A Mad, Wicked Folly (2 page)

WHEN THE CLASS
was over, the students—apart from
Étienne, who reeled off for home—asked me to join them
at a nearby café, a place they all went after class to argue
about art. They had never invited me before. I had a little
time to spare before I met Lily, where she always waited
with my school uniform, so I went along.

The only other woman at the café, apart from myself
and the proprietor’s wife, sat at a little table, a glass of
green liquid at her elbow, staring straight in front of her,
a dazed look on her face. Her booted feet were turned out
carelessly to the sides, her knees wide apart. I had never
seen a woman sit like that in public in my life. The art students paid her no mind, apart from Pierre, who grunted a
greeting in her direction.

The artists noisily pulled several tables and chairs into
the middle of the room, creating a table that would accommodate all of us. No one glowered at them or told them to
hush up or to put the tables back. Instead the proprietor
came over and shook everyone’s hands and surreptitiously
slid a large basket of crusty bread onto the table, despite
the disapproving glare of his wife. Several of the students
fell on it, grabbing the bread with their bare hands. I knew
it was probably the only meal they would have that day.
Bertram had told me that many of them spent their extra
money on paint—and wine—instead of food.

The proprietor returned with a carafe of red wine. I
could not return to school with wine on my breath, so I
asked for coffee.

Pierre poured a glass of wine and stood up, holding the
glass in my direction. “
À la vôtre!
To Mademoiselle Vicky!
For . . . how do you say in English . . . saving the day!”

The other artists held up their glasses; some banged the
table; a few clapped.
I pretended it was nothing, but I knew I would hold
their acceptance close forever, like a treat I could take out
and savor anytime I wanted.
The conversation turned into an argument. This one
was about whether painting subjects like a mother and
child was maudlin pap. Bertram said it wasn’t; Pierre said
it was.
“What do you say, Mademoiselle Vicky?” Pierre asked,
squinting at me through a plume of cigarette smoke.
“
Ça dépend
,” I said, carefully, knowing that Pierre fully
expected me to launch into a statement about how lovely
a mother and child were to look upon. “It depends upon
what you’re trying to say, what emotion you want to conjure within the viewer. If you render your point of view
skillfully, even the simplest subject can have meaning and
purpose.”
“Go on,” Bertram said, leaning forward over the table.
“Give us an example.”
I cast about for one, and my eyes lit upon the woman
in the corner. “Take a woman who has imbibed too much
absinthe. If you choose her as a subject, how do you want
the viewer to see her? Happy? Indifferent? Hopeless? If
you want to depict her in despair, a hopeless expression
on her face, her boots turned out, instead of together like
a lady would sit . . . the viewer might feel her despair and
have sympathy for her plight, and look on her differently from just an unladylike wretch who doesn’t merit
a thought.
“The same can be said of a mother and child. Perhaps
they are bidding farewell to a father as he marches off to
war, the family knowing not when they will see him again.
Such art can awaken feelings inside us for which there are
no words. And that is hardly maudlin.”
“What if the critics say that is ugly?” asked the teenage
boy who had knocked over his easel.
“They are entitled to their opinion,” I said. “But an artist should only worry about his or her own expression. An
artist shouldn’t let the critic hold the paintbrush.”
“Ha!” Bertram said. “I couldn’t have said it better,
Pierre. I win!”
Pierre, unhappy with losing, flicked his cigarette ash
in the direction of a plate. “Do you paint, mademoiselle?”
“Only watercolors,” I admitted. “But I so want to learn
to paint with oil. I hope Monsieur will let me progress
soon.”
Oils were my favorite, but they eluded me. I had no idea
how to mix them to create the depth of color so sought after
in the medium. My attempts in the past had been dismal. I
couldn’t get the feel of the paint. Worse, I constantly overloaded the brush and ended up creating an unspeakable
mess on the canvas. Oil paints were terrifically difficult
and most intimidating, but when one understood how to
use them, the results were magical. And magic was what
I craved. But Monsieur would only let students progress to
painting when they had mastered drawing. Drawing was
the alpha and omega of painting, he always told us.
“Oils are not a woman’s medium,” Pierre said. “Best to
stick with watercolors, eh?”
“For God’s sake, Pierre,” Bertram said before I could
protest. “You don’t have to have
un phallus
to work with
oils.” He turned to me. “Don’t take any notice, Vicky. He
doesn’t know one end of a paint tube from another. You’ll
get there; have patience.”
I smiled at Bertram gratefully, taking care to avoid
meeting Pierre’s steady gaze.
All too soon, I had to make my good-byes. I reluctantly
left the artists shouting over one another and smoking
their cigarettes. But before I left, I quietly settled their bill
with the proprietor and paid for extra bread and a hot cassoulet to be sent over.
I walked quickly through the village, needing to get
back to school. But I paused when I reached the square.
I saw Étienne’s latest poster plastered to the side of the
boulangerie
where Lily and I always bought our chocolate
croissants.
Étienne, like many French artists, made extra money
illustrating advertisements. His efforts, however, tended
toward the more risqué commerce. This one was for a cabaret the next village over.

