The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre (33 page)

“Leave it beside the bed,” Isobel said curtly. They complied and left the phial on her bedside table.

Isobel lay in bed, aware of her limbs.
So, here it is, the ridiculousness of illness, the thing I cure but also do not believe in.
She could feel her body weaken, the thin line of nausea that extended from stomach to mouth. Convalescence required faith, a resoluteness she did not have. She feared the infections of nostalgia.
No. There is only this room. That man outside my door.
A man smitten with her but also with the countenance of a ripened pear, the ashen light of a dusky boulevard. She was nothing but an effigy, something raised above his solitude. In all likelihood he was quite mad—she saw something strange in the Antwerp blue of his eyes. But the question did not flinch, it only grew:
Do I love him? Have I always?
Several times she had looked at his stern jaw and imagined his mouth pressed to hers. There had always been an excitement about his dazed belief; it was like standing at the confluence of whitened rivers.
I would allow him to kiss me,
she thought,
if he dared.
And if the kiss lacked feeling, if it was worn and scuffed like her vintage suitcase of mementos, then that would be the end of it.

Later that night Louis came back to her bedside. She was sitting up and doing needlework in the light of the carbide lamp.

“Is it time for my opium?” she asked.

“You sound in better spirits.”

She looked down at the brocaded fabric. “This is the first productive thing I have done in days. It’s giving me hope that I won’t be bedridden the rest of my life.”

“Do you want me or Chloe to give you the laudanum?”

“You may administer the opium, sir,” she said.

Louis took the phial from the bedside table and removed the cork. It gave off an acrid smell. “Just a small nip,” he said. “This stuff can be very strong. In Paris you see drunken, deranged poets sitting with bottles of absinthe and laudanum.” He handed the phial to her. She took a swallow. Her mouth bittered.

“It tastes like rancid almonds,” she said.

She handed it back to him. They passed a moment of silence.

“Well, I’ll come back in a while to check on you,” he said. He turned to leave.

Something about his shoes on her floorboards, the walk of a man who had known an hour of fame, compelled her. She couldn’t abide the waiting.

“Could you switch off my lamp and light a candle?” she said.

Louis did so and stood stiffly by the bedside table, awaiting her next instruction.

“Do you want to kiss me?” she asked in the half-light.

“What?” He was all breath.

“You heard me. If you want to kiss me on the mouth, then go ahead. But close the door first.” She said it flatly and pointed blithely to the door.

“Isobel, you’re feverish and you’ve just taken laudanum,” Louis said quietly.

“I may never ask again,” she said. “Later, I’ll deny it or blame it on the opium.”

Louis crossed to the door and closed it. He walked back lightly and nervous, raised on the balls of his feet. He sat on the edge of her bed, not knowing what to do with his hands.

“I apologize if I smell like an Indian bazaar,” she said.

“Don’t speak just now,” he said.

He leaned over her and placed his lips gently against hers. He opened his eyes at close range only to find the stunned jade of her eyes looking back at him. He closed his again and was surprised to find that beneath the bitter-almond taste of thelaudanum, she was familiar. For her part, Isobel tasted something woody and myrrh-like in Louis’s mouth, but far from finding this disturbing, she was reassured by it; she had feared all this time that he would taste mealy and decrepit, or worse, like a butter-mouthed shopboy. This mutual consent of taste and smell entered the kiss. He felt her body rise towards him, her mouth open slightly. He placed his hand at the back of her head, lightly, fingers intertwined with her hair. The kiss that had waited half a century lasted five seconds, and when it ended, because Isobel needed to draw an uninhibited breath, they looked at each other. Her cheeks had been left scalded by the kiss.

“That was impossibly sweet,” she said.

Louis began, “My whole life…” He looked off at the window, eyes on the verge.

“You must treat me like a fledgling. I cannot hear your proclamations yet, Louis. They have scared me to death my whole life. Let me pretend you hold me in fond regard, but I am not ready to hear about love.”

“As you wish,” said Louis, collecting himself. “Anyway, I meant to say that I don’t think you half bad.”

She smiled and coughed but managed to curb a full-blown spell. He took her hand and kissed the back of it. He pressed its soapstone cool to his cheek.

“Don’t tell Chloe about that kiss. I suspect she has feelings for you,” Isobel said.

“Don’t be absurd,” said Louis.

“I see it. A mother knows her daughter, no matter what’s passed between them.” There was a pause. She kissed him on the cheek. “Good night, Louis Daguerre.”

Louis quietly left the room. For a long time Isobel lay there, staring at the ceiling and the walls, waiting for the tide of laudanum to wash over her. She watched the yew branches projected on the opposite wall. She did not know what the future held. Summer was coming, the wallflowers were coming into bloom, the days were lengthening; soon she would collect hyssop on the meadow.
Nature doesn’t seem to care if we give ourselves over to love.
As for Louis Daguerre, she held but one hope: that the fury of his love would not overwhelm her before she had a chance to develop a lasting affection. She could picture him in the bed beside her each morning, could imagine leaning into the embrace of this vintaged regard.

The grace note of Louis Daguerre’s courtship was a field mushroom, rare and spotted. He had set out early for a walk with his camera and tripod when he came upon a field of daylilies. He cut a bouquet and brought the flowers to Isobel’s bedside. When Isobel awoke, she found gold and white lilies beside the phial of laudanum that she now regarded with some fondness. She gathered them up to smell and noticed the spotted beige head of a mushroom between the flower stems. She had seen this particular type only once, back on the estate, when she had witnessed a midwife curing a woman’s bleeding with just a speck of the fungus made into a tea. The
Trois Lions
was a distant cousin of the
champignon de Paris,
which was first gathered from the graveyards of the capital in the eighteenth century. It was said they got their vitality from the bones of the dead. The one she held in her hand had enough medicinal potency to create a thousand tinctures. She rolled it around on her palm and held it up to reveal the brown velvet gills beneath the cap. She called out to Louis, who rushed in, fearing the worst.

