Brilliance

by Rosalind Laker

  Then Michel broke into her thoughts, telling her about a novel he had recently read and wanting to know her taste in books as he had his own library in his apartment. ‘You are welcome to anything on my shelves that you would like to read.’

  She was about to say she would be glad of some reading matter when the motorcar spluttered and suddenly stopped.

  ‘I was afraid this would happen!’ he exclaimed, jumping out to lift the bonnet of the engine.

  She smiled. ‘You did warn me.’

  She alighted to sit on the grassy wayside bank and watch him as he fiddled with the engine, frowning in concentration. With his gathered brows and tightened lips she thought he looked like a musketeer attacking the engine. The comparison made her smile. There was no denying he was an extremely personable man and she hoped that they could continue to share time together without any romantic notions on his part coming between them.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said, glancing up from his task. ‘As we discussed earlier, it does happen sometimes that the engine dies for no apparent reason.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s pleasant sitting here in this lovely sunshine. Take your time.’

  He thought how different she was from his past fiancée, who had become so sharply impatient at any breakdown, constantly asking him in irritated tones how much longer he was going to be putting the engine right. Finally one day in the rain she had thrown a tantrum, which had led to the ending of their engagement and he had never had the slightest regret.

  There had been other women in his life since then, but Lisette was the first to seriously interest him. Beautiful and intelligent with a seductive figure, she had attracted him at their first meeting and he believed that he was falling in love with her. Now, as he wiped his greasy hands with a cloth, his task done, he gazed at her with pleasure. The brim of her hat shaded her lovely face from the sun, which was outlining her like an aura where she sat on the grassy bank.

  ‘You’ve been very patient,’ he said.

  She gave a little laugh, spreading out her arms. ‘Who could be anything else on such a perfect afternoon?’

  He put aside the greasy rag and pulled a small picnic basket out from under the seat of the vehicle. From it he took a bottle of champagne and two glasses. ‘I thought we should celebrate your first drive in a motorcar.’

  ‘What fun!’ she declared. ‘I love champagne.’

  He sat down on the grass beside her and poured the sparkling wine. ‘A toast,’ he said, raising his glass to her. ‘To the future.’

  She felt able to drink that toast, wanting the best for him as well as for herself, but not together. That was something she could not foresee in any way. No man could ever get through the barrier around her heart again.

  They sat talking for a while before returning to the car. He drove on until they came to a crossroads where he took an alternative and winding route back to Lyon. By then it was early evening.

  ‘I’ve had a wonderful time,’ she said appreciatively as he drew up outside their apartment building.

  ‘Let’s finish the day by having an early supper together,’ he suggested eagerly. ‘I know a place in the old district that I think you’ll like.’

  ‘It’s a long time since I was last there,’ she said. ‘It will be interesting to see it again.’

  As a child she had always been a little wary of that old district of the city on the west bank of the Saône. Most of it was mediaeval with black-timbered houses, the doorways deeply recessed and mysteriously shadowed, the stone thresholds worn down throughout the centuries. Some of the doorknockers were moulded into evil-looking faces or mythical creatures that were frightening to a young child. She had always held tightly to her grandmother’s hand and was glad that one of the menservants followed behind them every time.

  Most sinister of all in this ancient district were the long narrow alleyways that networked the whole area. She remembered how relieved she had always been when they came out into one of the squares and there was daylight again. The attraction, which had overcome all her fears, had been the puppet theatre in the rue de la Bombarde. She would have braved anything to attend those performances that had delighted her so much.

  When Michel had parked the Panhard on the edge of the old district they continued on foot along one of the dark alleyways and she told him about those puppet expeditions, which had so scared and delighted her. He promptly took hold of her hand.

  ‘If you held hands then, we had better do the same now.’

  She let her hand remain in his, but without any response. They made their way to the Place de la Trinite where the cafe he wanted was located. As the evening was so warm they ate at a table outside and afterwards sat on with coffee as they talked and watched people go by in the square. Three tumblers appeared in gaudy red and yellow costumes and sprang into a performance. Spectators gathered and afterwards threw coins into their caps, Michel giving generously. When the evening was over he saw her to her door and would have kissed her, but she drew back and he did not persist.

  ‘It’s been a wonderful day,’ she said sincerely.

  ‘I hope it has been the first of many more to come.’

  After that they went out together as often as he felt able to ask her. He would have seen her every evening if the chance had been his, but she was a very private person and he could tell that he needed to tread carefully if their relationship was to develop as he wished. Early on when he had tried to make their meetings more frequent, she had turned down his invitations for one reason or another. It was usually because, having made a few friends at her workplace, she liked to meet them socially and, he believed, used them as a convenient excuse not to see him.

  One day at her suggestion they took a picnic up to the heights of Fourvière. Autumn was already setting its brilliant colours into the trees and there would not be many more days warm enough to sit out in the sun. There they explored what was left of the Roman ruins. Then they sat to have their picnic and admire the view of Lyon stretching away below them where the Rhône and the Saône threaded through the old city like silver ribbons.

