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‘It shouldn’t take too long They shift people through pretty quickly’ The man in front of her turns and nods towards the front of the queue ‘They do free entry sometimes Now that’s a queue’ He wears a crisp linen jacket and the air of the independently wealthy
When he slish is actually writ large all over her ‘I’m not sure all these people will even fit inside’
‘Oh, they will It’s like the Tardis in there’ When she smiles, he holds out a hand ‘Tim Freeland’
‘Liv Worth – Halston Liv Halston’ The change of na Matisse exhibition on I suspect that’s the reason for our queue Here Let me put up my umbrella That will protect you from the worst of the sun’
He comes over for the tennis every year, he tells her, as they shuffle forwards a few paces at a ti their way towards the front of the queue And then fills his non-tennis tiallery to the Louvre, which is too full of tourists to see the paintings He half smiles as he says this, apparently aware of the irony
He is tall and tanned with dark blond hair, which is swept back in a way she iines it has been since his teens The way he talks about his life suggests freedom from financial concerns His reference to children and the lack of a wedding ring suggest so They discuss restaurants in Paris, tennis, the unpredictability of Parisian taxi drivers It is a relief to have a conversation that is not loaded with unspoken resentment or littered with traps By the time they reach the front of the queue she is oddly cheerful
‘Well, you made the time pass wonderfully quickly’ Tim Freeland folds up his umbrella and holds out his hand ‘It was lovely to meet you, Olivia Halston And I’d recoet the best vie, before the crowds get too unbearable’
He sone, striding off into the cavernous interior of the museum as if he is already sure where he is headed And Liv, who knows that even if you are on your honeymoon you’re allowed to feel cheered by twenty minutes’ conversation with an attentive, handso with you, walks with a slightly perkier stride towards the lifts
She takes her ti each painting carefully She has tihtly ashaallery since finishing her degree two years previously She decides, on reflection, that she loves the Monets and the Morisots, and dislikes the Renoirs Or perhaps they have just been overused on chocolate boxes and it’s hard to disassociate the two things
She sits down, and then she stands up again She wishes David was here It’s odd to stand in front of the paintings and have nobody to discuss the surreptitiously at other people who ns of freakishness She wonders whether to call Jasnal publicly the failure of her honeymoon Who calls anyone from their honeyain and has silently to argue herself out of it
The gallery fills steadily around her; a group of schoolchildren is led past by a theatrically engaged museum attendant They stop in front of Déjeuner sur l’herbe, and he motions to them to sit down as he speaks ‘Look!’ he exclaims in French ‘They placed wet paint on wet paint – the first artists to do so! – so that they could esticulates wildly The children are rapt A cluster of adults stops to listen too
‘And this painting caused a huge scandal when it was shown! Enorentle sir?’
She loves the fact that eight-year-old French children are expected to debate public nudity She loves the respect hich the attendant addresses theain, she wishes David were here because she knows he would have felt like this too
It is several minutes before she realizes how many people have poured into the series of rooly crowded She keeps hearing English and American accents For some reason they annoy her She finds herself irritated suddenly by sh one, two rooms, past a series of landscapes, until she reaches the less popular artists, where the visitors are sparse She slo, trying to give these lesser artists the sah there is not much that draws the eye She is about to look for the way out when she finds herself in front of a s, and there, almost despite herself, she stops A red-haired woman stands beside a table, laden with the re a white dress that arment; Liv can’t tell Her body is half turned away froaze slides towards the artist but will not meet it Her shoulders are hunched forith displeasure, or tension
The title of the painting reads: ‘Wife, out of sorts’
She gazes at it, taking in the exquisite limpid quality of the woman’s eye, the points of colour on her cheeks, the way her body seee, and yet a kind of defeat too And Liv thinks suddenly: Oh, God That’s ht has popped into her head it will not be dislodged She wants to look away but she cannot She feels al is so strangely inti I’m twenty-three years old, she thinks And I have round of his life I’ to be that sad, quietly furious woman in the kitchen who when she doesn’t get it Doing things alone and ‘ the best of it’
She sees future trips with David: herself, flicking through guidebooks of local attractions, trying not to show her disappoint he cannotto end up like my mother She left it too late to remember who she actually was before she became a wife
Wifey
The Musée d’Orsay is suddenly too crowded, too noisy She finds herself pushing her way downstairs, going the wrong way through the advancing crowds, ies as she s She slips sideways down a flight of stairs, and weaves her way along a corridor, but instead of heading towards the exit, she finds herself beside a grand dining room, where a queue has started to build for tables Where are the bloody exits? The place is suddenly ridiculously full of people Liv fights her way through the art-deco section – the huge pieces of organic furniture grotesque, overly fla end She lets out a great sob of so she can’t quite articulate