Both women laughed, though for different reasons.
“I’m sorry to babble,” said Libby, “but most girls I know will come to Paris for one reason only, on a continental tour of two weeks, to be shown a few ancient sites in their guidebook!”
“Ah yes,” said Clara Merle, flicking ash from her cigarette. “I see them clutching their Baedekers to their breasts and scurrying after their mamas and papas.”
“Or possibly on a honeymoon,” added Libby. “Though Niagara Falls is more likely, or Miami Beach or California, and Paris only if the husband chooses, and only as he chooses. Do you know?” she went on. “In my high school class, three quarters of the girls are already married or engaged. I’m looked on almost as a criminal for not joining the ranks. And those few who have evaded marriage are told their choices are to be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary. How many times have I heard those three professions trotted out! As if they were the only occupations on earth.”
“I suppose there’s always clerking in a store,” said Clara. “I’ve done that myself, long ago. Selling perfume. Heavens! A lifetime ago.”
“Yes, or a waitress, if you are from the lower classes. I think maybe the women in the lower classes do have more choices.”
Clara Merle’s eyes gleamed even through the smoke. “People from the middle and upper classes always think so,” she said. “But the only real choice, you know—”
“Is whom a woman marries,” Libby finished for her.
The two women looked at each other with genuine understanding.
“Exactly so,” said Clara Merle. “And I am living proof that one cannot choose too carefully.”
“Your husband—”
Clara shook her head.
“I’m so sorry,” said Libby warmly.
“Don’t be,” said Clara. “It all happened a long time ago. Many lifetimes ago.” She gazed out the window, onto the lights below. “It is incredibly beautiful, isn’t it? Paris, in all its glory. Yet I prefer Rome.” She took a drag from her cigarette. “At least I think I do, still. . . . You make me wonder about myself, if I even have a self anymore, and that’s something I haven’t done for a long while.”
Libby studied her new friend, the soft features outlined blurrily against the dark window and the Parisian evening. After a quiet moment she said, “I’m afraid you have sometimes suffered a great deal.”
Clara Merle turned her head slowly, lazily. “To have sometimes suffered—there’s nothing original in that!”
“Yes, but some people give the impression of never having felt anything at all.”
Clara flicked a long ash into the tray beside her. “There are more iron pots than porcelain, I suppose,” she admitted. “But if you look closely enough, every one of us is crazed and chipped somewhere. No one is seamless. And the more seamless they appear, the more deeply they are likely to be scarred. Take it from me! I do very nicely, for instance, as long as I’m in the cool depths of the cupboard—surrounded by Joy perfume and some masking spices. But take me out into the full light of day—oh then, my dear, I’m a horror!”
“I’m sure that’s not true!” protested Libby.
“I hope you’ll go on believing it as long as possible. It makes a soothing change,” said Clara. “But I could tell you tales . . .”
“I wish you would!” Libby exclaimed. “I love stories.”
Clara regarded her appraisingly. “Perhaps one day I will,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “It’s not that I’m afraid you’ll tell anyone else,” she added. “We don’t travel in the same circles. We don’t even live in the same country! All the same, I’d like to keep our friendship for a while”
“I have friends I’ve known since childhood,” said Libby.
“Yes, but you are at a cruel age,” said Clara Merle. “You might judge me harshly in the end.”
“I hope I am a fair judge,” said Libby, a bit primly.
“I’m sure you are,” laughed Clara. “Why would I be afraid of a poor one?”
Just then the front doorbell tinkled with its distinctive French tones, and Mrs. Sachs entered in her black winter furs, bringing a scent of winter and carrying parcels and bags, of which Libby and Clara immediately relieved her.
“I’m glad you two have met,” said Mrs. Sachs. “That spares my having to make the introductions. I couldn’t have planned it better. Where’s Henrietta, not here? Good. Clara, what do you think of my new niece?”
“Hardly new!” protested Libby, blushing, but she was struggling not to seem overly interested in the answer.
