Le Temps des Cerises (18 page)

Dreams of Amelia Botton had brought him closer to doing the ‘thing' than anyone else had before or since. The thing that made you gasp and which the Brothers warned made your eyes go bloodshot and your voice go squeaky. Lippy Buggins had done the ‘thing'. He said it was better than liqu­orice and his eyes weren't bloodshot at all though his voice hadn't half squeak­ed when his tooth came out. He said Brother Mathias had shown him how – he was thinging all the time apparently. Brother Mathias' eyes, Jacques remembered now, had been very bloodshot indeed. He'd thought it was simply because he kept such a good eye on the boys through his opera glass.

He was older and wiser now. He was nearly twelve and a half. Hardly a child! Though Eveline seemed to think so. Only last year she'd taken him to see a Punch and Judy show and bought him a toy bucket and spade. Honestly! Wimmin! He'd learnt a lot about wimmin from his father and the Professor. They either died or were full of gas and you didn't want to get in a menagerie with any of them. Jacques didn't think Amelia would get gassy in a hurry (despite the amount of sherbet she ate) but he dis­missed her now as a ‘yoofull infatchooation'. He was older and wiser these days. Nevertheless he wouldn't have minded seeing her eat sherbet with her eyes shut one more time. Just for fun. For old times' sake. Maybe one day, if he were so inclined, he'd come back for her in a steerable balloon, pick her up from school and land her down on her favourite café where he could watch her eating sherbet to his heart's delight; then make a grand exit through the Arc de Triomphe, to the utter amazement of onlookers.

Jacques picked up his satchel and left his room behind without a wave, a backward glance or even a cheerio. He wanted to say goodbye to his father though – if he could wake him that is. The snores from the next room were loud and regular and Jacques didn't really fancy his chances.

Mistigris had taken to sleeping in a coffin in preparation for death and the next life. He had made the coffin in his few sober waking hours, having raided the slabs (much to Eveline's dismay) from the nearby cemetery of Lachaise. It was three-quarters finished and had no lid – fortunately even Mistigris didn't believe that practice for the next life involved sleeping in a coffin with a lid on top. He'd started an engraving too. ‘
Ici repose
…' he had begun. Here rests… but he hadn't been able to finish it because he didn't know whether to put ‘the son of', ‘the father of', or simply plain old ‘Mistigris'. So in the end it just read: ‘
Ici repose
' and then a blank. He'd even begun to feel that the blank was more eloquent than any words would have been.
Ici repose
nothingness.
Ici repose
no more.
Ici repose
dust and ashes.

Jacques tiptoed close with the lamp and peered down at his father. Two bottles of wine sat beside him in the space he'd designated for ‘otherworldly nectar' and a newspaper lay spread on his chest in place of a rug, the headline ‘Paris in Peril' fluttering desperately up and down in time with each gigantic breath. Jacques took the two wine bottles into the kitchen, filled them up with the diluted raspberry juice Eveline kept for that very purpose, then returned them carefully to their designated place. Next he brought a blanket from his own room and laid it over the coffin lest his father wake up and feel the cold. He wondered if he shouldn't wake him now to say goodbye but his father looked so peaceful he decided against it. Instead he sat cross-legged by the coffin, staring at his father with a mixture of pity and affection. Once long ago he'd laughed and told jokes, made boats and battleships for Jacques to sail on the Seine; sold silver-tipped canes of myrtle and dog wood to old gentlemen in waistcoats. He'd told Jacques all about the properties of wood – their characteristics and personalities, textures and grains. How some were warm and yielding, others hard and stiff. Now he only worked in stone because it was cold and dead, so he said, just as he was. Jacques blinked away a tear, kissed his father on the forehead and stood up very straight, clasping his satchel.

He was a man on a mission. He had to go.

‘Here Fifi,' he called to the little cat who'd been watching him all the while from her box in the corner. The cat leapt into his arms with a soft miaow and he stuffed her very gently into his satchel on top of the cushion, mentally adding her to his weight inventory.

