They gathered up their belongings, and Christophe picked up Ella’s cases and pulled open the door to venture out into the August heat once more.
‘Are we going to take a tram?’ Ella asked, noticing the iron tracks laid into the cobbles of the street.
‘No, they’ve mostly been decommissioned now. Everyone uses the Metro nowadays anyway. And of course the future is the automobile.’ Christophe set her cases down on the pavement and raised an arm to hail one of the round-shouldered cabs from the stream of passing traffic.
‘Numéro trois, rue des Arcades, s’il vous plait, monsieur.’
Ella threaded a hand through the arms of each of her two friends and settled back against the smooth leather seat of the taxi, feeling excited, as she peered through the window to try to glimpse passing landmarks, at the prospect of seeing Paris properly for the very first time.
The Martets’ home in the rue des Arcades exuded the same air of serene elegance as the house on the Île de Ré, although with a great deal more formality. The building was a tall townhouse made of biscuit-coloured stone and capped with a mansard roof of grey slates. A long sweep of wrought-iron balconies ran the length of the terrace.
Marianne opened the black front door with its gleaming brass fittings and enfolded Ella in a warm embrace. ‘Come in, dearest Ella. Bienvenue. How was your journey? And how is your dear mamma?’ Her dark curls, which were tamed into the same neat chignon she’d worn for the Governor’s ball, seemed shot through with more fine threads of silver than last summer – or perhaps it was just the Parisian evening light which made them appear so, thought Ella.
In the salon, the sash windows were pushed open to allow the evening air in, cooling the high-ceilinged room. Through the windows, which were framed by long drapes in an exotic sienna-yellow silk embroidered with a design of Chinese birds and flowers, the first lights were coming on in neighbouring drawing-rooms as dusk fell over the city. A vase of long-stemmed lilies, sitting on an oval library table at one end of the drawing-room, filled the warm air with a perfume that transported Ella straight back to the Governor’s mansion on the island and that perfect evening last summer when she and Christophe had waltzed together.
He sat next to her now and smiled as their eyes met. Was he remembering that same evening, she wondered? Their moonlit flight through the dunes? Dancing on the beach? Their kisses amongst the sea-grass? She longed to be alone with him again, craving his touch.
Monsieur Martet bustled in, rubbing his hands. ‘Ah, Ella dear girl, you’ve arrived. Welcome to Paris. We’ve all been looking forward to having you with us again, not least Caroline and Christophe as I’m sure you know. Let me pour you a drink. Marianne’s favourite is a Negroni – would you care to try one?’
Ella wasn’t sure, such a thing being unheard of back in Morningside. What on earth would her parents say if they knew she was drinking cocktails before dinner? But it sounded most sophisticated and, after all, she was now in Paris and ready to sample all that the city had to offer, so she accepted the glass her host held out to her and took a tentative sip of the deep red concoction. It was like nothing she had ever tasted before, an intriguing balance of flavours, sweet, but with a bitter edge, refreshing but potent.
‘Do you like it?’ Monsieur Martet asked, his moustache lifting with the corners of his smile.
‘Yes, I do. Very much in fact. Although I think I’d better only drink one or I very much doubt I’ll be capable of getting up from this sofa.’ He beamed even more broadly at her response, and she sensed the slight tension in the atmosphere, which he had seemed to bring into the room with him, lift slightly. Or perhaps it was just the warmth of the evening, the heady hit of the drink, and her acute awareness of Christophe sitting so close to her that made her limbs relax and her head feel light all of a sudden.
She watched, leaning back against the sofa’s soft cushions, as Monsieur Martet stooped to hand his wife her cocktail, the glass suddenly lit with a rich, carmine glow in the final rays of sunlight that glanced through the windows. Marianne reached to take it from him, and, as she did so, she met her husband’s gaze, the two of them exchanging a smile of such utter love that Ella blushed, surprised at witnessing this moment of intimacy between them. She’d hardly considered Monsieur Martet – so distant and eternally preoccupied – capable of such depths of emotion. But now she looked at Christophe’s parents in a new light, realising there were hidden depths to their relationship. Perhaps their different characters provided the perfect balance: Marianne’s gentle, kindly and artistic nature meeting her husband’s determinedly pragmatic ambition to form a complex but satisfying marriage, not unlike the contrasting ingredients in the glass which Ella held in her hands, the components blending together and complementing one another in a heady cocktail.
