Eavesdropping was not one of Iris’s vices. But the next words electrified her. “Our flight’s day after tomorrow, so you’d better wait at least another day. You could take a Wednesday flight.”
It seemed to Iris that her heart had completely turned over. First a big leap in her chest, and then what was like a complete revolution. Her mouth fell open, and she was aware of that too.
After that, she listened shamelessly.
Some of her aunt’s words were lost to her, so that only fragments of the conversation were clear. But the burden of the whole thing was accessible enough.
“The Negresco …”
“Yes, Paul, it’s a risk …”
“You can only carry coincidence so far …”
Then a long silence.
Iris, stunned, fled to her room.
She tried to think, but all her thoughts were jumbled together. She felt paralyzed, unable to move.
So it had come to this … he was going too … Paul was following her aunt to the Côte d’Azur.
What else could those words mean? “You’d better wait at least another day … it’s a risk …”
And …
How awful this was … how sordid … that her aunt would …
I can’t bear it, she thought … that’s he’s really as bad as I thought. Paul Chandon, who quoted Dickens, and liked the Quai d’Orleans in the very early morning, and for whom she had been feeling sorry because she thought he was going to be left in the lurch.
She heard her aunt’s door open and her name called out. Then a knock at her door.
She took a deep breath and walked across the room. Another deep breath, and then she opened the door.
“Hi,” Louisa said, and saw the letter and the three slips of paper still in Iris’s hand.
“Anything for me?” she asked.
“Yes, some phone messages. Here they are.
“Oh, good,” Louisa said, scanning them. “Kitty and Jim. We had promised to meet if our paths crossed. Yes, I’ll give her a ring right away.”
She looked a little bit upset. “The only thing is … do you think you could manage another day alone tomorrow? I’d like to spend some time with them. What do you think … is it selfish of me?”
It was like a reprieve … that she wouldn’t have to be with her aunt all day tomorrow, knowing what she knew. That everything she had feared was true, that Paul Chandon and her aunt were lovers … or planned to be.
Relief swept over her. Now she would have time to think, think what to do!
It made it easier for Iris to act naturally, tell Louisa that yes, she would be overjoyed to come and go as she pleased tomorrow and that yes, the flight to Nice had been confirmed and departure time was at three in the afternoon.
“And the hotel?”
“Also okay. Two singles with bath.”
“Wonderful. We seem to be all set. Darling, you’ll have such a good time. I doubt you’ll get in any swimming, though it’s possible the temperatures will be high enough for it. But you can swim any time, and there are far more exciting things to do there.”
“I’m sure there are.”
“So we have that to look forward to. Get a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night, then.”
“Sleep well.”
In bed Iris lay quiet and sick at heart.
To be involved in these machinations between Louisa and Paul Chandon was so distasteful to her that she felt physically ill. And that her aunt was so blindly infatuated that she would countenance such a thing was unbelievable.
Louisa, after all, planned to spend some months in Europe. Couldn’t she have had the decency to postpone her affair until after her niece had left?
She was afraid of losing him, of course. She was afraid he’d lose interest.
There was one other explanation for Louisa’s behavior, Iris thought, her heart pounding. If her affections for Paul Chandon were so strong, might she not consider more than an affair?
There were something like fourteen or fifteen years difference in age between Paul and Louisa. Things like that could happen … and sometimes did.
She sat up in bed. No, she thought fiercely. Oh no. Not Louisa. Not her aunt. The older wife of a money-hungry man who would bleed her, and bleed her.
There has got to be a way out of all this, Iris decided. She would just have to think of something.
And maddeningly, exhaustingly, all she could think of was that song on the Butte.
Toujours je t’aime chérie
Always, my love, forever …
And then the next three lines. The first half of the song.
Beyond that, the words refused to come to her.
Quit trying, she exhorted herself. For heaven’s sake, there were important things to think about.
But the melody ran through her mind persistently, until she felt she would go mad.
If only they hadn’t met Paul Chandon … and if only she hadn’t heard that damned song …
Yet even in her dreams, when she finally fell asleep, the song was there, somewhere there, in her troubled mind.
Fourteen
Next morning, after a fitful night of tossing and turning, Iris was greeted by a knock at her door. “May I come in?” her aunt called.
“Please do.”
“Will you forgive me, dear? I called my friend Kitty Sievers and they want me to breakfast with them at the Crillon, where they’re staying. Do you mind?”
“No, of course not.”
Louisa hesitated. “Darling, is it all right if I spend most of the day with them?”
“Certainly. I told you last night that it would be perfectly all right with me. I’m not a child, after all … a child you have to — ”
Her aunt sat down on the edge of the bed. “Is anything the matter?” she asked.
Everything’s the matter, Iris thought bleakly, but forced her face into a reassuring smile.
“Of course not. I just meant … oh, please do have a nice day with your friends. You know very well I’ll find a hundred exciting things to do, particularly since it’s my last day here.”
“Not really, darling. I’ve decided to definitely bring you back here to Paris for a whole week after Nice. You can go to the Provence another time.”
