Le Temps des Cerises (39 page)

‘They're here!' Alphonse cried urgently then and his eyes reflected the flames of the Hôtel de Ville that had gone down roaring. ‘They're here everybody, they're here!'

Eveline fumbled with the gun she'd been taught to use at the Rue de Turbigo, her brain forgetting everything Elizabeth and Maria had told her. ‘I had better just rely on instinct,' she muttered to herself, ‘and the quick reactions of youth.'

And as the bullets shrieked ‘bread for a song on Marcadet' and ‘fish going spare on the Rue de Rivoli' Eveline stood straight and held her nerve, just as she had done in the queue for Potin's.

Chapter thirty-one

Bernadine found the Mont de Piété easily enough though she saw at once to her dismay that it was shut. The closed sign was hanging tip-tilted on the door handle and no sound could be heard from within. She pressed her face to the pane, almost crushing Aggie in her cotton papoose, and she had to turn her round to the side to get a better look. The shop was full of heirlooms, treasured possessions, old junk and bric-a-brac. She spotted a china tea set, some good linen, hundreds and hundreds of pairs of scissors, even a mattress and an old rocking horse, its boot-black button eye staring dumbly at her out of the darkness. All waiting to be reclaimed or sold on to a new home. She'd forgotten how full the world was of possessions, possessions and obligations.

Feeling suddenly panicked, she rapped sharply on the pane. If she couldn't exchange her ring here then where could she? She needed money, cash to be able to get around with, to eat, sleep, live with. The ring was only valuable in so far as it could be exchanged for the currency of the day – whatever that was. She'd been so long in the convent she didn't have a clue what the currency of the day was – it could have been old socks for all she knew, old socks or bloomers! She didn't even know what side of the war she was meant to be on. She rapped again and waited, listening intently. Not a sound. Not a creak or a peep. The windows above were shuttered up too. There was no one home. It was something she hadn't bargained on, there being nobody home.

Come to think of it, it was deathly quiet. On her way over she'd not met a single soul and had come to the conclusion merely that people in the outside world were tardy to rise. She imagined everyone on the outside to be some sort of midnight reveller and tardy to rise in the mornings. Not that she'd ever been out much in the mornings except to queue for food during the siege. Usually she crept out like a gnat in the twilight if she ever had to go on some errand for the convent. That was all changed now of course. She would have to brave the light of day on a regular basis now, on a daily basis in fact. But if it was always as quiet as this it wouldn't be so bad.

She decided to wait, wait for the proprietor to wake and open up. He couldn't be that much of a lie a bed. She moved away from the glass and as she did so she suddenly caught sight of a woman in the window. There was somebody there after all. She turned back with relief, gesticulating urgently and the woman waved back almost as urgently. How strange! Was she trapped in the shop somehow? Bernadine stood still, waiting for the woman to open the door but the woman just stood there staring back at her. She was holding something in her arms and even from behind the pane of glass Bernadine could sense the air of desperation about her, of loneliness, of despair. It was in the droop of the shoulders, the set of the neck, the large and haunted eyes. This woman was in trouble, needed help. Bernadine stepped forward impulsively at the same time the stranger did and only then when she was face to face with her, did Bernadine recognise the large and haunted eyes as her own.
She
was the woman trapped behind the pane of glass!

How stupid! She'd be fleeing from her own shadow next. She tore her eyes away out of habit and then a moment later allowed them to return. In her previous existence (for that was how she must describe her years in the convent now) she would have labelled that figure a woman of the night, a woman of ill repute, dressed as she was in that tight-fitting tunic, her head and ankles bare – and yet unbelievably it was herself. It was hard to look at her own reflection, hard to see herself in bodily form, having lived so long in spirit. It reminded her that from now on she would be judged as a woman, not as a nun, by men, not by God.

‘Go away!' The voice came from up above, startling Bernadine out of her thoughts, and she craned her neck to see who had spoken, but the windows were still tight shut and fastened. The disembodied voice spoke again. ‘Go away or I shall send for the police
.'

