Le Temps des Cerises (13 page)

‘To foxes!' cried Mistigris then who was drunk as a lord and toasting everything and anything he could think of. ‘To foxes, rabbits, chickens and porks! Up with the butchers! Down with the good Lord!'

Everyone laughed except for Eveline who seethed at the thought of the time she had spent finding the rabbit, preparing it, cooking it… the ungrateful bunch! It was the last time she'd dish them up a Christmas lunch! In the end she had to go into the kitchen to regain her composure, Laurie following quickly after.

‘It's a sign of a good party,' he consoled her. ‘Uproar!'

She listened to the hubbub of voices and smiled weakly. ‘See what I have to put up with?'

‘I think Madame Larousse has taken a shine to your father.'

Eveline rolled her eyes. ‘I was starting to regret my hospitality.'

‘You couldn't just leave her out there sniffing the air!'

‘No.' She giggled.

Laurie held out his hand. ‘Friends?'

‘Friends,' she agreed, taking it. When she'd mopped herself up a bit they re-joined the table. Jacques was fast asleep with Fifi in his lap; Monsieur Lafayette was saying to Alphonse that the trouble with the working man was that when he didn't get what he wanted he went to extremes and just started killing people – like Troppman
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; and Mistigris was regaling Madame Larousse with the method and madness of his Art.

‘The stone is just waiting to be born, waiting to be set free. And it will be what it will be. Sometimes I wish,' he went on mournfully, ‘someone would take a chisel to old Mistigris, knock him out of his surroundings, smooth his rough edges, set the old fellow free again.'

‘Ooh, would you now!' Madame Larousse flushed up. ‘Dear me! What a degenerate!'

Laurie, fearing another bout of musical chairs, enquired quickly of Mistigris: ‘Do you know what has happened to the Venus de Milo?'

‘No. What?'

‘She was packed up in a crate and taken from the Louvre in case it was bombed. It was a real cloak and dagger operation.'

‘In the dead of night, I suppose,' said Mistigris for whom anything of import always happened in the dead of night.

‘As a matter of fact I think it was. It was all top secret. Nobody knows where she is hidden.'

Mistigris let out a forlorn cry. ‘Green! Green she was and bloated when they fished her out of the Seine.'

‘Not today, Papa,' Eveline said firmly and he stared back at her piteous and obedient as a child.

Monsieur Lafayette did the honours for afters with his crate of cherry brandy and tin of surprises. The tin of surprises was a great success – it contained a real sponge cake and a packet of chocolate Bavarian helmets. No one had seen cake or chocolate for months; and the Bavarian helmets especially caused a stir of excitement. Madame Larousse quite lost her head over them, dipping them into her glass of cherry brandy and talking to them as if they were real.

‘You little horrors!' She squinted at one. ‘When are you going to start shelling us then?'

‘When it is the right psychological moment
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apparently,' Alphonse said wittily which set off a stream of jokes about the right psychological moment.

‘Is it the right psychological moment for you to have a drink,' asked Eveline, getting into the spirit of things, ‘do you think, father?'

‘It is always the right psychological moment for that!' Mistigris winked.

Things got a little silly then; though Madame Larousse, unlacing her corset even further, remarked that it was good for the young to let their hair down when they had the chance. You never knew when your time was up. Look at poor old Monsieur Larousse in his coal shed now for good. Eat, drink and be merry, that was her motto.

‘I should like to be buried in a barrel of rum,' said Mistigris, his thoughts still on a morbid track.

Under a sundial à la Romans, was Monsieur Lafayette's choice.

‘By the cherry trees of St Denis,' said Madame Larousse mistily. ‘How I love a ripe cherry.'

‘Strawberries are more my poison.' The confectioner grinned obscenely at Eveline. Suddenly he got to his feet and started singing, his ruffled up collar halfway up his chin.

Red on the outside,

Hard on the inside.

Like teeth behind lips,

The strawberry spreads its sweet breath
.

