“Braver soul than me, then,” he said. “If you walk fast, you’ll get there in time to watch them raise the flag.”
And so she started to climb again, one more step at a time, up and up and around and around, climbing up the center of the pinnacle, a corkscrew of steps to the top. These stairs were narrower than the last set and much, much steeper. The band was still playing on the first platform, but it was too far below now to make out what the tune was.
Halfway up, she paused to catch her breath. The sun was setting and the tower cast a long, long shadow. The ground telescoped below her feet and everything started to spin, the steps to shift, the horizon to bend. A rise of nausea engulfed her. The back of her neck, her face, her scalp broke out in a sweat. She was suddenly petrified, frozen with terror; from her mouth came the smallest whimper of fear. Nothing felt solid, nothing safe anymore. She clutched at the central column of the stairs, wrapping both arms around it and pressing her face into the red paint of its surface. But this was even worse; it was too big, too smooth, there was nothing to hold on to.
She glanced up. She was halfway there. She focused on trying to slow her breathing down—in and out. In. Out. Then she stretched her hand out until her fingertips grazed the handrail before grabbing it with both hands. Her palms were wet, her body damp. She tried to force her foot to take another step, just one more. Her knees, however, had begun to tremble. Her leg wouldn’t move. She was stuck to the spot. Was the tower really safe? She was sure she could feel it begin to sway. What was she doing so high up, only inches from certain death? All she wanted was to be standing on solid ground, on sidewalks or grass or cobblestones. How could she go any higher? It was physically impossible.
“Please,” she whispered. “Just one step at a time.”
She swallowed down the rise in her throat; she wiped the sweat from her face onto her shoulder. She was suddenly furious with herself; she was pathetic, weak. That was why her life had led her here, to this moment, stuck in this stretch of iron and air high, high above Paris, unable to go any farther.
There was a small cheer from high above. A bottle popped. The tricolor must have been raised. As the cheering faded, she heard the steady rhythm of feet on the metal stairs far below; someone else was coming up the spiral steps. To be found, petrified, clinging to the railing like a shipwreck victim, was almost the worst thing she could think of. And so she imagined Émile up there, at the top. She was almost there; it wasn’t far, not far at all. She cleared her head of everything but him and she took the smallest step, and then another, and then she kept on going, one step at a time, until finally, breathlessly, she stepped out onto the third and highest platform.
Cait sank down onto a bench, closed her eyes, and waited for the dizziness to subside. She imagined she was in the hot-air balloon again and Émile was standing close by. If she kept away from the edge, if she focused on the people and not the height, she could keep herself together. She opened her eyes again. The sun had set and Paris was a glittering black carpet studded with tiny diamonds of light. Figures swam before her, blurs of black against the glow: a dozen men and a couple of women. A child. A series of loud bangs and whistles came from below and fireworks began to bloom in the sky above, red and green and blue. A shower of confetti was released from the flagpole and fell slowly through the air like huge flakes of snow.
Twice she walked around the central column, and then once more. He wasn’t there. She paused at the small spiral staircase that led up to Eiffel’s private apartments. It was the only place he could be.
“I’m looking for Monsieur Nouguier,” she asked a gentleman coming down.
“I am afraid he isn’t up here,” the man replied. “A boy came with a message and he left a few moments ago.”
48
____
THE SHADES WERE DRAWN. The bedroom was completely dark apart from a single lamp on the mantelpiece. As quietly as he could Émile closed the door to the hall.
“Who is it?” she cried out.
“It’s me,” he answered. “Émile.”
His mother let out a small sigh, of relief, he guessed.
“I thought you would never get here,” she said.
“I came,” he said. “I came as soon as I got your message.”
She lay propped up with dozens of small pillows. The bed was strewn with paper and bottles of pills and jars of cream.
“How are you?” he asked, and took her hand. It was as small and thin as a child’s.
“Getting better,” she said.
He swallowed. How could he tell her? How could he not?
“There is something I should have told you,” he said.
She took her hand back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“There is a crème caramel for you in the pantry,” she said. “I know how much you love it.”
“Maman,” he started.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve known for months.”
Outside he could hear the bang and crack of the fireworks at the tower.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “I thought we’d seen off the Prussians.”
He smiled, but he wasn’t entirely sure that she was joking.
“Actually, I want to show you something.”
But she shook her head.
“In a moment,” she said. “Émile, I know you think that I never listen to you. You think my views are old-fashioned, outdated.”
“Not at all—” he began.
“Hear me out,” she said with more force than he expected.
“Very well,” he said.
“I listened to what you told me. I heard what you said about the factory, about the family, about the future. And so I did it for you.”
He wanted her to stop talking, to take it back. He didn’t want to hear what was coming.
“I sold Maison Soucht,” she said. “Well, you did, actually, when you signed the papers.”
“What papers?”
“The papers that you signed last time you were here,” she said. “And I invested the money. In your employer’s company. In the Panama Canal.”
Louise Nouguier smiled and the weight lifted from his face. Émile closed his eyes.
