The Velvet Hours

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2016 Alyson Richman

 

Solange

June 1940

Paris

Outside, I could hear the sound of airplanes, and their rumble filled me with unease. The only thing worse would be the wail of a bomb siren. I bit my lip and hurried to grab my bag.

I moved through the rooms of my grandmother’s apartment one last time. My finger trailed over the edges of her furniture, my eyes absorbing the image of her beloved porcelains, her carved ornaments, and, lastly, the magnificent portrait of her over the mantel. The only possession of my grandmother’s that I would take with me was hidden underneath the collar of my blouse, and feeling it against my skin gave me courage.

I learned so many things from my grandmother in the few short years I had recently come to know her. She taught me that when making a change in your life, never be sentimental and always be swift. So I took my final glances of all her precious things and reached into my satchel for the key.

As I pulled the heavy door behind me, I thrust the key in the lock. My grandmother’s apartment and her belongings were left as she requested. The place was now sealed like a tomb.

My new life began the moment I closed the door of that apartment, as I locked my grandmother’s secrets and personal treasures deep within.

It would become yet another buried story, in our family of reinventors and name changers, alchemists, and connoisseurs of beauty and love.

My father, a pharmacist, had grown up unaware of his true mother’s existence until he himself was eighteen, when the soft-spoken woman who had raised him presented him a letter written in my grandmother’s hand.

“I made a promise once,” the woman whom he had always believed to be his mother informed him. “And now I must tell you the truth.”

The letter was on heavy, bonded paper, with a small gold butterfly embossed on the top. The return address read 2, Square La Bruyère. The handwriting was flawless. A black fountain pen had rolled over the page in fluid peaks and arabesques.

My dear son, the letter began. By the time you read this, you will have turned eighteen. It’s hard to believe that I had you so many years ago, when I was but a child myself. But it’s important you know I exist. Do not fear, I will not demand you call me “mother.” Madame Franeau is the woman who will always deserve that title, and I make no apologies that I am hardly a shining example of maternal grace. But should you be curious, I am here, always available to meet you.

Her signature was large and marked with flourish. The name was wholly unfamiliar to him. Marthe de Florian.

He folded the paper, straightened his back, and made an effort to disguise his disbelief. It was almost impossible to comprehend that the woman who sat before him was not actually related to him. They both had small brown eyes, thin mouths, and dark hair. They had delicate digestions, and preferred their books and hobbies to the chore of making conversation. They found comfort in small animals, dogs, cats, and birds. And the fact that he chose to study pharmaceuticals seemed natural to all who knew him as a young boy. For he had always loved chemistry—the glass beakers, the mixing, and the science of making things that had the capacity to heal.

Madame Franeau tried to adopt a face of stoicism as she put forth this unexpected revelation to him. Her eyes were wet and glassy as she watched him read the paper, but never once did her tears fall.

“I couldn’t have children of my own,” she finally began. He looked out the window, his face not bearing any expression, but she could see that his thoughts were far away.

“I knew her from the first tailor shop where she worked. We were both seamstresses, and our days were colorless and bleak. We spent countless hours hemming trousers, and adjusting the lengths of sleeves. I was recently married to your father . . .” She stumbled over the words. The word “father” caught in her throat, as though after so many years of it being the truth, it was now suddenly a lie. “She wasn’t married and had little means of support, and we were overjoyed to have a child to raise. Her only stipulation was that you learn the truth when you became of age.” She paused and took a deep breath.

“I will not be hurt if you want to meet her. She has since become so different than I . . .” Her voice trailed away. “She belongs to another world. One difficult for me to explain.”

He spent the next several days looking at the letter. He would withdraw it from his desk during breaks from studying and gaze at Marthe’s full, scripted hand.

Only after he had finished the last of his entrance exams to the school of pharmacy did he decide to write her a reply.

His stationery was not as heavy, nor his handwriting as grand. On a simple sleeve of white paper he wrote:

Madame de Florian, I would like to visit you next Tuesday at four o’clock. Please let me know if you might be free. As you know, I have recently learned it is a falsehood for me to use the last name “Franeau.” So I will close this letter with what Madame Franeau has informed me is in fact, my real last name.

