The Paris Time Capsule (5 page)

“
Years of living on my own and getting by.” Cat felt her face redden.

Loic
moved back, closer towards the door. “So … no live in man, then?”

“
Nope.”

H
e took her arm gently. “Don’t hurt yourself, Cat.”

He
shouldered it himself, hard. “It’s moving,” Loic said, his voice straining with effort.

“
Well, if you say so,” she laughed.

Loic
raised a brow and looked down at her. “You can’t see that clearly this door has budged?”

“
Well…”

“
Okay then.” He tried again. It didn’t give a further inch.

“
You’ll have Madame Neighbor out here in two seconds,” Cat giggled.

Loic
raised a brow. “Well then, in that case …” He turned and gave an almighty push with the other side of his body. The door sprung open, appearing as light as a feather soufflé, now that it had decided not to be stuck.

Loic
held it open. He waved Cat into the apartment.

It was hard to know whether it was the engulfing stench of damp and rot and dust, or the instant sneezing that hit hardest at first.

Cat, her eyes closed, sense
d Loic striding towards the windows.

“
Merde,” he muttered.

It was only possible to hear
Loic pulling open curtains then shutters. Then, finally there was the sound of the window latch being un-clipped and light flooding in, causing a vivid gold to sear the vision that Cat was trying to muster through her streaming eyes.

Air swept into the room next, an almost visible swirl of it. Dust spun too as if it were furious with the upset of air and light and Cat and
Loic all at once. It seemed to fall from the ceiling, bounce off the lights. Cat coughed so hard she thought she might choke and from what she could sense with her grit filled eyes, Loic was leaning on the open windowsill, half out in the fresh air.

Footsteps next:
Loic striding around the room, past the spot where Cat stood just inside the entrance.

“
Wait there,” he said, his voice grim. “I’ll open all the windows first.”

Every time Cat
tried to open her eyes or remove her hand from her mouth she was overcome with thick dust motes travelling down her windpipe. The first angry dust dance would not abate, and was still choking her.

“
Sorry,” she was almost stuck on the words. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”

“
Cat?” There was something in Loic’s voice that forced her to move towards the sound of him. “Can you open your eyes?”

She took a few steps, tried to take some deep breaths, still rank with the smell of old grit and God only knew what else.

Loic was by her side, holding her arm. “You’re going to have to open your eyes. This is unbelievable.”

Cat f
elt a stirring in her stomach. She would have to force her eyes open.

With the sort of care that she normally reserved for taking a step into the cold sea, Cat opened one eye, and then the other. It was all she could do to breathe. She took one step deeper into the room, then another. Shafts of sun bore confident yellow streams, onto …

“Oh!” Dust that had greyed into thick velvet with age clung its ancient wrapping onto everything in sight. Cobwebs spiraled down from the ceiling like ghostly chandeliers, spinning around the real chandeliers that hung, suspended as if in a time warp, from the ceiling that peeled in drifts.

In front of Cat, in front of the floor to ceiling curved windows that
Loic had opened up, there was a dining table, set with pieces of silver as if guests from a decrepit decades old dinner party were about to reappear, light cigars, chat.

To the left of the vast dining table a black marble fireplace slept valiantly under layers of hideousness that nevertheless could not hide the sort of solid, genteel beauty that Cat knew would respond to the gentlest touch of a soft cloth.

Louis XV chairs sat just so as if they had been arranged by a servant, ready for their mistress to come home from a day of shopping in the 9
th
. Perhaps the lady of the house might have chosen to rest her tired feet on the chaise longue to Cat’s right. At one time it wouldn’t have had the great rust stain across its center. At one time, the pink toile de jouy would have been perfect, cared for.

A vast dresser resided against the wall, its wood still rich underneath the grime. It was filled with the sorts of porcelain treasures that people like Cat only drooled over while window-shopping. And yet here it all was, on location, the real thing.

Loic stood next to an Empire chair, upholstered, under the dust, in an exquisite pattern of Napoleonic bees.

“
You should see this.” He led her into the next room, through a set of open double doors, their gold gilt still beautiful against the cracked white paint.

Like the first room, this one ran from the back to the front of the apartment. The sets of doors appeared to open from one room to the next, in a set of deliciousness that was causing Cat’s heart to hammer and her legs to want to buckle.

“Are you okay, Cat?”

There were not satisfactory words. Dear, dear things. Another chaise longue
sat in this room, covered in the same tiny pink and green flowers that decorated the room’s pretty wallpaper. The wallpaper peeled in foot long patches from the walls.

“
A lady’s private sitting room,” Cat whispered.

Loic
was silent. He moved across to the open window, stood by the faded green silk curtains that looked almost as if they could break into bits at the touch of his hand.

A baby grand piano stood in front of the window next to
Loic. There was music still on its stand, open not at the beginning of a piece but at a page somewhere in the middle.

“
Debussy,” Cat murmured. There was another fireplace opposite the chaise longue, white marble this time and another vast web covered chandelier.

“
Cat.”

“
Hmm?”

“
Come to the bedroom.”

She had to stop herself from laughing; the expression on his face was so serious.

“
What more can there be?”

“
This.” Loic took a step through the next doorway.

For the first time, Cat noticed the sound of his shoes on the parquet floor.

“I’m finding this impossible to conceive,” he said, moving right into the room. “But come in here.”

