Christian Morel was a handsome man of some years past forty, judging by the lines around his eyes; clean-shaven, though his dark hair reached to his shining white collar. From the moment he opened the door to Tanya and Maud he gave the impression it was he and his home that were on trial, that he was campaigning for the privilege to have Maud with them. Her nerves leaked away under his quick smile, his concern for their comfort and air of sincere supplicant.
He began by apologising for the very beautiful apartment. He had meant to stay at his club, but his cousin, with whom his sister was supposed to lodge while he was away had become ill, so they had little time to find somewhere suitable for them both in town. Tanya sympathised, but to Maud the accommodation looked palatial. The drawing room was narrow but long, with high windows draped in lace that let in the winter light, and a fireplace at each end of the room. Starburst mirrors hung above both. The south end of the room was occupied by a chaise longue, a piano, and a few armchairs upholstered in yellow; the other end was dominated by a round, lace-covered dining-table and dresser. All the light-coloured wood in the room was worked into long supple lines; electric lamps were dotted around on the occasional tables. Maud thought of the heavy dark furniture in her father’s house; every piece of it had seemed hulking and angry. Here everything was cheerful but not overwhelming, comfortable without being oppressively rich. She was delighted.
‘There is a maid’s room,’ Morel was saying, ‘but we’d rather not have a servant live in. The house girl comes in every morning and prepares our lunch. In the evening we order up from the café on the corner.’ He looked at Maud, gently questioning. ‘They have a good chef. It’s not the Café Anglais, but who can eat like that every night? We live simply and dine early. I hope that is acceptable, Miss Heighton?’
‘Oh, quite,’ Maud said politely. As Morel led them out into the main corridor, Tanya pinched Maud’s arm. Maud turned and made her eyes wide. Tanya stifled a giggle. Morel had reached a door, the first in the corridor from the entrance to the apartment. He pushed it open gently with his fingertips.
‘If Miss Heighton were willing to stay with us over the winter, this would be her room.’ With a bow he invited her to walk in ahead of him; as she did so she was shocked by the pricking of tears in her eyes. Stupid to be so sentimental, but it was just as she had imagined her room in Paris might be when she had climbed onto the train in Alnwick two years ago. It was a large room. The bed was brass, wide and covered in white linen, the washstand was ash, the floor carpeted with thick rugs in red and brown. Soft shadows rested comfortably in the corners and draped themselves over the bed. Mr Morel was watching her anxiously.
‘But I am so foolish, you cannot see a thing.’ He crossed the room and opened the shutters. Light and air tumbled into the room and seemed to wake it; Maud felt it greet her as a friend. She went to the window and looked out. It gave onto a courtyard at the rear of the building where white-washed walls gathered the afternoon sun and flung it into the room. There was a lean-to by the entrance to the communal cellars and a girl was sitting on a rough stool outside it. She was plucking a chicken for the pot, her red apron a sudden splash of colour over the earth floor. Maud looked down on her, resting her hand on the windowsill.
‘Naturally, this room is a little shaded in the mornings, but I understand you ladies work elsewhere in those hours.’ He looked at his feet. ‘Miss Harris explained to me you have lessons every morning, Miss Heighton. I wish you to know that would be no difficulty, no difficulty at all if you are content to live here. My sister keeps to her bed in the mornings.’
Maud realised they were waiting for a response from her. ‘It is a lovely room,’ she said. ‘Absolutely lovely.’
Morel looked relieved, then started as he heard a clatter of cups from the drawing room. ‘Ah, our tea. Let us go and refresh ourselves.’
* * *
Over tea, served in the English fashion, Tanya set about questioning Morel. Maud watched her surreptitiously. Yvette had been right about her willingness to sniff out any threat to Maud or her reputation. She was polite but thorough, smiling as she asked questions about the background of the Morel family and nodding as they were answered. Her aunt would have been proud of her.
