Two weeks earlier they had gone to a show at the lavish Opéra Garnier. From the moment they had arrived at the theater, it was clear that the performance had begun long before the curtain rose. Young women in elaborate evening gowns cut to wear with the most rigid of corsets, and jewels that sparkled in the light from the huge candelabras that lit up the grand staircase, pretended to ignore the knots of young men who gathered at the doors to the stalls. The men, in contrast, pushed and shoved one another, laughed and joked. And yet there were many lingering glances and meaningful lowering of the eyes, half smiles, and raised eyebrows—a secret language of availability and flirtation, or of feigned disinterest and rejection.
Cait had paused on the steps to take in all the gold and marble, the silk and satin, to inhale the smell of lavender pomade and scent of Guerlain. Alice, whose new gown had been cut a little too tight, and whose shoes were of a style with a higher heel than she usually wore, looked strained as they ascended the marble staircase to their box in the dress circle. As they waited in line for the usher to show them to their box, she had gazed at the other young women enviously. They looked so relaxed, so comfortable, so effortlessly elegant.
The doors to the boxes were set into a curved wall and were opened with a special key. Once pulled shut from the inside, the doors were flush and no one could enter. The box was private and yet exposed. Although the stage was the central focus, once they had taken their seats they were displayed to the auditorium, Cait thought, like jewelry in a shop window.
“There’s no one here,” Alice had said a little too loudly as she surveyed the occupants of the other boxes and flapped her fan.
Below in the stalls, where the space between each row was too narrow to admit a lady’s skirt, a few gentlemen turned and looked up at them. One of them called up in English.
“I’m here. Isn’t that enough?”
At that moment, however, the house lights dimmed and the curtain began to rise noisily, drowning out a brief splutter of laughter from the other men and hiding Alice’s embarrassment.
“Do we know him?” she whispered to Jamie.
“Of course we don’t,” Jamie said. “We don’t know anyone.”
As the orchestra began to play and the dancers took the stage, the man below glanced up more than once.
“He’s staring,” Alice whispered. “What shall I do?”
“Look away,” Cait instructed.
“It’s easy for you to say.”
At the interval, Cait glanced down at the man in the stalls, at his wide, handsome face. Now that the house lights were up, there was no mistaking the expensive cut of his clothes and the attractive, arrogant tilt of his chin. As the scenery was changed and the jets in the gas lamps below the stage were opened wider, he glanced up at her and his eyes glinted in the light.
“See?” whispered Alice. “See!”
A bell rang and the audience returned to their seats. As the second half began, the man’s attention focused back on the stage. He was not the only one. Even Jamie was transfixed as the prima ballerina, a small black-haired dancer in silver tulle, made her entrance. Alice looked from Jamie to the stage.
“Oh,” she said. “So that’s why we’re here.”
At the end of the ballet, Alice insisted they leave their box before the encores had ended. She hurried down the wide marble stairs of the theater to the foyer, glancing over her shoulder at the doorways to the stalls. Then she sent Jamie off to find their carriage. Many moments later, well after the rest of the audience had left, the man from the stalls strolled by.
“Don’t look,” whispered Cait.
But Alice looked.
“Mademoiselle?” the man said, and tipped his hat.
Alice met his gaze, her eyes running from his face to his feet, then back again.
“Good night,” he said in English before heading out of the main entrance.
It was no use scolding her. It was doubtful they would meet the man again. But it meant something to Alice; she had finally made an impression.
Bastille Day was clear and bright and even early in the morning was punctuated by the distant pump and blast of brass. The air smelled of holidays—of starch and clean washing, of chocolate and warm leather. The housekeeper had prepared their breakfast, then left to spend the day with her sister in Fontainebleau. Without her, the atmosphere inside the house lifted. A breeze played in the curtain and a few petals fell from the flower arrangement on the hall table and were blown across the floor.
“I can see her now,” said Jamie of the housekeeper. “Her and her sister, both wearing black from head to toe, shriveling in the heat, eating snails with a pin.”
“You’re so cruel,” said Alice. “What has she ever done to you?”
“Nothing. I just don’t like her! The way she looks at me. She hates us all, you know.”
“Maybe ‘hate’ is too strong a word,” suggested Cait.
“How about ‘loathe’?” Jamie suggested. “Or ‘despise’?”
“She does what is expected of her, no more or less,” Cait said. “That’s what we pay her for.”
“That’s what Uncle pays her for,” Jamie corrected.
For a moment they were all silent.
“Will he be there?” Alice asked. “At the Bois?”
“Will who be there?” Jamie replied.
“The engineer?”
Jamie sighed and picked up the newspaper.
“Well? Yes or no?”
“Yes!” he replied.
“How do you know? Did he tell you?”
“No, my dear sister,” he replied. “He didn’t, and in actual fact, I have no idea of his movements. But you demanded an answer and I gave you the one I thought you might prefer.”
Jamie looked up from the paper and caught Cait’s eye. She looked away.
“Has he even mentioned me?” Alice went on.
“Of course he has, my beautiful Alice. You are the main topic of our conversation.”
“Jamie!” warned Cait.
