The Forever Horse Read online

  “Someone who is very, very good at something at a very young age. Like Mozart.”

  “Did he draw horses then?”

  “No. He played the piano.”

  “What’s the point of being good at that?”

  “Different people are good at different stuff,” Dad said.

  I decided at that moment that I would only ever be good at drawing horses.

  The next weekend, we caught the bus to Hyde Park. Dad had bought me a new sketch pad with thick, white textured pages, and he’d made us lunch to take with us.

  “There are horses here,” Dad explained. “They keep them in stables not far away, and they’re allowed to ride them through the park.”

  We sat on the grass beneath the trees that lined Rotten Row and waited, and within minutes we saw our first real-life horses! A pair of black-and-white cobs with fluffy feathered legs, Roman noses and broad backsides. I did a sketch of them as best I could as they went past, and then at home that night I painted over my original drawing to get the light and the colours right.

  “Do you really think I’m a podgy?” I asked Dad. He was confused. Then he got what I meant.

  “Not a podgy,” he said. “Prodigy. It means you are a young genius. You have a gift.”

  So … yeah, I’m a prodigy. Or at least I was. If you look it up in wikipedia a prodigy has to be under ten! And I’m twelve now, almost thirteen, so I’m way over the hill – that is modern life for you. Anyway the prodigy thing is not all it’s cracked up to be. You’d think that being an art genius would be a good thing. I mean, I’m pretty sure everyone loved Mozart when he was a kid. But it’s totally not working out like that for me. For a start, Mrs Mason, my teacher at Brixton Heights Academy, is a total cow and thinks drawing in class is, like, a crime or something. As far as she is concerned, it would be better to be Adolf Hitler than to draw horses. At least that was the impression she gave at the parent-teacher conferences.

  “She’s wasting everyone’s time and disrupting my class,” Mrs Mason said.

  “Because drawing horses isn’t part of your art curriculum?” my dad asked.

  “Mr Thompson,” Mrs Mason said icily. “Maisie doesn’t restrict her drawing to during art class. She is drawing horses all – the – time.”

  Mrs Mason reached below her desk.

  “Maisie’s maths book,” she said as she held it up and flicked through the pages. There were no sums, no formulas on the cross-hatched pages. Just horses. Lots and lots of horses.

  “I could show you her English book, which is exactly the same.” Mrs Mason continued her character assassination. “She draws in science; even during religious studies! She is the most impossible, unteachable child I have ever encountered in all my years as an educator …”

  Mrs Mason was so worked up that when the bell went off to signal it was time for the next parent, she ignored it! James McCavity, who was sitting with his mum in the row of chairs behind us, waiting for his turn, gave me a sympathetic smile as I sat there dumbly while she ranted. When the bell rang a second time and she was still going, teachers from the other classes who were in the school hall began to stop talking and look over at Mrs Mason, who had got quite red in the face. And then, at last, when she had run all the way to the end of her tether, my dad spoke up.

  “Did you ever look at her drawings, Mrs Mason?”

  “I’m sorry?” Mrs Mason was confused. “What does that have to do with it? I’m talking about Maisie’s bad manners in class.”

  My dad shook his head and sighed. “Are you aware that Maisie’s mum died when she was a newborn?”

  Mrs Mason looked taken aback at this. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I wasn’t … I didn’t know.”

  “No. Of course not,” Dad said. “So you didn’t know that I’m a solo dad. I raise Maisie on my own and my time is tight. I work a sixty-hour week and I’ve had to make excuses to get off work early today. I came here expecting we were going to discuss what your school was doing to encourage and extend my gifted child.”

  “Mr Thompson!” Mrs Mason bristled back. “Even Picasso had to go to school you know.”

  Dad laughed and said, “You know what, Mrs Mason? You’re dead wrong, but that’s the one interesting point you’ve made today.”

  Afterwards, as we walked home, Dad told me about Pablo Picasso, one of the most famous artists in the world, and how Picasso was accepted into a fancy art school when he was just thirteen.

