Le Temps des Cerises (19 page)

‘What do you mean?' asked Eveline, alerted by his tone of voice.

Alphonse shrugged his shoulders. ‘Paris is in turmoil,' he said simply. ‘Anything could happen.'

Eveline wanted to press him on the subject but his lips were set in such a grim determined line that she didn't dare to.

They talked about the war then in general terms – of the possible armistice with Prussia and the disaster of Buzenval – and conversation quickly turned to Laurie who was still laid up in the Louvre which had recently been transformed into another hospital
.

‘He is a little ashamed,' Eveline admitted. ‘He says concussion is hardly a war wound!'

Alphonse smiled. ‘Is he still raving about the French Officer?'

‘Yes, he seems to be. And Tessier. He says the officer shouldn't have taken Tessier's gun like that.'

‘Maybe he needed it,' Alphonse remarked a little brusquely, ‘more than Tessier did.'

Eveline was silent for a moment as a mark of respect. ‘The doctor says Laurie will be better when he gets back to familiar surroundings. I'm to take him some of his books and paper for his letters.'

‘Of course,' Alphonse grinned. ‘Where would Laurie be without his books?'

Eveline sometimes wondered the same thing but she didn't want to admit it to Alphonse out of loyalty to Laurie. She no longer loved him – she knew that now – if she ever had but he was still a friend whom she wanted to defend. ‘And what is wrong with liking books?' she asked almost playfully.

‘Nothing whatsoever. Unless they take the place of reality.'

‘At least he has a passion,' Eveline burst out hotly. ‘At least he has a passion for something.'

Alphonse gave her an odd, serious little look for a moment. ‘Yes,' he nodded. ‘Some of us find solace in words, shadows, ghosts, things that don't exist…'

‘And others?'

‘Others have more prosaic needs. We are content with people and what we find in them.' His eyes resumed suddenly their merry twinkle. ‘And you, Miss Eveline Renan? Did you find your passion at the Rue de Turbigo?'

He had a knack of turning the tables. Eveline knew that of old. Whenever you dug too close he fielded you off with a joke or a dry riposte. ‘Sort of,' she shrugged. ‘I don't know. I got a gun and a uniform.'

‘Help!' laughed Alphonse. ‘Eveline Renan has a gun and a uniform. Take cover everybody!' He almost shouted it into the empty street. ‘Take cover everybody!'

He was ridiculous – but he made her laugh – and she knew he was trying to cheer her up and she was grateful to him for that. ‘If you remember rightly,' she taunted him, ‘it was you who encouraged me to join a women's battalion. Your exact words were: “Break free while you've got the chance else you'll be a little mouse forever”.'

Alphonse shook his head gravely. ‘If that's true it was mighty irresponsible of me. Mighty irresponsible.' He pretended to shiver and shake. ‘But I must have been mad to ever call you a mouse.'

‘You did!' she cried triumphantly.

‘Mouse with a tiger's heart more like!' He brushed her fingers with the tips of his own. ‘But you must be very fond of me to remember my words so exactly,' he teased.

She hoped he couldn't see her blushing in the darkness. ‘I have the memory of an elephant,' she explained. ‘I remember everything.'

‘An elephant's memory and a tiger's heart all in the shape of a slender little mouse! What a girl you are Eveline Renan! Is this what Laurie means when he talks about evolution?'

It suddenly started to rain quite heavily and Eveline stared up at the sky in alarm.

‘He'll be fine,' Alphonse comforted her, taking off his coat and wrapping it round her for she'd run out of the house wearing next to nothing. But it was coming down hard and pretty soon they were both completely soaked to the skin. They decided to take shelter in Laurie's rooms. It wasn't far and it would kill two birds with one stone, Eveline said, because she could get the books and they could wait for the storm to pass. At least it was warm and dry in there and Laurie wouldn't mind at all. At least she didn't think he would.

‘D'you think he'll be alright?' Eveline asked as they ran, heads bowed, in the direction of the Rue d'Enfer.

‘Who? Laurie or Jacques?'

