Chapter One

Chapter One

Eve

Paris, May 1946

Odette bustled into the room, parting the curtains with a forceful ‘swoosh’. I was bathed in morning sunshine and given a view of the Eiffel Tower at the same time.

‘Are you awake, Mademoiselle Archer?’ she asked, peering into my face. ‘Shall I bring your coffee and newspaper now?’

I blinked slowly until my eyes adjusted to the light. ‘Yes, thank you, Odette.’

We regarded each other for a moment as if we were creatures from two different planets. We were both twenty-one years of age. Both reasonably attractive, but not exceptionally beautiful. Our complexions were lit by that certain glow of youthful health that, with some help from cosmetics and smart clothes, could put us on the right side of charming. But our similarities ended there. While Odette was content to be a humble maid, I had enough ambition to fill every room in the Hotel Ritz.

‘How is Madame Damour this morning?’ I asked. ‘Violet or red?’

Odette laughed as she went to the armoire and took out a gold satin dressing-gown for me. ‘I would say she is at green today – quite happy and content.’

‘Good,’ I said, slipping out of bed so Odette could help me into the gown. ‘That’s the best state of mind to be in when it’s your birthday.’

‘Let’s hope it lasts,’ said Odette, heading towards the door. ‘I’ll bring you the newspaper now.’

I sat down at the dressing table and brushed out my hair. There was so much to do for Lucile’s fiftieth birthday party that evening, but I allowed myself the luxury of a moment of feeling pleased with myself. It was just over a year since I had come to Paris, and six months since I had started working for Lucile. I had utterly transformed her life and elevated my own in the process. I now wore clothes from the top couturiers in Paris and slept on linen that smelled of violets. It was a long journey from where I had started.

My gaze drifted to the top drawer of the dresser where the letter was stored, the letter my mother had written the year before the war began.

You made me happier than anyone else could have...

When the policeman had handed me the note written on a flimsy slip of pale blue paper, I’d thought at first that my mother had penned those words to me. For a moment her abandonment of me was almost forgiven. Until I realised that the letter was directed to a man she had known in Paris – an art dealer named Serge Lavertu. She wrote longingly and lovingly of old times with him. The only part of the letter that referred to me was a postscript at the bottom, which seemed to be an instruction that I go to him for help.

Eve is a bright young girl who has a lot of you in her. Please help her make her way in the world.

It apparently hadn’t occurred to my mother – who to be fair wasn’t in a good state of mind when she wrote the letter – that her daughter had no means of getting to Paris. Then with the war and the German occupation, it was impossible to enter France anyway. When I finally did arrive, Serge was in no position to help me and so, once again, I was left to fend for myself.

‘Here you are,’ said Odette, returning with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. ‘Shall I put them by the window as usual?’

‘Yes, please.’

She placed the items down and then gave me a curtsy before leaving.

I wonder if she would still be so deferential if she knew the truth , I mused, taking my place at the window where I liked to admire the Eiffel Tower for a few minutes every morning. We all have our gods, and that wrought-iron lattice tower that had risen from nothing to become the icon of a city was mine.

Lucile liked to tell people that I was the daughter of a beloved friend who she had taken under her wing. The story was that I was born in the picturesque Hunter Valley in Australia, the offspring of landed gentry. She would further embellish the tale by adding that my fluent French and poise were the result of attending an exclusive boarding school in Sydney. It couldn’t have been further from the truth, but when one woman pays another to be her companion, details are bound to be exaggerated. I hadn’t been born on a vineyard, let alone to landed gentry. I’d grown up in a mouldy terrace house in Sydney’s inner city, squashed between the crumbling Italianate office of a funeral director and a general goods store. But my mother was French, and even though we had lived in cockroach-infested squalor and our rent was always overdue, she insisted on holding her head high, impeccable in her threadbare clothes.

