The Velvet Hours (18 page)

“You're right,” he said as he leaned forward to kiss me good-bye. “I'll write when I get to the military hospital.”

“I'll write you, too,” I promised.

“Finish your novel, daughter.” His words floated through the air as he let himself out. “Your mother's bookshelf is incomplete without it.”

*   *   *

When he shut the door, I turned back to find Marthe standing at the end of the hallway.

“Are you all right, Solange?”

“Yes,” I whispered. I wondered if she could hear the crack in my voice as I answered her.

“When a door is closed,” she said as she began walking toward me, “it means another chapter is about to unfold.”

I nodded as I struggled to fight back my tears. My sorrow at Papa's departure had taken me by surprise.

“Why don't we go look at where you'll be staying for the next few months? Giselle and I tried to make it as pleasant for you as we could.”

December 1939

T
he room could not have been more perfect for me. A rosewood desk. A side table with a pitcher and basin. A small cot made up in crisp, white linen. Above the bed, cut into the plaster, was a diamond-shaped window that reminded me of a kite. Its panes capturing a view of the changing sky.

“I hope it's to your liking,” Marthe announced as she waved me inside. I walked into the room while she remained standing at the threshold.

“You've made it so comfortable, thank you. I couldn't ask for a lovelier room.” In the corner, I saw Giselle had brought in my suitcase. She always moved so stealthily, her every movement nearly imperceptible as she navigated through the apartment.

“There's a small dresser for your clothes.” She pointed to a three-tier chest. “But I knew you'd enjoy the desk . . . I used to write all of my letters on it.”

A small sigh escaped her.

“Now I don't have the need to write as many . . . ,” she said as she stepped into the center of the room.

“I'm looking forward to having you here, Solange. I haven't had a houseguest in so long . . . ,” she told me as her fingers caressed her strand of pearls.

“And I'm grateful to you for your obliging my father. I would have stayed alone back at our apartment, but he wouldn't hear of it.”

“There's no reason for you to be alone. I have more than enough room for you.” She paused. “And I enjoy your company.”

I was surprised by her compliment. “And I enjoy yours. I'm glad Papa thought we'd make a good match.”

I lifted my suitcase onto the bed and unlatched it. On top was the wedding portrait of my parents.

I saw her eyes fall upon the photograph, her gaze weighted down by it like an anchor.

She looked up at me. “You look just like her, Solange.”

“Yes.” My voice softened. “Everyone says so.”

“I only met her twice . . .” Her voice was softer, gentler than I had heard it before.

“She must have been just a little older than you are now when she and your father last visited me here. She was pregnant with you.”

I felt a lump in my throat. I turned away from the portrait.

“Yes,” I answered her. “Papa told me.”

She lowered her eyes. “I suppose he must have.”

There was an awkward pause between us. I didn't know how to fill the air with a response.

Finally Marthe broke the silence.

“I don't believe in regrets, Solange. I believe in starting new chapters . . .” Her eyes were no longer somber, but filled with sparkle.

The writer in me appreciated the line.

“Let's eat out tonight,” she said, her eyes alight. “I'll tell Giselle she needn't prepare us dinner.”

“A restaurant?” I couldn't remember the last time I had dinner out. I was used to only nursing a cup of coffee and a croissant for hours when I took my notebook to write in a café. And Alex and I had met only a few times at the café near Place Saint Georges.

“And not just a brasserie. A real restaurant!” She clasped her hands. “We can mark our new start together with a glass of champagne!”

*   *   *

Marthe spent the next hour preparing for our little sojourn into the city. As I finished unpacking my case, I heard the water run in the bathroom. Then the patter of her footsteps across the floor.

I waited for her in the parlor, which gave me the chance to finally study the portrait of her without her being there. Nearly all of my prior meetings with Marthe had taken place with me seated in one of the velvet bergère chairs directly across from her. I hardly ever moved from that spot, as I had been invited to the dining room just once, and only recently had I gone into her bedroom when she showed me her letters organized by ribbon color. I desperately wanted to look at the portrait more closely, but always had found it difficult to take my focus away from Marthe when she was telling her story.