Fifi – 4 ounces. Far too heavy!

He blew out the lamp, took one last look around the room and at his father snoring fit to burst in his home-made coffin. Then he stepped up to the front door.

He had just enough time to reach the Gare du Nord by midnight…

Chapter sixteen

Eveline gasped for breath as she read the note out to Alphonse for she'd run all the way to Brébant's without stopping.

‘Calm down,' said Alphonse sternly, ‘and read it again. Slowly!'

‘
Dear Sis
,' Eveline repeated in a choking voice, ‘
I've gone on a secret mission to study the clips of the moon and take guvvermental desk-patches. And to rescue Fifi from the clutches of Monsieur Lafayette. He is always feeling her for jambonpoint and I don't like it one bit.

Yours ever,

Your brother, Jacques.

PS: Do not blame Papa. He does not know
.'

Alphonse shook his head thoughtfully. ‘It seems quite clear to me that he's gone to the Gare du Nord.'

‘How can he be so selfish?' cried Eveline, stamping her foot. ‘If he's not going up in balloons he's running away. I won't put up with it any more. Last year I was having to go and see the Brothers every few weeks about him. They said it would be easier to teach the catechism to the devil. I hope he has gone off in a balloon. Serve him right. And taken Papa with him, coffin and all. Silly little fool! Does he think Monsieur Lafayette means it about the cat?'

Alphonse half smiled and patted her arm. ‘Calm down. And think. When did you last see him?'

‘Earlier this evening.' Eveline felt a stab of guilt and wished she'd never gone to the Rue de Turbigo. ‘He was fast asleep. They were both fast asleep. Papa in his coffin, Jacques in his bed. I tell you they were fast asleep,' she almost wept.

‘Yes of course. I believe you. Don't get yourself into a state. But this doesn't look like a spur of the moment thing to me. He's obviously been planning it for some time. Has he been acting strangely recently?'

‘N… no,' said Eveline a little despairingly, not wanting to admit that she didn't take much notice of Jacques. He came and went as he pleased, as they all did. She put the food on the table and scolded him but she didn't do much else. She'd never done much else but feed him and scold him. No wonder he'd run away. A father who drank and a sister who scolded. It wasn't much of a life for a boy. And yet he had never complained. He was mischievous and disobedient but he had never complained. And she had thought, when she ever did think about it, that he was happy in his own strange way with his cat and his trains and his balloons. ‘He's always the same,' she whispered now. ‘Jacques is always Jacques.'

‘What a dangerous assumption,' Alphonse murmured with interest. ‘Are you telling me that you are always Eveline?'

‘Yes. No. Of course not. I am older.'

‘I see.'

He'd tied her up in knots and she realised how stupid she sounded. To her, Jacques was Jacques and Papa was Papa. A little boy and a drunk. Because that was what she wanted them to be. A little boy and a drunkard whereas she had leave to be different, to change, to evolve, to grow. She was guilty of the thing she hated most in Laurie – putting someone in a box and throwing away the key. Putting someone in a box for one's own peace of mind.

‘Well, never mind all that now,' Alphonse said quietly, taking her arm so that she could keep up with his long, loping strides. ‘We'll head straight for the Gare du Nord. We'll find him.'

They made their way to the station as quickly as they could, Alphonse leading her on a shortcut through back gardens, down narrow alleyways, over piles of rubble and walls so that she cut her hands and feet many times and ripped her dress. But she was glad it was Alphonse taking her and not Laurie. She felt a little guilty about it but she was glad that Laurie was still in hospital so that she could go to Alphonse without reproach. Laurie was not the best person in a crisis. He thought too much, analysed too much and in the end he usually did nothing. Alphonse just seemed to know without thinking. It wasn't that he reduced the complexity of things – far from it – but he was able somehow to cut a path direct to the core, the heart of a problem in a matter of minutes. It was a gift she recognised and appreciated, especially now. It was a gift, she guessed, of a natural leader. He didn't say much but when he did, you listened. She didn't know much about him but she didn't need to because she trusted him. It was a feeling that went beyond words, beyond thoughts even.

