“I’m sure she’ll only be a moment.”
“She’s a liability!”
“She’s just naive.”
“If we can just get her married off,” Jamie said, “then all will be fine.”
Cait picked up the teaspoon from her coffee cup and placed it in her mouth. The metal was cool and crusted with sugar. Suddenly Jamie sat forward and waved an index finger.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “I know what we’ll do.” And then he paused for dramatic effect.
“What?” said Cait.
“We’ll invite Monsieur Nouguier around for tea,” he said. “A pot of Darjeeling, a plate of patisserie, and some toast and Gentleman’s Relish, chez Arrol. Could you do the honors? He won’t say no to you.”
It was unlikely he would have time for tea. According to Jamie, Nouguier worked twelve-, thirteen-, fourteen-hour days.
“Well?” asked Jamie.
“I’m sorry,” Cait said, replacing the spoon on her saucer. “But I’m not sure he would even remember who I am.”
He let out a long, slow sigh. “Well, that’s that, then,” he said.
A group of people at the next table laughed uproariously at a joke.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” Jamie said once the noise had quieted down again. “I can put it off for another ten years, I’d say, take my time. But it’s different for women. We don’t want Alice to end up on the shelf. Or to marry a man who makes pies.”
“They’re not called pies in France,” Alice said as she returned, seemingly fully recovered. “But tarts! Talking of which, has anyone ordered dessert? We need to sustain ourselves for tonight’s ball.”
14
____
ÉMILE SAT UP in bed and threw his pillow on the floor. His room was airless. Even though the window was wide open, there was no breeze, nothing to cut through the viscosity of the summer heat. And the sheet was too crumpled, the mattress too soft; the wire springs of his bed had begun to corkscrew themselves up through the felt and horsehair and the cotton ticking into his ribs. He lay down again, his head flat, and tossed one way and then the other, trying to find a comfortable spot, an area of the bed that was still cool. The clock on the wall had just chimed two; he should be asleep. In four hours’ time he had to get up for work. But the more tired he felt, the more his mind seemed to spark. And every time he closed his eyes, his head rang with half-remembered words, with the scrape of anxiety, with the suffocating rise of his heart in his chest.
The day before, on-site at the Champ de Mars, a beam was about to be lowered from a hoisting gin. The foreman shouted out a warning. Everyone had moved out of the way—everyone but Jamie Arrol, who was standing, waving at someone, completely oblivious to what was going on around him.
“Arrol,” Émile had called out in English. “Watch out!”
But the Scot had not heard. Instead, he had taken off his hat and begun to smooth down his hair. A vision raced through Émile’s mind: the boy lying on the ground, his body crushed by iron. The beam began to tip.
“Hey,” Émile yelled again. “Get out of the way!”
Émile began to run, pushing people aside, skidding and sliding through mud and sand, across the broken earth of the showground. He wasn’t going to make it.
“Arrol!” he screamed. “Move!”
Jamie heard his name, turned, his face suddenly creased with alarm, as from another direction, a young worker dived forward and pushed him to the ground. The metal beam fell with an almighty crash behind them, missing Jamie by a couple of inches but crushing the boy’s foot.
Afterward, as the workers all rushed to the boy’s aid, trying to lift the beam to get him out from under it, Émile had grabbed the Scot by the collar and yelled at him in French. He told him that he was a fool, that he had no business being on the construction site if he couldn’t look out for himself. Arrol’s eyes had widened in incomprehension and then—and this to Émile was unforgivable—had glanced over his shoulder. Émile let him go and looked around. At the perimeter of the site was a woman. Tentatively, she waved. For an instant, Émile imagined it was the woman in the balloon and his heart leapt involuntarily. But then he saw it was not: she was too short; her body was too thin; she was too stiff in her clothes.
“Is she yours?” he asked in English.
“I know her, if that’s what you mean,” Jamie had replied. “I don’t know what she’s doing here, though.”
