‘So, what do you think of him, young man?’ Monsieur Landowski asked me as I looked into the eyes of our Lord, just one of which was almost as big as I was. He had just finished perfecting the head of what in Brazil they called the Cristo Redentor, and who I would call Jesus Christ. I had been told by Monsieur Laurent Brouilly that the statue would stand on top of a mountain in a city called Rio de Janeiro. It would be thirty metres tall by the time all the pieces had been put together. I had seen the miniature versions of the finished sculpture and knew that the Brazilian (and French) Christ would stand with his arms wide open, embracing the city beneath him. It was clever how, from a distance, you might just think it was a cross. How they would get the statue up the mountain and assemble it had been a matter of great discussion and worry over the past few weeks. Monsieur Landowski seemed to have many heads to worry about, because he was also working on the sculpture of a Chinese man called Sun Yat-sen, and was fretting over the eyes. He was a perfectionist, I thought.

During the long, hot summer days, I had been drawn to Monsieur Landowski’s atelier, creeping in and hiding behind the many boulders that sat on the floor, waiting to be shaped into a form. The workshop was usually busy with apprentices and assistants who, like Laurent, were there to learn from the great master. Most of them ignored me, although Mademoiselle Margarida always gave me a smile when she arrived in the morning. She was a great friend of Bel, so I knew she was one of the trustworthy ones.

Monsieur espied me in the atelier one day and, like any father, reproached me for not asking permission before I entered. I shook my head and put my arms out in front of me, backing away towards the door, then the kind monsieur relented and beckoned me towards him.

‘Brouilly here tells me you like to watch us at work. Is this true?’

I nodded again.

‘Well then, there is no need to hide. As long as you swear never to touch anything, you are welcome here, boy. I only wish my own children showed as much interest as you in my profession.’

Since that moment, I had been allowed to sit at the trestle table with a piece of unwanted soapstone, and provided with my own set of tools.

‘Watch and learn, boy, watch and learn,’ Landowski had advised. And I had. Not that it made any difference to my own methods, banging the hammer onto the chisel upon my piece of rock. No matter how I tried to shape it into the simplest of forms, I always ended up with a pile of rubble in front of me.

‘So, boy, what do you think?’ asked Monsieur Landowski, gesturing to the head of the Cristo. I nodded vigorously, as always feeling guilty that this kind man who had taken me in still tried to elicit a vocal response from me. He deserved to receive one just due to his perseverance, but I knew that as soon as I opened my mouth to talk, I’d be in danger.

Madame Landowski, now knowing I could write and understand what was being said to me, had handed me a pile of scrap paper.

‘So, if I ask you a question, you can write the reply, yes?’

I’d nodded. From then on, communication had been very simple.

In answer to Monsieur Landowski’s question, I took my pencil from my shorts pocket, wrote one word that took up almost the entire page, and handed it to him.

He chuckled as he read it.

‘“Magnifique”, eh? Well, thank you, young sir, and let us only hope that your response is the one the Cristo will receive when he stands proudly atop Corcovado Mountain on the other side of the world. If we can ever get him there . . .’

‘Have faith, sir,’ countered Laurent from behind me. ‘Bel tells me that preparations for the use of the funicular railway are well underway.’

‘Does she indeed?’ Monsieur Landowski raised one of his bushy grey eyebrows. ‘You seem to know more than I do. Heitor da Silva Costa keeps telling me we will discuss how to ship my sculpture over and then erect it, but the conversation never seems to take place. Is it lunchtime yet? I need some wine to calm my nerves. I am beginning to feel that this Cristo project may be the end of my career. I was a fool for ever saying yes to such madness.’

‘I’ll fetch the meal,’ Laurent responded, and headed for the tiny kitchen, every detail of which I would always remember as being my first safe haven since I’d left home all those months ago. I smiled as I watched Laurent open a bottle of wine. As I often did when I was awake early, I’d crept down to the atelier at dawn just to be amongst the beauty it contained. I’d sit there and think about how Papa would have laughed that out of all the places I could have ended up, such as the Renault factory only a few kilometres from here, I’d arrived instead in a place that he himself would have called an artistic temple. I just knew that it would please him somehow.

