From a Paris Balcony

by Ella Carey

  “I am returning to England,” she said. “I am going back to Ashworth. There is nothing, Henry, for me here.”

  Henry was quiet for a few moments. “You’ll need to stay here a few days. Then you can go. You’ll have to remain in Paris with me until it’s seemly that you leave.”

  The practicality of his statement hit her a little. But she nodded and closed her eyes. Then opened them again. Of course. That was all it had always been for him. Practical. His marrying her. The puppy, the lunch by the follies. She had been stupid. She had fallen for it all. But he hadn’t meant it. Suddenly, Louisa felt something loosen.

  If Henry was doing what he wanted to do, then why couldn’t she?

  She turned to him, but he drew out his cigarette case and lit up. “I really didn’t want you to show up in Montmartre last night. You know that.”

  The stink of smoke filtered through the room, reminding Louisa of the ghastly night before. The club. The heat. Sorry to have besmirched your plans, she wanted to retort. But she held it in, knowing that it would only start an argument. And now, the only way forward was to be formal right back to him. Practical. They had an arrangement, almost a business one at that. Louisa thought about it a little more. Perhaps there was a reassurance in this. Plenty of marriages survived on those terms. It wasn’t what she had wanted. But perhaps there were advantages in the relative freedom that such an arrangement offered—the release from any expectation that she would have a relationship with Henry that was anything more than superficial. If he could look at her as a means to an end, then why couldn’t she, as a woman, do exactly the same thing back?

  Louisa tilted her chin. “Very well, then, Henry,” she said. “I will stay for a few days to make things look good. But only on one condition.”

  Henry looked up at her, his expression very much as if he was only mildly interested in what she said.

  Louisa resisted the urge to bat at his cigarette smoke. “I want you to tell me about Marthe de Florian.”

  If Henry was surprised that Louisa knew the courtesan’s name, he didn’t give anything away. He just regarded her, blankly, through the haze. “She’s a friend,” he said.

  “Really.”

  “Why not?”

  “Henry.”

  “I’ve known Marthe a long time. There are things that you don’t understand, and I don’t blame you for that, but—”

  “I’m not brokenhearted.”

  Henry muttered something.

  Louisa went on. “Quite frankly, I’m more interested in women’s rights. Marthe seems a clever person. But how did she end up as a—”

  “Demimondaine?” Henry stubbed out his cigarette. Sat down in a chair and crossed his long, elegant legs. Aristocratic legs, Louisa thought. In some ways, he came across as a spoilt sort of child, in others, he was sophisticated. She understood his yearning to act on the stage. She understood how restricted he felt back in England. What he failed to grasp was that he had drastically underestimated her.

  “Like so many of them, Marthe was a poor seamstress in the garment district,” Henry said. “She had two sons to two men by the time she was twenty. Like all women without support, she is only trying to survive.”

  Louisa nodded. Exactly. Because Marthe de Florian had no other choice. What else could she do? Become a governess? A maid? Never see her children? “Henry, I want to do something to change that. To change things for women like Marthe. Can you understand that?”

  Henry’s mouth formed into a cynical smile. She could see he was taking in what she had said, but he was quiet for a while. Finally, when he spoke, his tone was cold. “I have already heard of your . . . interests. Your involvement with radical women—with bluestockings—will not be tolerated by my family. You are not unintelligent. Surely you understood the role you were taking on when you married me, Louisa.

  “As long as you toe the line, you can do what you want at Ashworth. But there are two rules you’ll need to follow. The Duval lineage can never be questioned; I will not raise a bastard. And for God’s sake, no politics. You’re going to be a duchess. I know you’re American, but can’t you see that?”

  Louisa leaned forward. She kept her voice soft. She was determined to make him understand. “Henry. Forget me for a moment. Think about Marthe. Wouldn’t you rather women like Marthe were not dependent, solely, on the whims of wealthy men? Wouldn’t you rather that they could have other opportunities? Surely, I could use my position as a duchess to further the interests of women like your friend! You saw what was going on in Montmartre. You know what is happening in the street. For every Marthe de Florian, there are a hundred starving, desperate women who have no hope at all.

  “As your wife,” Louisa went on, “I am in a position to do something to help. And with your support, with your weight as a future duke, behind the cause . . . Henry, quite frankly, you have millions of pounds at your disposal. You’ll have a position in the House of Lords, should you wish to take it. Surely, you would not want any daughter of yours to end up—”

  Henry uncrossed his legs and stood up. “Louisa.” He held out a hand. “You are quite delightful when you are passionate about such matters, but I’m afraid it simply won’t work. You will have to deal with the forces of Ashworth. I couldn’t. I left. Don’t you see?

  “You are welcome to stay here in Paris. I really don’t mind if you do. Or you can go back after a time, but you are not going to be able to conduct any sort of political activity as the wife of the heir to one of the greatest estates in England. And I’m afraid that while my father, who is in good health, remains a duke and as close to the royal family as one could possibly be, you are better off staying here with me, or going back and playing your role to perfection, than you would be trying to take some radical position that will only be regarded as shameful. They will stop you. You won’t be able to do it. Louisa, I know this from experience. When I spoke to my father about my hopes for a life in the theater—for a life working with Shakespeare, with Chekhov—he told me to grow up. He told me that if I mentioned such a thing once more in the house, he would disown me and leave everything to Charles.”

