Girl in the Afternoon (2 page)

Colette was not a frivolous woman, as she often appeared, but rather quite intelligent. Édouard appreciated this about her.

“Losing the battle at Loire has done us in, I'm afraid,” he said. “I don't know how much longer we can hold out. We're shooting each other out there now.” He jutted his chin in the direction of the window. “No one even knows who's in charge. It'll come to a civil war if there isn't an armistice soon, and that will mean full surrender.” He turned up his hands, opening them to the ceiling as if the Prussians were waiting in the rafters.

“At least it would put an end to all of this suffering,” Colette said.

“How are you faring for food?”

“We're not starved yet—unrefined bread and cabbage at twenty francs a head. What I wouldn't give for a warm café au lait.”

Sitting across from Édouard, Colette could almost feel the warmth of that café au lait slipping down her throat. For the first time in months she felt certain things would normalize. Surrender or no surrender, Paris would survive this war, and her Thursday-night soirées would resume. Her dining room would be full of guests again. There would be music and spirits and laughter.

Édouard cupped his hands to his mouth and blew a puff of air into them. “How is Auguste's wound?”

“What wound?” Colette gave a dismissive flip of her hand. “His foot healed weeks ago. He just refuses to get out of bed.”

Édouard smiled. “Warmest place to be. He did his duty. Might as well rest up. Things are only going to get worse before they get better.” He stood and gave a slight bow of his head. “Madame, I apologize that I am not able to stay longer. I just wanted to make sure no one was sick or intolerably hungry.” Then he said, “I assume the children are well?” which seemed silly to Colette, calling them children. Aimée was eighteen years old, and Henri would be twenty in April.

“They're doing as well as can be expected. Still painting until their supplies run out, as I'm sure you are.” She smiled, thinking of the portrait of her Auguste had commissioned Édouard to paint. For three months Édouard's superior eye had been on her, and it had given her a gratifying sense of importance.

After Édouard left, Colette went into her husband's study and stood in front of that painting. It was almost ten years ago now. She looked young and beautiful with her dark hair pulled into a high chignon and her slender hands crossed in the lap of her shimmering green dress.

She had been sure Édouard would seduce her with all those hours alone together. But he had worked silently, bitterly scraping away what dissatisfied him and scrupulously filling in what pleased him. When it was over he'd simply thanked her and said good-bye.

Colette stepped away from the painting and caught the reflection of her older self in the window glass. She ran two fingers along her hairline, pulling at her skin with a restlessness that was not brought on by the war, but by a sense of entrapment in her body. It was amazing what ten years could do to a woman. She would be thirty-nine years old in the spring. As a little girl she'd watched her maman bind her face in raw meat at night to prevent wrinkles. Colette's solution required eggs, rosewater, alum, and sweet oil of almonds, all of which were unattainable in this disastrous war.

Turning away from her reflection, she walked past her husband's meticulously organized desk, thinking of Édouard with a shudder of desire.

*   *   *

The
next morning, when the sun rose bright and cruel above the haze of smoke that covered the city, Henri made up his mind to leave. He had only slept a few hours, and he lay with his wrist flung over his eyes, blocking out the sharp light that persisted through the windows.

Last night had the outlines of a dream, its degradation cloaked in uncertainty. But it wasn't a dream, and the shame of it coiled through him, cool and piercing as wire.

The crack of a bullet came from outside, a sharp whine as it sailed through the air, and then silence. Henri pulled his hand from his face and tucked his arm under the quilt, pressing his icy fingertips into his bare stomach. From his pillow he could see the underside of the varnished cherry bedposts, and the blooms on the wallpaper bursting open to the ceiling.

How sweet it would be to roll over, pull his head under the warmth of the quilt, and fall back asleep. But the slant of light through the windows, and the silence in the house told him that it was still early, early enough to slip away undetected.

On a count of three, he tossed the covers off and sat up. The air was so raw the shock of it almost took away the hollow dread in the pit of his stomach.