I sipped my coffee, picked up my pen and studied the newspaper, looking for appropriate articles to highlight. It was the second spring after the war had come to an end. Signs of life were beginning to sprout like the shoots of tulips pushing through the soil after a long, hard winter. The headlines reflected that optimism and restoration of order: the ‘French Empire’ was now to be called the ‘French Union’, and those accused of collaboration during the war would now be tried with proper legal processes instead of being summarily shot at dawn. Even the Galeries Lafayette was selling underwear stamped ‘Renaissance Fran?aise’. Granted the products were in short supply and had all the utilitarian charm of Soviet-issue clothing, but still, these were signs of better times ahead.

A breeze drifted in through the window and frolicked over my skin. I found my mind turning to my mother again. She was the one who had taught me to ignore the reality around me and to set my sights on better things. So I had studied assiduously all those elements that made for a good and elegant life. First it was the magazines that Mrs Kent, the grocer’s wife, gave to me after she’d finished with them. I examined the clothes, hairstyles and recipes as if my future depended on them. After I left school I worked in a haberdashery shop, where I learned to distinguish mother-of-pearl from Trochus-shell buttons, and Guipure lace from Chantilly. Later I found a position in the prestigious millinery department of Mark Foy’s. For the entire years of the war, I trained myself to recognise the customers who had style and those who didn’t. Oh, how I loved those well-dressed, pleasure-seeking Sydney elites! Money was of no consequence to them. They had so much of it, they had to hire other people to keep track of it. They were marvellous. Their demands were high and they knew what suited them.

I finished my coffee, put aside the newspaper and opened the armoire. Today I would wear a striped silk dress with a harem-style skirt. I ran my hand over the soft, smooth texture of the material. Balenciaga had designed it. The man had done quite well for himself despite the war. I held the dress against myself and admired my reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t rich, but nobody could tell that unless they looked at my bank account. I’d learned to walk, talk and even think like a fashionable socialite. So much so that when I arrived in France I was surprised to find that not everyone in the city possessed an innate sense of style – that French je ne sais quoi as they call it. Due to my excellent references, I found a job as a junior draper with the fêted decorator Monsieur Rémy Lavigne. But when his clients all started to request the services of ‘la femme Australienne’, he became threatened, and was probably relieved when Lucile came along and made me a better offer.

*

Lucile was already seated for breakfast in the dining room when I entered. I was pleased to see how smart she looked with her soft boyish haircut, the one that she had initially resisted because everyone was still wearing victory rolls. The striped dress I had chosen for her gave structure to her otherwise scrawny figure.

‘Good morning,’ I said brightly, kissing her on both cheeks and handing her a copy of Le Figaro marked with asterisks on the articles I wanted her to read.

‘Oh Eve,’ Lucile said, glancing at the newspaper and pulling a face that did not flatter her hawkish features. ‘Not more politics.’

‘ Ma chérie ,’ I said, ‘political discussions are the lifeblood of France these days. They dominate every cocktail party and formal dinner, even with ladies present. You must learn to discuss the events of the day with facility and brilliance. It’s not enough to be simply decorative anymore. A woman must be well informed.’ I nodded towards her outfit. ‘You look lovely by the way. Not a day over thirty.’

Lucile blushed with delight. I felt both affection and frustration towards her. I was at a loss to explain how a woman able to afford the best of everything, and having more leisure time on her hands than the rest of the household combined, seemed to have managed to have raised being a wallflower to an artform. She was neither very young nor very old. Not particularly tall but not short either. Not dark nor fair. There was absolutely nothing about Lucile that stood out. Without my help, if you blinked, you wouldn’t notice her at all. She had already bored two wealthy husbands to their deaths and was unlikely to find a third. Left to her own devices, she would have sat in her apartment and faded away like her absurd button collection. However, it wasn’t my role to criticise her lack of savoir faire but to encourage her development of it.

‘Happy birthday!’ I said, passing her my gift: a box containing a bottle of Schiaparelli’s perfume ‘Shocking’, wrapped with a bright pink bow.

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have, Eve,’ she said, taking the perfume from the box and spraying a puff in the air. ‘I didn’t expect anything.’

I really shouldn’t have , I thought, as notes of rose, narcissus and honey floated through the air. The perfume had cost me almost my entire allowance for the month (Lucile and I never mentioned the word ‘wages’), but after watching the cream of French society give each other rationed goods like cigarettes and canned peas for the past year, I thought it was time to splash out.