was written in bold lettering across the top. Underneath
posed a woman who looked like our model Bernadette.
Quelle surprise
, I thought. Étienne had scribbled a froth of
orange tulle over her lower body, but her breasts were left
bare. I smiled. The poster would probably last only a day
before a disapproving villager tore it down.

When I rounded the corner of the bakery, I saw that
Étienne had thought of this and had managed to stick a
poster high up, where no one could reach it. He must have
climbed the roof and leaned over the eaves to paste it on.
Already the baker was outside eyeing the poster, most
likely working out a way to remove it. His wife stood at
his side, clucking with irritation like a maddened hen.

Mindful of the time, I picked up my skirt and broke into
a run. When I arrived at our meeting place, Lily stepped
out onto the path from behind the tree.

“Lily, I have so much to tell you! You wouldn’t
believe . . .” But my voice trailed off when I reached her.
Her face was white as milk, and she held my uniform bundled against her chest.

“Oh, Vicky. Tell me it isn’t true!”
“True? What are you talking about?”
Lily chewed her lip and shifted from one foot to the

other. Her complexion began to change from pale to bright
pink. Her curly blonde hair had escaped its combs and it
formed a wild halo over her head.

She clutched the clothing tighter. “Did you really take
your clothes off in front of men?” she blurted out.
“Pardon?” I was dumbfounded.
“It’s all over school,” Lily went on, breathless. “Mildred
Halfpenny said she saw you undressed, sitting in front of
a crowd of men. She must have heard us talking about the
art studio and followed you. You know what an eavesdropper she is.”
Mildred Halfpenny. My nemesis. Mildred had been
jealous of me the moment she laid eyes on me. She hated
that I was Lily’s best friend; the idiot thought she had more
claim on her because their families had summered together
in Germany once. And she thought she was better than
me because my father had a plumbing fittings-and-fixtures holding while
her
father owned a lingerie company.
As if knickers and petticoats put her higher in the social
standing than toilets and wash-hand basins. I called her
the Royal Princess of Petticoats once, and her face turned
so purple with rage that I thought she was going to choke.
How could Mildred have seen me? The window by the
model’s dais looked over the river. She must have tiptoed
round where no one ought to go and peered in the window.
Who knew that clumsy oaf could be so nimble?
“Is it true?” Lily stepped forward, her face pleading.
“Our model didn’t show, so I . . . volunteered.” I tried
to sound like I didn’t care, but I wasn’t doing a very good
job of it. In a daze, I took my uniform from Lily and went
behind the tree to change.
“You volunteered?” Lily’s voice was climbing higher.
“Volunteered?”
“It was my turn.” My mind whirled, trying to work out
what to do. I would just have to brazen my way out of it
as best I could. I dressed quickly and stepped back on the
path. “It’s Mildred’s word against mine. I’ll say she mistook
me for someone else. I wasn’t there. Madame Froufrou
won’t bother to check. You know what she thinks about
the artists in the village. She won’t get within a mile of
the place.” I certainly hoped this was true. It was my only
chance. And a slim one at that.
Lily looked down at the ground and bit her lip. “It’s too
late,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Vicky. You know I’m not
very good at hiding things. Madame Édith called me into
her study and started asking me all these questions about
the art studio and if you went there. I tried to lie, but my
face went all red and I started stammering. . . . You know
what Madame is like, the looks she gives. She got it all out
of me. I had to sneak out just to meet you here. I had to
warn you.” Lily paused for a moment and then went on,
her face grave. “Madame has already sent a telegram to
your father.”
“My . . . father?” I whispered. The shock of it made
my cheeks tingle and my limbs go weak. Panic rose hot
and fast inside me. I might have felt like Queen Boadicea
before, but I had forgotten one important fact about the
Iceni warrioress: in the end, the Romans had crushed her.
My father. That was it, then. My time in France with the
artists was over.

STOOD ON THE
deck of the steamship and looked
out at the seaside town of Cherbourg. Gray clouds
scudded overhead and a brisk wind whisked the
sea into foamy waves. The damp air seeped into my
bones. I shivered and wrapped my arms about myself. The

weather had chased the rest of the passengers below long
ago, but Cherbourg was my final glimpse of France, and I
was loath to look away. My chaperone, one of the school’s
maids, stood just behind me at a respectable distance, but I
could hear her little noises of dismay as the waves lapping
the sides of the ship grew heavier.

