Keeping the World Away (11 page)

Then he told her to leave her room. There was not enough sunshine in it, he said, and it was too stuffy. She should give notice, and move.

*

Another room, another beginning, and, at first that same sense of dismay which always filled her before she took possession. How was she to make this space, these four walls and window and door, her own? It was too much, she had been happy eventually in the Rue St Placide and had finally succeeded in owning her room there. She had painted it well, it had grown on her and by leaving it she was afraid that she was abandoning part of herself.

The new attic room she found was in a rather grand house and stood on a boulevard that was wide and impressive. There were five floors, reached by a spiral staircase, and her room was at the top, on the left. Getting her furniture up there was an almost impossible task which stretched over a whole day, from seven in the morning until ten-thirty at night, and before it ended she was in a state of collapse. The removal men were drunk and at first would not even try to get her wardrobe beyond the second floor. If it had not been for the other tenants in the house, who emerged to see what the commotion was about, they would never have been forced to persist. She carried her paintings up herself,
and
then her hats, not trusting the men, hating them for their boorish behaviour and wishing she could have managed on her own. And then, the furniture was at last in the room but looked all wrong. She was so tired. She could not bear to start moving things to better positions and instead suddenly went out, fleeing down the staircase back to her old room in the Rue St Placide where she had left her cat. They went together, she and the cat, to a café, where she had a glass of wine and some lamb and green beans, and felt better. She prayed that she would never have to move again. That night, she stood in her nightdress at the window, listening to a nightingale, and weeping for the beauty of its song.

In the morning, waking up, she felt strange. Keeping perfectly still, her eyes closed, she tried to analyse this feeling. It was the light, surely, and the air. She opened her eyes and yes, the dawn light was rising through her window, which she had left slightly open, and now the cool air was filling the room. She shivered deliciously, wrapping the coverlet round and round her body. She saw where the wardrobe Rodin had given her should go, and where the chair should stand, and the wooden table. It would not take so long. She would buy some material and make a new cushion for the chair – apricot was the wrong colour for this room, she needed white or cream, some linen or cotton stuff. Her plants would flourish on the table if she put it in front of the window. Slowly, she began to hope. She would put this new room to rights, and her
maître
would love it and be pleased with her. She would bring out from herself all that he believed precious in her.

And then she would paint her room.

*

Gus and Ida and Dorelia and all their babies were still in Paris, but Gwen did not tell them about Rodin. Perhaps they knew without being told – she felt herself so transformed by love that surely it shone out of her – but they made no reference to it. Ida was near her time again, with her fifth child. Her body was distorted with the weight of it, her eyes lacklustre and her skin without its usual bloom. Gwen felt for her, and shuddered a little at the sight of her, feeling suddenly apprehensive in case by some
unlucky
chance she herself should suffer such gross interference with her own body.

The likelihood of this had lessened. Rodin came to her new room, admired it, and made love to her, but he did not come even once a week now, and he did not always promise to come again. There was a change in him and she sensed it and grieved. She wrote to Ursula, telling her that she felt Rodin liked to make her furious and then take her in the middle of her rage. He kept her waiting for a visit for days, because he said he was so busy, and then when he did come he accused her of being lazy and not trying either to work herself or find other work modelling, though all the time he was the cause of her inertia. How could she paint, how could she leave her room and go to pose for others, when she was ever waiting for him? She knew that his excuses were not always true. He was at home in Meudon more and more, with Rose, and he travelled to England and to Germany, but that was not the whole reason for his absences. But she was posing for him again, naked, willingly adopting the erotic poses he required – to prove, she hoped, that he still had need of her – and she tried to silence the resentment that was building up within her towards him. She worked, too, producing portraits she was not ashamed to show him, though it was not his artistic, professional praise she yearned for but a greater share in his life. When she did not see him she could not contain her love, it was too huge, it swamped all other feeling, and so she wrote to him, pleading with him to come to her and accept more fully what she had to offer. But it seemed more and more that what she did have to offer was not what he wanted. He told her he liked her ‘anonymously’, as a body, as a woman, but she appeared not to be able to supply what he wanted emotionally and intellectually. He gave her books to read – Richardson’s novels,
Pamela
and
Clarissa
– and she did so but could not see why he wanted her to read them. Increasingly, he made her feel stupid and she knew she was not stupid. It hurt when she found he had told his concierge that she was not to be let into his apartment unless she had a letter from him arranging a visit. It was cruel, humiliating,
but
she could not do without him. She only had to see him to feel her body on fire.

