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(Lest They Leave - Chapter 7)
It was Charles himself who came to pick her up at the Dubois mansion that afternoon. On one hand, Sylvie begrudged him that he’d put Edgar out of commission half a workday, their chauffeur loved the automobile, after all; on the other, it made her feel unusually valuable, like a treasure you must pick up yourself, to ensure its safety. After exchanging a few pleasantries with monsieur Dubois and taking Armand aside for a second, talking to him in hushed whispers that made Sylvie slightly anxious, he nodded towards the car, not the backseat but the front. Armand waved at her as she climbed in. She was going to wave back once she’d made herself comfortable, but by then he’d already turned away along with his father, monsieur Dubois’ hand a jovial weight on his shoulder.
Sylvie’s hand fell to her lap.
They drove down the long, tree-lined driveway in silence, Charles and her. She didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell. She’d have been surprised if he had. Yes, he would have given her a right scare, and Sylvie hated that jolt of fright. Didn’t he ever feel that way? Or was he truly that untouchable? Immovable. Steadfast and strong.
“How is it coming along?” he asked; even his questions were demands, orders. Answer me.
Sylvie was going to assume he meant the painting, at the same time painfully aware that they could be talking about the model in the same breath. Charles had his agenda, you couldn’t tell her otherwise and she’d accepted that, without objection at first. And at second, what about that? While she wanted to please her brother, oh, while she couldn’t escape the part of her that yearned to do so desperately and unquestioningly, she was beginning to feel a keen urge to also please herself, now. That nameless courage without an origin. It only had a named trigger. Armand.
“It’ll look like him eventually,” she replied, her cheerfulness totally affected. It sounded like a rattle rather than a chirp. If Charles took note of it, he didn’t comment on that either – or he didn’t give a flying fart. It would track. She turned her head to look out the window of the passenger side door, thinking that even if the two of them were looking out the same front window, they wouldn’t be seeing the same thing. They didn’t have the same eyes, in the end. She’d thought differently when she’d arrived in Paris, weeks and weeks ago, but time would tell; not all differences could be bridged.
“So, he’ll be happy.” Charles’ voice was a low hum, like the rumble of a beast, that deep. Cats purring sounded like that, but the same cat that was purring away one moment could be biting your hand the next. That Sylvie knew. It didn’t mean there was nothing to fear.
Besides, he didn’t care about Armand’s happiness. Not like she did.
“He will if I am,” she remarked, blinking at the landscape passing by, fields and forestry spots turning lush green as summer drew closer and closer. She wasn’t sure Charles would understand, how Armand was so attentive to her needs and wishes, she barely understood it herself, but she felt it deserved mention. Because she loved that about him. She loved the care he took. The care he showed.
“As long as you do your part,” Charles said. Do your part, it meant. His care was truly always in the imperative, huh; she remembered them as children, running through the house, she was smaller but faster and he was yelling after her, don’t run, don’t act so wild, you’ll hurt yourself.
They were still talking about the painting, of course.
“It’s an art, not a business, didn’t you know?” Whereas her own care was always followed by a question mark.
His hold on the steering wheel tightened and he hit the accelerator with his foot, the car jumping forward so her whole nervous system awoke. It was thrilling at the same time as it was frightening. Maybe if he’d taught her to drive or, what did she know, paid someone else to teach her, you’d think he had the necessary resources, her breath wouldn’t be caught in her throat like a lump.
Now, she just sat next to him, not knowing what or how. As ever, the what and the how, right?
“Art is a business. And business is an art, Sylvie,” was his retort. Then, an order – like a full stop to a sentence. “Just stay focused.” It wasn’t the painting they were talking about anymore, maybe it never had been.
The rest of the way back to Paris, they passed in utter silence and at high speed.
Luckily, Edgar wasn’t benched for very long. Already the following week, they could return to their little game of exploring the city together. Next on Edgar’s all but unending list of sights to see in Paris, when you hadn’t seen Paris before, but also if you had, evidently, was the Arc de Triomphe, like a flourishing finish to the Champs-Élysées. He’d drive Sylvie there, and then pick her up at the eastern end of the boulevard, where she’d walk on her own, taking the opportunity to stroll past all the high-end boutiques and venues.