I had just picked up my baguette to butter it when Odette bustled into the room.

‘Madame Damour! Mademoiselle Archer! Look what’s arrived!’ she said, holding up a copy of Elle magazine opened to the page with a photograph of Lucile standing in the foyer of the apartment. I went to Lucile’s side so I could read the article over her shoulder.

‘What a triumph!’ I said, my eye travelling over the photographs of rooms with white wainscotting, whisper-soft pastels for the upholstery and delicate but well-crafted furniture.

Lucile turned the page and I gave a muffled cry of delight. There was a photograph of me standing with my arms folded and looking most pleased with myself.

Mademoiselle Eve Archer is the genius behind the apartment’s transformation , the caption read.

‘How lovely,’ I said, downplaying my moment of fame, while secretly thrilled at the acknowledgement.

When the Germans invaded Paris in 1940, Lucile had fled to her country house in Chantilly where she had lived out the war in relative tranquillity by turning herself into a recluse. Meanwhile, her city apartment was sequestered by the German army. At first the officers had behaved as gallant, respectable Aryans, but as soon as they realised they were losing the war, they turned into brutes and barbarians. Lucile returned after the liberation to find her apartment ransacked and vandalised. She immediately called for Monsieur Lavigne, for whom I was working at the time, to repair the damage. At first I didn’t understand why he sent me to assist such a wealthy customer rather than going himself. While I stood in the middle of Lucile’s drawing room and surveyed the broken porcelain that littered the floors, the slashed upholstery and the holes in the walls where light fittings had been ripped out, she had stood beside me, weeping into her handkerchief.

‘Perhaps you could show me around, Madame Damour?’ I suggested. ‘So I can report back to Monsieur Lavigne.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she sniffed, indicating for me to follow her down a corridor. But her self-control didn’t last long. In a moment she was in tears again. ‘I’ve heard reports that the Boche swung from the chandeliers while their scarlet women paraded around in my... delicates !’

I tried my best to put that image out of my mind.

When we came to the door of the main bedroom, Lucile was hesitant. As soon as I entered it, I understood why. Apart from the shredded carpets and upturned bed, someone had written obscenities on the walls in what I guessed was excrement, but that I assured Lucile was most likely brown paint.

We next turned our attention to the library, which – apart from the defaced portraits of Lucile’s late husbands – had been left mainly intact. It seemed even drunk debauched German officers appreciated the value of books. Lucile took out a photograph album full of pictures of herself and her second husband at home, so I could get an idea of what the apartment looked like before the maelstrom.

‘I’d like it returned to its original glory,’ she said, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘Do you think it’s possible? Do you think you could find all these fabrics again?’

I examined the photographs and swallowed hard to disguise my reaction. The apartment had been the most papered, panelled, tapestried and tasselled interior I had ever seen. There was not a square inch of breathing space anywhere. No logical line for the eye to follow, no pause to take in any particular object. As if the frilly curtains weren’t hideous enough, every lampshade was beaded and fringed, and every piece of fabric was patterned. The unmatched cabinets and dark Turkish rug added to the gloomy, funerary effect. I understood instantly why Monsieur Lavigne had sent me rather than come himself. Lucile had terrible taste – expensive, but terrible taste. His sensitive palate would not have been able to bear it.

I looked around the room once more then gently squeezed Lucile’s arm. ‘Rather than seeing what has happened here as a tragedy,’ I said, ‘let’s see it as an opportunity.’

‘An opportunity?’ Lucile asked, looking confused.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘To let the modern in.’

*

‘It was a good idea of yours to send Madame Damour to the beautician today,’ said Odette, helping me arrange the furniture in the drawing room for the party.

It was easy to do because one of my rules in redecorating the apartment had been that there wasn’t to be any chair, sofa or side table that couldn’t be lifted by two women. That ensured that all the furniture added to the elegant, airy atmosphere I had strived to attain.

‘Let’s plump these cushions, shall we?’ I suggested.