“She’s perfectly lovely,” declared Madame Merle. “You couldn’t have done better had you grown her from seed.” All the women smiled at this joke.
“Madame Merle knows everything there is to know about the world,” Mrs. Sachs announced, a note of pride in her voice.
“Ah, there isn’t all that much to know,” said Clara Merle. “And I only know very well the surface of things. The thin topmost layer.”
“But that you know very well. You understand the forms,” said Mrs. Sachs approvingly. “There is a great deal you could teach Libby.”
“Well, I undertook my studies at an early age,” laughed Clara lightly. “You might not think so, but I positively memorized all the books of etiquette, cover to cover. Where to put the oyster fork, when to wear short gloves, when to wear longer gloves. I studied those books as if my life depended on it.”
“Clara Merle has exquisite manners,” said Mrs. Sachs. “She could write a book herself.”
“But there is nothing exquisite in being a writer,” said Clara smoothly, “or indeed in being any sort of an artist. Only in being, oneself, a work of art.”
“I think you are as magnificent as the Winged Victory!” exclaimed Libby.
The two older women exchanged tolerant glances.
“She certainly is an enthusiast,” observed Mrs. Sachs drily.
“And unlike the Winged Victory, I have so far managed to keep my head,” added Clara Merle, touching lightly her golden hair.
Later that night the phone rang in the depths of the Paris apartment. Libby, sleeping in a single bed across from Henrietta, woke disoriented, her hand groping for the phone that lay several rooms away. Henry slept on, oblivious. Henry kept early hours, but when she was asleep nothing could rouse her.
Libby thought she heard a sound of dismay from her aunt, and then worried, murmured conversation down the hall. “Henry?” she said into the darkness. There was no reply. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”
She made her way into the sitting room, where Madame Merle and Mrs. Sachs were engaged in a whispered conversation. They stopped short at the sight of Libby, standing in her long navy robe, with white piping.
“Is it—” she asked. She was thinking of Lazarus, her voice trembling.
“It’s my husband,” said Mrs. Sachs. “He has taken a bad turn. We’ll leave Paris first thing in the morning. Clara has kindly offered to come with us.”
Clara Merle curved a reassuring arm around her elderly friend. “I’ll call the airport and make the arrangements,” she said. “You must try not to worry,” she said to no one in particular.
“I worry most about Lazarus,” said Mrs. Sachs simply.
“Help your aunt to pack,” instructed Clara Merle. She was one of those women at her best in an emergency. “I’ll make the plane reservations and arrange for a cab. We’ll take the earliest flight available.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Sachs. “All right. Thank you.” She made a move to rise, but then her legs gave out from underneath her, and she sat down with a small cry of surprise. “We never expect this moment to come,” she said. “I don’t know why. It always does.”
Madame Merle kept her arm around Mrs. Sachs. She gazed into the older woman’s face as if looking for something, and failing to find it, bit her lip.
“I hope I’ve been a good enough wife,” said Mrs. Sachs in a small dry voice.
Madame Merle stroked her
friend’s arm mechanically. “Ah, my dear. There is no book of rules to tell us how to do that.”
Almost before they knew it, the women were back at Gardencourt, with no notion of how they had arrived, or how much time it had taken to get there. Everything seemed blurry, including the Irish landscape. It was drizzling lightly, as usual. Henrietta had been escorted off to Manchester, England, to spend time with Mr. Pye’s helpful relatives and friends.
“I’ll only be in the way, at a time like this,” Henry told Libby.
“But you’ve only just met Mr. Pye!” Libby protested. “Don’t be silly. Stay with us.”
“I’m not being silly, I’m being sensible,” said Henrietta. “Things are likely to get worse before they get better. Don’t worry,” she added. “I’ll be back before you notice I’m gone. And I can return at a moment’s notice. Take good care of your aunt. She’s more fragile than she seems,” said Henrietta, “and I don’t trust that polished French friend of hers.”
