Luncheon of the Boating Party Read online

  “You have your new painter to get you into the Salon.”

  “She doesn’t have his reputation.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I meant as a painter.”

  He loomed above her as though that alone would convince her. Was his manhood at stake? A woman had to be clever in order to cherish a man’s manliness without letting it get the better of her. She’d have to find subtle ways of getting what she needed without him ever suspecting that he’d been manipulated. Then his manhood would remain intact. Men were happier that way. God knows she wanted a happy man.

  “We’re expected at eleven. A matter of honor,” he said, looking at her steadily, taking her elbow, guiding her home to get her parasol.

  Hm. A happy woman married to a happy man needed to choose her battles shrewdly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Glorious Insanity

  Auguste sat on the upper terrace of Maison Fournaise, his feet on a wooden chair, knees up to his chin, waiting. He surveyed the sky. A few high wispy clouds. Weaklings unable to keep out the sun. Good.

  He hadn’t slept well in his room above the restaurant. Worries had tumbled as he thrashed. It would be overcast. It would rain. He couldn’t work left-handed. The terrace would float in midair. Not enough people would come to convey the right atmosphere. The composition would be jumbled. Zola would be proven right. He wouldn’t be able to handle a complex painting based on long and thoughtful preparation. How long did Zola want? A decade? He’d been working up to this that long. All those portraits, every painting done en plein air, they were all exercises. Even the Marie Antoinette plates were exercises leading to this terrace. A village of triers, and he was one of them.

  He stood up, sat down, stood up again. On the Rueil bank a hundred meters away, Parisians poured out of trains with picnic baskets. From the station, some took the double-decker horse-drawn omnibus downriver to be ferried across to La Grenouillère to swim and dance at The Frog Pond. Others crossed on the Chatou bridge, and were already promenading on the island they claimed as theirs one day a week. Already Alphonse was renting out yoles and the river was sliced with racing sculls. Already the lower terrace was filled with exuberant people without a worry on their minds.

  “Don’t forget to save some canots for us,” Auguste called down.

  “Plenty. Don’t worry.”

  Well, that was one thing he didn’t have to worry about. He cranked the awning out. Not enough light. He rolled it in again.

  Alphonsine came up to the terrace with two white tablecloths and a stack of napkins. “Every time I come up here, you’ve changed the awning,” she said.

  “The light keeps changing.”

  “And you’re upstairs, downstairs, upstairs. Relax. They’ll come.” She shook out a tablecloth and smoothed it. “Oh, no! I’m sorry about these folds.”

  “But I love to paint folds.”

  She snickered.

  “It’s true. See how the white changes to pale blue along the ripples?”

  “I’m going to play waitress for you today, just for the pleasure of it. And Maman insists on preparing all the models’ meals so my aunt will cook for the restaurant. How many shall I set the table for?”

  “A dozen. Set the tables six and six.”

  “Twelve people in one painting?”

  “Fourteen. Counting you. You’re the darling of this place.”

  He liked watching her try to hide her pleasure.

  “Who’s the fourteenth?”

  “Your brother.”

  “Do you know what the picture will be like? Where everyone will be?”

  “I don’t even know who will come.”

  “Who might come?”

  “Some friends of mine. Writers. Models. Actresses. Ellen Andrée and maybe Jeanne Samary.”

  “Jeanne Samary! I saw her in School for Husbands. You know her?”

  He tried to be expressionless but he knew he wasn’t succeeding. Her eyes opened wider. She pinched her lips together with her index finger and thumb, a pretty little action, which claimed she knew a secret.

  “Will you do one thing for me?” he asked. “Go put on your straw canotier and a boating dress. In this painting, you are a canotière, not a hostess.”

  “Gladly.” She disappeared into the corridor.

  In a few minutes he heard Pierre and Paul singing as they came across the bridge. “Oh-ho! les canotiers, C’est aujourd’hui dimanche.” Boaters, today is Sunday, the song began. Paul, in a red-and-white-striped boating jersey, waved his canotier, apparently recovered from being roughed up when they made the rounds of cabarets, and Pierre waved his bowler.