This morning, as I’d sat amongst the boulders and looked up into the Cristo’s gentle face, I’d heard a noise from the room behind the curtain where we ate our food. Tiptoeing over to it and peering behind, I had seen a pair of feet sticking out from under the table. It transpired the sound was the gentle snoring of Laurent. Since Bel had gone back to Brazil, I’d noticed he often seemed the worse for drink in the morning, his eyes red and bleary, and his skin sallow and grey as if he might have to go and heave up the contents of his stomach at any moment. (And I had had a lot of experience in knowing when a man or a woman had sailed well past normal boundaries.)

As I watched him now pour a healthy glass for himself, I worried for his liver, which Papa had said was most affected by drink. But it wasn’t just Laurent’s liver I was concerned about; it was his heart too. Even though I understood that it was impossible for the organ itself to be physically broken by love, something inside the man had. Maybe one day I would understand the wish to drown away pain with alcohol.

‘Santé!’ the two men said as they clinked their glasses together. As they sat at the table, I made myself useful in the kitchen, collecting the bread, cheese and bulbous red tomatoes the lady down the road grew in her garden.

I knew this because I had watched Evelyn, the housekeeper, appear in the kitchen with a box laden with vegetables. As she was not a thin lady, and well into middle age, I’d run across the room to take the box from her and place it on the side.

‘Goodness, today is a hot one,’ she’d panted as she’d sat down heavily on one of the wooden chairs. I’d fetched her a glass of water before she’d even asked for it, and taking some paper and a pencil out of my pocket, I wrote down a question for her.

‘Why don’t I send the maids?’ she read, then eyed me. ‘Because, little boy, neither of those two would know a rotten peach from a perfect one. They’re both city girls, with not a notion of fresh fruits and vegetables.’

Taking the paper back from her, I’d written another sentence.

Next time you go, I will come with you to carry the box.

‘That is most kind of you, young man, and if this weather keeps up, I might just hold you to it.’

The weather did keep up and I did go and help her. On the way along the street, she chatted away about her son, telling me proudly he was at university studying to become an engineer.

‘He’ll make something of himself one day, you’ll see,’ she added as we’d picked our way through the vegetables displayed at the stall, me holding the box for those that passed her muster. Out of everyone in the Landowski household, Evelyn was my favourite person, even though I’d been dreading her return, having heard the maids’ chatter through the walls about when ‘the dragon’ would be back. I’d been introduced to her as ‘the boy with no name who can’t speak’. (It had been Marcel, the Landowskis’ thirteen-year-old son, who had said that. I knew he regarded me with suspicion, which I totally understood – my sudden arrival into any family would have ruffled a few feathers.) Yet Evelyn had simply shaken my outstretched hand and given me a warm smile.

‘The more the merrier, that’s what I say. What’s the point of having a great big house like this and not filling every room?’ Then she’d given me a wink and later that day, seeing me eyeing the leftover tarte tatin from lunch, had cut a slice for me.

It was odd, really, how a middle-aged lady and I could forge some kind of secret and most definitely unspoken (on my part, anyway) bond, but I knew we had. I’d noted a familiar look in her eyes which told me she had suffered deeply. Perhaps she recognised something similar in me too.

I had decided that the only way to make sure everyone in the house found no way of complaining about me was to either make myself invisible (to Landowski’s children and, to a lesser extent, Monsieur and Madame Landowski) or very available to those in need, which basically comprised the servants. Evelyn, Berthe, Elsa and Antoinette had what I think they realised now to be a useful little helper at hand any time they needed. At home, it had often been me that had cleared up the tiny space that housed us. Even as a very young boy, I had always had an urge to make sure everything was in its place. Papa had noted that I liked order, not chaos, and had joked that I’d make someone a very good wife one day. In my old home, it had been impossible because every activity had happened in the one room, but here at the Landowski house, the very orderliness of it thrilled me. Perhaps my favourite job of all was helping Elsa and Antoinette take sheets and clothes from the line after they had blown dry in the sunshine. Both maids had laughed at my need to make sure each corner met perfectly, and I could not help but stick my nose into whichever item of laundry I was unpegging to breathe in its clean scent, which to me was the most beautiful of any perfume.

Anyway, after I had chopped the tomatoes as precisely as I folded the laundry, I went to join Monsieur Landowski and Laurent at the table. I watched them break the fresh baguette and cut a slice of cheese, and it was only when Monsieur Landowski indicated I should do the same that I shared in the feast too. Papa had always told me how wonderful French food tasted, and he was right. However, after my bouts of sickness when I had stuffed anything I was given at top speed down my gullet as if it was the last meal I was ever offered, I proceeded to eat like the gentleman I’d been brought up to be rather than a savage, as Berthe had once said within my hearing.

