To Capture What We Cannot Keep

by Beatrice Colin

  “Nouguier instructed that we should go straight to the main office.”

  Instead of leading them inside, however, where draftsmen sat hunched over their desks, Jamie took them through the yard. Alice was wearing a white dress, a fur stole, and a new hat decorated with peacock feathers. She hadn’t wanted to let her brother have his own way when they had so little time left in Paris. But finally she had agreed to visit Eiffel’s workshop and had risen to the occasion and made an effort, wearing a brand-new outfit only just back from the dressmaker’s. Everything in the stockyard, however, was covered in a film of black grease, the kind that rings fingernails and seeps into the lines of the palm.

  “Be careful not to touch anything,” Cait told Alice.

  But it was too late. Alice’s fingertips had already left five small black spots on the bodice of her dress.

  “Oh!” she cried, and looked at Jamie.

  “We told you not to touch anything,” he retorted.

  “That’s easier said than done,” she replied.

  “Cover it with your fur,” Cait suggested. “You won’t be able to see it.”

  Alice tugged her fur stole tighter. She examined her hands and wiped the streaks of grease away with her handkerchief.

  “And why,” she whispered, “why are they looking at us like that?”

  A dozen workers had stopped what they were doing and were staring across. One of them lifted his cap. His face was dark with soot, but the skin around his eyes was splayed with tiny white creases.

  “They’re just curious,” Cait said. “Are you sure that this is convenient?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” said Jamie.

  Émile Nouguier was waiting for them outside the office at the top of a metal stairwell. In the light that fell in long dusty beams through the glass above, she saw immediately that his smile was genuine.

  “Welcome,” he said.

  Cait had chosen her most somber dress—gray-and-black-checked wool. Alice in her white dress with her fair ringlets and her new hat shone brightly beside her.

  “Thank you,” said Jamie. “Sorry we’re late. You remember my sister?”

  The engineer bowed to Alice, then turned to Cait.

  “And Madame Wallace?” Jamie continued.

  “Of course,” he said.

  She offered her hand. It was the way a married woman should greet a man, that was all, but Cait was suddenly breathless, suddenly uncomfortable, suddenly self-conscious, as he took it and gave it a small press.

  “But you should have used the visitor’s entrance,” he continued. “You came through the yard.”

  Alice looked at Jamie pointedly but didn’t comment.

  “We wanted to see the stockyard and the workshop firsthand,” Jamie said. “An impressive setup.”

  “Everything you see is for the tower,” Nouguier replied. “Every piece will be drilled or shaped here and then transported to the site.”

  “That sounds like quite an undertaking,” Jamie said.

  “It certainly is. According to our calculations we need eighteen thousand different pieces and more than two million rivets.”

  “Goodness,” said Alice.

  “And how will you assemble it?” asked Jamie.

  “We shall start with the foundations and work up,” he replied. “Once each piece has been fashioned, it will be transported to the site and riveted into place by hand.”

  “And will that work?” asked Alice.

  After a pause so short that it was barely noticeable, the engineer laughed.

  “One hopes so. Let’s begin,” he said as he ushered them along the corridor.

  “As well as dozens of metalworkers, we employ a whole floor of draftsmen.”

  “When can we meet the great man himself?” Jamie asked.

  “Monsieur Eiffel is very busy,” he said. “But I’ll certainly see if he can spare a few moments.”

  He paused at a window that overlooked the yard. “As you can see, we’re working on the piles that will be inserted into the concrete slabs of the foundations.”

  Huge lengths of iron glowed red hot as they were hammered and shaped. Here, the noise of the drill was earsplitting. Nouguier had to shout to make himself heard.

  “To make sure the tower is absolutely level,” he went on, “we’re going to use compressed-air caissons . . .”

  Alice yawned. The drilling stopped.

  “Maybe you would you like to take a look instead?” Nouguier suggested. “It sounds very dull if I explain.”

  Alice blinked several times in quick succession, then gave a tiny shake of her head.

  “Perhaps,” Cait suggested in French, “maybe we could wait somewhere—”

  “Isn’t the girl interested at all?” he replied in French.

  Cait smiled but didn’t answer.