“All of it?” he asked.
“Every last centime,” she replied. “You were right. You must follow your own path. And the money is quite safe, you reassured me of that. Émile, you won’t let the family down, I know that, you will face up to your responsibilities. This way you will have the money to do with as you please. Maybe you could start up your own firm?”
He nodded. Clearly his mother had stopped reading the newspaper. And maybe that was a blessing. She would not know that her investments were lost; the Nouguier fortune was gone. There was a small knock at the door. The doctor let himself in.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Better for seeing my son,” she told the doctor. “Now, what did you want to show me?”
The view of the tower from his mother’s balcony was completely unobstructed. Although it was half a mile away, it looked so close that he felt the urge to reach out and run his finger down its length. As he watched, huge chrysanthemums of colored light burst in the sky above, illuminating everything.
“It’s finished,” he said. “Look.”
His mother blinked twice.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “I’m so proud of you.”
The cannon on the first platform started to boom, once, twice, three times. A flock of starlings rose up from the trees on the street outside in one glorious swell. As the light faded, the beacon at the top of the tower came on with a flicker and began to beam out light, red and white and blue. Now, both night and day, the tower would be visible from the whole of Paris.
“Could you draw the blinds down again?” his mother asked. “It’s a little chilly.”
She was lying with her eyes open.
“Of course,” he said. “Would you like me to bring you anything? Have you started the Zola I
brought you?”
“Oh yes,” she replied. “And I’m enjoying it a great deal.”
He placed the book on the bed beside her and lit another light at her bedside.
“That’s better,” she said, and held the book in front of her.
“You might be able to read it better the right way around,” he said. “It’s upside down.”
She did not return his smile but looked on the brink of telling him something.
“Mother?” he asked. “What is it?”
Her face closed again.
“Actually, I’m a little tired,” she said, and closed the book. “What time is it? Is it late?”
Émile glanced up at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. It was 9:00 p.m. exactly.
“Can’t you see the clock?”
She blinked and looked in his direction. And in her eyes he saw a vulnerability, a lacking, that he hadn’t noticed before. He took a step to the left but her eyes didn’t follow.
“What clock?” his mother said.
49
____
THE OPENING PARTY WAS almost over and the metal stairs of the tower were strewn with paper streamers and rose petals. As Cait took the stairs down from the second platform to the first, she still felt light-headed from the altitude and the chill wind of the highest platform. She had done it; she had overcome her vertigo. Any sense of triumph, however, was tempered by the taste of sorrow. Her timing was lamentable. While she was catching her breath at the top, Émile must have been descending the spiral staircase. He would never realize how close their paths had come to crossing.
Alice was not where Cait had left her. How long had she been gone? An hour? More? For a few moments Cait felt the familiar rise of panic.
“Mrs. Wallace,” a voice called out. “Over here!”
Alice Arrol was standing at the door of the Anglo-American bar.
“Thank goodness,” Cait said.
“You were so long,” Alice said. “Well?”
She shook her head.
“He’d gone,” she said.
Alice reached out her hand and held Cait’s. It was a comfort somehow.
“Anyway, you’ll never guess who I met.”
Gabrielle was sitting at a small table surrounded by men in evening dress. She was in her element clearly, bright-eyed and beautiful, the crystal chime of her voice ringing out above the chatter.
“The chaperone returns,” she said when she saw Cait. “I’m afraid that while you were away, your charge was seduced and abandoned.”
Alice’s face blanched as everyone laughed, Gabrielle loudest of all.
“Miss Arrol,” she went on, “you haven’t touched your Champagne. It would be a crime to leave without finishing it. Come over here, my dear, and drink up.”
Cait turned to Alice.
“It’s late,” she said. “You don’t have to—”
“I’m fine,” Alice whispered. “Let me stay a little longer. It’s my last night in Paris. What harm can it do?”
“Alice . . .” Cait began.
“I know,” she replied. “But it wasn’t her fault. Her daughter was sick. That’s why she hasn’t been in touch.”
How could Alice believe that? After everything Gabrielle had done.
“We have an early start,” Cait pointed out.
“Please,” said Alice. “I won’t be long.”
Cait stood at the balustrade and looked north to Sacré-Coeur. What could have been important enough to call Émile away from the opening? An accident? Had something happened to his mother? Now she would never know.
Most of the guests were leaving and she watched as one by one the carriages on the surrounding streets drove away. Far below, the River Seine was silver in the moonlight, the barges that were moored in the current as black as tar. A woman stood in the road and hailed a cab. Even from high above, Cait recognized her. It was Gabrielle. Once the coachman had helped her inside, the cab turned and headed toward Gare du Lyon.
Alice was sitting in a booth with a bald man of around fifty. She was laughing a little too loudly.
“You’re too funny,” she told the man. “Is there any more Champagne?”
He topped up her glass.
“Drink up,” he said. “It’s on the house tonight.”
“Is everything all right?” Cait asked. “Miss Arrol?”
