Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances

by Dorothy Fletcher

“Are the soft-shelled crabs in season?”

  “Mais oui certainly, Mademoiselle.”

  “Then I’ll have that. And for an appetizer, some steamers.”

  He was busy scribbling on a pad.

  “My aunt will have moules marinière to start. And then the … écrévisses a la …”

  “A la nage,” he finished for her.

  He bowed, like the son of the son of the son of one of Napoleon’s servicemen, and then left her alone with a memory of his brilliant, Gallic smile.

  It brought to mind the title of one of Francoise Sagan’s novels, A Certain Smile, and unbidden, unexpected and certainly unwanted, there flashed in Iris’s mind another smile … that of Paul Chandon. The quick vision of those upturned lips, those flashing white teeth in a tanned face was so vivid that she closed her eyes against it. When she opened them again her aunt was sliding into her seat.

  “You ordered?” she asked.

  “Yes. I’m having steamers and soft-shelled crabs.”

  • • •

  When they were once again back at the Place Vendôme, the beautiful square was flood-lit and as entrancing as a scene from a Pisarro watercolor. The obelisk at its center, rising high and ever impressive, seemed to be trying to touch the stars.

  There was a soft, cooling breeze, and the timeless smell of old stone. It was a night for exploring, for adventure. It was not a night in which to go, long before the witching hour, indoors and, tamely, to bed.

  “Coming?” Louisa called.

  “Right with you.”

  Iris followed her aunt into the hotel, but turned to give a last look at the bewitching radiance outside … and at the soft Paris sky, with a crescent moon whitely shining.

  What would it be like to be in Paris and at the same time to be in love? On a night like this, to venture forth, arm in arm with one’s beloved … and forget about minutes, hours … days, even?

  At the desk the night concierge reached in their box and handed them their mail. “Yes, and some telephone messages,” he said.

  Iris had two letters, one from her parents and one from Jeff.

  “Letters from the home front,” she told her aunt, but Louisa was busy scanning the phone messages the concierge had given her.

  “What did you get?” she asked her aunt, and Louisa looked up.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” she said happily. “There are two messages from Paul Chandon. He’s phoned twice, it appears. At four this afternoon and again only an hour ago.”

  “Great,” Iris said unenthusiastically, and as they rode upstairs in the ornate little lift, she studied her aunt’s face, remarking the rise in color to her cheeks, and the small, almost furtive smile that rested on her lips.

  When they reached their quarters, Louisa turned the key in the lock. The salon was in darkness and she turned on the overhead light. Then, switching on several lamps, turned it off again.

  “I think we could do with a nightcap,” she said gaily. “Let’s visit for a bit before going to bed — post mortems about our day.”

  “All right.”

  Louisa sank down on the sofa. She kicked off her shoes and opened the bottle of Courvoisier, filling the two glasses. “We had a very good day, didn’t we?”

  “We always do when we’re together.”

  “Sit down, dear, we’ll have our little nip and then turn in.”

  Iris sat down obediently.

  “What did you like best today?” Louisa asked brightly.

  We’ve already gone through all that, Iris thought, but refrained from saying so.

  “Everything,” she said instead. “It was all perfect.”

  “You liked the Place de Vosges, I could tell that. It’s one of my favorite spots in the world. My first love — and you can quote me on this, Iris — is the Piazza san Marco in Venice. I’ll take you there some day.”

  If, Iris thought somberly, some young man with ulterior motives doesn’t snap you up with a view toward feathering his own nest. Someone like Paul Chandon.

  Later, in her room, she read her two letters and then lay, trying to sleep, watching the moonlit shimmer that came through the tall, handsome windows.

  Tomorrow morning, without any doubt, Paul Chandon would follow up on his two telephone calls of today and it would begin all over again.

  And Jeff was worried about me in Paris, she thought, stifling a compulsion to laugh hysterically. He hadn’t said so, but she knew he had been thinking about Parisian men following her about on the street.

