The Invitation

by Belinda Alexandra

  And now the debt collectors were coming after me.

  I opened the envelope from Roche & Associates with the most recent date but couldn’t bring myself to unfold the letter. Instead I lifted one corner and peeked at it as if I were staring down a dangerous viper. Like the previous notices it was typewritten, which somehow imbued it with a greater sense of threat than if it had been written by hand.

  I glimpsed the words: The outstanding amount remains unpaid despite our previous reminders. We urge you to contact us immediately. If we do not hear from you within fourteen days of the receipt of this letter we will be forced to refer this matter to the courts, where your continued lack of compliance could lead to imprisonment . . .

  Chills ran down my back. How was it possible that I had accrued such a formidable debt? Before Grand-maman became ill I’d been able to support us comfortably with my harp lessons and recitals and my published pieces. With careful saving, I’d even been able to take her to the spa in Vichy once a year to relieve her arthritis. But those days of happy abundance were a distant memory. When Grand-maman was in pain, I was in pain too. It was unendurable. I couldn’t play the harp. I couldn’t write. It would take a miracle for me to repay so much money now!

  I placed the yellow envelopes in the desk drawer along with the others from Roche & Associates, and with trembling hands turned to the letters from my readers as a distraction. People who enjoyed my stories were my salvation. Maybe one day I would be a very successful writer and this dark time would be behind me. But that time wasn’t coming soon enough.

  TWO

  On Sunday, Claude and I caught the train from Gare du Nord to Pierrefitte, the village north of Paris where his family lived. The trip was only twenty minutes by train but we may as well have travelled to another country. There wasn’t much to the village besides a bakery, a bar tabac and an optician’s shop with a pair of giant spectacles as its sign.

  ‘Smell the air,’ Claude said as we walked to his parents’ home. He opened his arms wide and took in deep breaths.

  I followed his example. The air had that special quality of freshness that braced the nostrils and caressed the lungs. I was happy to be out of Paris and escaping my troubles, even for a short while.

  ‘I can picture you growing up here,’ I said, playfully pinching his arm. ‘Naughty Claude running through the village streets with his socks down.’

  ‘A writer is always imagining things,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘It was a nice place for a child to grow up, but it was stifling for an adolescent with any sort of inventiveness. I once painted gold a single apple on each tree in old Madame Léger’s orchard. She believed it was a miracle and told the priest. After he investigated, he suspected me immediately and informed my father who gave me a beating. Some of the old ladies here still talk about me as if I am some sort of devil. You don’t know how lucky you were to grow up in Paris.’

  The Tremblay family home was a three-storey house fashioned from grey stone. The roof sloped steeply and a thicket of ivy clung to the walls. It was a respectable bourgeois home for a respectable bourgeois family, headed by Claude’s father who was a bookkeeper in a drapery firm.

  We let go of each other’s hand and walked down the path, past the pear and plum trees, which were tinged with their autumn colours, to the front door. Before we reached it, four small children burst out and circled us.

  ‘What’s the magic password?’ asked Marie. At seven years of age, she was the eldest of Claude’s nieces and nephews. ‘You can’t come inside unless you say it.’

  Claude scratched his chin. ‘Password? Let me see . . . is it . . . “hiccup”!’

  The children covered their mouths and giggled.

  ‘No,’ said Cosme, who was four years old. With his chubby face and blond ringlets, he was a perfect model for a cherub.

  ‘Is it “cabbage”?’ I asked, trying to remember what the secret word had been last time we visited.

  ‘No!’ cried Paul and Louis, the twins.

  To give us a clue Marie put her finger to her nose and twisted it.

  ‘Ew,’ said Claude, screwing up his face. ‘Not snot!’

  The children nodded and ran around the side of the house, giggling and pushing each other.

  ‘Why are children always fascinated by disgusting things?’ Claude said with a good-natured shrug.

  ‘Because they haven’t learned to be serious yet,’ I told him.