‘Both,' answered Eveline wondering vaguely what on earth she was doing. The night had been so strange already, full of unexpected twists and turns and she had the oddest feeling it wasn't over yet. A voice outside herself had suggested the plan of taking shelter in Laurie's rooms and part of her had looked on askance. Would Laurie really mind her going to his rooms in the company of his good friend Alphonse? She squashed the doubts with an invisible shake of the head. Of course he wouldn't. It was the sensible thing to do.

‘They'll be fine,' Alphonse answered. ‘If Laurie has his books and Jacques has his balloons they'll both be in seventh heaven. Wherever they are. It's you who needs a passion,' he added, gripping her hand so hard that she almost yelped out in pain. She turned to scold him but the look in his eyes made her giggle nervously instead. They were serious yet playful, fierce yet hesitant. His eyes are the key, Eveline told herself then as if at the birth of some sudden illumination. The eyes spoke everything his voice did not. Whenever I want to know him I must just remember to look in his eyes.

She was so busy looking into his eyes that she didn't notice the solitary figure beneath his umbrella gazing at them with interest from the far side of the street. And when they turned down the Rue d'Enfer the figure changed its course and followed closely after.

They tiptoed past the concierge who was sound asleep and always asleep. Eveline had a key but she didn't want any awkward questions about Alphonse. Dripping and giggling they crept up the steps and into Laurie's rooms where it was marvellously warm and dry and the cuckoo clock was just striking one. Alphonse lit the lamp and stared discreetly out of the porthole window while she dried herself off with a dirty old duster.

‘What a night!' she chattered, smearing and smudging herself as best she could then going over to the bookshelf in an effort to select a book. She could hear nothing but the sound of her heart pounding and her fingers trembled as they ran over the titles. Molière's
Imaginary Invalid
– no that wouldn't do at all! Corneille's
Fantastical Illusion
– nor that! Racine's
Antigone
and other plays…

‘What about Racine?' she called over her shoulder.

‘Who?' teased Alphonse, presumably staring out at Miss 49 and Mr 50 or the blackness, stars and the square-topped belfry of St Jacques.

‘Laurie loves his work,' Eveline muttered to herself, trying to remem­ber what he'd said about it. Beautiful, tragic like a piece of Bach… all about fate and how we can't escape it. She pulled the book out onto her lap. Was there such a thing as destiny, as fate? Did every moment in the past lead up to this point? Did you choose your own destiny or did it choose you?

‘Do you believe in fate?' she asked, twisting her head round to look at him.

He was standing staring at her with his back to the window. She looked quickly into his eyes. They were purposeful and determined as they always were yet oddly shy and passionate, and she saw with relief that they spoke everything she wanted to hear. She smiled to herself, still grappling with the idea of destiny. They had chosen to be here. They didn't need to be. It was only a spot of rain after all – he could have escorted her back to her father's house and probably should have. They had colluded in it – both of them. And yet it had seemed strangely inescapable too.

She smiled a welcoming smile and the thought of Laurie passed through her mind, but only for a moment.

‘Fate,' Alphonse replied, coming towards her with his arms open wide, ‘is what we make happen…'

Jacques soared above the clouds, grasping his satchel and grinning from ear to ear. The Professor was sound asleep, tired out with all his exertions and he, Jacques, was in charge of the balloon. All alone. Master of the skies, the heavens, of every little thing they flew over: palaces and prisons, chim­ney stacks and church steeples, hospitals, grasshoppers, sweet shops and trees. He pinched himself again just in case he was dreaming but the pinch hurt so much he knew that he wasn't. No dreams had ever been like this, even the ones of Amelia Botton! Fifi poked her head out of the
satchel, gave a nonchalant glance in the direction of Neptune and Jacques gave her a reproving tap on the nose with the end of his peachstone whistle.

‘Fishes and cream,' he promised her, ‘when we get to America! Much better than a bit of scrawny old pigeon even if it does come from a line of noble lineage!'

