“Perhaps you’re right,” said Libby slowly.
“But you don’t think so!” laughed Madame Merle. “Very well, my young friend.” She crossed the room and impulsively adjusted and readjusted Libby’s hair. “How lovely you are!” There was something genuinely motherly in the gesture, and Libby felt it in the core and marrow of her being. “Only I don’t want you to remember my words down the road and say, I wish I had listened to that clever, moldy Madame Merle.”
Just then the front door of Gardencourt opened, there was murmuring in the hall, and the latest doctor, the most trusted one, made his exit from the house. He had taken his hat from his head, and he walked slowly, thoughtfully, to his car, and when he pulled the driver’s door shut, it made a heavy sound.
“I’d better just step out and see your aunt,” said Madame Merle, who went out quietly.
Libby sat alone by the fire, looking out the window, stroking the head of the small white dog. She watched the Irish wind blow in patterns back and forth along the long grass behind Gardencourt. It made the air seem visible, a kind of intricate, ghostly dance. The grass was furred with frost and overgrown. She shivered without knowing why.
At last the door to the parlor opened and Lazarus entered without a trace of his usual smile. He seemed to have aged; his lank white hair falling over his forehead now looked like that of an old man. His hands were sunk in his pockets. “It’s all over,” he said simply.
Libby went and put her arms around him. “My poor darling,” she said.
Chapter Ten
Madame Merle stopped in front of the Paris apartment where she had first met Libby Archer. It was a registered and historic building, with a small blue circular sign attesting to that fact, the portico carved of marble so fluidly it might have been made out of something softer, like soap, with veins of rosy-pink running through it. It was the sort of palatial apartment that many visitors—Clara Merle included—would have given their eyeteeth to own. Mrs. Sachs used it as a pied-à-terre—a stepping stone between Italy, where she spent most of her time, and Ireland, where she had spent as little time as possible over the past twenty years.
As Clara finished paying the taxi fare, she noticed a new sign declaring the property up for sale, in French and in English. “They waste no time,” she said to herself before she rang the bell. She was wearing her black Chanel suit with a crisp white shirt. Even here in Paris, her appearance was striking and drew admiring glances from the passersby.
Mrs. Sachs opened the door and they kissed each other on both cheeks, in cosmopolitan style. Mrs. Sachs of course was also wearing black, but her appearance was almost untidy, for once.
“I know,” she said without preamble. “You’re surprised I’m selling the place so soon. But I am trying to lighten the load.”
“Nothing you do will ever surprise me,” said Clara Merle. “But how are you getting on?”
“I am surviving,” said Mrs. Sachs. “My husband was a good man. I think he came to feel I was a good wife . . . at least, he told me so at the end. I hope I helped him to be a better man as well.”
“You gave him many opportunities to sacrifice himself,” said Madame Merle, with her strange, crooked smile.
“We lived so much apart. Daniel understood the necessity of that. We were connected, even if we didn’t live as other couples do. But he knew that, even in my foreign life, my life abroad, I never showed the slightest preference for anyone else.”
“No,” said Madame Merle in an undertone, moving around the room, taking in the breathtaking views for the last time. “Only for yourself.”
“What was that?” asked Mrs. Sachs. “I can say this much, at least. I never once sacrificed my husband for anyone else.”
“Oh certainly not,” said Madame Merle, as quietly as before, speaking into the glass of the window, so that only her breath recorded that she had spoken aloud. “You’ve never done anything for anyone else.” Then, in an audible voice, “Will it sell quickly, do you think?”
“Heavens yes. We’ve already had two offers above the asking price. Nineteen fifty-four was a good year for real estate, and 1955 promises to be better. My husband chose this property himself. He had remarkably good luck in business.”
“And none in his private life,” Madame Merle murmured.
