Chapter 26
26
5 DECEMBER
A couple of days later, I take notebooks back to suite nineteen to exchange for others. One thing is certain: the writer who resided in this room spent many hours a day in here, writing her thoughts in beautiful calligraphy. She also explored the many parks and gardens in Paris, so she wasn’t entirely reclusive. So far, I’ve learned that her marriage was not a happy one, even before she caught her husband philandering. According to her journals, he was a cold, cruel man who sailed through life on the back of her success as a writer – sounds familiar. But, back then, things were so much harder for women, and she suffered in silence for a long time, claiming she only survived because she had the outlet of her writing. She could escape inside her own mind and create fictional worlds where men like her husband didn’t have control. There are also many passages written in ode to being newly in love and being welcomed into a supportive environment. This love helped her slowly lower her guard and each day she wrote how she felt safer, more in control of her destiny.
Now, I sit at her desk and go through the papers that lay in messy piles. Where would her manuscript be? I feel such an affinity with her, and the thought of a secret manuscript is intriguing.
A knock at the door interrupts me. Noah sticks his head around. ‘I thought I’d find you here.’
‘I’m obsessed,’ I say truthfully. While my own novel is coming along, the pull of this room is too much and I often find myself here, late at night, like now. ‘Is the bar closed?’
‘ Oui. From tomorrow I have a Christmas function almost every day.’
‘Do you ever get tired of it?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Take a seat,’ I say, and I motion to the bed and then blush. It’s the only place in the room that’s not covered with books or papers. Since our chat over eggnog the other evening, I’ve softened towards Noah; some of the ice around my heart has melted. While he can still be insufferable at times, I’m coming to learn it’s mostly when he’s passionate about the topic, like the jazz era and classic writers.
‘Did you ever want to write?’ I ask. Noah seems to enjoy learning about the minutiae of writers’ lives, like Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Orwell. Not only does he understand the volume of their work, but he also knows all about how they lived, and who they loved.
He shakes his head. ‘Never. I don’t have that talent, I’m afraid. I enjoy reading too much to worry about the mechanics of such a thing.’ I raise a brow at this admission. ‘OK.’ He dips his head. ‘You’ve caught me out there. I might like dissecting and discussing literature, which probably comes across pompous at times, but I know for a fact I don’t possess the skills to write.’
‘You, pompous?’
‘It’s been mentioned once or twice.’
‘ Oui .’ I smother a grin. There’s been a slight shift between us, but can I trust Noah when it comes to this room and its secrets? Trust him in my life?
‘I’d like to help you in here. You might be surprised to know in my past life I was a literary scholar and critic.’
I search his face in case he’s joking. His expression is earnest, and I suppose it fits: his literary bar, his swagger, the whole Noah persona.
‘Why does that not surprise me, especially the critic part? So you do know about the mechanics of such things?’
‘A little.’ He’s kept this close to his chest.
‘ Quelle surprise.’ Noah is more of an enigma than I first thought. No wonder his bar is an ode to Hemingway if he studied literature. ‘Why did you leave that world behind and open a bar?’
He glances out the window. From here, the gates of Jardin du Luxembourg are visible, the copse of trees swaying in the windy weather.
‘My ex-wife and I worked together at a college in the States. When I found out about her and her golfing buddy… I lost the heart for my work. Lost my heart for everything, as a matter of fact. I couldn’t sit in my office every day, across from hers, and pretend nothing had happened. Work with her as normal, as if she hadn’t detonated a grenade in our marriage.’
We lapse into silence with just the beat of heartbreak between us. What can you say in this instance that actually helps? ‘And so you came to France?’
When he turns back to me, the sadness in his eyes has dissipated. I suppose that hurt, that betrayal, never goes fully away, but it seems at least Noah has control of it. ‘I’d always wanted to live in Paris. How could I not, having studied The Lost Generation? But my wife wouldn’t entertain the idea. Wouldn’t even consider holidaying here. Aside from our work, I see now that we didn’t have much in common. When things ended, and they ended badly, I packed a bag and left. I applied for a long-term visa, and the French Consular Authority granted it based on my extensive studies in literature and the fact I planned to incorporate it into a business. The Hemingway effect. They love him here.’
