Gustave de Chagny’s wedding day was the most glorious of that summer.
Sun streamed in through the windows of the little church, gilding the shabby vestments of the priest — clearly passed down from before the war — and lying rich and heavy across the tiles. There were still scars from the shelling in the village outside, but the billets here had been far enough behind the front lines to be safe, for the most part, and the damage that had been done was healing with the merciful hand of Time: five years of peace, now, and the flowers twined around chipped stonework and helped shroud raw-patched walls. A generation of France’s youth lay interred among the mud and craters of a war to end all wars, and Flanders poppies would never blow carefree in our hearts again; but new life was growing up with each passing spring, and young creatures still laughed and loved and married, even as we had back in our day.
And I had been lucky: so, so lucky, among all those grieving mothers of gallant boys... Tears blurred for a moment, splintering sunlight across that beloved head bowed now at the altar beside the girl of his choice — but when else could a mother weep, if not at her own son’s wedding?
Gustave never spoke of the war. He’d chosen to return to France and fight for his country, a slender, musical boy full of romantic ideals; he’d spent months billeted here, at this very place. He and Bertrand... and it was Bertrand’s little sister Laure who knelt at the rail for the blessing at his side. Some good, at least, had come out of those lost years.
The War had stolen his youth and brought him back to me gaunt and silent, with haunted eyes. But he had come back, sound of wind and limb, and with Bertrand at his side: Bertrand the inseparable with whom he had shared a billet and played duets together on the old piano behind the lines. Bertrand had been studying to be a concert pianist, once. They still played together — Gustave’s own arrangements for three hands, since the last year of the war that had left his friend with the empty sleeve pinned so neatly at his side...
But there was no bitterness in Bertrand’s face now, as he watched the two he loved best in the world pledge their final vows together; he felt my gaze, turned, and smiled, and I found myself dabbing at my eyes in good earnest. The young had been through so much... and they still held so much hope for this world of ours.
Mademoiselle Laure was lovely, with the unaffected radiance of a girl on her wedding day; beside my tall, slim son the coltish tangle of her long limbs was transformed to elegance, and she had left behind the instinctive round-shouldered stoop that had served as camouflage for that ungainly height. Even in that absurd shapeless dress and low-browed veil — the new fashion which I could not admire, try as I might — she made a bride that any man could be proud of. But I hoped the craze for loose bodices and low waists would be short-lived; at forty-five, one comes to require a little more support. I did not think I could bring myself to throw off my lacing altogether, even if fashion demanded it.
The look on her face was sheer wondering delight. I watched Gustave kiss his bride through the veil of my handkerchief as happiness got the better of me at last; and I was not the only one.
Many of the village women my age were still clad in black, with a timeworn ring on a finger touched now in bittersweet recall. We all remember our own weddings at a time like this, I suppose, and the days of our girlhood. Mine had been by special licence, in a hurried privacy that might have brought scandal in itself if it had not already been so inextricably entwined around us... and I had been no older than Laure was now.
I seldom wore my ring these days, and it was growing harder to force it onto my finger. But it sparkled proudly there today in the name of respectability, my badge of position as Gustave’s mother, as bright and delicate as the day Raoul had chosen it for me with such pride.
Without intending it, I glanced sidelong towards the back of the church, where Raoul de Chagny’s fair head showed against the old stone. I had been doubly lucky, after all; I had gone through the years of the war without losing my son, or my... friend.
We’d lost touch with Raoul when war broke out, and Gustave had seen him far more recently than I. They’d met at Headquarters during the War: Raoul trapped behind a desk. struggling with supply shortages and imagining contempt in the eyes of every aged young subaltern, and Gustave with his field promotion still fresh upon his sleeve and a mud-stained message in his pocket. Both would have changed places, if they could.
But they’d found some kind of fellowship there, and again briefly in those weeks when Raoul had transferred at last to the front line, unable to bear the shame when men his age were being conscripted for the trenches. It had still been Staff work, of course. But a stray shell had struck the car he’d been travelling in, shattered his hip, and put an honourable end to Raoul’s war.
He would carry the limp to the end of his days, and in bad weather he could scarcely move; but he made light of it to Gustave. There were so many others in worse case, so many others who had not come back at all... and it was as if, by the pain, he had bought back his self-respect. Oh, I would never understand men, their lack of imagination and their wars, but I was glad all the same that Raoul had somehow found peace — and that he had found a son at last in Gustave.
