rowley smart memoir 8

At last I turn away and ask Pierre about the Duchess. 'Elle dort. C'est triste. On dirait une femme dégénérée par l'alcool.'* Well, he sold her the drink, it was his business for he kept a bar; and after all he made no effort to stop her drinking it. One day two women came in a handsome car and took the Duchess away. Who were they? What relation? I don't know. I was glad to see her go.

* i.e."She sleeps. It's sad. Looks like a woman degenerated by alcohol."

What constitutes the fascination of the life we led at Moret? And why do I remember it so clearly? Remember the trunks of the trees beside the river? Trunks that were streaked with the palette scrapings of the artists who had painted there. Some of those smears were years old. The tiny fish that swarmed in the deep water close to the shore, safe from the fast-running stream. The two little American girls who came to Moret for a weekend, unwittingly strayed into the tough gang at Pierre's, Rowley and I taking them on the river. I rowed towards the aqueduct and we went ashore at a little village some way downstream. Rowley and I had a red wine each and the girls chose grenadine. Rowley was strangely silent all the time. On the way back to avoid the full strength of the water I pulled close to the bank. Yellow irises grew there. The girls were delighted. One clasped her hands and said 'Goody!' I paddled, holding the boat against the stream and they leaned over and picked bunches of the flowers.

When we got back the one who had said 'Goody' thanked me for the 'ride'! I had never heard boating spoken of in that way before. She explained that they were at a finishing school in Paris and had told the headmistress they were spending the weekend with friends from New York. After dinner she gave me two bunches of the yellow irises we had gathered, they were prettily tied up with the ribbon she had worn in her hair. 'For your rooms, you and your friend,' she said.

I gave Rowley his bunch of flowers and he took them upstairs and put them in the water jug on the wash stand. He was very subdued and touched by the incident. 'Fancy Cliff, just schoolgirls. No, we must not try anything with them. I would not be right somehow.' I cannot recall their names and they left next morning.

There were nights when we sat under the stars and the candles burned steadily within their little transparent cardboard shades. One to each table, throwing circular pools of light on the red and white checked clothes. Danny played softly and sang to himself and forgot to plague the Duchess. A splash now and again as a big fish jumped in the water below. Two dark figures, a boy and a girl, wander by the side of the river, their bodies seeming one, so close are they. I watch Clare and think how lovely she is. I am held by the perfect drawing of her neck. I wish she wasn't married to Max because I like him, and I wish too that she would not return my look so wickedly, smiling invitingly. She is eighteen but not a bit like the American girls we took on the river. Clare is very sophisticated. She frightens me - but I cannot stop looking at her.

Rowley is telling Leon about his friend Marcel who owned a flour mill somewhere in or near Moret. Marcel was quite well off. He had two cars. He did not get on well with his wife and they quarrelled over the cars. So Marcel sold them and bought a steam roller. 'Used to dash about in that with a hell of a rattle - a great guy.'

But now he is talking about Ireland and what a beautiful place it is to paint and how well he worked there. 'I could paint anything there. And when it was too bad to work out of doors I bought flowers to paint in my room at the hotel. Once I got some waterlilies and floated them in the bath and painted those. I fixed it so they looked as if they were in a pond and I was seeing them from above.'

Leon told us that his wife was always grumbling at him because he did not work hard enough and make more money. Leon used to spend days just lying about out of doors, looking at the sky and the trees; afterwards he worked like a demon, making perhaps a dozen watercolours in a day. They were very sensitive. But his wife would have been more pleased, he said, if he had painted just one a day and did not 'waste' so many hours doing nothing. 'She can't see that I must think about things before I paint them.

Whilst we were in Moret Rowley became interested in lithography. Max Simpson, Clare's husband, gave him some chalk and a few sheets of transfer paper and Rowley made one or two small drawings. Some years later he drew his series of lithographs of old Paris streets.

