Season of Light (32 page)

‘There’s no need for you to go to such trouble.’

‘Clearly there’s a need. Father says that since Didier is the cause of your presence here, we can’t abandon you. I had no idea you were living like this. We have already put the word about that you are a distant relative of ours, down on your luck. If anyone asks we’ll say that although you’re French you’ve spent years abroad as a governess, hence the accent. I’ll wait downstairs while you dress. Don’t bother with a cap. Sometimes people think it’s harking back to the old days, for women to wear that sort of cap.’

Too sick to resist and too ashamed to ask for help, Asa thrust her juddering arms into her dress and plaited her unkempt hair. The leather travelling case thumped against her calves as she dragged it downstairs, where the landlady lay in wait.

‘I paid you yesterday,’ said Asa. ‘I’m leaving now.’

‘You didn’t give me notice. That’ll be one more night’s rent. If you don’t pay your bill I’ll have to report you.’

The landlady’s eyes glinted in readiness for a fight. After handing over the money Asa would have only a few écus left, but her head was pounding too much for any argument. The walk through Caen’s broiling streets seemed interminable; hot air even funnelled through shady rue Froide as they made their way north between close-packed houses and the indifferent morning crowds. Beatrice walked doggedly several paces ahead, neither offering to help Asa with her case nor making any attempt at conversation until they reached the house on rue Leverrier. When the front door was thrown open, she entered without waiting for her guest.

The housekeeper, Madame Vadier, was inside, eyes darting and hostile. She told Asa to follow her and then climbed the stairs beneath the likeness of Didier, with his firm shoulders and brilliant eyes, to a little room at the back of the house where muslin curtains were drawn against the sun so that the air seemed cool and translucent.

‘You look very sick to me,’ said the housekeeper. ‘I suppose you should go to bed. I can’t say I’m surprised. Nobody in their right minds would stay at that filthy place. I’ve not known her air a mattress in fifteen years. Lie down before you fall.’

Asa’s bones rattled with fever and the sheets were harsh on her hot skin. She was barely conscious of the scent of lavender as Madame Vadier said: ‘On top of everything else she has brought fever to the house. I shouldn’t be surprised if we’re all struck down, and then what?’

Beatrice appeared at the bedside. ‘You must promise me not to leave the house until I say. Madame Vadier will look after you. I’ll decide what to do when you’re well. I want people in Caen to forget about you, do you understand?’

At regular intervals the housekeeper brought fresh water and on that first evening she offered to bathe Asa’s neck and face, though her hands were decidedly unsympathetic and she muttered: ‘As if I haven’t got enough to do. What are people thinking of, visiting Caen at this time? I’ve not had a minute for those chickens. Goodness me, mademoiselle, your skin is burning, how can you possibly be shivering?’

Later that night Asa heard the two women shut themselves in their separate rooms; the housekeeper on the attic floor above. There was no sign of the professor. Asa slept fitfully and woke full of apprehension, imagining that the slightest sound – an owl’s hollow hoot, the clatter of a shutter – meant that she had been betrayed and that soldiers had come to arrest this mysterious English visitor. She felt the air move across her brow and thought Madame must be there, fanning her softly and keeping watch. Later she dreamed that she heard knocking on her bedroom door and that it was Shackleford forcing his way through a stack of luggage and upturned chairs.

Dawn came and the distinctive white walls of the Paulin house enclosed her again. How strange to spend day after day under Didier’s roof; to hear female footfall on the stairs, the opening and closing of doors and the clamour of chickens.
His
sounds.
His
life. Thus she floated between his world and her own.

After a couple of days Asa was eating morsels of fruit and toasted bread. The next morning she dressed and groped her way downstairs, where Madame Vadier found her in the hall, exhausted. ‘When you’re well enough I have plenty of work for you. For the time being you can go into the garden, if you like. I don’t want you in my kitchen when I’m baking so you can use the doors in the salon – it’s due an airing. Wipe your feet when you come back in.’

The salon was in semi-darkness but the housekeeper marched across and folded back the shutters so that light streamed through on to a faded green carpet and comfortably worn furnishings, chairs upholstered in pale green damask, yellowed in the seats from too much wear, a card table drawn up to the hearth, and a screen painted with butterflies. Asa stepped from this still space on to a terrace ablaze with sunlight and scented with currants and flowers. At the centre was an empty stone bowl which must once have held a fountain and beyond was a tangle of greenery penetrated by little gravel paths leading to the heart of the garden.

