A Rather Charming Invitation (16 page)

“Mademoiselle Penn-ee Neekolls,” she proclaimed into the phone, and my name echoed in the room as if she’d just announced the arrival of the president’s wife. From his office in the back, Monsieur Lombard came forth. He still had the look of a French intellectual, with those black-rimmed eyeglasses and the preoccupied air of a man with many complex thoughts on his mind. But as soon as he saw me, he let out a cry of joy, as if I were a long- lost friend, and he kissed me on both cheeks.

“
Ça va? Eh bien?
You are always adorable, but now you look radiant. Come, I think you will like what we’ve done,” he said in one of his usual modest understatements.

I felt suddenly shy, as I always do whenever people are kind to me. He gave my hand a light, reassuring squeeze, then released it and turned to his staff. He clapped his hands, and his lady attendants swung into action. A cavernous dressing room was immediately placed at my disposal, with enough mirrors to evoke Versailles and to please even the most demanding narcissist. There were several upholstered antique Louis XV fauteuil chairs in red, white and gold. In the corner was a table with a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, already chilled; and an espresso machine was hissing at the ready, alongside a tray of little sandwiches and pastries waiting for a nervous bride to nibble on.

And there, across the room, hanging on a satin-padded hanger with a gauze dust covering, the sole item on a long antique brass rack . . . was my wedding dress, ghostly white, waiting like a phantom in the corner.

As I approached the dress, the very sight of it made my heart flutter, like a bird who cautiously hops nearer, branch by branch. But these attendants knew their way around jittery brides, and nobody rushed me. Monsieur Lombard had already discreetly left the room, and one attendant brought in accessories and placed them on a low tufted ottoman covered in pale pink satin, while other women appeared with more padded hangers that they added to the rack.

Gently, they helped me out of my street clothes and into the soft, silky stockings and lingerie, which they’d selected for this dress, all in white silk with gold trim. The shoes had a deliberately old-fashioned shape to them, with ever- so-slightly rounded toes, and pretty golden heels.

Now, at last, it was time for the dress. Three attendants lifted the covering reverently. The under-layer was actually one of Great-Aunt Penelope’s magnificent 1930s gowns, cut on the bias to sensually caress the hips. Monsieur Lombard had made a new over- layer for this, of fine silk chiffon, decorated with gold and silver thread, and pink and pale blue beading, that his incomparable sewing ladies had stitched on by hand. The effect was of a unified shimmering creation which, depending on how I turned and caught the light, looked now silvery bluish, now golden pinkish, making the dress appear as if it had trapped a whole bunch of sunbeams and moonbeams in its folds.

I was looking down as I stepped into the shoes, while casting a wary eye at the ladies with the pins in their mouths while they made the final fitting. But now, as I lifted my head, I caught sight of my own image in the mirror, which was replicated in all the other mirrors. The room and its surroundings, and the ladies attending me, also appeared in the reflection, and I experienced an eerie feeling, as if I were getting a glimpse of some secret parallel world that my soul inhabited, along with these otherworldly creatures fluttering about, as they do in those magical, dreamy ballets, when seemingly ordinary women turn out to be enchanted swans.

The attendants made me turn this way and that, so they could assess, and show me, the full effect. I obeyed them, speechless, still keeping an eye on that floating, fleeting creature in the mirror, who might just tiptoe on air and ascend all the way up to the clouds and vanish. Monsieur Lombard had quietly re- entered the room and surveyed the dress, without making a single sound, until now.

“And so,” he said softly, “the veil.”

The chattering ladies fell silent as he reverently carried the veil himself and placed it on my head. It had a lovely round cap of crocheted silk, adorned with little pearls and tiny pale pink delicate flowers. The cap fit nicely on the crown of my head. From this sprung the long veil of billowing tulle, floating out behind me, light as a whisper of smoke.

Monsieur Lombard motioned to one of the gals to give me a drawstring bag made of crocheted silk, with the same beading as the dress. Then I slipped on a pair of Great-Aunt Penelope’s white elbow-length gloves that I’d selected from her treasured collection. Monsieur Lombard fussed, gently, with a few seams here, a few beads to lay flat there, brushing away invisible stray threads; until finally he stepped back and appraised the dress carefully from afar. The other ladies held their breath.

