Paris The Novel

Chapter Twenty-two




• 1924 •


Claire was happy to be in Paris. “I’m just a wide-eyed girl,” she would say with a laugh, “whose mother took her to the most exciting place in the world.”

But it was her uncle Marc who really opened her eyes.

“The whole of Europe is devastated after the Great War,” he liked to say, “but in Paris, we are recovering with style.” Certainly for a struggling artist, a poor writer or a young person like Claire, Paris was heaven on earth. And nobody knew more about what was going on than Marc.

After Aunt Éloïse died, and left everything to him, Marc moved into her apartment. He kept all her pictures, adding his own, so that the walls were wonderfully crowded. More than once he had given Claire a guided tour, explaining where each picture came from, and something about the artist. One day, when she’d admired a painting of the Gare Saint-Lazare, he told her, “That picture really belongs to your mother. She can take it anytime she wants.”

But when she asked her mother about it, Marie told her: “Aunt Éloïse bought the painting for me, but I never paid for it.”

“What made you choose it?” Claire asked.

“That’s a little secret from long ago,” her mother replied with a smile. “Anyway, it looks very well in the apartment where it is. Let it stay there.”

Her uncle would tell her about the artists he’d met.

“I’d love to take you to Giverny to see Monet, but he’s getting so old now that I don’t like to trouble him,” he remarked.

“The last survivor of Impressionism,” she suggested.

“I’d say he’s lived right through it and out the other side,” her uncle replied. You have the post-Impressionists like van Gogh, Gauguin, and the Expressionists—people who created a world that seems almost more vivid, urgent, even violent than real life—though they’re all tending toward abstraction—Cézanne especially, I’d say. But Monet’s gone on for so long that those pools of water lilies and screens of willows he does have turned into a sort of dream world of color that’s almost pure abstraction.”

“Have you met Picasso?” she asked.

“Yes. He’s a brilliant draftsman, you know,” he said. “He could have been a pure classical artist. He has incredible facility. Instead of which, he decided to break every rule of art.” He smiled. “Naturally, if he was going to invent Cubism, he did it in Paris.”

They talked about Surrealism, which was all the rage just then. And Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. “They operate mostly in Paris, but they’re going to Monte Carlo for the winter now,” he explained. Her uncle had been at the stage scandal of L’Après-midi d’un faune, and the riot which took place when Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was first performed.

“But what you must understand,” he would impress upon her, “is that all this excitement in Paris isn’t just about painting, music and ballet, interesting as they all are. It’s deeper and broader than that. We’ve just had a war. The German Empire, the ancient Hapsburg Empire in Vienna and the creaking old Ottoman Empire of the Turks are all broken. The Russian Empire has undergone a Bolshevik revolution. The old world order has gone. We’ve seen warfare on an industrial scale that’s not only killed millions but may even call into question our society and the nature of man himself.

“Naturally, most people assume that the comfortable old life with its solidity, its stratified classes, its masters and servants will gather itself together again. The world that is good to people like us.

“But the avant-garde are looking to the future with fresh eyes. These artistic movements you read about—the Constructivists in Russia, the Vorticists in England, or Futurists in Italy—they’re artistic movements certainly, each with their manifestos—but they’re reacting to this new reality, where the old certainties of humanity are all called into question, and the destructive industrial machines we’ve created seem almost to have taken on a fearsome life of their own. And if you want the best expression of that uncertainty, then read this.”

He gave her a slim book of verse: The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot.

“It’s just published. Eliot’s an American in London—I suspect he may turn into an Englishman, the way Henry James did. His friend Pound, an American who’s been living in Paris, gave it to me.”

On other occasions, he spoke of some of the French authors—Apollinaire, the modernist and anarchist. He told her delightedly how Apollinaire and his friend Picasso were briefly arrested, for reasons known only to the bureaucratic mind, when the Mona Lisa had been stolen. “Turned out it was a crazy Italian who wanted to return the Mona Lisa to Italy. They found it in his lodgings.”

Most important of all, however, he introduced her to the novels of Proust.

“The Prousts were our neighbors on boulevard Malesherbes,” he told her. “We just thought Marcel was a show-off and a dilettante. So did everybody. Who would have guessed he was hatching this work of genius in his head?”

“Does he still live there?”

“He moved just a block up the street and around the corner on boulevard Haussmann—only five minutes’ walk from Joséphine. He lived there until just after the war. But they say he’s dying now, and his brother may have to finish his work.”

The following year, Proust had died. But by then Claire had finished Swann’s Way; now she was halfway through Sodom and Gomorrah.

She’d never read anything like it before. Proust’s search through his extraordinary memory, his re-creation of every detail of the passing world, his ruthless portrayal of every aspect of human psychology, were fascinating to her.

“I’m delighted to see you taking such an interest in literature,” Marc said. “I’m only sorry you can’t share it with Aunt Éloïse anymore. She’d read everything. But don’t forget,” he added, “people like Eliot and Proust are writing radically new work, but they are still quite conservative politically. They’re looking for meaning at the end of the old world. Many of the avant-garde have a very different outlook.”

“They believe in revolution, don’t they?”

“Paris has always prided itself on being home to revolutionary thought. Ever since the French Revolution, we believe that all radical ideas belong to us. And people with radical ideas have always come to Paris to discuss them. A lot of radical Paris believes that only world revolution will solve all these new problems. Now we’ve had a Russian revolution, they think the rest will follow—or should. I’m sure Picasso’s a communist, for instance.”



But if Claire was excited by the cultural ferment of Paris, most of her time now was spent working on a grand commercial enterprise.

Joséphine. When her mother and Marc had reopened the family store, they had asked her to come and help just to give her something to do. But that was two years ago. She was an integral part of the operation now. “I don’t know,” her uncle was kind enough to say, “how we’d have done it without you.”

Of course, her mother was the central figure upon whom everything turned. She had a wonderful way with all the people working there. She was always calm, sympathetic, but very firm, like a mother in control of a large family. She inspired loyalty.

Marie controlled all the day-to-day running of the operation, and dealt with the biggest and most important suppliers—couturiers like Chanel, and others. But she soon delegated a smaller but very important task to Claire.

“I want you to find new designers and clothes makers. The ones who are going to attract girls of your generation. You find them, then you bring them to me, and we’ll see if we can make a deal.”

She had found them—in Paris, sometimes in the provinces, in Italy. And she would sit in on the meetings they had with her mother, and see how quickly and cleverly her mother discovered the strengths and weaknesses of their operations.

“How are you so good at business?” she asked her mother once. “You never did it before this.”

“I don’t know, to tell the truth. I suppose it must be in the blood.” Her mother smiled. “Do you think I’m good, then?”

“You know very well you are.”

Two years of working together had changed their relationship in subtle ways. They really were like a pair of sisters now. Sometimes they disagreed about whether to take on a supplier, or how to price the goods. When they did, they argued it out, and although Marie had the final say, she always respected Claire’s opinion and her intellect.

But they would both have agreed instantly on one thing. The Joséphine store could never have succeeded without the guiding hand of Marc.

“Our greatest competition is the Galeries Lafayette. They are just along the boulevard from us. They are much bigger. The business is well run and constantly innovating. There’s no point in trying to mimic all their departments, like haberdashery. We compete, as we always did, on fashionable goods at the best price. So we have to make people come to us because of the way we sell the goods, and because we always have the latest style, almost before it’s arrived! We must follow the old French military maxim: Il nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace. We need audacity, more audacity, always audacity.”

“You make it sound like a theater,” Claire laughed.

“But that’s it, exactly,” cried Marc. “A great store is not just a useful place. It’s an experience. It needs drama and surprise, like a theater.”

And he proved it. The Joséphine store was a constant surprise. Mannequins were being used in store windows now. But the windows at Joséphine didn’t only show off the dresses. They told a story, like a painting. Marc also had a gallery inside the store, where new artists’ work was shown. Every month something happened at Joséphine, something that was talked about, something that one had to go and see before it disappeared. It was a sensation.

The beauty parlor and the hair salon were huge successes too. Joséphine was the best place for young women to get the new, short, boyish haircut, the gamine look.

By the spring of 1924, Marc was running with a new theme for the summer.

The Olympics.

It was quite remarkable really. The ancient sports festival had been revived only in 1896. Appropriately, the first games had been in Athens. With one gap during the war, the games had continued every four years. Paris had been the venue in 1900, followed by St. Louis in America; then London, Stockholm and Antwerp had all had their turns. But now the games were returning to Paris again: proof indeed, the French thought—as if any were needed—that the capital of France was the finest city in the world.

Already Marc had his plans for windows with themes like track events, swimming, boxing, cycle racing. The store’s theme that summer would be sportive, with sportily cut tweeds and jaunty little cloche hats lined up for the months of September and October.

It was going to be a spectacular year. All three of them—Marc, Marie and Claire—had been working harder than ever, and enjoying every minute of it.



Only one thing was missing from their lives.

“It’s time you girls got married,” he remarked to Marie and Claire one day.

“I have been married, and very happily,” Marie replied.

“It’s you who ought to get married,” Claire told her uncle.

“I’m too old,” he said with a smile.

“He’s too selfish,” Marie observed to her daughter.

“Unfair,” said Marc. “Look at all the things I do for you.”

“I can’t imagine Uncle Marc allowing any wife to rearrange the pictures in his apartment,” said Claire.

Marc considered.

“She could do what she likes in the kitchen,” he said. “And maybe the bedroom. I have my dressing room, after all. But seriously”—he turned to Claire—“your mother was wonderfully fortunate in marrying your father, but it’s nearly five years since he died. Don’t you think your mother should marry again?”

“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 the 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 on 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.

And he had just been smoking a Gauloise when he met Louise. It was at the cinema. As usual, it was his genius for making himself useful that enabled him to pick her up.

The Louxor wasn’t just any cinema. It had only just opened then, in 1921, but it had instantly become one of the exotic landmarks of Paris.

Sitting splendidly on its corner site on the boulevard de Magenta, a short walk east of the Moulin Rouge, the Louxor was a mock Egyptian palace worthy of the pharaohs or of Cleopatra herself. With its Egyptian pillars, its golden ornaments and richly painted walls, it reminded Luc of those fantasy Oriental rooms in some of the most expensive brothels—if, that is, the brothel were on the scale of the palace of Versailles.

The cinema was often sold out, so Luc had not been surprised, arriving early one evening, to find twenty or thirty young people being sorrowfully turned away at the doors.

Why had she caught his eye? Because of her looks, of course. And she was alone. That was intriguing. But there was something else about her that aroused his curiosity. Something different. He decided that he needed to find out.

There are many kinds of womanizer. With some it is vanity or a sense of power, with others greed. With Luc it was that purest of all motives: endless curiosity.

“I am sorry you could not see the film, mademoiselle.”

“Yes. It’s annoying.” She was polite, but cautious. He had a sense that if he made one wrong move, she would freeze him out. But he also noticed her accent. Very pure. The best French, not even the slightly pointed enunciation of the Paris sophisticates. She might be from a very high-class French family, or she might be a foreigner who had learned the language in that environment.

“I haven’t got a seat either, but I am still going to see the film.” He smiled. “My nephew is the projectionist. I’m going to watch it with him, up in his little box.”

“Really?” She looked amused. “Then you are fortunate indeed, monsieur.”

He smiled, bowed, and started to walk away. Then he hesitated and turned. She was still watching him.

“Mademoiselle, I think there is room for one more person up there. If it would amuse you.” He shrugged. “You will be quite safe, I promise. And should my nephew, who is a good boy, be distracted from his duties by your beauty, one scream and the entire audience will turn around, while the management comes running.”

She laughed, gave him a quick, careful look, and evidently decided that he was respectable.

“Very well, monsieur, I accept the adventure. But if the film frightens me, I shall also scream.”

“Then thank God it is Buster Keaton,” he replied.

The girl’s mind was quickly set at rest when the man at the door greeted him politely, “Bonjour, Monsieur Gascon.”

“My nephew’s up in the projection room? I’m going to take this young lady up there, if that’s all right.”

“Whatever you wish, Monsieur Gascon.”

When they got up into the projection room, and Louise encountered a most surprised young man of about her own age, who he informed her was his nephew Robert, Luc did not permit her to introduce herself at all, raising his hand and declaring: “This young lady is an angel who has come down to earth to watch the movie. When it is over, Robert, she will fly back to the heavens—though we may hope for her benediction before she goes.”

The evening’s entertainment consisted of two Buster Keaton movies. As the projection room was not very comfortable, Luc was glad that they weren’t watching one of the new epics—for he knew that Abel Gance in France, and von Stroheim in America, were both producing movies that would run for seven hours or more. The girl seemed to be enjoying herself, anyway.

When it was over, it was time for young Robert to go off duty, so Luc said he’d walk home with him as soon as he was ready to leave. Meanwhile, he escorted Louise down to the entrance, and said he hoped she’d enjoyed the show.

“Very much, monsieur. I’m not sure if I thanked your nephew properly.”

“I will do it for you.”

“He seems to have a limp.”

“He has a wooden leg, mademoiselle. He came by it honestly, serving his country in the war. He was working in the family restaurant, but I could see his leg was troubling him, so I was able to get him this job instead. I happened to know the manager of this cinema.” He paused. “We are going to have supper at our restaurant now, in fact, just along the street. If you would like to join us, please be our guest. We can find you a taxi to take you home afterward.”

“I mustn’t be too late. It would upset the elderly lady with whom I live.”

“Not a problem.”

A quarter of an hour later, Luc had her comfortably installed in the restaurant, eating a croque monsieur and haricots verts. Business was fairly quiet that evening. Édith came by to chat for a few minutes. “This is my sister-in-law, the mother of Robert,” he explained. “And how should I introduce you, mademoiselle?”

“Just Louise,” she said.

“Mademoiselle Louise, then.” He smiled. “Who speaks a French so elegant and so pure, that either she comes from a château or a manor house in the Loire Valley, or she was sent there by her parents to perfect her French.”

Louise laughed.

“The latter, monsieur. I am English. But I have French family connections.”

“All is explained, mademoiselle. I will guess that through your parents, perhaps on the advice of the consul or someone in the embassy, you lodge in the apartment of a widow, whose husband was a civil servant, perhaps, so that you can live respectably protected, while you study here in Paris. However, since you were alone this evening, it would seem that for some reason you have not chosen to make many friends among your fellow students.”

Louise laughed.

“I attend several classes which interest me, monsieur, but as I’m not following a particular course, I’m not thrown together with the same group all the time.” She shrugged. “I have made a few friends, all the same, but sometimes I prefer to be alone. Everything else you said is correct, however, in every detail. I don’t know how you knew all that.”

“Uncle Luc knows everything,” said Robert.

“He thinks he does, anyway,” Édith remarked. She gave Louise a thin smile that might have been friendly, or might, Louise thought, have contained a hint of warning.

“It was an easy guess,” said Luc easily.

Louise turned to Robert.

“You are fortunate that your family owns a restaurant,” she said with a smile.

“It’s my uncle Luc who owns it, really,” he said between mouthfuls. “But he lets my parents run it. He looks after everybody.”

