come to my house.” She thought a moment. “I’ll meet you at the lighthouse. Tomorrow at eleven.” Her hand briefly slipped into mine, squeezed, and then she moved around the table and sat down next to Madame DuPlessis.

I didn’t remain much longer. The fatigue of the long journey had caught up with me and it was all I could do to suppress my yawns. When I saw Armand Daubigny approaching the table, mopping his brow with a blue handkerchief, I said good night and walked home, hearing the fading rhythms of the fiddle and accordion coming across fields of corn and wheat bright under the moon.

She had said it was complicated, and I realized that I was on the verge of complicating things even further, possibly even bringing pain to all of us. But it didn’t matter. I wanted the moon to fade and the sun to rise and bring morning, so that I could go to her again.

I
N THE MORNING, THE BEDROOM SHUTTERS WERE
rattling from a wind and the room was chilly. Pulling on jeans and a thick wool sweater, I hurried downstairs and got a fire going. From the stone jug on the counter I drank two glasses of water in quick succession, then lit the stove to make coffee.

Once the coffee had bubbled up in the percolator and the room was aromatic with the scent of the strong brew and the pine cones were crackling in the fireplace, I opened the seaward-side windows. Beyond the harbour, where the masts of the fishing boats were jerking from side to side above the quay, the sea was slate grey, rough with broken spume whipping off the waves, and the sky was only marginally lighter than the water, grey on grey.

I looked at my watch. Too early for my rendezvous with Lorca at the lighthouse. Would she even come in this weather?

And what of Tobias? I knew I had disappointed him in some way, but I had no real idea what he expected from me. Neither did I know exactly what Père Caron had communicated
to him about painting lessons. His removing his little flower picture and defacing the sketch of Lorca were obvious signs of anger, though. Maybe he was just jealous of me having another attachment. Piero had been like that for a period. Whenever visitors came to the apartment he would glue himself to Claudine, wanting to sit in her lap, or hang onto her hand, demanding attention. But I would make it up to Tobias.

I dressed for the weather in a woollen hat and a fisherman’s raincoat that I’d found hanging in the wardrobe. The air was moist as I made my way along the route des Matelots and down the path from the ridge that overlooked the chapel, wet air blowing in from the sea and mixing with the drizzle falling from the grey sky. Towards the horizon a threatening bank of cloud was slowly spreading. I wondered if it would reach La Mouche, and if it would be a passing squall or a full storm.

A light was on in the chapel. I halted at the top of the path, surprised, studying the white glow framed in the windows. Other than during Sunday Mass, the building was mine alone and not even Père Caron disturbed me. My first hope was that Lorca had come to meet me. But that made no sense when we had a rendezvous in an hour on the other side of the island. It was probably the priest, come to attend to some business or other. I hoped it might be him since there was something important I needed to discuss.

With my head bent against the wind, I hurried across the causeway. I opened the door into the light and the familiar smells of stone and oil paint to find Armand Daubigny standing in front of the big canvas. He turned towards me.

“Bonjour,”
he said. He was wearing tweed trousers and sturdy boots and a thigh-length brown leather coat. A plaid
scarf was knotted around his neck and he wore a soft cap on his head. Very much the country gentleman, I thought.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Daubigny said, waving a hand at the painting. “Père Caron told me about your intention to redecorate the chapel and I was curious.”

“I’m hardly proposing to redecorate. Mostly I’m making an attempt to restore that painting.”

“Ah yes, the Asmodeus. He mentioned it.” He crouched and looked at the area I had cleaned, the woman and the man revealed now, as if illuminated by a beam of light in their landscape of darkness.

“‘Love and the Pilgrim,’” I said.

“And which is which?” Daubigny asked, looking up at me, holding my glance a moment. He turned back to the painting. “But then, we are all pilgrims when it comes to love.”

He rose to his feet and moved over to the other painting, the big one I was working on, a building and two figures, one of them partly erased. He leaned forward as if trying to discern the identity of the face hidden in the smudges of charcoal. And then he saw the small portrait of Lorca, which still had the smear of red across it.

Standing with his hands behind his back he bent and studied the portrait. “Well. Unusual. And is my wife to be your model?”

When he glanced up at me, I shrugged.

“It’s very lifelike,” Daubigny said. “But you’re not pleased with it?” He pointed at the red streak.

“I didn’t do that. A local boy is responsible.”

“Ah yes, Lorca mentioned a mute boy. Something of a tragic figure.”

I tilted the picture so that it caught the light better. “Of course, I haven’t been totally accurate in this rendition of Lorca,” I said.

“How so?”

“I didn’t paint the black eye she had when I first met her.”

He laughed.

“I don’t see the joke,” I said.

“Did she tell you that I gave her that black eye?”

I glared at him. He held up his hands defensively. “I don’t blame you for wanting to beat me up, Monsieur Millar, assuming that you do, but before it comes to that, I should tell you that Lorca got that black eye from walking into a lamp post.”

“Isn’t that what your type always says? That or a cupboard door. Why should I believe you and not her?”

