Girl in the Afternoon (19 page)

“I'll need an answer soon,” she said, mustering what authority her age and position afforded. “Lady Arrington has already agreed, and she is awaiting my reply.”

“You should have consulted me first.” Auguste didn't look up. “Let her wait.”

What he couldn't say was that he didn't want to make any more decisions concerning Aimée right now. He regretted the ones he'd already made, and he didn't need his maman staring at him with her accusatory look while he muddled over another.

*   *   *

Two
weeks went by, and still, nothing came from Auguste in the way of an answer.

Aimée and Madame Savaray moved through their days with increasing anxiety. Aimée did not eat as much as she should, and Madame Savaray ate more than was good for her. Neither one of them slept much.

Colette was still too wrapped up in her grief over the loss of Jacques to notice. She rarely sat in the parlor with them, and since her Thursday-night soirées had ended, she spent little time concerned with the details of the house. The servants were left on their own, and Madame Savaray couldn't help but notice that they were taking full advantage.

But this was no time to worry about the servants. Aimée's middle was thickening. There was no rounded stomach yet, but her condition would be obvious soon. Madame Savaray worried she would compromise the baby if she kept tightening her corset. A proper, expandable corset would have to be purchased, and that would be the end of hiding anything.

Madame Savaray decided she must go to the factory, to Auguste's office where everyone could see she had come on important business. He wouldn't dare send her away, and she wouldn't leave without an answer.

Madame Savaray sat on the hard, wooden chair opposite Auguste's desk. She hadn't been to the factory in years, and as she listened to the rhythmic clank of the thin metal discs on the bobbinet machines, she remembered the feel of a perfect strand of thread between her fingers. She missed that life.

“I've booked Aimée's passage.” It was a risky thing to say, but she had no other choice. Aimée had to go. “I've heard these new paddle steamers make the trip from Calais to Dover in under two hours.”

For a moment, the balance of power swung between mother and son. Auguste leaned back with his hands clasped across his stomach. His maman wore a steadfast expression that he recognized from his childhood. It was the one she wore when she would tell him, in that unwavering voice, exactly how a thing was going to be. He looked out the window where a pigeon perched on the sill, cocking his head as if listening in on them. The truth was that Auguste was grateful the decision had been made for him. Sending Aimée away was the sensible thing to do; he just couldn't be the one to do it.

“Very well,” he said, finally. “Have you told Colette?”

“Of course not. That's your concern.” Madame Savaray stood up, clutching her reticule, so relieved it was all she could do not to circle around the desk and kiss her son's cheek.

Auguste watched his maman, smiling, her head bobbing ever so slightly to the rhythm of the machines. He remembered how huge she had seemed to him as a child, towering overhead, a deep resonance to her voice that gave her an almost brutish quality. He had found comfort in her strength. He had thought his great maman was capable of anything.

Leaning forward, he wondered if he'd missed, all these years, what an asset she was to him. “I will write to Lady Arrington myself,” he said. “I will want to know how Aimée is getting on.”

“Of course.” Madame Savaray waved her hand over the desk. “Hand me a pen. I'll write out the address.”

She had worked this part out also, with Henri. It was his idea. He said he knew a woman in England who would help them. “How well do you know this woman?” Madame Savaray had asked, and he'd said well enough. “And what makes you think she'll lie for us?” she'd demanded. “Because she's good at it,” Henri had said, and they'd left it at that.

Madame Savaray wrote the address on a piece of paper, and pushed it in front of Auguste.

*   *   *

Aimée's
departure was on a Friday. Madame Savaray had made sure of that. Auguste would have to be at the factory to inspect the week's finished products. He had given Aimée a hasty good-bye on his way out that morning, a nod, and a word of advice about obeying Lady Arrington. Colette was bothered she hadn't been consulted on any of this, but not enough to protest, and certainly not enough to mention it to Auguste. Her daughter was no different from the rest of them, her entire life subject to the decisions of a man.