“What is it?” he said. His hands were wet and he was running them down his trousers.

“Where did you find this?” she said, holding it up.

“Out on the field behind the marsh. Down towards Bartot’s farm. Why?”

“This is very rare, Louis. It was in among your flowers.”

“Yes. Of course I meant to pick it. I searched over dell and meadow for that rascal. A devil it was.”

“Kiss me,” she said.

Louis came to her and leaned down. He allowed her to pilot the kiss, her hand against his jaw. He straightened when the kiss was over. He placed his hands behind his back, then in front, then finally stuffed them into the pockets of his woolen trousers.

To fill the silence, he said, “They say Napoleon’s nephew might be staging a coup.”

“Let them have their revolutions. I would like to get dressed today. I would like a sit outside and then perhaps have a real dinner tonight. Would you take me to see where you found the mushroom?”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“It’s not like you to be prudent.”

“On the contrary, I am very prudent. I safeguard myself against the future.”

“How is it you do that?”

“I try for nothing that I can’t afford to lose. That way I am guaranteed success.”

“And do you think you will win me?”

“I have never doubted it,” Louis said, giving his waistcoat an insistent tug.

The three of them set off in a wagon, pulled by the widow’s old bay horse, in search of a hallowed mushroom field. Louis showed them where the lilies were and the place he suspected he may have picked the rare mushroom. But there was nothing else to be found. Isobel sat bundled in the wagon, directing Chloe and Louis to search certain likely spots—at the base of an oak, beside a patch of briar, in the shadow of a willow. On a hunch, Isobel told Louis to dig two feet at the base of the old gnarled oak. Something about the tree suggested an abundance of mold and rot at its roots, and sure enough, Louis found a perfectly formed truffle, about the size of a fist. He held it above his head, his hands blackened with dirt. Then he wrapped it in his kerchief and they rode back to the house. Isobel said, “Tonight we shall cook a very fine dinner with this truffle.”

“That would be wonderful,” said Louis. He looked at her and saw the fatigue etched into her mouth and eyes. The lung fever had turned her face a pale, indelible blue, so faint it was like a watermark in the cloth of her skin.

They cooked all afternoon, the three of them gathered in the stone-floored kitchen. Isobel sat reclined in a wicker chair, instructing in the manner of a benevolent governess before her charges. Louis made a hot fire of cypress and oak. Chloe prepared the assemblage of spices and herbs in the herbarium as her mother called out their locations. Isobel watched her daughter grind juniper berries, sage, and mustard seeds. Chloe added narrow strips of truffle and butter to the herbs and spices and mixed until it became a marbled yellow-brown paste. Louis had bought a leg of lamb from a neighbor and now sliced it open so Chloe could stuff it with the paste. She inserted cloves of garlic into the fleshier parts and sprinkled the entire thing with Asian white pepper, white wine, and rosemary. It went into the oven. They prepared the vegetables, sitting around the kitchen with greens and roots in their laps. Chloe topped the asparagus and carrots; Louis peeled the potatoes and placed them in a pot of rainwater; Isobel cut the Swiss chard on a wooden board.

Isobel dressed for dinner. She emerged from her bedroom in a magenta gown gathered at the sleeves and the waist. Her hair was down and an amber necklace hung around her neck. Louis looked at her over the pots of simmering vegetables.

“You look lovely,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. Dressing for dinner had given her confidence, a suggestiveness in her smile.

“Mother, you look wonderful,” said Chloe.

“The last time I wore this dress was in Paris,” she said.

They served the meal with a bottle of 1839 burgundy that had been given to Isobel as payment for an herbal remedy. They set a table by the fire. Louis played man of the house and carved the roast lamb. Isobel served the vegetables from a large clay pot. The meal was full of delightful contrasts—the dark, woody taste of the truffle, the subtlety of the herbed carrots. The wine was dry, with a citrus afterbite. They ate and drank, falling into bouts of reverent chewing between conversations about remembered meals and epic parties. Isobel reached for Louis’s hand under the table. He looked up from his plate, fork in hand, stunned by the veracity of the meal and the candlelight and the hand he now held. The women were talking about the department stores of Paris, about barege and silk ball gowns, about extravagant outfits that existed mainly in the mind. Louis listened to the women as if through a long corridor. He nodded. He smiled. Night pressed in at the windows. There was nothing else he wanted. For the first time in his life, he thought,
So this is happiness.

After several glasses of brandy, they retired, leaving the kitchen a scatter of pots and pans. Chloe said good night. Louis helped Isobel up from the table. They were both a little drunk and they moved down the hallway a little unsteadily, their hands gliding out to touch the walls now and then. Isobel opened her bedroom door. She had always instinctively closed a door behind her, ever since she was a child.

“Are you going to bed?” he asked.

“Yes.” She entered the room, still holding his hand. They fumbled in the dark for a moment before Louis lit the lamp.

“I need to get into my nightclothes,” she said.

“I’ll leave the room,” said Louis.

“Just turn your back until I say,” said Isobel.

“Very well.” He turned to face the wall farthest from the bed. He could see his own shadow sway in the carbide glow. A moment later, he saw the shadow of Isobel undressing. He watched her arms rise above her head like twin serpents, the dress coming off, the undergarments being unlatched, her body gradually coming into silhouette. Louis felt his heart thrum in his ears.

“You may turn around now,” she said.

He did so. She lay on the bed. She was wearing a black slip open at the neck and shoulders. He stared at her collarbones, the delicate hollows at the base of her neck.