While I didn’t encourage too much intimacy between myself and the servants, and my loyalty always had to be with Lucile, I couldn’t help but agree that things worked more smoothly when she was out of the way. Since my employment I had come to realise that the slightest amount of pressure could turn her from a placid woman into a tyrant. Which made the task she’d hired me for – to turn her into one of Paris’s most stylish hostesses – all the more challenging. A good hostess was something like a circus ringmaster, able to showcase her various guests while keeping a smile on her face even if the big top should collapse, a lion escape or a financial backer skip town.

While Odette dusted, I took a moment to admire the pièce de résistance of the apartment: a rare and valuable pastel painting by Degas that Serge had found for us. The painting had been discovered after the artist’s death. It was of a ballet dancer standing in the wings waiting for her moment of glory.

My mother had taught me the ballet steps she had learned as a young girl. We had no money for lessons, but I dutifully followed her strict instructions and developed a posture so regal that it earned the ire of the other children at school. Look at her! All haughty and high and mighty! She thinks she’s better than us, even though her mother is a filthy drunk who forgets to feed her so she has to hang around the rubbish bins looking for scraps to eat.

‘Better than them? Of course you are better than them,’ my mother told me when I went crying to her. ‘They are nothing but the low-born descendants of convicts. But you, my dear, are French.’

The taunts of those children meant I grew up not trusting people. My sense of style developed into an armour I held up against the world.

I adored my mother, but I was frightened of her too. It was true that she was fond of the bottle, and the alcoholic haze in which she existed meant she often made promises and broke them in the same sentence. She wounded my heart so many times that it now sat like a rock in my chest. It only opened when I saw something beautiful. Luxury was the crack that let in the light.

‘Why do we keep this thing?’ asked Odette, polishing the one piece that remained from the previous version of the apartment: a Baroque mirror studded with five bullet holes, each surrounded by a circular web of shatter marks, giving the impression that five spiders had taken up residence on the glass.

‘Because it’s a conversation piece,’ I said, coming to stand next to her. ‘It tells a story. Everyone in Paris is talking about how they passed the war. Some were part of the Resistance. Others were sent to concentration camps. This mirror tells Lucile’s story.’

Odette looked at me blankly, so I gave her a more straightforward reason. ‘Keeping evidence that the apartment was destroyed by the Germans supports the fact that Lucile wasn’t a collaborator.’

‘Oh,’ said Odette, the wisdom of my decision slowly dawning on her.

She moved on to dust the piano while I stared at myself in the war-scarred mirror. I thought about the German who had fired his gun at the glass. Why had he shot at his own reflection? What inner demons had been haunting him ?

*

I walked in the direction of the Place Vend?me to pick up a necklace that Lucile would be wearing that evening. The spring sunshine was glorious and the vibrant pink geraniums spilling out of window boxes lent colour to the beige buildings. But in the shadows, the air still carried a grave-like chill. I passed a woman with her hair twisted into an elegant chignon. The way she carried herself with an erect posture and walked one foot perfectly in front of the other was pure Parisian chic. But the damask tablecloth draped over her shoulders in place of a shawl wasn’t. Although such incongruousness was a common sight even in the seventh arrondissement, it never failed to astonish me. A freezing cold winter exacerbated by shortages in fuel for heating and textiles had sent people throwing decorum to the wind. They had gone about wrapped in anything that would keep them warm, including curtains, bed quilts and tablecloths, and now that the weather was warmer they seemed unable to shake the habit. Only the stupendously rich could afford new clothes, and the number of women in suits with padded shoulders, straight skirts and feathers in their hats made it seem as if the clock had stopped in 1939.

In the Jardin des Tuileries, there were so many women pushing prams or playing with infants on picnic blankets spread out on the lawn that it gave the impression the city was being overtaken by tiny squirming human beings with pudgy faces. I’d read in Toujours Magazine that ‘baby shows’ were now more popular than dog or cat shows had ever been. On the other side of the park, a crowd had gathered around a fromagerie and were peering in the window. The wistful expressions on their faces got the better of my curiosity. I walked towards them and looked over a man’s shoulder to see what had taken everybody’s attention. At first I thought I was hallucinating, for there behind the glass was a selection of cheeses such as I had not seen anywhere but the black market since my arrival in Paris. Camembert, Roquefort, Crottin... all artistically arranged from mild to strong.