  “What about you?” he continued. “Why don’t you come without her?”

  “What’s he saying?” Alice whispered.

  Cait tried to deflect the directness of the comment.

  “Is there anywhere we can wait?” she asked.

  The men strode off along the corridor together while Cait and Alice sat down on a hard wooden bench. For a moment they were silent. Cait closed her eyes and suddenly remembered the low gray horizons of Fife under­lined by the distant ocean, and the way the sun glanced across the land like the brushing of a careless hand. When had she been there last? Had it been with Saul shortly before they were married? Or was it as a child on a holiday to St. Andrews? And why would she remember it now? Maybe it was the last time she had felt that happiness was a given? And then Alice’s voice cut through, bringing her back to the engineer’s workshop in Paris.

  “He is rather dashing,” she was saying. “And I wouldn’t have to come here, would I, not often, at least?”

  Cait opened her eyes. Alice’s face was creased with concentration.

  “I mean, you didn’t, did you? When you were married? Go to your husband’s office?”

  Although the sun was still bright, a shadow descended. Cait tried to tell herself that it was a long time ago. But time was not linear. The shock of what had happened had not lessened, it was just buried deeper, and some­times the blinding awfulness, the sheer indignity, the intolerable shame of it opened inside her like a night bloom.

  When Cait didn’t answer, Alice turned and examined her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m an idiot for mentioning it.”

  “No, don’t worry,” Cait replied, and gave her a half smile.

  Convinced that the awkward moment had passed, Alice picked up her train of thought and continued.

  “You see, half of me doesn’t want to get too old to marry and end up on the shelf. And the other half wants to run away.”

  “You won’t end up on the shelf, Alice.”

  “I know. There’s always Pig-nose.”

  “Mr. Hogg sounds like he has many fine qualities. You mustn’t listen to Jamie.”

  Alice turned and looked at Cait.

  “What do you think of him?” she whispered. “The engineer? Do you think he could be a good match for me? Uncle William would be over the moon. But he’s so old!”

  “Is he old?”

  “He must be at least forty.”

  “That’s not old. Not for a husband.”

  But Alice was barely listening anymore. Instead she was caught up in her own train of thought.

  “I’d have to learn French,” she went on. “Maybe you could teach me? And then once we were married we could move into a nice little house near the Bois and have lots of French children called Pierre or Mathilde.”

  “Alice, maybe you should take it one step at a time.”

  “But my uncle’s been so good to us. I don’t want to disappoint him.”

  A door slammed on the floor below. Jamie’s laughter, a short burst, was followed by the scuff of feet ascending the stairs. They were coming back.

  “How do I look?” Alice asked. She blinked her large eyes at Cait.
r />   “Lovely,” Cait replied. It was true. She did.

  “But what about the dress?”

  “He doesn’t care about the dress, Alice.”

  Émile, Jamie, and a smaller man of about fifty with a sweep of white hair appeared at the top of the stairwell. As soon as he saw them he approached Cait and bowed.

  “Mademoiselle Arrol?” he said. “Gustave Eiffel.”

  There was a slightly awkward moment as Alice stepped forward.

  “Actually, I’m Mademoiselle Arrol, Monsieur Eiffel,” said Alice. “I think you are acquainted with our uncle?”

  He looked from Cait to Alice and bowed once more.

  “Please excuse me,” he said. “Indeed I am. He is a wonderful engineer and extremely engaging company. I am a huge admirer.”

  Alice seemed to relax. She smiled and pulled her fur stole a little tighter around her body.

  “He’s hard at work on another bridge,” she said, and glanced at Émile. “Across the River Forth, near Edinburgh.”

  “Ah yes,” Eiffel replied. “We all intend to make a special trip to Scotland to see it when it is finished.”

  Alice beamed with pride as if it were her bridge, her river. Jamie had been watching them all closely. Finally he saw his moment.

  “I’m sure that our uncle would agree that we would like stronger ties,” he said. “To find a way to link up Paris with Scotland. In fact, I have a proposal.”

  Alice inhaled sharply. Her blue eyes were wide with horror.