  Who would have thought it would be Aunt Louisa who would capitulate to a pair of dark eyes and a dazzling smile? Who in the world could have suspected that her aunt would languish, like a Victorian heroine, over someone young enough to be her son?

  Don’t think, she told herself.

  The way her aunt’s eyes had lighted up when she got those messages …

  Don’t think. Just go to sleep.

  I never bargained for anything like this, Iris told herself, tossing. It was ridiculous. It was grotesque.

  I said, don’t think, she told herself viciously, and pulled the covers over her head.

  Nine

  Halfway through breakfast the next morning, the telephone shrilled in Louisa’s room and she got up so quickly that she almost upset her coffee cup.

  “Excuse me while I take that,” she said hastily, and rushed into her bedroom, her peignoir swishing along the carpet.

  Then her door slammed shut.

  The call was, dollars to doughnuts, from Paul Chandon, Iris thought grimly.

  I feel like crying, she thought. Or tearing my hair out, strand by strand.

  She never would have imagined, in her wildest dreams, that her Aunt Louisa could so easily forget twenty-two years of a happy marriage … and fall, like a ripe plum, into the wily arms of a …

  Of a Parisian stud.

  Bleakly, she noted the passing minutes on her watch, and after ten of them had ticked by, got up and paced the floor.

  What was she saying to him? What was he saying?

  There was a sudden vision of Paul Chandon, of his tall stature, his easy and assured posture, his dark eyes and his flashing smile.

  She tried to picture herself, widowed and melancholy, and then meeting someone like Paul Chandon. What would be her own reaction?

  How could you imagine yourself forty-six years old and widowed, she thought impatiently. It was impossible. She couldn’t even envision the day after tomorrow, much less twenty-two years from now.

  Yet reluctantly, after much reflection, she had to admit that, under her aunt’s circumstances, she might regard Paul Chandon acquisitively.

  But I wouldn’t trust an utter stranger, not under any circumstances, she told herself passionately. Someone you met in a cafe … someone you knew nothing about.

  Her aunt’s door opened, so she sat down quickly.

  “I’ll just get rid of this cold coffee and have some fresh,” Louisa said cheerily. “Do you suppose I’d be arrested if I threw it out the window?”

  “I wouldn’t chance it. Pour it down the john.”

  “I don’t suppose it will hurt this plant,” Louisa said merrily, and dumped the gelid liquid into a potted plant on the window sill.

  Then she sat down again, poured herself some coffee from the steaming silver urn and announced that Paul Chandon had just called.

  “He apologized profusely for having to cancel our plans for last night,” she explained. “And he would like us to have lunch with him at one-thirty today. That sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

  “At the same time,” Iris pointed out coolly, “it will break our day very neatly in half. Where are we supposed to lunch with him?”

  “At a place on the Rue de Lille. La Chandelle. I know it only by hearsay, but it’s a favorite of Left Bank writers and editors. It has an éclat, like the Brasserie Lipp.”

  “Did he ask for both of us to go?” Iris asked slowly.

  Louisa looked astonished … but then again, Iris thou
ght, as if she might be faking surprise. “What do you mean, both of us?” she demanded.

  “I just wondered.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Of course he wants both of us.” She gave her niece a searching look. “Are you still worrying about the fact that we weren’t introduced properly to him?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “Is that what’s — ”

  Iris pleated her breakfast napkin with nervous fingers. “I’m not sold on men who …”

  “Who what?” her aunt demanded. “Men who what?”

  “Oh, never mind.”

  There was a little silence. Then, “I like him,” Louisa said quietly. “Can’t you let it go at that?”

  “If you say so.”

  “No. Not if I say so.” She gestured. “I’m sorry. I should have consulted you before I accepted. I just didn’t think there would be any reason why you wouldn’t want to have a civilized lunch in a civilized restaurant with a civilized man.”

  “No reason,” Iris said quickly. She was now sorry she had made an issue of it. She certainly didn’t want her aunt to go off without her to spend some time with that designing man.

  “No reason at all,” she repeated. “Where is this Rue de Lille?”

  “Not far from where we were the other day,” her aunt said. “The day we went to Notre Dame.”

