Luncheon of the Boating Party (37 page)

“This peach is a lifesaver.
Merci.
”

“Another
café?
” Camille asked.

“No. One is fine. I had intended to pay up some against my ac -

count.”

“It can wait.”

“
You’re
the peach.”

He shouldered the door open just as Aline was about to enter.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Renoir. Géraldine has been worried about you.”

Her eyes flashed with mischief. “Oh,
mon Dieu,
I can see why.”

A jolt. A shiver. In the sunlight of the doorway her round, peach-tinted cheeks acted like a magnet. Hm, lively eyes. Rose-petal ears. Full, sensual lips. Part of the background of his quarter come to life. He swung around. “On second thought, Camille . . .”

She nodded. “Another cup.”

Annette looked up over her magazine. “You can have this table. I’ve got to get back to the shoe shop.”

It was a quick, calculated exit, full of grace. Annette knew when she was beaten.

Sitting down with him, Aline raised her hand as though she were going to touch his cheek but held it carefully away. “
Tch, tch.
At least no cast. What happened this time?”

“Last night,” Camille said, “in place du Tertre, the poor man was violently attacked by notorious criminals of the worst sort, beaten near to death, and left to rot in the gutter.” Camille brought them each a
café.

“Omelette?”

“Petite, s’il vous plaît,”
Aline said.

Three eggs cracked in Camille’s bowl.

“We haven’t seen you for a while,” Aline said. “Shall I tell Géraldine you’re all right? She would want to know.”

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He could lose himself in her. A peach among peaches. Flecks of gold and green in her slate blue eyes splintered light and sent it back to him charged with an impish spirit. She had a kittenish face that made him want to tickle her under her chin. Reddish blond hair swept up into a chignon round as a country bun, an eggshell complexion, turned-up nose, almond-shaped eyes at the right position—the imagined face he’d painted on all those plates as a boy, telling Monsieur Lévy it was Marie Antoinette. And his Venus on a vase, it was Aline’s face before she was born. How had he not noticed before? He’d found his shoe on his own foot. Timing. Timing was everything.

“How much time do you have for lunch?” he asked.

“Half an hour.”

He had to get to the point quickly, and quietly.

“I’m sorry about your accident,” she said. “I suppose I would call it an accident, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Are you normally busy on Sundays?”

“My mother and I often go to the Jardin du Luxembourg. We like to walk among the pine trees and watch the wood pigeons. They remind us of home.”

“Are you going this Sunday?”

“Or Géraldine and I go to La Grenouillère. She knows how to swim.

Are you hurt badly? Did they punch you in the stomach?”

“Do you know the Maison Fournaise?”

“Oh, yes. Where did they hit you hardest?”

He couldn’t tell her that, but he could play her little questioning game. “Do you like
le canotage?
”

“Yes, but did they kick you too?” She spurted out her questions more quickly that her usual slow, rolling way of speaking.

“Would you like to go there this Sunday?”

“Did they fi lch your money?” Her lips pushed out in a pretty little pout.

“Do you have a dark blue dress and a
canotier
for the sun?”

“Does your jaw give you a pain when you talk?”

“Only when you don’t answer my questions.”

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“Oh.” Her hand went up to her mouth to cover a giggle. “And all along I thought you weren’t answering mine.” Her scampish eyes

sparked. Such a playful spirit would fit right in.

Camille clunked down a plate in front of Aline with an omelette nearly as big as his. “This is the craziest conversation I’ve ever eavesdropped on. Get to the point, Renoir. You want to take her boating.”

“No! Well, maybe. I want her to pose in my painting. I’ve started this monstrous painting with fourteen people in it on the terrace of the Maison Fournaise. Well, it’s supposed to have fourteen people in it, but one,
quelle peste!
I scraped her off so now I have a hole in my painting.”

Aline attacked the omelette with vigor and her little cheeks bulged.

“A real hole? That you can see air through? You want me to plug a hole?”

“No, just a big, scraped-off, smeared spot. She was one of the main figures. You would be perfect for it, and I’d be much obliged, but you’ve got to pose in profile and I need you to have a dark blue fl annel boating dress so as to cover the shadows left from the other model.”