“
Ah, bon
,” he said finally in approval. Then he looked directly into my eyes, and whatever he read there made him smile gently. “
Très belle,
mademoiselle
,
” he said.

I heard gasps of relief and pleasure from the attendants. I looked gratefully from them to Monsieur Lombard, then to the creature in the mirror again. I had begun to tremble, and now I let out a little tremulous sigh. “Ohhhh!”

That was the first time that I really, truly felt like a bride.

Monsieur Lombard said, “You will be a beautiful long-stemmed white rose. Enjoy it, mademoiselle. Bask in the sunlight of your dreams.”

 

 

After that, I existed, for a few hours, in a pleasant blur. I vaguely remember stepping carefully out of the dress, into my street clothes again, and being served those nice pretty sandwiches that I now devoured with a sudden robust appetite. I was given a pretty flute of champagne from a bottle that Monsieur Lombard popped open. He drank a glass with me; then he let his main lady take over, with her notes about the final delivery of the dress and accessories. Honorine would handle it from here.

“And you will let us know, as soon as possible, whether the wedding will be in England or France?” the woman inquired without any trace of impatience, but some concern, as the French always do when they want something to be done correctly, with dignity, and not in some dumb half-assed flurry, which they find utterly appalling. “Because we can easily get it to you through our shop in London, if need be,” she was saying. “Only let us know, and we will do whatever you require.”

“I will,” I promised.

“And the suits for your fiancé to choose from, they are ready for him at the shop in London, but he must try them on soon and decide,” she warned; then said lightly, “Well, you will let me know.”

“Okay,” I answered, still half in a dream.

And so, I went back out onto the streets of Paris, walking on clouds, oblivious to the noise and soot and traffic. Back at the hotel, I freshened up, then waited for Jeremy in the guests’ lounge, the kind of parlor that has newspapers from all over the world on long wooden poles hanging like flags. A tall, magnificent grandfather clocked ticked companionably in one corner.

Jeremy’s arrival caused a number of heads to turn, because he was carrying himself with even more than his usual confidence; and when he spotted me, his face lit up with such pleasure that people curiously glanced at me, to see who he was meeting.
Whew
, I thought, feeling tremulous again. Why didn’t someone ever tell me that love could feel this good? But at the same time, I felt as if I might faint, too. Imagine that. In this day and age, a woman swooning at the approach of her guy. It was so crazy, to have my emotions tumbling all around me, threatening to be explosive, like some chemistry experiment, which might prove to be too much, and blow me right out of the lab.

“Hi,” Jeremy said as he sat beside me. “Drake’s man insisted I eat some lunch with him. Have you eaten?”

“Monsieur Lombard gave me lots of nice lady-food,” I said, adding softly, “the dress is beautiful.” Jeremy saw the emotion on my face, and he kissed me.

I asked how his meeting went with Parker Drake’s man. “Extremely well,” he said. “The guy asked the usual questions, you know, like what other projects we’re working on, and about our partnership, and all that other stuff they ask when they’re trying to see if I’m a family man, reliable, et cetera.” Jeremy smiled, adding, “So, I explained that we’ve got an upcoming wedding, and we’re visiting some of your relatives in France. In the end, he told me we’re on the right track, and he will recommend the firm of Nichols & Laidley to Parker Drake.”

“Great!” I said, feeling that this, too, was simply a part of the enchantment of being in Paris. “What happens next?”

“If all goes well, we’ll be invited to meet Drake himself,” Jeremy said. “They’ll let us know when.” He checked his watch, then said, “Time to head on out to your ballerina’s place. We should get there spot-on, if we leave right now.”

This woke me up a little. “Holy smokes,” I said. “I almost forgot about Venetia. Do we have time to get her some nice flowers? Good. I think she’ll like it.”

V
enetia was ensconced in a grand turn-of-the-twentieth-century apartment house on the Left Bank, not far from the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the Sorbonne and the Luxembourg Gardens. Her building, decorated with globe lamps and flanked by two catalpa trees, was set back from the street with a pretty gated courtyard in front, made of white and grey flat paving stones. Inside, the building had an old wood-and-glass elevator with a little wooden bench inside, so that an elderly ballerina like her could ride up and down in style and comfort.

