The Seven Sisters

by Lucinda Riley

  Bel left the Casa and climbed into the car, staring out of the window as Jorge drove her the short distance to her parents’ house in Cosme Velho. Due to the fact that any spare moments she could steal from the time she was away from the house were spent with Laurent, Bel had not seen her parents for over a month. And yesterday, Loen had asked her when she might next be visiting her mother.

  ‘Soon, soon,’ Bel had replied with a jolt of guilt.

  ‘I know you are . . . busy, but perhaps you should go and see her,’ Loen had said pointedly as she’d helped Bel into her dress. ‘My mother is worried about her.’

  ‘Is she sick?’

  ‘I don’t . . . know,’ Loen had replied warily.

  ‘Then of course I will go tomorrow and see her for myself.’

  As the car arrived in the drive of Mansão da Princesa, Bel instructed Jorge to collect her from the Copacabana Palace at six thirty that evening.

  She’d told Luiza earlier this morning that after she had called on her mother, she was meeting her new friend Heloise, whom she sat next to at the Igreja da Glória, for tea at the Copacabana Palace. Bel had known Luiza would approve, as she had been the one to encourage her daughter-in-law to befriend suitable young ladies that matched her new status, and Heloise came from a very old aristocratic family. Moreover, knowing that Luiza found the flamboyant grandeur of the hotel distasteful, Bel had deduced correctly that she would not suggest she join them there.

  As she walked towards the front door of her old home, Bel’s stomach churned at the thought of being caught out in her deception, but she knew she had little choice. Sadly, in the past two months she had become a reluctant but adept liar.

  Gabriela opened the front door and her face lit up when she saw Bel. ‘Senhora, it is a pleasure to see you. Your mother is resting at present, but she asked me to wake her when you arrived.’

  ‘Is she unwell?’ Bel frowned as she followed Gabriela into the drawing room. ‘Loen said you were concerned about her.’

  ‘I . . .’ Gabriela hesitated. ‘I don’t know if she is sick, but she is certainly very tired.’

  ‘You don’t think’ – Bel steeled herself to say the words – ‘that her problem has returned, do you?’

  ‘Senhora, I do not know. Perhaps you must ask her yourself. And persuade her to see a doctor. Now, what can I get you to drink?’

  As Gabriela left to fetch some orange juice and wake her mother, Bel stood up and paced the familiar room anxiously. Eventually, Carla arrived to join her and Bel noticed that her mother not only looked pale and tired, but had also developed a strange yellow tinge to her skin since the last time she’d seen her.

  ‘Mãe, forgive me for not seeing you for so long. How are you?’ she said, trying to quell her fear and her guilt for not visiting sooner, as she walked towards Carla to greet her with a kiss.

  ‘I am well. And you?’

  ‘Yes, Mãe . . .’

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ said Carla, slumping heavily onto a chair as if her legs could hold her upright no longer.

  ‘Mãe, it is obvious you are not well. Are you in pain?’

  ‘Only a little, I’m sure it is nothing. I . . .’

  ‘Please, you know it is something. Surely Pai must have noticed you’re not yourself?’

  ‘Your father has other things to concern him at the moment,’ sighed Carla. ‘The coffee farms are not making the yield they once did, and the stockpiling plan the government has suggested does not seem to be helping.’

  ‘I hardly think that Pai’s business concerns are more important than his wife’s health,’ Bel shot back.

  ‘Querida, with your father so strained, I don’t wish to burden him further.’

  Tears brimmed in Bel’s eyes. ‘It might be inconvenient timing, but don’t you see that nothing is as important as your health? Besides, you may be fearing the worst.’

  ‘It is my body and I live in it, and I understand and can feel what is happening to it,’ Carla interrupted firmly. ‘I do not want to put myself, or you and your father, through a distressing process that will only lead to the same end.’

  ‘Mãe,’ Bel uttered, her throat constricted with the hard lump of emotion that had formed there. ‘Please, at the very least, let me book an appointment with the doctor who treated you last time. You trust him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I think he is the best that there is in Rio. But I promise you, Bel, I am beyond his help.’