  Auguste hailed them. “Pierre, I haven’t seen you for a couple of months, long enough for you to fall in love. Did you?”

  “Twice!”

  “You lucky devil.”

  Pierre lifted a basket with two bottles of wine. “In case we drink the restaurant dry.”

  “Do we have time for a row?” Paul asked.

  “Before it rains,” Pierre added.

  “These aren’t rain clouds, you worrywart,” Auguste said. “They’re just puffs of decoration. Alphonse is saving a pair of sculls if you want to race.”

  Paul turned to Pierre. “Then, to La Grenouillère for a bock.”

  “That’s the wrong way,” Alphonse said. “Upstream first, to the boatworks at Bezons, and back with the current when you’re tired.”

  “Good,” Pierre said. “That’ll keep Paul from getting into woman trouble at La Grenouillère. It’s my duty.”

  “And you’ll be improving the nation’s moral fiber two ways!” Auguste said.

  Alphonse joined in with, “Exercise for the sake of the Republic!”

  “Revitalizing France,” Paul said, beating his breast with his fists.

  Laughing at themselves, they settled into the two boats, maneuvered into the current, and Alphonse shouted, “Allez!” to start them off.

  Louise Fournaise in a blue-gray dress and long white apron came up to the terrace carrying a tray of wine glasses clinking against each other.

  “Louise, my sweet,” Auguste said, summoning his most charming smile, which cracked his scabs. “Do you think you could use your glasses made at Bar-sur-Seine instead of these?”

  “My, you are a picky one. Whatever for?”

  “They’re made by hand, so they’re irregular and have tinges of color. It’s important to see in a thing the person who made it.”

  “I would think you’d want the best we’ve got.”

  “Machine-made glasses are sham. The imperfections of handmade glass give each one a personality, a soul.”

  “If my glasses had a soul they’d wash themselves,” she muttered.

  “Good taste is disappearing with all this trashy sameness. If there were a Society of Irregularists, I’d drop everything and join it.”

  “You’re crazy, you know. Crazy.” She tapped her temple. “Un fou.”

  He knew he was on safe ground now. “And don’t cut the bread. Let them tear it. It makes more interesting shapes. And don’t let anyone bring out that silly little tray and brush to sweep up crumbs. It’s pretentious. Leave them lie.”

  “Fussbudget.” She clinked down the stairway.

  “Merci, ma chérie.”

  The Iris sped by on a broad reach. Gustave was showing off. He tacked quickly and came back. No one was as smooth a sailor as Gustave. Auguste hurried downstairs to help bring in the boat.

  As he stepped onto the dock Gustave tugged at his sleeveless singlet. “Is this all right?”

  “Perfect. It’s naturalness I want.”

  They watched a stream of people come across the bridge—bourgeois couples under parasols and top hats, young lovers arm in arm, shopgirls chattering gaily, young men on the prowl.

  “Doesn’t it remind you of Watteau’s paintings of Cythera?” Auguste asked.

  “Ah, the isle of Venus. A day of love in some secluded glen.”

  “Willing grenouilles wai
ting on the bank in bathing costumes or summer dresses ready to jump into action.”

  Gustave shook his head. “Cythera’s only a myth.”

  “It’s a hope for some. The bushes will be moving in a few hours.”

  They both chuckled, somewhat wistfully, Auguste thought.

  “You know what Guy de Maupassant named his new barque?” Gustave asked. “L’Envers des Feuilles.”

  “The undersides of leaves?”

  “What couples see when they’re on the ground.”

  “Ah, yes. Frenchmen appreciate la nature.” Auguste sat at a table under the maples and drummed his fingers, watching the footbridge.

  “Relax. They’ll come.”

  The next train arrived and chugged off to the west, belching black smoke. Soon Angèle stepped off the bridge with Antonio Maggiolo, the Italian journalist, jaunty in pin-striped jacket. She looked delicious with a white velvet toque perched on her auburn curls and a red carnation tucked between her breasts. Right behind her, petite Ellen Andrée, wearing a canotier with a flower pinned to the side, came with a man she introduced as Émile.

