Illumination (5 page)

Once on the busier lanes they soon began to attract attention. Clem and Elizabeth’s travelling clothes, although hardly ostentatious, were enough to draw unfriendly stares from nearly everyone they passed. Insults were hissed, the word
bourgeois
spat out as if it was the worst curse imaginable; children trailed behind them, sniggering and asking rude-sounding questions. Inglis wasn’t nearly as comfortable in Montmartre as he’d implied. His proletarian disguise, with its various quality touches, was largely ineffective; Clem saw him remove the diamond tiepin and secure it inside his jacket.

Madame Lantier’s directions brought them to the place Saint-Pierre, the square at the heart of the district, and on past the derelict merry-go-round in its centre. The northern side of the place had been left empty of buildings, a chain of gas lamps tracing a path up the last stretch of the hill to the signalling tower at its summit. An electric searchlight was trained on this structure; as Clem watched, a soldier stepped into its white beam, waved a series of semaphore flags and then withdrew into the darkness.

The Danton lay to the east, on the rue Saint-André. It was mean and rather dingy – nothing much to look at. Clem felt the deadening cramp of nerves, his breath catching in his throat. He hadn’t seen Hannah for more than two years now, but that wasn’t the reason for his unease. It was more like an intimation of doom – a profound sense that things weren’t going to go as planned. This bothered him. He really wasn’t the sort for such hand-wringing; indeed, he tended not to have the slightest inkling of doom’s approach until he was sunk in it up to his neck. Nothing could be done, at any rate. Elizabeth was steaming past the gaudy street women sitting around the pavement tables and in through the doors. There was no time to reconsider.

Conditions inside were very close to the undignified crush represented in the paintings. The theatre itself was shut, the customers restricted to the narrow bar. A large proportion were National Guard, red flags and all; the rest were clerks, shop assistants, off-duty waiters and waitresses, with a scattering of trollops and pickpockets. Everyone was laughing, singing, arguing at the tops of their voices. Elizabeth jabbed a finger towards one end of the room and then started in the opposite direction, worming between the swaying guardsmen.

Clem pushed on along the bar as politely as he could manage. His ribs, still aching from the Gare du Nord, were barged anew; sour, boozy breath washed over his face as unpleasant comments were muttered; tobacco ash was flicked on his coat and wine splashed on his shoes. Ten minutes passed and he saw no one who looked remotely like an artist, or even like they might know an artist. He’d almost finished his search when a fight broke out nearby among a group of shrieking laundresses, forcing him against the marble bar-top. There was a mirror behind the rows of bottles: Clem contemplated himself as the brawling women were bundled into the street. How bloody
wrong
I am here, he thought, in my brown flannel and my squat English hat – wearing trimmed whiskers in this land of beards and drooping moustaches. He closed his eyes, sorely tempted to marshal his French and order a large brandy.

Upon opening them he saw someone familiar in the mirror, past his shoulder – a young woman. The image was itself a reflection, he realised, caught in a glass door panel and made especially sharp by the darkness outside. An arm nudged against this panel; it moved very slightly and the woman disappeared. He glanced around, judging the angles. By his estimation she was in a small area beyond the end of the bar. He worked his way towards it.

The woman from the painting was sitting at the edge of a candlelit booth, watching the barroom with an air of total boredom as a cigarette burned between her velvet-gloved fingers. She was almost as alien to the Danton as Clem – a more natural inhabitant of flash dancing halls than the drinking dens of Montmartre. Her dress was dark blue, extremely tight above the skirts and cut low to put as much of her pale flesh on show as possible. The copper hair, longer than in the portrait, was gathered up and adorned with black ribbon and lace. Her legs were crossed carelessly, revealing patent leather ankle boots and a few inches of silk stocking. She noticed Clem, acknowledging him with a beat of her turquoise eyelids. There was sly recognition in her smile. She beckoned for him to approach.

Hannah was in the rear of the booth, engaged in a lively conversation. It was an uncanny moment – gratifying and mystifying in equal measure. Her silver-blonde hair was tied beneath a length of red muslin. She was thinner than Clem remembered, but in a way that suggested vitality and energy rather than privation. And how like them she was! He’d never paid it much mind before, but there in that booth he saw his mother’s oval face and clever grey eyes; the gentle point to the chin that he’d never cared for on himself, but on Hannah was nothing short of beautiful. There was his sister, his twin, for many years his closest friend. He’d found her.

