Moonlight Over Paris (8 page)

A
s soon as the door had closed behind Maître Czerny, air began to fill the salon again. Helena took a deep breath and tried to collect her thoughts.

“You seem a little
bouleversée,
” Mr. Moreau said. “I am not sure of the word in English. Overturned?”

“Bowled over, perhaps?”

“Yes, exactly. I was thinking we should—”

“Étienne!”

They were interrupted by the arrival of another student, a woman who had been sitting on the other side of the salon, and whose work had elicited several rare nods from Maître Czerny. She and Mr. Moreau kissed cheeks and began a conversation in French that was far too animated for Helena to follow.

“Miss Parr, allow me to introduce you to Mathilde Renault. I was about to ask if you'd like to share a coffee with me.”

“Yes, please. But you must both call me Helena. I insist.”

“We shall. We should all be on a first-name basis, should we not? As comrades in arms? Yes?”

“I have the time for one coffee,” said Mathilde. “But what of your other friend?” she asked, looking over Helena's shoulder
at the American girl, who was slowly gathering her sketches into a bundle.

“Of course,” Étienne agreed. “Excuse me, Mademoiselle—would you like to join us?”

“I'd love to,” she said, her expression brightening.

“I am Étienne Moreau, and these are my friends Mathilde Renault and Helena Parr.”

“I'm pleased to make everyone's acquaintance. I'm Daisy Fields.”

No one spoke for a moment. The American girl simply had to be teasing them.

“Truthfully—that is your name?” Étienne said, his eyes wide with amazement.

“Well, my real name is Dorothy, but my parents called me Daisy when I was little and I guess it just stuck. It's pretty silly, I know.”

“Not at all,” Étienne insisted gallantly. “I think it suits you very well. Now—where shall we go? Mathilde?”

“The Falstaff is not so very far.”

“The Falstaff it is.
Allons-y!
”

A
S THEY FILED
out of the
grand salon
and down the stairs, they were joined by a middle-aged woman who had been sitting on a stool in the corridor.

“Do you know her?” Helena whispered to Daisy, for the woman's eyes were focused to a disconcerting degree on her new friend.

“That's just Louisette. Daddy insists she accompany me everywhere. We hate one another.”

“Oh . . . I see.”

“I shouldn't use the word ‘hate,' I know. But she does get
on my nerves. When Daddy first hired her, I tried to be nice. I'd invite her to sit with me, to have what I was having, but she always said no. So now I try to pretend she doesn't exist.”

When they got to Falstaff's, which was just down the street from the academy, Daisy politely but firmly banished Louisette to a table at the far side of the café and asked the waiter to bring the woman a glass of water. But she didn't touch the water, or ask for anything else. All she did was sit and stare at Daisy and, by extension, the rest of them. It really was quite unnerving.

Soon, though, Helena was caught up in their conversation and having a grand time, though she barely touched the
café
noisette
she had ordered. Étienne was on his third
café express
before he noticed.

“Is there something not right with your coffee?”

“Nothing at all. It's simply . . . well, it's a bit strong for me. I would normally have a café au lait, but—”

“But the garçon would faint if you asked for such a thing after nine in the morning,” Étienne agreed. “The milk in the
noisette
—it isn't sufficient?”

“I think the trouble is that it still tastes like coffee to me, and I'm used to tea,” she admitted. “Don't mind me. I'm in Paris now, and this is how Parisians take their coffee. I'll learn to like it.”

The Falstaff was a curious place—a café-bar in the heart of Paris that was decorated to resemble a British public house, with forest green banquettes, framed prints of hunting hounds and Scottish stags, and enough oak paneling to satisfy a Tudor. At least Helena assumed that had been the decorator's intent, for she'd never actually been inside a public house.

Their conversation so far had centered on Maître Czerny and their morning class. Daisy and Helena were still feeling
bowled over, while Mathilde and Étienne were more phlegmatic. It seemed that tyrannical behavior was not uncommon among the city's art teachers.

“I was in a class once where the maître ripped our drawings to pieces when they displeased him,” Mathilde recalled. “And there was another teacher—remember Maître Homard, Étienne?”

“God, yes. That wasn't his real name, but we called him that because his face would become as red as
un homard
—how do you say it in English?”

“A lobster?” Daisy offered.

“Yes, that's it. Once, I remember, he was so enraged by one student's efforts—I think the poor fellow had overworked his paint—that he came leaping across the studio, waving a palette knife, and slashed the canvas in two. Right down the middle!”

“Goodness me,” Daisy said. “That does put things in perspective.”

