“I ran into him today,” Luc said. “In Montparnasse. He was there to see Matisse. Matisse!”
“Matisse?” Éliane repeated, laughing now at her brother’s enthusiasm. “Then he must have changed a lot since I last saw him. He used to wear those awful English short trousers—”
“They don’t fit me anymore.” A voice broke in from behind.
Luc laughed as if Éliane had said something hilarious and Éliane turned to see a dark-haired homme with oil-paint stains on his fingers. He was wearing a suit rather than short trousers, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, a jacket slung over his shoulder like a grown-up man.
“You’re Xavier?” she said disbelievingly.
He nodded. “And you must be Éliane. Although I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without at least one sister in your arms.”
“Angélique looks after everyone now.” As she spoke, she was, for almost the first time in her life, acutely aware of how simple her dress was. She’d made it from a remnant of fabric thinking it mimicked a Lanvin day dress she’d seen in a catalog, but now it felt like a child’s attempt at playing dress-up.
Xavier, for all the paint on his hand, looked at least five years older than her, even though she knew he was only twenty-three to her twenty.
All at once, every church bell in Paris began to chime and Éliane snapped to attention. “I’m late,” she said for the second time that day. “Give that to Jacqueline.” She thrust her parcel at Luc. “I’ll have to go straight to the brasserie, otherwise—”
She stopped herself from saying it but her hand strayed to her cheek nonetheless.
“Go,” Luc said.
But he and Xavier walked almost as fast as she did and it meant they saw what happened: her father roaring, even though it was only five minutes past six, “Where were you?”
“Buying Jacqueline a bra, since nobody else will,” she shot back.
Her father hit her, a stinging blow.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Xavier put a hand on the brasserie’s door. She only let herself breathe out when Luc pushed him away and up the stairs to the apartment, where Xavier would see that much of their furniture was gone—sold off to pay Papa’s debts—beyond the necessities of beds, a table, a sofa, and six chairs.
Her mother, who had come out of the kitchen at the sound of the blow, caught Éliane’s eye and offered a sympathetic shrug.
If only Éliane could afford the luxury of a headache.
Éliane folded napkins until there was somebody to wait on. Customers were scarce and, as two tables were occupied by her father’s friends—who were there for the heavily discounted wine—Éliane knew it would be a long time—or likely never—before she was permitted to be a full-time student at the École du Louvre.
Close to eight-thirty, she saw Angélique in the passage beckoning to her. She slipped out. “What is it?”
“Yolande can’t find her doll. The one she likes to sleep with.”
Éliane closed her eyes and tried to think. There weren’t many places to hide anything in their sparse apartment.
“And my gloves are missing too,” Angélique added quietly. “The ones you gave me for my birthday.”
They both looked toward the kitchen where their father was cooking dinners.
Then Éliane’s eyes locked with her sister’s. “Maybe he hasn’t sold them yet,” she said. “Maybe I can find them.”
“Yolande won’t sleep without her doll.”
Her usually feisty sister spoke resignedly and Éliane drew her into her arms, kissing her forehead, understanding how much effort it was taking for Angélique to think of Yolande’s doll rather than her own precious gloves. “Give Yolande something of mine to sleep with,” Éliane said, knowing that a sleepless Yolande would fray everyone’s tempers. “And you can have my gloves.”
Angélique squeezed her fiercely and, for the millionth time in her twenty years, Éliane wished she could gather up all of her sisters and run away. Surely she could do better than a bankrupt father and a worn-out mother? She frowned as she watched Angélique climb the stairs. Perhaps it was time to give up art school altogether and work at the Louvre in the mornings too.
The minutes ambled on. At ten o’clock, the bell tinkled and Éliane, who had been hoping to close up, turned to the door with a pasted-on smile.
Xavier stood there. “I was hoping I could get a glass of wine,” he said, the accent of his mother tongue hardly marred at all by his time in England.
“Luc’s not here,” she replied, knowing her brother would be in Montparnasse, drinking wine too, and pretending that by visiting the cafés frequented by the artists of the School of Paris, he was producing artistic works himself. She’d expected Xavier would be with him.
“I’ve been in Montparnasse for two hours listening to Luc talk about muses with an artists’ model. I was looking for somewhere less noisy.”
“Well,” she gestured to the sweep of empty chairs, “you’ve found the quietest restaurant in Paris.”
He laughed. “It’s probably not the best slogan to get customers in the door, but it’s just what I want.”
Éliane’s smile was real now. She showed him to a table and poured some wine.
Xavier glanced at the kitchen, where her father’s tipsy voice rang with a lewd song. “Can you sit down?”
She nodded.
Xavier passed the wine to her. “It’s for you.”
“Thank you,” she said, sipping and feeling the dragging tiredness in her feet disappear. “Are you in Paris for a holiday?” she asked, suddenly eager to know more about this man who bought her wine and asked her to sit. “It seems a strange time to come.” Beside them lay a newspaper; its headline shouted the disquieting news that the Soviet Union had signed a nonaggression pact with the Nazis. Éliane elbowed it away.
“It’s because the times are so strange that I’m here.” Xavier leaned back in his chair and she couldn’t help but wonder why he was visiting her, his friend’s sister, who hadn’t had time to touch up her lipstick all day, who wore only a cotton frock and probably a red cheek from her father’s earlier violence.
“I can’t remember whether you know that my father owns an art gallery here,” he continued. “He has one in London and New York too.”
Éliane smiled wryly. “Back then, I was probably too busy yelling at small children while you were telling Luc about that.”
Xavier smiled again and she found herself unable to look away from his eyes, which were dark brown, of a shade she wasn’t sure existed in a tube of paint, and might be too difficult even to mix. It was like morning sunlight dancing on bronze.
“I don’t remember much about your family, but I remember that you never yelled,” he said.
Éliane stood up and pulled another glass down from the shelf. Despite the fact that her plan had been to sweep the floor and go to bed, she wasn’t tired now. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.
She put her head through the kitchen door and spoke to her mother. “I’ll lock up. There’s one last customer. But he doesn’t want any food.”