Her dainty nose poked up. “
Tch, tch.
If you had asked me fi rst, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

“I know, I know. Would to God I had.” And while you’re at it, God, please give her a cooperative nature.

“So you’ll come?”

She tipped her head toward her raised shoulder. “May I bring

Jacques Valentin Aristide?”

His hopes plummeted. Not another arrogant bourgeois bringing

tension to his happy, harmonious group. “Who is this Jacques Valentin Aristide?”

“Truth to tell, his name is Jacques Valentin Aristide d’Essoyes sur l’Ource. You’ll like him. He’s very handsome with his hair in his eyes.”

He felt himself tense up, and his ribs ached. A parvenu trailing a false name and needing a haircut. He didn’t expect this simple girl, a laundress or seamstress with a Burgundian accent, to have such ambitions. He steeled himself. “Tell me who he is.”

Aline blinked a few times, apparently enjoying his anguish.

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“My new puppy.”

“Puppy or puppy love? Human or canine?”

“He’s a dog, monsieur. A little terrier. Oh, so sad. Sunday is the only day I can take him out for a good long walk. He’ll be cross if I don’t.”

He let out a breath, then remembered Madame Charpentier’s dog

which had jolted him with surprise snorts. At least Aline didn’t ask that the mutt be in the painting. He had sworn he would never paint another dog.

“And you, do you have a long name trailing behind Aline? Some-

thing Greek? Pandora, maybe?”

“No. Just me. Aline Charigot. I’m the one from Essoyes, in Champagne near the Burgundian border, not my dog. It’s on a tributary of the Seine called the Ource.” Her voice thickened and she rolled the
r
in Ource forever.

Camille barreled toward her and smothered her in a hug. “I just love to hear you say Ourrrce that way.” She turned to Auguste. “I’m from Champagne too, from the Aube region, and hearing Aline brings it back to me.”

Camille put one hand on her hip and wagged the index finger of her other hand at Aline. “Don’t tell your mother, girl, if you’re going to do this posing. When Auguste’s painting of the two juggler girls was on the wall, she took one look and said, ‘
Eh, là,
he must have paid you handsome to hang that thing in your
crémerie.
Pity those poor innocent girls posing for lascivious painters’ eyes. They’re thick as thieves around here ogling the
lorettes,
and they’re all the same, and none of them are honorable.’ Oh, she has a monstrous dislike for painters.”

Aline’s happy expression drooped. “True enough.”

“Respectability is everything to her,” Camille said. “I know for a fact that she prays, ‘Our Father who art in a respectable heaven, swept daily,’

so you mind your manners, young man.” She pulverized his shoulder with the bowl of a spoon, and stepped back to her stove.

He turned to Aline. “Will you still come?”

“I would have to tell my mother that I’m going with Géraldine to La Grenouillère.”

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Auguste chortled. “If she’s set on protecting you from lascivious eyes, don’t tell her that either. That’s out of the frying pan into the fi re.”

“I could say Géraldine and I are going rowing. She knows I like that.”

“So do I.” His arm might be strong enough, but now his ribs would be the problem.

“I don’t know if Jacques Valentin Aristide likes it.”

All this time she was saying with her eyes,
Convince me.
He ought to tell her he would pay the modeling fee, but could he?

“If you pose for me, I’ll make sure we’ll take him for a ride.”

Had he lost his mind? “If not this Sunday, then the next. I’ll need you three Sundays, at least.”

Her eyes widened. “Three Sundays? I don’t know, Monsieur Renoir.”

“Ten francs each sitting.”

“Mm.”

She’d finished her plate and was patting the napkin against her puckered mouth. He chuckled. “I can feed myself just by watching you eat.”

“That’s one thing. I do like to eat.”

“Every Sunday we have one of Mère Fournaise’s delicious meals. So far we’ve had
canard à la paysanne
with
artichauts à la vinaigrette, poulet
forestière
with
asperges d’Argenteuil en conserve, lapin en gibelotte, friture
d’ablettes, de gardons et de goujons.”

“Mm. The duck must have been nice, but I’m sorry I missed the rabbit stew. It reminds me of home.”

