Le Temps des Cerises (5 page)

‘
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.

‘Monsieur Lafayette,' Eveline began at last, colouring a little though she could hardly take him seriously with his bald head and piggy little eyes.

‘Modeste, please.'

‘Monsieur Modeste Lafayette! You are old enough to be my grandfather!'

‘Father surely!'

‘Grandfather,' she assured him. ‘And as I have pointed out many times I would not marry you if you were the last man standing.'

‘Well, well,' said Monsieur Lafayette, blowing smoke rings over the stonecutter's head. ‘The way this war is going I might well be just that.' And he coughed three times as if to emphasise the point or to sound a valediction for the soon to be departed.

Eveline pursed her lips and looked at Jacques who was fumbling about on the floor beside the laundry basket. He must have felt her eyes upon him for he stood up, beaming, and held out the stockings she had set her heart on wearing that evening. ‘That's a slip in that leg and a quick release in the other,' he announced proudly; and then, as if the matter had engaged his brain for a while: ‘What's a harlot, Sis?'

She stared at him blankly, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the question or the little urchin who held her stockings all twisted up in his hands.

Monsieur Lafayette came to the rescue. ‘An extra-ordinary mother, my lad,' he smiled. ‘An extra-ordinary mother!'

Chapter five

I would fain have news of anywhere but here
, Laurie wrote feverishly, taking up the letter from where he left off,
trapped as we are in our little ice palace! Do you have any Tales from Toulouse to tell me? Is the Pope still in place? Is Mr Gladstone still Prime Minister of England? Is the Princess Louise married, Eveline would like to know.

And is it true that the Prussians skate on Lake Enghein and stare round-eyed at Versailles? Our papers tell of regular parcels of bierwurst, smoked cheese and macaroni being sent to the troops and we gnash our teeth in envy!

I am sure I have heard them playing their accordions and singing – it is like singing in the wilderness – in their harsh guttural voices. Alphonse tells me I am dreaming but Tessier assures me they are waltzing away to Eleven Thousand Maidens of Cologne! I wish I could believe him but he is a terrible prankster and in truth, if his command of German were as good as all that, he would have been taken for a spy by now! There is a veritable spy mania in Paris at the moment. Everyone is convinced their neighbour harbours some terrible secret. Only the other day a young widow (careful Maman!) was arrested because her neighbour reported her macaw doing semaphore out of the window; and some poor chap stuck his head out of a manhole only to get it blown off for his efforts! (No doubt building a magic tunnel to the Prussian camp.) Foreign visitors are so paranoid they're taking out adverts in the press such as: Mr Crumblehome/Castiglione/Cooper is not a Prussian, having been born in Chelsea/Venice/New York. Delete as appropriate!

I think we are all quite crazy with lack of food and being kept so long on tender hooks as Molly would put it! Not so very tender in truth.

I wish you both a Merry Christmas in the hope this letter reaches you ‘par ballon' before the 25
th
. Think of me please as you scoff your roast turkey. I shall be in my rooms on the Rue d'Enfer or maybe with
Eveline
the Renans.

In hope of peace,

Your son,

‘Hey, Laurie! Haven't you finished that letter yet?'

‘Alphonse!' Laurie grinned in delight, letter forgotten, and stood to greet his friend who had appeared as always from nowhere – large as life, eyes twinkling, his strong graceful fingers wrapped round the neck of a hessian sack. ‘What the hell have you got in there? Bismarck?'

‘Yeah, and his balls. Let's just say it's a delicacy...'

‘It's a lark!' someone shouted.

‘Crow!'

‘Your mother's nose!'

‘Arse!'

‘...for the bastards who dine at Brébant's while the rest of Paris starves,' Alphonse finished with a grin when he could get a word in edgeways. He took a swig of mouth warmer then spat it out with a grimace. ‘That stuff gets worse!'