He had almost missed the ceremony at the start. I stole another look across as we filed forward for the Eucharist; yes, she was there, that aging, overdressed woman on his arm who had caused such a stir when they came in together at the last minute. Some trouble with the hired fly that had driven them from the railway station, apparently, but we hadn’t had time to talk and I had no idea who she was. Village society being what it was, I’d overheard some ripe speculation, but I was doing my best to keep an open mind.
We’d written since the War, but we’d never met. I’d sent him tickets for my Norma at La Scala — it would be the last time I’d sing the role, the demands were growing too much for my voice — but the seats had remained empty. Travel was no longer so easy these days, and there was unrest in Italy. I would retire soon, I thought, and move back to France.
Really, Raoul looked ridiculously young when he smiled... His fair hair was fading now, back to the flaxen thatch of the boy who’d played with me on the beach, and I thought ruefully of the silver threads I plucked so assiduously from my own. No-one would ever mistake my complexion for that of a bride again, even under the shade of a flattering hat. But Raoul could have stood in Gustave’s place at the altar, and the match would not have seemed an unseemly one...
I must pay more attention to the service, I told myself severely, schooling my wandering attention to its proper place. Such comparisons did not belong in church, let alone such vulgar curiosity.
As it turned out, as soon as the Mass was over, I was to bump into Raoul’s mysterious guest myself: quite literally.
“Laure — Gustave!” I embraced them both as the crowd jostled, laughing, around us, and Laure bent to press her fresh, unpowdered cheek against my own. “Laure, darling, I’m so very glad. I hope you’ll be so very happy together—”
Gustave had turned to welcome another of the local women — they all remembered him kindly from the months he’d spent here behind the lines — and I stepped back to give them room. A little too quickly.
“Pardon, Madame—”
We apologised almost in the same instant, but I couldn’t help staring. That heavy purple dress with its rows of black beading must have been twenty years behind the times at least, and by far too ornate for a simple country wedding. And the hat made her look like a concierge on a Sunday outing.
“Forgive me...” Raoul took my elbow gently from behind, moving past. His own suit was old — the little snag of thread on one of the lapels was one that I knew, I saw with a pang — but impeccably pressed, and it fitted him almost as well as ever.
“Christine, Laure — this is my dragon-housekeeper, Marie Brassard. Mère Brassard, this is Gustave’s mother, the great Christine Daaé... Gustave you know... and this is my dear daughter-in-law, Madame de Chagny.”
Laure blushed adorably, and my own cheeks coloured a little at the reminder. It was a long time since anyone had called me that; but there would be a new Madame de Chagny now.
Raoul had not paused. “Laure, would you take care of her? I know you’ll be kind to her for Gustave’s sake, but she doesn’t know anyone here... and I couldn’t leave her behind, not for Monsieur Gustave’s wedding. He always meant such a lot to her when he came to visit.”
“Of course she will,” Gustave said at once, smiling over at his wife. “Won’t you, darling? Laure can put anyone at ease in a moment...”
So this was Mère Brassard... I scarcely listened as Raoul embraced the pair and made his formal congratulations. I knew Gustave had been seeing a good deal more of Raoul these last years since he’d been back in France with Bertrand, but Mère Brassard had been an affectionate feature in his accounts since those first, awkward visits. Still... ‘dragon’?
“Rehearsing again, Mother?” My son touched me on the shoulder, with an impish grin at my visible jump.
“We never finished the introductions...” He gave the little stage-bow I’d taught him that always made me smile. “But I think you two know each other anyway. Mother — Father.”
And just like that, Raoul was kissing my hand, and we were alone together in a sudden swirl of strangers as the congregation poured out of the little church around us.
“Madame,” Raoul said quietly, straightening. His eyes warmed. “Christine... look at you. Regal as a queen — and lovely as the day I last set eyes on you.”
“We both know that’s not true, Monsieur le Vicomte...” I could see the years on him, too, now that we were closer. Marks of pain, and stress — and old dissipations. Oh Raoul... “But you’re trying to distract me with flattery. I demand to hear about your ‘dragon’ — Gustave always made her out to be the kindest creature...”
“Oh, she dotes on small boys.” Raoul cleared his throat a little awkwardly. “I didn’t know what to do with him, but Mère Brassard saved us both. Saved me, anyway.”