Yet Ida called her ‘reserved’. She did not know how lacking in the smallest scrap of reserve she had become when she was with her
maître
. Ida would have been shocked to see how brazen she could be, utterly without inhibition. But then Ida knew about a love like this. She loved Gus, but her devotion to him had not kept him by her side. Aware of this, Gwen wondered if there might be a lesson she ought to learn from Ida’s position, and apply to herself. She did not like to think so – could not bear to imagine that by keeping nothing back, by exposing herself so completely to Rodin, laying before him all her love, she might have made him wary. Calm, calm, he was always advising, compose yourself, be tranquil, he urged, and what was that but a warning? A warning which she could not heed, and which made her angry. She saw herself as a blue flower growing high in the Alps, refusing to be found and cut and killed.

She voiced none of this to Ida, who had her own troubles, but she thought about doing so. She trusted Ida, and needed a confidante. But then, suddenly, it was too late. In the first week in March 1907, Ida felt her labour pains begin, mild enough to permit her to walk from her apartment to the Hôpital de la Maternité, where she gave birth to yet another boy. Gwen, when she received the message, said out loud, though there was no one with her, ‘Oh dear!’ Ida had so wanted a girl, every time. Mrs Nettleship arrived and, Gwen knew, would be in charge, so she would wait until later to visit Ida. There never was a later. On the 14 March another message came: Ida was dead, and Gus was drunk.

*

The studio was enormous. Gus had told her it would be magnificent when the workmen had finished, and she could see what he meant. But standing in the doorway that day she thought how its echoing emptiness, its disarray, the chill in the air were like a form of grief itself. Gus wandered about, still drunk, sometimes singing, sometimes whistling, a look of what anyone who did not know him might interpret as contentment on his face. Silently, Gwen
moved
about, clearing away some of the builders’ debris, lifting bits of plasterboard very, very carefully and stacking them neatly. Gus should not really be here at all but she had guided him here, encouraging him to believe that it was perfectly proper for him to try to work. He was no good to his crying children and he antagonised Mrs Nettleship who, with Dorelia, was looking after them.

There was to be a cremation. Gus would not attend and neither would she. What was the point? They did not want to see a row of weeping mourners when their own distress was so savage. Work, that was the only thing. Work, try to put into their art all that they felt, and so keep Ida alive and warm within them. They did not talk about her. Neither of them mentioned her, not since the first moment when she went to collect Gus (she felt that is what she had done, scooped him up, taken him away from Mrs Nettleship). He had told her then how beautiful Ida had been just before she died. ‘Here’s to love!’ Ida had said, and the two of them had drunk a toast in Vichy water. Gwen could hardly bear to hear this and had put her finger to his lips. She wondered if she should embrace him but instead she led him to his easel, and put a paintbrush in his hand. After staring at the canvas for a long time, he began to paint.

And she drew him. Sitting to his right, she positioned herself on a stool, sketchbook on her knee, and drew him, and while she drew she thought of her lover. Rodin would hear about Ida’s death, everyone would, and when he returned to Paris he was sure to come to her, knowing how shocked she would be. She had left a note with the concierge and he would read it and come to the studio, but delicacy would prevent his entering, so she had left another note with the concierge here, saying when and where she would meet him. She needed his comfort. He would hold her, and stroke her hair, and do for her what she could not do for Gus. But instead, on the third day, when Gus had slept as though in a coma, and she had not slept at all, a telegram was brought round by her own concierge. Rodin was not coming to her. He expressed his condolences but said nothing more. And he had been in Paris all this time.

