Author:
If you've read up to here then you are star! Thank you for giving this story a go. I decided to write it, my first stab at prose, as an experiment. I've always wanted to write a novel, but I've never attempted it. When I needed a subject to just practice on, I decided to write up this story as I've always wanted to, but never felt the urge as poetry is my forte. I f you are enjoying this novel, then please let me know and I will continue writing it until it's conclusion and write the other two I've planned about it afterwards. I'm going off popularity though, no use flogging a dead horse and that!
Chapter Ten
"Nerves" Alex said to himself out loud when he looked in the mirror and combed his hair for the third and final time. He placed the mirror and comb down on the window sill of his small attic room and took in a slow deep breath in an effort to calm himself down.
He brushed his brown jacket down with his palms in an effort to smooth it and then he bent down to inspect his shoes. When he was satisfied with what he saw, he opened the door and traversed the landing and descended to the ground floor of the house.
He stood before a very fancy doorway, containing two high doors with intricate gold leaf swirls and lines on top of duck egg coloured panels. He knocked on the right hand door and waited. He was almost faint with nerves at this point, but he clenched his fists and tightened his lips in order to look calm, but he knew he would fail to pass himself off as so as he was sure he was becoming pale.
It had been not much more than a week and a half since he had began to recover and he was starting to eat much better and hence had more energy. He had began to do odd jobs in the eaves of the upper attic, but could only work for about half an hour before he felt completely drained again and needed to rest, but he felt he had to be useful. To him, there was nothing worse than sitting idle, especially as he had to work for his keep.
Hortense was extremely impressed with her young English worker. Whilst the other men recovering barely left their beds, this young man, who in fairness had been more taken by the sickness than they, had still worked hard. He insisted on making himself useful, even if only a little, so Hortense found him small tasks to perform for her. She was extremely grateful for the help about the practically deserted house and Alex was an apt worker. One day the previous week, he had stopped to eat lunch with Hortense in the upper attic when she suggested that, because his strength was recovering, he may make himself useful now by keeping company with the young mistress, Elise.
Alex had almost dropped his spoon full of thick vegetable soup when he heard this and blundered in his acceptance of the notion by stammering to the affirmative. Hortense smiled at this young mans embarrassment, especially as he had confided in her that he had thought he was dead as he lay sick and that Elise was genuinely an Angel sent by god to tend to him, or take him from this world.
Now he was stood before the parlour door, awaiting admittance and trying desperately to remain calm. He heard soft foot steps cross the room and take the handle. He heard the catch in the lock slide to one side and saw the door open to reveal Hortense, stood there in the gap and smiling at him. He returned the smile and nodded at her as she stood aside and allowed him to enter.
He looked about the room until he saw her.
His mouth fell open slightly and his eyes became huge, though only for a moment. Hortense bustled past him and, with a beckoning hand, bid him follow her to where the young lady stood.
For some reason, he felt calm now that he was in her presence, again as though he was in the presence of something supernatural. He followed Hortense until he was in front of Elise and whilst Hortense uttered an introduction, his brain worked quickly to take in everything about the girl before him.
She was utterly and completely beautiful. She had bright blonde hair that fell in soft curls over her shoulders and back, accentuating her porcelain skin and slender neck. She was also tall, but not as tall as to make her unusual. Her small mouth was heart shaped and her lips were full and a dark pink. Her nose was small and button like, leading up towards her eyes.
Alex stared at her eyes, they were unbelievable. The same eyes he had seen smile at him in his delirium were the same eyes that stared at him now. They were depthlessly blue and in the light of day they were more brilliant. The long eye lashes surrounding them were like a fence that kept whoever fell into those azure pools secured and unable to escape.
Hortense touched Alex's arm, which forced him out of his trance. He had not even heard a word that had been said and felt immediately embarrassed. The girl before him smiled, holding out her slender hand for him to take as a greeting.
"Are you quite well?" asked Hortense.