In the vestibule, the trunks already loaded, Colette looked over her daughter's shoulder into the street. It surprised her how difficult it was to say good-bye.

“I never cared for the English,” she said. “They're much too stiff if you ask me. Regardless, I'm sure you'll manage.”

Madame Savaray hovered behind them, puffing air over her bottom lip.

“At the very least, it will be a change of scenery,” Aimée said, looking out into a day that was bright and chilly and promising.

“A dreary one, but a change.” Colette reached for Aimée. It wasn't her usual way, but an embrace seemed the proper thing to do when one's daughter was going abroad for an indefinite period of time.

Taken aback, Aimée leaned in and awkwardly returned the hug. It was then that Colette noticed her daughter had put on a little weight; there was some substance to her chest now. She pulled away. Aimée's complexion was rounder and rosier than she'd ever seen it. “Filling out.” She gave Aimée's stomach a little pat, and Aimée winced. “Maybe you'll find an Englishman for a husband.”

“I'm sure I will not.” Aimée noticed the delicate spider veins running through her maman's temples, and the thin, bruised skin under her eyes. Her maman looked fragile, which was startling, and for a moment it worried Aimée to leave her.

Madame Savaray pushed her way between them, gave Aimée a vigorous hug, and turned her toward the door. “Best be getting on.”

Before stepping into the carriage, Aimée looked back. Her
grand-mère
and her maman stood side by side on the threshold, her
grand-mère
's magnificent black hair turning midnight blue in the sunlight. Aimée gave her a look of deep gratitude, returned by a sharp nod from Madame Savaray. A bond of trust and secrecy had formed between them. They were in it together, that they knew. But neither knew what threatening emotions lay ahead, what helpless, intolerable pain might have to be endured. They could only hope to come through it.

*   *   *

After
the carriage pulled away, Madame Savaray hurried inside, but Colette stayed on the doorstep watching the commotion in the street. A white-haired man with a large dog stepped into the road, a carriage halted, and the horse swished his thick mane and slapped his tail against his back.
All these people coming and going,
she thought,
lives being lived.
A shout echoed. Handcarts rattled by, filled with the last of the root vegetables, pushed by strong-armed women. Colette imagined these women enduring the hardships of life with the same relentless strength with which they pushed their carts. How simple, she thought, to throw oneself into a job. Haul something heavy. Dig potatoes. Survive.

She turned, and the sun slipped away from her face as she stepped back into the house. For a long time she stood in the dim, cool hall listening to the silence. She wanted to be young again, with all the possibilities of a future. She wanted to be going far away too.

Instead of heading to her room, Colette went into the parlor where Madame Savaray sat looking out the window. The old woman's chin was tilted up, and Colette could see the protruding muscles along her neck, and her paper-thin skin hanging under her chin.
How miserable to be old,
Colette thought, sitting on the sofa and straightening her shoulders.

“A cup of thick, warm chocolate might comfort us,” Madame Savaray said.

“Yes.” Colette smiled. “It might.”

For a brief moment they looked at each other, and then looked away, aware that Aimée had always been the buffer between them. Without her there was a danger of things becoming too personal.

They became aware of something else too, something obvious yet profound. They were aware of how mundane and tedious their lives had become. And how neither one of them had anything of meaning, whatsoever, to do.

 

Chapter 22

Instead of taking a train north to Calais, and then a boat across the English Channel, Aimée took the train from Paris to the station at Fontainebleau. It was strange to go such a short distance, and travel into an entirely different life. A passage across the sea would have made it feel more believable, or at least more momentous.

Aimée sent her trunks ahead in the carriage and walked, following the Seine, weaving her way under massive oak trees, tall and ordered like sentinels along the river. A bitter wind blew off the water, but the sun was shining, and Aimée didn't mind the cold. She paid close attention to the gray-green color of the river, to the bursts of white sunlight on top, and the cool blues of the sky. Yes, this was where she would come and paint every day, as long as the weather, and her condition, permitted.