I had got to know a French painter, Briant, and I used to spend some evenings playing billiards with him, the local doctor and the patron of the Café du Siècle Siele, where Briant was staying with his pretty wife and little daughter. Briant was very charming to me and through him I sold a picture to one of his clients, borrowing the fare to Paris from Pierre for I was hard up again. I can't remember the picture very well. It was, however, of the Loing with its coloured boats and the hill in the background. I still have a preliminary study in pen that I made for it.

We celebrated the sale of the picture in the Select one evening. The crowd were there, including Jack the vet. He was a frightful colour, bright mauve - the evening before his complexion had been distinctly green. Moret was such a sleepy little place; there wasn't much excitement except that provided by the artists. Once a wheel had come off the two horse van that used to go every day to meet the train. Moretl talked about it for weeks. This evening the patron was telling us about a circus, arrived early that morning, showing tonight, your only chance to see it. A gaudy poster already advertised its attractions from behind the bar. 'Forest bred lions.' 'The Red Indian Chief and his Braves.' 'Trapeze Artists' etc, etc. The performance commenced at 8.45 and we all decided to go.

As it happened Jack got there first, rather against his wishes. We were intercepted by a fellow wearing a dirty maroon coat with shabby gold facings. He was from the circus. The proprietor had been told there was a vet in the town and had sent to ask him to come and look at one of the animals. Monsieur Jack was pointed out.

'Oh' he said, 'one of the horses gone lame eh? Well, I'll see what I can do.'

'No, monsieur, it is not one of the horses.'

'Not a horse' says Jack, his eye on the flaming poster with 'Forest Bred Lions; in block capitals six inches high, 'then I fear I cannot help you.'

It was a lion, the man explained, but monsieur need have no fear. The trainer would be there, and in any case the animal was very weak, refused to eat and lay in a corner of its cage.

But Jack wouldn't budge. 'Not in my line at all.'

The man went off but presently came back with the proprietor of the show. He summed up Jack at once and bought him a Pernod. Someone stood another round. The circus proprietor bought a third and Jack began to get quite brave. It cost the owner of the lion quite a bit in Pernods, but finally he and Jack lurched off arm in arm.

Jack actually went into the cage. The lion died soon after and the circus people all said it was his fault.

That evening, at the circus, the lion tamer came among the audience, as is the custom in some Continental shows, selling postcards of herself with the lions grouped dejectedly round her. Rowley spoke to her in English and she replied in the same language with a real Manchester accent. He made what he would have called 'a grab at her'. She turned and caught him a terrific wallop on the jaw. He swung backwards over the narrow seating and before I could catch him, crashed down with a hell of a clatter, bringing an avalanche of planks and people with him.

Rowley was getting more and more difficult. He behaved at times like a spoiled child. Without warning I have seen him pick up a dish of food and fling it over the parapet into the river just because he didn't like the look of it. Or it might go out of the window, smashing the dish to pieces. Pierre, coming back from retrieving the spoon, only smiled. 'I like artists in my house. They are so gay.'

'No difficulty in finding where Rowley is living. Just look for the bits of broken crockery lying around.' said Max.

At last I had to go back to England. The Select gave us a champagne party to celebrate the paying of our bill, for we had both managed to get some cash. It was held after 11 when the café was closed. The management provided one large bottle of champagne per head, there were about half a dozen of us, and of course we ended up by getting quite a few more bottles. It was an expensive send-off. We shut Willy Gilman in the lavatory because he kept on fighting with his French girl, Lucette. Lucette was very happy. She put flowers in her hair and hung a wreath of them round her neck. She danced. 'I want everyone to be happy,' she cried. 'All my life I have only wanted that.'

The party finished late and Lucette ran ahead of us down the moonlit street, leaving a trail of pale and dying flowers behind her.

Rowley came back to Paris with me to see me off. I only just caught the train.

* * * * * * *

'He needs a woman to look after him. Someone who could direct his really remarkable talent.'

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