To Capture What We Cannot Keep

by Beatrice Colin

  Cait wrote out William Arrol’s name and address again. Despite all her resolve at the train station, she had changed her mind. She would explain the situation as tactfully as possible and ask him to send a banker’s draft. She would admit that regretfully, she had failed. One telegram, and their futures would be fixed; they would pack up and leave Paris immediately. Back in Glasgow Alice would marry Pig-nose. Jamie would be found some nominal employment in the ironworks, and she would return to a life of polishing pews and arranging flowers, of prudence and parsimony. She caught sight of herself in the dark glass of the window. Did it show? Was it obvious in the curve of her lip or the flood of her pupils? Could anyone see the elation that surged inside her at the thought of his face, his mouth, his name, a grace note: Émile Nouguier.

  His letter had arrived just as Cait was heading out for her daily walk. Alice had been expecting the dressmaker and would be busy for an hour or two. He had said that he had something he wanted to give her: the photograph. He’d asked if she would come and collect it from his concierge and wrote out his address: a street in the fifth arrondissement.

  There was no risk, she had told herself. He would be out at work. But when she arrived, the concierge didn’t have anything for her. Monsieur Nouguier, however, had come home ten minutes earlier. Would she like to go up?

  She took the elevator to the third floor, where it stopped with a sigh. In­stead of pulling back the metal grille of the gate she hesitated. Should she call on an unmarried man? Was it respectable? But she wasn’t a girl, she was an adult woman, a widow. And yet it wasn’t just any man. It was Émile Nouguier. She knew she should not get out of the elevator. She knew she should return to the lobby. She knew it, but still her fingers gripped the metal handle of the door and she could not let go.

  Suddenly the door to Émile’s apartment swung open and there he was, coat and hatless, with an envelope in his hand. He started when he saw her.

  “The very person,” he said. “Can you manage the gate?”

  She looked at him through the bars, he on one side, she on the other.

  “I—” she began. “I think so.”

  She hoped he did not notice the color rising in her cheeks. She hoped he did not see the tremor of her hands. The gate clattered as she drew it back.

  “Did you find it easily?”

  “I did,” she said.

  “Please,” he said. “Come in.”

  Once he had taken her coat and hat, he guided her into the drawing room. A couple of paintings hung on the wall, small studies in bright color.

  “Seurat?” she asked.

  “That’s right. Would you like coffee, wine, water?”

  She shook her head. The bells began to ring in the church of Saint-Séverin. For a moment they were silent.

  “The photograph?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he replied, and handed the envelope to her.

  White sky, black wicker, the fine thread of the balloon’s strings, the blur of movement, and there in the middle in perfect focus, a woman with her eyes closed.

  “It was a test shot,” Émile said.

  He came to her elbow and looked at the photograph over her shoulder.

  “You see that man there,” he said, pointing out the smudge of a shoulder. “He kept walking in front of me. He must have ruined at least six plates.”

  She smiled.

  “Why am I so sharp,” she asked, “when everyone else is blurred?”

  “You were completely still,” he said softly. “Everyone else was moving.”

  The photograph was in her hands but she was aware only of him, of his breath inches away from her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For thinking of me.”

  “Cait,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I think of you all the time.”

  How many closed doors sealed them this time from the city? Three? Four? For the first time they were completely alone. He knew it too. Gently, he took the print from her hands. Softly, he reached down to the curve of her neck and kissed it.

  “Shall I stop?” he asked.

  Yes, he should stop. Think of the consequences, she told herself, think of the cost. But she didn’t listen to the voice in her head; she paid no heed. Instead she turned her head and kissed him on the lips.

  In the post office, Cait put down the pen and covered her face with her hands. What had she done? It was shameful, terrible, wonderful. She remembered everything that happened after, the warmth of his hands, the sense of release as she unbuttoned, unlaced, unpinned, until she could breathe again, until she could feel with every inch of her skin the softness of every inch of his.

