Liberty Silk (6 page)

‘I’d like your hair loose,’ he added, jabbing a finger at her.

‘As you wish.’

Behind the screen the kimono was draped over a bentwood chair. Of faded blue artificial silk, it bore a pattern of birds and butterflies and flowering cherry blossom, and it smelt of someone else.

The first item of clothing she removed was her straw cloche – the one she’d bought in Venice. She set it on the chair, then slipped out of her shoes and started to undo the buttons on her dress. Steeling herself, she pulled the frock over her head. There was no peg to hang it on, and she didn’t want to drape it over the screen the way she knew some girls did. That would appear too provocative. Folding it neatly, she laid it on the chair alongside her hat. Underwear next. Garters, stockings, camiknickers . . .

Then – quickly! Into the kimono. As she slid her arms into the sleeves the scent of cheap perfume that still clung to the fabric was so overwhelming it almost made her gag.

Good Lord! How insane it was to think that not so long ago she wouldn’t have bothered with either screen or kimono. She’d have discarded her clothes blithely and unselfconsciously because she’d discovered that nakedness held neither shame nor sin.

‘Are you ready?’ The voice was clinical, detached; but impatient.

‘Not quite,’ she replied.

Raising her hands, she began to unpin the chignon that she’d gone to some pains to construct that morning. What wouldn’t she give to have her hair shingled! The weather had been stiflingly hot in Paris recently. But she knew that her hair was her chief asset. Apart, that is, from the obvious allure of her youth.

She dropped the hairpins into her shoe and uncoiled the plait, and then she shut her eyes tight and brought her hands to her face, resisting the urge to cry out as she cast her mind back, remembering the way
he
had laughed and the shout of joy he would give when she discarded her clothes and loosened her hair, and how, muzzy with the wine they’d drunk at lunch, she would be sweetly compliant, holding the pose for hours on end until a craving for nicotine set in and she’d beg for a cigarette break.

A meaningful cough sounded: it was her cue.

Taking a deep breath, Jessie moved out from behind the screen and walked an imaginary tightrope across the bare floorboards: chin up, gaze direct, demeanour unflappable – even though she was shaky with nerves. When she reached the day bed, she paused.

‘I’d like to examine the goods before we start, if you please.’

The goods
. . . She’d never been made to feel like a commodity in her life before. But of course, that had been in her old life – before Finistère. She untied the sash, slipped the kimono from her shoulders and dropped it over the cushioned headrest.

The man moved towards her. She couldn’t help but tense a little, waiting for his touch. If he touched her he had overstepped the mark and she would have to put her clothes back on and leave. But a surge of relief flooded through her when he stopped a yard or two distant and folded his arms.

‘Turn around,’ he said.

She did as he asked.

‘And now back to me.’ Another moment of scrutiny, and she held her breath and instinctively sucked in her tummy even though she knew she wasn’t showing yet, and would not for some months. ‘You’ll do,’ he said.

Thank God. Oh, thank God! She’d got away with it.

‘Remove your rings, if you please,’ he asked, directing his gaze to the third finger of her left hand. ‘They’re something of a giveaway.’

She slid first the narrow gold band with its single sapphire off her finger, then her plain gold wedding ring. There was something symbolic about the gesture. They would go to the pawn shop soon, as had her amber beads just last week, and her going-away suit, and the hounds-tooth coat that had been part of her trousseau. The whole lot had fetched just one hundred and fifty francs.

C’est fini
, she thought, as she dropped the rings into the pocket of the kimono.
The jig’s up and the final curtain’s fallen – and hang it all, didn’t I know it? Didn’t I know in my heart that day in Finistère that it was over and that I would never see him again?

‘Now fan out your hair for me.’

She obliged.

‘It’s quite remarkable.’ He reached out and lifted a handful of her riotous hair, grinning as he saw her flinch. ‘Don’t worry,
jolie petite
. You’re safe with me. I’ve never felt a smidgeon of attraction for the so-called “fairer” sex.’ He let the mass of hair fall, then moved across the room. ‘The Pre-Raphaelites would have envied me,’ he remarked over his shoulder. ‘Your hair is easily as glorious as Lizzie Siddal’s. You know Millais’s drowned Ophelia?’

