Le Temps Des Cerises E-Book

Zillah Bethell

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 561

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

If you've seen Les Mis and are still wanting more, this new ebook could be just what you need. Le Temps Des Cerises is set at the barricades of Paris in the 1870s, just a few years after Victor Hugo penned his epic novel. The citizens are still suffering, this time being starved out by the Prussian siege and the Versaillais, and even rats are on the menu. For 17-year-old Eveline Renan the horror also brings excitement as she finds herself on the frontline, caught between two lovers: the dreamy poet Laurie, and his heroic friend Alphonse. She has no idea that just a few streets away, disgraced nun Bernadine is selling herself to save the lives of innocents, including hers. As the Gare du Nord becomes a centre of resistance, Eveline finds a revolution on the streets that is reflected in the hearts of the soldiers, nuns, artisans, lovers and renegades of this chaotic city. She and others are forced to find their own ways of living and dying as the fighting finally reaches the young men at the barricades of la semaine sanglante - the bloody week of the Paris Commune.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Quotes

Part One: Waiting to Live, Waiting to Die

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Part Two: Living, Dying

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Part Three: Death, Life

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty-one

Chapter twenty-two

Chapter twenty-three

Chapter twenty-four

Chapter twenty-five

Chapter twenty-six

Chapter twenty-seven

Chapter twenty-eight

Chapter twenty-nine

Chapter thirty

Chapter thirty-one

Chapter thirty-two

Chapter thirty-three

Chapter thirty-four

Chapter thirty-five

Chapter thirty-six

Chapter thirty-seven

Epilogue

Annotations

Copyright

le temps des cerises

Zillah Bethell

for Benji

‘The early heat from which we are suffering may be attributed to the presence of a comet not yet perfectly visible. It is common knowledge that in all epochs the appearance of a comet has preceded a great event. I am waiting for one particular great event in the world...’

Henri Rochefort (1868)

‘Paris amuses itself on foot, on horseback, in a carriage; Paris amuses itself by day, by night; in the morning, in the evening; Paris amuses itself doing good, doing wrong; cheating and being cheated; laughing, weeping; hanging about, working hard; bankrupting, burning, killing itself.’

Pierre Véron (1862)

Part One: Waiting to Live, Waiting to Die

Chapter one

It was here, here she always felt most at ease, protected once by the city walls, twice by the grey stone slate of the convent and thrice, of course, by the hands of the Lord. Even now, in bleak midwinter, the garden shone in her mind’s eye, overflowing in rhythm and colour, the plants breathing in and out their souls… only here could she praise the Lord. She whispered anAve Maris Stellafor the soldiers fighting at the ramparts, the French and Prussian high commands, the starving inhabitants of the city, the Sisters of St Joseph’s and last but not least her dear friend Aggie who sat beside her on the bench of sweet woodruff, moaning softly and sweating profusely.

‘Roast chicken,’ she groaned now, holding her sides. ‘It gives me stomach ache just thinking about it.’

‘Ssh dear,’ Bernadine chided her gently. ‘We must keep our minds off it. How many have you done now?’

‘One hundred and one,’ Aggie declared proudly, indicating the horsehair basket on her lap all swollen up with red crêpe bandages.

‘Well done!’ Bernadine took a gold from her sliding box of coloured cotton and, holding a needle up to the sun, threaded it expertly. ‘Only another fifty to go!’

Aggie sighed. ‘If only I could live on grass and twigs I’d munch my way through every window box on the Rue de Rivoli as well as the Bois de Boulogne. Or a glow-worm living off dewdrops. Or a big fat spider catching flies! If you were a blancmange I’d eat you up!’ She giggled at Bernadine’s wry expression then wrinkled up her nose. ‘The smell of gunpowder makes me feel even sicker. I wish I could sleep underground with the squirrels and wake up to springtime and peace… I’ll never refuse one of Brother Michael’s vermicelli soups ever again!’ she added vehemently.

Bernadine smiled a little at that for she’d never known Sister Agnes refuse anything; and it was a source of wonder to the whole convent how she remained so plump on such meagre rations. Her own dress had been taken in twice already and it still hung about her like an altar cloth whereas Aggie looked fit to burst her buttons.

‘He says the Emperor1spent a hundred thousand francs a year,’ she went on with a gloomy air, ‘on sugar plums! Imagine that!’

‘I shouldn’t believe everything Brother Michael tells you.’

‘Oh yes indeed, it was in the papers. One hundred thousand francs a year on sugar plums. Pocket money for him. And the feasts they had at the Tuileries you wouldn’t believe. Peaches in syrup was a great favourite. Brother Michael said the footmen scampered about like mice in white slippers, bringing him morsels of cheese. And walnut.’

‘Goodness!’ was all Bernadine could think to say, staring at Aggie whose face at that moment looked like a great sweating cheese itself.

‘What wouldyouhave, Sister Bernadine? You can have anything you like. Anything at all.’

‘Oh, Agnes.’

‘Go on,’ implored Aggie. ‘Anything at all. A great banquet in your honour…’

‘Oh alright.’ Bernadine put down the bit of gold braid she was stitching and appeared to give the matter great thought. ‘I’d have a savoury to start with of course… oyster soup I think.’

‘Good choice. With new bread and butter?’

‘Yes, with new bread and butter. Then I think I should like shrimps and watercresses… or maybe mussels with parsley sauce. I don’t know; I’m torn between the two.’

‘Both. Have both of them.’

‘Alright,’ Bernadine smiled. ‘Both. The main course would have to be a delicious beef stew full of onions and carrots and potatoes and dumplings.’

‘Dumplings!’ echoed Aggie looking as if she were in heaven. ‘I dream of dumplings.’

‘For pudding I don’t know – let me think…’

‘Floating islands?’ her friend suggested.

‘Oh, yes.’ Bernadine felt herself giving in at last. ‘And gingerbread. How I love gingerbread.’

‘Cherry nougat?’

‘Chocolate mousse!’

‘Rum baba!’

‘Caramel cigars!’

‘Peppermint creams!’

‘Toffee terrine!’

‘Raspberry sorbet!’

‘Lemon meringue pie!’

They egged each other on, on and on and on until no more puddings could be dreamed up, not in a month of Sundays; and Sister Bernadine, wiping away a tear of laughter, said she hadn’t eaten so well in ages and a few Hail Marys were in order after that little lot.