Christophe nudged her. ‘Ella, you are lost in thought. Come back to us!’
She smiled at the touch of his hand against the flesh of her arm and replied, ‘I think it must be the cocktail, or perhaps it’s simply being in Paris; it’s going to my head.’
Over dinner, the conversation turned, inevitably, to the latest rumours from Germany. ‘Paris is still being flooded with refugees,’ Marianne explained to Ella. ‘People are so worried that Germany will not respect her new boundaries, even with the latest expansion, and there are rumours of persecution of the Jews in the eastern countries. My cousin, Agnès, has brought her family to Paris, but she’s still terrified what might happen if the Nazi dogma spreads. Unlike me, you see, she married a Jew, whereas I dared to marry outside of both my religions.’ She smiled at her husband across the table. ‘Love has a lot to answer for, n’est-ce pas, chéri?’
Ella considered this fact carefully, as she dissected the turbot à la crème on the plate before her. She hadn’t realised that Marianne had Jewish roots. Didn’t the religion pass along the maternal line? Were Christophe and Caroline Jewish too? She felt so foolish for not having known this before, although there had been no churchgoing of any kind on the island last summer, which had only added to the liberty she had felt there.
As if reading her mind, Caroline said, ‘As you will have noticed, Ella, we are not a very religious family. Maman’s father was a Jew, but Grand-mère was a Catholic. Both Maman and Papa’s families lapsed from adhering to any particular religion a generation or two ago. Given what we see happening in some parts of the world today, perhaps we are all better off without it. Does that shock you?’
Ella thought for a moment. ‘No, not really. It seems to me that you all have a deep faith in one another, and in truth and beauty; and perhaps that’s the only faith that really matters. My parents have always insisted that we go to church every Sunday, but I have to say that I’ve never felt it to be a particularly spiritually uplifting experience. In fact, now I come to think of it, I felt closer to whatever God there may be when we were out sailing on Bijou last summer than I’ve ever felt anywhere else.’
Christophe beamed his approval. ‘You see, she understands perfectly. God is present in beauty and freedom. That’s what counts.’
Monsieur Martet tut-tutted faintly, although when Ella glanced at him down the table, his expression was anything but disapproving. He was smiling at his wife in the candlelight and the look in his eyes told Marianne again, as eloquently as any words could have done, that he loved her, body and soul.
She decided that Paris was a little like one of the centime coins that jingled in her purse – far lighter than the heavy threepenny bits and penny pieces back at home. And, like those same coins, the city had two sides. The first was the one she’d anticipated: elegant, cultured, glamorous, a Paris familiar from the photographs and articles she’d pored over in the Picture Post and National Geographic magazines. She visited shops and galleries with Caroline and Marianne, drinking in the latest Parisian fashions along with the tiny cups of strong black coffee that she learned to order whenever they paused at a café to restore their energies. She also visited Caroline at the Louvre, learning far more about art from a few hours with her friend in the museum’s labyrinthine galleries than she’d ever learned in art lessons at school. They met Christophe after work and the three would stroll beside the Seine, watching the boats that ploughed up and down the river, or pausing to admire the work of the artists who’d set up their easels opposite Notre Dame to paint the cathedral’s soaring stone traceries and their shifting reflections in the water below. She savoured every moment, but especially those early-evening walks, holding Christophe’s hand and laughing as he described the latest scrapes he’d got himself into at the bank. Occasionally, Caroline would make an excuse to leave the two of them alone and then they would find a secluded stretch of the riverbank and kiss beneath the dusty leaves of the plane trees that lined the road above them, to the evident appreciation and encouragement of passing boatmen.