Liberty's Fire Page 2

  ‘Is it that obvious?’ Jules removed Minou from the top shelf where she was delicately stepping between bottles of chemicals, and placed her on the floor. The cat jumped straight back up onto the workbench.

  ‘It was awkward this morning. I felt for her. First time she’d sung the main Act II aria in front of the whole company, and it was expressive, but far too thin. All pinched and wiry on the long notes, and squeaky at the top. Nerves, I suppose. She was in tears afterwards. Not surprising. It was humiliating. And more to the point, if it happens again, she could lose the part, and she’s been lucky to get a chance like this so young.’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t deserve it?’ suggested Jules.

  ‘Oh that’s harsh. Everyone’s on edge at the moment, for one reason or another.’

  It was quite true. The depleted performers of the Théâtre Lyrique no longer felt quite like a company. Some musicians had volunteered to fight in the early rush of patriotic fervour after war broke out; quite a few were now dead. Some had vanished to the provinces, and even now others were disappearing. A shift was taking place, movement in the ranks. There were new parts to learn, new partnerships to forge.

  ‘And from what I can gather,’ Anatole went on, lowering his voice as though there might be a risk of being overheard, ‘she’s been abandoned by a rich banker, who ran off to hide in the country with his family before the siege, and now claims to have fallen back in love with his wife. Or something like that.’

  ‘That old story. Maybe he’s found a more attractive mistress in the nearest village.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Anatole.

  ‘Oh? You know this man?’

  ‘Never heard of him. Just know he’d be pushed to find anyone more beautiful than Marie.’

  ‘So she got the part in the show on her looks too?’

  ‘And her voice,’ said Anatole reprovingly. ‘She’s going to be a sensation one day. The audience will adore her. She’ll have her pick of new protectors as soon as the show opens. Anyway, I expect she’ll be better at the next rehearsal.’ Anatole was now straddling a chair back to front. He looked and sounded rather pleased with himself.

  Jules stopped sweeping up the broken eggshell and turned to look at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. You see the only way I could stop her crying was to suggest that we had an extra practice session before the main run-through. We’re meeting on Monday. I’m sure I’ll be able to help. It’s mostly a matter of confidence. And concentration. She’s very worried about her brother. He’s been a prisoner of war for months and the Prussians still aren’t saying when he’s going to be released.’

  ‘Poor girl. I’m sure she was delighted to accept your offer,’ said Jules.

  ‘She was, as a matter of fact. Of course she was.’

  Anatole jumped up as he spoke, and flung his chair to one side. Taking the dustpan and brush from Jules and chucking them in a corner, he began to waltz him around the room.

  2.

  20th March

  Blurred with grief, Zéphyrine stumbled down the steep Montmartre lanes to the municipal pawnbroker shop, pushing her way through gathered knots of people. She didn’t know why the pavements were so busy, and she couldn’t make herself care. Why had her grandmother waited to give up now? Now, of all times, when there was finally bread in the shops again, and hope for the future? What was the point of surviving the siege, suffering so much, getting through the whole war, only for this? It was unbelievable. And Zéphyrine had deluded herself for far too long. She was wicked, useless, wretched.

  Two days earlier Zéphyrine realised, with creeping horror, that the worst was finally coming: there could be no other explanation. All that shouting and drumming in the lane outside, such a racket with the bells in the early hours, and never a flicker of Gran’mère’s papery eyelids? But by then she hadn’t been able to risk going to the pharmacist, Monsieur Balard, not with so much commotion outside. She even thought she heard a few gunshots. Anyway, she couldn’t pay him, and what if she’d gone and got trapped in the crowds? That’s when she should have called the priest of course. But Zéphyrine had done everything wrong. Gran’mère had taken her in when nobody else wanted her – she had done everything right – and this was how she had repaid her.

  At least she had not died alone. Her forehead was still warm when Zéphyrine bent to kiss it. You’d hardly have known she was dead. So the girl had gone on sitting by the bed, holding her bird-claw hand. She just kept on watching over her exactly as she had been doing for weeks already. She didn’t know what else to do. At first, the changes were so slow and slight that she barely noticed them – skin tightening over teeth, colour fading. By the next morning though, her grandmother looked like a stranger.

