Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (43 page)

“Well then,” he said, “would I be in the way if I went along with you? And then I will take a taxi back to where I have a four-thirty appointment.”

“Come along,” Louisa said, looking pleased. “Maybe you can help me make up my mind.”

And all like that, Iris thought, trying to resign herself. So much for the rest of the day: By the time Paul Chandon left them it would be late afternoon.

The whole day shot to blazes.

Not that she minded walking along the Left Bank quays again. The river was like a narcotic for her. It was something she would never tire of.

It was just that she had done her duty, been affable at lunch, smiled until it hurt, and they still weren’t free of Paul Chandon.

I do not like feeling like a fifth wheel, she told herself. And it was exactly what she felt like. Excess baggage. Paul Chandon’s smiles were not for her … they were for her aunt.

As if he sensed Iris’s resentment, today he chose to walk between them, so that she had to carry on a conversation with him whether she liked it or not.

“What was it you saw in that shop in the Grands Augustins?” he was asking Louisa.

“A clock that seemed to me to be something of a find,” she said. “Circa 1700. Wonderful marquetry. Hideously expensive, but I did rather fall in love with it.”

“Did you like it?” Paul asked Iris.

“I know nothing about antiques,” she said.

“I should think you would know a great deal since your aunt is so knowledgeable about them.”

“Do you know about them?” she asked indifferently.

“A little something.”

Bully for you, Iris thought.

“You are wearing your hair differently today,” he commented.

“Am I?”

“Yes, the part is on the other side.”

“Imagine you being so observant,” Louisa said, laughing delightedly. “Men are generally so unnoticing.”

“Women only think they are,” Paul said, smiling. “For example, Madame, when you came into the restaurant earlier today you were wearing earrings. And now you are not.”

“I’m not because they began to hurt so I took them off. Well, you certainly keep your eyes open, Paul.”

She pointed. “There’s a Bateau Mouche,” she said, looking toward the river. “Not very many people on it today.”

“There will be more in the evening, for dinner and dancing,” he assured her.

“I suppose so. I haven’t been on one in years.”

“Neither have I,” he admitted, and turned to Iris. “Have you indulged in that little pleasure yet, Mademoiselle?”

“Not yet.”

“I suppose you will, sooner or later.”

“I suppose so.”

He smiled teasingly. “It should be with someone you are in love with,” he told her. “At night, when the city is lit up like a shower of stars.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s one of the things lovers do here. But since you assured me that you were not in love with anyone, perhaps you won’t bother with the Bateau Mouche.”

And before she could answer him, he turned again to her aunt. “And here we are at the antique shops,” he said. “Which one has your expensive treasure, Madame?”

“Just up ahead.”

“I hope your clock is still there.”

“I hope it’s not. If it is, I’ll be tempted to buy it.”

But when they went into the shop the clock was still there, and Louisa, after circling around it, asked Paul’s opinion.

“Yes,” he said, after an inspection of it. “It’s a very good piece.”

“Shall I succumb?” Louisa asked him.

He asked the owner its price, and when told, whistled softly.

“It’s a lot of money,” he said to Louisa.

“Yes, but it’s not overpriced.”

“No, it’s not overpriced. But the Customs …”

“Yes,” Louisa sighed. “The Customs.”

She thought a minute and then said briskly, “But I shall have it.” She conferred with the owner of the shop. A check was finally drawn against her Chase Manhattan account in New York, and the sale was made.

“You will be happy with it,” the owner assured her.

“I know I will.”

Delivery date was scheduled for early December. “By then, I shall have been home for at least a week or two,” Louisa said, and they left the shop a scant twenty minutes after they had gone in.

And now Paul Chandon is quite certain of her solvency, Iris thought, enraged. If he had any doubts before, he could have none now. The price of the clock had been in four figures, and it hadn’t taken her aunt long to make up her mind.

Why must I have this cross to bear? she asked herself disconsolately. My first trip abroad … and this kind of thing has to happen.

And he was so charming. Smiling, casual, gallant…. Like some young
grand seigneur …
as if he owned the world, instead of being what he was, a shrewd, calculating chaser of rich, defenseless women.

