Moonlight Over Paris(24)

“Désolée, étienne, but I cannot stay,” Mathilde said. Something passed between them—a look of understanding, something that hinted of shared hardships? It made her very curious to learn more about her new friends.

“I’m sorry, too, but I must go as well,” Helena said, gathering her things. “It was lovely meeting all of you. à demain?”

“à demain.”

She had done it. She had made it through the first day of classes, her dignity more or less intact, and she had made three new friends who knew her as Helena Parr, an art student like themselves. Just the thought of it made her so happy she could hug herself, for with friends at her side, she knew, she could weather any storm—even the unpredictable gale of the ma?tre’s ire.





Chapter 10


10 October 1924

Dearest Amalia,

I hope this letter finds you well and happy, and that Peter and the children are also in fine form.

Today marked the end of my first month of classes—four weeks of dessin, dessin, dessin, and yet more dessin, all with Ma?tre Czerny. There are days when I feel as worn-down as the stub of charcoal I use for sketching, but there are good days, too, when everything suddenly makes sense and the drawing I produce comes close to matching the one in my head.

Although the ma?tre is a difficult man, I can’t say I regret my decision to attend his academy and not another school. Our focus here is limited—there are no classes in sculpture, for instance, as the ma?tre says it bores him. He doesn’t much care for watercolors or pastels, either, and so those classes, which began last week, are being taught by others. But he is a very good drawing master, and I know I have made progress, even if he has yet to tell me so.

I am rather nervous about his class in oil painting techniques. Each year he chooses only twelve students for the class, and I have a terrible feeling I won’t be one of them. It’s not that the ma?tre dislikes me or my work—the problem is that he doesn’t seem to notice that I exist.

But that, I must admit, is a small problem set against the joys of my life here. Auntie A is a delight, as ever, and I’ve made some wonderful friends, all of them students at the academy. My health is even better than it was before my illness—all that swimming in the Med, and now the long walks I take each day from home to school and back again.

In response to your question—no, I haven’t yet written to Mr. Howard, and now I rather regret having told you about meeting him. He is a perfectly nice man but he is not, no matter what you may be thinking, a potential beau. While I’m not opposed to furthering my acquaintance with the man, I have no intention of embarking on any sort of romantic entanglement, so please do put that idea out of your head!

I’ve enclosed a little portrait of Hamish that I thought the boys might like to see when they’re next home from school—isn’t he a dear old thing?

With much love,

Your devoted sister,

Helena


She did have every intention of writing to Mr. Howard. Once or twice, she had very nearly asked her aunt for a petit bleu postcard, for she had seen Agnes using them when arranging visits or appointments. But something had stilled her tongue. What if the man she remembered from that day on the beach was a concoction of her memory? What if he had only been making conversation, and was himself uninterested in furthering their acquaintance?

She had warned him that she would be busy; a few weeks here or there wouldn’t make much of a difference. Besides, she was busy enough with her friends from school. Unsurprisingly, étienne had become the star of their class, and while he clashed with Ma?tre Czerny nearly every day their teacher seemed to like him all the more for it. Mathilde was another favorite, and his criticism of her work was mild at best.

It was poor Daisy who most frequently attracted the ma?tre’s ire, which Helena thought horribly unfair. Her friend had made terrific progress in the last month, but Czerny didn’t seem to notice or care. Daisy’s problem, he told the class on more than one occasion, was her lack of passion.

“Miss Fields has no fire in her belly. I see nothing in her work that engages my imagination, nothing that seizes me by the throat and shouts in my face. She might as well be creating wallpaper.”

As for what he thought of Helena’s work? As she had said to Amalia in her letter, he had yet to notice her. The terror she had first felt, when he roamed the aisles of the salon searching for prey, had faded once she realized he simply wasn’t aware of her presence in his class. She had improved, she knew she had, but her drawings attracted neither his praise nor his anger. She, and they, were invisible to him.

She knew she ought to say or do something—anything to make him see, but fear stopped her throat time and time again. It was silly, and childish, to let one man’s indifference push her from the path she had chosen, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to address him directly or, even more terrifying, challenge him openly as étienne often did.

She simply needed more time; that was all. She would learn, and improve, and when she was feeling more confident she would make sure that he noticed her. For good or for ill, by the end of the year he would know her name.

In the meantime, there was the problem of her studio, or, more precisely, her lack of one. Agnes’s house was large, but every room was crammed full of artworks and antiques, and the only space suitable for a studio and its attendant mess was an unheated garret.