Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (38 page)

“Nor I,” Iris said.

“I also am
rassasier,”
he admitted. “But please, ladies, not to use that expression even if I did, as it is somewhat vulgar.”

“It probably means stuffed,” Louisa said, laughing, “which is not exactly acceptable in polite society. But I will have a demi tasse and Iris, you will too, I suppose.”

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll attend to it,” Paul said, and rose with a murmured,
“Pardon …”

Louisa’s eyes followed him with, Iris thought, an admiring look. “Isn’t he nice,” she murmured. “And this is really a fun place to eat. Henry and I had our favorite dining spots here on the Ile. I guess I’ll bypass them, this trip at least. I am
so
glad to have you with me. I don’t suppose you can possibly know how much it means.”

“Which is a nice way of saying that I’m doing you a favor by being here,” Iris said gently. “You’re a dear aunt and a dear person.” She leaned forward. “You know how I feel about you,” she continued earnestly. “But darling, you mustn’t try to … you know you promised that …”

“Yes, dear?”

But there was no time. She heard the approaching footsteps. Paul, returning, slid into his chair again. He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.

“Madame,” he said, offering it first to Louisa.

“Thank you.”

“Mademoiselle?”

“No, thanks.”

Their coffee came and the waiter went off again. The sun, strong and beneficent, shone through the mullioned window, and the crowd inside began to thin out. Soon there were only three tables occupied, their own and two others.

“More coffee?” Paul asked.

“No. We must go, I’m afraid. I’m sorry too. It’s been so nice. Paul, would you get our waiter, please?”

He came over.
“Oui, Madame?”

“Our check, please.”

He shook his head.
“Pas aujourd’hui, Madame.”

Louisa turned to Paul. “What does he say?”

“Apparently it’s on the house,” Paul replied, with a faint shrug.

She stared at the waiter, and then back at Paul. “So that was why you excused yourself,” she cried. “You took care of the bill, didn’t you?”

But she didn’t make an issue of it, simply said, “Then next time, Paul, you will be
my
guest. That is, if there will be a next time?”

“I would be most unhappy if there were to be no next time,” he said gravely.

“I’m glad. Then thank you for this very good meal and for introducing me to this charming little place. And if you can suggest an evening for us to have dinner together, I’d be pleased.”

“Would tomorrow evening suit you, Madame?”

“That would be splendid.”

No one consults me, Iris thought. And so it was to be a steady threesome. She was beside herself with alarm. This was simply not to be believed! This utter stranger … who knew what his reputation was?

Her aunt’s face, radiant and happy, appalled her. Why, she looked as anticipative as a young girl on the eve of her first prom … as if …

An unpleasant thought came to her, unpleasant and unwelcome … but gaining momentum. A thought that had leapt up at her suddenly and horribly …

There, she thought, was this affluent-looking woman, her aunt. Marvelous clothes, chic hairdo, carefully manicured nails. Why, that alligator handbag alone was worth a few hundred dollars … and the gold jewelry, the chain round her neck, the bracelets, the rings …

And on the other side, this suave young man, with his practiced charm, his dazzling smile …

Louisa, in her mid-forties, was an attractive, even alluring woman, a woman no man — even someone Paul Chandon’s age-would be ashamed to be seen with.

How often had she heard her aunt say, “Women of middle age are far better off in Europe than in the United States. They’re not written off as dull and dreary, or physically undesirable. Rather, their status improves. Europeans appreciate women with experience and savoir faire.”

Those words came back to Iris now. Experience and savoir faire …

Some other words, so recently voiced, echoed in her mind as well.

“‘Ingenues, not quite grown …’“

In other words, inexperienced girls without savoir faire … like herself.

Who was this Paul Chandon pursuing, when it came right down to it? Iris Easton … or Louisa Collinge?

Once again her face flooded with color, followed by a wave of angry, wry consternation and the feeling that someone had punched her in the stomach. She had been so sure that he was eyeing her, Iris, as a promising possibility.

But instead, couldn’t it be her aunt he was contemplating as a soft touch?

