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“He was ill, Nic, he didn’t know what he was doing. You said so yourself.”
How many times had I told myself that? How hard had I tried to believe it?
“Don’t go and track him down again, Flor. Honestly, you’re better off without him. He messed with your head. You’ve only just got back to normal.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Yeah, right. So that solemn vow lasted all of twenty-four hours.
I wore my hair loose, framing my face, and topped it off with a woollen beanie, even though it made my head hot and itchy. Was it an effort to distance myself from the subject of the wall of pictures? Possibly. Armed with neither a goal nor a plan, only a maelstrom of mixed emotions, I chained my bike up a few paces from the gallery and gave myself a minute to compose myself. In all probability, he wouldn’t be in the gallery anyhow. I’d have a polite scoot around the paintings, die a small death from embarrassment, and get the hell out of there before I did something stupid like burst into tears.
Half the businesses in Ars were upmarket galleries flogging art and pottery at extortionate prices. Some were small and niche, like the tiny one in the square, exclusively exhibiting the landscape works of two well-established local artists. Others, like the one I steeled myself to enter, were large and airy, and advertised a rolling calendar of different exhibits throughout the year.
With my head bowed, I stepped inside, thankful for both the cool draught following me and that I wasn’t alone. I’d waited until mid-afternoon, figuring it would be a popular time for tourists to browse, and I wasn’t wrong. Several groups of two and three milled about, and I hovered next to a young couple, hoping to blend in without attracting attention. Foreign languages spoken in hushed voices bounced off the clean white walls.
Staring up at several images of oneself in various states of happiness, activity, and undress was a peculiar sensation. Surrounded by strangers doing the same thing felt even odder. Flattering, I supposed, but not altogether pleasant. Aside from the centrepiece—a large watercolour of me bent over my rake silhouetted against the setting sun—the artist had restricted himself to above the waist. Thank God, although in some of the sketches, anyone with an iota of intelligence could surmise what pleasures occurring below the waist had resulted in such a fucking delighted expression on my face.
My mum would like the big watercolour, not that she was able to afford it. Behind the image of the raking salt harvester, Charles had painted my salt marsh with an almost magical element to it. As if the sun’s dying rays had transformed each individual crystal of salt on the surface of the water into sparkly silver glitter. If I’d been alone, I’d have reached out and traced my fingertips over it.
No doubt my mum would get wind of the exhibition, sooner or later, so I’d pick up a postcard of that one on the way out in preparation for a future inquisition. She’d like a couple of profiles of my face, too, simple pencil sketches, but each with a delicate, green-stemmed silver sparkly flower drawn on my cheek. Even as they brought a lump to my throat, I couldn’t help smiling a little.
With a pounding heart, I moved on to the series of smaller charcoal sketches of my face, shoulders, and bare chest, set on a creamy, yellowy background. My mother would probably not approve of those. Especially the one that was clearly my sex face. I pulled the beanie lower over my ears. Oh, fucking merde, how embarrassing was that?
Though subtly erotic, those weren’t the pictures that would upset her. No, that was reserved for a series of portraits of my face, made up of jagged lines, smudged and broken where he’d pressed charcoal so hard the paper underneath had torn. Angry slashes of orange crayon zig-zagged through one. In another, a strip of orange shielded my eyes, like a blindfold, another closed my mouth, like a gag.
On a deep exhale, not sure if I could stand much more, I leaned closer, studying the title cards underneath – one written in English, the other a French translation. Anguish, I read, letting the unfamiliar sequence of consonants and vowels roll over my tongue. Angoisse. What am I without you?
His presence spoke to me even before I heard his voice. Or perhaps it was the loss of his absence making the hairs on the back of my neck rise. A young woman was asking him, in halting French, whether any of the works were for sale.
“Non,” he replied, in a pleasant tone. He spoke lightly, confidently, the accent I’d teased him about as seductive as ever. “I’m so sorry. They are all sold.”
She thanked him, her disappointment evident, and I listened to her and her companion’s footsteps fading away. Charles stayed where he was; in the stretched silence I fancied I heard the rise and fall of his chest.
“They are all sold?” I asked into the silence. “Waouh. People are paying good money for pictures of me. I must be in the wrong profession. Perhaps I should take up modelling.”
“You would have a fantastic career as a model. You would be in demand constantly.”
His shoes echoed on the tiled floor as he took a step closer. I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms.
“I lied to her, Florian. They were never for sale. None. I would never part with any of them.”
A tortured sigh escaped my throat. Myself and the strangers around me were voyeurs, peering through an open window into Charles’s tortured soul. I wished I’d never seen the damn pictures; they were all too painful. Even the one of me hunched over my rake.
“Florian, I…”
“How long have you been staying here? On the island?”
“About six weeks,” he answered. “I joined the local art club. They were arranging this exhibit and asked me if I had anything to show. So I said yes.”
“Why haven’t I seen you, or heard you were back?”
At this time of year in Loix, locals still outnumbered tourists.
“Because I’m renting a place here in Ars. I… I didn’t know if you would want to see me, so I avoided Loix. I didn’t want it to be awkward for you.”
I laughed at that. “Putain, and you don’t think this is awkward?”
I gestured to the twenty or so inanimate Florians staring down at me. “And you’ve called it Florian, for fucks sake! Is that on the off chance one of the hundreds of people who have known me all my life wouldn’t recognise me?”