“Madame Merle is a compatriot of ours, as it turns out,” said Libby, trying to smile.
“Well, she’s not like any American I’ve ever met,” Henry insisted. “She seems foreign through and through.”
Lazarus spent every spare moment in close quarters with his father, sleeping on a cot in the old man’s room, taking meals at his father’s bedside, so Libby barely saw him for the first days after their hurried arrival home to Ireland. It was just past eleven on the third night—she had been lying in bed, listening to the chiming of a grandfather’s clock—when she heard a light tapping at her door. She assumed it to be her aunt.
“Come in,” she called, sitting up in bed.
It was Lazarus who leaned at the door, wan and smiling, and covered in embarrassment upon finding his cousin in bed in her white nightgown. He looked at everything in the room but her, and nervously shuffled a deck of cards he plucked from his jacket pocket.
“Of course, it’s late,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking.” He spoke to a far corner of the wall, almost the ceiling.
“Would you hand me my robe?” she asked, and when he did, she put it on, tying the belt in a knot, slipped out of bed and hugged him tenderly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been ignoring you terribly.”
“I don’t mind,” she said eagerly, as if she’d been waiting for this excuse to say it. “Of course I don’t mind. How is your father doing?”
Lazarus shrugged hopelessly. He walked around her room. He picked up objects, turning them around in his hands, and then setting them down again. It was a nervous habit with him. At the moment he was holding Libby’s tortoise shell hairbrush. Then he startled, as if seeing it for the first time, and set it down hastily.
“I haven’t seen you since you left for Paris,” he said.
“A bit before. You disappeared suddenly—leaving me alone with an uninvited and unexpected guest.”
“You still haven’t forgiven me,” said her cousin, “for inviting that American man here.”
Libby turned her dark eyes upon him. They looked almost black in the low light, and scintillating. “It wasn’t kind,” she answered soberly. “I was . . . taken by surprise. I didn’t think you would play me such a trick.”
“I’m sorry,” Lazarus said. He kicked one scuffed heel against the toe of the other worn slipper, staring down. “I won’t try to make excuses for myself. Is he so terrible, this clever American inventor?”
“Tormentor, more like,” she said.
He looked up at her. “If I had known that, I never would have allowed it!”
“Oh,” she said with a small smile. “I am joking. Mostly joking. And I can’t hold a grudge now . . . now—”
“Now that my father is dying?” Lazarus tried to speak matter-of-factly, but his voice broke on the last word.
Libby laid her hand over his and held it tightly. “I hope it won’t be so,” she said. “I hope you are wrong.”
Lazarus looked away but left his hand in hers. “So do I,” he said, “but when did hoping ever change a thing?” She read his long, dreary history in his drawn face and could make no reply. So she wisely said nothing. “His doctor’s name is Dr. Hope,” he added. “Ironically. But tell me about Paris,” he went on, forcing animation into his voice. “Is it as glorious as ever? Did you stroll along the Champs-Élysées at dusk? Did you wander back and forth across the bridges?”
“I did.” She smiled.
“And did you take a tour of L’Opéra, as I instructed?”
“I did indeed.”
“Good, very good.” He released her hand at last and threw himself into a chair nearby, stretching his long legs in front of him. “Tell me,” he said, closing his eyes like a small boy getting ready to sleep. “What was the most marvelous thing you saw in all of Paris?”
“Oh, the most marvelous thing,” she breathed. “That’s easy. It was a woman, a friend of your mother’s. It was Madame Merle.”
His eyes flashed open. He was frowning. “Lucretia Merle?” he asked.
“She calls herself Clara. Is her name really Lucretia?”
“It suits her,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she wore a ring that contained a special poison for her enemies.”
“She has enemies?” Libby exclaimed.
His lips turned in a downward smile. “My dear cousin,” he said, “how could such a creature not have enemies? A good many more enemies than friends by now, I’d wager.”