Émile took a deep breath. He should not lose his temper in front of the men. The beam had been shifted and the boy was free now, but his face was white and his eyes elsewhere with pain and shock. Someone wrapped him in a blanket. Someone else was sent to fetch a doctor.
“When you are here,” Émile told Jamie in slow, faltering English, “you work. On your day off, you play. Understand?”
Arrol shrugged nonchalantly, but his face reddened.
The doctor said the boy had been lucky; the mud and the sand had taken the brunt of the beam’s impact. His left ankle was broken, but it would heal. Later, when Émile was queuing up at the cook tent for a bowl of soup, he overheard the men talking about Arrol’s female friend.
“Isn’t she one of the Chabanais girls?” said one of the engineers.
Le Chabanais was a maison close. It had a reputation as the most luxurious brothel in Paris, with gaming rooms on the ground floor and private rooms on the first.
“I doubt it,” said another. “Madame doesn’t let them out during the day.”
“A bit like us, then,” one quipped.
They laughed until one of them turned and saw Émile standing there.
“Sorry, boss,” he said. “No disrespect intended.”
Émile had placed his empty bowl back on the trestle table, his appetite lost.
After work, he had asked the foreman for the injured boy’s address.
“I’ll take you,” said the foreman.
The boy lived in the thirteenth arrondissement, in an appartement meublé, a furnished building. Although the area had once been wealthy and the apartments generous, it was now overcrowded and squalid. They passed a tavern, the kind of establishment where the metal plates and cutlery used to serve food were chained to the tables. None of the buildings were connected to the sewer, and the odors of cesspits, of damp straw and rotting food that clogged up the drains were so strong that Émile had to cover his mouth with his handkerchief.
“This one,” the foreman said, and stopped at a doorway.
In this building, the windows of the lower rooms were whitewashed in lieu of curtains. The landlord had divided up the drawing rooms and lavish bedrooms above, putting in platforms to make two floors instead of one. On the second floor Émile was shown to a small wooden ladder. At the top, a door opened onto a warren of rooms set around a huge chandelier, the lowest of its crystals falling only inches from the floor. It was impossible to stand upright; Émile had to stoop. The worker lay in bed in the back room, a filthy curtain drawn across the top half of what was once the drawing-room window. The smell was awful, of unwashed clothes and chamber pots. Was this the kind of apartment Gabrielle had once lived in? It certainly couldn’t be any worse.
A young woman sat at the end of the bed with a string of rosary beads in her hand. She was not much more than fifteen but already heavily pregnant.
“How is he?” he asked her.
The girl nodded but didn’t speak. The boy was sleeping, his foot raised on a stuffed sack. Émile pulled out a note and then another and gave them to her.
“Come on,” said the foreman. “We don’t want to wake him.”
“You’ll keep paying him, won’t you?” he asked the foreman afterward.
The foreman didn’t appear to hear his question; he certainly didn’t reply.
_______
And no wonder Émile couldn’t sleep now. No wonder he couldn’t dismiss what had happened as an unfortunate accident. He would send the boy a weekly sum out of his own pocket. He would make sure that the worker and h
is family were provided for. It was the least he could do; he couldn’t take them out of the slums, but he would do what he could.
Outside the night was pitch-dark. He could hear the sound of two cats fornicating, all teeth and claws and agony. And then there was silence. But still that awful noise, the sound of ferocious need, remained in his head like an echo. And yet there was nothing to worry about. The construction was going well; the four legs of the tower were growing in size. Thirty meters at the last measurement; the bolts in the trusses were being taken out and replaced by heat-sunk rivets. In a week the hoisting gins would be taken down and in their place they would position pivoting cranes and then pyramidal wooden scaffolds. Soon they would reach the first platform. The construction had been straightforward and was still on schedule. What Jamie Arrol did in his own time was his business. And the boy would recover; the doctor said so. Yet why did Émile still feel so ill at ease?
