Jewels (41 page)

Emanuelle picked up one of the heavy bracelets in her hands. They were pink-gold bangles encrusted with diamonds and rubies “I think they’re very chic, and very well made,” she pronounced finally She was looking very stylish herself these days, with her red hair in a chignon, and a black Chanel suit that made her look very dignified, as they sat in Sarah’s office.

“They’re also going to be very expensive,” Sarah said honestly. It bothered her to charge too much for things, and yet good workmanship commanded incredible prices. She refused to cut corners, and use poor workmanship or bad stones. At Whitfield’s one bought only the best, it was her credo.

“I don’t think anyone will care,” Emanuelle said, smiling at Sarah as she lumbered across the room to look at one of the bracelets in the mirror. “People like paying for what they get here. They like the quality, the design They like the old pieces, but they like yours, too, Madame.” She still called her that, even after all these years. They had known each other well for eleven years now, ever since Emanuelle had come to help deliver Phillip.

“Maybe you’re right,” Sarah decided finally. “They’re beautiful pieces. I’ll tell him we’ll take them.”

“Good.” Emanuelle was pleased. They had spent the whole morning going over things. This was Sarah’s final trip to Paris, to have the baby. It was the end of June, and the baby was expected to arrive two weeks later. But William was taking absolutely no chances this time. He had told his wife months before that he had given his last performance as a midwife, and she was not doing that to him again, particularly after what he’d heard of her second difficult delivery when he was gone.

“But I want the baby to be born here,” she had said again before they left the château, and William absolutely wouldn’t hear it.

They had come to Paris to stay at the apartment they’d finally bought that spring. It had three lovely bedrooms and two servants’ rooms, a handsome salon, a lovely study, a boudoir off their bedroom, and a very pretty dining room and kitchen. Sarah had somehow managed to find the time to decorate it herself, and they had a lovely view of the Jardin des Tuileries, with the Seine beyond, from their bedroom.

It was also close to Whitfield’s, which Sarah liked, and to some of her favorite shops. And this time, they had brought Phillip with them. He was furious not to be at the château, or somewhere else, or even Whitfield, and he claimed that being stuck in Paris was boring. Sarah had hired a tutor for him, a young man who could take him to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, and the zoo, when she couldn’t. And she had to admit that for the past two weeks, ever since he’d been home, she could barely move. The baby seemed to have taken over her entire existence.

And Phillip was annoyed about that too. They had told him about the baby during his spring break, and he had looked at them with dismay and horror. And afterwards Sarah heard him tell Emanuelle he thought it was disgusting.

He and Emanuelle were very close, and the one thing Phillip did like was to go to the shop to visit her, and look at the things, as he did that afternoon when Sarah dropped him off with Emanuelle so she could do some errands. He thought some of the jewelry very nice, he admitted And she tried to tell him the baby would be nice, too, but he said that he thought babies were stupid. Elizabeth hadn’t been, he said sadly, but that was different.

“You weren’t stupid,” Emanuelle said gently as they ate madeleines and sipped hot chocolate in her office, after Sarah had gone to do some errands before she had to go into the clinic. “You were a wonderful little boy,” Emanuelle said gently, wishing she could soften him. He had grown up to be so hard, and so brittle. “And your sister was too.” Something now crossed his face as she mentioned her, and Emanuelle decided to change the subject. “Maybe it’ll be a little girl.”

“I hate girls”… And then he decided to qualify it.

“Except you.” And then he startled her completely. “Do you think you might marry me one day? I mean, if you’re not married yet by then” He knew she was already pretty old. She was twenty-eight, and he knew that by the time he could marry her she’d be almost forty, but she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, he thought, even prettier than his mother. His mother had been pretty good-looking, too, until she got big and fat with her dumb baby. Emanuelle told him he was too old to feel that way, at his age, he shouldn’t have been jealous of a baby, he should be excited about it, and about being a big brother. But he clearly wasn’t He wasn’t excited at all Emanuelle could tell he was very angry.

“I’d love to marry you, Phillip. Does this mean we’re engaged?” She beamed at him and offered him another madeleine.