“Do not be disheartened,” Mathilde advised. “Czerny will not always be so fierce.”

“How do you and Étienne know one another?” Helena asked. He seemed to be in his early twenties, while Mathilde was nearer to thirty, she judged; as their accents when they spoke French were quite different, she doubted they had grown up together.

“We were students at the École des Beaux-Arts together, last year,” Mathilde answered. “But we both found it . . . I'm not sure how to say . . .
désagréable
?”

“Disagreeable.”

“Ah. Nearly the same. Yes, it was disagreeable. I thought the teachers too rigid. Too attached to old traditions.”

“I was asked to leave,” said Étienne with mischief in his eyes. “I consider it a great honor.”

Thinking it impolitic to question him on the reason for his expulsion from the prestigious school, Helena turned to Daisy.

“Did you come over from America specially for the course?” she asked.

“Oh, no. I've been here for years. My father's a doctor, and during the war he came over to oversee the American hospitals here. My mother had died a few years before, and he needed someone to run the house and act as his hostess when he entertained. That kind of thing.”

“I see,” said Helena, thinking that Daisy would have been awfully young for such responsibilities, at least when they first came to France.

“Daddy's retiring at the end of the year—they asked him to stay on after the war, which is why we're still here—so I suppose we'll be going home then.”

“Why are you taking the course?” Mathilde asked. “Have you studied art before?”

“No, not really. After the war, I worked in a studio for a while, helping with the supplies and some preparatory work. I learned a little while I was there, and then, after the studio closed, I bought some instruction books and tried to learn that way. Daddy wasn't very keen on my going out to school, you see. But I convinced him, finally, that I should have some lessons. So here I am, although it may not be for long . . .”

“For someone who's never had an art class in her life, you are very good, you know,” Helena reassured her. And it was true. Maître Czerny had been wrong to dismiss Daisy's work so cruelly, for several of her sketches had been competently executed.

Étienne reached across the table to pat Daisy's arm. “Here we say
le chien qui aboie ne mord pas.
The barking dog does not bite,
I think? He is a loud man, and a rude man, but you must not be afraid of him.”

“And you, Hélène?” Mathilde asked. “Why are you here?”

“Just after Christmas last year, I came down with scarlet fever, and I nearly died. Even after the worst was over, I was bedridden for ages. Once I was a little better, I told my parents that I wished to come to Paris and learn how to paint properly.”

“They let you come to Paris all on your own?” asked Daisy, her mouth agape in wonder.

“Heavens, no. My aunt lives here, otherwise I'm sure they'd have made a huge fuss. And I think the only reason they did agree is because they felt so badly for me.”

“Shall you return home when the course ends?” Étienne asked.

“I think so. Although if Maître Czerny keeps making faces when he looks at my work I may be home before Christmas!”

“No, no,” Étienne said, shaking his head. “You will be fine, and so will you, Daisy. Now—it is time for lunch. Shall we order something?”

“
Désolée,
Étienne, but I cannot stay,” Mathilde said. Something passed between them—a look of understanding, something that hinted of shared hardships? It made her very curious to learn more about her new friends.

“I'm sorry, too, but I must go as well,” Helena said, gathering her things. “It was lovely meeting all of you.
À demain?
”

“À demain.”

She had done it. She had made it through the first day of classes, her dignity more or less intact, and she had made three new friends who knew her as Helena Parr, an art student like themselves. Just the thought of it made her so happy she could hug herself, for with friends at her side, she knew, she could weather any storm—even the unpredictable gale of the maître's ire.

    
10 October 1924

    
Dearest Amalia,

                    
I hope this letter finds you well and happy, and that Peter and the children are also in fine form.

                    
Today marked the end of my first month of classes—four weeks of dessin, dessin, dessin, and yet more
dessin, all with Maître Czerny. There are days when I feel as worn-down as the stub of charcoal I use for sketching, but there are good days, too, when everything suddenly makes sense and the drawing I produce comes close to matching the one in my head.

                    
Although the maître is a difficult man, I can't say I regret my decision to attend his academy and not another school. Our focus here is limited—there are no classes in sculpture, for instance, as the maître says it bores him. He doesn't much care for watercolors or pastels, either, and so those classes, which began last week, are being taught by others. But he is a very good drawing master, and I know I have made progress, even if he has yet to tell me so.

                    
I am rather nervous about his class in oil painting techniques.
Each year he chooses only twelve students for the class, and I have a terrible feeling I won't be one of them. It's not that the maître dislikes me or my work—the problem is that he doesn't seem to notice that I exist.