And Louise was just deciding that Luc must be a very nice man when he cut in swiftly.

“My nephew is making me out to be better than I am, mademoiselle. It’s true that I started the bar next door, where Robert’s father is now. And a stroke of luck enabled me to acquire this little restaurant. But my brother and his wife kept them going for me during the war, and after that I didn’t really want to do it.”

“My parents are happy, that’s for sure,” said Robert. Louise liked the way he was determined not to let his uncle escape the credit for his kindness.

“Your mother is happy. She likes to run the restaurant. My brother would rather be out of doors on a building site. But he’s getting a little old for that, and your mother prefers him to be safely at home. He runs the bar very well.”

“And what about you?” Louise asked.

“I have what I want, mademoiselle. I take a share of the profits, I eat here for nothing whenever I wish. And I’m free to engage in a few small businesses that interest me.” He shrugged and smiled. “I don’t like to be tied down.”

He had been watching her more carefully than she realized. Her long, dark hair was quite striking. Her features were regular, but there was something interesting about her face, a muselike quality that was hard to define. Her body was slim. If she cut her hair in the short gamine style, there would be something both feminine and boyish about her. She would photograph well, he thought.

And what kind of girl was she? She had class, that was obvious. Intelligent. Sexually innocent, so far. Lonely. He could tell that she was lonely, but whether that was a passing mood, or something deeper, he’d have to find out.

It crossed his mind that this girl could even be useful to him. She had all kinds of potential. But it would take careful handling. Very careful. Finesse. A challenge.

“Tell me, mademoiselle, have you ever modeled—I mean modeled clothes for a serious couturier?”

“No, monsieur. I’m sure I wouldn’t be nearly chic and sophisticated enough. There’s a special walk, isn’t there?”

“It can be learned.” He paused. “I certainly cannot promise you anything, but I have an idea … If you come by this restaurant in a week’s time, I shall leave a note for you with my sister-in-law. It may be nothing, but there might be an introduction for you. We’ll see. Would you be prepared to do that?”

“I suppose so. The evening has been full of surprises.”

“Good. Now I shall find you a taxi. What quarter of the city will you be going to?”

“Near Place Wagram. Not far. I could really walk.”

“Absolutely not,” he said. And a few minutes later he returned to tell her that the taxi was at the door, and that the driver had been paid to take her to that quarter of the city. “Perhaps we shall meet again, mademoiselle, and perhaps not. But there will be a note for you in a week’s time.”



Louise had lied. She quite often did with strange men—for her own protection. It was better that they should think that she was a respectable young woman with a family to protect her.

And it was mostly true. She was a respectable girl, studying in Paris. And she was living in the apartment of a widow who had been recommended by the British consul.

But she was not being watched over, even from a distance, by her parents. Because her parents were dead.

It had happened soon after her return from the Loire. She’d been feeling so pleased with herself. Back at the big, Edwardian house behind its high hedges, the world had seemed so secure. She’d rather shocked her parents by telling them that, until such time that she found a husband, she’d like to teach French in one of the better London schools. They didn’t approve, but she was quite determined to be independent.

And then suddenly the world had changed. It had been such a foolish business, really. Her father had a Wolseley motor car of which he was very proud, and he liked to drive it himself. He and her mother had gone out one misty day. There weren’t many cars driving on the lanes near the house.

But the big tractor coming toward them had been too much even for the solid Wolseley. And suddenly Louise hadn’t any parents anymore.

Mr. Martineau, the senior partner at Fox and Martineau now, had been very helpful. Her father had left her an inheritance in trust. Enough to tempt a prospective husband, perhaps, though not enough to keep her in the style to which she’d been accustomed. She’d get the principal when she was thirty and only a modest income until then.

So what was she to do? Become a French teacher in London, perhaps? Or something more adventurous?

She had no one else to please. No one to approve or disapprove. She was of age. She could do exactly what she wanted.

And the British pound went a long way, in postwar France.

So she had gone to Paris. She could live quietly there, take some courses, and continue to lead a genteel student life for as long as she wished. Or until something interesting turned up, of course.

After all, she was French really, whoever and whatever her parents were.



Chanel. She was to present herself at 31 rue Cambon, just behind the Ritz Hotel, where the maison de couture had its sublime headquarters. Chanel: of Paris, of Deauville in Normandy, where the racing set gathered, of Biarritz on the Atlantic coast in the south where the rich Spanish liked to holiday. Chanel, who lent her Paris house to Stravinsky, and underwrote the production of The Rite of Spring. Louise couldn’t believe it.

Madame Chanel herself was there, just back from the South of France. Dark-haired, very simply dressed, it seemed to Louise that she exuded an elegant sexuality, and that she had the eyes of a watchful panther.

“So, you are the one Luc Gascon found. Turn around. Walk forward. Turn, and walk back. Tell me about your education and upbringing.”

Louise did so.

“So you speak elegant French and English. That is rare. You could do very well, depending on how you wish to live. How many lovers have you had?”

“None, madame.”

“If you wish to succeed in life, you should do something about that at once. Choose wisely. My lovers made me rich. The rest comes from my talent and hard work. Are you ruthless?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The English bring their children up not to be ruthless. It is all a lie. Those who succeed are just as ruthless as the rest of us. This we call English hypocrisy. Are you a hypocrite?”

“No, madame.”

“Good. Hypocrites soon become boring. That is their punishment. Nobody wants to talk to them. Find a rich lover and become ruthless. The girls will show you how to walk. I shall pay you a little. Maybe more, later, if you are any good.” And with brief instructions to one of her assistants, she waved Louise away.

In the succeeding days, Louise learned how to walk, and much else besides. As to the rich lover, she decided she would have to think about that.



It was a week later that, sitting in the restaurant early in the evening, Luc Gascon saw Louise approaching. He rose politely to greet her, and she accepted his offer of a little food.

“Just a salad.” She smiled. “I am slimming.”

“I have a bottle of Beaune, as you see. A glass can do you no harm.” He poured.

“I came to thank you. I am doing a little modeling for Chanel. You seem to know everyone in Paris, monsieur.”

“Not everyone, mademoiselle.”

“She is paying me. I feel I should owe you a commission. A present at least.”

“It always gives me pleasure to help people discover their destiny. That is my art, if I may say so. And you are giving me a charming present by finding me here and sitting at my table.”

They chatted for a while. She liked Luc, she thought. He was so easy to talk to. She liked the faint aroma of Turkish cigarettes that he carried with him. He gave her his complete attention, asked what she thought of all sorts of things and seemed to take her opinions very seriously. It was nice that a mature man should treat her with such respect.

She decided that he was quite handsome, in his way. In a former century, she supposed, she could imagine him as one of a powerful Italian family like the Médicis, made a cardinal at twenty and enjoying the fleshly delights of Rome until he became pope. But perhaps not, she thought. The lock of dark hair that fell so elegantly over his broad brow seemed better suited to a maître d’hôtel than a priest, though she couldn’t say exactly why. Anyway, she could see that he knew how to charm the girls, and good luck to him.

“Forgive me, Mademoiselle Louise,” he remarked after a while, “but although you have this new excitement in your life, it seems to me that, nonetheless, there is a certain sadness about you.”

“Oh,” she said. How had he detected that? “It’s nothing.”

“A lover giving trouble, perhaps?”

“No.” She laughed. “None of those yet, monsieur. Madame Chanel told me to find a rich lover, but I wouldn’t know how. That’s not how I was brought up.”

“I am glad to hear it,” he said, with a fine insincerity.

“The truth is,” she confessed, “that I was not entirely frank with you when we met. One has to be careful. My parents died not long ago, leaving me an orphan. I live very respectably and study, but it is sometimes a little lonely.”

“I am sure you have friends in England, mademoiselle,” Luc said kindly. “You can always go back when you tire of Paris.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know.” But then, because she felt the need to confide in someone, she added: “The trouble is, it’s more complicated.” And then she explained about her adoption.

She did not tell him everything. She did not tell him how she had gotten the information about her mother, nor did she give him any names. He might be a sympathetic ear, but he was still a comparative stranger. She protected her privacy.

Luc listened, and now he understood. This was the key he had been searching for.

“So you believe that you are French.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Do you want to discover your French family? Have you any information at all?”

“I am not sure. I have my mother’s name. That’s all.”

“There are records. In every town hall. They’re not always open to the public. But I know a lawyer who specializes in searches. He’s quite reasonable.” He took out a little notebook, wrote down a name and address on a page, and tore it out. “There. You can always see him if you want.”



She waited two weeks before she went to see the lawyer. Monsieur Chabert was a compact, gray-haired man with a quiet voice and very small hands. He agreed to start a limited inquiry.

“I shall begin in Paris, mademoiselle. Most likely the Corinne Petit you seek was a young woman when this happened, and was sent out of the country to have the child. If that is the case, I should have a list of possible candidates quite soon.” He mentioned an amount that would use up the spare cash she had after a couple of small payments she had just received from Chanel. “I shall keep within that budget, mademoiselle. Before incurring any extra expense, I shall ask your permission. Come to see me again in ten days.”

When she returned, he greeted her with a smile.

“The search was quite simple. I found three girls born in Paris who would have been under twenty-five at the time of your birth. Keeping within your budget, I was able to check all three of them. One married and went to Lyon, the other resides in Paris. The third, however, came from a family who are still to be found in the Saint-Antoine quarter. They have moved from their old address, which actually made it easier for me to seek information about them from old neighbors. In one evening I was able to discover quite a bit. It seems that Corinne found a position with a family in England and never returned. After her departure, the family never spoke of her. I cannot promise you, but I think it is very likely that this is the family you seek. What do you wish me to do?”

“Nothing more at present, monsieur. But I thank you.”

“A word of caution, mademoiselle. If you go to see them, they may not welcome you.”

“I understand, monsieur.”

But she didn’t.



She took the Métro to Bastille. To reach the address the lawyer had given her, she only had to walk eastward down the rue de Lyon and into the avenue Daumesnil. But when she emerged from the Métro, she found that the pale sunlight of the afternoon had given way to a dull, listless gray, and suddenly feeling that she wasn’t prepared for her encounter, she turned southward instead.

From the Place de la Bastille to the Seine, a line of wharfs ran down the side of one of the northern canals as it widened into a long basin, where the barges unloaded their cargoes. For a quarter of an hour she wandered there. Then a yellowish peep of sun seemed to signal that she should proceed, and so she crossed the water by the lock near the Seine and made her way eastward again.

The avenue Daumesnil was long, straight and grim. Immediately behind it ran a large, high viaduct that carried the railway trains out to Vincennes and the eastern suburbs beyond. She walked down the avenue. There were motor cars and buses in the roadway, but here and there a horse-drawn cart carrying coal or timber lumbered sadly by. Twice, a train from the viaduct let out a prolonged rattle that gradually died away behind the eastern rooftops.

The street she sought lay on the right. It was narrow. The storefronts on the street level mostly had shutters and their windows informed the passersby, with seeming reluctance, what might be found within. A selection of hammers, copper pipes and boxes of screws, accompanied by a familiar, metallic smell from the open door, announced the hardware and ironmonger’s emporium. Another window contained rolls of wallpaper, only one of which had deigned to reveal its pattern. And halfway down the street, a window containing a well-made table and bookcase, and a faded gold sign above the door saying PETIT ET FILS, told Louise that she had reached her destination.

The young man who emerged and stood behind the desk at the back of the little showroom was about her own age. He had brown hair and blue eyes. Nothing special. Did he look like her? Not really.

“May I ask,” she said politely, “if your family name is Petit?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.” He spoke respectfully. His accent belonged to the streets. She hadn’t thought of it, but she realized that, of course, whether in English or in French, she spoke in the accent of a different class from that of her real family.

“It is possible,” she said, “that we have a family connection.”

“A connection?” He was polite, but obviously puzzled.

“Through Corinne Petit.” She watched him a little anxiously.

“Corinne?” He looked mystified. Clearly the name meant nothing to him. “There is no one of that name in this family, mademoiselle. I have never heard it. It must be another family.”

“She went to England.”

“My uncle Pierre and his family went to Normandy once on holiday. That’s as close as anyone has been to England.”

“Is your father here?”

“He will be back tonight, mademoiselle, but not until late.” He looked apologetic, but then brightened. “My grandmother is here, if you would care to wait a minute.” He disappeared into the workshop behind.

His grandmother. My grandmother, perhaps, she thought. After a long pause, the older woman appeared.

She was slim. When she was younger, she would have had a figure very similar to her own, Louise realized. Her hair was gray, frizzed in the fashion of an earlier time. Her eyes were just like her own. But they were hard, and angry. She stared at Louise in silence for a moment.

“Mademoiselle?”

“I was asking your grandson …,” Louise began.

“He has told me.”

“I am the daughter of Corinne Petit, madame.”

She watched the old lady’s eyes. There was recognition. She was certain of it.

“There is no one in this family of that name, mademoiselle.”

“Not now. But I believe there was once. She led a respectable life in England, married and died. I never saw her. I was adopted by a banker and his wife.”

“You are fortunate, then, mademoiselle.”

“Perhaps. I was curious to know something of my French family, madame. That is all.”

“And why did you suppose you would find them here?”

“A lawyer made researches for me. He found three families with a daughter of that name born in Paris at the right time.”

“Perhaps your mother was not born in Paris, mademoiselle.”

“It is possible, madame, but I suspect she was.”

“I should know if I had given birth to a daughter named Corinne, mademoiselle. And I did not. You have come to the wrong place.”

She was lying. Louise knew it instinctively. She was certain of it. This old woman was her grandmother. Was the scandal really so terrible for the family, back then? Was her grandmother still implacable? Perhaps it was because the boy was there.

“I am sorry you cannot help me, madame,” she said sadly. She suddenly felt an urge to cry.

“I may be able to help you,” the old lady said. Was there a hint of pity, of kindness, in her voice? She paused. “My late husband had a cousin. They never spoke. There was a family quarrel—he never told me what it was about. But he had two daughters. One went to live in Rouen, I believe. The other, I don’t know. She could have been called Corinne. It’s possible. If you could find her sister in Rouen …” She turned to the young man. “Jean, I forgot that cake in the oven. Run upstairs to the kitchen, and take it out for me.”

The young man disappeared.

“I think you are my grandmother,” said Louise. “Was my mother so terrible that you have to lie?”

But now, with her grandson gone, the old lady changed abruptly. The look she gave Louise was venomous. When she spoke, it was quietly, almost a hiss.

“How dare you come here? What gives you the right? The person you speak of has been dead to us for more than twenty years. You want to come here with your stupid quest, and disgrace the next generation as well? We didn’t want her and we don’t want you. Now get out, and never show your face here again.” She went to the door and opened it. “Get out! Live your life elsewhere. But stay away from us. Forever.” She reached for Louise’s arm, seized it with surprising force and shoved her out into the street, slamming the door behind her.

Louise looked back at her grandmother through the glass. There was no hint of mercy in the old lady’s face. It was pale, and cold, and hard.



It was still early evening when Luc came by the restaurant. He’d been on a business errand.