“That would be lovely.”
Her aunt looked dissatisfied. “You seem a bit flushed to me.” She put a hand on Iris’s forehead. “Sure you’re feeling all right?”
“Great. Super. Now run along.”
“I’ve ordered breakfast for you. It will be up shortly.”
“Thank you. Have fun.”
“And we’ll have a scrumptious dinner somewhere really good tonight. The Tour d’Argent, how’s that?”
She got up. “And now I must run. Take care, darling.”
“You too.”
At last, Iris thought, when she was alone. At last she could put her mind to making order out of chaos. She had all morning and all afternoon to put on her thinking cap, dream up some way to avert a coming catastrophe. She simply could not imagine going through with this planned rendezous of her aunt’s.
ROMANCE ON THE RIVIERA.
That her aunt, the proper Mrs. Henry Collinge, could scheme in such a Machiavellian manner …
And no suite at the hotel in Nice, Iris thought, fuming. Oh, no. Two singles and bath.
How could she!
What, oh what, could be done to prevent it?
A knock on the outside door heralded her breakfast which, when Matthieu brought it in and then left, Iris swallowed hastily, and then shoved the tray aside. The food tasted like straw.
She bathed and dressed, made up her face and brushed her hair, scarcely knowing what she was doing.
And then she was ready to go out, but stood in the middle of the room, frantic with indecision.
She had to do something … but what? To whom could she turn for help?
I should have had it out with Aunt Louisa, she
thought. I should have told her I knew. Told her that I wouldn’t be a party to her shenanigans.
That’s what she should have done.
She could still do it. She could call the Crillon. Maybe her aunt and those friends of hers were still there, dawdling over breakfast in the dining room, yakking away.
She went over to the phone, picked up the receiver.
The operator said, “Oui?”
“Yes, please. I … I …”
I can’t do it, Iris thought, sagging. She simply couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t know what to say or how to say it. She couldn’t do it.
“Nothing,” she said quickly into the receiver. “Rien, merci,” and then hung up the receiver with a little bang.
Her hands were shaking so that her tote bag, on the bedside table, slid off, and the contents spilled out onto the floor.
“Damn it,” she said, and started scooping up tissues, wallet, postcards, map, card case …
It was then that something clicked in her mind.
The card case.
That man at the Place de l’Aima. Monsieur …
She sat down on the floor and fished out the card he had given her.
Monsieur Marchand, that was it. That nice man. That nice, older man.
“If you should ever be in trouble, or need a friend …”
He had been so kind, so sympathetic, she remembered. He had been the kind of person you felt you’d known all your life.
She thought about it. Thought about it for quite a while. After all, he was a stranger. She had talked to him for no more than a half hour. He would have forgotten her very existence by now.
You couldn’t just call a perfect stranger, that you had exchanged a few words with for about half an hour and say, “I need help badly, please come to my rescue.”
He’d think she was crazy.
And anyway, how could he possibly help her? What would be her purpose in contacting him? What could he do for her?
An odd little feeling came over her. A new, and rather startling feeling. It was a weird, almost frightening sensation. It was like seeing herself from the outside, as if part of her was looking down at herself, looking with a stranger’s eyes … and eyes that were pitying … but at the same time critical.
As if this stranger were watching her as she sat on the floor of her Hotel Vendôme bedroom, brooding, uncertain, and forlorn.
She was suddenly conscious of her ridiculous sprawl on the floor, her whirling, unproductive thoughts, her juvenile approach to what was a very real problem.
For heaven’s sake, she thought, springing up. She was twenty-four years old, a great gawk of a young woman who was behaving like a child of ten.
There came a time when Mommy and Daddy couldn’t fix things for you, she told herself coldly. It was high time she faced that fact. It was high time she started acting her age.
Now, she thought, she had this man’s card. He was not St. George, to fight a dragon for her. But he could, very likely, be of some use.
She thought it all out very carefully, step by step.
One: It was too late now to call her aunt at the Crillon.
Two: To confront her aunt with her knowledge of what was going on was something she couldn’t, really and truly couldn’t, bring herself to do.
Three: Therefore, she would telephone Monsieur Marchand. And assuming that she could reach him, what was she going to ask of him?
She finally decided that, since Monsieur Marchand was a native Parisian and an experienced, worldly gentleman, he might conceivably find out something about this Paul Chandon, something that would assure her aunt that to go any further with this liaison would be to her detriment and sorrow.
“That’s it,” she cried, triumphantly. That’s what she would ask Claude Marchand to do.
She was no longer wringing her hands. She had made up her mind, like a mature person, and it only remained to telephone Claude Marchand.
When she went to the telephone this time there was no stupid hemming and hawing.
“Oui?” the operator’s voice said.
“Will you call a number for me, please?”
“Certainly, Mademoiselle.”
She gave him the number and waited.
It was ten to one, he would be out, Iris realized. But she waited calmly, and after about half a dozen rings, she heard a man’s voice say, “Allo?”
“Hello,” Iris said. “Am I speaking to Claude Marchand?”
“This is Claude Marchand.”