                    
But that, I must admit, is a small problem set against the joys of my life here. Auntie A is a delight, as ever, and I've made some wonderful friends, all of them students at the academy. My health is even better than it was before my illness—all that swimming in the Med, and now the long walks I take each day from home to school and back again.

                    
In response to your question—no, I haven't yet written to Mr. Howard, and now I rather regret having told you about meeting him. He is a perfectly nice man but he is not, no matter what you may be thinking, a potential beau. While I'm not opposed to furthering my acquaintance with the man, I have no intention of embarking on any sort of romantic entanglement, so please do put that idea out of your head!

                    
I've enclosed a little portrait of Hamish that I thought the boys might like to see when they're next home from school—isn't he a dear old thing?

With much love,

Your devoted sister,

Helena

She did have every intention of writing to Mr. Howard. Once or twice, she had very nearly asked her aunt for a
petit bleu
postcard, for she had seen Agnes using them when arranging visits or appointments. But something had stilled her tongue. What if the man she remembered from that day on the beach was a concoction of her memory? What if he had only been
making conversation, and was himself uninterested in furthering their acquaintance?

She had warned him that she would be busy; a few weeks here or there wouldn't make much of a difference. Besides, she was busy enough with her friends from school. Unsurprisingly, Étienne had become the star of their class, and while he clashed with Maître Czerny nearly every day their teacher seemed to like him all the more for it. Mathilde was another favorite, and his criticism of her work was mild at best.

It was poor Daisy who most frequently attracted the maître's ire, which Helena thought horribly unfair. Her friend had made terrific progress in the last month, but Czerny didn't seem to notice or care. Daisy's problem, he told the class on more than one occasion, was her lack of passion.

“Miss Fields has no fire in her belly. I see nothing in her work that engages my imagination, nothing that seizes me by the throat and shouts in my face. She might as well be creating wallpaper.”

As for what he thought of Helena's work? As she had said to Amalia in her letter, he had yet to notice her. The terror she had first felt, when he roamed the aisles of the salon searching for prey, had faded once she realized he simply wasn't aware of her presence in his class. She had improved, she knew she had, but her drawings attracted neither his praise nor his anger. She, and they, were invisible to him.

She knew she ought to say or do something—anything to make him see, but fear stopped her throat time and time again. It was silly, and childish, to let one man's indifference push her from the path she had chosen, but she simply couldn't bring herself to address him directly or, even more terrifying, challenge him openly as Étienne often did.

She simply needed more time; that was all. She would learn, and improve, and when she was feeling more confident she would make sure that he noticed her. For good or for ill, by the end of the year he would know her name.

In the meantime, there was the problem of her studio, or, more precisely, her lack of one. Agnes's house was large, but every room was crammed full of artworks and antiques, and the only space suitable for a studio and its attendant mess was an unheated garret.

Agnes had arranged for the contents of the studio in Antibes to be set up in the garret, and in September, when the days had been long and mild, she'd been happy working there. In recent weeks, however, her makeshift studio's failings had become all too apparent. It was cold, and would only get more so as winter approached; and the light that had seemed so abundant in the late summer was waning by the day.

Her friends were also desperate for studio space. Étienne's landlady had taken to complaining about the smell of turpentine and linseed oil, going so far to as warn him that he would be out in the street if he didn't find another place to work. Daisy's father, from what little she had said, disapproved of her “hobby” and discouraged her from practicing at all when she was at home. And Mathilde simply agreed that she, too, needed some room in order to work without distraction. What those distractions might be, Helena had no idea, and the Frenchwoman's reserved, dignified manner discouraged curious questions.

Their mutual need for a studio soon became an obsession, although they never got very far with their discussions. The difficulty, as ever, was money. Studios, even grubby, rat-infested, and terminally damp ones, were expensive; and landlords,
according to Étienne, were disinclined to rent them to students who had no visible means of support beyond their art.

If she'd had enough money to rent a studio for them all, she'd have done so; but the allowance she received from her parents, though perfectly generous, didn't stretch to such an expense. And there was no question of asking them for more, as they would never agree to such a proposal. “But we don't
know
these people,” her mother would be sure to say. “We don't know anything
about
them.” True enough, for Helena knew almost nothing about her new friends. She hadn't met their families, hadn't been to their homes, and couldn't honestly say that anything they had told her was, in point of fact, true.

She considered dipping into the money her grandmother had left her, but to do so she would have to consult with her father's solicitor, and he would be certain to tell Papa. Never mind that she was a grown woman and perfectly capable of deciding what to do with her own money. Papa would object, Mama would fuss, and she would be forced to admit the truth.

