Le Temps des Cerises (30 page)

‘He'd have thrown a balloon at the man!' smiled Alphonse, watching the people foraging in their pockets for something more testing than a shoe and a penknife. A cushion was hurled from a velvet bench and a rotten-looking orange but luckily for the juggler his time was up for La Bordas herself was waiting in the wings.

She sashayed onto the stage draped in a red flag and little else and a frisson of anticipation went through the audience. Acrobats and jugglers were just the starters. La Bordas herself was the main course, especially when she sang her version of
La Marseillaise
.

‘I won't be singing
La Marseillaise
tonight,' was the first thing she said in her usual steely voice; and the audience groaned with disappointment. She always sang
La Marseillaise
– it was her trademark song so to speak. ‘The last time I sang
La Marseillaise
,' the great singer explained, ‘the Prussians were at the gate. Now it is our fellow countrymen and I cannot in all conscience sing it tonight.'

The audience was keen to show its sympathy. Of course. What a predicament for such a temperamental soul! Whatever she chose to do would be fine by them (so long as she sang
La Marseillaise
!). No no but really, she couldn't. In all conscience she could not sing it tonight. If they didn't mind she would recite a poem by Victor Hugo. And much to Laurie's delight she did. She recited
Le Lion Surpris
with, on the whole he thought, much feeling though perhaps not with the political impartiality she might have hoped for. He wanted to put his arms round Evie's shoulders during the savage attack but he pressed his hands to the velvet bench to stop himself doing so.

A young girl came on in La Bordas' shadow and most people expected to be bored. Dressed in a simple cotton frock she looked as frail as a grey-winged moth, her hair catching the light in the candelabra. She cast a quick, scared look around the room and then, clutching her hands together in front of her, she suddenly broke out into song, her voice soaring up into the golden-tableauxed ceiling. She sang about remembrance and everything past as if her soul held all the longing that had ever been and ever would be… and you could have heard a pin drop in that vast quiet multitude, in the Salle des Maréchaux… just a girl singing her heart away like a bird in a gilded cage.

J'aimerai toujours le temps des cerises

Et le souvenir que je garde en coeur.
22

When it was over Laurie got up to go because he just couldn't bear any more after that. The song had pierced his heart and he wasn't quite sure if he'd been very happy and was now very sad or had been very sad and was now very happy. Alphonse protested at the sight of him making ready to depart.

‘We've only just begun,' he said, gesturing vaguely around the room; and this time it was Laurie who misunderstood.

‘Yes,' he said seriously. ‘We have only just begun and yet already it feels like an ending.'

‘But the best bit's next,' Eveline chimed in, patting his arm in a sisterly gesture, a little too sisterly by half. And he gazed at the woman who reminded him of a sea nymph or woodland sprite, a slender tree, a translucent leaf. For her the best bit would always be next; but for him it was over, past, a memory to hold in his heart.

‘You were right, I'm afraid, Evie,' he said with a rueful smile, ‘the lemon and cream has done for me it seems!'

‘Then we will all go,' Alphonse announced firmly, fishing beneath the velvet bench for his hat and coat.

‘Please don't,' muttered Laurie, holding up a hand because he just couldn't bear any more of it. He didn't want a long walk home full of explanations and reassurances, didn't want to hear in excruciating detail how Alphonse loved Eveline and Eveline loved Alphonse. He had seen it in the frank blue eyes of his friend. He didn't want to see it again.

‘Well, make your minds up!' came a disgruntled voice from behind and the three of them, catching each other's eye, burst out into crazy laughter, an awkward embarrassed exaggerated laughter that united and parted all at the same time. Three children of the revolution, thought Laurie, in the Salle des Maréchaux, a baker and two waker-uppers in the palace of kings. It was everything he and Alphonse had dreamed about. And he left after saluting a silent goodbye and made his way out into the warm spring night though for the first time ever the streets of Paris left him cold and the city of light felt dark to him.

