The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (13 page)

There wasn’t much room in the
felce
and at one point I kicked the curtain out of the way. As I did so, I caught the eye of the gondolier, who was looking down towards us. Thinking of his eyes on my nakedness should have been embarrassing but instead I found I wanted him to stare. But my lover closed the curtain behind us again and once more it was too dark to do anything other than feel him making love to me. He held my hands above my head and sucked on each of my nipples in turn.

Then at last he was inside me. His humping pushed me back into the cushions. I lifted my pelvis to meet his. Faster and faster. Harder and harder. He came with a triumphant cry, thrusting hard against me as though to wring every last drop from his orgasm. I felt my body respond accordingly. I contracted around him, massaging him to a shuddering climax.

When we came apart, my lover laid his cloak over me to cover my nakedness. He opened up the curtains of the
felce
so that we could see the world outside.

The ghostly gondolier continued to row us silently through the lagoon. Venice was far behind us. There was just a sliver of new moon to guide us. I could not see what was ahead.

Chapter 16

Paris, 1839

I could not go back to Arlette. Even a month later, she had not changed her mind or mellowed in her opinion in the least. Remi was a beast and I had betrayed her. ‘She’s says you’ve made your bed,’ Elaine told me, on my fifth visit to beg for work.

So, Remi found us a place to live in Saint Germain. I had some small savings. We could afford it for a couple of months. It was tiny, just one room. But I was used to the
chambre de bonne
, which was half this room’s size, and thus it seemed like a palace to me. Besides, it contained everything I needed. A double bed and Remi.

Having Remi to love, I thought that I had it all. I couldn’t imagine needing anything else to survive. And for those first few months, I didn’t need anything much. I took in sewing and Remi sold sketches to tourists on the quays. In the evenings, he worked on a painting of me. He used the canvas on which he had painted Arlette, blotting her out with a layer of grey paint before he started again. He had me pose naked on the bed. He told me to imagine I was the Queen of Sheba. I should be proud and unembarrassed of my triumphant nakedness, he said. I was the most beautiful woman on earth. I was the best loved.

But that winter in Paris, everything was to change. Now that I was not living in Arlette’s house, with its eternally glowing fireplaces, I would come to know the true meaning of cold.

The winter was a harsh one. Beginning in December, right before Christmas, the wind blew from the north-east for two months straight, bringing with it more snow than I had ever seen. At first it seemed jolly and festive. The pristine white snow covered the litter and the horseshit for a start and the thought of a new year made everyone happy. But after a week or so, we all wanted the snow gone again. Anything. Endless drizzle would have been better than the biting cold and the wind that seemed to want to rip your coat from your back every time you stepped outside the door.

I bundled up and carried on as best I could. I wrapped rags round my hands to stop my fingers from turning blue and wore every pair of stockings I had at one time, though it made my tight boots pinch. I would not be defeated. Remi, however, seemed to be taking the weather especially personally. Each morning when he got up and looked out of the window, he cursed to see that another layer of white had dusted away his footprints of the day before. Sometimes he would sit for hours at that window, while I stitched the shirts I had taken in to repair. He only looked up when I handed him a hot drink to warm his fingers, and then only briefly. It was as though he was grieving the summer as a husband grieves a wife lost in childbirth. He stopped drawing.

Once he told me that the whiteness of the snow was blocking his imagination. He needed colour to paint, he said. He was briefly animated as he explained to me, making huge sweeping gestures as though putting shades on our walls. But then he collapsed back onto the bed as though the fight had gone out of him. He couldn’t paint in endless tones of icy nothingness and if he couldn’t paint then what reason was there left to go on?

‘Because the winter will be over before you know it,’ I reminded him. It was already the end of January.

I tried all the time to cheer him up and sometimes I succeeded. We would usually make love and I would wrap myself round him, forcing my heat into him. When I kissed him I imagined myself infusing him with my passion. I did everything I could to remind him what a joy it was to be living. When he didn’t want to make love to me, I took his manhood in my mouth and sucked and caressed him with my tongue until even the snow could not keep him from exploding in ecstasy. All the same, he got a small cold and convinced himself that he was dying.

‘It’s this weather,’ he told me. ‘It’s going to be the end of me. I won’t last the winter in this house.’

I stuffed every crack in the floorboards with rags. I made a sausage of fabric to stop the draught at the door. I took every job I could find to pay for fuel for our fire, but no matter what I did to keep him warm, Remi sank still deeper. The winter carried on. It was Remi or the weather and the snow seemed to be winning.

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘We need more logs and we need more to eat. We’ve got to get some more money from somewhere. I need to sell a painting.’

‘You’ve only got one painting,’ I pointed out.

‘And it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.’

We both looked at it. Me as the Queen of Sheba. Remi had painted an imaginary bower filled with silken cushions in place of our modest home. I was in agreement with him. It was his most accomplished work, for sure.

‘I’m sorry, my love, but now its duty is to keep us warm. I either sell it or I burn it on the fire to give us just a moment of heat.’

‘You can’t sell it! I’d rather it burned. But you can’t burn it either. You can’t!’

I was distraught. I did not know which was worse: my naked image on the fire or in a stranger’s home? But Remi was right that it was the only item of any value we had left to sell.

‘If no one likes the painting,’ he continued, ‘then at least the frame might fetch the price of some bread.’

‘Oh Remi.’ I battled the urge to cry.

He seemed determined and I knew better than to try to stop him. He had been distressed by the fact that I’d taken on so much work to raise money for our rent while he had been unable to do anything since the snow came down and he couldn’t draw cartoons on the quays any more.

