Paris: The Novel

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “If she wants to,” said Claire. “If she finds a man she really likes.” She looked at her mother. “I think you should.”

  “I haven’t the time,” said Marie.

  And they were all certainly going to be busy as the month of May approached, when the Olympic Games officially began.

  By July, Roland de Cygne would normally have been in the country at his château for the summer. This year, however, he had lingered because of the Olympics. Not that he was interested in most of the proceedings, but there was a week of polo at Saint-Cloud at the start of the month and the equestrian events were taking place toward the end. So he’d decided to stay for them. As he would still be in the city then, he’d bought a couple of tickets for the ballet at the Opéra right at the end of the season and told his son, despite the boy’s protests, that he’d take him. “It will be good for your education,” he said cheerfully.

  As compensation, however, he’d taken him out to the stadium on the western outskirts of the city where the track events were being held, and they’d seen some thrilling races, culminating in the hundred-meter final when a British athlete named Abrahams had taken the gold.

  “One doesn’t think of a Jew being an athlete,” he’d remarked mildly to his son. “There was once a famous boxer named Mendoza, mind you, but he was a Spanish Jew, which is different.”

  Today, he’d made sure to be back in his house by early evening so that he could attend a small social event. Yet as he set out to walk from his house toward the Luxembourg Gardens, he wondered if he was making a mistake.

  He’d been at a charity event the other evening when he and Marc Blanchard caught sight of each other. Though they moved in different circles, he’d been reminded of Marc from time to time when articles by him appeared in the serious newspapers. They were reviews of exhibitions or books, usually, and read more like little essays than jobbing articles—as befitted an established cultural figure with an independent fortune.

  Politeness dictated that they should greet each other, and Roland asked after Marc’s parents.

  “They are both quite well for their age. My father still takes an interest in life, though he is a little forgetful. It’s many years since he retired to Fontainebleau. And you, Monsieur de Cygne,” Marc inquired, “your father had a house near the boulevard Saint-Germain, I seem to remember?”

  “I have it still. After the war, I retired from the army to look after my estate and my son.”

  “I heard that you had married.”

  “Yes, but sadly I’m a widower now. My father adored his wife, lost her and was left with an only son. I never imagined that exactly the same thing would happen to me. But le bon Dieu evidently decided that, having established this pattern with our family, He would continue it.”

  Marc expressed his sorrow for de Cygne’s loss.

  “And are you married?” the aristocrat asked.

  “Not yet,” Marc confessed. “At present I’ve too much else to do. During the war my brother died, and I had to step in and run the family business. It’s not what I wanted, but someone had to preserve it for the next generation. I’m still doing it now.”

  “This does not prevent you marrying,” de Cygne gently observed.

  “My sister says I’m too self-centered.”

  “I remember your charming sister well. She married the Englishman, Fox, your father told me.”

  “She did. They were quite happy and had a daughter. Sadly Fox was one of the victims of the flu epidemic. My sister and her daughter returned to Paris for a visit three years ago, and I’m delighted to say that they stayed.”

  “Ah. I had no idea.”

  “As it happens,” Marc said after a pause, “I am having a few people over for a drink next week in my apartment. I took over my aunt Éloïse’s apartment near the Luxembourg Gardens when she died. Marie and her daughter will both be there. You are most welcome to join us, if you would care to. Wednesday evening.”

  “I shall check my appointments when I get home,” Roland said. It was always wise to leave oneself a graceful way out. “But if I am able to come, I should be delighted.”

  So Marc had given him the address, and they’d left it at that.

  And for several days he had been uncertain whether to go or not. He was quite sure that Marc’s friends would not be to his taste. On the other hand, he couldn’t help being curious to see what Marie looked like these days. He remembered how he’d imagined she would be like by now, when he had considered marrying her all those years ago.

  There was no particular reason he shouldn’t satisfy his curiosity, he told himself. He only had to be polite and friendly, and then he could leave.