  ‘This is the best view in the world,’ she said contentedly.

  He grinned. ‘I have to question that statement. It’s very fine, I agree, but you are seeing it in a nostalgic light.’

  ‘Yes, of course I am,’ she admitted frankly. She had told him a great deal about her childhood, but very little about the turns that her life had taken afterwards.

  It was not long after the Fourvière picnic that Michel had to go to Paris to represent a client in a court case. It was a complicated affair and, as he had expected, the case went on for several weeks. Letters came from him quite frequently and Lisette always replied, telling him local news and of the friends she had seen. In spite of herself she missed him more than she wished.

  She was in correspondence once more with Joanna, who was living in London and having a busy time. She had been a year at the Sorbonne after last seeing Lisette and had followed it with another year learning more in the Parisian studio of an Impressionist artist, but now she was back in her birthplace of London. She had her own studio in Bloomsbury and had held several exhibitions of her paintings. Her work was selling well, and she taught art twice a week to bring in extra funds. Joanna was overjoyed that Lisette had made contact again, wanting to know everything that had happened since the cancelled wedding and imploring her to visit as soon as possible.

  On the evening of Michel’s return he came charging up the flights of stairs to hammer on the door of Lisette’s apartment with a bouquet of flowers and an elaborately trimmed box of chocolates tucked under his arm.

  ‘I’m back!’ he declared exuberantly as she opened the door.

  She was genuinely glad to see him and invited him in. ‘You’re in luck! I’ve made dinner and there’s plenty for two. What beautiful flowers!’ she added as she took the bouquet from him. ‘I’ll put them in water straight away.’

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Lisett
e,’ he said as he closed the door after him and put the chocolate box on a side table before he took off his gloves and shouldered off his overcoat.

  ‘Yes, it’s been quite a long time.’ As she placed the vase of flowers on the side table she saw that the box of chocolates was from a shop she remembered on the Champs Elysées. ‘Those will be delicious!’ she declared. ‘Thank you so much.’

  Then he caught hold of both her hands, his gaze on her warm and admiring. ‘Say that you’ve missed me!’

  She laughed. ‘Of course I missed you!’ Smilingly, she slid her hands from his. ‘It was early autumn when you left and now winter is here. I can tell by your expression that you won your case.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he declared with satisfaction. ‘It was a difficult one, but I gained the right verdict in the end. How are you? Still busy at the factory?’

  ‘Yes, orders from abroad increase all the time.’ She went to stir the bouillabaisse, talking to him over her shoulder. ‘Do sit down where I’ve laid my place. I’ll set another opposite in a minute.’

  ‘Let me do it,’ he said.

  She indicated the cutlery drawer and told him there was a bottle of red wine in the cupboard beneath. ‘I’m looking forward to hearing about Paris,’ she said as she handed him a wineglass and a napkin for the table. ‘It’s quite a while since I was there.’

  As he opened the wine he wondered exactly when that was, for there was still so much about her that he did not know. She had told him that most of her childhood had been spent locally with her grandmother and that after the old lady’s demise she had lived with her father and his second wife near Paris, but he was certain she was holding back more than she had revealed. She had never said exactly where she had worked for her living as a shop assistant and then as a housekeeper before coming to take up a bookkeeping post with the Lumières. In a way her reticence only added to her attraction, for here was a woman able to keep an invisible guard about herself, but through which she continually charmed and fascinated him.

  He felt she knew all about him, that he had been born in Tours, studied in Paris, and had come first to a lawyer’s in Clermont-Ferrand before eventually taking over the chambers of a retired lawyer in Lyon. He had one sister, who was married and lived abroad, and their parents had moved to be near her and their grandchildren.

  With any other woman he would have expected to make love to her at the evening’s end, but he was certain that if he made one false move with Lisette he would lose her. In any case he had come to realize during his absence from her in Paris that he had fallen in love with her. He had also made up his mind that she was the woman he wanted as his wife and nothing must endanger that ultimate goal.

  Over supper, after relating a few of the interesting highlights in the case he had defended, he told her that he and some lawyer friends had celebrated his success by going to a restaurant that she remembered well. She had a momentary nostalgic image of its lights and laughter and elegance, which she had enjoyed any number of times with Philippe and friends.

  ‘I met Monsieur Lumière in Paris,’ Michel continued. ‘We both had invitations one evening to a demonstration by the American, Mr Edison, of his invention, the kinetoscope. It’s a box-like structure with pictures in it that give the illusion of movement due to the production of curves through a kind of circular movement. Edison was selling these kinetoscopes at sky-high prices.’

  ‘Did Monsieur Lumière buy one of these kinetoscopes?’ she asked with keen interest.

  ‘No! He said that he was certain his sons could produce a much better apparatus with pictures that could be projected instead of being enclosed in a box, and he was coming home to get them started on it.’

  ‘I’m sure they will take notice of what he says, because photography is in their blood as it is in his,’ she said with a nod. And, she added to herself, as it was in Daniel’s too.