  “One more is always welcome,” Auguste said.

  Now if Charles and Jeanne didn’t come, he would still have a dozen. But what if only one of them came? Thirteen. Not knowing was making him sweat.

  “I’ll have you know I had a crushing performance last night,” Angèle said, her eyes glinting at Auguste. “I usually sleep till noon after the likes of such a one.”

  Antonio made no effort to hide his lusty smile.

  “I appreciate you being here. You both look splendid.”

  He wondered if Jeanne had given an actual performance last night.

  “Would you like a café?” Auguste asked.

  Angèle sized up Gustave in his singlet. “We’d like a boat ride.”

  “I’ll take you for a sail to Bezons and back,” Gustave offered.

  They pushed off. He turned back and saw Alphonsine in a dark blue boating skirt and white middy blouse trimmed in red.

  “Oh. I wish I’d seen you in time. You could have gone with them.”

  “That’s all right. Is Mademoiselle Samary here yet?” she whispered.

  Auguste made a show of looking under the tables, in the arbor, up on the side balcony, in the trees, in the water.

  “No, but here comes Jules Laforgue, natty in country tweed and mariner’s cap.” He introduced her as la belle Alphonsine, the soul of La Maison Fournaise. “You ought to appreciate that, Jules. You write poems about soul, don’t you?”

  “Among other things equally elusive.” Jules chuckled. “Equally impossible to express.”

  “Right, so I’m glad you’ve come down to earth for a day. You’ll have to excuse him, Alphonsine, if he spouts Shakespeare now and then. Jules may be quiet, he may be looking off in the distance, but he’s always thinking.”

  “I hear, yet say not much, but think the more,” Jules said with a self-mocking grin. “This breast of mine hath worthy cogitations.”

  “Then cogitate on that a moment.” Auguste gestured toward the river.

  Baron Raoul Barbier was arriving under sail at a dangerous speed, just as he’d said at Madame Charpentier’s salon. A brave fellow. Alphonse leapt down from the bank and cushioned the hull from crashing into the dock. Raoul tossed him the bowline, lurching sideways on his stiff leg. “Nana is as frisky as a filly in her first race,” he said apologetically. “Are the ladies here yet?”

  Right at that moment, Auguste saw her. Not Jeanne. Cécile-Louise, the woman with too much name. On the top step of the bridge. Her dress! Shimmery blue and white stripes. He didn’t know if he could love her, but he could love the dress. Composed, expectant, twirling a coral-colored parasol with ruffled edge, packaged and sent by Madame Charpentier. A porcelain figurine of a Watteau lady already posing so that at any moment a nobleman would bow and escort her to Cythera.

  He felt himself moving toward her, unconscious of the grass and gravel beneath his feet, the luminous skin of her face and décolletage unmistakably coming closer, and he arriving somehow, in time to take her hand as she stepped daintily onto the ground. Her hand was warm—this was no myth.

  “I’ve been breathless, waiting for this day,” she purred through a dazzling smile and the overpowering scent of cheap perfume.

  “You look ravishing. A striped dress is every painter’s dream.”

  Her nose poked at the sky. “A bird told me so.”

  “One who answers to the name of Madame Charpentier, no doubt.”

  A calculated coup. He forgave Madame her manipulation in anticipation of what he could do with those stripes falling in folds.

  The canotiers climbed out of the boats and Alphonse declared Paul the victor. Paul did a celebratory dance step on the slanted dock, an oar on his shoulder.

  “You won’t feel like dancing if this dock collapses,” Pierre said.

  Paul grinned at a young girl on the promenade, turned to follow her, and whacked Pierre on the back of the head with the oar.

  “Zut!” Pierre cried and chased him up the bank. “Give me that before you brain someone prettier than me.”

  “Who are they?” Cécile-Louise asked.

  “The one in the bowler with the bushy red beard is Pierre Lestringuèz. He works for the Department of the Interior. A good sort, but ever since he began studying the occult, he’s become a bit of a calamity howler, always foreseeing the worst.”

  “And the winner?” Alphonsine asked.

