The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (33 page)

I gazed out at the clouds and counted the minutes. The flight couldn’t pass quickly enough. I was so impatient to be with the man I loved. The man I was sure loved me in return.

I arrived in Venice at five o’clock. I did not even think about going to the hotel to gather myself before I went to the Palazzo Donato. I hustled straight for the water-taxis, almost pushing people out of my way in my haste to get into a boat and on my way. The water-taxi driver tried to make small talk. I told him that I would appreciate it if he would just concentrate on getting me to the Grand Canal post-haste.

I sprang from the boat onto the deck. I hammered on the door. Silvio, as usual, took his own sweet time. I hammered again. I shouted.

‘Come on, come on.’

‘Signorina Thomson?’ Silvio was not expecting me but he didn’t seem unduly distressed. ‘You have come to visit the library? I didn’t know you would be here today.’

‘I haven’t come for the library,’ I said, not waiting to be invited inside. I squeezed past Silvio and headed for the courtyard garden.

‘Miss Thomson! Please wait,’ he called from behind.

Silvio tried to stop me but he was too much of a gentleman to try to restrain me physically in any real way. He made a half-hearted attempt to block me with his body but I pushed past him – rather more roughly than I needed to – and made straight for the library. Once inside, I went to the shelf that hid the secret door, pulled out the copy of
Beauty and the Beast
that triggered the lock and pushed hard.

He wanted me to find him. I knew that was the truth. Why else would he hide the secret door behind my favourite book? Had he been determined to keep me out, he could have locked his door, even barricaded it. But he didn’t, and when I stepped into the corridor, the door to his office was already open. Marco was at his desk with his back to me. He did not even flinch.

I stood in the open doorway, catching my breath and wondering what I should do next. My grand plan to burst into Marco’s house and push my way into his office had ended at the moment when I opened the door.

‘Most people knock before they come into someone’s office. I suppose you should come in properly,’ he said. ‘Close the door behind you.’

I stepped over the threshold and pulled the door shut, quietly so that it made barely a sound. I’d made enough noise as I barged through the house and now I felt rather foolish.

‘So, you get what you always wanted at last. You get to meet me in the flesh.’

I was still out of breath.

Slowly, Marco got to his feet. He leaned heavily on the desk in front of him, giving the impression that the movement was difficult. He straightened up. He was tall and elegantly slim. He was wearing a silk dressing gown. His dark brown hair curled over his collar. I longed to reach out and touch it.

‘Now I can only hope you think it was worth all the fuss,’ he said.

There had to be a happy ending.

Chapter 49

Paris, December 6th, 1846

Remi never replied to my letter. I was devastated. Though I had decided a total break would be the best thing – for him at least – I did not expect him to give me up so easily. But he did. The painting was taken from my house to his studio, where he finished it without needing to look at me. It was brought back to the house a week later. I could hardly bear to look at it.

Just as with Arlette’s portrait all those years ago, Remi had not let me see his work in progress, insisting it was for his eyes only until it was absolutely finished. I knew how happy I had been while I was sitting for the painting – lifted up by the idea that soon I would leave the Duc and be with Remi for ever – so I was surprised to see that I seemed so very sad. It was as though Remi had looked into my heart as he applied the final brushstrokes.

The Duc didn’t like it.

‘You look miserable,’ he said. ‘Surrounded by everything I’ve given you, you look like a Breton fishwife after a bad sardine harvest.’

He glanced from the painting to me.

‘You’re starting to look like that in real life too. You’re getting rather thin.’

I didn’t feel much like eating. Since September, my cough had been getting worse. The servants at the house did their best to look after me, but it did not seem to matter what they put on the table; I was growing weaker by the day.

‘You are giving in to your illness,’ the doctor told me. ‘You must spend more time in the fresh air.’

I had Pierre drive me around the Bois de Boulogne but I kept the curtains of my carriage closed. I could not bear to look out and see the whole of Paris carrying on as though nothing had changed. The city’s indifference to my broken heart made the pain keener still.

Arlette, who was concerned, came to visit. Dear Arlette was the same as ever, full of gossip and laughter. She carefully kept off the subject of Remi, and the poet too, in case that should remind me of my lost love. Instead, she regaled me with tales of the general, who still visited twice a week, and Girodin, who had ended up in prison. Elaine was still in her service but not for much longer. She had captured the heart of a sailor and he intended to marry her when he returned from his next voyage to Mexico.

‘I approve,’ I said.

‘See,’ said Arlette, when she had been with me for an hour. ‘Laughter is bringing the colour back to your cheeks. It’s not consumption that ails you, it’s heartache, and the best way to get over heartache is to let yourself be entertained. Come to the opera. Tonight. It’s
The Damnation of Faust
. And, more importantly, Clemence Babineaux is going to be debuting her new hairstyle. You will laugh yourself half to death when you see her. She looks exactly like her new spaniel. Please come.’

Arlette held both my hands.

I agreed I would be there.

‘Come back to life,’ said Arlette.

That evening I dressed in the dark red gown that the Duc had bought for me only that week. Against my white skin, the effect was dramatic. I wore my hair in a chignon, studded with pearl- and diamond-topped pins. I wrapped pearls round my neck and hung diamonds from my ears.

My new maid, Natalie, nodded her approval.

‘You look really lovely,’ she said, as she wrapped a shawl round my shoulders.

I thanked her. She was a good simple girl, as I had once been myself. I hoped that her time in my employ would not corrupt her.

Pierre drove me to the Opéra Comique. I would be alone in the Duc’s box that evening. Arlette would be with Clemence. We would all meet to go to dinner in Le Grand at the Café Anglais afterwards.