“I will drop you somewhere,” Paul announced, looking at his watch. “Wherever you wish to go from here.”

“Let’s see, it’s almost four. What shall we do, Iris?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. It’s a bit too late to do much, isn’t it?”

“Well, we could go shopping. You wanted to buy some gifts.”

“Very well, we’ll go shopping.”

“Paul, if you can find us a taxi. You have an appointment, so one for you and one for us. We’ll go over to Trois Quartiers.”

“Oh, but I don’t like to — ”

“My dear, we can certainly manage to get ourselves over to the stores,” Louisa said. “Let’s each take our own cab and call it a day. And a very pleasant day, thanks to you.”

At last, with Paul solicitously helping them into one cab and flagging down another for himself, they said their final good-byes.

“My word,” Louisa said, settling back in her seat. “Wasn’t that nice. A lovely few hours on a lovely day.”

“I don’t see that we have much time left for shopping,” Iris said sulkily.

“Oh yes, a good couple of hours. Enough time for you to find some pretty things to take home as presents. Oh, I shouldn’t have bought that clock. Think of all the starving Armenians.”

“That was a long time ago,” Iris said, laughing in spite of herself. “Other people are starving now, Aunt Louisa. The Third World.”

“I expect so. Life is so unfair. Oh, but I did enjoy this day. Lunch, a very
good
lunch, with someone as handsome and considerate as Paul.”

“You do seem to like him.”

“I think he’s
delightful.”

No kidding, Iris thought grimly, and wondered what, exactly, was going to come next.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, she thought gloomily. Only for Roman, substitute Parisian.

And for Mrs. Stone, substitute Mrs. Collinge.

“I’ve just made an appointment with the hairdresser,” Louisa announced the next morning. “And then I had a call from friends of mine who live on the Faubourg St. Honoré. They’ve asked me for lunch. I told them my niece was with me, and they would like you to come, too.”

“Oh dear, must I go?”

“No, you needn’t, and as a matter of fact I didn’t expect you’d want to, so I said you might like a day all to yourself and of course they understood.”

“I’d love a day all to myself! That would really test my mettle. It’s just the kind of challenge I need. You wouldn’t mind, then?”

“Of course not. I’ll be a couple of hours at the beauty salon, so my day is rather taken up as it is. I have no doubts at all that you’ll manage beautifully. But remember, Paul is calling for us at five o’clock, so you had better be home not much later than four.”

She swallowed her breakfast coffee hastily. “And now I must dash or I’ll be late for my hairdresser.”

She knocked on Iris’s door before she left, and called in, “Have a nice day, won’t you?”

“I will. You too.”

“Bye now, darling.”

When she was alone, and dressed for the street, Iris sat down to map an itinerary for her day’s jaunt. There were dozens of places she wanted to go to, but as time would be somewhat limited, due to having dinner with that awful Paul Chandon tonight, she would have to plan rather carefully.

She got out her walking map, picking and choosing, always coming back to the fact that, because of that horrid dinner date this evening, she couldn’t go to the Père Lachaise cemetery where the immortals of the ages were buried because she would want to spend hours there … and there wouldn’t be time for that today.

Nor could she ferret out La Grande Jatte, because that would mean a long Metro ride and a lot of exploring in unknown territory.

What she really would like to do most would be to take a train to Chartres, which was only about two hours away, stay all day and return in the late evening.

Chartres … the cathedral of Chartres …

But she couldn’t go there unless she skipped the dinner date with that miserable Paul Chandon … and if she did that, it would mean her aunt would be alone with him.

No way!

It was then that she had a perfectly ghastly thought.

Those friends of Louisa’s, the ones on the Faubourg St. Honoré … the ones she was lunching with … anyway, said she was lunching with.

Or were they just an excuse? Was Louisa really going to the Faubourg St. Honoré for lunch? Was she
really?

Or was she, instead, meeting that sinister Paul Chandon somewhere?

Was that why she had given her niece a day off?

Oh, dear God.

She got up and paced the room.

I must not jump to conclusions, she told herself.

She even considered leafing through her aunt’s little address book, which must surely be on her bedside table. See if she could locate those friends of the Faubourg St. Honoré.