“She was drunk, Monsieur Millar. It happened outside a restaurant, Bofinger. We had just left dinner.”

I shook my head, disbelieving.

“It was witnessed by the manager of the restaurant, and two of the waiters who were seeing us off.” My face must have showed my skepticism. “Next time you are in Paris you can go and ask them,” Daubigny said. “Bofinger is on rue de la Bastille. I am known there. My wife and I dine there often.”

“I know where it is. I live nearby.”

“In fact,” he said, “why don’t you ask Lorca again?”

If what he said was true, why would she invent such a lie?

“I don’t know how well you know Lorca, Monsieur Millar—not well I suspect, since she has only been here a short time—but you might have noticed she likes a drink.”

I remained silent, noncommittal.

“Alcohol gives her solace. And sometimes she overestimates her need for consolation.” He stepped past me. “There never was a jazz musician by the way. Or an affair.” At the door, he turned and said, “You won’t be the first young man to become infatuated with Lorca, Monsieur Millar. She is one of those ‘dramatic’ women. But I wonder if you will be able to cope with her demons.” He buttoned his jacket and made a half bow. “
Au
revoir
. Good luck with your picture.”

I was left with the sound of the wind and the hissing of the oil lamp. I felt out of my depth, like an actor alone on the stage not knowing what his role is, what his lines are. Was Lorca playing some sort of complicated game with her husband, and I was the unwitting pawn?

Pushing back the sleeve of my raincoat, I looked at my watch. Almost eleven. I hurried from the chapel.

T
HE LIGHTHOUSE STOOD ON THE NORTHWESTERN
tip of La Mouche. I had only been past it once, on my initial exploration of the island. To reach it, I retraced my steps along the route des Matelots in the direction of LeBec, then turned off along the path marked L
E
C
IRCUIT DU
P
HARE
. As the track rose I could see to my left the fields and buildings of Manoir de Soulles. All the cattle were huddled in a corner of one field, sheltering under the spreading boughs of the oaks. The light was fading, although it was only mid-morning, and the landscape was almost monochrome, trees and fields and buildings painted in tones of muted green grey. Green umber, I thought, automatically selecting in my mind the key pigment I would use if I were to paint the scene.

The path veered away to the shore, bringing the ocean into view. Beyond the long empty beach, the water was a dark green, almost black, the sky now a solid wall of cloud. Terns and gulls wheeled above the sand, their cries plaintive.

The lighthouse came into view, its rotating yellow lantern a feeble gleam against the immensity of the black sky. The building was a cylinder of stone blocks with the light contained in a green-painted lantern house at the top. A gallery enclosed by iron railings, painted red, circled the base. I walked right around the tower and tried the door. Locked. Since there was no keeper’s cottage, I assumed the light was automated. A glance at my watch showed that it was ten minutes past eleven. Would she come?

I paced back and forth in front of the lighthouse, anger rising when I thought of what Daubigny had told me. I was a fool to let myself be toyed with this way. I imagined myself shouting at her, demanding that she explain herself. I imagined myself slapping her. Then I was ashamed of the notion. Jealousy was making my thoughts bitter.

Finding a spot that was sheltered from the wind, I sat down with my back against the stone of the tower. Gusts of wet air wafted in from the ocean, the dark sea heaved and broke, booming on the shore. I looked at my watch again.

Far along the shore I glimpsed a figure. I got up quickly and hurried down the slippery steps. A sudden, low flash of lightning creased the sky, bleaching everything in a magnesium flair of impossibly white light. Then the sky broke and the deluge came, bending the dune grass and pockmarking the sand. I ran towards her.

I was close enough now to see her face and I felt my heart turn over in my chest. The rain battered down as I reached her, and I grabbed her hand, pulling her towards a derelict boat upended near the dunes. Her black hair framed her face in wet tendrils like seaweed and her sodden dress was plastered
against her body. She didn’t even have a raincoat, just a light cotton windbreaker against the stinging needles of rain. On hands and knees we scurried under the hull and crawled onto a heap of old fishing nets half buried in the sand.

Lorca leaned against the shell of the boat, pulling her knees up to her chest, breathing hard. Neither of us spoke. Anger had been welling in me since I’d left the chapel and perhaps she saw it in my face. There was a kind of fear in her eyes. Her pupils were round and shining. My heart softened.

“You’re soaking wet,” I said, slipping out of my raincoat and spreading it flat. “Sit here.” Reaching into my pocket I took out a handkerchief and wiped her face. There were goose-bumps along her bare legs.

I pulled off my sweater. “Put this on.” My shirt had come loose and she scrambled to me, thrusting her icy hands under the cloth, up around my back. I awkwardly tried to fold the sweater over her.

I held her trembling shoulders, felt her wet hair against my cheek. My hands searched her face and my fingers ran over her features like a blind man exploring. When I found her lips I bent my head and kissed her, tasting there the salt of the ocean. Her hands were under my shirt again, moving across my chest as if seeking out the warm beating life in me. Silent lightning flashed, illuminating the ribs of the boat, throwing shadows onto the bleached wood. Then we heard the thunder, and the rain drummed furiously on the boat’s hull, the old wood creaking and rocking in the wind. We were buffeted and thrown, our grasps urgent, her breath loud against my ear, her skin white in the blue flashes of lightning between sand and hull.