The fires in the house hadn't been lit in months. Paris had been under siege for one hundred days, and there was nothing left to burn. What peat they had was reserved for cooking, but even that wouldn't last much longer.

Taking short puffs of air into his lungs, Henri snatched his wool stockings from the floor, his linen drawers and undershirt, and hurriedly put them on. From a trunk he took a pair of twill trousers, a shirt, waistcoat, and cravat. His armoire had been removed for safekeeping, and his clothes were badly creased. But that hardly mattered now.

He struggled to tie his cravat, his fingers stiff with cold as he walked to the window, watching a pall of black smoke curl over the rooftops into a clear sky. The street was eerily deserted, the road a sheet of ice. It would be slippery going, he thought, feeling very weak, like a boy again standing at his old bedroom window in England. There had been snow on the ground when he left then too, and he had felt this same sense of dread.

Shells fell outside like cracks of thunder, and Henri pressed his palms over his eyes. He was not a brave man, and yet he wasn't afraid of being hit by a stray bullet or freezing in a gutter. He was afraid of facing the intolerable loneliness he'd known before coming here.

He turned from the window as the sound of footsteps came down the corridor, frantically stepping toward the bed as if he meant to hide under it. He couldn't face Colette, or Auguste, but it was the thought of seeing Aimée's serious eyes and her honest, straightforward face that made him feel sick.

The latch to his bedroom door clicked and lifted, but whoever stood on the other side clearly couldn't face him either, because the latch fell back into place, and the footsteps receded down the hall.

Henri didn't waste any time then. He grabbed his bag, threw in two pairs of stockings, a shirt, trousers, and his black frock coat. Briefly, he fingered his waistcoat embroidered with tulips and edged in silk ribbon, then shoved it back into the trunk.

Pulling on his greatcoat, he hoisted his bag over one shoulder and stepped gingerly into the hallway. He wondered how he was going to retrieve his paint box and portable easel from his studio on the third story where the militiamen were now billeted.

The corridor was empty and quiet. Henri knew he should hurry, and yet he stood looking at the small dent on the floor where, as a child, he'd dropped a large, marble elephant Auguste had given him. The elephant was still on the mantel in his bedroom with a chip in its trunk.

Henri thought of going back for it, but he didn't, and when he finally moved forward, it wasn't courage or any sort of heroic strength that drove him, only simple, undeniable shame.

*   *   *

As
Henri crept down the hall, stepping cautiously over the soft sections of floor that moaned with pressure, Colette sat at her dressing table untangling metal curlers from her hair and trying to ignore the gurgling noise coming from her husband's open mouth in the bed behind her. With a hand mirror, she arranged the curls at the back of her neck and then pinned a large amethyst brooch at her throat. After last night, she felt it imperative to look particularly lovely today, no matter the war.

When she finished, she stood over Auguste and watched him sleep. The white coverlet was clutched up to his chin, which had sprouted unruly whiskers.
Lazy whiskers,
Colette called them. He'd been a lot more attractive in his lieutenant's uniform, before he'd suffered the minor wound that forced him to leave the service. She may have been able to find something attractive in him if he'd been in the artillery, fighting heroically, but he'd been posted to the general staff where there was no real danger other than accidentally dropping his bayonet straight through his foot.

It was not that she didn't love him. She was just disgusted with him. What woman wouldn't be? He lay in bed all day complaining even though he could walk perfectly well with a cane.

“What's the point of getting up when there's no meal to go down to?” he grumbled. “Besides, keeping to bed is the only way to stay warm.”

He'd tried to get her to join him, tugging at the front of her dress as he pulled her on top of him, and she'd had to slap his hands away from her breasts.

“You're too pathetic an old man to attract my attention anymore,” she'd said, struggling to her feet, which had only made him laugh, as if he didn't really believe her.

This had always been their marriage. He would want her, she'd push him away, he'd become inflamed by her flirtatious nature, there would be a passionate fight, and then they'd fling themselves at each other. She held back for Auguste's own good. Marriage was boring. If she gave in easily there'd be no struggle, and men like a struggle.

