(Dedicated to my kind and stern editor who measures my words into strict order and then interprets my meaning so skillfully.)
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Paris, the summer of 1929, 'the last summer' we called it later, remembering the October Crash; it was the end of an era but I also remember it as the summer of my awakening.
It seems like yesterday. A heat wave had swept through Europe and its arrival in Paris coincided with my own. The heat wave died after five days but as it died I was reborn.
Paris sweltered and so did I, as my mother had insisted I wear conservative clothes complete with foundation garments, and as a dutiful daughter, I obeyed. My mother described me as 'an ample woman' so the foundation garments kept my full and rounded body in check.
As I laboured in the heat, walking down the boulevards in my starched dress and brushed cotton petticoat, short of breath because of my corset, I envied the freedom of the Parisian girls in their breezy dresses. They wore their skirts to the knee (my mother would have fainted at the sight) and those girls had obviously eliminated the restrictive undergarments; garters, petticoats and corsets were no longer appropriate for the girls of Paris in these wild times. Everywhere I looked the girls displayed their legs, and they dressed as if they were free to move, to dance, to swing and sway. Stockings were rolled, the sheerer the better, while seemingly respectable women wore rouge and powder. I was glad my mother was not with me.
I had been dispatched to Paris in a hurry after my fiancé had run off to Canada with the daughter of his father's chauffer. We had heard the news just as my mother and father were about to take me to my first opera, Puccini I believe it was, but after that abrupt announcement the opera vanished. I had seen Mother scream with rage at the whole incident and I could not decide whether she was angry with my fiancé for leaving me or for causing such embarrassment for her. To make matters worse, the maid wasn't even British! My mother, her face red with embarrassment, arranged with my uncle to have me assist an anthropologist in Paris while the humiliation evaporated.
My role was to sketch articles of interest that were to be published in the anthropologist's thesis. Each day I would climb the stairs to the second floor, to that small office with its big desk, unlock the iron chest and lay the articles so I could draw them.
The building had four floors and a jazz band rehearsed on the floor above me, while an artist had his studio on the top floor. As I climbed the stairs on that fifth day, I could hear the band playing upstairs and small children squealing in the street behind me. The office was stuffy and hot, so I opened the doors leading out to a small balcony and let in some air. The anthropologist was in the country, and for that I was grateful as I hoped that the humiliation would evaporate quickly so I could return home, before I had to meet him again.
I unlocked the iron chest and selected an artifact to sketch, carefully placing it on the heavy wooden desk. Charcoal and crayons, together with crisp sheets of cartridge paper, were taken from the drawer and spread out on the desktop. I drew steadily through the morning, starting first with the shrunken head from Equatorial Guinea. When I completed the sketch, I took the calligraphy instruments from the second drawer and carefully lettered the description and illustration number below my drawing. I had learned the art of calligraphy as a young girl at the knee of my aunt on many a rainy Sunday afternoon, and it now proved to be very useful indeed.
The clock chimed ten and, flushing self-consciously, I opened the door to the hall and furtively glanced down the stairs. For the past few days I had opened this door, so I could watch her go past on her way to the artist's studio.
My obsession with her, for that's what I feared it was, began on my first day while the anthropologist was detailing my instructions. On that day she had glided past the open door, a long green knitted scarf loosely hanging from her throat, and our eyes locked for a moment over the gesturing hands of my instructor. She had an exotic and exquisite beauty with lush brown skin, dark pools for eyes, pouting lips and short coal black hair. Those liquid eyes swept over me, she raised an eyebrow mockingly and was gone.
From then on, I opened the door so I could watch her undulate past on her way to the artist's studio. I knew the studio was her destination for I had followed her once, stealthily keeping back so she would not see me. She knocked imperiously on the artist's door and, while waiting for it to open, turned and smiled slyly at me, causing me to blush furiously and hurry back down the stairs, my skirts rustling.
Late at night when the heat stopped me from sleeping, my nightgown sticky and clinging, I wondered about her. She had to be a model for the artist, I had decided that almost immediately. With such beauty there could not be any other conclusion, but what was her nationality? Was she a gypsy or a dancer, a singer or an artist herself in some way? One afternoon I had heard a woman's voice singing with the jazz band and I wondered if it was the beautiful model, as the voice was husky, raw and emotional.