  “Don’t look so shocked.” Jamie laughed. “I have a few ideas of my own. Ideas that involve me and me alone. Monsieur Eiffel? I’d like to come back and work as an apprentice on the tower. Would that be possible?”

  He looked expectantly at the engineer.

  “I have no objection in principle,” Eiffel replied. “Monsieur Nouguier?”

  But Émile Nouguier was distracted; a clerk was running along the corridor toward them. Monsieur Eiffel was wanted at once in the workshop.

  “Monsieur Nouguier?” Jamie prompted once Eiffel had wished them good day and set off along the corridor. Nouguier blinked rapidly, rubbed his eyes, then apologized.

  “I was up at five,” he explained. “I’m sorry.”

  “We should go,” said Cait. “We’ve taken too much of your time already.”

  Alice’s eyes darted from Jamie to Nouguier and then back again.

  “But the tower!” she said, and added a short laugh. “Aren’t there plans or something that we could look at? Quickly, I mean.”

  Alice waited with her head cocked.

  “I would be happy to show you the original drawings,” Émile was compelled to reply.

  A look of relief spread slowly across Alice’s face.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I would be interested. Very interested indeed, as a matter of fact.”

  Cait raised her hand to cover her eyes. She blinked, but there was some­thing wrong with her sight, a darkening blur right at the center of her vision. They always started like this, her headaches. First the blindness, followed by crinkles of flashing light, and then the thump of pain on one side of her face. She sat back down on the wooden bench.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I’ll stay here. It’s my head.”

  “Mrs. Wallace has these turns,” Alice explained. “But she’ll be right as rain in a moment.”

  “You go,” she told them all. “I’ll be fine.”

  She was suddenly aware, however, of a presence close by.

  “Would you like anything?” Émile Nouguier asked.

  She could tell that he was crouching down in front of her. She just couldn’t see him.

  “A glass of water. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  By the time he returned, the blinding throb had shifted from the center of her vision and was pulsating in a small rainbow to the left. She could see again. She stood up as he approached and took the glass.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Where are the Arrols?”

  “With one of my colleagues. How are you?”

  “Much better now,” she said brightly. “It’s nothing serious. The doctor said it was neurasthenia, nervous exhaustion that manifests itself in what he called a migraine.”

  “Ah yes, my mother suffers from those too. Did he give you something?”

  “Indian hemp. It certainly lessens the severity of the pain. But then again, they use Indian hemp for everything—for coughs and for cholera even!”

  Nouguier laughed. “For insanity and Graves’ disease.”

  “For epilepsy and opium addiction,” she continued.

  “If only it worked,” he said softly.

  He seemed momentarily lost. She adjusted her hat.

  “It was kind of you to take time out of your day,” she said.

  “Not at all,” he said.

  His gaze shifted from her eyes to her mouth and back again.

  “When do you leave Paris?” he asked.

  “In two days’ time,” she replied.

  “Will you come back?” he asked. “To Paris, I mean?”

  “I shouldn’t think so.”

  There was a pause, a tiny interlude, when she was aware only of his eyes and the rise and fall of his breath.

  “Anyway,” she said, handing him back the glass, “I’m sure you need to get back to work. Could you tell the others that I’ll wait for them in the carriage?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Au revoir.”

  Not “goodbye,” but “until we meet again.” They would never meet again. She’d had her chance. But even so, her neck prickled as she imagined his eyes running down the length of her, her shoulders, her waist, her hips, her narrow bustle. At the bottom of the stairs, she hesitated, then turned and looked back. And there he was, still standing at the top, the empty glass in his hand, watching her leave.

  6

  ____

  IT WAS MARCH, and Paris was approaching the end of the petite saison. Émile knew there would be a flurry of balls and dances, dinners and salons. After Easter, the grande saison would begin with the Concours Hippiques, a horse show on the Champs-Élysées. Then more balls and horse races and exhibitions parties, until the middle and upper classes left Paris for summer, heading north to the Côte Fleurie, or south to the Côte d’Azur on the Blue Train.

