Vienna 1907

Wally Neuzil must find a way to feed her family. Having failed in many vocations, Wally has one last shot: esteemed artist Gustav Klimt needs a muse, and Wally could be the girl he’s been waiting for. But Wally soon discovers that there is much more to her role than just sitting looking pretty. And while she had hoped to establish herself as an emerging lady, the upper classes see her as no more than a prostitute.

With her society dreams dashed Wally finds herself at rock bottom. So when young artist, Egon Schiele, shows her how different life can be Wally grabs hold of the new start she’s been desperately seeking. As a passionate love affair ensues will he be the making of her or her undoing?

The Artist’s Muse

Kerry Postle

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Disclaimer

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Endpages

Copyright

KERRY POSTLE

left King’s College London with a distinction in her MA in French Literature. She’s written articles for newspapers and magazines, and has worked as a teacher of Art, French, German, Spanish, and English. She blogs on art and literature.

She lives in Bristol with her husband. They have three grown-up sons.

Kerry is currently working on her second novel set in Franco’s Spain.

Follow her on twitter @kerry_postle

Acknowledgements

For their unwavering support, Simon, Joe, Tom and Harry. For her unfailing belief in me, my mother.

For her time, patience, and curbing of my predilection for ribald double-entendres, Kate.

For their support and expertise, Hannah Smith and Helena Newton at HQ Digital.

I’m indebted to the following works: Jane Kallir’s Life and Works of Egon Schiele for dates and biographical details, Arthur Rimbaud’s poem ‘The Infernal Bridegroom’ from Une Saison en Enfer 1873 for the light it sheds on the nature of Wally and Egon’s relationship, Otto Weininger’s Geschlecht und Charakter 1903 for its insight into the misogyny of the time, and Adelheid Popp’s autobiographical Die Jugendgeschichte einer Arbeiterin 1909 for exposing the hardships faced by working class women at the turn of the century. As for Karl Kraus’s formula for a woman’s soul, I stumbled across it in Edward Timms’ Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist:Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna.

However, I would never have started this novel if I hadn’t visited the Leopold Museum’s stimulating ‘WALLY NEUZIL. Her Life with Egon Schiele’ in 2015. This exhibition posed more questions than it answered. The Artist’s Muse is my response.

Author’s Note

Although inspired by a true story the facts narrated and the characters represented in this novel are fictitious.

For Simon, Joe, Tom and Harry

‘woman is soulless and possesses neither ego nor individuality, personality nor freedom, character nor will.’

Otto Weininger, Sex and Character

Vienna, 1903

Prologue: Vienna

Modelling. The first time I did it, I didn’t like it. But Hilde told me to look as if I did. Or, failing that, to do as I was bid. I was only a child yet the future of my family – now living in Vienna, due to circumstances that I will reveal to you in due course – would depend on how well I got on in Gustav Klimt’s studio one gloomy Tuesday afternoon in November 1907. And Hilde, already successfully established as one of Klimt’s favourites, knew how much I needed – my family needed – this job.

Monday 4th February 1907

We had arrived in Vienna, city of hope, some nine months before that fateful afternoon in the studio, yet I remember it vividly even now. It was a brutally beautiful February day when we made the journey into the big city. As we set off, we must have made a strange sight. Katya was ten, Frieda eight, and Olga only seven, while I – the oldest and biggest of us – was twelve.

I, and even Katya, looked like giants, our young girls’ bodies bursting out of what we had on, exposing uncovered skin at wrist and ankle to the harsh cold of an Austrian winter’s day, while Frieda and Olga, wearing big-sister cast-offs, swept the floor with their hems. Our shoes, squashed-toe small or hand-me-down loose. But we dared not complain for fear of upsetting our mother whose life had now become a veil of tears, the tangible evidence of which she wore with the pride of the recently bereaved. It was hard to lift it up to see what she’d been like before.

Yet I for one was pleased to be going on this adventure. I had never been on a train before and the second the doors slammed shut, the whistle blew, and the engine started to hiss and puff its way out of the station, I was hypnotized. As I looked through the frost-framed windows, so the train took me on a mesmerizing trip past ice swords hanging from snow-tipped trees, single magpies frozen on walls, field upon field of virgin-white snow increasingly disturbed by man the closer we got to the city – and then there was bustle.

We had arrived in another world. We stumbled out of the carriage, our belongings slapping down on the stone platform like dead dogs behind us, our eyes taken this way and that by the coming, going, dashing, crashing, and hurtling in every direction of the bodies now swarming around us. Overwhelmed and in the way, we shuffled, dodged, and collided our way out of the station, the mist of the new gradually lifting to reveal, to my delight, a world of possibilities.

Velvet bows and fur trims whispered to me of riches. Well-soled, perfect boots tapped out the rhythms of success. Education and employment would be ours in this twinkling land of plenty.

I failed to notice my mother’s face, grief-grey, her brow furrowed by the yoke of responsibility, as she led us out into the cold Vienna air.

Like ducklings, we followed her, single file, climbing onto a busy tram, which drove us round the Ringstrasse. Grand and wide, it encompasses Vienna’s heart, and it shone that day, like a band of gold encrusted with monumental jewels shimmering against a heavy sky. Transfixed, I dropped my head against the window, the plump whiteness of my cheek squashed flat against its glass like a suction cup while my mind conjured up a waltzing world of sparkling interiors and sweeping staircases as dazzling façades danced before my eyes.

And I let myself dream of an opulent world, full of luxury, laughter, and ease, of all the magic I would find within this golden ring, encircling as it did this capital of empire. For a little girl like me, with her imagination full of grand balls and princes (who weren’t going to die in the night), the Ringstrasse was an ideal place to be.

The tram juddered. It veered to the right, crossed over connecting lines. But my cheek, momentarily squelched out of position, soon settled back into place while I now marvelled, dribble trickling down my chin, at the mannequins in ballgowns in the glittering window displays of a shopping street. Back in my innocent dream world once more I wondered which dress I would wear to the ball in the house with the sweeping staircase.

Yet in a second, with the blast of a klaxon and the scream of a horse, the spell was broken. Followed closely by the impact.

Your world, the way you see it, can change in an instant.

With the dull thud of metal and wood on flesh I was violently shaken out of my reverie. Something terrible had happened. Within seconds, hordes of people, shouting out excitedly in unrecognizable languages, appeared out of nowhere. It was as if they had pulled themselves up through the cracks in the cobblestones, their sewer-drenched poverty tainting the golden streets of the city of my dreams. Replacing fur-trimmed coats with filth-edged jackets; taffeta ballgowns with worn, ripped clothes.

What did they want? Why were they shouting? The travellers on the tram stood up to find out, blocking my way, though sounds of ugliness pushed their way through. It was only when the tram pulled away that I saw the encircling crowd: baying hounds around their weak and injured quarry. I heard a voice say, ‘’E’ll not get as far as the knacker’s yard,’ but I had no real grasp of what it was that I saw that day, even though I sensed its menace. I dream about it still.

However, if the accident had disturbed me, it was clear, from her trembling fingers, that it had disturbed my fragile mother more. She placed a shaking hand on my shoulder. It was time to get off.

She stood up; we followed, watching her exhausted frame nearly collapse as she struggled to lift her bag off the tram. I rushed to help her though she pointed me to little Olga who’d been lifted off the tram by a foreign-looking young man with a thick moustache and a wavy mop of dark hair, a book in a foreign language peeping out of his coat pocket. I said thank you and he nodded. I suspect that he wasn’t a true Austrian.

‘I’m so proud of you, Wally; you’re such a good girl.’ My mother sighed heavily when we’d all made it to the pavement. She gently pushed the hair away from my eyes, before kissing me on the head with a barely audible, ‘I can manage now. Please don’t worry.’ But she couldn’t. And I did.

As we stood there, an old, well-dressed man approached us. Cupping his hand over his mouth, he spoke quietly into my mother’s ear, his eyes roaming furtively over Katya, Olga, Frieda, and me. She found the strength to turn down his kind offer of help that afternoon but as I watched her I wondered how long it would be before she buckled.

It was clear that she was – we all were – going to find it hard to survive in this place of extremes. My poor, sweet, weak mother, her light frame resuming her heavy walk, tears rolling silently down her face, leading us to our new lives with all the enthusiasm of the condemned to the gallows. We knocked on the door of number 12 Favoritenstrasse. We waited for Frau Wittger to open the door with the chipped black paintwork. We had arrived in Vienna.

Chapter 1

The wind is cutting and the trees bare. It will not be easy. But I am twelve years old. We are at number 12 Favoritenstrasse. And I take this as a sign. It is time for me to stand tall, grow up, and look after the people I love. Mama knocks on the door. I stand behind her, holding myself as upright as I can after dragging two deadweight bags – mine and Olga’s – all the way from where we got off the tram.

It’s difficult to even stand (and as I glance round at Olga, whose head is against my skirt, Frieda who’s sitting on her own bag, and Katya who’s standing protectively behind the two of them, I see that I am not the only one of us having trouble), yet I grit my teeth knowing that I will be able to remove my boots with gaping holes in their soles very soon. And I will be strong. No one has come to answer the door to us yet. As I lean past Mama I wonder whether I have grown or she has shrunk since we caught the train from Tattendorf. Either way, one of us has changed. I knock on the door with more force.

As I wait for it to be answered, Mama fidgets and turns the scrap of paper over and over in her hand. She reads it again, just to make sure we’re at the right address and when Frieda asks, ‘Is this it?’ Mama looks to the heavens. I just think: twelve and 12. How could it not be?

Then the door collapses inwards. It’s pulled back with a force so fierce I expect to see cracks in the white plaster of the walls that surround it.

An elderly man, once he’s picked himself back up, stands in the doorway, stopping momentarily to draw a flask to his thirsty lips. He’s so close to us that I can’t fail to see that he has an oversized red nose from which veins trace across his cheeks like tributaries on a map; the whites of his eyes are yellow. He looks the worse for wear, no doubt due to the liquid contents of his flask, which he attempts to drain by holding it upside down until he’s drunk every last precious drop within. He is an intriguingly strange and disturbing sight on this cold and wintry day.

‘… but they’ll be here in a minute,’ a woman’s voice pipes up. ‘You’ve got to go.’

A small, elderly woman with messy grey hair – despite its being pinned back in a bun – now stands at the open door, pushing the man with the flask over the threshold. An evil old crone pops into my mind. Will she lure us in? Pop me, Katya, Olga, and Frieda in the oven? Cook us? Eat us? But I push this wicked witch on through before she sets up permanent residence in my imagination. I never did like the stories she was in.

‘Frau Wittger?’ my mother asks, her voice rising with trepidation: worried that she is, worried that she isn’t.

‘Oh, Oh!’ She pushes the old man with the flask out into the street and we part like the Red Sea as she shoos him on his way. He leaves a sour smell and goes without a struggle, more intent on checking the contents of his flask every other second. He’s forgotten he’s just emptied it down his throat. Sway, swig, puzzled expression. Sway, swig, what? There’s none left?

‘Same time next week, Wittgi?’ he shouts behind him, not hanging round for a reply.

‘Oh!’ The old woman puts one hand to her hair then brushes the front of her skirt with the other, just like Mama used to do when we had visitors. Before father died. ‘Frau Wittger,’ the woman says, ‘that’s me.’ And then, with hushed embarrassment, she leans closer to Mama and whispers, ‘You won’t be seeing him again.’

At this I notice my mother sway a little. I put out my arm to steady her. I fear she’s growing weaker and I have visions of my sisters floating away untethered for want of a mother to hold them in place. Twelve and 12. It’s my time. I can do this. I push them in front of me, Katya included, as I am the eldest, extending my arms around the shoulders of the two younger ones to give strength to their sapling limbs.

Katya copies me, which I don’t begrudge on a day like this. Together we cross and link limbs in an intricate, delicate way. We will be strong together, my sisters and I.

A broad smile stretches out the wrinkles of Frau Wittger’s face, which softens at the sight of us. ‘Oh, such little ones. Such lovely, lovely little ones. Come in, my dears. Look at you all. Oh, my dear girls. Come in. Come in.’

She nods a welcome to me, then Katya, before bending down and taking Olga and Frieda by the hand. I first think her overly clucky, like a broody hen, but as I see my little sisters relax, catch the relief sweeping across Mama’s face, I am soon grateful for the gentleness this stranger brings, and for the excess of warmth with which she tries to thaw us. ‘Oh, you poor dear mites, you’re frozen,’ she cries, as she beckons us inside.

