Roots Before Branches Page 2

  “Oh, she does, usually when she has had a few wines.”

  “And do you usually hang out with Hildie when she has had a few wines?” I pressed and Andre shrugged.

  “Maybe. But that is a big secret,” he chuckled and I knew I wasn’t going to get anything out of him, he could keep those secrets for now.

  “So, how come you can’t teach me French? Why does it have to be Ezra?”

  “Charlie,” Andre smiled, the skin around his eyes wrinkling as he did. “I do not want to teach you.” I laughed out loud and shook my head at him and went back to picking the ivy which he chose to ignore that time.

  “What makes you think Ezra would want to teach me if you don’t?”

  “Ezra teaches French in the evenings.” Andre said bluntly and looked at me like I should have already known

  that information.

  “He does?” I tried not to sound too interested. “Where?”

  “Coco’s.” I rolled my eyes at the revelation. Coco’s was a small bar in town where a lot of tourists gathered until the early hours of the morning. During the day you would find people there in groups, smoking, drinking coffee, eating pastries. The whole place would be engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke so thick that it would feel hard to breathe. The evenings got more lively of course, the coffee would turn into wine or tequila and loud music would drift out into the street. I could picture Ezra there, a cigarette hanging out of the edge of his mouth while he spoke French with eager tourists. I imagined it was mainly women, hanging onto his every word and giggling when he inevitably smiled at them.

  “He makes money doing that? He’s only been here a few months and he has students?” I asked as I sat on the small wooden bench by the back door, an ivy leaf in my hand that I had pulled off of the vine.

  “Yes. You would have to pay him too.”

  “Of course,” I said as I started to gently pull the leaf apart, cutting along its veins with my finger nails.

  “You should talk to him. He’s in the outhouse. Go now.” Andre waved his hand in the vague direction of the outhouse and I reluctantly stood up.

  “Now?”

  “If not now, when?” Andre scoffed, “you sit around waiting, Charlie. You are so lazy.”

  “You think I’m lazy?” I didn’t know if I was supposed to be offended but I smiled anyway.

  “Laziest boy I know. The others all work. You sit. You paint.”

  “That is me working, Andre.”

  “Putting colours on paper is working?”

  “It’s for my studies. You know that.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. And you are very good. Now, go to the outhouse you are bothering me.” I turned from him and placed the now dissected ivy leaf down on the bench. I knew he was watching so I looked over my shoulder at him and gave a shrug to which he tutted and shook his head at me.

  Ezra wasn’t in the outhouse. He wasn’t in the old green house. He wasn’t even in the garden. I had run back and told Andre that Ezra was nowhere to be found, but he seemed entirely unconcerned and had returned to his work without another word. It left me with an unsettling feeling that he could be anywhere but I didn’t know where. He should have been working. That’s what my aunt paid him to do. Not being in the garden meant that he was not working. The thought crossed my mind that maybe he was out teaching French to someone. A beautiful girl, probably. He knew Andre was working so he wouldn’t be at home so he had taken her back there and made love to her while muttering pathetic French phrases in her ear. They would have smoked afterwards, allowing the smell of their sweat to mingle with that sweet smoky aroma of nicotine. She would run her fingers through his damp curls and kiss his cheeks, covering his freckles with her lips to leave her mark on him. Would he have kissed her? Of course he would. He would have kissed every inch of her skin, made himself worth the money she was paying him for his ‘tutoring’. What if he fell in love with her? What if he quit his job here and I never saw him again? Why did it even matter?

  “Shit…” I said to myself and kicked at a puddle that had formed outside of the outhouse, the water spilling over the front of my trainers which made the material wet.

  “That’s why you shouldn’t kick puddles.” Yet again, Ezra’s voice came out of n where and I hated that I must have looked as startled as I did when he asked for water.

  “Yeah…I know.” He was filthy. Another white t-shirt clung to his body but it was caked with mud and grass stains.