It was a bright, spritely Monday in May, and just the drive itself was a treat, Edgar let her sit with him in the front seat, which was an entirely different experience than driving with Charles. By contrast, Edgar was a habitual and beau driver whose pace never went beyond leisurely and whose temper never showed in his driving at all. His conversation was minimal, but interesting. Did she know for how long Citroën had advertised on the Eiffel Tower? Who knew for how long they’d keep it up. That car they’d just passed was the newest model, the 5CV. Fantastic specimen! She liked his raving about automobiles, she liked that he shared it with her, that she could be more than just the master’s sister to him.
Should she tilt her head to the side and look at it for a very long time askew, she could almost imagine he treated her like a daughter. Then, regretfully, she wondered whether he had children of his own somewhere, real sons, real daughters. Naturally, he never mentioned them to her, if he did.
They didn’t have that kind of relationship.
No, the kind of relationship they had, had him dropping her off on the big square around the Arc and promising to wait for her at the other end. “Take as long as you’d like, mademoiselle,” he said in goodbye, firing up the car and taking off, disappearing quickly in the steady flow of vehicles coming this way and that. She followed it with her eyes for some time, then turned her attention on the Arc de Triomphe itself. It was very big and very excessive, of course a man built that. She didn’t actually like it all that much, but walked a round regardless, for propriety’s sake. So that she could say to Edgar later, I’d forgotten how ugly that thing is. He’d roll his eyes at her when he thought she wasn’t looking, wouldn’t he? Sylvie would continue, but it is – and secretly love that he opposed, saying, it’s Paris, mademoiselle, like all of Paris was a shining wonder.
Because, at the end of the day, they would both agree that it was.
That was what she thought, as she twenty minutes later finally did stroll down the Champs-Élysées. Looking at the booming shops here, she remembered Charles mentioning the ghostly atmosphere that had existed in the aftermath of the Great War, no one able to afford the high-end locations, most people not even able to afford their inner Paris homes what with rationing and inflation. It had been another reality back then, to think they’d come back from that. She drew her coat more tightly around herself. Boarding school had, then, felt a world away. She’d been spared so many of these things.
And been removed from even more, as a result.
Somewhere in the smack middle between the Arc de Triomphe and the Sorbonne, her feet were beginning to complain in her nice, low-heeled walking shoes, the leather dyed a beautiful red colour to match her tea gown and the thin scarf wrapped twice around her neck, the small beret on her head. She was a real picture, she was, but her legs were also buzzing and there was still a mile to go before Edgar could come to her rescue. So, Sylvie afforded herself a break and stopped in front of the next major building, a small theatre that she’d never noticed was there before, was it new? Then again, it could’ve been here forever, it wasn’t because Charles had ever taken her to the theatre before, when she visited.
That, definitely, was new.
Théâtre Femina it was called, and Sylvie liked the name for self-evident reasons, she had studied her Latin well once, enough so she walked over to the façade where the posters for the various plays currently on stage had been put on display in large glass frames. She looked them over. And she paused.
The elegant building with the small balcony like a unibrow over the entrance felt suddenly a little more intimate. The third poster was a drawn portrait of an actress in full Oriental garb, portraying Cleopatra with the distinct wig, and the words Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, May 27th written at hip-level. The actress was, without a doubt, even with her red hair hidden away, Eloisa Paolo, the portraitist had put effort into portraying her most distinct features, the sharp line of her lips, the edge of her smile and her heavy-lidded eyes. There could be no doubt.
Was this her new play? Was this her new venue? Charles had said nothing more of it since their conversation in the library, he hadn’t told her who Eloisa was playing, where they would be going, even just whether they were going at all like he’d promised. It was simply a moment in time that had existed between them, a possibility, a chance.
Now, here she stood, and Eloisa Paolo was a real thing in front of her eyes.
Deep breaths.
She studied the manner of the artist who’d drawn the poster critically for a moment, mostly because she wanted most of all to tear the thing down and take it with her, hang it in her room, fall asleep gazing upon it, and she found that while he had taken care with accentuating Eloisa’s most memorable features, he had been lazy with the colouring, he hadn’t put the right love into her general outline. He’d had an opportunity to caress this woman with his pencil, and he hadn’t taken it. Sylvie almost couldn’t forgive him for that.
There was nothing she wanted to do more, herself.
Her fingers dug into the fabric of her mink, her feet were irrelevant at this point, she’d walk all the way to Rome if necessary, to see Eloisa again. To have another drink, another ciggy with her, another one of her kisses, sharp-edged like the line of her mouth in that cheap piece of artwork.