They worked on in silence then for a while on the little sweet-woodruff bench, Bernadine stitching gold braid onto cuffs and collars and wondering as she often did how such beautiful clothes could be made for such a terrible occupation. The brass buttons glinted in the sunlight, reflecting Aggie’s plump white fingers rolling her little crêpe bandages. Now and then the sound of guns boomed in the distance like far-off thunder or St Peter snoring up above, but the air in the garden was soft and full of peace. A robin pecked at the sunken vegetable patch, peering from one bright eye and then the other as if he didn’t know which to believe and Bernadine wondered idly if next year she wouldn’t get honeysuckle and lemon verbena for the bees.

‘Narbonne honey,’ Aggie remarked upon hearing the suggestion, ‘is the best in France. You can taste the wild flowers in it.’

Maybe some pale pink roses or buttercup yellow… to remind us of the original source of all light… and to make a splash between the old and forlorn-looking flower clock and convent wall. (It had been her idea – the flower clock – oh so many years ago… ‘A marriage of nature and progress,’ she had announced proudly to the visiting dignitaries… ‘tribute to the great clockmaker himself and to symbolise the difference between earthly time run by hours, days, minutes of prayer and the timelessness, infinitude of heaven.’ Quite the theologian, he had said and she had blushed… oh she had blushed…) Deep crimson perhaps to remind us of… the blood of our Saviour…

‘Sister Bernadine?’

‘Oh, yes Agnes?’ She took up her needle quite purposefully.

‘I… I…’

Bernadine knew Aggie well enough to know that she wanted to confess and she concentrated hard on an epaulette in an effort to encourage her.

‘I… oh… do you remember last year when we went to the Madeleine flower market and came back with bunches of azaleas and wallflowers – Brother Michael said it would have been quicker to grow them.’

‘Oh yes. What fun we had that day!’

‘I wish we could have flowers all year round. It’s so desolate here somehow.’

Bernadine laughed. ‘You would not care for them half so much if that were the case. It is in the nature of a flower to be a surprise, an event. It would be like having Christmas every day of the week. How sick we would become of it.’

Aggie looked as if she didn’t think Christmas every day of the week would be too much of a penance after all; but she lapsed into silence and closed her eyes.

Bernadine wondered if she shouldn’t press her further on the matter, but she had always held firm to the belief that a confession was best delivered of its own accord prompted by the voice of God or the inner workings of the conscience; and besides it was too beautiful a day and the girl in no fit state, and so she let the matter drop along with her needle and fell back to basking in the warm winter sun and gazing upon her beloved little garden.

Desolate, yes, and sweet! A place to forget, to confess, to dream, to repent. How many hours had she spent inside these walls protected once by the city ramparts, twice by the grey stone slate of the convent and thrice, of course, by the hands of the Lord. Only here could she praise Him! Amidst the stained-glass panes of crocus and marigold, incense of lavender, spearmint and thyme and the hymns of ancient insects and orange-bellied singing toads which each struck a different note at sunset. As if God stood on the threshold of spring, took up his baton and said to the world, ‘Let Earth’s song begin. Let Earth’s song begin…’

‘Sister Bernadine?’

‘I… oh… yes Agnes?’ Bernadine took up her needle again with lightning speed.

‘I have a secret,’ Aggie panted painfully, her round face pallid and damp with sweat.

‘The Lord knows all our secrets, Agnes,’ Bernadine murmured automatically.

‘It’s not the Lord I’m worried about,’ responded Aggie with a fearful glance at the low arched window of the convent where the Reverend Mother sat beneath her shelves of confiscated property, drawing up lists and timetables for the novices.

Bernadine decided to put the poor girl out of her misery. ‘I know about the sweets you stole from...’ she almost choked over his name, ‘... Monsieur Lafayette’s. I do not believe it to be a thing of great weight. We are all so very hungry.’

‘Oh, it’s not that, it’s much worse than that!’ Aggie went on in a low panting murmur, her whole body trembling with emotion. ‘I should have told you long ago but I felt so ashamed... and... it’s obvious to me now that you would have understood… only person who could possibly help in my predicament. And yet…’

Bernadine’s eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘For goodness sake, what is it my child? What on earth’s the matter?’

But before Aggie could open her mouth again to reveal her terrible secret her body was overtaken by a violent paroxysm and she suddenly toppled off the little sweet-woodruff bench and onto the ground with an almighty crash, sending the horsehair basket flying and the rolled-up bandages unrolling with gentle abandon past pyramid fruit trees, the greengage cage and the sunken vegetable patch.

Brother Michael was down in the cellar investigating what he privately termed the ‘miraculous’ ingredient of the convent wines – an allusion to the water he’d accused the steward of adding to the bottles of La Tour Blanche – when he heard a muffled scream; but thinking it was simply some nun in the act of self-mortification, he shrugged his shoulders and got on with his job.

‘Oh, very Christian,’ he muttered angrily, taking a drop of’68. ‘Here’s a little miracle for you!’ Out of the fifteen bottles he’d investigated, sixteen of them at the very least, he’d noted down, contained the special ingredient and he was most aggrieved. Turning water into wine, he felt, was quite in keeping with a holy life but to turn wine into water was undoubtedly the action of an unsound mind, a mind not altogether in its rightful place. He corked up the bottle of ’68 and moved a little unsteadily to a crate of ’69, craving heaven as he did so for the remission of sins, the grace to live a holy life and to deserve some eternal rest.

‘BROTHER MICHAEL? ARE YOU DOWN THERE?’

He came to an abrupt halt. He knew that voice. It was Sister Bernadine – Shady Lady as he privately termed her. Woman Rumoured to have a Past. One of the handsomest nuns in the convent with a lonely faded beauty reminiscent, he had decided in a poetic moment, of a wild flower pressed between the pages of a book. Still capable of giving off glows and hints, he reminded himself. Still capable of leading even a man like him astray. He trembled slightly, wondering if he oughtn’t to hide behind the crate of ’69 and hold his breath until she went away but a shadow over the open cellar hatch persuaded him to own up to his existence.

‘Just checking the cellar for damp,’ he called out in a surprisingly business-like tone. And wiping his fingers on his blue twill apron he started climbing the cellar stairs one step at a time, as St Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas recommended.

‘Oh thank goodness,’ Bernadine exclaimed, all red in the face and breathless, giving off glows and hints no doubt to poor Brother Michael. ‘Sister Agnes is in trouble. I believe she’s suffered some kind of stroke. We must get her inside immediately.’