  Then Zéphyrine realised there were practical things that had to be done. She wished she had started sooner. It was hard to move and clean up a body so stiff and strange, skin and bones though it was. It took hours, and she had to keep stopping, to calm her nausea. Finally, reluctantly, she slipped Gran’mère’s wedding ring off her scrawny finger – easy to do when it was so loose – and looked around the bare room. There was only one other thing left to pawn: the thin, ticking mattress, patched and repatched so many times. She hated to leave Gran’mère on the floorboards, but their hardness couldn’t hurt her now. Zéphyrine rolled the mattress up and tied it into a bundle, then waited, listening, for Madame Mouton to go out. She wanted to escape before the concierge could remind her again that the rent was due. All the debts built up during the siege suddenly had to be paid. This cowardly government said so. Everyone was furious about it. Except Zéphyrine had a different priority now. She somehow had to find the money to pay for a decent burial too.

  It was even busier at the pawnbroker’s than usual. Eau de Javelle hung in the air, the tang of bleach prickling her nostrils but failing to mask the stale odour of old clothes. She was rubbed threadbare herself, a wrung-out rag. As she took her place in the queue, she felt herself sinking. Compulsively turning her grandmother’s ring on her own finger, she edged bit by bit along a wooden bench polished smooth by endless shuffling and sliding. Walled up in her own misery, she was deaf to the lively discussions taking place all around her. The talk was of cannon, cowardice, capitulation and finally triumph. Two generals had been executed by a mob. The government forces had fled. Paris had been left to govern itself. For the time being, at least. But Zéphyrine took none of this in. She shifted herself and her burden slowly closer to the front.

  Eventually, a door opened, and the mattress was prodded, inspected, removed. The ring she had to pass over the counter. She imagined all the piles of abandoned possessions they would be joining: scissors, candlesticks, bedsteads, joiners’ tools, linen and watch chains, all left at ‘Auntie’s’ in the hope they would one day be reclaimed.

  ‘Here. Ticket. Money.’ The voice came from behind frosted glass, the shadow behind broken into dark squares. The government liked to protect the employees of the mont-de-piété from the public. The invisible speaker grew a little kinder. ‘I’d come back and claim it as soon as you can. Can’t say what the rules will be by next month. Or who will be in charge, come to that.’

  A few francs rattled across the counter towards her, and a yellow ticket.

  Zéphyrine gripped the paper voucher in her hand so tightly she nearly tore it. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I don’t set the prices, dear. Next please.’

  There was no point in arguing. But Zéphyrine couldn’t even begin to meet the bills with this pathetic sum. She felt herself beginning to crumble.

  ‘Wait!’ The voice was imperious again. ‘I need to see your marriage certificate.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Rules are rules.’

  A tiny sob leapt from Zéphyrine’s mouth, and she clapped her hand over it before another could escape. There was a long silence, while a pair of eyes peered at her from the small gap between the counter and the screen. The woman clicked her tongue, and made a face. ‘Go on t
hen. Quick as you can. I’ll let it go this time. Times are hard and you’re right – that won’t go far.’

  Zéphyrine pushed her way out, and emerged on the pavement hardly able to see. Without the mattress weighing them down, her arms felt light and floaty, as if they might rise by themselves. She didn’t know what to do with her empty hands. That bulky mass had smelled almost comforting. It had taken her back to the nights when she had first arrived in Montmartre: her grandmother would hold her tight in a great big hug and tell her she’d soon get used to Paris and then she wouldn’t miss Brittany any more. She always said Brittany. Never mentioned her mother. And Zéphyrine pretended she didn’t care, though she still waited and hoped for a letter from home. Nothing ever came. ‘Just the two of us now,’ Gran’mère would say. ‘The Lord he taketh away, and he giveth too. I’ll look after you, and you’ll look after me.’ But now what?

