A CORSAGE OF CARROTS

 

(first published in Room of One's Own, 2004)

 

A classic chèvre – there’s nothing like it. Such an honest, strong smell, it’s closer to the goat than Brie is to the cow. Not that I turn my nose up at a ripe, runny Brie, but I eat chèvre when I’m feeling at one with the world. I spread it roughly on a decent-sized hunk torn from a fresh baguette.

            It’s only a snack, not a full meal, and I lounge on the threadbare velvet chaise longue as I eat, patting my rounded belly, feeling pleased with myself.

            Rumour has it that I keep a real live goat in my studio to which I give my bad drawings to eat. Rubbish, of course: I wouldn’t keep a goat confined, it needs freedom to graze and do its own goaty thing.

            Anyway, I’m happy to keep the tale alive – it suits me that people believe it. Far better than for them to think I’ve become respectable and ordinary in my autumn years.

            I’ve got crumbs all over the chaise longue and down my blouse. I stand up and shake myself so they scatter onto the floor. Well, why hire a cleaner if there’s nothing for her to clear up?

            I emit a series of soft burps and adjust my skirt – I like to pull it tight to emphasise my waist, but by the end of the day I often need to leave a button or two unhooked.

            Today, though, I am expecting a visitor, a journalist friend of my son’s who wants to talk about my life. I’ve told the story so many times it comes out fully prepared, a little too slick perhaps, but I change the anecdotes so that no one gets quite the same version.

            I shall try a little harder with this Jacques Vernier who claims to have been such a confidant of my son, even though I can’t recall Maurice ever mentioning him.

            I wonder if he likes chèvre. I’ve wine, of course, but I don’t believe in taking wine without food – that much I learned from poor Maurice.

            When I hear footsteps on the creaky stairs I smooth down my skirt and clear my throat. In spite of my defined waist, I’m a heavy-set woman who looks her age. Ah, well, it comes to us all.

            There’s a knock on the door. A polite, diffident tap.

            ‘Entrez, Monsieur.’

            As he opens the door I fold my hands at my waist and hope I look presentable, if not attractive any more.

            ‘Madame Utter?’

            He inches forward, hand half extended, his back a little bowed because of some deformity, it seems, rather than out of deference.

            I thrust out a hand and give him a non-committal, public smile.

            His hand is small as a boy’s and feels almost boneless. Because of that hand I know I’m not going to take to this young man, whose smile speaks of someone too eager to please.

            ‘Sit down, M Vernier.’

            He fusses with his jacket and trousers as he settles into the chair.

            ‘A drink? Some wine?’

            ‘Thank you.’

            As I pour out the drinks, with my back towards him, I try to work out which story to give, which one he most deserves.

I tear up the remaining baguette and place it on a large plate with the rest of the chèvre and a generous pat of butter.

            ‘So, M Vernier,’ I begin, turning to face him and catching him engaged in an investigation of a nasal cavity with a slender finger. He has the grace to blush.

            ‘How did you first meet my son?’

            I have decided to find out a little more about my guest before telling him about myself.

            ‘To be truthful, we were only friends for a short time. But I liked him very much indeed; and of course I admired his great talent - ’

            ‘You know it was I who taught him to paint?’ I interrupt.

            ‘Well, of course, I only realised later that his mother was also a painter.’

            It’s always the same. They think I began to paint as a way of trying to emulate Maurice’s success.

            ‘I, of course, had too much respect for art to show any paintings until I’d fully learned my craft.’

            ‘I didn’t mean to cause offence,’ M Vernier says.

I’m beginning to find him tiresome. He is typical of the fawners my son collected. M Vernier is the type who will be very, very ‘umble to my face then tell all his acquaintances what an old hag I am, what a harridan, no wonder poor Maurice turned to the bad!

I can’t repress an irritated sigh, but I try to cover up by thrusting the plate of food at him.

He puts up his hands and a horrified look crosses his face. You’d think I’d offered him a still-warm dead and bleeding beast. The fabled goat, perhaps.

‘Really – I ate just a short while ago,’ he says, wrinkling his nose. Any respect I had for him dissipated at the sight of that expression of distaste. A real man would never be so fastidious.

I don’t care, I crack open a lump of bread and load it with chèvre. As he begins to speak, I set to work on my food.

            ‘Of course, it can’t have been easy for you,’ M Vernier gamely persists. I can’t answer, because my mouth is full, but I frown and nod at him to continue.

            ‘I mean – bringing up a child on your own, without a man.’

            ‘You think that’s why Maurice became a drunkard, because he had no father?’