The steamship’s vast engines rumbled to life, the sailors cast off the lines, and the boat began to make its way
across the Channel toward England. Toward home.

I was leaving France under a veil of scandal and humiliation. The scandal was bearable. The girls at the school loved
any chance to gossip, and I didn’t care about their chatter,
but the humiliation bit through me to the bone. I had just
proven myself to the artists, and now I was being sent back
home to my parents like a naughty little girl who had misbehaved at a party.
What did the artists think of me now?

The immediate punishment for posing nude was
acceptable to me. I was expelled from Madame Édith’s
Finishing School for Girls—good riddance to bad rubbish.
No more marching about with books on my head to perfect my posture. No more elocution lessons hammering
home the proper diction of words as though one’s fate in
life depended upon it. No more listening to inane conversations about how the hockey pitch was flooded or what
sort of pudding would be served at Sunday lunch—usually
the same old jam roly-poly, so I don’t know why the girls
yammered on about it.

My expulsion would have been welcome if it hadn’t
meant saying good-bye to Monsieur’s art studio forever. I
had not had a chance to say farewell, not even by letter.
When I went to ask Lily to take a note to the studio, she
looked at me with red-rimmed, tear-filled eyes, and I put
the note back in my pocket. Lily was in trouble enough for
helping me; I did not want to add to her burden.

Yes, the immediate punishment was bearable; the
unknown punishment was the one I feared.
A sailor carrying a coil of hemp rope over one shoulder paused on his way across the deck. “Best you go down
below, miss,” he said. “There be weather kickin’ up, make
no mistake. Wouldn’t want to fish you out of the water.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll go down in a moment.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He tugged at the brim of his
hat and then continued on to his task.
“Go ahead to your cabin, Anne-Marie,” I told the maid.
She bit her lip, looking unsure. “
D’accord
,” she finally
said, and turned for the stairs that led to the cabins.
I sighed and returned my attention to the shoreline,
watching until Cherbourg grew smaller and smaller until
it was just a tiny dot in the distance, and then it vanished
into the horizon. The first drops of rain began to fall, as
the sailor had predicted, and the wind gusted, sending the
ship’s flags snapping.
I made my way below, weaving around my fellow passengers, the deck rising and falling under our feet. I found
my cabin, turned the key in the lock, and swung the door
open.
“Hell’s teeth,” I muttered.
My cabin was a tiddly little cupboard with only enough
room for a cot and a small washstand with a pitcher and
basin atop. The bed was dressed with an old woolen blanket that looked like it might be crawling with noisome
creatures. The meanness of the accommodation spoke volumes. My father always paid for me to travel in a first-class
cabin with a sitting room. I dreaded small spaces, and my
father knew it.
All right, Papa, you’ve made your point
, I thought, struggling to wash my face over the little bowl as the ship
pitched to and fro.
The crossing grew even more fitful and I spent a good
part of the night with my head hanging over the basin.
When the seas calmed and my nausea abated, I fell into
bed, exhausted. But sleep was far away.
There was enough light from the bedside candle lamp
to see by, so I took my drawing book out of my art satchel
and opened it to a fresh page. Sketches of my friends from
France flipped past: Lily, sitting on a stone wall by the sea,
gazing at me with a mix of admiration and exasperation,
her eyes so wise and merry; Étienne, smoking a cigarette
and squinting, his hair tousled as if he had just woken
up. And then I paused on my sketch of a nude Bertram,
posing contrapposto, weight on one foot, hips and shoulders twisted to the side, a look of embarrassment and
amusement on his face, as if he couldn’t quite believe
what he had let himself in for but he found it funny all the
same.
Sadness and longing filled me. Tears threatened and
I pushed them back. The aching sense of loss I could do
nothing about. Crying about what might have been would
take me nowhere.
I put my pencil to the page and began to sketch the features of the sailor from memory. I was halfway through
the picture when the boat heeled so steeply that I tumbled
off the bed. I struck my elbow on the frame of the cot and
landed on the floor in a heap.
The cries of the other passengers drifted through the
cabin walls, accompanied by the sounds of china crashing
to the floor and trunks slamming into walls. A moment
later the sea settled and the ship righted itself. I hauled
myself up and rubbed the life back into my tingling elbow.
My sketchbook had come to a rest upside down against
the doorframe. Several pieces of paper had fallen out and
lay scattered over the floor. I was always collecting bits
of things and shoving them into my sketchbook—posters,
leaves, newspaper cuttings. I was a magpie that way. I
gathered them all up to shove them back into the book
when one of them caught my eye.