  “I bet Mrs Mason wouldn’t tell off Picasso,” Dad grumbled.

  “I think she probably would,” I replied.

  In a weird way, though, we had Mrs Mason to thank for what was to come. If it hadn’t been for her, Dad would never have got the idea into his head that I could be like Picasso too. He was hatching a plan right there as we walked home, but he didn’t talk about it with me yet. He just told me that Mrs Mason was a silly old sausage, and we got fish and chips and Dad told me to at least try and look like I was paying attention in class in future to keep Mrs Mason from calling him again.

  He spent the rest of the night on the computer, and at one point I remember he came into the living room and began to sort through a stack of my drawings on the coffee table.

  “Where’s that one you did the other weekend?” he asked me. “Those two black-and-white horses trotting in the park with the big oak trees overhead? It’s not on the fridge any more.”

  I always put my best works on the fridge and then after a week or so I put them away in a drawer in my room. That was where I found the black-and-white horses.

  Dad looked at the drawing and smiled. “This will do the trick,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant by that at the time, and I didn’t think to ask.

  For the rest of term there was a truce between me and Mrs Mason. It wasn’t as if she started liking me or anything. That would have been too much to hope for. But she didn’t keep looking over my shoulder to see what I was doing either. I think she couldn’t be bothered facing down my dad again.

  It was almost the end of term when Dad came home one evening and called me into the living room. There was something about the tone of his voice that had me really worried.

  “Am I in trouble?” I asked when I saw him standing there with that serious look on his face.

  Dad didn’t say anything. He held out his hand and I saw the envelope. It was made of thick creamy paper embossed with a silver seal that had words in French on it.

  “Is it for me? You’ve opened it already,” I pointed out to him. The envelope was torn.

  Then I saw he was shaking. There were tears in his eyes.

  “Dad, is everything OK?” I was worried now. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re in,” he said.

  “In what?”

  “The School of Arts in Paris,” Dad said. “A school term on a full, all-expenses-paid scholarship.”

  “But I didn’t apply to art school,” I said.

  And then I remembered that day after the parent-teacher conference, when he’d searched out that drawing I did of the two black-and-white cobs.

  “You didn’t tell me you were going to apply to any art school,” I said.

  “I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Dad said. “It’s a scholarship for an English pupil to study there. They get over a thousand applicants – and only one kid gets picked.”

  “And they picked me?”

  “They picked you,” Dad confirmed.

  “So, Maisie.” He smiled at me. “What do you say? Do you want to go to Paris?”

  We went out to a French restaurant to celebrate. It seemed appropriate, considering.

  “The Parisian School of the Beaux-Arts is the most famous art school in the world,” Dad said as the waiter handed us menus. I looked at the prices – eight pounds for a green salad!

  “Did you win the lottery?” I asked.

  “We deserve a special treat this once,” Dad replied.

  “But this Paris school,” I pressed home the question. “W
hat about that? Is it expensive?”

  “Very expensive,” Dad said. “But your fees and expenses for the term are paid for. That’s what a scholarship means.”

  “So you don’t have to pay anything?” I went back to the menu. “What are l’escargots?”

  “Snails,” Dad said. “Dare you to order them!”

  I wasn’t falling for that. I got burger and chips – in French it was called steak haché and frites. I could read the menu a little. I had taken French this year for the first time at school, and Dad always joked that the only words I seemed to retain in my brain were about food.

  I squirted tomato sauce all over the frites as Dad explained to me about the scholarship.

  “How will it work, though?” I asked. “If we have to go and live in Paris? How will you do your job?”

  We were on the puddings by now. Dad had ordered the chocolate mousse. He gave it a prod with his spoon, but he didn’t eat. He didn’t speak for a bit either, and then he said. “It would just be you, Maisie. I need to stay and work – they won’t hold my job for that long. You’d have to go alone.”

  I had just shoved a forkful of meringue in my mouth so I had to chew before I could reply.