"Oh – yes, yes. Sorry. Yes" he stammered, taking Elise's hand, knowing that every nerve in his body was eager to discover what it would be like to touch her.
"Oh it is so wonderful to see you well" Elise enthused "please sit down by the fire so we may talk, my society has been very limited since the house emptied and it has been down to Hortense to keep me company". She gestured to two high back arm chairs that had been deliberately brought towards the hearth, where a fire had been lit and offered satisfactory warmth for the two of them.
Alex smiled an agreement to her plan and letting go of her hand, took to one of the seats. As he looked at his seat, a great blanket had been left draped over it. Hortense then told him to wrap up in it and put his feet on the foot stool, for she wanted them both well, therefore they were to wrap up, even in front of the fire.
Elise swathed herself in her blanket and he in his and they sat there in pure bliss watching the fire for a few moments without a word. Hortense went to arrange some refreshments for the pair, to be placed on the small round table that was between their chairs.
When Hortense returned, she took up a post in a corner of the room, draping a thick dark blue woollen blanket over her legs and began to knit. She was happy in her station as chaperone to the young lady and was also pleased that Elise had another person whom she could converse with.
Alex looked at Elise whose eyes were half closed as she stared at the orange blaze before her. They had not spoken since they sat and the strange notion was, Alex did not feel uncomfortable with it. He decided to break it though, even if out of politeness, for he was her guest.
"So Elise" he began "how are you feeling? I understand that you are recovering from this wretched sickness that has blighted us all."
"Oh yes" she began, her French accent sounding quaint to Alex's ears as her tongue curled around every syllable.
"I was quite ill, but I am now much better. It was a horrible illness. I cannot believe it had struck us so hard. Apparently this whole area for many miles has been caught with it. When some of the staff died, at home, not here, then we thought we were all done for. The doctor instructed that we all left, my family and I, but when I became ill, the doctor told them to leave me here in his care. They tried to convince him to have me sent away somewhere else, but I was too sick to travel. Anyway, they should return in a few more weeks." She was sat up now and leaned towards him.
"Hortense apprised me of your dreadful situation. I am so sorry for you to be without your family. I know how that feels" Alex's eyes betrayed his sadness, even though he smiled warmly at his companion.
"Oh do not feel pity for me. I am almost well again and besides, my family are still in the same country. You are away from yours. It must be awful for you." She looked quickly at Hortense who was engrossed in her knitting and thoughts and then placed her hand over his.
He looked down at her elegant fingers that were resting on his hand and then he looked up into her eyes. His lips parted slightly and his stare was intense, Elise mirrored him exactly. They sat entranced by each other for a moment until they heard Hortense sneeze. This snapped them out of it, making Elise sit back and after taking a cup of tea from the little table, sitting far back in her chair.
"Tell me about your family, in England" Elise said, taking a sip.
"Very well" he began.
He cleared his throat for he knew that his life would be strange listening for this young woman's ears.
"I need to explain a bit about my life really, before you can comprehend my family" he said.
"That's fine, please tell me everything" she replied, smiling warmly.
"Well, I was born in the north west of England in the Lancashire town of Coalcote. My mother was a young widow named Charlotte Durrows, who had only just settled in Coalcote herself. I lived with my mother and the Boon family with whom we lodged at first when I was born. When I was still a baby, my mother began to work as a school teacher at the nearby primary school, which was only a few streets away from the house. It was during this period that my mother and I moved a few doors down the street to lodge with Peggy Topping, an old lady who lived on her own, but looked after children for the other families in the street. I was left in the care of Peggy when my mother was teaching, until I was old enough to go to that school myself. All the family I have ever known have been Mrs Topping and the Boon family. I was brought up near a coal pit called Woodly Pit and almost everyone I knew was involved in it. Before my mother became a teacher, she worked as a pit brow lass. That means that she worked at the top of the pit with the other women to sort through the coal and that. When people discovered how highly educated she was, she was given the teaching post as the school was in desperate need of teachers.
