The girl pulled a threadbare man’s dressing-gown around her shoulders and slid her feet into a pair of silk slippers. Byrd climbed very slowly down from the ladder on which he was perched. There was a smell of linseed oil and turpentine. He rubbed at the handful of brushes with a rag. The large painting was nearly completed. It was difficult to put a name to the style; perhaps Kokoschka or Soutine came nearest to it but this was more polished, though less alive, than either. Byrd tapped the scaffolding against which the ladder was propped.
‘I built that. Not bad, eh? Couldn’t get one like it anywhere in Paris, not anywhere. Are you a do-it-yourself man?’
‘I’m a let-someone-else-do-it man.’
‘Really,’ said Byrd and nodded gravely. ‘Eight o’clock already, is it?’
‘Nearly half past,’ I said.
‘I need a pipe of tobacco.’ He threw the brushes into a floral-patterned chamber-pot in which stood another hundred. ‘Sherry?’ He untied the strings that prevented his trouser bottoms smudging the huge painting, and looked back towards the mural, hardly able to drag himself away from it. ‘The light started to go an hour back. I’ll have to repaint that section tomorrow.’ He took the glass from an oil lamp, lit the wick carefully and adjusted the flame. ‘A fine light these oil lamps give. A fine silky light.’ He poured two glasses of dry sherry, removed a huge Shetland sweater and eased himself into a battered chair. In the neck of his check-patterned shirt he arranged a silk scarf, then began to sift through his tobacco pouch as though he’d lost something in there.
It was hard to guess Byrd’s age except that he was in the middle fifties. He had plenty of hair and it was showing no sign of grey. His skin was fair and so tight across his face that you could see the muscles that ran from cheekbone to jaw. His ears were tiny and set high, his eyes were bright, active and black, and he stared at you when he spoke to prove how earnest he was. Had I not known that he was a regular naval officer until taking up painting eight years ago I might have guessed him to be a mechanic who had bought his own garage. When he had carefully primed his pipe he lit it with slow care. It wasn’t until then that he spoke again.
‘Go to England at all?’
‘Not often,’ I said.
‘Nor me. I need more baccy; next time you go you might bear that in mind.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘This brand,’ he held a packet for me to see. ‘Don’t seem to have it here in France. Only stuff I like.’
He had a stiff, quarter-deck manner that kept his elbows at his waist and his chin in his neck. He used words like ‘roadster’ that revealed how long it was since he had lived in England.
‘I’m going to ask you to leave early tonight,’ he said. ‘Heavy day tomorrow.’ He called to the model, ‘Early start tomorrow, Annie.’
‘Very well,’ she called back.
‘We’ll call dinner off if you like.’ I offered.
‘No need to do that. Looking forward to it to tell the truth.’ Byrd scratched the side of his nose.
‘Do you know Monsieur Datt?’ I asked. ‘He lunches at the Petit Légionnaire. Big-built man with white hair.’
‘No,’ he said. He sniffed. He knew every nuance of the sniff. This one was light in weight and almost inaudible. I dropped the subject of the man from the Avenue Foch.
Byrd had asked another painter to join us for dinner. He arrived about nine thirty. Jean-Paul Pascal was a handsome muscular young man with a narrow pelvis who easily adapted himself to the cowboy look that the French admire. His tall rangy figure contrasted sharply with the stocky blunt rigidity of Byrd. His skin was tanned, his teeth perfect. He was expensively dressed in a light-blue suit and a tie with designs embroidered on it. He removed his dark glasses and put them in his pocket.
‘An English friend of Monsieur Byrd,’ Jean-Paul repeated as he took my hand and shook it. ‘Enchanted.’ His handshake was gentle and diffident as though he was ashamed to look so much like a film star.
‘Jean-Paul speaks no English,’ said Byrd.
‘It is too complicated,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘I speak a little but I do not understand what you say in reply.’
‘Precisely,’ said Byrd. ‘That’s the whole idea of English. Foreigners can communicate information to us but Englishmen can still talk together without an outsider being able to comprehend.’ His face was stern, then he smiled primly. ‘Jean-Paul’s a good fellow just the same: a painter.’ He turned to him. ‘Busy day, Jean?’
‘Busy, but I didn’t get much done.’
‘Must keep at it, my boy. You’ll never be a great painter unless you learn to apply yourself.’
‘Oh but one must find oneself. Proceed at one’s own speed,’ said Jean-Paul.
‘Your speed is too slow,’ Byrd pronounced, and handed Jean-Paul a glass of sherry without having asked him what he wanted. Jean turned to me, anxious to explain his apparent laziness. ‘It is difficult to begin a painting – it’s a statement – once the mark is made one has to relate all later brush-strokes to it.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Byrd. ‘Simplest thing in the world to begin, tricky though pleasurable to proceed with, but difficult – dammed difficult – to end.’
‘Like a love affair,’ I said. Jean laughed. Byrd flushed and scratched the side of his nose.
‘Ah. Work and women don’t mix. Womanizing and loose living is attractive at the time, but middle age finds women left sans beauty, and men sans skills; result misery. Ask your friend Monsieur Datt about that.’
‘Are you a friend of Datt?’ Jean-Paul asked.
‘I hardly know him,’ I said. ‘I was asking Byrd about him.’
‘Don’t ask too many questions,’ said Jean. ‘He is a man of great influence; Count of Périgord it is said, an ancient family, a powerful man. A dangerous man. He is a doctor and a psychiatrist. They say he uses LSD a great deal. His clinic is as expensive as any in Paris, but he gives the most scandalous parties there too.’
‘What’s that?’ said Byrd. ‘Explain.’
‘One hears stories,’ said Jean. He smiled in embarrassment and wanted to say no more, but Byrd made an impatient movement with his hand, so he continued. ‘Stories of gambling parties, of highly placed men who have got into financial trouble and found themselves …’ he paused ‘… in the bath.’
‘Does that mean dead?’
‘It means “in trouble”, idiom,’ explained Byrd to me in English.
‘One or two important men took their own lives,’ said Jean. ‘Some said they were in debt.’
‘Damned fools,’ said Byrd. ‘That’s the sort of fellows in charge of things today, no stamina, no fibre; and that fellow Datt is a party to it, eh? Just as I thought. Oh well, chaps won’t be told today. Experience better bought than taught they say. One more sherry and we’ll go to dinner. What say to La Coupole? It’s one of the few places still open where we don’t have to reserve.’
Annie the model reappeared in a simple green shirtwaist dress. She kissed Jean-Paul in a familiar way and said good evening to each of us.
‘Early in the morning,’ Byrd said as he paid her. She nodded and smiled.
‘An attractive girl,’ Jean-Paul said after she had gone.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Poor child,’ said Byrd. ‘It’s a hard town for a young girl without money.’
I’d noticed her expensive