The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (28 page)

Oh, Remi’s expression said it all. I knew it at once. He was as moved as I was. The moment existed in an instant, but I saw he was shocked by the frisson that still passed between us after so much time estranged. He struggled to find the words.

The Duc looked at him quizzically.

‘My goodness,’ said Remi.

‘Do you not think your subject worthy of your art?’ asked the Duc.

‘On the contrary,’ said Remi. ‘I am wondering how I may do justice to such a beautiful face.’

To the Duc he gave no hint that he had already done me great justice, though his eyes flickered from my face to the unsigned portrait that hung over the fire. The way his eyes opened slightly wider showed me he knew his own work.

‘Well, I shall expect you to do your very best,’ said the Duc. ‘I shan’t pay for anything less! Now, do you have everything you need in here? Is there enough light? Will you need props? I thought that Mademoiselle du Vert would sit in this chair here, with her fan slightly open on her lap and . . .’ The Duc began to smile at his own ingenuity. ‘My own face shall be painted in the folds of the fan. A subtle touch.’

Insofar as a mark of ownership can ever be subtle, I thought.

The Duc asked me to show Remi the fan, which already had his face painted upon it by a far less skilful artist.

‘Very clever,’ said Remi. ‘It is a good idea to keep your face somewhere the young lady can see it all day long. Women tend to be terribly forgetful.’

How they both laughed at that.

Oh, the next hour was so painful. It seemed the Duc would never leave us alone. I had not realised he was so interested in art, or rather in the celebrity that followed the artists of Paris these days. The Duc wanted to know about Remi’s associates. ‘Was it true that So and So . . . Did What’s-his-face really . . . Have you heard of Monsieur Blah . . .’

Remi played the part of the jolly bohemian, regaling the Duc with lurid tales from the underbelly of the city. The more he said, the more I began to hate him. Remi played the part well but I knew the truth. He could no more live a life of happy poverty than the Duc himself might have done. Remi was soft. He was an impostor. When he glanced at me, I was glad to see him look slightly ashamed.

‘Well,’ said the Duc. ‘I must leave you to your work. How long will it take? I want to reveal the portrait at a small party in four weeks.’

‘It will take as long as it takes,’ said Remi.

The Duc nodded. I expected him to protest that Remi was in his employ and should make sure the painting was ready on time, but he didn’t. It was odd. I had never seen the Duc subservient but subservient he was in the face of art and artistry.

The Duc left, kissing me on the forehead as he went.

When the door was closed, Remi and I stared at each other. He did not step closer to me and I did not move from my seat.

‘You look well,’ I said eventually. ‘I am glad to hear your painting is gaining recognition.’

Remi continued to stare.

‘The Duc’s patronage makes you the best in Paris,’ I prattled on. ‘Since he will not bother with anything less than the best.’

‘So what does that make you?’ Remi asked suddenly. ‘The best lay in France?’

I turned my face away from him as though I’d felt a blow.

‘I suppose I should have known you’d come to this. Arlette must be very proud of you. I bet she couldn’t wait to pair you off with some rich old prick when she had you back in her grasp. “Augustine du Vert.” Was changing your name Arlette’s idea too?’

‘What was I supposed to do?’ I hissed at him. ‘After you left me all alone on the Rue de Seine? You said you loved me! And then you left me. You chose the easy life in Guerville over my love. You left me with nothing but the clothes I stood up in while you went back to the bosom of your family like the milksop you are. Unable to live without your comforts, your restaurant meals and your nights at the theatre. Or was it just an excuse to be rid of me? Less than six months after you left, you were back in Paris. Sitting in the stalls at the Opéra Comique with your friends again. You weren’t so desperate to be parted from me that you came to find me first.’

‘But I did,’ said Remi.

‘When?’ I said. ‘When did you come to find me?’

‘Only two weeks after I left you.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I came back as quickly as I could. I was taken ill from exposure on the way to Guerville. As soon as I was better, I went straight to the Rue de Seine and hammered on our door. You’d gone. Some vile old woman had already taken our place. Then Jeanne-Marie sent me to Arlette’s house. I ran all the way. And all the time I was running, I imagined scooping you into my arms and carrying you away from there. I was ready to defy my father. I knew that the moment he met you, he would understand why we could not be parted. But you had already forgotten about our love. Elaine told me you’d found someone else. You gave up on me just like that.’

He snapped his fingers.

‘You told me to give up on you! In those horrible letters. When you sent me the money.’

‘What letters? What money?’

‘The letters telling me we were from different stock. The money to buy me off.’

‘I never sent you any money. Nor any letters, except the one to tell you I would be back with you the minute I was well.’

‘You sent me a letter telling me it was for the best that we broke off our relationship and a promissory note drawn against your father’s account. Don’t you remember?’

‘What?’

‘I have never been more insulted in my life.’

Remi looked suddenly furious.

‘Don’t you see? My father wrote those letters, while I lay ill in bed. He must have copied the address from my letter telling you I would be coming back and destroyed it before sending you a message of his own. I would never have deserted you.’

‘Your father wrote the letters? Why should I believe that?’

‘We have an identical hand. Look!’

He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. It was a letter from his father. A friendly letter full of fatherly concern for his son’s progress in Paris. The handwriting was indeed very like Remi’s.

‘When I recovered from my hypothermia, I told my father I was going back to Paris to marry you. I should have wondered why he seemed so unconcerned. He knew you would not be waiting for me.’

‘No one told me you came to the house,’ I said. ‘Do you think for one moment that I could possibly have forgotten you so quickly? You should have begged to be let in and waited until I appeared.’