Ellen Boon, whom met my mother in France, has been my adopted Aunt and my mothers greatest friend. Her father John, is also my adopted grandfather, he also met my mother at the same time as Ellen. They are wonderful people and I miss them a great deal." Alex smiled wanly and looked away from Elise as if remembering those who were absent.
"Do you have any blood relatives?" asked Elise, who was leaning forward and resting her chin on her palm.
"No. Well, yes actually I do, but it is very complicated." He stated.
"Good. I like complicated and I would love it if you could tell me everything" she said. She knew she was being rather too forward and perhaps even rude, but Hortense was hard of hearing and sat away from them. She felt though, oddly enough, that she could be forward with this man. The way he had looked at her sent shivers not only down her spine, but through her very soul. She wanted to drink in as much of him as she could.
"Right" he said as he made himself comfortable in his chair.
"I need to tell you about my mother then. In fact, she had recently asked Ellen to send her diaries to me. They are personal journals that she started writing when she was sixteen, not long before she met my father and then, until this day. I got them last week and I've read almost all of them now. I understand her a lot better because of those books, so I think I can accurately tell you about her and her family." He looked at Elise who was still following him with interest glistening in those beautiful eyes. He tried to concentrate on his story instead of losing himself again in them. He bit his lip and tore his glance away from her in order to continue.
"My grandmother was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Badney, the Queens cousin, who had married a wealthy politician named Jonathon Heath. After his untimely death when my mother was still very young, and the lack of any relatives on my grandfather's side, my grandmother inherited everything. This meant that my mother had a very decadent childhood, with an excellent home education. She wanted for nothing. However, because of her mother's wealth and social standing, this young widow was courted by many suitors. In the end, she decided to marry a northern mill owner named Robert Camborne. He was originally from Scotland, but had spent many years in the north of England creating this empire of mills and factories. He was even granted a Baronet by the Queen too. He had three children of his own already before marrying my grandmother. They were Thomas, the oldest, then James then Juliana. Their mother died when they were young apparently, but I don't know anything else. Anyway, the boys were older than my mother, by quite a lot really, so they were all married and living away from home, doing their own thing by the time she reached sixteen. Apart from Juliana though. She was very pretty, but spoilt and sullen. She was the same age as my mother and was therefore to become a debutant in society during the same season down in London. Juliana did not want the competition from my mother, especially as my mother was granted a great dowry according to my grandfather's will and she was also of noble blood, especially as she was a distant relation of the Queen of England. Juliana's jealousy managed to prevail though and my mother was despatched to France, to Paris actually, to live with her step brother James and his wife. This was to ensure that Juliana would be debuting as the only girl from that family. It was just her playing silly buggers if you ask me." He smirked to himself, thinking about the diary entries that described all of this and how his mother had been sad when writing about her father, enraged when she found out why she had been packed off to France and bitter towards her mother for allowing it.
"Anyway, she went to live with this step brother James and his wife, who was apparently quite ill in the head. I don't mean to sound harsh, it's just how it was. She was depressed, I mean really depressed. Me Mam wrote in one of her later journals, only a few years ago now, that she had read a notice in a news paper that Amelia, that's James' wife, was dead. Apparently it was suicide, but me Mam thought otherwise." He shrugged indifferently "who knows".
"Alex?" asked Elise "What do you mean, 'me Mam'?"
Alex laughed kindly at her and himself. He had started to let his guard down before this woman and she was hearing the way he always spoke when being colloquial; letting the Lancashire twang into his accent.
"I'm sorry" he said, elevating his lexis and his accents prestige "where I am from, we tend to say 'me' instead of 'my' and 'Mam' is simply an affectionate way of saying mother". Elise nodded and smiled.
"My mother was a very quirky teenager." He continued "She was very energetic and adored music and dancing. She would buy sheet music and play it over and over again on the piano until she knew it by heart. She loved to sing also and would make up songs to pieces she had learnt that were not meant to be songs. She just loved it. When she was in Paris, she went to the great opera house there" Elise grinned and he stopped.