She leads us to our room at the top of the house. We follow in silence, pulling on heavy bags while I clutch tired hands. ‘If you need anything …’; ‘if you get any trouble …’ She bombards us with kindness and offers of help we’ll never remember.

And as we make our way up creaking stairs, and along dark corridors lined with closed doors, she lights up this new and shadowy world with the exuberance of her voice, wraps us in the warmth of her words so that we feel protected from the harsh shouts and coarse laughter that come from the rooms along the way. Though Mother asks, ‘Are we your only guests?’

‘A key, look here, you’ve got a key,’ she pants when she gets to our room at the top of the house. There is a lock, and with a rattle and twist of the key we are in. A sharp blast of icy air hits us. I look at Mama.

Frau Wittger looks to heaven. ‘Oh, it’ll soon be warm, once you makes yourselves all comfortable up here!’ she wheezes, more in hope than belief, and with that she abandons us, taking her optimism with her.

The room is miserable, with a bare wooden floor, its discoloured curtains drawn, drawn to conceal a broken windowpane I discover when I go to open them. Cold air comes in through the cracked glass, causing the curtains to flap around.

Katya tells Mama what she should do: leave, move, go back, say to Frau Wittger … But I know that’s the wrong thing to do. I know that Mama has no choice. Not one of us has any choice other than to stay here, and we’re lucky Frau Wittger’s such a good, kind soul.

I look at the bed and I’m about to suggest to Mama that she go and have a rest in it when there’s a knock on the door. It’s Frau Wittger, now quite flushed, perspiration around her nose and across her forehead. She’s made her way back up the stairs. It hasn’t been easy for her. And there, tucked under one arm, she has the prettiest white bedcover, embroidered with the daintiest of pink rosebuds. Dangling from the other arm is a basket so heavy she puts it down the minute I open the door.

‘For you and your mam,’ she says, offering the bedcover to me. As soon as I take it, she holds her side, clearly in physical discomfort, before bending down to pick up the basket. Once inside, she closes the door and sets the basket down. She hugs Mama before leading her to the bed and helping her to remove her boots.

‘Lie down and rest, dear,’ she says soothingly, though Mama casts a look of anguish over her daughters in protest. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ she assures her softly. ‘Now cover your dear mam up with that cover, why don’t you, girl,’ she tells me. ‘Then you little ones can bring that basket over and we can see what’s inside.’ By the time Olga lifts the cake out, Mama is asleep.

Chapter 2

The first nine months are tough. To set the tone, Mama does not get out of bed for three weeks, and when she does she looks as though a noose has been placed around her neck. Exhausted, that’s what Frau Wittger tells us is the matter with her, but Mama’s not done a day’s work yet.

The elderly woman we’ve only just met cooks, cleans, and cares for us as if we’re her own.

Her rooms are on the same floor as ours and she opens them up to us with a joy that doesn’t blind us to Mama’s suffering but helps us see there’s something more. That Olga and Frieda play ‘searching’ in her drawers full of broken costume jewellery is a rare and unexpected pleasure for this woman with no children, as it is a welcome escape for the little ones from the groans our mother makes as she grapples with her own demons. She’s not a kind stranger for long.

The rent on the room’s been paid in full for the first three months by my father’s sister, Aunt Klara, and Mama’s grateful to Frau Wittger for, well, just about everything else. Having four daughters is not for the financially challenged, ironic considering that’s what Mama is. Even Frau Wittger, no matter how lovely she thinks we are, will soon be struggling to maintain the support she so wants to give us and which she’s under no obligation to provide.

Mama needs to get a job and so do I. I’m twelve, I live at number 12 Favoritenstrasse and I can do this. When I announce I won’t be going to school no one argues – not even Mama. Especially not Mama, when it turns out that the first job she herself gets is the wrong one. She takes it because it’s in a pretty building – all exotic. She thinks she’s crushing flowers when what she’s really doing is making insecticide. As she’s as delicate as a butterfly she was never going to last there for very long.

As Mama leaves I start, but I may as well have kept going round the revolving door as two weeks later I’m out. I’m underage. Someone reported me. Children must receive eight years of school. It’s the law. Who knew? From the number of children in the factory, not many. Mother’s been sentenced to eighteen hours’ imprisonment. That’s certainly tightened the rope around her neck. We’re all worried about her. I’ve just got to get another job. These are fast-changing times.

I go to school with the others for a month. Then I get another job, this time in a bronze factory where I work with the soldering irons. But they are powered by gas. Which makes me pale. Giddy. Ill. I have to see a doctor who tells my mother who’s weaker than me that I need a nourishing diet and plenty of fresh air (which is all that we have to live on).

Mama has lost one job. I have lost two. We’re wasting time, not earning money. Frau Wittger whispers to Mama about the workhouse, the very mention of which is as effective as a dose of smelling salts on her.

And that’s how Mama’s ended up in the glasspaper factory. It’s an unpleasant dirty job, but she does it without complaint. She gets me a job there as a counter, putting glasspaper sheets into packs ready for the salesman to take around the country.

At home things are better for a month or two. We have money for food, bills, even ribbons.

His name is Herr Bergman, the travelling salesman. He doesn’t come in that often. But when he does the other women and girls go into a flutter. Flapping, flirting. He has his favourites who giggle as he whispers in their ears, their dirty-fingernailed glass-dusty hands pressed against their oh-you-saucy-devil-you mouths.

Herr Bergman, the popular travelling salesman.

He’s so busy tending to his admiring flock that he doesn’t notice me at first. I’m quiet, conscientious, don’t even talk to the other girls, as what they like to discuss in hushed tones punctuated by ribald laughter does not interest me at all. But one day – it is the day when I tie my hair with the new shiny black satin ribbons I bought with some of the money Mother allowed me to spend from my wages – he demands a counter, ‘the one with the red hair and the black ribbons’, for the stock he has come in to collect.

And he watches me while I re-count the pile of glasspaper that I set aside for him earlier in the day.

‘… forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.’

‘Beautiful hands.’ No sooner has he said these words than jealous eyes pierce me. Eyes of women who know exactly what he means.

I am even more silent than usual as I do my work that afternoon, and after a few sarcastic ‘nice hands’ remarks, by the time I go to find my mother to go home, the tense atmosphere has lifted.

But, as I walk along the corridor towards my mother’s workroom, a man’s hand grabs me and pulls me into the stockroom. It’s Herr Bergman. He knows all about me. Feels so concerned for me. Wants to give me a fatherly kiss, because – sad creature that I am – he feels so sorry that I don’t have a father to look after me. I freeze. Can’t move as he gives me his fatherly kiss. Then he releases me. What should I do? What if I lose my job? Should I tell Mama?

For the next few weeks I keep it to myself. Avoiding Herr Bergman. Until I can’t. He comes in one day, leans over to whisper in my ear the way I’ve seen him do to other girls before. But, unlike them, I do not giggle. I do not put my hand to my mouth in an oh-you-saucy-devil sort of way. And as he pushes himself hard against my shoulder I do not move.

‘I’ll see you later, Beautiful Hands! I’ve got a little something for you that I think you’re going to like.’

For the rest of the day I don’t hear the other girls call me names. All I can think about is Herr Bergman.

It’s late but I can’t delay any longer: it’s time to walk along the corridor. Within seconds he’s pulled me into the stockroom, so eager to shower me with paternal affection and give me my surprise that he doesn’t get round to closing the door.

My mother screams. And screams. Her small hands pull at him. With a back sweep of his hand he knocks her to the ground, stepping over her while sneering, ‘I was doing you a favour, you silly cow.’

See now why my voice is getting angrier, my words more knowing? Because I am angry. Shocked. Doing things I shouldn’t be doing, seeing things I shouldn’t be seeing. Forced to grow up quickly. I’d thought of painting my life better than it is, as I’d wished it to be – Lord knows it doesn’t make me feel good to read over what has happened – but I can’t. No. I’ll not give this story a sugar coating, lay claim to an innocence that experience has already tarnished with its guilt-stained hands

Bitterness. That’s its true taste. And if you have a daughter who’d never think or say what I commit to paper, pray she never has to endure what I have had to endure. Because if she does you’ll soon hear a change in her voice.

We are out of work again.

That night in bed, as I cuddle the sleeping Olga on one side and Frieda on the other, the atmosphere is dead calm. Katya is still awake, pretending to read in the corner because she doesn’t know what to say to me. Nor I to her. And so there we are, silently listening. No rain, nor wind to disguise the hysterical sounds of our mother falling apart in the other room.

‘So what am I to do, Frau Wittger? I have no strength left. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to protect them. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid girls. And after what I’ve done I might never get decent work again. She’ll end up on the streets. They all will. Oh my lovely stupid girls, what will become of them?’

Katya and I, scorched souls silently screaming in the next room, cry tears that run over the molten lava of our mother’s love.

As I listen to Frau Wittger console my mother while she sobs, I wish I’d been strong enough to let Herr Bergman give me what he thought I’d like. If my mother’s to be believed, somebody’s going to give it to me anyway.

‘There, there, dear. There, there. You need to sleep. Believe me, things won’t look so bad in the morning. Your Wally’s a good girl. None of this is her fault. Nor yours either. I’m not promising anything yet but I think I know how we can get over this. Your Wally’s a good girl, and a pretty one. But I think I’ve got a way to make that work for her. Again not promising anything but fingers crossed this could work out well for all of you. Now off you go to bed.’

Mother sleeps on the floor that night, the noose so tight around her neck the next morning her eyes are bulging.

Shot to bits by grief, pain, misfortune, and the challenge of bringing up girls in a city full of predators, Mama’s on the brink of giving up. And who could blame her for that? Not I. But I won’t. I won’t give up. Not ever. I will be strong and do whatever it is Frau Wittger has in mind.

Chapter 3

It’s Tuesday the 5th of November, 1907, and nine months since we turned up at Frau Wittger’s door and gave her something to worry about; she says her life was a walk in the park before we turned up, although the strange way she laughs as she says this makes me wonder if that was as good a thing as it sounds.

And she’s already worrying before she starts to work on me today. I am too. We have a lot riding on it. ‘Come here!’ she cries, grabbing me more roughly than she’d intended by the arm.

‘Your skin’s so pale – it shows every mark!’ Tut-tut-tutting, she places her hands, cold and rough, around my jaw and turns my face to the light.

It’s a sunny day. The sort that shows up the filth on the windowpanes. Whose low-in-the-sky late autumn sun blinds you for your foolishness in daring to face it. Hitting you. Blasting you with searchlight force, and any other object in its way, against the facing wall. Too bright. Woe betide the poor ordinary mortal who gets in its way.

‘You two! Get out from under there!’ she cries as Olga and Frieda come out of their hiding place under her bed and run out of the room. ‘But be careful not to disturb your mother,’ she whispers after them. ‘She’s trying to sleep!’ She closes the door after them. Then, in the unforgiving light, she scrutinizes me.

Tut, tut, tut!

As she releases me from her searching grip Frau Wittger retreats to the only upholstered chair in the room, momentarily overcome by the magnitude of the task. Now she too is in full beam. Irritated, she shields her eyes and face from its cruellest revelations. Yet she cannot conceal herself completely. Her hands and neck take a heavy hit.

I suppose you could say she is well dressed. Certainly the weight of the deep blue wool from which the dress is made gives her an air of respectability. And its design – square-necked bodice, decorative buttons centre front, pinched in at the waist, white lace collar – gives a pleasing shape to the parts of her body that it contains. But as the white lace collar frills and froths in the sunlight its uneven pure white edges cast shadows on an already interesting neckline, seemingly squeezing out a well-filled strudel and giving it an exceedingly flaky crust.

And though her hair – piled high upon her head in the pompadour style – glistens with streaks of white and silver, this only serves to blind me, causing my eyes to seek sanctuary in the brittle, grey dullness of her hands. Those rough hands she has just laid upon me. Hands that thirstily drink in the sun that seeps through every crack and flake, rendering the fault lines ever darker and deeper.

A carriage passes by on the street outside. Horseshoe on cobble. Its clack-clacking disturbing the dust motes in the shaft of light. I follow snakeskin scales as they fall away from the backs of Frau Wittger’s hands, crumbling away, swirling, eddying upwards, before vanishing into the kindly, forgiving shade. I pull my gaze back to the hands. They drain the light, sucking it in behind every crease and fold, its energy magnifying as it goes. Skin knots and ridged-nail trunks on gnarled tree-bark hands.