Chapter twenty-four

‘Frogs and tulips!' muttered Monsieur Lafayette as the banging on his door grew louder and louder. ‘Hell's bells! Hold your horses!' He pulled off his nightcap, put on his dressing gown and padded to the door on his thick-soled feet, pressing a pin black eye to the peephole. A malicious little smile suddenly stole across his mouth; and he rubbed his hands together in delight before drawing back the heavy bolts.

‘Well, well,' he said to the hooded figure on his doorstep, ‘I thought it looked black enough to rain a few priests and nuns!'

Sister Bernadine stepped over the threshold, sopping wet and dripping rivulets, her cloak bulging oddly over the form of little Aggie. The nun looked paler than ever, her face almost ghostly in fact and contrasting sharply to the trellis of curls that clung in red clusters to her forehead and cheeks.

‘No umbrella?' the herbalist ventured in a conversational tone as if having a nun after hours in the middle of his shop was a commonplace social event. ‘You must be chilled to the bone!'

‘N... no,' stammered Bernadine a little confusedly, gazing about her in dismay. She lowered her hood and opened her cloak to check that the infant was perfectly dry then sank down on a chair beside the counter.

The shop was full again. Brim full with coloured bottles and dried herbs: mallow, comfrey, elderberry and thyme; and the jars were stuffed once more with pounds and pounds of shrimp sugar, marzipan, chocolate shoe laces, caramel cigars, barley twists, gumdrops, almond brittle and peppermints… everything the sweetest of teeth could desire.

Monsieur Lafayette, delving about in a cupboard by the counter, brought out a brown decanter and two small tumblers. ‘An apple brandy, Sister?' he offered with a sly little grin. ‘I won't tell if you won't. Perhaps a rum baba to go with it?'

Bernadine shook her head, uncertain how to begin. She almost wished she hadn't come and yet she knew at the same time that she had to confront it once and for all. She couldn't carry on with the uncertainty, the not knowing, the hypotheticals and the question marks. Clutching the string of rosaries sewn into the lining of her pocket, she steeled herself to speak.

‘Did she live?' she uttered in a peculiarly loud and uneven tone of voice.

Monsieur Lafayette tapped his glass and swirled the brandy around with a delicate flick of the wrist. ‘Very voluptuous,' he murmured dreamily, taking a sip and smacking his lips. ‘Almost titillating to the tastebuds. Apple is the most pleasant of fruits and yet, of course, the most ambiguous. Think of Eve, my dear, before that fatal scrumping… your Ernest was partial to a drop. On the quiet naturally.'

Bernadine started and a flush began to creep from her neck to her chin.

‘Funny little man,' Monsieur Lafayette went on, bringing his chair so close that she wanted to recoil. ‘He always reminded me of a hungry boy staring at a jam sandwich. I wonder what he made of all that bare flesh in Africa. Jam sandwiches galore, I should say! Just like her mother,' he added, touching the infant's downy hair with his yellow-stained fingers. ‘An uncanny resemblance.'

‘You have not answered my question,' Bernadine said accusingly, fighting the urge to flee then and there.

‘Oh but I am answering your question,' replied the herbalist a little obliquely. ‘The church talks in riddles so why shouldn't I? It is all metaphor after all. We are talking are we not of the daughter you did not have… and a Bishop who was sent to Africa simply to tame the barbarous natives and flesh-eating crocodiles. I wonder what became of him...' Monsieur Lafayette mused vaguely. ‘They probably ate him alive. Put him in a pot. I know my wages dried up.'

‘So you
were
blackmailing him,' Bernadine said with a note of resignation. ‘I thought as much.'

‘Earthly repentance you might say,' Monsieur Lafayette replied icily. ‘Put it this way, he valued my silence. Besides which it takes a lot to clean up that sort of mistake.'

‘You drove him away,' Bernadine cried scornfully, ‘with your demands.'

‘Hardly! I'm not that powerful, my dear. I'm afraid his superiors got wind of – oh must we use metaphors again – his
transgression
and that was the end of that. They sent him off to the depths of Africa to spread the good word. I imagine he spent most of his days reading the bible to those flesh-eating crocodiles. Until even they got sick of him. What a spectacular instrument of God he turned out to be!'