We exchange a grin. ‘How long ago did you move here?’
‘Six years ago. The first thing I did was pick up French language lessons. I’d studied a bit in high school but was very rusty.’
‘And then you found the bar?’
‘ Oui , a damp, little rundown bar that I knew on sight would be the perfect spot to make my own.’
‘Are you still in contact with your ex-wife?’ I don’t know why I ask but I wonder if Noah forgave her, or if he holds that hate in his heart still. I suppose I want to know if this feeling of betrayal, of humiliation, ever fully eases.
‘Not directly. We communicated through lawyers and settled our divorce in record time because she wanted to get remarried, and I wanted to buy the bar. It gave me no pleasure when I heard her second marriage also ended recently. I wish her well, but I don’t think she’ll ever find what she’s looking for.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The next best thing.’
‘Ah. And what about you? Would you marry again? Do you want to have a family?’
‘ Oui , I’d like that very much, but I don’t know if that will happen for me. I’m forty this year, and while that’s not old in the scheme of things, it does seem rather difficult to imagine a wife and family when you’re single. What about you? Do you see marriage and children in the equation?’
I consider it. ‘I’ve been too heartsore to imagine anything except hurt and possible bankruptcy. I’m thirty-eight and I wonder too if that ship has sailed since there’s no man on the horizon.’ I do want to find my happy ever after, but how do I allow myself to trust again? What if I make the same mistake? ‘Right now, my sole focus is this place and my writing. If I don’t make this work, I’ll lose everything I’ve got left.’ Before I can overthink it, I say, ‘I wonder if we put our heads together we can figure out who she was?’ Could this writer be the key to making the hotel successful? Solving a one-hundred-year-old mystery in the process? Or do I keep it all quiet? Keep her secrets safe from the world?
‘I’d love to be involved. I hate to say it, but I know a thing or two about 1920s literature, so perhaps I can be of some assistance.’
‘Well, I will gladly accept that assistance, but I’d like to keep the room and its contents on the quiet for now.’
‘ Oui, you can trust me, Anais.’ I feel the truth in his words. There’s a sincerity about Noah and I only hope my intuition about him is correct. If I take him at face value, he’s sensitive, wise and often soulful, but then so was Francois-Xavier. Is Noah the real deal? I wish I knew for certain because I feel a flutter in my heart when we share time together as nice as this.
‘ Merci . There’s one other thing. We found a typewriter on the desk under a stack of papers. There was a piece of paper in the reel that said: Keep my soul in peace. Keep my last manuscript safe .’
At that, his eyebrows shoot up. ‘There’s a hidden manuscript from a writer of the twenties that hasn’t seen the light of day?’
I nod. ‘And I believe she was someone of note, due to other notebook entries she made.’
I catch Noah up about what I’ve read so far in the personal journals and offer them to him to read in his own time.
‘Did she date the journal entries?’
‘The ones I’ve read so far were all written in the year 1924.’
He rubs his chin, thinking. ‘And she alludes to being traditionally published before that date?’
I nod. ‘ Oui , she talks about varying publishing success with a range of books and then there’s excitement about a “runaway” novel that superseded expectations, but there’s never mention of the title of the book; she just refers to them as “the summer novel” or “the novel set on the coast”, so there’s not much to go on.’
‘Getting published back then was difficult. Rare. Especially for women, who often used a pseudonym, which we know she did. Still, there’s enough here for us to start making notes of points to research later. And her husband, no ideas who he was?’
‘A “brutish bull of a man with an intolerable countenance” if I remember correctly.’
We share a smile.
‘The sad thing is,’ I say, ‘from what I can gather, once she escaped her marriage, her royalties were still going directly to him, hence her desire to cease publishing. Why would that be? Why couldn’t she retain her own royalties?’
We lapse into silence, reflecting on it all. ‘ Oui , why?’ he muses, eyes sparkling from the mystery of suite nineteen.