‘It’s incredible!’ exclaimed one man, practically salivating.

The others nodded in agreement. While bread, butter and vegetables had been slowly reappearing in stores, the memories of near starvation were deeply etched on the onlookers’ faces. The patisserie next door wasn’t quite so lucky. The cakes in its window were all still made of cardboard with little handwritten cards in front of each that read ‘Model only’. The only real pastries they had on offer were some dry-looking croissants and tarts. As I walked on, it was clear that the Paris I had come to was not the city my mother had described to me, back when she’d run away to live the bohemian life in Montparnasse.

‘Tell me the story again,’ I would beg her when I was a young girl. ‘Tell me about my father.’

I would sit enthralled as she described Paris in the twenties, about her bad-tempered concierge who wore a monocle and smoked a pipe, the artists’ ball where she went in a leopard costume and got into an argument with a woman dressed as a panther. I imagined the glamour of the cafés where she conversed with artists. Then she would tell me about my father, Serge Lavertu. ‘He was so elegant, so chivalrous, a truly unique human being. You couldn’t help but adore him.’ Not only did her stories magically make the stained walls of our draughty house disappear, but they kept her away from the bottle.

‘Tell me another story. Tell me another...’

I wanted her to keep talking forever. When my mother was sober, she was an angel. But when she was drunk, she was a devil. I knew the drink would eventually kill her, but at least the stories bought us time.

*

The neoclassical buildings of the Place Vend?me appeared before me. If ever there was an area of Paris that demonstrated that France’s postwar economy was bankrupt, it was here. The prestigious square’s haute couture milliners and dressmakers were kept afloat by American dollars. It was no longer European royalty sniffing the expensive bottles of Fleur de Rocaille and L’Heure Bleue at the Institut de Beauté, but ‘Joan from Atlanta’ and ‘Barbara from Sacramento’ who found the devaluation of the franc had worked in their favour and they could afford French luxury now.

The concierge at Mauboussin gave a courteous bow when he opened the door for me. I drew in a breath. The lights rained down on the displays of sparkling jewellery. Such colours! Such forms! Mauboussin’s ability to create new shapes and combinations of stones was unending. My eyes drifted from the glass case housing the 24-carat emerald Napoleon had given Joséphine – on show but not for sale – to the spectacle of gold and ruby bracelets designed by the master, René Sim Lacaze.

The store represented the best of the decorative arts at which the French still excelled. It was not a place you came to find quaint clusters of diamonds and pretty arrangements. You had to love colour – emeralds, rubies and sapphires set against black onyx or brilliant platinum.

Sylvette, the store’s most stylish midinette , smiled when she saw me approaching her counter. Even in her black uniform she managed to stand out, with her beauty spot at the corner of her mouth and her naturally rosy pout. The only artifice she wore, and to great effect, was a turquoise and platinum clip in her blonde hair.

‘ Bonjour , Eve,’ she said, taking out a purple velvet presentation box from the drawer under the counter and opening it for me.

‘Oh!’ I said, feasting my eyes on the dazzling white gold choker. It was everything I had imagined it to be when I ordered it. Each of its waved links – fifty in all to signify each year of Lucile’s life so far – was decorated with a cabochoncut pink tourmaline and a pearl joined together by rows of sapphires and brilliant cut diamonds. My instinct told me that it would be necklaces that would take over from bracelets as star pieces in the next year, and that’s why Lucile’s new choker had to be especially exquisite. She had to lead the way in something.

‘What will Madame Damour be wearing this evening?’ asked Sylvette.

‘A black silk-faille off-the-shoulder evening dress.’

Sylvette nodded her approval. ‘The perfect choice.’ She reached under the glass counter and produced a rose gold ring set with Burmese rubies, aquamarines and diamonds.

‘Try it on,’ she urged me.