Henri Beaugiron

When he called on her at her apartment, a housemaid opened the door and led him inside. The air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers, and the space was crowded with collections and curios from exotic lands. Even before she appeared, he felt ill at ease. There were just too many things. Too much velvet and satin. His childhood home had been a simple place: a bedroom with a wooden desk and bookshelves, and a living room with modest but tasteful furniture. A kitchen with a warm stove.

Now he felt as though he was entering a secret theater, one in which he clearly did not belong. Heavy drapes cascaded over the tall windows, which made it difficult to gauge whether it was night or day outside. His breathing began to escalate as he waited for her. He looked at the collections of Asian porcelains on the shelves, then the large portrait of a beautiful woman over the mantel painted with exuberant brushstrokes, and he was struck by its palette of sensual colors, its feeling of vibrancy and heat. He was about to move closer to examine it, when he became distracted by the sound of rustling silk and the striking of measured footsteps against the parquet floor.

“Henri,” a voice emerged. There, standing before him, was Marthe dressed in a soft pink dress, her neck roped in pearls.

They stood, several paces from each other. Her gaze was one of appraisal, as if she were looking at him as an object she may or may not choose to buy.

“Well, now . . . you look nothing as I had imagined!” She let out a gentle laugh. “But I suspect neither do I.”

He was unable to reply.

If my calculations are correct, she must have been close to forty when my father first met her, though it is impossible for me to know that for sure. Even when I met Marthe years later, she claimed to be an age that would have been impossible given my father’s age and my own. But this was certainly not the first step in her reinvention. As I would eventually learn from her, one needn’t be born into a beautiful life in order to have one.

I met my grandmother in the last months of 1938, when I had just turned nineteen years old, a few years before everything in Europe would smolder under Hitler’s torch. Her existence came as a complete surprise to me, like a hidden steamer trunk that was suddenly pulled down from an attic and opened to reveal a forgotten treasure.

My father spent most of his hours running his small pharmacy on Rue Jacob. Since my mother’s death, he had struggled to find ways to occupy me, his only daughter. I had finished my schooling five months before, and now spent my days dreaming of adventures and writing down imagined stories and plays.

We were mutually frustrated with each other, and my restlessness only made it worse. At night, when he returned home from work, all he wanted was solitude, while I was eager for companionship. Our apartment was dark, the paint worn and the furniture practical. My mother’s legacy was her books that lined the shelves. Every time I pulled a bound leather volume down from its resting place, a part of me ached, and my mourning felt like a fresh wound.

When I complained one evening about the lack of excitement in my life, he seemed to be on the brink of despair.

“I’m sorry I can’t be more entertaining.” The exasperation in his voice was apparent, and it was clear he was unprepared for the trials of rearing a daughter on his own.

For a moment we sat across from each other without speaking, his eyes focusing on the tower of bookshelves before finally settling on me. At first, I thought he was thinking of my mother. The woman who had kept his house tidy, cooked his meals, and nurtured my love of books. But then, something unexpected happened.

The light in my father’s eyes shifted. It was as though he had stumbled upon an elixir in a forgotten cabinet in his shop, and he believed this tonic might have the power to alleviate the ennui that plagued me.

“I know someone I believe you’ll find interesting . . . Perhaps she’ll even give you some material for your writing . . . I haven’t seen her in quite some time, but I will write and see if she will meet you.”

Three days later he walked into my bedroom with a letter in his hand.

“Tomorrow, we’ll visit someone you will not believe is actually related to me. But it’s the truth,” he said, as if he, too, could not quite believe the veracity of his statement.

“And who might that be?” I asked, perplexed.

“You’ll finally meet the woman who bore me. Marthe de Florian.”

The next day, after our lunch, we set off for Chaussée d’Antin in the ninth arrondisement of Paris, where Madame de Florian’s apartment was located. On the way, he told me he never thought of her as anything more than the woman who had given birth to him, as they had been estranged from each other most of his life.

“The only thing we share is her original last name,” he told me as he shook his head. “But even that is something she’s changed along the way.”