‘She escaped to L’Hotel du Parc and promised herself she would never write another word that her controlling husband would benefit from. She lived here and wrote in these notebooks for her own enjoyment. L. L.’s family must have protected her privacy here, but how did she afford to live? Surely their generosity didn’t equate to paying her living expenses as well as her private suite.’
Noah rubs the back of his neck. ‘We can investigate who L. L. was. Surely there’s a record if they were a prominent family. We’ll learn more as we sift through all these papers. The other notebooks in the desk. Even the novels that lie scattered about might offer up a clue.’
I pick up a book from the desk. Inside is a notecard filled with reflections of what she enjoyed about the novel, and what she didn’t.
‘Yes, perhaps we’ll find more here. It’s strange; I want to unearth her secrets, but it feels like sacrilege, delving through her dusty papers, rifling through her private journals. Suite nineteen has been kept locked up for all this time, and it feels like we’re intruding.’
Noah surveys the room. ‘The big question is, why was the room hidden away?’
‘ Oui .’
‘While I understand your reservations about rifling through her suite, don’t you get an overwhelming sense that you ’ re the exact right person to uncover her secrets? A writer yourself, who inherently understands why she wants to keep her last manuscript safe. You could quite possibly solve a literary mystery, the fate of this escaped author and share her last works.’
There’s a hush, a sense that the room itself is holding its breath. How can that be? Is she here, somehow, stuck until we right the wrongs done to her? There’s that one gnawing concern…
‘That would mean going against her wishes to keep it safe.’ I blush when I recall I had considered selling the manuscript when JP told me the budget would blow out because of the need to reseal the windows. It had simply been panic taking over. I’d never really do it – would I? Not for my own financial gain, at any rate. ‘But what does she mean by that?’
‘I take it to mean she didn’t want her husband to get his hands on it or profit from the royalties from it.’
There’s a faint echo, as if the words inside this room have a pulse. Is she showing us the way or is this mystery making me a whimsical mess?
Noah runs a hand over the lace quilt cover. ‘Do you think they left the hotel, the author and L. L., but planned to come back, and that’s why they had the wall made?’
‘Why not just lock the rooms?’
‘ It’s a mystery.’
We spend the next little while going through papers and diaries, jotting down points of interest to delve into further.
Juliette and I walk along Rue de Seine holding umbrellas aloft. ‘Timothee and Zac got the Père No?l job. Kiki found work in a bistro as a dish hand. I’m still doing the walking tours, but they’re not generating much income with the weather like it is and Christmas approaching.’
‘So what will you do?’
The apples of her cheeks colour. ‘I know you’re renovating with a strict budget, but would you consider me for any work around the hotel? Any amount of money would help so I don’t deplete my savings before we go to the Netherlands. Maybe I could help paint?’
We’re so behind with the painting, I’m sure Manon would jump for joy having extra to help. There are still some funds left from the windfall of the items we sold from the storage room.
‘ Oui ,’ I say, giving her a bright smile. ‘We’d love your help to paint, Juliette. We’ll work out a figure that’s fair for both of us.’
‘ Merci! I really appreciate this, Anais.’
‘So do I. Another pair of hands means I can escape earlier to get back to my book…’
‘Speaking of books, this is the park I wanted to show you. Another location for your literary map of Paris. This is Square Gabriel Pierne.’
It’s a small cobblestoned park with statues and a fountain, but what draws the eyes is the benches shaped like open books. ‘This is gorgeous.’
‘It’s beautiful when the cherry blossom tree blooms with pink flowers. It’s usually quiet; not many people know this park exists. It looks so inconsequential on the map of Paris.’
‘It’s the perfect place to read. Thank you for showing me. Guests will love knowing this place exists and visiting with a book to enjoy the solitude.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘This is close to Bibliothèque Mazarine on the Quai de Conti, so guests could visit both places easily.’
‘While not literary, there’s also a stunning parfumerie nearby, Officine Universelle Buly 1803. They make parfums and lotions with natural products and are very popular with tourists. The shop looks like an old apothecary.’
‘Let’s go take a look.’