“And for dessert, raspberry tarts and apple pastry.”

“Ooh, I would have loved that. What are you having this Sunday?”

What had Louise told him?
“Côtelettes d’agneau à la forestière.”

She rolled her eyes. He was making progress, thanks to Louise.

“Oh, I adore lamb, and mushrooms too.”

He almost had her. He felt the room spin.

“You didn’t answer me. May I bring Jacques Valentin Aristide

d’Essoyes sur l’Ource?”

“Yes, but I must draw the line. No cutlets for him.”

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C h a p t e r T w e n t y - f i v e

The Blue Flannel Dress

After work in Madame Carnot’s Atelier de Couture in Montmar-

tre
d’en bas,
Aline Charigot climbed the steep streets toward the Moulin de la Galette until she found the cardboard sign for Chez Hortense, Ladies’ Clothes to Let. She’d been curious about this place but had never gone in. A bell tinkled when she opened the door. In the narrow, dim interior, two racks of dresses hung from suspended iron rods. She walked through the aisle looking for a blue one, not touching anything.

A woman with a shadow of a mustache shuffled toward her in violet mules, Madame Hortense she assumed.
“Bonjour, madame,”
Aline said and smiled.

The woman returned the greeting but not the smile. “What might

you be wanting?”

“I’d like to rent a dark blue dress, a pretty one.”

“All my dresses are pretty, mademoiselle.”

“Then I’ve come to the right place.”

With that, a smile stretched across the woman’s splotchy cheeks.

“Blue, you say?”

The woman slipped into the familiar
tu
form. The informality struck her as false, but then this was Montmartre
d’en haut,
the Butte.

Maybe she was being motherly.

“Why not this green one?” Madame pulled out an elegant dark

green dress with draped side panniers trimmed in violet braid.

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“No, it’s got to be blue.”

“This one?”

“No, dark blue.”

“
Mon Dieu,
you’re a picky one!”

“It doesn’t have to be a fine fabric. Canton flannel will do.”

“I’ve got this one, but it will hang on you like a sack. I can stitch it up for you, though.”

It was the dark blue of boating dresses, and had dark red braid around a deep square neckline and down the front. A lace ruffl e lay inward along the braid at the neckline. She felt pinpricks of excitement.

“May I try it on?”

“
Bien sûr.
It’s a good choice. A nice demi-polonaise drawn into a modest drape over the derrière. Not too bouffant, but enough to wag when you walk.”

As it fell over her head in the back of the shop, it was like putting on a holiday spirit. She’d never had a dress with a polonaise drape.

Madame fastened the back hooks. “Such a clean one for a country girl. Your neck is as white as a swan’s. Sometimes I have to give the girls a scrubbing they’ll never forget before I let them have a try-on.”

“How do you know I’m from the country?”

“You take a week to say anything. And your
r’
s.”

With warty fingers, Madame Hortense went to work pinning the

side seams. “This won’t take but an hour. Then you can get started tonight.”

“I won’t be needing it until Sunday.”

Madame Hortense shook her head, pins pinched in her mouth.

“Sunday’s the worst day to start. They’re with their wives on Sunday.”

Madame made basting stitches up the side bodice. “You’ll be needing a place to take them, so you come back here tonight. The key for a tithe, by the hour. Two hours, two tithes. Discreet and clean. Mind you, bring this dress back as clean as I’m giving it to you. No grease spots from man or beast.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Oh yes I do, certain enough. No need to be coy with Mère Hortense.

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Eventually you’ll be needing a
hôtel de passe.
It’s good to keep up good relations with the proprietor. Bring him little cakes once in a while.

Then, if you run over your hour by a few minutes, he won’t charge you for two. Try Hôtel Maître Renard on boulevard Rouchechouart.”

“I only want the dress, madame. Not a recommendation.”

Madame Hortense scowled. “For how long do you want it?”

“Just three Sundays. Maybe more. You can have it back in be-

tween.”

“Just Sundays!
C’est ridicule.
Raise your arm.”

“Please, madame, I want the dress. It’s perfect.” She touched the narrow lace ruffle at the sleeve, coveting it.