"I've been there many times, it is amazing. My mother used to sing there when she was about my age. She used to be a ballerina too" she enthused.
"I know" Alex said, but continued with his story before Elise asked him how he knew.
"It was this very first night at the Opera that she met my father. His name was Erik Durose. He was a strange fellow. He was born in the south of France to a middle class family. His father was a medical doctor I believe. He was brought up in a very caring household with six other siblings. There was one strange thing about him though, which made him stand out, which were his eyes. I have never met my father as he was out of my life before I was even born, so I can only tell you what I have learned from my mother. He had these strange eyes, like a cats I suppose. They were great and golden and the iris covered the whole of the eye so there were no whites to them. This was not a problem for anyone who knew him. No-one in the town where he lived was bothered, nor anyone else and it was never considered a disability or deformity. Well, as my father grew up, he decided to leave his family and go to Paris. His parents warned him that people had different attitudes there about his eyes and that he should consider wearing dark coloured spectacles.
My father took this onboard – to the extreme. After he arrived, he had little luck finding a job he was willing to do and his parents were right about the way people would treat him about the way he looked. They were even frightened of him. To him, that was just nonsense behaviour and decided that he could no longer live amongst such backward thinking people, not because they disliked him, but because he disliked them. He disappeared. Literally. He decided to look for somewhere discreet to live where no-one would bother him. After the hustle and bustle of living in a large family and then reaching the capitol city, he desired solitude and found it. Living in the bottom cellar of the Paris opera house. There is a lake down there. Averne I think. My mother knew a song about it. That is were he made his home and stayed there for a number of years."
Alex looked at Elise who was engrossed in what he was saying, he wondered if she would recognise the familiar beginning to the infamous story that her mother had been a part of. He continued.
"He had been living down there since his late teens and now he was twenty-two I think, the night he met my mother. She had seen him watching the performance she was at, from a walkway by the ceiling. She decided to follow him and see who he was and why he was sat up there. I think it was the fact she was young and a bit naive. She had been indulged in her whims since she was very young, but it had not made her selfish or demanding. It had simply lowered her senses of propriety and danger. She apparently found him, and pulled off this mask he had on. She just thought he worked there and that he was messing about, trying to scare her off. The next day, she convinced her step brother to allow her to visit the opera house during the day, which she was allowed to do. She posed as a tourist. She saw him watching her again and he stayed in plain sight. She managed to lose the maid who had been sent to chaperone her and met up with him. I think it was then he realised that the perfect solitude he had created for himself down on that dark lake was about to be invaded by this persisting girl."
"I know who you mean." Elise said "I know you mean the gentleman that my mother was kidnapped by. But he was horribly deformed. How could your mother pursue this man? Can they be the same person?"
"Yes. Quite the same. He wasn't deformed at all. Apart from his eyes that is. Apparently, it is how he made his living. He used putty or clay I think it was to make his face and head look all deformed and horrible. He just used stage make up. If people ever saw him, they thought he was some terrible monster. It was a great big joke to him. That's how he made money. He coerced the management into paying him a substantial wage and would occasionally cause mischief to back up this idea he had created for himself as being an 'Opera Ghost'. Oh he loved it." Alex explained.
"But – how –but – no. I mean, how could this be? My mother saw him herself, as did my father. They both say –" she began, but Alex interrupted.
"They saw what he wanted them to see. Which confuses me. I mean, he was in love with your mother, but chose to remain caked in all that make up and wear a mask on top of that. Maybe he thought that she had to love him as a person, not just the way he looked. I don't know." Said Alex, looking back into the flames, a scowl issued across his face momentarily. He hated the fact this man, his father, had loved another woman other than his mother. It made him resent him even more.
"Well what happened with my mother and your father must have been when? After you were born? I thought your father was dead, you said your mother was a widow" Elise looked confused.