  Louisa found herself pressing her lips together in order to stop the flood of words that wanted to come out.

  “But the irony is that we all have to act, my dear,” he said. “I do so every day. It’s just that I act in my life, not on the stage. Me, Marthe, you. You can’t choose what role you want to play, because you are married to me. I’m sorry, but you made your choice. You decided to marry me. As I said, you are not stupid. Presumably you thought the entire thing through.”

  Louisa folded her arms. Anything she did or said right now would not be to her immediate advantage. She remained silent.

  “I have an engagement in the Bois de Boulogne now.” Henry adjusted his sleeves, checked his hair in the mirror, and moved toward the entrance hall. “Tonight, Louisa, I have tickets for us both to the ballet.”

  Louisa felt her breath coming in shudders.

  “I will see you at eight,” he said. “It’s important you come. People need to see that you are accompanying me as my wife.”

  He nodded at her, almost bowed, and then there was only the sound of his heels clicking on the hard, patterned tiles before the front door shut with a thud.

  “Damn you,” Louisa whispered to herself.

  Once again, that rhetorical question shouted in her ear. What was the difference between the web in which she was caught and the one in which the courtesan found herself? And that begged another question—who was better off?

  Louisa chose to wear black to the ballet. This was deliberate. She hoped that the color was formidable. She stared straight ahead once she was in the carriage with Henry, but her thoughts spun in whirls. She simply could not stop. This afternoon, she had asked the footman to take her to the Louvre, where she had wandered around. She had begun with the idea of looking at art as a means of distraction from life, but she had finished filled with inspiration to forge ahead instead. S
he had stared long and hard at Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, taking in every aspect of the artist’s noble, resolute woman who spurred men to final victory.

  And now, as she sat in the carriage next to her husband, Louisa reminded herself that she had never wanted to exclude Henry from her plans. Having a husband who was sympathetic toward her desire to make things better was something she had wanted and something she had hoped to find. Her failing was that she had misjudged Henry, and now, she had to carry on by herself.

  Once they were seated in the Duval family box at the Opéra Garnier, with its soft velvet seats, gilt columns, and rich red walls, Henry’s reasons for choosing to bring her to the ballet became even more telling. The Opéra was the place to show off to society, a place where Henry could appear as a respectable married man.

  No one was looking at the stage.

  As Louisa gazed around the theater, it was clear that the ethereal beauty of Les Sylphides was lost on this audience. The crowd spent the evening peering at each other through their lorgnettes. A constant stream of people came in and out of the Duval family box to meet Louisa and to chat with Henry as if oblivious to the ballet that was being performed on stage.

  At intermission, Henry leapt out of his seat without even a glance at Louisa, but when Louisa went to follow him, he told her to stay where she was. He insisted that she speak with the Comtesse de Laigne, a woman who had appeared right on cue with a waiter bearing two glasses of champagne.

  Louisa turned to her new companion, a splendidly dressed, short woman whose beady eyes looked Louisa up and down before she leaned in and spoke.

  “You know where the men have all gone, don’t you, my dear?”

  Louisa shook her head. Smoking in the lobby?

  “They are in the Foyer de la Danse.” The comtesse spoke as if she were sharing some great confidence. She spoke as if Louisa should be flattered that she had chosen to share this information with her. “Wives and male dancers are not allowed to enter the room.”

  Louisa sipped her champagne, its fizzy sweetness tingling on her tongue. The older woman seemed to want to shock her. Louisa wanted to roll her eyes in return.

  “And what happens in this Foyer de la Danse?” she asked, keeping her voice deliberately even.

  “Your husband gets a season ticket to the famous Foyer along with his box,” the woman said. Her bosom was powdered. Her curls bobbed. She fairly burst with the superiority of her knowledge. “The Foyer was built for the express purpose of facilitating encounters between the ballerinas and gentlemen ticket holders. It is a sort of club, where noblemen and industrialists alike linger with the dancers and watch them limber up at the barre.”

  Louisa stared straight ahead.

  Of course. Why else would everyone come to the ballet?

  “As one would expect, the dancers seek gentlemen with enough clout to advance their careers. Most of the girls arrive here at the Opéra starving. Most of them are young, perhaps fourteen or so?”

  Louisa closed her eyes. Yet another brothel. “How interesting.” She was aware that her voice had as much life in it as a painted doll.

  She picked up her own opera glasses and peered around the room. Perhaps if she ignored the comtesse, the woman would find someone better to impress.

  After a few moments, predictably, her companion began to shriek at a passing parade of friends who were promenading in the hallway.

  “Do excuse me,” the woman said to Louisa, patting her on the arm. Louisa nodded. With joy, she thought.

  When Henry returned, Louisa felt more resignation than anything else. What an education Paris had turned out to be. What on earth could be done was the question. The challenge had to be squarely met.

