To Capture What We Cannot Keep

by Beatrice Colin

  The corsetière had brought a dozen styles. None were suitable. Alice stood in her bedroom in a white cotton shift. Cait took in the fullness of her breasts and the curve of her belly.

  “I eat too much bread,” said Alice said as the corsetière eyed her skeptically.

  “How long?” Cait asked once the corsetière had gone.

  Alice sat down on her bed.

  “How long since your last bleed?”

  “I can’t remember,” she said. “I never can.”

  Her face was fixed into an expression of painful ennui. Cait rose. A wave of alarm swept through her. And she suddenly understood that once again she had made a grave error of judgment.

  “No!” she said. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  At the panic in Cait’s voice, Alice stiffened.

  “It’s only bread!” she repeated and turned away.

  Cait grabbed Alice’s wrist and spun her around. “Don’t lie to me!”

  Great big tears started to roll down Alice’s face.

  “It’s what they do in Paris,” Alice said, her voice small. “Gabrielle told me.”

  “When? How?” But it all fit into place without an explanation. The artist’s sittings.

  Cait took Alice by both shoulders. She had the urge to shake her, to shake in some sense. Alice was so naive, so gullible, and Gabrielle had served her up on a plate.

  “How could you?” Cait said.

  Alice pulled a face. And no wonder. Cait could hear herself and she sounded sour, mean-mouthed.

  “Don’t be angry,” Alice said softly. “Everyone has a ‘ four till five.’ That’s what she called it.”

  And then she started to sob, her face as distraught and unaware of itself as a child’s.

  “But it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way!” she went on. “Why would he marry that ugly old American woman? Why, when he loves me?”

  “You don’t mean the artist, do you?” Cait said.

  “Gabrielle’s husband? Of course not,” she said as she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “But it was my idea, not hers.”

  “So, how long?”

  Alice swallowed.

  “Well,” she said. “You know I saw him at the ballet and then in the Bois de Boulogne. And then when I was trying on that dress, that wedding dress, I overheard some women talking about the ice rink. They’d seen him there.”

  “That’s when it started?”

  Alice shook her head. “I barely saw him. Not then, at least. Not until—”

  “The Louvre?”

  Alice nodded.

  “And the sittings?”

  She shook her head. “Gabrielle arranged it,” she said softly.

  Cait stood up. She was so furious that she couldn’t sit down for a moment longer. Gabrielle had betrayed them both; she had ruined Alice. But why?

  “What have I done?” said Alice. “I’m such a fool. Don’t scold me, Mrs. Wallace. I’m not like you. I never will be. Why did we ever come here? I wish we never had.”

  Alice’s voice was flat but her eyes still streamed tears. She swallowed once, twice, to try to hold it in. It was as if the momentousness of the situation had only just hit her.

  Cait closed her eyes. She prayed once more for strength.

  “Alice,” she said and held out her arms. “Come here.”

  They sat in silence as the daylight drained away.

  “Are you going to tell Jamie?” Alice whispered. “It’s just I haven’t seen him for days.”

  She didn’t say what they both were thinking. Whose bed was he sleeping in? Which woman was worthy of his attention now?

  Jamie’s room was tidier than she had expected. The bed was made but the wardrobe doors were lying open. There was nothing hanging inside apart from a frock coat and a couple of dress shirts. The chest of drawers was empty too. The ring in Cait’s stomach pulled taut.

  “When did you say you saw him last?” she asked.

  “I can’t remember,” Alice replied. “But you know what he’s like. He prob­ably comes home once we’re asleep. And then he’s off again. Gallivanting. Because men can without consequence.”

  And then they both saw the note propped up on the nightstand.

  44

  ____

  A FEW WEEKS later the Panama scheme collapsed. The canal company was formally dissolved and liquidators were appointed. All 800,000 investors lost everything. Émile found Gustave Eiffel sitting in his office at Levallois-Perret with his coat on.

  “You’re still here!” Émile said.

