To Capture What We Cannot Keep

by Beatrice Colin

  33

  ____

  EVEN THOUGH IT WAS not yet six in the morning, the concierge was already working, sweeping the steps with an old brush. He stepped aside and opened the door to the street for her. Outside a carriage was waiting at the curb.

  “Please,” he said, and motioned toward it.

  Had Émile arranged a cab? He hadn’t mentioned it. And he knew she preferred to walk. The coachman opened the door and offered her a hand as she took the step. There was someone inside.

  “Don’t be ashamed,” a woman’s voice came from inside the carriage. “Sit down.”

  “I think there must be some sort of mistake,” Cait said.

  “No mistake,” the elderly woman said. “I am Louise Nouguier. I believe you are acquainted with my son.”

  “Where did you go?” Alice asked at breakfast.

  Cait looked up from her cup of coffee and blinked.

  “Sorry?”

  “I heard you go out last night.”

  “Me?” she said, trying to appear nonchalant. She hadn’t prepared an answer.

  “I saw you,” said Alice. “Walking away very fast.”

  “Why on earth,” said Cait, “would I go out in the middle of the night?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t ask you,” she replied.

  Cait picked up the newspaper and started to read. But Alice wasn’t about to let it go.

  “I heard footsteps on the stairs, I heard the front door open, and when I looked out I saw you.”

  She put down the newspaper and looked at Alice. Maybe it was pointless to deny it.

  “Actually, I have insomnia,” she said. “I have had it for years. The only thing that helps is a brisk walk in the fresh air.”

  Alice frowned. It was so implausible it sounded true.

  “But is it safe?” Alice said. “A woman alone at night in Paris!”

  Cait shrugged. “What are the alternatives? That I pace around the house and wake everyone up? If you want to know the truth, my condition embarrasses me. I prefer not to talk about it.”

  Alice started to color.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Wallace. I thought you had a lover.” She stifled a guffaw. “Such a ridiculous notion. I mean, you’re way too old for any of that nonsense.”

  And she started to eat her breakfast with renewed gusto. Cait poured her­self some tea but didn’t drink.

  “Is something the matter?” Alice asked a moment later. “You seem strange, Mrs. Wallace, distracted.”

  Cait blinked.

  “Actually,” she said, “I’m fine.”

  The housekeeper appeared with a letter and handed it to Cait. Alice watched her face as she read it.

  “Not bad news?”

  Cait shook her head and folded it up again.

  “It’s from my sister,” she said. “She wrote to wish me a happy birthday.”

  Alice’s eyes widened.

  “You should have told me! When?”

  “Today,” she replied.

  It was true. It was October 26, and she was thirty-three exactly. How did she get so old?

  “We’ll go out: you, me, and Jamie. I think it might be too late to get a booking at the Café de Paris or Ciro’s, but I’ll try!”

  “Please,” said Cait, “you don’t need to.”

  Alice frowned at her and then shook her head.

  “We can afford it,” she said. “You wouldn’t have to pay for it or anything.”

  Alice didn’t mean it; she didn’t mean to insult her with thoughtlessness, to remind her of her place.

  The salon was lit by the splutter of several gas lamps, their filaments burning yellow in the smoky dark. At the bar, the men clustered, their top hats an architecture of curved satin and brushed beaver. Beside them the women arched and gestured, making black swans’ necks out of gloved arms. Underneath the clamor of conversation and the steady thrashing of a piano in the corner came the regular pop, pop, hiss of Champagne bottles being opened.

  It was almost cold enough to wear fur. And in the air, beneath the smell of cigar and soap, was the musty stink of fox and mink and bear. Alice and Jamie both ordered in French. Alice wore a blue velvet dress that Cait had never seen before. Around her neck she had tied a black velvet ribbon. Jamie’s eyes darted around the restaurant, looking for friends and acquaintances and pretty women. How changed they were from the year before.

  “You should be happy!” said Alice, and they drank a toast. “It’s your birthday.”

  But Cait wasn’t happy. She wondered if she could feel that way again. She leaned forward to lift her glass, but her elbow struck the bottle and it toppled, rolling across the table before it smashed on the tiles below, a fizz of green glass and bubbles.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said as she knelt down and tried to lift the broken pieces. “I’m so sorry.”

  A shard sliced her finger and it began to bleed, large red drops falling.

  “Mrs. Wallace, it’s all right, really it is.”

  Jamie made her sit down, he wrapped her finger with a linen napkin, he tried to make her understand that it didn’t matter.

  “It’s only a bottle,” he said. “I’ll buy another. It’s not the end of the world. As long as you’re not badly hurt.”

  As Jamie tried to catch the waiter’s eye, Cait’s eye was drawn to a man at the bar, a man who looked, from the back, just like Saul. Her heart clenched.

  When the police had asked for a detailed description of Mr. Saul Wallace in the aftermath of the accident, this is what she told them: height five foot nine, hair short, fair, short whiskers and a mustache, dark tweed suit, white shirt, black corded walking coat with black corded buttons, and a vest of the same material, a tweed top coat of dark blue, a black felt hat, black lacing boots, gray woolen socks, white swansdown drawers, a brown leather wallet, a gold watch, and a wedding band.

