‘My father died,’ she accused. ‘Six months ago.’
‘I was afraid of knowing that,’ Ti-Loup said.
‘He had a heart attack not long after Ti-Christophe – not long after you left, and then he had a stroke and he never got well again.’
They clutched at each other then. They held each other.
This was Manhattan. Nobody stopped to stare. Nobody even noticed.
‘Vanderbilt?’ Cabot asked. ‘Everything okay?’
Cap and Ti-Loup floated up from a very deep and dark place to find themselves alarmingly exposed to hundreds of people on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 72nd. They blinked, dazed, as miners do when emerging from the shaft.
‘You left in such a rush,’ Cabot said, ‘I was sure you must have had devastating news. Are you okay?’
‘Sure,’ Vanderbilt said. ‘I’m fine. Just caught off guard by a visitor from France. Unexpected.’
‘And who is this gorgeous French woman?’ Cabot asked.
‘Ah, monsieur,’ Cap said, ‘comme vous êtes gentil! Je m’apelle Lilith Goldberg. Je suis une amie d’enfance.’
‘Translate for me, Vanderbilt. I don’t know any French.’
‘She’s a childhood friend,’ Vanderbilt said. ‘We grew up in the same village. Her name’s … uh … She told you her name. She does speak English.’
‘My name’s Lilith Goldberg,’ Cap said.
‘Well in that case,’ Cabot responded, taking Cap’s hand with an only slightly sardonic mock-Gallic flourish and kissing her fingers, ‘what are you doing here in New York, Lilith Goldberg?’
‘I’ll be a student at NYU in the fall,’ Lilith said. ‘Art history. And you are?’
‘I’m Cabot. I was at Dryden with Vanderbilt. I gather this is an emotional reunion. I don’t know Manhattan well, but I do know that one of the places to celebrate is the Loeb Boathouse in the park. Can I treat you both to champagne? I’ve just had great news myself. I’ve got advance acceptance at Columbia for my PhD. Mind you, I haven’t given my response yet. I’d prefer to stay at MIT if I can.’
‘Congratulations, Cabot,’ Vanderbilt said. ‘That’s wonderful news. But perhaps we could celebrate tomorrow? My friend and I haven’t seen each other for years and I think perhaps –’
‘I’ve seen the boathouse from the Ramble,’ Lilith said. ‘It looks so beautiful. I’ve never been there but I’d love to.’
‘Settled then,’ Cabot said. ‘Vanderbilt, you can have your private reunion tomorrow.’
‘When I left,’ Lilith explained, ‘after my father’s funeral, your mother gave me the letters you’d sent in those first few weeks. I have finally read them, four years later.’
‘I don’t think I can remember the boy who wrote them,’ Vanderbilt said.
‘I can. But he isn’t you.’
‘It’s not that I’ve forgotten anyone or anything or that St Gilles doesn’t matter. It’s more like – it’s like jumping from a plane with no parachute. I feel panic. I don’t dare go back there, not even inside my head.’
‘It’s okay, Ti-Loup. It’s okay. And I recognise you now. This is how I remember you, the first time you climbed out your window. I was roasting rabbits, remember? And you were shaking with fright.’
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I am not that boy.’
‘I am not that girl either,’ Lilith replied. She was calm and quiet. She pushed her chair, very slightly, away from the bar.
‘You don’t know me,’ Vanderbilt said.
‘You don’t know me either. Cabot asked me out, by the way. We are having dinner tonight before the concert at Lincoln Center.’
7.
Every week after term began, Lilith Goldberg wrote to la comtesse, and every week she received a reply.
Ma chère marraine, Lilith wrote.
I am on cloud nine. The Met’s collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French paintings and furniture is extraordinary. I spend many hours there every week. I like to imagine you there beside me. Then we would have a glass of wine in the Met lounge and discuss the paintings, especially Philippe de Champaigne’s The Annunciation. It was done at the request of the mother of Louis XIV, for her private chapel. I will never forget that moment when I first heard from you the story of the mother of Louis XIV … I spend hours in front of that painting.
I have seen Gwynne Patrice. He avoids contact with his father as much as possible. He has not forgotten us. He is deeply troubled, but he sends his love.