Madame Vadier could not resist following Asa and standing in the shade of a birch. ‘My late mistress, Mademoiselle Paulin’s mother, loved to work out here. This used to be a wonderful formal garden with statues at each corner and a huge urn at the centre where the mistress grew ferns. You should have seen the garden when she was alive. The professor always brought her plants. Look at those lilies, the white ones. Very rare. You wouldn’t see those where you come from.’

‘Who looks after the garden now?’

‘Who do you think? Everything falls to me. Except for Mademoiselle Beatrice, who helps out when she has time, which she hasn’t. And there’s a boy but he’s lazy and has taken to loitering about in the square claiming to be patriotic. He’ll get himself conscripted if he’s not careful; he’s certainly foolish enough.’

‘Madame Vadier, what about the professor? When will he be home? I should like to speak to him.’

‘Best not to ask questions. That’s what Mademoiselle Beatrice told me to say.’

The housekeeper, whose uneven shoulder blades were too prominent under the thin fabric of her dress, darted back inside. The garden was bordered on three sides by high stone walls sheltering fruit trees and a thriving vegetable garden. In a secluded spot at the side of the house was a washing line, and a smooth lawn for bleaching sheets, just as they had at Ardleigh. But the shrubbery and flower beds were neglected and wild so that the thoughtful faces of mossy statues, half buried in the undergrowth, peered between the leaves of overgrown laurel.

Unlike at Ardleigh on a summer afternoon, here there was no sense of a slumbering pause between morning and night. In the Paulin house absence permeated every moment. Beatrice had left instructions that Asa might borrow books from her father’s study but she couldn’t bear to set foot inside. The shutters were half closed and the desk scattered with papers, as if its owner might return at any moment and set to work.

In the dining room the oval table was covered with heavy felt, though Madame Vadier showed Asa a linen press stacked with embroidered tablecloths. ‘It’s years since we’ve eaten formally,’ she said, stroking the top of the pile. ‘I ought to be grateful, it was an hour’s work to iron one of these cloths and in any event there’s no starch to be had these days.’ She pointed out a miniature of the late Madame Paulin, who had been dark haired like her children, with a somewhat ferocious stare and an angular face. ‘Of course, since this was a professor’s house, we had many visitors. At one time there were four servants. But Madame did much of the work herself. She loved to cook – she wasn’t proud. And she rarely sat down, was always rushing from one room to the next. No wonder she died young.’

‘Her death must have been such a blow to the family.’

‘It certainly was. The house was never the same after that. She had so much life in her. The children’s friends were always here, running about the garden. She loved to bring them feasts of biscuits and cakes and cheese. The house used to hum when she was alive.’

Madame Vadier looked dotingly about the room. ‘In the winter, this is where they’d work. Four heads bowed over their books. Sometimes more. We used to keep the fire burning high for them and make them chocolate. My boy Didier used to take the head of the table, Jean Beyle the foot, the girls in between.’

‘Jean Beyle?’

‘I thought you’d have heard of him, since you’re an old acquaintance of the family. Everyone knew Didier’s friend Jean. I remember the arguments. Sometimes the professor would stand by the window and listen, or interrupt with a quotation from one of his philosophers. He never minded the outrageous ideas they had, as long as they could support them with their learning, that’s what he used to say.’

‘Did Beatrice join in as well?’

‘Of course she did. All the girls who came here learned how to argue. They were encouraged to do so. Madame Paulin never said much because she thought she was too ignorant but she had her views all right. That’s why Beatrice went to school in the first place; her mother wanted her to learn. Then in the summer out they’d go, into the garden. When they were small it was always hide and seek, wrecking the mistress’s flower beds, breaking her precious pots. I can see them now, laughing at me from the trees. When they were older they’d sprawl on the grass with their books.’

At half past two each afternoon, Madame Vadier collected a glass of water from the scullery and went upstairs for her sleep. ‘That portrait of Didier, Monsieur Paulin,’ Asa said, ‘it’s very fine.’

‘You think so? Estelle did it. Jean’s sister.’ The housekeeper shot Asa an unreadable glance. ‘Personally I don’t think much of it. She painted it for Madame Paulin, as she lay dying. Otherwise I don’t believe it would still be hanging there.’