  For the rest of the city, the seasons were not simply a backdrop for the fashion conscious. The heat, the cold, the wet, and the dry had to be borne with the addition of a scarf or two or the removal of a layer of undergarments. This year he had noticed the weather was unseasonably warm. On the rivers, the numerous guinguettes, or open-air dance halls, that lined the banks had opened earlier than usual. And in Montmartre, the outdoor cafés that looked over the whole city tentatively unlocked their terraces while washer­women toiled up the hill—or La Butte, as it was known—with baskets of wet sheets to hang out on the wasteland next to the windmills at the top.

  Émile paused to light a cigarette at the doorway of the artist’s atelier. As he inhaled, he felt someone’s eyes upon him. He turned and looked over his shoulder, back along the length of the street down toward the boulevard de Clichy, but saw no one. The narrow streets below smelled of sour wine and stale air, of last night’s tobacco and this morning’s piss. The maisons closes, or brothels, the circuses and cabarets, had been shut for only a few short hours, but by midmorning some were already opening for business, their doors pushed ajar to give the illusion of being aired.

  “Looking for a model?” A thin woman of about thirty stepped out of the doorway opposite so suddenly that Émile dropped his cigarette. She was dressed as a shepherdess, with a wooden crook, bare feet, and a brown dress over a grubby white chemise. While her outfit suggested an Arcadian simplicity, her eyes projected something altogether more knowing.

  “I don’t think so,” he replied, and pulled out his cigarette case to extract another. “Not today.”

  The woman adjusted her bodice and took a couple of steps toward him.

>   “I’ve been painted by all the masters,” she said. “By Poussin, even.”

  “I very much doubt that you were painted by Poussin,” Émile said. “He’s been dead for two hundred years.”

  “Not him,” she said with a shake of her head. “This man was very much alive. Said he was studying at the École des Beaux Arts. Respectable too. Why wouldn’t I believe everything he told me?”

  She smiled up at him and there was something in her face that he recognized, the certainty that he had what she wanted and that she had the where­withal to get it.

  “I’ll model for you for fifty sous a day,” she said. “Far less than what you’ll pay in there. I’ll do it nude for a franc.”

  The slight swell of her breasts was visible beneath her chemise. Her breath was sweet with tooth decay. He turned away.

  “Madam,” he said, “I am afraid what little talent I have would never do you justice. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I am late for class.”

  He bowed, turned, then made his way through the courtyard and up the narrow steps to the artist’s studio.

  “You’ll come back,” she called after him. “My name, for next time, is Jeanne.”

  A small number of men were waiting at the top of the steps outside the wooden door. The door was locked, but several of them still tried the handle once or twice, just in case. The artist’s studio was an attic room with glass panes in the roof. Although the light streamed in all day, it was too hot in summer and too cold in winter. The tutor, a former member of the Académie, an old man with a whiskered face and broken spectacles, seemed to pay no attention to the temperature. He opened up the studio, without heat or fan, and provided instruction to aspiring artists for a monthly fee of ten francs. There was a waiting list. But despite, or maybe because of, the demand, he was late. He was always late, and the men, as usual, were impatient. Many had arrived hours earlier to secure a good spot and had turned sour and morose with boredom. Émile took his place at the end of the queue and finished his cigarette.

  “Poussin,” he said to himself again.

  The majority of Paris’s artists, the students at the École des Beaux Arts or at Suisse, the independent atelier, all lived here, in Montmartre. It was little more than a village, part of Paris and yet not, not with the creak and rush of the windmills and the buzz of bees drifting down from the Abbesses’s vegetable gardens. Beneath the stink of the city and the smell of turned earth, you could taste turpentine and oil paint almost as soon as you reached the lower slopes of La Butte. At the bottom of the hill were the successful painters; Renoir and Degas lived and worked near the boulevard de Clichy. Farther up, where the streets were steeper and the rooms were cheap and cramped but had a view to compensate, were all the rest—the men who dreamed of exhibiting in the official Salon or the Salon des Indépendants and who spent all their money, and probably their parents’ money too, on lessons and paint from Maison Edouard, on Côte du Rhone, and on whores. No wonder so many of them got sick and caught the pox; no wonder so many of them were found lying on the street, just a crumpled heap of clothes beneath an open window high above. The ones who survived seemed to exist on air and ego, on sex and soup.