  “I can’t go and live in Paris on my own. I’m thirteen!”

  “I know,” Dad said. “I’m not sure the scholarship people realised you were so young either. I think I forgot to fill in the bit with your age because in their reply they asked me what university you were currently attending!”

  “Do you think they’ll withdraw the offer when they find out?”

  “I don’t know,” Dad admitted.

  I felt my heart sink. “So I’m not going to Paris?”

  Dad ruffled my hair.

  “Don’t fret yet, Mais,” he said. “I’m going to talk to them. Perhaps there’s a way we can make it work.”

  ***

  Let me tell you something about my dad. He is not a man who admits defeat. Yes, after he spoke to the Paris school, he said it had come as “a bit of a shock” to them when they found out I was only thirteen. Apparently they wanted to cancel my scholarship on the spot. Except for one woman who stood up for us. Her name was Nicole Bonifait – she was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Rose Bonifait, the artist who started the whole scholarship in the first place. Nicole Bonifait told them that she would take responsibility for me, acting as my guardian while I was in Paris for the term. Then Dad spoke to my school in Brixton and they agreed to let me go on exchange (sucks to Mrs Mason!) and it was done!

  One month later, I stood with my bags at Charles de Gaulle airport, being pushed this way and that as people hustled by me, surging through the arrivals terminal. I was in Paris! All. By. Myself.

  And for a brief moment, standing there in the terminal, I felt entirely and utterly alone and completely terrified. And then, it was as if the crowds parted in front of me by magic and through the throng came Nicole Bonifait. Her flame-red hair was loose and bouncing on her shoulders as she hurried towards me.

  “Welcome to Paris, Maisie,” she said warmly as she grabbed my bags from the trolley. “Your life as an artist begins here and now.”

  ***

  We drove into the city round the Arc de Triomphe, and through the tinted windows of Nicole’s black Renault with its own chauffeur I caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Then we were whizzing along the broad avenues that run alongside the Seine and crossing over the river. I looked out of the window at pink horse-chestnut trees in bloom, and elegant cafés on every corner and felt like I was in a movie. Paris!

  “This is the Left Bank,” Nicole explained. “The artists’ side of the city. The most famous names all went to art school here: Matisse, Picasso and Renoir, and Rose of course. That café on your left? Les Deux Magots? It was Rose’s favourite. Always filled with painters, talking and eating and drinking.”

  Nicole saw the worried look on my face.

  “Is there something wrong, Maisie?”

  “I feel like I’m going to let you down,” I said. “I’m not a real artist.”

  Nicole laughed. “But of course you are! You’re the chosen one, Maisie! You follow in the footsteps of the great Rose Bonifait herself. Your scholarship bears her name and her world is now yours. Even the rooms that you will live in while you are here in Paris are the same ones that Rose herself occupied when she attended the school.”

  A block down from Les Deux Magots café we pulled up outside a branch of the most famous cake shop in Paris, Ladurée. I got out of the car and gazed in through the gilt-trimmed windows of the store at a display of rainbow-coloured macarons, little meringues stacked up as if they were precious jewels. We swept past its pretty windows and went in through the doors of the building, into a tiny foyer, which housed an ancient elevator. Nicole ushered me in and slammed the gold doors closed without waiting for the driver. “He’ll follow us up with the bags,” she assured me as she pressed the button for the top floor.

  The elevator rose and I watched the floor numbers whizz by as we went up, up, up. “The Bonifait corporation owns the entire building,” Nicole explained. “Most of the levels are offices these days, but the upper level remains our family home …”

  The elevator came to a sudden, jerky stop and the doors opened and we stepped out into a grand entrance room with an ornate gold ceiling, brilliant green swirly malachite pillars and cold marble floors. It was so huge our entire apartment back home in Brixton could have fitted into it.