  “I can’t go home,” he replied. “Have you seen a newspaper?”

  According to Le Monde, one and a half billion francs had been lost. Émile nodded. “How long have you known?” he asked.

  Eiffel sat back and stared into space. “There was talk but I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t think the French government would let it happen.”

  “But they have.”

  “Indeed. And they have stationed troops along the site in Panama and sent warships. Warships! What do they envisage? That the French people will sail across the Atlantic, take up arms, and attack?”

  “What will you do?”

  “I will keep working. I have six thousand men out there. Most of the iron­work is complete and is already on-site. And they expect me to give up now? What kind of a man do they think I am?”

  He paused but was clearly not looking for an answer.

  “I will not stop the construction,” he went on. “The government will have to find a solution. And in the meantime, I will stick to my original work schedule. This is not just about Gustave Eiffel, it is about saving the reputation of France!”

  He stood up and brushed down his coat.

  “We must carry on as normal. I have an invitation tonight to a salon. Will you come?”

  Émile hesitated. Gustave blinked.

  “There will be music,” he said. “Debussy, the composer, will be there, by all accounts.”

  “I need to go and see my mother. She hasn’t been at all well.”

  “Go in the morning. Please come, Émile? I ask you not just as a colleague but as a friend.”

  The salon was being held in a large mansion that backed onto the river. Debussy, a dark-haired young man with a slightly quizzical expression, was indeed there and was due to play a new composition. Apart from a brief greeting from the hostess, the wife of a Parisian banker, they were widely shunned. Nobody spoke to them or even cast a glance in their direction.

  “I am now a social pariah,” Eiffel said as he took two glasses of Champagne from a passing tray. “How swiftly one can fall in this fair city. Drink this and then drink some more. It’s the least we can do to keep ourselves entertained, I’d say.”

  Without anyone to talk to except each other, Émile accepted Eiffel’s challenge. The Champagne slipped down easily and he soon lost count of how many glasses he’d had. He was on his way back from the water closet when he saw that Eiffel was talking to a woman.

  “Émile,” Eiffel called out when he saw him. “This young lady was just telling me that you are acquainted.”

  The woman turned and a shock ran through him. It was not just any woman.

  “Maybe you should introduce us?” Gustave prompted.

  “I can do that myself,” she said, and held out her hand. “It’s Gabrielle.”

  “Charmed,” said Eiffel.

  Gabrielle turned back to Émile.

  “We have a friend in common,” she said.

  “Really?” Émile replied.

  “Alice Arrol. Lovely girl.”

  She watched him for a reaction. What was she playing at?

  “Have you proposed yet?” she asked.

  Eiffel was staring at him with a large smile on his face.

  “Why do people keep asking me that?” Émile shrugged. “It’s still early days.”

  She smiled her quite beautiful smile and then she played her card—her trump card, by the sound of it.

  “Oh, but Émile,
that’s not what I heard,” she said. “Under the circumstances, time is of the essence, wouldn’t you say?”

  “They’re starting,” said the hostess. “You can keep gossiping after the recital.”

  A grand piano had been set up in the ballroom. Debussy was joined by another musician; it was a piece for four hands. Émile tried to listen to the music. He tried to focus on the tumble of notes and melodies. Gabrielle stood to the left of Eiffel, but her words still throbbed like the sting of a wasp.

  “I need a glass of water,” he whispered to Eiffel before he excused himself.

  He made his way through the house, past a maid collecting empty glasses, past a couple of elderly chaperones who knitted in silence, through the wide hallway with its display of tapestries and Sèvres pottery, to the winter gar­den. It was quiet out there, cooler, with its glass walls and the fringes of palms and yuccas. He tried to think straight, to make sense of the situation. But his head was still spinning with Champagne and the sour taste of his own consternation.

  “Émile,” said a voice. He turned. It was Eiffel.

  “Did you hear that?” he said.