Still the chatter was of the Cristo and Sun Yat-sen’s eyeballs, but I didn’t mind. I understood that Monsieur Landowski was a true creative – he had won the gold medal in the Olympic art competition in the summer and was apparently renowned for his gifts around the world. What I admired the most about him was the way that fame hadn’t changed him. Or at least, I imagined it hadn’t, because he worked every hour he could, often missing supper, which Madame Landowski scolded him for because his children needed to see him and so did she. His attention to detail and the fact he strove for perfection, when he could easily have had Laurent finish his work for him, inspired me. Whatever in this world I was meant to do or be, I promised myself that I would always give all I had to it.

‘And what about you, boy? Boy?’

Yet again, I pulled myself out of my thoughts. It was a place that I had become so used to inhabiting that having people showing any interest in me took some getting used to.

‘You weren’t listening, were you?’

Making an apology with my eyes, I shook my head.

‘I asked you whether you thought that Sun Yat-sen’s eyes were yet right? I showed you the photograph of him, remember?’

I picked up my pencil, thinking carefully about my answer before I wrote it. I’d always been taught to tell the truth, but I needed to be diplomatic as well. I wrote the words I needed to, then passed the book to him.

Almost, sir.

I watched Landowski take a sip of his wine, then throw back his head and laugh.

‘Spot on, boy, spot on. So, this afternoon, I will have another go.’

When the two men had had their fill, I cleared away the leftover bread and cheese. Then I brewed the coffee for them, the way I knew Monsieur Landowski liked it. Whilst I was doing so, I stuffed the remains of the bread and cheese into my shorts pocket. This was one habit I was yet to break – one never knew when one’s supply of food might be cut off. After I’d served them the coffee, I nodded and returned to my attic. I stowed the bread and cheese in the drawer in the desk. More often than not, whatever leftovers I put there would be secretly thrown away the next morning in the bin outside. But as I said, one never knew.

After a wash of my hands and a brush of my hair, I went downstairs to begin my afternoon round of being useful. Today it involved polishing silver, which, because of my precision and patience, even Evelyn had said I was good at. I glowed with the pride of someone starved of compliments for so long. The glow hadn’t lasted long, though, because she’d stopped at the door and turned round as Elsa and Antoinette were replacing the knives and forks in their velvet beds.

‘Perhaps you could both learn from the young man’s skills,’ she’d said, then walked out, leaving Elsa and Antoinette to glare at me. But as they were both lazy and impatient, they’d been happy to hand over the polishing. I loved sitting in the peace of the big dining room at the mahogany table, which always glowed with a shiny sheen, my hands busy and my mind free to roam wherever it pleased.

The main thought on my mind now, and almost every day since my body and senses had begun to recover, was how I could make money. However kind the Landowskis were, I knew that I was at their mercy. Even tonight, it could be that they would tell me that for whatever reason my time with them was up. Once again, I’d be cast out onto an unfamiliar street, vulnerable and alone. Instinctively, my fingers went to the leather pouch that I wore under my shirt. Just the touch of it and its familiar shape comforted me, even if I knew what it contained was not mine to sell. The fact it had survived the journey was a miracle in itself, yet its presence was a blessing and a curse. It alone held the reason why I was currently in Paris, living under the roof of strangers.

Having finished polishing the silver teapot, I decided there was only one person in the house I trusted enough to ask advice. Evelyn lived in what the family called ‘the cottage’, but in reality was a two-roomed extension to the main house. As Evelyn had said to me, at least it had its own private bathroom facilities, and most importantly, its own front door. I had not yet seen inside it, but tonight after supper I would pluck up my courage and knock on that door.

I watched through the dining room window as Evelyn made her way to the cottage – she always left once the main course had been served, leaving her two maids in charge of the dessert and then the washing-up. I ate my supper and listened to the family chatter. Nadine, the oldest sister, wasn’t yet married and spent much of her time leaving the house with an easel, brushes and a palette. I had never seen any of her paintings, but I knew she also designed the backgrounds for theatre stages. I had never seen a play on a stage, and of course couldn’t speak to her to ask her about her work. As she spent so little time in the house and seemed very wrapped up in her own life, she took little notice of me, offering me the occasional smile if we crossed paths early in the morning. Then there was Marcel, who’d stopped me in my tracks one day, then puffed out his chest, put his hands on his hips and told me he didn’t like me. Which, of course, was silly because he didn’t know me, but I had heard him calling me a ‘bootlicker’ to his younger sister Françoise, because I helped in the kitchen before supper. I understood how he felt; his parents taking in a young ragamuffin who’d been found in their garden and refused to speak would have made anyone suspicious.