A woman, for example, who could well, very well, afford to stay at the Ritz but instead preferred the Vendôme … which, according to Paul Chandon, had its own “quiet distinction.”

A woman who was far from old, much more than merely goodlooking to boot, and who clearly had a lot of money.

Why, that’s the way it was! Not what she had thought … no, not at all. Paul Chandon wasn’t one bit interested in the niece. He was interested — and very much so — in the aunt.

And the way Louisa catered to him.

My God, Iris thought … where would this lead?

Her aunt’s voice came to her, as if from a great distance. With difficulty she tore herself away from a horrid fantasy.

“Yes?”

“Paul asked where we would like to dine tomorrow evening.”

“Why don’t we ask Paul to make one of his interesting suggestions?” Iris said brightly. “Since I know nothing about restaurants here, and he obviously knows a great deal, wouldn’t it be logical to rely on his vast experience?”

He seemed not to notice the bite in her words. He only nodded, turned to Louisa and asked if she had a preference. When she said no, he nodded agreeably, and told her he would select a restaurant that might be new to her despite the fact that she was no stranger to Paris.

“We’ll look forward to it,” Louisa said, with a soft smile. Her uptilted eyes, green today because she was wearing a suit of that color, were luminous.

Iris looked away. She was sickened, positively sickened, by the glow on her aunt’s face.

No fool like an old fool, she thought, was instantly contrite, but saw no real reason to amend her harsh judgment.

Oh, poor Aunt Louisa! Lonely, grief-crazed; Henryless … and seizing on the first young Frenchman who gave her the glad eye.

She had visions of cabling home to her parents.

Aunt Louisa in danger of being victimized by a fortune-hunter. What shall I do?

As if they could help! As if anyone could.

It’s up to me, Iris thought anxiously, to discourage this cheeky young man in every way I can.

At the moment, however, the problem seemed somewhat insoluble.

When they left the bistro, Louisa suggested that they take a walk along one of the quays on the Ile St. Louis. “The Quai d’Orléans is my favorite. How about you, Paul?”

“My favorite too,” he agreed.

They turned left, then right and were soon wending their way along a riverside street that was almost miraculously beautiful. The trees that bordered the embankment leaned toward the river, with some of the branches actually touching the water. There was a sense of being in another age, another era and Iris wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see someone come out of any one of the handsome old houses that lined the street, dressed in Empire clothing … or glimpse a horse-drawn fiacre just up ahead.

No one, however, came out of any of the houses, nor was anyone, save for themselves, in sight. The long, winding quay was deserted, hushed … like a dream vista.

In spite of Iris’s recent consternation, she was unable to feel anything but euphoric on this peaceful quay and, taking out her camera, shot almost half a roll of film. To the right, where Notre Dame presented itself from the rear, and from which angle it was even more grand and thrilling than from its front facade, the scene was incomparable.

The Seine, seen from this vantage point, with those magnificent trees shadowing it and the water craft, like little toys moving leisurely across its green-blue surface, was like a poem.

“The quays of the Ile St. Louis are best in the very early morning,” Paul said, when Iris at last put her camera away. “In the hours after dawn there is a faint, rather mysterious haze that shadows everything … as if a fine veil of gauze had been drawn over the environs. No one is about then, except for a young boy on his bicycle delivering the morning papers.”

“No one’s about now,” Iris commented. “Only us.”

“True … but in the time of day I speak of, it is as if no one would ever be about … as if …”

He broke off a little self-consciously. “I talk too much,” he said. “And often about ridiculous things.”

For a split second Iris wanted to like this man because of what he had just said. She had the oddest feeling that he had been going to finish his sentence with the words “as if there were no one but oneself in the whole world.”

It was a feeling she herself knew, felt occasionally. That, on some quiet and unpeopled street, she was absolutely alone, and that everyone else had either died or never been born. And she was on her own, forevermore, without help, company or the voices of others.

“Well,” Paul said briskly, “now that you have seen something of the Ile. St. Louis, what about St. Germain? All tourists want to go there, mainly to take snapshots of themselves at
Deux Magots.”

