Liberty's Fire Read online

  ‘Hoy!’ he shouted, to no effect.

  ‘Do you want to make a run for it?’ Rose whispered a little obviously. ‘I can move faster than you think when I have to, you know.’

  Anatole grabbed Zéphyrine’s arm to stop her vanishing again, but she was already shaking her head, and shaking him off. ‘No.’

  He looked at her cheeks, already less cadaverous than he remembered. He watched as she tucked a straggle of hair back under her cap, and straightened her shawl. With her feet neatly together again, and her eyes lowered, she suddenly looked a very different kind of girl.

  ‘Well, “Zéphyrine” … or whatever your name is …’ he began.

  ‘It is Zéphyrine. I’m not a liar,’ she said as yet another person pushed past her and knocked her askew.

  ‘I can’t hear you!’ said Anatole, leaning in closer. The bugles were sounding again. The crowd was on the move, all the battalions getting ready to file past the stage.

  ‘I said I’m not a liar,’ she shouted, and shot an angry glance at Rose, who was giggling behind her. ‘And I’m sorry I took your money. I needed it.’

  Rose couldn’t stop herself then. Zéphyrine had confessed that part of her encounter with Anatole.

  ‘It was for her grandmother. She had to pay for her funeral.’ And she ducked back behind Zéphyrine, who gave her a furious shove. She didn’t want Anatole’s pity.

  His mouth dropped open, and he struggled for words.

  ‘It’s true. She’s buried now,’ Zéphyrine muttered. In Anatole’s silence some of her earlier defiance returned. ‘So thank you.’

  Anatole mumbled some acknowledgement, and let go of her arm. She didn’t move away though.

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ she said. ‘And then when you suddenly disappeared, how was I to know who you might come back with? You could have had me arrested. You must have known I wasn’t registered with the police. It was obvious I was breaking the law when you found me.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought that far,’ Anatole admitted. The endless, degrading rules that governed every woman trying to make a living from her own body had never been his problem. ‘I … never mind.’

  Zéphyrine blushed again. There was one obvious way to make good her debt, and they all knew it. A surge in the crowd pushed Anatole right up against her, closer than they’d ever been. Then it was his turn to flush. They steadied themselves, apologised, and lurched simultaneously into speech.

  ‘Do you want —’ she began to ask.

  ‘Look, why don’t you …?’

  ‘Sorry … what were you going to say?’

  ‘No, I interrupted you.’

  ‘I just …’

  ‘I tell you what. Forget the money.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was going to give it to you anyway.’

  It was difficult to talk, still crushed together like flotsam twisting in a tide. Rose detached herself. She had seen the way they were looking at each other.

  ‘I think I’ll leave you two to sort this out,’ she said quietly. ‘See you at the club later?’

  The girls kissed cheeks, then Zéphyrine faced Anatole again.

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t want to forget the money. I shouldn’t have taken it. I’m not a beggar. It was a mistake and I want to give it back.’

  ‘If you insist …’ said Anatole, though he didn’t hold out his hand.

  ‘I haven’t got it now, but I will get it for you, I promise. You’ll have your … seven francs … soon.’

  ‘Seven francs and twenty-three centimes.’

  Anatole’s face came close to Zéphyrine’s, too close for her to see he was beginning to smile. Then their halting conversation was drowned out by a fresh outburst of singing, even more wild than before.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Zéphyrine sharply, proudly, ‘I’ve got a job now.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘So I will pay you back. It won’t be long.’

  It was a matter of dignity.

  ‘Well, you know where to find me. If you insist,’ said Anatole.

  Zéphyrine hesitated. She knew her way round every lane and alley in Montmartre, but this part of Paris confused her still. She remembered Les Halles of course, and she could get herself back there – it was more or less a straight line. But after that?

  ‘The Théâtre Lyrique,’ he reminded her. ‘Near the Île de la Cité – you know, the island in the river. You really can’t miss it.’

  ‘That’s good. Though I don’t know when …’ She met his eye, and looked away.

  ‘I’m in no hurry,’ he said, although suddenly he was. Anatole was tempted for a moment to do something he might regret. They parted quickly, and when Zéphyrine looked back, she saw no sign of the young violinist.

  APRIL 1871

  And then April arrived, with all its uncertain glory. Almost as soon as the sun had brightened the streets, the rain returned. But at last Paris was free to decide how it would run itself. The city would take no more orders from monarchists, or empire-lovers or even peasants, come to that. Committees met, policies were argued, decisions made, decrees declared. The church was separated from the state, salaries were fixed, newspapers multiplied. The leaders were wary though, and careful not to take things too far. They ignored the calls from the clubs to take over empty property. They even left the Bank alone. Caution was the watchword, despite what the foreign newspapers would have had their readers believe.