Now that I was alone, I treaded closer to the painting, my heartbeat escalating with each step.

I approached it cautiously. It appeared even larger with no one else in the room. Within the carved gilt frame, Marthe's energy and sensuality seemed to burn off her skin. I noticed how Boldini had her fingers pulling slightly on one of her sleeves, thus revealing her bare shoulder, and exposing her broad décolleté as though it were its own white canvas. Around her slender neck, he had painted her pearl necklace in exquisite detail, leaving the butterfly clasp hidden behind her hair.

I studied the brushwork. The swirls of pink and apricot paint. I looked at her face in its pinnacle of youth. The flirtatious glint in her eyes. I traced her profile with my eyes, trying to see if there was a marked change in how she now looked forty years later.

Even now, one could see the sharpness of her cheekbones, her straight nose, her long white neck. Her skin was certainly more feathered, and the jawline not as taut, but the beauty was still evident.

“Solange.” I heard her voice coming from the doorway. She stepped into the parlor. I turned to face her, but I was so surprised by what I saw I hardly recognized her.

Marthe was standing in the parlor wearing a pair of wide-legged trousers and a cream-colored, silk blouse, with her hair twisted back in a tight chignon. I had never seen her wearing anything other than her flowing silk dresses that went down to her ankles that echoed another time. But now, the woman standing before me looked thoroughly modern.

“Do you like them?” she said, patting down the placket of her pants.

“I sewed them myself.” She gleamed with an understandable sense of pride. “I was intrigued after I saw you wearing a pair during one of your visits. I sent Giselle out in search of the gabardine and the pattern.” She laughed. “I'm still handy with a needle and thread, aren't I?”

I walked closer. “You look smashing. I'm impressed.”

She had painted her mouth not in the rose pink she typically preferred, but a soft red.

Again my eyes ran over her.

“Really,
Grand-maman
, the trousers suit you so well . . .”

She let out a small giggle that made her sound far younger than her years. “Thank you, Solange. I've been looking for the opportunity to wear them.” She shook her head back, and the delight on her face was clear.

*   *   *

At the last moment, she had gone into a hall closet and retrieved a long fur coat. We took the elevator down, she and I. This was the first time we had ever left the apartment together.

She slipped it on as easily as if it had been one of her silk robes de chambre.

*   *   *

We walked through the streets, the sky heavy and gray. The air as crisp as apples. Both of us inhaled the night as though it were perfume.

“I can't remember the last time I walked in the snow,” Marthe said. “It brings life into my old lungs.”

She stood for a moment outside an awning and looked up. The ground was dusted with snowflakes, the soles of our shoes damp from the moisture on the pavement. Marthe's cheeks were pink and flushed like a young girl's. She looked so happy, her eyes bright, and the night full with abundant possibility.

December 1939

W
e entered the restaurant crowded with couples smoking cigarettes and drinking wine. All the things every Frenchman needed to help forget the war.

The maître d'hôtel gently pulled the fur coat off Marthe's shoulders, and she slipped a crisp note into the host's hand. If it were true that she hadn't been out on the town in a long time, she hardly seemed to show it. She knew exactly how to navigate the room.

She smiled as we were shown to a corner table with a semicircular leather banquette. Positioned against the red upholstery, she looked out onto the restaurant as though she were on a stage.

“Perfect,” Marthe said, smiling as she took the tall paper menus from the waiter and put them down on the table without a second glance.

“Two glasses of champagne and a dozen fresh oysters. We'll share, my dear.”

*   *   *

We sat facing each other, each of our reflections caught in the mirrored panels of glass.

It was strange and marvelous to be with her outside the apartment. To see her come alive against a new backdrop.

Even after all these years, she still moved like a dancer. Her neck stretched, and her shoulders pushed back, she took in the crowd as though she were appraising them from afar.

When the waiter had placed the pedestal of oysters in front of us, Marthe lifted her arm to retrieve one as elegantly as a swan.

She sipped her champagne with relish and slid the oyster into her mouth, drinking the brine. Once the waiter returned, she ordered two cassoulets for us and a bottle of wine.

