Page 24 of If You Were the Only Girl in the World
Everyone laughed.
His wife rolled her eyes. “He does not speak of my own stark days and nights before we met.”
“I put them into stone for all to examine,” he said.
Katrina would have to ask later which sculpture that was, for she did not wish to ask it now and appear ignorant of his works.
“That one,” said Aurore, “isMon Ange.”
My Angel,a six-foot tall woman of white Italian marble, was well known to Katrina. The woman was portrayed as all too human, dressed in the rags of a peasant, looking over her shoulder at something horrible from which she must escape. This—said popular explanations of the work—was Remy’s depiction of his wife’s escape from marauding soldiers, fire and famine. Now Katrina knew those soldiers she fled had been Confederate and Yankee alike.
“Now in the Louvre,” Aurore added as her father leaned forward for his wife’s introduction of Katrina.
“We are happy to have you, Katrina. I understand you are at an American hospital,oui, in Neuilly?” And when she told him she was, he asked, “How do you get on there?”
As his wife poured tea for him and added his shot of brandy, Katrina told him of her appointment.
“And how do you get on in Paris, eh?” His eyes, clouded with age and astigmatisms, were nonetheless intent on the details of her answer.
This was the very thing she had sought to avoid discussing. But among them all, especially Nate whom she wished to spare her fears and Aurore who needed to hear no complaints, she had to find a way to be diplomatic. “It is very difficult for me. I…I had not anticipated the atmosphere. Oh, the hard work, the long hours, the need to help those ill and wounded, yes, I knew that. But not…not the constant pounding of Big Bess. Or the sight of women in perpetual black. The poverty that I cannot cure or the grief I have no medicine to heal. I am at a loss…” She stopped and stared into her tea. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. This is—”
“Not what you expected,” Aurore finished for her.
Nate gave her a compassionate smile. “The city is not that far from the front.”
“It will always be a target of the Germans,” Remy said. “They wish to claim it and grasp the whole country that way.”
“I understand,” she said and thought her statement inadequate.
Aurore put down her tea upon the nearby table. “I think it is a good time for me to show Katrina my studio. Would you like to see it? It’s through the stables, through Papa’s conservatory. A different world from all the French kings and emperors who line these walls.” She was smiling in such a way that her gaiety lifted Katrina’s spirits.
“Please,” she said and stood.
* * *
Aurore led the way out in to the vast courtyard. A French parterre Reminiscent of Versailles and Fontainebleau, the green was formed into an elaborate pattern of squares and triangles within them. The formation was made only of short evergreens, lacking the seasonal flowers Katrina had seen when she visited the Loire chateaux similar to this eight years before. Fountains stood empty but still glorious, the snow flakes kissing the nooks and crevices of the old sculptures. The statuary, diverse and spectacular, dotted the landscape. Lions, male and female twice the natural size, lounged together in repose. A flock of parrots, four and five feet tall, danced upon a ball. An old sundial of stone glistened in the rays of sun that peaked through the heavy clouds.
“We have one caretaker left to us,” Aurore said with a nod toward the extravagant vista before them. “He is eighty-two and loves his work but we told him that we do not want him to spend his days attempting to cultivate flowers. Maintain the boxwoods and the Chinese holly, we said, if he can save them from the freeze. All of us, Papa and Mama too, work in our orangerie to grow our vegetables and herbs. We open the front gate on Saturdays and give away the produce to the villagers. Beyond my studio, we have the barn for our cow and three goats. We tried to raise chickens but a pack of foxes in that far copse over there are more clever than we.” She laughed. “Chicken was never my favorite so I do not complain.”
She kept up her explanation of the grounds. “To the left of the house is that detached structure of similar white-grey stone. All of our stone comes from the same quarry of which most buildings in Paris are made. I know it looks like the main house but it was at one time, the separate home for all the house staff.”
She shook her head. “Most are gone now, to the war or to the south. We have our cook and her daughter, the housekeeper and an older man who was once our butler. You see over here to the right? That huge oblong structure of half timber and half stone was once totally the carriage house and repair shop for the house and the estate.” It was there that Aurore pointed them.
Katrina shoved her hands into her coat pockets and huddled into her scarf to cut the sharp wind. She was glad she’d worn her warmest coat and a wool yarn hat her mother had knit for her last year.
Aurore pulled down her own hat over her ears and picked up her pace toward the old carriage house. “Papa used to work in his studio in Montmartre and at home in the Rue de Rivoli. The war, however, aggravates his sensibilities. He argues that this conflict is unnecessary and will lead to more chaos than anyone anticipates. Men in the trenches will want the world to change and make it so because of all the hardships they’ve suffered. He and Mama closed up both houses as soon as the French declared war and Papa does not wish to return. This studio that you are about to see contains many of his former creations, but also the new ones since nineteen-fourteen. Those, you will see, are quite different from those of the Belle Epoque. They are more contemporary. Abstract.”
Aurore pushed open the carriage house doors. “A collection of our old conveyances is here, none of which we use. Papa likes his Peugeot, but prefers our reliable old Maurice to taking time to find petrol. That, he says with a scowl, is required elsewhere.”
The carriages of every shape and size and color brought a grin to Katrina’s face. “They are lovely. And in fine order, too.”
“I think one day after the war, we will donate them to a museum.” Aurore stood with her hands on her hips. “People will want to know how damn uncomfortable they were.”
“Motor cars are not for the faint of heart either!”
“More padding is required!” Aurore declared.
“On the wheels, first.”