‘Why not?’

Madame Vadier took a step down and spoke in a low voice. ‘Didier – Monsieur Paulin – took everything he wanted when he was last here. Said we should throw out the rest. It was autumn. You should have seen him, driving up to the door in his smart carriage, and half of Caen rushing up the road to set eyes on our famous young man. Next thing I know he and his father were shouting in the study and when Didier came out he was weeping. I’d not seen him in tears since his mother died. When he kissed me and called me his darling Vadier, like he used to, he said he wouldn’t be coming back.’

Madame Vadier continued up the stairs, each step slower than the last, as if her body was already half asleep. As Asa studied the painting, she thought that the housekeeper had been unjustly critical and that the young friend, Estelle Beyle, was unusually gifted for an amateur. True, the laughing eyes and painted smile lacked depth and subtlety but the soft folds of the cravat and in the sleeve of Didier’s coat were so meticulously done that Asa felt she might have inserted her fingers into them.

There was no signature, just initials in the bottom right-hand corner in modest grey paint: E. B.

A week after Beatrice had plucked Asa from the Auberge St-Jean, she told her to fetch Didier’s handkerchief and her false papers and prepare for a walk in the countryside. Beatrice was dressed as usual in a deep-brimmed cotton bonnet and carried a covered basket so laden that even though they shared its weight the handle cut into their palms. At the city gates the guards waved Beatrice through then glanced indifferently at Asa in her crumpled dress and straw hat.

The lane led due west through flat countryside. On the other side of head-high hedges cattle dozed and the wheat was already pale gold, though Beatrice said the summer had been so hot and dry, nobody expected a high yield. On and on they walked, past hamlets of houses poorer even than Key Cottage with patched roofs and broken shutters, the doors lying open so that hens might shelter from the sun.

‘I’m grateful to you for not pestering Madame Vadier about Father,’ said Beatrice. ‘I assume you’ve guessed – or been told – that he is in prison. He would like to meet you but you still have a choice; if you don’t want to visit him, you can turn back.’

‘Yes, that is what I suspected – after all, I saw what happened to Mr Lambert in England. Of course I still want to see your father. And I’m used to prisons so I shan’t find that disturbing.’

‘He told me to warn you that there’s always the danger that some official will turn up and arrest a visitor on suspicion of conspiracy or some other trumped-up charge. If anyone found out you were English, we would all suffer.’

‘Why would your father risk seeing me, then?’

‘He’s already in terrible trouble. He’s accused of whipping up discontent by speaking out against the policies of the National Convention. That is a capital offence, even though he also says that the idea of Caen taking military action is sheer madness. He’s advocating peaceful argument, but either way, it’s unlikely he’ll survive. If the mood in Caen changes or if those men they have imprisoned in the chateau happen to be released and decide to seek revenge, my father would certainly be sent to the guillotine. His view, therefore, is that he has nothing to lose.’

‘What if they find out who I am?’

‘Let’s hope they don’t. Once we’re inside the prison there’s no need for you to say a word, except to father. But to be honest, I’m worried too. I didn’t want to bring you here at all, but my father feels responsible for you because of Didier. That’s why he wants to see you.’

The prison, formerly an abbey, was built in local, oatmeal-coloured stone with a lofty chapel on the east side. Within the gates the atmosphere was rather that of suspended normality than of a gaol; men strolled about the cloisters in their shirtsleeves and a few women, grouped in the shade with their sewing, looked curiously at Asa. When a couple broke away to ask Beatrice for news they were polite enough but their exhausted eyes were avid. A red-faced guard with a military bearing accepted a coin as if he were a servant taking a discreet tip and admitted Asa and Beatrice through a side door to a stone passage reeking of rancid meat. At the far end was a flight of worn, shallow stairs leading to a row of cells.

Five years earlier, when the professor had driven with Asa to Madame de Genlis’s salon, he had worn a neat wig and a suit of fawn velvet; his complexion had been ruddy and his demeanour smart and proud. Now he was gaunt with a few white hairs sprouting from the sides of his head, and he was dressed in a shirt damp with sweat and stained breeches. His skin had a powdery pallor and he smelt yeasty and stale. After kissing his daughter on either cheek he took Asa’s hand in his, and subjected her to a moment of unswerving scrutiny.