Morel was born in 1867 in Luxeuil-les-Bains, the only son of a prosperous merchant in the town and his first wife. This lady had died in 1871 but Morel’s father had eventually remarried and was blessed with a daughter in 1889, Sylvie. Morel spoke with the dignity and restraint of an Englishman when telling them of the carriage accident that killed their father and Sylvie’s mother in the year 1904. Sylvie had been with her parents at the time and the injuries she had suffered had made her health delicate. She was easily tired even now. Morel had taken on her care and support. Then, having given the two young women the facts of the case, he moved the topic on and spoke of how impressed he had been by Miss Harris and her good works. He hoped Maud and Sylvie would speak English together. He wished to go to America in the spring, he informed them, to pursue some promising business opportunities, and wanted to take Sylvie with him. To have her English fluent and practised would make her life there much easier.
This gave Tanya the chance to enquire as to what his business was. He smiled and waved his hand. ‘Moving money! Trains and planes and automobiles, the telegraph and now telephones. Money has to learn how to keep up in this modern age. But it is dull business in comparison with yours. Let us talk about you young artists instead.’ He turned towards Maud. ‘You are an artist, Miss Heighton? Tell me what your family think of you living so independently and so far away from them. Do your parents approve of your coming here?’
Maud put down her cup. ‘My father was an auctioneer in the north of England, Mr Morel. He died three years ago. My mother died when I was twelve.’
‘An orphan like my poor sister and me? But not alone in the world, I hope.’
‘My elder brother James is a solicitor in Darlington. I have a younger brother too, only six years old, from my father’s second marriage. He lives with James and his wife now.’
‘Perfect woman!’ he said, lifting his hands and looking upwards as if thanking heaven. ‘You understand then the bond between Sylvie and myself.’
She thought of Albert, his round face always dirty and his wide blue eyes.
‘I do.’
‘And there is no better man to do business with in my opinion than an English solicitor,’ Morel continued. He seemed more at ease now than when the girls had first arrived. He picked up his teacup again and arched one eyebrow. ‘One always knows exactly what they are going to say. I think I can quite easily imagine what they are likely to say about a young woman living in Paris alone.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Or am I being unfair?’
Maud shook her head, trying not to smile. ‘No, you are quite right. James thinks Paris a very dangerous place, and his wife thinks any city a mortal danger, and art only ladylike if taken in moderation. Perhaps they are right. However, they have little to say on the matter. My father’s property was insured and the money divided equally between the three of us. It is not enough to provide an income, but enough to support me during my training until I can earn money of my own.’
She felt his eyes examine her threadbare cuffs, but he made no comment and when he found he was being watched, smiled at her warmly.
‘Ah! You are one of the new women. Independent in thought and deed. Excellent.’
‘Christian? We have visitors?’ A woman’s voice. They stood and turned towards it and Maud saw Sylvie Morel for the first time.
She was much lighter in colouring than her brother, with white-gold hair loosely tied up and pale skin. She leaned against the doorframe looking as if she had just stepped out of a Burne-Jones painting. Her afternoon dress of ivory silk suited her slim figure and had some suggestion of classical drapery about it. It was as if Canova’s marble sculpture of Psyche in the Louvre had woken and dressed herself. Maud looked away, suddenly shy.
‘My dear, we have woken you,’ Morel said. ‘I’m so sorry. Please, come and join us.’ She approached slowly, not quite looking at either of them. ‘This is Miss Koltsova. Miss Koltsova, my sister.’
‘Delighted,’ Tanya said, putting out her hand. Miss Morel took it with a smile and repeated the word, drawing it out as if she were enjoying the taste of it.
‘And this is Miss Heighton,’ Morel continued. ‘I hope, if you think you might like each other, that Miss Heighton will spend this winter here as our guest.’
Mademoiselle Morel turned towards Maud and after a moment smiled with more warmth. Maud put out her hand and for a moment held Mademoiselle Morel’s fingers between her own. They were dry and cool. ‘I think I should like that,’ Sylvie said. ‘Will you come? It might be very dull for you, but we will do our best to make you welcome.’
‘Then I shall come,’ Maud said, and released her hand.