Sometimes he told himself that he should work harder, but the twenty or thirty clients to whom he discreetly supplied cocaine provided him with all the ready cash he needed. Years ago when he was operating the bar before the war, he had run a few girls as well, acting as a protector mainly. But he’d given that business up. It was too much trouble. People had sometimes asked him if he could supply them with a nice girl. “If I find someone, I’ll let you know,” he had always told them. But so far he hadn’t come upon a good prospect.

He was carrying quite a quantity of cash, and was going to put it in the small safe he kept in the office behind the restaurant. Then he was going to have a meal, walk up to his house, and go to bed early.

When he got to the restaurant, Louise was sitting quietly at a table. “She’s been sitting there two hours,” Édith told him. “Waiting for you, I suppose.”

He sat down opposite her.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

She shook her head. He ordered for them both.

“I met my grandmother today,” she said. “She told me never to come there again.” She gave him a sad smile. “It seems nobody wants me.”

“You must eat,” he said.

As they ate, Luc did not try to comfort her too much. But he did try to explain. He pointed out that it was natural for the old lady to act as she had. “I dare say that’s how your mother was treated all those years ago when they threw her out. Plenty of families would have done the same. They do it to protect themselves. So when you appeared and threatened to upset the apple cart, she must have been terrified.”

Louise listened. She understood what he was saying, but she was still all alone in the world.

When they had finished their meal he asked her quietly if she would like to come with him, and she nodded. After they had left the restaurant, he put his arm around her shoulder, protectively, and she smelled the aroma of Gauloises in his clothes, and she felt comforted. Then they walked up the hill of Montmartre toward his house.



The affair between Luc and Louise lasted several months. At first, they would meet in the afternoons at his house. But after a little while, he found her an apartment. “It belongs to a businessman I know and it’s in a good quarter of the city, just north of the Palais-Royal and near the stock exchange, the Bourse. That’ll be convenient for getting to Chanel as well.”

“Won’t it be expensive?”

“No. He’s a rich man. His daughter was using it, but she’s left and he hasn’t decided whether to sell it or let it. For the time being, he’d be glad to have a respectable person there. Assuming he thinks you’re respectable, he wouldn’t charge you any rent, but you’d have to leave if he wanted the place back. That ought to suit you rather well.”

She’d met the man, a middle-aged stockbroker with a respectable family, who had been suitably impressed by her background. Sometimes Luc would join her there for the night, and sometimes she would go up to his house on the hill of Montmartre.

She quite liked the house. It was a little masculine, as one might expect, and it was permeated by a faint aroma of coffee and Gauloises, like a bar, but it was comfortably furnished with pieces that he had probably found in sales over a period of time. The salon contained a large sofa in the Directoire style, some Second Empire chairs, prints of Napoleonic soldiers on the walls and a thick carpet which, he informed her, he had laid himself. The bedroom contained a large bed made of the best African mahogany and handsomely inlaid. The kitchen contained a gas cooker and a fridge. He was a good cook, on the rare occasions that he took the trouble, but she liked to cook for him.

Luc was a wonderful lover. He was skillful, strong and considerate. In later years, she would say simply: “It was the right time for me.”

They met several times a week. Often they would explore the city together. She had thought she knew Paris fairly well, but soon she began to see it not as a big city but as a series of communities. She shared his memories of characters who had lived their eccentric lives in every corner of the city. She discovered ancient street markets, the places along the river where she could buy good flowers cheaply; he showed her where to eat the food of Normandy, or Alsace, or Provence; he showed her where the licensed brothels were, and where the old prisons and gallows had stood. He paid for everything, for he always seemed to have cash, and since she was living free, she could save not only her modest allowance but the small sums she got from modeling as well.

One benefit of working for Chanel was that, once in a while, she might be given small items of clothing. But most of all, she found that she was developing an eye for fashion. And with the advice from the other models, and information from Luc, she was able to assemble a little wardrobe that was getting quite chic.

It also amused her that, though he did not always say anything, Luc’s eye missed nothing. A grunt of approval meant that he had noticed the new blouse she was wearing. And once in a while, if she was carrying some elegant little bag she’d picked up somewhere, he’d ask sharply, “Where did you get that?” For he didn’t like to think that there was any bargain in the city that he didn’t know about. And she would say, “I shan’t tell you. A girl has her secrets.” And then, on and off, he might question her, “Was it one of those secondhand shops behind the rue Saint-Honoré, or that Moroccan dealer on the rue du Temple?” And even if he guessed right, she would always deny it. And though he would pretend to be annoyed, she knew he liked the challenge of these little games, and others that she learned to play, to tease him.

Yet despite all the time they spent together, she never discovered anything about his business. If he was out, he was out. That was it.

“Never ask a man his business,” he told her. “He’ll either get his whip or get bored.”

“Bad alternatives,” she said with a laugh.

“Voilà.”

She had the impression that he might be part-owner in other bars and clubs, and that there might be properties from which he collected rents, but that was all she knew.

Meanwhile, she was happy in the new quarter where she found herself. With the stockbrokers and financial men around the Bourse, the area was less residential than most other quarters of the city. But it had a feature of particular charm—a whole network of glass-covered arcades and halls, some of them more than a century old, that housed all kinds of stores and places of refreshment. She would often walk about these intimate malls, exploring happily for an hour at a time.

Only once during all this time did she glimpse another side of Luc—and even then, it was hard to say what she had seen. It happened at dawn, on a summer’s day, up at his house on the slopes of Montmartre.

She was suddenly awoken by a cry beside her. Luc was thrashing about wildly in the bed. Before she could do anything, his hands encountered her, and then suddenly seized her by the throat. She tried to pry them off, and scream, but his grip was so strong that she couldn’t even breathe. She was completely in his power, and he was still asleep. She hit out wildly, slapped his face as hard as she could. His eyes opened. He looked startled and confused. His grip relaxed.

“Luc, what are you doing?” she gasped.

“A nightmare.” She could see that he was still struggling into consciousness.

“Evidently. But you almost throttled me.”

“Chérie, I am so sorry.”

“Who were you trying to strangle?”

“A dog.”

“A dog?”

He propped himself up on one elbow and stared at her.

“A dog. I can’t explain. It was a crazy nightmare. Without any sense to it.”

And then he gave her a strange look.

“Did I cry out anything?”

“No.”

“A name?”

“You mean the dog had a name? What’s he called? Fido?”

“I didn’t call anything out?” He was fully awake now, and he was watching her in a strange way. She’d never seen him look like that before, and she found it disquieting.

“Nothing. You were thrashing around in the bed. That woke me up. The next thing I knew, you were strangling me.”

He continued to look at her. Then, apparently satisfied, his expression changed to one of tender concern.

“I hardly ever have nightmares. It must have been something I ate. Are you all right?” He kissed her softly on the forehead. “You had better hold me. I was afraid.”

They lay together for a little while. She held him. His fear subsided, and his courage grew. But just when she thought he was going to start making love, he got up from the bed, and went to the window. Opening the shutter, he looked down into the little garden behind the house. His eyes seemed to be fixed on something.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Nothing. I was listening to the dawn chorus. One could be in the middle of the country.”

“Come back to bed.”

“In a minute.”

And soon he did, and they made love, and everything was back to normal.

But she couldn’t forget the strange expression on his face when he was questioning her, even though she had no idea what it meant.



The girl. It was a long time since that vision had troubled him. Luc knew it was said that murderers revisit the scene of the crime, but he had never gone down into that cave again. The girl must surely be whitened bones by now. Even her name was forgotten. After all, it was more than ten years since she’d disappeared. A world war had come and gone. Millions had died. Bushes had grown across the hidden entrance behind the little shed in his garden. One would have to cut them down even to get into the caves now. There was no reason to give the girl a thought.

Nor did he, during his waking hours. But sometimes, in his sleep, her face rose up before him. Her pale face, her eyes angry and accusing. And he would know that she was a ghost, and be afraid.

But that night the dream had been different. He had seen her skeleton, in among the others in the cave. But a strange plant had been growing from the bones, sending out long shoots. And one of the shoots had turned into a long stalk that had started winding its way along the passage, yard after yard, until at last it found its way to the entrance hidden behind the shed in his garden, and somehow it had managed to creep around the back of the shed and out onto the grass where it lay, apparently exhausted by its efforts to make its way out of the darkness into the light. And from the end of the green stalk, now, small flowers like lilies began to grow.

Perhaps the plant might have remained there, doing no harm, had it not been for the dog that suddenly appeared. Luc had no idea where the dog had come from, but it seized the plant, and began to pull on it. Luc took the dog by the collar and tried to drag it away, but the dog would not be dissuaded from its task. It pulled on the long stalk and dragged it several feet. Then it leaped forward and grabbed the stalk farther up, and pulled that out from the tunnel too. Far underground, the skeleton of the girl began to move, and now Luc realized that if the dog kept pulling, it would pull the dead girl all the way up until she was back in his garden. He must stop the dog, before it dug her up again.

And it was then, in his dream, that he had grabbed the dog by the throat, and started to throttle it, squeezing harder and harder, to choke the life out of the animal.



Luc waited a month before he suggested to Louise that it was time for them to part.

It was not because of the dream, though that perhaps had shown him that she was getting too close to him. Too close.

He had always intended that, when his work was done, their relationship should move into a different phase. He led up to it gradually.

“Chérie,” he said kindly to her one afternoon, “will you promise me one thing: when our affair comes to its natural end—as it will—we shall remain friends. It would pain me very much if, when you left, you were no longer my friend.”

“I have no plans to leave at present.”

“That is good to hear. But one day you will. It’s only natural. You will go forward with your life. But I shall be left with wonderful memories, the best of my life. And those will make me happy, as long as we remain friends.”

“The best of your life?”

“Absolutely, I assure you.”

“I was very ignorant.”

“You are not at all ignorant now. Not in the least. You are wonderful.”

“If so, I have you to thank.”

“I could only bring out what was already there. The gardener does not create the flower.”

There was a pause.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“You’re getting too cynical.”

“I learned that from you.”

“Only for your own protection. I’m protecting myself as well, you know, by being realistic.” He smiled. “I am a middle-aged man of no importance. You should move on, get yourself a rich lover, as Madame Chanel told you.”

He had let her think about it for a couple of weeks, then told her that he had to leave Paris on business for a little while. It was quite true, as it happened. He had to go to Amsterdam for a week. “When I get back,” he said, “we shall be friends.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Always ask me for help, whenever you need it, whatever you need.” And seeing her look doubtful, he added: “Remember, I should be hurt if you did not.” He smiled a little sadly. “My only fear is that you will never need me anymore.”



She did not see him again for over a month. She was sure he was back from Amsterdam, and several times she was on the point of going around to the family restaurant to ask after him. But her pride held her back. He had told her she wouldn’t need him. She’d show him he was right.

And finally, it was he who came to her. He turned up at her door one evening.

“I came to see how you were.”

“I am well,” she said calmly, but she didn’t invite him in. If he was hoping to crawl back to her, she was going to make him crawl a long way for a long time.

“Is there anything you need?”

“No, thank you.”

“Would you like to make some money?”

“Why? How?”

He shrugged.

“Let me give you a meal and I will tell you. It’s an opportunity that came my way. It may be of no interest to you. It’s something … diplomatic.”

And because she was curious, she agreed to meet him that evening at a brasserie nearby.

It was interesting to observe him because, after a number of inquiries about her welfare which were practical and thoughtful, he became rather businesslike.

“There is an ambassador I know. He’s from a small country, he’s rich, and unusually for a diplomat in that position, he’s unmarried.”

“How do you come to know such people, Luc?”

“It does not matter. He is a nice man, he knows everybody of importance in Paris, he is very cultivated, and he is … fastidious.”

“And so?”

“I think you should get to know him. He would like you.”

“And do you propose to introduce me to this person?”

“I have told him all about you. He’s quite interested to meet you. In fact, he’d like to take you out to dinner.”

“Let me understand. Is he looking for a wife?”

“No.”

“A mistress?”

“Let us say, an occasional mistress.”

“Luc, are you asking me to be a prostitute?”

“He would not be interested in most prostitutes. He is very fastidious, as I have told you. You would see if you liked each other over dinner. If not, there is no obligation whatever. But if you liked each other, then perhaps …”

“He would pay me?”

“Certainly. He would pay fifteen hundred francs each time. You would give me half. If you had any difficulties, I would take care of them. But I am quite certain that you would not. This is a very civilized man. You are the only person I have ever known who I should dream of recommending to him, and he is the only person I should think of recommending to you. But as well as the money, he might be a good friend for you to have.”

“I can’t believe you would treat me in this way.”

“One must be practical.”

“This makes me a prostitute and you a pimp.”

“The situation is more specialized. As for the money … Why don’t you think about it for a little while? Remember, he has offered you dinner without any obligation at all. You might like him.”

She was silent for a little while.

“What you are really thinking,” she said quietly, “is that I might like the money.”



When Marie had a problem, she often liked to walk in the Luxembourg Gardens to work it out. The gardens were classical in their outlines, but they were simple, and friendly, and sensible. By ten o’clock on the Saturday morning after her brother Marc’s party, she was walking there.

It was still quiet. A few children were already sailing their model ships in the big basin. Some elderly men had begun a game of boules on the gravel beside one of the statues. Marie walked to the bottom of the park and back, thinking hard. For today she had a very big problem indeed.

What was she going to do about Frank Hadley Jr.? They were going to meet later that morning.

Marc had started the business by inviting them all to join him at the Ballets Russes that evening. Young Frank Hadley and Claire had wanted to go. She couldn’t herself, she’d explained, because she’d agreed to go to the opera.

Then Frank had asked if anyone would like to accompany him to the Olympics. “I’m going to watch the boxing with an American friend and his wife on Saturday afternoon,” he’d explained. Claire had wanted to go, Marc could not.

Was Claire attracted to the young American? It had looked as if she was, and it would hardly be surprising. In any case, Marie had told herself that she couldn’t possibly leave her daughter alone with a young man who had such a glint in his eye, so she’d declared firmly that she and Claire would both accompany him.

And now she considered the day ahead. It was one thing for the young American to flirt with her, seriously or otherwise. She was a widow, after all, who could certainly take care of herself. Claire, however, was another matter. Her daughter might be grown up, and the world might not be the same as it was before the war. But the rules of society hadn’t changed so much; and the human heart, not at all. Claire still had to be protected. She didn’t want her daughter being compromised, and she didn’t want her being hurt.

So she was going to be practical. Very practical. If necessary, she supposed, she might have to send Frank Hadley Jr. away with a flea in his ear. Unless, of course, she decided to take the young man in hand herself.



The bookshop where they were to meet Frank’s friends was only a short walk from their apartment. They arrived there punctually at noon.

If the area from the Seine into the Quartier Latin had been the home of the bookstall for centuries, it was the recent arrival of two eccentric bookshops on the rue de l’Odéon, both run by women, that had turned that little area into the literary capital of the world. The first was the French literary bookshop of the warmhearted Adrienne Monnier. The second, almost across the street, had been named Shakespeare and Company by its owner, Sylvia Beach.

Claire was better acquainted with the bookstores than her mother.