The answer was so simple, so clear, he felt it like a sharp pinch on the skin. Arrol wouldn’t be happy about it, but he could deal with that. Émile would tell him he’d made a mistake, that his lack of time made the relationship untenable, that he could maybe come back and work on a different project at a different time. Yes, he’d promise him anything just to get rid of him.
At last Émile felt at peace. It was the only answer. He listened to the approach of the street sweepers, their brooms sluicing water from the hydrants along the gutters. A horse-drawn tipcart would soon pick up the mounds of rubbish that were dumped on the streets every evening for collection. Gabrielle used to tell him he should never sleep with the window open in Paris. But he would not think of her. Not now. Finally he gave up on sleep. He climbed out of bed, brewed some coffee, lit a cigarette, and stared out at the eggshell blue of the slowly lightening sky.
August in Paris was a dead month. Most of the bakeries, the cafés, the florists, even some of the great halls of Les Halles were shuttered. Everyone who could afford to left the city. The ones who remained were the working poor, the tourists, and those who were building a tower. Or not, in Arrol’s case.
As he was pulling on his jacket, Émile noticed a white envelope on the floor near the door. It was a letter, redirected from his office. How long, he wondered, had it been there? He ripped it open and unfolded a page of heavy white paper. The handwriting was dense, elegant copperplate. He was invited to tea with Mr. Jamie Arrol, Miss Alice Arrol, and the author of the letter, whose signature was undecipherable, on Sunday at five in the afternoon. He made an instant decision; he would reply with a regretful apology. Sunday was his only day off. And then he changed his mind; maybe this was an opportunity to speak candidly to Arrol, sooner rather than later.
On Sunday, just before five, Émile arrived at the front door of the house where the Arrols were staying and rang a large brass bell. A housekeeper answered the door almost immediately, which made him wonder if she had been hovering behind it. She didn’t try to hide her opinion of the Scottish tenants as she took his coat and showed him into the parlor. It was clear in the rise of her chin, the arch of one eyebrow, and in the tiny draw of her lips over her teeth.
“You’re welcome,” she said, before turning and closing the door with greater force than was necessary. Although the word was in his mouth, he hadn’t actually thanked her yet.
From the floor above he heard the whisper of voices and the faint creak of footsteps. He walked over to the window, took off his hat, and looked out over a small garden with a fishpond in the middle. Sunlight glanced off the surface of the water and a breeze in the trees above sent down a flurry of leaves. He’d been so busy working that he’d barely noticed. The year had turned. In a matter of weeks summer would be over and autumn would arrive.
He had gone over what he would say to Jamie Arrol several times. He would firmly but pleasantly inform him that his services were no longer required. The boy would be upset, for sure, but that couldn’t be helped. And then it would be done.
“Monsieur Nouguier?” a voice rang out behind him. “We are so happy you could come.”
He turned. A woman in a gray silk dress stood in the doorway. Her eyes gazed straight into his with a directness he immediately recognized.
“We have met,” she began. “Before—”
“We have,” he said.
“You seem surprised.”
“I am!”
She opened her mouth but then paused.
“I also remember your name,” he said. It was in his mouth, ringing in his ears like a minor chord, spoken out loud before he could hold on to it. “You are Caitriona.”
She swallowed and gave him a tiny glance. He had used her Christian name, and with the informal pronoun.
“I am usually known as Mrs. Wallace,” she replied.
“Please excuse me,” he said, returning to a formal tone.
He was suddenly aware that he had been staring. He gathered his face into a more acceptable expression.
“I have a photograph of you from the day in the balloon. It must have been months ago now.”
“Really? I wasn’t aware—”
“It was a test shot. I stumbled upon it just the other day. And now here you are.”
She smoothed down her skirts even though they didn’t need it.
“I would like to see it,” she said. “One day.”
“I would like you to have it,” he said. “A gift.”
She smiled but didn’t reply. Someone else was approaching. A young woman dressed in an elaborate gown of pale-blue brocade made an entrance into the room and walked to the center. She turned her head a little to the left and then she seemed to compose herself, as if about to launch into a dance.
