JOE DASSIN SANG ‘LES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES’ ON THE HI-FI system. Henrietta lay in the bed, as small as a rag doll and as still. The blinds were open, the wan sunlight illuminating Central Park far below. The dark wood bookshelves groaned under the weight of hardcover novels, art and photography books, dictionaries and travel guides and various knick-knacks Henrietta had collected on her travels. A blue stone statuette of Anubis sat near the bed next to the lamp and an untouched glass of water. Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses hung on the opposite wall away to the bed.
‘She moved the painting,’ Isabelle said.
‘She liked to look at it,’ Dr Steinmeier said.
Joe Dassin kept singing about the Champs-Élysées. Isabelle couldn’t take it. She didn’t want to look at the small, still figure on the bed.
‘Why this song?’ she said. ‘Did she like it or something? I never heard her play it.’
‘Beats me,’ Dr Steinmeier said.
‘Can you turn it off?’
‘Sure.’
He did something with a remote control. The sudden silence came as a relief. Isabelle sat on the side of the bed. She took her mother’s hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here.’
‘Don’t be,’ Dr Steinmeier said. ‘She didn’t want you to see her.’
He was blunt, Isabelle forgot that about him. Also, how much she disliked the man.
‘Could you…?’ she said.
‘What? Oh. Of course.’ He nodded curtly and left the room.
Alone with Henrietta, Isabelle looked at her mother’s face, searching it for… what, exactly? Henrietta was so thin, the animating force that had made her such a strong, infuriating presence was gone and there was nothing in its place. Isabelle breathed, inhaled the smell of old books, polished wood, death. The sunlight dappled the treetops as it broke through the clouds over the park, and the air smelled of fresh rain and flowers. There were freshly cut roses in a bowl on the desk by the window. Henrietta’s nails were freshly painted. Isabelle wondered which of the maids had done it for her.
The whole apartment felt hushed, but she knew it would soon get busy, that now that the ritual of death had concluded, the elaborate ceremony of its aftermath would begin. She should call Uncle James. She put her mother’s hand down gently on the bed sheet. She stood up, paced the room. Ran her finger along the spines of Henrietta’s books.
Pacific US Foreign Policy in the Aftermath of the Guano War: 1855–1890. Pioneering Photographers Series: Lady Julia Montmorency, a Monograph. Baedeker’s Egypt. Edgar Waverley’s A Quiet Spy: A Memoir. Death in the Morning by Edna St James.
She frowned at an old copy of Marx’s Capital, pulled it out, opened it to the flyleaf. To Henry from Edith. A little heart drawing. She put it back, kept pacing.
She stopped when she saw the small framed poster half-hidden on the wall next to the bookshelves.
Her mother – her birth mother – looked young and happy and pretty in the picture. Her face dominated the poster, half in profile, looking to the distance.
She looked so lovely, Isabelle thought. She looked so young. Mariam Khouri never got the chance to grow old. Never got the chance to see her daughter grow up. The poster was for one of her early films, a breakout role, with a real director and a real script. In The Yellow Sun was a British-French-Egyptian co-production. It was made before Isabelle was born.
Isabelle had watched it once, years later, coming home unexpectedly one afternoon, in between school expulsions. Henrietta was sitting in the dark, the movie cast onto the wall from an old 35mm projector. Mariam rode on a horse through the desert, pursuing a figure far ahead. Though her head was covered, her face was bare. The sunlight made her glow.
Isabelle stood in the doorway, not daring to breathe. Henrietta hadn’t noticed her. Henrietta’s eyes were on the movie, and she was crying without sound, the tears streaking down her face.
Isabelle had felt like an intruder. Had stood there, for a long moment, not sure what to do, and then she left. She went out again and then to Macy’s, where she did some shopping and then got stoned in the toilets. When she got back to the apartment the projector was nowhere, Henrietta had gone out to some charity function, and Isabelle had a takeout pizza and watched cable until she fell asleep.