  He felt in his pocket for his lighter.

  It was foolish, no doubt, but he’d always thought that the little lighter in its shell casing might have saved his life. Had it touched the heart of Le Sourd when he’d asked him to send the lighter to his son? Was that why Le Sourd had failed to shoot him that day at the front? Who knew? Perhaps, when the moment came, he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger in any case. But it seemed to Roland that the lighter had brought him luck, and he nearly always kept it with him, like a talisman.

  Not that he needed any luck this evening. There was nothing to be lucky about. He certainly wasn’t in the least excited about the prospect of seeing Marie again, he told himself, as he walked the short distance from his house to Marc’s apartment.

  Marie Fox was in a sunny mood as she and Claire went across to her brother’s. One never knew who was going to be at one of Marc’s parties. One time Marie had found herself talking to Cocteau the writer; the next time she had even found herself chatting with the American novelist Edith Wharton. Everyone came to Paris these days, and Marc seemed to know them all.

  When she’d first started work at Joséphine, Marie had wondered if she should return with Claire to the area of the old family apartment, so that she would be near the store. She had hesitated for two reasons. First, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to a place where she lived before. Somehow, it seemed like a retreat. Second, Claire didn’t want to go there.

  “It’s so boring,” she said.

  For Marie, the main attraction of their present apartment was the charming Luxembourg Gardens, just nearby. For when King Henry IV’s widow, Marie de Médicis, had wanted a little Italian palace to remind her of her native Florence, she had unwittingly given future generations of Parisians their most delightful park. Sixty acres of gardens surrounded the building, with a big octagonal pool where children now sailed their toy boats, a puppet theater, a grotto, leafy alleys in which to stroll and lawns where one could sit and catch the sun. From the middle of the gardens there was an elegant view south toward the Sun King’s handsome Observatory.

  But for Claire, it was the area just to the south of the park that was the attraction.

  Montparnasse. Mount Parnassus. A place for the gods. And if the gods who lived in Montparnasse now were mostly very poor, they were surely touched by the divine. Artists, writers, performers, students—Montparnasse in the 1920s was like Montmartre the generation before, with one difference: Montparnasse was international in a new way. Italians, Ukrainians, Spaniards, Africans, Americans, Mexicans, Argentinians, a colony of artists from Chile—they all crowded into Montparnasse, and made it their home. They were international Parisians, and they were rapidly forming a sprawling cultural club that would spread from Paris to Buenos Aires, London, New York and the Orient.

  Marc decided the issue.

  “Both of you—Claire especially, but you too, Marie—need to live in contact with the avant-garde. The people running Joséphine need to be elegant, chic and absolutely up to date with everything that’s happening. We sell our goods to the bourgeoisie, near La Madeleine, but we need to know what’s going on in the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse.”

  It was quite convenient. Marie had considered using a motor car and chauffeur to get to work, but she often found it easier to walk the short distance to t
he Sèvres-Babylone Métro station; a few minutes later she’d be at La Madeleine. Marc had been right. So far, she hadn’t regretted staying on the Left Bank.

  Marc’s parties were always well judged—plenty of people, but never a squash. Claire had found a young designer to talk to. Marie had been chatting to a couple of writers she knew for five minutes when she saw the tall, aristocratic figure enter the room. His hair was gray now—it set off his blue eyes very well, making them seem brighter—but there was no mistaking Roland de Cygne. He came over to her at once.

  “Madame Fox, I think. Indeed, I am certain, for you are quite unchanged.” He made a slight bow. “Roland de Cygne.”

  “Monsieur de Cygne.” She smiled. “We are all changed a little. You have gray hair, but it suits you very well. What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Your brother did not tell you he had invited me?”

  “He never says who’s coming.”

  “Ah. First, madame, may I express my regret: Marc told me you had lost your husband—whom of course I remember well. You may not know that I married a few years before the war, and sadly my wife died two years ago, so I understand what it is to lose someone. You have a daughter, I believe.”

