Brilliance (9 page)

Whenever there was a piano available in a rented hall she now played for the arrival and departure of patrons. She would also play if there was a long sequence of slides when music would help to convey the mood of what was being shown. Daniel always made sure that she took a bow at the end of a performance and she was always enthusiastically applauded. By now she had made a variety of masks in the same style and wore one in a different colour for every day of the week.

She had followed Daniel’s advice by staying in cheap lodgings. These places were not always as clean as she would have liked, but sometimes she had to make do with whatever was available. She paid all her own expenses and shared the cost of the meals that they ate together in inexpensive places. As a result, she still had plenty of funds in her purse, supplemented by the wages that he paid her every Saturday night, which he had raised after she had proved her worth. It meant that she was still able to avoid drawing anything from her bank account, which she was afraid might be traced in some way by Isabelle’s spying detectives. More than once she thought she was being followed, but each time it was a false alarm.

She knew Daniel had been making some adjustment to his projector, working on it whenever he had time to spare, but when he finally showed her the result she was amazed. He had fixed several slides in such a way that by moving them through swiftly he made the full face of a baby change from crying, showing two teeth in the lower gum, to a radiant smile and back again.

‘That’s wonderful! It’s so real! Just as if the baby were there in person instead of on a screen. Only the noise of bawling is missing.’ She shot him a wary glance. ‘You’re not expecting me to do that, are you?’

He laughed. ‘Do you think you could?’

Her sense of humour triumphed. ‘I can try, but for the happy pictures I’ll have to coo. I don’t think I could manage a baby’s chuckle.’

They tried it out that evening on the first audience. Immediately there were exclamations of dismay from the women.

‘That poor baby! What’s happening? The child shouldn’t be exploited like that!’ Several rose in their seats until baby’s happy cooing caused them to sit down again as it dawned on them it was some trick of the magic lantern and laughter resulted.

The baby slides were a continued success, although on one occasion a woman tried to hit Daniel with her rolled up parasol, accusing him of having the baby squashed into the magic lantern itself.

Lisette had been four weeks with Daniel and they were travelling on to a new venue one morning when they were held up briefly by a village wedding. The young bride and groom had emerged from the church to be followed by a swarm of merry guests, who completely blocked the road, some appearing to have started their liquid celebration early.

Daniel grinned and raised his whip in salute to the approaching bridal couple, who looked up with radiant faces at Lisette and him in the stationary cart. ‘Good luck to you!’ he called.

‘Every happiness!’ Lisette echoed with a wave, but at the sight of the loving looks the couple gave each other when they passed, he snatching a kiss, she was struck with such an explosion of heartache at what might have been for herself and Philippe that her carapace of numbness was shattered. For a matter of seconds she felt as if she might die from the pain of it. As if fighting her way out of an abyss of despair, which she had managed to keep at bay until now, she uttered a defiant and bitter statement as Daniel drove on again.

‘I’m never going to marry! I’ve recently had a lucky escape, no matter that it’s torn me to pieces, because it would have meant total unhappiness with someone unable to be true to me. I realize now that marriage is the end of freedom for a woman. Mine would have been a hateful trap! I hope that bride will be more fortunate than I ever would have been.’

Daniel listened keenly. He had gained more information about her reason for running away in that fierce declaration than from anything else she had ever said previously. It was more or less what he had guessed, but her bitterness had never before shown itself with such force. He turned his head calmly and met her fierce gaze.

‘I share your hope for the bride,’ he said evenly, ‘but personally marriage is not for me. There was someone once, but she married my best friend and so that was it as far as I’m concerned.’

She sensed that he wanted no expressions of sympathy. ‘Then we each have our own reasons for a single life,’ she answered quietly.

He nodded. ‘You weren’t the first woman wanting to ride out of town with me, Lisette, which was why I refused you at first. I have turned away quite a number holding romantic notions about the life that I lead.’ He did not add that these were usually women he had bedded or with whom he had had some dalliance. ‘I only relented in your case because you had reasons of your own for departure that had nothing to do with me personally.’