I blink. Refocus. My kaleidoscope stare makes out yellow spots beneath dead-dull thick claws.

I have come to have her prepare me. I imagine the scraping of desiccated fingertips, traces of Frau Wittger, on the surface of my skin.

She stands, bringing her hands by her sides, slowly moving towards the coolness of the dressing table upon which are displayed an attractive array of pots and potions in all sizes and colours. Tissues. Books of papier poudré. Sable hairbrushes and bright-coloured ribbons. Timely and pleasing distractions all, upon which to rest my eyes after the trauma caused them by Frau Wittger’s hands.

As if she knows what I’m thinking she positions herself with her back to the window and presents her hands for my inspection. No longer grotesque out of the sunlight, they just look pale and small. And possibly a little dry.

She sets about her tricks.

She opens a tub, plunging her fingers into the glistening white peaks contained within. Wringing, kneading, rubbing, patting, she works cream into the crevasses and creases of her hands. White. Translucently melting. Vanished. And not just the cream. Like a magician she raises the palms of her hands and wriggles her fingers. All, all gone. The creases are softer, the skin now smoother. The flaky, brittleness now plump and moist. She takes a tissue and blots the residue before offering the back of her hand for my delectation. Not sure what to do I kiss it. I have heard my sister Katya say that that is what ladies do – give out their hands to be kissed. That’s why I do so.

She laughs.

‘No need to kiss the likes of me, silly girl. Just smell it.’

My nostrils breathe in Frau Wittger’s floral-scented skin.

‘There. Geranium oil.’

I smile in surprise then wonder at its delicate fragrance.

‘Now touch. Touch my hand, girl.’

I touch her hand, unable to stop myself turning it in awe. I caress its dewy softness as she glides the back of her other hand lightly across my cheek. What sort of magic is this? Then ‘Clap!’ she puts her hands together dramatically before whipping them away, back now turned to me.

This most elaborate of hand moisturizing rituals is still not finished. I hear another lid removed. An unctuous squelch. Fingers in jam. Not a minute later she has rubbed in and buffed up the jellylike stuff on her nails. She removes the excess with a tissue, which she leaves scrunched up on the side.

‘There.’ She holds her hands up once again, walking back into the sunlight. Pink nails. A healthy sheen. Soft, generous, plumped-up skin. The metamorphosis is complete. I have witnessed a miracle.

She turns her attention to me. It is my turn to be transformed from a pale and blotchy thirteen-year-old girl with messy red hair to an ideal of female perfection.

‘You’re tired. Shows in your face.’ Tut. ‘This is going to take me ages.’ Tut, tut! ‘Now if only I could slap on some proper colour …’ Tut, tut, tut! I scan the table, responsive to her words, searching for bright and bold. I am excited and afraid. Will she give me red lips? Strong eyes? Vivid cheeks? Will I look like an actress? Dear God, let her not make me look like a prostitute.

With brushes and powders and lotions and potions she massages, creams, and daubs me for the next hour.

She talks me through her materials. Pots of colour. ‘Pinks for the cheeks and lips. Browns and yellows for the eyes.’ Books of papier poudré: ‘face powder for a matt and natural complexion’. Lemon juice: ‘a tonic for the skin. And to lighten it. It can tingle.’ Cream: ‘to both soften and massage in. Gets the blood circulating for a nice, healthy glow. And if it doesn’t then there’s always a stronger rouge. But I will avoid that if I can.’ Petroleum jelly: ‘to make the lips juicy and the nails’, wiggling hers once more to demonstrate the point, ‘lustrous’. Materials spread out on the dressing table, the artist sets to work, her only tools her fingers, one small brush, and some blotting paper.

She begins with the lemon juice. Fingers sweep deftly across my face. Then cream, her now soft and firm hands massaging upwards and out. ‘Up the neck – two, three. Circle round the nose – two, three. Up the side of the face – two, three. Up the forehead – two, three. ‘Supposed to help a girl’s face defy gravity – not that you need it yet.’

I look up at her and I smile. It feels heavenly. Not the cream. But to feel the warmth of her hands, to be touched with such care.

She goes over to the dressing table and looks at the pots of eye colour. My eyes are tight shut. My nose flares involuntarily to keep fine powder dust out as she dabs soft brown on my lids, followed by face powder held between sheets of a pretty little book, on its cover a white silhouette of a woman against a black background.

I hear her move back. Say ‘Yes.’ No tuts.

‘Now for just a tiny pinch of rouge. Tiny, tiny, tiny.’ Her fingers massage peony pink into my cheeks using small circular movements as I breathe with pleasure.

She picks up the mirror to show me two shiny pink apples. To me they are the prettiest of cheeks in the loveliest of pinks. She sees my joy.

‘No, love. No.’ She laughs. ‘Madness perhaps, because you look lovely, but this look says, well, let’s just say, sweetheart, that a look like this can get you into trouble. Attract the wrong sort of attention. This look says danger.’ She looks into my eyes with sadness. She is not smiling. ‘Besides, it’s not the fashion.’ I look at my reflection again. It’s enchanting. But having already received the wrong sort of attention I am in no hurry to court it again. Pink rose blush takes its place, giving the final look a delicate sugar coating.

I take care not to wrinkle, sneeze, or in any way disturb the work Frau Wittger has created. She is beaming as she holds up the mirror.

‘You need just a little something on your lips.’ She fusses, adding peony pink then rubbing it off to leave a delicate stain. ‘Now you can’t get that colour biting them.’ She laughs, her head pulling back and causing her Apfelstrudel neck creases to disappear momentarily.

‘Nearly done.’

With tiny pieces of blotting paper it’s as if she’s wiping away everything she’s done. Yet she’s so gentle, so careful. I’ve not felt so safe for such a long while. Not since before father stopped teaching.

‘Now to make this God-given red hair dazzle.’ Her voice is so happy, her touch so enthusiastic, as she plunges her fingers playfully though my lawless hair, that even I start to believe that this is possible. To change the curse that has been my unruly red hair into a blessing. Can that be? I hope that she’ll pin it up, turn me into a Gibson girl. Instead she pulls out two black satin ribbons. I shudder. I hold my tongue and let her tie my hair in childish bunches.

‘It’s me who’s the real bloody artist,’ she says proudly.

She offers me the pretty silver-handled mirror so that I can fully appreciate her finished work before opening the door. All three sisters tumble in. Though there’s no sign of Mama.

‘She’s ready,’ Frau Wittger tells them as they gasp in appreciation.

I wonder at the time it’s taken her to make me look as though I’m wearing not a trace of make-up. And yet …

I am pearly flawlessness. I am innocence. I am sugar-coated youth.

***

As I step outside into the street I turn to bid farewell to them all and see an expression of sadness cross Frau Wittger’s face. We embrace, though carefully. ‘We don’t want to be spoiling all that work we’ve done on that pretty face of yours now, do we?’ And as I turn to go, my hand reaching into my pocket to make sure that I’ve not lost the address of the artist for whom I am to model, I hear her exclaim, ‘What am I thinking? You’ve never been there before. Hang on there, girl, I’m coming with you.’

She hurriedly grabs her coat, gloves, and hat before following me out and taking my hand. As I wave to my sisters I look up to catch my mother looking down at us from an upstairs window. She blows me a kiss for luck.

I squeeze Frau Wittger’s hand twice, once for me and once for Mama. We are doubly thankful that this woman will be by my side on this important journey on the way to such an important meeting.

‘Destination – Josefstädter Strasse 21. Knock on the door and ask for Herr Klimt. He will be expecting you.’

Josefstädter Strasse 21 is in Vienna’s 8th district, home and studio of the artist Gustav Klimt.

To begin with, we walk there in silence. It’s late afternoon. Shadows lengthen as the day fades. And as the light goes down so my anxiety builds, my mind struggling to imagine what I don’t know.

Just as I start to feel that I am condemned, I see a girl stumble out of a side street. She’s swaying. I look away from her as something tells me I won’t like what I’ll see if I carry on looking. But it’s too late. I have seen too much already. There is still enough daylight for me to see her smeared bright pink lips and poorly hidden bottle of I don’t know what (though I have a good idea), the neck of which peeps out from beneath a scarf in her bag.

A well-dressed man wearing a top hat appears out of the same side street immediately behind the swaying girl. He pushes her aside with disdainful familiarity, storming past her without casting a backward glance. There is something between them. Her suppliant neck moves after him. I don’t fully understand what I have seen. But I know that it’s ugly.

‘He’s an artist,’ Frau Wittger says, breaking the silence. Changing the unspoken subject. I watch the back of the well-dressed man who pretends not to know the smudged-lipped girl. ‘Oh no! Not him, silly. Oh no. Not him at all. No, the man we’re going to see. He’s the artist. Very popular. Really very good. Gets a lot of commissions. Paints a lot. No, dearie me no. Nothing like that man. You’ll be secure there. If he likes you.’

I feel alarm at the possibility that he might not, especially after the disturbing scene I have just witnessed. Frau Wittger, sensing my concern, continues, ‘But he will, dear, of course he will. Adore you. How could he fail to? Just look at you. Yes, he will like you. You’ll get a lot of work there.’

She walks along, fiddling her coat buttons nervously, before adding, ‘Why, you will become his muse. Imagine that, an artist’s muse? And it’ll pay the bills. Certainly be a help to your mother.’

I have no idea what a muse is but assume that it’s preferable to what the girl with the smudged lipstick is to the man in the top hat. As for my mother, that’s why I’m here.

As the daylight retreats further so the streetlights come on. They add a comforting glow, eliminating the sinister. Though not for long.

As we carry on down the street, out fly the brightly coloured women. First one. Two. Three. Then whole flocks descend, feathers bold and beautiful, ready for the paid employment that Frau Wittger wants to protect me from.

A very beautiful girl spots us, recognizes Frau Wittger, and flags us down. Frau Wittger tries to keep her at bay by waving acknowledgement and turning sweetly with a ‘you-know-how-it-is; must-dash’ smile. But the girl is not to be deterred.

‘It’s Ursula.’ I hear the note of resignation in Frau Wittger’s voice. Sigh-deep. ‘We are going to have to stop or that girl will tackle us to the ground!’

As we approach her I recognize the rosy pink cheeks on a startlingly white skin, her bright eyes dazzlingly set in smokily shaded sockets and her lips daringly red. She should be on the stage.

‘You’re looking good, Ursula dear,’ Frau Wittger remarks.

‘Yes. All my own work,’ the brightly painted lady replies, leaning forward, sweetheart chin resting on open-petal-shaped palms, red lips puckering ready to blow us a kiss.

‘Yes. Very nice,’ Frau Wittger answers unconvincingly. ‘But you really don’t need so much. It’s heavy. And besides, remember what happened to poor Silke’s skin when she slapped it on every day? The lead’s not good for you.’

‘Yeah well, I agree,’ Ursula replies with a wag of her head. Don’t know why she bothered. Though you can’t blame the greasepaint for that. She was whacked around the head with the ugly stick was our Silk’. Whacked good and proper. A waste of good greasepaint trying to improve on God’s shoddy handiwork there.’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about and well you know it,’ snaps Frau Wittger before narrowing her eyes as if she’s just noticed something she can’t ignore.

‘But wait, hang on just a second. Come here, Ursula.’

Ursula laughs sheepishly. ‘Get off me!’ Her uncharacteristic coyness causes Frau Wittger’s eyes to narrow even more.

She takes Ursula by the hands and gently pulls the young woman towards her to get a closer look at her face. Ursula winces and lets out a poorly stifled ‘ouch!’ The older woman pulls up the girl’s sleeves to reveal bruises the size and shape of large fingers about her wrists. As the girl pulls her hands away she looks down and the streetlight catches her face, revealing a raised surface on her left cheek, bumpy and rough.

It becomes apparent why Ursula has resorted to such heavy make-up. The greasepaint has successfully served to mask the discoloration of her badly beaten cheek. But lead can’t eliminate the scabrous contours caused by knuckles breaking skin. Even I can see that.

Ursula rolls her eyes defiantly. ‘Well it’s nothing. It really is nothing. I can look after myself. I can.’

Frau Wittger puts her arm around Ursula’s shoulder, taking care not to hurt or damage her in any way. Who knows where else the girl might have been beaten? There is a sensitivity and strange quietness in the scene as the beautiful girl places her head on the older woman’s shoulder. They melt into one.