She cut through a meadow that had lost its summer luster, past rows of mud walls tangled with massive grapevines, and out onto a road where she'd been directed by the porter at the station.

A few kilometers down the road, she came to a stone cottage overgrown with Virginia creeper. When she stepped up to the door, an enormous black dog bounded out, barking uncontrollably. Leonie was right behind him, grabbing at the scruff of the dog's neck, scolding in a deep, warning voice. Then she wrapped her arm around Aimée and pulled her through the door.

“This is Laertes.” The dog had calmed down, and Leonie rubbed the back of his head. “He followed Jacques and me home from the village one day. Wouldn't leave our sides, and then the butcher threw him a bone from his cart as he drove by, and this fool dog thought we were the source of food. We've been stuck with him ever since.” Leonie spoke with a quiver of nerves. “I don't know where Henri and Jacques have gone to. They must be outside. Come, I'll show you the house.”

Aimée followed Leonie into the drawing room, Laertes sniffing her from behind. Leonie seemed nervous, almost skittish, and Aimée found she was nervous herself.

“It's not very large,” Leonie apologized, looking around as if this had just occurred to her. “But after our apartment, it feels utterly indulgent. All these rooms, and there's a view of the river from the upstairs.”

Aimée smiled, and told Leonie it was lovely, which it was.
Humble,
she thought to herself, but she didn't mind that.

The rest of the house consisted of a kitchen and dining room opposite the drawing room, and two upstairs bedrooms with a dressing room adjoining them. The bigger room was Henri and Leonie's, with a bed in the corner for Jacques. The nude painting of Leonie hung—boldly, seductively—on the far wall opposite their bed.

The smaller room would be Aimée's, with a chair, a desk, a washstand, and a wardrobe. Her trunks had already been placed at the foot of the bed, and she wondered if Henri had done this for her, or if the porter had carried them up.

She walked to the window—noting the tidy landscape on the wall opposite her bed. There was a view of the river, just as Leonie had said, and of a weedy garden with an ancient, knotty plum tree, the ground still littered with rotting fruit.

On the train ride, Aimée had felt gloriously independent, leaving home, leaving her parents. How ironic it was that her sin was what had finally gotten her out. But now that she was here, it was impossible not to accept the full truth of her situation. She was utterly dependent, and there would be no privacy in this small house. If the winter wasn't too harsh there was always the outdoors, but in her condition she wouldn't be able to go into the village. She certainly couldn't be seen at church. And her friend, who stood hovering in the doorway, was not just a friend anymore. Aimée was now beholden to Leonie; she would be the mother of her child. What a change in the roles they once held.

“Are you all right?” Leonie asked, sensing Aimée's hesitation, and wanting, very much, for her to feel at home.

Aimée nodded, but she didn't turn from the window. She'd just spotted Henri and Jacques coming up the path, both dressed in brown trousers and white shirts, Jacques's wrinkled and spotted with grass stains. The boy was dragging a stick in the dirt and holding tight to Henri's hand. They were talking excitedly, both faces lit up, smiling.

It startled Aimée to see Jacques happy. She'd imagined him scowling and lonely. It had been only a few months since he'd been taken from his home. How quickly children accept what they're given.

“I hear Henri,” Leonie said. “Come, let's go down. Jacques will be so excited to see you.”

She hurried down the stairs, while Aimée paused to glance at herself in the mirror, smoothing her hair, aware of the change in her body, her fuller chest and rounder face. For once, she looked almost pretty.

From the hallway, Aimée watched Leonie hold the door open for Jacques, who came skipping in with Henri right behind, Laertes leaping and wagging his tail. When Aimée stepped forward, Jacques halted at the sight of her. Then he spun around and buried his head in Henri's legs.

“Come, come,” said Henri softly. “It's your
tante
.”

They had decided to refer to Aimée as Jacques's
tante
. It might confuse him at first, but he was only three years old; he'd quickly forget she used to be his sister.

Aimée crouched down. “Jacques,” she said in the same soft voice Henri had used. “I've missed you so very much.”