Laurie nodded. For as long as he could remember Alphonse had worked at Brébant's, in between his job as a waker-upper
⁴
 
and his political ambitions. He had said that to infiltrate the toffee-nosed and the upper crust you might as well serve 'em up their toffees and crusts – a little burnt and stale perhaps, just for the fun of it.

‘It's Trochu's plan
⁵
,'
Tessier said suddenly, pointing at the sack. ‘That's where it's been hiding. Alphonse Duchamp, master magician, delivers from his bag – Trochu's plan. Where did he find it ladies and gentlemen? The Hôtel de Ville? A government journal? The Ministry of War? No! The elusive article was found in a turnip field! Trochu's plan came from a turnip field!'

‘Oh, you're good, Tessier,' Alphonse smiled kindly, running his fingers through his dark curly hair. ‘I wouldn't want you on the other team.'

Tessier looked as pleased as punch and he poured Alphonse a drop of gin then shuffled the pack again, this time with his eyes closed. Bidulph muttered that he didn't want that bloody palaver all over again and the mood looked ugly again for a while until Alphonse said he'd go a round with the best of 'em; and then they all hoorayed English style and budged up a seat for him.

Laurie watched his friend slip back into the game as if he'd never been away from it and smiled ruefully. Trust Alphonse to lift the mood of the men with a merest flick of his fingers, a glance, a smile. If he so much as sneezed the whole world came running out with ‘God bless you's' and handkerchiefs, hot gins and flu potions. It would have been sickening if he hadn't been his friend and even now he felt a slight stab of envy as he saw the men falling over themselves for a word of praise or pat on the head. Alphonse sat, so it seemed, quite oblivious to it all, earnestly studying his cards; and Laurie shrugged off the feeling as completely unworthy. He got up and went over to straighten the tent for the new squad, busying himself with shaping the straw pallets, re-directing the rusty saucepan under the leak and packing up their kit bags with identical mess tin, drinking cup, leather cartridge supply bag and first-aid box. By this time he could hear the customary howls of derision that 7
th
Company used to greet the new squad, the back slapping, friendly bickering, cries of ‘Merry Christmas, you poor suckers' and Coupeau's voice above the rest, bragging about the bet he'd laid with Joubet to muff ten women by Christmas Eve and even that would be a breeze. Laurie lengthened his rifle strap to fit more comfortably around his bulky greatcoat and packed the letter away carefully in a side pocket. He was just taking a last look round the tent when Alphonse poked his head through the flap.

‘What are you doing hiding away in here?' he demanded which Laurie knew was his friend's way of thanking him for packing away. ‘You haven't forgotten the meeting tonight have you?'

‘Of course not!' cried Laurie, unable to stop the note of pride creeping into his voice. ‘Eveline will be there.'

‘Ah yes.' Alphonse looked at Laurie's face with interest. ‘The beautiful Eveline.'

And, shouldering their kit bags, they crawled out of the tent side by side into the twilight.

Chapter six

The meeting was in full swing by the time Eveline arrived, bare legged, drenched and unkempt, wishing she'd wrung that little urchin's neck. She had to stop for a moment as she entered the church because the heat and hubbub hit her like a train after the cold air and pelting rain. She still found it strange to see the church at night, so different, so unrecognisable – no flowers or prayer books, no bent heads, pious eyes, no priests in flowing garments, no body or blood of Christ. Instead, an altar table piled high with dirty plates, sticky glasses and dead-necked wine bottles; the
Marseillaise
instead of the
Magnificat
; and a congregation so different from the day it was scarcely believable. Hardened revolutionaries with zealous eyes and red kerchiefs; National Guardsmen roaring drunk and off duty; dilettantes seeking amusement; fat women and thin women both looking for food; refugees from the long cold winter nights and ragamuffins who sidled into the lonely back pews and fell asleep, only to be kicked out in the morning by an angry curate. The clubs were only granted access in the evenings and even that was grudgingly given; but Eveline reckoned that any priest would give his eye teeth and chalice away for a congregation this big, this enthusiastic…