  But who would have thought intransigence could turn so quickly to civil war? Who would have imagined the soldiers of the line would actually be prepared to fire on their brothers in the citizen’s army, the National Guard? Outside the city walls, between Paris and Versailles, fighting began. Elsewhere in France, other rebellions were put down, distant communes dying almost before they had lived.

  Inside Paris, life carried on. In some parts of the city, you’d be forgiven for wondering exactly what had changed.

  11.

  3rd April

  Zéphyrine’s knife thudded against the wooden board faster than machine-gun fire. She was chopping carrots, under pressure, in a hot, noisy kitchen. This was a workers’ canteen, and making food instead of flowers felt altogether more useful, and more permanent. People always needed feeding.

  She liked having her sleeves rolled up again. Zéphyrine enveloped herself in the smell of softening onions and marrowbones, savoury steam and a sense of purpose. Everyone working together, and everyone talking too, about the latest decrees, the latest threats, last night’s debate. There were so many opinions flying around all the time: you had to keep talking, and listening hard, to keep up with it all. So many changes, all at once, and best of all, the rent cancelled again. Well! Wasn’t that the point of the elections? At last Paris had a government who was on the side of the tenants instead of the landlords. The Commune was really something to be proud of.

  ‘Who wants to go up to the Butte this evening, to watch the fireworks?’ called out one of the cooks, banging down the lid of the slop bucket. There was plenty of laughter at that, and disapproval from some, but plenty of volunteers too. Zéphyrine was tempted. It wasn’t far from home, and you got such a view of the battlefield from the top of Montmartre, over the windmills’ sails.

  The biggest cauldron of soup she’d ever seen was on the range, bubbling and spitting with a life of its own. A gigantic dipper hung on a nearby hook. It took two strong arms to stir with it, and this was usually left to the woman in charge of the canteen, a great tall ageless creature known as the Ladle. Zéphyrine tipped her carrots into the cauldron, sweat prickling on her forehead as she bent over the heat. In a few hours the children would be lining up with their bowls in the dining hall, the orphans of the siege hungry for their lunch. Hurry, hurry. So much to be done. So good to be part of it, right there in the stew of life. The thoughts that plagued her at night could easily be kept at bay by day.

  There was such a hubbub inside that at first nobody noticed the change outside.
>
  Then:

  ‘Listen!’

  The talking stopped and the screaming began. They already knew the noise of cannon fire of course. In the distance, that is. Prussian shells had fallen on many parts of Paris in January, but never here. Anyway, this was completely different. In January they had been at war. But now – to be shelled by your own countrymen? It was incomprehensible that Versailles should attack like this. Barbarous. Impossible. A few women rushed to the roof, to see for themselves, and came running back to report. It was true. It was terrible. Out of a blue sky, shells were falling on Paris. Thiers’s government was trying to bomb the rebellious capital into submission.

  ‘Get in the cellar!’

  One or two ran down the stairs to crouch, head in arms, among sacks of potatoes. Others refused to be budged. Zéphyrine froze, uncertain. Then she retied her apron, and went back to her chopping. What would happen would happen.

  After the children had eaten, their lessons were abandoned. They spent the afternoon in the courtyard filling sandbags for new barricades, supervised by schoolmistresses in black wearing red cockades. Through the steamed-up window, Zéphyrine could just make out their heaving shadows. When the last pot had been cleaned, and the knives put away, the floor swept and the fire damped down, she hung up her apron and hesitated in the doorway.

  Anatole had been in Zéphyrine’s mind all that day. After the celebrations, Rose had come round – rent debts wiped out, Zéphyrine was back in her room at Madame Mouton’s – and she’d quizzed Zéphyrine about Anatole for hours. She had nothing to tell her. Eventually Rose turned up her nose with a sniff and declared she had no time for men anyway, and nor should Zéphyrine, not in the middle of a revolution. Better that she stopped talking about them then, in Zéphyrine’s opinion. But she would have found Anatole hard to forget even without Rose’s regular reminders that he had awfully dark eyes, something sparky about him when he spoke, and hadn’t he seemed very determined to find her again? He looked so different from the Breton boys – all ruddy and windswept – or the pale young workers of Montmartre, always so hungry for one thing or another, their eyes constantly looking for something she couldn’t give them. Next to them, Anatole seemed golden.