Agnes would have offered up the money for a studio without hesitation, but her aunt had already been far too generous. So she said nothing of her dilemma, and after dinner most evenings, sitting in the
petit salon
at home with her aunt, she avoided the subject of her classes at the academy, and instead talked about her new friends and their talents and interests. Before long Agnes was insisting that she invite them for dinner.

“I won't take no for an answer, Helena. I simply won't. In every one of her letters, your mother persists in asking me if I approve of your friends—but how can I answer if I haven't met any of them? What if she should take it into her head that I'm hiding something? You know how she can be. No one is better than her at sniffing out a lie or half-truth.”

“Fine, Auntie A. I'll ask them tomorrow.”

Agnes would charm them, she knew, but it still gave her pause. While she knew little of her friends' lives, they knew even less about her. Would meeting her aunt, and seeing where she lived, change how they thought of her? It was all rather antediluvian, but she'd never been friends with ordinary people before. Her childhood friends had all hailed from the toploftiest branches of the aristocracy, just like herself.

None of those friends had proved faithful or true, however, and she had no reason to believe that Étienne, Mathilde, or Daisy would be envious or jealous, or even disconcerted by her background. They would surely discover the truth one day, so better to be honest with them now.

She didn't say anything until Friday, when they had gathered for lunch at a cheap and nameless café on the rue Delambre that was marginally less expensive than its grander cousins on the boulevard du Montparnasse. Rain was pelting down outside, as it had all morning, and after their one-franc meal of soup, bread,
saucisson,
and cheese they lingered over their coffees.

Helena had nearly finished her
café crème,
which she had almost learned to like, Daisy was lost in her thoughts, and Étienne and Mathilde were smoking like chimneys, as usual. She hated the smell, which clung to her clothes for hours afterward, but since nearly everyone else in the café was smoking it didn't seem right to ask them to refrain.

“You know I live with my aunt,” she said, after waiting for a pause in the conversation. “She is, ah . . . she's keen to have all of you to dinner. Or to lunch on a Friday, if that's better.”

“I'd love to meet her,” said Daisy, glancing at Louisette, who perched as grim as a gargoyle on a nearby chair, “but Daddy likes me to be home in the evenings.”

“I can't manage dinner,” said Mathilde. “Lunch is better.”

“Étienne?” Helena asked.

“I am at your disposal, my dear Hélène.”

“Shall we say next Friday? We can walk there after school.”

“Where does your aunt live?” asked Étienne.

There was no way around it. “Her house is on the Île St.-Louis.”

“A house, you say? Not a flat?”

The man was relentless. “Yes, Étienne. An entire house.”

“Who
is
this aunt of yours?” Mathilde asked, her curiosity piqued.

“Her name is Agnes Paulson, although that's . . . well, it's a translation. Her husband was Russian.”

“Go on,” said Étienne, his eyes sparking with interest. “I can tell there's more.”

“He was a grand duke. There. Happy now? But he was killed in an airplane crash several years ago.”

“Interesting. What was your aunt before she married him? A cancan dancer?”

The mental image this provoked was decidedly bizarre, and enough to bring a smile to her face. “No, silly. She was just an English lady.”

Mathilde leaned across the table. “Does ‘lady' mean a woman, or does it mean the relative of a lord?”

“The latter,” Helena admitted.

“And are you . . . ?” Mathilde pressed, not unkindly.

“My full name is Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr, but I prefer to use only the last part of my surname. My father and Agnes are brother and sister.”

“Who is your father?” Mathilde persisted.

“The Earl of Halifax.”

“So that makes you
Lady
Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr, does it not?” Étienne asked.

“Yes, but I don't use it. The title, I mean. To my friends I'm Helena. Even Ellie, if you feel like teasing me.” She held her breath, waiting and worrying. Wondering if this would change things. America and France were republics, after all. They'd had revolutions to rid themselves of such pretensions.

“Ellie,” Étienne said at last. “I like it.”

“That's all? You're not going to tease me?”

“Why? Paris is filthy with aristocrats. Do you know how many people I've met with a ‘de la' in their surname? And none of them have two sous to rub together. So—lunch with the grand duchess this time next week?”

“Oh, please don't call her that. She honestly prefers Agnes.”

“Then I shall call her Agnes, but in the French fashion. ‘Ahnyess.' Far more elegant that way.”

“Mathilde? Daisy? Will you come, too?”

“Yes,” said Mathilde, meeting Helena's gaze squarely. “We will be there.”