The only thing to do was stare. If the living room and the exquisite sitting room, lying untouched, waiting patiently while Paris surged on through the forties, fifties, the sixties, the seventies and beyond had not wrenched at Cat’s heart, and caused her imagination to fly into orbit, then the bedroom nearly knocked her down flat.

Loic seemed to be watching her. “Keep looking.”

Cat took a few steps closer, towards the vast dark bed, its deep red canopy moth eaten
, hanging in strips. A cluster of pale pink cushions was still arranged just so on the cobweb covered pillows.

She put a hand out, touched one of the
dust-drifted pillows. And there was something else. It was as if the apartment had taken on its own lingering smell, a hint that seemed to emerge through the dust. It was almost as if some old perfume was trying to reach its ancient and gnarled fingers out to remind her, to remind them both, perhaps, that someone had once lived in these rooms. That once, they had been alive and loved.

Once, someone had loved this apartment so much that they had filled it with the most beautiful of things, with the most stunning collection in one place that Cat had ever seen in her life. It was
as if it had all been asleep. She had been stunned at first, but the enormity of its discovery was just beginning to hit home.

“
Cat, look up.” Loic’s voice was soft. She could sense that he watched her. She looked up.

And she knew that what
she was staring at now was more precious to someone than the sum of everything else in the apartment put together.

It was
breath taking.

The portrait of a
young woman sat overlooking the bed. Her hair looked as if she had swept it up mighty hastily into a loose arrangement that could fall out into cascades down her elegant back if she pulled out one pin. Her head was turned to the side. It was almost as if the beautiful dark haired girl was throwing herself into her own portrait.

One hand rested on her décolletage looking almost as if it were holding up her low cut pink dr
ess that was frothed with seamy silken brushstrokes not so much to cover her body as to show off its obvious charms. Her other hand hung loose in front of her and was covered with rings.

“
Loic …”

Loic
looked down at the street. “My grandmother came down to the south of France with nothing. She … cleaned for a living. My mother lost opportunities because there was never any money. Forgive me if I’m a little …”

Cat moved towards him.

“I noticed that you seem to like wearing vintage clothes. Go and look in the dressing room. You’ll like what you see.”

“
I’m not here for the clothes.”

Loic
raised a brow.

“
This belongs to your family. I won’t take it. You know I can’t take it. Can’t you just accept it?” She put out a hand, her fingers reaching of their own accord for the nearest thing to lean on.

“
Oh!” Her hand landed on a dressing table, dark wood, beautiful wood, an oval mirror, antique elegant scent bottles of all sorts, shapes and sizes, their silver tops blackened and their glass fogged with age. A set of silver brushes sat alongside these. They were all laid out on a square of gossamer fine linen edged with lace. Cat shuddered.

Loic
still did not move. “It wasn’t left to us.”

“
I may be in my own personal heaven here, Loic, but I’m not a criminal.”

“
Yes, but here’s the material point. How the hell is my mother going to cope with the fact that my grandmother had all this and kept it from her daughter? That’s all that concerns me right now, Cat.”

“
I’ll leave you alone for a moment.” Cat took another long look at the painting. The girl seemed to be in her own world. It was impossible to read any depth of expression on her face. Cat slipped out of the bedroom and through the dressing room.  It was narrower than the previous rooms, but it still ran the length of the apartment. Now, it didn’t seem right to open up the elegant armoires that lined the wall. There was an oval mirror in the corner farthest from the window. In spite of the dust, Cat could still see her astounded and faded self in the glass. She looked like a ghost too.

Spare sections of walls
were lined with white painted shelving. In these there were stacks of ancient shoeboxes. Cat forced herself to move through to the next room, a smaller bedroom. Two single beds were covered in spidery apricot silk. A book lay on the small table between them. A French romance. Inexplicably, Cat wanted to reach out, turn down the bed covers, and see if the beds were made up. But she knew what the answer would be. There was no need to check.

Cat moved back through the eerie dressing room, the main bedroom, and through the pretty sitting room, back to the dining room. There was another door at the end of this, and it was open too. Cat slipped through, into what was a small kitchen. An ancient range sat against the far wall, some loose wooden benches,
and an antiquated porcelain sink. Beyond this, to the back of the apartment, there was another door, smaller this time, no gilt, just plain wood. It opened into a tiny corridor. There was a small set of painted wooden stairs to Cat’s left, almost, she thought, like stairs from a doll’s house, the contrast with the rest of the apartment was so great.

Cat tested the first step. It seemed to be safe. She cl
imbed the narrow flight, stopped on the small landing at the top. The ceilings were far lower up here in the attic. A narrow corridor led across the top of the building. Dust floated in here, a subdued mirage, as if waiting for her to react. Off this, there were three rooms. One was clearly a laundry room. There was another sink in here, an old wringer, and a set of irons on a shelf by the tiny, murky window.

Cat popped her head into two smaller rooms. One was furnished simply, with a single bed
, its ironwork heavy, practical. There was a cross hanging on the wall above it. There were iron bedsteads in the other two rooms, but they had no mattresses on them. Their black springs looked menacing. Cat shuddered and went back to the stairs.

She slipped out of the kitchen and back into the dining room. There, she made a double take. Was she beginning to go mad or was she looking at a floppy Mickey Mouse leaning against the wall by the sitting room door? Cat moved over to it and knelt down in
the dust. Mickey was propped up next to a teddy bear. And above them, there was a stuffed ostrich, draped with just the sort of elegant scarf that Cat would rescue without thought. Her hands started to shake.