‘Very good, come tomorrow if you can. I get so bored with Christian away all hours. Forgive me, I must go back to my room. This is not one of my good days.’ She turned to go at once, then looked back over her shoulder. I wonder if she will model for me, Maud thought. One would have to thin the paint so as to create only a suggestion of colour. ‘May I ask your first name?’
‘Maud.’
‘A proper English name, I am glad. Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls…’ she quoted in English, her accent giving a heavy new fragrance to the line.
‘My mother was a great admirer of Lord Tennyson.’
‘It suits you. My name is Sylvie.’ She left them, her slippers whispering across the hardwood floor.
‘Then it is settled!’ Morel said, looking triumphant and relieved. He hesitated as if to say something more, then looked uncertainly between his guests. Tanya at once put out her hand to him.
‘There is a darling little bookshop on the corner I noticed as we came in. Would you think me terribly rude if I take the chance to have a look at what they have? I can see myself out. Maud, I’ll be waiting for you when you are ready.’
Morel bowed over her hand and did not speak again until the door had clicked behind her. ‘What a charming woman! Are you very good friends?’
Maud smiled. ‘I hope so.’
He cleared his throat. ‘I should like to offer you a consideration of five louis a week, Miss Heighton, as well as your board. Would that be acceptable?’
‘You are too generous,’ Maud replied sincerely. She lived on that amount a month.
‘Do not be too quick to say so,’ he said. ‘Please, sit with me a moment more.’
Maud took her place in front of the cold teacups again. Morel reached into his pocket and produced a cigarette-case, blue enamel and decorated with a tiny circle of brilliants. He asked her permission with a raised eyebrow and she nodded her consent. She found she was holding onto her little purse quite tightly on her lap. The fear that something would deny her that room, this company elegantly balanced between champagne or gruel, reared up again. It was so comfortable here.
Morel lit his cigarette and then exhaled; the smoke curled upwards in the light. ‘My sister … Sylvie…’ He crossed and uncrossed his legs. ‘This is a matter of some delicacy. My sister has a weakness that I know is tolerated in some parts of Paris, but I cannot condone it. I was not perhaps the guardian I should have been to her during these last few years, and she was introduced to bad influences in my absence. I hoped bringing Sylvie to Paris might break these connections with certain corrupting influences, but I find she cannot now manage yet without…’ His voice trailed away and he scratched suddenly and hard at the underside of his chin.
Maud shook her head. ‘I am so sorry, sir. I do not understand you.’
‘Of course not. You know that laudanum can be of great help to those in pain?’
‘Yes, I have heard it can do a great deal of good.’
‘So it can, so it can, and properly administered under the care of a professional medical man it did help my sister a great deal. Then she was introduced by a “friend” into taking the drug in a vaporised form – that is, smoking it in the fashion they do in the East.’
Maud was startled. ‘Opium?’ she said faintly. All she knew of opium came from the cheap novels her step-mother had left lying around the house. The illustrations showed hovels in the bowels of London full of emaciated, corpse-like figures and sinister Chinamen rubbing their hands. It all seemed rather at odds with this elegant apartment and the beautiful girl. Though she was rather ghostly, a little lost in her own dreams.
‘You are shocked, naturally. Perhaps I can reassure you. I purchase the poison for my sister and she has sworn to use it only in this apartment. She knows no one in Paris. You will not be dragged into any low or dangerous places, Miss Heighton, I assure you. No one visits us, no low company will offend you here. Though, I admit her use of the drug does make Sylvie very reluctant to leave the apartment in the evenings. I would be happy for you to go out from time to time if I were at home, but I am afraid you will find this a dull place. No parties, no visits to the theatres or cabarets. If the consideration I offered you perhaps seems a little high, let us say it is by way of compensation for robbing you of the delights of Paris to a great degree over the winter.’
Miss Charlotte’s fears were explained away. Maud felt a sudden relief. Not only could she live here through the winter, she could be useful to the lovely girl and her concerned brother. She would distract Sylvie with sketching and English conversation and keep a watchful eye on her.