This relief was tempered with disquiet. She was surrounded by men, all of them wearing simple, faded clothes. They looked more like a band of revolutionaries than artists. Han had never been one for gangs, being an impatient, solitary type; yet here she was holding court, telling these moustachioed fellows what was what in French that sounded even better than Elizabeth’s. She didn’t need rescuing, by Clem or anyone else. The letter was a lie. His sister was neither friendless nor destitute; she wouldn’t be leaving Paris, no matter what danger the city might be in. They’d been misled.

The copper-haired woman reached out to Hannah, attracting her attention and jerking a thumb towards Clem. His sister’s astonishment seemed to smack against her, knocking her back in her seat.

‘Dear God!’ she cried. ‘What – what the devil are you doing here?’

The booth went quiet.

‘Well, Han,’ Clem began, ‘with everything that’s going on, it was felt—’

Hannah got to her feet. ‘Please, Clem,’ she said, ‘just tell me she isn’t with you.’

II

Hannah took hold of Clement’s lapel and pulled him away from the booth, into a doorway beside the bar. The material was well worn; it was the same coat he’d been using when she went, and it hadn’t been new then. The fortunes of the Pardy household had plainly not improved. He’d started talking in his old manner, rambling on about how very well she looked and how much this place seemed to suit her; hearing and speaking English again after so long felt strange, a little wrong, like walking in someone else’s boots.

‘Shut up, Clem,’ she said, ‘for pity’s sake.’

She considered him for a second: a guileless boy still, largely unchanged by the two years that had passed. His face, freckled by another idle summer, lacked the pinched quality Hannah had grown used to in Montmartre. Poor he might be, but he had food; he had a good bed and an easy mind. A flicker of contempt gave way immediately to guilt. Clement had been her sole regret when she’d fled from London. She’d abandoned her brother to Elizabeth. This could not be ducked or denied. He had every right to resent her – to demand that she explain herself and listen to the suffering he’d endured in her absence – but he was grinning, saying how pleased he was that they’d been reunited, whatever the circumstances. She released his coat.

‘Is she here with you? Answer me.’

Clem’s grin fell. He scratched at his blond whiskers and glanced along the bar. ‘Over there somewhere, I’m afraid. Her blood’s up something awful, Han. You’d better get ready.’

Hannah was glad of the anger that gripped her; it at least dictated a clear course of action. ‘Why have you come? Why now?’

A letter was produced from his coat pocket, written in an official-looking hand. She read it with gathering dismay.

‘But this is quite untrue. It’s nonsense.’

‘Who could’ve sent it, do you reckon?’

Hannah thought hard. This letter was obviously intended to humiliate. The arrival of her family from London at this pivotal time would make her seem like a hopeless ingénue – no different from the hundreds of hare-brained English girls who ran away to Paris every year, only to be retrieved by their relatives. It labelled her a tourist, an outsider, someone not to be taken seriously. The list of suspects was long. She’d learned that camaraderie between artists was a fragile thing, in constant danger of tipping into rivalry. They might share a philosophy of painting, but each one of these professed comrades, in some private chamber of his heart, desired the ruination of the rest. There were others as well; impatient creditors, a handful of rebuffed suitors, and the likes of Laure Fleurot, who’d pointed Clement in her direction with such malevolent delight. Any of them could be responsible.

Ingenuity had been required, of course, both to discover the St John’s Wood address and compose a letter in English. Nobody of Hannah’s acquaintance had ever admitted familiarity with her mother tongue. Translators and draughtsmen could be found throughout the city, though; and besides, who could say what knowledge people chose to keep hidden?

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said.

‘Things are getting bad here though, aren’t they? It’s like the city has been given over entirely to soldiers. I’ve heard that there’s to be a siege, Han – a bloody
siege
.’