I slipped on the ring and the two of us gazed at it like two clucky grandmothers doting over a newborn baby.

‘It’s a pity you and I, so appreciative of beautiful things, can’t afford them,’ Sylvette lamented. ‘Not unless we find a rich man.’

I flinched. I had unpleasant memories of a rich man. His name was Anthony and he had spotted me working at Mark Foy’s. But our love affair didn’t end well.

There now, don’t look so sad. You knew it couldn’t last, Eve. I must marry someone who my family knows. Someone who moves in the same circles... Here is a ticket for Paris. No, I insist you take it. You always said you wanted to go there... Together? Oh no, that is impossible. One day you’ll meet a man who will sweep you off your feet and you’ll forget all about me. You’ll see...

Abandoned by my mother. Abandoned by my lover. If there was one thing I’d learned about life it was that the only person I could rely on was myself.

I reluctantly slipped the ring off my finger and handed it back to Sylvette. ‘One day I hope to be very rich,’ I told Sylvette, ‘and have an apartment full of beautiful things. But it won’t be because of a man. It will be due to my own efforts.’

‘We can only dream,’ she replied, putting the ring back under the counter and closing the presentation box. ‘Shall I have the necklace sent around?’

‘Yes, please do,’ I told her. ‘I have other errands to do and the last thing I need is to be robbed.’

*

After I saw the florist about the arrangements for the evening, I made my way to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The rickety medieval houses, narrow winding streets and profusion of dusty second-hand bookstores had little in common with the grander arrondissements of Paris. I had no real business there that morning; it was simply one of the places in Paris where I felt close to my mother. But like the rest of the city, Saint-Germain-des-Prés was changing. It was American students who spilled out of the cafés now, wearing berets and discussing existentialism and the poetry of André Breton. The French students wore swing skirts and motorcycle jackets and listened to the Glenn Miller Orchestra on their radios. The Americans wanted to be French, and the French wanted to be American. Together, the sheer number of students in the quarter had brought about a kind of revolution. A bill making prostitution illegal had just been passed. The government needed all that brothel accommodation to house the influx of students.

I stopped in front of an antiques store with a chalkware bust of a beautiful woman in its window. The eyes of the sculpture looked alive and gave the appearance of being trained on some distant horizon. It made me think of my mother.

When she was sober, my mother would teach me how to dine like a lady and dance the tango. Her beauty and charm made it easy for her to win jobs as an inhouse model or a sales assistant in the fancier sections of the department stores. At those times, there might be a new dress for me or a pretty doll in a box. Then, just as I was fooling myself that this time her abstinence was permanent, I’d return home from school to find something burning on the stove and my mother passed out on the couch. Captain Sutherland from the Salvation Army would come over and pray for my mother, who would contritely pour the remaining alcohol down the sink. But the cycle would always begin again.

I looked over my shoulder at the art gallery wedged between a book binder and a café. The larger paintings hung from the floor to the high ceiling while smaller ones were propped on a long browsing shelf that ran down the centre of the room. Serge was there at his desk, bent over his account books with his wire glasses perched on the end of his nose. The diffused light from the glass ceiling gave him an angelic glow.

The first time I had come to see Serge I’d fully intended to give him the letter my mother had written to him and reveal that I was his daughter. But then I discovered his circumstances had greatly changed during the war. He’d lost his prestigious gallery on Rue la Boétie due to the Nazi Aryanisation laws during the occupation and he had filed a lawsuit to get it back. For now, he was living in the humble shop where he and his business partner, Max Bergeret, had started out their career selling art supplies. Max had disappeared during the war and his wife, the artist Kristina Belova, had been sent to a concentration camp. Serge had not been able to find out what happened to them. The most valuable paintings in his inventory had been looted during the war and he was barely making enough money to support himself. I couldn’t bring myself to add to his burdens by informing him of my mother’s death and thrusting a daughter on him whom he knew nothing about.