            ‘I surely didn’t mean to suggest - ’

            ‘It’s what they all think,’ I say with a shrug. ‘Did you wonder where the goat is?’

            ‘The - ?’

            ‘You must know the story, that I keep a goat tied up here that eats my discarded drawings.’

            ‘I didn’t pay it much heed,’ he says, but I sense he’s lying. Everyone knows the legend of my goat.

            ‘They also say you wear a corsage of carrots,’ he adds. ‘I don’t suppose that’s true, either.’

            ‘No, it’s not. But there are worse things people could believe about me.’

            He looks thoughtful; perhaps considering a juicy rumour he could spread, something to put the goat and the carrots in the shade.

            ‘Still. You have achieved commercial success, after all,’ he says, crossing his legs. Above his silk socks he has surprisingly hairy legs.

            ‘And critical success,’ I remind him.

            ‘Of course,’ he says with a slight nod. ‘Your husband and son must be very proud of you.’

            ‘Proud!’ I laugh, because this naïve young man clearly has no idea what my husband or son are like. ‘I thought you knew Maurice?’

            He clears his throat and uncrosses his legs, only to cross them again immediately.

            ‘As I said, we didn’t know each other for very long…’

            ‘Clearly,’ I say, raising an eyebrow and hoping I look rather grand dame, like Sarah Bernhardt after she lost her leg, perhaps.

            He clears his throat again and it occurs to me this thin man with bright spots of red on his cheeks is consumptive, though he may not realise it.

 

*

 

I was seventeen when I fell pregnant with Maurice. Like a typical teenage girl I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening in the hope that it would go away.

            It was Henri who noticed I was showing, even before my mother did.

            ‘Suzanne, you must look after yourself,’ he told me as I posed for him in his dank studio.

            ‘I’m fine,’ I said with a shrug.

            ‘Not just you,’ he said, pointing his paintbrush at my gently rounded belly. Instinctively I put my hands on it and felt a faint flutter.

            He grinned. ‘I’ve never seen you blush before. It’s most becoming.’

            The little man had been after me for months, and if only I’d given in I could have passed off this child as his. He would have been a good father, and solicitous of me.

            ‘Who is the father?’ he asked, his face hidden behind the big canvas. ‘No reply, Suzanne? Don’t you know?’

            ‘Of course I know! But I don’t want him to know.’

            ‘Why not? Has he no money? Has he a wife?’

            I enjoyed the sound Henri’s brush made as he firmly applied paint to the canvas; it was almost hypnotic, and time seemed to stand still.

            ‘Suzanne?’

            ‘I’m sorry, Henri. There’s no point talking about it.’

            I sighed and my shoulders sagged. Normally he would have clicked his tongue and told me to sit up straight, but today he put his brush down and emerged from behind the canvas. He didn’t look so small when I was sitting down.

            He passed me the soft pink wrap he kept for his models and I draped it over my knees.

            ‘Put it on properly,’ he said, but I didn’t move.

            He began to cover me up but I took hold of his hands and pulled him onto me. I closed my eyes before clamping my mouth to his cold, wet lips. I expected him to pull away but instead he brushed the wrap to the floor then traced his hand from my neck down to my breasts, over my warm, hard belly and down between my legs.

            Oh, he was ugly! But so tender…

            When I went home, my mother immediately noticed the purplish bruise on my neck.

            ‘Henri?’ she guessed.

            I nodded. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I blurted out.

            ‘I see. And will he marry you?’

            ‘It’s not his.’

            ‘Does that matter?’

            ‘He knows it can’t be his.’

            ‘He thinks the world of you, Suzanne. A mother without a husband is little better than a piece of rubbish. You’re a fool if you don’t make him marry you.’

            I knew Henri would have married me and taken my child as his own, but I was foolish and stubborn and still believed one should marry only for love – for a grand passion.

            ‘I love my baby’s father,’ I said. ‘If I can’t have him, I don’t want anyone.’

            ‘And why won’t this man marry you?’

            I thrust out my chin. ‘He’s already married,’ I admitted.

            ‘Fool!’ Mother said, slapping my face.

 

I wasn’t in the mood for work. I slumped in the chair and curled my hair around my fingers while I watched Henri working on the background of the painting.

            ‘I told my mother,’ I said.

            ‘Oh, yes? And what did she say?’

            ‘That I should make you marry me.’

            He looked up and cocked his head. He removed his glasses and breathed on them before wiping them on his shirt that was surely dirtier than the glasses.

            ‘I see.’

            I reached across and took the palette from the floor where Henri had left it. I pressed a finger into a thick stripe of orange paint. With each of my fingers I caressed the hardening swirls of colour.

