The Paris Time Capsule (22 page)

Cat allowed Elise to kiss her on both cheeks.
“Elise, this isn’t a good time.”

But the other girl
was in the apartment. “I’ve just been at the gym, so I thought Chinese takeout!”

“
My dear Madame, if you will permit me,” Monsieur Lapointe said down the phone. “I have found something.”

“
Were you happy with the engagement party sweetie?”

“
Elise …” Cat held up the phone.

“
Oh! Sorry to interrupt!” Elise didn’t sound sorry at all. She popped her takeout boxes on the kitchen bench. “Do you mind if I get some plates out?”

Cat waved at her to go ahead.

“I have a file under the name of Bonnie Jordan,” Monsieur said. “It is marked private and confidential. Only for her.”

“
You can open it,” Cat said.

“
Chow Mein okay?”

Cat nodded at Elise. She blocked her free ear with her other hand.

“I am afraid I can’t do that,” Monsieur said. “I am sorry.” He cleared his throat. “You will have to come to Paris. The formalities.”

“
Oh, please, Monsieur.”

“
In the file, Madame, there is a very fat envelope. There are forms that must be signed and witnessed. Can you get a flight in the morning?”

Did Monsieur think that New York was just a stone’s throw from Paris?
Cat looked at Elise. “There is someone who could get me on a flight,” she said.

“
Call me, as soon as you are booked.”

“
Monsieur?”

“
Oui?”

“
Thank you!”

Elise was unsurprisingly helpful.
“I’ve been a member of all the airline clubs since I was a kid. Give me ten minutes, Cat.”

Cat was surprisingly hungry, even after the toast.

Elise had Cat’s computer screen open. “The earliest flight I can get you on is at 4.30pm tomorrow afternoon to Charles de Gaulle. There is a seat. Do you want it?”

Cat nodded. She would take two days off work.

“And now, for the important stuff,” Elise said. She pulled a swathe of samples out of her bag. “We are going to have such a fun evening, sweetie!”

Cat took a large sip of her wine.

The plane arrived at five thirty in the morning, Paris time.
Cat slept sporadically but she thought about Isabelle and Marthe the entire time she was awake on the flight. How Cat would have loved to have met them both. And then there had been other thoughts, thoughts about her grandmother. Virginia had adored old things, had surrounded herself with them, but had she let go of her past? Had she ever gotten over Paris?

The taxi arrived at Cat’s hotel well before business hours had begun. Cat had booked her room for the previous night, and having taken a shower, she fell into a deep and exhausted sleep for three hours. When she woke, the first thing she heard were birds.
She was in Paris and it was spring.

This time,
Monsieur Lapointe did not keep Cat waiting in the reception area. As soon as she entered the building he was at the front desk, escorting her into his rooms. His assistant, as before, witnessed the signing of all the documentations but Monsieur moved ten times faster than he had before. Cat felt light headed, as if everything were unreal.

Monsieur dismissed his assistant once everything was signed. The envelope in question sat in front of Cat on the desk. It was fat, and yellowed with age.

“Would you like me to translate?” Monsieur Lapointe asked, one hand on the envelope. “Or would you prefer a proper translator?”

Cat smiled.
“Monsieur, I would love you to read it. The only thing is …”

Monsieur coughed.
“I could not reach Monsieur Archer. As they have first right of refusal, I had to, Madame Catherine …”

“
That was exactly my question.”

“
However, with your permission, perhaps I could send him a copy of the information we have in this file.”

“
Whatever it is, it will have to go to Monsieur Archer and his mother.”

Monsieur coughed.
“You are ready? Some café, perhaps?”

“
Thank you, Monsieur, no café.”

Monsieur cleared his throat. He opened the envelope. There were scores of thin pages covered with typewriter print.

“Madame Catherine,” he said. “The document is in English.”

Cat reached out a hand.
“Then,” she said. “I will read it to you.”

March 29
th
, 1983

Dear Bonnie,

I wanted to write a cover note to this document in which I have done my best to put into writing all the things that my friend and confidante Sylvie-Marie Augustin told me while we met for coffee last week in Avignon. Sylvie-Marie asked me to translate all of this into English and then type it up in order to explain it all to you, Bonnie. I took extensive notes that I read and re-read during our talk just to make sure all of it made perfect sense.