‘Please, please come to see me. You know where I am if you need any help. Or just to talk.’

I see flickering looks. Love, sorrow, gratitude. Inevitability. They gently pull apart from one another.

‘And who’s this young ’un here then?’ Ursula turns to me as if suddenly aware of my presence. She flicks one of my hair ribbons dismissively in an attempt to deny the undeniable truth of her situation.

‘Looks like you’re off to Josefstädter Strasse. Am I right?’ She laughs.

I nod as Frau Wittger says, ‘Yes, Wally is going to be a model. A muse, isn’t that what we said, dear?’ She chuckles affectionately.

Ursula throws her beautiful head back so that a tendril of curled hair falls loose and cascades around her temple, giving her a cavalier, almost rebellious air. ‘Nice work if you can get it; don’t you forget that. But make sure you don’t go and spoil it for yourself like what I did.’

She sees my look of surprise before continuing, ‘Yes, I did try out as a model but – it’s hard to credit I know –’ and she looks at me, eyes wide open and a can-you-believe-it expression on her face, before explaining ‘– but I was, let’s say, a little too chopsy, if you gets my drift. Too many ideas of my own when it came to what he should and shouldn’t have been painting. Even offered to help him one day what with all that colouring in he likes to do. But he didn’t like it, ungrateful old goat. An’ I’ve always been good with colour. I could have been a great help.’

She snorts and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Always been great with colour as a matter of fact.’ She snorts once more before rolling her hands up and down her clothes as if displaying the proof. ‘Green dress. Brown boots. And just look at my face. Nice touch of green on my lids and my lips, inspired by a dancer I saw at the theatre last month. Could spot her right from the back of the gods. Said to myself that’s what you need, Ursula love, and that’s exactly what I’ve got …’

Amused and enchanted by the colour-conscious Ursula, I am also horrified that she could be my future. But before she can say any more Frau Wittger takes my trembling hand and reclaims control of the situation before Ursula – she who can only speak loudly, no internal check, she who just opens her mouth and says whatever she wants to whoever she fancies – throws any further verbal fireworks. ‘Well, really, all Ursula is trying to say is that as long as you don’t go shooting your mouth off (just like what Ursula’s so good at) then you will be fine. Really fine.’

‘Yes, that’s my advice. What I was going to tell you. But …’ Before Ursula can finish her sentence she starts to vibrate. She’s bending at the knee, her pinned and curled hair bouncing and flouncing loose still further as she makes o’s with her painted red lips, alternately covering them then pointing to a short well-dressed man with a walking cane heading towards us.

‘Oh my! Oh my lordy! Oh! Oh!’ Before either I or Frau Wittger can answer she rushes off, smoothing her hair to make sure the escaped tendrils aren’t waving Medusa-like from her head, hands hiding momentarily her battered cheek. She’s swinging her hips excitedly and teetering forward, towards the man who is much older than she is. And as she walks away I can tell from her girlish figure that she is not much older than me.

She turns and mouths back at us by way of explanation, having suddenly discovered the facility of volume control, ‘Oh it’s Klausy. He’s a good ’un. I’ve got to go.’ And with that she calls to him.

We look at one another, Frau Wittger and I, and do not say a word.

Ursula links arms with the short well-dressed man with a walking cane and they turn into a side street and disappear into its darkness, the tinkling of her young, shrill, sing-song voice lingering long after she has vanished from sight.

I want to go and pull her back to us but I don’t. Can’t. In my head I am crying, ‘Don’t go!’ I blame Frau Wittger. Why isn’t she helping her? We walk on in silence along the street of light and shade.

And I am aware of yet more solitary-predatory men. Brooding and hungry, causing the flocks of women innocently clucking in the light of the streetlamps, which have just come on, to cease their noise. Menace and fear before show time.

With a theatrical wiggle of their hips, and a come-hither glance cast towards the vague shapes of their audience, faceless in the descending darkness, countless Ursulas make some last adjustments to their hair before flying off, solo, wheezing softly into the unknown.

Frau Wittger keeps me out of the spotlight and I know not to draw attention to myself in any way. No solo flying. No soft wheezing. Yet a beast of a man is tracking us. As he lurches towards us I see that he is corpulent, whiskers failing to disguise his folded, falling face, and the night unable to mask his enlarged, pickled nose, the nostrils of which flair, breathing us in. He is old. At least forty. And he stares at me, saliva dripping, drooling. ‘How old?’ he asks Frau Wittger of me.

‘Not old enough, sir,’ she answers.

I pant with terror. I dare not move. He looks at my ribbons, my hair, my virgin skin. Frau Wittger’s body stiffens and bristles, soft arms rendered implacable weapons to keep the foe at bay. The man sneers, giving a low, deep, dismissive laugh that is suddenly broken by the soft coo-cooing of a delicate birdlike creature. She swoops and falls around us advertising her wares.

The sight of this fragile, tiny girl, weighing not much more than a bag of cherries, so easily available, catches his attention. He puts out his bearlike hand and grabs her before she flies on. She twitters with the excitement of the young girl that she is before singing a more disturbingly seductive song – gay bright young chirrups dropping to rollingly suggestive coos. My senses pound in pointless rebellion as I hear his low, grunted response.

I sense danger.

My breath leaves my body in despair as he leads her roughly away. But as they fade into the distance I feel relief. Gratitude. I see a tiny, fragile, young girl hanging off the arm of a fat, ageing man. A repulsive sight. But I don’t look away. I watch them. I make myself watch them, as they find their chosen side street where she will allow herself to be snapped. Broken. I am sad for her. Glad for me. What am I to do with this unpalatable truth? Do you think you would have helped her? I thought I would have too. But I didn’t.

I cannot look Frau Wittger in the eye and she does not look at me. ‘How can she?’ escapes from my mouth. As if she’s got a choice. I hold tightly on to my guide. Seeking protection.

She lets out a sigh. ‘Poor cow.’ She rubs my arm reassuringly in return. ‘The modelling work will pay your bills.’

Chapter 4

A vision of red hair in green silk pulls me in quickly, waves a hand briskly, blows a kiss into the air, then shuts the door after us, leaving Frau Wittger on the street. ‘It’s flamin’ freezin’!’ she says in justification as she leads me into the studio.

‘I’m Hilde by the way,’ she tells me. ‘So you’re looking for work here?’ And before I have time to answer she starts putting me through my paces.

‘Move your arm above your head. Look down. Bring your hair forward. He asks you to do it, you do it. You’re the model. He’s the artist. An’ a big ’un at that. Fat as well as famous.’ Hilde pauses dramatically just to make sure that I get exactly how big the painter is before giving in to a whispered, conspiratorial, ‘If you like that sort of thing.’ Then she glowers at me as if I am the one who’s given utterance to such treachery before continuing indignantly, ‘I love his stuff actually. Everyone does. People pay good money to have a painting by him. They do, you know.’

I’m not disagreeing, not saying a word in fact, my whole being so paralysed with fear; I ceased existing on the more rarefied holding-an-opinion plane the moment I stepped over the threshold of the artist’s home a few minutes earlier. Besides, she’s not waited for me to give an answer yet. And all I can see is Hilde’s finger wagging up and down in front of my face. ‘It’s a good studio to be in, this one is, girl, I can tell you.’ She walks away muttering obscenities about ‘sweaty bastards at the Naschmarkt’, and ‘them that loiters in the woods at Schönbrunn’, as if I’ve brought them in with me.

Hilde shudders. I assume that it’s because she’s dressed in next to nothing. A green silk next to nothing embroidered with oriental pink blossom. But the look that sweeps across her face tells me it’s more than just the cold that’s making her twitch so. It’s a fear as intense as my own. I take the artist to be the cause. Because his faceless presence is certainly what’s making me uneasy.

I have no knowledge of the innumerable times that this woman with the red-gold hair has had to pace around the Naschmarkt, or the woods at Schönbrunn – times when she had no choice but to appeal to an altogether different kind of connoisseur to the one she so fervently believes Herr Klimt to be. Just to get by.

‘He’s an artist. He is,’ she argues, though with whom I’m not completely sure. ‘A real, honest-to-goodness one. With all them paints an’ stuff.’ She extends her finger, waving it in the direction of a table, gloriously messy with brushes, palettes, paints, and oily rags. I am struck by its resemblance to Frau Wittger’s dressing table with its stained sponges, pots of colour, piles of powder and scrunched-up tissues. One transforms a canvas. The other a face. My face. Similar tools for not dissimilar trades.

‘And you, young lady, you. Are very lucky.’ Hilde is as fiery as Frau Wittger warned me she would be, her voice ice-prickly, staccato words stabbing. ‘Yes. Remember that. You had better believe it.’ She brings her face up close to mine as she says these words yet I feel no threat. Not from her. The mass of wavy gold-red hair, curls billowing softly around her face like the morning mist, enchants me; and the warmth in her eyes melts the brittle ice knife of her tongue before it can pierce me. (‘She’s got a tongue as sharp as vinegar but don’t let her fool you as she’s got a heart as soft as honey.’ And I don’t, Frau Wittger. I don’t.)

I hold her gaze as she looks at me. With a bold, businesslike wipe of her hands, she pulls away. ‘You’ll do!’ She has made up her mind. Satisfied, Hilde walks up to a covered canvas, beckoning me to follow. ‘There!’ she announces dramatically. ‘See?’

I look at the unfinished painting and I instinctively try to cover myself up. Protectively.

All I see is a naked breast.

I force my eyes to study the entire canvas: follow the gentle curls of red hair, the round outline of a body; try to fix myself in the texture and colour of the fabric that surrounds it, diaphanous and dark, decorated with gold circles. Yet my efforts to see the painting as hair, body, texture, colour, do nothing to protect the sleeping girl at its heart. The fabric has slipped away to reveal the concentric circles of nipple on top of snow-white breast. And I can do nothing to stop it. I blush with shame.

‘Oh that!’ Hilde laughs at my shock and embarrassment and with her left hand she flicks my concern away. She sits down next to the canvas and adopts the same pose as the figure in the painting. She slips her green silk robe over her left shoulder, letting it slide down to reveal herself to me. ‘It’s only a body, love,’ she tuts at me with a roll of her eyes – before yanking the robe back up, her point made.

‘To him, I’m, well, I’m …’ She pauses, heightening the drama of the moment, while I gasp in fearful expectation.

‘Danaë.’

Hilde. Where she has sought to demystify she has brought confusion, where she has sought to becalm she has brought dread. I do not know who Danaë is. And now I do not like what a model does.

My mother always says that I shouldn’t fiddle with my hair. Says it makes her feel nervous. Like there’s something wrong. Makes her feel guilty. Especially when it’s tied back. Like tying knots in knots. And that shouldn’t happen. Tying knots in knots. And that’s what I’m doing now. I can’t help it. Knots in knots in knots. I look at the painting again. Danaë is curled up in a knot. And that doesn’t help her. Perhaps if she’d tied herself in another one.

‘Stop that!’ I’m making Hilde feel guilty, which is making me twist, twirl, curl. Furious fingers screwing their way to oblivion; Hilde’s voice growing sharper prickles by the second. ‘Stop that now!’

We seesaw hysterically. Until I fall off.

Hilde plumps up her pillow-soft hair to catch me.

‘There! There! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. You’re only a child. What was I thinking? Here. Come here.’ She enfolds me in her warm embrace, kissing the top of my head. Oh to be allowed to remain the child that I am. But I’ve seen too much to expect that to happen. I am afraid.

Before I can stop myself, tears roll down my pale face, trickling pink hot rivulets on face-powder-dry white riverbeds. One riverbank-breaking smear deftly made with the back of my left hand and I have created lakes that sit at the bottom of both cheeks. I taste the powder, see it transferred to the back of my hand, and sob some more.

‘Ssh! Ssh! You’ll be fine.’ Hilde’s voice strokes me like a feather, all prickles gone.

‘Now. Let’s start again, shall we? How old are you sweetheart? Twelve? Thirteen?’

‘Fourteen,’ I reply, unconvincingly. I am thirteen now but Frau Wittger warned me that to say so might mean I’m sent away and told to come back next year. Or, worse still, simply sent away. I think of Mother. I think of my three little sisters. I must help them. I remember Ursula, the girl I came across on my way here. I don’t want them, or me, to end up like her. I don’t want to stay but I can’t go. I try really hard to look grown-up. To stop snivelling.

‘Old enough.’ Hilde looks at me encouragingly, nodding her head and smiling.