‘I’m so grateful that you did.’

She could understand that women found him sexually magnetic with his strong good looks and fine physique. Once she had glimpsed him changing his shirt and seen how his muscles rippled. At the end of the show there were often two or three young women – and others not so young – lingering with an excuse to chat with him. It was satisfying to know that she and Daniel were two independent people holding the same attitude.

Yet for her the incident of the wedding had done its damage and although she still remained totally dry eyed she could no longer keep at bay the terrible anguish that had been waiting to engulf her. Not being able to weep only added to her torment. She, who had been so easily moved to tears for her own or another’s sorrow in the past, could not find such relief in present circumstances.

Soon work was not the antidote it had been, for thoughts of Philippe came unbidden all the time. It was as if her memory had shut out that image of him with her stepmother, and now she could only remember the happy, loving times they had spent together. She began questioning whether the fault could have been hers. Should she have surrendered to him? Would that have put a stop to any affair with Isabelle before it had time to develop? Had she not convinced him how good life would be with just the two of them together for always? Perhaps in spite of all the tender words they had exchanged, he had never realized how fully she had loved him since that first meeting on the train.

One evening she was masked as usual and playing the piano while people took their seats when a tall young man entered. He was so like Philippe that her hands fell from the keys and she thought for one wild, heart-stopping moment that he had tracked her down to implore her to return to him. Then he turned his head and the likeness was gone. White-faced with shock, she resumed her playing, realizing with dismay that she might have run into his arms if the stranger had proved to be Philippe.

Daniel soon became aware of the change in Lisette. She rarely spoke and her normally healthy appetite waned. He guessed that abject misery had taken over from the anger and outrage that had sustained her until now. He decided to talk to her more than he had done before and hoped it would help to bring her through her present trauma. She was too lovely a girl to pine away for a lecher who did not deserve her. Her beauty was unusual, for she had a curiously fascinating face, even though now it had become wan, causing her cheeks to hollow, but her bodice swelled invitingly over her full breasts and her waist was a hand’s span. She also seemed totally unaware of how sensuous was her walk. Her long skirts tantalized him with thoughts of her slim legs and pale thighs. It amused him that she considered herself to be inconspicuous in her humbler clothes, for any full-blooded man would turn his head to look at her even if she were in sackcloth.

‘You’ve never told me where you were born or where you grew up,’ he said conversationally one morning after she had rehearsed the sound effects for a slight change of programme that evening. They were drinking coffee at a marble-topped table under a cafe’s green-striped awning. ‘All I do know is that it’s certain you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, as the saying goes.’

She was surprised, for except for those few minutes when they had briefly opened up to each other at the village wedding they had only ever talked about their work, topical events reported in the newspapers, things that had amused them during the day and anything else that was not on a personal level. He had never before shown any interest in her as an individual.

‘I suppose I did,’ she answered with a faint smile. ‘My mother died very soon after my birth and my father did not want me. He had hoped for a son. My dear grandmother in Lyon took charge of me until I was eleven and then I lost her too. After that I went to live with my father and stepmother in the family château, except when I was away at school. The best to come out of it all was that Papa and I became very close as father and daughter. It was as if the gap of my childhood years had never been and, as a bonus for him, my stepmother gave birth to a son not long before he died.’

‘That was good. You’ve certainly had some changes in your life. Mine ran along a more even plane in some ways, in that I grew up with three sisters in a large house in the heart of London. Unfortunately my relationship with my father was never good. He was a banker and highly respected in the City, but very set in his outlook and in his ways. It meant that he always saw me as a rebel and I never fitted into the mould of the son he wanted me to be. So, needless to say, we differed strongly over my choice of career. I moved out of the family home and only visited my mother and sisters there afterwards. Eventually he fell sick after losing her and we made up our differences not long before he died.’

