Chapter 1 #2
Mitzi’s ears twitched, but she didn’t open her eyes.
Alex was a favourite of hers, but sleep came first, of course.
After he’d gone, Romy glanced at the table and the work she should be getting on with.
She didn’t have much time left to finish her assignment before it had to go to the school for marking.
But she couldn’t face it just now. She needed to go out, take a walk and clear her head.
Reaching for her umbrella, she was about to pick up her shoulder bag when there came a knock on the door.
Alex must have forgotten something as he often did, she thought, and she opened the door with a teasing smile.
But it wasn’t her uncle who stood there.
It was a complete stranger, a woman maybe in her fifties—Romy wasn’t good with ages—with an expressive face dominated by a pair of sparkling hazel eyes and set off by a wave of chin-length richly chestnut hair.
Her clothes were stylishly summery, with a hint of vintage: a sheath midi dress in pine-forest green worn under a fitted pale pink and white striped jacket that reminded Romy of the classic 1930s illustration she’d based her own design on, and green T-strap shoes.
She realised she must have been staring, for the woman said uncertainly, ‘Um—my name is Bernard, Isabelle Bernard.’ Her voice had a Southern lilt to it.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but I wondered if you could help me.
’ Seeing Romy’s frown, she added quickly, ‘I’m looking for someone who used to live here.
’ Reaching into the pouch that hung over her shoulder, she drew out a plastic wallet and carefully extracted an envelope from it.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s addressed to this very apartment.
I just wondered if by any chance you had heard of the person it had been sent to. ’
Romy glanced at the name written on the envelope—Mademoiselle Houssaye—and her eyes widened.
When she and Alex had cleaned up the flat before she moved in—a mammoth task, because it seemed that the old man who’d lived there sixty years or more had never cleared out anything in all that time—they’d found a few intriguing things in the detritus.
One of those things had been a thin magazine which had been rolled up to plug up a hole, and which proved to be an old department store catalogue from 1930—well before the old man’s time, but then the apartment building was nineteenth century.
It had been in that very catalogue where Romy had found the illustration on which she’d based the design for her end-of-year project.
But the illustration wasn’t the reason she stepped aside, saying, ‘Come in, Madame Bernard. There’s something you might be interested to see.’
Audrey Oliver looked up and down the street.
Running between the broad, noisy Boulevard du Montparnasse and the winding Rue de Notre-Dame-des-Champs, this little street felt like a haven of quiet peace, where you could imagine discreetly well-off families going about their comfortable routines, insulated from the bustle and disruption.
She knew that it hadn’t always been so: from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s, the Rue de la Grande Chaumière and its environs had been a lively hotbed of artistic creativity, for the rents back then in working-class Montparnasse were cheap and easily affordable by the impecunious painters, sculptors, musicians, photographers, designers and writers from all over the world who flocked to Paris, the lively centre of the arts in those golden years.
Signs of that still remained in this street: a marble plaque commemorating the spot where the great painters Paul Gauguin and Amedeo Modigliani had once had studios, at different periods, of course; a boutique hotel whose name, H?tel des Académies et des Arts, commemorated the art schools and artists who had once proliferated here.
And most of all, the attractive building at number 14 that Audrey had come here to see, which housed the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, one of the most famous of the Montparnasse art schools that had survived and occupied the same spot it had been in since 1904.
Started by Swiss painter Martha Stettler as a place where aspiring female artists could learn to draw, paint and sculpt the human form from life, the Académie soon expanded beyond that and by the 1920s was known as a centre for creative freedom and bold experimentation.
Famous artists had worked there, with Modigliani, Chagall, Miro, Foujita, Zadkine, Lempicka and Bourgeois among that long list.
But there had also been countless obscure young hopefuls who had converged on this place, Audrey thought, as she gazed at the red-brick and white limestone building with its gilded sign.
They too had followed their dreams to Paris in the années folles, the mad years, as the French sometimes termed that wild twenty-year period between the two wars, when social restraints crumbled and artistic ferment reached an extraordinary level.
Audrey’s French great-grandmother, Alice, had been one of those hopeful young people.
She’d come to Paris from her home in the far southern provinces to take up a position as a junior illustrator in a well-known fashion illustration company.
It had been arranged by her mother, who knew her daughter’s predilection for art but decreed that she couldn’t be a part of that world of hard-drinking, lover-swapping, brush-wielding idlers whose outrageous antics the sensationalist papers described in lurid tones.
Yes, she could study at the Académie, but she had to earn a living too.
Standing here now, Audrey imagined Alice as she had looked in photographs of her from the time: somewhat of a fashion icon herself, with her bobbed blonde hair in immaculate waves under a soft hat that perfectly framed her beautiful face.
Audrey had been told by both her mother and grandmother that she looked like Alice, but she couldn’t really see it.
