Part 21 (1/2)
”I was told before I came that Master Vermeer rents out the tavern,” Francesca said after Clara had knocked and they stood waiting.
”That is correct. He gave up everything to do with it after his father died, which was shortly before his marriage.”
The maidservant who admitted them was an amiable-looking young woman, her hair hidden under a white kerchief knotted at the back, while her blue ap.r.o.n showed that she had been engaged in the usual morning routine of was.h.i.+ng every floor throughout the house.
”The master is not in at the moment, Juffrouw Huys,” she said to Clara while her bright eyes took in Francesca from head to foot with a surrept.i.tious side glance. ”He has gone to send a picture by ca.n.a.lboat to Leiden, but my mistress wishes me to take Juffrouw Visser straight to her.”
”Very well, Elizabeth.” Clara turned to Francesca. ”I'll leave you now, but I'll be back at six when your day here ends.”
The door was shut after her. Elizabeth bobbed as she said, ”This way, if you please, mejuffrouw.”
The house seemed so light and bright after the one in which Francesca had awakened that morning that she almost blinked. It was well furnished in the spa.r.s.e Dutch style that set off each piece to advantage with pastel walls hung with maps and paintings, checkered marble floors and bronze chandeliers suspended from white plastered ceilings with black crossbeams. There were the usual steps between different levels on the ground floor and a maze of corridors through which Elizabeth led her before stopping to tap on a door. A woman's voice replied from within.
”Enter!”
Elizabeth opened the door for Francesca, who went into the room alone. Catharina Vermeer sat serenely suckling her baby, at whom she was gazing. With her blue bodice unlaced to reveal the whiteness of her chemise and the pale curve of her naked breast, she could have been posing for a painting of the Madonna and Child. An aura of light from the window shone about her neatly dressed head, giving a sheen to her light brown hair and touching the down on the infant's head. Slowly she looked up and for a moment the illusion held, for her expression was one of sweet contentment. Then, like an awakening sleeper, she emerged from the euphoria of single-minded motherhood and became alert again to her other duties as mistress of the house, her face animated and smiling.
”You're here! I hadn't heard you arrive. I'm Catharina. There's no need for any formality between us. Come and sit down. Have you breakfasted? You can't paint on an empty stomach and I can send to the kitchen-Oh, you have eaten. I've heard Vrouw Wolff keeps a good table. Jan won't be long. Oh yes, I call him Jan, although he is Johannes to most of those who have known him longer than I. That's eighteen years and we've been married for seventeen of them. Our elder son is named Johannes too.”
Francesca had warmed to her immediately, for she exuded an open friendliness that was entirely without guile. She had a round face with a creamy complexion, very sparkling brown eyes under arched brows, a pretty nose with a slight tilt and when her smile was wide it curved her mouth like a crescent moon lying horizontally. In all it was a well-formed, expressive face that any artist would want to paint, and Francesca thought it not surprising Willem had said that Catharina was her husband's favorite model.
”What is your baby's name?” Francesca peeped down at the infant guzzling its milk.
”This is Ignatius-a long name for such a mite, but I'm almost running out of names that I like for our children. I've been put off so many by people I know. I would have invented lovely names if it had been possible, but then children have to live with them all through school and you know how children hate to be different from one another.”
Francesca was highly amused, for it had all been said with tongue in cheek and yet with a basis of truth. This was a charming woman who, in spite of constant pregnancies and all the many tasks a large family created, had lost neither her sense of fun nor her youthful looks.
”It might have been possible to name them after tulips,” Francesca joked. ”Semper Augustus would have sounded very grand, or there's Laprock, which would suit a prince in a fairy tale as well as a handsome male child.”
Full of laughter, Catharina plucked the baby from her breast and held him high to look into his sleepy little face. ”You might have been called Catolejn's Red and Yellow! How would you have liked that, my sweeting?” The baby burped just as if he had made a disparaging reply and she gave a shriek of mirth, which blended with Francesca's laughter, and hugged him to her before removing him to her shoulder and patting his back. With dancing eyes she looked across at her husband's new pupil. ”You must be a gardener or a great lover of flowers to know those names.”
”Both. I could say the same about you.”
Catharina shook her head. ”No, but I've heard so much about flowers from my mother, who lives in Oude Langendijk, the street near where you are staying. She has a garden with parterres and trees that is quite perfect and yet she lets my children play there. We have no garden here. Look out of the window and you will see.”
Francesca went to the window and leaned out. Below her a narrow ca.n.a.l s.h.i.+mmered alongside the rear wall of the house and those of its neighbors as far as she could see up and down the length of the street of Voldersgracht. Small bridges gave access to it from the alleyways leading through from the square. She saw at a glance that the almshouse of redbrick opposite had been depicted in a painting that she had noticed on her way to this room and that only could have been painted from this very window.