  Inside the house we were greeted by the buttery-sweet aroma of potatoes baking for Claude’s mother’s favourite side dish, duchess potatoes. She poked her immaculately coiffured head out of the kitchen and smiled when she saw us.

  ‘Papa will be pleased you are on time today,’ she said, kissing us both on the cheeks. ‘You know he has that irritating saying: “If you are early, you are on time”!’

  Although she was in her late fifties, Madame Tremblay had the pliant complexion of a young woman. She had been a singer with the Opéra-Comique in her youth, and although she was respectable in her striped brushed cotton dress and starched apron, she still radiated the magnetism and energy of a performer. Claude had inherited his charisma from her.

  Madame Tremblay left the maid, Anouk, to complete the dinner preparations and ushered us into the sitting room where Claude’s father and brother, Albert, were drinking crème de cassis. Albert had joined Monsieur Tremblay in the drapery business and lived with his wife, Lucie, in the house next door. The father and son could have been twins, with their round bespectacled faces and their checked suits and fob watches. They rose when they saw us.

  ‘You look lovely, Emma, as always,’ Monsieur Tremblay told me.

  ‘What is that suit you are wearing?’ Albert asked Claude, an amused smile dancing on his lips. ‘You look like a dandy.’

  ‘Thank you,’ answered Claude, twisting the jab into a compliment. ‘One can only try.’

  Claude had left for Montmartre when he was eighteen to live the free life of an artist, so he and Albert were the opposite of each other in many ways. But despite their differences, I sensed that if something happened to either one of them, the other would drop everything to be at his brother’s side.

  Outside I could hear Lucie and Claude’s sister, Agathe, calling in the children from the garden. ‘Come and wash up before dinner,’ Lucie was saying. ‘Cosme, what a fright you look! How did you get so much dirt on your face?’

  ‘Where is Franc?’ Claude asked about his brother-in-law.

  ‘Monsieur Durand’s best horse has an abscess,’ Monsieur Tremblay answered. ‘Franc has gone to drain it.’

  Claude grimaced. ‘Ah, the life of a veterinarian.’

  Anouk informed Madame Tremblay that dinner was on the table. Claude’s mother removed her apron and directed us into the cramped dining room with its dark wooden panels and heavy First Empire table and sideboard.

  The children took their places, except for Cosme who skipped past his chair and hoisted himself into my lap, resting his heavy golden head against my chest.

  ‘I like Emma,’ he said. ‘She’s the same colour as me.’

  ‘Get off Emma and sit on your own chair,’ Lucie gently scolded him.

  Cosme smelled of Castile soap and his warm body snuggled to mine was comforting. I experienced a sense of loss when he slipped off my lap and went and pressed his head against his mother’s arm.

  Madame Tremblay smiled. ‘You’ve always been his favourite, Emma. Cosme has an eye for attractive ladies.’

  ‘As does Claude,’ joked Albert.

  As dinner progressed, the chatter around the table grew lively, with the subjects ranging from the preparations for the Paris Exposition Universelle to the best way to make a bouquet garni. I marvelled at how Claude’s family could speak all at once and still understand each other. My gaze drifted over their happy faces to the family portrait that hung opposite the fireplace. In the picture, Monsieur and Madame Tremblay were seated, with Albert and Lucie, Franc and Agathe, Claude and the children surrounding them
. The old family sheepdog, Bonfils, was in the picture next to Monsieur Tremblay’s chair. The photograph had been taken only a year ago but I wasn’t in it. Family portraits did not include fiancées let alone ‘girlfriends’.

  Claude and I were enjoying the company of his family so much that we lost track of time and missed the last train back to Paris. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and Madame Tremblay kept a nightdress and brush set especially for me in the guest room on the second floor.

  I watched her turn back the covers on the bed and fluff the pillows. Every movement she performed exuded the elegance of someone who had trained for the stage. Did she ever regret giving up her career for a husband and a family?