I stop sobbing.

‘Look!’ she says chirpily. ‘These are what I meant to show you.’ She takes me on a tour of the studio that she hadn’t expected to do, walking me through some of the canvases propped up against the sides of the room. ‘Now this is me. Here I’m a goddess. (Can’t remember which one; I’ve been so many!) And I’m wearing –’ she breaths deeply to emphasize the point ‘– a deep, red wrap.’

She nudges me. ‘And look. Look. This one’s not finished yet but you can see that she’s got on a white dress. And her hair curls at the ends just like yours. And this one’s me. Again. I’m wearing … And her here, she’s dressed in …’ I grasp the point, am thankful for the effort, and feel my breath calm once more.

I catch sight of my reflection in the largest mirror that I have ever seen. I’m smiling. But I am also blotchy. Tear-stained. Shiny black ribbons against lurid red hair. Ghastly. Raw. I don’t smile for long.

‘And he paints us beautiful,’ she tells me, ‘better than in real life.’ She throws her head back, laughing at her own attempt at a joke, when all I can think of when I see my own ghoulish reflection is ‘I hope so’.

‘Well, I’m probably not the greatest of challenges,’ she continues. ‘But believe me, we do have some right ugly Frau vons walking in here hoping for him to turn – what do they say? Water into wine. Mud into gold. Make a silk purse out of a sow’s arse. Or is it ear?’ Chuckling maliciously, she shows me an unfinished painting of a dark-haired woman in a gold patterned dress. ‘Arse. That’s what she is. Oh, you should see her in real life.’

She places her hands on her hips, bends over in mirth, then gives me a nudge strong enough to make me reel. It works. I stop thinking about myself. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she adds. ‘And who says you can’t polish a turd? Or an arse! This one’s bleedin’ gleaming! It’ll make him piles!’ I put my hands to my mouth to stifle a snigger. ‘Of money,’ she explains. ‘And just think –’ she turns to me now warmly ‘– of what he can do with you as his model.’

Model. That’s what I have to be. Why I’m here. Yet the very word ‘model’ still tears me in two. I look at the women who surround me in the paintings for some sort of sign that to be a model, a model for this artist Herr Klimt, is a good thing to be (guiltily avoiding the direct gaze of the polished turd in the gold dress as I don’t expect her to reward my treachery with any words of wisdom).

Then I see her, find the reassurance that I’ve been looking for, in the eyes of a woman to whom Hilde has not yet introduced me. The woman I see has hair like a dark halo, which frames her face, a face that returns my distressed look with serenity and peace. I see no monstrous artist reflected there. And if there’s an arse hidden behind a silk purse it’s not peeping out at me. She looks beautiful. But even that proves to be enough, on a day as important as today, to tilt me over into despair.

First childish sobbing, now self-pitying despair. I even annoy myself but I can’t stop feeling set adrift, my emotions flying to and fro on savage waves. And what makes me calm makes me frantic because I cannot see me in a painting. The women I see are adults, fully formed. Not underaged, poorly fed pretenders. When I look to the future I can see only a workhouse. Or worse, the streets. My eyes well up with tears once more.

‘There there!’ says Hilde in exasperation masquerading badly as compassion. Before I can say a word she moves instinctively on, patting my forearm, briefly, as she guides me towards one of the largest and loveliest paintings I have ever seen through watery eyes, propped up at the very far end of the studio.

‘Calm now. Calm. Breathe deeply. This is a good studio. The best. Gustav’s not so bad. And you’ve got to love his work.’ Hilde lifts a cover to unveil what she calls his ‘crowd-pleaser’ and stands back to let it take full effect.

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she coos, pulling me to her, her arm firmly around my shoulders. ‘Every model who’s ever set foot in this studio claims to be her here. Odds are you’ll look back one day and say that it was you an’ all. A pale princess with orange-gold hair, studded with flowers, caught forever in an embrace with a dark-haired prince wearing a leaf crown and kneeling on a floral carpet. Why 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 I leave the studio I run home in the dark, conscious of my limbs, my breathing, how I hold my head. I imagine that I am the most supple of dancers leaping her way effortlessly home. I will myself to ‘shine from within’ but rapidly think better of this as it occurs to me that it doesn’t do, even with my key clutched in my hand for protection, to shine too brightly down secluded side streets. Once home, I fall back against the closed front door, panting with relief. And I smile.

‘So, how was it?’ Frau Wittger shouts down the stairs, wanting to know how I’ve got on before she’s even seen me.

I leap up the stairs with excitement. ‘I’ve done it. I’ve done it,’ I shout. ‘I’m going to be an artist’s model.’ I can’t wait to see Mama’s face light up, if only a little, at the news and I bound into the bedroom. Olga and Frieda are asleep. Mama isn’t there.

For a moment I am worried until Frau Wittger calls out in a loud whisper, ‘She’s here with us in the kitchen.’ Frau Wittger and Mama are sitting around the kitchen table, a lit candle in the middle, shedding just enough light to reveal the pained look of anguish on my mother’s face. The flame flickers, accentuating the hollows of her already sunken cheeks, exaggerating her expression of self-sacrifice. Although it’s not herself she’s sacrificed. She says nothing.

‘So, girl,’ Frau Wittger asks, looking for details, ‘how was it at the studio?’ But as she pulls the tone up so my mother drags it down with her air of self-pity.

I can’t answer. The weight of expectation. The burden of disappointment. These are my mother’s gifts to me. I return home with news of a job but all she can do is sit and look sorry for herself. I’ve done it for her, all for her. Can’t she see how afraid I am of the cloven-hoofed, coarse-haired artist in the dirty smock? And to know that I’d brightened her life just a little, made her smile even for the briefest of moments, would make it all worthwhile.

‘What’s his name? What’s he like? Is he any good?’ Katya is still up. She should have gone to bed with Olga and Frieda three hours earlier, but she’s strong-willed, stronger-willed than our mother, and that’s why she’s sitting at the table asking the questions. Perhaps it’s my mother who should have gone to, or rather stayed in, bed. Katya is eleven years old, with light brown hair, her moon face a waxing, waning crescent as she shifts her head excitedly in the candlelight, waiting for my answers.

‘He’s the best artist in all of Vienna,’ Frau Wittger answers for me, trying to engage my mother. ‘His name is Gustav Klimt. Don’t you recall? I told you.’

‘Really?’ says Mother, vague. ‘I can’t remember.’ And distant.

‘You’ve heard of him,’ the older woman insists. And with that the licking flames from Frau Wittger’s tongue set about melting the frozen pinnacles of the iceberg that is my mother.

With burning promises and incandescent claims she makes me believe that I’m the luckiest girl in the world. ‘Vienna is plastered all over with his name … His work is everywhere. You’ve got to see his murals in the Burgtheater, the Beethoven Frieze in that new white building, then there’s the paintings he’s done for the university – although I think there’s been a little to-do over them. Anyway, he’s on his way to painting the entire city. Then there’s a list of society ladies as long as your arm all waiting to get done by him. Herr Bloch-Bauer, you know, the man who made his money in sugar – him – well he wants Klimt to do his wife an’ all. Not sure if he already has? But just think, our little Wally will be mixing with the likes of them!’

Mother pulls a face. I can tell she’s trying, though it’s not quite yet a smile.

‘Bottom line is – he’s famous,’ Frau Wittger concludes, sitting back and crossing her arms with finality.

‘Thank you for all that you’ve done for my family.’ Although it’s not pride, joy, happiness my mother expresses, I am touched by the gratitude she shows towards Frau Wittger. My kind mother is still in there somewhere behind the shattered pieces of herself.

Frau Wittger gently pats the back of my mother’s hand in quiet appreciation, acknowledging the effort it has taken for my broken mother to engage. Yes Frau Wittger has been far more than a landlady. She’s fed us, found work for us, kept us off the streets and out of the workhouse, but it’s not simply thanks she wants, it’s hope, for us to have the strength to cope and do something with our lives.

As I look at her illuminated in the candlelight, her every line shows a depth of understanding of a life well lived. The ugly, evil, old hag who opened the door of her home to us when we first arrived in Vienna, who I thought might push us in the oven, roast us, eat us, has vanished. She has been replaced by the woman whose light shines forth tonight, burning so brightly that I feel its warmth. She has done what I could not – got through to my poor, locked-in mother.

‘Aren’t you proud of your daughter?’ Frau Wittger asks her. I look at my mother. Her eyes are like watery pools. And she nods softly.

And I am overcome with joy.

‘Let’s have some hot chocolate to celebrate!’ Frau Wittger fetches her best cups, the ones with the elegant gold-painted handles, and sets about heating up the milk singing something in French as she goes. ‘I love this song. It’s by Gaby Deslys,’ she shouts.

‘Je cherche un millionnaire.

Un type chic qui voudrait bien de moi,

Au moins une fois par mois.

Je cherche un millionnaire

Qui me dirait froidement,

Tout ce que j’ai c’est à toi,

Je cherche un millionnaire.

C’est pour ça que je fais le boulevard …’

As I look at the back of her head, bobbing in time to the song, I know that I owe it all to her – staying off the streets, making my mother proud. And that’s all I ever want to do.

***

Mama hasn’t always been this way, withdrawn and weak. And I’ve not always done my best to help her. She annoys me, to show so little fight, but I know it’s not her fault.

Life’s changed her, changed me, pounded us like lumps of clay, soft matter, so that we’ve lost ourselves for now. For some, life may be for living, but, for me, the only thing it’s good for is for learning, as I have no choice, no power, to do the former. I may not go to school but I have a brain and know how to use it when I get the chance. And in the most extreme times, I’ve learnt the greatest lessons. That’s why I owe it to Mama, to you, to put a few things straight.

***

A time before Vienna

There was a time when we were happy: my father, my mother, my sisters, and me. A time before Vienna, in a village called Tattendorf, far, far away. My mother was a happy soul, always laughing, and she adored my father who was a much-loved teacher in our local school. Our lives were good and the only poverty we knew was the poverty of others. And every Christmas, rich factory owners from Vienna would come and make it go away. Or so it seemed.

Once a year they would arrive, compassionate, immaculate, god-like in demeanour, and they would shower upon the poorly dressed and damaged food and clothes, sweets and treats. And I would admire them.

The poor themselves, I admit to my eternal shame, I would regard with great disdain for no other reason than their poverty and what it had reduced them to: accepting cast-offs, begging for money, grovelling, having no self-respect. I did not understand, at the time, their agonizing humiliation at having to kiss the shoes of the very people who had made them poor in the first place. I suppose few of us ever do. Until it happens to us.

But Fate generously gave me that opportunity when Mama and I worked in the factories after we arrived in Vienna. Some of the owners were the very same rich men who used to visit the poor children in our village, arms laden with presents. They didn’t remember us, their benevolent smiles now replaced by demands and gripes for not coping with the twelve-hour days and a pittance of a wage.

Like sinners in a hell of never-ending toil, we worked and worked. And if the toil should accidentally end in one place, then we would scrabble around so that it could start up all over again in another. We were infinitely dispensable, disposable, replaceable, as we frequently discovered. And you know the story about Herr Bergman and me.

That’s part of the reason why Mama is as she is now. Employers don’t want weak workers or those who speak out when rights are wronged. But it’s not the whole story. The main cause for our fall started back in our village. Sometimes I can’t understand it. Can life be so unfair? Sometimes I even think it was my fault because it certainly wasn’t my mother’s. Perhaps you can decide.

That last Christmas in Tattendorf we were happy. To have lost paradise – that’s how it seems to me today when I think about it.

The fall was swift and brutal.

Christmas had come to an end. As we were putting the decorations away, one of the gilded walnuts rolled towards me. Father had warned us girls not to touch them, but, calculating that he would never find out, I removed the nut from its shell and put it in my mouth. Anticipated pleasure turned into unforeseen pain. A taste of putrefaction invaded my mouth. Instinctively I spat out the rot.

I waited for the consequences, as Mama was always quick to deal with us when we’d done something wrong. And though she quickly gestured to Katya to help me clean up the saliva-drenched pieces, she barely turned away from the conversation she was having with Papa.

I held up the gilded shell and wondered how such a perfect surface could have hidden something so disgusting. Something wasn’t right.

Father stopped working at the school very soon after Christmas. Several months later mother screamed at me: ‘Wally, run. Get Father Neuberg. Hurry!’

Father Neuberg came immediately to hear Papa’s last confession and while we sat with him he repeatedly said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Now I know why.

