Under the Eiffel Tower I buy us ice creams and we take in the view. I’m looking up at the great steel structure when Evie suddenly asks, “What would you be doing if you weren’t a singer?”
For one ghastly moment I think that she must have found out my secret somehow. It seems it was just an idle question, though, as she’s licking up a drip from her ice cream cone and hasn’t noticed the flash of horror on my face. Smoothing out my expression I say, “When I was small I wanted to be a cowboy. Would you like to climb the tower?”
She looks toward the long queue and then shakes her head. My distraction seems to have worked as a moment later she asks, “Shall we walk up the Champs-élysées to the Arc de Triomphe?”
We leave the crowds beneath the Eiffel Tower behind and head toward the Pont de l’Alma, where we can cross the river. To head off more uncomfortable questions, I say, “You never told me your opinion of Rochester.”
She laughs. “I didn’t, did I? I have a confession about that. I pretended to be indifferent, but I love Jane Eyre and I am simply bursting with opinions about it.”
“You do? Why did you pretend you didn’t like it?”
“It’s such a cliché, isn’t it? The bluestocking who loves Jane Eyre. Also, Mona’s eyes would have rolled out of her head if we’d started talking about it.”
“Mona needs to learn it’s not all about her.”
She slants a look at me. “That was quite waspish, Frederic.”
“Well, it’s true.” I’m still annoyed about the way Mona teased Evie and sent me that archive without asking if she could share it. She must have known she’d embarrass her sister. “I asked your opinion about the character and you didn’t feel you could answer.”
Evie seems to be determined not to get upset about what happened in Oxford. “So ask me now.”
I realize I don’t want her opinion about the book. I want her opinion about me being in the show. “All right. You’ve seen my work. You know the character. Do you think I’ll make a good Rochester?”
She gives me an appraising look. “You’re too good-looking, but they always cast Rochester as handsome even though he and Jane acknowledge he’s not. Also, you’re not English. But you’re the right age and you’ve got the Byronic air about you that Rochester has, so in all I’d say that you’re a very good fit.”
There’s no flattery in the way she tells me I’m good-looking and I’m amused that she’s even managed to make it sound like a disadvantage. “Byronic?”
Evie’s in her stride now. “It pertains to Lord Byron, the poet. Men who are dark, mysterious, moody, arrogant and sexually intense.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like me at all. I’m not arrogant.”
She grins into her ice cream.
I give her a narrow look. “Evangeline Bell, I don’t know what to make of you sometimes. You’re so bashful and yet you come out with things like this.”
“What?” she says, with a look of wide-eyed innocence. “We were talking of literature. I’ve given you my literary opinion. And how do you know my name’s short for Evangeline?”
“Lucky guess.” Moody and sexually intense. She has me pegged.
We walk beneath some beech trees and the leaves dapple us with shade. Evie finishes her ice cream and I throw our napkins into a bin. “Do you think that audiences will accept me, a foreigner playing one of England’s most beloved literary figures? I’m not too North American, am I? My mother is French but that will hardly endear me to the British.”
She gives me another critical look. “Do me an accent?”
I square my shoulders and effect what I hope is a Rochester-ish attitude. “‘If that boisterous channel come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.’”
“How much speaking is there?”
“None. It’s a sung-through.”
She wrinkles her nose, thinking. “You’ll be all right, then.”
“You little cat!” I feel the urge to grab her and tickle her till she screams, and she must see it in my eyes as she darts away, giggling.
We veer away from the Seine and along a boulevard with a gently sloping gradient. I study the ground as we walk. “I want the show to be good. I want to be good in the show. It’s important to me.”
It surprises me to find I’ve spoken out loud. I don’t talk about my work in casual conversations, especially to non-performers. People don’t usually know what to say. I can’t remember a single conversation between Marion and I where I voiced doubts or aspirations to her as we just didn’t have that sort of relationship. I was her lover and partner and protector, and she was my happiness and stability. It worked beautifully on an emotional level, but deeper down there wasn’t much there.
But something about Evie, her determination and her creative mind, makes me think she’ll understand even though she’s never set foot on a stage.