“The French writers go to Monnier and walk across the street to Sylvia Beach, and the English and Americans start with Sylvia and then explore Monnier as well. They’re both such nice women. Best of all, they fell in love with each other. They actually live together now.”

“Oh. Is anyone shocked?”

“I don’t think anyone cares.” She smiled. “Shakespeare and Company’s like a sort of club. As well as selling books, Sylvia also has a lending library. She supports authors, too. About a year ago, she even published Ulysses for James Joyce, the Irish writer, at her own expense, when the manuscript was virtually banned in Ireland and England. She even lets people sleep at the place. Everyone loves her.”

And indeed, when they arrived, Frank introduced them at once to the owner, who turned out to be a bright, friendly woman in her mid-thirties, who soon remarked to Marie that around the time she and James Fox had left Paris for London, she’d been arriving in Paris for the first time with her father, who was taking up an appointment as assistant minister at the American Church.

“I’ve hardly a single ancestor in a century who wasn’t either a pastor or a missionary,” she informed Marie with a wry smile, before she left them to attend to business.

Frank’s friends were an American journalist who wrote articles for a Canadian newspaper, and his wife. The wife was the first to arrive, a broad-faced woman in her early thirties with intelligent eyes.

“This is Hadley,” Frank explained, and grinned. “We’re not related. Hadley’s her first name. The match with my family name is pure coincidence.”

“And here comes my husband,” said Hadley, indicating an approaching figure.

He was a muscular-looking fellow, somewhat younger than his wife, but his impressive appearance seemed to make up for the difference. He was six feet tall, with a broad regular face and a mustache, and eyes set wide apart and square. Despite the warm July weather, he was wearing a sturdy tweed suit which, Marie guessed, served him for all occasions, and a pair of equally sturdy brown shoes—that let one know at once that he was a sportsman and an outdoorsman. She thought he looked like a young Theodore Roosevelt, without the politics or the glasses. From the way he carried himself, she guessed that he wrote fine, clean prose about where he’d been and what he’d done, and how it felt.

“This is Hemingway,” said Frank.

To Marie’s surprise, Hemingway turned to her at once and said that he’d seen her before.

“You like to walk in the Luxembourg Gardens,” he explained. “We live just south of there, beside a sawmill in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs on the edge of Montparnasse.” He grinned. “The poor district. Sometimes I sit quietly in the Luxembourg Gardens, and I see you. But I’m usually keeping my head down, and when no one’s looking I grab a pigeon.”

“Whatever for?”

“To eat, madame. I kill it quick, tuck it under my coat, and head for home. The Luxembourg pigeons are well fed, so they cook up nicely.”

“I don’t believe you are so poor, monsieur,” said Marie.

“Sometimes we are,” he said.

“None of the French can believe that any American is short of money,” Frank remarked with a laugh. “Especially in the last couple of years, with the French franc falling like a stone against the dollar. That’s why so many of us are flocking over here. They say there are thirty thousand Americans in Paris now.” He looked at his friend, who was shaking his head. Then, excusing himself, Hemingway and his wife stepped outside for a moment to look at the shop window.

“Actually,” Frank continued quietly to Marie, “Hadley has a small income from a trust fund, but they lost some of it recently, and Hemingway quit his job with the newspaper to write his fiction. So they’re sometimes a little short. Hemingway can write articles to make money if he has to, but his short stories are already attracting notice. Ford Madox Ford has started publishing them in the Tribune.”

As they went out to rejoin Hemingway, it was Claire who spotted the volume in the window.

“Look,” she said to her mother. The volume was very slim and its cover was very simple. It was titled, in lowercase letters, in our time.”

“Those are Hemingway’s,” said Frank, with almost as much pride as if they had been his own. “Short stories. How many has Sylvia sold?” he asked the author.

“Nearly twenty already.”

“Not bad,” said Frank cheerfully. “It’s not just the numbers, but the quality of the readers.” He grinned. “A novel or two and you’ll be rich.”

“Come on,” said Marie.



The boxing was taking place in the covered winter cycling track, the Vélodrome d’hiver, that lay on the Left Bank just downstream from the Eiffel Tower. They walked westward along the boulevard Saint-Germain until, at the intersection with the boulevard Raspail, they found a taxi and all piled into it.

During their walk, Marie discovered from Hemingway’s wife that they already had a baby boy, not yet a year old. They also learned that Frank had been out at the open stadium outside the city during the track events ten days before.

“The British did very well,” he informed them. “Their man Abrahams even beat our Charley Paddock to take the hundred-meter gold. But the finest thing I ever saw was the Scotsman Liddell. He’d pulled out of the hundred meters months before the games because the heats were being run on the Sabbath. So he trained for the four hundred instead, although nobody thought he had a chance. Then he ran like a man inspired. Covered the first two hundred at a speed no one thought he could possibly keep up, and just kept going. Running for God. And God gave him the gold. Almost a whole second faster that our man Fitch. It was a magnificent sight.”

In many ways, Marie could see, Frank and Hemingway were similar. Both were clearly athletic fellows, although Hemingway was more of a showman. Hemingway was only a couple of years older, but Frank treated him as a mentor. Maybe because Hemingway was already a married man, but more likely because he’d served in the war. That was the great dividing line in the younger generation, she’d noticed—whether you’d been in the war or not.

Hemingway, for his part, treated Frank very much like a brother, and one he respected. “I know you’re a good oarsman, Frank,” he remarked, “but you should try boxing. I know a good trainer here. I’d be glad to spar with you.”

He also told them that Frank was writing short stories, and was quite surprised they didn’t know.

“I hope to learn a little about writing while I’m here,” Frank confessed. “But I shall go home like my father, in due course, and become a teacher.” He smiled. “That’s a good enough life for an honest man.”

“It certainly is,” Hemingway agreed, “but you could make a name as a writer. It may surprise you, but it won’t surprise me.”

Claire seemed intrigued by Frank’s literary interests and wanted to know more, but Frank was keeping his cards close to his chest.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” he said. “The best advice I ever had came from Hemingway here.”

“Tell us,” Claire said.

“Everyone who tries to write anything should know this,” said Frank. “What Hemingway told me is that he never stops a day’s work until he knows exactly what’s coming next. Stop then, and you’ll be able to get back into rhythm when you start writing again. If you don’t do that, you’ll probably get stuck at the beginning of every day’s work.”

“So don’t come to the end of a section and put down your pen and say, ‘That’s done, now I’ll stop for the day.’ ”

“Exactly. Natural reaction, but fatal error.”

“I like that,” said Claire. “It’s good to know practical things.”

Marie watched. A flirtatious young man can be attractive, but when he shows he has a serious side as well, and skills that he values, he becomes even more intriguing. She wondered what else Frank was going to say to get her daughter’s interest.

The Vélodrome d’hiver was a big covered stadium. For the cycle races, a wooden track would be set up, and the spectators would crowd into the center area of the track as well as the steep tiers of seats around the sides. Hemingway told them that he loved to come to the cycle races, but that all the terms were French and it was hard to write about them in English.

For the boxing, however, the stadium had been turned into a huge auditorium with the ring in the center, and an array of powerful lamps hanging from the metal rafters high overhead.

They watched several bouts. Both Hemingway and Frank seemed to be well informed. The United States looked set to take the most medals, but the American strength was in the lighter weight classes. The British dominated the middleweights. The Scandinavians were strong in the heavyweight class.

The two men discussed the boxers with some knowledge. It seemed that Hemingway sparred in a gym quite often, and Marie asked him if he went to boxing matches in America.

“The last I went to, I saw the finest fighter in the world.”

“Who’s that?”

“Gene Tunney. Light heavyweight champion. If he could make the extra weight and fight as a heavyweight, I think he could beat Jack Dempsey.”

“I thought no one could do that.”

“Tunney might. That’s a man I’d like to meet.”

Frank grinned.

“What would you say to Tunney if you met him, Hemingway?”

“I’d ask him to fight me.”

Marie laughed, but Hemingway’s wife, Hadley, shook her head.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “He really would.”

Frank laughed.

“Tell them the Pamplona story, Hadley,” he said, with a sideways glance at his mentor.

“Last year,” said Hadley, “when I’m pregnant with Jack, I am told that I must watch a bullfight in Pamplona because the sensation of it will be good for my unborn child. You know. Toughen him up before he’s even born.” She looked at Hemingway fondly. “I am married to a crazy man.”

Soon after four o’clock, Marie and Claire left their new friends and returned to their apartment. Frank was going to join Claire at her uncle’s in the evening. On their way back, Marie asked Claire what she thought of the day so far.

“I love Shakespeare and Company.”

“And the Hemingways?”

“They seem very much in love. He means to be a figure in the world.”

“I agree. A showman,” said Marie.

“They say his short stories are really fine, though.”

“And Frank Hadley?” She made it sound casual.

“Were you interested in his father?”

Marie laughed.

“He was Marc’s friend, rather than mine. Your father and I were already courting at that time. I think the son’s a bit of a flirt. Not to be trusted.”

“He seems serious about his writing. He denies it, but I think he is.”

“That may be. Avoid him if he has any talent.”

“Why?”

“Because all artists are monsters.”

“Tell me about Monsieur de Cygne. Is he an old flame?”

“No. His father and your grandfather were friends. He was always away with his regiment. But he was nice, the few times we did see him.”

“You’re both free now. You could be a vicomtesse.”

“Better than that, chérie. I can be seen at the opera with him. It’s quite respectable, and chic.”

“Is that so good for you?”

“You’re missing the point, my child. It’s good for the store.”



She enjoyed the evening. It was the very end of the ballet season, after which the Opéra would close until September. The opulence of Garnier’s opera house, the magnificent, gold Corinthian columns, the sumptuous decoration, the gilded balconies and tiers, and the rich, velvety red seats recalled the Belle Époque of her youth so strongly that she gave a light laugh as they sat down.

Roland gave her a quizzical look.

“It’s so preposterous,” she said happily.

“You find it vulgar?”

“Can an overstuffed cushion be vulgar? It’s a kind of heaven, like a huge gâteau.”

He chuckled.

“I can imagine my dear father looking down from the balcony with the same ironic pleasure you feel.”

“And my father too. They smoked the same cigars, you know.”

“We share similar memories.”

“Mine are more bourgeois, Monsieur de Cygne.” She smiled. “Complementary, perhaps.”

“That’s it exactly,” he said with a nod.

During the interval, they sat and talked. She asked him about his son.

“He’s at the same lycée that I went to,” he told her, “and I don’t know if I did the right thing or not. It was always very conservative, and it still is. I wonder if I should have sent him to a place where their ideas are more modern. On the other hand, I feel I can help him better because I understand the school.”

“Is he happy?”

“He says he is.”

“I think you did right. If you felt out of sympathy with the school, uncomfortable with the teachers, then you’d feel off-balance yourself. Children don’t have to agree with their parents, but they like it when their parents are comfortable with themselves, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m so glad you say that.”

She could see that he said it with some emotion. Yes, she thought, you’re a good man.

She wanted to go straight home after the performance, but when he asked if she might care to go to the opera when the new season began, she smiled and told him: “After such a delightful evening at the ballet, monsieur, I cannot imagine why I should not want to go to the opera with you.”

“I go down to my estate in a couple of days,” he said, “but you may be sure, madame, that I shall look forward to taking you to the opera as soon as I return in September.”



The apartment was quiet when she returned. Claire was still not back. After she had prepared for bed, Marie told her lady’s maid that she and the other servants should go to sleep and that she’d let her daughter in herself.

She was looking forward to hearing about the Ballets Russes from Claire. Diaghilev and his company had decided to stage Le Train bleu for the Olympics, and it had opened just four weeks ago at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysèes, which lay below the great avenue, near the river. All Paris knew about the huge front cloth that Picasso had painted for it, of two strangely ungainly women running on a beach.

Claire could be relied upon to give a vivid description of the performance.

An hour passed. Marie supposed that her brother had either taken the young people out to a restaurant, or was giving them a drink at his apartment. She decided to telephone him.

When he picked up the receiver, he sounded half asleep.

“I was looking for Claire,” she said.

“Oh. They went for a drink with friends. Americans.”

“Where?”

“How do I know?”

“You let Claire go out with a young man, to God knows where, in the middle of the night?”

“Look, Marie … She’s a young woman now.”

“She’s a respectable young woman. Do you remember what they are like?” she shouted down the line. “But I was forgetting,” she added bitterly, “you never knew any respectable girls in the first place.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Look after her. Return her to me. Not let her go off with a young man in the middle of the night. You have no sense of responsibility,” she cried in exasperation. “You never had.”

“Well, there’s nothing I can do now, anyway.” He sounded guilty, but bored as well, which only infuriated her more.

She hung up.

And then she waited. After a while, she opened the window of the salon, which gave out onto a small balcony where she could see up and down the street. Paris was silent. Now and then someone appeared in the lamplight, but it seemed that the city had gone to sleep.

Were they in a bar or nightclub? The night was warm. Were they walking along the Seine, or out on one of the bridges? Was young Frank’s arm around Claire? Was he kissing her? Or worse, had they gone back to his lodgings? Would he do such a thing? Of course he would. He was a young man.

She wanted to run into the street and save her daughter. And perhaps she might have gone out, if she had any idea where they might be.

She pictured Frank Hadley, his tall frame and unruly mane of hair, so exactly like his father. She imagined his eyes in the darkness.

And then, despite herself, she was assailed by a terrible sensation. It caught her by surprise and took hold over her before she even knew it was happening.

She wanted Frank Hadley.

Was it young Frank, or his father? She could hardly say. The other evening at her brother’s it had seemed that the Frank she knew had suddenly walked in from the past. Now it felt as if her old self had reappeared, as if the layers that made up her personality had been peeled back to the girl she’d been a quarter century ago, who had now emerged, hardly changed from what she had been before.

The shock she had felt when she saw Frank had now turned into something else. A terrible longing.

Desire. Jealousy. She wanted him for herself.

Could one be two people at the same time? It seemed she could. As a mother, she wanted to protect her daughter from Frank Hadley. But when she thought of them together, she wasn’t a mother anymore. She was a woman whose rival is trying to steal her lover. She felt ready, almost, to physically attack her. But first, she had to know.

Was Claire her rival? And how far had it gone?

She was sitting on the sofa in this confused state when she heard a sound at the door. She moved quickly to the hall. The front door opened. It was Claire.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” She looked pale. “I drank too much.”

“It’s so late. I was worried about you.”

“I’m fine.” Claire closed the door.

“You came home alone?”

“No. They brought me to the door.”

“They?”

“Frank and his friends.”

Was she telling the truth? Marie wanted to run back to the balcony to see if they were down in the street, but didn’t feel she could.

“So long as you’re all right,” she said.

But the next day she warned her daughter that she must be more careful with her reputation and that her uncle shouldn’t have let her wander off with Frank as she had. She was quite relieved when Claire made no objection.



The month of August was quiet for the Joséphine store. Most Parisians were out of town, though foreign visitors to the city came in. The whole Blanchard family based itself at the house at Fontainebleau, and Claire and her mother took turns going into Paris for a day and a night each week to keep an eye on things.