  When she had cleared away the dishes they sat on at the table with a last glass of wine, the chocolate box open between them, and he felt encouraged enough to say a little of what he felt.

  ‘In Paris,’ he said softly, ‘I resented every day I had to spend away from you.’

  Immediately she saw which way the conversation was turning and thought to halt it by putting her hand on his wrist that was resting on the table. ‘We are good friends, Michel. Let us keep it that way. Nothing more.’

  He closed his hand tightly over hers. ‘Why, Lisette?’ There was no turning back now. ‘You surely know that I care for you. Do you think we could be more than friends one day?’

  She became so pale that even her lips lost their colour and she would have pulled her hand away, but he kept it clamped in his. ‘Marriage is not for me,’ she said in a stumbling voice. ‘There was somebody once, but he has gone from my life and with him all that might have been.’

  ‘But I’m not that man or anything like him, whoever he was. You came to Lyon in order to make a new start in life, didn’t you?’ When she nodded, he added, ‘I guessed as much. Forget the past. It’s over and gone. Let me help you with this new beginning.’ He took up her hand and pressed it to his lips in a kiss before lowering it again. ‘Say you’ll look to the future with me. I can pave the way.’

  She thought how nothing could make her forget the past, for that would be as if her daughter had never been. Whatever she might have felt for Michel was blocked by what had happened and there was no changing it.

  ‘Don’t ask the impossible,’ she implored, for she had no wish to hurt him in any way.

  ‘But surely you want a home and children?’ he protested. ‘I can’t believe that you plan to go on working in a factory all your life.’

  ‘I’ll not have to do that,’ she replied, deciding at last to tell him about her grandmother’s bequest. ‘I have a house in the Bellecour district that will become mine when I’m twenty-one together with an inheritance.’

  He sat back in surprise, but did not relinquish his hold. ‘But surely if you are virtually homeless – and you can’t consider this apartment to be a home – some claim for accommodation in the house could be made on your behalf in the meantime.’

  ‘The house would be mine now if I married, but as I’ve already told you I’ve no wish to be anybody’s wife.’ She glanced about her, seizing the chance to keep the conversation to a safer level. ‘I’m happy enough in this little place, although I would like to get rid of the wallpaper.’

  He gave her a long look, understanding that she was drawing him away from further talk of love, and he decided he had no choice at the present time but to follow her lead.

  ‘I’m going to be busy at work for the next few weeks after being away so long, but I’ll help you redecorate next Sunday.’ He knew better than to offer to have it done professionally for her, which he would have preferred, but he was sure that he had retained some skill in painting walls from his student days.

  ‘Would you? That’s very kind! I’ll buy the paint in the colour I want.’

  ‘I’ll bring brushes and a bucket. We’ll need dust sheets to cover your furniture.’

  ‘I know where I can get some.’

  It was time for him to leave. Still holding her hand, he drew her around the table as they both rose from it. Then he took her by the shoulders and looked down into her upturned face.

  ‘Grant me as much of your new beginning as you can spare,’ he said quietly. Then before she could draw back he bent his head and kissed her softly on the lips. ‘Goodnight, Lisette.’

  She held the door and watched him leave before closing it. He was all any woman should want and she had become extremely fond of him, but it was not enough. At least, not yet. His talk of children had struck home more than he could ever realize. Nobody she knew suspected that she endured many moments of intense heartache that were usually sparked by the sight of an infant being pushed in a baby carriage or jogged about happily in a mother’s arms.

  As the months had gone by she had tried to picture every stage of her daughter’s growt
h. By now little Marie-Louise would be toddling about and taking a lively interest in everything. Did she have a favourite toy? Maybe a soft one from which she would not be parted. Perhaps she held it and sucked her thumb until she went to sleep. Such thoughts were both a torment and a comfort to Lisette and she could not let them go.

  On Sunday Michel came early to start the redecoration. She had brought dust sheets from Bellecour, going back to the house when it was dark as she always did when she wanted to get something from there. They stripped off the wallpaper, which was already curling over in parts, and prepared the walls. Together they painted them in the soft blue of her choice. When the two rooms were finished and hung with some small paintings from Bellecour she was delighted with them.

  ‘I’m so high up in this building,’ she said, laughing, ‘that the sky colour will make me feel as one with the birds that I feed on my windowsill!’

  Michel did not attempt to kiss her again, except on the cheek, which enabled her to keep their relationship on a level plane. Even when she invited him to dinner in her apartment now and again he never touched her amorously. As if to reassure her further he began inviting other couples to join them on social occasions, either his married friends and their wives or sometimes bachelors with fiancées. Often a whole party of them would go to a play or a concert and have supper together afterwards. Sometimes Auguste as well as Louis Lumiére would be there too with their wives, Marguerite and Rose, who were both pretty, friendly women, and she enjoyed being with them. As a result of this social round, she and Michel began to be invited everywhere together. Then came an invitation for them to a grand ball on New Year’s Eve to welcome in 1895. This time she wore a gown of cream silk that she had had made from one of the bolts that she had found in her grandmother’s chest of drawers.