Sure, she had the same shade of blonde hair, but her nose was sharper than Alice’s pert one, and her grey eyes looked ordinary compared to Alice’s unusual shade of blue as evidenced in colour photos of her in later life.
Even as a teenager Alice had looked naturally stylish, while Audrey had to work at that.
But she felt an instinctively warm bond with Alice, whom she’d never met in person, but whose surviving notebook filled with lively tales of an exciting youth in the world’s most beautiful city had become a cherished family heirloom as much as a family legend.
A legend that had inspired Audrey herself, as a wide-eyed twenty-year-old Australian, to come to Paris for the first time with the vague idea of retracing her great-grandmother’s footsteps.
She hadn’t got very far with that back then, but the trip had changed her life—and not just because of the fact that it had unexpectedly inspired her to begin a career as a fashion writer, first in Australia and then in the United States, where she’d made her home for the past ten years.
That first time in Paris, twenty years ago, she’d also come to this place but hadn’t been admitted into the building.
Since then, she’d been to Paris many times for work, to go to the Paris Fashion Show, to interview designers and see new collections, but she had never had the time to follow up on that old dream.
Now here she was again at last, having arranged over text to be let in at a set time.
She looked at her phone. It was almost time.
She’d arrived early to get a feel for the street, the atmosphere, the position of buildings and any particular sights.
It would all go into the book she was writing about the great French female fashion designers of the 1920s and 1930s—that fascinating world her great-grandmother had been a small part of.
Audrey had written hundreds of highly regarded articles and features that had been published in famous magazines and syndicated all over the world, but she was rather nervous about this project—her first book.
The publisher who had contracted it had certainly been excited about it, saying it was sure to be an amazing story.
But Audrey wasn’t so sure. It was an amazing subject, yes, but whether she could do it justice was something else.
Would her idea of turning Alice’s sparkling memories into an engaging thread that would hold the book together and appeal to readers across the board, not only fashion tragics, really work?
She had no clue. All she knew was that she had to try, not least because it was a distraction from the thought that she had to get back to James about their wedding date.
Eighteen months ago, she had met James Fuller in a Brooklyn bar where she’d gone for a drink with a fellow journalist. At first, she hadn’t noticed the good-looking man in the smart suit at a neighbouring table, and it was only after her companion had left that he came over and introduced himself.
Tired of being single—she hadn’t dated anyone for over two years—she’d responded positively.
And so it had gone from there. They were well matched: both successful in their careers—he was a senior partner in one of New York’s most prestigious legal firms—both wanting a stable relationship without fireworks, both settled comfortably into their own lifestyles.
Then, four months ago, he had proposed to her at a company dinner, getting down on one knee to cheers from his colleagues.
It had been a complete surprise and she’d been rather overwhelmed by the whole thing, but she’d said yes, of course, to more cheers from the assembled throng.
So why was it now so difficult for her to settle on an actual wedding date?
Her phone beeped. A text. Phew, not James. She looked at the number, frowning, and clicked through to the message which was in French, a language she spoke and read fluently, thanks to her many visits to Paris.
We apologise, Madame Oliver, for this late notice, but we regret we cannot accommodate you at the Académie today due to unforeseen circumstances. Please contact us at your convenience to arrange an alternative date and time.
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ Audrey said loudly and was about to type out a terse reply when someone behind her said, ‘Excuse me, are you all right?’ in French-accented English.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Audrey began, turning to face the man who’d spoken to her.
‘I was just …’ She trailed off as she took him in properly, her stomach dropping like a stone.
He had changed in twenty years, but there was still no mistaking those warm brown eyes, the humorous set of the mouth as if the whole world amused him, and the way he carried himself with such confidence.
‘Alex,’ she whispered, just as he exclaimed, ‘Audrey?’
They stared at each other for what felt like a long moment, then Audrey said, ‘I—I’d better go.
I had an appointment at the Académie, but it was cancelled, so there’s no point in waiting around here.
I’ll have to make it another time.’ She knew she was babbling but she couldn’t help it—anything to stop the memory pushing its way into her mind, the memory of the last time she’d seen this man, twenty years ago on that first Paris trip, when he’d broken her heart into a million pieces with just a few devastating words.
‘I was visiting my niece. She lives a couple of buildings down from this one,’ he said, swallowing.
In that instant, she realised he was just as rattled as she was, and that helped enough for her to say, ‘Well, now we know what we were each doing on this street, which is a relief, isn’t it?’ That brought a faint smile to his lips, which disappeared when she added, ‘But I really do have to go.’
‘Wait,’ he said, a note of entreaty in his voice, but there was no way, no way in the entire bloody crazy world she was going to spend one second more there, just to hear excuses that were twenty years too late.
Turning on her heel, she walked rapidly up the street towards the boulevard, heart thumping, half-expecting, half-fearing that he would come after her.
But he didn’t, and when she furtively glanced back, she saw he was still in the same spot, as if he’d been turned to stone.