The lines on his face had grown harsher, abruptly, and for the first time he looked older than I.
“I was in a pretty bad way when we... parted. I don’t know how much you knew — I tried to keep as much from you as I could. I wasn’t proud of the way that I’d acted—”
I didn’t want confessions, not now. There was quick understanding in his eyes, and he threw up a hand in acknowledgement.
“All right... But Mère Brassard took me in, gave me a room when no respectable lodgings would have me. Found me employment when I couldn’t pay her and no-one I knew would give me the time of day... the War swept away a lot of things, Christine. Not all of them for the worse.” He shifted his weight a little, wincing, and I saw for the first time that he was leaning on the stick at his side.
“Raoul, you shouldn’t be standing — come and sit down... Gustave should have told me—”
“This?” He let me draw him down onto a chair with an unconscious sigh of relief, looking down at the cane he held. “Dear, it’s nothing. It helps with standing, that’s all.”
He flourished it with a schoolboy grin. “And it’s a wonderful means of expression: of punctuation, like this—” little jabs — “exaggeration—” another flourish — “disdain, disapproval—”
I caught hold of his hand before he could make me laugh any more; tears were too close behind. “You’re still trying to distract me. Tell me about your dragon.”
Raoul shrugged it off, turning my fingers over in his own. “Oh, she used to tell me the same things that you tried to tell me, only in stronger terms... and I could take it from her, that’s all. I was supposed to be taking care of you, not the other way round.”
“We were supposed to be taking care of each other,” I said softly, feeling his touch on our wedding ring, and Raoul sighed.
“We were too young.... I’m sorry.”
But it hadn’t been just his hurt young pride, and my clumsy attempts to appease it. There had been the vast, unspoken secret that had stained the very beginning of our marriage, from that bond of music that he’d never forgiven or understood: and the question, always, that hung over Gustave. I’d never known for certain if he’d guessed that the boy might not be his son. I couldn’t ask him now, on this day of all days...
There’d been that rumour I’d heard, a few years back, about the little girl whose school fees he was paying: idle gossip, but I found myself hoping now with a jolt of surprise that it was true. He’d have done as much for the child of any woman with whom he was living — I knew that better than most — but the girl must be eight or nine now, and Raoul deserved a daughter of his own to love. It had been a hard blow to us both to find that I could give him no more children after Gustave was born.
“I’m sorry too,” I said instead, and closed my hand round his.
His grip tightened. “Well, Mère Brassard got me straightened out, and in the end I had enough to pay for some furnished rooms — that was when I wrote to tell Gustave that he could come — with her to look after me. And it was her contacts behind the scenes that helped get me into that junior Staff job during the War: that, and the remnants of a title, for what good that did anyone. The best men we had were from families we’d never heard of—”
“Now you sound like Gustave.” My son’s new-found passion for politics had first bemused and then rather appalled me; but I couldn’t doubt the ideals behind his activities, and he spoke so enthusiastically about all they hoped to achieve that I’d found myself converted despite my misgivings. Judging by Raoul’s expression, he’d been subjected to much the same experience.
He made an inelegant sound. “Ah yes — the Radical party. My son, Deputy Comrade the Vicomte de Chagny...”
“They’re not altogether Communists, you know,” I said mildly. “And it’s quite the coming movement: we might see him in the Assembly for real before the decade’s out.”
Raoul snorted again, sounding comfortably middle-aged. “I blame the Italians, myself... You’re not going to stay there, are you? I don’t like what I’m hearing, and you don’t want to find yourself in the middle of a revolution, whether it’s one of Gustave’s colour or not.”
He’d been careful not to say ‘I don’t want to find you’, and I appreciated it.
“I’m forty-five, Raoul. I’m not going to be playing svelte young soprano roles much longer... I was thinking of a farewell tour: London, Paris, Brussels, maybe even Vienna again. Then maybe I’ll find a place here, somewhere near Gustave, and try a little tuition. I’ve always wanted to take on some pupils; see if I can teach some of these modern Carlottas how to put more of their soul on stage.”
Raoul laughed. “In that case, I forecast more ‘farewell tours’ for you than Adelina Patti... though that was America, of course, and the Americans will put up with anything.”
A touch of the old hauteur; silence fell between us. I don’t know what he was thinking, but mine was an all too vivid memory of a scribbled score on a hotel piano in New York.
“You never did go to the States?” Raoul said at last, drawing his grasp gently free from mine, and I shook my head.