  ‘Don’t say that! I need you here, and so does Pai.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Carla agreed with a grim smile. ‘But Izabela, I am not a coffee bean or a real note. And I can assure you that they are his first true loves.’

  ‘You are wrong, Mãe! Please, even though you may not see it, your daughter does. You are everything to him and without you, his life would be nothing.’

  The two women sat in silence for a few minutes.

  ‘If it makes you happy, Izabela, you can book an appointment with my doctor and accompany me to see him. Then you will hear, I am sure, that every word I have spoken to you is true. I have only one request if I agree to see the doctor.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘For the present, do not tell your father. I couldn’t bear to make him suffer for any longer than he has to.’

  Bel left the house with her parents’ driver half an hour later, after Carla had admitted that she needed to lie down, and asked him to take her to Ipanema. She was reeling from shock. Surely, she thought, her mother was exaggerating through fear?

  Bel left the car two blocks away from Laurent’s apartment and began to pick up speed, running mentally and physically to the one person who she believed could give her comfort.

  ‘Chérie! I thought you were not coming. Mon Dieu! What is wrong? What has happened?’ Laurent appeared at the door and embraced her.

  ‘My mother,’ Bel managed to utter between gasps. ‘She thinks she is dying!’ she cried into his shoulder.

  ‘What? Has she been told this by a doctor?’

  ‘No, but she was sick with cancer a year ago and is certain it has returned. She is convinced that it is the end for her. But she doesn’t want to worry my father, who has business problems. I’ve told her, of course, that she must see a doctor, but . . . in the month since I last saw her, she has deteriorated so much. And’ – Bel looked up into Laurent’s eyes – ‘I am so very fearful that her instincts may be right.’

  ‘Bel,’ Laurent said, taking her shaking hands and gently pulling her down onto the sofa next to him, ‘of course you and she must go and get a professional opinion. It is easy to imagine these things are back if you have suffered them before, but it may not be what it seems. Your maman tells you that your papa has business problems?’ Laurent clarified. ‘I thought he was as rich as Croesus.’

  ‘He is, and I’m sure that if he does have concerns, they are overexaggerated,’ Bel agreed. ‘So,’ she said, struggling to pull herself together, ‘are you well, Laurent?’

  ‘Yes, chérie, I am well, but I think that we are past those kinds of formalities. I have missed you terribly in the past few days,’ he admitted.

  ‘And I you,’ she replied, turning her head into his chest as if to block out the pain of the past two hours.

  Laurent stroked her hair gently and tried to think of something to distract Bel temporarily from her misery. ‘I was here this morning wondering what I would do with myself in a few days’ time when the sculpture of the dreaded dog is finished, when who should come to call but Madame Silveira and her daughter, Alessandra. The mother wishes for me to sculpt Alessandra as a gift for her twenty-first birthday.’

  ‘Alessandra Silveira? I know her,’ said Bel uneasily. ‘Her family are distant cousins of the Aires Cabrals and she came to my wedding. I remember her being very beautiful.’

  ‘Well, she is certainly more attractive than the chihuahua,’ Laurent agreed equably. ‘And inevitably there will be better conversation. She spoke to me today in good French,’ he added.

  �
��And she is unmarried, I believe,’ said Bel dully, a further clutch of fear tugging at her heart.

  ‘Indeed she is.’ Laurent continued to stroke Bel’s hair. ‘Perhaps her parents are hoping my sculpture can advertise her beauty and sophistication to a suitable husband.’

  ‘Or perhaps they might see a talented young French sculptor as an appropriate suitor,’ Bel shot back as she pulled away from him, her arms instinctively crossing protectively around herself.

  ‘Izabela!’ Laurent chided, watching her intently. ‘Please don’t tell me that you’re jealous?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not.’ Bel bit her lip. The thought of another woman sitting in front of Laurent day after day, just as she had once done in Boulogne-Billancourt, sent hot ripples of envy coursing through her. ‘But you can’t deny that you’ve been invited to many society soirées recently and have become quite the man about town?’