‘Do you see your sisters often?’

He shook his head. ‘The family home was sold when my eldest sister, Angela, married a Scot and went to live in Edinburgh while the other two emigrated to Australia with their husbands.’

‘How scattered you all are now,’ she commented. ‘I’ve only one relative to care about, and he is my little half-brother, Maurice.’ She had become very fond of him, for he was an endearing baby, although she wondered now if he was indeed her father’s child. ‘He’d just started taking his first steps a few days before I came away. Now I shall never see him again.’

‘Maybe you’ll meet him in the future when he’s grown up.’

‘I should like that very much. I do hope so.’

They both found everything became easier for them after that conversation and she no longer felt any strain in Daniel’s company. Yet she was aware all the time of her true self being deeply buried in wretchedness and supposed he thought her a dull creature who had forgotten how to relax and to laugh. Maybe she had and would never feel anything but this tearing heartache again.

The magic lantern show had reached Rouen when one morning Lisette paused to raise her veil as she looked in the window of a bookshop, for she loved to read and liked to keep abreast of the latest titles. She did not know she had been recognized by somebody within the shop until the entrance door burst open and her name was called.

‘Lisette!’

She spun about in consternation and saw her friend from schooldays, who would have been one of her three bridal attendants. ‘Yvonne!’ she exclaimed in dismay. ‘What are you doing here? You don’t live in Rouen!’

‘Of course I don’t! I’ve become engaged to Claude and we’re staying with his parents at their town house here.’ She giggled. ‘They’re getting to know their future daughter-in-law. Claude and I are to be married in the autumn. But it’s you I want to hear about! Why on earth did you run off like that? I travelled with Violette and Sophie as arranged and when we arrived at your home everything was in turmoil.’ She glanced about her. ‘We can’t talk here. Let’s go into the cafe over there.’

She hustled Lisette across the street, talking all the time. In the cafe she ordered a pot of coffee and then rested both arms on the table, looking across at Lisette expectantly. ‘Now tell me everything.’

Lisette had no intention of telling her anything. They had always been good friends since first meeting at school, but Yvonne found it difficult to keep secrets in spite of good intentions.

‘There’s nothing much to tell,’ Lisette answered guardedly. ‘I just decided that I didn’t want to marry Philippe after all.’

‘Why didn’t you just tell him? He was so upset!’

‘Upset or angry?’ Lisette queried dryly.

‘Both, of course. What did you expect? As for your stepmother—’ Words seemed to fail Yvonne and she threw up her hands expressively.

‘I can guess. She was hysterical with rage.’

‘You’re right. I’ve never seen anyone so violently angry.’ Yvonne sat back in her chair while the coffee was served and then leaned forward again. ‘She swore us to secrecy immediately, saying that if you failed to return within the next twenty-four hours an announcement would be made that the marriage would not be taking place.’

‘I thought she would have said that I was ill or indisposed to give more leeway for me to reappear.’

‘She did not dare take such a risk. Suppose people had seen you or knew where you had gone? In any case Sophie and Violette agreed with me that by the time evening came she and Philippe seemed to have gained some idea between them as to why you had vanished so suddenly. We all knew how besotted you were with him and you would never have given up marrying him so suddenly unless something very untoward had occurred.’ Her face was consumed by curiosity. ‘So do tell! Why did you run away?’

‘I’ve given you a reason. It was a sudden decision, that’s all I can say.’

Yvonne sat back in disappointment. ‘It was very foolish of you. I think you panicked. Now I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Madame Decourt has declared that she will never receive you at the château again. The doors will always be closed to you. But perhaps if you apologized to her—’

Lisette shook her head determinedly. ‘I have no intention of ever going back there. I have begun a new phase in my life and soon I hope to have a small home of my own until I inherit my grandmother’s house in three years’ time. I also feel well equipped to start a career.’