  “Paul Lhôte. A loose screw. Hungry for experiences. Reckless. A writer of articles and an amateur painter. He escapes his deadly conventional post at a shipping company by collecting unconventional adventures.”

  “Such as?”

  “Stowing away to South America on a packet ship. He lost his post for that escapade, so he immediately stowed away to Asia. On the isle of Jersey once he dared me to dive from a high cliff out over the rocks into furious waves. I thought he was crazy, but he did it, bare-assed, and came up laughing.”

  “He would make a good canotier,” Alphonsine said. “He’s not afraid of getting wet.”

  “What Paul lacks in caution, Pierre supplies in fretfulness.”

  When Gustave’s boatload arrived they were singing a canotier song about feeling good on Sundays:

  Mais le dimanche, mais le dimanche,

  Moi, je me sens bien, bien, bien,

  Car je ne fais rien, rien, rien.

  As they went upstairs, Auguste sang loudest.

  Louise came up to set out the uncut bread. A pretext only. He knew she couldn’t contain her curiosity. “Why, Auguste, I never knew you could sing.”

  “When I was a boy, Gounod said I should be an opera singer. I can dance too.” He grabbed her around the waist and twirled her under his left arm.

  “Oh, là là,” she cried, took one look at the models, and hurried downstairs.

  The moment lacked only Jeanne and Charles to make it perfect. Not one, but both of them.

  Auguste made sure that Cécile-Louise sat so that she’d be in the foreground of the painting and her dress would spill over the side of her chair in a cascade of stripes. She was as decorative as a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette on one of his china plates. He was dying to start painting right then, but there was the meal to get through.

  Fournaise brought up a bottle of white wine and another of crème de cassis to combine as an apéritif. He held the cassis up to the light. The black currant liqueur would be a gorgeous deep red in the glasses.

  Angèle tapped her cordial glass. “Be a good man and pour me a schnick.”

  “Did you know this was invented by monks in the sixteenth century?” Fournaise asked. “As a cure for snakebite, jaundice, and wretchedness.”

  Angèle winked at Antonio. “Alors, I do believe a snake bit me just last night, come to think of it, so don’t be afraid to be generous.”

  Paul raised his glass. “A toast honoring Auguste’s painting-to-come. A toast to la vie
moderne, which allows us the freedom to row where we please and eat at the table of life. Let us spend our wealth and time gaily, preserve our liberty, and enjoy life whatever happens. À votre santé!”

  Whatever happens, Auguste thought. It sounded ominous.

  The itch under his cast was tormenting him. He needed to get started painting so he could be absorbed, body, mind, and instinct, so the itch would disappear.

  “Liberté, egalité, fraternité, et gaîté,” Raoul said.

  Pierre sang a Béranger drinking song urging people to avoid drunkenness by taking small sips, but plenty of them.

  “Vive la bohème!” Angèle sang out, and all chorused the toast.

  Louise and Alphonsine served the entrées. “A family effort,” Louise said. “Alphonse caught the eels in Marly, Alphonsine caught the artichokes at the market last month, and I conserved them in jars.”

  Someone downstairs at the piano was playing a medley of Béranger’s ballads of Lisette, the grisette from the country living on bread and diluted wine, as faithful as her poverty allowed. Pierre sang some lines and Jules made up a verse about Lisette as a canotière. People were getting to know each other. The toast was working. Or maybe it was the cassis-and-wine.

  The main course was canard à la paysanne, braised duck garnished with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, bacon, and fried potatoes. Auguste didn’t know how he could sit still and eat. He was conscious only of the painting moving before his eyes. Conversations separated, blended, jumped from one topic to another. He didn’t follow them.

  Alphonsine brought out two large raspberry tarts. The light on her raised cheeks issued from within. She cut generous pieces, and lingered by the railing watching intently as each person took a bite.

  “Did you make these?” Auguste asked.

  “With a little help from the sun and rain.”

  When Père Fournaise set out a small wooden cask of brandy, all Auguste could think about was how much everything was going to cost.

  “You have no Menuet Hors d’Age?” the baron asked.

  “This is the brandy de la maison.”