Paris: The Novel (115 page)

They all had lunch at the Brasserie Lipp: Marc and Marie, Claire and Frank. Marc chose the Brasserie Lipp because it was conveniently close on the boulevard Saint-Germain, and Frank hadn’t been there before. “It’s an institution,” Marc explained. “You can’t make a reservation. It doesn’t matter who you are. But if they say you’ll have a table in ten minutes, then you will.”

The brasserie specialized in German and Alsatian food. Marc and Frank ate sausages, and sauerkraut, washed down with German beer; the women ate cassoulet, and drank the dry Riesling of Alsace. When they had all eaten and drank too much, they came out of the brasserie and made their way eastward along the boulevard a little way before turning right into the big curving slope of the rue Monge.

“This is part of the hill of Roman Lutetia,” Marc reminded Frank. “If you haven’t seen it, the old Roman arena’s coming up on our left in a few minutes.”

They walked slowly, Marc and Marie side by side, Frank and Claire a little ahead.

“They make a handsome couple, don’t you think?” Marc said quietly to his sister.

“I was a little nervous about him,” Marie said. “But I don’t think they’re interested in each other.”

Marc glanced at her.

“I wouldn’t be sure of that,” he replied. “She’s certainly in love with him. I saw that at Fontainebleau.”

“You did? When she saw him up at Montmartre, she said they scarcely spoke.”

“What if he were serious about her? What if he wanted to marry her?”

“And take her away to America? A Frenchwoman in America?”

“She’s half English, for a start. Would you have gone at her age, if you’d been asked?”

Marie did not answer. She frowned. Her mind was in a whirl. Was Marc right? Was that why Frank had suddenly drawn back? Was Claire closer to Frank than she realized? Was her daughter deceiving her? She was still lost in these questions when they came to the site of the old Roman arena.

“Paris was always supposed to have had a Roman arena, but nobody even knew exactly where it was until about sixty years ago,” Marc told Frank. “They started building a depot for tramcars on the site and came upon the remains. We’re still excavating, but as you see, the arena itself was a circle, with a semicircle of stone seats around one side of it. So they could have put stage plays on here as well.”

“It’s a fair size,” Frank remarked.

“You could imagine between fifteen and twenty thousand spectators. About right for a significant Roman town.”

Claire was staring at the open central space. It was gray and dusty. There was a blank wall of an apartment building overlooking it.

“There seems something bleak about it,” she remarked. “Did they have gladiators? People were killed here?”

“Of course,” said her uncle. “This was the Roman Empire. Our classical tradition is splendid, but it was always harsh.”

Frank walked out into the center of the big circle and looked around it thoughtfully. Claire went to stand beside him, and linked her arm in his. It was just a friendly gesture.

Marie was standing just beside one of the entrances to the ring that went into a tunnel under the stands. She supposed that the gladiators, and the sacrificial victims, passed through this way. She thought she could imagine how they felt. She glanced at Frank and Claire. Frank was looking across the ring the other way, but Claire was looking straight at her. And there could be no mistaking the little smile of triumph in her eye.

You want him, it said, but I have taken him from you, and now he is mine.

Then her daughter turned away.

It was a long time since Marie had been in the Jardin des Plantes herself, and she had almost forgotten how magnificent it was.

“The place was started by the king’s doctors, back in the days of the Three Musketeers,” Marc told them. “Then the Sun King brought in a team of the world’s finest botanists, and they expanded it. And now …”

The sky was clear. The sun was still quite high, and if not quite so warm as at Fontainebleau, two weeks before, it was only the first tinges of yellow in the leaves of some of the trees that warned of autumn approaching.

They toured the long alleys, they admired the great cedar of Lebanon, brought from Kew Gardens in London, and looked at the little royal zoo, taken from Versailles after the Revolution. They visited the charming little Mexican hothouse. Marc and the two young people were clearly enjoying themselves. Marie smiled pleasantly.

But she scarcely saw what they were looking at.

Of course, she thought, how foolish she had been. What was her sudden passion for young Frank—an attempt to re-create a lost time with his father? Yes. An attempt to rekindle something in herself that she had not expected to feel again? That too. Was it normal? She didn’t know. Was it absurd? No doubt.

She’d had her time. Indeed, she’d been lucky. James Fox had been a good husband. It was her daughter’s turn for love now. Claire might be lucky or unlucky. That was for the Fates to decide. But young Frank belonged to Claire. And I am in danger, she realized, of making a fool of myself.

She glanced up at the sun. It was warm, but it was bright. No doubt it was picking out, stenciling, every wrinkle on her face. How harsh the sun was, how terrible.

