Authors: Matthew Plampin
Clem shifted in his armchair. A joint clicked; a belch bubbled somewhere inside him, bringing the taste of liquorice to the back of his mouth. He held it in, fighting down a strong surge of nausea. ‘Hell’s bells, Elizabeth,’ he replied eventually, ‘I’m no deuced writer.’
His mother’s expression said
I’m well aware of that
. ‘You wouldn’t actually need to put pen to paper in any considered way,’ she said. ‘Simply tell me everything about what you see, where you go and who you speak to. Hannah’s sweetheart, our Monsieur Allix, would be a good place to begin. He speaks some English.’ She smiled, her lips compressing into a narrow line. ‘I have a sense that he doesn’t much like me – thanks to Hannah, no doubt. But with you it might be a different story entirely.’
‘I’m not sure if he and I—’
‘Consider what I am proposing. Such an endeavour could lead to any number of other things. It will be a
proper accomplishment
for you, Clement, at long last, after all your tomfoolery. It will show the world that you are a person of substance.’
Clem nodded. He was a regular victim of his mother’s honesty – those succinct, devastating assessments that came disguised as advice or support. Lacking the energy to make a response, or even to think through her offer, he shut his stinging eyes and leaned back into his armchair.
Elizabeth rose from the bed. She placed a hand upon her son’s shoulder. ‘You may let me know your decision in the morning.’
The main hall of the Elysées-Montmartre was rather run down – cracked plaster, signs of rodents, warping floorboards – but its mirrored walls were reflecting some truly astonishing activity. When Émile Besson had brought Clem up there two days before, the hall had been empty; you could almost still see the tutus lined along the practice bar. Now, though, it was every inch a balloon workshop. The heady smell of varnish hit you as soon as you opened the doors; the rattle of sewing machines made it impossible to converse in much less than a shout. Patterns had been laid out across the floor, to which vast white sheets of treated calico were being cut. The finished pieces went over to the sewing benches, where a hundred seamstresses were stitching the balloon envelopes together under the direction of a patrolling supervisor. Ahead, in the dancing school’s modest courtyard, Clem could see a few dozen sailors, part of the contingent sent to Paris from the northern ports, fighting to inflate a completed balloon with a hand-driven metal fan; the thing rose and collapsed, wheezing like an expiring sea monster, while naval officers strolled around it on the lookout for holes.
Besson stood with his arms crossed, in the same grey suit, radiating quiet pride. Clem couldn’t tell if the
aérostier
was glad to see him again, but he was certainly relishing the chance to show off the transformation of the dancing school. No word of explanation or apology had yet been given for his departure from the café on the day of Châtillon. He’d made his exit the very second that Hannah had appeared. If the fellow was infatuated with her he had a decidedly unusual way of expressing it.
The
aérostier
glanced towards the hall’s entrance. ‘I must watch for Monsieur Yon. He had to attend a meeting with Colonel Usquin of the Balloon Commission, but he will soon be back. We are not supposed to allow anyone inside. Especially not foreigners.’
Clem smiled. So this spiky customer is taking a risk having me here, he thought; he must value my company a little. ‘A superior, Besson? Why, I thought this was to be your place.’
‘Gabriel Yon is an experienced balloonist and an old friend of Nadar. It is an honour to work with him. I am learning much.’
‘Of course you are. Of course.’
Clem put his hands in his pockets. The brown flannel suit was creased and dirty, with a new tear in its jacket lining, but nothing he couldn’t live with. The after-effects of the absinthe and the hashish had almost lifted; all that remained was fatigue and an odd hollow feeling. He put this from his mind. It was time to begin.
He’d agreed to Elizabeth’s plan over breakfast, in the echoing splendour of the Grand’s dining room. He wasn’t one to hold out through either pique or principle; that was more Hannah’s style. What else, anyway, was he to do with himself? He was stuck in Paris – for how long was anyone’s guess. The days had to be filled somehow. And besides, if Elizabeth was correct, if there was really a chance for her to resurrect her career with a bravura account of the siege of Paris, then why the devil shouldn’t he partake of the spoils? Clem found that he was sick of poverty. Elizabeth might be right: this could be the start of something good. It could be that he had a knack for investigation – that he, like his mother, was an observer. After all those experiments, all those failures, had the solution been directly under his nose?
