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The woman with the clicker gestured them forwards into a room, which, in spite of its dark walls – or perhaps because of them – seemed to explode with light and colour.
‘Oh wow.’
Claire stood still, looking around the room, just taking it in. Every painting was familiar, known from calendars and book covers, but at the same time astonishingly new. No postcard or poster could ever have reproduced the exuberance of the colours, the unashamed joy of them. It was as though each painting had captured within its gilded frame a moment in time: not the exact history of it, but the feeling of it. And more than that, there was an air of magic in the space. Maybe it was the way the paintings were lit, she thought. It was almost as if they were windows. They weren’t flat like stained-glass windows, and it wasn’t sunlight that shone through them. It was life.
‘So much happiness,’ said Claire, feeling she could almost hear the music at the ball in Montmartre, could maybe reach out and take the glass from the table, so close to her hand. She wanted to ask the woman so engrossed in her book what it was about. She wanted to take off every stitch of her clothes and lie in all her glory beside the bathers. The notion took such a hold of her that she felt her cheeks colour up at the thought of it.
‘They’re the exact opposite of church pictures, aren’t they?’ said Ronan.
‘How do you mean?’ she asked. She thought she knew – she felt it, too – but she wanted him to put it into words for her.
‘There’s no sin in them or sorrow. They’re not about hell or heaven. There aren’t any threats or impossible promises. It’s like he wants to remind you of everything that’s good about this life, the one we’re in.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, still blushing, and relishing it – the normal, everyday joy of being alive.
They walked slowly around the sides of the room and then stood in front of the matched pair of tall, narrow paintings given pride of place on a central display. Each frame held a life-sized couple, dancing. On the left, in a society ballroom, a man in an elegant swallowtail coat, danced as close as he dared with a slim beauty in pale ruffles. On the right, at a country dance, a bearded man in baggy trousers was holding a round-faced woman in a floral dress and a bright red bonnet.
‘Is the point that they’re different, do you think,’ asked Claire, tilting her head from one picture to the other, ‘or that they’re the same?’
‘I think both of those men are whispering what they want to do when they get home.’
Claire burst out laughing. It did look that way. The young lady of town society seemed quietly pleased, though possibly at a loss for a response. The country woman glowed with obvious delight.
‘Essentially the same, then,’ she said. ‘We all want the same things out of life.’
‘We do. Everyone knows that. We all want someone to love us, someone to hold us together. Maybe the thing is that some of us do better at finding the fun in it.’
‘So, which are we?’
‘I hope this isn’t a shock to you, love.’ He pulled her in front of his body, so that they both faced the pictures, and he wrapped his arms around her. ‘We are undoubtedly the country bumpkins.’
She leaned back against his chest, and he swayed her gently from side to side. ‘Hmm, I’m glad.’
Ronan put his lips to her ear and whispered, ‘Je t’aime.’
Claire laughed. ‘Ah listen, you’re taking it too far now. You’re never this romantic. If we weren’t in Paris and all, I’d say you had a guilty conscience.’
Ronan didn’t answer.
She turned her body within the curve of his arms so that they were face to face. ‘What?’
She held his gaze for a moment, before his eyes flickered left. He nodded to the couple at the country dance.
‘Bold thoughts,’ he said.
‘Come on,’ she said, taking him by the hand and pulling him onwards. ‘We still have to see Van Gogh.’
But Thou’rt Forgot
The sun didn’t penetrate through the dense, leafy canopy that surrounded the pool of the Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens. Harry felt a shiver run through him. He put his book down on the bench. He’d reached the bit about the young Maximilian Robespierre having written an ode to jam tarts, and he thought to himself, no way.It seemed too silly to be true. He googled it, and there it was, with a translation:
I give thee thanks who first with skilful hand
Did fashion paste and pastry to command,
And gave to mortals this delicious dish
So nothing more was left for them to wish .?.?.