‘Please, Mr Morel, I came to Paris to study art, not for the cabarets. I also know very few people in the city. You would be robbing me of nothing.’ He looked greatly relieved. They made their arrangements for her belongings to be removed to Rue de Seine the next day.
* * *
Later in the afternoon Tanya and Maud walked arm-in-arm past the secondhand book stalls that lined the embankment opposite the solid square towers of Notre Dame. The sky had cleared slightly, and they were both a little giddy with their success. They drank in the cold air as if it were fresh water in the desert. It was strange for Maud. She had never made friends easily, having been isolated as a child and reserved throughout her youth. She wished that some of her old school fellows who had thought her such a strange girl, always sketching and never joining in with their gossip and whisperings, could see her now, in step with this glamorous Russian girl, strolling the Paris pavements as if they owned them. She felt as if her old tired skin was being shed and she, fascinating and original as Paris itself, had suddenly emerged at some moment between Miss Harris’s beef tea and the handshake with Morel.
‘My eyes, what a beauty! I declare I hate her,’ Tanya said. And when Maud laughed at her: ‘I do! We brunettes are expected to be fiery and clever and passionate all the time. It’s exhausting. With her colouring, all Mademoiselle Sylvie has to do is recline on a day-bed and the world will drop to its knees in admiration. It is very, very unfair.’
‘I shan’t pity either of you for being rich and beautiful,’ Maud said.
‘Well, that’s very cold-hearted of you.’ Tanya dropped Maud’s arm to pick up a volume of Baudelaire from the closest bouquiniste, but after reading a couple of lines, she made a face and replaced it. ‘Oof, I am glad I am a painter. Poets are never cheerful – but not all writers are like that, are they? Mr Allardyce is a journalist.’ Maud smiled at Tanya and she blushed. ‘So your father, Mr Heighton, he was an auctioneer?’
‘He was a drunk,’ Maud said, surprising herself.
‘Ah.’
‘And his name was not Heighton, but Creely. Heighton was my mother’s name before she married.’
‘My dear Maud, you are full of surprises. Why did you change it?’
On the pavement behind Tanya an elderly man with long, well-groomed whiskers and a long black cloak was arguing over the price of a book with the stall-holder. Each bent forward from the waist and argued their point nose to nose. Behind him on the pavement and apparently waiting for him was a handsome young woman very fashionably dressed and leading a tiny dog. Her lips were painted a deep crimson and her figure drew glances from the cabmen driving by.
Maud looked too, as boldly as a born Parisian, and sketched them in her mind as she replied, ‘It would not surprise you if you had met my father, or seen the shop. The name Creely reminds me of him and of that horrid place. I was delighted when it burned down. I was cheering on the flames. Everyone in the crowd thought I was distraught. Poor Miss Creely losing her father, and now this! But it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. It was a wonderful fire. They couldn’t save a thing.’
The man in the long cloak concluded his negotiations and huffing into his moustache handed over a number of coins. The young lady took his arm and they set off again along the pavement. Her skirt hung so straight and narrow from her hips she could take only tiny rapid steps. Her stride seemed to match that of the toy dog that trotted beside her. The man with the book, she with her skirt and dog. Money was paid and collections formed, passions indulged. Maud felt wise and amused by the pageant, then there was an unexpected pang inside her – a distant warning of a storm coming. It was all too sudden, too perfect.
‘Tanya, what do you think of them, truly?’ she asked. ‘Is this wise of me? Is there not something a little … strange about them?’ She had said nothing to Tanya about the opium, and Morel seemed a gentleman indeed, a concerned brother and Sylvie so young. Drink was a worse addiction, surely? She thought of her father’s sudden rages and repentance.
‘They seem respectable enough to me. I would say it does not look as if you will have much fun, but judging by our night in Maxim’s you will not mind that.’
Did Tanya sound a little hurt? The Russian girl had taken her in and dressed her and shown her a side of Paris she would not otherwise have seen. Maud felt ashamed. ‘I do not mean to be ungrateful, Tanya.’