Elizabeth had been unsurprised. She’d produced some cash, a loan from Inglis she’d said, and had issued him with ten francs for his expenses; hardly a fortune, but it gave him a few more options. Clem had quickly decided that he wouldn’t seek out Jean-Jacques Allix that morning, as she’d suggested. Hannah’s battle-scarred beau was far too daunting for a first foray. A return to Besson’s balloon factory was more manageable; he’d walked from the Grand full of purpose.
‘So this is where it happens, eh?’ he asked. ‘This is where the balloons are made?
‘Well, the rope-work is done upstairs. The netting, the tackle – the baskets and ballast also. The sailors’ skills are proving most useful.’ Besson led Clem towards the courtyard. ‘But this room is inadequate. We need more height to hang the calico properly. A second factory has been founded in the Gare d’Orléans – there they can hang it from the roof, from the iron girders. Far better to see imperfections in the material.’
They stopped in the courtyard’s open doorway. Clem took out a cigarette, offering one to Besson. ‘When will the first siege balloon actually be ready?’
‘Our first launch is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, in the place Saint-Pierre,’ the Frenchman replied, refusing it. ‘The
Neptune
– the old spotter balloon Nadar has been running up for the past fortnight. They have made some repairs and say it is good enough for the flight. A few others have been located as well, around the city, and are being inspected.’
‘How about these, though?’ Clem nodded at the balloon outside, which billowed briefly only to catch a breeze and be flattened against the façade opposite. ‘The ones you’re making here?’
‘Two weeks, perhaps. They must be thoroughly tested, you understand.’
‘My dear chap,’ Clem said with a grin, ‘the war might well be over and done with in two weeks, if your newspapers are to be believed. They’re full to bursting with reports of French heroism. Two hundred Prussians captured in the Bois de Vincennes. A fourteen-year-old boy from La Villette killing an enemy sentry with his own rifle. Letters found on dead Uhlans revealing how the poor blighters just want to pack up and head home. They are all but beaten, surely?’
Clem hadn’t read any of this himself, of course; he’d sat across from Elizabeth that morning as she’d translated from the heap of papers she’d had brought in. The Parisian press was in a funny fix indeed. Censored to the quick by Napoleon III, it now flourished like weeds in springtime, new papers sprouting up daily. However, a mere forty-eight hours into the siege, this profusion of organs was already running short of real news; and as a result no piece of baseless conjecture, no ludicrous boast or lie, was too outrageous for them to print.
Besson did not rise to it. ‘It is talk only,’ he said. ‘You know this. The Prussians have whipped us back – contained us. They are waiting to see what we will do.’
Clem adopted a thoughtful look. ‘I hear that Trochu has sent Vice-President Favre through the lines to Bismarck, to discuss terms for peace.’
The
aérostier
dismissed this. ‘A formality. It will come to nothing. The Prussians will demand too much, and Jules Favre is not a weak man.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Besides, the government is terrified of how the ordinary people might react if they surrendered. And any terms acceptable to Bismarck would definitely be seen as surrender.’
‘They’ve been too stoked up by the reds, haven’t they?’ Clem flicked ash through the doorway. ‘Tell me, what do you make of those types – the radicals and ultras?’
There was a pause. Clem thought he’d been being pretty slick so far, extracting information with deft delicacy; now, though, Besson was staring at him as if he was an absolute imbecile.
‘They will finish us, Mr Pardy. Surely you see this.
Les Rouges
will end all hope of a fair and enduring republic, with their Marx and their Proudhon and whoever else. Freedom is what they want, so they say, but it is not a freedom that I recognise.’ He looked back at the pattern cutters, guiding their shears through creamy folds of fabric. ‘The old ones are veterans of the revolutions of ’48 and ’51. Many were exiled or put in prison, and they have their scores to settle. As for the younger ones – who knows? Every society has its madmen. And they have influence in the poor districts. Here in Montmartre, for example. The workers suffered under Napoleon. They have nothing to lose.’
‘I met one of these
Rouges
the other night, you know, after we parted ways in that café. Raoul Rigault, his name was.’
Besson was growing angry; his slight, hard-won amiability disappeared. Clem remembered the spoiled photographic plate – the shattering of the glass against the track. ‘Rigault is among the worst. They say he wants to set up a guillotine in every square – a
guillotine
, Monsieur. The Jacobin fool would return Paris to the darkest days of the Terror.’ The
aérostier
snorted. ‘That is a strange kind of freedom.’