Not to be outdone, Mistigris staggered up and gave his version of ‘Rose Blossom In Her Hair' in a cracked but surprising baritone.

When I first met her

She had peach blossom in her hair.

And it was true love,

My dear
.

Madame Larousse stopped him going any further by bursting into a storm of weeping. Nobody could console her. It was thought she'd been moved to tears by Mistigris' rendition of ‘Rose Blossom' but in the end it came to light that she wanted to sing her own little song – in gratitude for the meal. She'd been a soprano in her youth, had trod many a dance hall and though she said it herself had even been compared to the great Blanche Patois. If they didn't mind, of course. She didn't want to impose.

Eveline said that of course they didn't mind, they would be quite delighted and Mistigris led the cheering. ‘Take to the floor, dear lady. Take to the floor!'

Madame Larousse stood up, arranged her violet skirts and struck a pose.

‘Little Je… sus! Little Je… sus! ,' she burst out in shrill reedy voice. ‘Little Jesus La La La.'

Everyone waited expectantly for the verse but she simply kept singing: ‘Little Je… sus! Little Je… sus!'

‘And the rest,' thundered Monsieur Lafayette.

‘Little Jesus La La La.'

‘Marvellous,' shouted Alphonse in an attempt to stop her; but the woman was indefatigable.

Jacques, having been woken up by all the noise, shouted out: ‘Encore' before racing out of the room, giggling his head off, Fifi at his heels.

‘Has he been drinking wine?' Eveline asked, concerned.

‘No,' winked Alphonse.

Mistigris stared suspiciously after his son as though he thought the boy had engineered the whole pantomime; then apprehensively back at Madame Larousse grinning fearfully beneath her mop cap.

‘Little Jesus!' The dreadful apparition swayed in the dull ashy light. ‘La La La.'

In the end Monsieur Lafayette had to thump on the table to get her to stop. ‘Enough madame, enough. I can see why that went down such a storm in the dancehalls. The memory of it will live with us forever.'

Madame Larousse flounced back to her seat and promptly burst into tears again. Everybody by this time was entirely fed up with her, though Mistigris, taking pity, patted her on the arm and she gave him a sidelong little glance.

As the ashy light grew darker, Eveline lit the lamp; and the statues jumped out at them like spectres waiting to join the feast.

‘Happy Christmas everybody,' she smiled, playing the hostess and almost falling into Alphonse's lap. ‘Happy Christmas everybody!'

Chapter twelve

By the time Christ had been born again in hearts, minds and imaginations, Aggie was dead for real. She lay huge and no longer suffering on the small white bed beneath the large wooden crucifix, a pectoral cross on her breast. Two candles lit her way to the Reconciliation, to that gentle eternal embrace; while a bowl of Holy water sat at her feet to cleanse her of all earthly defilement. The nuns had sung a Requiem in her honour; had tolled through the Cherubim and the Seraphim, Patriarchs and Prophets; had been to pay their last respects, one by one or in nervous giggling pairs. Some had given her a good drenching with the Holy water in the pious belief that she needed all the help she could get while others had sprinkled and flicked with an averted eye as if fearing to catch a contagion from that impure vessel. Still more had come to gloat and peep at the ‘fruits of sin' swaddled up in the bottom drawer of the antique tallboy. Three stalwarts remained on the hard cane chairs beside the bed, their heads bent in the profound silence of prayer.

Bernadine stared in disgust at the bunch of violets she'd made, wondering why she'd put her faith in such superstitious nonsense. Aggie was dead. The child had lived, yes, but Aggie had died. Perhaps if she'd made a second bunch, one for each life… she shook her head in bewilderment. How ridiculous to bargain over death with a bunch of fake violets. Death came and went as he pleased, making no promises, breaking no hearts. It was God and men who made promises, broke hearts… The starlight crept in through the window, filling the room with silvery, fluctuating shadow, reminding Bernadine of a chapter from Prime
: Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising?
Is this what it all boiled down to in the end? A cold white lump in a barren little cell? The fruits of sin slept peacefully, oblivious to it all, dreaming no doubt of fairies, food, love, Prince Charming…