  “What’s so shit you had to kick a puddle?”

  “You know. The weather,” I said and gestured to the sky even though it had now stopped raining.

  “Ah, yes, the weather.” His lips curled into a smile and I felt myself leaning towards him slightly just to get as much of his French accent into my ears as possible. “Why are you outside in such…horrendous weather Charlie?” It was the first time I had heard him say my name and I wanted him to repeat it over and over until it didn’t even sound like my name any more.

  “I was looking for you, actually.”

  “Why on earth would you be looking for me?” he said with a grin and I had to look down at my feet to stop myself from blushing. It didn’t work though, and I could feel my cheeks turning a dark shade of red.

  “Andre said that you’ve been teaching French in town.”

  “Yes. There is not a problem with that is there?” I looked back at him and he leaned against the old wooden doorway of the outhouse.

  “No. I was just wondering if you have time to tutor me as well?” The words came out of my mouth too quickly but any embarrassment I might have felt swiftly melted away when he smiled at me.

  “Andre told me that your Aunt teaches you. Why do you want me to teach you?”

  “Andre told you that?” I liked the thought that they had been talking about me, and I was eager to know what else they had spoke about.

  “Yes. Andre tells me a lot of things,” he said and, as much as I wanted to ask what else, I had the feeling that he wasn’t going to tell me anything else.

  “Well, can you, then? Teach me?”

  “I’m kind of busy with other people at the moment,” Ezra said with a frown but it didn’t look genuine.

  “Everyday?”

  “Everyday.”

  “Oh. Right. Well. If you do get some time, I would appreciate it if you could fit me in.”

  “You don’t need to actually learn French though, do you?” His tone seemed authoritative, completely different from before.

  “My aunt says I should learn because I’m living here. She is right,” I said defensively.

  “You can’t have long left of college, then you will go back to England, right?” Him saying that frightened me, I hadn’t been faced with the reality of going home in such a long time that it actually came as a bit of a shock.

  “Who knows. But I get it. You don’t want to teach me. Forget I asked.” I didn’t know why the conversation had turned that way but I wanted to get as far away from him as possible. I turned and accidentally walked back through the puddle, but had to make it look like I didn’t care, even though the water was now seeping through into my socks.

  BALANCE

  My aunt had been kind enough to assign one of the many rooms in her house as my study. It separated my work from my bedroom, which had quickly become overwhelmed with all of the things that I brought home from college each day. To put it simply - I adored my study. An old wooden desk, that apparently had belonged to Hildie’s husband when he was my age, sat in front of a single window pane that overlooked the gardens towards the back of the house. It brought in a perfect amount of light so that I could draw or paint all morning right through to the late afternoon. I had adorned the walls with various sketches that I had done, and even pinned up copies of work I liked from other artists. What I liked most though, was that my aunt never went in there. She had come in once and looked disapprovingly of some of the art I was studying and vowed to “leave me to it.” I think some part of her thought of me as this perv
erted boy living in her house, who studied explicit images and called it ‘art’. My current obsession was Schiele - an Austrian painter. My tutor had shook his head in dismay when I said I was choosing Schiele as my focus for this term and had said that Klimt was far superior. I passionately disagreed with him. Klimt created beautiful work - I distinctly remember feeling incredibly emotional when I first saw The Kiss, with its rich colours and beautiful lines. Schiele was even a protégé of Klimt. But, to me, his work had so much more to say. His work was sexual, explicit and often vulgar in subject - but so evocative and stunning at the same time. I adored everything about his work, from the more simplistic pieces to those that used bold bright colours that didn’t let you take your eyes away from it. I wanted to re-create his passion in my own work, and out of any other artist my work was most like his. But where Schiele loved to draw women, my focus was the male form.

