Chapter 8

Fen slept well that night, despite her almost all-day nap earlier. Whether it was the crème de menthe, the exhaustion of last night’s journey or the comfortable bed, she couldn’t tell, but there was a bit of her that was sure it was because she felt, in some way, that she was home. Not home as in Oxford with her parents, or home with Mrs B in the old farmhouse near Midhurst where she’d spent the war, but home in the sense that everything around her was familiar. She had spent hours in this apartment as a girl, either painting alongside Madame Coillard (as she had always called her back then) or playing with her brother as her parents left them to amuse themselves running marbles along the smooth parquet floor while they talked and laughed with their eccentric friend.

She’d also reread her letter from Kitty and she could almost hear her voice through the words as she sent condolences and local news. Fen missed her friend terribly. Simone seemed nice enough, but Fen would give anything for Kitty to be here now, sharing her room like they did at Mrs B’s, giggling into the night about some fancy man or other, or just companionably going about their work. Still, it was good to know that Kitty, Dilly and Mrs B were safe and well. It all helped to ease the pain of knowing now that her beloved fiancé Arthur was dead.

By 8.30 a.m. the next morning, Fen was up and dressed and sitting in the studio, a hot cup of mint tea steeping in front of her. She’d been woken by Tipper scratching at her door an hour or so earlier and rather than let him wake the rest of the household up, she’d taken him for a quick run around the tree-lined courtyard in the centre of the building. The early-morning blast of chill air had been good for her and she felt far more alert than she had the night before.

Now, sitting in the sunlight streaming through the windows, a newspaper caught her eye…the name Sartre – hadn’t Rose mentioned him last night? She picked the paper up from the floor where it had been doing a grand job of protecting the wooden blocks from splashes of white spirit and oil paint. She read the headline properly: ‘France Seen From America, by our special correspondent Jean-Paul Sartre’. She read with interest about the journalist and philosopher tasting Coca-Cola for the first time and meeting President Roosevelt.

‘Well, Tipper,’ Fen said, as the little dog padded into the room and nuzzled her outstretched hand, ‘if I do come across this Sartre chap in the bar of the Deux Magots, I shall ask him all about this Coca-Cola drink!’

She read a few more articles, enjoying the challenge of testing her French and stretching her vocabulary. There had been a rise in Mafia-style gangs, it seemed, according to one article at least, which blamed American films for giving Frenchmen ideas, while there had also been a scandal in the Bois de Boulogne, where a painting had been stashed in the racehorse stables. Paris was certainly more exciting than Midhurst, that was for sure.

Simone’s bedroom door opened and the young woman crossed the studio to get to the bathroom, which was on the other side of the apartment. Seeing her now in her nightdress and without a scrap of make-up on, Fen realised that the assumption she’d made last night over the dishes about Simone being plain under her lipstick and powder wasn’t entirely correct. Her skin glowed and her poise was as elegant as anyone’s who had spent years at the barre. No, she wasn’t unattractive without make-up, far from it, but her rouge and mascara had emphasised her features, which were actually more delicate and less striking in the clear morning light.

‘Good morning, Fenella,’ she spoke and raised a hand in greeting.

‘Good morning, Simone,’ Fen replied and went back to reading the newspaper.

Gradually, the apartment came to life. First, Simone dressed and breakfasted, if you could call just a small cup of coffee breakfast. Fen decided that Mrs B, her old landlady in West Sussex certainly wouldn’t. She had always said that a breakfast wasn’t a breakfast without at least one of the freshly laid brown eggs from the ‘ladies’ on the farm.

Fen was just thinking about those early-morning stints in the fields when Rose appeared from her bedroom, wafting into the studio with her hair in a bright-pink chenille turban and the rest of her draped in another voluminous velvet housecoat, this one turquoise in colour. A more different landlady to her last, you could not imagine.

Fen remembered the history of how Rose came to be in this apartment. Her parents had left it to her, their only daughter, after they had died, prematurely and devastatingly for the young woman, of the Spanish flu that had swept through Europe after the end of the Great War. Rose had become a financially independent young woman, and one not inclined to marry, it seemed. The artistic life suited her, and she only took the honorary title of madame on as she got older, as a way to distinguish herself to her pupils and clients.

A buzz of the doorbell, followed by the scrabbling of Tipper’s claws on the wooden floor and his yapping, announced a visitor.