  Zéphyrine blinked very hard and shook her head, hoping it would clear her mind as well as her eyes. She’d always been good at putting on a brave face, and she needed money a lot more than she needed comfort. She had to save Gran’mère the shame of a pauper’s funeral. Zéphyrine couldn’t bear the idea of that communal pit: so many strangers’ bones all tumbled together like so much waste, and not a flower in sight.

  She thought longingly of the bundles of silk flowers that transformed their rented room in the old days, before the war killed all demand. Pink and mauve, yellow and scarlet, tumbling blossoms, all seasons together, and so real you wanted to smell them, though all you ever got was a sniff of glue. Hours of work in every petal. These flowers never wilted. They were made to bloom for a year or two on a bonnet or ballgown, then fade at the back of a wardrobe. She decided she wanted fresh flowers for her grandmother’s grave. Only fresh flowers.

  ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said a gruff voice.

  Zéphyrine’s eyes focused on the brandy-befuddled workman swaying in front of her. He tried to take her arm, but she shook him off. He lurched towards her again, still leering and laughing.

  ‘Get off me!’ she shouted. ‘I’m not what you think …’

  He stopped his pawing and burped. Then he straightened his blue cap and frowned at her, eyes settling. ‘You what? If you didn’t want it, then why were you looking at me like that, you stuck-up bitch …?’

  Zéphyrine didn’t wait for his anger to explode. She gathered up her skirts and made off as fast as she could, looking back over her shoulder as she ran. There he was, still standing and swaying, face redder than ever, while a group of men outside a café pointed and jeered at his mistake, and whistled after her. Then her foot caught on something hard and she fell, sprawling.

  She spat sandy earth from her mouth, cursing the man she’d run from, and all the others too. What had she done? How had she looked at him? Was it his fault or hers? It was only because her grandmother had kept her on such a tight rein till then that Zéphyrine had managed to avoid trouble like this before. She ought to have thanked her for it, instead of resisting all the time. She’d seen it happen to others of course. It was almost impossible for a working girl to make her way through the streets of Paris without being taken for the wrong kind of working girl, a fille publique … This man was unpleasant, but she’d got away this time. The important thing was that the police didn’t make the same mistake. Once they had your name on their files, there was no going back, no rising from the depths.

  Wiping away the gritty spit with the back of her hand, she raised her head. Something else was blocking her way: a solid wall across the great open thoroughfare at the bottom of the hill leading up to Montmartre. Two walls, she saw when she looked harder, in parallel, neither of them high, but both rising fast. Blocks of paving stone had been pulled up in a jagged line to make them, and Zéphyrine had fallen into a gap.

  ‘Hup … grunt … hup … grunt …’ A human chain was passing the stones along from hand to hand, and they had a good rhythm going. In the sandy earth between the broken edge of the paving blocks and the beginning of the barricade, a couple of children sat making mud pies and digging for worms. A dog rooted around them, going quietly wild with the excitement of all the fresh smells set free by the works.

  Another man’s voice, older, and another hand on her arm. ‘Up you get.’ She froze. ‘It’s Zéphyrine, isn’t it? Oh yes, I know you. Don’t worry. You’re all right with me.’ He kept talking while she slowly obeyed, scrambling to her feet. ‘I used to drink with your grandfather. Years ago. When he first came to Paris. We had some times in the old days, I can tell you, before … Ah well.’

  The old man gently brushed off her skirt as he spoke, shaking his head and mumbling quietly. ‘I remember you from his funeral. Such a comfort to your grandmother, though I’ve not seen a hair of her since the siege. How is she? Shame he’s not here to help now.’ His grey beard quivered, and he touched his hat briefly, before bending to retrieve his pick.

  ‘Get a move on, Bertrand! We haven’t got all day!’ A fierce female face rose from between the two walls ahead, and ducked back down.

  ‘My missus,’ he explained, grunting as he began to prise another stone away to add to the barricade.

  Zéphyrine smiled thinly, willing him not to say more, willing his wife not to look more closely, and notice what Bertrand hadn’t. She would crumble under the weight of too much kindness. She wasn’t ready to open her mouth, either to ask or answer questions.