‘But I have a ring to exchange,' Bernadine protested, her heart thumping with anxiety. ‘I need money to get out of Paris.'
Should she tell him the truth? Tell him she had just left the convent and was running to a new life in Rhône with a baby in tow? It sounded absurd, not possible, not credible…

‘Don't we all.' The voice was still hostile but less so and Bernadine squinted hopefully up at the shutters. ‘Here, look!' With trembling fingers she brought the little pouch out of the pocket of her tunic and held the ring up to the sun where it glowed with the dull warmth of real gold. Her father had done her proud she had to admit. It was a rare and beautiful ring, even she could tell that. Surely it would tempt the proprietor out of bed…

It did. A few moments later the door of the Mont de Piété opened and a wiry-haired man stuck his head out, looked to the right and left then beckoned her in.

‘I thought you were a
pétroleuse
25
,' he explained apologetically and Bernadine, not knowing what a
pétroleuse
was, shook her head in any case and gratefully entered the shop. It was cool and pleasant inside after the beating heat of the streets and she placed the horsehair basket down on the floor and checked Aggie's head for fever as she always did when it was hot. The baby was fine, peaceful and sleeping for once, her long dark eyelashes curling like spiders' legs over her cheeks.

‘Let me set up my equipment,' the proprietor said then before Bernadine had had a chance to bring the ring out again, ‘else I shan't be able to give you a fair valuation.' He seemed to take an inordinately long time setting his equipment up though it consisted merely of a duster, magnifying glass, pair of scales and bottle of vinegar. Then he brought out the big black book of receipts and began searching slowly and methodically for an available space.
I don't need a receipt
, Bernadine wanted to scream.
I just need to get to Rhône by nightfall
. But she stood waiting patiently, her legs aching, as his dirty thumbnail bent the pages. There was a look of suppressed excitement in his small green eyes and Bernadine wondered if he were deliberately delaying the moment when he would examine the ring in her possession just as Agnes had always delayed the moment when she could gorge herself on a chocolate pudding or citron glace.

‘May I take your name.' He'd found an available space and she opened her mouth to say Sister Bernadine then closed it abruptly, blushing furiously. She must use her old name now.

‘De Villiers,' she stuttered at last, her tongue twisting over the unfamiliar vowels and consonants. ‘Marie-Ange de Villiers,' she added softly, almost to herself, getting herself used to it again.

The proprietor raised his head sharply, suspicion in his eyes. ‘De Villiers – after the shipping line?'

Bernadine nodded. ‘Distantly… my uncle…' she tailed off, not knowing what to say. In truth her father had opted out of the family business as a young man, preferring clocks to ships, leaving her uncle to amass a small fortune. Luckily for her the ring was a relic of that fortune. She brought it out then without further ado in an attempt to avoid any more embarrassing questions and placed it on the counter beside the magnifying glass.

‘I will need an address.' The proprietor's voice was cold and disbelieving, almost hostile again, and Bernadine could feel the colour sweep back into her cheeks. She wondered if she oughtn't to tell him the truth, that she was a nun from St Joseph's convent on her way to a new life in Rhône but it sounded so preposterous, so absurd that she couldn't bring herself to do it. In the end she gave the address of her father's old place in town, smiling a little to herself at the thought that upon investigation it might turn out to be a boulangerie, a pâtisserie or to exist simply in memory only. The haberdasher having long gone after all…
He has a vineyard now
, her uncle had written her,
in Provence I believe
. The stupid trivial things you remembered.

‘I have been visiting relatives,' she added on the spur of the moment, ‘and now I intend to go home.'

‘I hope you had a good visit,' was the proprietor's decidedly sardonic response but at least he was writing the address down in the big black receipt book. At least he hadn't confronted her over it.

