Paris to find her, how long before she would have to return to the house in Mayfair as a jilted wife and hear her mother rail against her son-in-law: ‘I
knew
it all happened too fast! Engaged within a month! I knew he was a ne’er-do-well . . .’
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ the painter asked, jolting her back to the present.
It took her a moment to reply. ‘I’m thinking about the last time I sat for a portrait,’ she replied.
‘When was that?’
‘Last month. On the beach at Raguenez, in Finistère . . .’
She’d said something to exasperate Scotch, that last afternoon. She couldn’t remember what exactly – some facile remark about the PBIs who had come to the library in Rouen, to chat and flirt and read.
He had taken the drawing he was making of her and ripped it in two. ‘What do you know about what goes on in the real world? What do you know about real men, about flesh and blood men, what do you know about the horror they endured in the trenches while you were toasting your toes by the library stove, engrossed in Jane Austen?’ He reached into his knapsack and handed her a slim sketchbook – one she had not seen before. It had a bloodstain on the cover. ‘This was made by one of the war artists. He died in the hospital in Rouen, poisoned by mustard gas. What you have there is a true record of the war, Jessie, one the Propaganda Bureau doesn’t want you to see.’
Between the covers of the battered sketchbook had been images of the dead, the dying, the injured, the limbless. Page after page depicted atrocity: corpses trampled into mud, heaped into trenches, twisted at obscene angles. Some were unrecognizable as human; most had been mere boys. A poppy had been pressed between the last two pages of the book – the only splash of colour in a graphite record of hell.
Jessie and Scotch had stared at each other for a moment like two strangers on opposite sides of an abyss, and then Scotch had taken hold of her wrists, raised her hands to his face, and pressed them to his mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and she had buried her face in her arms and sobbed until her face was red and blotchy and her throat ached, and then Scotch, at a loss for words for the first time since she had known him, had put the sketchbook away and changed the subject, and she had ended up prattling something silly, something inconsequential.
And now, as she lay on the couch in the artist’s studio, Jessie realized that she had never had any real idea of what had been going on in her husband’s mind. She had had no idea what horrors Scotch had seen in the years before she had come to Rouen to play at war work in the library; and no idea that every time she spoke of her privileged Cambridge education it might have irked him – really irked him. She had had no idea each time she rattled on about London and her shopping trips to Liberty or Harrods, and afternoon tea at the Savoy and visits to the West End to see the latest Somerset Maugham play, that it just might have had the effect of a chisel blow to the cement of their relationship.
Madame Saprasti! Diseuse de bon aventure!
The fortune teller’s chant recalled her to the here-and-now.
‘I’m sorry – did you say something?’ she asked the painter. ‘I was miles away.’
‘I asked you who he was. The artist you sat for.’
‘I don’t remember his name,’ Jessie said quietly. ‘He was nobody, after all. He was nobody very special.’
CHAPTER SIX
BABA
LONDON 1939
BEFORE BABA EMBARKED for Hollywood, Richard Napier took her to tea in the Palm Court, in the Ritz Hotel.
‘I
love
this place!’ said Baba, smiling at the waiter who had just finished pouring Lapsang Souchong. He returned the smile, made a small bow and backed away. ‘It has the most soothing atmosphere of anywhere in London – and it has the most beautiful clientele, too. Even dog-faced women don’t look so bad here – did you know that? It has something to do with the lighting,
knew
it all happened too fast! Engaged within a month! I knew he was a ne’er-do-well . . .’
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ the painter asked, jolting her back to the present.
It took her a moment to reply. ‘I’m thinking about the last time I sat for a portrait,’ she replied.
‘When was that?’
‘Last month. On the beach at Raguenez, in Finistère . . .’
She’d said something to exasperate Scotch, that last afternoon. She couldn’t remember what exactly – some facile remark about the PBIs who had come to the library in Rouen, to chat and flirt and read.
He had taken the drawing he was making of her and ripped it in two. ‘What do you know about what goes on in the real world? What do you know about real men, about flesh and blood men, what do you know about the horror they endured in the trenches while you were toasting your toes by the library stove, engrossed in Jane Austen?’ He reached into his knapsack and handed her a slim sketchbook – one she had not seen before. It had a bloodstain on the cover. ‘This was made by one of the war artists. He died in the hospital in Rouen, poisoned by mustard gas. What you have there is a true record of the war, Jessie, one the Propaganda Bureau doesn’t want you to see.’
Between the covers of the battered sketchbook had been images of the dead, the dying, the injured, the limbless. Page after page depicted atrocity: corpses trampled into mud, heaped into trenches, twisted at obscene angles. Some were unrecognizable as human; most had been mere boys. A poppy had been pressed between the last two pages of the book – the only splash of colour in a graphite record of hell.
Jessie and Scotch had stared at each other for a moment like two strangers on opposite sides of an abyss, and then Scotch had taken hold of her wrists, raised her hands to his face, and pressed them to his mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and she had buried her face in her arms and sobbed until her face was red and blotchy and her throat ached, and then Scotch, at a loss for words for the first time since she had known him, had put the sketchbook away and changed the subject, and she had ended up prattling something silly, something inconsequential.
And now, as she lay on the couch in the artist’s studio, Jessie realized that she had never had any real idea of what had been going on in her husband’s mind. She had had no idea what horrors Scotch had seen in the years before she had come to Rouen to play at war work in the library; and no idea that every time she spoke of her privileged Cambridge education it might have irked him – really irked him. She had had no idea each time she rattled on about London and her shopping trips to Liberty or Harrods, and afternoon tea at the Savoy and visits to the West End to see the latest Somerset Maugham play, that it just might have had the effect of a chisel blow to the cement of their relationship.
Madame Saprasti! Diseuse de bon aventure!
The fortune teller’s chant recalled her to the here-and-now.
‘I’m sorry – did you say something?’ she asked the painter. ‘I was miles away.’
‘I asked you who he was. The artist you sat for.’
‘I don’t remember his name,’ Jessie said quietly. ‘He was nobody, after all. He was nobody very special.’
CHAPTER SIX
BABA
LONDON 1939
BEFORE BABA EMBARKED for Hollywood, Richard Napier took her to tea in the Palm Court, in the Ritz Hotel.
‘I
love
this place!’ said Baba, smiling at the waiter who had just finished pouring Lapsang Souchong. He returned the smile, made a small bow and backed away. ‘It has the most soothing atmosphere of anywhere in London – and it has the most beautiful clientele, too. Even dog-faced women don’t look so bad here – did you know that? It has something to do with the lighting,
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