Under the Poppy (48 page)

“I keep gentleman’s hours,” with a humorless smile, turning to see what her eyes cannot hide, though she tries to distract them both with chatter about Pimm: he is making himself a little workshop backstage, Pimm’s Chateaux to become Pimm’s Theatres, with little paper puppets to replace the dancing gentlemen and ladies. “And Mickey is making finger puppets,” she says. “We’ll sell the lot in the lobby, before and after the shows—”

“Mickey misses—his friend.”

“Yes,” after a pause. “They all do,” and herself, too, though she knows Istvan has been back more than once, slipping in and out like a cat through a window, her worktable rearranged, a certain tool gone missing; as she knows he is well, or at least that he is observed to be well, from the notes she gets and carefully destroys. No one has come to the Blackbird, the letter box sits unmolested in the safe; her silent hallway quiz to Benjamin, miming a key, brought his fingers to his chest, his nod in return, Benjamin whose key is Rupert, Rupert who now opens the traveling case to find inside a sachet of dried mouse, a yellowed note card advertising an evening’s entertainment, “
The Hour of the Flesh
” and “That’s apt,” he says, dropping both to the floor. “I’ve had my hour, I ought be on my way.”

“What do you mean? You’re leaving?”

“Why not?” with a shrug. “You’re safe with Pimm. And I’m worthless here, I do nothing of value—”

“Monsieur Benjamin would not say so.”

“Monsieur Benjamin.” He rubs his forehead, he stares at the floor. “Monsieur Benjamin is heir to a great name, and a very great fortune.” He rubs his forehead again. “Each day a boy blacks my boots, a girl tends my coat, another brings me water when I want to shave, whiskey when I want to be drunk; I sleep on silk.” He puts some papers into the case, a clean shirt, the little white knife. “That teacher creeps about the house sniffing in corners, he’s halfway behind every door I pass. And letters come like clockwork from the country house, from the old man, that old mummy who thought to break my hand. Meanwhile I play about in the gardens, or Mme. de Metz tries to teach me chess…. Jesu,” looking about the room, as if it is already a memory, as if she is a memory, a sweet one he must still forego. “I used to have industry. Now I may as well be a puppet in a fucking box.”

And what to say to that? so she says nothing, only reaches to press his hand, as he takes her into his arms, holds her as he once held Decca, another woman who found her own way, and “Mr. Pimm, now,” he says. “He’ll help you keep what’s yours.”

She closes her eyes, she breathes the strange flowery scent of his new waistcoat. He is a good man, it is dreadful to see him so, dreadful that she cannot speak truly, say at least what little she knows. “We’re to marry, in the spring. You must—you must stay for the wedding at least, you must give me away—”

“Marry! Why, felicitations, Lucy,” kissing her cheek, a kind of relief in his eyes that makes her bite her lip. “I’ll stop at the broker’s today,” as Pinky’s knock comes gaily to the door: “Excuse me, milady’s chariot’s below for Miss Bell?”

“I’m there directly,” Lucy calls back, as Rupert gives her the smile he used to, in the days of the war and the soldiers in the lobby, the stink of piss and pus and gunpowder and “He’ll come back,” she says, as if compelled. “You’ll see, he’ll come back to you,” and rushes out, face red, before she can say more: leaving him with the half-filled case, its key slipped onto the ring beside another key, black metal for the safe he checks mechanically, the gold intact, yes, and the box with its strange letter, what use for that anymore?
I pray you know me when we meet again,
well, there will be no meeting in this world, and the General will have naught to do with them again; with him. May be he ought to burn the thing before he goes, may be he ought to burn it now—

—as he takes from his pocket the matches, bends once more to the safe but “Aren’t you coming,
Maître
?” Benjamin diffident in the doorway, so he closes the safe again, closes the traveling case, tucks it under his arm and follows Benjamin down to the cab: where Lucy, Pinky, Mickey and Didier wait to take a turn around the promenade. It is a festive ride, the sun striking silver the statues of statesmen and saints, the pigeons wheeling, the vendors crying rabbit-fur muffs—“Rat fur,” says Mickey wisely—and pocket-stones to heat and slip into one’s coat, black paper sacks of steaming chestnuts, and chocolate almost too bubbling-hot to drink, a taste of it carried back in a china thimble-cup for “Bella,” with Benjamin’s flourish of a bow, Isobel in pale lavender silk beside the fire in the east parlor, sable-cuffed gloves and writing letters; she lets her pen fall as they enter. “The man said it would give you sweet dreams.”