Bernadine covered her ears. ‘I should not have come to torture myself so. You have no right to judge, monsieur. Ernest was worth a thousand of you,' she added bitterly.

Monsieur Lafayette gave a coarse laugh. ‘Was he now? Well, you should know, my dear, though I don't believe you've had the opportunity to make a comparison. More's the pity.' And he leered at her with his pin black eyes, his boiled head gleaming like an egg in the lamplight.

She shrank back a little farther into her seat, wondering what to do. She wasn't exactly scared of the man; she disliked him more than she feared him. But she knew what he was capable of and she had Aggie to think of too. She almost wished she hadn't come but she had to find out the truth once and for all. St John, chapter eight:
And the truth shall set you free
, sang a voice in her head.
The truth shall set you free
. She had tried to move on, make her peace with the Lord and the Mother Superior, go back to her calling, step into that more rarefied air, leave the past dead and buried at her feet. But the past didn't stay where it should. It sprang up again and again with the snowdrops and primroses; sprang up again and again like a resurrected shadow over the present.

‘Or are you too high and mighty for a Modeste?' Monsieur Lafayette was teasing. ‘Now that you have had a Bishop.' Snapping his fingers in front of her: ‘You were drifting off, Bernadine. You really ought to get out of those wet clothes I'm sure, else you'll catch your very own death and what would the Lord make of that? I have one or two dry items you could use and I could hold the baby while you dress…'

‘N… no,' stammered Bernadine violently, watching him go over to the counter and help himself to a slice of rum baba, delving into the rum-soaked sponge with a huge silver spoon. She was beginning to think he wouldn't tell her anything. He would go on playing cat and mouse with her for as long as he wished then let her go. What did
he
care? He had nothing to lose – if Ernest were really dead. Nothing to gain perhaps but nothing to lose either. He could make up whatever he liked – say the girl was in Timbuctoo – to suit his own design. How could she have been so blind? So blind and so stupid as to come over here without any sort of plan. The incident with Mistigris had sent her over the edge, she chided herself silently. How stupid to race off into the night like that in search of the truth. You never found the truth when you looked for it; it hit you unawares like sunlight through the trees or a face in a dream. Hadn't she learned anything in all these years? Surrender to the moment and the truth will be revealed. That's all she had to do. Surrender to the moment and the truth would be revealed.

She smiled serenely, with a certain amount of difficulty, and loosened the bonds on the cotton papoose. Little Aggie was wide awake and staring inquisitively at the colourful jars behind the counter. Monsieur Lafayette, noticing her reflection in the fly-spotted mirror, enquired with a wry smile: ‘Would she like a chocolate shoe lace or a caramel cigar? They were her mother's special favourites if I remember rightly.'

Bernadine shrugged. ‘Why not?' she smiled sweetly. ‘It can't do her any harm.'

He brought one of each, crouching down beside the infant and dangling them into her mouth as if he were feeding worms to a bird. ‘I expect you were rather pleased,' he chatted cosily to the nun, ‘when the Cannibal's Delight popped her clogs. No offence meant of course – she was a valued customer, poor woman – no doubt eating the wildflowers by their roots at this very moment as fast as she is able. But the infant is some sort of compensation to you is she not?'

Bernadine smiled blandly though her heart wept at the betrayal.
Forgive me
, she cried silently.
Forgive me my dear, kind, brave, best friend
. ‘In a way you are right, monsieur,' she spoke carefully. ‘The infant is a compensation of a sort. A chance to redeem.' She paused. ‘I don't expect I shall ever meet my own daughter… but I am sure that you found a good home for her where she was well loved and looked after. I am sure that Ernest's trust in you was not misplaced.'

‘Oh my dear,' the confectioner's eyes twinkled in delight. ‘You've set my pulse racing with that fine speech. You could tempt the birds from the air, you really could. I can see why Ernest fell so sharply from grace.'