‘A… Agnes,’ faltered Brother Michael, blinking rapidly. The Prettiest Perfectest Peach in Paradise as he privately termed her. But Aggie was literally bursting with health. There could never be anything the matter with Aggie…

‘Do you understand, Brother Michael: we must get her inside immediately!’

‘Yes.’ He suddenly flew into action, tearing past Bernadine as if he had wings, out of the kitchen and up the garden path at an astonishing speed to where Aggie sat propped by the little sweet-woodruff bench, moaning loudly and sweating profusely. ‘There there,’ he shouted, patting her on the head. ‘Brother Michael’s here now!’

Events took on the quality of a dream after that. It seemed to him that he gauged the situation at a glance. No detail escaped him of the red strewn bandages, scattered uniforms and coloured thread, Bernadine’s distress, Aggie’s howls. Nothing was lost on him – not the bright sun, nor the blue sky, nor the nuns gathering one by one, pale and peering their long, thin faces at him like a bunch of silly sheep.

‘…bran poultice,’ one of them bleated. He distinctly heard her bleat.

‘Smelling salts!’

‘Only yesterday…’

‘Enema by the look of her!’

‘Pale as a drink of water!’

He issued orders with remarkable fluency (though others might tell a different tale). He remained Calm amidst Chaos; took charge, took command, took off his girdle and tied it round Aggie’s right leg, wrapped a bandage round her head; did all manner of useful and necessary tasks. He measured the distance by eye from where they sat to the convent wall, took pains to test the strength of his girdle by pulling on Aggie’s left leg, calculated the position of the sun on her hair and the time it would take to reach her foot, meticulously planned each step of the route until in the end he came to the decisive conclusion (though with the feeling he’d spent a lifetime preparing for it) that Aggie must be got inside. And with that they half dragged, half pushed, half carried a shrieking Agnes through the greengage cage, past the pyramid fruit trees and over the sunken vegetable bed to the rooms where the Mother Superior sat, grim and foreboding, behind her desk.

‘I am to blame,’ Bernadine babbled as everyone shuffled in. ‘All the talk of food brought on some sort of malady. She has the most terrible stomach cramps.’

‘Gumdrops!’ whispered the Mother Superior with a shake of her head.

‘Oh no, it’s not a mere case of indigestion,’ Bernadine insisted, ‘I am sure of it. She’s in the most frightful pain. We must fetch a doctor at once.’

‘War! More needy!’ whispered the Mother Superior with another shake of the head. ‘No doctors for gumdrops.’

Brother Michael stared at the Gentle Terror as he privately termed the Mother Superior. ‘This is not the work of gumdrops,’ he said in a tone of utter seriousness, pointing at Aggie who was writhing in agony on the floor. ‘I could never believe this to be the work of gumdrops, Reverend Mother.’

And indeed it was not. A few minutes later, beneath the shelves of confiscated novels, facepaint, jujubes and lace knickers; the benevolent eye of a plaster Mary and infant Jesus and signs which read:Here Silence is Always KeptandInsubordination is Everywhere, Sister Agnes’ confession was delivered of its own accord in the shape of a tiny blue baby girl, amidst much shouting and hysteria on the part of everyone concerned except for the Mother Superior who whispered for all she was worth and Brother Michael who stood open mouthed and tugging at his blue twill apron as if he were tolling the angelus.

Chapter two

21stDecember 1870

Dearest Maman,

Here I am in the thick of it still, as you see – though thank God I sleep on my own bed tonight instead of this wretched straw pallet. The mud is almost up to our knees after the sudden thaw but it is still bitterly cold. Those socks you sent to me via Monsieur K. are a godsend, Maman. A real godsend. It is the coldest winter ever they say. Of course it would be!

I have still not a scratch upon me, having seen no real action. Alphonse has his chest wound from Le Bourget which aches a little more, he says, when a pretty girl goes past! I envy him sometimes: his spontaneity, his ready engagement with life, the ability to slough off an identity yet still be the same, to wake up bright and breezy day after day. Constancy above all in all things. I am weak willed as a woman. I wish that something would happen – anything – if only to see if I could bear it. All this waiting around will be the death of me. We while away the time somehow with cards and dominoes – wine is plentiful! We have a few tables and chairs dotted about – a little sitting room at the ramparts! All I need to feel at home is a roaring fire, some toasted muffins, you knitting quietly in your armchair and Molly thumping away on the piano! Tell her I expect a perfect rendition of the Moonlight Sonata when I next see her!

You would not recognise the city if you came to visit. It is quite simply a fortress: the Louvre an armament shop, the Bon Marché a hospital (all your favourite calicoes and linens being used to mop up the wounded!), the squares nothing more than parade grounds. Not a single stump is left in the Bois de Boulogne and the lime trees you loved so on the Boulevard Haussmann have all gone for firewood. We have no lighting after dark (Paris, city of light, extinguished!), the Prussians having cut off our coal supply from Belgium; and few carriages are to be seen because (don’t read this bit out to Molly) the horses have all been eaten (Paris, city of the gourmet, famished!). Nobody knows how to make it palatable. Copies ofThe Practical Cuisineare selling like hotcakes apparently as uppercrust housekeepers search for tips on ‘how to dress exotic meats’! The rest of Paris searches for tips on how to dress thin air. I dream of a cheese green as an emerald and...

Laurie broke off from his letter to blow on his numbed fingers, stamp his feet and take a sip of the watery coffee commonly referred to as mouth warmer – because the only thing it was good for was warming one’s mouth. He rolled it around his tongue like a wine then spat it out again. What didn’t he dream of here in this ruined landscape, acres of dreary white before him, the city like a crouching beast behind him. What didn’t they all dream of but to win the war, get out of this stupid futile mess and go back home for good instead of this endless to-ing and fro-ing; though in fairness, he had to admit, some wanted it, to some it was an adventure, like Alphonse maybe, or the little gunner who rubbed his cannon down as if it were a horse or a woman and made snowmen on sentry duty just for the hell of it. Laurie crunched on the stale biscuit he’d been saving in his mess tin and reread the page he’d just written, wondering if its tone was sufficiently buoyant. He spent a long time over his letters, believing them to be a filial and fraternal duty, digging up curious and unusual anecdotes to entertain his mother and sister who sat in Toulouse in blissful ignorance. At least he hoped they sat in blissful ignorance. Sometimes he underplayed or over dramatised the situation a little, depending on his mood or what he thought might best amuse, generally writing behind a persona and keeping the full colour of emotion, whole complexity of truth for his poems and dreams. And if he ever did write straight from the heart, more often than not he crumpled up the page and left it unsent. Today he felt he’d been a little too honest and he finished up the sentence with a mildly facetious ‘one of your baked eggs, Maman’ then sat back to rack his brains a little more and listen half-heartedly to the rest of the men who were drinking gin and playing pontoon.