“Am I going deaf, or are you mumbling?” snapped Mrs. Sachs. “I think my ears have closed from the plane. I bring chewing gum, but it does no good.” She lifted a small Lalique vase and put it down again. “I shall ship a few things—but only a few. He left me this apartment, but of course I have a much better one in Rome. Lazarus has Gardencourt; he would never leave Ireland for long. My husband was very generous to a few charities, but that’s as one would expect. However there was one oddity,” she added after a pause. “He left our niece, Libby, a fortune.”
“A fortune!” Clara Merle swung around, her hands clasped.
“Yes, Libby comes into something like two hundred thousand pounds.”
Madame Merle’s pale-blue eyes dilated. Her hands, still clasped, rose to her breast. “Ah, the clever creature!”
“There was no cleverness involved,” said Mrs. Sachs shortly. “The girl is stunned.”
Clara Merle’s color rose; at the same time she dropped her gaze. “It certainly is clever to achieve such results—with no effort at all.”
Mrs. Sachs frowned. “There was no effort involved, I assure you.”
Madame Merle smiled, to cover a number of combating instincts—cynicism, envy, disappointment. But she had expected nothing from old Mr. Sachs, surely. “There was nothing between us like that,” she would have told her friends, snapping her fingers. “Now his son might have been a different story.” Instead, to Mrs. Sachs she simply said, “Libby would not have stepped into a fortune had she not been the most lovable, charming girl in the world. That’s a form of cleverness, surely.”
“She was my husband’s niece, and an orphan,” she said. “They were fond of each other; one could see that. She was the child of his only sister. Whatever she achieved, she did unconsciously. She’s with me now—Lazarus has gone down to the Riviera for his health. And as for cleverness, at the moment she’s just stupefied.”
“Is she?”
“She doesn’t know what to think. It’s as if someone fired a cannon behind her, and she’s checking to see if she’s still in one piece. When the solicitor made his little speech to her, Libby burst into tears. The principal will remain in an Irish bank, and she’s to draw interest monthly.”
“How delicious!” Madame Merle touched her lips. “After she’s drawn the money a few times, she’ll get used to it. The shock will wear off and something else will settle in its place.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “How is Lazarus taking it?”
“He’s devastated, of course. He adored his father; they were two peas in a pod.” Madame Merle made a gesture of impatience, which Mrs. Sachs registered. “Oh, do you mean about the money? Yes, some of his inheritance went to Libby. I don’t think he minds it. He’s never minded anything his father did.”
“Perhaps he even suggested it,” said Clara Merle, her eyes large and bright.
“It’s more likely he’d have suggested the money go to me,” said Mrs. Sachs. “In any event, it’s not the kind of thing that we would discuss. Lazarus is not a young man who’s always thinking about number one.”
“That might depend on who he thinks of as number one,” remarked Clara. “Am I to see your happy niece while I’m in Paris?”
“Don’t expect to find her happy,” said Mrs. Sachs. “Good God—it would be unseemly. And Libby is never that. But she is genuinely somber these days—as if she’s carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.”
“I suppose so,” mused Clara. “I would like very much to see her. May I?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Sachs answered irritably. “We will be at the usual Paris salons, once a few months have passed.”
“Yes of course,” said Clara. “Nothing m
ust get in the way of that!”
Those few months later, Libby was standing at the foot of a gilded Paris staircase, looking like a very different young woman than the one who had been packing boxes in her late father’s house in Rochester, New York. Her dress was Parisian. It tied at the waist with a simple white satin ribbon. Her hairstyle too was à la mode in Paris—shorter and sleeker, all the rage in 1955. She had traded her Moondrops lipstick for a paler shade of mauvey pink. Yet she looked somber indeed, like someone wearing a costume that was a few pounds too heavy, too stiff. She was smiling with helpless politeness at the small group of women—fellow expatriates, all of them at least ten or fifteen years her senior—who encircled her.
“I can get you the name of my manicurist,” said the plumpest of the circle. “She does everything comme il faut. There is even a name for these white tips. They call it a French manicure.”