However, I forgave him everything from the moment I’d first heard the sound of beautiful music coming from a room downstairs and drifting into the kitchen. I’d stopped what I was doing and stood there, entranced. Even though Papa had played me what he could on his violin, I’d never actually heard the sound that piano keys could make when they were expertly handled by a human being. And it was glorious. Since then, I had become slightly obsessed with Marcel’s fingers, wondering how they managed to cross the piano keys so fast and in such perfect order. I’d had to train myself to avert my eyes. One day I would pluck up the courage to ask him if I could watch him play. However he acted towards me, I thought him a magician.

His older brother Jean-Max seemed indifferent to me, being on the cusp of adulthood. I knew little about what he did when he left the house, but he did once try to show me how to play the game of boules: the national pastime of France. This involved throwing balls at the gravel in the back courtyard, and I picked it up pretty easily.

Then there was Françoise, the Landowskis’ youngest daughter, who was not much older than me. She had been friendly when I’d first arrived, though very shy. I was gratified when she’d wordlessly given me a sweet in the garden, some kind of sugar on a stick, and we’d sat side by side licking our respective treats and watching the bees collect their nectar. She joined Marcel in his piano practice, and enjoyed painting like Nadine. I’d often see her sitting at an easel facing the house. I had no idea if she was good or not, because I’d never seen anything she’d painted, but I suspected that a lovely pastoral view of a field and a river that hung along the downstairs hallway was hers. We were never to become great friends, of course – it must be quite boring for anyone to spend time with someone they cannot conduct a conversation with – but she often smiled at me and I could feel the sympathy in her eyes. On the odd occasion – normally Sunday, when Monsieur Landowski was free – the family would play boules or decide to go for a picnic together. I was always asked to join, but declined, out of respect for their family time, and because I’d learnt the hard way what resentment could do.

After supper, I helped Elsa and Antoinette with the dishes, and once they had gone upstairs to bed, I slipped out of the kitchen door and scurried around the back of the house, so that no one would see my departure.

Standing in front of Evelyn’s front door, my heart knocked hard in my chest. Was this a mistake? Should I simply go back the way I had come and forget all about it?

‘No,’ I whispered under my breath. I had to trust someone at some point. The instincts that had kept me alive for as long as they had were telling me that it was the right thing to do.

My hand shook as it reached out for the door and I gave a timid knock. There was no response – of course there wasn’t, no one who wasn’t standing immediately on the other side of the piece of wood could have heard me. So I knocked louder. Within a few seconds, I saw the drawn curtain being lifted from the window, and then the door was opened.

‘Well, what have we here?’ Evelyn said as she smiled at me. ‘Come in, come in. It’s not often I get visitors knocking at my door, and that’s for sure,’ she chuckled.

I stepped into perhaps the cosiest room I’d ever seen. Even though I’d been told it had once been a garage for Monsieur Landowski’s car and was simply a cement square, everywhere I looked there was something of beauty. Two upholstered chairs sat facing the centre of the room and brightly coloured embroidered quilts were draped over them. Family portraits and still-lifes dotted the walls, and an arrangement of flowers sat proudly on the clean mahogany table by the window. There was a small door which I presumed led to the bedroom and facilities, and a pile of books sat on a shelf above a dresser filled with china cups and glasses.

‘Now then, sit down,’ Evelyn said, pointing to one of the chairs and removing some kind of needlepoint from her own. ‘Can I get you some lemonade? It’s my own recipe.’

I nodded eagerly. I’d never had lemonade before coming to France, and I couldn’t get enough of it now. I watched her walk over to the dresser and take down two glasses. She poured the milky yellow liquid from a pitcher full of ice.

‘There,’ she said as she sat down, her large bulk just about fitting into the chair. ‘Santé!’ She lifted her glass.

I lifted mine too but said nothing, as usual.

‘So,’ Evelyn said, ‘what can I do for you?’

I’d already written down what I wanted to ask and drew out the paper from my pocket to hand it to her.

She read the words, then looked at me.

