“Don’t cry,” Mathieu said, wiping away tears I had not realized I’d begun to shed. “We’re finally together now.”
I shook my head. I had to tell him that we weren’t and couldn’t ever be. But not right away. Surely I could steal just one afternoon. One more day to write about in my Book of Hours. One new set of memories to survive on for all the empty years ahead of me.
Chapter 45
At six that evening, everyone convened in the living room for cocktails, accompanied by puff pastry hors d’oeuvres filled with either salmon paté or cheese. Anna and Jules retired to the card table for a game of chess. Eugène sat at the piano but didn’t play. He turned his body from us and stared out the darkened window into the rain.
“This could turn out to be a surrealistic nightmare,” Picasso mused, as he sipped his gin, “if this storm never ends and we are all trapped here forever.”
“What a fabulous idea for a play,” Cocteau said. “The Endless Weekend. Ten very different people trapped in a castle. Ten small acts. The séance. The mudslide. The flooding. The hidden treasure. Picasso, imagine the sets.”
“I’ll get paper and pencils.” Madame shot up. “How exciting to create our very own drama out of our unfortunate circumstance.”
The idea of a play occupied everyone for the next forty-five minutes. All but Eugène got involved in plotting out the action, which mimicked what had occurred so far in the chateau.
When it came time to recreate the séance, Eugène finally stood up and joined the party.
“I don’t want you to include what Thérèse said.”
For the first time, I noticed his eyes were bloodshot and the glass he held in his hand shook a bit.
“It’s just a game, Eugène,” Madame said.
He laughed sardonically. “With Cocteau and Jules writing? It’s not a game. This thing will be performed on a stage six months from now, with Picasso turning the spirit of my fiancée into a hideous beast. I won’t have it.”
Picasso raised an eyebrow. “Don’t hold back on how you feel about my paintings.”
Eugène waved his hand. “You know exactly what I mean. Don’t pretend you are insulted, Pablo. You’ve discussed this yourself. You’re proud that you walked away from the kind of easy beauty that others still hold on to.”
Madame, ever the hostess, quieted Eugène down. “We won’t write about that part of the séance. We’ll make up another spirit who belonged to one of the other guests.” She looked around, her eyes alighting on me. “Delphine, do you have a spirit we can borrow?”
As I shook my head, Anna said, “Delphine’s spirit hasn’t moved on. She’s haunted by one who is alive.” Her voice was distant, her eyes unfocused. She looked as if she were in a trance again.
“How extraordinary,” Madame said. “Cocteau, we have to use that moment exactly. Anna coming in on the middle of all this commotion.” Then Madame turned to me. “Are you haunted, Delphine?”
“Not that I know of,” I said, as lightly as I could.
“No, she’s the one who does the haunting,” Mathieu said softly. I wasn’t sure anyone heard him but me.
It was one thing for all of them to come for a party and stay overnight but quite another not to have the choice about leaving. The entrapment was weighing on the group. While I should have been excited at the thought that Mathieu was trapped with me here, instead I was filled with a sense of dread. The more time we spent together, the more difficult it would be for me to let him go again.
Sebastian was only pretending to enjoy working on the play. He glanced over my way too many times and studied Mathieu’s face with too much scrutiny. I was waiting for my twin to question me, still not sure how I would answer his queries about what this man he’d never before heard of meant to me. I think he was secretly glad for the company staying longer. He and I had been here alone with Madame for almost a week now, and the hours passed more pleasantly for him with a houseful of guests.
By dinnertime, most everyone except Anna and me had imbibed too many cocktails. The meal was a complicated affair. Eugène was even moodier than he’d been earlier. Cocteau and Picasso were more ribald. Madame’s personality was exaggerated, her actions and speech a bit more theatrical. She seemed almost desperate for excitement.
The roast chicken was a bit overcooked and the potatoes a bit underdone, and I thought the wine was too dry. The air crackled with anxiety, although I couldn’t quite locate its fountainhead.
At some point, Madame asked Eugène—who was still sullen—about his next project. He was headed back to Egypt, he said. Madame regaled us with stories of her own time there, about how she had visited the pyramids and slept inside one of the tombs for two evenings.
“Talk about Surrealism,” she said, and nodded at Picasso. “Nothing about that experience comes close to anything in our reality. There were so many spirits residing in those stone walls we felt we were at a party.”
“Surely they weren’t all glad to see you,” Cocteau quipped.
“Surprisingly, none of them tried to frighten us away.”
Ever the gracious hostess, Madame asked Cocteau and then Picasso what they were up to next. And then she moved on to me. I was hesitant. I didn’t know who at the table other than Mathieu and my brother knew exactly what I was doing there. They’d all acted as if I were just another guest.
“I’m still in the midst of my current commission,” I said.
“Don’t be so coy,” Picasso teased. “A commission for whom?”
I looked across the table at Madame.
“For me. She does portraits that reveal the sitters’ innermost secrets.”
“Really?” Jules asked her. “You’ve decided to allow the world to see your secrets?”
“No, no. I brought Delphine here to help me find the chateau’s secret so I could discover its hidden treasure.”
“What a perfect sojourn for a treasure hunt. Storm and all,” said Jules. He turned to me. “How exactly do you suss out someone’s secret?”
I explained a bit, using the stock answer I’d worked out when my brother first began getting me commissions in Paris six years ago.
All but Anna and Eugène were fascinated and asked me quite a few questions. I was uncomfortable being the center of attention, especially when Picasso said, “I think I’d like to commission you to paint my portrait. I’d be curious what you might discover.”
I felt blood flood my cheeks. Picasso was famous for not sitting for any of his friends the way most artists in his circle did.
“And I’d also like to do that,” Jules said. “Maybe you could discover the enigma that disturbs me. A series of events in my childhood that I can’t quite remember.”
“Sounds like Sigmund Freud would be more likely to help you than Delphine,” said Yves Villant.
The conversation was lively, but I wasn’t enjoying it.
“I think I’d like to hire you, too. My secrets are not buried deep, but I think they’d make for an interesting portrait,” Cocteau said.
“A scandalous portrait,” Picasso added.