‘That’s so clever, Rose. I still can’t believe some were just sent to auction though. Were many sold?’ Fen was still shocked that local dealers and auctioneers would do such a thing, though she had to admit the proverbial gun to the head was always a persuasive reason.
‘Yes, too many. Some of the Jewish families had some beautiful paintings – Matisse, Mohl, Braque, even that Picasso’s daubings. We called it avant garde, the German called it degenerate, but they knew enough to know that they were worth something. So, Henri took my list and marked up which paintings would delight the Führer and which ones could just help line the Reich’s pockets, but knowing full well that I had already snuck my code in. And now the war is over, it’s safe to decipher the names and start tracking down the art. Some of our dear friends are returning to Paris and I can now help them, thank the Lord.’
‘You’ve decoded the list, Rose?’ Simone seemed put out that she didn’t know this already.
‘No, dear child, I’ll have it back from Henri tomorrow. He saved it from the fires that the Nazis lit as they retreated.’
Fen toasted her. ‘I’m so impressed, Rose.’
Rose shrugged the praise away. ‘We all did our bit. You tilled the fields in rain or shine to help feed your countrymen and women, Simone here took potshots at Germans and I… I just typed up a list.’
Eight
Fen slept well that night, despite her almost all-day nap earlier. Whether it was the crème de menthe, the exhaustion of last night’s journey or the comfortable bed, she couldn’t tell, but there was a bit of her that was sure it was because she felt, in some way, that she was home. Not home as in Oxford with her parents, or home with Mrs B in the old farmhouse near Midhurst where she’d spent the war, but home in the sense that everything around her was familiar. She had spent hours in this apartment as a girl, either painting alongside Madame Coillard (as she had always called her back then) or playing with her brother as her parents left them to amuse themselves running marbles along the smooth parquet floor while they talked and laughed with their eccentric friend.
She’d also reread her letter from Kitty and she could almost hear her voice through the words as she sent condolences and local news. Fen missed her friend terribly. Simone seemed nice enough, but Fen would give anything for Kitty to be here now, sharing her room like they did at Mrs B’s, giggling into the night about some fancy man or other, or just companionably going about their work. Still, it was good to know that Kitty, Dilly and Mrs B were safe and well. It all helped to ease the pain of knowing now that her beloved fiancé Arthur was dead.
By 8.30 a.m. the next morning, Fen was up and dressed and sitting in the studio, a hot cup of mint tea steeping in front of her. She’d been woken by Tipper scratching at her door an hour or so earlier and rather than let him wake the rest of the household up, she’d taken him for a quick run around the tree-lined courtyard in the centre of the building. The early-morning blast of chill air had been good for her and she felt far more alert than she had the night before.
Now, sitting in the sunlight streaming through the windows, a newspaper caught her eye… the name Sartre – hadn’t Rose mentioned him last night? She picked the paper up from the floor where it had been doing a grand job of protecting the wooden blocks from splashes of white spirit and oil paint. She read the headline properly: ‘France Seen From America, by our special correspondent Jean-Paul Sartre’. She read with interest about the journalist and philosopher tasting Coca-Cola for the first time and meeting President Roosevelt.
‘Well, Tipper,’ Fen said, as the little dog padded into the room and nuzzled her outstretched hand, ‘if I do come across this Sartre chap in the bar of the Deux Magots, I shall ask him all about this Coca-Cola drink!’
She read a few more articles, enjoying the challenge of testing her French and stretching her vocabulary. There had been a rise in Mafia-style gangs, it seemed, according to one article at least, which blamed American films for giving Frenchmen ideas, while there had also been a scandal in the Bois de Boulogne, where a painting had been stashed in the racehorse stables. Paris was certainly more exciting than Midhurst, that was for sure.
Simone’s bedroom door opened and the young woman crossed the studio to get to the bathroom, which was on the other side of the apartment. Seeing her now in her nightdress and without a scrap of make-up on, Fen realised that the assumption she’d made last night over the dishes about Simone being plain under her lipstick and powder wasn’t entirely correct. Her skin glowed and her poise was as elegant as anyone’s who had spent years at the barre. No, she wasn’t unattractive without make-up, far from it, but her rouge and mascara had emphasised her features, which were actually more delicate and less striking in the clear morning light.
‘Good morning, Fenella,’ she spoke and raised a hand in greeting.
‘Good morning, Simone,’ Fen replied and went back to reading the newspaper.
Gradually, the apartment came to life. First, Simone dressed and breakfasted, if you could call just a small cup of coffee breakfast. Fen decided that Mrs B, her old landlady in West Sussex certainly wouldn’t. She had always said that a breakfast wasn’t a breakfast without at least one of the freshly laid brown eggs from the ‘ladies’ on the farm.
Fen was just thinking about those early-morning stints in the fields when Rose appeared from her bedroom, wafting into the studio with her