‘What about our Monsieur Allix, then?’ Clem asked. ‘How does he compare? Rigault couldn’t praise him highly enough.’
This was a further mistake. Besson lowered his eyes; he pulled at his sandy moustache. ‘Him I do not know about,’ he muttered. ‘You should ask your sister.’
Clem threw his half-smoked cigarette into the courtyard. He thought of their first conversation, as Besson had prepared his camera on that railway embankment. The Frenchman hadn’t given an opinion on Allix then either, merely performing a subtle sidestep. The reason for this was suddenly clear.
‘You’d say he was a bad lot though, wouldn’t you? A source of danger? Worth removing Han from, maybe, should the opportunity arise?’
Besson did not look up. ‘You are talking about that letter,’ he said. ‘You think that I wrote it.’
An incisive fellow indeed. ‘You speak English pretty damn well, Monsieur Besson. You plainly care for my sister and know a fair bit about her sweetheart and his friends. What would you think?’
The picture was compellingly complete. This intelligent, awkward man had watched from the wings as Jean-Jacques and Hannah paraded around Montmartre. He’d seen the situation get more fraught, and the rhetoric more heated – with Hannah caught right at the heart of it. Delving into her past, he’d found out about Elizabeth and penned the letter. Perhaps he’d even discovered the connection with Montague Inglis, contriving a professional link in order to monitor Mrs Pardy’s movements. Perhaps their acquaintance had been no accident.
‘If I cared for her as you claim,’ Besson asked, ‘why would I want her gone? Why would I want her back in London?’
‘To know she was safe,’ Clem replied, ‘well away from Allix and Rigault and their revolution. It was selfless, I’ll give you that. You’re a decent man, Monsieur Besson.’
‘If
you
were a decent man,’ the
aérostier
snapped, ‘a decent brother, you would take action. You would separate them. You would do it today.’
Clem chuckled uneasily. ‘Lord Almighty, what the deuce d’you think is going to happen here? What do you—’
Besson shook his head; he walked off, back into the busy hall. ‘I have duties to attend to,’ he said. ‘You must leave, Mr Pardy. At once.’
Clem stepped into the street outside the dancing school, imagining Hannah on the barricades, waving an enormous tricolour; sitting on a revolutionary committee, at Allix’s right hand, sending scores to their deaths. Comrades, inevitably, would turn on each other. He saw Han climbing the scaffold; saw the great angled blade rising in its frame, catching the light; heard the flat
thunk
as its lever was released.
No, Clem told himself sternly – none of this would occur. He’d become infected by Besson’s melodrama. Han was a sensible girl, for the most part; she’d run a mile from such lunacy. Still, it might be wise to pay her a brotherly visit, just to get the lie of the land. He stood for a few seconds, trying to remember the way to the rue Garreau, then fastened his jacket and started uphill. It was a glorious day of blue skies and sharp shadows. Cannon-fire sounded in all directions, but it was no longer causing much alarm among the few who milled on the pavements around him. Give people twenty-four hours, he supposed, and they’ll get used to more or less anything.
As he approached a corner someone rushed up behind him, grabbed his buttock and squeezed hard. He spun around; Laure was giggling, chewing, lunging in for another pinch. She was in her
vivandière
’s uniform, but bare-headed, her orange hair loud in the sunshine. In her left hand was a roll, missing a couple of bites; a thin cigarillo smouldered between her fingers. Her eyes shone with delight at having caught him unawares. She certainly isn’t angry with me, Clem thought as he hopped to the side; I can’t have disgraced myself too badly.
Laure said something in her deep, tarnished-sounding voice. Clem understood none of it. He stopped weaving about, his mind brimming with questions. What exactly had happened that night? What did he do? What did
she
do? How in God’s name did he get back to his room in the Grand? He hadn’t a hope of putting these in comprehensible French, though, or of following her replies.
Seeing that he’d lost interest in their game, Laure halted her attacks and offered him her roll. He declined it so she took another bite herself. Around her mouthful she said something else, nodding back towards the school; she’d spotted him going in, it seemed, and had waited in the street for him to emerge. From her gesticulations Clem gathered that she’d once been a pupil of the Elysées-Montmartre, until an unknown circumstance had obliged her leave. To prove this she threw the remains of her roll into the gutter and performed a pirouette in the middle of the pavement, the cigarillo still poking from her fingers; and although hampered by her ankle-boots, she pulled the move off with remarkable grace.