Jules Blanchard and his wife had retired into one of the pavilions beside the courtyard now, leaving the main body of the house for the family. Gérard’s widow and her children were there, as well as Marc, Marie and Claire, but there was still room for guests, and so there were usually a dozen people sitting out on the broad balcony looking over the lawn on any August afternoon.

Claire was always happy to be at Fontainebleau. She loved her grandparents. Her grandmother had become a little confused lately, but old Jules, though somewhat forgetful, still liked to sit out on the veranda and chat, and she would ask him questions about the days of his youth, and he would describe the old people he could remember who had lived through the French Revolution and the age of Napoléon.

During those long, easy summer days there was only one shadow over her life. A cloud of uncertainty. Did Frank Hadley have any interest in her?

Perhaps it was because her parents had come from different countries that she was hard to please. As a girl being brought up in London, she liked the English boys she knew, but always felt that there was something lacking. It wasn’t only that they didn’t speak French. She was used to seeing things through her mother’s French eyes as well as her father’s. And indeed, her father had lived in Paris so long that, English though he was, he also saw the world in larger terms than most of his neighbors. True, there were English people—many of them—who had served the British Empire in far corners of the world, and whose imaginations had large horizons. But most of them still saw that larger world in imperial terms, secure in the knowledge that, at the end of the day, British was best. English people who had lived on the continent of Europe were a much rarer breed.

Similarly, when she returned to France with her mother, she found Frenchmen interesting, and seductive—yet even while she was catching up with the cultural excitement of France, the Frenchmen she met began to seem a little less fascinating. They too, she realized, were part of a crowd—a different crowd, but still a crowd.

And almost without realizing it, she began to wish that she could find a different sort of man. A free spirit. A man for whom life was an open-ended adventure. He might be English, he might be French, he might come from any nationality. An explorer perhaps, or a writer, or maybe a diplomat … She really didn’t know.

And where did one find such a man? It had taken her a little while to discover that there was a community in Paris to which people of that sort were drawn.

The Americans.

Why was that? She soon came to realize that there were many reasons. Freedom was in their blood. It was their birthright. But almost to a man, these expatriates felt that the mighty engine of America was still too young, too raw to have developed the rich culture they were looking for. Whereas Europe had over two thousand years of culture, from Greek temple to English country house, or Parisian nightclub, all there for the taking. The Americans came, not arrogant, but eager to learn. They meant to have it all.

And so it was that Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach from America, and Ford Madox Ford the Englishman, and the Spaniard Picasso, and Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, and French writers like Cocteau, and young Ernest Hemingway could all find each other in the bookshops and bars and theaters of Paris on any day of the week—and did.

So when her uncle Marc asked her casually one day what she thought of the Americans in Paris, she answered: “I wouldn’t want to marry Hemingway, but I like his adventurous spirit.”

“Perhaps you could find yourself a younger version and share your adventures. Though you may have to work to get him the way you want him.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“Don’t you want a challenge?”

Perhaps she did.

So what did she have to do to get Frank Hadley Jr. to notice her?



He was friendly. He was easy to talk to. That evening after the Ballets Russes, they’d gone back across the river with her uncle Marc, and then walked down the long boulevard Raspail into Montparnasse where they’d met his friends, and she’d felt so easy in his company. He’d seemed to enjoy her company too. He’d laughed at her jokes. When they walked her home, there had been a party of six of them, walking along empty streets, and they’d all linked arms. Frank had been next to her, so that she’d felt his tall, warm body against hers, and they’d all kissed each other on both cheeks, in the usual French manner, before she went into the building where she lived. But she hadn’t been able to tell whether he was interested in her or not.

She’d seen him once again, at the very end of July. She’d agreed to meet him and the Hemingways early one evening at the big Dôme Café bar, where all the artists and writers gathered. “Lenin used to come here too, when he was living in Paris,” she informed him. “Uncle Marc told me.” It had been very pleasant. Hadley Hemingway had informed them proudly that Ernest had written maybe a dozen stories already that year, and then Hemingway had turned to his wife and asked if she’d seen any of Frank’s writing. Frank frowned, and she said, No, she hadn’t.

“You should show her your stuff,” said Hemingway to Frank. “She’d be a good judge.” But Frank just looked awkward and said it wasn’t good enough yet, and probably never would be.

“You need to stay in Paris for a good while,” said Hadley. “We think it suits you.”

“That’s right,” said Hemingway.

“Don’t go disappearing on us, like Gil,” said Hadley.

“Who’s Gil?” asked Claire.

“Oh, he was a nice young American that we all thought had promise,” said Hadley. “And then suddenly he wasn’t there anymore. Disappeared without a word.”

“I won’t do that,” said Frank.

After that, he’d walked her back, and he’d talked about his home in America, and asked her all kinds of questions about Joséphine and the plans for the store. He seemed quite interested in what her mother did there as well. In fact, he seemed rather fascinated by her mother. Then he told her that he was going to spend part of August in Brittany. So she hadn’t expected to see him again until September.



It was the third week of August when Marc, after an absence of a few days in Paris, returned not alone, but with Frank. “I’d just looked in at the Dôme to meet a man, and there he was. I told him to come down to Fontainebleau with me.”

Since the house was almost full, Marie told Claire that she’d better let Frank have her room.

“There’s the little boudoir beside my room,” she told her daughter. “We can put a bed in there for you.”

Frank seemed a little embarrassed that he might be inconveniencing everybody, especially Claire; but Marie assured him that it was a family house and everyone was used to making room for friends.

And indeed, Marc soon made Frank into a family project.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for you,” he declared. “Here you are in the middle of a French family, and we shall teach you how to be French.” He smiled. “An even better Frenchman than your father was.”

Every morning, Claire was to spend an hour teaching him to speak French. Then he’d spend another hour with Marie. She might take him to the kitchen and show him how all kinds of dishes were made. Or she might take him to the market to shop. She simply involved him in whatever activity she was employed upon at the time, and gave him a running commentary. As for Marc, he would take Frank and anyone else who wanted to come to the old château, or across to the village of Barbizon, or show him books in the small library and talk of French history and culture. In ten days of this regime, Frank learned an astonishing amount.

One lunchtime, Frank confessed that he had still not fully understood how Paris was organized geographically. And here everyone had something to tell him.

“First,” Marc explained, “you must understand how Paris has grown from a modest Roman town to a medieval city.” And he told him how the city had expanded, like a growing egg, as he put it, enclosed by a series of walls taking in further suburbs each time.

“So we have, for instance, the ancient Île de la Cité, and the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève where the university is, which was once a Roman forum. Across the river you have the Temple area, once a suburb where the Templars lived, and near it the Marais, so called because it was once a marsh. Most of the other quarters keep the names either of former villages or churches. And each has its own character—though many smaller quarters practically disappeared when Baron Haussmann knocked them down in the last century.”

“But what about the arrondissements?” Frank asked. “That’s where I get confused. They have numbers, but there seem to be two sets. And they also seem to have their own reputations, don’t they?”

Marc turned to Gérard’s son, young Jules.

“To be precise,” Jules told him, “soon after the Revolution the inner parts of Paris were divided into twelve arrondissements—and people sometimes still refer to them as the old arrondissements. But in 1860, the whole of Paris was divided into a new set of twenty arrondissements. They start with the Louvre area and the western part of the Île de la Cité: that’s the First Arrondissement. Then they continue in a clockwise spiral, the first four on the Right Bank. The Third contains the Temple, the Marais is mainly in the Fourth. Then you cross the river to the Fifth, which is the Latin Quarter, the Sixth, which is the Luxembourg Gardens area, and the Seventh, which is maybe a little cold, but rich, and includes Les Invalides and the Eiffel Tower. Back across the river, you’re in the huge area that runs south to north from the river right up to the Parc Monceau, and west to east from the Arc de Triomphe, right down the Champs-Élysées to the Madeleine and the Opéra. That’s the Eighth. It’s socially grand.

“Then you go around the city again. The Ninth to the Twelfth Arrondissements are on the Right Bank—the Twelfth runs out from the Bastille, along the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine to the old Vincennes gateway. Then to the Left Bank: the Thirteenth, the Fourteenth, which is Montparnasse, and the Fifteenth.

“Across the river again for the last five. The Sixteenth is long and runs right up the west side of the city to the Arc de Triomphe and the avenue de la Grande-Armée. The Bois de Boulogne lies beyond it. There are old villages like Passy, where Ben Franklin lived, in the Sixteenth, and the avenue Victor Hugo. It has a reputation of being smart and international. Above that, on the northwest edge of the city, is the Seventeenth, with the old village of Neuilly to the west of it. Neuilly is chic. The Seventeenth is respectable but dull.”

“The Seventeenth is not so bad,” said his mother.

“But it’s boring,” Claire whispered to Frank.

“The Eighteenth,” continued young Jules, “you might say is the top of the city. It contains Clichy and Montmartre. Then on the outer northeastern edges of the city are the Nineteenth, which contains the Buttes-Chaumont park, and the Twentieth, which is the working-class district of Belleville, but also has the Cemetery of Père Lachaise.”

“Normally,” said Claire, “though old people don’t use the arrondissements so much, if someone asks you where you live, you’ll say ‘in the Fifth’ or ‘in the Sixteenth,’ unless it’s a special quarter or place of interest. If you lived on the hill by Sacré Coeur, you might say you lived in the Eighteenth, but you’d probably say you lived in Montmartre. Same with Montparnasse. Or the Île de la Cité, or the Marais.”

“But if you lived in Pigalle,” added Marc with a smile, “which contains the Moulin Rouge and some far less savory places, you might say ‘in the Ninth,’ which could mean you lived more respectably near the boulevard Haussmann.”

“I get it now,” said Frank. “I’d better study a map.”

“By all means study a map,” said Marc genially, “but personally, I recommend that you live in Paris.”



The afternoons passed easily. Everyone would sit out on the long veranda, and old Jules would read his newspaper, and Marie would walk about in the garden or rest, and Frank was left to write in his notebook without anyone inquiring what he was doing or asking to see it.

On Sunday, of course, the women went to church in the morning, and the whole family, except for Claire’s grandparents, would go for their traditional walk in the Forest of Fontainebleau.

But despite their being often together, and despite the fact that he was slightly flirtatious with her mother, Frank never made the slightest move toward Claire. He was friendly, like a brother, but nothing more. Nothing at all.

Sometimes she observed him while he was working in the afternoons. As long as he could be observed he would sit there looking quite contented, and making a note or two, apparently just as casually as if he were reading a newspaper. But sometimes the veranda would be empty, or the people there would be dozing; and if she looked out through a window, or watched him from the small arbor at the side of the garden where the roses grew, and where he could not see her, his face would become concentrated, and intense, and she would know that he was on some quest that he kept hidden from the world, and that there was a force driving him, and that behind the handsome young man with the sometimes flirtatious manner there lay a man who was very fine, and serious. And she wished that she could share his private world.

She wasn’t going to throw herself at him. Sometimes she would say something to make him laugh. At other times she would engage him in a conversation that would show him she could be serious, and that she thought about the world. But it didn’t seem to do her any good.



They were all going back to Paris in two days. The August afternoon was hot, the long garden filled with sun, dappled here and there by shade from the trees along its edges. There was scarcely a breath of wind and, apart from the occasional creak of a cart easing its way along the street, the only sound was the quiet hum of the bees visiting the roses and the warm, dry lavender bushes beside the lawn.

Uncle Marc had put a record on the gramophone in the salon, leaving the French doors open so that the sound of Debussy’s “String Quartet” wafted out onto the veranda where he was sitting with a book.

He was pleased with the record. “It’s played by the Capet Quartet. They’re just starting a whole series of recordings. I got it from a friend,” he added with some pride. “It’s not even on sale yet.”

Apart from her grandfather, who was dozing, Marc was the only one on the veranda when Claire came out.

“Where’s everybody?” she asked her uncle.

“Frank wandered down the garden. I think your mother’s somewhere in the house. Don’t know about the others,” he replied.

She was going to sit down, but then she thought she’d take a turn round the garden herself, so she started to walk along the lawn.

The music followed after her. The quartet had just reached its slow movement. How soft and sensuous it was, like the faint hum of the bees in the sun. She felt a bar of shade steal across her face, and then the sun touched her hair again.

The music was just rising to its first small climax, like a sudden, urgent whisper in that lazy afternoon, as she came to the hedge at the end of the lawn where one passed through an arch of privet into the green space beyond where there was a small tree, and roses, and red poppies, and blue cornflowers grew in a bed beside the grass.

And there she saw her mother standing with Frank. They were standing close. Her mother’s face was turned up to his, and he was looking down, and there could be no doubt, she was sure there was no doubt, that Frank was about to kiss her mother, and that her mother wanted him to, the way she was smiling, with her face turned up.

And then they saw her, and they did not spring apart, but Frank half turned toward her to make it look as if they had just paused for a moment while they were talking, and he said something to her but she did not seem to hear what it was he said.

“I just wondered where everybody was,” she said, and looked at the flowers for a moment as though nothing had happened. “Don’t you love Uncle Marc’s record?” she said, and then she went back through the privet hedge and made her way down the lawn. Uncle Marc glanced up at her, then down at his book. And when she was getting closer she saw him glance behind her and guessed that her mother and Frank were walking down the lawn too, talking as though nothing had happened. She didn’t stop on the veranda, but went into the house. She would have gone to her room, but it was Frank’s room at the moment, so she went into the courtyard instead, and out through the iron gateway into the street, and walked in the street for ten minutes before returning.



When Marc suggested to Frank that they go for a stroll the following morning, Frank was quite agreeable. They walked along to the château, talking of this and that, and Marc remarked that despite all the long royal history of the place, it was always the image of Napoléon, bidding farewell to his guards in the courtyard, before he left for exile, that came into his imagination each time he approached it.

“Tell me,” he suddenly said as they reached the gates, “did your father give you any warnings before you came to France?”

“He gave me all sorts of advice. Things to do, things not to do.”

“What did he tell you to do when you met respectable young Frenchwomen?”

Frank looked a little taken aback.

“Well,” he answered cautiously, “he told me to be careful to treat them with the same respect I would an American girl from a family like ours. We’re pretty conservative, you know. But he said the French were even more so.”

“A girl like Claire, for instance.”

“Yes. Well, she’s quite English, but it’s the same.”

“You wouldn’t want to make an enemy of her family.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You don’t think I’ve behaved improperly toward her, do you?”

“Not at all. I shouldn’t have let you wander off into the night with her, but I’m sure no harm was done.”

“Absolutely none. I promise you.”

“I believe you. You realize she’s in love with you?”

Frank looked astonished.

“Claire?”

“She watches you when you’re not looking. You fascinate her.”

“Oh.”

“You like her?”

“Very much.”

“But you are being careful.”

“Very.”

“Whereas my sister’s different.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” Frank looked awkward.

“You couldn’t shock me if you tried, my friend. Most young men think it would be fascinating to have an affair with an older woman, and my sister’s very attractive. She’s widowed. She can look after herself. No difficulties with her family, no complications. I think she quite likes you. You remind her of your father, obviously. You’re very young, of course. She wouldn’t want to make a fool of herself. But … who knows?”

