The brasserie specialized in German and Alsatian food. Marc and Frank ate sausages, and sauerkraut, washed down with German beer; the women ate cassoulet, and drank the dry Riesling of Alsace. When they had all eaten and drank too much, they came out of the brasserie and made their way eastward along the boulevard a little way before turning right into the big curving slope of the rue Monge.
“This is part of the hill of Roman Lutetia,” Marc reminded Frank. “If you haven’t seen it, the old Roman arena’s coming up on our left in a few minutes.”
They walked slowly, Marc and Marie side by side, Frank and Claire a little ahead.
“They make a handsome couple, don’t you think?” Marc said quietly to his sister.
“I was a little nervous about him,” Marie said. “But I don’t think they’re interested in each other.”
Marc glanced at her.
“I wouldn’t be sure of that,” he replied. “She’s certainly in love with him. I saw that at Fontainebleau.”
“You did? When she saw him up at Montmartre, she said they scarcely spoke.”
“What if he were serious about her? What if he wanted to marry her?”
“And take her away to America? A Frenchwoman in America?”
“She’s half English, for a start. Would you have gone at her age, if you’d been asked?”
Marie did not answer. She frowned. Her mind was in a whirl. Was Marc right? Was that why Frank had suddenly drawn back? Was Claire closer to Frank than she realized? Was her daughter deceiving her? She was still lost in these questions when they came to the site of the old Roman arena.
“Paris was always supposed to have had a Roman arena, but nobody even knew exactly where it was until about sixty years ago,” Marc told Frank. “They started building a depot for tramcars on the site and came upon the remains. We’re still excavating, but as you see, the arena itself was a circle, with a semicircle of stone seats around one side of it. So they could have put stage plays on here as well.”
“It’s a fair size,” Frank remarked.
“You could imagine between fifteen and twenty thousand spectators. About right for a significant Roman town.”
Claire was staring at the open central space. It was gray and dusty. There was a blank wall of an apartment building overlooking it.
“There seems something bleak about it,” she remarked. “Did they have gladiators? People were killed here?”
“Of course,” said her uncle. “This was the Roman Empire. Our classical tradition is splendid, but it was always harsh.”
Frank walked out into the center of the big circle and looked around it thoughtfully. Claire went to stand beside him, and linked her arm in his. It was just a friendly gesture.
Marie was standing just beside one of the entrances to the ring that went into a tunnel under the stands. She supposed that the gladiators, and the sacrificial victims, passed through this way. She thought she could imagine how they felt. She glanced at Frank and Claire. Frank was looking across the ring the other way, but Claire was looking straight at her. And there could be no mistaking the little smile of triumph in her eye.
You want him, it said, but I have taken him from you, and now he is mine.
Then her daughter turned away.
It was a long time since Marie had been in the Jardin des Plantes herself, and she had almost forgotten how magnificent it was.
“The place was started by the king’s doctors, back in the days of the Three Musketeers,” Marc told them. “Then the Sun King brought in a team of the world’s finest botanists, and they expanded it. And now …”
The sky was clear. The sun was still quite high, and if not quite so warm as at Fontainebleau, two weeks before, it was only the first tinges of yellow in the leaves of some of the trees that warned of autumn approaching.
They toured the long alleys, they admired the great cedar of Lebanon, brought from Kew Gardens in London, and looked at the little royal zoo, taken from Versailles after the Revolution. They visited the charming little Mexican hothouse. Marc and the two young people were clearly enjoying themselves. Marie smiled pleasantly.
But she scarcely saw what they were looking at.
Of course, she thought, how foolish she had been. What was her sudden passion for young Frank—an attempt to re-create a lost time with his father? Yes. An attempt to rekindle something in herself that she had not expected to feel again? That too. Was it normal? She didn’t know. Was it absurd? No doubt.
She’d had her time. Indeed, she’d been lucky. James Fox had been a good husband. It was her daughter’s turn for love now. Claire might be lucky or unlucky. That was for the Fates to decide. But young Frank belonged to Claire. And I am in danger, she realized, of making a fool of myself.
She glanced up at the sun. It was warm, but it was bright. No doubt it was picking out, stenciling, every wrinkle on her face. How harsh the sun was, how terrible.
And suddenly she was overwhelmed by a feeling of desolation, as if life had passed her by and, long before she was ready—for she was ready, never more so than now—fate and that terrible sun had sentenced her to exile. To a barren waste, and autumn cold, and emptiness.
They walked into the circular maze on its little hill. The winding path and the clipped hedges seemed like a prison to her.
Then Marc led them to the centerpiece of the Jardin, the vast exhibition hall of the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution. They paused outside for a few moments, gazing down the long grass esplanade in front of it.
She stared, but hardly noticed that Frank was standing by her side.
“By the way,” he said, “I forgot to mention that I had a letter from my father yesterday. He told me to give you his best wishes.”
She nodded, and managed a smile.