When my mother’s sobs exploded I knew Papa was dead. We were alone. My sisters and I without a father; my mother without a husband. We were appropriately devastated, dressed in black and grieving as we should. Losing Father was hard.

Though (please don’t think me callous) being poor was harder. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing could have prepared us for the devastation of being poor. At first, the neighbours were kind, coming round with pots of soup and loaves of bread. But as the demands came in: ‘You still owe me for three prescriptions …’; ‘You owe me for the groceries …’; then propositions addressed to Mama – the neighbours retreated so far back into their cottages that they disappeared from sight, no longer even answering their doors to us.

Then it came. ‘Notice to quit’ in a letter from the school authorities.

Dear Mrs Neuzil,

We would like to extend our warmest sympathy to you and your family at the loss of your beloved husband. We would also like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for your husband’s faithful service as a much-valued teacher at our school. His hard work and devotion were examples to us all and greatly appreciated. His passing has been a genuine loss to the community and it has been very difficult to replace him.

Yet replace him we must, for the sake of our children. Thus, it is with great respect that we thank you for appreciating that we must house our new teacher.

We do not expect you to vacate the property immediately and so we have agreed upon what I’m sure you will see is a very generous offer. That is, that you will be allowed six weeks starting from the receipt of this letter to find alternative accommodation for you and your family.

Good wishes for the future,

The School Authorities

I took the letter out of my mother’s hand as she prostrated herself, sobbing, across the table in front of her. No husband. No home. Four daughters.

I hope you see it now – that no one is more deserving of kindness and pity than a mother of four young girls. Hard lessons to learn for all of us. And although I know it has nothing to do with that silly rotten walnut, part of me wishes that it did, as at least then it wouldn’t seem so random, so unfair, what’s happened to Mama. At least it would have meant that the gods had a plan. Even if we didn’t understand it. That someone was responsible.

***

But back to me. One week I’m counting sheets of glasspaper, avoiding paternally disposed salesmen who want me to call them Daddy, and the next I’m counting my blessings for having found a job as a model. Oh, so I’m making light of the attack. But don’t think that I found it funny at the time because I did not.

In fact, it was only after something Hilde said to me at the studio when I’d told her about it that I decided to laugh about it at all. She told me that a hard life can seem like a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think and so, challenging though it may be, I’ve decided that I’m going to be doing a lot more thinking from now on. And, if you think about it (as I have), then you’ll realize that it’s Herr Bergman I’m mocking, not me.

So, now, I’m here. Modelling. Or rather learning how to model. And I’m not finding it very easy. Even the seemingly simple poses are proving to be a physical challenge. ‘Start her off with something easy to hold, Gustav,’ Hilde tells him. ‘It’s pretty tough for beginners.’

And so he does. Asks me to sit for him. Just sit. Now you mightn’t think that you’d have any trouble, just sitting down. But I do. Maintaining the same pose for sometimes over an hour can be agony. The muscles in my neck hurt from the effort not to move. I can’t even feel the nerves in my buttocks, as I’ve been clenching them so tightly in my attempt not to slouch. It’s not easy work.

Herr Klimt makes lots of sketches, showing them to me as he goes, and although I don’t consider them to be great likenesses they are well executed. He even lets me take one home. It becomes my most prized possession – little matter that it is my only one (apart from my black satin ribbons).

When I’m not modelling I’m watching others model while the artist paints. He is a quiet man. Quiet as he works. Yet he likes to touch as he draws. His gnarled hands, paint hardened under fingernails, gently stroke what he sees before committing it to paper. His thumb, rough-skinned, outlines the contours of cheeks, the line of a jaw, the sweep of a forehead. When he does it to me I don’t like it but Hilde says, ‘Imagine you’re just fruit in the fruit bowl. And don’t squirm if he comes close to sniff you.’ I flinched the first few times. But now I am getting used to it, finding it almost reassuring.

I see Hilde every time I am at the studio; she’s always there, and the two girls I recognize from the large canvas in the corner have become familiar faces. And bodies. With a nod of Herr Klimt’s head they both take off their clothes and get themselves into position on the day bed in front of the window. They’re pretty, a year or two older than me, though far more experienced.

I chant Hilde’s reminder: ‘it’s just a body; it’s just a body’ over and over again. I think of fruit in a fruit bowl. Objects. Things. Shapes. Textures. Smells. Break it down, Wally. Break it down. Lines. Contours. Shapes. Break it down still more, Wally. She sees me – Hilde – as she’s draping the sea serpent models in sheer green and as she passes she leads me into another room, drawing the door to as quietly as she can.

‘Now look,’ Hilde tells me.

We sit at a table upon which Hilde has placed a small pile of sketches.

‘Go on,’ she commands.

I leaf through them. Pictures of girls. Women. Of all ages. Not all beautiful. Not all whole. Body parts. Sketches of heads, hands, legs, breasts. Some bodies – completely naked. Some are beautiful. Others unnerve me with their detail. I’ve never seen anything like it, sketched or in real life, and I blush just to look at them. ‘Never look down at your body,’ my mother always says. And I never do.

‘Wally.’ Hilde puts her hand on my forearm to soothe me. ‘Stop feeling and start thinking. It’s what a model does. Model. And remember, arse, elbow, peach, or pear – it’s just lines, shapes, and colours.’

I’m feeling queasy when I come in the next day. Don’t know why. But Hilde soon has me stretching out at an impromptu bar, warming up for the day’s performance, because that, she’s forever telling me, is what modelling is. I need to be as flexible as a dancer and as convincing as an actress.

The two girls from yesterday are here again and as they undress – ready to turn back into water serpents – the pain in my tummy comes back, only to get worse when I hear Herr Klimt call my name. I am to model for him first. I am grateful to feel Hilde’s warm hands guide me over towards him, otherwise I am sure that I would stay rigid by the bar, all flexibility and desire to convince frozen solid.

The next thing I recall is sitting on a chair in the kitchen with a blanket tightly wrapped around my shoulders, my head pounding. ‘You fainted. Hit your head on the corner of the bed,’ Hilde tells me, her voice a muted mixture of concern and anger. I’m sorry to have let her down. ‘Best if you go in and look and learn today,’ she tells me with a smile that perturbs me, shot through as it is with pity.

After I’ve had a glass of water I go back into the studio to watch Herr Klimt while he paints his water serpents and as I’m pulling the door to Herr Klimt’s cat squeezes itself in. Before I can throw it back out Herr Klimt let’s out a loud ‘Ssssh!’ Quickly, I hide myself, sitting cross-legged in the shadows, relieved that I’m not the body on the bed. Then I see Katze. I beckon her to me but she darts towards the girls, her paintbrush tail sweeping gently across a foot, which twitches involuntarily.

Herr Klimt shouts, ‘Break!’ Flying, flinging, and flinching follow. He storms out into the garden taking Katze with him while the water serpents and me – we don’t move, don’t say a word. He re-enters the studio and walks on through, slamming the door behind him.

Ten minutes later he returns. With a point of his finger the water serpents are out of the studio to receive from Hilde the instructions Herr Klimt is too angry to give. She hands them a postcard Herr Klimt would like delivered. Addressed to Fräulein Emilie Flöge, it reads, ‘I have finished the designs. Drop by the studio to discuss them. Gustav’

The artist turns his attention to me.

‘How old are you girl?’ Herr Klimt asks me. I’m worried. I’ve told him my age before. But he can’t catch me out that easily. ‘F-f-fourteen,’ comes my stammering reply. I need this job. I will get better. Something unspoken passes between Hilde and Herr Klimt as the painter walks out of the studio.

She takes one of my hands in hers, smoothing my hair protectively with the other, so that it frames my face and hangs loose around my shoulders. ‘Remember, I’m here.’

The dizziness can do nothing to keep out the certain knowledge that my time has come.

Hilde prepares me. Respectful. Silent. When she is done, I shiver with cold and with the knowledge that I am naked. She puts her arms around me, rubbing my back. Warming. Reassuring. And she places her lips on my ear, kissing me softly as she whispers, ‘Breathe. Breathe beauty.’

When Herr Klimt starts work, I breathe beauty for what seems like an eternity, and then, when I think I can breathe beauty no more, I start thinking of my loved ones. But not for long. My mother’s face makes me want to cover myself up for fear of her seeing me like this. When I’ve finished I pull my clothes on, hopping and tripping in my haste.

Herr Klimt shows me what he has drawn. I am newly crestfallen. He has rendered my naked body with such anatomical correctness that when he points at the turn of my shoulder, or shallow curve of my breast it is as if he is touching me. My breathing becomes shallow as I hear his low, menacing growl. I sense danger in the presence of this bear with a paintbrush.

Hilde congratulates me with a kiss. ‘I’m here,’ she says softly before appeasing the beast. My relief to see that she’s placed her beautifully soft, pale hands around his rough bull-like neck is greater than my indignation that it is wrong to see youth and age in such an embrace. The growl turns into a low hum of contentment and I am overjoyed that I am not the cause.

She leads him by the hand to the adjoining room, flattering as she goes, closes the door, only to pop her head round a few moments later. ‘Tidy up and get Herr Klimt’s pencils and sketchbooks marked ‘Flöge Sisters’ ready for ten minutes from now,’ she tells me.

I collapse as soon as she disappears, my silent sobbing soon giving way to whimpering so loud that at first I don’t hear the ugly animal sounds coming through the wall. But then I do. Oh, Hilde. What you have done for me. I do what she has asked.

Hilde and Klimt reappear, as Hilde promised they would, exactly ten minutes later. ‘You could set your watch by him.’ She laughs. He looks drained. Flushed. Sweaty. He beckons me over to him. A shudder of relief surges through my body when Herr Klimt announces that he’s going to spend the next ten minutes working on his sketches for Emilie. He holds out his hands for the sketchbooks and pencils and doesn’t notice the tears of relief that have newly sprung from my eyes.

Hilde has. She drags me into the garden, finding for us a secluded spot where the sunlight plays on our faces through the twinkling leaves of a tree. She says nothing to explain herself other than: ‘I know,’ letting me rest my now throbbing head in her lap, while the leaves above make oval shadows on my hair. Shape. Line. Colour. Shimmering in the dappled sunlight.

‘Now I would paint this,’ she says looking down at me. Katze jumps up and nestles into the well I make as I lie there on my side, my knees bent up. I stroke her fur, feel the beating of her heart. Hilde strokes me. She moves her hand down my arm, glides it over the mound made by the outside curve of my thigh then brings her delicate fingers up to trace my eyelids, outline my cheeks in beautiful, sweeping movements before plunging her fingers into my sun-warmed hair.

I lie there and close my puffy eyes, kissed by the warmth of the sun, soothed by an animal with a beating heart and consoled by the kindness of a woman. We sit like this, possibly for ten minutes, and not one of us makes a sound.

Chapter 6

What’s right and wrong never really changes. But I’m learning that the colours often run between the two in an all too imperfect world. A man-made world with its man-made language where to be pleasured turns out to be an unpleasant affair.

‘To pleasure.’ There’s a misnomer if ever I heard one. Hilde’s had the dubious honour of having Herr Klimt pleasure her – his words not mine – every time I’ve posed for him naked over the past year. That he has not laid a single calloused, paint-covered finger on me, at least not in a pleasuring way, I owe to her.

But I can tell from what she says that she’s finding it increasingly difficult to keep him away, from spreading joy to one who has yet to experience the evident delights he has to offer. And the worry of this gives her humour a vulgar edge.

‘He thinks we all love a bit.’ She clucks mockingly, nudging my side. ‘Says he likes to give his models a bit of his “Giorgione”. Know what I mean?’

We roll around laughing hysterically for a while. And then I cry and Hilde consoles me as what she is telling me really isn’t very funny. It really isn’t very funny at all. Hilde has kept me safe up until now but we both know that she can’t protect me for ever.

Though Consuela Camilla Huber, the latest model to join the studio, possibly could.

The first time I saw Consuela was a few days ago and she made an impression. Darker, older, more experienced, even than Hilde, she made an entrance to remember, wafting confidently around the studio in a green silk robe that did not belong to her. And she wore it as I’d never seen it worn before – deliberately loose at the front and clinging to her ample curves, with her long, dark, wavy hair worn loose and arranged artfully over her right breast. She breathed confidence. And she’s made an entrance every day since.

No one seems to know where she’s come from although she makes it clear what she has come for: Herr Klimt.