  She had to write the telegram. But to do so was to commit all three of them to a purgatory of a life that none of them wanted. The post office would close soon. The telegram. She had been intimate with a man she barely knew, a man she was not married to. What would he think of her? What did she think of herself? She didn’t know anymore. And yet was it so bad? Rules were made to be broken, weren’t they?

  She scored out William Arrol’s name. Then she ripped the paper in two and then in four, then eight, then sixteen, until her words were nothing more than a series of tiny strokes of ink on a confetti of paper.

  28

  ____

  ÉMILE LEANED BACK ON the wooden scaffold and looked up through the lattice of ironwork. The sun was rising in the east. The workers who ascended the ladders threw long shadows across the site, a shifting plaid of light and dark.

  “Émile!” shouted a voice. “How goes it?”

  He looked across and saw Gustave Eiffel on the opposite pier, hatless and surrounded by a dozen officials.

  “Right on schedule!” he called across. “We’re at fifty-four meters. Only three more to go! I’ve brought my camera to record the moment!”

  “Good man,” said Eiffel. “And how are you?”

  “Well!” he replied. “Very well indeed.”

  A soft spring wind blew handfuls of early blossoms through the air below. He closed his eyes and remembered Cait asleep in the crook of his arm, her dark hair loose, her skin as flawless as poured milk. Somewhere in another building, in another street perhaps, someone had been playing the piano. A plate of oranges in a bowl sat on a table in front of the window. A breeze gently lifted the curtain and then let it go. Without moving he had glanced down at her head, at the steady rise and fall of her breath. She had a tiny mole on the lobe of her left ear. Did she know it was there? It was a lover’s privilege to know another’s body almost better than she herself did.

  She inhaled sharply in her sleep and he waited for the next breath. It seemed to take an age. Finally it came. He relaxed again. How fragile, he considered, is the thread between wakefulness and sleep, between life and death, between love and sex. Then she opened her eyes and looked up at him. Had she been sleeping at all?

  “You’ve come back,” he said, and raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. She pushed the hair from her eyes, but even as he watched, a veil descended.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  She sat up and then leaned over the edge of the bed to reach her under­clothes. First she fished out her camisole and pulled it on. Then, as he watched, she picked up her corset and fitted it around her body.

  “Shall I lace you?” he asked.

  Cait stopped what she was doing. She was suddenly self-conscious, suddenly stiff.

  “I can manage,” she said.

  He watched as she threaded and pulled, threaded and pulled—tight, then tighter still, until she wasn’t soft anymore but rigid, her waist and hips contained by strips of whalebone, white satin, and Valenciennes lace. On top of it she layered a petticoat, a chemisette, and then a bustle, which was made of nothing more than a frame of wire and a few strips of cotton tape. Against the light of the window the undergarments were transparent, the lines of her body visible in silhouette. Finally she pulled on a black velvet jacket with lace around the collar and cuffs, and a skirt wit
h pleats and bows and fringes. No light could penetrate the weave and weft of the cloth. She was opaque again.

  “Come to the site,” he said. “There is something I’d like you to see.”

  She glanced at him, her gray eyes full of morning light.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” she asked as she pulled on her gloves.

  “We’re going to reach the first platform soon. It’s the moment of truth, the moment we see if everything fits together the way it’s supposed to.”

  “Is there any doubt?” she asked.

  He reached for her and took her hand. “No,” he said. “No doubt at all.”

  Ever since, he had the sense that life should pause, that there should be a hiatus, a moment when all was still, a silence in recognition of what had happened between the two of them. Instead, as he walked to the Champ de Mars, he saw that steam still rose from the trains as they pulled into Gare Saint-Lazare and Gare du Nord, smoke still pumped from factories in the distant suburbs, and clouds still surged across the western sky. A French­man had recently announced that he had invented a so-called chronophotographic gun, capable of taking twelve frames a second: photographs now moved. The world, it seemed, was revolving faster, time was speeding up. And above it all, the steel tower kept rising, growing taller almost visibly, like vigorous metal bamboo.

