Season of Light (40 page)

‘Thomasina, you came to Paris, all this way, for my sake? But why on earth didn’t you write to me first?’

‘I told you. I thought you’d sent for me.’ The words now sounded unbearably naive.

Didier held his mother’s handkerchief to his lips. ‘Oh, my dear Thomasina, I believe that these are in fact about the only notes I ever wrote to Estelle. Surely you can see they weren’t for you? Look how rushed they are. I probably left them for her on the table when she’d gone storming off after one of our arguments. And obviously I gave her the silk handkerchief as a token.’ He leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. ‘I’ll be straight with you – you have to know. She was my mistress for a while.’

Asa straightened her back and took another sip of wine.

‘So your father said.’

‘Ah, yes, he would. I wish he’d let me tell you … I know what you must have thought. But you’re wrong, it wasn’t that I’d forgotten about you … Thomasina, it had been more than three years.’

‘You wrote to me that we would be married. I waited all that time.’

He kissed her hand and studied the palm. ‘My dearest girl. You were nineteen when we met. It had been years. I had not dreamed you would have waited for me. And I received no letter about this Shackleford and your sister’s plans. Estelle was available. No, more than that, she came knocking at my door. We’d known each other for years and she made it too easy.’

‘Then what did it all mean, when I was here with you in Paris?
Tell me
what it meant.’ Asa saw herself standing with Caroline on the shore at Littlehampton watching wave after wave, enthralled by the image of herself; a daring young woman with a mysterious French lover. Had all that passionate longing been merely the fantasy of a lonely girl?

‘Thomasina. It meant that we were young and we fell in love. There was so much happening. I knew even when you were here in Paris that I should not have permitted myself to love you, but that was my head speaking. It could not govern my heart.’

‘Did you ever love me?’

‘Of course I loved you. You were my beautiful English love.’ His head dropped, then he turned to gaze out of the window. ‘It’s astonishing that you’re here. I hardly know what to think. If only I wasn’t so tired, but I’d just got back from Toulon when I was called out of Paris again. There’s endless trouble these days. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.’

Worse time for whom? Asa wondered. But his self-absorption emboldened her.

‘Estelle told me she wanted to come back to France so that she could bury her brother. She seemed to think there was some doubt about what had happened to his body.’

‘I know nothing about that.’

‘I think she blames you for Jean – Gabriel’s – death. She said she wants to punish those responsible. It seems to me that there are no limits to what she may do. That is why I came.’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘No other woman in the world would have done so much for me.’

A gentle breeze blew across the square and ruffled the muslin at Asa’s breast. Drawing the papers together, Didier pushed them back across the table, sprang to his feet and lit candles on his desk. Then he took out a clean sheet of paper and dipped his pen. ‘I will send men out to find Estelle. It won’t be difficult. We’ll arrest her, then I’ll talk to her. You have made a great sacrifice for me – my goodness, it’s astonishing you should have taken such a risk coming to Paris. But as my father should have pointed out, I’m very well protected.’

‘I also have a message from your sister,’ said Asa, determined now to break through his air of having matters entirely under his control. ‘She thinks you should go back to Caen. If you did, she says people would be reassured that not everyone in Paris is an enemy.’

‘Is that what she thinks? Well, when I have a moment, I shall go. How’s that?’ The flash of his old, brilliant smile.

‘Your sister is still grieving for Father Jean Beyle. So is her friend Charlotte.’

‘I grieve for him too. He was very dear to me.’

‘Yesterday I visited the rue Vieux Colombier and stood under the wall of St-Joseph des Carmes. I could see the window of your old room.’

He blotted the page and drew out another sheet. ‘Actually I care very little either for Estelle or her brother at this moment. It’s you I’m concerned about. Christ, Thomasina … The more I think about it, the more I realise we must get you out of Paris. It is not safe for strangers here, especially the English. And given my role in the police …’

‘Perhaps if you do have such an influential role it will be easier for you to be rid of me.’

‘You sound hurt, Thomasina. You mustn’t be. The last thing I want is to be rid of you, as you put it. But we must act, do you understand, for your own sake? We need to work out how best to get you home without attracting attention. I still can’t fathom how you managed to arrive in Paris without running into trouble.’