  In January and February they’d begun to recover the bodies from the River Tay, some brought up from the wreckage by divers, others washed up near the site of the bridge or farther up the estuary, east of Monifieth or in the salmon nets at Tentsmuir near Leuchars. Saul’s body was never found.

  The man at the bar turned. It was not Saul; he was gone, he would never come back, she was safe. And yet his death hadn’t ended the ordeal. As time passed she realized that he had bequeathed her more than a broken neck­lace; he had left her with something much worse, the opposite of a gift.

  The letter that morning had not been from her sister. It was from the physician she had seen after her accident.

  “I am sorry to inform you,” he wrote, “that as I told your husband at the time, and in answer to your enquiry, it would be highly unlikely.”

  By the next morning, after countless drafts, a letter to Émile had been written and sealed. She let herself out of the house and caught the first post. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. But still she’d held her hand to the cold pressed metal of the postbox with her letter deep inside as if she could hold on to it, and him, for a little longer.

  34

  ____

  ÉMILE STOOD IN the drawing room of the Arrols’ residence and waited. The house was quiet; only the muted rhythm of a clock graced the silence. He could just about sense the weight of footsteps far, far up above. This time, there was a pot of tea and a plate of tiny cakes laid out on the table. Cait, however, had not been there to greet him. After about ten minutes he heard footsteps approaching, the door opened, and in walked both women—Alice in a dress so covered in froths of lace that she looked not unlike a cake herself, and Cait in indigo blue. He bowed.

  “It has been a while,” he began.

  “It has,” replied Alice Arrol. “We haven’t seen you for months. Please sit down and let me pour you a cup of tea?”

  He scratched his chin but didn’t move. This was more difficult than he imagined. He looked at Cait; he tried to catch her gaze but her gaze would not be caught. He thought back over everything he had ever said to her. What c
ould it have been to turn her like this, what could he have done to make her become so cold? It was agonizing not to know. After he had received her letter, he had written to her a dozen times but her answers were short, polite, and offered no explanation. And so he had decided that he would have to take matters in hand. If he wanted to see Cait, he would have to pretend that he was interested in Alice.

  “Tea?” she asked again.

  Now that he was there, in the Arrols’ house, his idea seemed fatally flawed; to remain for another second in this room, making small talk and having to force himself to drink tea and eat cake, was more than Émile could bear.

  “Why don’t we go for a drive?” The thought was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “It’s a beautiful winter day!”

  Alice stared at him.

  “But I’m not dressed for a drive!” she said.

  He turned and looked pointedly at Cait. Her hair was pulled back and her dress was as plain as Alice’s was fancy. She looked so beautiful he found it hard to draw his eyes away.

  “Madame Wallace?” he said. “It’s Sunday, for goodness’ sake! Let me take you to the park at Saint-Cloud. You can see for miles from up there.”

  Émile stopped to catch his breath when he reached the summit of the hill. Just as he had promised, there was a view right across Paris; the bridge of Saint-Cloud below, and beyond, the Bois de Boulogne. A hot-air balloon floated over the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur. The half-built tower was clearly visible, a black iron scribble against the pale stone and dull golden glint of Les Invalides.

  Far below on the road, his carriage waited. In the lower part of the park, a military band was playing, the strains of the brass and bass drum rising up the hill in gusts. He had come to this park as a child, when the château was still standing, before it burned down in the war. As well as the view­point, there were forests and fountains, the Grande Cascade and the Jet Géant, a great surge of water that shot up into the air. He suddenly remembered his elder brother explaining Newton’s laws of motion to him with horse chestnuts on strings, the force of the first hitting the second so hard that it set in motion a third.

  On the path below, Cait paused and waited for Alice.

  “It’s worth it!” he called out. “The view is spectacular.”

  Alice had her hands on her hips and was shaking her head. And then with a flounce, the girl started back down the hill.

  “Come and see, Madame Wallace. This time you can keep your feet on solid ground.”

  Cait had barely said a word to him all afternoon. Saint-Cloud was about six miles from the center of Paris. On the way, Alice had talked incessantly, about Paris on a Sunday, about what people usually did. He found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying. She talked so fast. Instead, he found his eye drawn away from her; the line of Cait’s wrist beneath her pale green woolen cuff, a curl of her hair that had escaped from a pin, the shape of her foot laced up inside her boot.

  Cait had reached the path and was adjusting Alice’s hem. There was no chance that they could snatch a few moments together now. In fact he realized that Cait was pulling back, stepping out of the frame, leaving it wide open for him. And like a fool, he had stepped right in. As if on cue, Alice turned around, looked up, and waved, first with one arm and then with the other.

  They were all silent on the drive home. The music of the band still echoed in his ears and he held on to it, repeating the cheerful refrain in an attempt to drown out a sadder tune that was all his own. As they reached the gates of the Bois, he knew it would be mere minutes before their journey ended and Cait would be gone.

  “It’s a beautiful evening,” said Alice.