  Eiffel nodded, then sat down on a wicker chair. “She’ll make a nice little wife,” he said.

  Émile was on the edge of his temper, his body sweating, his heart stampeding. “What did you say?”

  “You know what I think. Marriage, a family, would be good for you.”

  “It’s not my child!” Émile hissed.

  Eiffel raised his eyebrows. He leaned back in his chair. His lit a cigar and inhaled deeply.

  “You have been courting her? Publicly!”

  “But I haven’t been sleeping with her.”

  “Still, you must do the gentlemanly thing and marry her,” he replied.

  “And if I don’t?”

  Gustave Eiffel inhaled deeply.

  “You work for me,” he replied. “I have a reputation. And reputation in this city is everything, you know that.”

  “Did you hear what I said?” he asked.

  Eiffel stood up.

  “My company has already been tarnished by a scandal not of my own making,” he replied curtly. “I simply cannot afford another one so close to the opening of the tower. I can’t afford it.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  Eiffel tapped his ash into a potted palm.

  “Marry the girl,” he said. “And take a lover.”

  Émile shook his head. “And if I can’t do that?”

  He laid his hand on Émile’s shoulder.

  “Let’s talk about it in the morning,” he said. “I’d hate to be forced to let you go.”

  From the ballroom came a round of applause. Eiffel bade him goodbye and headed back to the party.

  Émile sank down onto a stone bench. All he wanted was Cait, all he had ever wanted was Cait. He should have listened to her. He should have broken off contact when she had asked him to. And then another thought occurred. Did she know? Had she been involved? Had she set him up with Alice deliberately? But he knew, he knew without a doubt that this was Gabrielle’s doing. He didn’t know how or when, but he was sure. This was her revenge, his retribution.

  He was suddenly aware of a man standing next to him in the half dark smoking a cigar.

  “Can’t see what all the fuss is about,” the man said. “This composer, what’s his name?”

  The count looked across at Émile, his handsome face open, his lip curled into a question.

  “Debussy,” Émile said.

  “That’s the one. I prefer ballet. At least the eyes are kept busy, if you know what I mean?”

  He laughed—a short, boyish blurt filled with vulgar innuendo. If he hadn’t laughed, Émile considered later, if he had gone on talking about his failure to love classical music, the outcome might have been quite different. But instead his laugh echoed around the glass of the winter garden and mocked him as it filtered through the polished leaves. He didn’t remember the trajectory of events exactly, he couldn’t recall ever having made a conscious decision, but instead of acquiescing, he found he had a fistful of the count’s collar in his hands.

  “Is there no end to your debauchery?” Émile whispered.

  The count stared at him, blinking in surprise.

  “I don’t even know you.” He coughed.

  Émile held him tighter, fueled by more rage than he had ever felt before. It seemed perfectly clear at that particular moment that this man in his fine silk shirt, with his handsome face and superior gene pool, was to blame for all the hurt and hate and pain and anguish in the world, for all the inequality and unfairness and hypocrisy, for the loss of everyone he had ever loved. And yet he was impermeable, untouchable, indifferent to the damage he caused. More than anything else Émile had ever wished for, all he wanted to do was hurt him back.

  “Monsieur!” a voice rang out behind him. It was one of the crowlike chaperones, her knitting still dangling from her hands, her spectacles propped on the end of her nose.

  Émile let go and reeled away, his anger collapsing like flimsy scaffolding. He was left with lightness in his head, as if the blood in his veins had been carbonated by all the Champagne he had drunk.

  The count had barely moved but now he was rubbing his neck, his face crumpled in alarm.

  “Just what do you accuse me of?” he said.

  “To call you a whore,” Émile said, “would be to denigrate a profession. No, sir, you are a cunt.”

  Émile made for the door, stumbling against the frame. The composer was still playing, the maid was still collecting glasses—only a few minutes had passed—but he knew that the fabric of his world had been irreparably torn.