“This gentleman—”
“Mr. Pickering,” he offered.
“Mr. Pickering was just telling me a very amusing story.”
“Don’t you want to hear the punch line?” he asked. There was something vaguely lecherous about the way he was looking at her. Alice, however, seemed oblivious.
“Another time,” said Alice. “It was lovely to meet you.”
She rose and held out her hand. Pickering took it and raised it to his lips. Alice’s eyes widened.
“Mr. Pickering, now, that is a little forward.”
“Forward, backward,” he whispered, “I like it most ways?”
Alice’s face flushed a deep puce and then she opened her mouth and closed it again.
“The stairs to the ground are this way,” Cait said, and took Alice’s arm. “Good night, sir.”
“He’s a friend of Gabrielle’s,” Alice whispered as they left. “He’s not quite such a bore once you get to know him, though. His wife is French, apparently.”
They had just reached the door of the bar when Mr. Pickering caught up with them. He did not look quite so benign anymore.
“Can I have a word?” he said to Cait. “In private?”
“Wasn’t it enough?” he said, once they were out of earshot.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Enough for what?”
“This is most unsatisfactory,” Pickering explained. “We have an arrangement.”
“An arrangement? What kind of arrangement?”
“For the girl. I paid your friend twenty francs for her.”
It took a moment to figure out what he was talking about.
“For Miss Arrol?”
“Twenty francs to your French friend.”
Cait looked at his flushed face and fleshy fingers. He pushed back a strand of hair from his forehead. Once more Gabrielle had duped them all.
“Well, you’ll have to take that up with her.”
“Or with the girl.”
He turned and would have marched right up to Alice if she had not put out her hand and stopped him.
“No,” Cait said. “Don’t do that.”
Cait opened her reticule.
“Twenty, you say?”
As they walked down the stairs to the ground level, Cait put her arm around Alice’s shoulders.
“What did Mr. Pickering want, anyway?” said Alice. “He seemed quite animated.”
“To tell me what a charming young lady you are,” Cait said.
Alice smiled, then looked a little sad.
“I wonder where she went,” she said. “You know, she didn’t say goodbye.”
Cait pictured Gabrielle lying in a bunk in Chinatown. Was she there now, Pickering’s money in the Chinese man’s pocket? And she imagined the waft of opium clouding the air, her limbs limp, her eyes closed, her heart small and bitter in her chest.
“I’m so tired,” Alice said. “I think I’m ready to go home.”
Epilogue
____________
Edinburgh, 1890
THE ROYAL TRAIN rolled slowly onto the Forth Rail Bridge as the crowd’s cheers rose briefly above the howling wind. A hurl of rain hit the window, followed by the punch of a squall, but then the bridge rose up on either side, its red arms stretching out in the three great reaches.
Émile looked out along the wide gray river toward the sea, as the steam from the train’s engine was blown out like a bride’s veil behind them. In the next carriage were the Prince of Wales and several other members of the royal family. In this one, engineers. It was a measure of how much their reputation had risen in the year since the tower had opened. Eiffel was
now pursued by autograph hunters and unattached women of a certain age. Despite the government’s termination of the Panama Canal project, he was famous, he was distinguished, he could travel on the same train as British royalty.
The tower had been, and still was, an unmitigated success. Almost two million people had queued to climb the stairs or take one of the elevators during the seven months of the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Thomas Edison had visited. And Buffalo Bill, along with the full cast of his Wild West Show. In ticket sales alone, Eiffel had almost covered his costs. Even some of those who had once condemned it had changed their minds. The city was awash with souvenirs, with models and brooches, candles and bottles, all in the shape of the tower. And there were paintings, songs, poems, waltzes and polkas; even Jamie Arrol’s Eiffel Tower elevator room at La Chabanais, he had heard, was booked up months in advance. As promised, Eiffel had given both Émile and Maurice Koechlin a percentage of the profits. It wasn’t a fortune, but it almost made up for the money that his mother had lost.
“Émile!” cried Gustave Eiffel. “Come and sit with me.”
“I am comfortable here,” he replied.
Ever since the tower’s opening, he had found it hard to speak to his former employer. They had traveled separately to London and sat in different compartments on the train to Edinburgh. They had been friends for many years. And it wasn’t the money that his mother had invested and lost, it wasn’t that.
There were some things that couldn’t be overlooked, that couldn’t be forgiven, no matter how well meant.
On the river directly below a couple of steamers were tossed about on the wind. As he watched, the cloud cover cleared and sunshine briefly lit up the water and the distant Scottish hills. Even though they were saturated with rain, the colors seemed more vivid than any he’d seen before. And he was sure he recognized something of Cait in the graze luminosity of light and the purity of the air.
As he had stepped off the train at Waverley Station in Edinburgh the day before, he had looked for her face in the crowds of people who had waited to greet the train, as if by his will alone she had come to him. She wasn’t there. Of course not. It still pained him to think of what had happened a year earlier, when everything at last became clear.
To Capture What We Cannot Keep Page 29