“They wanted me at the Met, before the war, but...” I swallowed. How could I admit to Raoul, of all people, the complicated knot of emotions that had filled me at the prospect of that voyage? “I — I couldn’t.”
No more dollar millionaires; no more journalists; no more ghosts of unhappiness past. Paris held memories good and bad. New York held only nightmares.
“And you never thought of going back to Sweden?” Raoul was asking, curious. “After our time in Christiania, I thought perhaps... On hot nights in Paris I used to picture you there, among the lakes and birch-logs in that old story-book we had. But then I heard you’d gone to rival Nellie Melba in England at Covent Garden.”
He had mispronounced the name of the great English opera house so badly that it was a moment before I understood what he meant, and his answering shamefaced chuckle broke the constraint of New York. I smiled back.
“I did think of taking Gustave to Sweden, but... we’d been studying English already, and it would have been very hard for him there. And I wasn’t really Swedish any more... When once you’ve been very happy in childhood, Raoul, it doesn’t do to try to go back. We learnt that together, you and I.”
He’d started to say something, and then stopped. His hand gripped again over the end of his cane in what was clearly a habitual gesture, and tightened. I hadn’t meant to hurt him.
“Raoul, I—”
He’d been studying his own shirt cuffs as if fascinated all of a sudden; now he looked up. “We’re not children any more, Christine, and I’ll ask anyway... I can’t afford much, but my rooms are clean, and if you wanted to spend a few days quietly in Paris, away from the crowds at the big hotels—”
“Raoul de Chagny!” I made a joke of it, to soften the rejection. “Did I just hear you make me an indelicate proposition?”
On the off-chance that it was true, it needed to be nipped in the bud as soon as possible; I wasn’t sure quite what he’d had in mind, and suspected he wasn’t either.
I got up, with a glance at the little statue of the Virgin where Laure’s bouquet had been laid in reverence. The girl’s voice floated in from outside, happy and excited. I made my words as gentle as I could.
“Dear old friend... it wouldn’t work. I still have a very jealous suitor: my art. Scales at eight o’clock in the morning — remember?”
To my relief I got a rueful look in response. “All too vividly, my dearest wife.”
“If ever I come to live in Paris, I’ll buy a luxurious villa on the outskirts according to tradition, alongside all the aristocrats’ cast-offs... and we’ll meet every Friday for tea with Gustave and Laure, and all their little Christines and Raouls.” I let a touch of mischief enter my eyes. “And you can bring your daughter.”
... It was a long time since I’d seen him go quite so scarlet as that.
My little shaft had caught him off-balance in the act of trying to rise to his feet, bearing heavily on the cane: it was hard to watch, and when I held out my arm he took it without hesitation, letting me take his weight as he braced himself. At least we didn’t have to meet one another’s gaze.
“We need to find the others,” he said stiffly after a moment, settling the stick at his side. “I ought to get Mère Brassard back to the station — the fly calls at three—”
I slipped my hand through his free arm, remorseful at having spoilt the mood. “I’ll help you find her. I’m sure Laure still—”
But he demurred with a shake of the head. “Dear Christine, I think she finds you a little overwhelming. Better if I go alone.”
“Then it’s goodbye — or au revoir.” I pulled back and looked up at him, a little anxious. “Promise me you’ll write soon. We must see each other more often... best of friends.”
“Every Friday,” Raoul said gravely. He opened his arms with a diffident air, offering an embrace if I cared to take it.
I hesitated a moment; then stepped forward to kiss his cheek as his hold tightened around me. I was no longer the slip of a girl who’d fitted so easily against his side, and I was all too conscious of his stick... but his arm hugged closely round my shoulders, and I put both of mine around him and squeezed back, burying my face in his coat.
“Best of friends,” Raoul said with a smile as I released him, straightening my hat, and I gave him a grateful look.
“Raoul, if I—” I didn’t know how to ask it without wounding his pride. “If I send you the fare as well as tickets for my next performance, will you come?”
But he laughed, without a trace of resentment. “Send me your scarf, Christine Daaé — and I’ll bring it back.”
I watched him walk out of my life again with a little pang for the years we’d lost; but we’d both found peace, and an affection we could share. And next month — Raoul’s fair head caught the sunlight as he paused to go down the steps — next month I opened in Venezia, at La Fenice.
And there was a red scarf at the bottom of my drawer.
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