The storm broke in us.

I
LISTENED
to the dripping of water running down the sides of the boat. Lorca was still asleep, curled up in the crook of my arm. The musk of our bodies mingled with the smell of the sea.

“The rain has stopped,” I murmured, waking her.

Lorca sat up and reached for her dress, grimaced to find it still damp, and pulled it on. We scrambled out from under the boat. A slash of clear blue sky showed in the purple clouds. The ocean breathed in long gentle swells. On the shoreline a solitary long-legged curlew skittered across the damp sand. Lorca took out her cigarettes and lit one.

I watched her smoke, and when she looked over at me, I said, “I spoke to your husband this morning. In the chapel.”

“Ah.”

“He saw the portrait I did of you.”

“Mmm.”

My earlier anger came back in a rush. “He told me that he never did hit you, that you got that black eye from walking into a lamp post. He said you were drunk.”

She laughed.

“Is it true?”

“Yes. It was just like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie.”

“Why did you tell me that he beat you? That you were having an affair with a jazz musician?”

Taking her time, she extinguished her cigarette by pushing it into the sand until it was buried. Then a shrug. “Maybe I wanted to scare you off,” she said.

“Am I part of a little game the two of you are playing? King versus Queen, Pawn in the middle?”

“No,” she said emphatically, twisting round to face me. “It’s not like that.”

“Was there a jazz musician?”

“No. I made that up.” She ran both hands through her hair. “It sounds stupid now.”

“He said I wouldn’t be the first young man to become infatuated with you.”

“I don’t have affairs, Leo.”

“So what am I?”

“You’re something else.” A small repentant smile on her face, a look of tenderness.

“Your husband also asked me if I would be able to cope with your demons. What did he mean by that?” I took her hand and touched my fingers across the underside of her wrist, feeling the slight difference in texture where the white scars ran. “This?”

She pulled her hand away, grasped a handful of the fine white sand and, holding it tight in her fist, let the grains trickle out in a thin stream. Opening her hand, she blew the last grains from her palm.

“I was his student. Students fall in love with their teachers. It’s a cliché, no? Distinguished and accomplished older man, impressionable young woman. Ambitious too. We hit it off musically. Eventually I was promoted, so to speak, and he gave me a place in the orchestra.” She glanced up at me sharply. “I was good enough. Better than that, even. Well, to make the story short, we married and lived happily ever after.”

“Except?”

She gave a long sigh and shook her head. “I’ve always been under his spell in a way. Hard not to be with a man like that—talented, charismatic, cultured, famous in his field. I’ve become trapped in that orchestra. I’ve always wanted to compose. I do compose, but what I write is not for the Orchestre de Paris. Armand is of the old school—a musician should become technically perfect and stick to the known repertoire. He’s looked at my compositions, even advised me on them, but he’s never offered to play a single one. Nobody takes a woman composer seriously. Maybe I’m no good. I have no confidence in that regard.”

“Why don’t you leave? The orchestra, I mean. Find other musicians to play your work.”

“It would be a betrayal. Make no mistake, Leo, I owe Armand a great deal. Not only musically. It was a difficult time in my life when we met. The war, all that … He rescued me in a way.”

“But that was a long time ago. And you don’t have any children together.”

She let out a long sigh. “I didn’t want children. After the war I couldn’t imagine a world with children in it.”

“And now?”

“And now I am too old.”

“Hardly.”

“I’m forty-one, Leo.” She shrugged.
“C’est la vie.”

When she continued speaking she kept her face averted. “I had a crisis a while ago. A sort of breakdown. That drunken evening when I walked into the lamp post was the culmination. Armand challenged me to finally finish the composition I have been working on for many years. He said the orchestra
would play it,
if
it was good enough.” She looked across at me and sighed again, blowing the air out between pursed lips. “So I came here. To get away. To think. To work. To be alone. I didn’t know I would meet you.”

Reaching out for my hand she pulled it to her mouth and kissed my palm. “I don’t want to fall in love with you,” she said. “I can’t. It’s too complicated. I can’t even begin to explain how complicated everything is. And it’s not fair to you. But I want you. I want you all the time. Now. Again. I don’t understand it.” She pushed my hand down between her thighs, to the surprising heat there. “Feel!”

“I love
you,”
I said. I took her in my arms again and pulled her down to the sand.

She kept her eyes on me the whole time, and afterwards, her look was anguished. “I can’t heal you, Leo. I can’t. I’ll drown.”

I didn’t know how to reply. I knew that what she said was true.

“You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I whispered, but in my heart I wanted to win her, to win her for at least a little while longer before losing her.

She ran her hands through her hair, shaking it free of sand, then stood looking out to sea. Her face was soft and melancholy. The sight of her was too beautiful to bear. I bent down to lace up my boots.

“I’ll go back alone, Leo. It’s better that way.”

“Yes,” I said.