her, then climbing to the top of the mound, and gesticulating like a prophet, his hand roving round the big circle.
God knows what they were up to, but these meetings seemed innocent enough, at least in so far as his being ‘another man’ in her life.
But something disturbed me in their relationship, however, and that something, I felt, had taken Katie away from me, and now it seemed I was right. The evidence was here, in her journal, where he’d evoked her real self. Her father had died of a heart attack three months before, and although Katie had taken this in her usual unemotional way, it seemed to me now that her suicide had more to do with her father’s death than with me.
The hell with all these lousy Katie mysteries for the moment. I called Harry Broughton in Paris that evening and told him my mother had died and that I’d be taking the boat over to Paris for a break in a few days’ time, and that I’d see him when I got there. I didn’t tell him that Elsa was coming with me. That could wait. I packed my bag, took some canvasses, paints, an easel, Katie’s diary and the Modigliani nude.
FIVE
On the uneventful voyage to France, to Le Havre and then up the Seine to Paris I saw I had a problem. If I was to keep any semblance of a natural order of things with Elsa, we were going to have to see him together. But Harry had met Katie several times and had two largish paintings of her in the big first-floor salon of his apartment in the house he owned in the Marais, a portrait and a nude, both of which he’d bought from me. So when Harry saw Elsa, and if Elsa saw the paintings of Katie, some awkward cats would be out of the bag.
Elsa, if she saw the pictures of her double on the wall, would really begin to wonder what the hell was going on. I had to tell Elsa about her resemblance to Katie before we met Harry, but I kept putting it off. There was comfort, and an excitement, in imagining Katie still alive in Elsa. I wanted first to talk to Harry alone, if I could. So I delayed matters, telling myself I’d explain everything to Elsa over a coffee on that first morning in Paris before we met him. In the event she stayed on the boat that morning, tired from the voyage over.
‘You go and see your friend Harry on your own. I’m sure you have things to talk about. I can meet him later, get myself together meanwhile and meet you back at the boat when you’re ready.’
‘Okay. Give me an hour or so and I’ll pick you up back here and we’ll go have some lunch.’
I took the Modi nude, left the boat and walked up onto the quay of the Port de Plaisance where we’d moored. Harry’s place, in the Marais, was just fifteen minutes away. I crossed over the Place, along the rue Saint Antoine, into the Marais, and along the rue des Rosiers in the heart of the old Jewish quarter. A big building, an abandoned red-brick hammam, the Turkish baths on one side, with Golden-berg ’s famous deli on the other. I gazed at the tremendous display in the window – the tart, spicy smells wafting out the doorway on the summer air. Rye, pumpernickel, unleavened loaves, salads and olives, hot pastrami, pickled herrings, coleslaw, herb feta cheeses: all that was Jewish and foody in the crowded street of bearded men in skull caps or black homburgs, with old kosher women and young Hebrew heartbreakers. Widow’s weeds and miniskirts. The orthodox and unorthodox everywhere. I turned off the street and made for the old house on the Place du Marché St Catherine.
Harry was finishing a late breakfast when I arrived at his first-floor apartment. In his eighties, bare-chested, loosely swathed in a red silk dressing gown, white hair still thick. With his fierce old pugilist’s face he looked like a retired boxer. He’d boxed for Columbia before the war, where he’d graduated in art history, a study he’d sometimes regretted later. ‘Yeah,’ he used to say, in his laconic New Yorker manner. ‘I coulda made a better career as a
God knows what they were up to, but these meetings seemed innocent enough, at least in so far as his being ‘another man’ in her life.
But something disturbed me in their relationship, however, and that something, I felt, had taken Katie away from me, and now it seemed I was right. The evidence was here, in her journal, where he’d evoked her real self. Her father had died of a heart attack three months before, and although Katie had taken this in her usual unemotional way, it seemed to me now that her suicide had more to do with her father’s death than with me.
The hell with all these lousy Katie mysteries for the moment. I called Harry Broughton in Paris that evening and told him my mother had died and that I’d be taking the boat over to Paris for a break in a few days’ time, and that I’d see him when I got there. I didn’t tell him that Elsa was coming with me. That could wait. I packed my bag, took some canvasses, paints, an easel, Katie’s diary and the Modigliani nude.
FIVE
On the uneventful voyage to France, to Le Havre and then up the Seine to Paris I saw I had a problem. If I was to keep any semblance of a natural order of things with Elsa, we were going to have to see him together. But Harry had met Katie several times and had two largish paintings of her in the big first-floor salon of his apartment in the house he owned in the Marais, a portrait and a nude, both of which he’d bought from me. So when Harry saw Elsa, and if Elsa saw the paintings of Katie, some awkward cats would be out of the bag.
Elsa, if she saw the pictures of her double on the wall, would really begin to wonder what the hell was going on. I had to tell Elsa about her resemblance to Katie before we met Harry, but I kept putting it off. There was comfort, and an excitement, in imagining Katie still alive in Elsa. I wanted first to talk to Harry alone, if I could. So I delayed matters, telling myself I’d explain everything to Elsa over a coffee on that first morning in Paris before we met him. In the event she stayed on the boat that morning, tired from the voyage over.
‘You go and see your friend Harry on your own. I’m sure you have things to talk about. I can meet him later, get myself together meanwhile and meet you back at the boat when you’re ready.’
‘Okay. Give me an hour or so and I’ll pick you up back here and we’ll go have some lunch.’
I took the Modi nude, left the boat and walked up onto the quay of the Port de Plaisance where we’d moored. Harry’s place, in the Marais, was just fifteen minutes away. I crossed over the Place, along the rue Saint Antoine, into the Marais, and along the rue des Rosiers in the heart of the old Jewish quarter. A big building, an abandoned red-brick hammam, the Turkish baths on one side, with Golden-berg ’s famous deli on the other. I gazed at the tremendous display in the window – the tart, spicy smells wafting out the doorway on the summer air. Rye, pumpernickel, unleavened loaves, salads and olives, hot pastrami, pickled herrings, coleslaw, herb feta cheeses: all that was Jewish and foody in the crowded street of bearded men in skull caps or black homburgs, with old kosher women and young Hebrew heartbreakers. Widow’s weeds and miniskirts. The orthodox and unorthodox everywhere. I turned off the street and made for the old house on the Place du Marché St Catherine.
Harry was finishing a late breakfast when I arrived at his first-floor apartment. In his eighties, bare-chested, loosely swathed in a red silk dressing gown, white hair still thick. With his fierce old pugilist’s face he looked like a retired boxer. He’d boxed for Columbia before the war, where he’d graduated in art history, a study he’d sometimes regretted later. ‘Yeah,’ he used to say, in his laconic New Yorker manner. ‘I coulda made a better career as a
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