Frank said nothing.

“But if by any chance you decide that you wanted to court Claire—in a respectable way, of course—then you cannot sleep with her mother. It would be a very bad idea, and I will not allow it. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Frank looked a bit shaken. “I hadn’t been thinking of … courting. I mean, I had no idea she was interested.”

“And you were afraid to flirt with her. Which left her mother.”

“I wouldn’t put it like that. Her mother is remarkable …”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t have fallen in love with an older woman. It’s quite usual, you know.” Marc nodded to himself. “France is a sensuous place, especially in summer. The warmth of the Mediterranean travels north, where it is diffused and softened. It’s all in the music of Debussy, I should say.”

“I think I understand.”

“Well,” Marc ended cheerfully, “choose one woman or the other, but not both. Let’s get back for lunch.”



It was the end of the first week of September that Luc asked Louise if she’d like another client. She had three so far. One man she saw once a week, the others every two weeks. All three were middle-aged, respectable and rich. The first, the diplomat, lived in a handsome apartment in the broad avenue that led down from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. The second lived in the somewhat austere, fashionable quarter between the Eiffel Tower and Les Invalides. The third in an elegant apartment on the rue de Rivoli that interspersed modern, chic comfort with pieces that might have come from Versailles.

By spending two or three nights a week with interesting men in impressive surroundings, she now had all the spending money she needed, and was saving more than a thousand francs a week. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was more than she could have made in any full-time employment. And Luc, who was getting the same, must be saving even more from her activities.

She understood now why girls became whores. If you could get the right clientele, the money was good, very good, and it was nice to have it.

“If you add this man, who’s a charming fellow,” Luc pointed out, “you’ll almost double your savings.”

“Where do you find them?” she asked him, not for the first time.

“I’ve built up so many contacts over the years,” he answered with a shrug. “And you’re a great success. You have class, which is hard to find. People are talking about you.”

“One more is all I want, Luc.”

“Understood. The arrangement will be as usual. No names. At least, not at first. You’ll meet for dinner. After that, it will be up to you.”

“And him. He may not like me.”

“He will. By the way, this man knows about a lot of things. You could learn from him.”



They met at the Café Procope, just off the boulevard Saint-Germain. He looked in his fifties, but well preserved. Graying temples. Above medium height. Quite slim. An intelligent face. He looked artistic, but she suspected he might be lacking the pugnacity of a creative artist. An intellectual of some kind. But one with money, clearly.

“I hear you’re English,” he said pleasantly.

“Half English, half French,” she answered.

“Well, I don’t know about your English, but your French is very good. And you model for Chanel?”

“Yes. It’s quite interesting. And she is remarkable.”

“Indeed.”

She had a feeling he probably knew Chanel, but she wasn’t going to ask. He’d tell her if he wanted her to know. The art was to be discreet.

They made light conversation. The Café Procope, with its gilt mirrors and pictures, was like stepping into the eighteenth century. She said she liked it.

“It was founded back in the seventeenth century. It’s funny to think that Voltaire himself ate here, and it probably looked much the same. What other restaurants do you like?”

She wondered if he was expecting her to name some expensive places.

“Places with character.” She smiled. “I’m just as happy in a bistro if it’s interesting.”

“Really?” He looked at her thoughtfully. “There are plenty of interesting places to eat if one knows where to look. By the way, do you know the origin of the word ‘bistro’?”

“I don’t think so.”

“After Napoléon fell, and the Russians briefly entered Paris, the Cossacks were camped up on Montmartre and went into the little restaurants, and when the service was slow they kept shouting ‘bistro,’ which is Russian for ‘quick.’ So the French started calling these informal restaurants bistros.” He shrugged. “Well, that’s the story anyway. It probably isn’t true.”

They talked of many things. He was clever and amusing. By the time they’d finished the main course she was sure that she liked him. So much so that, for once, she even ventured to ask him a question or two.

“Luc is very discreet, monsieur, and so am I. But he told me that you were not married. And I am surprised that someone as charming as you doesn’t keep a mistress.” She smiled. “Unless you already do.”

He laughed.

“No, mademoiselle, I don’t. Though I have done so in the past. But in my life at present, if I can find a suitable person—I mean someone like yourself, which is hard to find—then it’s better for me to have an evening a week, let us say, to look forward to, than to have a constant companion.”

“Less personal commitment?”

“Not only that. I do so many things. I have a family business that occupies some of my time. I have many other activities. Often I go out on social engagements in the evening and then return home to work at night, or to read. I haven’t room for a companion, to whom I should otherwise feel bound to give my attention. You may think this selfish, but it is the only way I can get things done.”

“Are you an artist, or a writer? I do not mean to pry.”

“I was an artist at one time. I prefer to write about these things now.”

“I have one other question, monsieur. Might I ask how it is that you know Luc?” She shook her head and smiled. “I’ve never been able to work out how he knows so many people.”

He looked at her cautiously.

“You do not know?”

“No. I have always been curious.”

“Are you going to repeat what I tell you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“It is cocaine, mademoiselle. Luc has supplied cocaine to people for God knows how many years. Everyone. It is always pure. Everyone trusts him. He supplies … all sorts of people. And sometimes they ask him for other things.”

She stared at him. Of course. Everything made sense now. How could she have been so naive, and so stupid, not to have guessed? Was that how he knew Chanel? God knows. It was none of her business.

“He always has money,” she remarked, “but I don’t think he’s rich.”

“The people like him are not the ones who get rich in that business. Often they become addicts themselves.”

“I don’t think Luc uses the drug.”

“He doesn’t. He’s rare. I seldom use it myself. Sometimes, if I have too many things to accomplish, it helps me work through the night. That sort of thing.” He smiled. “So, mademoiselle, I have answered all your questions. May I ask now if you’d be interested in seeing where I live?”

“I should be delighted, monsieur.” She meant it, and he could see that she did.

As they left the restaurant, she linked her arm in his. It was only a short walk to his place near the Luxembourg Gardens. On entering, they took the small elevator up to the third floor and entered his apartment. It seemed to be empty.

“I have only two servants that live in,” he explained. “And they are up in the attic quarters for the evening. So we have the place to ourselves. Would you like a drink? I’m having a little whisky.”

“The same. Thank you.”

The apartment was impressive. She’d never seen so many paintings in a house in her life. She saw Manet, Monet, van Gogh …

“Turn on any lights you want,” he said, as he handed her a tumbler of whisky. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

She sipped her whisky and looked around. The salon was large. There was a grand piano in one corner with some framed photographs on it. She went across to look at them, turning on a table lamp to see them better.

They were not photographs designed to impress the visitor, but family photographs by the look of them. A number of them featured a tall, elegant woman. One was a wedding group. She saw her companion at once. He was a young man then, but quite unmistakable. She looked at the bride and groom.

And froze.

The groom was James Fox. The London lawyer. There was no mistaking him. Not a shadow of a doubt. She stood there staring at it.

Behind her, she heard him come back into the room. He came and stood beside her.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” She pointed to him in the group, trying to sound casual. “Family wedding?”

“Yes. That’s my sister in the middle, the bride. And that’s her husband. An Englishman as it happens. But of Huguenot origins. They were called Renard, and anglicized it to Fox.”

“Interesting. The wedding looks French.”

“It was. At Fontainebleau. Her husband died, sadly. A very nice man. The flu, you know, after the war.” He pointed to the elegant woman in another picture. “My aunt Éloïse. She had this apartment before I did. A remarkable woman.”

“She looks it,” said Louise, trying to sound interested.

Her mind was working fast. Fox. His Paris law office. The adoption. Blanchard. She turned back to the wedding group.

“So these would be your parents?”

“Correct. And that’s my brother. He was the respectable one—in those days. I was the artist.”

“In your twenties.”

“Yes.”

“Very handsome.” She considered a moment, and chose her words. “It looks the perfect bourgeois wedding. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

He chuckled.

“That describes the Blanchard family, all right.”

“Would you excuse me a moment?”

He indicated a passage. “Down there on the right.”

It took her a minute or two to collect herself. James Fox had married a member of the Blanchard family. It was too great a coincidence. This must be the same Blanchard family who knew who her father was. Probably one of themselves. And if her father was a Blanchard, then the obvious candidate was just a few feet away from her.

And then, suddenly, she wanted to cry. So it had come to this: she’d almost found her father after all. But either it was this man, who now knew, or someone else whom he would tell, that she was a whore, and that Luc the cocaine dealer was her pimp. This was her life. What sort of welcome was that likely to earn her?

She sat very still. She did not allow herself to weep. But she saw her situation with icy clarity. If she didn’t do something, she was about to sleep with a man who was probably her father.

She had to get out of there. Fast.



It was the first conflict Claire had experienced with her mother. But the conflict was silent, unspoken, never acknowledged. How could it be?

In the first minute, as she had walked down the lawn away from Frank and her mother, she had experienced only cold shock. By the time she’d entered the house, she was shaking. But as she wandered in the street, another sensation gradually began to take over.

Anger. Rage. How dare her mother try to steal her young man? She wasn’t going to let her do it. She was young. She had good looks. She’d show her mother. She’d take Frank Hadley from her.

But powerful though the feeling was, it didn’t last for long. By the time she passed the local parish church, it changed to a sense of hopelessness. Frank Hadley didn’t belong to her. He’d made no sign that he wanted her at all. It seemed he wanted her mother, and perhaps he was going to get her.

There was nothing she could say. So she said nothing.

And her mother didn’t say anything either. She carried on calmly, as if nothing was happening at all. If she’d raised the subject, she knew what her mother would say: “He’s flirting with me.” She’d shrug. “It’s amusing, I suppose.” And what could she say in return? Protest that it was disgusting? Then her mother would guess that she was jealous, that she wanted him for herself, but that he didn’t want her. Why should she expose herself to that defeat?

So she gave no sign. She felt misery, resentment, humiliation. But she gave no sign at all.

As soon as they were back in Paris, they were both busy at the store. She watched for hints of Frank hanging around her mother. He didn’t seem to be.

She was quite surprised, therefore, a week after her return when Frank telephoned her at Joséphine.

“I thought you might be interested. There is a whole crowd of us going up to Montmartre this evening. The Hemingways, some artists, some people from the Ballets Russes. If you’re free, I thought you might want to be there. Hemingway told me to tell you to come.”

She had nothing special planned. And he was right, this was the sort of gathering she should be at.

“I’m wondering if my mother would like it,” she said.

“This is really a younger crowd.”



They met at the foot of the hill. There was a group of a dozen people waiting there when she arrived. Frank greeted her with the usual two kisses, but it seemed to her that there was a new warmth in his manner. Nothing obvious, but something.

A moment later the Hemingways arrived and they all cheerfully piled into the funicular cabin and rolled up the steep tracks. As the rooftops of Paris began to fall away below them, Frank, who was pressed quite closely beside her, whispered, “I get vertigo in these things, but don’t tell Hemingway.”

“He wouldn’t mind,” she suggested.

“No, but he’d put it in a book.”

At the top, they walked across from the funicular to the steps in front of the great, white church, and looked across Paris as the early evening sun turned the rooftops into a golden haze, and the Eiffel Tower in the distance was like a soft gray dart pointing at the sky, and below them on the broad, steep steps that flowed down the hill, the people and the benches threw their lengthening shadows eastward.

Frank was standing beside her. He pointed toward the Bois de Boulogne that lay under the sun, and his hand rested on her shoulder as he did so. She experienced a tiny shiver and he asked her if she was cold, but she shook her head.

After they’d all stared at the view for a while, they went along the narrow street to the Place du Tertre and sat at a long table under the trees.

It was a good-humored gathering. Claire knew some of the people. She thought she recognized a couple of the dancers from the Ballets Russes. Frank told her he thought Picasso might be coming, but there was no sign of him yet. There was a charming Russian with a kindly, pointed face sitting almost opposite her, in his mid-thirties she guessed, who told her in accented French that he’d lived in Paris before the war. “I was in Russia again for a couple of years until I returned to France recently,” he explained. He smiled. “Paris is the place to be these days.”

“Where did you spend the summer?” she asked.

“Brittany, some of the time,” he answered.

“Frank was up there too.” She indicated Hadley.

“I’m afraid I missed you,” he said to Frank, with a twinkle in his eye.

His name was Chagall, she discovered, but despite his years in Paris, he certainly wasn’t among the names one had to know. Her uncle had never mentioned him. But he said he knew Picasso.

Frank already knew about him, however, and while Chagall was speaking to someone else he told her: “He paints beautiful, intimate work, especially about his childhood in a Jewish shtetl. It’s strange, almost surrealist stuff. Wonderful colors.”

“I heard that Vollard is arranging a show for you in America next year,” he said to the artist at the next break in the conversation. And Chagall nodded modestly. “Will you go over for it?” Frank asked, but the Russian shook his head.

“Can’t afford it.”

Claire was impressed that Frank was already ahead of her with this information. Obviously she’d better keep an eye out for Monsieur Chagall in the future.

They discussed Paris for a while, and all the exciting people in it.

“It’s funny,” Claire remarked. “If I listen to my uncle Marc, who’s been at the center of everything going on here for three or four decades, he talks of Paris as a French city, full of French culture. But you all see it as something else. As a place where all the artists come to play. So which is the real Paris, I wonder?”

Hemingway reached over and poured her some wine.

“Maybe it’s in the eye of the beholder,” he said. “Paris has always been proud of being a cultural center ever since the university was set up. Now it’s become the place that people come to from all over the world. So it’s just a more international version of what it always wanted to be. A city’s a huge organism. It can be all sorts of things at the same time. History may or may not remember the recent French presidents, but it’s going to remember the Impressionists, and the Ballets Russes, and Stravinsky, and Picasso I suspect, all together. So what will Paris be? The memory of all those wonderful things. We remember Napoléon, the Corsican, and Eiffel, who was Alsatian, and most of us also remember that Ben Franklin lived here. That’s Paris.” He grinned. “Paris became an international city, so now it belongs to all of us. Everyone in the world.”

They started ordering food after that. And then Hemingway and Frank got into a friendly argument about Paris and New York, because Frank said that after Paris he wanted to go and live there.

“You stay here,” Hemingway told him. “At the moment, at least, Paris is the only place to be.” He turned to Claire. “Don’t you agree?”

“For painting, dance, and fashion, everyone says it is,” said Claire. “Though I love London theater. What about music, though?”

“Stravinsky’s here,” said Hemingway. “What more do you want?”

“I want jazz,” said Frank. “I want all that fresh rhythm and excitement and improvisation of jazz. That’s in New York. And by the way,” he turned to Claire, “I know London theater has the best tradition in the world, but amazing things are happening in New York now. Eugene O’Neill will have five plays running on Broadway this season.”

But Hemingway wasn’t having it.

“If you’re going to write for the stage, Frank, then maybe. But none of the good writers of books and poetry want to be in New York. They’re all in London and Paris. Eliot, Pound, Fitzgerald. Everyone’s in Europe.”

“Not true. There’s a crowd of writers in New York. They hang out together at the Algonquin Hotel every week.”

