To Capture What We Cannot Keep

by Beatrice Colin

“I wish you and Alice the greatest happiness,” she said.

  “I don’t want Alice.”

  She swallowed and tried to focus on breathing. She thought of church pews and Sunday sermons.

  “It couldn’t last. You know that.”

  “Stay here,” he said. “In Paris.”

  “And what, be your mistress?” she said. “So you can go off and marry someone else and have children?”

  “I could do that with you.”

  In the ballroom, the piece ended. Almost immediately, the orchestra launched into the next dance, a slow waltz. A couple wandered out of the French windows, strolled into the garden, and disappeared. And she was suddenly certain that they had reached the end, that after this night she would never be alone with him again.

  “Dance with me,” she said.

  They were the only ones on the terrace now. Everyone else was inside, the lights so bright that they would be rendered invisible in the dark. And she let him lead, she let him slowly spin her around and around until the stars blurred and her mind numbed, until all she was aware of was the warmth of his body next to hers.

  The French windows suddenly flew open.

  “Here you are!” said Alice. “Jamie has gone and fallen in love again.”

  They turned to see Jamie dancing arm in arm with the baroness.

  “See!” said Alice.

  And then she was aware that Alice had turned and was looking from Émile to her and back again.

  “Mrs. Wallace,” she said. “You shouldn’t be out here. You’ll catch your death!”

  “You’re right. Goodbye, Monsieur Nouguier.”

  The lights of the ballroom were bright, far too bright. Her eyes smarted from the cold and her head had begun to ache. As Cait stepped around the polished parquet dance floor of the ballroom and made her way back to her seat, the music stopped and there was the sound of rain on the glass. How strange, she thought, for it to rain when the sky was so clear. And then she realized that it was not rain at all but applause.

  “Bravo!” called one guest after another. “Felicitations!”

  “Why are they clapping?” she asked one of the chaperones.

  “It’s an engagement,” the old woman said. “Look!”

  Cait turned, and there at the top of the stairs, glittering in diamonds and silk, was the baroness. And on either side of her, looking slightly less resplendent in comparison, were the count and American heiress. Alice was standing at the windows to the terrace. It was fortunate that no one was looking, no one saw. Her face could not hide the magnitude of her dismay.

  38

  ____

  THE STORM HIT PARIS in the middle of the night. The wind howled along the boulevards of the Left Bank, while gusts caught the bells in the Abbaye de Saint Germain-des-Pres and made them sway on their ropes.

  Émile had woken in a state of panic. The wind was rattling at his shutters, the bluster of a draft fingering through the cracks. From outside came the clatter of a bicycle being blown over. He dressed quickly. The storm sounded bigger than any he had heard for years in the city. He had to go to the site, to make sure that the cranes that moved up and down the central shaft were secure. What if a loose pole blew off and hit a passerby? What then? And what of the tower itself, what if the metal beams were too weak or the rivets not strong enough to hold the structure together? What if the foundations had shifted? As he pulled on his overcoat, he imagined the whole tower collapsing like a child’s toy, struts folding into one another and bolts being spat out like a mouthful of loose teeth.

  The streets were deserted. Rubbish blew along the pavements and a fallen café sign clattered and skittered until it hit the base of a tree. As he ran along the length of the rue de l’Université, the wind hit him head-on, hampering his progress like a hand in his face.

  The last time he had visited his mother’s apartment, he had told her the truth. He had had enough of lies and half-truths and delusions. Could no­body be honest in this city? Could nobody own up to who and what they were?

  “Émile,” his mother had said. “What an unexpected surprise. Now that you’re here, could you sign a few papers? Next time you go to La Villette, could you check out the furnace?”

  “Maman,” he’d said softly. “You have to understand. I can’t do this.”

  She folded her hands in her lap and glanced at the floor. Her eyes filled up with tears.

  “I only want what’s best for you,” she said.

  “I can’t live the old way,” he said. “The factory means nothing to me. It never has. It ties me down. Like a chain.”