“And does she know about me?” I asked him.

“Yes . . . she knows. I took your mother to meet her before we married, and we later visited her again to announce we were expecting a child. But you will see when you meet her, Madame de Florian has little interest in marriages or births . . .”

I raised an eyebrow. “What are her interests?” I pushed him.

“Things I find tiresome . . . her own comfort and pleasure . . . her own beauty . . . her belief that she is somehow above the banality of this world.”

We had nearly reached her apartment.

“She’s an actress of sorts, so be prepared,” he warned. “She enjoys an audience.” He paused for a second and looked at me. I was dressed in my best clothes, a navy hat and wool coat, and one of my mother’s dresses that I had taken in for the occasion.

“She will like you very much, Solange. You’re pretty enough to fit in amongst her things.”

“But you haven’t seen her in so many years,” I told my father. “How do you know everything will still be beautiful?”

“I don’t . . . but I suspect that she has kept herself quite well preserved; that was very much her nature.”

I think that upon our introduction, we both surprised each other. I know I certainly wasn’t expecting to be greeted by a woman so elaborately dressed, with makeup camouflaging a face over sixty, and around her neck the most exquisite set of pearls.

And I believe she, too, appeared slightly amazed, for my face, although years younger than hers, so clearly resembled her own. I had the same pale skin and slate blue eyes, the long neck and Gallic nose.

My father introduced us coolly. It was evident by the way he stood in the hallway that her apartment made him nervous, and he had little tolerance for staying any length of time in her company.

He refused to call her “mother,” or introduce her to me as “grand-maman..”

“Madame de Florian,” he said with great formality. “Let me introduce you to my daughter, Solange.”

Our arrival appeared to delight her. She didn’t bother to reprimand my father for not having visited her in what must have been nearly twenty years. I would later learn that she didn’t calculate time as most people did. For her it wasn’t the minutes passed, but the moments exchanged.

“A pleasure,” she said to me, extending her long white hand. “Will you both be staying? I can have Giselle prepare us some tea.”

“I won’t be able to as I have work to do,” my father said, making an excuse for himself. “But Solange will, if that’s acceptable.” He looked at me, then back at this tall woman who seemed wholly unrelated to him. “Since her mother died, she has been restless . . . She just finished school and tells me she wants to write plays, perhaps even try her hand at a novel . . . So I thought perhaps you might share some stories with her while I am at the pharmacy.”

“But, of course, Henri,” she said, reaching to touch my arm. “I am not so busy anymore, and I would appreciate having the company of a beautiful girl to share my afternoons.”

I stood there, rapt at her. Her voice was melodious. Her eyes were full of life.

“Giselle, take her hat and coat.” My wool coat and felt hat were given to the elderly maid in the black dress and white apron.

“I’ll pick her up at six,” my father said.

With that he left us, and I was led inside.

I will never forget the parlor, with the large portrait that dominated the room. It was undoubtedly of her, created in a tornado of brushstrokes. Around her neck, the same necklace she now wore, a glimmering, perfect set of pearls.

She saw me look at the painting, and then the choker around her neck.

“I have never seen so many beautiful things,” I whispered.

“Why, thank you,” she retorted, ever so pleased. She then took a seat in one of the velvet chairs, as though it were her personal throne.

I believe she could sense my desire to study everything that surrounded us in the parlor, even though I tried hard to control my urge to stare. The collections of porcelain. The many objets d’art. The painting over the mantel. Even her string of pearls.

I admitted to be most taken in by the painting. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

“Who was the artist?” I asked, pointing to her portrait. The body, depicted with great, artistic exuberance, seemed to give off a pulse within the room.

“The artist?” She was bemused. “It’s not the artist you should be asking about.”

“No?” I answered, perplexed.

She motioned for me to sit down.

Her eyes flickered and she reached to touch her necklace. Its clasp, a small green butterfly with emerald wings, slid forth.

“No, it’s the story behind it. Everything of value contains a story, Solange.”

She touched the butterfly with a light caress of her fingers. I had never been in the company of someone who could so cap...