“A bunch of old women,” Hemingway retorted.

“They’re not old women. They’re bright, and they’re young.”

“Give them time.”

It was obviously no use arguing with Hemingway, so Frank didn’t try. Soon they were all eating. The waiters put small candles on the table as the sun went down.

By the end of the main course, a certain mellowness had descended upon the table. Claire noticed that Chagall had taken out some crayons and was quietly doodling on the paper tablecloth. By the candlelight, it looked like a goat in a green space and a lady in a flowing dress flying through a deep blue sky.

But then Hemingway rapped on the table and said he was going to read from something. And she supposed it might be one of his latest stories, and she was eager to hear it, but it wasn’t his own, he told them.

“This is something I was shown in Shakespeare and Company the other day, and I liked it and thought you’d enjoy it too. It’s the opening to a story that’s still being written.”

Hemingway had a good voice for reading. It was a light baritone, unaccented, straightforward, like a correspondent reporting from a faraway place, and when he descended into the wide trench of the open vowels, his tone became somewhat gravelly.

But the place he was describing now, as he read from some sheets of typewritten paper, was not a war zone, nor was it an American forest, nor a big river or a mountain somewhere, but a long garden, and a wide French house, quite simple and provincial, with shutters on the windows, and a bed full of lavender and cornflowers where the bees hummed, and a veranda where an old man sat reading a newspaper, with his old wife who could no longer remember who he was, sitting by his side, and a pretty girl going into the house and past the kitchen where there was still a smell of oil and vinegar from a salad bowl that had been left on the wooden table.

And Claire realized that it was the house at Fontainebleau, and she stared at Frank, who was looking both embarrassed and pleased.

When Hemingway stopped, she whispered to Frank that he had written it, and he whispered back that he didn’t know Hemingway was going to do that, and he shouldn’t have shown it to him.

Then Hemingway said that he’d never read anything which conveyed the sounds and smell and feel of a place so well and so simply, and that it really made one want to know more about the characters, and especially the girl, who was still—he glanced toward Claire with a grin—tantalizingly mysterious. And he nodded to Frank, so that everyone understood he was the author.

Later that evening Frank took her home, and when he left her at the entrance to the building, he kissed her on the cheek, but he pressed her arms lightly as he did so.

“Hemingway really likes you,” he said. And she knew this meant that he did too.



When Marie thought back to the last days in Fontainebleau, she could almost have cried out in vexation.

When Marc brought young Frank Hadley to the house, and she had given him Claire’s room, and put Claire in the boudoir beyond her own bedroom, she had told herself that it was not only a simple solution, but it protected Claire from the young man during the night. The only door to the boudoir led into her own room. No one could slip in or out of the boudoir during the night without crossing her bedroom, and she was a light sleeper.

So her daughter was safe. And of course it also followed—she admitted it freely to herself—that, with her daughter denied him, Frank was more likely to turn his thoughts to herself.

And why not? Why shouldn’t she? If he was discreet. If she’d let the father slip through her fingers, why not the son?

It hadn’t been difficult to interest him. Showing him things in the kitchen or about the house, taking him to the market and walking about the town with him, introducing him to the rich, sensuous world of provincial France in summer. She’d kept her figure. If her face contained lines, they were interesting ones. As a Frenchwoman, she walked with a poise and lightness that was different from the frank, easy movement of an American girl. All this was heady stuff for any young man looking for adventure.

As for herself, after the years of being alone, it made her feel young in a way that she had never thought she would again. As she looked at her face in the glass in the soft lamplight in the evening, and shook her hair loose, she thought the face she saw wouldn’t look bad on a pillow. One night, when Claire was asleep, she’d slipped out of her nightdress and surveyed herself naked in front of her long mirror, and had been pleased to see that her breasts still looked so firm, and that she hardly had to pull her stomach in. When she turned to look behind, she saw only a few dimples, nothing much.

Day by day she had seen his interest growing. And when it had culminated that sensuous afternoon, at the end of the garden, she thought he was hers. Another moment and they would have kissed. It would have been enough to hold him. Perhaps they might have made love at Fontainebleau. It would have been difficult. They might have gone for a walk in the forest and kissed more passionately, at least. And then, another day or two, and once back in Paris, anything could have been arranged.

Just another moment, if Claire had not arrived.

But the next day, something had happened. He seemed suddenly to draw back. At least, he made no further move. There were two occasions when they found themselves alone in the house, once in the salon, once in the hall, but he did not come close either time. She wondered why. What had happened? Did he suddenly find her unattractive? Did she seem old? Was he afraid?

Frank was going to take the train back to Paris a day before the family left, and Marc said he’d drive him to the station. While Frank was waiting by Marc’s car in the courtyard, Marie had come out and stood with him. They were almost as close as they had been in the garden, and she looked up at him and smiled, and he smiled too. But there was nothing else. Nothing at all.

“You said the other day that you’d never been to the Jardin des Plantes,” she said.

“I haven’t.”

“This is a good time of year to go there. It’s rather dull in winter. Telephone me, and I’ll take you there.”

“Thank you. I will.”

A week passed. Then another. But he had not called.

Claire saw him. Marie and Marc were talking in the office one day when Claire put her head around the door and asked her uncle if he’d ever heard of an artist called Chagall. He hadn’t and asked her why.

“He may be someone to watch. I met him the other night, in a crowd of people up at Montmartre.”

“Was anyone there that I do know?” Marc inquired.

“Hemingway.”

“Was Frank Hadley there?” asked Marie.

“Yes. I said hello, but I hardly spoke to him. He and Hemingway were arguing about something or other.”

Marie said nothing. Perhaps she should call him herself. Perhaps not. She hadn’t heard a word from Roland de Cygne yet, either, though he was sure to be back in Paris by now.

She was feeling rather deserted when, a few days later, Claire came into her office and asked if Frank had got through to her on the telephone.

“He was trying to reach you, but he got me instead. He said you’d offered to take him to the Jardin des Plantes. Why don’t we all go this Saturday?”

“Ah,” said Marie, and shrugged. “If you like.”



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?



The gallery was in the rue Taitbout, only a short walk from her apartment. She’d gone to several of the best galleries—Vollard, Kahnweiler and Durand-Ruel. She quite enjoyed her quest. It was educational. They all knew Marc Blanchard, but it was the assistant at Durand-Ruel who knew where his work was to be found.

“It’s a small gallery, quite new. The Galerie Jacob,” she was told.

The gallery was certainly small, and Monsieur Jacob turned out to be a young man, only a little taller than herself, with delicate features.

“My grandfather has an antiques business, and my father helps him, so I wanted to do something different,” he explained. “I’m delighted if you are interested in the work of Marc Blanchard. He was very helpful to me in getting started, and I represent him. If you stay in the gallery, I’ll bring some of his work for you to see.”

They spent quite a while looking at canvases. Though she didn’t know much about art, it seemed to her that the work was good. Several were portraits, and she told him she’d like to see more of them. He had almost a dozen.

“Do we know who any of these young women are?” she asked him.

“Most are studio models, or people he happened to meet. They tend not to have names. The commissioned works are nearly all in private collections, though there are sketches for many of them. He has more work that he keeps himself. I could always ask him. Would you like to meet him?”

“No,” she said. “That won’t be necessary.”

One picture in particular intrigued her. It was a nude. A young girl with a very pretty body and long hair. It seemed to Louise that she looked a little like herself.

Was she looking at her mother?

“Again,” said Jacob, “no name.”

“I should like to come and look at some of these again,” said Louise. “If you can find out the names of some of the sitters, that would also interest me.” She smiled. “It would be a present for my husband. He likes to put names to people.”

“And your own name, if I may ask, madame?” said Jacob.

She reached into the little bag she was carrying, as if to take out a visiting card, and frowned. “I have left my cards at home. I am Madame Louise. I shall call in again in two or three weeks.”

She wondered whether it would turn out that any of the models was named Corinne.



The note from Roland de Cygne early in October was profuse in its apologies, and rather touching. During August, down at the château, his son had become ill—so much so that at one point the doctor had feared for his life.

All was well now, however. Father and son were safely back in Paris, where the boy was to convalesce for a month.

Sure enough, a few days later, he telephoned to ask if she would like to go to the opera. As it happened, she could not go on the evening he suggested. But wanting to be friendly, especially after his troubles with his son, she made a countersuggestion.

“I met the manager of the Gobelins factory the other day, and he offered to give me a private tour of the place. On the last Monday of October, in the morning. I wonder if you and your son would like to join me. Perhaps it might amuse him.”

The offer was accepted at once.



Why was it, Marie would sometimes ask herself in later years, that of all the many discussions she had, during two turbulent decades, about the destiny, even the survival, of the world she knew, the one she most remembered was a short and unplanned conversation with a boy?

The Gobelins factory was in the Thirteenth Arrondissement, about half a mile south of the Jardin des Plantes. The manager gave them a delightful tour of the collection of buildings.

“As you see, we have returned to making tapestries, just as we did in the time of Louis XIV,” he explained, and showed young Charlie de Cygne the working of the looms. “Some of these are the original seventeenth-century buildings. They were set up beside the little River Bièvre, which runs into the Seine near the Île de la Cité, so that the river could provide water power when it was needed. But do you know what else was made here?”

“You made furniture for quite a while,” said Roland.

“Indeed, monsieur, that is correct. But we also made statues.” He pointed to a couple of buildings. “They were foundries. We supplied most of the bronze statues in the gardens of Versailles.”

“Has the works been going continuously since Louis XIV?” young Charlie de Cygne asked.

“Almost. As you may know, the wars of the Roi Soleil were so expensive that he ran out of money once or twice. We briefly had to close in the 1690s, then for about a decade after the Revolution. And then, unfortunately, during the Commune of 1871, the Communards burned part of the factory down, which interrupted our work for some time.”

It was clear that the manager was no lover of the Communards, and he glanced at de Cygne, clearly hoping that the aristocrat would express his distaste for them, but Roland said nothing.

The visit was a success. After they came out, it being almost the lunch hour, Roland asked if Marie would like to eat something.

“Why don’t we just go into a bistro?” she suggested.

It seemed to Marie that Charlie de Cygne was a nice fourteen-year-old, rather shy, who resembled his father and had manners of respectful politeness that only someone like Roland de Cygne could have taught him. It also seemed to her that he was perfectly well and ready to go back to school again. His father, however, was still showing lines of worry. He’d lost weight. She felt a strong maternal urge to feed him.

“You’ll have a steak with me, won’t you?” she asked, although she would much rather have had a salad. And when he had finished that, she persuaded him to eat a strawberry flan with Chantilly cream. Getting young Charlie to eat, of course, was not a problem.

They took their time, chatting of nothing in particular, but being careful to ask Charlie what he thought of the Gobelins factory, and making him part of the conversation.

As she and Roland had coffee, he asked her if he might smoke a cigar, and she was fascinated when, instead of an elegant lighter, he pulled a strange little object made of a shell casing out of his pocket. “I always carry this with me,” he explained with a smile, as he laid the lighter on the table. “It brings me luck.”

And it was then that Charlie asked a question.

“The man at the Gobelins factory said that the Communards burned the place down. That’s not so long ago. Do you think something like that could happen again?”

Marie and Roland looked at each other.

“Yes,” said Roland.

“I don’t know if you heard about it, Charlie,” said Marie, “but just this weekend, Zinoviev, who’s an important man in Communist Russia, wrote a letter to one of the British Labour leaders outlining how they should work together for world revolution. That’s what they want.” She nodded firmly. “The whole of England’s in an uproar. There’s a general election in two days, and this will probably put the Conservatives back in power.”

“Today’s paper says that Zinoviev claims it’s a forgery,” Roland remarked.

“But he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Marie answered.

“This is true.”

“But are there many Frenchmen who really want a communist revolution,” asked Charlie, “like in Russia?”

“Certainly,” said his father. “You and I would both be killed, my son. And Madame Fox too, I’m afraid.”

“You know such men, Father?”

Roland picked up the little lighter and looked at it thoughtfully.

“Oh yes. I have known such men. And there are many of them.”

“People at school say that the Jews are behind the revolutionary movements,” said Charlie. “Do you think it’s true?”

“No less a person than the great Lord Curzon, who’s the British foreign secretary, has just made a speech about the Zinoviev letter,” said Marie, “where he reminds us that most of the inner ruling circle of the Bolsheviks are Jews. So he seems to think there’s a connection.” She shrugged. “He would know more than we do. I have a few Jewish friends who I’m quite certain are not revolutionaries.”

Slightly to her surprise, the aristocrat wasn’t content to let it go at that.

“Lenin himself, of course, was not Jewish in the least. In fact, he was technically a Russian noble, you know. To the surprise of his audiences, his revolutionary speeches were made in a highly aristocratic accent.” He smiled at the irony of this truth. “But you must be very careful, my son,” he continued. “Your school friends are partly thinking of the famous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document which outlined a Jewish plan to take over the world. It was a complete forgery. We know this for certain now.”

“Lots of people still believe in it, however. Especially in America,” Marie pointed out.

“Oui, madame. But that is partly because Henry Ford, the motor manufacturer, is obsessed with it and tells all the world it’s true. But it’s still a forgery.” He paused a moment. “I am sensitive to this because, as you will remember, I myself was entirely persuaded of the guilt of Dreyfus when I was a young man. I thought he was a traitor because he was Jewish.”

“So did half of France.”

“That in no way excuses me. It is now absolutely established that he was innocent.”

“So you do not think the Jews are behind the revolution, Father?” His son wanted clarity.

“There are many Jews who are in the revolutionary movement, especially in Germany and Eastern Europe. It may also be true that, because Jewish families have historically been more mobile, that there is a Jewish network that will operate, along with other networks, in spreading international revolution. Many people think it, but I do not know if it is so or not. For there are plenty of revolutionaries who are not Jewish. There are also many Jews who are not revolutionaries. You must be guided by the evidence, my son, not by rumor or prejudice.”

“But you do think that there is a danger of international revolution spreading from Russia around the world.”

“I am quite certain that is true.”

“So what should we do, Father?”

“It remains to be seen. The revolutionaries are ruthless. Perhaps the democracies of the free world are strong enough to defend themselves against them. I hope so. But it may be that the free world will have to adopt some of the tactics of the revolutionaries to counteract them. Beat them at their own game.”

“What sort of organization are you thinking of?” Marie asked.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps some kind of order, like the crusading orders of long ago. Perhaps military governments. We shall need strong leaders, certainly, and we don’t have them now.”

“It sounds a little frightening.”

He smiled.

“Not as long as we have good people like you, madame, and I hope myself too, to keep us all sane.”

“And what do you think, Charlie?” she asked the boy.

“I’m ready to fight,” he said. “Father tells me I may have to.”

“And who will you fight?”

“The communists, I suppose, madame.”

So the conversation ended. The two de Cygnes returned home. She went across the river to Joséphine. But she never forgot it. They had said nothing out of the ordinary. Any conservative, and even some liberals, in both France and Britain would have expressed the same sort of views. She, too, had thought them natural, at the time.