  “Must you shout?” she whispered.

  He took her hand. His anger lifted. He couldn’t accuse her, not here, not now.

  “How have you been feeling?” he asked.

  “Not good,” his mother said. “Better for seeing you.”

  “You should try and rest.”

  “Will you sit with me awhile?”

  “Of course.”

  She lay back, closed her eyes, and within a moment or two, she was asleep.

  The wind whistled through the metal web and raced up the elevations, but the tower barely even swayed. A figure was standing at the base, in a spot at the dead center, where you could still look up and see a small disk of night sky. Émile recognized the way the man’s feet were placed apart, his top hat cocked and shoved down hard.

  “Monsieur Eiffel?” Émile called out.

  Gustave Eiffel frowned as he approached.

  “Émile, it’s you?” he yelled. “Filthy night! What are you doing out of bed?” “Is everything all right?” he asked, glancing up.

  “Of course,” he said. “We calculated for much stronger wind than this, remember?”

  As if to contradict him, a blast of wind lifted his hat from his head and sent it wheeling off into the darkness.

  “Your hat!” said Émile.

  “I have others,” said Gustave with a wave of his hand.

  The tower creaked while, high above, a rope whipped back and forth as if trying to restrain a live animal.

  “Sometimes I need to come here to remind myself that she exists,” said Gustave, “to prove that she isn’t just a figment of my overactive imagination. I mean, isn’t she magnificent? The art on view for all to see.”

  The streetlights, the so-called Yablochkov electric candles, flickered and then went out. Émile glanced up. Now the loom of the tower, its crossbeams and platforms, was impossible to make out in the dark.

  “But compared to the Panama Canal she’s just a folly,” Gustave went on. “When the canal is finished, a transatlantic liner will be able to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific in a matter of days. Can you imagine the time, the money it will save? The whole world will see it for what it is; a triumph of engineering—French engineering, to be specific.”

  They stood in silence for a moment and listened to the billow of the wind across the sand of the site. Eiffel had just sent another four thousand workers to Panama to excavate the sites. In Brittany, the construction of ten locks was well under way. Recently, however, a rumor had spread that de Lesseps had died, and the price of shares had plummeted. No wonder it wasn’t just the wind that kept Gustave up all night. And yet he was still confident; he was always confident. He couldn’t imagine anything not turning out the way he wanted it to.

  “And how is it going so far?” Émile asked.

  “There have been a few problems with the finances,” he admitted. “But de Lesseps has organized a shareholder’s meeting next week and everyone will be able to see that he is very much alive.”

  “And the investors’ money?” Émile asked. “Is it safe?”

  “Oh yes, quite safe,” he said.

  It had started to hail, tiny pricks of ice hurled down so hard and in such quantity that they quickly turned the ground white. Eiffel shivered and pulled his collar up.

  “What a night,” Gustave said. “I have a bottle in my office just over there. Will you join me for a g
lass?”

  Eiffel’s office was modest, a hut really, at the center of the site. To get to the door, one had to climb over a stack of iron girders.

  “It’s fine for now,” he said as he unlocked the door. “Very soon, as you know, I’ll have my set of rooms at the top of the tower, three hundred meters up. It’s my little payoff. You may use them if you like when I’m not there.”

  “That’s very generous of you.”

  “I’m a very generous man,” he replied.

  They shook the ice from their coats and their collars and their hair. Eiffel lit a small stove and took out two glasses and a bottle of cognac from his desk drawer.

  “And how are you, Émile? What brings you to work in the middle of the night?”

  “The wind woke me up. I needed a walk.”

  He didn’t elaborate.

  “Well, I for one am glad it did.”

  The stove was warm and the cognac glowed in his chest. Slowly they both began to thaw.

  “How is the state of play with the Arrol girl?” Gustave asked.

  The glow immediately began to fade. Émile put down his empty glass.