The same heavy but velvety accent, the same charming intonations. Thank God he wasn’t out somewhere, Iris thought, and took the plunge.
“You won’t remember me, I’m afraid, but this is Iris Easton, and two days ago we met on the Place de l’Aima. You … my tote bag had fallen down and you — ”
There was a low, pleased chuckle. “And I picked it up and woke you from a sound sleep,” Claude Marchand said. “Hello, Mademoiselle Iris Easton. Are you still in love with Paris?”
“More so than ever,” she replied, so grateful for his warmth and kindness that she could have cried. “Only I’m going to have to leave tomorrow. My aunt and I are bound for the Côte d’Azur.”
“Very lovely at this time of year,” he said approvingly. “You will enjoy it.”
“There is a slight problem,” she said quickly. “You were so kind, Monsieur, to say that if I should be in trouble I could call you.” She swallowed. “This is a great imposition, I realize.”
“Oh,” he said, with a smile in his voice. “And I thought you were calling me because you had fallen in love with me and wanted to propose that we start an amour.”
She sat down on the bed and laughed softly. “What would you do,” she asked him, “if I declared that I would like to start an amour with you?”
“I would faint,” he said boomingly, “with delight.”
Then he became serious. “What’s the trouble, chérie?” he asked. “Is it about that young man who is causing you such distress?”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “And I thought that … that somehow you might be able to … well, to find out something about him.”
A fractional pause and then, “You mean his credentials,” he said.
“More or less. You see, if his reputation is … if he’s a notorious … if he makes a practice of preying on older women.”
Another silence.
“That is,” Iris finished, “do you think, if I gave you his name, you could ascertain whether he’s one of those men who — ”
“You mean you want me to find out if he’s a cheap chiseler,” Claude Marchand said, quite astonishing Iris with his knowledge of American lingo.
“Is that asking too much?” she asked humbly.
“Why, not at all,” he replied. “What’s this young scoundrel’s name?”
“It’s Paul Chandon. C-h-a-n-d-o-n.”
This time there was a very long silence. So long that Iris was sure the connection had been broken.
When it seemed that, indeed, they had been cut off, she cried, “Monsieur? Are you there?”
“Oui,” he said, and then, “I assume that this young man is most attractive?”
“You assume correctly,” she answered. “Like … oh, Charles Boyer, when Charles Boyer was young and — ”
“And irresistible to his female audience,” the man said. “Did you see him in Pepe le Moko?”
“Yes, at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York,” she said. “With Hedy Lamarr. Anyway, he’s that sort of man, only far more striking even.”
“About what age is this man who is clinging to your aunt?” he asked.
“I would say thirty-one or two. Thereabouts.”
“Dark-haired?”
“Yes, dark-haired. Dark eyes too. Very tanned. Expensive clothes.”
“Ah?”
“And beautiful manners, except with me. He, naturally, dislikes me. I’m in the way, as you can understand.”
“I wonder …” Claude Marchand said thoug
htfully, and then fell silent again.
“Yes?” Iris demanded, twiddling her thumbs.
“Yes,” he said. “I am thinking.”
“Oh.”
She waited again.
Then, “I wonder,” he said musingly. “I really do wonder. Paul Chandon, yes? C-h-a-n-d-o-n?”
“Right.”
“It strikes me a little funny,” he said. “Paul Chandon. It’s, of course, a very famous name here. Oh, I am sure there are many Chandons in Paris, and in France. It’s not a name like Dupont, of course, which fills up about ten pages of the telephone book. But Chandon, when one thinks of it, inevitably means the wine family.”
“The wine family?”
“Bien sur. Chandon, a household word. There is a Paul Chandon père and a Paul Chandon fils. Father and son. Theirs is one of the great distilleries of France. So naturally, when you speak of a Paul Chandon, one instantly thinks of the Paul Chandon.”
“It couldn’t be,” Iris said flatly. “This young man doesn’t do a bloody thing except hang around cafes.”
“And make overtures to people like your aunt.”
“Exactly. So how could it be that Paul Chandon?”
“But why not?” he argued. “Many younger men are partial to older women. Particularly when a certain young man lost his mother not very long ago. Perhaps he is lonely, and was in need of solace from a kind lady like your aunt.”
This time it was Iris who was silent. The receiver had gone slack in her fingers. What was all this? Was he saying that there was a possibility of Paul Chandon’s being Paul Chandon?
I mean, the Paul Chandon, she thought, sitting down quickly.
“Allo, allo,” Monsieur Marchand said imperatively. “You are still there?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Iris’s lips were dry. “Is there any way I can find out if this man is … the wine family Paul Chandon?”
“Let me give it some thought,” he said, and then suddenly, “Where are you now, Mademoiselle?”
“At my hotel.”
“You told me where, but I have forgotten.”
“Place Vendôme, the Hotel Vendôme.”
“Ah yes, now I recall. What time is it? My clock is in another room.”
Iris looked at her watch. “Almost eleven.”
“Almost eleven. You are very near the Cafe de la Paix.”
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 45