But then something unexpected happened. My keenness to learn about everything cultured led me to ask Serge about art and my interest sparked something in him. Before I knew it, he was inviting me on weekly visits to the Louvre, explaining which paintings had been hidden from the Nazis during the war, and the importance of colour, line, form and texture. He showed me that the Mona Lisa was not meant to be viewed straight on, but just left of centre – the subject’s eyes are the focal point of the painting and from this angle we connect with her – and that the young male nude painted by Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin was so moving because the reason for his heartbreak was unknown: Is he shipwrecked? Is he a shepherd who has lost his flock? Or a young man who has lost his beloved?

There wasn’t any underlying flirtation in Serge’s attentiveness, which would have been horribly awkward. His interest was altruistic and genuine, and I soon sensed that he was very different from other men. He was calm, steady and, most of all, consistent . He turned up to meet me when he said he would, and when he promised to find a unique and beautiful painting for Lucile’s apartment, he searched diligently until he discovered the Degas. The more I began to treasure my time with him, the more paralysed I felt about revealing my secret. What if I told him I was his daughter and his attitude towards me changed? What if he abandoned me as the others had? After all, there was some reason that my parents had not been together. My mother had alluded to it in her letter:

I understand the reasons you couldn’t love me the way I loved you, and I forgive you for them ...

Now I felt the only way I could be accepted by him was to become worthy enough of him and to make myself someone of note in Paris.

*

Serge looked up from his books when I pushed open the heavy wrought-iron and glass door to his gallery. His face instantly brightened.

‘Ah, Eve,’ he said, laying down his pencil and taking off his glasses. ‘The sight of you lifts my spirits! How is Madame Damour enjoying her new painting?’

‘I’m not sure she quite notices it, to be frank,’ I told him. ‘But her guests surely will tonight. And I stop to admire it every time I pass it. The dancer seems poised, ready for her life to begin. Yet I can almost feel her heart hammering in her chest.’

Serge smiled. ‘The appreciation of art is a lifelong education. Don’t give up on Madame Damour developing a keener eye just yet.’

My gaze travelled over the walls of Serge’s gallery. Apart from a few impressionist landscapes, his stock was almost entirely modern paintings, including some emerging American artists. My eye settled on the portrait of a handsome man with kind eyes.

‘It’s Max,’ said Serge. ‘A portrait painted by his wife soon after they met. The Artistic Recovery Commission returned it two days ago. It was found in a salt mine in Altaussee.’

I understood the mental torture Serge was enduring of not knowing what had happened to Max. But I also knew that death of any kind left questions that could never be answered. What were the person’s last thoughts? Did they suffer? My mind flashed back to that day at the hospital when the mortician had pulled back the green sheet. Despite having jumped from the Harbour Bridge, my mother had not broken one bone in her body. Her golden hair lay around her grey face like a mermaid’s. She looked like she was only asleep, and I half-expected her to open her eyes and talk to me. But of course, she didn’t. Once they are gone, there is only a deafening final silence.

‘Ah, look at me,’ said Serge. ‘You have come to visit and already I have made you sad. Come upstairs. I’ll show you something else I have discovered.’

I followed Serge up the stairs to the apartment. He’d never taken me there before and my nerves tingled with anticipation. The fact that my mother had once been a visitor to those private quarters meant they held a particular fascination for me.

Serge waved me inside. My eyes took in the bronze chandelier in the hall and the stained-glass window of the room beyond as I followed behind him. My mother saw all of this , I told myself. There was an intoxicating smell of old books, beeswax and sandalwood in the air. I looked down at the worn parquet floor, imagining my feet stepping in the same places as hers.

‘Well, tell me what you think of this?’ asked Serge, indicating a painting leaning on an easel. ‘It was returned to me by an old client of mine who swears he bought it unwittingly from another dealer with no idea of its provenance.’

I moved closer to the painting of a beautiful young woman with blonde hair sitting in front of a dressing table and brushing her hair. There was something intriguing about her bright blue eyes. The brushwork was vigorous and dazzling. The painting had an immediate effect on me, both alluring and hypnotic. It showed not only technical mastery but a high degree of creative imagination.

My eyes dropped to the signature: Kristina Belova .

‘It’s a self-portrait,’ said Serge. ‘She was only eighteen when she painted it.’