“I would like her number as well,” put in the woman standing next to her.
“I carry her card for this purpose,” said the plump woman, smiling benignly. “It isn’t easy to get an appointment. One must plan well ahead.”
“We could use a fourth for bridge on Wednesdays,” said the eldest of the group. She wore her white hair in an avant-garde swoop. It was said that she collected monographs and knew something about modern art.
“That’s very kind,” answered Libby, “but I don’t play bridge.”
“If you have a quick mind, you will pick it up quickly,” said the bridge player. “And if you don’t”—she glanced severely at one or two in the circle—“you’ll never learn at all. But I think you will be a quick study,” she added more kindly.
“I don’t know how long we will be in Paris,” said Libby. “I would hate to disappoint you.”
“Oh, none of us ever knows how long we will be here in Paris!” laughed another woman. “I thought I would be here for a month or two. And that was in 1943!”
The other women laughed with her. And then the plump woman said, more seriously, “It is not so easy to find a group like ours. Times have changed. Manners, expectations. Just look at all the trouble with the Algerians! Unthinkable a few years ago. We must replace Mendès France with a more sensible point of view.”
At that moment Henrietta swooped in. If Libby was notable for how much she had changed, Henry was as distinguished for how absolutely she had stayed the same. She was now a European correspondent for the papers at home, but that was a change in title and location only. Paris had not touched her. “Are you ready to go?” she asked Libby.
“Almost,” Libby said. “My aunt doesn’t like to wait up much past nine.”
“Thirty minutes,” Henry said, tapping her watch, and off she went. Libby watched her stride off, rather enviously.
“We must protect our interests in Indochine,” said the plump woman. “Despite what others say.”
“I never discuss politics,” said the white-haired woman. “I hear they have a folksinger tonight. I hope he won’t sing political songs.”
“A folksinger!” exclaimed a thin woman with thin, sharp lips. “What on earth is that?”
“Very current,” said the plump woman. “And besides,” she added, shrugging, “anything for a change.”
“I know that young man,” said Libby to Henry, as the salon gathered around the evening’s musician. He was singing “Bound for Glory” in a thin, reedy but pleasant voice. No one had quite stopped their talking to listen to him, but they had lowered their voices.
“We all know that young man,” Henry whispered back. “At least back home we do.”
“No, I mean I know him personally—I feel as if I must,” said Libby.
He was barely out of his teens, and he wore his hair long, under a black cap with a brim. Had he been wearing a black motorcycle jacket, the effect of the long hair might have been menacing, but he was sensitive to his audience, and when he felt their attention wander, or their hackles rise, he settled down into something more cheerful. In fact, he would have suited a school uniform far better than the leather jacket—and then Libby had it.
“It’s little Ned Rosier!” she declared. “Our fathers were friends,” said Libby. “One summer at Canandaigua they rescued me when my father disappeared for a week. Ned was a little angel then, with china-blue eyes. Oh, he’s combed back all his golden curls!” She smiled and waved, and the young man burst into a smile. He waggled the guitar by way of greeting and swung into “Goodnight, Irene.”
As soon as he had finished the song, he made his way through the lukewarm crowd, nodding and smiling to each, came straight to Libby, and seized her hands in a way that turned Henrietta’s heart toward him.
“I thought it was you!” he cried. “You have gotten very beautiful. But mon Dieu,” he added in perfect French. “Je suis désolé. Ton papa . . . très triste. My father told me of your loss.”
“I thought you were American,” said Henry.
“I spent half my life here and half in America,” Ned answered gravely.
Henry narrowed her bright, buttonlike eyes on Ned. “But you were singing American folk songs. So you must have some sense of attachment to your own land.”
Ned smiled his most winning smile. “I am loyal to music itself,” he said. “Now tell me, is it true, Libby? Papa had heard you were engaged to marry Caspar Lockwood.”