Brother Michael had shuffled in and was kneeling at the edge of the bed wringing his hands. The girdle he wore to symbolise the bonds of our Saviour during the Passion seemed tighter than ever, almost lacerating his cassock; and the tonsure on his head had grown from the size of a Communion wafer to the size of a shining soup plate. He dipped his fingers in the Holy water, made the sign of the cross on the white marble forehead then sank back to his knees. His dry sobs filled the air, causing the stalwarts to stir restlessly in their devotions.

It seemed to Bernadine that time stood still, hanging suspended in the space between two chimes, two moments, two heartbeats. Is this what it all boiled down to in the end? A barren little cell filled with silvery shadows like memories of a past that wasn't over yet, a future that had been and gone already. On their way out the nuns would sing the
Te Deum
to thank God for accepting Aggie's nothingness. Nothingness. No light, no spark, no voice of God, no feeling of His presence. Nothing but nothingness from here to eternity. Just a barren little cell filled with silvery shadows where time hung suspended in a space between two moments, two heartbeats; two shakes of the thurible.

At length the silence was broken – Sister Frances, one of the eldest and wisest in the convent, sat up suddenly with a beatific smile and exclaimed: ‘Dear child! Even in death she has a good colour.'

‘Praise be!' said the second, rosy-cheeked little nun while the third stared lugubriously about her as if having woken from a dream, her eyes feasting on everything, her lips chewing mercilessly on nothing.

‘She was a white lily snowed from heaven!' cried Brother Michael loudly, beating his breast, apparently glad to be able to vent his pent-up emotions.

Sister Frances frowned at him a little testily, as if to say that his place was in the kitchen, and he had no business in the cell of any nun – dead or alive – but she turned the frown into a smile and spoke with charitable kindness: ‘Indeed, yes, Brother Michael. Indeed yes. A loving and generous spirit.'

‘Oh, that doesn't do her justice,' shouted the monk, clearly quite beside himself – for he would never have dared speak in such a way to the Old Walnut as he privately termed Sister Frances. ‘Not by a long shot. She was generous to a fault.'

‘She always shared her peppermint creams with me,' the rosy-cheeked one admitted.

It wasn't quite what Sister Frances meant but she let it pass. ‘Yes, indeed, Sister Luke. A most generous and loving spirit.'

‘I remember the time,' Brother Michael gabbled on, seriously shaken up, ‘when the Mother Superior hauled her up on account of her chicken legs.'

Sister Frances looked at him askance. ‘Chicken legs? Whose chicken legs?'

‘Aggie's. She smuggled them in last year during Lent and hid them under the mattress. I was going to...'

‘Dear child!' Sister Frances interrupted hastily, trying not to look too shocked. She didn't want to hear any more about the escapades and misdemeanours of the dear departed – there was sufficient evidence in the bottom drawer of the tallboy! ‘Such joie de vivre! Nowadays it is all joie de vivre. Perhaps a little too much joie de vivre,' she added as the fruits of sin let out a piteous little grunt.

The lugubrious one nodded in full agreement and turned her face to the child, a tut escaping her lips like a delicate puff of incense.

The baby's face was quite cool and Bernadine wrapped her up in another warm blanket. Soon she would have to get milk. The thought had crossed and re-crossed her mind without cessation. Milk. Was there any milk left in the city? She would have to journey far beyond the convent to find it, venture deep into the heart of Paris. The thought made her shiver and she stared at the tiny creature in alarm, wondering how something could be so vulnerable and yet so powerful at the same time.

‘Sister Bernadine, am I right in thinking that Sister Agnes was posted to Rhône at one time for teaching duties?' Sister Frances, having observed the niceties, was now inclined to chat, and keen to include Bernadine. Being one of the ‘living rules' of the convent her only vice was to occasionally bend them a little; and she did not think the Lord would turn His nose up at her for that.