The moment of tentative rapport, in which Iris had been unexpectedly drawn to the man who was looking down at her, died with a dull thud. Antipathy returned and, with it, the determination not to be fooled by him again. There was simply nothing about this Paul Chandon that was of any merit and she would somehow convince her aunt that he was up to no good. He said these nasty things to upset her, that was the size of it. And just when she had thought there might be some decency in him. Of
course
she wanted to go to St. Germain and of
course
she wanted to go to the celebrated cafe called
Deux Magots.
But she was
not
every tourist, she was not some American hick who said ooh la la, thought the Folies Bergère was the height of sophistication and Maxim’s the last word in culinary splendor. She was an educated girl of good family and how
dare
he presume anything about her?

“We can walk there,” Louisa said, approving of the suggestion.

“Is that okay with you, Mademoiselle?” Paul asked politely.

She flinched at the American slang, which she was sure had been to bring the conversation down to what he considered her level … that of ‘an ingenue, not quite grown.’ In other words, she thought furiously, wet behind the ears.

I dislike this man intensely, she told herself, and answered curtly, “Okay with me,” emphasizing the ‘okay’ with elaborate irony.

He simply laughed, moved to her aunt’s right and, as before, there was Louisa in the middle, with the two younger people on either side of her.

At least I don’t have to look at him or listen to his insolent remarks, Iris thought. He and her aunt were carrying on their own sprightly chitchat, most of which was lost to Iris because of the brisk breeze that blew his words away.

Better so, she felt crossly, and turned her attention to the beauties spread out before her.

They retraced their steps, going over the iron bridge to the Ile de la Cité again, walked back through the gardens to the front of the cathedral, and crossed back to the Left Bank on the Pont St. Michel.

This brought them back to the cafe in which they had met earlier. If only they hadn’t stopped here those few hours ago, Iris thought, this persistent stranger wouldn’t be with them now, holding her aunt’s arm and sticking to them like glue.

Or like a leech, more likely …

If only they hadn’t stopped here.

They didn’t stop here now, at any rate, but continued on past the Place St. Michel, Paul saying, “Now we are on the Boul’ Mich’, on our way to St. Germain, but first we will go a little farther so that you can have a look at the Sorbonne where a hundred years ago I was attending my lectures.”

Another dig at me, Iris thought, and avoided his teasing glance at her.

“There’s the Cluny Museum,” Louisa told her, at the junction where the Boul’ Mich’ crossed with the Boulevard St. Germain. “You might want to go there sometime.”

After that the area became very noisy and cluttered, with students coming and going, clustering in groups, and the sprawl of the Sorbonne acting as a backdrop. The dome of the Panthéon rose behind it.

There was a variety of eating places, all piled up side by side in a kind of jumble, with the smell of food and the redolence of Gauloise cigarettes spicing the air.

A group of four young people, standing outside of one of the cafes, was engaged in what appeared to be quite serious talk. They didn’t look giddy, or infantilely inconsequential. They looked, in fact, like kids you’d want to know.

Iris rather imagined that they were discussing politics or something like the Common Market. Most of the students, in fact, had the air of being preoccupied with things other than drugs, sex or gay liberation … or at least not obsessed with them.

One young couple, walking close together, drew Iris’s attention particularly. Both were in jeans, sloppy shirts and zori sandals. The boy, who was only a shade taller than his girl, had a pally arm slung over her shoulder.

They probably lived together, showered together, and would very possibly go separate ways when the semester was over. But that affectionate arm slung over the shoulder of the girl, and their carefree camaraderie … it was somehow so … so touching.

They finally disappeared into one of the restaurants, but Iris kept thinking about them and when Paul said, “Lively place, isn’t it?” she answered abstractedly, “Uh huh.”

“If we continued on,” he told her, “we would come to the Place Edmond Rostand. You know
Cyrano de Bergerac,
Mademoiselle?”

“I have a nodding acquaintance with it,” she answered shortly.

His faintly amused smile came at that, and she turned away.