‘There’s a phone call for you,’ Myriam Goldberg said. ‘From Boston.’
The call was from Cabot. ‘I can’t get you out of my mind,’ he said.
‘How did you get this number?’
‘From the Vanderbilt housekeeper, who gave me the number of the former housekeeper, Shannay, who gave me this number … I had to pester them. It took quite a while.’
‘Ah.’ Lilith wanted to ask if Ti-Loup was okay but she did not know how to ask. What would she call him?
‘I’ve been going on and on about you,’ Cabot told her. ‘And my mother said, For God’s sake, call her. So I just gulped down a shot of whiskey and now I’m calling. Can I invite you up here for a weekend? To stay with us?’
‘That’s … You take me completely by surprise,’ Lilith said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Say yes.’
‘But …’
‘My mother was over the moon when she found out the girl turning me into an insomniac was studying seventeenth-century French painting. And my father said, A girl I can talk to? Bring her here. So it will be a crushing disappointment to the whole family if you don’t visit. And of course we’ll invite Vanderbilt too. My parents have kind of adopted him and he always spends Christmas here. Will you come?’
‘That’s … well … I’d love to.’
‘Mind you,’ Cabot said, ‘I haven’t told my parents your last name. But you’re not really Jewish, are you? Vanderbilt said you weren’t.’
Lilith could see her own breath hanging in front of her mouth like a cobwebby fog. She could scarcely get air into her lungs. ‘Vanderbilt is wrong,’ she said. ‘I’m really Jewish. Perhaps it would be better if I don’t come.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Cabot pleaded. ‘Don’t hang up. That was idiotic of me. It doesn’t matter what you are, and it won’t matter to my parents either. Please come.’
‘All right. I’ll take the Greyhound.’
‘Good grief, you mustn’t do that. Greyhound buses are horrible. My parents use a car service. A driver will pick you up and deliver you right to our house.’
Cabot was waiting outside the carved oak doors of the mansion on Commonwealth Avenue. He kissed her and took her overnight bag. ‘You must tell my mother all about Philippe de Champaigne,’ he said. ‘I haven’t read up on art since I had to do it at Dryden but I’ve been cramming on the French baroque for the last few weeks. That’s why my parents are already crazy about you. My mother wants to take you to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Gardner.’
‘Am I allowed to tell her my last name?’ Lilith asked.
‘That was an unbelievably stupid thing for me to say,’ Cabot responded. ‘I have no idea why I did that. Nobody cares about that sort of thing anymore.’
‘Some people do,’ Lilith assured him.
‘Well, we don’t. The Cabots don’t.’
‘Your house is so beautiful,’ Lilith told Mrs Cabot. ‘And your furniture.’ She trailed her fingers across a mahogany sideboard, English, eighteenth century. ‘I’m more knowledgeable about French baroque, but this is lovely.’
‘Tell me about Vanderbilt’s mother,’ Mrs Cabot said.
‘Ah … She’s – she’s my godmother. I am extremely fond of her.’ Lilith wondered if she should say, Are you wondering how a French countess came to be godmother to a Jewish child?
‘I gather she has some extraordinary antiques in her chateau. And some valuable paintings, though we had to pry that information from Vanderbilt o
n his visits.’
‘He never cared for life in the chateau. But his mother’s collection of paintings and furniture is superb. She inherited most of them. It was because of my godmother and because of her chateau that I fell in love with French baroque art.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Mrs Cabot said, ‘I want to take you to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, an extraordinary place. And tomorrow evening we will have a big Cabot family dinner. We’ve invited Vanderbilt because it’s far too long since we’ve seen him. And I’ve also invited some friends who are art curators. I think you’ll enjoy them.’
The Cabot dining room reminded Cap of the chateau. The table, set with silver candelabra and the finest china, had places for twelve. There seemed to be a lot of Cabots – married older siblings – as well as close family friends connected to the world of art museums and the Boston Symphony and chamber music ensembles and the Back Bay Chorale. The dinner was catered. The chef, in starched linen top hat, appeared in the dining room briefly to offer and describe the amuse-bouche and to announce the menu to come. There was even a Pierre, though not in pantaloons. Cap hardly dared look at Ti-Loup, seated opposite, but their eyes met and a shared vision of the velvet knickers hovered between them, blurred at the edges and vanishing into blue nothing just as the candle flames did. They bit on their smiles and studied their linen napkins.
