The Reader oil on canvas 56.1 × 33.1 cm
A subject that was a favourite of Edwardian genre painters, this image of a young woman reading by a window is given extra interest by the late-night setting, the treatment of the light falling across the figure, the burning end of her cigarette and the psychological realism of the model’s absorption in her book. What can be saccharine in some renderings here becomes an intimate portrait of a state of mind.
Extract from the catalogue notes to the exhibition ‘The Paris Winter: Anonymous Treasures from the de Civray Collection’, Southwark Picture Gallery, London, 2010
25 January 1910
Maud jerked awake. Yvette was sitting in the chair by the window as she had promised she would. The faint glow of the street-lamps softened the sharp angles of her face and made her look younger again, and gave her enough light to read by. She had borrowed some historical romance from the owner of the house and sat with it now on her knee, a cigarette burning in her other hand and an ashtray improvised from a soapdish sitting on the floor at her feet. The filigree ironwork outside cast vague curling shadows over the folds of her skirt. She heard Maud move but did not look up.
‘The rooms are still dark,’ she said and turned a page. ‘Go back to sleep.’
For a few minutes Maud thought she would, then a sudden explosion shook the room, a great throb of thunder. ‘God!’ Yvette said, getting to her feet and opening the window as Maud sat upright in the bed, her heart beating wildly. ‘They must have blown the Pont de l’Alma after all. Heaven help us.’
Maud slid out of the bed and went to stand next to her. Yvette pointed across the street. A light had come on in the Morels’ apartment and one of the shutters was being pulled back. Maud shifted back into the shadows, looking down and sideways as Sylvie appeared in the frame, leaning her small white hand on the ironwork and looking towards the river. The light spilled over her shoulders, the sapphire-blue of her silk dressing-gown, her blond hair loose and long over her shoulders. Other figures appeared on the street, all looking in the same direction. Only Maud was not looking north and west where the sound had come from; she focused instead on the lines of Sylvie’s face and her hand on the rail, remembering that head resting on her shoulder, that hand in hers.
* * *
Some hours later, Yvette brought coffee, bread and news from the woman on the ground floor. ‘The bridge is still there,’ she said, handing Maud a sliced and buttered roll. ‘It was some factory in Ivry blew up, but the fire didn’t spread. The water is still rising though. Anything from over the way?’ Maud shook her head. The shutters to the Morels’ drawing room were half-opened but there was no other sign of life. ‘Eat something, Maud.’ It was the sadness in Yvette’s voice that made her try the food, but even so she did not stop looking out of the window. ‘I want to get some message to Tanya if I can, to tell her we are well…’
The concierge of the Morels’ apartment came out into the street pulling her shawl over her head. The snow was falling again and melting onto the soaked pavements as if the ground were drinking it up. Maud sat up in the chair and peered after her. She remained there, her pose one of fixed attention until the woman returned. There was a man with her in a long pearl-grey overcoat and a large leather bag at his side.
‘She has been for a doctor,’ Maud said and licked her lips. Yvette looked up from the novel she was reading again then set it down and brushed the crumbs of her breakfast from her dress.
‘I shall go and see if I can find out what’s happening,’ she said, and went to the door. Maud did not look round to see her leave.
The concierge was happy to talk. Her older sister had nearly been killed by typhoid and now with her best tenant ill it was all she could think about. ‘He came back shivering and soaked last night – fell in the waters, she said – and I don’t like the sound of him today. Groaning! There is groaning! And what if the floods come up this far? What are we supposed to do? Leave him to drown or carry him off with us, nasty diseases and all?’ Everything she said was in a fierce whisper and spoken out of the corner of her mouth, as if they were at the theatre and speaking at all was bad manners.
‘But the water won’t come this far. We’re safe, surely?’ Yvette said, huddling away from the sudden cold wind that ran up the street. She felt it like Maud’s impatience, pulling her back to the room to tell her about the fever, the groaning.
‘Don’t you bet on it, sweetheart! You don’t have to walk half so far to see the river today, I tell you. Go and have a look. My Georges has been down there already. He took one look and back he came, emptied out our bit of storage in the cellar and moved it all up to the attic. Now he’s a strong man, but a lazy one. There’s no way he would have carried my mother’s second-best mattress up to the roof if he didn’t think it had a good chance of a soaking. That I can tell you for free.’
