Read The Magician's Wife Online
Authors: Brian Moore
The Magician's Wife
FOR JEAN
comme d’habitude
Contents
France, 1856
The Colonel left the house at five o’clock. As his carriage drove out towards the main gates Emmeline put down her
petit point
and went to look through the window of her sitting room. She wondered about this visitor. He must be important. For the last two weeks her husband had refused to see anyone, remaining locked up in his workroom with orders that he not be disturbed. As the Colonel’s carriage reached the gates, a painted mechanical gate-keeper wheeled jerkily out of its lodge, legs moving on an electric track as it approached and touched the lock of the gates. The gates swung open, the automaton stiffly raising its right arm in salute. When the carriage had crossed the hidden trip wire which lay at the entrance the gates began to close. As the carriage moved off in a wall of dust down the rutted road which led to Tours, the automaton trundled back into its lodge and an electric bell sounded within the house signalling that the visitor had departed. A moment later she heard a second bell. She looked up at the bell panel installed in her sitting room. That would be for Jules. Soon Jules would come upstairs to tell her that the Master could not leave his work to join her for supper.
Two weeks ago a new mechanical figurine had arrived on time from the workshop where her husband’s artisans had constructed it exactly to his specifications. But something was wrong with the mechanism. The automaton’s hand, which was supposed to draw silhouettes in ink on a sheet of paper, behaved erratically, producing a series of scribbles. He had at once begun to take it apart painstakingly, obsessively, as always when a marionette developed some flaw. There was no reasoning with him, not that she had tried. He no longer thought of himself as a magician. Now he was an inventor, a scientist. But would a real scientist spend his days making mechanical marionettes?
A bell jangled on the panel above her head. That would be Jules. She went to her escritoire and pressed a button. The door opened electrically.
‘I beg pardon, Madame. Monsieur sends his compliments and asks you to meet him in the green salon in ten minutes’ time, if that is convenient?’
‘Tell him, yes.’
As Jules withdrew, the electric beam automatically closed the door behind him. She went to her dressing table and sat in front of the triptych mirror, beginning to brush her hair. She set great store by this brushing and did it three times daily, tugging at the long thick mane of her hair, counting the strokes. She was not brushing it for him. These days she sometimes wondered if he noticed that she no longer used mascara or rouged her cheeks except on the rare occasions when they went out to dine. And even then, what was the point of dressing up and trying to look pretty? It was always the same: when they entered a room people looked at him, not at her, he, the famous Henri Lambert, and she? May I ask you, Madame Lambert, what it is like to be married to a great magician? It must be exciting to be the wife of a person like that?
At first it
had
been exciting. She was happy to escape Rouen for the pleasures of Paris. They lived in a furnished apartment in the seventh arrondissement which he told her was a gift to him from one of his admirers. He also owned an atelier in Neuilly where he employed three artisans in the manufacture and painting of automata and electric devices, and a small theatre near the Palais Royal where each season he performed his celebrated ‘Magical Evenings’. In the first two years of their marriage he took her with him on two foreign tours, once to Berlin and once to Madrid. She had enjoyed seeing these cities and had hoped to see others. But after her first miscarriage Lambert decided that he no longer wished or needed to keep his Paris theatre or go on foreign tours.
‘I’ve long ago made my name as a performer,’ he told her. ‘Now I must devote more time to my inventions. And so, my darling, I’ve decided that we shall live in the country with servants and comforts in a home where we can bring up our children and I can work undisturbed.’
At once, in his usual secretive way, he bought and furnished this manor outside Tours without even showing her the premises. And so, when she first entered the Manoir des Chênes knowing it would be her home, she was pleased, disquieted and disappointed. Pleased because the rooms were larger and more grand than those in her parents’ home, disquieted by the strange displays, disappointed because the manor was down a rural road that led to Tours, a dull town far from Paris. It was, she felt, less a country house than a theatrical museum. There were magic boxes in almost every room, a large puppet theatre in the front hall, its stage electrically lit, and on the walls portraits of magicians from a bygone age and large framed posters of Lambert’s command performances before the Queen of England, the Empress of Russia, King Louis Philippe and Emperor Napoleon III. In addition to the chimes and tickings of forty-two clocks, an electric carillon sounded constantly in different tones, each tone telling the master of the house that a visitor had arrived or departed, that a servant was preparing a certain meal, that the gardeners were working in a specific area of the grounds, that the morning mail had arrived or been sent out, that the electric grottoes and displays had been activated by someone’s entering them. In his workroom in the dungeon-like basement, Lambert controlled and watched over each of these activities.