Anger began to mix with grief as she stayed close to her brother. Death was so near, time so limited, and her lover did not seem to appreciate this. He could die, like Ida. He was more likely to die than Ida had ever been. She developed a hissing noise again in her head and felt she might explode with the frustration of it all. Gus, awake at last, properly awake after days of stumbling about and drinking heavily, when she could not persuade him to paint, was unaware of her state of mind. He wanted his children back. Mrs Nettleship had taken the three eldest back to Wigmore Street with her, and he had had to let her do this, leaving the two babies with a nurse and Dorelia. Now he wanted them all reunited. Gwen could not begin to comprehend how this could be managed and was no help in making plans. But Gus was full of schemes, and the energy needed to explore all the alternatives began to come to him, so Gwen went home, back to her attic room, feeling that she was not needed so much any more. She could return to her own life.

Back in her room, soothed by its peaceful air, she wondered about her life. Did it have meaning without her master at the centre of it? But he was not at the centre now, perhaps never had been. He was on the edge, and ever threatening to slip off it. Dying would solve everything – if she were to die, like Ida, not him. She could kill herself and have done with him. What, after all, was there to live for if she had lost his love? She had no children to mourn her, no dependants she would be deserting. More and more it seemed attractive to end her own life. Wicked, but attractive. Lying on her bed, watching the tops of trees tremble in the wind outside her window, she thought how easy it would be to drift off for ever, fall into a deep, deep sleep, toasting not love, as Ida had done, but death itself.

Then he wrote to her, a letter full of concern, saying that he did love her and that he wanted her to be happy. He would come to her soon, and wanted to find her tranquil and working well. One last chance, she promised herself.

IV

QUIETLY, URSULA TYRWHITT
climbed the stairs, pausing every now and again not because she found them steep but to listen. She could hear nothing from above. It might mean that Gwen was out but she did not think so. She hoped her friend was painting, and that the intense silence was a sign of creativity. A new painting had begun. Ursula had seen it the week before. It was different from anything Gwen had ever attempted, a painting in which there were no people, only objects. She had said this to Gwen – ‘No figure? There is to be no figure?’ – and Gwen had shaken her head. ‘It is not about people,’ she had said, and shrugged, a gesture Ursula knew well. It meant ‘do not press me’.

She was carrying some primroses, bought that morning from a woman selling them in the street. They were fresh, newly picked, drops of moisture still on the delicate petals. Ursula was holding them in her gloved hands, conscious of their fragility. The stems were tied with a thin wisp of straw and would come apart any minute. Cautiously, approaching the top of the staircase, she raised the posy to her face to see if the primroses still carried their scent. They did, but only faintly, only a trace of the woodland where they had been picked remaining. Gwen’s door was slightly open. Ursula hesitated. The gap was just wide enough for her to peer round. Gwen was standing motionless in front of her easel, paintbrush in hand but not poised to touch the canvas. She was staring at it as though she did not recognise it, and was bewildered by what she saw. ‘Gwen?’ Ursula whispered, fearing to break whatever spell her friend seemed to be under. Mutely she held out the primroses.

In a sudden swift movement, Gwen put down her paintbrush and crossed the room to take the flowers. Without speaking, she
took
them from Ursula and turned and seized a glass tumbler which she filled with water from her sink and placed on the little wooden table in front of the window. She pushed the primroses into the tumbler, not seeking to arrange them, and stepped back. There was an open book on the table but now she removed it. The window was open, but she closed it and drew across it the fine lace curtain. Again she stepped back, and this time nodded. Ursula was afraid to speak and wondered if she ought simply to turn and tiptoe away, but Gwen spoke first. ‘Good,’ she said, ‘the flowers are just right. They say the right things.’ Ursula wondered what these right things were, but Gwen was asking if she would like tea and did not seem to want her to go.