They did not know what they should call each other in alien company.
They did not even know how to think about each other.
‘So, Vanderbilt,’ Mr Cabot said. ‘You know my son has told you that I always wished he would take the courses you are taking. But, alas, we can’t live our children’s lives for them. How’s Introduction to Philosophy going?’
‘I love it, sir. I’m hoping to take a course with you next year.’
‘And you, Lilith,’ Mrs Cabot said. ‘What are your career plans after art history at NYU?’
Lilith was hesitant. ‘Well, I always used to assume Paris and the Louvre. But perhaps Sotheby’s now. I have a connection.’
‘Oh my dear,’ Mrs Cabot said. ‘You mustn’t think New York is the centre of the cultural world. We have extraordinary opportunities here in Boston: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Gardner, the Fogg at Harvard.’
‘And heaven knows,’ Mr Cabot said, ‘even MIT, for all its blinkers, has an Alexander Calder and an unconventional art collection. Holographic art, that sort of newfangled thing. I suppose we have to learn to accept it. People didn’t know what to make of Picasso once. You might be able to persuade my son to show you what physicists think of as art.’
Cabot Jr tapped his wine glass with a spoon. ‘I would like to propose a toast,’ he said, ‘to Lilith Goldberg. I will take it upon myself to be her cultural guide to Boston.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ his father said, ‘even though I have serious doubts about my son as cultural guide. But my wife and I would like you to know, Lilith, that we are more than willing to fill in what I fear will be abysmal gaps in Simon’s knowledge.’
Glasses were clinked, wine sipped. Cap smiled at Cabot and he blew her a kiss. She was afraid to look at Ti-Loup, but he raised his glass high. ‘To Lilith Goldberg,’ he said rather loudly. ‘May she conquer Boston.’
After dinner, as people were murmuring thanks and farewells in the hallway, Lilith and Vanderbilt exchanged a very decorous and very formal French parting, not touching, but kissing three times, left, right, left, on the cheek, brushing the air with their lips. On the final kiss, Ti-Loup whispered close to her ear: ‘Cap the Conqueror. All hail,’ and then he embraced Mrs Cabot warmly at the door, shook Mr Cabot’s hand and left without looking back.
Cabot handed Lilith a folded slip of paper as they went upstairs to separate bedrooms. ‘Vanderbilt’s phone number,’ he explained, ‘in his dorm room at Harvard. He asked if you’d call him in the morning. I refuse to be jealous because you’re more like brother and sister, right?’
‘More or less,’ Lilith said. ‘We grew up in the same house.’
‘But I thought he showed a flash of jealousy,’ Cabot noted. ‘Not, you know, the romantic or sexual kind. I guess everyone feels possessive about childhood friends. Vanderbilt and I were close at Dryden, his first year, my last. And after I left for MIT, I caught myself feeling jealous of his new friend, McVie. Childish, isn’t it? And yet it still bugs me when he spends Thanksgiving with the McVies instead of with us.’
‘I don’t know McVie. I don’t know about any of Ti – of Vanderbilt’s friends from Dryden. We drifted apart after he left France. We lost contact.’
‘It happens. Well. Goodnight. Sleep well.’
‘Goodnight. This has been a beautiful day. Thank you.’ She stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek but the gesture turned suddenly into a fiercely passionate clinch and Lilith could scarcely breathe for the wild movement of Cabot’s tongue inside her mouth.
She did not dislike the sensation.
When they separated and stood inches apart in the upstairs hall, their breathing ragged, unspoken possibilities hovered.
Cabot closed his hand over the brass doorknob of his own bedroom. ‘We could,’ he said softly. ‘If you wished.’
Lilith hesitated at the guest-room door opposite.
‘I’m such a rash idiot,’ Cabot said, ‘as my father always points out. Fools rushing in, etcetera. Sweet dreams.’
‘See you in the morning,’ Lilith said.
8.