She’d forgotten that day. She looked at the poster now and wondered. When she looked away it was raining again beyond the window, the sunlight gone and the joggers in the park moving like tiny ants below. Henrietta lay in the bed. She looked at peace.
Could you be at peace? Isabelle wondered. Or was it just something people said? She took one last look and went out and shut the door, quietly.
Dr Steinmeier was in the kitchen with Pikorski. They both looked up when she came in and Pikorski got up and poured Isabelle a cup of coffee. Isabelle sat down and Pikorski put his hand on her shoulder, then let go. He left the room.
‘They were old friends,’ Isabelle said.
‘I know,’ the doctor said. He pushed a plate towards her. ‘Cookie?’
Isabelle took a cookie. Butter and sugar, so delicate the pastry flaked on her tongue. She sipped coffee.
‘My family has been looking after Feebeses for generations, also,’ Dr Steinmeier said. ‘My great-great-grandfather was in Peru when Edward Feebes expanded the guano mining operations in the Chincha Islands. Family legend is that my grandfather looked after Edward as he recovered from his… Well. A little breakdown brought about by an over-dependence on opium, if family lore is to be believed. He was a great man, my great-great-grandfather. He made a fortune in Lima in construction. Then his grandson lost it all playing cards against Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary. Or that’s the story, anyway. We made our fortune back in the forties, during the… well, the war. As did the House of Feebes, I must add. We have been together a long time, Steinmeierses and Feebeses. And now here we are, Isabelle. It is like a wheel, I think. It turns and the faces change but all the people remain the same.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Isabelle said. She searched for her cigarettes. Fuck it, she thought. She could smoke. Dr Steinmeier watched her without commenting, but she could read the disapproval.
She never liked Steinmeier, she didn’t think Henrietta had liked him either.
She fished out the pack, shook it. She was low on smokes. She pulled out a cigarette, couldn’t find her lighter, checked her pocket, felt that she was putting on a show. So much of smoking was a performance, even when you were alone. She finally found the lighter, put the cigarette in her mouth, applied the flame to the tip and watched it glow. She took in her first drag and held it, then released the smoke slowly, watching it waft across the table.
‘I have informed the baron,’ Dr Steinmeier said. ‘Well. Your cousin Alfred. The baron is, how do you say, he has his good moments and his bad ones.’
‘What did Alfie say?’ Isabelle said.
‘He was very sorry. He said he’ll call you.’
‘That’ll be nice.’
‘And then there is the funeral to arrange, of course,’ Dr Steinmeier said. ‘Ah, just in time.’ He got up as the elevator arrived. Isabelle followed him out, to see the doors open and busy-looking men in sombre black suits emerge with a stretcher.
‘Through there,’ Dr Steinmeier said, directing them. Isabelle watched it all with a sense of unreality. The men went to Henrietta’s bedroom. Pikorski opened the door for them. They spoke softly. He came out and went to Isabelle.
‘Let’s go into the library,’ he said. ‘Let them do their job.’
Isabelle numbly agreed. She had said goodbye. She didn’t need to see Henrietta carried away, out of her own home, like so much garbage being removed.
‘So what happens now?’ she said. They sat down in the reading chairs. Isabelle liked the library. It was full of books no one had opened in years, but it was always a good hiding place to nurse a hangover whenever she was back in New York.
There were no clocks in the library room. Nothing ticked or tocked or indicated the passage of time. Rain fell outside and drummed impatient fingers on the window.
Isabelle waited.
*
For two weeks Isabelle continued to wait: the sort of heavy-limbed, uncertain period akin to being in limbo, that waiting place between heaven and hell which is nevertheless closer to hell in Catholic theology. The House of Feebes, of course, were good old-fashioned Anglicans, that is to say, they always had an angle. Isabelle stayed in the apartment, sleeping in her own room, which felt too small, where her posters of the Backstreet Boys and Boyzone from when she was eleven still hung on the wall. The apartment felt too large, its silence too oppressive. When she went out into the city proper its crowds felt overwhelming, the noise deafening, the buildings too tall. She was too used to the relative quiet of London.