  “She’s a lovely girl,” he replied. “But—”

  “But?” he repeated. “There’s nobody else, is there?”

  Cait suddenly appeared in Émile’s mind unbidden, her face in the moon­light on the baroness’s terrace.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Émile said as he picked up the cognac bottle.

  “Be my guest.”

  Émile poured himself another, larger measure. It calmed the turmoil deep in his belly.

  “The thing is,” he began, “we have almost done it, we have built a structure higher than any other in the world, which will not waver even in winds like tonight. And yet—”

  He paused.

  “Go on,” said Gustave.

  “And yet we cannot calculate everything with mathematics and formulas.”

  “She doesn’t want you,” he said softly. “It happens. Nothing you can do.”

  Émile turned and looked at Eiffel. How did he know?

  “But with the other one, the Arrol girl, you can calculate the risk,” he went on. “And I’d say it was a surefire.”

  “I’m not a gambler.”

  “Life is a gamble,” Gustave retorted. “For the lucky ones, it pays out.”

  Émile paused for a moment and then threw back the cognac in one gulp.

  “You make it sound easy,” he said.

  “Once you place your bets it is. The brother’s trouble, mind you. I hear he was entangled with someone he shouldn’t have been at that charity ball you were at. And I also heard that he was responsible for that monstrosity in La Chabanais.”

  “What monstrosity is that?” Émile asked in a tone as nonchalant as he could.

  “Haven’t you heard? It’s a room where you can fuck in a simulated elevator, just like one of the ones we have installed in the tower.”

  Émile hoped that Arrol had kept his word, that he hadn’t revealed the extent of his involvement.

  “Hugely popular, apparently. And not bad, structurally. The boy’s a natural engineer despite his abominable behavior. We should be getting a percentage.”

  Eiffel laughed, a big deep laugh that relaxed the lines on his face. He glanced at his watch and then started to pull on his coat again.

  “We should do this more often, my dear Émile,” Gustave said. “But next time we will drink Champagne up there, at the top, to celebrate what will be one of the wonders of the modern world, the Panama Canal! And then we’ll drink another toast. To your marriage!”

  “Marriage?” said Émile. “Who said anything about marriage?”

  He laughed, but Gustave’s face was grave.

  “I have faith in you,” he said. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  39

  ____

  CAIT SAT IN THE SECOND pew from the back and listened to the nuns singing Mass. Their voices, high and pure, rose up into the vaulted heights of the church to echo and overlap above the chancel and around the nave. It was Sunday morning and the church was full. As well as incense, the air smelled of fresh flowers. Garlands of hothouse roses had been hung at the end of every row. The smell reminded her of her grandmother and she missed her with a fierceness she had not felt for years.

  It was a beautiful but cold December day. Earlier the streets had been almost deserted. As she walked, she had passed a few men sitting on benches or on the Métro steps, their opera hats in their hands, their chins on their fists. Had they lost their keys or forsaken their vows? Had they been betrayed or been the betrayer? The slanting morning sun picked up every crease and stain, every slice of regret and pang of hurt.

  It was easy to walk for miles and miles in Paris without any real destination in mind. The street cleaners hosed the cobbles, sluicing away the detritus of the night before down the drain with gallons and gallons of clean water. If only the past could be wiped clean with a hose, if only heartbreak were soluble. And then she had paused at a doorway to wipe her eyes and heard the nuns’ singing.

  The congregation knelt down to pray and she joined them, her head bowed, her face in her hands. She prayed that she would have the strength to get through the coming months and to let him go. She should never have succumbed to temptation; she took risks, she made bad decisions, she was rash, impetuous, irrational. Hadn’t she learned anything? And it all came rushing back, the horror that was her marriage.

  It had started gradually, a harsh word, a slammed door, a smashed cup. She dutifully picked up the pieces, collecting broken crockery with bleeding fingers. A bad day at work, a canceled train, a lukewarm bath: anything could ignite his fury. Saul never apologized but warned her not to provoke him. One day, however, she found her necklace, one of the few things that had belonged to her mother, torn apart, a handful of pearls rather than a single string, then put back in the velvet bag where she would find it.