  “I have, monsieur.”

  “And I have a son.”

  They talked easily about their children. She explained that Claire was in Paris now and working in the family business. His own son was still only a boy, the aristocrat explained. “I was without a mother myself,” he said, “and I am very sad that the same thing should have happened to my son. I do my best, as my father did, but it worries me. I am so afraid that in my own blindness I shall repeat the mistakes of the past.”

  He had mellowed, she thought, and she liked his honesty. She found his worries about his son rather moving. And they continued chatting about her time in England, and his estate, and life in Paris, so that they hardly realized that a quarter of an hour had passed.

  “I go to the opera from time to time, madame,” Roland said finally, “and I wonder if you would do me the honor of accompanying me one evening.”

  “That sounds delightful,” Marie said.

  “As it happens, I have seats this coming Saturday for the ballet. I told my son that he is to accompany me for his education. I don’t imagine you would be free at such short notice, but he would be eternally grateful if you would take his place.”

  She thought for a moment, and smiled.

  “The appointment I had can easily be changed.”

  “Then I shall collect you at your house.”

  Marc now joined them, and their conversation turned to the war. Marc gave de Cygne an amusing account of his efforts to build the fake model of Paris to deceive the German bombers.

  “Construction was already well under way, you know, when the armistice came. Had the war lasted into 1919, I dare say we should have had a dummy Eiffel Tower in the sky.”

  Roland was fascinated.

  “We were quite unaware of all this at the front,” he remarked.

  “It was a huge secret. Of course, it would only have taken one German plane flying over the place in daytime to see the two towers. The whole scheme was probably insane.”

  “Talking of secrets,” Marie remarked, “there was a rumor in London that some of the French army had mutinied, but that it had all been hushed up. Did you ever see or hear anything of that, Monsieur de Cygne?”

  Roland did not hesitate. Amazingly, the truth about the mutiny had never reached the press, or the history books. Those involved preferred to forget it, and the army was determined to help them.

  “I did know about that business, as it happens,” he said calmly. “One prefers not to speak of it—even a hint of mutiny is embarrassing—but it was very limited, you know. A handful of incidents in a couple of divisions. The whole thing lasted only a day or two. Most of the army never even knew about it.”

  “That’s what I heard,” said Marc. “Now I’ll tell you,” he went on cheerfully, “where there will never be a mutiny. And that is in the Joséphine department store. Thanks to my sister. She rules the entire staff with a rod of iron, yet they’re all devoted to her.”

  Roland looked slightly confused. Marc saw it.

  “Marie didn’t tell you that she runs Joséphine?”

  Roland shook his head.

  “She’s the big boss,” Marc continued with a laugh. “I often think she’s got the best business head in the family.”

  Roland looked at Marie with astonishment.

  “I had no idea you were so terrifying, madame,” he said with a smile, but she could tell that he was shocked as well as surprised.

  “Does this mean, monsieur, that the invitation to the opera is canceled?”

  “Not at all. Of course not.”

  No, that would be rude, she thought, but I bet you wish you hadn’t made it.

  She was glad that at that moment Claire came to join them. She was always proud of her daughter, but Claire was looking particularly elegant today, and she saw that de Cygne noticed it.

  “I’ve just had an idea for the store,” Claire announced. She hesitated, and glanced at Roland de Cygne uncertainly. Marc laughed.

  “Monsieur de Cygne knows how to keep a secret. Continue.”

  “Someone’s just been telling me about a book called The Phantom of the Opera. And I suddenly thought, couldn’t we make it a theme for a set of window displays one day? You could do all kinds of things with a theme like that.”

  “I don’t know this book,” said Marie. “Do you?” she asked Roland.

  “I have heard of it, but never read it,” he confessed.