She sips; she smiles her thanks; she notes Rupert pouring himself an unusually large whiskey. “We’ve a simple bit of venison tonight, Monsieur, I hope it’s to your liking. Benny, you dine with the Guyons, I believe.” A one-act charade, but one that Benny will accept, as he will also accept—whether he yet understands or not—the Guyon girl, Christobel, as his wife. The letter from Chatiens has come, the fiat has been issued, but overall it is a very suitable choice, much more so than Adele Chamsaur. Isobel has met the girl on several occasions, and while she may not be a beauty—too pale, and much too tall, almost as tall as Benny himself—she has lovely eyes, and is quite accomplished, a reader of more than silly novels, she and Isobel once had a lively chat about, what was it? Voltaire, yes. The Guyon name is an old one, and Mme. Guyon is the sister of M. Guerlain, so that connection will be well-attached. As for Benny’s connection to M. Bok—it is well that he is dining alone with the Guyons. The gossip has grown dangerous—Fernande asking archly if Isobel will wed M. Bok, to keep him in the family—and loud enough to be overheard at Chatiens—

—where Benjamin has been summoned by a letter he has not yet read, left lying on a pile of others on his desk, beside the heap of unfinished poems and his red journal; into which, before he leaves, he scrawls a quick summary of the day’s events—the clutter and chill of his master’s old rooms, how he longed to take each object into his arms, everything bright with Rupert’s luster:
The piled-up scraps of puppets, that’s I before I loved him
—then lets the cover fall. Hat and gloves and down to the carriage, but not without a moment’s pause in the parlor, to whisper once more to Rupert, Isobel watching their faces, their eyes. She cannot feel envy of Benny, but—to have someone look at her so, someone like M. Bok, what must that be like? as “I shan’t be late,” says Benjamin. “I won’t stay for the dessert, it’s always something rather foul—”

“Why not consider your hostess, for once,” says Isobel, with such asperity that both men stare at her: then Benjamin offers a cool bow and departs, while Isobel reaches for her pink pavé case, an unpleasant flush across her cheeks. Rupert says nothing, he lights her cigarette, he lights a cheroot. Finally “Shall I read, Monsieur?” from a book of essays, “A Map of the World” that maps no world he knows, but it is a pleasure to sit and listen to that low, commanding voice reading of long-ago princes and their stratagems, queens and their intrigues and discontents. A servant comes to draw the drapes, replenish the logs; another sets with daily silver the small fireside dining table, pours the wine, brings the meat. Outside, the wind rises, pressing against the long windows as if seeking the weakest spot for entry; small things creep unseen in the frozen garden, hunting one another through the dark.

After dinner, Isobel nods invitingly to the chessboard, an old and starkly carved set from the Indies, red jade versus ivory, but “It’s a waste of your time, Madame,” says Rupert. “You need a proper partner—I still can’t tell the damned bishop from the knight.”

Something in his tone, the cast of his gaze, brings her softest smile, very rarely seen: “Oh, Monsieur. What difference if you play a certain game or not! And as for bishops, I am sure you know one when you see one.”

Rupert shrugs. “I’ve never met a cleric, unless it was in these rooms.” He nods at the book, the map of the world, her world, and Benjamin’s. “The landscape I know best—” Looking now not at but past her, at the draped windows, the roads to the fields to the wilds he understands; he almost smiles, a wolf in a brocade waistcoat as “I am a traveler,” he says. “A traveler, and a brawler, and a bravo, a front-of-the-house man—if you know what that is, Madame, which I most truly doubt—alongside men whom you’d not allow inside this house, or even near it, if you were wise. And in the days of the Poppy, we—” but there he stops, the name gone silent on his lips.

That silence lies between them like the firelight, the drifting haze of smoke until “Monsieur,” says Isobel, “I am well-acquainted with the lords of this city, and of many other cities; I have watched such men come and go since I was a very young girl. Bishops, yes, and mayors, military men, men of industry; viscounts and dukes. Once even a king.” Her gaze stays locked to her gloved hands, tightly clasped in her lap; the fur trim trembles. “And I tell you that never have I known a finer man than yourself, Monsieur. Most truly, I tell you so.”

He stares still at the draped window, he does not see her, no one sees her. But in this moment, opened like a rose, Isobel is beautiful.

In the dimness of the hallway, Mr. Entwhistle stands listening, tense as a cherubim at the gates of Eden; he too has had a letter from Chatiens. On the stairs, Otilie pauses to watch him, then deliberately drops the heavy tongs she carries, to make them clang, to make him jump, to make his presence known to the ones in the parlor. He throws her a look of loathing as he hurries past—

“Jade!”

“Spy!”