‘I’ve never seen so much make-up on a man,’ Old Joubet was saying, picking his teeth and staring at his hand in disbelief. He always stared at his cards in disbelief – whether to bluff his opponents or because he really couldn’t comprehend the blows Fate kept dealing him was hard to tell. ‘He was wearing so much make-up at the Battle of Sedan he looked like a fuckingcocodette2. What the hell’s wrong with him anyway?’

‘Kidney stones!’

‘Syphilis!’

‘His days are numbered in that area. The only thing that pops out nowadays is his tongue. His servant takes sugar tongs along when they go to the opera to stick the Emperor’s tongue back in if he’s been drooling too long at the ladies!’ Little Coupeau, a dyer from Montmartre, was known for his salacious take on the world and everyone laughed including Laurie.

‘No wonder his missus went round like a thunderclap.’

‘That’s why she kept sending him back to the front, hoping desperately he’d get himself killed!’

‘He bloody nearly did,’ Old Joubet resumed, still staring. ‘God knows how the enemy missed him – you could see his fucking cheeks a mile off! Twenty-one,’ he added, putting down an ace and king in spectacular fashion and collecting up his chips, still with a look of disbelief.

Everybody sighed and the gin bottle was passed round; somebody muttered something about foul play and was immediately shouted down by Bidulph, a good friend of Joubet’s. Then the talk turned to the evening’s entertainment – they were looking forward to the few nights off – some were going to the meeting at St Nicolas, others to Mabille’s for the women. The name of a particular dancer cropped up in conversation and two young men at the end of the table almost came to blows over it; would have done so, in Laurie’s opinion, if Tessier hadn’t stepped in.

‘Oh Tessier,’ one of them drawled angrily, ‘keep your club foot out of it, will you.’

There was a strained silence at that – all eyes on Tessier as he limped back painfully to his seat; and then someone shouted out ‘on with the game’ and he smiled good-naturedly because they all loved to watch him shuffle, his hands flew so gracefully over the cards. He put on an extra show this time with feints, slidebacks and sleight of hand stunts; and Old Joubet told him he should take a stall at the Gingerbread Fair while Coupeau said that the Queen of Diamonds coming out of his ear was the biggest thrill he’d had in years! Tessier got quite carried away and the whole thing might have got a little tedious if someone hadn’t shouted out ‘on with the game, on with the game’; but at least he was back to his old self again and sufficiently put to rights to call out to Laurie a moment later in a blustering tone: ‘Hey Laurel leaves – how’s it going? Tell your ma if she wants to know what her boy gets up to, to look up Léon Tessier, bookkeeper,12 Rue du Faubourg… he’ll put her in the picture!’

Laurie smiled. ‘Thanks very much, Léon! I’ll be sure to do just that!’ He was fond of Léon – beneath the blustering was a good heart and a kind soul and he reckoned that out of all the members of 7thCompany (apart from Alphonse of course) Tessier was the one he’d trust his life to despite the bad feet and poor eyes which to his utmost shame had kept him out of the regular army.

The card game went on as the afternoon sun drifted down over the camp. Two idiots were trying to light a fire with green sticks and brambles, smoking out the whole provisions tent; and an officer stood polishing his boots and roaring at a corporal to put the pegs in straighter because a gale was forecast that night and he didn’t fancy ending up over the ramparts. Laurie felt quite unnerved by the pointless activity, the squabbles between the men, the endless hustle and bustle of squads changing shifts, the dirt and mess of it all – and it was times like this he craved the solitude of his own little room where at the very least he could be bored to death in peace. Here there was nothing but mud and white, swathes and swathes of mud and white that enveloped you like a cloak as you walked through the night and into the early hours, clasping your dew-laden rifle in your hand and listening to the sound of hooting bats, grunting owls and, hardly knowing which was which, fleeting snores of men for company. If he’d been an artist he’d have sketched a sentryman as a wingless owl or a bodyless head, képi perched at a jaunty angle, bayonet in the air, eyes fixed expectantly on a middle distance as though awaiting some out-of-doors theatrical production. Sometimes when he stared into the darkness a vision of the city would appear before his eyes: the grand old towers of Notre Dame and the elegant spire of the Sainte Chapelle swaying in the breeze above the drear white acres, like the lofty rigging of some ancientship. And sometimes, in the solitude of his own little room, the view beyond the ramparts would rise above the bed sheets in ghostly immanence – all mud and white – an endless succession of days and nights…

Chapter three

Bernadine slipped through the convent gates – a shadowy figure in her black cloak and boots, black horsehair basket and inevitable black umbrella to fend off wind, rain and unwanted attention. She didn’t have the time today to touch tubercular fingers, run her hands through lice-infested hair or give reassurance that the Lord was biding His time where the Prussians were concerned. How on earth did she know what the Lord had planned? He moved about in mysterious ways like a spy in the midst of them. Seemingly friendly at first, a good sort, the kind of man you could bare all for, lay your heart on your sleeve for and then, lo and behold, He was trotting off to the enemy camp with your secrets and your heart on His sleeve all bayoneted and blown to pieces. Leaving you bereft, appar­ently glad to be cleansed of all sin, all passion, all animated life. A chosen vessel. A vessel fit for the Holy Ghost to pour his goodly vapours into.

She stopped to blow her nose in the frosting air and scan the street. It was quite deserted and she smiled at all her unnecessary caution; few people would be travelling this path on such a grim winter’s day – it was too far away from the bright lights and boulevards, too close to the lairs of waifs and strays, outlaws and strangely loitering men. ‘We are close to the lion’s den,’ the Mother Superior would sometimes whisper to the trembling novices, ‘and we must tread very carefully.’ Strange how the convent had been built in such a sinister part of the city and yet, of course, not strange at all for its very motto was ‘To bring Light into Darkness’. The railway was overgrown and rusted with disuse, barely visible beneath the melting snow and thick brambles and she felt a pang of regret that she might never again hear the merry whistle from inside those convent walls and stop to imagine the people going off for a day in the country, to visit a sick relative or simply for the thrill of racing into blackness and out the other side again. Beyond the railway line lay open country carpeted in a gently greying snow and criss-crossed with hedges, ditches and the silhouettes of stunted trees. It was quite deserted – not an animal or even an animal’s tracks to be seen; and she smiled at all her unnecessary caution.