If that was how Kristina Belova had painted at the start of her career, I could only imagine what she would have achieved if the war had never happened. She was beautiful, no doubt, but it was a sense of inner elegance that made the painting exceptional.

‘It’s stunning!’ I said. ‘Truly! I must convince Madame Damour of the value of it to add to her collection.’

Serge looked at me. ‘You have good taste, Eve, but this one is not for sale. The portraits are all I have left of them. I intend to hang Max and Kristina together in this room. They can be inseparable as they were in life.’

I was ashamed of my insensitivity. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’m sure that’s what they would have wanted. You never told me exactly what happened to Kristina.’

Serge indicated for me to take a seat while he went to the little kitchen in the corner of the room and put a kettle on the gas stove. ‘It seems Kristina survived the concentration camp and was sent to a hospital in Switzerland afterwards. After that there is no trace of her,’ he said. ‘Some people in the art world conjecture that she killed herself after what happened to her daughters.’

Serge had tried to sound factual, but I noted the crack in his voice. He hadn’t mentioned Max and Kristina’s children before. Still, having already been less than tactful only a moment ago, I held my curiosity at bay and didn’t press him for more details. I turned back to the painting, once again struck by its beauty and sense of movement. War destroyed everything that was good.

The kettle whistled and Serge cleared away ink bottles, writing paper and books from the side table before taking the kettle off the flame. He returned with a pot of steaming rosemary tisane. Its woody scent perfumed the air.

‘Tell me more about Kristina’s art,’ I said, accepting the cup he offered me.

‘She was a Russian but worked in France,’ Serge said, blowing into his cup. ‘She managed to combine French modern influences with the Slavic love of brilliant colours. Her talent was never widely appreciated as much as it should have been, but her art was sought-after by discerning collectors – those who recognised genius when they saw it.’

‘Yet another artist ahead of her time?’

‘No artist is ahead of their time, Eve. They are all perfect for the era in which they are painting. It’s the viewing public that must catch up in their ideas.’

‘That’s an interesting theory,’ I said.

Serge sat back in his chair and glanced about the room forlornly. ‘I had a dream the other night that I received a letter from Kristina. She wrote that she and Max were alive and well. They had decided to live on an island in the Pacific where the people were kind to each other and nature, and didn’t perform horrific acts out of greed.’

‘That sounds like a beautiful place. Perhaps Kristina is alive somewhere, nursing her broken heart. People are still showing up even now. Only recently, I read in the paper about an American GI being found in a jungle in Borneo. He had no idea that the war was over.’

A door at the other end of the room was slightly ajar. As I spoke, I caught a glimpse of a mahogany bed and an oriental screen. The last time my mother had seen Serge was in 1923, just before she left for the other side of the world, trailing after a no-good actor who promised her everything and gave her nothing. I thought of the letter she left before she took her own life.

‘Serge,’ I said, leaning forward and hearing my own heartbeat thump in my ears, ‘why did you never marry? Did you not want children yourself?’

His brow furrowed as he considered my question. ‘Some people are not made for family life and I’m afraid I’m one of them. No, Eve, I have never wanted children.’ Then as if to make light of the subject, he added, ‘Anyway, can you imagine children in a gallery? All those grubby finger marks on the artworks? Precious sculptures smashed to smithereens?’

I smiled too, despite the wave of pain that surged through me. If Serge had not wanted the joy of young children with all their carefree laughter and playfulness, what on earth would he want with an adult one? I might not damage his artwork, but I came with more complex problems.

Peering over the rim of his teacup, Serge studied me. ‘When the light falls on you a certain way, you remind me of someone,’ he said. ‘But among the ghosts of the past, I can’t think who that might be. And yet it is there in the tilt of your head and the way your mouth quivers the second before you smile.’

I turned to the faded gilded mirror above the mantelpiece. Black spots were dotted around the edges where the silver had worn away. The reflection of Serge and me together fitted perfectly within the frame, like a family portrait. Both of us sitting there, meticulously elegant with our cups poised in our fingertips. The perfect picture of a father and daughter.