  “I think that you are right about the possibilities, but wrong about the windows,” said Marc. “The story’s based on a very famous book called Trilby, where a girl is turned into an opera star by hypnosis. The hypnotist is named Svengali. That was a huge success in its day. The Phantom story features a monster who lives under the opera house, where the secret lake is. It was a serial originally, then a book. But it didn’t sell many copies. So I don’t think it’s well enough known, at present, to be a store feature.”

  “That’s a pity,” said Claire. She turned to de Cygne. “You see, monsieur, all my life, nothing but rejection.”

  “I cannot imagine anyone rejecting you, mademoiselle,” he responded gallantly.

  “Isn’t he nice?” Claire said to her mother, who laughed.

  Marc took de Cygne away now. “I’ve got a charming old historian, who’s writing about the ancient families of the Loire. He’d very much like to meet you.” Claire went to talk to a young painter. Marie began to make her way through the groups of guests, nodding or smiling to those she knew, but feeling a little disengaged from the proceedings.

  How strange it had been to encounter de Cygne again. It was quite agreeable, but it took her mind back to those days at the turn of the last century, just before she’d married, and for a moment or two, she found herself almost transported back to those days, and the people around her seemed to dissolve into the background.

  She soon pulled herself together. There were people to meet, people who might be useful to the store. She looked around. As she did so, she noticed someone looking intently at the painting of the Gare Saint-Lazare by Norbert Goeneutte—her painting. The man had his back to her, but she was sure she knew him. He turned.

  It was Hadley. The realization was so sudden that it made her gasp. Not only that, he was completely unchanged. If anything, he looked even younger. The same tall frame, the same mane of hair, the same eyes, gazing straight at her. Dear God, he was more handsome than ever.

  Her heart skipped a beat. She felt the need for air. It was as though, by some strange magic, she was a girl of twenty again.

  How was it possible? Had the meeting with de Cygne opened some mysterious corridor between the present and the past? Had she, in the middle of this party, unwittingly taken a journey in H. G. Wells’s time machine? Was she hallucinating?

  His eyes were o
n her. Now he started to come toward her. Dear heaven, she was blushing. This was ridiculous. And yet, strangely, there was no light of recognition in his eyes. Had she turned into a ghost? No, he was going to introduce himself.

  “Je m’appelle Frank Hadley.”

  His French accent left much to be desired.

  “Frank Hadley?” She said the name in English.

  “Junior. My father …”

  Of course. Everything suddenly made sense.

  “You can speak English to me, Mr. Hadley. I am Marie Fox, Marc’s sister. I remember your father from many years ago. He knew my late husband too. You look just like him.”

  “Oh.” He smiled broadly. “My father told me to contact Marc when I came to Paris, but he thought you lived in England, so I didn’t imagine we should meet. You fit the description my father gave me exactly.”

  “Really.”

  He smiled.

  “He said you were very beautiful.”

  She stared in surprise, but there could be no doubt about it. He was flirting with her. The cheeky monkey. He was looking straight into her eyes now, and she realized that his own eyes were rather beautiful, and full of life. To her embarrassment—but she couldn’t help it—she felt herself going weak at the knees.

  This was ridiculous. She could be his mother. She managed an entire department store.

  “I’m going to be in Paris for some months,” he said. “My father gave me very clear instructions. He told me to learn French, and not to come back until I was fluent.”

  The hint wasn’t blatant, but it was quite unmistakable. He was telling her that he had come to learn French, and that he was available if she cared to teach him.

  They looked at each other. A couple of seconds passed. And then, suddenly, Marc appeared beside them, with Claire.

  “Ah, Frank, mon ami,” he said, “I see that you have met my sister. Now let me introduce you to her daughter, Claire.”

  Luc Gascon had started smoking during the war. It was the thing to do. Every poilu in the trenches seemed to have a packet of Gauloises in his pocket. The little blue packets and the strong, Turkish aroma of the cigarettes suggested comradeship. And they were supposed to steady the nerves. If a man were taken to a field hospital, like as not, the first thing the orderlies or the nurses would do was give him a cigarette. Luc had started smoking mainly because he was bored.