            ‘Don’t mess those up, Suzanne. Let me see your fingers.’

            I held them up, each pad decorated with a different colour.

            ‘Wash them, please, before you get paint on your clothes.’

            ‘I don’t mind,’ I said, looking at them. ‘I like it. I like the feel of the paint. How can you bear to use a brush? How can you resist using your fingers?’

            ‘Finger painting is for children,’ he said. ‘If it’s the colours you like, why don’t you try using a brush?’

            ‘Me, paint?’ I scoffed. I wanted to press my fingers against a canvas, but only to see the colours and patterns, not because I wanted to be a great artist.

            ‘Come and watch me paint, Suzanne.’

            I had never seen him in the act of painting before, as I’d always been there as his model, not as an observer or student.

            ‘But wash your hands first.’

            ‘No,’ I insisted, careful to keep the paint well away from my white dress.

            I perched on a stool next to Henri and stared as hopeless blobs and amorphous shapes became things with their own kind of reality. It made me shiver to see him using paint so authoritatively. It was perhaps the only time I ever felt genuine desire for him. There was nothing ugly about those fingers that were so confident with every sensitive brush stroke.

            ‘Would you like to try?’ he asked, holding out a brush.

            ‘Don’t be absurd.’

            ‘You might have natural talent.’

            ‘I don’t believe in it,’ I said. ‘I believe in hard work.’

 

*

 

‘Thirteen years! You really painted for thirteen years before you showed your work to anyone?’

            ‘I meant it when I told Henri I believed in hard work.’

            M Vernier drains his glass, which I immediately refill.

            ‘So you didn’t marry Henri.’

            ‘Obviously not.’

            He had meant more to me than any mere husband, who would have surely discouraged my artistic ambitions. Henri gave me old canvases, ends of tubes of paint, brushes and knives.

            It took me some time to decide what I wanted to paint; at first I was too in love with the colours to care what I could make them represent.

            ‘You’re best known for your nudes, of course,’ M Vernier says, holding up his glass to the window and twisting it round, enjoying the play of sunlight on the red wine and on the crystal. ‘They’re very bold, aren’t they?’

            He gives me a shrewd glance.

            ‘You find them vulgar?’ I ask.

            He considers. ‘Unconventional,’ he declares, looking pleased with himself, though the word is clearly meaningless. ‘Your vibrant use of colour, your boldness of composition – these are very refreshing.’

            That’s what everyone says, just before they cast aspersions on my lifestyle and question the morals of a woman who paints female nudes in so candid a fashion.

            As I say nothing, he continues: ‘Your nudes - ’

            ‘I don’t just paint nudes,’ I snap, although they are the pictures of which I’m most proud and which I know are my most original and important works.

            ‘Of course not – please don’t take offence,’ he says, leaning forward and tapping my knee. For a moment I wonder if he’s going to try to make love to me, but he’s too much of a boy and when I place a hand on his he jerks away and makes a great production of clearing his throat. This turns into a coughing fit that leaves him gasping and with a film of sweat over his sickly face.

            ‘I apologise, Madame,’ he says, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a delicate lace-edged handkerchief. Where on earth did he get such an item? From his mother, sister? Lover? Whore?

 

*

 

The magazine for which M Vernier works is blandly titled The Paris Arts Review. I receive a copy of it, wrapped in a broad band of brown paper which I slit with a palette knife.

            I turn to his article entitled A Corsage of Carrots: “Bohemian Suzanne,” and begin to read.

            He says a great deal of flattering things about Maurice and his work, but when it comes to me his tone becomes acidic. According to him, I am a fat, greedy, selfish, ridiculous monster who stifled my son’s talent and gave him a lifelong fear of women. Valadon, an intimate friend of Toulouse-Lautrec, has never had much regard for the opinions of polite society… True, but I don’t care for your tone, M Vernier.

            I spend a couple of days brooding about this snide essay before deciding on the best way of relaying my disgust to M Vernier.

            If he wants a goat, he shall have one. I purchase a handsome billy goat and send him round to M Vernier’s apartment – anonymously – with a barrel of absinthe tied around his neck by a length of crisp red ribbon.

            For a separate parcel I select a whole ripe chèvre, wrap it securely in layers of muslin and brown paper, and have that delivered to his home.

A week later I receive a letter from M Vernier; he has an elegant hand but spoils the effect by using violet ink, an unmanly colour. Mme Utter, he writes, reverting once more to the use of my married name; you are, like your paintings, unforgettable.

He mentions neither the goat nor the cheese.