I consoled myself with the thought that at least desperation had made Remi animated again. He dressed up in every jacket he owned, wrapped my portrait in a sheet to protect it and set out into the wintry weather. I did not know what I hoped would happen out there. A big part of me wanted him to return with the picture unsold, but I was human too and I was hungry. Yes, I would swap my chance at eternal beauty for a piece of bread and chicken.

When Remi returned three hours later, he did not have the painting.

‘Who took it?’ I asked.

He named a furniture dealer I particularly disliked. I put my hands over my eyes to stop the tears as I imagined what a poor return Remi would have got for the painting that had taken so much of his talent, his time and his affection for me.

‘How much did he give you?’ I dared to ask at last.

It was only enough to feed us for two days. Especially since Remi had no idea how to get a good price for anything in the market and had paid almost twice as much as I would have done for a loaf of bread and some mouldy cheese. He’d also spent a good chunk of the money on wine, I noticed with some distress. After the few provisions we had were gone, we were in the same position as before. A worse position, because now we did not even have the portrait to remind us of warmer and happier times. Still, I let Remi drink all the wine. It made him amorous. I was glad to give myself to him and to see that familiar smile on his face. With his arms around me, feeling his manhood pressing to enter me as ardently as ever, I felt momentarily protected. Something would happen to make everything better.

With the food almost finished, Remi announced that he would have to make an even more drastic sacrifice than selling the painting. He would have to throw himself on the mercy of his father. To Remi, who had not spoken to his father since the day he announced he wanted to go to Paris to become a painter, it would be the equivalent of selling his soul.

‘He will be happy to see me grovel. And I will be happy to grovel for you, my little love.’

I tried to tell him he should not go to Guerville. We would manage. I would find a way. I could sell one of my dresses, I suggested. I could go and beg Arlette to take me back again. But Remi would not hear of it. He told me that my efforts to keep us fed so far had unmanned him. If he couldn’t provide for me then what kind of a man was he? He was not the kind of man he thought would be worthy of my love.

He would not hear any disagreement so I had to let him go, though if I was honest I would have said I did not see how going to his father could be thought of as being especially manly. It was clear that Remi thought he was making an extraordinary gesture for my love. With the snow still falling, he dressed in all his jackets again and I bid him a good journey out of the city. Little did I know that I would not see him again for quite some time.

Chapter 17

In truth, I did not need to go back to the palazzo a second time. There was no real writing to be translated in Remi Sauvageon’s sketchbook, apart from the odd title.
Augustine in the kitchen
or
Augustine sewing
. But something dragged me back there. You know what it was. When Silvio opened the door again he didn’t seem in the least bit surprised to see me.

The sketchbook was still on the desk. Silvio must have known I would come back. I took off my jacket and arranged myself again, opening up my laptop to make notes.

I don’t know why I tried again. Foolish optimism, I suppose. Still, I was surprised to find that the Palazzo Donato network was active that morning. I was even more surprised to find that the password Marco had given me all those months ago – Ernesta1973 – still allowed me access.

But what use was it to have that access now? I didn’t want to spend my precious time in the Donato library surfing the
Daily Mail
online. Keeping the Wi-Fi connected could be a dangerous distraction, though truthfully, that’s exactly what I was hoping for. A dangerous distraction. And my hope did not go unrewarded. After ten minutes or so spent staring at the empty instant-message window, I got back to my work. I was soon absorbed in Augustine’s account of life in Paris. I matched the events she talked about to the little scenes in Remi’s sketchbook. It was easy to imagine the garret on the Rue de Seine and the bustle in the streets below his window. Remi had drawn many of the local characters and so my mind’s eye had very little work to do to recreate a street full of faces, some friendly, some not.

I was so absorbed in my work that I forgot to keep checking my laptop. The screen went into rest mode – completely blank. Until, that is, I wanted to make a note in my calendar to remind me that I should call my aunt later that day. It was her birthday and I was in danger of forgetting. I inputted my password, which was, since I felt superstitious about changing it, ‘Venezia’, and the screen came back to life. It was not, however, as I had left it. There was a message in the instant-message box from ‘Marco D’.

I felt a little sick at the sight of his name, not because it repulsed me but because the idea that he had reached out to me filled me with nerves. It might be spam, I told myself. Several of my friends had had their DM accounts hacked so that they sent out endless exhortations to try new diet pills. But it was really Marco.

How are you?

was all the message said.

‘Fine,’ I responded. ‘I’m in your library.’

‘I know. Silvio told me. How is the research progressing?’

‘Well. Thank you for letting me come back.’

‘Least I could do.’

‘I really do appreciate it.

‘What exactly is it you’re hoping to find?’ Marco asked.

Oh Marco, I thought. There’s a question. I replied, ‘I’m not sure. I suppose I was hoping that seeing Remi Sauvageon’s sketches would give some colour to my account of Augustine’s life. It’s the closest thing I can get to photos.’

‘They’re great sketches,’ Marco wrote. ‘The work of a master.’

‘Which is why you bought them.’

‘I didn’t just buy them because they were drawn by Sauvageon. I think I would have wanted them regardless. They’re not just cartoons. They have a life of their own. A vibrancy. I suppose that comes from the artist being in love with his muse.’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I agree his feelings seem to shine through.’

‘I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at them in the past,’ Marco continued. ‘I was fascinated by the thought of the relationship the pictures represent. I tried to find out more about his early life and the woman he so clearly adored. I did get to see some letters. From her to him and to her employer at the time.’