‘Yes.’

‘She held that pose in a bath of cold water. Made herself so ill she nearly died. But don’t worry,’ he added, giving her a saturnine look before turning and moving back across the room. ‘I shan’t expect you to be quite so obliging as the divine Miss Siddal.’

The words of a letter she had written from Chambéry several weeks earlier came back to her.

Scotch has been very busy these last 2 or 3 days painting a divine Italian girl – he is absolutely mad on her, and no wonder, she’s a real beauty – black hair and eyes, an olive skin, and a tall graceful lithe figure. He has begun another, a ripping one – in a black velvet dress, with a white ostrich feather fan in her hand . . .

That dress! The very texture of it made you want to reach out and touch. She remembered how it gleamed when the Italian girl moved, how the dewy blush of the rose tucked into her décolletage drew the eye there, how the dusky velvet set off the translucent sheen of her skin after dark, in the blue hour, the hour between dog and wolf . . .

‘Ready to start?’ The painter was standing next to the trestle table that bore the tools of his trade – palette, brushes, pencils, charcoal, knives. He was looking at her with a kind of resentment now, like a customer kept waiting too long to be served.

‘Yes.’

‘Then make yourself comfortable on the day bed, if you would be so kind. On your side.’

She did as he instructed, sliding automatically into a series of poses.

‘Hm. No. No . . . Yes – that looks good,’ he said, regarding her critically. ‘Try leaning up on one elbow – that’ll give me more of you.’ He chewed on his bottom lip, considering. ‘Good, good. Chin a little higher. Yes! Hold that. We’re getting there, but there’s something missing.’

‘How about this?’ She stretched a languorous leg. It was a pose she’d held successfully before, in that room in the Villa Balestri – the room with the view of the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio. The view he’d painted.

‘No. I want a coquette, not a bloody
femme fatale
.’

This time she crooked her knee and arched a pretty foot. It would be a devil of a pose to hold, but she knew she was in no position to call the shots here.

‘That’s it! That’s just what I’m after. Now – try looking away from me. To your right. And smile. God – no – not like that. Who d’you think you are? The Mona bloody Lisa?’

‘Sorry.’

‘A sweetheart look is what I’m after – d’you follow me? A Mary Pickford look – playful and sassy. Yeah. That’s good. Lovely.’ He held up a thumb and finger to measure perspective, then: ‘Lovely,’ he said again. Giving her a perfunctory nod of approval, he adjusted the angle of his easel a fraction, helped himself to a stick of charcoal and set to work.

Long minutes went by. It was stuffy in the studio despite the open casement, and she had to concentrate hard to stay awake. The air was redolent with the smell of oil paint mixed with a pungent odour of frying onions from the street stalls below, and the only sounds in the room were the scratch of charcoal on canvas, the whine of the occasional mosquito, and the sing-song cries of the traders that came drifting in through the window.

One call was familiar –
Madame Saprasti! Madame Saprasti! Diseuse de bon aventure!

She’d been approached by the fortune-teller earlier, as she’d made her way down the street looking for the artist’s address. Madame Saprasti had offered to tell her what her future held for ‘a mere’ five francs. Jessie had shaken her head at the woman – five francs could get her a decent meal, after all – but part of her yearned
passionately
to know what the future held for her.

She remembered the cherry stone game she’d used to play as a child, the one that told you what class of man you might marry. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Her mother had expected her to bag a rich man – what other kind
were
there, after all? – but she knew she’d never get any kind of a man now, a married woman, abandoned, and with a baby on the way.

A baby! The idea that she would be responsible soon for a living, breathing human infant made her nauseous with apprehension. If she hadn’t been required to stay quite still, she’d have curled up in a foetal position the way she did every night now, wishing she could hibernate like some uncomplicated hedgerow creature and make real life with its anxieties and awful obstacles go away. She wasn’t going to give birth, she wasn’t going to give the ‘gift’ of life: sad bereft Jessie was going to inflict existence on another human being.

She’d spent many midnight hours recently lying awake, trying to garner a degree of comfort by praying to a God she no longer believed in. Mostly she prayed silently, but sometimes she murmured the words in a mantra. She’d have loved to shout them, on the really bad nights, but the walls of the boarding house were so thin they might have been rice paper and her neighbour was a grouchy fellow, a mad Serb who muttered endlessly to himself.