—as the butler opens the outer door to admit both the wind and Monsieur de Metz, back early but not too early, having dutifully consumed Mme. Guyon’s dessert—
The mayor’s lady gave her cook’s recipe for
tarte tatin
, she had it from Louis Vaudable himself!
as Christobel Guyon rolled her eyes to make him smile—and promised more than once that he would return. Otilie lingers, tongs back in hand, longing to tattle on the awful tutor, but already Monsieur is stepping into the parlor—

—as a moment later, Madame steps out, having kissed her brother—“You’ll tell me in the morning all about your evening, Benny”—and
smiled to M. Bok, retiring then to her own rooms, where her lady’s maid sits waiting with the violet water: surprised instead to find herself dismissed until the morrow, Madame saying only that she is very, very tired.

And in Benjamin’s chambers, Rupert sits with one last cheroot, as Benjamin tosses down his jacket and tells the story of his night: the meaningless pleasantries, Mme. Guyon and her gluey dessert, M. Guyon and his careful inquiries—
Your father is quite well? Your father is a true friend of mine, and an old one, we were in Ypres together years ago
—with Christobel calm in white bridal lace, placed across from him at table since “They want me to marry her,” he says. “No one has yet said so, but I know.”

“Is she likely?”

He shrugs. “She’s not a fool. Or a strumpet, like Adele Chamsaur. But I’m in no hurry.”

Rupert considers him, the cropped curls begun to grow again, the faint shadows of his cheeks, the shadow of the man he will be; a man that he, Rupert, can never know. Very gently: “You ought to wed.”

“You say this to me?”

“For—safety’s sake. For your own sake. What we do—”

“What we do belongs to us. No one else.”

Monsieur Benjamin is heir to a great name, and a very great fortune.
“If you say that, then you don’t know the world.”

And Benjamin smiles back at him, cravat in hand, safe as Adam in the garden. “What other world is there than this,
Maître
?”

In two long steps Rupert is beside him, bending to kiss him, claiming and relinquishing, a master’s kiss. A little flurry, Benjamin hasty to shed his shirt, bunch it in one hand as they come together, as the moon recedes and the gaslight glows, the wind trembles the window-glass left bare, a pair of charcoal drawings fluttering like falling leaves. Footsteps pass the room, pause, return to pass again. On the carpet, unconcealed by the fallen shirt, its silver chain gleaming, lies the black metal key.

Lucy

Thank Providence it was Pinky here with me when they came. The children were with Pimm, at the arcade, and we were onstage, planning out the props for the new show, “Jack-in-the-Box.” A potato crate with a flat false top, a broomstick length for Rosa to crank, and Mickey will pop up in the motley-and-bells:
In French, you know, it’s “diable en boîte,
” Pinky told me,
a boxed devil. Which suits our Mickey to the fingertips.

He always calls him so, “our Mickey,” as it’s always “our show.” How much he brings Puggy back to me! Once or twice I’ve even called him so…. His own dearest wish, he says, is to apprentice to me—to me!—and learn to play the puppets proper, though his father would never allow it:
The old stick gives me a fairly slack leash, but it’s just so long and no longer. One dark day he’ll make me tuck in my tail, and marry, and go roost at a desk in the bank,
with a tragical roll of his eyes.
Still, he’s not a thorough pharaoh, like Benjamin’s father. It was a treat to see Benjamin, wasn’t it? It’s been an age. We talked a bit of, of M. Bok. You know.

Yes
, I said.
I know.

He says they’ll go to Greece, soon. As a surprise.
Most thoughts he has show right upon his face, again like Puggy, and I could see his worry, though I kept my own worries to myself; some things I don’t tell even Pimm.
He’s happier than ever I’ve known him, but—Miss Bell, you see, I’m not the swimmer he is. I splash about in shallow waters, I don’t go out into the deeps. But Benjamin
—

It was then we heard it,
tap-tap-tap
like knocking, but already he’d let himself in: the General, bold as day down the center aisle, and climbing onto the stage, with some curbside thug there at his elbow, the kind Omar would have pitched right out into the street. Except for the bowler hat, he looked just the same: bowing to me all affable and kindly-like, as if we were old bosom friends.
Greetings, Lucy, you’re looking very well. And in a theatre, quite the likely setting.… I’d have a word or two with your M. Bok.

I could feel myself puff up, like a cat does when she’s cornered, while Pinky set his hammer down, then straightaway picked it up again, so I knew he felt it, too. Whatever the General wanted of Rupert, he could have had elsewhere, and he’d know well and good before he came that Rupert’s elsewhere himself these days. So why did he come? Standing ramrod-straight with his arms crossed, as if his army was right behind him, and that bravo looking me brazen up-and-down, like he was totting up an offer; no one can do such to me, not ever again. So before I said a word I stared at him, I stared his gaze right back down into the boards, and then I told the General, He’s not about just now, sir. You can leave a message if you wish, I’ll see he gets it.