  When she asked Saul why, he didn’t offer an explanation. Instead he hit her then so hard that for a moment she wondered if the sky had just caved in. Afterward she realized that it had. Who was this man? she asked herself. Who was this wife? There were no answers in the classics, in philosophy or algebra. Later, there were tears and apologies and the blame was apportioned. She promised that she would try not to make him angry. He promised to do his best. Their reconciliation lasted until the following morning when he threw his plate of toast onto the floor because she’d forgotten to ask the maid to buy more marmalade.

  But something good came out of those bad times. It was Christmas when she discovered she was expecting a child, conceived in one of the aftermaths of her provocations. The doctor confirmed it would be born in summertime. For a few weeks Saul was happier than she had ever seen him. For as long as she could, she did her best; she kept her mouth shut, her eyes closed. Nothing would take away her joy, nothing could be taken the wrong way, nothing could be used against her; it wasn’t worth the risk.

  And then one morning, she accidentally dropped the milk. The bottle slipped out of her hands and smashed on the hall floor. How vividly she remembered the roll of white across the polished wood and the Turkish rug. How clearly she recalled the drops of milk that had splashed Saul’s best coat, his shoes, the umbrella stand. How sharply she remembered the silence of the moment after.

  It had been snowing outside. She remembered the taste of it in her mouth. She remembered the coldness of the granite beneath her cheek. She heard the milk cart trundling off to the Pollok Estate. She opened her eyes and watched the wheel of a seagull high above. She felt the bloom of a bruise on her arm where his hand had grabbed her hard, then pushed. How long did she lie at the bottom of the stone steps? Long enough to wish for two things. Only one was granted, and not for another year.

  Her injuries were attributed to a fall. She broke her wrist and cracked a rib. She lost the child.

  A hand between the shoulder blades made Cait start. She rose and sat back in the pew
. The service had ended; the church was empty. She had no idea how long she had been kneeling there for. A curate was standing in the aisle, asking if he could help. His face was so kind, she thought she might cry again. Instead, she shook her head, thanked him, gathered her skirts, and made for the door.

  As she walked home, she decided that she would let herself think only of practical things. There were bills to be paid and appointments to be arranged, reservations to request and letters to post. Émile was picking up Alice at seven p.m. He had tickets for the opera. Once more the three of them would travel side by side, with her in the middle. She would close her eyes, she would not feel, she would speak only when spoken to. Nothing in her face, her eyes, her posture would betray her. She could do it; she’d done it before.

  And then she turned the corner of the rue de Rennes and stopped. There, right in front of her, was the tower, Émile’s tower. Although unfinished, it was already far higher, far lovelier, far more visible than anything else for miles around.

  40

  ____

  AT LEVALLOIS-PERRET it was once again possible to see the factory floor. Nearly all of the metalwork was on-site now, and only a few stacks of iron bars and several barrels of rivets remained. It was early afternoon and the workshop was quiet; most of the company’s engineers had relocated either to Brittany to oversee the construction of the huge iron locks, or to Panama to work on the ten vast excavation sites. It was weeks since Émile had spent any length of time in his office. He had come back only for a meeting with Gustave.

  Despite the winter storms and the rumor that they would blow the tower over, the damage had been minimal. The structure was growing faster, higher, thinner, the top almost within reach. Émile had worked without a break for months now, starting at dawn and retiring at midnight. Apart from the occasional outing with Alice Arrol, he saw only his mother. She seemed to have become obsessed with paperwork, with sorting out her affairs. Did she already know?

  Émile had lost weight, his face was pinched and his trousers hung loose around his waist. It wouldn’t be long before it would be finished. And what then? His mother would see his tower and would understand everything. But without an offer of marriage, the Arrols would return to Scotland and Cait would be gone.