She'd known this from the beginning. She made Auguste wait three years for her hand in marriage even though he had asked the very night he met her.

“You're magnificent,” he'd whispered, pulling her off the dance floor onto a dark balcony. “Marry me.”

“I've only just met you!” Colette had cried, her voice pitched with youth and the delight of attention. “Besides, I'd be a fool to marry the first man who asked.”

She was only seventeen, after all, and not the type of girl to make things easy on anyone.

After that, she entertained more suitors than was respectable, receiving an outrageous number of proposals even for a woman of her beauty. Most men would have given up. Not Auguste. He didn't bother with the coy formalities of courtship, but worshipped Colette openly, which she rebuked, though secretly adoring his attention. He'd drop conversations the moment she entered a room, rushing to take her hand, holding it firmly as he ran his thumb over the ridge of her knuckles, at first gently, and then with enough pressure to arouse her.

If he'd only touch her like that again, Colette thought.

Auguste groaned and rolled over, one arm falling limply off the edge of the bed. He looked vulnerable in his sleep, and as Colette turned away, the gravity of what she had done sliced through her, sharp as a blade, leaving a deep wound of regret.

*   *   *

Auguste's
maman, Madame Savaray, was the only one who saw Henri leave.

Earlier that morning she had been in the kitchen checking on the menial provisions Marie had procured for the day's meals. In normal times, Colette ran the household and had always made it perfectly clear that Madame Savaray was not to interfere. But ever since that first shell fell on Paris, Colette had receded, doing nothing to ensure their survival.

Madame Savaray, on the other hand, knew all about survival. She came from the Nord—a much heartier people than the pampered Parisians—where she'd practically starved as a child. She knew what it was to be hungry, and she knew what it was to sleep on soiled linens. She also knew they should be grateful that, under Marie's vigilant stewardship, there was
something
to eat every day.

They had been fools to stay in Paris. Auguste had wanted to send them to England, but Henri, who was not obligated to fight since he was not a Frenchman, had refused to return to his homeland, something Madame Savaray simply did not understand. Colette had also refused to leave. She'd said, “I don't see why I should be cast out of my own home. These things always sound worse than they are.” Of course, Auguste let her do exactly as she pleased. So here they were, stuck in Paris as it crashed and crumbled around them.

Fools, every one of them,
Madame Savaray was thinking as she ascended the stairs, stopping at the sight of Henri, bag and easel in hand. He looked sickly. He had always been a thin, weak child, and he had grown into a thin, weak man. His stooped shoulders, his restless blue eyes that never seemed to settle anywhere, and the way he mumbled—as if petrified to speak up—had always made Madame Savaray pity him, as if the simple hardships of life were too much to bear.

Today, he looked particularly troubled, and there was such desperation in his piercing eyes that Madame Savaray stepped forward unwittingly, but he practically ran out the front door. She had the urge to run after him. Where in heaven's name was he going? To paint in the open air? What a ridiculous business this new method of painting outdoors. His hands would freeze. He would get shot. What could he be thinking?

Quickly, she went to the parlor.

Colette had just come in, missing Henri by minutes. She was seated at the far end of the room near a set of double doors that, in warmer months, opened onto a garden. In her hand she held a piece of ecru fabric cinched into an embroidery ring.

Madame Savaray couldn't help noticing how thoughtlessly attractive Colette looked this morning. There was a war on. The woman could at least attempt modesty. It was sacrilegious to sit in her silk dress with a brooch at her throat when people were freezing to death.

Wetting the tip of her finger and knotting the end of her thread, Colette glanced up at Madame Savaray. Her mother-in-law was a formidable woman, taller than most, with wide hips and an abundant chest that, with age, had turned into a hapless mound of flesh. Her face was set hard beneath a black bun, and her dated wool dress swished over the floor. It had always amazed Colette that—given Madame Savaray's age—her hair had never grayed. It was still so black that sunlight could turn it blue.