I was very happy to help my dear friend Sylvie-Marie out when she learned through her lawyer of the death of your mother, the late Virginia Brooke during the winter in Connecticut. As a fellow American, I was fascinated to learn about Virginia and her wonderful joie de vivre. Suffice to say I wish I had known her, Bonnie. She must have been a very special woman and I am sure you miss her so very much.

I know you must have been confused when you received the will and especially flabbergasted to learn that you have inherited such a legacy! There is no doubt on this earth that you will want to know why you are now in possession of an apartment in Paris.

Sylvie-Marie so wants you to understand the events of the past, that she asked me to act as a backup for her at the time of her death, plus we have gone to the extra precaution of writing everything down for you in case anything happens to me in the meantime and you are left with this amazing legacy.

I have known Sylvie-Marie Augustin since the war. I was, as they used to call it, something of an unusual girl myself. My father was a magistrate in Boston, and I inherited all his interest in politics, history and related matters. Unfortunately as you would know, the fact that I was a girl in those days didn’t help my ambitions one little bit. The situation in Europe during the 1930s fascinated and concerned me especially, and I found myself wanting to do something, anything that I could to become involved.

Had I stayed home in America, I could see my life turning into a round of meaningless tennis games and tea parties with some suitable husband who would bore me to tears. I wanted to have none of that. It seemed like everything that mattered was happening across the Atlantic, so I sailed on my own and arrived in Paris in 1938. Although I had some money of my own, I secured myself a position as a secretary in a legal office. But it was the evenings in Paris that brought things alive. People were talking politically and drinking far too heavily and what with one thing leading to another, soon I wended my way into a group of anti-Fascists who were determined to do something about the rise of this type of government in Europe.

Well, you will know that when the Nazis invaded Paris there were people who needed to get out of France. I helped convey them from one safe place to another and later I wound up working for the French resistance. These were both the best years and the worst years of my life.

I fell in love with a fellow maquisard, a French resistance fighter,
with whom I worked and soon after the war we married. I have spent the rest of my life in the Perigord region. I still take a great interest in politics and ended up teaching the subject at our local university. Now, I will try my hardest to convey all of this important information to you in the best way I know. I have added in a few details of my own, given my understanding of the times of which I write.

God bless, my dear,

A bientot

Louise Delfont

Taken from my notes, as told to me by Sylvie-Marie Augustin, February 1983

Dear Bonnie,

The first thing you must know is that t
he apartment that you have inherited in Rue Blanche belonged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Marthe de Florian. Marthe was a demimondaine, in other words, she was a courtesan in late nineteenth century Paris. This meant that her way was paid by her many gentlemen clients. But these were not just any gentlemen, you know, they were only of the highest social and political classes or they were so fabulously wealthy that their backgrounds didn’t matter.

Marthe did not come from a wealthy background, in fact she worked as a lowly seamstress in Paris when she was a teenage girl. The hours and working conditions were hard and so very tough. Marthe never spoke of her childhood apparently except in passing and only as a slip now and then. By the time she was twenty she had given birth to two sons. She never mentioned who
their fathers were. One of the boys died as a baby. Marthe kept his tiny clothes in a locked wardrobe that she would open once a year. The other son was Isabelle de Florian’s father.

One could assume that one of Marthe’s many gentlemen clients bought the apartment for her when she was still in her twenties. Her rise to fame and fortune could have been gradual, or it could have been dramatic and sudden. Perhaps she was spotted somewhere, running a dress to an important client in Paris. Perhaps someone was struck by her beauty and natural grace, and tempted or even lured her into her a way of life that would change her world forever.

No matter what, Marthe de Florian entered into a lifestyle that was both glamorous and risky in the extreme. She was plied with exotic gifts, money, most likely absinthe and exotic drugs.

Perhaps her life could best have been described as a balancing act, hovering in a tight spot between vulgarity and glamour.  But, you have to understand my dear that all of Paris wanted to see and be seen. It was fashionable even amongst the conservative upper classes to
be theatrical during the Belle Époque.

The beautiful portrait of Marthe that will no doubt strike you when you see it was done by some well known artist apparently, who was in his turn so struck by Marthe’s charms that he had her sit for him and gave her the portrait to keep.