“I don’t believe you,” Libby said primly. “Perhaps people just don’t appreciate her.”
“I don’t think a lack of appreciation has ever been her problem.”
“A lack of understanding then,” said Libby stubbornly. She refused to look her cousin in the face—she mustn’t pick a fight with him now. She moved restlessly around the room, as he had done a few minutes earlier, picking up a small ivory figurine and putting it back down again unseen.
“That may be so,” he said, watching her pace. “It is hard to understand someone so deep.”
“We agree on that, at least!” she said with a toss of her head.
“There are depths and there are depths,” said Lazarus.
“You are trying to say something without saying it.” Libby fiddled with a pair of candlesticks, turning them round and round in her strong, slim fingers. Then she set them down with a light thunk. “You may as well tell me her flaws,” she said. “I can see you’re dying to.”
“That is exactly the problem,” Lazarus said. “Madame Merle has no flaws.”
“Oh, you think everyone is perfect!” she exclaimed.
“Not so,” said Lazarus.
“You described Lord Warburton as a perfect specimen,” she said. “And you called Henrietta the perfect word chaser one day,” she added, “and she sulked in her room for an hour.”
“Henrietta understands me,” he said.
“But she doesn’t approve of you.”
“That is because she understands me,” said Lazarus.
“And I imagine you think I am perfect too, in some way.”
“I do not,” he said more soberly. “I think you are marvelous—you know I do—but far from perfect. It’s exactly your imperfections that interest me most. You are still in the process of becoming, but Madame Merle is a finished product. She is . . . manufactured. In everyone else on earth one can find a weakness, some touch of humanity, but Madame Merle has no flaw, not the tiniest crack. There is no way in. She’s as smooth as an egg.” He thought for a moment and added, “She wears too much hairspray. Have you noticed? Her head looks like a polished helmet.”
“I have been known to use hairspray myself. It’s not like you to be so trivial.”
“I don’t like the way she smells.”
“Lazarus!” chided Libby.
“There is nothing trivial about the way someone smells,” said Lazarus. “It carries their whole essence. She smells of chemicals and perfume.”
“I suppose you’re trying to say she’s too worldl
y,” said Libby.
“Too worldly?” He threw his arms out. “She is the whole wide civilized world itself.”
“You were in love with her, and she let you down!” Libby cried. “That’s it. You’re turning color. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“How can I have been? She was married to Monsieur Merle when we met.”
“Did he die?”
“So she says. Any husband of Madame Merle would be likely to die.”
“How unpleasantly you say that!” exclaimed Libby. “I think you were in love with her.”
Lazarus moved to sit on the end of Libby’s bed and looked at her earnestly. “You may think what you like,” he said, “but there is more than one way to be let down by a woman. You may believe they are real—that they are trustworthy.”
“Has she any children?” asked Libby.
“No, thank God!”
“Thank God?” Libby echoed.
“She would be likely to spoil them.”
“Unlike your father,” said Libby with a smile.
“You have a point,” said Lazarus. “And that reminds me I must go back to him. He sleeps a good deal of the time, but when he opens his eyes, I want him always to see me there.”
“You’ve deserved your spoiling,” said Libby gently.
“I only want you to”—Lazarus leaned forward, his fists digging into his thin legs—“I want you to be safe,” he said. “That’s why I’m warning you off Lucretia Merle.”
“Clara,” Libby corrected him.
“Clara, Lucretia—”
“But, my sweet cousin,” she said, “none of us is safe. Haven’t you learned that even yet?”
Mr. Sachs baffled the doctors with the violence of his recoveries and failures. He was as mercurial in illness as he’d been in health, and his capacity for rebounding appeared limitless. One day he could seem close to the very end, with night nurses hovering over him and Mrs. Sachs studiously avoiding him, and a day later he’d be not merely sitting up in bed, but carrying on raucous conversations with his son and flirting with the nurses.