All roads from here in led to Monsieur Lafayette’s or back to the convent and she hesitated a moment, umbrella poised between heaven and earth to stave off wind, rain and unwanted attention; but then the thought of Aggie’s ashen face and the tiny blue baby’s cries pushed her on again. The Lord was a supreme idiot sometimes, the way He let things happen. If Aggie died she would not forgive Him. If the child died she would not forgive Him. It was best to rely on yourself, take the lead and let Him follow, meek and mild as a lamb. She stumbled on down the track to Monsieur Lafayette’s, railing at her God because there was no one else to rail against; and to drown out the voice which shouted in her head that she was the supreme idiot, that she had neglected her friend, her vows, her vocation again and again, that life on this earth was not so easily redeemable and that if Aggie died or the child died it was she who would remain unforgiven.

The green-painted shop sat squat in the road like a very determined and overgrown cabbage, and Bernadine almost held her nose at the sight of it. The faded lettering of ‘LAFAYETTE: HERBALIST’ and in lower case: ‘Confectioner’ could still be seen if you squeezed your eyes hard enough; and the windows that had once been gilded to protect the delicate essences of the interior now let in the full spectrum of elements. Snails hung frozen to the outside walls, sticking tight to their dream that this was indeed a live green cabbage and toadstools seamed the edge of the yard which was overrun in the main by nettles cultivated, the way the Romans did it, for teas, potions and the unaccountable delight of dashing one’s hands against the malevolent leaves. Occasionally a daring daffodil or crocus tried to eke out a living in the four square feet of weediness but it was soon throttled to death for its presumption. Bernadine braced herself and entered the shop, blinking in the rapidly deteriorating light.

‘Better to lose her to me than to the truth,’ Monsieur Lafayette was saying to Mistigris, the stonecutter and notorious drunkard. (Bernadine was a little distressed to see the stonecutter there for she didn’t want the subject of the statue coming up, not now. Mistigris had once made a statue for the convent and had never been paid for it because the Mother Superior had dubbed it appallingly inferior handiwork.) Both men were dressed in token gesture of the National Guard uniform with a red stripe down the side of their trousers and both were smoking cigars, their heads almost lost in a halo of smoke. Upon seeing Bernadine, Monsieur Lafayette coughed and changed the subject with a flourish: ‘We await the Prussians as the Romans awaited the Carthaginians in their curule chairs. Do we not, sir?’

‘Quite,’ tottered old Mistigris, swaying a little at the hips. ‘In our curules, sir.’

The shop looked quite different – emptier, of course, with a sad, neglected air. The cabinets still displayed their monstrous instruments, enemas, lozenges and syrups, tinctures of mallow, comfrey and myrrh; valerian root for the toothache, false unicorn powder for the gout; a variety of miscellaneous dried herbs; but the sweet boxes and jars that had contained pounds and pounds of shrimp sugar, jujubes, almond paste and peppermints were practically empty and all that remained on the counter was an old wig box and almanac. Bernadine tried to appear unfazed in the presence of the two men by pulling down the hood of her cloak, placing her basket on the ground and smoothing her hair straight, though her right hand clutched at the rosary beads sewn into the lining of her pocket.

‘And you, my dear,’ Monsieur Lafayette leered, his bald head and red lips shining through the cloud of smoke. ‘We don’t often have the pleasure. How long has it been? Sixteen or seventeen years, surely?’

‘Not quite. I came in a couple of years ago if you remember rightly for the Reverend Mother’s toothache.’

‘Ah yes. And how is that… dear soul?’

‘Very well.’

‘Then it must be some commission from the Cannibal’s Delight, I suppose. Tell her we are quite out of caramel cigars. She finished off the last box two days ago.’

Bernadine ignored the reference to Agnes – too aware of the terrible irony of the situation – and replied that she hadn’t come in for sweets.

‘Grease a few onions that one would,’ he went on in a jocular fashion. ‘Put her in a stew and she’d do the business of the butter and the goose fat put together!’

Mistigris laughed delightedly at that, though with no idea presumably who Monsieur Lafayette was alluding to, then staggered off into the back of the shop. Bernadine watched uncomfortably as he sat himself down beside the blue and white curtain that sectioned off the deeper recesses of the room. It was rumoured that behind the blue and white curtain lay a dirty mattress and stool, the purpose of which nobody knew but many speculated…

‘You, on the other hand, my dear,’ he chuckled, ‘are a touch narrow around the shoulders for my liking. The Lord’s been wearing you a little thin, methinks.’

‘Not the Lord,’ she murmured. ‘Rest assured, monsieur, I should not have come if the business wasn’t quite urgent.’

‘How very mysterious and exciting. But what can poor old Modeste give you that your little garden cannot? I was under the impression it provided you with everything: love, succour, consolation, green beans…’

‘Not this year, I’m afraid. In truth, Agg… one of the nuns is very sick and I need some healing herbs.’

‘If you buy any two, I’ll throw in a bottle of iron water.’ He indicated the nails steeping in a carafe on the windowsill, the water already a clouded yellow; and Bernadine nodded.

‘That would be very kind,’ she smiled, mentally ticking off the herbs she needed as he brought out the silver spoon and little brass scales for the weighing. ‘Yarrow, shepherd’s purse, lady’s mantle if you have it, raspberry leaf, camomile, nettle of course, and certainly a bottle of iron water. Please.’ The cat was out of the bag now – she knew that – for the herbs she’d named were those commonly used by women after childbirth: to stem the flow of blood, lessen a fever, encourage milk production, strengthen the spirit and replenish iron reserves. She waited for Monsieur Lafayette to start poking fun; but for a while he did not. He simply set to work with an air of great diligence, weighing out the herbs on the little brass scales and into three-gram brown paper packets, fishing out the bad bits with his blunt, stained fingers, tutting when a golden camomile head fell to the floor and straining the iron water from the carafe into an old quart glass jar. Each time a gentle snore arose from the moth-eaten chair by the curtain he would raise a conspiratorial eyebrow as if the two of them were colluding in something while the poor old stonecutter slumbered; but it was only when the packets were lined up on the counter that he allowed himself to speak.