“Monsieur Nouguier,” said Mrs. Wallace. “You remember Mademoiselle Arrol too, I expect?”
“Of course,” he replied.
The young woman didn’t look at him directly. She took in his shoes, his cuffs, his hair, and then seemed to fix her gaze on a point just above his head.
“Would you like to partake of a cup of coffee?” she asked in very poor French. “Or would you prefer tea? Assam or Darjeeling? We have both, you see,” she added in English, “although I must admit I find it hard to tell them apart.”
“Either,” he replied.
The housekeeper arrived with a tray. Over a cup of Assam, Mademoiselle Arrol told him that she was learning French, and gave him another demonstration. And then she asked him about the tower.
“I heard it would fall down,” she said. “That it wasn’t safe.”
Émile shook his head.
“I don’t think it will fall down,” he said.
“You mean you’re not sure?” she replied with some alarm.
“Benjamin Franklin claimed that there are only two certainties in life,” he said. “Death and taxes. But no, I’m sure it will be quite safe.”
For a moment the only sound in the room was the small chink of his teaspoon in his china cup. This wasn’t going well.
“So has Paris been kind to you?” he asked. “Did you attend a ball on Bastille Day?”
Alice’s mouth twisted. “We couldn’t get tickets,” she said, and stared at the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “They are hard to come by.”
“Do you know people?” Alice asked suddenly.
“People?”
Finally she looked him in the eye, but only for a fraction of a second.
“Yes, you know, people in the arts, in society, with titles, those kind of people?”
It was as if the air had all been sucked from the room and up the chimney. He coughed and pulled out a handkerchief. To ask that kind of question confirmed that it was unlikely that she would ever know the right kind of people.
“There is cake,” said Mrs. Wallace before he could compose a suitable answer. “And jam for the tea, if you’d prefer.”
“Ah yes,” he said, willingly changing the subject. “In Russia we drank tea with jam. It was rather nice, if I remember.”
; Miss Arrol was staring at him, a full-on stare that was not unlike a frown.
“Well, do you?” she asked again.
Émile stirred a spoonful of jam into his tea. She would not drop it. She hadn’t taken the hint. This was worse, much worse, than he could have imagined. The girl was just as bad as her brother.
“Miss Arrol, I am an engineer,” he said with a shrug. “Not a socialite.”
In response, her nostrils flared, just a little. He took one sip and then another. If he drained the cup, then maybe he could leave sooner.
“More tea?” the girl asked. “I prefer the tea we drink at home. It’s not the same here. And so expensive!”
Alice Arrol smiled, and she suddenly looked younger, like a child dressed up in adult clothing. How old was she? Surely more than sixteen? No more than twenty?
“My brother calls it puddle water, doesn’t he, Mrs. Wallace?”
He took this as a cue to glance across. Caitriona, Mrs. Wallace, was sitting with her hands folded in her lap. She smiled but did not look up.
“Where is he?” Alice asked. “No, don’t get up, I’ll go. Jamie!”
She hurried out of the room, her dress rustling like paper. There was a moment when the room was silent but for the regular, distant tap of Mademoiselle Arrol’s footsteps on the stairs.
“We have all begun to drink coffee instead,” Mrs. Wallace blurted suddenly. “I prefer it now, to tea.”
“We are a nation of coffee drinkers with aspirations toward tea,” he replied. “Listen,” he went on, suddenly switching to French. “I had no idea . . .”
She gazed across at him, her eyes pale gray glass in the garden light.
“I had no idea,” he continued, “that you were here, in Paris.”
She sat back a little and her mouth parted. “I had no idea either,” she said, “that we would return. But here we are.”
She smiled, and a couple of strands of her hair blew across her face. She did not seem to notice and appeared, momentarily, to be elsewhere. The door, caught by a breeze, slammed shut and made her start. And then with what looked like a great effort, she sat forward, took another sip of her tea, and placed it back in the saucer decisively.
To Capture What We Cannot Keep Page 13