“If I were you,” he went on, “I wouldn’t read this. It might put you off Frenchmen for life!”
The papers were full of the Pranzini trial. Henri Pranzini, the accused, as well as being smart, handsome, witty, and fluent in eight languages, was also a confidence trickster, a thief, a gambler and a womanizer. After killing his lover, her servant, and the servant’s baby, and stealing bonds, jewelry, and money amounting to a thousand pounds, he intended, it was claimed, to flee to America with another young woman he had seduced using his murdered lover’s fortune.
Alice glanced over the article that Jamie had handed her. “How on earth could one fall for a man like that?” she said. “Surely you would suspect? Mrs. Wallace, what do you think?”
“Maybe he was very charming.”
“But still. You’d just know, wouldn’t you?” said Alice.
Cait spooned a lump of sugar into her cup and then another, then a third, then a fourth. Alice and Jamie stared at her.
“Do you have something to tell us?” asked Jamie.
Cait stopped stirring her tea and stared at him. How did he know? No one knew.
“Four sugars in your tea!” said Jamie.
She swallowed. It was all right.
“But lumps are smaller, surely?” she replied.
Jamie and Alice exchanged a glance.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Wallace?” asked Alice.
“Yes, perfectly fine.”
“It’s just that usually you take your tea without sugar.”
“A little sweetness,” she replied, “never hurt anyone.”
There was a small, loaded silence.
“It says she was a ‘demimondaine,’ ” Alice said. “What does that mean?”
“It means she was a lady of the night,” Jamie told her. “A tart, a whore.”
Alice took a sip of tea as if to wash away the taste of the words.
“And what will happen to him if he’s found guilty?” Alice asked.
He made a slicing motion with his hand across his neck.
“Oh,” said Alice. “That’s horrible.”
“It’s what they do in France. Chop people’s heads off and then celebrate for a hundred years.”
Cait drained her cup and rose from the table.
“We better go,” she said. “If we want to see anything. Are you ready, Alice?”
Alice, of course, was not.
They were so late that they couldn’t get anywhere near the parade. By the time they reached the Bois it was busier than they’d ever seen it. Families had laid out blankets on the parched summer grass or sat on the benches in the dappled shade of the trees. A stream of landaus, fiacres, and victorias sped past, heading toward the racecourse while dozens of horsemen and -women cantered along the bridle paths.
At first they followed the crowds and strolled along gravel paths that ran alongside the Allée des Acacias and the Allée des Poteaux. After an hour, Alice started to complain about the heat and the crowds and her tight-fitting shoes and so Jamie offered to row them around one of the lakes.
“It’ll be cooler out on the water,” he suggested. “And less crowded.”
The lakes, the Inferieur and the Superieur, were side by side. Only the former rented rowing boats. Alice reclined on a cushion in the bow of their skiff, closed her eyes, and let her hand drift in the water. Away from the main drags, the Bois was so calm, so peaceful. Even though they were only a mile or so from the center of Paris, apart from the splash of their oars, the intermittent chatter of birds, and the short bursts of high laughter that came from the nearby woods, it was almost silent. Cait sat under a parasol and watched the water boatmen as they skated across the surface. A black heron stood motionless in the shallows before spreading its huge wings, rising up, and wheeling away through the trees. A swan came up to the boat and peered at them, either curious or in search of bread.
“Jamie!” screeched Alice. “Row faster!”
“It won’t hurt us,” said Cait.
From nearby, a voice rang out, a falsetto imitation: “Jamie, row faster!” Another boat was approaching fast from the far bank, rowed by two young men and weighed down by another three. It passed by in silence, leaving such a swell that their own boat was set rocking back and forth in its wake. Jamie raised his hat but received no response. Once they were out of earshot, one of the men said something and the others all roared with laughter.
“Idiots!” said Jamie, then glanced at Alice. Her expression was fixed into one of great suffering.
At lunchtime, they decided to moor the boat at one of the islands. On the largest was a restaurant designed to look like a Swiss chalet, which could be reached from the shore by a flat-bottomed boat.
“It was a gift, apparently, to the empress Eugénie from her husband, Napoleon III,” Cait read from the guidebook. “She saw the chalet in Switzerland and was so taken with it that he had it dismantled and rebuilt here, in the Bois.”
“I wish someone would do that for me,” said Alice. “So shall we?”
“It looks expensive,” warned Jamie.
“It looks perfect,” said Alice.
After they had been shown to a table and been given menus, Alice pulled out her phrasebook, a “manual of conversation,” from her wrist bag. Jamie snatched it from her, opened it at random, and began to read.
“Listen to this: ‘I have had a slight attack of the gout, which has forced me to keep to my room for a fortnight!’ ”
“Give it back,” said Alice softly.
“This is even better: ‘I am very much inclined to be sick.’ I hope we never need that one. Or this: ‘I want a diamond that makes a great show and costs very little.’ Don’t we all?”
“Mrs. Wallace!” pleaded Alice. “Do something!”
“Jamie!” said Cait.
He pushed the book across the table at Alice.
“I hope you order tripe,” he said as she tucked it back into her bag. “By mistake.”
Alice’s eyes suddenly widened.
“What?” Cait asked.
