CRASH. The door to the office slammed open and bounced off the opposite wall. Gilbert came sauntering through with a wide, toothy grin plastered on his face.
“Well, how did it go?” he boomed as the two other men sat frozen, still processing the apparition.
“It went fine,” said David.
Gilbert moved hastily forward, he curled his fingers around David’s arm and tugged him out of the chair.
“A word. In private,” he said, and walked right back out of the room.
Georges shook his head and went back to work.
“What?” David said as he closed the door to Gilbert’s office.
“I thought you might drop this. We never agreed on a third person.”
“I’m sorry?”
“How much are you paying him? What is he actually doing? Is this just charity?”
David seethed; the constant rude behavior and abhorrent comments were fraying his nerves.
“Let me answer you one question at a time. Since you aren’t in the office, and I’m not entirely sure what you get up to all day; we do need a third person to act as secretary and assistant. I am paying Georges a fair wage based on his experience and workload. His pay is drawn from the accounts just like ours. Lastly, this is not charity. I found a fully qualified and capable individual to do work you should be doing. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to that work. Or perhaps there’s something else you’d like to whine about.”
Gilbert’s face went through ten different shades of red. Muscles in and around his jaw thumped. His lip curled into a thin sneer.
“Just remember whom you have to thank for your clients.”
The office door slammed moments later with a second crash that sent the windowpanes rattling. The threat was not lost on him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rachael - March 2016
IT WAS ONE OF those days. There were errands upon errands to run and as we crested the last hill toward home crayons came flying up from the back seat and hit the windshield, one of them lodged in my hair. I pulled into the garage and didn’t even bother to pick them up from around the pedals. I dropped the countless bags and junk mail and my green purse, into which another crayon had found itself, on the counter and popped in a movie. I didn’t want to move from the couch or shift my daughter from where she had snuggled into my side.
My phone rang, and I wanted nothing more than to ignore it.
“Hi Dad,” I said, as I walked into the kitchen. The movie Brave played on in the background.
“Rachael,” he said tersely. “I thought you understood.”
“Understood what?”
“About David. I thought you weren’t going to pursue this.”
“I don’t need your permission, Dad.”
“Our family is going through a hard time, I know the divorce isn’t easy, but it would just be easier … it would ruffle less feathers …”
“Please say that’s not all you care about? There might actually be something to this story. You know the rumors. What if I could ease someone else’s suffering? What if I could give them answers? Wouldn’t you like answers for the way that Mom has treated you … wouldn’t you like to know why?” I said. My chest heaved and a heavy silence settled over the line.
“This isn’t about me,” he breathed.
“No, it’s about me. I want to do this. I’m going to do it. Maybe I could give this person, imagined or not, some hope.”
I waited for a response. I thought I could hear his breathing, but when I pulled the phone away from my ear, the line was dead. I was looking at the background screen: a photo of Jared and I on our honeymoon … blissfully content in each other’s arms. I put the phone down and sighed.
My laptop was still on the side table where I had cast it aside in frustration the night before, my eyes so dry that my contacts seemed glued to my eyeballs. I had his name: Gilbert de Granville, the mysterious French business partner. Beyond that, the man was an enigma. I’d spent months search for him, for one tiny sliver of information.
I raked through social media accounts, marriage certificates, and death records. But even with the vast numbers of documents now available online, I couldn’t find him. It was as if he had existed only to form a company with David Golike. Was it possible the name was an alias? But even in 1970, surely you’d have to provide some sort of documentation to prove you were who you said you were.
I was backed against a wall. It was a pretty speech; proclaiming to my father that I was going to right a wrong, that I was going to put back some semblance of what … a family?
Perhaps I wasn’t finding any information because there wasn’t anything to find. I walked over to where my daughter lay curled up on the edge of the sofa, asleep as Disney’s Merida battled her way through angry Scots. She was so peaceful, so unlike the torrent of emotion that she’d been earlier. She was angelic, her little curls splayed out on the white sofa, her eyelashes curling prettily above her pale porcelain skin. I stroked that skin and those curls and longer for her to be still like this more often. A tear escaped and I stifled a sob. My mind careened as my father’s ringing silence came back to me. Surely he was, even now, fuming over my insubordination, and complaining about me to whoever might listen. Was it possible to be such a massive failure as a child?
That night, I curled up in bed, my arm around Jared’s waist, and wallowed in my despair. David’s secret lover would go another year without their letter. Did she (or he) wonder? Had they forgotten him? And then; the realization that perhaps they wouldn’t want to see the letter at all, that I would go through all the work of understanding a man who didn’t want to be understood and I’d ostracize my father in the process. I curled tighter around my pain and slowly drifted off to sleep.
“Here you are,” Jared said, early the next week at breakfast.
I sat, hunched over a bowl of Greek yogurt and granola and overripe berries, enjoying the weak sunlight filtering through the sliding glass doors. He held out a small slip of paper. On it was a phone number, a name, and an email address.
“What is that?” I said dubiously.
“I went through a lot to get this. A friend of a friend of a friend got this for me. It’s the name of a person who might be able to help you.”