  I think my tutor was surprised when I handed him my last assignment and it was filled with sketches of nude males. There was nothing sexual about them, just simply observations; different poses accentuating different parts of the body. I adored drawing arms and hands, I could spend hours studying fingers and trying to get them accurately across in my work. Women tended to have very delicate hands, beautiful in their own way, even when they showed signs of hard work they still had some kind of elegance to them. Men’s hands were just different. I didn’t know what it was, but I just loved how they could be beautiful too but in a completely different way. My tutor had raised his eyebrows when I handed him pages upon pages of hands, and I did wonder if he thought I had some kind of hand fetish. If he did he didn’t mention it and after reviewing my work he actually praised me on how much detail I had given the study.

  We were very lucky where I studied in that we had a lot of life drawing classes. Many models would come in all shapes, ages and sizes and it was wonderful to study people in a setting like that. We had a regular model, Ishmael, who was in his late seventies, but he was in incredibly good shape for someone of that age. I loved drawing him the most, each time he came in there was something slightly different about him. As if he had aged just enough to add more wrinkles and dark spots on his skin to make his drawing just that little bit different than the last time. He really enjoyed seeing what we had come up with after class as well, and you could tell how impressed he was with us all by the way his smile reached his eyes. He sometimes spoke during the sessions as well, which could be distracting, but I genuinely loved hearing his stories. He had lived such a vibrant life and he credited it all to his wife, Shana, who had passed away a few years ago now. What made me smile was how he spoke about her; he had such admiration, such love , I wanted that too. I wanted to feel that way about someone and have them feel the same way about me. But I feared that I would never really find it, not in the same way at least. My mother had instilled that thought into me since I was old enough to recall memories. I was like her, you see, which meant that I would go through life just waiting for the next bad thing to happen. How can someone love you when you don’t even know how you will be from one day to the next? She never understood that I loved her no matter what, but that wasn’t enough.

  Henry, my classmate, did not like it when Ishmael used to come in to model for us. I would hear him sigh under his breath when our tutor would announce that he was coming in and he would roll his eyes at me, assuming that I felt the same way. I never gave him reason to think that I didn’t like the elderly man as well, but then I also never gave him reason to think the opposite either. Henry was the type of person that you wanted to be friends with, even if you didn’t particularly like him. He had a presence about him that just drew you to him, he was confident and loud and always had a smile of his face. I can’t say I ever really enjoyed time that I spent alone with Henry. Whether he realised it or not, he would constantly make remarks that could be seen as an insult. He said it in such a casual way though that I never called him up on it or made an issue out of it. Today was no different and when Ishmael left our class Henry dragged his chair over to me and sat beside me behind my easel.

  “I don’t know how they can expect us to stare at his body for hours on end,” he huffed and placed a finger on a patch of wet paint on my work. “Red. Strange colour choice but…it is your work.” I turned to look at him a bit more, my lips not breaking out into a smile yet. Henry was American. I imagined, back home, he would have been one of those stereotypical popular guys at school, maybe he played football, he certainly had the physique for sports. Yet here he was, studying art in France. It didn’t suit him.

  “His skin looked a bit inflamed today. Hence the red,” I explained and he smirked at me, the dimples in his cheek appearing on one side.

  “Hence the red,” he mocked my tone and shook his shoulders slightly, which I think was him trying to impersonate my movements but I wasn’t sure.

  “Don’t you think his skin looked a little sore today?” I asked, intrigued to get some actual insight from him.

  “Honestly, Charlie, it looked the same as the last time we had to draw him.” He ran his hand through his short blonde hair, sending some red streaks through from the paint he had on his finger from my canvas. “He always looks the same. You just make up these little changes to explain why your work is inconsistent.” He waved his hand towards my painting. “It looks nothing like his last picture.”

  “No. It doesn’t. Because it is a completely different day. I used different materials. These-” I said and gestured to my palette. “Are acrylics, my last picture was water colours.”

  “Right, yeah of course. Still look the same though,” he yawned and stretched back on his chair. “Wanna go out tonight? I met these cute French girls the other day and they are going to be in town.”