“I guess so. But I can’t buy you a ring. Father never lets me have any money.”

“That’s all right. I’ll borrow one from the store in the meantime.”

He nodded and glanced at some of the things on her desk, and then he surprised her by what he said next, and he would have surprised his mother even more.

“I’d like to work here with you one day. Emanuelle … when we’re married.”

“Would you?” She looked amused, and then teased him a little bit. “I thought you wanted to live in England.” Maybe he’d discovered Paris wasn’t so bad after all. She wondered.

“We could open one there In London I’d like that.”

“We’ll have to tell your parents that sometime,” she said as she put her cup of tea down, just as Sarah walked into the room, looking absolutely huge but still very pretty, in a dress Dior had made for her that summer.

“Tell me what?” Sarah asked as she sat down, looking incredibly uncomfortable to Emanuelle, who hoped she never had a baby, and was fully prepared to make every possible effort not to. She had seen enough of Sarah’s deliveries to know that children were not something she wanted. She didn’t know how Sarah did it.

“Phillip wants to open a store in London. A Whitfield’s,” Emanuelle said proudly, and sensed instantly that he didn’t want her to tell his mother about their engagement, so she didn’t.

“That sounds like a nice idea.” She smiled at him “I’m sure your father would be pleased. I’m not sure I’d survive it however.” The last year, since their opening exactly a year before, had been absolutely exhausting

“We’ll have to wait till Phillip is old enough to run it.”

“And I will,” he said with a stubborn look Sarah knew well. She offered him a drive through the Bois de Boulogne, and he grudgingly left Emanuelle with a kiss on both cheeks, and a squeeze of the hand to remind her of their engagement.

They had a nice walk in the park after that, and he was more talkative than usual, chatting about Emanuelle, and the shop, and Eton and Whitfield. And he was patient with Sarah’s slow, cumbersome pace. He felt sorry for her, she looked so uncomfortable all the time now.

William was waiting for them when they returned to the apartment, and they had dinner at the Brasserie Lippe that night. Phillip always loved it. And for the next two weeks Sarah devoted herself to him, because she knew she wouldn’t have as much time once she had the baby. They were planning to go back to the château as soon as it was born, and the doctors said she could travel. They had even wanted her in the clinic a week before the baby was due, and she flatly refused, and told William that in the States people just didn’t do that. In France people went into private clinics a week or two before the baby was born, to be pampered and wait, and then they stayed another two weeks after. But she wasn’t going to sit in a clinic, no matter how fancy, and do nothing.

They stopped in at the shop every day, and Phillip was very excited when a new emerald bracelet came in, and on another afternoon when Emanuelle told them they had sold two enormous rings in one morning. What was even more amazing was that she had sold one of them to Jean-Charles de Martin, her lover. He had bought it for her, and had teased her mercilessly, pretending it was for his wife when he bought it. And then, as she grew angrier and angrier at him, he took the ring from the box, and slipped it on her finger. It was there now, and Sarah raised an eyebrow.

“Does this mean something serious?” Sarah asked, but she also knew how much jewelry he bought for his wife and girlfriends, at other jewelers.

“Only that I have a beautiful new ring,” Emanuelle said realistically. She had no illusions. But she had a few very interesting clients. Many of the men who bought from them, bought for their mistresses as well as their wives. They had complicated lives, and all of them had come to know that Emanuelle Bourgois was the soul of discretion.

They went back to the apartment late that afternoon, and Phillip went to the movies that evening with his tutor. He was a fine young man, a student at the Sorbonne, and was fluent in both English and French, and fortunately Phillip liked him.

It was already July by then, and Paris was hot and steamy. They had been there for two weeks, and Sarah was anxious to go home again. It was so beautiful at the château at that time of year. It seemed a shame to waste the summer in Paris.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘wasted’” William mused with a smile as he watched her. She looked like a beached whale as she lay on their bed in an enormous pink satin nightgown. “Aren’t you hot in that thing?” he asked, it made him uncomfortable just looking at her. “Why don’t you take it off?”

“I don’t want to make you sick, having to look at me like this.” But he rolled slowly toward the bed as she said it.