She has seen his work – his portraits of Frida Riedler, of Adele Bloch-Bauer – and she likes it. It’s bold. Obvious. Shiny. Golden. And she wants a piece of it. A big great fat nugget.

Consuela Camilla Huber is the original gold-digger.

And she knows how to dig. Well-versed in Herr Klimt’s work, she is sympathetic to his argument with the university, expresses an interest in his design work for the Flöge sisters. Indeed she has an opinion relating to everything Herr Klimt and a technical knowledge of painting seemingly equal to Herr Klimt’s own.

I learn a great deal about the silent Herr Klimt from the talkative Consuela Camilla Huber. She is a thing of wonder to me. And confusion. She will be Herr Klimt’s muse. And it is clear that she wants to be his mistress.

My fourteen-year-old mind cannot understand why such a glorious woman would deliberately seek out such a role. Yet the two, muse and mistress, are inextricably linked in her mind.

She makes rapid inroads in her quest to secure her role as the latter. She sustains her performance before, during, and after her ten minutes with Herr Klimt. Where Hilde looks sheepish when her time is up, unable to hide her own distaste the moment she comes back in the studio, Consuela makes a regal entrance, standing in the doorway as if straddling two worlds, triumphant.

I am surprised to see that she is more hunter than hunted. I love to observe her from the sleepy shadows of the studio, her strong, shapely body taunting that of her slow, squat victim. She stalks her grizzled, stocky prey, plays with him cruelly, sending paint pots crashing, stained water splashing, across the floor of the studio. And then she pounces. Within six months she is guiding Herr Klimt by the nose.

I shall always be indebted to Consuela.

***

‘Where’s Hilde? She should have set up my paints by now.’ Herr Klimt’s ready to work on another version of his water serpents and there’s no Mizzi, no Devla, and no Hilde. Even Consuela is nowhere to be seen. His serpents have slithered away, upset because Herr Klimt shouted at them two days ago for not getting a pose right (though Herr Klimt has been so busy with Consuela that he hasn’t noticed). My suspicion is that they’re writhing round in the grass in the Schönbrunn woods somewhere.

As for Hilde, I know that she went to sing in the chorus at the Burgtheater last night, though I’m not going to tell Herr Klimt that. Even she’s looking for another job. Especially after Herr Klimt spent the whole morning pleasuring Consuela last Friday. Putting paid to Hilde’s ten-minute theory as well as tingeing her relief at no longer having to endure Herr Klimt’s attentions with a shameful sense of loss.

‘I’ll just have to sketch you,’ he grumbles.

As I get ready, I wonder at how much I’ve changed. I slip my clothes off and hang them up neatly. Though I still hold my petticoat to hide my nakedness I no longer cling to it. ‘Shall I do Mizzi or Devla, Herr Klimt?’ I ask.

‘Mizzi,’ comes the reply and my heart sinks.

Mizzi’s made a lot of noise about how uncomfortable her pose is. Her oft wailed ‘It’s not fair,’ is ringing in my ears as I try to arrange my body as it needs to be.

Herr Klimt walks in a semicircle around the bed. From top to bottom. I can’t get it right and Hilde is not here to help me. I wince and close my eyes. Herr Klimt has to touch me. Yet the sexual threat I anticipate is pure physical pain. I am taken aback at the roughness of his touch as he tugs and pulls at me as though I am modelling clay. ‘Oh! It’s no use,’ he exclaims, exasperated. If he could throw me out for the dogs to run after and chew on he would. But then he thinks again.

Without explaining what he’s doing, he places a pillow under me so that the curve of my bottom rises and falls. I know that he wants the undulating line. I’ve seen Mizzi hold the shape so many times and he pushes me this way and that to get it. I close my eyes to pretend it’s not happening and imagine myself less water serpent more golden mermaid, shiny, and softly gliding through warm comforting waters, moving my tail up and down, rhythmically, keeping time with my heartbeat, warm blood pulsating within. Swimming away, far away from this humiliation.

‘Practice over! I will be your water serpent.’ It’s Consuela. To hear her voice is a joy and as I open my eyes she sees the depths of my misery. I want to cry but her eyes flash a warning at me. ‘Not now,’ they say. And I swallow back the tears, every one. Yet as I falter, the pins and needles causing me to bend and buckle like a newborn faun, so the pain of my failure wraps around my heart like a vice.

Consuela says something to Herr Klimt and within minutes I am free, walking to the art shop to stock up on pencils and sketchbooks. And the paints that were missing from the cupboard earlier on.

Materials keep going missing all the time at the moment. Hilde’s told me that she thinks it’s probably down to Consuela (‘Takes a lot of lead to get all of her in a picture!’ she quips), and indeed it is, but not in the way that she imagines.

When I return from the art shop, keen to avoid Herr Klimt, I go straight to the materials cupboard to put everything away. Consuela is already there, bag at her feet, rummaging around on the middle shelf for I know not what. She leans back, sticks of charcoal in her hand, relief replacing worry on her face as she sees it’s only me. She says nothing about before.

Instead she bends down to place the charcoal in her bag. ‘Thanks,’ she says as she helps herself to three pencils and two sketchbooks followed by a wink and a finger to lips that say: ‘Sssssh!’

She pulls a well-used sketchbook from her bag and opens it to show me a sketch of a mother and child. At first I imagine it must be Herr Klimt’s work. Even when Consuela tells me it’s a picture of her landlady Wilhelmina and her daughter MargareteKlara, I still don’t get it. But then I do.

‘I have a mission, and that is to exhibit my work at the next women’s art exhibition – God, just to say those words gives me a thrill, Wally. Women’s art exhibition! So exciting! There was one last year. The works of Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzales were there. Even Tina Blau agreed to exhibit her work in it. She usually makes it very clear that she doesn’t want to be judged as a woman artist and so …’ She sees the disbelief in my eyes, laughs, pauses, and takes my hand in hers.

‘B-b-but you’re a model,’ I stammer.

‘Yes, I am and I’m proud to be one,’ she tells me. ‘I inspire one of the greatest artists of our time. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be an artist too.’ I must still look confused, unconvinced, as Consuela retorts with rebellious passion, ‘When not even women believe that we can achieve the same things as men, that we’re simply frivolously fickle females –’ she flicks back her wavy hair and adopts a fashionable pout in self-mockery ‘– it makes me realize what a struggle we have on our hands.’ Her eyebrows arch upwards for her eyes to reach out and accuse me.

‘Consuela! Consuela-a-a!’ Herr Klimt is looking for her, and as she puts her sketchbook back into her bag, she asks if she can draw me some time soon. Of course she can. ‘Consuela-a-a!’ He’s calling out again.

With another flick of her hair and a right hand placed on her hip, she’s off: it’s ‘show time!’

From that time on I am rarely required to pose for Herr Klimt. Instead I am sent on errands for him, delivering messages, bills, receipts, buying more paints, pencils, paper, preparing refreshments, cleaning the studio, tidying up his materials cupboard. I hope that he doesn’t think that I’m the one who’s been stealing his pencils.

He even gets me to feed Katze. And so I’m kept busy. Busier in fact now that I’m moving for my money. Though I do feel, if not sad, then possibly uneasy that I’m not modelling for my living. And I wonder how long it will be before I will have to tell my mother the bad news that must surely be coming before too long.

I watch Consuela to learn from her as she learns from Herr Klimt: my dream is still to be a good model, as hers is to be a good artist. Though watching her brings me to an uncomfortable conclusion. She and Herr Klimt work well together in every way.

Yet recently I’ve observed a change in Consuela and Herr Klimt’s voracious appetite for her is making her look decidedly off colour. Her great artist with great appetites needs to vary his diet a little, feast elsewhere, although she’s careful to guide him away from me.

‘Go!’ ‘Fetch some coffee!’ ‘Buy some paint!’ and I am thankful that she pushes me as far away as she can from the artist’s tools.

‘You’re just a child, Wally dear!’ she whispers to me, as I pass her on my way out. Every night when I say my prayers I thank God for putting Consuela between me and my cloven-footed artist.

Then one day, Consuela’s performance fails to convince. No, that’s not strictly true.

Consuela fails to perform.

Over the next few weeks I notice a definite change in her. She is eating less though looking fuller, and has recently taken to turning up to the studio late in the morning with attractive young women she’s picked up on the way. Prospective models all.

Initially I imagine that she must be spending too much time creating her own art and worry that she’s running perilously close to the edge. But her light is dim, her enthusiasm flat. She no longer helps herself to the materials in the art cupboard. It can’t be that.

Then there are the women she brings in with her. Fresh, flighty, flirty. ‘Now what would your favourite old master do with these lovely creatures, Gustav?’ she asks him and seems delighted that the very suggestion of Giorgione has Herr Klimt strutting and rutting like a cock in a henhouse.

‘I can’t take too much pleasure at the moment,’ she confides.

Then, one morning, as I pass the bathroom, I hear her being sick. I ask her if there’s anything I can do. She begs me not to tell anyone.

No need as everyone knows.

When Herr Klimt discovers that Consuela is pregnant he is attentive, stroking her hair and rubbing her feet. He declares that he will fast but his giorgionesque appetite soon gets the better of him and Consuela begs that I attend her in his place. She still tries to protect me.

But just as she has failed to perform, so soon will she fail to protect. As I attend on the sleeping Consuela, her ankles swelling in the summer heat, I hear Herr Klimt’s voice calling, ‘Wally. Come here. I need a glass of water. Now.’ He has a thirst that needs to be quenched.

I walk into the studio and place the glass of water, half-full, down on the table so that it doesn’t get kicked over.

It’s all over very quickly. Not even ten minutes.

When he’s done, I pick up the glass; my hands shake, spilling tears that my eyes are too afraid to shed. Gustav, now studying his canvas with fresh eyes, turns for a moment and sees the wet floor. ‘Clean that up before you go, Wally,’ he tells me calmly, no trace of remorse or guilt in his voice. As though he’s done nothing wrong. No hint of intimacy either.

I put the glass back down on the table, my head bowed to hide my shame as I stoop to mop up the water with the skirt of my dress. Then I see it. Blood. Along the hem. I throw myself towards the door and hobble to the end of the dark and dusty corridor where I hide myself. And weep.

A tear-filled lake threatens to drown me, its waves of despair overwhelming me so that I am gasping for air in that dim and windowless space. My soul flails. What am I to do? Is this my life? My version of normal? Who am I to tell?

Instinctively I walk towards the light.

As I stand at the sink splashing water on my face and washing away the damage, I watch a wasp trying to burrow its way outside. It moves rapidly around the edges of the window in front of me, pushes itself into the corners, the tiny pinholes in the wooden frame, trying to get out. It feels then flies its way around, wings erect above its deep yellow and black striped body, ever ready. I’m so transfixed by it that I don’t notice Gustav come up behind me.

Whack! He slaps the window with a cloth and the wasp falls, drops onto the windowsill. It’s curled up, on its side, its wings bent by the impact between cloth and glass. No way out any more.

‘There’s a glass still in the studio that needs clearing up, Wally. I’ll be in the living room for a while if anyone calls.’ I rush back as quickly as I’m able to retrieve it.

When I get there I find, sitting by the table and lost in thought, a slim, dark-haired woman. From my young girl’s eyes she seems old. I know that she is respectable from the way she is dressed, covered as she is from neck to toe. And that she is wealthy I guess from the beautiful heart-shaped pendant that she wears around her neck. I have never seen such an unusual piece of jewellery and even in my distracted state I cannot help but notice it. Though the opals in the chain remind me of my tears.

This woman must be here for a portrait. I must keep myself under control.

When I tumble in she barely registers my presence but I feel compelled to acknowledge hers in some way, particularly as my half-empty glass is just to the left of the elbow upon which she rests with her chin on her hand. Facets of mirrored glass catch my eye as her necklace dangles and turns in the light.

‘Hello. Excuse me. Sorry. I left a glass in here. I’ve just come to clear it away.’ I smile sympathetically at her, relieved to show kindness to another. Her body language suggests that she has all the woes of the world on her shoulders. I do too. She looks straight through me, unsmiling. Yet I see myself reflected in her watery eyes. She has a crumpled handkerchief clutched in a hand.

Perhaps she’s not here for a portrait. She has fallen on hard times. Her husband has died. She has children to support. She’s from Slovakia. Or Galicia. She can’t understand the language. Perhaps.