‘Another one of you been viewing the moon then?’ he said in his syrupy voice. ‘No wonder St Joseph’s receives such handsome donations.’

Bernadine caught sight of herself in the fly-spotted mirror behind the counter – a thin, ashen-grey face with two flaming points of colour on either cheekbone.

‘Who can it be, I wonder. Surely not the Cannibal’s Delight? It would account for her being the size of a balloon! Maybe we should have sent Gambetta off in her instead of the Armand-Barbès3!’

Bernadine lowered her eyes in case they betrayed her and busily crammed the packets into her basket, her mind racing. Well, one thing was for certain at least, a thing that had bothered her a little: Monsieur Lafayette could not be the father, he had seemed quite genuinely surprised in his own strange way and, loathsome as the man might be, she did not believe he would have taken Aggie by force.

Mistigris, by this time, had woken up with all the commotion and was veering towards the counter like the archetypal avenging angel. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you lot,’ he cried, pointing at Bernadine. ‘You’re a scurvy bunch and no mistake!’

Bernadine, almost reeling from the smoke and alcoholic fumes, valiantly stood her ground. ‘Monsieur Renan,’ she began sincerely, looking him square in the face, ‘I’m truly sorry that you were never paid for the statue. It was quite wrong – you should have been – and I have always felt badly about it. Perhaps when everything returns to normal the Reverend Mother will see fit to do the right thing by you.’

Mistigris looked quite taken aback and he stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and gazed at her appraisingly. ‘That’s alright,’ he mumbled at last. ‘It was the stone’s destiny to be a Virgin, in any case. I don’t need paying for it.’

It was Bernadine’s turn to look surprised and she gazed back at the white hair and creased face, wondering what sort of man he had been before the drink had claimed him. ‘That’s very generous of you, monsieur. Nevertheless the materials alone must have cost you a pretty penny. I shall try to put in a good word for you when any new commissions are required. Only the other day, the Reverend Mother was talking about having a calvary made.’

Bernadine pulled up her hood, hooked her umbrella to the horsehair basket and made ready to leave but before she could reach the door, Monsieur Lafayette had crept up and positioned himself in front of it.

‘If anyone should require the services of old Lafayette,’ he wheedled, ‘they only have to ask.’ He pressed her arm. ‘Nicely. He can be very delicate when he wants to, old Modeste, and discreet. Delicate and discreet, isn’t that so, Sister Bernadine?’

She looked at the pin black eyes and fat red lips with a feeling close to hatred. ‘Goodnight monsieur,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster and, motioning him aside, stepped into the yard, her right hand still clutching the rosary beads in the lining of her pocket.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Monsieur Lafayette, shutting the door and smiling at Mistigris who had slumped down beside the counter in a crumpled little heap. ‘Well, well, well! The Cannibal’s Delight up the duff? That’s quite cheered me up! I’d like to meet the man up to that job. It must be like scaling Mount Olympus!’ And with that, he hopped over the crumpled heap of the old stonecutter and began tidying up behind the counter. When everything was set to rights, he peered over the counter to check that Mistigris was still out of the picture and then, with a guilty movement, pulled the lid off the wig box and brought out a small shining key. Slipping it into his pocket, he walked nonchalantly to the back of the shop and pushed aside the blue and white curtain. Behind the curtain lay the fabled mattress and stool as well as a box of hook-like metal instruments, a roll of bandages, a barometer, some worm-eaten chairs and a row of pictures against the far wall. Feeling his way around the varied obstacles for the light was growing dim even for him, Monsieur Lafayette padded softly over to a lewder version of Manet’s ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’, brought the little key out of his pocket and stuck it between the naked lady’s lissom white legs. The picture split in two, the cupboard doors swung open and a delightful aroma suddenly filled the air. A mixture of scents all jam-packed together of spices and sweets, candlesticks and tea biscuits, sugar loaves and licorice, pickled eggs and beetroot, boiled hams and cheeses, silver polish and peppermints. Monsieur Lafayette sniffed appreciatively, rummaging through his secret store cupboard over tins of Victoria sponges and earthenware pots and pots of Brittany butter until he unearthed what he knew to be a box of sardines. He brought it out, blew the dust off it then locked the cupboard up again, the picture magically re-composing itself. Then he got up and walked back into the front of the shop, slipped the key into the old wig box on the counter, smoothed his moustache in the fly-spotted mirror and knelt down beside the old stonecutter.

‘I believe I have an invitation to dine chez Renan?’ he bellowed into the poor man’s ear.

‘Quite,’ cried Mistigris, leaping up with surprising agility and throwing his arms out to the counter for support. ‘In our curules, sir. In our curules!’

Chapter four

Eveline Renan stood in the middle of her kitchen, staring in dismay at the contents of the saucepan. There was barely enough to go round, even with the few potatoes she’d found on the stall in the Rue Marcadet. It had boiled away to nothing beneath her very eyes like spinach always did, however much you thought you had at the start.

Well to hell with it, she suddenly decided, stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon, keeping it warm at any rate. She did her best and if anyone dared complain she’d throw the saucepan over their head! It was good to vent her feelings like that. She often did in the cramped little kitchen, waiting for her father and Jacques to return, bashing the saucepans, chipping the plates, yanking the door off the larder cupboard which was quite bare save for two carrots and a tin of pears she was keeping for Christmas. The longer she had to wait, it seemed, the more she fell to thinking about all the things that were wrong with her life. ‘Stuck away in crumbling stucco,’ she would moan a little dramatically over the chopping board. ‘Barely a woman but with the hands and back of a fifty-year-old hag!’ None of this was entirely true, of course, for the house (though made of yellowing stucco as all the houses were in that district) was hardly crumbling; her hands (though no stranger to laborious work) were soft and white as a lily and her back (though admittedly often bent over drudgery) remained straight and supple as a beech tree. But it did her good somehow to work herself up into a frenzy of misunderstood martyrdom. A frenzy which always ended in a list of grievances as long as her arm of things that needed to be done around the house such as the chimney that had to be re-pointed, the leak in the roof that had to be mended and, a particular bugbear of hers, the vine on the south wall that had to be cut back because the grapes had shrivelled to raisins and the wine they produced was sour as a lemon rind. Even her father couldn’t drink it! Occasionally she tortured herself by imagining what it would be like to be a shop girl on the Rue Ornano, skimming through a life of bows and silks, sales and crinolines; or la Païva the great courtesan who lived on the Champs Élysées behind a fountain of eau de cologne and a flower-gemmed terrace. Even the life of a lowly dancer seemed preferable to her own, though her father had warned her it was all bunions and besides. Eveline thought that when you were short of the necessaries, a few besides would come in mighty handy.