As soon as I’d started to dress for the evening, I’d felt a little better. Perhaps Arlette was right and all I needed to do was pull myself out of the doldrums by meeting with some dear old friends. By the time we arrived at the Opéra, I was quite excited. My reflection in the mirrors in the hotel lobby told me that no matter how I felt, I was still beautiful. I could see that in the regard of the other opera-goers too. I still made heads turn when I walked into a room.

I took my place in the Duc’s box. I nodded to the familiar faces in the boxes to either side. I leaned on the velvet-covered rail to look down into the stalls, and to give the people in the stalls the chance to look at me. That was, as Arlette had once told me, an important part of my occupation. The opera box was a shopfront; I should never forget that one day soon the Duc would tire of me and I would have to look for a new protector.

My eyes filled with tears at the thought.

Thankfully, the opera was beginning. In the darkness, I sank into my seat and listened to Faust’s tale. I could not keep from crying when his darling Marguerite sang ‘
D’amour l’ardente flamme
’ as she waited in vain for his return. I composed myself, however, before the curtain fell.

I told myself I must be happy, I must be gay. I must be entertaining at the dinner. The gaslights were turned up again. I looked across the theatre for Arlette. And that is when I saw him.

Remi was not alone. He had beside him a petite young woman, with blonde hair arranged in ringlets around her pretty, plump face. He was telling her something. She was laughing. She batted at him with her fan. I could tell she was in love with him. I could not see whether her feelings were reciprocated; he was half-turned away.

I could not take my eyes off him. My beloved was a stranger again. Then he stood to escort his young lady from the box and, in doing so, he glanced across the theatre to see me. His smile disappeared. He regarded me as though I were a beggar, trembling and covered in dirt.

He met my eyes for just a moment, but it was long enough for me to know everything. He hated me. He had cast me from his heart for abandoning our love and I would never be able to tell him why.

I left the theatre in a hurry. I told Pierre to take me directly home. I went straight to my bedroom where I had a coughing fit that seemed to last for hours.

I coughed until the candle on my bedside table had burned down. After that, I lay awake in the dark, feeling very small and scared. I thought I heard my mother’s voice, telling me that it would all be over very soon. I cried for Remi and for the chasm that had opened between us. I tried to remember what it had been like when he smiled at me. I couldn’t bear that my last memory of him might be of his eyes filled with such hate.

Chapter 50

So, at last, Marco and I were going to meet face to face.

I thought I had prepared myself for this moment. I had considered the very worst and at the same time hoped for the very best, but right then I was scared and I was shaking. I held my breath. I thought that perhaps he was holding his breath too. He still had his back to me. I stared at the back of his head. I took in his thick dark hair curling over his collar. His square shoulders. His posture was relaxed. He was still holding a pen in his left hand, which did not seem to be injured. I had caught him writing.

‘I don’t suppose we can put this off for very much longer,’ he said, laying down the pen.

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘And just think, in a year’s time, we’ll laugh about how silly we were to take so long to get here.’ I laughed. It was a high, nervous laugh. I was suddenly petrified.

‘I want you to stay silent,’ said Marco. ‘When I turn round.’

I put my hand to my mouth. I bit down on my knuckles.

Marco turned.

His eyes were still the eyes of the playboy in the picture. They were still vital and engaging. I would have recognised him anywhere.

I pulled my hand from my mouth.

What was I supposed to say? It’s not so awful? You don’t look like you’ve been freshly pulled from an inferno? I could tell that he’d received his injuries many years ago. His skin looked tight and uncomfortable. In places it was shiny. His mouth drooped at one side until he smiled. It seemed like an effort but it also seemed genuine. I smiled back but stayed silent, as he had requested.

He stepped towards me. His beautifully cut shirt fitted him perfectly. It showed off a broad chest. A swimmer’s physique. Except that his right arm hung awkwardly. He was trying to hide that hand.

I reached out and took his left hand in mine. It was the first time we had ever touched.

‘You’re still here,’ he said.

‘Of course I am,’ I replied.

‘You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.’

‘I do want to.’

We sat down side by side. I held his hand and took in the reality of him. I felt a thousand emotions rushing through me. Pity, fear, anxiety but also, just as strongly, delight and love.

‘You look—’ I started.

‘Don’t,
cara
. Don’t. I don’t want to hear any lies. You know that you shouldn’t have come here.’

‘I had to. You wanted me to! Why else fund a whole bloody movie? You could have sent an email.’

He smiled but this time it didn’t reach his eyes. The magic of the moment when our eyes had first met was already being clouded by the thought of ‘what next’.

‘I was selfish,’ said Marco. ‘I should never have started this at all.’

‘But you did and now we’re here. You’re looking at me and I’m looking at you.’

‘I don’t want you to look at me. Every time I look in the mirror, I want to stab myself in the eyes. This face is not who I want to be for you, Sarah.’

‘It is who you are.’

‘But I can’t forget what I was.’

‘Then don’t look in the mirror. Look only into my eyes and see who I think you are. I love you. I don’t care about a layer of burnt skin. It’s what’s underneath that counts.’

Marco rolled his eyes. ‘“It’s what’s underneath that counts.”’ He parroted my words back at me, in a silly voice that made me shrivel inside. Was that how he thought I sounded? ‘Sarah, you have no idea how stupid that sounds to anyone who isn’t perfect on the outside any more.’

‘I’m not perfect,’ I said.

‘Perfect. Normal,’ said Marco. ‘You know what I mean. It sounds ignorant and patronising. It’s easy for you to say it. It probably makes you feel good to think that you’re so open-minded, you could consider loving a man so badly disfigured that even his own mother couldn’t bear to look at him. But then you’ve always been like that.’