‘That will be your young man, Fen dear.’

‘Oh, he’s not—’

‘Simone!’ Rose interrupted Fen and called out to her lodger. ‘Be a dear and let the poor man in.’

‘I suppose it might not be James,’ Fen looked at the ormolu clock on the console table, it was still only 9 a.m. and remembering how he used to like drinking with the men at the vineyard, she wouldn’t have put it past him to have found a bar rather than a hotel last night.

The sound of girlish giggles, and a deeper more earnest voice in the hallway, put paid to that idea, though, and, soon enough, the masculine bulk of James appeared in the studio, this time carrying the squirming Tipper in his arms.

‘You see, he likes you,’ Simone was still stroking the small dog as it strained against James’s muscles. She kissed the pooch’s head and Fen couldn’t help but notice James’s cheeks redden slightly at the attention, even if it was directed at the dog.

‘Ahem,’ James coughed as Simone ran her fingers along Tipper’s back, brushing them against James’s chest at the same time. ‘Good morning all,’ he continued as he placed the small dog down and gave it a little shake as its needle-like teeth hung onto his sleeve.

‘Tipper!’ Rose snapped and clicked her fingers and the dog obediently let go and shot off around the legs of the easels, upsetting a couple of paintbrushes from the side table between them. ‘Oh, that stupid dog,’ Rose sighed, as if this was a near-daily occurrence.

Fen stood up to greet James. Before she could cross the room to offer him a friendly handshake, Simone had reached up and given James a kiss on both cheeks. She then waved to the women.

‘Ooh la la, I must go. I’m due at the atelier and I’m late. Simone, Simone…’ she tutted to herself and riffled through her stylish little handbag. ‘Key!’ She held her quarry aloft. ‘Not that I need it, you never lock the door, madame!’ She waggled a finger at Rose, who raised her eyes ceiling-ward, letting the accusation glance off her.

‘Have a good day,’ James said to her as she left the room and then Fen watched as he followed her into the hallway. She couldn’t catch their conversation, but she heard Simone giggling again. She shrugged her shoulders and sat back down with Rose.

‘Beauty is such a transient power, don’t you think?’ Rose asked her, rather rhetorically. ‘And yet such a strong one.’

‘Oh to be young and beautiful, indeed.’ Fen flapped the newspaper open again and ignored James when he walked back into the room. He came and sat down on the saggy old armchair and nodded a hello to the ladies.

‘Captain Lancaster, good morning.’ Rose reached forward and pulled a cigarette out of the packet. ‘And to what do we own this pleasure?’

‘Just checking in. As asked.’ He put a certain emphasis on the final two words and Fen was shamed into lowering the newspaper and finally smiling at him properly.

‘Thank you, James. Did you find a hotel yesterday?’

‘Yes, all tickety-boo. Decent little place round the corner in fact. Close to that Deux Magots place you were speaking of, so, after a nap, which seemed to last most of the afternoon, I popped in there and shared a drink or two with some of the locals. Decent chaps.’

‘Good. I was worried about you,’ Fen smiled at him. ‘I’m glad you didn’t get lonely.’

‘Not at all. And Simone has offered to show me some more hotspots tonight, so, all in all, my trip to Paris is really looking up.’ He leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his hands together, obviously very pleased with himself. ‘So what’s the plan for today. Art galleries?’

‘Definitely,’ said Fen with enthusiasm, then raised an eyebrow at James and carried on, ‘if you think you’ll be interested? Rose has offered to take me to the Louvre. We can meet her friend Henri Renaud too and see if there’s anything we can do.’

James looked puzzled, so with Rose’s nodded permission, Fen filled James in on her certain style of war work.

‘Blimey, Madame Coillard, bravo.’

The older woman allowed herself a smirk. Then she sat upright and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Come, let’s not tarry here with war stories. What’s done is done. I need to get that list from Henri and you two can get some culture.’ She paused and looked at James purposefully. ‘I feel at least one of you will be greatly improved by some time in our wonderful national collection.’

Fen stifled a chuckle. She was pretty sure James could take a joke, but she caught his eye just to check. Luckily, he looked more rabbit-in-headlamps than annoyed and Fen really wanted to snort out a laugh. Instead, she gabbled out something along the lines of going to get ready and slipped back into her bedroom to check her reflection and fetch her coat.