Little Aggie let out a cry then, having woken in unfamiliar surroundings and Bernadine turned to attend to her. In actual fact the baby always cried upon waking and Bernadine found herself wishing, as she often did, that just for once she would greet the day with a smile, that just for once the transition from sleeping to waking would be a pleasant one. She took her off to look at the rocking horse, leaving the proprietor to examine the ring in peace; and the baby cooed and crowed in delight over the boot-black button eye and moth-eaten mane as the proprietor dusted, weighed, polished and stared. The way he worked reminded Bernadine a little of her father and for a moment she was back in the quaint old shop amongst grandfather clocks and grandmother clocks, jewelled, enamelled, gold, ormolu… where time itself was dusted, polished, weighed and stared at and yet still passing with every tick and tock. How fast it had gone and now here she was in the outside world with a child of her own to support and protect, not to mention a grown-up daughter somewhere in the city…. The proprietor must have noticed the tears in her eyes for he said quite kindly and out of the blue that if she wanted to tell him something then he'd be happy to listen.

‘I hear more confessions in here every day, Mademoiselle de… Villiers, than a church must get in a month of Sundays.'

He clearly didn't believe her, didn't believe she was a de Villiers but then why should he, dressed as she was? Even she didn't believe she was a de Villiers any more.

‘Everyone agonises over giving up some treasured possession to pay off a bad debt – a wedding ring, locket, child's baptismal gown. It is only natural. I hear the whys and wherefores of it all. The only way they can deal with the guilt is to pretend that one day they will come back to reclaim it though few of them do. Sometimes I think I should call this place the House of Perpetual Hope.'

Hope, yes. A place to dream, forget, repent. A place to find a new life in amidst good linen, silver candlesticks and pretty rocking horses, the bric-a-brac of people's lives. She'd forgotten how full the world was of things and of feelings; and it horrified her to think how full it was.

‘The strangest thing anyone ever left was a parrot. A tiny old lady brought one in during the siege, her face festooned with tears. She'd been having dreams of skinning him alive – we were all so hungry then I suppose. Well, it contravened rule number 4,' the proprietor waved at the placard behind his wiry head which read, Bernadine saw mistily through her tears,
No corpses, No perishables, No edibles, No animals ('less stuffed)
, ‘but I made an exception in her case. Well, what else could I do? I am not entirely without a heart. I rather lived to regret it, however. That tiny old lady must have owned the entire works of Dante Alighieri for I got
Purgatorio
from the beak of that bird from dawn till dusk! I thought it was talking double dutch until a learned gentleman came in one day selling his mattress and translated it for me.'

Bernadine smiled weakly at the anecdote, related she felt quite sure for her benefit. ‘Did the old lady ever come back for the parrot?' she asked politely, scooping Aggie up in her arms and approaching the counter.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact she did, luckily for the parrot. One more day of Dante's
Inferno
and I'd have skinned him alive myself.' He was smiling now and loquacious though the small green eyes, Bernadine noted, were completely inscrutable. The look of suppressed excitement had gone from them and they were shuttered and opaque as an algae-covered pond. She felt guilty now about the ring after everything the proprietor had said about people wrestling with their consciences, even though her father had given it to her for just such a purpose as this.

‘Is it worth very much?' she asked quickly, wanting to get the transaction over and done with.

The proprietor scratched his wiry head. ‘Less than I imagined I'm afraid,' he admitted sorrowfully, turning the ring again between finger and thumb as if contemplating it afresh. ‘It is a surprisingly poor quality gold.'

Bernadine's heart sank and for a moment she railed against the memory of her father – how stupid he was preferring clocks to ships, not knowing the real value of things, no wonder her mother had left him – before coming back to her senses. He'd given her the ring in case she ever wished to escape her own life. He would have made sure at the very least that the gold was good quality. It must be the proprietor out to cheat her. She glanced quickly at the small green eyes but they were as inscrutable as ever – a stagnant, algae-covered pond – though the mouth was warm and smiling. She wondered if all men were scoundrels if they could get away with it, wondered if it would have been any different had she been in the veil, wondered if she could bring herself to haggle though she knew at the same time that she couldn't. She gave a small, nearly hysterical laugh, naive and ridiculous in her ill-fitting costume, clasping Aggie to her chest. ‘As long as it gets me to Rhône,' she stammered and the proprietor nodded his head emphatically. ‘Oh, it'll get you to Rhône certainly, but it might not bring you back again.'