Chapter 44

Peterborough

1897

‘Who is this pretty lady, Mama?’

I did not look up from the bust I was working on of my seven-year-old son. I was concentrating on the tricky business of carving the whorls of his ears.

‘Mama!’

I put down my knife and sighed. ‘What is it, Sydney?’

When I looked up, Camille stared back at me. Sydney held the bust in both arms. He’d been looking through an old tea chest in the potting shed I still used as my studio and found the portrait I had made of Camille ten years earlier. I took the terracotta head from him and brushed the cobwebs from her face. Her expression was austere, despite the youthfulness of her rounded cheeks. How old would she be now? Thirty-two? I’d kept in touch with Rodin over the years, sent him news of my wedding and the births of my children. Brief, polite letters came back in his illegible hand. Camille never answered my letters and after a while they were returned ‘address unknown’.

I had tried to put our broken friendship behind me, but I couldn’t forget Camille. When I had my first baby – a little girl with navy blue eyes – I was so full of love and tenderness all traces of anger fell away from me and I was able to forgive Camille. It was as if a shard of pain inside me had melted. As a young mother, in the quiet moments after the children were asleep, I liked to think back to the beginning of our friendship, and to the happiest days of my life. But I hadn’t thought of Camille in years. Now I ran my fingers over the clay bust over the contours of her face, and I was filled with regret. I should have fought harder to keep her. I would never meet another friend who would mean as much to me.

‘Mama, why are you crying?’ Sydney put his small hands on my knees. I pulled him into my arms and covered him with kisses until he squirmed away.

‘Mama’s a little sad, that’s all. I was remembering a girl I used to know – my best friend.’

After William came to fetch me back to England, I has been ill for a long time. I’d caught a chill on the ferry home that turned into pneumonia. For the rest of that summer I lay in my old bed in Wootton House, watching the leaves of the elm tree turn from green to russet. Ma fussed over me but she was too relieved to learn about William’s and my engagement; she knew better than to ask too many questions.

At first I wrote to Camille in a fury, dashing accusations across the page, smearing the ink. How could you treat me so after everything I did for you and Rodin? I thought I knew you. Now I wonder if I ever did. But I burned those letters. I couldn’t face the accusations she would no doubt throw back at me and they would somehow seem more horrible in writing. And I couldn’t bear to think of her reading the harsh words in the letters I never sent.

While I burned with fever, I asked myself over and over why she had broken our friendship. How could she just forget about me? Why did she no longer love me as I loved her still? I couldn’t bear to think she was carrying on her life in Paris without a thought for me. I wondered what she was doing, where she was going, who she was seeing. I pictured her in Rodin’s studio, high up on the scaffold, intent on The Gates of Hell, or at Le Chat Noir, laughing as Georges sat with a girl on his lap, trading insults with Rosa.

William came often, pressing my hand in his and speaking about mutual friends and exhibitions coming up in London: anything to take my mind off Paris. But like an animal gnawing at a wound, I returned again and again to Camille. As for Georges, I wouldn’t let myself think about him.

‘I don’t know what to do, William. Should I write to her?’

He sighed and looked out at the spreading elm, its branches now almost bare beneath a pewter sky. ‘If it would give you peace of mind.’

‘And what shall I say? Shall I ask her why she turned on me? Oh, why did she do that, William?’ I could hear the whine in my voice and hated myself for it. I held onto my grief as I could not hold onto Camille.

William’s sigh betrayed his irritation. I could tell that he was wondering what had happened to his courageous girl.

‘There, Jessie, don’t fret. You’ll only make yourself ill again and you are looking so much stronger.’ He got off my bed and stood in front of the fire. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong, Jess. You should write her a civilised letter; show her she hasn’t hurt you.’

William helped me write a short note to Camille. Instead of a plea for love and friendship to be restored, the letter was polite and friendly, enquiring after her family and her work. I wrote about our wedding that would take place that December in London. It was to be a big affair as Papa had saved our fortunes after all with a timely investment in paraffin oil, which could now be mined from shale in Scotland. But I didn’t tell her about that. Instead, I hoped she was well and added, almost as an afterthought, that I regretted any misunderstanding between us and hoped we could still be friends.

William put the letter in his pocket. ‘I’ll put it in the afternoon post.’ He kissed me on the forehead. ‘Forget about Paris. You’re home now.’