Clem’s experience of Paris had plainly unnerved him. Her brother led a sheltered life, seldom straying from long-established paths; he was singularly ill-equipped to cope with the upheaval that had come to define the city. The past few months had seen wild jubilation at the outbreak of war, the misery of subsequent defeat and then a bloodless revolution, swift and uproarious, unseating an empire in a single day. And now, almost impossibly, events were escalating yet further. The end of Napoleon III had not brought the end of the war he’d started. The Prussians were coming for Paris – set on razing her to the ground, it was rumoured, and then remaking her in their own forbidding image.

Hannah shook her head, remembering Jean-Jacques’s words. ‘These invaders do not see what Paris is,’ she said. ‘They think we’ve been cowed by the fall of the Empire and the destruction of the Imperial armies, but the opposite is true. Our city has been liberated.’

‘
Our
city? Quite the loyal Parisian these days, Han, ain’t you?’ Clem’s laugh was tense. ‘I mean to say, that’s all well and good, but these Prussian blighters are approaching in their
hundreds of thousands
. They have guns like you wouldn’t believe. I read in
The
Times
that at the battle of Sedan they—’

Hannah wasn’t listening. She looked at the letter – at her address on the rue Garreau. ‘How did you find me? Here in the Danton, I mean?’

Clem stopped; he grinned again, pride in his detective powers displacing his apprehension. ‘Why, from your paintings. This fine establishment features in a good few of them. I asked your landlady about it and she was kind enough to provide directions. Then I recognised that girl, the one in blue, from your portrait of her. Simple stuff, really.’

‘You
went into my home?
What were you thinking, Clem?’

He became defensive. ‘We were worried, Han. We thought you might be poorly, or starving, or—’

A murmur of excitement spread through the Danton, rippling out from the doors to its furthest corners. Many turned to stare; Hannah overheard a nearby labourer say ‘
l’Alsatian’
to his companions. Jean-Jacques had arrived. Two inches taller than the next tallest man, black hat still on his head, he was moving slowly towards the bar, shaking hands and giving nods of acknowledgement. A squad of National Guard pulled him among them, hailing him as a brother as they poured him a glass from their wine jug.

‘I say,’ Clem remarked, craning his neck, ‘isn’t that the black-suited fellow from your paintings – the orator? Is he going to speak?’

Hannah didn’t answer. Exactly how much had her brother deduced? She tried to remember what had been left in the shed – and suddenly realised that if Clem could recognise Jean-Jacques, Elizabeth might be able to as well. A situation too awful ever to be anticipated was unfolding around her. She stepped from the doorway, hurriedly plotting the best path through the crowd whilst trying to think of an excuse that would get Jean-Jacques back outside.

‘What news, Alsatian?’ someone shouted. ‘Where are the pigs now?’

Jean-Jacques addressed the room. His voice, accented slightly by his home province, was not loud, but it blew away the bar’s chatter like a March wind. ‘The latest sightings are of Crown Prince Frederick, crossing the Seine to the south. The Orléans line has certainly been severed.’ The Danton let out a groan. ‘Do not lose heart, friends, it is but a minor loss. The Prussians will be driven back across the Rhine before a single week has passed. We will beat them.’

Those around him managed an embattled cheer, the National Guard raising their glasses to the coming victory; and between the uniformed arms was Elizabeth Pardy, poised to introduce herself to this noteworthy gentleman and ask him about her daughter. Like Clement, she seemed eerily the same – a figure from Hannah’s past transposed awkwardly onto the present. Her hair was tucked up beneath a fawn travelling hat; her expression amiable yet glassy, concealing a deeper purpose. And now Jean-Jacques was turning towards her, listening as she leaned in to speak.

The next Hannah knew she was before them, quite breathless, grasping his left hand in both of hers. There were exclamations of surprise. Elizabeth planted a kiss on Hannah’s cheek; her face was cold and heavily powdered, and the most extravagant praise, in French, was pouring from her lips. It took Hannah a moment to understand that the subject of this laudation was her paintings. She’d expected some overwhelming line, delivered with chilly calmness – a statement of disappointment and distress, perhaps, intended to floor her with shame. She hesitated, completely wrong-footed.

‘Wonderful,’ Elizabeth was saying. ‘Extraordinary, beyond anything I had hoped for. I see what you are doing, Hannah, I see it so clearly. It is close to genius. You are on the verge of something great, my girl. I predict a—’