Illumination (26 page)
Authors: Matthew Plampin
Besson’s voice was quiet. ‘Mademoiselle—’
Hannah threw open the office door. ‘I have to find him,’ she said. ‘I have work to do.’
Clem studied his hands, rotating them slowly. They were trembling so much that they seemed almost to blur. Half an hour’s scrubbing with the Grand’s carbolic soap had failed to shift the dirt; it was ingrained in the skin. There was an ugly line between the thumb and forefinger of the left one that he could swear hadn’t been there a month earlier. The nails were all gnawed down to raw stubs. He plucked the linen napkin from his shirt, brought it below the level of the table and twisted it as tightly as he could.
Montague Inglis sat next to him, chewing thoughtfully, his head angled towards the gilded ceiling of the hotel dining room. Clem had been surprised to find Inglis at the Grand when he returned; and more so when he stayed to dine with them. There was something different about both the conduct and the demeanour of the
Sentinel
’s Paris correspondent. His beard had been left wild, never recovering its courtier’s precision, and he was thinner too, of course – everyone was thinner – but it ran deeper than this. The rivalry had receded; that ancient row with Elizabeth, whatever it was, had been laid to rest. He was more a familiar now than a competitor. Then, as they’d taken their seats in the empty room and Elizabeth had asked about the day’s special dish, Clem had spotted a complacent look passing between them. Oh Christ, he’d thought, not that. Anything but that.
‘So this is
canis lupus
,’ declared the newspaperman. ‘Mother of Rome, slavering nemesis of countless bedtime stories, reduced to the status of luncheon.’ He regarded his plate without enthusiasm. ‘Rather horrible, ain’t it?’
Clem studied his own portion: a steak the colour of damp rosewood, withered coins of carrot, nubs of potato in a thin white sauce. It wasn’t very enticing, even for a man just out of prison.
‘There is not much to be said, certainly,’ Elizabeth observed, ‘for the tenderness of wolf.’
His mother was opposite him in a new dress, a practical but fetching chocolate-coloured gown. She looked poised, redoubtable – honed by the siege and the role she’d taken in it. A notebook was open on the table beside her; she was writing as she ate. Along with her unsparing exposure of frippery, corruption and cant, and her unconventional mode of living, Mrs Elizabeth Pardy had been famous for her iron constitution. It was like that of a wild boar, they’d said, a hippopotamus made from stone; the reading public had delighted in the contrast with her elegant appearance. When on her adventures of yore, she’d been able to digest the most dubious of local delicacies – to thrive on them, even. Details of her gastronomic experiences had been a much-loved element of her books. It was obvious that siege cuisine was to have its place in the current one.
‘A step too far down the carnivorous path, perhaps,’ Inglis continued. ‘It is no accident, Lizzie, that the more appetizing beasts are those whose natural diet most resembles that of standard livestock.’
Clem winced at that
Lizzie
. Its meaning was unmistakable.
‘We covered the equines long ago, Clement,’ Elizabeth explained, without looking up from her notebook, ‘and the domestic pets. We have had our share, also, of rat and mouse.’
‘Oh, one must try rat,’ interjected Inglis. ‘One cannot say one has truly been besieged otherwise. And it ain’t nearly so bad as you’d think, once chef has chopped it into a nice
salmis
.’
‘Within the past fortnight, however, the Jardin des Plantes has opened up its zoological department to the butchers of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Many intriguing morsels have become available. What have we had so far, Mont? Bear, reindeer, dromedary …’
‘All of which were superior to the poor wolf – vastly so. And everything I’ve tasted pales beside kangaroo. I dined on a length of tail, don’t y’know, at Brebant’s the other night. Dashed expensive – something like eight shillings a pound – but I have to say that it was the very best game I’ve ever eaten.’ Inglis paused, a smirk tugging somewhere beneath his beard. ‘Strange, though we ate a good deal of it, none of us felt at all – ahem! –
jumpy
afterwards.’
The newspaperman laughed loudly, glancing at Elizabeth; this joke had plainly been one of the evening’s gems. She granted him a measured smile.
‘I’ve been among National Guard for the past several weeks,’ Clem said. ‘I didn’t see any of them sampling such exotic fare.’