“It’s him,” she whispered. “The man from the ballet!”
At the next table, with a woman of considerable age and an elderly gentleman, was the young man who had sat in the stalls that night at the Opéra Garnier. He was working his way slowly through a plate of oysters.
“Are you finished yet, Clément?” the woman asked him in clipped French. “One forgets how intolerable the city is in July.”
“No, Mother,” he replied. “Not yet.”
“Mother,” Alice mouthed.
As he dislodged another oyster with a knife, doused it in lemon juice, raised it to his lips, threw back his head, and swallowed, the older man glanced around the restaurant with obvious distaste. Cait took in the couple’s clothes, their shoes, their jewels. The cuffs were frayed and the old man’s silk waistcoat spotted with grease stains. They were what she had come to recognize as le gratin, which meant, literally, the upper crust, the titled. Although their clothes were shabby and they were notoriously mean, many of them lived in huge mansions in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. She glanced away as the younger man swiveled around in his seat and raised a hand to summon the waiter.
“Garçon?” he called. “The bill.”
The waiter rushed over immediately.
“Certainly, Count,” he said.
“Count,” whispered Alice.
The man from the ballet either hadn’t seen them or pretended he hadn’t. His father paid, placing a pair of spectacles on his nose and laying out the notes and coins in little piles. Then the count helped his mother with her cape, fetched her cane, and slowly they made their way to the door. A few seconds later, however, he was back again with a waiter, looking under his chair for a lost scarf. Almost casually, he stepped backward toward their table so the waiter could pull out all the chairs. He was turning something around in his fingers, something white, which he dropped into Alice’s lap without anyone, except Cait, noticing. Alice’s face blushed from pale pink to puce. It was a note.
“Is this it?” said the waiter, holding a white silk scarf that he had picked up from the floor.
“That’s the one!” he said.
Once he had left the restaurant again, Alice began to unfold the note underneath the table.
“What are you doing?” Jamie asked.
“Nothing,” she replied. But Jamie was too quick. He leaned across the table, snatched the note out of her hand, and quickly glanced at it. And then he held it above the candle on the table and burned it.
“Jamie!” Alice cried. “That was mine!”
“My dear sister,” he said. “Surely even you know by now that men like that will ruin you as soon as look at you. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Wallace?”
He looked to her to provide the appropriate response.
“It certainly was a little forward,” she replied.
“He looked perfectly respectable,” Alice said. “He’s a count, for heaven’s sake.”
“Even more reason to stay away from him.”
“But why on earth should I?”
Jamie leaned forward in his chair.
“Because, put quite simply, we’re not his sort,” he said. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“And what sort are you talking about?”
Jamie shook his head and let out a snort of indignation. “Has it slipped your mind that we’re from Glasgow? Glasgow, Scotland?”
“But we’re not exactly poor, are we? Besides, I thought you wanted to marry me off to the first eligible man who turned up. What’s wrong with that one?”
“Everything,” he replied.
Alice had barely touched her lunch. And now she rose and excused herself.
“She might be right,” Cait said. “He might have had perfectly honorable intentions.”
Jamie didn’t respond as the waiter cleared their table.
“And he seemed pleasant enough,” Cait went on.
The waiter, balancing thei
r plates in one hand, swept the tablecloth of crumbs with the other.
“Would you say, Mrs. Wallace, that you’re a good judge of men?” Jamie asked once the waiter had finished.
“That depends on the man. Some are easier to read than others.”
“With respect, what exactly was wrong with Roland Sinclair?”
Despite the fact that the dining room was warm, Cait suddenly felt cold. She sat back in her chair.
“Nothing,” she said. “He was perfectly nice.”
The waiter returned with three small coffees, each one flavored with a twist of lemon.
“My uncle wouldn’t support me to come here on my own,” Jamie said. “And then he suggested that you come with me. And that we bring Alice.”
“That’s right,” she replied. “It was the only way he’d let you come back to Paris.”
Jamie picked up his coffee cup but didn’t drink. “I suppose I should thank you for your act of self-sacrifice,” he said.
“No need,” she replied.
“Out of interest, would you have married him?”
“With respect, Jamie, I don’t think it appropriate for you to ask that kind of question.”
She gave him a half smile, a smile that suggested some kind of internal sensitivity, a rawness that still chafed.
“He seemed to like you. A great deal, in fact,” Jamie went on. “Wasn’t that enough for you?”
He wouldn’t stop, would not let it go. She felt her face begin to flush.
“Marriage shouldn’t be entered into lightly,” she replied. “And simply being the object of a man’s adoration is not, in my opinion at least, an adequate reason. And besides, there are other factors of which you have no knowledge.”
He looked at her and raised his left eyebrow. For a moment they sat in silence. Her irritation began to ebb. Jamie Arrol was young. He had never felt the lurch that comes in the middle of the night with the realization that you have made an irreversible mistake.
“Well, I suppose it’s always an option,” Jamie said. “If things don’t work out here, you could always pick things up again with Sinclair.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“We’ll just have to make sure we don’t come a cropper,” he said softly, “for all our sakes. Now, where has Alice got to?”
To Capture What We Cannot Keep Page 12