  “Come this way. Your rooms are in the east wing,” Nicole strode ahead, her boots clacking on the marble floor. “You’ll have your own bathroom and a small kitchen, but there is no need to cook. You’ll take your meals with me and Françoise in the main dining room.”

  “Who is Françoise?” I asked.

  The answer to the question greeted us in the next room. A girl about my age with flame-coloured hair, who looked very much like Nicole, was lying on a sofa piled high with long-haired caramel Persian cats.

  “Maman! You’re back!” the girl leapt up from the sofa and the cats yowled in complaint as they were flung off in her wake.

  “You must be Maisie!” the girl rushed to me and kissed me on both cheeks.

  “You can’t imagine how excited I am to have you here.” The girl’s eyes were bright. “All the other artists who’ve come to stay have been boring adults. But now we have you, and this is going to be the best summer ever. We can go swimming and have ice creams and …”

  “Françoise.” Nicole rolled her eyes. “Maisie is not here for a play date! She is here to attend art school.”

  “I know that!” Françoise sniffed. “You don’t have to be boring about it, though! She can still eat ice creams, can’t she?”

  Françoise clutched my arm as if I were about to bolt off. “Come on, let me show you the rooms.”

  Françoise dragged me away before Nicole could stop her, and we scooted together down the corridors and through a door that led to the east wing. Here, the mood of the apartment changed. No more flashy gold and marble. The room I was standing in now clearly belonged to an artist. The worn parquet floors were spattered with paint. A row of easels in various sizes leant against the wall. Down one wall of the room the windows were almost floor to ceiling, letting in the most amazing light and giving me a view over what seemed to be the whole of Paris. “It’s very basic, I know.” Françoise was apologetic.

  “It’s perfect,” I said.

  “Really?” Françoise wrinkled up her nose. “I find it a bit drab and grubby, but it’s good that you like it.”

  ***

  I phoned Dad before bedtime. I told him I’d arrived safely and that everyone was very nice. I could tell he was trying to keep the conversation light to stop me feeling homesick. Neither of us were used to being apart like this. All my life, apart from one school camp, I’d never been away without Dad. “Good luck for tomorrow, Maisie,” he said as he hung up. And those words kept me awake way after midnight as I lay in my bed an
d looked out of the windows at the Paris roofline under the inky night sky and felt sick to my stomach about my first day at school.

  ***

  I should never have brought my own canvas. I realised this as I walked across the cobbled courtyard. No one else was carrying one. At the office of the school administrator, Madame Richard, I sat on the chair and waited with my stupid big canvas and my bag, feeling like a little kid in Year Zero at primary school. Madame Richard opened her door. “Maisie? Here you go!”

  I thought she would show me inside and talk to me about the school. I expected at the very least she’d show me where the classroom was! Instead, she just gave me a pink slip of paper and waved me towards classroom 1C!

  In the end I found it by myself. Classroom 1C was on the lower level of the building, and the number was written in black on the door.

  I could hear the buzz of conversation as the door swung open, but the moment they clapped eyes on me the words froze in the air. Sixteen art students, all of them so old they looked, like, almost twenty or something, stood silently behind their easels and stared straight at me. I have never wanted the ground to open up and swallow me so bad.

  “You must be Maisie Thompson?” A bearded man in a dust-brown short-sleeved shirt and black-paint splattered jeans came over and shook my hand. “My name is Augustin. Congratulations on your scholarship.”

  He said the words in perfectly accented English and then he muttered, “It would be nice if they would consult me in these matters of course …”

  He said this in English too so I’m sure he meant me to understand him, and the meaning of his words, that he hadn’t been the one to select me for the scholarship and perhaps was not entirely happy about it. Certainly it didn’t seem like he was congratulating me at all and he definitely seemed disgruntled about having me in his class.

  “You may take the easel at the front of the room,” Augustin directed.

  I felt uneasy. It meant that I would have my back to my classmates and they could look over my shoulder and see what I was doing. The idea that these sophisticated art students could see my work as I was creating it suddenly made me deeply self-conscious.