Maybe some chillies for his father, a parrot for his sister, an amber-rated insect for Amelia Botton and a gold tooth for Lippy Buggins. Poor old Lippy Buggins! Poor old chap! Jacques hugged himself in delight, remembering the row of upturned faces that had stared as he soared, gaping and twinkling ever more distantly like pins in a cushion or glow-worms in the dark; and the hubbub of voices like school being let out, far far away… it was perfectly quiet and tranquil now as they sailed aboard a bed of cloud, through blackness and stars and over every little thing that had ever been since time began. He was leaving it all behind. The petty squabbles and the scoldings, the wars and the washing up. He was sailing over everything that anyone had ever taught him. The catechism and algebra, honey and bees. He was free, perfectly free. He could spit on it all if he chose to. Not that he would of course. He left that sort of behaviour to the likes of Lippy Buggins. Though it would have been fun to have spotted Monsieur Lafayette and dropped a gob on that boiled egg head of his. Maybe a bag of sand ballast just to teach him a lesson. A good clout from the heavens. Not that he would of course. He had more important things to see to like Zanzibar, America, the Orient, the moon…

Little did he know that his nemesis was down below pressed to the keyhole outside Laurie's rooms, peeping and peering for all he was worth, his bald head shining like a full moon itself; and as the stars grew paler and paler in the sky, his black eyes grew brighter until they fairly glistened.

Chapter seventeen

Brother Michael looked wilder than ever as he paced the floor of Bernadine's cell, stopping every now and then to cock his head and listen. He'd paced and waited for nearly two hours and out of those two, he decided then and there, three had been spent agitating in the armchair. Sometimes he pushed aside the dingy grey curtain to peer down the corridor at the warren of little cells but he caught neither hide nor hair of Bernadine or Bluebird, as he'd recently dubbed the infant Aggie. He hoped they hadn't come to any harm. It was a dark night to be out and about in the low dives and haunts of Montmartre.

He fell to reciting the
Confiteor
, the
Office of the Virgin
and a long Latin sentence in which he got completely lost. ‘
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus
,' he mumbled, making the sign of the cross in the air. ‘
In nomine Patris
. In the name of the father...'

He wanted to say ‘
In nomine Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti'
but he couldn't get past ‘
In nomine Patris
'. The words got stuck in his throat. Those dratted miraculous wines of the steward had given him a headache indeed. Bloody fool, watering them down like a bunch of patio roses. He needed Dutch courage at this point not a headache and a fuzzy tongue. In the name of the father, he tried again – to no avail.

He'd determined to tell all – though it would cost him his black stockings and cassock. ‘There will be nothing left of my religious life,' he said to himself, ‘but a pair of black stockings and a worn-out cassock.' Still, conscience dictated that he reveal all, unburden his soul, loosen the tug boat of sin for the waves and the Lord to do what they would with. He had no doubt that the Lord would forgive him. It was the Lord's job to forgive. It was what He did after all. Brother Michael had concluded long ago that it was the Lord's job to forgive and the Mother Superior's job to punish. The thought now of what that Gentle Terror might do to him when she found out sent a shiver down his spine and the whole of his portly frame baulked so that he paused in the spirit of St Thomas Aquinas, one overly capacious boot mid air, mid step. Perhaps he didn't need to tell her after all. Perhaps it would be best not to tell her at all. She had plenty to worry about without adding his spiritual health to the list of her concerns. Indeed it would be kindest not to tell her. It would be doing her a positive disservice to tell her.

Yes, that was it! Brother Michael began pacing again, much relieved in heart and mind. To tell the Mother Superior of his wrongdoing would be the biggest wrongdoing of all. It might even be the straw that broke the camel's back for she was terribly overburdened with her shelves of confiscated property – the novels and bottles of anisette, fancy note paper and smuggled sweets – and spent longer and longer each day sorting through them, her whispers less and less audible, her face quite red and startled if you came upon her unawares. No, it would be quite improper, the most heinous crime of self-indulgence to loosen his little tugboat of sin on her waters. It was for the waves and the Lord to deal with. And maybe Sister Bernadine. She had a right to know and she wouldn't be too appalled. She had secrets of her own, so they said. Shady Lady. Woman Rumoured to have a Past. He would clear his conscience with her, she would smile, nod her head, and he would disappear like a cloud into the velvet of the night.