  ‘Yes, but I hardly think that I’m seen as a suitable match for any of the young ladies present. I am more of a novelty.’

  ‘Laurent, I can assure you that the very fact you are French and from the Old World in a town such as Rio, let alone with my mother-in-law’s patronage of your sculpture, makes you far more than a novelty,’ Bel countered firmly.

  At this, Laurent threw back his head and laughed. ‘Well, if you are right, I am happy for it,’ he responded eventually. ‘For as you know, in France, I and my band of artists are considered the bottom of the barrel. As I said to you once before, French mothers would prefer their daughters dead rather than shackled to a struggling artist.’

  ‘Well, I think you should understand that you are viewed differently here.’ Bel knew she was sounding churlish, but couldn’t help herself.

  Laurent tipped his head to one side and surveyed her. ‘I understand that you are upset, chérie, especially given the bad news about your mother. But surely you can see that you’re being ridiculous? It is not I who has to run off back to a husband on the afternoons we do manage to meet. It is not I who still shares a bed every night with another. And it is not I who refuses to countenance any thought of changing the situation we currently find ourselves in. No, but it is I who must endure these things. I whose stomach churns every time I think of your husband making love to you. I who has to be available any time you click your fingers to say you might come to visit me. And I who must find something to fill the lonely hours I spend thinking of you without losing my mind!’

  Bel put her head onto her knees. It was the first time Laurent had ever spoken of their situation with such bluntness and anger, and she wished she could block out the words from her heart and her mind. For she knew every one of them was true.

  The two of them sat in silence for a while until eventually Bel felt a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Chérie, I understand that now is not the time to discuss such matters. But please, accept that I am still here in Brazil marking time as best I can for one reason only. And that reason is you.’

  ‘Forgive me, Laurent,’ she murmured into her knees. ‘As you say, today I feel desolate. What are we to do?’

  ‘Now is not the time to discuss it. You must concentrate on your mother and her health. And although I hate to say it, you must take a cab immediately to the Copacabana Palace so you can emerge as if you have been there taking tea with your friend,’ he reminded her. ‘It is already past six.’

  ‘Meu Deus!’ Bel stood up and immediately turned towards the door. Laurent caught her arm and dragged her back towards him.

  ‘Bel,’ he said as he stroked her cheek, ‘please remember it is you I love and you I want.’ He kissed her tenderly and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Now, hurry away before I kidnap you and lock you up here in my apartment to keep you all to myself.’

  39

  Two days later, Bel walked out of the hospital entrance alone. The doctor they had just seen had insisted that Carla admit herself immediately for tests and Bel was to collect her at six that evening.

  Even though Luiza and Gustavo were aware she was at the hospital and it would have been possible for her to spend the afternoon in Laurent’s arms while she waited for Carla, Bel could not bring herself to do so. Guilt that she had selfishly neglected her mother for Laurent ate into her. While Carla underwent the necessary tests, Bel sat numbly watching the trail of human tragedy enter and exit the hospital doors.

  At six o’clock, she reported as requested to the ward to which her mother had been taken.

  ‘The doctor has asked to see you when you arrive,’ said the nurse. ‘Follow me.’

  ‘How is she?’ Bel asked as she followed the nurse along a corridor.

  ‘Sitting up in a chair and drinking tea,’ said the nurse briskly as she knocked on an office door.

  Bel entered and the doctor ushered her to a chair in front of his desk.

  Fifteen minutes later, Bel left the doctor and walked shakily along the corridor to collect her mother. The doctor had confirmed that the cancer had spread to Carla’s liver, and almost certainly further. Her mother’s instincts had been right. There was no hope.

  In the car on the way home, Carla seemed simply relieved to be leaving the hospital. She made jokes that Bel found impossible to respond to and talked about the fact she hoped that the cook had remembered that Antonio had asked for fish that evening. When they arrived at the house, Carla turned to her daughter and clasped her hands in her own.