  “You should go home now, Louisa,” Henry announced once the performance was over. He sauntered back down the famous Opéra staircase to the crowded street, leaving Louisa to trail behind him.

  Carriages drew up, one by one. Theatergoers drifted down the boulevard. Supper after the Opéra was famous in Paris.

  “Where are you going next?” Louisa asked. She was determined not to be left walking behind him.

  “The circus,” he said.

  Louisa stopped. “You are joking, aren’t you, Henry?”

  “Would you keep moving, please?” Henry took her arm in his. “Do not make a scene in the street.”

  “The circus!”

  “Louisa. While it is perfectly acceptable for you to attend the ballet—”

  “Apart from certain rooms, it seems,” Louisa muttered under her breath.

  Henry went on. “The circus in Montmartre is only for men. Strictly. That’s it.”

  “It seems to me that there is more segregation here in Paris than anywhere else I have been. Women in certain places, men in others, and then women are divided into two strict groups. I cannot believe that you said Paris was free.”

  “Good night, Louisa.” He handed her over to the footman.

  Louisa took one last glance down at him and settled herself in the carriage. She wondered if she would have more luck changing society itself than altering her husband.

  Three days later, Louisa was on her way to Ashworth.

  Henry had come to her the night before, and the night before that. She had suffered it. Just.

  But now, enough was enough. It was time to do something. Plans were forming in her head.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Paris, 2015

  Ashworth, 1895

  My dear Marthe,

  I confess that I endured a round of robust internal discussion before I found the courage to pick up my pen and write. But, I was so moved after the discussions that we had the last time I was in Paris, that I wanted to continue them. I don’t want them to stop. I feel that our understanding grows deeper each time we meet, that there is some sort of magic in place every time that we talk. I am drawn to you, hopelessly, and so I must write.

  Indeed, when I imagine you, elegant in your Parisian salon, you are reading this with an arch of that perfect auburn eyebrow (forgive me) while at the same time, selecting those communications that you will preserve and dismissing those which you decide are not worthy of your attentions. I hope this letter will be of more interest than those which simply ask for an afternoon of your company.

  You know I value you far more than that.

  I wonder what criteria you will adopt when making such monumental decisions as to what correspondence you will read and what you will not? Will it be your heart that chooses which poor men will be “taken on” or must you base your decisions on protocol: on who is worthy of your attention, and who is not?

  I suspect that the latter method must govern every choice you make. Society defines us, no matter how much we may pretend that it does not, right down to whom we must love—if we are allowed to do such a thing, which is questionable. I acknowledge that we are both surrounded by gilt, but is it worth it if we have no freedom of choice?

  It could be argued that you chose your position in the world, that you have created yourself out of this very society which we both laugh at and abhor. That you have beaten it at its own game, as it were.

  It is harder for me to do so, I fear. But that is not to say that I am not determined.

  You must know how deeply I value the connection that I have with you. I know that you understand me, and I you. It is as simple as that. It is as if you are ahead of everything, cutting edge, so to speak, in every single way, and yet caught up in a world where your station at birth must still define your station in life.

  We both know who we are, but we cannot be ourselves in the world as it is now.

  It is a strange and wonderful relationship that you and I have. It is almost as if we are kindred spirits, were I to believe in the existence of such things.

  And as for society, were I to attempt to understand that, I would say one thing: it is fear that drives our world, Marthe, fear of everything that is strange and uncomfortable and different and independent.

 
Society has set up structures with rigid boundaries to keep the great “other” out of its pale little version of life, and it is a pale version. Polite society, in denying us who we are, denies the human spirit. It denies us all the truth.

  And there are two factions opposing this society that has been set up. One is the world that you and I inhabit. We escape, to a place of fantasy and artifice and illusion. We pretend that our world is the real world. But at the same time, we both know that it is not.

  I cannot be who I am in the real world, so I must create a new one.

  But there is another fight, one that I find unattractive, unappealing, and base. This is the world of my wife. It is ironic, do you not think, that Louisa finds my world unattractive? And yet these two opposing forces are two sides of one coin—two methods of rebellion, I suppose. Louisa lives for politics and reform. I live, simply, to be able to live as myself. And I see life in Montmartre. Montmartre is life. It is true to the body and the soul of a person. It reviles all those niceties that society constructs. And you, you embody this, and so do all the others—the poets, the writers, the dancers, the actors. I ache to be one of you. I ache not to be who I am.

  I fear that my wife’s way will lead to straight-out, head-on fighting, to death, to destruction. Men are not going to give up their positions, simply hand them to women. And the upper classes are not going to give up their role of leadership to the rising working class without some monumental fight.

  I battle with the outcome of Louisa’s ideas. Is it because she is my wife? Can you see how, possibly, any of this could change without fighting? Do you know why it is that so many people seem content with convention? They insist on preserving it as if they are some sort of moral force!

  A self-created police force for the status quo. Is that all society is?

  It is freedom that you and I seek in a way that will not harm others. It is true liberation that we want—the need for expression of our own humanity, not to be put upon or dictated to by anyone else. We both want to make our own choices. We both want to run our own lives.