‘I travelled under a different name.’

‘A false name? Don’t tell me you have forged papers?
Christ
. Oh, don’t look at me like that, I can’t bear it. You weren’t to know. But the situation in Paris is very delicate. Next week I stand for election.’

Asa got to her feet so suddenly that the glass tumbled over, spilling its contents on to the white cloth and the edge of one of the letters. ‘You don’t have to worry about me; I expect nothing from you. And actually I’m grateful to Madame Estelle, because who knows how long I might have gone on thinking you still loved me, had she not lured me back. My God, Didier, hadn’t I said time and again that you had only to whisper my name and I would have come? But it seems you gave me up long ago, and all these years, while I was still waiting for your letters … Now I realise that what bothers you most of all is that my presence here might damage your career. Is that what happened to your friend Jean Beyle? Did he get in your way too? I want the truth, Didier. What have I been loving all these years?’

‘Hush, hush.’ He took hold of her arm and brought her forehead against his shoulder. She let her face rest on the coolness of his shirt, inhaling the essence of Didier while he stroked her hair. ‘Thomasina.’ He drew her closer and kissed her hair. ‘Do you remember, when we were together in Paris, we used to dream of such a wonderful future? Sometimes I do wish I’d scooped you up then, and taken you to Caen, where we could have lived our lives as a provincial lawyer and his wife. But how would that have been?’

‘You would never have been satisfied. You were far too restless and eager to do the right thing.’

‘The right thing. Yes, that’s what I wanted.’

‘Then why has it proved so difficult, Didier? You and I used to dream of ending slavery. We talked of freedom. But now even your own father is in chains.’

He laughed. ‘Hardly chains. He is being kept out of harm’s way for his own protection. Lord knows what calamity the people of Caen are drawing down upon themselves. But yes, it’s all coming back to me, how you used to be. That was one of the things I loved so much; you also believed in doing the right thing. But can you possibly understand, I wonder, how hard it is for me?’ When he raised her chin and gazed down at her, the blueness of his eyes ought to have been spellbinding. ‘Do you know what I’d like to do, more than anything in the world at this moment? Be with you. Spend time with you and learn you all over again. I look at you and remember how it was. When you left I was grief stricken, I promise you. It seemed to me that everything was perfect while you were here, and that it never would be again.’

It was as if, for the first time that night, he really saw Asa. His arms settled about her, remembering her shape, and his eyes had shed their determination and were instead filled with desire. With his fingertips he touched the side of her forehead. ‘Oh, I remember you. The scent of you. The freshness of your skin, here, in this hollow. I hadn’t realised, I had forgotten what I once had.’ And that was the moment, standing in his arms where she had for so long wanted to be, that Asa knew for certain she didn’t love Didier – not because he’d changed, but because he hadn’t. She saw now that same eager young man, who could be caressing her breast one minute, the next dashing forth to a meeting that would wrench France on to a new course, his whole being attending to each extraordinary moment, but not assimilating, not caring for one experience once it had been transplanted by another. And so that race went on within Didier, to find the perfect moment, and Asa knew that when she disentangled herself, when he remembered where he was and with whom, and saw the heap of papers on his desk, she would be consigned ruthlessly to the shadows once more.

She put her hand on his wrist. ‘Didier, does it have to be like this? Jean Beyle was your friend. He seems to have been a good man. Why did he have to die?’

‘A good man. A saint, in fact, and didn’t everyone say so? But I saw a rather different side to Beyle. You forget, I knew Jean Beyle from when we were children, and he had a will of iron. He was far more ambitious than I; it was simply concealed by all that prayer. Jean, I’m afraid, was always destined to be a victim. In fact, I often think he
wanted
to die so that he could make his point. He was the type who would never look to left or right once he’d made up his mind.’

‘Surely people don’t choose to be killed. They make a choice, and are killed for it.’