  ‘Don’t worry about coming in, querida. I know that you saw the doctor and I know also what he said to you, because he had already spoken to me before he called you in to see him. I only went with you today because I knew that I must convince you. And now that I have, we will speak no more about it to anyone. Especially not to your father.’

  Bel felt the heat of her mother’s glance and the desperation contained within it. ‘But surely—’

  ‘When it is necessary, we will tell him,’ Carla said, and Bel knew it was her final word on the subject.

  Bel returned that night to the Casa, feeling her world had tipped on its axis. For the first time, she was being forced to face her mother’s mortality. And, through that, her own. She sat down to dinner that evening and glanced at Gustavo next to her, before gazing across the table at Maurício and then Luiza. Both her husband and her mother-in-law had known where she was this afternoon. And yet neither of them cared enough to ask after Carla’s health, enquire of her what had happened at the hospital. Gustavo was already inebriated and incapable of lucid conversation, while Luiza probably considered that touching on a distressing subject would upset her digestion of the beef, the texture of which would challenge the most cannibalistic of incisors.

  After dinner, and the endless rounds of cards, matched in numbers by the glasses of brandy downed by her husband, she accompanied him upstairs.

  ‘Coming to bed, querida?’ Gustavo asked her as he divested himself of his clothes and fell back onto the mattress.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, walking towards the bathroom. ‘I will be there in a few minutes.’

  Shutting the door behind her, Bel slumped onto the edge of the bath and put her head in her hands, hoping that by the time she emerged, Gustavo would be fast asleep and snoring. As she sat there desolately, she remembered Carla talking to her before her marriage of the fact that she had needed to grow used to Antonio and learn to love him.

  However much Bel had inwardly derided what she had seen as her mother’s subservience to her father in the past, and wondered how she could tolerate his arrogance and never-ending desire for social acceptance, for the first time she understood the strength of the love her mother had for her husband.

  And Bel had never admired her more.

  ‘How is she?’

  Laurent’s concerned face greeted her at the door of his apartment as he ushered Bel inside a few days later.

  ‘She’s dying, as she told me she was.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, chérie. So what will happen now?’ Laurent asked as he led her into the drawing room.

  ‘I
. . . I don’t know. My mother is still refusing to tell my father,’ she murmured as she sat down abruptly in a chair.

  ‘Oh my Bel, how difficult things are for you just now. You’re still so young – not even at your twentieth birthday – and yet you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. This bad news has almost certainly made you look at your own life too.’

  Bel wasn’t sure whether she felt patronised or comforted by his comment. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘It has.’

  ‘I’m guessing that you must also be in a quandary of guilt because of the news you’ve just had. Deciding whether this means that you should do your duty as a faithful wife and daughter and forget me. Or whether your sudden realisation of how short life really is means you should take advantage of the time you’ve been granted and live your life following your heart.’

  Bel stared at him in surprise. ‘How could you know that is exactly what I have been thinking?’

  ‘Because I am a human being too,’ Laurent shrugged. ‘And I believe that the powers up above often throw us such dilemmas to make us fully aware of our situations. But it is only we who can ever make the decision as to what we should do.’

  ‘You are very wise,’ Bel commented quietly.

  ‘As I said, I am simply human. I am also a few years older than you and have been forced to make decisions in my past that have involved asking myself the same questions. I understand, and don’t wish to prejudice you either way. And I want to reassure you that if you wish me to stay with you here in Brazil during this difficult time, I will. Because I love you and I want to be here for you. I also understand that my love for you has made me a better person. There, I have learned a lesson too!’ Laurent smiled at her wryly. ‘But . . . I am still not completely selfless. So if I stay, you would have to promise me that when the . . . situation with your mother is resolved, you and I will come to a decision on our future. But that is not for now. Come, let me hold you.’ Laurent opened his arms to her and she rose slowly and went into them.