Horsefeathers, she was really stuck on this girl, wasn’t she?
Swallowing hard, she turned away from the front of the theatre, looking down the way she was supposed to go now, to get to Edgar, to get home. It seemed ludicrous. What was the point, she’d go see the great Eloisa Paolo and the great Eloisa Paolo would hang off her brother’s arm, and they wouldn’t be those kinds of lovers, but they’d be some kind of lovers, all right. Her brother and his actress. His. His.
Sylvie began walking, then, simply walked ahead blindly, following the bend of the road past nice-looking houses and storefronts. She didn’t see much of it. She didn’t see much of anything, she was busy chasing off Eloisa’s voice in her mind, don’t slap me. Little Sylvie. Chérie.
Deep breaths.
You have no idea.
If only she knew what it was that she didn’t know. If only she knew. If only she knew. All she could grasp was this deep-seated urge to make Eloisa not his, but her own. Even that, however, she understood so little of. It was just a feeling, but what a feeling!
At the end of her walk, an hour long and it left her feet in dire need of Claire’s blister treatments, she found Edgar parked near the Sorbonne, reading his regular paper, licking his thumb before turning a page. She must have looked tired as she approached, because he was quick to pack his things away and throw the door open – to the passenger seat again, not the back. Smiling at him gratefully, Sylvie climbed in.
Although she’d considered walking on forever, never going back to Charles’ house, never to darken his doorstep again, she’d realised, there would be no chance of seeing Eloisa on stage or elsewhere at all, if she did. The actress was too connected to him. Just as Sylvie was. Their one common denominator was her brother.
She hated it.
She wanted Eloisa to hate it, too.
The drive home was undertaken in complete silence, wholly thanks to her jealous mood and trust her, Sylvie hated that as well.
As the days went by and the calendar counted down to the end of May, Sylvie began waiting more and more restlessly for Charles to make good on his promise, invite her along to the performance, make arrangements to go, at least, or prepare her for the big night, any big night, really, as long as she got to see Eloisa again.
Nothing happened. On the morning of the 27th, a rainy Friday, he hadn’t brought it up yet. Several times, Sylvie had thought about sending Eloisa flowers herself and just bill him; slap slap, she’d have written on the card, but she didn’t dare, in the end. Well, imagine this, maybe Eloisa would appreciate someone being considerate of her stuffy nose and pollen allergies.
Maybe she wouldn’t.
She was busy getting dressed for evening, when he came to her doorway, leaning against it nonchalantly, and even before he opened his mouth to speak, Sylvie had figured him out. Now was the moment. Really, now? How long was he intending to give her?
“We’re going to the Théâtre Femina tonight,” he said, arms crossed over his chest, it was another order, and it was indisputable. “Eloisa’s play is premiering there.”
I know, she wanted to tell him, but the panic that seized her, because he was giving her less than two hours to get ready, made her say something far less wise-headed. “Tonight,” she repeated, stupidly. Dumbstruck. The opposite of herself. Sylvie bit her lower lip hard. He looked at her for a long moment, his gaze dark and bottomless, pitiless like Eloisa’s had been the first time they met. Oh, she hated that they suited each other so well. Even more, she hated that she didn’t understand one better than the other. Which meant, not at all.
Not at all.
“Yes, tonight,” he shook his head. “Didn’t you want to go?”
How did she express how achingly much she wanted to go without losing face completely. She’d already shown too much interest, hadn’t she, comparing Eloisa Paolo to Josephine Baker and having Josephine Baker lose. But, of course, the question was how much Charles noticed these things, it took care to notice, it took care to have an opinion on anything, and all he cared about was business, coffee beans and cush, if you asked Sylvie. Charles didn’t. It was all rhetorical. You said you wanted to go, did you lie?
She hadn’t been lying. She wasn’t lying now, instead she looked down, refusing to raise her eyes and look at him, though she could feel his attention on her like a heavy yoke. “I’d love to,” she replied.
“Meaning, there’s no problem,” he concluded, then after a second, “Get yourself sorted. No tea gowns this time, there’s a reception afterwards.”
Her heart was pounding. A reception?
A chance.
Then, she recalled that she’d promised to bring Armand along, but with such short notice, could he make it? Not to face the even greater dilemma; did she truly want him to be there, still? As if reading her mind, maybe for the first time ever, Charles smiled his wry smile and turned on his heel, making to leave. What he dropped on her was like a glass of ice-cold water in a nice, warm bed.