  And the day we met Paul Chandon, Iris thought resentfully. The day everything changed, and my worries began.

  “Super,” she said, summoning a smile to her face. “In that case, why don’t we walk up the Right Bank this time and cross over at the Pont d’Arcole? If we do that we can see the flower markets. I’d like to.”

  “Oh, you’ve been studying your map,” her aunt cried. “Good girl. Before I know it, you’ll be showing me about Paris.”

  “I doubt it. But yes, I’m getting there, and I’m almost sure that, if I had to, I could get about quite easily.”

  “Needless to say, I’m pleased. And now we must get dressed and ready to leave.”

  They did so at just before ten, and today, sadly, the sun was hiding behind fast-moving clouds in a slatey sky.

  “It looks like rain,” Iris said. “Oh dear. Shall I go back and get an umbrella?”

  “Yes, do. Mine’s on top of my suitcase. A folding one.”

  When she came down again, with both umbrellas, there were indeed a few drops of rain.

  “I’ll have a fit if our luck changes,” Iris said disappointedly. “What do you think?”

  “After all, it’s nearing the middle of September. It could very well change for the worse. I hope not.”

  But by the time they had reached the Rue de Rivoli, the rain had stopped. Iris crossed her fingers. And as a matter of fact, the sky, ominous and mushrooming with those great, vaporous clouds, was still beautiful, wildly wonderful and, in a way, even more spectacular.

  Yet, no matter how you looked at it, autumn was on its way. It gave Iris a stab of melancholy. If autumn came, was winter far behind? When this city was cold and snowy, and all the trees sere and leafless, she wouldn’t be here. She would have been long gone.

  “No,” she murmured, not even knowing she was saying it aloud.

  “What’s that?” her aunt asked.

  “I was just thinking about a time when I wouldn’t be here any more.”

  “That’s the way I wanted you to feel. And I hope that — ”

  “That what?”

  “Um … oh, high hopes, high hopes. Shall we walk through the Tuileries? We have loads of time. We can go as far as the Carrousel and then make our way back for a look at one of my pet haunts, the Palais-Royal. Afterwards we’ll wander all the way down the Right Bank.”

  The Tuileries gardens, where once princesses and dauphins had strolled, was a lovely park, with its riotous gardens, turquoise pools, burbling fountains and flowery scents. The Carrousel, a miniscule version of the Arc de Triomphe, was a small delight.

  “A pretty place,” Louisa said reflectively. “I’ve often sat here with a book, or the morning newspaper, while Henry smoked his endless cigars. Okay, let’s go over to the Palais-Royal. You will adore it. I’ve often thought about taking an apartment there, a pièd a terre. Henry and I did some talking about it, but never more than that.”

  “Colette lived there,” Iris said. “And Cocteau too.”

  “A lot of prestigious people lived, and live there. I can imagine the rents.”

  “Where does Paul Chandon live?” Iris asked suddenly. The thought had just occurred to her. She was really more or less thinking aloud, and was very much startled when her aunt answered, right away and very casually, “Somewhere in the Rue Jacob.” And then added, “It’s a place many young people like to quarter themselves.”

  So she even knows where he lives, Iris thought, stunned. She even knew that …

  The two of them had certainly covered a lot of ground in a single meeting.

  She followed her aunt, darkly speculating, and was only roused from her tumult of thoughts by the sight of a gilded statue of Joan of Arc at a crossing on the Rue de Rivoli. Brightly gleaming, even in this overcast day, the golden Maid, on a golden steed, burst upon her eyes like a fanciful dream.

  “You haven’t seen it before because we haven’t walked in this direction,” Louisa said, smiling at Iris’s excitement as she got out her camera. “It’s a nice little surprise, isn’t it?”

  “I just love it!”

  “And now we’ll go up this street to the Rue St. Honoré to see the house that Richelieu built. Come along.”

  A few blocks later the Palais-Royal presented itself in all its splendid perfection. Beyond its golden portals lay a colonnaded courtyard of stupendous beauty, in back of which rose the tall-pillared, gilded palace of the eminent cardinal.

