Moonlight Over Paris(28)
“And the others?” asked Mathilde.
“Too far away, too small, too expensive. But I shall keep looking. There is one place, on the avenue du Maine; my friend Léon told me about it this morning. But it’s expensive—two hundred and fifty francs a month. Would your aunt balk at that, Hélène?”
“I’ve seen her spend that much on a hat without blinking, so I don’t think she’ll mind.”
Agnes may have been happy with the arrangement, but Helena still felt uncomfortable. She couldn’t properly say she was taking advantage of her aunt, for Agnes was wealthy enough that 250 francs a month meant nothing to her; but all the same she wished she had money of her own to pay for the studio. If, one day, she managed to sell any of her work, she would repay her aunt right away, no matter how she protested. At the very least she would buy Agnes a trunkful of stylish hats.
“Shall we go this afternoon?” étienne suggested. “Otherwise we risk losing it to someone else.”
As soon as their afternoon class had finished they set off, with Louisette trailing five paces behind; as étienne had promised, the studio was an easy ten-minute walk from the academy. They almost walked past the alley in which it was located, for the entrance off the street was narrow, its archway shadowed by a mantle of ivy, and the cobbles underfoot were thick with moss. The buildings themselves had a faintly ramshackle appearance, as if they’d been constructed from scavenged materials—a hod of bricks, a weathered greenhouse window, an ancient stone lintel—and one or two of the structures seemed alarmingly close to collapse.
étienne led them to the end of the alley, about seventy yards back, where a red-painted door had been left open.
“All??” he called, stepping inside.
“Entrez, entrez!” came an answering voice.
étienne led them upstairs and introduced everyone except Louisette to the concierge, Madame Beno?t, who had been sweeping out the empty studio.
It was a large, open room, perhaps ten yards along its longest wall, its chief appeal a great bank of windows that began at knee height and soared up to the twelve-foot ceiling. Some of the window panes were cracked, and ivy had crept inside a number of the casements, but the light would be wonderful once the glass had been cleaned. Here and there were bits of furniture—a paint-splattered table, a threadbare settee, several wobbly chairs—and Helena was relieved to see a small potbellied stove and a deep porcelain sink.
The negotiations that followed, in which étienne and Mathilde both participated vociferously, were nearly impossible for Helena to follow, and there was one moment when she feared they might come to blows with the concierge, who was a large lady and perfectly capable of knocking any of them flat with her sturdy broom.
And then, quite suddenly, all was resolved, and Madame Beno?t was smiling and shaking her hand, and Daisy’s, too, and with a round of final good-byes they retreated to the alley and the avenue beyond.
“What just happened?” she asked, more than a little bemused.
“We discussed the terms of the lease,” Mathilde explained. “I told her the studio was in a shocking condition and we would certainly not pay two hundred and fifty francs a month for it. She disagreed, but offered to clean it and repair the windows. I said we would do the work ourselves and pay two hundred a month for the first three months.”
“Wait—we have to clean the studio?” Daisy asked.
“Yes. There’s nothing wrong with it that soap and hot water can’t fix.”
“And some whitewash,” étienne added. “She agreed to pay for that, too.”
“But I . . . I don’t know how to do any of that. I’ve never had to do anything like that,” Daisy protested.
“Then you will learn.”
Chapter 12
The next day, Helena confessed the truth to Mathilde: she, too, had never held a broom, mop, or duster in her life. Servants had always done such things for her, and apart from her paintbrushes and her own person she’d never cleaned anything.
Mathilde bore this news with good grace, and if she was irritated at having to show the other women how to grate soap into hot water so it would dissolve properly, or how to sweep without raising clouds of dust, or how to scrub and wax wooden floors, she never betrayed it.
True to her promise, Agnes had written to Dr. Fields, and whatever she had said in her letter had worked, for he had agreed to Daisy spending a few hours in the studio most days. He had not, however, relented on the matter of Louisette, who continued to shadow Daisy’s every step. She even came into the studio with them, where she perched on a stool in the corner, never saying a word, her gaze as bright and baleful as a raven’s.
While Mathilde, Daisy, and Helena swept and polished, étienne cut away the ivy that had grown over the windows and replaced a score of cracked and broken panes, fitting the glass as expertly as a glazier. When that was done, he repaired the chairs and settee and steadied the table, and even constructed a set of shelves from some scrap lumber that Madame Beno?t had been about to burn.
It took almost a fortnight of work, a few hours at a time, until Mathilde was satisfied. All that remained was an application of whitewash to brighten the space.
It was Friday afternoon, and they’d just finished applying a second, and final, coat of whitewash. At étienne’s suggestion, they abandoned their usual haunt for the marginally more luxe surroundings of Le D?me, where the wine was served in bottles, the menu was printed on paper and not scrawled on a chalkboard, and the tables were covered with clean white cloths.