"Yes, now that is a very interesting thought. Apparently, my mother and father were married in secret until her family found out and tore them apart. They convinced her that he was dead and vice versa. You don't want to know how they did that" he grimaced then continued "I think that my father thought my mother was dead and as they were separated before my mother even knew she was carrying me, he never knew I existed. He clearly carried on, thinking his wife as dead and then found your mother, fell for her and all that. He left the opera after that. It was only a few short months ago that my mother found out that he was alive. Now she has gone dashing off on this journey that she refused to let me be part and left me here in your father's protective custody." He continued to look into the fire, bringing his fist to his mouth, tapping it gently in contemplation.
"Why do you need to be in protective custody?" Elise asked. Alex looked at her, his vision was slightly blurred after looking so long into the burning light of the fire.
"My mother escaped from her family, after they took her away from my father. She tried to flee to England. Her family were in hot pursuit though. They were even searching the docks for her, in case she tried to flee to England, which she was trying to do. Some henchman of some variety was at the docks, checking the particular one she was at. Just before he got to her, in come the Boon's, John and Ellen. They had been to bury an Aunt from Kent, who had married a Frenchman many years previous and had lived in France and had died there. These were not wealthy people, but their journey had been paid for by some of their relatives. Just as that man was about to catch my mother, John warned him off, telling him that she was his daughter and to keep his hands off her. The bloke thought he had made a mistake and this girl only looked like who he was after. He quickly departed. That is how they got to know each other and how they ended up taking my mother in. We have been searched for by James Camborne my entire life. My mother even changed the spelling of her surname to evade detection. Then one day, it turned out that he found us. I don't know how and I was recalled from where I was working in Cheshire and we had to leave. We fled to London, where my mother found out about what had happened with your mother and my father and then she came to Paris. She then left me here so that she could go on alone, which tears me up. I'm so worried about her"
Elise looked over at Hortense who had dozed off in her chair and was sleeping soundly. She rose, putting her blanket to one side and glided over to Alex, kneeling in front of him. He moved his fist from his face and sat up, quite alarmed that she was so close. He looked over to Hortense, who was sleeping and relaxed, placing his hands on the arm rests and looking down at the angel in front of him.
Elise took his hand in hers and looked down at it, turning it over and examining his palm. He had strong hands with large fingers. They felt rough on the palms, but his fingers were soft and she knew that his touch would be gentle. She stroked his palm with the tips of her fingers. Her heart pounded so hard in her chest she felt embarrassed because she thought he could hear it. She had never felt attracted to anyone as much as she felt for Alex. When she had seen him through the window the day he arrived, she could not take her eyes away from him. Then when she had over heard one of the servants say that the new servant had been taken ill and might not make it, something inside her that she could not explain or resist, told her it was the man she had seen that day. Without thinking, she was dressed in her cloak and dashing to the Garçonnière to tend to him, refusing to leave him until her father called their own doctor. She had stayed with him for hours, mopping his brow and stroking his hair for there was little else she could do. She just stared in amazement at him. She was sure she was in love. Now looking at his hand, knowing he was watching her and not pulling away from her made her believe in her soul that he felt the same way as she. Now he had opened up his soul to her, maybe only partially, but it was enough to know that he had imparted some of his history to her. He trusted her that much. She needed to know for certain.
She looked up. She needed to have it confirmed and his hazel eyes would do that for her, she just knew. He was sat smiling softly at her, his eyes were not holding the intensity from before, but were soft and looking back at her with the expression of utter bliss. She smiled at him, just as softly. They stayed still now, in a thick silence that pulsated with electricity and intention.
Every sinew in her body craved for his mouth to be on hers. Every morsel of her ached with wanting him to take her into his arms and hold her hard against him. She wanted to experience the passion that she could now see overflowing between them and she parted her lips, allowing his skin to feel how heavily she breathed. He remained motionless, only allowing himself to watch her. He suddenly felt wild inside, for the first time in his life. He had always been quite ordered and civil, but something inside his soul longed to let the hand she was holding in hers, take hold of her face and devour her.