“Medlars. They’re best picked after the first frost.”
“So what will that make you in the end? Aside from Aristotle?”
“A teacher. The École Normale Supérieure, it puts out the best teachers in Europe.”
“Teaching?” I put the spoon in my mouth. “That’s so…”
“Bourgeois?” He raised his eyebrows. “I know.” He disappeared into the larder.
“It’s not what I expected from the son of artists.”
“Maman, she rebelled against her parents by running off to Picardy with a painter twice her age. I rebel by becoming respectable.”
“I don’t know if you could ever be respectable in that red sash.”
He returned to the table with cloth-wrapped bundles and covered plates, a knife between his teeth like a corsair. “Once a bohemian, always a bohemian, I suppose.”
“Did you grow up wanting to be a teacher?”
“Of course not. I wanted to be an expert swordsman, naturally. And an ornithologist. And, for one solid summer, a brilliant English detective, like Sherlock Holmes. Mostly, though, I wanted to be a tennis star.” He offered a paper-thin slice of ham on the tip of the knife.
It nearly melted on my tongue. “So sweet!”
“Bayonne ham. It’s cured in sea salt and air-dried on the ocean shore.”
I imagined I was tasting the sea. “Aren’t you already a tennis player?” I knew nothing about the sport, but he’d come in swinging his racket like an expert.
“Not just a player. A star. Like Paul Aymé or André Vacherot or Max Decugis.” He brushed back a dark curl from his forehead. “Playing in the Championnat de France, the French Covered Courts Championship, the Riviera Championship. They even have tennis in the Olympics now.”
I’d never heard of any of those men or any of those tournaments, but the way he said their names, the way his face glowed and his words slipped over one another in excitement, I leaned closer. “And will you? Will you be a star?”
He busied himself unwrapping a wedge of bright orange cheese. “There’s nothing all that practical about dreams like that.”
“Whoever said dreams had to be practical? If they were, we wouldn’t have to hide them in the middle of the night.” I didn’t wait for him, but broke off a crumbling bite of cheese myself.
He looked up under a fringe of lashes. “So what are yours?”
The cheese was sweet and nutty and utterly delicious. “My dreams?” I brushed crumbs of cheese from my lips. “Well, I’ve never told anybody. I’m sure you can guess.”
“Mimolette.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The cheese. It’s Papa’s favorite.” He cut me another piece, but held it just out of reach. “Confess all or the mimolette goes on the fire!”
“Of course it’s art.” I hopped down from my stool and snatched the slice of cheese. “The Glasgow School of Art, like our mothers. I want to learn to draw, to paint, to sculpt, to carve, to etch, to…arrange, to design. To learn anything they’ll teach me there.” I ate the cheese in a single bite. “And I won’t leave school, like my mother did. To give up on all of that, for marriage?”
“My maman left the School of Art to marry, too.”
“Was your father also a student there?”
“Worse. He was her instructor. It was quite the scandal.”
“Mother spoke fondly of your father. She omitted all the good details, it seems.”
“They were all friends, I think. Our mothers, our fathers.” He wiped the knife on his towel. “I’ve seen some of Papa’s studies from that time. Boisterous dinner parties, cafés, picnics, rowing on the Clyde.”
Mother always spoke of art school longingly, but never of her life in Glasgow. Had she once worn Gypsy earrings like Madame Crépet? Drunk black coffee and argued socialism in smoky cafés?
Father had been part of that life. For a brief time he’d stepped outside of his architecture apprenticeship long enough for night classes at the School of Art, long enough to fall for a redheaded art student named Maud. I’d always wondered what had brought them together. I wished I’d asked him about it when I had the chance. I wished I’d asked him about a lot of things.
“And then they married and left all that behind,” I said. “The rowing, the parties, the school.”
“They stayed friends, though. Even when my parents left Glasgow for France.” He uncovered a dish and, with a corner of bread, scooped something pale brown and creamy. “Here, this is garlic pâté.”
I took the bread but didn’t eat. “They couldn’t have been as close. They lived in different countries, they had different lives. They only saw each other once a year.” I ran a finger through the pâté and put it in my mouth. It tasted like garlic and herbs, like autumn in the woods.
“I suppose I’ve never had a friend to grow apart from,” he said.
Neither had I. After Mother left, Father kept me close. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he was worried I’d disappear next. “One must always begin somewhere,” I said, the taste of pâté still on my tongue. For the first time in a long while, I let myself smile.
Clare Ross wasn’t the first stray that Maman had brought to Mille Mots. She was forever carrying in some wretched creature, a sore paw or a broken wing tied up with her pocket handkerchief. Apart from Marthe’s parakeets, we’d housed numerous dogs, several scrawny cats, a handful of birds, a baby mouse, and, on one occasion, a three-legged squirrel. To me, a teenage girl was as mystifying as a pet squirrel.
It must have been just as mystifying for Maman. She wrote me from Calais to say she was bringing home a visitor, her old friend Maud’s daughter. Will you come home at the weekend, Luc? Your papa is working on that frieze, the one with the serpents and the swans, and is in Reims most days. I’m sure Clare doesn’t want to be stuck here with no one but me.
And though I had lessons and work and tennis games I’d rather be playing, I didn’t argue. There was a note of desperation hidden in Maman’s note. I pinched the inside of my wrist, the way Maman always had when I was a boy and swung my legs during church. A good Crépet. I’ll be there Saturday night, I wrote back.
I didn’t want to play nursemaid. I expected black crepe and tears, stiff-necked Britishness. I expected dreary hours of being polite. Instead I found a girl, hesitant in the front hall of the château, with a halo of Titian hair and a wispy dress the color of summer leaves. She might have been one of Papa’s fairy queens. Her face was shuttered, yet her eyes were intense and curious, flicking from one thing to the next. I wondered how she saw Mille Mots.
Though I tried to study on the train ride back to Paris, my thoughts kept going to Clare Ross and her single, careful smile. I sensed that she didn’t offer them often. Though I hadn’t planned on it, I knew I’d be back soon.
When I returned the next Saturday, Mademoiselle Ross wasn’t in the château. I found her out under the old chestnut tree with a sketchbook resting against her knees. She still wore that leaf-green dress. Two of the dogs stretched out on the grass beside her, one snoring, the other watching my approach with rapt attention and wagging tail.
“There you are.” She pushed her straw hat back from her face. “I haven’t seen you in days.” Despite the hat, the tip of her nose was pink.
I bent to pet Bede the springer, who jumped up, wriggling, and licked my wrist. The other, a pudgy mutt we called Ripper, yawned without opening his eyes. “Paris. Remember?”
She nodded. “Anyway, you’re dressed differently. At first I thought you were a country curate coming across the lawn.”
I looked down at my black suit, narrow cravat, ink-stained shirt cuffs. “The unofficial uniform of a student.”
“I liked your red sash. The one you were wearing while you played tennis?” She poked the end of the pencil in her mouth. “You looked like a pirate.”