“Please return mine to him, when you next write,” she said.
“Actually, you’ll be able to give them in person,” Frank continued. “His letter says he’s coming to London next month. Unfortunately my mother isn’t able to accompany him, which is a shame. But after that, he’s coming to see me in Paris. I think he may stay here awhile.”
“Your father is coming to Paris?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” said Marie.
As Louise approached the office of Monsieur Chabert the lawyer again, she wondered what he had found. She’d gone to him the very next day after the incident with Blanchard.
Luc hadn’t been too pleased about her walking out on a customer. He’d come straight around to her place that night.
“Are you all right? I got a call to say you walked out.”
“I felt a little dizzy.”
“Did he do something bad to you? Was there something you didn’t want to do?”
“Nothing like that.”
“So are you sick? He liked you. He was worried about you.”
“I can’t see him.”
Luc went very quiet.
“You can’t act like that,” he said. “You have to tell me why.”
“I can’t, Luc. But it won’t happen again.”
He didn’t reply for a moment. He seemed to be considering something.
“Make sure it doesn’t,” he growled finally. “I couldn’t tolerate that.”
She didn’t like the way he said it.
“I thought you were my friend.”
“I am, chérie. But think how this makes me look to him. I look like a fool. And it’s bad for your reputation too.”
“I understand, Luc. It really won’t happen again.”
He left after that. But there was tension in the air.
There was no tension today, however, with Monsieur Chabert. The little lawyer beamed at her.
“Mademoiselle, you gave me a very easy task. The gentleman concerned is Monsieur Marc Blanchard.” He gave her a quick summary of the family, of Gérard, Marc and Marie, the Joséphine store and the house at Fontainebleau. “Interestingly, it is Marc’s sister who married Fox the Englishman, who now runs the store. Marc was
an artist. His work is considered talented, if not of the first rank.”
“Thank you, monsieur. This is exactly what I wanted.”
“If this family was involved directly with your mother, then there are two obvious possibilities. She might have been a servant in the house. Or possibly an artist’s model.”
Louise thanked him, took the little dossier he had prepared and went home to consider it.
The next day she went to Joséphine. Explaining that she was a model for Chanel, it was easy to strike up a conversation with one of the young women working in the store, who had soon pointed out both Marie and her daughter to her. She obtained a good look at each of them.
Two days later, she took a train to Fontainebleau. When she reached the address Monsieur Chabert had given her, she entered the courtyard and went up the steps to the front door, where she rang the bell. A maid soon answered it. Might she speak to Monsieur Blanchard, she asked? “My name is Louise Charles,” she added. It was a common name she’d chosen at random.
After a couple of minutes she was ushered into the salon, where she found an elderly man, looking a little puzzled.
She’d prepared a simple story. Her father, who had retired to the south, had once had a friend called Gérard Blanchard, whose family came from Fontainebleau. Hearing that she was visiting the town, her father had asked her to find out what happened to his friend.
“Mademoiselle,” the old man said, “I regret to inform you that my son died during the war. His widow lives in Paris, however, as do his brother and sister.”
She explained that it was really Gérard that her father knew, but took his widow’s address when the old man insisted on writing it down for her. She refused any refreshment, but thanked him for his kindness.
Out in the street, she walked a little way to the small square by the local church, where she sat down on a bench.
Had she just met her grandfather? She’d liked the old man. She hoped it might be so.
And if she had met Marc in some other circumstances, if she was still the person she had been before Luc had introduced her to her present life, she might have gone back and told the nice old man her story. If she could have convinced him that she hadn’t come to cause trouble, he might have been persuaded to tell her who she was. And, if she was lucky, to say a word of kindness to her.
But she couldn’t. Not now.
At least, she thought, if he really is my grandfather, I shall have met him and known what he was like.
So now she knew the Blanchard family. What could she do next?
The gallery was in the rue Taitbout, only a short walk from her apartment. She’d gone to several of the best galleries—Vollard, Kahnweiler and Durand-Ruel. She quite enjoyed her quest. It was educational. They all knew Marc Blanchard, but it was the assistant at Durand-Ruel who knew where his work was to be found.
“It’s a small gallery, quite new. The Galerie Jacob,” she was told.
The gallery was certainly small, and Monsieur Jacob turned out to be a young man, only a little taller than herself, with delicate features.
“My grandfather has an antiques business, and my father helps him, so I wanted to do something different,” he explained. “I’m delighted if you are interested in the work of Marc Blanchard. He was very helpful to me in getting started, and I represent him. If you stay in the gallery, I’ll bring some of his work for you to see.”
They spent quite a while looking at canvases. Though she didn’t know much about art, it seemed to her that the work was good. Several were portraits, and she told him she’d like to see more of them. He had almost a dozen.
“Do we know who any of these young women are?” she asked him.