She lit the lamp with trembling fingers. She always put off lighting the lamp for as long as possible to save on the oil and it was only when the statues in the corner started reminding her of bodies in the morgue that she succumbed to the need for light. The blue flame sputtered and smoked for a moment, throwing ghastly shadows about the room of Mary Magdalenes on top of each other, headless Baptists with begging hands and Jesuses grinning from ear to ear. Once upon a time her father could have made anything he wanted to out of clay, wood or stone but now his forms were a little distorted – the robes too long, mouths stretched too wide, the eyes a little too sly – as if his fuzzy brain and fumbling fingers lingered too long or cut too abruptly. They reminded her of the gargoyles in the Place Vendôme and they piled up in the corner like bones in a charnel house because nobody wanted to buy them. She sighed and set the table, bringing out the old, stained, but clean linen cloth and placing a spoon beside each bowl. One good thing about having nothing to eat was that there was little to lay, little to wash, little to prepare. It was an advantage certainly. If you wanted to look on the bright side then that was it. She smiled at the thought of making a case for lack of food and sending it round to all the cooks, bottle-washers and housewives in the area, distracting herself from the waiting.

She always seemed to be waiting for something: in queues for food, for her father to come home, to stop drinking, for Jacques to grow up, the war to be over, for Laurie to whisk her away to the Place de l’Etoile. Maybe everyone was waiting for something, even the shop girls and la Païva, though they seemed to have everything. Laurie was waiting for his poems to be published so he could afford to whisk her off to the Place de l’Etoile – or so he said. She didn’t think anyone would want to buy his poems any more than they wanted to buy her father’s statues, not when they couldn’t even find potatoes, but when she so much as hinted at such a thing Laurie gave her a look which meant she didn’t understand because she was a woman and only read newspapers and recipe books. It was Laurie who didn’t understand, she fumed now, deciding then and there that he’d have to beg and plead till his knees were sore if he ever wanted her to go and live with him in the Place de l’Etoile. You couldn’t fry poems. You couldn’t eat words. And however much a rhythm might nourish your soul it didn’t put flesh on your bones.

There was a commotion at the door and Eveline got up to let the two men in, her father staggering under the arm of his sturdy old friend.

‘Two old sodjers back from a campaign. The bullets whizzed! I nearly lost my scalp to a Fritz. What’s on the menu, then? Chopped Prussians?’ Monsieur Lafayette smacked his great red lips at her – lips which looked, Eveline always thought, as if they’d sucked on too many caramel pipes or been stung by a bee.

‘Sorrel stew,’ came her rather sardonic reply.

‘Sardineand sorrel stew,’ Monsieur Lafayette corrected, bringing out a small box from somewhere about his person.

Eveline tried to appear disgusted but only succeeded in looking pathetic­ally grateful. She took the box and proceeded to empty its contents very carefully into the saucepan, resisting the urge to scoff the lot then and there with her fingers and be damned to the rest of them. Monsieur Lafayette always brought a morsel with him – she wouldn’t have let him come otherwise – something strange and exotic, something she hadn’t tasted for months or years, and something you couldn’t find on the stalls in the Rue Marcadet or even on the black markets beyond the fortifications. He was a little tiresome and a bore but she put up with him for her father’s sake, for Jacques’ sake and for her own shrunken stomach’s sake.

The fish swam in the juices of the pan, glistening with oil; and she added a few salt flakes, her mouth watering. ‘We won’t wait for Jacques,’ she announced decisively. ‘Please be so good as to sit yourself down, Monsieur Lafayette, and make sure Papa has his napkin on.’ It was like dealing with a child, dealing with her father but it was no longer embarrassing for either of them because she was quite used to it and her father, more often than not, was drunk as a lord. She ladled out the stew, took off her apron and said grace all in a matter of seconds.

‘Maythelordmakeustrulythankfulamen.’

She always said grace because, strangely enough, however drunk her father might be he never touched a particle of food until he’d heard it spoken once at least.

‘Amen,’ intoned Monsieur Lafayette while Mistigris sat staring absent-mindedly at the statues in the corner.

‘Forwhatweareabouttoreceivemaythelordmakeustrulythankfulamen.’

‘Amen,’ Monsieur Lafayette intoned again with a wink while her father still sat staring at his statues.

‘Please, Papa.’ Eveline spoke gently now, picking up her father’s spoon and placing it between his finger and thumb. ‘You can eat now. I’ve said grace. Monsieur Lafayette has brought some wonderful fish!’

‘Fish?’ echoed Mistigris doubtfully, dabbling his spoon in the stew as if he were dipping his toes in a cold tub. ‘Who is responsible for the fish?’

Monsieur Lafayette inclined his head. ‘Your servant, sir.’

‘She must have seen fish like these,’ Mistigris went on dejectedly, ‘between the reeds and the water lilies.’

Eveline sent a beseeching look to Monsieur Lafayette who smiled an acknowledgement and put down his spoon.

‘Sea dwellers, my good man, not fresh water. Pike perhaps, rainbow trout indeed but not a sardine, dear fellow, never a sardine.’

‘Green! Green, she was, and bloated when they fished her out of the Seine.’

‘Yes, Papa.’

It was going to be a long night. A long self-pitying night if her father didn’t fall asleep first. Thank goodness she had an escape route planned in the shape of a meeting at St Nicolas.

‘You are a tragedy king tonight!’ Monsieur Lafayette tried to jolly along the old stonecutter. ‘You make the Emperor look positively cheery and he’s been exiled to England. Look at what you have here: a daughter dancing attendance upon you, your best friend at your side, a splendid stew to get your teeth into...’