“I already invited Armand. He’ll be there in time to meet us, before we go in.” With that, he waved one hand dismissively and left, that easy.
Staring after him, Sylvie’s mind was spinning. Reception. Armand. Eloisa. Reception, Eloisa, Armand…
Yet, once her brother had left, Sylvie heard herself frantically call for Claire, who had just come off-duty and was in the middle of her clock-out routine, to be on her way home, but she came running regardless in just her black maid uniform and no apron, no white cap. “What is it, mademoiselle Gallard?”
Sylvie looked around at the clothes they’d found for her this very morning, before they knew anything, before Sylvie knew anything, and now it was absolutely out of the question. There was a reception! “You must help me find out what to wear tonight at the theatre,” she whispered, halfway excited, halfway terrified.
Not to forget, Claire could’ve left, receiving no retribution, she was in her full right to free time, but what she chose to do, and Sylvie beamed at her in answer, was to ask, “What colour, mademoiselle?” Her eyes didn’t inquire about anything else, but they wondered, openly.
“I don’t know, I don’t – Blue? Try blue!”
They both went on the hunt for the perfect blue dress, because monsieur Martin had certainly filled her closets with enough of them, he’d seen her eyes and thought his own private thoughts, it seemed. Finally, Claire pulled out a knee-length silk dress with silver sequins in thin stripes down the front, shining against the fabric, which was a soft, dusty blue, medium-hue with a paler blue underskirt. Flapper-style. The maid and her mistress looked at each other for a moment, then soundlessly agreed, that would be it. That was perfect.
Claire even stayed to help style her hair in rows of tight, rounded finger waves, the final result looking like a polished crown of gold. An elaborate hair piece. Or a picture out of the magazines. She also picked the blue hairpin to hold up the most trickily placed finger waves, the little glass pin glimmering in the light, sapphire-like. Looking at herself in the mirror, Claire peeking out from behind her, Sylvie studied herself. She actually looked quite beautiful.
Not that she had ever considered herself particularly unattractive before. Come now, she knew she wasn’t butt-ugly, but beauty in her eyes? It was something else. And here, she was almost embodying it. She beamed. Claire beamed with her. They were beaming together, in some sisterly bond.
Taking care with her clothes, Sylvie embraced the maid and held her close for a moment. “Thank you,” she murmured into her hair. The older woman pulled back first and met her eyes.
“Bon courage tonight, mademoiselle,” she answered. Sylvie didn’t know how Claire knew she’d need the courage, but she appreciated it.
So, tonight, she was the one to walk the maid out, when Claire had finally gotten into her civilian clothes and could go home to her chimneysweep husband and their young ones, not the other way around.
After that, it was only the wait.
When they arrived, by car, Edgar driving them right to the door, the front of the theatre on the Champs-Élysées was brightly lit, the poster of Cleopatra-clad Eloisa shining like a gilded engraving, they passed it by as they walked to the entrance, Edgar jumping out first to help Sylvie out of the automobile’s backseat, her older brother left to fend for himself. In the lobby, the coat check accepted their outerwear and left Sylvie’s beautiful dress on full display. She could feel a fair few gents’ eyes on her as Charles led her towards the balcony, where Armand would be waiting for them, she was told, at the loge Charles had bought tickets for, in this house he didn’t have one at his disposal by default. For some reason, she found that fitting. He didn’t own it here; Eloisa wasn’t a thing he’d bought access to. Here.
Noticing his gaze on her, Sylvie found that even Charles was admiring her tonight. It gave her a mixed feeling of elation and displeasure in the pit of her stomach. She looked up at him, catching his eyes, but he looked away once more without saying anything.
Neither did Sylvie say anything to him. She was too excited to manage coherency.
By the door to the loge, open now, awaiting them, stood Armand, dressed spiffily, his brown hint of curls for once not tampered down quite so much, she liked this natural look on him very much. Although she wanted to, she didn’t speed up when seeing him, but waited for Charles to take her the distance, even waiting for the two men to shake hands with some sombreness, before she stepped up to Armand and kissed both his cheeks, muttering to him under her breath, you look wonderful. He smiled his small, soft smile at her, as she drew back, catching on to the reference. Like a secret code language between them, words only they understood. Together.