‘Well no, boy,’ chuckled Inglis. ‘Highly unlikely that the blighters can afford it. They’ll be sticking to their horse, I should think.’
Elizabeth caught the meaning behind her son’s comment. They had yet to speak of what had befallen him on the day of the red revolt, and his ensuing absence. Meeting upstairs in the corridor outside her suite, she’d merely asked if he was well – and then instructed him to bathe and shave before luncheon.
‘You blame me for your incarceration,’ she said matter-of-factly, setting down both fork and pencil; Mrs Pardy did not beat around the bush. ‘Need I remind you that we were deliberately waiting by the Tour Saint-Jacques. We were maintaining what my military friends refer to as a
safe distance
. It was entirely your choice to scamper off after your harlot.’
Inglis tilted in towards him. ‘I might well have done the same, in your shoes,’ he murmured. ‘A true nymph of the
pavé
, that one. Why, before I—’
Elizabeth silenced the journalist without moving, speaking or even looking in his direction. ‘You knew that a riot was possible, Clement, and you went on regardless. You cannot hold me responsible for the loyalist militia placing you under arrest.’
Clem had rehearsed many cutting lines in the Mazas, enough for an entire stage-play of recrimination and wrath, but right then he couldn’t remember any of them. Setting down his twisted napkin, he readied himself to speak as best he could. ‘Elizabeth, I was in there for nearly four weeks. You didn’t visit. You didn’t enquire after me.’ A fat tear popped into his eye, wobbling at the edge of his sight. ‘You didn’t try to – to get me out.’
They’d put him in a cell on his own, a deathly cold box with an unglazed window that showed only a square foot of sky. He’d been fed weak broth and bread that appeared to have been made from straw. Twice in the first few days a pair of National Guard officers had come in and told him he was to die – forcing him to kneel and pointing revolvers at his head, laughing as he begged for mercy. Everyone he’d encountered claimed not to understand English, refusing to listen to his explanations for his presence in the Hôtel de Ville that day, or his pleas for word to be sent to his mother. Eventually he’d just been released, turned loose carelessly, nobody bothering to tell him why.
Elizabeth’s one chance had been that she didn’t know where he was – that she’d been hunting for him across the city, her book and her Leopard forgotten. This clearly hadn’t been the case. It was futile to try to make her feel guilt or shame, however, or to extract any form of apology. There was a silence. Clem wiped his eyes on his cuff. He picked up his knife and fork; his hands were behaving themselves, so he sliced off some of his steak and put it in his mouth.
‘I knew that they would not dare to shoot you, Clement,’ Elizabeth told him, a single atom of conciliation in her tone, ‘and that they could not reasonably hold you for more than a few weeks.’ She looked at her notebook, rereading the last few lines, reaching for her pencil to cross out a word and write its replacement in the margin. ‘To be quite honest, I felt that a spell in gaol might be just punishment for your idiocy.’
Clem almost choked on his wolf. Inglis was right; it was revolting, pungent and stringy. He spat it into his napkin. ‘
Just punishment?
’
‘You are back now, though,’ Elizabeth went on, ignoring him, ‘in the shelter of the Grand, and I suggest you stay here. Things are about to heat up. Our lily-livered General Trochu finally appears to be steeling himself for serious action. The Leopard’s example is being heeded at last. My reports are having their intended effect.’
Sheer astonishment overwhelmed Clem’s anger. ‘How the devil did he get away? It’s – that’s—’ He struggled to imagine it. ‘The last time I saw him he was before the government’s soldiers. Between two great mobs of armed men. How did he escape arrest – or injury, for that matter?’
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, as if to say
well, that’s just the kind of fellow he is
. ‘Monsieur Allix slipped the clutches of the government and went into hiding. He continues his raids on the Prussian positions, providing invaluable scouting information as well as eroding enemy morale. And then he comes to see me, in my sitting room upstairs, to give me what I need for the
Figaro
.’
Clem felt as if he’d been pummelled about the head. ‘What happened to Han?’ he asked faintly. ‘We got split up when I was—’ He glimpsed the stamping boots and grimacing faces, and tasted the blood in his mouth. ‘When I was detained.’