‘I thought I deserved your disdain.’ Remi stared at his feet. He was as a small boy, deeply ashamed. When he looked up again, something in his expression had changed. ‘But you acted on my father’s letters with alacrity. As Elaine confirmed. You could not have accepted to be this man’s concubine if you really loved me. I should have known you were a whore when I met you at a prostitute’s house.’

‘Why are you being so cruel to me?’ I wailed. ‘I was devoted to you. You were the only man I ever loved. I would have loved you for the rest of my life. I gave you my virginity and you left me to fend for myself and yet you accuse me of being a whore? It is you who made me a whore, Remi. The alternative was to starve. Don’t tell me you would have starved for me.’

Remi’s shoulders slumped and he was once again the broken man who had set off in the snow to beg his father’s assistance rather than face hunger with me.

‘I have been punished for my cowardice a thousand times,’ he said. ‘The sight of you with the Duc burns my eyes. Every day we’ve been apart I have thought of you. I will be punished until I die for what I did when I left you alone in the snow.’

‘I do not blame you for your weakness. But in turn, you must not blame me for having accepted the Duc’s protection. Just as you have chosen to marry a woman I understand to be the heiress to quite a substantial fortune herself.’

‘I do not love her,’ Remi burst out. ‘I love only you. Augustine, you must understand. That has not changed at all.’

‘Oh!’ I was distraught.

‘This is hopeless. Hopeless!’ Remi wailed. He threw a piece of charcoal across the room. ‘I cannot be expected to go through this torture. I cannot be so near you and yet not have you for myself.’

Taking his sketchbook with him, he left me at once.

That evening, the Duc noticed a change in my mood. I always tried my best to be light and gay in his presence, but now that Remi was back in my life, I just couldn’t pretend.

‘You are listless, my petal,’ said the Duc.

I told him it was due to a novel I had been reading, in which a girl and her sweetheart are kept apart by the most terrible circumstances.

‘You girls and your novels. I do not think you ought to be exposing yourself to such nonsense. Why don’t you take up sewing? Sewing never made anyone sad.’

The Duc seemed to have forgotten my humble beginnings as a seamstress.

My sadness did not discourage the Duc from making love to me. He started by kissing away my tears in the manner of a mother comforting a small child, but he soon grew tired of that and forced me to accept his tongue in my mouth. After that, his mouth wandered down my neck towards my cleavage. He pushed my breasts together and thrust his tongue between them. I continued to cry but if he noticed, he ignored it. He was bent on nothing but his own pleasure now.

He undressed me, throwing my gown over the back of a chair and ripping my chemise in his impatience. I did not say anything, although since I had made my plan for an escape, his tendency to rip things hurt me far more, as I would be less able to sell the clothes when I was no longer in his favour.

That night, however, I was very much in the Duc’s favour. My low mood and my heartfelt tears had filled him with desire for me.

More than ever, I felt like a puppet in the Duc’s strong arms. I let him pull me this way and that. I let him examine the secret places of my body more closely than any doctor. He asked me to call him ‘Papa’. As soon as he was hard enough, he forced his way into me, not caring that I cried out in pain because I was not ready for him. I knew only too well that my anguish did not make him more careful; it made him more determined to have his ecstasy. I braced myself as he hammered into me again and again, grunting and swearing like the pig that he was. When he came, I wanted to scratch his face off. Instead, I balled my hands into fists again and promised myself that I would not have to bear this awful situation much longer. I would run away. I would ask the cook to sell some of my things. If I offered her a cut of the proceeds, she would keep my secrets, I was sure.

The Duc did not have to leave me quickly that night, alas. He wanted to stay beside me and tell me all about his latest social triumph and complain about his wife. I knew what to do. I nodded along, but all the time my mind was elsewhere. It was with Remi, back when we were happy together in the garret.

I was terrified I would never see him again. I lay awake all night long, praying he would change his mind.

When Remi returned in the morning, as if nothing had happened, I felt for once that fortune might be on my side.

Chapter 41

Greg Simon, the producer who had been my main point of contact for the Augustine project, was coming to town. He wrote to tell me he would be arriving in just a couple of days. When I got his email, my first instinct was to panic. Since breaking up with Steven for a second time, I had indulged in something of a wallow. I was sure he would want to stay in the apartment, and it was a mess. After all, the production company was paying for the place and it was big enough for both of us.

But when I told him that I would have his room ready for him, Greg told me not to bother. When he was in Paris, he liked to stay at Le Bristol. Since he would only be in town for a couple of nights, he wanted to make them luxurious. On that subject, he continued, perhaps, after our meeting, I would care to join him for dinner at Macéo on the Rue des Petits Champs?

The restaurant was right opposite the Bibliothèque Nationale. I didn’t have much else on my agenda. I told him I would be delighted.

I had wondered what Greg Simon would be like. Naturally, I’d googled him the first time I heard his name. He was a seasoned Hollywood professional. He’d made several shows that I’d actually heard of. In his photograph, he looked like any American professional of a certain age. His hair was neat. His smile was big. He could have advertised anything from hair loss products, to toothpaste, to life insurance.

When I met him in the flesh, I’m glad to say he did not look quite so plastic.

He had booked a corner table in the restaurant. As we were shown to our places, Greg explained to me that Macéo, now a chic spot popular with the businessmen from the nearby Bourse, had once been the site of a high-end house of ill-repute. The elegant restaurant’s windows looked out onto the back of the Palais Royal, originally a palace built for a cardinal, where casinos and brothels had proliferated after the revolution. Later, the novelist Colette had been a frequent visitor. Her gift to the proprietor in her day – a pickled melon – still had pride of place in the quiet spot where we were seated that night.