“Who?”
“She should have the information for you. Although I’m not quite sure if she speaks English,” Jared said as he rose from the table. He laid a perfunctory kiss on my cheek. “I’ve to get into work. Call me when you get your information.” He left with a wave and another kiss and the soft rustle of wool against leather.
I sat looking at the scrap of paper, my heart hammered in my chest, and I licked my lips and my fingers hovered over the possibility.
“Oui, may I speak to Madame Juliette, s’il vous plaît?”
“Yes, speaking,” a clear Gallic voice said over the phone. She sounded, though it was such a boring comparison to make, so French. As if she was sitting in Chanel’s atelier in a camel colored trench coat, eating a croissant.
“My name is Rachael Golike and I was given your number. I’m searching for information on a Gilbert de Granville. He was a business partner of my great-uncle who passed away in 1988,” I said, breathlessly.
It was one of my poorer qualities, I’d always thought. I was forever getting my hopes up, even when they’d been dashed to the ground. I had no earthly idea whom this woman was or how Jared had found her. Across the line came the rustling of papers.
“Oui, I looked up his information for you. Monsieur de Granville was a member of a prominent Parisian family. He was arrested in the late 1990s for fraud and embezzlement. I have no records for the time during which he and David Golike were in business.”
“Is he still alive?” I asked. I could barely contain the whirling mass of questions in my brain. Fraud? Embezzlement? Prominent family?
“He is,” Juliette said, a pregnant pause followed by the muffled sound of a door closing. “Madame, I will give you his phone number, but pl
ease do not tell anyone who you got it from.”
“Juliette, I don’t even know your surname.”
“My Christian name would be sufficient,” she said darkly.
I bit my lip. I hung on the precipice of change–so close to a man who could give answers. Juliette read off the series of numbers and I wrote them down. I told her how grateful I was.
“He swindled my grandfather. I’m happy to help,” she said, dryly.
I sat down the phone, and stared at the little slip of paper. It was a piece of ‘The Brown Palace’ stationary. I dialed the number. The phone rang and my heart flew out of rhythm with nerves.
“Allô?” a timid woman’s voice came over the line. I took a deep breath and summoned my best French.
“Puis-je parler à Monsieur Gilbert de Granville, s’il vous plaît?”
“Un moment, madame,” the woman said. She put down the phone and the quiet tinkling of water and the steady crawl of traffic came through the line. In Paris an ambulance careened by.
“Allô, qui est-ce?”
“Bonjour, Monsieur de Granville. My name is Rachael Golike. I am David Golike’s great-niece, I’d like to ask you a question, if you have the time,” I said tremulously. A huff seemed to come out of the phone itself and I drew it a little way from my ear.
“One of his American nieces. Pshaw. What do you want?”
“I have a letter that my great-uncle wrote on his death bed. It was to someone he loved dearly. Was there anyone in his life that you know of? I want them to get the letter.” A great silence met me–a billowing mass seeming to break out of the receiver. For a long, terrifying moment I was sure Gilbert de Granville had hung up.
“He’s dead you say?”
“Yes, sir, he is.”
“Probably from all the smoking. We all found out too late that it kills you.”
“I don’t know what he died of,” I said. My voice shook and I thought I heard the trace of a laugh on the line.
“I’m not sure what makes me laugh more; the fact that you’re asking me about David’s love life or the fact that he never told anyone. And here you are, begging for information.”
I bit my lip. I could feel him snarling over the phone. I imagined him, wrapped up in a smoking jacket, velvet slippers on his feet, while he leaned against a thick mantelpiece in his antique strewn home.
“I am begging, Monsieur de Granville,” I said quietly. Another silence broke over the line and the thread of hope that I’d spun was held out, as if the fates were ready with their scissors and would cut it at any moment.
“Catherine. Catherine Federov. The Ruski. If that’s all,” Gilbert de Granville said with another massive sigh before he slammed the phone down. It crashed against something, a wooden table perhaps, before the line went dead, and I was called back to the present-out of the strangely surreal world of Gilbert de Granville.
Catherine Federov wasn’t too difficult to trace. I found her on an ancestry site right next to her parents, Ilya and Irinushka Federov. Catherine had died in 1986. But there was something else–and David’s life, now illuminated, made just a little more sense.
July 1971
“WILL YOU BE ALL right for the rest of the month?”
“I wish you’d just leave and not keep her waiting,” Georges said, not deigning to look up from his work.
“I have a few more minutes.”
Georges was silent, he scratched away at papers he was grading, before he looked up with weary eyes. They’d had this argument every day for a month.
“David, I’ve worked for you for a year. The clients are all aware that you are on holiday. Most of them are on holiday themselves and the rest have no issue with instruction from me. There is nothing to delay you further,” he said with a rehearsed air.
David straightened his belt buckle and shuffled his feet.
“I could not have done this without you. You are beyond impeccable.”
A warm smile broke over Georges’ face.
“You flatter me, but you’re getting sentimental in your old age.”
“Get in touch if Gilbert starts making trouble.”