Yvette ignored the wind tugging at her back and went to look for herself. The shock was sudden and absolute: water everywhere. It rippled along the quays and ate away at the islands; the naked trees, shivering with wet snow, hung at strange angles along the Quai de Conti. The streets were sinking. She turned back up Rue Bonaparte and saw the same fear on each face. The nervous excitement of the previous day had become something darker. Paris was being throttled slowly by her own river, and what had looked like another spectacle laid on by the city for the entertainment of her citizens was twisting into a slow act of violence.
* * *
Tanya was certain that Maud or Yvette would call for her early in the morning. The only possible reason why she had not heard from them already was that they had received her messages too late last night to respond – but nothing came. She stared at the clock until she thought it must be broken, and when Sasha came into her room with tea just after ten, she was shaking it vigorously. The old maid took it from her with a frown and set it back on the mantelpiece, then she pulled a telegram form from her apron and handed it to Tanya. She snatched it from her, then a second later crumpled it in her fist and threw it in the general direction of the fire.
‘All well? All well? That’s what they have to say to me?’
Sasha bent down to pick up the note, smoothed it out again then tucked it into her pocket. She thought all such things had value and should be preserved against emergency like short threads and off-cuts of wax paper. ‘They think I can have nothing important to tell them. That is it. They think all I’m doing is worrying about them and of course I am, but I do have something important to tell them.’ She turned and pointed an angry finger at Sasha who only stared at it with her eyebrows raised. ‘And I am engaged.’
‘I think you mentioned that a time or two last night as I put you to bed, pumpkin,’ Sasha said.
‘But they don’t know that! Yvette only knows I refused Perov…’
Sasha yawned and sat on the bed. ‘Maybe they can’t tell you where they are. Fact they sent this,’ she patted her stomach where the pocket of her apron sat, ‘means that they are thinking of you, so stop wailing. Now I mean to get you out and useful before you tear the house apart. The Red Cross are collecting, and what they are collecting needs sorting.’ Tanya started to protest but the look in Sasha’s eyes made her stop. ‘We shall send a heap of your messages around so they know where to find you and leave word here too. We might as well enjoy having footmen to spare before you make beggars of us, I suppose. Now put something on a sensible woman might wear and let’s hurry along, shall we?’ She got to her feet again with a grunt and pulled out one of Tanya’s more conservative walking dresses from the armoire.
‘Sasha, when I marry will you come with me?’
Sasha helped her lift the morning gown she was wearing over her head. ‘I’m not sure that’s how they manage things here, dear. Normally you’ll just have a girl in to clean and fetch for you by the hour.’
When Tanya’s face re-emerged from the white chiffon it was pale and slightly tearful. ‘If you wish to go back to Saint Petersburg, of course I shall understand.’
Sasha picked up the walking dress and bent down, fanning out the skirt so that Tanya could step into it. She felt the girl’s hand on her shoulder as she steadied herself. ‘Don’t fret, chicken. I’ll help you settle in – you’ve got some learning to do. Vera and I will teach you.’ She stood, pulling the dress up with her and held it so Tanya could slide her long slim arms through the tight sleeves. ‘Then I shall open a little restaurant, I think.’ Tanya’s eyes sprang open and Sasha sniffed. ‘There’re lots of Russians in Paris might like a taste of proper food from their homeland, and none of these Frenchies can cook a damn. All sauce, sauce, sauce till you don’t know what you’re eating.’
Tanya turned to let her fasten the dress, thinking the world was a more surprising place than she could have ever imagined.
* * *
He kept asking her if she had been to fetch them, though at times he wasn’t sure if he had said the words out loud or just dreamed them. She always said, ‘In a little while, Christian my love, in a little while. I cannot leave you just now.’ He was afraid he had mentioned the ghost of the woman and might have made her angry, but whenever he managed to open his eyes she was smiling at him kindly enough. She knew where they were, she’d take care of it. He sank into a sort of half-dream where he could see nothing, but the air was tainted with corruption and there was a constant sound of trickling water.
* * *
Maud watched by the window, eating whatever Yvette handed to her and watching the shutters of the house opposite. The day passed slow as ice. That night she slept a while and let Yvette watch, and for the first time her dreams were not of drowning. She seemed to be again on the terrace outside Sacré Coeur; the rain was falling but it felt warm as a blessing against her skin. She knew Yvette and Tanya were there watching with her as the floodwaters consumed Paris, and below them the lights went out one by one till the city of lights was dark and cold and victory blossomed in her.