At that moment – as if on cue – Jacques burst through the door, catapulted out of the cold night air and into his chair to make the additional point, so it seemed, that Mistigris also had a son to be thankful for: a sturdy-limbed little urchin of thirteen or thereabouts with carrot-coloured hair, a freckled nose, a forcible chin for one so young and horridly dirty hands. After scolding him roundly for his tardiness, his hands, the state of his shoes and the unpalatable objects she’d found underneath his bed that morning, as well as anything else that came to mind, Eveline served him up his helping of stew and turned to her father.

‘I wish you would support me, Papa. Dinner, what we have of it, is at six o’clock sharp. One day you will both come home and there will be nothing to eat because I will have eaten it.’

Mistigris looked a little ashamed and Jacques hung his head, mumbled an apology and then began spooning the food into his mouth as if he feared she would prove true to her word. By this time a tortoiseshell cat had streaked out of nowhere onto his lap and was purring for all she was worth and poking her nose up over the table to see what her young master had been given for his supper. Jacques tried to work out what proportion of his stew he should be saving for her by applying the weight/balance principle he’d been learning in balloon training. Figuring that Fifi could not possibly be more than half his weight, he concluded (to his great satisfaction) that three fish tails would suffice; and he deftly cut them off with the edge of his spoon and fed them to her under the table when nobody else was looking.

‘There’s a butcher on the Boulevard Poissonnière who’s feeding up a cat like that for Christmas,’ teased Monsieur Lafayette. ‘He’s going to present it as a turkey stuffed with mice and onion stuffing!’

Eveline shot him a venomous glance while Jacques cried out in alarm: ‘You must never let her out, Sis. You must never let her out! And if you do,’ he conceded, ‘you must watch her!’

‘I can’t watch her all the time, Jacques. Honestly, everyone in this family seems to think it’s my life’s duty just to do their bidding.’

‘There are cat snatchers on the loose looking for prime meat like that one,’ Monsieur Lafayette went on unrelentingly. ‘How old is she now, boy?’

‘S… seven,’ stammered Jacques warily, clutching Fifi to his chest.

‘Ah, mature but still tender,’ Monsieur Lafayette leered at Eveline. ‘Just the way I like it. Clear eyes, wet nose… a butcher would give you seventy francs for such a juicy little bit.’

‘How much?’ Mistigris leaned forward over the table.

‘Papa!’

‘Papa!’

‘It comes to us all in the end, my boy,’ said Mistigris with a philosophical air. ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away! He took your mother a little early of course, but then again she went to meet him bless her soul the bloody whore!’

‘Papa!’

‘I might just follow her one fine day into the deep dark waters of the Seine. The waves tight about me. Green...’

‘Have a heart, old man.’ Monsieur Lafayette slapped his friend on the back. ‘You’re giving me an indigestion nearly as bad as the one I got up at the ramparts when Colonel L. treated us to a slice of his Arab mare. There’s patriotism for you. Ultimate sacrifice for France and his men. He’d reared her from a foal apparently. A little fiery for my taste...’

‘...and bloated,’ Mistigris finished mournfully. ‘Terribly, terribly bloated.’

Eveline stared at him, white faced. ‘You have a vivid imagination. Papa,’ she muttered angrily. ‘If you remember rightly it was I who visited her in the morgue and she wasn’t green and bloated at all. In fact she was rather pale and peaceful looking.’

‘Ah.’ Mistigris sat back, grateful tears springing to his eyes. ‘A wonderful woman your mother, Jacques. A street whore and a harlot but a wonderful woman all the same!’

The rain pattered down outside and they were all quite warm and sleepy after the meal. Jacques told them about his exploits at the balloon factory: how he had fed Old Neptune, one of the homing pigeons, who could carry thirty thousand messages on his own because they were typed in columns like a newspaper. Eveline listened half-heartedly, hoping the rain would have stopped by the time she had to go out because she didn’t have any sugar water to straighten her curls with. She decided to wear her blue merino dress with the pink corsage and coloured stockings for the evening. She wanted to look smart but appropriate, the sort of girl you might expect to be living in a bright new house on the Place de l’Etoile, with a husband in the literary world. She wished she had some of the latest cosmetics that had been all the rage before the war broke out – the Queen Bee milk and honey preparations (by appointment to the Empress herself no less) but she reasoned that even if she had been able to afford them, she would have eaten them up by now, they smelled so nice and tasted so good. Youth and beauty will have to do, she told herself wryly.

Jacques was telling Monsieur Lafayette that when he grew up he wanted more than anything to be a famous balloonist like the great Nadar, and voyage over plains and ice caps, deserts and seas to the lands of the fearsome dragons and insects.

‘You don’t have to go up in a balloon to meet a dragon,’ chuckled Monsieur Lafayette, taking out a cigar and a strip of matches. ‘They’re all over the place. I was married to one for a time. Until she ran off with a wolf!’

‘One to the wolf and one to the water,’ Mistigris started up; and Eveline glowered at Monsieur Lafayette in exasperation. ‘See what you’ve done?’ she demanded, stacking up the plates and crashing into the kitchen with them. The girls on the Rue Ornano wouldn’t have to put up with all this. Theirs was a life of bows and silks, sales and crinolines. La Païva had an onyx staircase and a golden bathroom and what did she, Eveline have? A leaking roof, an overgrown vine...

‘Sis, sis,’ called Jacques, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Can I borrow some stockings to practise my knots with?’

‘No,’ she shouted and then a little more gently, ‘Well, perhaps an old pair… but not the coloured ones.’ She watched him scramble down, the cat at his heels and streak out of the room.

‘A little mother to us all!’ Monsieur Lafayette remarked sententiously; and she glowered at him again. It was the last thing she wanted to be. At her age. He may have brought sardines but the man was a menace all the same. If he wasn’t scaring Jacques half to death, he was upsetting her father, reminding him of things he didn’t need reminding of.

‘Dear heart, dear heart!’ the menace declared now, puffing on his cigar like a fish on the bank, his legs stretched underneath the table. ‘Does my heart good just to look at her. Upon my soul, it does my heart good to look at her. No gold dust needed on those fair curls. No gowns from couturiers. Dress her in a sack cloth and she’d outshine the lot of ’em. There are millions of girls in Paris, some virgins and innocents, some fast and loose, some fancy free; but there is only one, could only ever be one… Eveline.’ Perhaps it was out of respect that he spoke in such a roundabout way, or even shyness for it was only now, upon pronouncing her name, that he turned to look at her.

There was a long silence punctuated by the snores of old Mistigris and the sound of Jacques clattering into the room.