‘Well, I certainly don’t want you to be grateful either!’ She bit her lip. ‘Do you think, Maud, I can be a good painter but still enjoy my clothes and my evenings out?’
‘I see no reason why not,’ Maud said, surprised by her sudden vulnerability. ‘I think you are a fine painter, Tanya. You cannot doubt it.’
‘No,’ but she did seem doubtful. ‘It is hard to find the time to work when one must go to dressmakers every other day and change one’s clothes three times in the course of an afternoon. My aunts feel it is a disgrace to my family to do less. When I have a family as well, how shall I find the time to paint? I do want a family.’
Maud did not know how to answer her. Tanya seemed to shimmer and dance through her life so, Maud could not see her as a woman with worries of her own.
Tanya shook herself a little and said firmly, ‘Morel seems to have the proper respect for an Englishwoman’s virtue. If he tries to force himself on you, come running to me. I shall send Vladimir after him.’ She put her hand on Maud’s sleeve. ‘Wouldn’t the comfort there do you a little good, Maud? If someone gives you a free horse, do not check the bridle.’ Maud thought of that bright little room again and what Miss Harris had said about prayers being answered – but Maud had not asked God for anything for a very long time.
‘Charlotte was right, he does smile a lot and he is offering a great deal of money.’ Tanya had become brisk again. ‘You can leave if you are unhappy. I shall be in Paris all winter and will not desert you. Always have the means to a graceful exit to hand – don’t you think that is one of the best lessons we learn? I always have a gold sovereign sewn into my travelling dress. Actually half a dozen, so the line isn’t spoiled.’
Maud considered. Mr Morel had offered her board, her own room and a weekly consideration that he called a trifle and that Maud called a fortune. She could simply wait and see how matters unfolded. The wind had been fierce yesterday evening, rattling her windows while she sketched her memories of the day, giving birth to new cold draughts, harbinger of the freezing depths of winter.
‘Thank you, Tanya. Even if I only stayed there a week it would do me good. It has been difficult these last months.’
Tanya squeezed her arm again then looked up. ‘Oh Lord, the rain is coming again, and I am expected back at the cathouse.’ She turned and lifted her hand, and the dark blue motor materialised beside them. Vladimir and Sasha were staring out of the windscreen like dolls in a shop window. ‘Can I give you a lift somewhere? No? Do you have an umbrella? Vladimir, do give Miss Heighton an umbrella, please, there’s a dear. And that package.’
Tanya thrust a bundle tied in brown paper and string into her arms. ‘It is only an old walking dress of mine, so don’t say no. You cannot wear your working dress every afternoon while you shepherd that beauty round the streets.’ Before she could thank Tanya or refuse it, the umbrella had been placed in her other hand and Tanya had scrambled up into the back seat. She leaned out of the window and took Maud by the hand.
‘The angels have given you a gift, my dear. Embrace it! Now say you shall. I shan’t let go of your hand until you do.’
She looked quite determined and Maud said, ‘Very well, I shall!’ Then as Tanya released her grip, Maud held on. ‘Tanya, why have we not been friends before now?’ The car was beginning to cause an obstruction in the road. A carter shouted and Vladimir yelled back something in Russian.
‘Sweet, you always seemed so sober and serious, so contained, I’ve been quite terrified of you. Somehow I knew you weren’t the type for Maxim’s. Even if you did look charming in that dress.’
Maud let go of her hand and Tanya blew her a kiss as the car pulled away. Maud watched it retreat into the stream of taxicabs, omnibuses, carts and motor-cars heading along the quayside. It was a few moments before she remembered the umbrella and opened it to protect her and her package from the increasing pace of the rain. It had a tortoiseshell handle and bore the name of a shop in Rue de la Paix. Maud knew the place. She had walked past it shivering in the cold every day for a month when she lived off Rue de Lille, and each morning had wondered who could possibly be rich enough to spend such a vast number of francs on an umbrella. Now she held one over her head – an elegant, oiled-silk shield of money. She leaned her back against the wall, the wave of relief spreading over her so quick and full she would have fallen otherwise under its force.