And suddenly she was overwhelmed by a feeling of desolation, as if life had passed her by and, long before she was ready—for she was ready, never more so than now—fate and that terrible sun had sentenced her to exile. To a barren waste, and autumn cold, and emptiness.

They walked into the circular maze on its little hill. The winding path and the clipped hedges seemed like a prison to her.

Then Marc led them to the centerpiece of the Jardin, the vast exhibition hall of the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution. They paused outside for a few moments, gazing down the long grass esplanade in front of it.

She stared, but hardly noticed that Frank was standing by her side.

“By the way,” he said, “I forgot to mention that I had a letter from my father yesterday. He told me to give you his best wishes.”

She nodded, and managed a smile.

“Please return mine to him, when you next write,” she said.

“Actually, you’ll be able to give them in person,” Frank continued. “His letter says he’s coming to London next month. Unfortunately my mother isn’t able to accompany him, which is a shame. But after that, he’s coming to see me in Paris. I think he may stay here awhile.”

“Your father is coming to Paris?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” said Marie.

As Louise approached the office of Monsieur Chabert the lawyer again, she wondered what he had found. She’d gone to him the very next day after the incident with Blanchard.

Luc hadn’t been too pleased about her walking out on a customer. He’d come straight around to her place that night.

“Are you all right? I got a call to say you walked out.”

“I felt a little dizzy.”

“Did he do something bad to you? Was there something you didn’t want to do?”

“Nothing like that.”

“So are you sick? He liked you. He was worried about you.”

“I can’t see him.”

Luc went very quiet.

“You can’t act like that,” he said. “You have to tell me why.”

“I can’t, Luc. But it won’t happen again.”

He didn’t reply for a moment. He seemed to be considering something.

“Make sure it doesn’t,” he growled finally. “I couldn’t tolerate that.”

She didn’t like the way he said it.

“I thought you were my friend.”

“I am,
chérie
. But think how this makes me look to him. I look like a fool. And it’s bad for your reputation too.”

“I understand, Luc. It really won’t happen again.”

He left after that. But there was tension in the air.

There was no tension today, however, with Monsieur Chabert. The little lawyer beamed at her.

“Mademoiselle, you gave me a very easy task. The gentleman concerned is Monsieur Marc Blanchard.” He gave her a quick summary of the family, of Gérard, Marc and Marie, the Joséphine store and the house at Fontainebleau. “Interestingly, it is Marc’s sister who married Fox the Englishman, who now runs the store. Marc was an artist. His work is considered talented, if not of the first rank.”

“Thank you, monsieur. This is exactly what I wanted.”

“If this family was involved directly with your mother, then there are two obvious possibilities. She might have been a servant in the house. Or possibly an artist’s model.”

Louise thanked him, took the little dossier he had prepared and went home to consider it.

The next day she went to Joséphine. Explaining that she was a model for Chanel, it was easy to strike up a conversation with one of the young women working in the store, who had soon pointed out both Marie and her daughter to her. She obtained a good look at each of them.

Two days later, she took a train to Fontainebleau. When she reached the address Monsieur Chabert had given her, she entered the courtyard and went up the steps to the front door, where she rang the bell. A maid soon answered it. Might she speak to Monsieur Blanchard, she asked? “My name is Louise Charles,” she added. It was a common name she’d chosen at random.

After a couple of minutes she was ushered into the salon, where she found an elderly man, looking a little puzzled.

She’d prepared a simple story. Her father, who had retired to the south, had once had a friend called Gérard Blanchard, whose family came from Fontainebleau. Hearing that she was visiting the town, her father had asked her to find out what happened to his friend.

“Mademoiselle,” the old man said, “I regret to inform you that my son
died during the war. His widow lives in Paris, however, as do his brother and sister.”

She explained that it was really Gérard that her father knew, but took his widow’s address when the old man insisted on writing it down for her. She refused any refreshment, but thanked him for his kindness.

Out in the street, she walked a little way to the small square by the local church, where she sat down on a bench.

Had she just met her grandfather? She’d liked the old man. She hoped it might be so.

And if she had met Marc in some other circumstances, if she was still the person she had been before Luc had introduced her to her present life, she might have gone back and told the nice old man her story. If she could have convinced him that she hadn’t come to cause trouble, he might have been persuaded to tell her who she was. And, if she was lucky, to say a word of kindness to her.

But she couldn’t. Not now.

At least, she thought, if he really is my grandfather, I shall have met him and known what he was like.

So now she knew the Blanchard family. What could she do next?