“Nothing about you ever makes me sick.” He was a little sad this time, not to be there when she had the baby. He felt a little left out of it, with her fancy Paris doctor, and the clinic, but it was William who wanted her there, because it was so much safer.

She fell into a deep, deep sleep that night, as he slept fitfully in the heat, and she woke him at four in the morning, when the pains came. He dressed carefully, and called the maid to help her, and then he drove her to Neuilly, to the clinic they had chosen. She seemed to be in considerable pain by the time they left, and she said very little to him on the short drive in his Bentley. And then they took her away from him, and he waited nervously until noon, fearing that things might be going as badly as they had the first time. They had promised to give her gas this time, and they had assured her that everything would be easy and modern. As easy as it could be for a woman having a nine-pound baby. And finally, at one-thirty, the doctor came out to him, looking very neat and prim, and smiling broadly.

“You have a handsome son, Monsieur.”

“And my wife?” William asked worriedly.

“She worked hard,” the doctor looked serious for a moment, “but it went very well. We have given her a little something to sleep now. You may see her in a few moments.” And when he did, she was draped in white sheets, and very pale, and very groggy, and she seemed to have no idea where she was, or why she was there. She kept telling him that they had to go to the shop that afternoon, and not to forget to write to Phillip at Eton.

“I know, my darling … it’s all right.” He sat quietly next to her for hours, and about four-thirty, she stirred and looked at him, and glanced around the room in confusion. He moved closer to her again then, and kissed her cheek and told her about their baby. William still hadn’t seen him yet, but all the nurses said. He was lovely. He weighed nine pounds, fourteen ounces, almost as big as Phillip, and William could only imagine from the look of her that it hadn’t been easy.

“Where is he?” she asked, looking around the room.

“In the nursery, they’ll bring him in soon. They wanted you to sleep.” And then he kissed her again. “Was it awful?”

“It was strange …” She looked at him dreamily, holding his hand, and still trying to focus. “They kept giving me gas and it made me feel sick … but all it really did was make me woozy, it seemed like everything was very far away, and I still felt the pain, but I couldn’t tell them.”

“Maybe that’s why they like it.” But at least they were both safe, and nothing dreadful had happened.

“I liked it better when you did it,” she said sadly, this was all so odd, and so foreign, and so antiseptic, and they hadn’t even showed her the baby.

“Thank you I’m afraid I’m not much of a surgeon.”

But they brought the baby in to them then, and all the pain was suddenly forgotten. He was beautiful and round, he had dark hair and big blue eyes, and he looked just like William. And Sarah cried when she held him. He was so perfect, such a wonderful little boy. She had wanted a little girl, but she didn’t mind now that they had him. All that mattered was that he was there, and he was all right. They had decided to call him Julian, after a distant cousin of William’s. And she insisted on William as his middle name, which his father said was foolish, but he reluctantly agreed Sarah cried when they took him away again. She couldn’t understand why they had to do that. She had her own nurse and her own room. She even had her own sitting room and her own bathroom, but they said it wasn’t sanitary to leave him there for too long. He belonged in the nursery with sterile conditions. Sarah blew her nose and looked at William after Julian was gone, and the emotions of the day overwhelmed her. And he suddenly felt guilty for bringing her here, but he promised to take her home quickly.

He brought Phillip to see her the next day, and Emanuelle, who proclaimed Julian beautiful when she saw him through a window. They wouldn’t let the infants visit with guests, and Sarah hated the place more than ever. And Phillip stared at him through the glass and then shrugged and turned away, visibly unimpressed, as Sarah watched in disappointment. He looked angry about the baby, too, and he wasn’t very kind to his mother.

“Don’t you think he’s sweet?” Sarah asked hopefully.

“He’s all right. He’s awfully small,” Phillip said disparagingly. And his father laughed ruefully, knowing what Sarah had been through.

“Not to us, young man. Nine pounds, fourteen ounces is a monster!” But there was nothing else monstrous about him, whenever they brought him to Sarah to feed, she could see he had the sweetest disposition. And after he nursed, he would lie nestled next to her, and as though a bell had rung, a nurse arrived instantly to remove him from her.