Page 101 of The Seven Sisters
Bel watched Luiza leave the room, feeling akin to a kettle left too long on the stove and near to boiling over.
‘Don’t mind her.’ Gustavo walked over to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder, sensing her irritation. ‘Mãe might complain, but she loves every second of it. She’s talked of nothing else for the past nine months. Now, allow me to accompany you into the garden.’
‘Gustavo,’ Bel said as they left the house, ‘where will your parents live after we are married and I am living here with you?’
He raised an eyebrow in surprise at her question. ‘Well, of course they will continue to live here with us. Where else would they go?’
*
The following morning, Bel made Carla comfortable in the back of the Rolls-Royce and climbed in next to her. Loen sat with their driver in the front as they embarked on the five-hour journey up to the cool air of the mountainous region of Paty do Alferes. For two hundred years Fazenda Santa Tereza had belonged to the family of the Baron Paty do Alferes, a Portuguese nobleman and also, as Antonio had pointed out before they’d left that morning, a distant cousin of the Aires Cabral family.
The roads up to the region were surprisingly good, due to the fact that the wealthy landowners had once needed to transport their coffee beans and themselves back and forth to Rio and had financed the construction. Carla was able to sleep most of the way without disturbance.
Bel gazed out of the window as they began to climb up through the mountains, the gentle slopes falling into the valleys beneath, the streams that carried pure, fresh spring water cutting narrow crevices into them.
‘Mãe, we are here,’ said Bel, as the car bumped along the dusty drive which led to the main house.
Carla stirred as the car came to a halt and Bel jumped out to breathe in the wonderful clean air the area was renowned for. As it was almost dusk, the cicadas chirruped at full force and Vanila and Donna – the two strays that Bel had begged her parents to keep when they’d arrived as hungry puppies at the kitchen door seven years ago – yelped excitedly around their mistress’s legs.
‘Home,’ Bel sighed in pleasure as she saw Fabiana and Sandro, who took care of thefazenda, following behind the dogs.
‘Senhorita Izabela!’ Fabiana wrapped her in a comforting embrace. ‘Why, I think you have grown more beautiful since the last time I saw you. Are you well?’
‘Yes, I am, thank you. But,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘I think you will be shocked when you see my mother. Try not to show her,’ she warned.
Fabiana nodded and watched as the driver helped Carla out of the car. She patted Bel’s arm and then walked over to greet her mistress. If anyone could restore her mother to health, thought Bel, it was Fabiana. Not only would she offer up prayers in the tiny chapel which sat in an alcove just off the drawing room, she would also ply Carla with all types of traditional remedies: mixtures of the different plants and flowers that grew in abundance here and were renowned for their medicinal qualities.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bruno – Fabiana and Sandro’s dark-eyed son – hovering in the background. As they all approached the entrance to the house, she saw Loen throw him a coy smile. And watched as Bruno returned it.
Bel followed Fabiana and Carla inside the house, seeing how the housekeeper had a maternal arm around Carla’s shoulder, and breathed a sigh of relief. Having borne the worry of her mother’s care alone, she knew that Fabiana would now assume the responsibility. As Fabiana took Carla to her bedroom to unpack and get her settled, Bel walked across the wide-planked wooden floor of the drawing room, filled with heavy mahogany and rosewood furniture, and opened the door to her own childhood bedroom.
The sash windows were drawn up and the exterior shutters thrown open. A wonderful cool breeze blew in as she leant her elbows upon the sill and gazed at her favourite view. Below her in the paddock were Loty, her pony, and Luppa, her father’s stallion, grazing peacefully. Beyond rose a gentle hill, still dotted with old coffee bushes that had somehow managed to survive despite years of being untended. A herd of white oxen peppered the hillside, the odd barren patch revealing the deep red soil beneath the wiry grass.
She walked back through the drawing room and stood at the front door, flanked by two of the majestic, ancient palm trees from which the area took its name. Sitting down on the stone bench outside on the terrace, and smelling the sweet scent of the hibiscus that grew abundantly here, she gazed across the gardens to the freshwater lake in which she had swum every day as a child. As she listened to the steady drone of dragonflies hovering over the flower beds and watched two yellow butterflies dance playfully in front of her eyes, Bel felt some of her inner tension fall away.
Laurent would love it here, she thought to herself wistfully, and despite her determination not to think of him, tears sprang to her eyes. Even though she’d known when she took the decision to walk away from him in Paris that it signalled the end, the girlish, imaginative part of her had wondered if he’d attempt to make contact. Every morning, when she’d seen the post on its silver tray at the breakfast table, she’d imagined receiving a letter from him, begging her to return to him, telling her he couldn’t live without her.
But of course, that hadn’t happened. And as the weeks had passed, she’d begun to ponder whether his declarations of love had been as Margarida had suggested: simply part of a plan to seduce her. She wondered if Laurent ever thought of her now, or whether the short time they’d spent together had passed through his mind like flotsam and was now forgotten.
Whichever the true answer, what did it matter? She was the one who had drawn the line in the sand, chosen to return to Brazil and her forthcoming marriage. The atmosphere of La Closerie des Lilas and the sensation of Laurent’s lips on hers were now a memory, a brief dance with another world that she had chosen to end. And no amount of wishing and hoping could change the course of the life which she herself had decided on.
31
Paris, November 1928
‘So, at last the statue is finished.’ Professor Landowski thumped his workbench in relief. ‘But now the crazy Brazilian needs me to make a scale model of his Christ’s head and hands. The head will be nearly four metres high, so it will only just fit into the studio. The fingers too will almost reach the rafters. All of us here in theatelierwill, in the most literal sense, experience Christ’s hand upon us,’ Landowski joked. ‘Then, so da Silva Costa tells me, once I have finished this, he will carve my creations up like joints of beef in order to ship them over to Rio de Janeiro. Never before have I worked liked this. But,’ he sighed, ‘perhaps I should trust to his madness.’
‘Perhaps you have no choice,’ agreed Laurent.
‘Well, it pays the bills, Brouilly, although I can accept no more commissions until Our Lord’s head and hands are gone from myatelier. There would simply be no room. So, we begin. Bring me the casts you made of the two ladies’ hands some weeks ago. I must have something to work with.’
Laurent went to retrieve the casts from the storeroom and placed them in front of Landowski. The two men studied them intently.
‘They both have beautiful, sensitive fingers, but I must think how they will look when each hand stretches for more than three metres,’ Landowski commented. ‘Now, Brouilly, don’t you have a home to go to?’
This was the signal that Landowski wished to be left alone. ‘Of course, professor. I will see you tomorrow.’
On his way out of theatelier, Laurent found the young boy sitting on the stone bench on the terrace outside. The evening was chilly but clear, and the stars formed a perfect canopy above them. Laurent sat down next to him, watching him gazing up to the heavens.