When we rang her bell, a plump maid let us inside an apartment with a long, dark corridor. We passed a flock of thin, long-legged, long-necked girls in their late teens who were just leaving, and thus going in the opposite direction; they were strange big-eyed beauties who scampered past us, walking in that telltale way, with their hips and feet turned out.

“Ballet students,” I explained to Jeremy. “Honorine told me they still pay homage to Venetia, in the hopes of learning her secrets about how to dance a particular role. Honorine says they’re all very gossipy, and Venetia loves having their company to dish about the new dancers.”

Venetia was awaiting us in a large, high-ceilinged room that overlooked a quiet side street. There was one big window, through which, presently, we could see the dancers walking and chattering to one another in the street below, as they headed toward a nearby ballet school. Shafts of light from this window fell upon the butterscotch-colored parquet floors. The room at first appeared to be nearly empty, with just a mirrored wall to the right, and a freestanding ballet practice barre.

Then I noticed that the rest of the room’s furnishings were all assembled in a sitting area against the left wall: a few chairs with crimson padded seats and backs; a low round table, piled high with dance magazines and large dance books; a tall, fringed lamp and a telephone on a chest of drawers; and an open trunk of costumes. Two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves contained several framed publicity stills of Venetia as a young ballerina, and rows of satin toe shoes on display, in every shade imaginable. Between the shelves was a fancy daybed, whose back and arms had a dramatic swooping shape.

And there sat Venetia, enthroned upon this sofa like an Egyptian queen, with a small bulldog at her feet on a pillow of his own. He opened one eye to size us up.

“Madame?” I said to Venetia. “So pleased to meet you. I’m Penny, and this is Jeremy.”

“
Bonjour!
” she purred, in the low, husky voice of a woman who has smoked cigarettes all her life. She had dark, full eyebrows above slanted violet eyes, and a foxy, pointed chin that bore a resemblance to Honorine’s. Her expressive mouth moved into a wry smile, and her eyes were shrewd and observant. When Jeremy handed her the flowers, which were beautiful and fragrant, Venetia accepted them with a coquettish smile, as if he were an admirer who’d come backstage after a performance. She buried her nose in the bouquet, saying, “Mmmm,” before letting her maid put it into a blue vase.

The maid had returned with a silver tray and silver pot of hot chocolate, which she poured into red-and-white china cups and topped with a little daub of freshly whipped French cream. The chocolate was very good, rich and dark. Venetia sipped hers while holding the cup with both hands, which were adorned with rings of bright, chunky, colorful stones.

She looked at us together now, in that speculative way people do when they are assessing lovers. “So, you two are about to be married, eh?” she said, her gaze going from me to Jeremy, and resting there. “You are both very brave,” she drawled. “Ah, but mademoiselle is
très jolie
, and he is a handsome devil, and you seem to move well together. That sort of coordination cannot really be faked or taught. You have money, I hear, so that’s a good start, all told.”

Jeremy appeared amused by her, and she enjoyed this; she had the soul of a born performer, and I think our receptiveness caused her to become more animated, as if she wanted to hold our attention by continuing to entertain us. So, as soon as possible, I asked her about the tapestry.

Venetia was quite savvy, and said slyly, “Hah, Leonora wants to know what it’s worth, and she’s thinking again of selling it, eh? Well, I gave it to Philippe, so it’s theirs to sell, if they wish. Leonora told me the last price she was offered; it seems fair, but does that make it worth giving it up? I wonder. Is she still hoping to find out that the king himself commissioned it? I told her I already looked into it, quite extensively, because, you know, it was made by one of my ancestors.”

“Yes, I heard, but I never got the details,” I said eagerly, being on turf that was comfortable for me as a researcher. “What time period?” I asked.

“Oh, the mid to late 1600s, during the reign of Louis XIV,” she said.

My father had told me that all French schoolchildren must learn to recite the names and dates of every one of their kings, yet so many are a Louis or a Philippe, that I often lost track. But of course I knew about Louis XIV, the Sun King who had expanded the palace of Versailles and used it as the seat of French global power.