  “Lovely, for the time of the year.”

  “Too early to go home, surely?”

  Alice sat forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “Take the next left,” she told him.

  “Through the Bois?”

  “That’s right, through the Bois.”

  She sat back and looked at Cait, then Émile.

  “You don’t mind, do you?”

  It was five thirty p.m., the time for a stroll before an aperitif. They would be seen. People would talk as people always did. Everyone would know that he, Émile Nouguier, was stepping out with the Scottish heiress, with Alice Arrol. They rolled into the forest, past lines of carriages and couples strolling along the paths. Several men raised their hats to him, but mostly people just looked. Without intending to, he had just made an announcement to the whole of Paris.

  35

  ____

  “GOOD LORD ALMIGHTY!” A deep voice boomed up from the front door, clear and loud and most definitively Scottish. Cait picked up her skirts and ran down the stairs. William Arrol was standing in the hall while the housekeeper protested in rapid French.

  “I’m not understanding you, woman,” he said with a shrug.

  “Mr. Arrol!” she cried out.

  “Mrs. Wallace! At last. I was beginning to think we’d got the wrong house.” He laughed.

  “What are you doing here? I mean, this is so unexpected!” She took his top hat and peered over his shoulder at the carriage in the street, where a woman was being helped down by the coachman.

  “I wrote and told Alice we were coming.”

  “Did you? She must have forgotten to mention it,” Cait replied. “I must get the guest room ready.”

  “No need. The hotel is already booked. It’s only a flying visit. Three days, I’m afraid. I had some business in London and thought I’d extend the trip.”

  “Well, it’s nice to see you and your wife for any length of time.”

  William Arrol took a deep breath before he spoke.

  “My poor wife was not well enough to travel,” he said with his head bowed.

  On the street outside the woman turned, brushed down her skirts, and fixed her hat.

  “But my cousin, Miss Lamont, kindly agreed to accompany me,” he said. “You have met her?”

  Cait shook her head no.

  “Miss Lamont, come and meet Mrs. Wallace, the woman who has been working miracles for me here in Paris.”

  “I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Cait replied.

  He waved the air with his hand. “Now, don’t be modest. You are the perfect chaperone—charming but chaste. Now, where is my niece . . . Alice?” he bellowed.

  “She’s not here. She’s at the dressmaker having a fitting,” Cait explained. “I’m going to meet her at noon.”

  “Never mind. Now, tell me this. It’s far more important: Where can a man get a decent cup of tea in this city?”

  Lucy Lamont was small and trim and defiant. A certain sourness came over her face when she thought herself unobserved, but she worked hard at conversation, snatching up facts and information to tease like a wren with a worm.

  Alice had no recollection of receiving her uncle’s letter when she returned from her fitting. Dinner was hastily arranged at a place that Arrol himself suggested—Leon in the Place du Palais-Royal—and a note was dispatched to Jamie at the tower site. That night as they sat down, the mood was celebratory; the Forth Rail Bridge was on schedule and Arrol was talking to several other companies about new commissions.

  “I suppose you come here all the time,” he said as he glanced around the dining room.

  Alice looked horrified. The menu was prix fixe, and the other customers were nearly all British.

  “No, never,” she replied, and closed the menu with a snap.

  “A man we met on the boat train recommended it. ‘One must be on your guard in Paris,’ he told me. ‘They’ll fleece you as soon as look at you.’ ”

  “As soon as look at you,” Lucy Lamont added for emphasis.

  “Dinner for three francs a head in here. And they give you a glass of Champagne! That’s a bargain!”

  “A bargain!” Lucy Lamont echoed.

  Alice looked around the room. Cait knew what she was thinking. No one would see them in a place like this, a place full of miserly for
eigners. And thankfully, no one would witness her uncle’s behavior. In Paris, who knew he had a wife already, a wife whose mind had wandered but was still very much alive? No one would know about the true nature of his relation­ship with his cousin.

  What was marriage but a bind from which to escape? What was the point, if all it served as was as a cover for men’s infidelity? Cait glanced across at William Arrol. He was listening to Alice explain the Paris seasons, the small one from December to Easter and then the big one from May to July. Just when had he realized that his own marriage was a failure? When had he been told that his wife would not be able to have his children, when had he accepted that despite his huge success and personal wealth he would have to nurse her for the rest of her life? It was a tragedy he wore remarkably well, considering. Did he suspect, however, that he loved his niece and nephew with an indulgence that wasn’t always good for them?

  Cait was suddenly aware of the pull of a gaze. She turned to find Lucy Lamont staring at her.

  “So how do you find Paris, Miss Lamont?” Cait asked.

  “It smells,” she said with a directness that would have been considered vulgar even among the Scottish middle class. “And the coachmen expect a tip when all they have done is drive.”

  Like her cousin, William Arrol, Lucy Lamont gave away her impoverished background in a number of ways. She fixed her bodice, gave a great sigh, then began to fan her face with a napkin.

  “But there is plenty to see,” Cait suggested.

  “Tomorrow we are going to the tower,” she said. “Now, tell me, what is the engineer, this Nouguier, like?”