“I thought ladies were impressed by feats of daring?”
“We’re certainly not impressed by assumptions.”
I bowed. “And the mademoiselle has won that duel.”
The hallway outside of Papa’s studio was quiet, but I waited a moment with my fingers on the door. I wasn’t as offhand as I pretended. Even Bede took one look at the studio door and bounded back downstairs, toenails clicking. Only when I was sure that there was not a sound from within did I push open the door.
The room was almost blinding after the dim, ruby-papered hallway. Windows stretched from ceiling almost to floor and, with no curtains anywhere, light shot enthusiastically into the studio. Papa was too enamored with shadow and changing light to let the south facing windows worry him. Overhead, cords crisscrossed the ceiling, with sockets for electric bulbs. Only the doorway was darkened, with piles of furniture and hatboxes and stacks of filmy fabrics on either side.
“It’s magnificent,” Clare exclaimed, stepping in.
Though I’d been in the room dozens of times, I understood. Papa’s studio had always filled me with an awe that I’d never admit. Not when I’d brushed aside his hopeful suggestions for the Glasgow School of Art or, as much as it pained him to suggest, “even the Académie des Beaux-Arts, if you must.” I couldn’t admit that, like a cathedral, Papa’s studio exuded a peace that I sometimes wished I had.
Clare traced a finger over the arch of the curved mauve sofa Papa used to pose subjects. “Is this where he painted the fairy-tale illustrations?”
“Some.” I went to the cabinet where I knew he kept supplies. “In the mornings he likes to work outside, by the river. Afternoons he’s in here.”
“The easel is empty.” She caught up the end of a diaphanous scarf and swirled it over her shoulders. “Where does he keep his paintings?”
I found new brushes, oil pastels, tubes of pigment, but no pencils. “The walls of the château.” I peered into the dark at the back of the shelf but only saw more tubes and a jumble of empty jars. “Or the walls of other châteaux. He does take commissions at times.”
“But he also paints for himself?”
“He does, though not as much as he used to. It makes Maman crazy. She thinks he should only paint what he will sell.”
She paused in front of a mirror and tried on a greenish top hat. “He paints for art’s sake, not money’s sake.”
For some reason seeing her in that top hat made my neck hot, so I pulled over a stool and resumed my search farther into the cabinet.
“Don’t you see?” she continued. “Sometimes art springs unexpected from a deeper place. Your soul, it has a story to tell, and the drawing, the painting, the sculpting, are only the medium for that story.”
They were heady words for a fifteen-year-old. But her eyes reflected in the mirror were resolute. She understood this passion, this itch, this frenetic creating that seized Papa. I never had, but this young girl, somehow she did.
She turned. “You’ve grown up surrounded by this.” She waved a hand around the studio, at the dust and light and smudges of color. “I’m sure you know. Art can be personal, emotional, spiritual. Glorious and expansive. Restorative, even. It’s more than shapes on canvas or brushstrokes or curves in clay. It’s…well, it’s expression.”
“And when it’s a commission—when Papa is painting fairy-tale queens or Parisian bankers—where is the expression in that?” I leaned against the cabinet door.
“He paints them as he sees them. It is not a photograph, is it? No. It is a fairy-tale queen or a Parisian banker as viewed by Monsieur Claude Crépet.”
I pointed at the tiny clock perched on the windowsill. “If you wish to do more snooping, Madame Je-sais-tout, you are running out of time.”
She set down her sketch pad on the mauve sofa. “Where does he keep the rest? The ones he doesn’t hang and he doesn’t sell?”
Up on the top shelf of the cabinet, I found a small box of square red Conté crayons. I slid a few from the box and wrapped them in my handkerchief. “Most are unframed. In the next room. Some are unfinished.”
“Here?”
I looked up to see the end of the scarf float through the adjoining doorway.
“Mademoiselle, you should come out of there.” I abandoned the cabinet and walked across the studio. Halfway, then stopped. “Papa doesn’t allow anyone in that room.”
“It’s only canvases, all stacked up. Does he sell these ever? It’s horribly dusty in here.” Then, to herself, “Oh, how fascinating!”
“What’s fascinating?”
“They’re studies, done up in pencil. Nymphs, satyrs, a feast.” Frames rattled. “There’s a finished one. Dancing women in white dresses, like Botticelli’s Primavera.”
“Be careful,” I called.
She sneezed. “And here are some all covered up. I wonder what—” She broke off with a stifled gasp.
“What is it?”
“It’s…your mother.”
“Maman? In a painting? He always teased that she couldn’t sit still.” I moved towards the door.
“No, stop!” She sneezed again. “You shouldn’t see this one.”
“Why not?”
Clare was silent for a space. “Because…because she hasn’t a stitch on.”
I froze. “She hasn’t?” I backed away from the doorway.
In a house of artists, there was no shortage of nudes on the walls. They had been, dare I say, instructional to me in my formative years. While other adolescent boys had been speculating about breasts, I had an array—in oil paint, that is—to peruse. But never, never my own maman. I sank onto the mauve velveteen sofa in dismay.
“It’s really quite elegant,” she said from the other room. “The painting, I mean. She’s holding three roses and lounging on that purple sofa out there.”