‘How can you earn some money? That is what you are here to ask me?’

I nodded.

‘Well, young man, I am not sure if I know. I’d have to think about it. But why is it you feel you need to earn money?’

I indicated she should turn the paper over.

‘“In case the kind Landowskis decide they no longer have room for me,”’ she read out loud. ‘Well, given the monsieur’s success and the amount of commissions he’s getting, it’s very doubtful they’d have to move to a smaller house. So, they are always going to have room for you here. But I think I know what you mean. You are frightened because they might one day decide to simply turn you out, is that it?’

I nodded vigorously.

‘And you would just be another young, starving orphan on the streets of Paris. Which brings me to a very important question: are you an orphan? Yes or no will do.’

I shook my head as vigorously as I’d nodded it.

‘Where are your parents?’

She handed the paper back to me and I wrote the words down.

I do not know.

‘I see. I thought that they might have been lost in the Great War, but that ended in 1918, so you’re perhaps too young for that to be the case.’

I shrugged, trying not to let my expression change. The problem with kindness was that it meant you let your guard down, and I knew I mustn’t do that, whatever the cost. I watched as she gazed at me silently.

‘I know you can talk if you want to, young man. That Brazilian lady who was here told us all that you said thank you to her in perfect French the night she found you. The question is, why won’t you? The only answer I can think of – unless you have been struck dumb since, which I doubt very much – is that you are too scared to trust anyone. Would I be right?’

Now I was really torn . . . I wanted to say yes, she was absolutely right, and to throw myself into those comforting arms, to be held and to tell her everything, but I knew that still . . . still I could not. I indicated I needed the paper, and I wrote some words then handed it back to her.

I had a fever. I cannot remember speaking to Bel.

Evelyn read the words, then smiled at me. ‘I understand, young man. I know you’re lying, but whatever trauma it is that you’ve experienced has stopped you trusting. Perhaps one day, when we have known each other for a little longer, I will tell you something of my life. I was a nurse at the front during the Great War. The suffering I saw there . . . I will never forget it. And yes, I will be honest, for a time it made me lose my faith – and trust – in human nature. And also in God. Do you believe in God?’

I nodded my head slightly less vigorously. Partly because I did not know whether she was still a religious woman after her lapse of faith, and partly because I wasn’t sure.

‘I think that perhaps you are at the same point I was then. It took me a good long time to trust to anything again. Do you know what it was that brought back my faith and trust? Love. Love for my beloved boy. And that made everything right. Of course, love comes from God, or whatever you wish to call the spirit that joins all us humans in an invisible web to Him. Even if we sometimes feel that He’s deserted us, He never has. Anyway, I really don’t have an answer to your question, I’m afraid. There are many young boys like you on the streets of Paris, who manage to survive in ways I really don’t wish to think about. But . . . Goodness, I wish you could at least trust me with your name. I promise you that Monsieur and Madame Landowski are good, kind people and would never just throw you out of their home.’

I indicated I needed the paper again and once I’d written on it, I passed it back.

Then what will they do with me?

‘Well, if you could speak, they would allow you to live here in their house indefinitely and send you to school like their other children. But as it stands . . .’ – she shrugged – ‘that is an impossibility, isn’t it? It is doubtful any school will take a boy who is dumb, no matter what level of education he’s had. I would guess from what I know of you that you are educated and would like to continue to be so. Is that true?’

I gave what I thought was a good impression of a French shrug, which everyone in the house seemed expert in executing.

‘The one thing I don’t like is liars, young man,’ Evelyn reprimanded me suddenly. ‘I know you have your reasons for staying silent, but you can at least be truthful. Do you or do you not wish to continue your education?’

I nodded reluctantly.

Evelyn slapped her thigh. ‘Well, there we have it. You must make up your mind whether you are prepared to start speaking, at which point your future in the Landowski household will be much safer. You would be a normal child who could go to a normal school and I know that they would continue to welcome you into their family. Now’ – Evelyn yawned – ‘I have an early start tomorrow, but I’ve enjoyed this evening, and your company. Please feel free to knock on my door whenever you wish.’

I stood up immediately, nodding my thanks as I walked towards the door, and Evelyn stood up to follow me. Just as I was about to turn the knob, I felt a gentle pair of hands on my shoulders, which turned me round and then wrapped around my waist as she pulled me to her.

‘A little bit of love is all you need, chéri. Goodnight now.’