  As if reading my mind, she kissed me goodnight then peered into my eyes. ‘I will ask my husband to have a word with Claude. Five years is too long to keep you waiting. I want you for a daughter-in-law. I want more grandchildren.’

  I longed to reply that she would be the perfect mother-in-law. Even the simple things Madame Tremblay did for me — lending me books that she had enjoyed reading or collecting flowers from the garden to make a bouquet for me to put on my writing table — nurtured me. They were the kinds of things Grand-maman had done when she was well, and they meant the world to me. But, out of loyalty to Claude, I only smiled at her comment. He had expressed his views on the ‘bourgeois institution of marriage’ many times.

  After Madame Tremblay left, I changed into my nightdress and climbed into bed. The sheets smelled deliciously of lavender water and I snuggled my face to the soft pillow, listening to the rest of the household settling down. Anouk was closing windows, and in the room above me, where Claude’s parents slept, floorboards creaked. Eventually the house fell into a silence so profound that my whole body became alert. There were no noises from the street outside, and if it wasn’t for the bright moon the room would have been in total darkness. It wasn’t like sleeping in Montmartre when I stayed overnight with Claude. There, laughter and music drifted from the cabarets and dance halls until the early hours of the morning, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear the loud grunting of a man satisfying himself with a prostitute in the laneway.

  A muted tapping sounded at the door.

  ‘What’s the password?’ I whispered.

  ‘Amour,’ Claude said softly back.

  ‘You may enter.’

  Claude, dressed in his nightshirt, closed the door behind him before lifting the bed covers and slipping in beside me. He wrapped his arm around my waist and curled up with me.

  ‘You’ll be in trouble with your father,’ I said. ‘We aren’t married.’

  ‘We’ll be quiet,’ he said. ‘I was watching you all night and thinking of how I’d like to paint you naked.’

  ‘Nude, you mean. Doesn’t Vauclain always say there’s a difference between nude and naked?’

  Claude’s fingers reached for the hem of my nightdress and tugged it up over my hips. With his other hand he undid the tie at the neckline and slid it over my shoulders, kissing my bare skin with his warm lips.

  ‘You would make a beautiful nude,’ he said.

  ‘You want me to pose for you? Do you want to ruin my reputation completely?’

  He turned my body towards him. ‘It would be a painting for me only. Then, when you are busy writing, I could still admire you.’

  His fingers slid gently between my legs. I surrendered myself to the pleasure of his touch, but when I moaned he pressed his lips to mine in a kiss. Then I was lost as his mouth travelled down my neck and to my breasts, and his hand continued to drive me deeper and deeper into ecstasy. I reached for him and touched his hardness, massaging him until he too was biting his lips to suppress cries of rapture. Although I longed for him to enter me and possess me completely, we pleasured each other with our hands until we were both spent. Afterwards we lay in each other’s arms, listening to the silence.

  ‘I want to marry you and have children with you,’ I said.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. We had shared this conversation many times and it always ended the same way.

  ‘I love you, and I want a family to love as well,’ I continued. ‘I want to hold a little boy like Cosme, and watch a precocious little girl like Marie blossom into a beautiful young woman. I don’t want to be alone any more.’

  ‘You like my niece and nephews because you can hand them back. You wouldn’t want them all the time, Emma. When would you write? When would I paint? As I’ve told you many times, my mother gave up a spectacular career to marry my father. I would never ask the same sacrifice of you.’

  I squeezed my eyes shut to prevent my tears running down my face. It was easy for Claude to reject the idea of a family because he had one. Yes, his mother had given up her career but she looked happy and contented surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Never once had I heard her complain. A deep pain pinched my stomach: an ache born of desiring something deeply but not believing I could have it. Someone in my past had taught me that my dreams weren’t as important as everybody else’s.

  ‘I love you, Emma,’ Claude said, nuzzling his cheek into my neck. ‘You are not alone.’

