The Artist’s Muse. Kerry Postle

wouldn’t you? And then there’s the gold.’ The huge canvas shimmers brightly and for a while we are both rendered speechless.

      ‘It’s gold leaf.’ Hilde breaks the silence. ‘The one over there, of the woman with the horse face, the one who looks like she’s wearing a tin dress, well, that one will look more like this one when he’s properly finished it.’ Then she checks herself. ‘Though not the face of course. Only the dress.’

      I’m starting to want to be here and the bewitching spell cast over me by the pale princess on the glittering canvas is only broken because Hilde stands between me and it. She goes down on her knees.

      ‘Look. Who does she remind you of? Anyone?’

      She puts her head to the side, draws her hands up, sweeping her long tresses back, all orange-golden and red. She smiles at me before closing her eyes. ‘See it now?’ she shouts as if I’m standing at the opposite end of the studio.

      Before I can answer, she jumps up, giving her beautiful wavy orange-gold hair a shake before adding, ‘He told old misery guts Emilie that it’s her but she’s not the one who ended up with neck ache and creepy crawlies in her hair from all them flowers. Besides, it’s like looking in a mirror for me when I look at it. And have you seen her?’ Her already familiar chuckle tells me that Emilie, whoever she is, is no looker.

      I assume – wrongly – that she has to be another of Klimt’s models.

      ‘If he likes you, you could be a Golden Girl too. And he pays good money. You’ll be able to pay your rent. Put food on the table. Think how happy you’ll make your mother. Oh yes, Frau Wittger’s told me all about your circumstances, dear. Now, let’s have a good look at you. If I like you, he’ll like you. Don’t worry, I know how much you need this.’ She pulls me towards her and moves my limbs as if I’m a jointed mannequin.

      ‘Ouch!’ I’m not used to another person controlling my body in this way and though I try not to cry out, Hilde’s hands are pushing my fingers back, apart, together. ‘Nobody said modelling for an artist was easy,’ she snaps. ‘We’ve got to suffer for his art.’ She cackles. ‘So you might just as well get used to it. Now shut up and let’s get that face of yours sorted. Remember, there are worse things you could do to earn a crust.’

      As Hilde quickly makes good my tear-damaged face I think of Ursula and the birdlike girl I met on my way to the artist’s studio, I remember Herr Bergman with disgust, and I know that Hilde is right – there are far worse things than to be an artist’s model.

      ‘Don’t force the child, Hilde. Be gentle with her.’ From behind me booms a man’s voice. It’s his voice, the voice of the artist. He has entered the studio without our hearing his footsteps. His accent is strong, his tone gruff, yet his words are kind. ‘I don’t want her to do anything that she feels uncomfortable with.’

      Hilde spins me round so that he can see me.

      Wiry, uneven tufts of coarse, grey hair grow out of a parched skull. A messily pointed goat-grey beard straggles down to meet straying white-grey chest hairs that escape up and over the neck of a dress. No. It’s not a dress that he wears, more a paint-spattered grey-blue smock that ineffectively hides his stocky body. Bare, hoof-like feet protrude beneath. Part high priest, part satyr. The artist is an alarming sight. Old.

      He walks up close to me, assessing me in turn. And as I breathe in deeply to steady my troubled mind I take him into me. A smell of staleness overpowers the gentle fragrance of my own cleaned and powdered skin, filling my nostrils, entering my mouth, a staleness so strong I can taste it. I start to cough. I cannot help myself and quickly clap hands to mouth.

      As I do so he envelops my small, soft hands firmly in his, and pulls them to him, turning them slowly, looking at them silently, broodingly. He brings them to his nose, sniffing, snuffling. Instinctively I close my eyes and transport myself to another place. Yet the place to which I find myself transported is an imagined side street with the tiny fragile bird of a girl and the grunting man from that afternoon. I open my eyes again quickly.

      I am a commodity, ripe for inspection. And I need him to pick me.

      His small eyes wrinkle and crease in a smile as he turns away from me, moving towards a table, this one strewn with sketchbooks and crayons.

      ‘Sit here.’ He gestures to the bed in the window, and I do as he asks. I am relieved. Petrified.

      ‘Name?’ he asks me.

      ‘Walburga Neuzil, sir,’ I tremblingly reply. He continues to scrutinize me as I find the courage to add, ‘My family call me Wally.’

      ‘Well, Wally,’ he says while studying every part of me, ‘it would be a waste to lose such a delicate flower, but …’ He pauses dramatically. I anticipate rejection. ‘It is important that you want to be here.’

      It’s need not want that has its hands at my back, pushing me forwards. Strong, Wally, be strong. I can do it. I must do it. I wilfully conjure up in my mind the image of the fragile bird-girl. Then of Ursula. I think of the care and time Frau Wittger has lavished on me. Of my mother feeling unwell back home at our rooms with my three younger sisters to look after. Her tired drawn face. Her disappointment if I’m accepted. Her devastation if I’m not.

      As I sit there, my red hair in pigtails with black ribbons, my clean skin glowing pink all over, the odd tearstain here and there, I look over at Hilde, who stands at the artist’s shoulder, mouthing words of praise and encouragement at me. ‘You do want to be here?’ he asks me. And I nod in assent. Slowly.

      The artist mistakenly reads my reluctance for modesty, though in truth it’s both.

      ‘Now, my beautiful child, I want you to sit for me, that’s all. Due to the hour the light is not good and so it can only be for a short time.’ For what seems to be a very long and uncomfortable time to me, Hilde bends my legs, folds my arms and turns my head, much as she did before, while the artist draws sketch after sketch of me. I experience a burning sensation as I hold my left arm in the air. The suffering for his art has begun. I waver and wobble as my upheld arm throbs and twitches, Hilde silently whispering, ‘Keep still,’ at me.

      This is my first time and I don’t really like it. I don’t really like it at all.

      There’s a knock at the studio door.

      Nobody responds to it. Nobody moves towards it. But like the school bell at the end of a lesson I have now had my concentration broken. All I want to do is go out and play. (Oh, if only.) My trance shattered, all I want to do is stop. Another louder knock follows. Still no response from either artist or Hilde – though as I look towards her I see that Hilde is now starting to look restless too. Then an urgent longer set of knocks hammers down upon the door, this time accompanied by a woman’s voice, shrill with anger, calling, ‘Gustav? Gustav? I know you’re in there. It’s time to go.’

      At this, at last, the grizzled artist grumpily sets down his tools and holds up his sketches for inspection. He gets up and for a moment I am concerned that I won’t do. That he will rush off without a word. Relief that it’s over and panic that it might never happen again surge through me.

      Hilde taps his arm. ‘She’ll do,’ she tells him, stroking the back of his neck affectionately.

      ‘She will,’ he says, before brushing her off and opening the studio door only to close it immediately after him.

      For the moments that follow Hilde and I don’t move, concentrating as we are on the woman’s voice, which gets louder as she harangues the artist for making her wait, for not answering the door, for ignoring her, for making them late for their French class. ‘It just won’t do.’ Her voice continues to fill the space until it slips away along the corridor and – slam – out of the front door. And still we follow its shrill now wordless sound until it disappears completely.

      And we laugh.

Chapter 5

      As