It was these gifts that furnished the entire apartment as you see it now, and set Marthe up so that she could live a most luxurious life. As well as entertaining her gentlemen clients, she worked as a highly paid actress, and made appearances in famous dance halls and exclusive clubs. Men would compete to dress her for the theatre, and would bask in the shock that it caused to be seen with her by their sides. Demimondaines were not accepted at all by upper class women and yet they were so infamous that nobody dared question their right to exist. It was a halfway modern world. Everyone still had a place, but there was great change brewing. That was the next generation’s story.

By the time Virginia knew her, Marthe was well into her seventies and she was more interested in overseeing the life of her granddaughter Isabelle than anything else.

Marthe was determined from the beginning that Isabelle would not suffer the same indignities that she, Marthe had to suffer when she was young. Isabelle’s own mother had been a middle class woman whose family had not approved of her marriage to Marthe de Florian’s son. As a result, they would have nothing to do with the little girl after her young parent’s untimely death and Isabelle was raised by her grandmother in Rue Blanche.

From the very start, the young Isabelle had only the most beautiful of clothes, attended the smartest girl
s’ schools, and was encouraged to have the most charming of companions. Most of these, I am told, accepted Isabelle into their homes, but there were several families who would still never admit Marthe de Florian’s granddaughter into their salons.

In
1934, Marthe decided to take Isabelle to Lake Geneva in Switzerland for the summer. Their new young maid, Camille Paget, accompanied them and they set off to stay in a chalet for several weeks. This was where they met Virginia who entranced both Isabelle and the elderly Marthe to the extent that they all became inseparable.

Isabelle was petite and bubbly with dark curls and laughing brown eyes
, and as you know, Virginia was exactly the opposite, a tall willowy blonde whose considerable beauty and delicious spark soon caused more than a ripple amongst the young men in Switzerland. Isabelle and Virginia, or “Virginie” as Isabelle took to calling her friend, made quite a dazzling pair, and soon countless young men were fighting over them both.

Marthe watched over the girls as they frolicked their way through a summer filled with boating parties on the lake, picnics and visits to the charming Swiss villages nearby, not to mention evenings spent dancing on the broad terraces of the fashionable resorts.

When summer ended that year and it was time to go home, Isabelle was so distraught at having to say goodbye to her dearest Virginie that the only way she could cope with her return to Paris was to bring Virginie with her. Marthe approved thoroughly of course.

So they returned to the apartment, where Isabelle and Virginia shared the bedroom off Marthe’s own, bringing a sort of renaissance to the apartment in Rue Blanche. Again, the apartment was filled with gentlemen callers, but this time they were much younger, far more earnest,
and less discreet. Those were wonderful years for both the young women. They saw themselves as independent, or Virginia did. Isabelle adored her friend and they travelled to the continent several times together, but most of the time they lived it right up in Paris.

By 1939 Virginia was receiving letters from her concerned parents who wanted her to return to the safety of the United States.  Finally, they insisted that she sail home. But then Marthe became ill. The influenza that had taken both of Isabelle’s parents when she was just five years old sank itself deep into Marthe’s old lungs. She developed pneumonia in November 1939. Tragically, she died a week before Virginia was booked to sail home.

Distraught, alone in Paris with neither a close relative nor friend to her name, Isabelle grew up during one agonizing winter. As the war gathered momentum during the first half of 1940 and as it seemed more and more likely that the Nazis were going to move into France, Isabelle felt there was little to live for even if she did survive the war.

S
he made her will, leaving Marthe’s estate to the only friend whom she adored and fully trusted. She left everything to her dear Virginia Brooke.

Isabelle was living alone with only her maid Camille to keep her company in the apartment. Isabelle went into a sort of decline and Marthe had only had very few female friends during her life
so there were few visitors at the apartment after her death. Without Virginia, there was little to entice Isabelle out of the apartment at all.

Camille
Paget was set with the task of looking after Isabelle, but with Isabelle the way she was, hardly going out, and with only one lady to look after, Camille started to go out more regularly in the evenings herself. She had always been allowed to go out if she didn’t have any duties at night with her mistresses, but this was a regular occurrence once Virginia had gone.