  His breathing grew heavier and deeper and he was soon asleep. Despite his assurances, forlornness washed over me and I stifled a sob. I am alone, I thought. What a thing it was to have a family; but those who were born into one thought nothing of it. I’d only had Grand-maman and now she was gone. Caroline was hardly a source of love and support. Perhaps if I had parents and brothers and sisters I could depend upon, I wouldn’t feel that the rug was about to be pulled from under my feet. We would work together to deal with my debts. But even if I had all that, I would still want a husband and children of my own.

  Writing gave me a sense of doing something wonderful and important, but I also longed to love fully from my heart and to take care of a family in a way that was selfless. I had an inkling that if all I did with my life was to write, I might end up totally self-absorbed. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be anything like my sister.

  Early the next morning, Claude and I caught the train back to Paris loaded up with carrots, turnips, spinach and leeks from Madame Tremblay’s garden. The aroma of the fresh produce was enlivening, making me feel like I’d lain down in a flourishing vegetable patch and become one with the earth. Although the trip was short, Madame Tremblay had also prepared us grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches wrapped in brown paper ‘for the journey’. She was a woman who enjoyed taking care of people.

  She had also kept her promise to encourage Claude’s father to speak to him about marriage. As we were heading down the garden path for our walk to the station, he called after us, ‘I expect an announcement by the end of this year. You have both just turned twenty-six — you’re not spring chickens any more!’

  When we reached Gare du Nord, I handed Claude the share of vegetables I’d been carrying. My maid, Paulette, was a stickler for choosing her own produce from the market.

  ‘Give these to Sophie,’ I told him. ‘She has her sister staying with her and they could probably do with the extra food.’

  He kissed me goodbye. ‘You’ll come for supper tonight? Bring me what you’re working on if you like. I’m keen to hear how it’s developing.’

  When I returned to my apartment, Mrs Cutter and her daughter were out, and Paulette was in the kitchen making a spinach pie. Since I was a child I’d associated the aromas of pastry baking and cheese melting with our family maid.

  Paulette smiled when she noticed me in the doorway, and pushed back a strand of silver hair that had escaped her neat bun. ‘I’m using cottage cheese,’ she said. ‘It was your grandmother’s favourite recipe.’

  ‘Lovely! I’ll do some writing now, and then we’ll have lunch together.’

  I went to my room, replaced my shoes with slippers, greeted Grand-maman’s photograph, and settled down to write. I was pretending everything was normal and disaster wasn’t looming over me. I had experienced so many distressing situations
in the past few years that it had become increasingly difficult to face each new one squarely. My ability to attack a problem logically and efficiently had disappeared.

  But I couldn’t escape for long. No sooner had I begun writing than Paulette rushed into the room.

  ‘There’s a man here to see you,’ she whispered. ‘I left him on the doorstep. He wouldn’t give his name and I didn’t trust him enough to let him in.’

  I frowned. Who could it be? If he was a thief or a scoundrel how had he got past the concierge? Then I remembered Paulette had reacted the same way when Nicolas had come to paint my portrait for an exhibition. She had taken one look at his paint-splattered clothes and declared him a vagrant.

  But the man I found on the doorstep wasn’t a thief or a vagrant. He wore a tailored black suit and gave the impression that he had been waiting a long time but wasn’t in a hurry.

  ‘Mademoiselle Lacasse? I am Monsieur Ferat of Roche & Associates.’

  Perspiration broke out down my back. I was too shocked to speak.

  When I didn’t answer him, Monsieur Ferat regarded me with curiosity. ‘I thought we might talk?’

  He looked over my shoulder to where Paulette was peeking out of the kitchen with a saucepan in her hand. She was aware that I had incurred some debt after Grand-maman’s illness, but she didn’t know the extent. She also didn’t know that I had spent the money Grand-maman had put aside for our loyal maid’s old age.