“I never imagined you enjoyed being outside the apartment much,” I confessed to her as I washed down my oyster with champagne. “Of course I knew you went to Boldini's studio and to Ichiro's shop, but . . .”

“In the beginning, I didn't, Solange,” she interrupted me. “Certainly I never dined out with Charles. It was always his wish to keep me a private affair . . .” She smiled. “But after his death, Boldini enjoyed taking me out, and I can't deny I took pleasure in all the attention.”

She took her fork and moved the oyster shells to the side of her plate. The waiter arrived with two small bowls of warm lemon water for us to soak our fingers. Then, the waiter returned with two fresh glasses and filled them with wine.

Marthe lifted the glass and took a sip.

“I didn't feel the passion toward him that I had with Charles, you know. But I craved our exchange of ideas, the ability to discuss art with him . . . and he was not ashamed of being seen with me. He introduced me to so many of his friends . . . artists, even a few politicians.”

I nodded. I could only imagine how thrilling it must have been for her to enter his artistic circle.

She took another sip of her wine.

“I've been lucky, Solange. I had three men who took good care of me in my lifetime.”

I knew two of them, Charles and it appeared Boldini did as well . . .

But who could be the third?

“Three?” I questioned her.

“Yes,” she said wistfully. “Charles, Giovanni, and my dear Ichiro.”

*   *   *

That evening after we returned home, our shoes leaving footprints in the path of white snow, Marthe came upon the steps to her apartment building and stopped, her head turning to me in the moonlight.

“I've lived here for so many years now . . .” She looked up. The sky was now filled with a spray of stars.

“To think where I came from, it's rather amazing. I still can't quite believe I'm here.”

It was true. It had always perplexed me how she was able to sustain herself after all these years. The money Charles had left her surely would have been spent by now.

“You've been able to maintain it all these years all by yourself. Not an easy feat.”

Marthe smiled.

“That's the next part of the tale, Solange. But we'll save it for another night.” Marthe had an incredible ability to always make one feel as though she had a secret up her sleeve.

“As you wish,” I said, smiling. I stood next to her as she fished into her purse for the key to the building.

She jiggled the contents and peered deeper into the little silk satchel with a golden handle.

“I think I've forgotten my key.” A girlish laugh escaped from her.

I glanced at my watch. It was half past ten.

“I'll ring Gérard,” she said. “He'll let us in.”

She went over to the call box and pressed the ground floor apartment's buzzer.

“'Gérard, it's Marthe de Florian. I'm sorry to disturb you, but I've misplaced my key.”

“I'll be right there, madame.” His voice sounded gravelly through the intercom.

Within a few minutes he was holding the door open for us.

“Thank you, Gérard,” Marthe said. “I apologize that it's so late.”

“I was up with the children . . . They don't want to go to bed tonight, and Francine has a cough and went to bed early. It is not a problem at all.”

I could see he was slightly bleary eyed and was trying to readjust his gaze on Marthe. Probably, like me, he had never seen her in trousers.

Marthe read his look of bewilderment.

“Yes, I'm not in chiffon tonight . . . ,” she said, smiling. “I was in the mood to experience a night out with my granddaughter as a modern woman.”

“I hardly recognized you,” he laughed. “And it's been some time since I saw you out for the evening. Always it's Giselle out doing your errands.”

“Yes.” Marthe nodded. “You know, better than anyone, I've always been a creature of habit, staying in my apartment with my things most of the time.”

He nodded and his eyes were soft and kind as they looked at Marthe.

“But every time I do see you, it's hard for me to reconcile this young gentleman with a wife and family of his own. To me you're still Pierre's little boy.”

He smiled. “And you're still the glamorous woman upstairs that Papa told me not to stare at when you came through the lobby. You always reminded me of a cherry blossom . . . floating by in your pale pink silk.”

*   *   *

In the elevator, Marthe looked pensive.

“I should add one more to the list of men who have enabled me to stay in my apartment as long as I have. And that is—without a doubt—Gérard's father, Pierre.”