On Sunday morning, Gwynne Patrice Vanderbilt met Lilith Goldberg at the subway station in Harvard Square. He waited for her outside the turnstiles by the flower sellers and newspaper stands. Instinctively they embraced and stood holding each other in that murky underground space.
‘Cap,’ he said. ‘Can I call you Cap?’
‘Only in private. Cap doesn’t have a Green Card and could be in trouble if her mask slips. Lilith Goldberg is legal. Can I call you Ti-Loup?’
‘Only in private. And nothing but Ti-Loup in private.’
He took her through the glut of traffic in the square and led her into the tranquil green space of Harvard Yard. ‘It’s beautiful,’ Cap said. ‘It’s like the chateau courtyard. It’s like the enclosed garden in the Goldbergs’ building. It’s like the Sheep Meadow in Central Park.’
‘Yes. I love it. I love being here.’ He pointed out landmarks: Widener Library, the picture-postcard white steeple of Memorial Church, his own freshman dorm. ‘You still like taking long walks?’
‘I walk more than an hour every day in Central Park.’
‘Where we’re going is a twenty-minute, maybe thirty-minute walk. That okay?’
‘Yes. Where are we going?’
‘To mass at St Ann’s in Somerville.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not. You willing to come with me to mass?’
‘I’m not thrilled about the idea.’
‘I know. Who would have thought? I go to confession too because I have to talk to someone about … you know. I have to talk to someone safe. Sometimes I dream that I’m covered in blood and I wake up and my sheets are drenched with sweat.’
‘I have nightmares too.’
‘I stopped having them while I was at Dryden. I was someone else there, but now it’s all coming back. I want it to stop.’
‘We should never have left the bodies, but who could have imagined …?’
‘I should have stayed with Ti-Christophe. I should have stayed beside him and held his hand.’
‘We should have gone to the police first, instead of to Papa.’
‘If I had just run out between them,’ Ti-Loup said, ‘everything would have been different.’
‘Yes. You would have been killed.’
‘And Ti-Christophe would still be alive.’
‘You and Ti-Christophe would both be dead, and Papa would still be dead, but we have to figure out how to go on living.’ In alarm, she yanked him back from an oncoming car. ‘And how to stay among the living.’
‘Sorry. D
on’t usually have to watch for cars on these back streets. Especially not on a Sunday morning. We’re in Somerville now. It’s a pretty rough area but no one will do anything violent on a Sunday. Everyone’s Boston Irish and Catholic and they all go to St Ann’s. And here we are.’
St Ann’s was a great red brick hulk of Romanesque Revival with a blocky tower on one side surmounted by a squat copper spire.
‘Well,’ Cap said. ‘It’s not St Gilles, is it?’
‘Not twelfth century, not stone, not early Gothic. The sort of thing that matters to my mother.’
‘To me too,’ Cap said. ‘Architectural beauty. All kinds of beauty. They matter.’
‘This church matters to me,’ Ti-Loup said. ‘It’s where my best friend from Dryden was baptised and where he received his First Communion.’
‘And St Gilles? Where we received our First Communion?’
‘I hated going there. I knew what everyone was thinking. No one at St Ann’s knows I ever had to wear a blue dress or climb out my window every night. I’m guessing you can understand the difference. At St Ann’s you’ll meet my best friend.’
‘Your next best friend after Cabot.’
‘My best friend, after Cabot moved on. His name is Patrick McVie. His father owns a butcher shop. McVie is going to remind you of Ti-Christophe and we’re going to have lunch with his family after mass. Unless that would be too blue collar for your taste.’
‘I’m the gardener’s daughter, remember? My brother was a butcher’s apprentice.’
‘Before you crossed over. But I think you and the McVies will get along.’
The dining room in the McVies’ living quarters, which were above the butcher’s shop in Union Square, was small and crowded. There were eighteen people, counting the children underfoot, as well as the priest from St Ann’s and Brother Damian from Patrick McVie’s Marist school. The meal was not exactly lunch, not in the way Cap thought of lunch. It was a heavy dinner, the main Sunday meal, with a cauldron of Irish stew (beef, heavy with gravy, carrots, lentils, dollops of red wine) and a deep bowl of mashed potatoes. Guests ladled their own servings and found a space at the table.
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