‘You’re wrong. In Jean’s case, he chose. I should know because it was I who gave him a chance to save his life. Listen to me. Of course I wanted to spare him – he was my friend as well as Estelle’s brother – so I arranged a meeting with a colleague of mine who was high up in what was then called the Legislative Assembly. He promised to have Jean released and sent to a safe place, if only he would sign the oath. So I visited the prison yet again and took Jean the appropriate papers – I even had a witness with me – but still he refused to sign. I shouted at him: “Do you realise how cruel you are being? I’m doing this for Estelle. Why can’t you put her first, above a piece of paper?”’

Didier rubbed his forehead with the side of his fist and gave Asa a pleading look, as if he must convince her, of all people. ‘Beyle always pretended to be so mild, but he knew exactly how powerful he was. The trouble was that he was trapped in the past, refused to see that in the new France we must all pull in the same direction, that the Revolution is fragile and must be led with clarity and strength of purpose.’

‘But
you
used to argue with everyone all the time. It seems to me that the only crime Beyle and your father committed was to disagree with you.’

‘They were
wrong
.’ She stared at him and he added, more quietly: ‘On the day Beyle was killed I was out of the city, in Caen, as a matter of fact, visiting my family. Estelle blamed me, of course. She thought I had deliberately arranged to be away. But even had I been in Paris there was nothing more I could have done. Paris was seething. Civil war might have flared up at any moment and then the counter-revolutionaries would have joined forces with foreign powers. The killing of those priests and prostitutes was like a purge, an example.’

‘So you did know it would happen. Estelle was right.’

From outside came the sound of running feet. Didier roused himself. ‘But we must forget all that now and get you out. And no, Thomasina, it’s not for my sake that I’m doing this, but yours. Times are very bad in Paris. I want you to be safe.’

‘I have no money except the amount your father borrowed for me.’

A woman was shouting in the square and someone was ringing a handbell. ‘I’ll send him the money, don’t worry about that. But you mustn’t go back to Caen; it’s not safe at present. I’m going to have you taken to Calais. It’ll be a day or two before the papers are ready. Where are you …?’

More bells rang, a cacophony of clangs from bell-towers near and far. People were rushing into the square, throwing open windows, collecting in doorways. Didier urged Asa to stand out of sight and called down: ‘What is it? What has happened?’

Word was passed from mouth to mouth until a man in a red cap raised his head and bellowed: ‘It is Marat. Our great Marat. Our country’s saviour. He’s been murdered.’

Didier leaned out farther. ‘What do you mean? When? How do you know?’

The crowd surged on, carrying with it the man in the red cap, who yelled back at Didier: ‘At home. He was at home. A woman done it.’

When Didier again faced Asa he seemed to have forgotten who she was. ‘Christ, if it’s true, if Marat
is
dead, everything will change.’

He crammed papers into a case and left the room to fetch his coat. More and more people were streaming into the square.

‘We must go,’ said Didier when he came back. ‘I’ll have to convene a meeting and get my men on to the streets. We must keep the city calm. At times like this anything can happen. They will be looking for scapegoats. You …’ He stared at her, the horror of the situation dawning. ‘You are a foreigner. You especially will be at risk.
Move
, Thomasina. We must get you out of this city.’ He returned to his desk, sat down, pondered, then again sprang up and seized her hand. ‘Listen, for both our sakes you must do as I say. Go back to your lodgings. Do
not
talk to anyone. Stay indoors until I send for you.’

‘Nobody out there will care about me.’

‘It’s a precaution. We don’t know what’s happened or whether Marat really is dead. But if he is, there’ll be a shift. Everyone will be watching everyone else.’ He was urging her towards the door.

‘I’ll walk home.’

‘No.’ He led her along a passage to a flight of narrow stairs. ‘I’ll see you into a cab but you must go straight back to your lodgings. And stay put, do you understand? I need to get you out of the city fast, before anyone finds out that you and I are connected. You’re English, for God’s sake.’

He found a cab, paid the man, thrust his arms into his jacket, and disappeared through the crowd. The street was jammed with people alerted by the tocsin, which was taken up by one bell-tower after another. They were grabbing each other, demanding to know what was happening. One woman screamed: ‘They should kill the lot of them. Anyone who knew this woman, everyone from her district.’