  It was true, however, that work on the tower had been stopped by the City of Paris several times over the past few months. The press coverage had become hysterical, and some newspapers suggested that the tower might topple and crush nearby buildings. Eiffel had agreed to compensate any resident that the structure adversely affected—sore eyes, he had privately joked, not included. He had also agreed to pay for the tower’s demolition should it prove to be unsafe. But the debate went on and on. A mathematician was quoted as saying that according to his calculations the tower would collapse. Others claimed that it would slowly sink. The less scientific believed that it was nothing more than a giant lightning conductor, which would attract more thunderstorms to Paris and electrocute all the fish in the rivers. That had caused much amusement in the office until it began to rain heavily and the workers came to the door to ask for reassurance that they wouldn’t be electrocuted either.

  What the public didn’t realize was that the most crucial part of the construction was not the upper reaches of the tower but the part that was just about to be tackled. The first-floor platform, where the four piers met, had to be absolutely level. A millimeter out and the tower above would lean. Eiffel had devised a similar method to the one he used for bridges: using boxes of sand and hydraulic jacks deep inside the foundations, each pier could be moved up or down a fraction until they were in place.

  Émile knotted his scarf a little tighter around his neck and placed both hands under his armpits. The men were finishing off the last sections; there was nothing to do but wait. From where he was standing, the whole structure was still a web of steel and wood, of bolts and metal braces. It was hard to mentally untangle what would remain and what would eventually be re­moved. The four piers were so high now that they had to be supported by huge pyramidal wooden scaffolds. A belt of horizontal trussing, a steel frame eight meters deep, was being bolted together above. Once it was attached to the piers, it would form the top of the pedestal and the tower would stand unsupported.

  “That’s it!” cried the foreman. “We’re ready when you are.”

  “Excellent!” called out Eiffel. “Shall we begin? I haven’t got all day.”

  Eiffel hadn’t been on-site much recently. It was said that he came more often at night, to climb the scaffold and inspect the work by lantern when the men weren’t around. Although the tower was his priority, contracts had just been signed for the Panama Canal project. He had just sent 2,500 men out to Panama to begin the excavation of ten locks. Despite the fact that it was a 125-million-franc project, paid for by the public in the form of government bonds, Eiffel wasn’t intimidated. He had decided to start construction of the locks at once in Brittany. It was a hugely ambitious approach, one that Émile hoped, for his employer’s sake, would pay off.

  As the foreman signaled to the riveters to lower the huge metal frame into place using rope, Émile suddenly felt apprehensive. It was all about balance, all about equilibrium. What if he had made a miscalculation or had let through a rivet that was slightly off-center? What if the difference in height of the piers was too great to fix with air and sand alone? And then his eye caught sight of something moving up one the ladders. A corner of blue silk and the tuck of velvet; the curve of whalebone and the lacing of ribbon on steel hooks, a woman’s laugh, a rising curl in the freezing air. He knew that voice, that body; he recognized the way that woman moved. It was Gabrielle.

  “Tell these people to get down,” he yelled at the foreman. “No visitors to the site without permission. Especially not today!”

  What on earth was she doing here? Now of all times? He caught sight of her face through the tangle of the steel and wire, strut and smoke, as she turned her head and looked up. Then she leaned across to hold on to the arm of a man, a man with a wide girth and a large mustache. Émile glimpsed her eyes, her mouth, the triangle of her bare neck, but pulled back before she saw him.

  “But it is the Minister of the Interior,” the foreman told him. “He has permission.”

  “Ready!” yelled Eiffel. “Number three needs to be higher. Raise it by two millimeters! Émile? How is it looking over there?”