‘Hello,’ I say again. Though it pains me, I smile still. ‘I could get you something to drink, if you’d like.’ I hold up the glass and mime my meaning. ‘Or find you a fresh handkerchief?’ I point to the one she holds crumpled in her hands. She frowns, sniffs, and raises her eyes heavenwards.

‘No.’

Her accent is crisp and Austrian.

I smile again. The sharpness unleashed by a word of one syllable is blunted by my blindness to see what is before me. I remain determined, entrenched in the erroneous belief that this truculent though unhappy woman could be my mother. Or me.

I should have picked up the glass and fled.

Instead I talk. To push out the silence. Decorate the cold, unwelcoming space with kind, warm words. If not for her then for me. I need to run away from what’s been done. Focus on the nice weather. The size of the glass. The prettiness of the flowers in the garden. About … Katze. Thank heavens for Katze. Katze pads into the studio stealthily and with purpose. I beckon her to me but she dismisses me now, too easy, and makes her way towards the prize. The real challenge that is the outwardly hostile woman. Grieving. Wronged. Abandoned. Forlorn. Neither Katze nor I know the reason for this woman’s unhappiness but where I have failed to console Katze intends to succeed.

She arches her back on contact, rubbing her fur back and forth on the hemline of the woman’s skirt so that it pushes up to reveal the black leather of her lace-up boots. But the woman has no need to have them polished today. With a brazen kick of her foot, the woman nudges the surprised cat away. Defiant, Katze gives an angry miaow and jumps up on to the back of the woman’s chair. I quickly sweep her up in my arms before she jumps into the woman’s lap. I stroke Katze firmly into submission and today she lets me.

Then I hear the door open, and a woman’s voice, crystal clear German cascading down and tinkling like a mountain stream in spring.

‘Oh, Emilie! What in heaven’s name are you doing in here? Gustav and I have been waiting for you in the living room.’ There is no mistaking the breeding as the voice turns into a body that walks towards the woman sitting in the chair.

‘Come, sister, whatever is the matter?’ With a tug on her hand, Emilie is led out of the studio. I still have no idea who she is. But, with a taunt from her sister about French lessons, I have it. Emilie. Emilie Flöge.

As the sisters walk towards the door, Emilie throws me a withering look. ‘Know me now?’ it hisses. And just for a moment she lets her gaze drop to the hem of my skirt.

I am left standing there, glass of water in hand, spots of blood on my skirt, hair dishevelled, eyes swollen. I sink to the floor. Emilie Flöge has seen me. I feel disgusting. Ashamed.

I don’t know how long I lie there but it’s Katze who brings me to the surface. This cat has a greater instinct for compassion than the woman who’s just left. With the beating of her heart and warmth of her tongue this creature consoles me.

Emilie Flöge. Now I have her name I can’t let it go. My anger towards her grows. I tell myself that it was nothing. She snubbed me; that’s all. I’m over-reacting because of … Well, I have good reason. You know that I do. I should blame Gustav. And I do. Oh how I do.

But. Gustav. Since I came to Vienna I’ve long recognized how men treat girls in this city – there was never any secret about the danger he posed. No disappointment should come (though it does) when you get what you know has always been on the cards: he was always going to catch me. I knew. Yet the colour of knowledge, so recently cloudy and white, shrouded in a mist that I hoped would never lift, is now a burst bubble of red, pierced, its contents a trickle down the inside of my legs that turns to a red-brown stain on the edges of my dress that sweeps across the floor attracting dust, dirt. And the attention of Emilie Flöge. Emilie.

Since I came to Vienna I’ve known only the kindness of women who’ve sought to protect me from the dangers of men. But Emilie Flöge. She saw, understood and said nothing. Treated me as nothing. When all I tried to be to her was kind.

I go home that evening and let myself into the apartment as quietly as I can. I don’t want anyone to notice me, although soon everybody has. I thump and scrub my skirt – hard, furious. It’s hard to be inconspicuous when you’re trying to kill something that won’t get out of your head. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. And yes, I feel ill. And no, I’m not hungry. I take myself off to bed. I’ve had enough of concerned looks and my fill of probing questions. I long for the oblivion of sleep. But tonight, even there, all I can do is remember.

A wounded horse. An angry mob. A vixen. A cur. And a woman with a mirror pendant, her back to me: I call out her name. I know she hears but she does not answer. Her silence screams betrayal.

When I wake up in the morning my mind is made up. I will wage war on Emilie Flöge. And all women like her.

Chapter 7

Hilde said something strange to me a few weeks ago, the import of which I did not wholly grasp at the time. It must have been just before I discovered Consuela was pregnant. ‘You know, Wal,’ she sighed, ‘I pity the girl a man desires, because she’s never going to be the one that he goes on to marry. No. Society doesn’t like that at all.’ When she said it I took it as sour grapes at worst, feigned sincerity at best. But since I’ve joined the ranks of girls a man desires, Hilde’s words have replayed in my head, drumming their warning over and over again. ‘The girl a man desires …’ Hilde, Consuela. And now me.

Though I’ve told no one and it’s been two weeks since it happened. You are the only one who knows. As for the military campaign I’d planned to wage on Emilie Flöge, this has not got off to the most brilliant of starts. Short of laughing when Hilde or Consuela make her the butt of a joke, my war hasn’t amounted to much, especially when you consider that the more knowledge I gather about her the less power I have to wield.

Let me explain.

What I’ve discovered so far is this: her sister Helene was married to Gustav’s brother Ernst – older I think – who died, leaving her a widow (she might have been the sister I saw). They say he looks after the whole family now: Emilie, his sister-in-law Helene, and another sister, Pauline. Hilde told me they were a millstone round his neck but, when I see them together, it doesn’t look that way to me. Doesn’t look as if Emilie Flöge is a drain on him financially, a burden on him emotionally – no, these truths are as certain as castles in the air on a windy day. These are not to be my trump cards in this battle.

Though I have another battle to contend with on a still more personal front.

Ever since that Thursday when he showed me I was ‘desirable’, I have turned up for work every day. It has not been easy. Forcing myself out of bed, I have pushed my body out into the street, dragged my feet over cobblestones, breathed deeply before entering the studio. I have done everything within my control to conceal the truth. Yet it is what’s outside my control that threatens to give me away. Oh my own treacherous body. Tangled and taut, it struggles to accept food, rejecting sustenance completely as the day and the time comes round again.

Thursday afternoon: 3 o’clock. My insides tighten. The taste of bile surges up through my throat once again, fills my mouth. Oh no, don’t go thinking I’m pregnant. There could be no two women in more different states. While Consuela expands and blooms with new life, I dwindle and struggle to come to terms with the death of my old one.

Yet Gustav is newly fascinated with his blooming model, drawing her ever-changing shape until he is forced to drop his pencil and run across the hall to his living room. He barely looks at me. If I didn’t know better I would say that he felt if not guilty then uncomfortable around me.

When he has gone to join the three sisters, Consuela and I make the most of this time to lie still and be silent. Though tempted, I resist the urge to infect the peace with my ugly confession. I need to get through this on my own. I am trapped and have no choice but to be here. The sooner I accept that the better.

I lose myself, rubbing Consuela’s back, enjoying the closeness as we listen to the excited voices coming from across the hall. Mainly women’s voices punctuated by a low-growled monosyllable here and there. Gustav. The Bear who sounds more bearlike still when muffled by thick block walls. As for the sisters, they are the Witches: nasty, ugly, old. Their cackling scratches me with broken nails. They have surely cast a spell on him as he treats them with such reverence and care.

Perhaps it is true – these are the women he would marry (nature helping the sisters fulfil the other half of the condition – that he should never desire them – in making them as physically unattractive as frogs). And where does love come in? Desire or marriage? And where does that leave me? Consuela? Her baby? I pray that it’s a boy. Torturing thoughts throw my imagination forwards to the world of the future. I pull it back before it sees too much.

But then we hear something else. Something unexpected to set my thoughts on a completely different path.

The same Thursday afternoon it grows uncomfortably hot for Consuela. I go to the door to let the air in. And in with it comes the soothing breath of hope from across the way. It blows gently on our skin, massaging us with the cooling currents of change.

Change. For women. In the form of votes. It’s Emilie who mentions this first. That my nemesis should breathe the words that herald my liberation astounds me. I’ve seen the posters. How could I miss them? They’re plastered all over Vienna.

‘Do women really believe they’ll get the vote?’ It’s a woman’s voice that utters these words though I can’t put my finger on who she is.

Then I hear her: ‘Please, Pauline. Really. It’s 1911. In this day and age women should surely have it.’

Emilie Flöge’s voice fills me with both awe and hatred: her words are inspiring, but how can the woman, who saw my bloodstained hem and said nothing, possibly mean them?

‘There is to be a rally on the 18th of March and I for one shall be going,’ she adds. I make a mental note of the date as the Flöge sisters express their interest, all at the same time, their excitement at the prospect of a women’s rally now expressed in volume and speed so that, for a while, I am unable to pick out a single word.

Then I get one. ‘Eman –’ I lose it: it comes again. ‘Eman –’ I strain to make it out, waiting for it to be said again. ‘Emancipation.’ That’s it. I’m not sure what the word means, but as I lie there listening to the conversation in the room across the way, it is bandied about with such relish, that I work out it has to mean something wonderful.

‘Oh yes, emancipation, Emilie, for women! Women have been shackled for centuries! It’s time for all of us to slip our chains.’ (I think that’s Helene.)

As these words permeate my consciousness, lying there, next to Consuela, rubbing her back, it dawns on me how they apply to me, much more than to any Flöge sister, as I lie shackled to the bed in the studio, my insides pulled and constricted by fear. Fear to speak out for fear of losing my job. And over the Thursdays to come, as I lie there in my chains, soothing Consuela, remembering to leave the studio door open, the women’s words seep in with a key for my model’s manacles. I dare to hope that change is on its way.

Though the fact the message is delivered via the likes of Emilie Flöge sticks in my throat.

***

She might have been reduced to tears at having to go to French classes on her own but I learn that Emilie Flöge is a strong woman. She exercises a power over Gustav that changes the tone in the studio for a short while, impacting greatly on us all.

We girls wear what we’re told are ‘clothes for liberated women’ for many of our modelling sessions at the moment, and the talk of emancipation has burst the four-walled banks of the living room and is now sloshing around under our feet in the studio, covering the floor in a slippery, insubstantial layer of hope, which, to walk on too enthusiastically, leaves a girl flat on the floor.

That’s because even Gustav is talking the talk. And, after what’s happened, it’s difficult for me to take him too seriously (even though a part of me can’t help hoping the hope. Am I a fool to do so?). When I cast my eyes to the floor to avoid his gaze I am immediately reminded of how dangerous he can be, and I shudder at the memory. Besides, Gustav may be familiar with the individual words – words such as unity, liberty, rights – yet when he puts them together in a sentence he clearly has no understanding of what they really mean. Though if the women of the world united we’d soon see some improvements around here.

The three Flöge sisters run a fashion house on the Mariahilferstrasse 1B, Casa Piccola, telephone 1621. It’s a very fashionable street. And they socialize with very fashionable women who wear their very fashionable clothes, which they buy from their very fashionable shop. I’ve seen portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer and Sonia Knips around the studio – it always helps to put a face to a name. And Hilde’s been to their shop a few times – oh, but not to buy anything, just in case you’re wondering! She’s had to go there for Gustav.

It’s ‘stunning’ and the interior is ‘so modern’. Should be, as Gustav got Jo and Kolo, his Wiener Werkstätte friends, to design it all. All right for some. Helene, Pauline, and Emilie: the very fashionable Flöges who want to free women with their exclusive designs and crusade against the foe with their prohibitively expensive made-to-measure range. United. Little matter that they don’t get on.

Nevertheless, they’ve unwittingly introduced subversion into our fold by spreading the emancipated word, a word only ever intended for somewhere vague out there, to be passed around among educated women, never within their own kitchens, parlours, workrooms, and studios. Though they don’t tell you that part. No, I’ve worked that one out for myself.

Consuela and I are early to the studio this morning. Earlier than usual. She’s in the final phase of her pregnancy and the studio has never looked so clean and ordered. It’s going to be a busy day. We’ve arrived even before Gustav has gone to have his usual breakfast at the Tivoli Café (it’s not far from the Schönbrunn Palace) and we listen to him while he waits for his horse-drawn carriage to arrive to take him there. I am not sure what to make of what he’s saying. Consuela laughs. I think she’s heard it all before.

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