  The atmosphere here made it easier to pretend. Everyone was so busy. The Montmartre National Guardsmen had spent weeks sitting around since the armistice, idling away the days with nothing to do but smoke their pipes, play dice and drink, their rifles piled up in pyramids. There was the occasional demonstration in support of the French Republic. Otherwise, just waiting. At last the men were hard at it again and pleased to have a job to do. Their women were even more pleased, and also, it had to be said, a great deal more organised.

  There was almost a party feeling in the air, a sense of camaraderie. Zéphyrine couldn’t join in. She’d got too used to isolation over the past few weeks of silent vigil. How fast everything moved on while you weren’t looking! How quickly the printing presses rolled, and the newspaper headlines changed, and the posters too. ‘Save the Republic!’ New ones were plastered on every wall and kiosk. ‘Citizens!’ they called out. ‘Citizens! You have the future in your hands!’

  The future in her hands? It had never felt less like it. Zéphyrine turned abruptly south, down a street that led to the centre of Paris. It was all too much to take in. She was just so tired, so tired of everything, so tired of worrying about money and food and fuel. Her limbs felt loose, and her eyes kept closing. Each time her lashes fluttered shut, Gran’mère’s face reappeared in her mind’s eye. She couldn’t seem to conjure her how she had been in life. She only saw her frozen in death: a stretched haggard creature, with eyelids like silken petals, dark and crumpled.

  Zéphyrine walked faster, forcing her eyes back open. Money, she kept thinking. Where could she get more money? She tried to calculate. A few sous for hot water, so she could go to the laundry to wash her grandmother’s shift. And her own, come to that. Rose would help her. She could borrow money for the washing. But how much might the priest cost, or the gravedigger? And would that vulture of a landlord let her stay without her grandmother? She would have to steel herself to ask Madame Mouton. Not without money he wouldn’t though. Money. Money. Everything always came back to money.

  Feathers dancing on their splendid hats, two girls jiggled across a passageway, and knocked on the door opposite. They still had a bit of a wait before getting to work. Better to pass the time with friends. In side streets all around, in building after building, up staircase after staircase, in tiny rented rooms where chairs were strewn with underclothes, and water steamed in jugs and basins, young women were getting up, yawning, stretching. Downing drinks in preparation for the long night ahead. Shuffling packs of cards. Tightening corsets.

  Zéphyrine watched. With much giggling and laught
er, the girls waiting in the street were let in by three others, also rouge-cheeked and bright-lipped. They looked happy enough, she thought with a shock. They could afford nice clothes. Underwear too. (An upstairs shutter opened, and another girl leaned out and called down.) They seemed to be able to do exactly what they wanted. Of course there was still a way to make money. There was always a way for a girl to make money in Paris, day or night.

  No. She mustn’t think like this. There was one other alternative. Keep on walking, and you’ll get to the river. Once she had thought of it, the waters of the Seine kept swirling before her, drawing her on. Zéphyrine pictured herself on the parapet of a bridge. She thought about plunging into nothingness, and the thought didn’t seem frightening. She used to love diving off the rocks at Le Cabellou years ago, twisting in the air, showing off to her small half-brothers. She remembered the roar in her ears, the rush of bubbles, the silence. And then the gasp, as she burst back into another element, and her lungs filled with air again. It was no good throwing herself into the filthy Seine. She couldn’t be sure of sinking.

  The first time she heard the gulls in Paris – screeching, mournful, wheeling overhead near the river or the canal – she imagined they were calling her back to Brittany. Their voices had a way of sounding human. Where she came from, they called them soul birds. Drowned sailors, like her father, or so she used to think. But the truth was that nobody was calling Zéphyrine. Her brothers might miss her a bit, and maybe the dog, but her mother and stepfather certainly didn’t want her back. They’d be happy to forget she’d ever existed. It was Gran’mère who told Zéphyrine the reason why. Her father had been a sailor – that was true enough – but her mother hadn’t even known his name. That was why she’d left her bastard daughter in Paris, so she could finally be rid of her shame.