”I saw this view on the corridor wall,” she said, having retained an instant impression of the painting's beauty and peacefulness. One of the inhabitants of the almshouse was sitting in an open doorway with some sewing, exactly as another woman had been portrayed in the picture.
”That's one of my favorite works by Jan,” Catharina said happily. ”He called it A Little Street in Delft. When I particularly like one of his paintings he lets me keep it. That's why when people come to his art gallery, thinking to buy one of his works, they find nothing there and do not know what we have in the house.”
Francesca returned to where she had been sitting. ”My father painted several portraits of my mother that he'll never part with. To return to the subject of your mother's garden, how often do your children go there?”
”As often as they can. I'm afraid they run riot when they get there, but my mother never minds. She grows the most superb tulips and one year two of the children tripped and fell among some of the best. You should have seen that array of broken stalks!” Catharina rolled her eyes in dismay.
”Perhaps your mother would let me make some sketches of her flowers and then I could create a floral painting later on.”
”I'm sure she would. Mind you, I don't think you'll get much flower painting with Jan, although I'm sure he'll let you please yourself sometimes as to what subjects you choose. You won't find him a hard taskmaster, although he can be terribly strict at times. He has to be with the children and so do I, or else he'd get no peace in which to work. I think that's why the children get so exuberant when they're in my mother's garden. There they can make as much noise as they like.”
”Does Master Vermeer paint many portraits of them?”
”No! They're far too fidgety and restless. He has drawings of them, but if you didn't know we had offspring you'd think when viewing his paintings that there was not a child in the house. Except,” she added as an afterthought, ”he has painted me during two or three of my pregnancies.”
”How many children have you?”
”Eight now.” Then Catharina's face clouded and her eyes went to the baby in her arms. ”We have lost two children, the second only last summer.”
”I'm so sorry.”
”I can't talk about it.”
”I would not expect you to,” Francesca declared sympathetically. Out of consideration for the woman's feelings she took up another subject. ”Is there one of your husband's paintings in this room?”
Catharina looked up again and shook her head. ”There are a few in other rooms in the house and a half-finished one in the studio. Maybe you would like to go along there and see where you will be working while I change the baby's linen before putting him down to sleep?”
”Yes. How do I find it?”
Francesca would have found her way easily from the clear directions Catharina gave her, but before she reached the studio she met three little girls waiting for a glimpse of her.
”Good day, children,” she greeted them. ”I'm Francesca Visser and, as I expect you know, I've come to complete my training as an artist with your father. Would you like to tell me your names?”
The tallest girl, with a prim air and hair the color of honey, bobbed respectfully. ”I'm named Catharina after my mother, but Papa started calling me Rina and that is how it stayed. I'm nine.”
”Are you the eldest girl?”
”Oh no, that's Maria, who is fifteen.”
Francesca spoke to the second girl, who was bright-eyed and freckled. ”And you?”
”I'm Lysbeth. On my next birthday I'll be eight.”
The youngest, a merry-looking child with impish eyes, jumped up and down now that it was her turn to speak. ”I'm Beatrix and I'll soon be five!”
Rina gave her a shove. ”Be still now. You'll wake the baby with all that noise.” To Francesca she added, ”Our new brother is three months old.”
”I saw him. He is a fine baby.” Francesca knelt down and put an arm around Beatrix, drawing her close.
Both the other girls knelt down too, Rina to move into the crook of Francesca's free arm while Lysbeth, conscious of her appearance at all times, spread her skirts carefully around her. They started to ask Francesca many questions about her home and family, wanting to know if she had any more sisters and if she had brothers too. In the animated conversation none of them noticed the sound of footsteps along the corridor until Francesca saw out of the corner of her eye that someone in a pair of bucket-topped boots had come to a halt beside her.
She looked up from where she knelt. Master Jan Vermeer, hands resting on his hips with elbows jutting, a black hat thrust to the back of his head, was grinning down at her. His face registered with her before he spoke. It was long and oval, framed by a shoulder-length ma.s.s of frizzy brown hair, eyebrows arched over twinkling eyes. The thin nose, turned down at the end with a slight crookedness to it as if at some time it had been broken, had nostrils flaring back. The mouth was wide and sensual, revealing small, uneven teeth, and his chin was firmly rounded. He leaned over her, thoroughly entertained by finding her in the midst of three of his offspring.
”Are you a new nursemaid or my apprentice?”
”Both at the moment!”
He reached a friendly hand down to her and raised her to her feet. ”Welcome to Delft, Francesca!”