‘She’s quite safe,’ said Elizabeth. ‘In hiding. Not with Monsieur Allix, but he knows where she is. The reds went too far that night. He acknowledges this. They allowed themselves to be carried forward by their less rational members. I am assured that the politicking will be played down for a while. There will be no more revolts, but the ultras cannot recognise the plebiscite. Their view is that there can be no fair elections in a city under attack by a ruthless foreign enemy. They are focused upon the sortie – which was one of their central demands, after all. They intend to show bourgeois Paris what her working people can do. What they are owed by their fellow citizens.’
Inglis restricted himself to a single cynical grunt.
‘Troops are being moved around the city,’ Elizabeth enlarged, ‘from north to south. The National Guard is being asked for active volunteers – men who will serve outside the wall, who will fight rather than merely stand upon a rampart.’
‘Needless to say,’ Inglis added, ‘very few of those noble warriors have availed themselves of the opportunity as yet.’
Elizabeth pretended not to hear him. ‘But you mustn’t concern yourself with any of this, Clement. You’re not suited to it – that has been demonstrated conclusively. You’ll be safe enough here in the Grand, helping the orderlies or something similar, provided the blood doesn’t prove too much for you. There shouldn’t be more than a week left in this siege now.’
‘Good heavens, old chap,’ grinned Inglis, leaning in again, ‘I do believe that she’s confining you to quarters.’
Clem knocked over his chair as he stood. He decided that he would shout; it came out like the yelp of a petulant adolescent. ‘You can stuff the Grand,
Mother
. You can stuff my room. You can stuff your wolf steaks. And you can stuff your bloody Leopard.’
Inglis failed to smother his laugh. ‘Stuff your leopard! Oh my word!’
Elizabeth stared at her son. She was not visibly cross, but her voice was at its very firmest. ‘Sit down.’
‘No. Not this time. I will not.’
Clem strode from the table, his fury driving him through the makeshift hospital in the lobby and onto the boulevard des Italiens. Elizabeth didn’t believe he was serious; she seldom did. She considered him utterly ineffectual. He began recounting everything he should have said to her in a low mutter, resentment prickling against his skin like new tweed. The stone of the barren boulevard glowed coldly in the late November sunshine; there was a smell of burning leaves. A circuit of the arrondissement was required, to clear his head – to rid him of this corrosive bitterness.
Swerving to the right, Clem entered the Passage des Panoramas, a narrow, famously garish arcade that led away from the grand boulevards. That afternoon it was grey with shadow, dirty and deserted. Shattered glass crunched underfoot; several of its fine shops had been broken open and ransacked. Laure had brought him here one night in the early days of the siege. The Passage had still been partially lit then, multicoloured transparencies projecting images of clocks, hats, fans and other goods across the shop-fronts. Chains of white and red lamps had hung from the glass roof, lending the air itself a luminous haze. They’d been drunk on absinthe, so much so that they could hardly stand. She’d insisted that he take her right there in the doorway of a closed-up confectioner’s. Clem could just about remember the bunched folds of her satin dress; the pale flash of the legs beneath as they wrapped around him; the nudge of a passer-by’s elbow against his.
Approaching that doorway now, he felt the smart of betrayal, painfully enough to send him weaving across to the other side of the passage. It was Laure Fleurot who’d landed him in that trouble at the Hôtel de Ville – whose absurdly disproportionate prank had led straight to his stretch in the Mazas. He’d cursed her name with each drop of frozen dew he’d picked from his whiskers; each mouthful of that foul straw bread; each precarious bowel movement over the drain in the corner of his cell. It was impossible for him now not to view the whole liaison through a lens of regret. What the hell had he been thinking, gadding around with a scarlet woman – copulating in the street like a dog? Had he actually been insane, his mind upset by the drinking, the lovemaking, the hashish and everything else?
Clem emerged gratefully from the arcade’s other end and began to walk south-east down the rue Montmartre. Amidst the various declarations painted on walls – mostly communistic and anti-Trochu in tone – was a
Vive le Léopard!
in a toxic shade of yellow. The watery sun had disappeared; it was barely two o’clock, yet night was already on its way. The jacket of his trusty brown travelling suit flapped baggily around him. It had been waiting in a Grand Hotel wardrobe, some kind soul having even attempted to give it a clean. It seemed to have doubled in size since he’d last worn it, though, so much of him had dropped away in the Mazas. He put his hands in the pockets, trying vainly to gather it in.