She decided immediately that she was truly glad he’d come. After all, they weren’t exclusive, he’d said. Even in the dark, not knowing what he was allowing, she expected he would honour that sentiment and a part of her, the part she didn’t understand yet or maybe ever, was relieved. To the bone and to the core of her.
“All well?” Charles asked Armand, once Sylvie had found her place by his side again.
“There is some trouble in the distribution line we might have to discuss later,” Armand replied, and Sylvie realised, she’d never heard him talk business before this way, matching up to Charles fully. Her chest puffed from pride. Pride and a little bit of petty glee, he sounded completely competent, and the plantations in Abyssinia were under the Dubois’ family’s management, in the end; even Charles needed coffee from somewhere to run his coffeehouses. He had other providers, she knew, but the Abyssinian coffee was the most luxurious. Very fine and high-quality.
Armand had told her that first night, when they’d walked together in her mother’s congratulated gardens at home. Like a strange, uninvited but welcome afterthought, Sylvie wondered what her mother would have thought of Armand Dubois. Only the shipwreck of the Titanic on the bottom of the Atlantic could tell her, though, and that thing wasn’t going to talk, she was aware, Sylvie had tried talking to it for years, getting no answers.
“Later, then,” Charles agreed, turning towards Sylvie slowly. “She was all flustered when she heard you’d be here, Armand.”
“Is that true?” Armand asked, raising a sensitive eyebrow at her. She wondered if he knew better. She invited me herself, he meant, but kept quiet. Their moments in her studio in the Dubois mansion were their own, too. Private affairs.
“I hurried to dress in my finest,” she replied without really replying, smiling widely at him. Not exclusive, he’d said, so he shouldn’t be upset with her if she hadn’t dressed for him.
And he wasn’t. “I’ll be chasing guys away from you all night.”
“Hopefully not,” Charles cut in, looking irritated, at the same time as Sylvie said:
“They’ll be running in vain.”
It sounded a little bit like a love declaration and felt like one as well. A subtle, understated, two-edged love declaration, though she wasn’t sure to whom. Armand took it as such, stepping forward to take her hand and kiss it like some gentleman from the previous century. She beamed at him. Next to her, Charles was glancing down at his pocket watch, their father’s. The spare.
“Time to go inside,” he commented, ignoring their cash or check moment. Armand was the first to laugh. Sylvie followed along. Charles looked at them for a moment, then rolled his eyes and that was the youngest she’d seen her older brother look since her arrival in Paris. He was actually thirty-two for once.
Sylvie liked that, too, she thought, and she hated it at the same time. She hated how it all ended up in the same box as Eloisa’s kiss, Armand’s soft smile and other precious things, she’d collected since moving into the old townhouse where she still had some extent of family, that was the ghosts of her parents and the ghost of him, Charles.
The ghost of herself.
Armand released her hand, straightened up with a nod and extended his arm to her. She took it, letting herself be led in that direction instead.
The theatre looked like all theatres did on the inside, lush, red velvet seats and gilded ornaments along the edges of everything, the ceiling, the bannisters, a large chandelier that mimicked the one at the Opéra, but on a smaller scale, because Théâtre Femina was about a thirtieth of the Opéra’s size, of course. Sylvie sat down between the two men, her brother and her baby, on the first row, fishing out her opera glasses, though this balcony loge was close enough to the stage that they weren’t strictly necessary. But she wanted to see! She wanted to see her, Eloisa Paolo. She wanted to see her up close.
Once the dark fell over the audience, Armand reached out and took her hand, not in any possessive way, but with a soft brush of thumb over her knuckles, her tightly wrought fingers, gripping and creasing the playbill. Eloisa’s name was in there, so she gripped it harder.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
The curtain went up. After two overall placid actors doing the honours as Antony’s friends, Cleopatra with her train finally entered the stage and the world narrowed quickly down. If it be love indeed, tell me how much, Eloisa recited, like a question directly to Sylvie, her voice without flaw and without accent, too, how she shifted in and out of that, Sylvie simply couldn’t fathom. Her red hair was hidden beneath the short-style Egyptian wig, but even at this distance, it couldn’t be anyone else. No one wore themselves in that way, like some kind of costume. Some kind of makeup, to be changed and reapplied at will.
Feeling slightly lightheaded and therefore, yes, ever only because of that woman, letting go of Armand’s hand, Sylvie lifted the opera glasses to her eyes.