A week later I received a letter postmarked Paris. My heart lifted when I recognised Rodin’s lavish scrawl. It was a strange, rather dear little note wishing William and me well. I wondered if Camille would write too, but day after day arrived with no letter from her and after a time, I became caught up in the preparations for my wedding and tried to put her from my mind.

On our wedding day in London, yellow roses were twined around the pillars and sat in fat bunches at the end of the pews at Great St Helen’s. I wore my emerald pendant and ring. William looked so handsome, a yellow rosebud in his buttonhole. He held out his hand to me and I felt as if I had sailed into a safe harbour.

‘Jessie. My beautiful Jessie.’

As we walked back down the aisle, there, among my English aunts, uncles and cousins, sat an incongruous figure – Rosa in full morning suit with Natalie on her arm. They seemed unaware of people staring.

‘Salut, Jessie! We came to make sure William was looking after you.’

A seed of hope burst open inside me and I looked along the pew for Camille. But she had not come. I held onto William’s arm a little tighter and he bent his head to mine.

‘Everyone who loves you is here, Jessie,’ he whispered.

He kissed me and the congregation cheered and clapped.

I smiled at him as Widor’s Toccata burst through the church. ‘Let’s go and drink champagne.’ We walked out into the bright, clear morning of our marriage.

William settled into his position at Owen’s College in Manchester and I began a new life as the wife of an academic. I tried not to miss Paris and busied myself with hosting tea parties for the other masters and William’s students, clever and serious young men who talked in chemical formulae. But while I handed out sherry and fruit cake, my mind would slip back to Le Chat Noir, to the studio in Notre-Dame-des-Champs, to Georges and Camille. I had tried to bring Paris into our new home, dressing tables in embroidered shawls, hanging sketches by Henri and Rosa. The little sculpture Rodin had given me sat on the mantelpiece, and it gave me strength during those dry gatherings.

But when I came to bed, after yet another dreary evening stuck in a corner with the rest of the wives, William would take me in his arms and whisper into my hair. The passion of our nights together took me by surprise, bound us tightly together. William had been right: we were of different metals but together we were the perfect compound.

And then there was the wonder of becoming a mother. Helen was born and with her dark blue eyes she reminded me of Camille. She loved to play with my clay and it was no surprise when she became an artist. Had some of Camille’s spirit entered my heart and made its way into my child? It was a fanciful notion and one I have never shared with William.

We had three more children, lively sons, and I began to disappear, bit by bit. I tried to keep sculpting, but it was impossible during those early years of motherhood, when my children filled every corner of my life.

When Papa died, Ma was distraught and we moved back into Wootton House with her. Father’s estate had been decimated by the recession of the 1890s and I found myself running a large household on a small budget. I taught the children at home to save on school fees and balanced the books.

When the children grew bigger, I went back to sculpting. I made portraits of the children and took on commissions, but it was never the same: my ambition had gone along with my youth. Sculpting the perfect heads of my children in my old potting shed of a studio was what I loved best. And my favourite model was Sydney, my beautiful boy.

The day he found Camille’s bust, Sydney was leaning into the tea chest, looking for more treasure.

‘Mama, you know how you’re good at finding things? Like my wooden horse that was buried in the garden all winter?’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘Well, why don’t you go and find your friend?’

I stopped what I was doing. ‘You’re right. That’s what I’ll do.’

But it was years before I found her. I made a few attempts to write to her family but never received a reply. Then war broke out and we were all in turmoil. But I didn’t give up and after the war I tracked her down through Paul. A friend of ours in the Foreign Office mentioned he was working in the French Embassy in Copenhagen. Chap’s a poet, quite famous it would seem. Paul’s reply came back months later: Camille had been ill for years and was in hospital in the south. He thanked me for my kindness. I wrote again asking for details but he had moved. For years my letters went unanswered, until a postcard came one morning. My letters had been lost and had only just turned up. Paul was the French Ambassador by now in Washington, but writing was still his passion. Had I perhaps seen any of his plays on the stage? He enclosed photographs of himself outside the White House and said he remembered me fondly. His poor sister Camille was still in the same situation. I wrote by return of post. Where was Camille? Could I write to her? William and I were travelling to Italy by train and we would pass through the south of France. Could I perhaps visit her?