If she could, then on some pretext she could phone them. Say something like, “I forgot to tell my aunt that …”

Tell her what?

She sagged. Then rallied, as after all she was only a very young average girl who wanted to enjoy a day in a strange, magical city all on her own … and by God, she was going to!

After all, Aunt Louisa was a grown woman. She must have
some
sense, for heaven’s sake.

I’ll worry later, Iris told herself, and bent over the map again, this time resolutely limning out her next few hours.

Then she left the hotel and walked briskly over to the Place de la Concorde which, situated as it was in her near vicinity, had become for Iris the focal point from which she regarded the rest of the city.

At any rate, the Place de la Concorde was one of the most glorious spots in Paris, for at its center one had a view of almost all the great landmarks of the city. You could see, all the way down the Champs Elysées, the noble contours of the Arc de Triomphe. You could see the classic Greek facade of the Church of the Madeleine. You could see the Palais Bourbon and you could see the Eiffel Tower spearing the sky.

But because of the vehicular traffic, you couldn’t stay for longer than a minute or two at the Place de la Concorde … unless you had a yen to land up in some hospital. So you left it rather quickly and moved on.

You moved on, perhaps — as Iris did today — to that great, quintessentially beautiful expanse of the Champs Elysées, and you waded through the early fallen leaves that were heralding autumn, and were relieved, if only temporarily, of niggling worries and pesky little doubts. The Champs Elysées, in the prelude of Fall, had a particular smell.

Smells so … so different, Iris thought, and sniffed. In fact, Paris itself had a faintly musky, faintly perfumed odor. Perhaps, Iris thought, it was the perfume of the past. All the long eras, merging together, and combining in this bittersweet, pungent redolence. Elusive, intoxicating …

There were, in great profusion, flowers, bushes, trees, hedges. There were ornate lampposts that probably Dumas and Balzac had leaned against. There were benches where people of all ages and all classes sat and turned their faces up to the sun. And there was the sun itself, burning high in the vast Paris sky.

After a while, at a large circular mall called the Rond-Point, these “Elysian Fields” became a street of commerce, with airline companies lining the avenue, and boutiques, restaurants, outdoor cafes and film palaces taking the place of its earlier peace and quiet. There was Fouquet’s, over on the left side of the avenue, and after a bit the Plaza Athenée, a hotel much favored by Americans.

And just up ahead the Arch of Triumph, outlined against an almost cloudless sky …

It took Iris a while to learn that there was an underground passage leading to it. At first, contemplating the swift rush of traffic that streamed past as she stood on a corner, she despaired of ever reaching it.

Then a sympathetic Parisian, noting her perplexity, touched her arm and pointed to the left.

“Oui,”
she said, finally comprehending.
“Oui. Merci.”

She walked over to the entrance of the subterranean walkway, went down the long flight of steps and finally, at the end of the tunnel, walked out into daylight again.

She was now at the base of the Arch and, dead ahead, flickering with a warm and blood-red glow, was the Eternal Flame, at the very core and heart of the Arch itself.

She spent a solemn moment there and then went underground once more, to again arrive at the other side of the Etoile.

From the Etoile, the twelve avenues radiated outwards. The one Iris was bent on exploring was the Avenue Marceau, which in turn would take her to the Place de l’Alma, her first goal for the day.

It was at the Place de l’Alma that, at this very time of year, one of Iris’s friends had gathered chestnuts. In Iris’s room, at home in Manhattan, were four fat chestnuts which had been a gift from that friend.

It was her weekend pleasure to polish them with a soft rag, look at them afterwards with fond delight, and then put them back in the little faience bowl still another friend had brought her from the Midi of France.

Today, Iris had decided, she would garner some Parisian chestnuts herself. Chestnuts
she
would scoop up from the ground, a memento of her first trip to Paris.

It was a very pretty hike, with the Eiffel Tower always in sight to the left, and the Avenue Marceau was quiet and lovely, increasing in attractiveness with each step. There was an abundance of trees, a charming little park, and at last she was once again at the Avenue President Wilson … and only a stone’s throw from where she had been two days ago.