  Émile leaned down to inspect the height. And yet he couldn’t focus; his heart was thumping and his hands were damp. He blinked and the world began to tip; the horizontals and verticals ceased to make sense, his center of gravity was gone.

  “Monsieur Nouguier!”

  Three arms shot out to pull him from the edge of the platform and he was yanked back, a dozen fingers clawing painfully into his forearms and several hands grasping at his collar until it tore.

  “I’m fine,” he said repeatedly as he rubbed his arm. “Just fine.”

  And then there was her laugh again, sweet and high and cruel.

  “Clear the site!” he snapped. “It’s not Notre-Dame! Get these people out of here!”

  The foreman blinked twice. He was expecting a request for water or coffee, nothing else.

  “Certainly,” he said, and started to descend the nearest ladder.

  A whistle blew. The piers were all the right height, lowered or raised until they were exactly even. They’d done it. The workers started to clap. They knew how important this moment was. Everything was as it should be. And then he saw two figures talking to a third at the perimeter fence. It was the Arrols and Mrs. Wallace. Alice was laughing at something that her brother was saying, but Cait’s face was serene and calm and beautiful.

  “Émile,” shouted Eiffel. “Take a picture!”

  “Just a minute!” He fumbled with the box, dropping, then catching, then once more dropping his camera over the edge.

  “Look out!” he cried. But its heavy black body, with its concertinaed lens and glass plate, was already spiraling, colliding with metalwork, smashing its way downwards before it landed on the ground far below, breaking into fragments and sending up a small puff of dust.

  Gabrielle looked up and this time she saw him. Without meaning to, Émile glanced across at the figures by the perimeter fence. Gabrielle followed the line of his gaze to the Arrols. He knew she would immediately see them for what they were; foreign, wealthy, and, Alice at least, perfectly eligible.

  29

  ____

  INSIDE THE LOUVRE, the atmosphere was hushed despite the high number of visitors. Unlike a stroll along the rue de Rivoli, people whispered, rather than spoke, as they glided across the parquet floor of the galleries or up the shallow stone stairs of the escaliers. And yet most of them weren’t there to admire art—at least, not that kind of art. It was Saturday afternoon and it was raining. What else was there to do in Paris?

  The Picture Gallery on the first floor
had become a promenade, a place of backward glances and flicks of fan, of stifled mirth and tiny snorts of indignation. Horror came in guises other than in the paintings of Eugène Delacroix, a vulgar shade of damask or the whiff of cheap cologne, a curious bruise or a fallen hem. Gossip crackled up and down the great vaulted space like electricity, cruel and rapacious and barely true. But that was the fun of it, the gullible collective swallow that ruined reputations and spoiled chances. How could you know who pay a call on don’t look now after it was pointed out that her dress was you know what? And how could he continue his courtship of that young woman when it was noticed that in certain lights, her face bore little resemblance to her father but to the coachman. It was all in the intonation, the slight lowering of register, the suggestion that invited the listener to lean a little closer and then harness their imagination. Surrounded by naked nymphs and scantily clad figures from Greek mythology, the imagination freely sparked. No wonder so much of it was fiction.

  The visitors, to give the impression that they were indeed cultured, that they were there to improve their minds rather than debase them, felt that it was necessary to dawdle, occasionally, in front of a work of art and stare at it for a moment or two with a thoughtful expression. In front of the most famous paintings, artists had set up their easels and were making copies, painstakingly re-creating the palettes and brushstrokes of Antoine-Jean Gros and Raphael. The smell of their oil paints mixed with the stronger whiff of beeswax floor polish and pomade, making the air heady with the scent of boudoirs and ateliers.

  There was a charity ball at the end of the month to mark the end of the season. The theme was “Old Masters.” And so that particular spring Sun­day, a number of ladies had brought their dressmakers to the gallery. They gathered around Canova’s Cupid, Leonardo’s St. Anne, and Rembrandt’s Angel of Tobias, to discuss cut and cloth, color and coiffure.