“Most are studio models, or people he happened to meet. They tend not to have names. The commissioned works are nearly all in private collections, though there are sketches for many of them. He has more work that he keeps himself. I could always ask him. Would you like to meet him?”
“No,” she said. “That won’t be necessary.”
One picture in particular intrigued her. It was a nude. A young girl with a very pretty body and long hair. It seemed to Louise that she looked a little like herself.
Was she looking at her mother?
“Again,” said Jacob, “no name.”
“I should like to come and look at some of these again,” said Louise. “If you can find out the names of some of the sitters, that would also interest me.” She smiled. “It would be a present for my husband. He likes to put names to people.”
“And your own name, if I may ask, madame?” said Jacob.
She reached into the little bag she was carrying, as if to take out a visiting card, and frowned. “I have left my cards at home. I am Madame Louise. I shall call in again in two or three weeks.”
She wondered whether it would turn out that any of the models was named Corinne.
The note from Roland de Cygne early in October was profuse in its apologies, and rather touching. During August, down at the château, his son had become ill—so much so that at one point the doctor had feared for his life.
All was well now, however. Father and son were safely back in Paris, where the boy was to convalesce for a month.
Sure enough, a few days later, he telephoned to ask if she would like to go to the opera. As it happened, she could not go on the evening he suggested. But wanting to be friendly, especially after his troubles with his son, she made a countersuggestion.
“I met the manager of the Gobelins factory the other day, and he offered to give me a private tour of the place. On the last Monday of October, in the morning. I wonder if you and your son would like to join me. Perhaps it might amuse him.”
The offer was accepted at once.
Why was it, Marie would sometimes ask herself in later years, that of all the many discussions she had, during two turbulent decades, about the destiny, even the survival, of the world she knew, the one she most remembered was a short and unplanned conversation with a boy?
The Gobelins factory was in the Thirteenth Arrondissement, about half a mile south of the Jardin des Plantes. The manager gave them a delightful tour of the collection of buildings.
“As you see, we have returned to making tapestries, just as we did in the time of Louis XIV,” he explained, and showed young Charlie de Cygne the working of the looms. “Some of these are the original seventeenth-century buildings. They were set up beside the little River Bièvre, which runs into the Seine near the Île de la Cité, so that the river could provide water power when it was needed. But do you know what else was made here?”
“You made furniture for quite a while,” said Roland.
“Indeed, monsieur, that is correct. But we also made statues.” He pointed to a couple of buildings. “They were foundries. We supplied most of the bronze statues in the gardens of Versailles.”
“Has the works been going continuously since Louis XIV?” young Charlie de Cygne asked.
“Almost. As you may know, the wars of the Roi Soleil were so expensive that he ran out of money once or twice. We briefly had to close in the 1690s, then for about a decade after the Revolution. And then, unfortunately, during the Commune of 1871, the Communards burned part of the factory down, which interrupted our work for some time.”
It was clear that the manager was no lover of the Communards, and he glanced at de Cygne, clearly hoping that the aristocrat would express his distaste for them, but Roland said nothing.
The visit was a success. After they came out, it being almost the lunch hour, Roland asked if Marie would like to eat something.
“Why don’t we just go into a bistro?” she suggested.
It seemed to Marie that Charlie de Cygne was a nice fourteen-year-old, rather shy, who resembled his father and had manners of respectful politeness that only someone like Roland de Cygne could have taught him. It also seemed to her that he was perfectly well and ready to go back to school again. His father, however, was still showing lines of worry. He
’d lost weight. She felt a strong maternal urge to feed him.
“You’ll have a steak with me, won’t you?” she asked, although she would much rather have had a salad. And when he had finished that, she persuaded him to eat a strawberry flan with Chantilly cream. Getting young Charlie to eat, of course, was not a problem.
They took their time, chatting of nothing in particular, but being careful to ask Charlie what he thought of the Gobelins factory, and making him part of the conversation.
As she and Roland had coffee, he asked her if he might smoke a cigar, and she was fascinated when, instead of an elegant lighter, he pulled a strange little object made of a shell casing out of his pocket. “I always carry this with me,” he explained with a smile, as he laid the lighter on the table. “It brings me luck.”
And it was then that Charlie asked a question.
“The man at the Gobelins factory said that the Communards burned the place down. That’s not so long ago. Do you think something like that could happen again?”
Marie and Roland looked at each other.
“Yes,” said Roland.
“I don’t know if you heard about it, Charlie,” said Marie, “but just this weekend, Zinoviev, who’s an important man in Communist Russia, wrote a letter to one of the British Labour leaders outlining how they should work together for world revolution. That’s what they want.” She nodded firmly. “The whole of England’s in an uproar. There’s a general election in two days, and this will probably put the Conservatives back in power.”
“Today’s paper says that Zinoviev claims it’s a forgery,” Roland remarked.
“But he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Marie answered.
“This is true.”
“But are there many Frenchmen who really want a communist revolution,” asked Charlie, “like in Russia?”