Oh, God
, went her prayer,
make it a boy, please! It’s got to be a boy, a healthy boy, a bully boy, a little ox. Don’t let it be a girl! Don’t let me bring a daughter into a world where men can pick girls up and play with them like dolls and then throw them away when a prettier popsy takes their fancy. Oh, God – please, please make my baby a boy!

What a sucker she’d been. What a mug! She remembered how she’d felt the day after Scotch had left her as she’d sat by herself on the beach at Finistère with her arms wrapped round her shins and her face on her knees, and how, when she’d finally got up, the cotton of her skirt had been stiff with salt. The wind had been as cold as a mother’s reprimand, and the sea and sky had been cracked pewter: so grey that it was hard to believe that only the day before the sun had been splitting the bright blue heavens, and she’d had to take to the shade to finish writing her letter.

When she’d first arrived in Paris a week ago, Jessie had hoped that one of Scotch’s artist friends, a girl with whom they’d stayed earlier that summer, might still be in residence in the rue du Sommerard: but no. She had headed north to Saint-Omer, where her architect fiancé was working on the War Graves Commission. There had been nothing for it but to find cheap lodgings elsewhere: and, of course, the only legitimate work available to a single woman fallen on hard times was as an artist’s model. That was how Jessie had ended up joining the other hopeful destitutes on the carrefour Vavin, where the models’ fair was held every Monday morning. She had hoped perhaps that she might run into a chum of Scotch, someone who could provide her with a clue as to where he might be, someone who might say: ‘Jessie! There you are! Thank God we’ve found you – Scotch has been searching everywhere for you . . .’

But no-one had come looking for her, and she wasn’t surprised: because every time she recalled the autocratic allure of the Italian girl, the oblique smiles she had shared with her husband, and the disdain with which her expressive sloe-black eyes had regarded his shabby little bride, Jessie knew how thoroughly she’d been duped. How long might she continue to fool herself, to live this lie? How long might she continue to deceive her parents, letting on that everything was tickety-boo, that she and Scotch were still basking in the warm glow of newly-wedded bliss and living
la vie en rose
in Montparnasse? How long might she continue to cling to the hope that he would come to Paris to find her, how long before she would have to return to the house in Mayfair as a jilted wife and hear her mother rail against her son-in-law: ‘I
knew
it all happened too fast! Engaged within a month! I knew he was a ne’er-do-well . . .’

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ the painter asked, jolting her back to the present.

It took her a moment to reply. ‘I’m thinking about the last time I sat for a portrait,’ she replied.

‘When was that?’

‘Last month. On the beach at Raguenez, in Finistère . . .’

She’d said something to exasperate Scotch, that last afternoon. She couldn’t remember what exactly – some facile remark about the PBIs who had come to the library in Rouen, to chat and flirt and read.

He had taken the drawing he was making of her and ripped it in two. ‘What do you know about what goes on in the real world? What do you know about real men, about flesh and blood men, what do you know about the horror they endured in the trenches while you were toasting your toes by the library stove, engrossed in Jane Austen?’ He reached into his knapsack and handed her a slim sketchbook – one she had not seen before. It had a bloodstain on the cover. ‘This was made by one of the war artists. He died in the hospital in Rouen, poisoned by mustard gas. What you have there is a true record of the war, Jessie, one the Propaganda Bureau doesn’t want you to see.’

Between the covers of the battered sketchbook had been images of the dead, the dying, the injured, the limbless. Page after page depicted atrocity: corpses trampled into mud, heaped into trenches, twisted at obscene angles. Some were unrecognizable as human; most had been mere boys. A poppy had been pressed between the last two pages of the book – the only splash of colour in a graphite record of hell.

Jessie and Scotch had stared at each other for a moment like two strangers on opposite sides of an abyss, and then Scotch had taken hold of her wrists, raised her hands to his face, and pressed them to his mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and she had buried her face in her arms and sobbed until her face was red and blotchy and her throat ached, and then Scotch, at a loss for words for the first time since she had known him, had put the sketchbook away and changed the subject, and she had ended up prattling something silly, something inconsequential.