  “No, I will pass.” I wanted to stay in tonight, Andre and Ezra were working late to start building a new greenhouse and I was hoping to watch them from my balcony.

  “Charlie, come on,” he whined and even started to pout at me which was rather off putting.

  “I have a lot of work to catch up on.” I lied. “My aunt will get onto me if I don’t do it. She threatened to call my dad last time.”

  “One night isn’t going to kill you. I will bring my bike past your house at six, we can ride in together then leave our bikes in town.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Leave my bike in town?”

  “Charlie. Charlie. Charlie,” Henry laughed. “I would love to see you riding your bike home drunk, but as I am such a good friend I won’t let you.”

  “Oh. I don’t want to get drunk.”

  “You’re such a bore,” Henry stood up and flicked at my paintbrush that sat in a jar of cloudy coloured water. “I will be at yours at six. You’re coming.” I watched as he turned away and went over to Marianne, one of the prettier girls in our class. He was charming, I could tell even without hearing their conversation. She smiled from the second he approached her, and fiddled with the ends of her hair as he spoke. I didn’t want to go into town, to be sat there while Henry spoke to these French girls like he was with Marianne. I knew my mind would be on Ezra, wondering how the building was coming along and if he was wearing that tight white shirt again.

  I think some higher power was trying to punish me for thinking about my aunt’s gardener so much, as when I got home that day, Ezra had already left. Andre was out back, nailing some planks of wood together for the base of the greenhouse on his own. He mumbled something about Ezra having made previous plans, and that they would work late together tomorrow. I tried not to show my disappointment and made my way to the kitchen to find myself something to eat. I didn’t really have much of an excuse now not to join Henry in town, and if there was going to be alcohol involved I needed to make sure I ate first. Or maybe eating was a bad idea. I could be sick and bring it all back up again. My aunt would be less than impressed if I threw up anywhere in her house. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice that I was even gone. On Frida
ys she had Monsieur Bardet round for dinner. In the whole time I had been there, he had never not showed up on a Friday - and I had never been invited to eat with them either. She insisted that he was just a friend. Little did she know that I had seen him creep out of her bedroom in the early hours of the morning, a satisfied look spread across his face as he went. It was not my job to pry however, and if anything it meant I could actually try and enjoy an evening being an eighteen year old for once.

  Andre had uncovered my bike from the outhouse, it had been months since I had been on it and he insisted that he needed to oil up the chains before I left. He was still making sure that it was safe to ride when Henry made his way down the driveway, tires crackling over the shingle stones.

  “Good one Charlie, make sure the hired help actually do some work,” he said as he reached us and gave Andre a disgusted look.

  “Andre is always working.” I could tell that Andre

  wasn’t going to stand up for himself, he never did when Henry was around and made his comments. “Thank you, Andre.” I placed my hand on his shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Goodbye Charlie.” Andre smiled and nodded at Henry who just turned away from him. I mounted my bike and it took a couple of pedals before I found my balance and rode back alongside Henry towards the town.

  WINE

  Henry suggested that we go to Coco’s and the only reason that I agreed was because I didn’t want to tell him why I didn’t want to go. That would mean explaining who Ezra was, and I didn’t want to get into that. So. We went to Coco’s. The music that night was some kind of pop that I wasn’t familiar with, but the patrons seemed to be enjoying it which made the atmosphere welcoming at least. I was most relieved to see that Ezra wasn’t there, so I gladly accepted a glass of wine when Henry offered me one. I wasn’t a drinker usually, especially wine as it went straight to my head. My brother had taken me out in England last time I had gone home and it had only taken me two glasses of red before I was giggling like a school girl. That wasn’t going to happen tonight though, no, I had to remain composed just in case Ezra did show up at some point in the night. Henry seemed to know everyone in the bar, and the barmaid presented him with a bowl of olives without him even asking.