The arrival of Mr. Frank Hadley Sr. at the end of October was marked by a gathering at Marc’s apartment. All the Blanchard family were there, except for Marc’s parents. But Marc was going to take the Hadleys down to Fontainebleau for lunch the following week.

He’d asked Roland de Cygne, who had said that he’d be delighted to see the American again after so many years, and asked if he might bring his son. There were also a couple of art historians and one or two dealers, including young Jacob—all people whom Hadley might enjoy meeting.

He was standing beside his son, talking to young Jacob, when Marie entered the room. And he recognized her at once and smiled, and she went toward him to greet him.

But she was ready for him now. She was prepared. She’d seen a recent photograph that young Frank had shown her, so she knew that there were some strong lines creasing his cheeks nowadays, and crow’s-feet from a quarter century of smiling pleasantly at his students. And she knew that he was still just as tall and athletic as before, because regular exercise had toned his body and preserved his figure. And she knew that there was a little graying at the temples. But the photograph, being black and white, could not convey the healthy youthfulness of his complexion, and the rich color of his hair; and so although she was well prepared and totally in control of herself, and greeted him as an old family friend, she was all too aware of the little gasp, the intake of breath that caught her unawares, despite all her preparation, as she crossed the room toward him.

They chatted easily. Roland de Cygne came and joined them.

“I am sorry that your wife could not come with you,” Marie said.

“So am I. But her sister lost her husband recently, so she wanted to spend a little time with her. And she doesn’t really like to travel.”

“Hates the sea,” said his son. “She won’t come sailing with us.”

“And where are you staying?” asked Roland.

“I thought I’d stay a month, revisit old haunts, that kind of thing. So instead of a hotel, I took an apartment in the Eighth, overlooking the Parc Monceau. There’s a housekeeper who comes in each day. It suits me very well.”

“I should like to give a dinner for you,” said Roland de Cygne.

“That would be very kind.”

“Have you retired from teaching, to be away for so long?” Marie asked.

“I’m not ready to retire for a long time yet,” Hadley answered. “But I took a sabbatical. With my son in France, it seemed a good time. I’m doing a little monograph on the Impressionists in London.” He smiled. “Did you know that when he did all those paintings of the Thames, and the London fog, Monet was staying at the Savoy Hotel? Painted looking out of the window. He stayed at the Savoy for weeks. So much for the struggling artist!”

“I hope a stay at the Savoy formed part of your own research,” said de Cygne.

“As a matter of fact,” Hadley answered cheerfully, “it did.”

He still spoke excellent French. As she looked at young Frank, watching the little group with Claire, she thought how nice it must be for him to have a father he could feel so proud of.



The next ten days were busy. Marc, she and Claire took the two Hadleys for an evening in Montparnasse, starting with a drink at the expatriate Dingo Bar, and ending with a long meal at La Coupole. The Hadleys went on a long afternoon tour from the Louvre, across to Notre Dame and ending with a meal at a bistro in the Latin Quarter, but she was too tied up at the store to join them. For the same reason, she couldn’t go down to Fontainebleau with them, though she would have liked to. But she did attend the dinner for Hadley at the mansion of Roland de Cygne.

It was an interesting evening. He had invited both the Hadleys, a French diplomat and his wife, who had recently spent some years in Washington, together with their daughter, who was young Frank’s age. There was also a rich American lady who lived in a palatial apartment on the rue de Rivoli, and the daughter of a French count, whose family had an art collection, and being only seventeen, was obviously there as company for young Charlie, who had been allowed to join the grown-up party.

It was interesting to watch. At the drinks beforehand, Roland introduced everyone with charming grace, and they all seemed to find plenty to talk about. The diplomat and his wife were old hands at this sort of thing, but it was clear that Hadley was no stranger to smart social gatherings, and he and the rich American lady soon found people they both knew.

They sat ten at dinner, and Roland asked Marie to act as his hostess. Since the dinner was being given for Hadley, he was on her right, and the French diplomat on her left. Conversation was easy. Halfway down the table, young Charlie de Cygne, despite his strict upbringing, was staring in open-eyed admiration at the aristocratic young girl on his right, who was exceptionally pretty. Marie noticed, and so did Roland. Their eyes met, and they silently shared their amusement.

Only a certain number of people in Paris could give an aristocratic dinner of this kind. The setting, the family silver and china, the footmen behind every chair—hired in to be sure, but looking entirely in place in such a house—the wonderful food and wine: Was Roland, by putting her at the head of the table opposite him, showing her what he had to offer any potential wife? He might be.

Meanwhile, however, Hadley was sitting beside her, looking impossibly handsome, and she knew she was looking her best herself. It occurred to her, with a little frisson, that if she was going to make a discreet pass at Mr. Hadley Sr., then this would be a good moment to do it. If she could do so, that is, without it being visible to his son, or her daughter, or Roland de Cygne.

But how? Making light conversation with him was certainly easy. During the last quarter century, Hadley had acquired a rich fund of amusing stories, which made him a delightful dinner companion. She watched his friendly eyes, to see if they were indicating that he was also finding her attractive. It was hard to tell. More promising, he was fascinated that she ran a business.

“Since the war,” he said, “a lot of young American city women are going to work. But they never get to run anything. Is it different now, in France?”

“I think it only happens in family businesses,” she said. “But it wasn’t forced on me, and I must say I enjoy it.”

He asked her all sorts of questions about how she ran Joséphine, and her answers seemed to impress him.

“I think you are remarkable,” he said, and she could see that he meant it. Good, she thought. She intrigued him. That was a start.

She asked him one or two innocuous questions about this wife of his, who didn’t like to travel. But she received only innocuous answers. Mrs. Hadley was a good wife and mother. She liked tennis. She had a talent for flower arranging. This was all information that might have been said about any wife, but it was not accompanied by any of the slight inflections that a man sometimes uses to hint that his wife is boring him. She suspected that, even if he were dissatisfied at home, he would never show it. But that was hardly to her purpose.

She reminded him of their visit to Giverny long ago, and he became quite enthusiastic about the subject. She caught a certain light in his eye as he remembered that summer day, but whether it was engendered by herself or by the garden she wasn’t sure.

She also learned that he would be remaining in Paris for another three weeks before taking the liner back to America. So if she was going to spend time with Mr. Hadley while he was in Paris, she had better do it soon.

“Would you like to look over the store?” she suddenly suggested. If he was intrigued by the idea of her business, that seemed a promising venue. Taking him around the offices and the storerooms opened up all sorts of possibilities for moments of private intimacy.

“Yes,” he said. “If it’s not too much trouble, I should.”

“Then telephone me at my office tomorrow,” she said. “I need to check my appointments, but we can arrange a time.”

She felt decidedly pleased with herself. Whether he had understood her design and was complicit she wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. She just needed to get him to herself.

A new course was being served. With a charming smile, she turned to talk to the diplomat on her left.



The next day she casually asked Claire if she had any plans for seeing young Frank that week, and learned that she was taking him to a fashion show at Chanel the following day.

“It’s a small afternoon show for some of her customers, but he’s never been to such a thing.”

Perfect. With Claire and Hadley Junior otherwise engaged, she would have his father entirely to herself. She smiled at her daughter kindly.

“Enjoy yourselves.”

So she was more than a little surprised and vexed, an hour later, when instead of a call from Mr. Hadley, she received a visit from her brother.

“Hadley just called me. He’s asking if he can see us. Just you and me. Privately. He wonders if we could meet at his apartment. It’s not far.”

“I suppose so. When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”



The apartment was on the third floor, in a big, ornate mansion block. It had a handsome double salon whose windows looked over the leafy, well-tended walks of the Parc Monceau. It was furnished in the rich style—heavy carpets and hangings, gilded ornaments, Louis XV furniture—so favored by the great banking families of the late nineteenth century. Not quite Hadley’s style perhaps, but he seemed to be enjoying it as a place to stay.

As soon as they’d sat down, he came straight to the point.

“We know each other well enough to be completely honest with each other,” he said, “so I want to ask you both. What are we to do about my son and Claire?”

Marie sat up sharply. She looked at Marc, who seemed quite unfazed.

“Are you suggesting they’ve …”

“No. My son assures me not, and I believe him. But he’s falling in love with her.”

“Have they really had time to be so much in love?” Marc asked.

“I don’t know. But the first thing Frank told me when I arrived was that he’s glad I’ve come, because he thinks he’s found the girl he wants to marry.”

“I’m against it,” said Marie.

“Why?” asked Marc.

“Because I don’t see young Frank in France for the rest of his life, and I don’t see Claire in America.”

“You’ve never been to America,” Marc pointed out. “By the way,” he asked his sister, “has Claire talked to you about this?”

“No. She hasn’t.”

“I’m surprised,” said Hadley.

“The young are strange,” said Marie crossly. “I don’t understand them.”

“What surprises me,” Hadley remarked, “is that neither of you have mentioned the question of religion. My son is not a Catholic.”

Marc shrugged. He didn’t care.

“Claire’s life has been a little unusual. One could say that she has been brought up to be both,” Marie said. And she explained the bargain that James Fox had originally struck with her father.

“I had no idea,” said Hadley.

“We must also remember that Claire has been brought up in England rather than France,” Marc added. “The cultures are closer than France and America.” He turned to Hadley. “You haven’t expressed your own view.”

“I haven’t got one,” said Hadley. “I know your family.”

“All too well,” said Marc drily.

“I’ve also had a chance to get to know Claire a little, and I like her very much.”

“Your son’s a good boy too,” said Marc. “None of us has anything against him.”

“Your son does you credit,” Marie agreed.

“The point is this,” said Hadley. “If my son wants to propose, and if Claire wants to accept him—which it seems none of us knows—what are we all going to do? Are we going to forbid it?”

Marc indicated that he wasn’t worried personally. Marie was silent.

“You know,” Hadley added quietly, “I can stop it. I could put my son on a boat to America tomorrow if it’s necessary.”

“You realize, don’t you, that if they marry, your son will probably take my only child three thousand miles away across the ocean, where I shall never see her, or my grandchildren. Quite apart from the fact that I need her at the store.”

“Then perhaps I should act,” said Hadley.

Marie shrugged.

“Let her decide for herself,” she said miserably.



The next few days were not easy for Marie. It was as though a spell had been cast over the last three months. The shock of the first encounter with Frank Hadley Jr., then the excitement of his father’s arrival, had blinded her to the cold, grim reality that if her daughter fell in love with young Frank, he would take her away forever and she would be alone for the rest of her life. And when she thought of that, she cursed the young man’s coming.

She asked Claire what she thought of young Frank the next evening, when Claire was reading a magazine, and Claire looked up and said he was nice enough, which was clearly an evasion.

“Well, don’t go falling in love with him, unless you want to find yourself cut off from everything you love, in America—which all the Americans seem to be trying to get away from,” she said, as though she were joking, but they both knew she wasn’t.

“I’d like to see New York,” said Claire, casually, turning back to her magazine. And Marie wanted to continue the conversation, but realized that it was no good, and silently cursed the fact that the little scene in the garden at Fontainebleau had left her, forever, in a false position with her daughter.

She wished there was someone to comfort her, but Marc was no real support, and she didn’t want to share her thoughts with de Cygne. And Hadley didn’t call.



It was three days after the meeting that she went to Hadley’s apartment. She really hadn’t meant to. She hadn’t planned it at all.

She’d had a lunchtime meeting with a designer who had a little studio on the rue de Chazelles, just above the Parc Monceau. As she came out, she saw that despite the fact that it was November, it was a bright afternoon with a wintry sun in the sky, so she decided to walk through the park, as she had done so many times as a child, and continue down to the boulevard Haussmann and across to her office.

And having decided that, it was only a very small detour to ring the bell of Hadley’s apartment, in case he’d like to walk with her in the park.

He was in. He came straight down.

The park was such an elegant little place, with curling walks, and statues discreetly placed upon lawns or under trees. In the morning, nannies wheeled prams there, and rich little children played, but it was nearly deserted now. There were still golden leaves on many of the trees.

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “I almost called you. I realized afterward what a terrible thing it must be for you that my son might take your daughter away, and I wasn’t sure what to do.”

“I shall feel very lonely. But … It’s her life, not mine.”

He offered his arm. She took it. They walked a little way.

“Our families have seen a few things together,” he said.

“Have we?”

“I was thinking of the time, all those years ago, when Marc got in trouble with that girl about the baby …”

“The baby was adopted in England by a very good family, so she’s all right,” Marie remarked. “She’s probably a happily married Englishwoman by now.” She smiled. “That’s one bit of the past that can be left to rest in peace. I never even knew her name.” She sighed. “It’s amazing what we don’t know.” She walked on with him in silence for a little way. “Talking of the past, did you know I was in love with you in those days?”

He hesitated.

“I thought that, maybe a little.”

“It was more than that.”

“Oh.”

“Do you mind?” She looked up at him.

“No. I’m very flattered.” He paused. “You probably didn’t know that Gérard warned me off.”

“He what?”

“Well, you know, wrong religion, America not where the family wanted their only daughter, and all the rest. He was perfectly nice about it. I never liked him much, but he didn’t accuse me of seducing you or anything. Well, not quite. He found us in the grotto in the Buttes-Chaumont, if you remember.”

“Gérard.” She shook her head in mystery. Gérard, who’d been betraying her since she was a child. She might have cried out, “May he rot in hell!” though she did not. But she stopped walking for a moment, and stared at the ground. Hadley put his arm around her to comfort her, and neither of them moved. Then she indicated that they should walk on, and he offered his arm again, and this time she clung to it so that her head rested against his shoulder.

“You know,” she said, “I always felt that I missed my chance. So if Claire wants to go away to America with Frank, I can’t stand in her way. I don’t want her to miss hers.”

“I’m sorry I caused you pain,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if I would have proposed. But I might have.”

“It’s nice of you to say so.”

“It’s true,” he said simply.

They had crossed the park now, to its eastern corner, where there was a pond, partly enclosed on one side by a charming Roman colonnade. It was a romantic place.

Marie straightened herself and turned her face up to him.

“You know,” she said with a smile, “we could make up for lost time. While you are here in Paris.”

He stared at her.

“Are you suggesting …?”

“It’s nice to close unfinished history.”

“No doubt.”

She could tell from the way he said it that the idea was not at all unattractive to him. That was something, at least.

“I’m a married man.”

“You’re in Paris. Nobody will know.”

“There are things to think of,” he said.

“One can think too much.”

“One can think too little. And what about my son and your daughter? If they were to marry?”

She shrugged.

“It’s good to keep these things in the family.”

“Only a French person could say that.”

“We’re in France.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“Marie, I swear to God I’d like to. But I can’t.”

“Let me know,” she said, “if you change your mind.”

But he never did.



In May 1925, Mr. Frank Hadley Jr. and Mademoiselle Claire Fox were married in Fontainebleau. The bridegroom’s father came across the Atlantic to attend the wedding. He could stay only a few days. But everything went off very well.

The following week, Marie received a visit from her friend the Vicomte de Cygne. He was looking very spruce and handsome in a pale gray suit, with a flower in his buttonhole.

He asked her to marry him. She asked for a little time to consider.