“Aha!” said Henrietta. “I like your music better already.”
“Thank you,” said Ned.
“It is not true,” said Libby.
Ned’s face fell slightly. “Tant pis. The man is a genius. He was changing the face of music, he had made great strides, and the man who changes the music can change the whole culture. That at least is my opinion,” he added. “Jazz, the blues, country music, the folk songs, the great singers like Johnny Ray. Do you know what he said?” Without waiting for their answer, he went on. “He said, ‘I make them feel. I exhaust them; I destroy them.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Charming,” said Henrietta.
“But your Mr. Lockwood has turned to computers now. There’s no future in that. He was on the right track with music. Do you think he’ll go back to working on improving the LP?”
“He’s not my Mr. Lockwood,” said Libby.
“More’s the pity,” answered Ned.
“On that we agree,” said Henry. “She might have made something great of him. The two of them together would be a force.”
“Indeed!” said the young man agreeably.
“Pardon,” said a clear, mellow voice behind them. It was Madame Merle. Her hair was swept back in a smooth blonde chignon; small diamond earrings glittered at her ears. The effect was dazzling, and silenced even Ned. Libby made the introductions, and Ned bent his head over Madame Merle’s firm white hand and kissed it.
Clara and Henrietta regarded each other coolly. “How are you?” asked Clara indifferently.
“I’m here. Right here,” answered Henry.
“Yes, of course you are. And my dear friend,” said Clara, embracing Libby. “We have not really spoken since your great loss—”
“I’m glad to see you.”
“It’s been too long. I’ve been away.” Clara held the younger woman by the shoulders, peered into her eyes, and then kissed her rapidly, once on each cheek. Ned had begun talking again to Henry about music, and Clara murmured to Libby, “But we must spend some time alone together. How about tomorrow at the Café d’Étoile? It’s near your aunt’s, a quiet place; shall we say eleven o’clock?” Libby nodded. “Good—I must be off. Salons don’t really suit me. You added something new,” she said to Ned. “I must thank you for that.”
“Oh—well—you’re very welcome,” he said, flustered. “I’m always looking for new places to play,” he added hopefully.
“I’m sure you will find them,” she answered, and turned away without saying goodbye to Henrietta.
Henry watched her go. “I don’t care for that woman,” she said.
“Ned, we must have a meal toge
ther in Paris,” Libby said hurriedly. She had a rather guilty feeling now that she had an appointment to dine alone with Clara Merle, a guilt she hid by digging into her purse for a card, on which she scribbled busily with a pen. “You’ll be around for a little while longer, won’t you?”
“Broke, young, footloose, and fancy-free,” said Ned, hoisting his guitar. “It’s a good time to be alive, ladies!” He kissed his hand to them and made his way into the crowd, accepting compliments as he went and snaring canapés.
“He was always a sweet boy,” said Libby, somewhat defensively.
“Oh, I don’t mind him,” said Henry. “He has a cause, at least. But we’d better get you home, before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?” asked Libby.
“I’m not sure,” admitted Henry. “Let’s start by getting you home, and then I’ll let you know.”
“I’m ready,” said Libby. “We have time to walk back to my aunt’s.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” said Henry.
Madame Merle was waiting with an amused smile the next morning when Libby came cautiously through the doors of the café wearing tortoise-shell sunglasses.
“Are you in disguise?” she asked, kissing her friend and relieving her of her jacket. “Am I so risqué?”
“Oh! No, of course not,” answered Libby, blushing and laughing.
“But you can’t stay long. You’re on a very tight leash. I understand,” said Madame Merle.
“My aunt is still in mourning,” answered Libby.
“Yet she’s been taking you to all the Paris stores,” Clara Merle observed, nodding at Libby’s pale-pink outfit. It featured a soft black bow at the neck and a slim, woven pink-and-black skirt. “Le Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville. Very chic.”
Beauty and Attention: A Novel Page 12