Henrietta had arranged her own death in advance. For the funeral, she had hired Lillian Oberman of the Oberman Group, her go-to for social planning. Lillian had burst into the apartment on that first day, all white even teeth a horse would be proud of, a mane of blonde hair and contact lens blue eyes, and immediately took charge.
Planning was under way. The funeral date was arranged, a church booked, and ‘We must discuss the invitation list, we must,’ she said.
In the event, Isabelle left her to it. Isabelle was not needed, the invite list decided long before, for what was sure to turn out to be ‘The hottest invite of the season, Issy, anyone who’s anyone wants to come pay their respects—’
No one called Isabelle Issy. She longed for a friendly face, but even Pikorski, after the first day, retired to his own place in the city and had since gone to Hong Kong, promising to return for the funeral. The service staff for the apartment were retained, and they moved like efficient ghosts around Isabelle, keeping the place just the way Henrietta had liked it, making Isabelle feel even more of a stranger.
She assumed she would inherit the apartment now, but she didn’t know. Arrangements will be made after the funeral, she was told. A few photographers waited for her downstairs the first time she came out. Her photo – looking wan and withdrawn – appeared in the papers, with Heiress to the Feebes Fortune? splashed across page six.
She spoke to Claire, twice. Claire was more than capable of running the gallery back in London, what there was of it. In truth it was only kept afloat with Isabelle’s allowance. They chit-chatted about the weather. Rainy, cold, dark: the usual. Condolences on the death, then the inevitable question: What happens next?
‘I don’t know,’ Isabelle admitted. ‘It’s all in a sort of holding pattern until after the funeral.’
‘Is your uncle going?’
‘I don’t think so. He’s feeble.’
‘He’s a feeble Feebes,’ Claire said. Isabelle didn’t laugh.
‘Got offered a couple of George Shaw paintings on commission,’ Claire said, to fill in the silence. ‘He’s pretty hot right now after that Turner nomination last year.’
‘That’s great,’ Isabelle said.
‘Well, stay strong,’ Claire said. ‘And all the other things people are supposed to say, you know.’
‘I know,’ Isabelle said. ‘Thanks.’
She spoke to Simon, once.
‘We’re not together anymore, you know,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘You’ve got to stop calling me.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, his voice softening. ‘About your mum.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Well, I’ve got to run.’ He hung up abruptly.
So that was that. She went for long walks, to nowhere in particular. Manhattan in the winter. Steam stacks wafted fog into the sky, office workers huddled in corners sharing miserable cigarettes. Tourists took pictures outside St Patrick’s. She walked through Midtown to the East Village to Chinatown, stopped to eat dumplings in a place where the steam fogged the windows. She stepped out into more fog, darkness fast falling, under Manhattan Bridge she watched the lights across the river, lit a cigarette and added yet more obfuscation to the city’s air.
Passing the Angelika Film Center in SoHo a couple of days later she saw her mother’s face looking down on her from the marquee, which advertised an Italian B-movie retrospective, tonight’s screening being of Black Dirt – Mariam Khouri, impossibly young, tiny behind the two leads but still recognisable, if not from memory then from the mirror, whenever Isabelle looked.
She went in, purchased a ticket. She sat in the dark cinema. The blue light from the projector reflected off the dust motes above her head. On the screen it turned into moving pictures. She watched the spy meet the girl for the first time, watched their love bloom, but she only had eyes for the young Zabbaleen girl in the background. She waited for each one of her appearances, from the moment she first arrives, a being of pure light, carrying a pile of laundry from one side of a room to another.
Isabelle cried, quietly. There were few people in the audience. No one noticed or, if they had, they left her to it. You were supposed to cry at the movies, anyway.
She felt better when she left the movie theatre. The fog cleared, a little bit.