“He’s too busy with the new girl to notice. It won’t be an issue.”
David nodded. He was nervous all the same. Gilbert had failed to bring in any new clients for months and was prone to bouts of mysterious disappearances.
“Enjoy Normandy,” Georges said, motioning David towards the door once more.
“Do you realize the Normans crossed the channel in 1066 to conquer England and almost nine hundred years later the British [and Americans] crossed the channel to free France? What a twist of fate.”
Georges shook his head and motioned towards the door, “The summer heat is slowing your mind. Go get on the train.”
“I leave it in your capable hands, but you’ll take time off when I get back,” David said from the office doorway, closing the door before Georges could offer up a complaint.
David left the building, walked through the too-warm streets, swinging his briefcase. Georges’ last words and the Gilbert’s absence played on his mind. If he didn’t know Gilbert better, he would have contacted the police.
He walked in silence, pondering the mysterious disappearance. Today there was space to think, the bands of Parisians on the streets were smaller. Most had already left, having made their annual pilgrimage to the sea or countryside. It was a quick walk to Catherine’s apartment, enjoyable without the constant rabble moving in and around him. David dropped his head as he walked. Was Gilbert’s disappearance just down to a vigorous new girlfriend or was it deeper? His business partner was unreliable and closed-lipped, and the longer David tried to think of reasons for the absences, he realized he knew next to nothing about Gilbert.
“You’re late.”
“Only a few minutes,” David said.
She stood, framed in the apartment door, one hip thrust to the side in annoyance.
“You look lovely.”
“We shouldn’t be late,” Catherine responded, blushing as she bent down to gather her bags.
“IT’S SO TERRIBLY HOT,” Catherine said, wiping her brow and leaning against a wall.
They reached the St. Lazare station on time, remarkably. They pushed through the crowds at the yellow stone exterior, desperate for cooler air, only to find the temperature had soared inside.
“This is why Paris is empty during the summer.”
“Yes, but it’s sweltering in here, couldn’t they open some windows?”
David looked around. The windows were indeed closed. Their fellow travelers looked as miserable as Catherine, fanning themselves with anything they could find; a book, a hat, a briefcase.
“So did Georges have to resort to kicking you out of the office?” she asked once they were, at long last, comfortably ensconced in their train compartment and hurtling out of the city.
“He came close.”
“Was Gilbert there?”
“No.”
“Where was he?”
“Presumably on vacation,” David said, watching Paris roll swiftly by.
“Presumably?”
“I can’t control the man’s life. He’s an equal partner in the business.”
“David …”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Have you discussed this with him?”
“I haven’t had the opportunity. Besides, Georges and I manage perfectly fine without him. Our clients are enough to pay the bills.”
“This isn’t about paying bills. This is about being taken advantage of. He’s drawing a salary that he isn’t earning. If you were able to force him out you could pay Georges more, you could earn more,” she said, taking hold of his hand.
“There isn’t anything I can do. Gilbert brings in the business. One word from him and all the clients will leave. I will have nothing left. I cannot ask Pierre to take me back on.”
“Pierre would gladly have you back.”
“Pierre isn’t going to
be at the Sorbonne forever, and I haven’t talked to him in a year, ” he said, scooting further back on the plaid seat. The lights in the compartment flickered as the train flew through a crossing. He’d never told Catherine about Pierre’s arthritis and he wondered why. “Anyway, why do we have to discuss this now?”
“So we can get it over with before we get to Normandy. I don’t want to argue on a beach. We’ve been there and done that before,” she said. “He’s taking advantage of you and you don’t realize it. I would never put up with this myself.”
David took her hand in his own, smiling at her, sinking into her dark eyes.
“I adore you.”
“David, I care. I really do.”
“I only love you more for it.”
“Promise me you’ll speak to Gilbert.”
“I’ll speak to him.”
Her gaze softened, she smiled, and excused herself to go find some food. David stretched out across the bench, listening to the muffled sounds of the other passengers. The train hurled around a particular hard turn and lurched to one side. David started, and then realizing his bladder was about to burst, jumped up, and went in search of the nearest bathroom. He hadn’t gone far when he came to a halt. The dining car lay before him and Catherine was silhouetted in the window.
A chink of light fell across her figure and cast a golden aura. He leaned against the side of the car, head against the cool window, and smiled. It was as if he was gazing upon heaven through a parting in the clouds–heaven arrayed in all its peace and beauty. She turned, her back to him. Two men were talking animatedly to her. One of them must have said something funny because she threw her head back and laughed uproariously.
David fell hard against the opposite wall of the car. It was terrible trying to make it back to his seat. The train rocked this way and that, eliciting shrieks from disgruntled passengers. Catherine didn’t come back to their car for a long time, and when she finally did he pretended to be asleep.
IN LESS THAN THREE hours David and Catherine’s train chugged to a stop in the small Bayeux, Normandy station with a great billow of steam. David sighed with relief. Catherine looked sideways at him as they gathered their things, but he stubbornly avoided her gaze. A feeling of despair welled inside and the image of Catherine laughing played on a loop in his head.
Lives Paris Took Page 13