Paris: The Novel

hand, along the boulevardSaint-Germain, in five minutes she’d be in the heart of the university Latin Quarter, where she could cross to the Île de la Cité under the elegant spire of the Sainte-Chapelle.
    Marie saw Aunt Éloïse every day. Meanwhile Marc arranged for Claire to take a course at the École des Beaux-Arts, at the top of the rue Bonaparte.
    Marie and her daughter had always had an easy relationship. Toward the end of her school days there had been the usual moments of friction to be expected between a mother and a daughter of that age; but the huge consciousness of the war, with its daily tragedies and privations, did not leave much space for family strife.
    The sudden death of her father had matured Claire, as well. She knew that her mother needed company, and made a point of being her friend as well as her daughter. They often went out together and if, as sometimes happened, a stranger wondered if they might be sisters, she was both amused and happy to see her mother’s pleasure at the compliment.
    Claire soon made friends in Paris. She liked the company of people her own age. But she also enjoyed exploring the city together with her mother, and most weekends she and Marie took the train down to Fontainebleau.
    At least one day a week, Marie would go over to the Right Bank, where she would meet Marc for lunch and then spend the afternoon with him in the office. “For as you’re here now, Marie,” he had remarked, “you may as well know something about the business. When our parents die, you’re going to own a part of it, after all.”
    Though it wasn’t how he really wanted to spend his time, Marc had been conscientious in managing the family’s affairs. Gérard’s son, named Jules after his grandfather, was taking an active part now. “He works hard, and he’s absolutely determined to run the business successfully,” Marc told her, “but he’s still in his twenties. I oversee what he does, and I watch over the finances like a hawk. Two or three years more and I hope he won’t need me.”
    Marie rather liked the young man. He reminded her a little of her father, except that he was slimly built and he was going prematurely bald. He worshipped his father’s memory—and even if she couldn’t share his enthusiasm, she found it rather touching. His sisters were already married, so he regarded himself as the future head of the family, and protector of his mother.
    Marie hadn’t a lot to say to Gérard’s widow. She was a perfectly pleasant woman with plenty of friends and not a lot to do except shop and pay calls. A year after Gérard’s death she had dyed her hair with henna. “A mistake,” said Marc laconically, “but it may be a signal that she hopes to find another husband. We invite her to all family gatherings,” he continued, “and she gives no trouble. You should go shopping with her. She’ll be quite happy if you do that.”
    So that’s what Marie did. It was agreeable enough, just the same as shopping with one of the mothers she’d known in London. Their tastes were different. Once or twice Marie tried to lure her sister-in-law into art galleries or exhibitions, without success. She’d rather look for bargains in a department store. But Marie discovered that her brother’s widow had a weakness for jewelry and high fashion. They would spend a happy hour or two in the area north of the Tuileries Gardens, around the elegant Place Vendôme, looking in the showcases of Cartier and the other jewelers, or in the new couturiers like Chanel. After that, Marie would arrange for Marc to give them lunch at the nearby Ritz Hotel, before she went off to spend the afternoon with him at the office.
    And it was thanks to a chance remark of her sister-in-law’s that Marie came to a realization that was to change her life.
    “You should stay in Paris, you know,” she told Marie one day. “You have your family here, and you could have a pleasant life just like mine.”
    It was perfectly true, Marie thought. She could find plenty to interest her in Paris for the next thirty or forty years, become a grandmother no doubt, devote herself to some good causes perhaps, and in the end die quietly, in Paris or in Fontainebleau. She could do all that and count herself a very lucky woman.
    But rather to her own surprise, she realized it wasn’t what she wanted. She needed something more. She just didn’t know what that something might be.
    She was chatting with Marc in the office one