  45

  ____

  IT WAS EARLY, so early that a fine mist still covered the whole city. Cait had lain with her eyes closed, but once she knew sleep had gone and would not return, she had risen and opened the shutters. Soft light filled the room, glancing off the mirror and the glass of the framed botanical etchings on the wall. The morning was still as a pool, the air thin and clear as water.

  The house felt empty without Jamie. Even though he had rarely been there, there was always the possibility that he might walk in at any moment. And she realized that she had become accustomed to listening out for him, had been aware of every creak of the floor and click of a door, had developed another sense, more acute than smell, that could perceive his presence.

  “Panama!” Alice had wept when Cait had read out his note. Then she’d taken it from Cait’s hands and read it once over herself.

  “How could he?” she had sobbed.

  At mealtimes the table was laid for two, not three. The house felt too quiet. The cloakroom was half-empty, the coats hung sparse, like thinning hair. And it seemed as if Jamie’s absence seemed to swell, until his memory took up much more space than he ever had.

  As for Alice, there were decisions to be made, doctors to consult, confessions to make, but it was still too awful, still too raw to face. How could she tell William Arrol about his niece’s predicament? How could she admit that his nephew had run away to Central America? There was time, a month or two perhaps, in which they could live in denial. And so Cait took Alice’s lead and kept on as before. She would do something, just not today.

  Cait laid her clothes out on the bed: bloomers and chemise, petticoat and stockings, bustle and princess corset. She had picked out a dark-green walking dress with a high collar, narrow sleeves, and a small bustle, bought, readymade, from a department store. It hadn’t been expensive.

  As she took off the camisole she wore in bed, she caught sight of herself in the mirror, her dark hair long and loose, her feet bare, her body naked. She ran her hands over her breasts, her hips, her thighs. This was how Émile had seen her, not constrained by corsetry or pinned and preened, not laced and looped, but able to breathe long and low, to stretch and bend, to soften and yield.

  She turned away from her reflection. The thought had passed through her mind that her white skin a
nd soft breasts would be for no one else’s eyes now but her own. No one would ever know her. She dressed quickly, first the white cotton chemise and pantaloons, then the corset, black with the whalebone stays and steel boning, the tyranny of its curves hourglassing her body into the right shape. She fixed the wire bustle, a crinolette, around her waist, the cage jutting out at the rear. Her boots laced up the front, her stockings attached to the corset but were fiddly to fix, and then the final layer, the walking dress with its drapes and swags, buttons and narrow cuffs of green damask.

  At the front door, she pinned up her hair and fixed her hat—a velvet and felt toque—pulled on her gloves, and picked up her purse. At last she stepped out and into the street, trying to ignore the pinch of boning and the poke of wire, the threatened slide of her left stocking, the weight of cloth and steel, of lace and bone, and the sweat that was already collecting under her armpits. The morning mist had lifted. The air was fuggy with the choked smoke of thousands of coal fires. Maids hurried to work, men sauntered toward their offices, and small boys clutching bags of books ran at full tilt toward their schools. Within ten minutes she had passed half a dozen women out walking, their heads held high, their faces free of the suggestion of the extra weight they carried in their clothes, the slow torture of being dressed.

  She found an empty bench in the park and sat down for a while. Spring was a long way off, but the grass was precocious with yellow and purple crocuses. A woman was running along the wide pathways looking, or so it seemed, for someone. As she came closer, Cait recognized her. It was their housekeeper; she was looking for her.

  Alice’s cries were audible from the front door. She was lying twisted up in her bedclothes, her body racked in pain. She grabbed Cait’s hand and held it.

  “I’m going to die,” Alice said.

  The doctor confirmed that she wasn’t going to die. The bloody sheets were taken away and boiled, two months’ bed rest and a diet of soft food were prescribed. Nobody verbalized what had happened or what it meant. It was the kind of blessing that was too terrible to pray for, but it was a blessing nevertheless.

  Three days later, Alice came down to breakfast. She was pale and her eyes were red-rimmed.