She doesn’t look at him as he rises from the lavatory. When he closes the bathroom door behind him, Liv shuts her eyes and slides under the hot water until she can hear nothing at all.
Chapter Two
Paris, 1912
‘Not the Bar Tripoli.’
‘Yes, the Bar Tripoli.’
For a big man, Édouard Lefèvre could bear an uncanny resemblance to a small boy informed of some imminent punishment. He looked down at me, his expression pained, and blew out his cheeks. ‘Ah – let’s not do this tonight, Sophie. Let’s go and eat somewhere. Let’s have an evening free of financial concerns. We’re only just married! It’s still our lune de miel!’ He waved dismissively at the bar.
I reached into my coat pocket for the handful of IOUs I had folded in there. ‘My beloved husband, we cannot have an evening free of financial concerns for we have no money to eat. Not a centime.’
‘But the money from the Galerie Duchamps –’
‘Gone on rent. You were behind from the summer, remember.’
‘The savings in the pot?’
‘Spent two days ago when you were minded to treat everyone in Ma Bourgogne to breakfast.’
‘It was a wedding breakfast! I felt the need to mark the occasion of our return to Paris somehow.’ He thought for a moment. ‘The money in my blue pantalons?’
‘Last night.’
He patted his pockets, coming up only with his tobacco pouch. He looked so downcast I almost laughed.
‘Courage, Édouard. It won’t be so bad. If you prefer I’ll go in and ask your friends nicely to settle their debts. You need have nothing to do with it. They will find it harder to refuse a woman.’
‘And then we will leave?’
‘And then we will leave.’ I reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘And we will go and get some food.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll wish to eat,’ he grumbled. ‘Discussing money gives me indigestion.’
‘You will wish to eat, Édouard.’
‘I don’t see why we have to do this now. Our lune de miel is meant to last a month. A month of nothing but love! I asked one of my society patrons and she knows all about such things. I’m sure there is money somewhere in my … Oh, hang on, here’s Laure. Laure! Come and meet my wife!’
In the three weeks that I had been Madame Édouard Lefèvre, and, in truth, for some months beforehand, I had discovered that the number of my new husband’s creditors was even greater than his skills as a painter. Édouard was the most generous of men – but with little, financially, to support such generosity. He sold his paintings with an ease that must have been the envy of his friends at the Académie Matisse, but rarely bothered to demand anything as unpleasant as cash for them, settling instead for a steadily growing pile of tattered IOUs. Hence Messieurs Duchamp, Bercy and Stiegler could afford both his exquisite artistry on their walls and food in their bellies, while Édouard lived for weeks on on bread, cheese and rillettes.
I had been horrified when I uncovered the state of his finances. Not because of his lack of funds – I had known when Édouard and I met that he could not be wealthy – but because of the casual disregard with which these so-called friends seemed to treat him. They promised him money, which never came. They accepted his drinks, his hospitality, and gave little back. Édouard would be the man suggesting drinks for all, food for the ladies, good times for everyone, and when the bills came, he would somehow find himself the last soul in the bar.
‘Friendship matters more to me than money,’ he had said, when I went through his accounts.
‘That is a perfectly admirable sentiment, my love. Unfortunately friendship will not put bread on our table.’
‘I have married a businesswoman!’ he exclaimed proudly. In those days after our wedding, I could have announced I was a lancer of boils, and he would have still been proud of me.
I had been peering through the window of the Bar Tripoli, trying to make out who was inside. When I turned back, Édouard was talking to this Madame Laure. This was not unusual: my husband knew everyone in the fifth and sixth arrondissements. It was impossible to walk a hundred yards without him exchanging greetings, cigarettes, good wishes. ‘Sophie!’ he said. ‘Come here! I want you to meet Laure Le Comte.’
I hesitated for only a second: it was clear from her rouged cheeks, her evening slippers, that Laure Le Comte was a fille de rue. He had told me when we’d first met that he often used them as models; they were ideal, he said, being so unselfconscious about their bodies. Perhaps I should have been shocked that he wished to introduce me, his wife, to one, but I had quickly learned that Édouard cared little for conventional etiquette. I knew he liked them, respected them, even, and I did not want him to think less of me.
‘A pleasure to meet you, Mademoiselle,’ I said. I held out my hand, and used the formal vous to convey my respects. Her fingers were so ridiculously soft that I had to check I was actually holding them.
‘Laure has modelled for me on many occasions. You remember the painting with the woman on the blue chair? The one you’re particularly fond of? That was Laure. She’s an excellent model.’
‘You’re too kind, Monsieur,’ she said.
I smiled warmly. ‘I do know the painting. It’s a beautiful image.’
The woman’s eyebrow lifted just a fraction. I realized afterwards that it was unlikely she was often complimented by another woman. ‘I always think it an oddly regal work.’
‘Regal. Sophie is quite right. That is exactly how you appear in it,’ Édouard said.
Laure’s gaze flickered between us, as if she was trying to work out whether I was mocking her.
‘The first time my husband painted me I looked like the most awful old maid,’ I said quickly, wanting to put her at ease. ‘So severe and forbidding. I think Édouard said I looked like a stick.’
‘I’d never say such a thing.’
‘But you thought it.’
‘It was a terrible painting,’ Édouard agreed. ‘But the fault was entirely mine.’ He looked at me. ‘And now I find it impossible to paint a bad picture of you.’
It was still hard not to meet his gaze without blushing a little. There was a brief silence. And I looked away.
‘My congratulations on your wedding, Madame Lefèvre. You are a very lucky woman. But, perhaps, not as lucky as your husband.’