  The whole vista of the long, large rectangle, sequestered as it was by its columned promenades, gave it the appearance of a hidden island, complete unto itself in all the hurly-burly of Paris.

  “Like a secret garden,” Iris said ecstatically. “Can we go inside the courtyard?”

  “Um hum. Come, we’ll amble along one of the loggias.”

  Louisa consulted her watch. “It’s eleven-thirty. That gives us two hours before meeting Paul. Enough time, granted, but you’ll want to spend some time at the flower market along the quays — that is, if it’s not a bird market today. So we mustn’t linger too long.”

  • • •

  La Chandelle, on the Rue de Lille, was a good bit more impressive than the place Paul Chandon had chosen on the Ile St. Louis. It looked expensive, smelled expensive, and had a decided aura of sophistication.

  The maitre d’ asked, with suave cordiality, if they were expecting someone.

  “Monsieur Chandon’s table,” Louisa answered. “Has he arrived yet?”

  “Please,” the man said pleasantly. “This way, Mesdames.”

  He led them past a polished bar and through to a bright, cheerful room with great bowls of silvery, dried flowers massed in stunning profusion. There was sparkling napery on the tables, the gleam of crystal and silver and a general air of easy affluence.

  In spite of this, Iris noted that several of the men diners were in casual attire, with carelessly-worn jackets and ties loosened. At least two men wore no ties at all.

  You wouldn’t see that in Manhattan, she thought, where a great emphasis was placed on neckties. Women might go half naked, but the strictures for men were merciless enforced.

  She rather approved of the more relaxed status quo here, and then saw Paul Chandon, standing at their approach. He himself was without a tie, though he had on a lightweight jacket that was unbuttoned.

  Two days had passed since she had seen him, thought it seemed, for some reason, far more than that. She gave him a quick, critical look and, whatever she might think of him, had to acknowledge that this Paul Chandon was a strikingly handsome man. Coming to terms with that fact, she accepted it, and promised herself that she would be very understanding with her aunt. Lesser women than
Louisa had capitulated to men not as prepossessing in their appearance.

  And I will be nice, she told herself. I will be charming, agreeable, and utterly adorable.

  A mischievous thought came to her. How about going all out and being so utterly adorable that Paul Chandon would find her too enchanting to resist?

  In short, seduce the would-be lover of her own aunt.

  Now that sounds too much like a Feydeau farce, she decided with an inward grin, and answered Paul’s greeting.

  “Hello yourself,” she said gaily. “And how are you, Monsieur Chandon?”

  He was very well, he said, standing like a sentinel until the women were seated. “But I am sorry about last night. Something came up that was totally unexpected. So I thought that, at least, I could make up for it just a little bit by this.”

  He added, hastily, “I mean, naturally, make it up to myself for the loss of your charming company last evening.”

  “Don’t give it another thought,” Louisa said. “We had a very pleasant day and had dinner at a restaurant I remembered from previous trips.”

  She outlined their itinerary of yesterday, and when she mentioned the Auberge Bretagne Paul’s face lit up.

  “But I know it,” he said. “I have been there several times.”

  “Marvelous crayfish,” Louisa commented. She looked about. “I can imagine that there will be enormous portions in this pretty, hospitable place and I am counting calories.”

  “Count them when you return to New York,” he replied, smiling.

  She laughed, and turned to Iris. “Shall we have our bread and cheese in our rooms tonight?” she suggested.

  “I’m all for it. And afterwards I’ll wash my hair. It’s way past due. I’m letting myself go in the most awful way. Paris has laid a spell on me.”

  “I was almost sure it would,” Paul said.

  “Oh, were you?”

  He laughed, didn’t pursue the subject, and told the waiter who came over that the ladies would have very dry martinis and he himself would have a bock.

  Iris was dying of curiosity to know what “a bock” was, but she would sooner have cut her tongue out than ask. And when their drinks came, Paul’s bock turned out to be beer.

  So now I know what a bock is, she thought, and decided that her knowledge of the world was improving.