The Gare du Nord was lit up like a bandstand. People were milling about with lamps and candle torches and making one hell of a racket. A balloon had just gone up by the look of things.

‘We've missed it,' cried Eveline, aghast, tearing from Alphonse's grasp and running headlong for the take-off point. ‘JACQUES, JACQUES,' she shouted, gazing about her in bewilderment. The sky was a pure evil black with one or two horridly twinkling stars and the ground was scuffed where the balloon had been, the tethering ropes coiled like treacherous snakes. She grabbed somebody's arm. ‘When did it go up?' she demanded.

‘Only a short time ago, miss.'

‘Who was on it?'

‘A little boy and a big fat man.'

‘N… not Mathers?' she whispered, her heart sinking.

‘Who?'

‘Mathers. A sailor. An old sailor.'

‘I don't think so, miss.' The man scratched his head. ‘They called him the Professor.'

Eveline blanched. ‘The English Professor?'

The man's brow cleared. ‘That's right. Do you know him? He was going up to study the eclipse of the moon. They say he's mad as a March hare.'

‘And he's been to Zanzibar,' somebody piped up.

‘I thought it was a little dwarf man with him at first then I saw it was a nipper. Couldn't have been more than ten. Some tearaway fleeing from home probably.'

Eveline didn't want to admit it was
her
home the tearaway was fleeing from; and she felt a lump come into her throat. Why had she ever gone to the Rue de Turbigo? she wondered. Why hadn't she stayed home and looked after Jacques? ‘Was it a safe ascent?' she hesitated.

‘Depends what you mean by safe,' the man recalled. ‘They couldn't get any lift at first, the Professor's weight being what it is… in the end they threw out so much ballast it shot up like a fucking bullet, scusing the language. Like a fucking bullet!' His eyes shone at the memory. ‘The Professor looked half out of his wits.'

Eveline wanted to shut her ears to it now but a little crowd had gathered round by this time and everyone was putting in their pennyworth. Someone said he'd heard the boy miaow like a cat he'd obviously been so frightened. Another said he'd seen him fall from the basket clinging on to a sack of ballast. The general consensus of opinion was that the Professor was some sort of lunatic and the boy an unfortunate orphan.

‘Poor little mite,' a woman sighed. ‘His mother will be turning in her grave if she's dead and if she's alive she oughtn't to be. Did you really say he shrieked like a cat?'

‘Fifi!' Alphonse whispered in Eveline's ear and she almost but not quite smiled.

The crowd was mulling over the incident now, expressing concern for the adventurers by prophesying all the terrible calamities likely to befall them and the dire straits they would no doubt end up in. Eveline wanted to kick them all in the shins but she restrained herself by holding tightly to Alphonse's hand.

Alphonse led her gently away then because she was on the verge of hysteria. One or two people were giving her pointed glances, shaking their heads in disapproval.

‘How can he go up there?' she blubbered as Alphonse half carried her out of the station, ‘when sometimes he can't even sleep without a light.' She pointed up at the sky. ‘It looks so black, as black as marble and he is only a little boy.'

‘Don't forget,' Alphonse interrupted sternly, ‘how skilful, competent and well practised he is, how impressed we were when we saw him rehearsing. And the Professor is an experienced balloonist whatever else he is. He will be back soon enough to plague you again.'

‘But he is only a little boy,' Eveline wailed again.

‘He is a young man,' Alphonse corrected. ‘And one day he will tell his grandchildren how he flew over Paris with a lunatic Professor.'

That did the trick. The thought of Jacques as a grandfather made Eveline giggle albeit a little hysterically.

‘Besides which,' Alphonse went on sombrely, ‘maybe it is better this way. Who knows what will happen in the next few weeks. He's probably safer up there than down here. In fact I wish you had all gone off in a balloon.'