And now, minutes after Jules’ visit, clocks throughout the house began to chime the quarter-hour. She hurried out of her sitting room, down the main staircase and into the ground-floor reception room. As she entered she looked at once to the clock over the chimmneypiece, strategically placed to astonish all who had not seen it. Five feet in height, made of transparent glass, it kept perfect time. He kept perfect time. She knew that in less than one minute he would appear in the doorway.
‘Emmeline!’
As always, coming into a room he made an entrance, now opening his arms as if to embrace her, palms up to show that he had nothing to hide. Normally, while working at home, he wore an old velvet coat, an open shirt and checked trousers, which he bought in a shop that provided uniforms for chefs and kitchen staff. But today he was dressed as for a performance in a dark frock coat, a white linen waistcoat, a formal shirt with red silk cravat and narrow trousers of dark-grey wool. This was the attire that had made him famous as the first magician to appear, not in ornate oriental robes or other extravagant stage costumes, but dressed soberly, a person no different from his audience and therefore ever more mysterious, ever more the sorcerer. Now, in a conjuring gesture, he slid his slender white hand into an inside pocket of his frock coat and produced a gold-lettered invitation card which he held in front of her.
‘We are going to Compiègne, my dear.’
‘Compiègne?’
‘Yes. We have been invited to a
série
for the last week of October.’
A
série
? The Emperor inviting his guests to a week of hunting, shooting and parties, everyone had heard of those grand affairs, everyone in Paris talked about them, was Henri to perform, that must be it. But why me?
‘Henri, if you’re going to perform there, why would I be invited? Aristocrats, grand people. They don’t want me.’
He handed her the gilded card. ‘Read it.’ She stared at the ornate lettering:
Maison de l’Empereur,
Palais des Tuileries, 20 October 1856
Monsieur,
By order of the Emperor I have the honour to inform you that you have been invited, together with Madame Henri Lambert, to spend seven days at the Palace of Compiègne, from 22 November to 28 November.
Court vehicles will be waiting to bring you to the Palace on the 22nd on arrival of the train which will leave Paris at 2 hours 30.
Accept, sir, the assurance of my distinguished sentiments,
The First Chamberlain,
Vicomte de Laferrière.
Monsieur,
Madame Henri Lambert.
‘It’s an invitation for both of us. And I am
not
being asked to “perform”. I’m told the Emperor wishes to see me on a matter of national importance.’
She stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I can’t discuss it, not yet. It’s highly confidential.’
‘But, Henri, I can’t go there. I’d be terrified.’
He turned away and went to the window which looked out on the main drive. It was his habit when irritated to lapse into silence.
‘Henri, there must be some mistake. Please?’
‘There’s no mistake. It’s a great honour, don’t you understand that? Everyone – society, aristocrats, millionaires, artists, everyone dreams of being invited to Compiègne. You who complain that life is dull here! This is the chance of a lifetime. We are to be the guests of Napoleon III. And of the Empress! We have been invited for a whole week.’
‘A week? What are we going to wear? We don’t belong in that world.’
‘Don’t worry. Colonel Deniau has given me a list of the items we will need for our visit. In my case, I’ll have to be fitted for court clothes. You’ll have to have at least twenty dresses. The style for the ladies is that they should not be seen twice in the same costume. Emmeline, it’s going to be wonderful. We’ll be entertained, we will mingle with the
gratin
, we’ll be in Their Majesties’ company each night for dinner.’
‘But it’s not – I don’t want to go! Besides, it will cost a fortune! My dressmaker here wouldn’t be able to make anything suitable. I’d have to go to Paris. I won’t have time to do all that. And in Compiègne, what would I do all day among a lot of titled ladies who’ll be looking down their noses at me. And you dressed up in court dress, dining among marquesses and counts. Henri, it’s not our place. We must apologize, you must invent some excuse.’