  It was either now or never. Anatole could be leaving Paris at any moment, in uniform to fight, or in disguise to flee. Zéphyrine had money in her pocket again. If she didn’t make good her debt to him right away, it might be too late. She decided to take her chance, and head south into the centre of the city, to the Théatre Lyrique.

  ‘Ils ont attaqué, ils ont attaqué, ils ont attaqué!’ Versailles had attacked. Skirmishes had turned suddenly into vicious warfare. The new proclamation was already on every poster. The printing presses worked overtime, spreading the terrible news right through the city in just a few short hours:

  ‘Not content with cutting off all communications with the provinces, and making vain efforts to defeat us through famine, these furies are following the Prussian example to the letter and bombarding the capital … But we have been elected by the population of Paris, and our duty is to defend this great city. With your help, we will defend her. The Executive Committee of the National Guard.’

  All through the streets, the cry rang out. ‘To arms, to arms.’ Drums and bugle calls sounded, and everywhere you turned a new barricade had miraculously sprung up. Passers-by were stopped with shouts for help, or just a quiet, pointed word: ‘Your paving stone, citizen.’ And another solid block of stone would be offered, and usually taken, and laid with modest ceremony, sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes reluctance.

  Cross-currents of marching battalions came from every neighbourhood, wave after wave of men tramping along the boulevards, heading south-west towards Issy. Zéphyrine darted from pavement to pavement, judging her moment as best she could. She narrowly escaped a galloping horse, a skitter of hooves flashing as it swerved, and then horse and red-shirted rider clattered out of sight. From the battlefield, the ambulance wagons had already begun to arrive. The wounded were returning from the front, and the dead with them.

  Zéphyrine reached the big square by the river. She remembered the fountain and column, and stood by its fantastical gushing creatures, staring in panic at one theatre and then another. Which was Anatole’s? Then she recognised the posters outside the Théâtre Lyrique. But they had all been stamped over. ‘CANCELLED. CANCELLED. CANCELLED.’ One frame after another repeated the message. The building looked completely dead.

  Zéphyrine had no idea how or when these people worked. She supposed it counted as work. She looked for that entrance at the side marked ‘Stage Door’, and pushed it cautiously, certain it would be locked.

  It wasn’t, and she remembered the lobby with the chairs as soon as she saw it again. No charwoman this time. Once again, a newspaper fluttered on the face of the porter, who lay back in an upholstered chair, a few rows of empty pigeonholes behind him. Voices – raised voices in fact – could be heard coming from one of the many mysterious rooms beyond. The theatre wasn’t as empty as it had looked.

  She rapped her knuckles on the wooden counter.

  ‘Excuse me!’ she said firmly, and stepped quickly back as the man she’d just woken up sprang to his feet with limbs all over the place. He shook himself like a dog coming out of a pond, and then slowly collected the scattered sheets of his newspaper. Only when they were back in a neat pile, and folded on the counter, did he finally acknowledge Zéphyrine’s presence.

  ‘Yes?’

  She stared at a scar on his nose, but could not quite meet the narrowed eyes just above it.

  ‘Please could you tell me where I can find Monsieur Clément?’

  ‘Come to pick up his washing, have you?’

  ‘It’s none of your business what I’ve come for,’ she replied. ‘I asked where I could find him.’

  They had a brief staring competition, which Zéphyrine won. The nose indicated the staircase. Up she went.

  The building’s strange, distorting acoustics made it hard to work out exactly where the shouting was coming from, but at least there were no other noises to distract her, for everyone in the building seemed to be gathered in one place this time. Higher and higher she climbed, until she had to stop and catch her breath. At the top of the final flight she reached a door that was half open. Hundreds seemed crammed into the room beyond, an effect of all the mirrors lining the walls, offering infinite and deceptive reflections of the gathered meeting. She pushed the door a little wider, and every one of those faces seemed to turn at once.

  12.

  Anatole looked too and saw Zéphyrine’s eyes flitting from face to face. Grabbing the barre that ran at waist-height round the room, he pulled himself to his feet. He hadn’t dared dream he would see her again.

  ‘All those in favour, raise your hands.’ Dr Rousselle, who had called the meeting, began to count out loud.

  One arm held above his head, Anatole threaded his way through chairs and instruments and musicians and singers. He could not get to the door quickly enough, could not take his eyes off her. She might fade away like one of Jules’s creations, he thought. So he kept his gaze fixed on her, like a camera lens, and she stood there, exposed.

  ‘And all those against?’

  A shifting of bodies, and a resistant murmur. Fewer hands. Anatole didn’t look round. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled as his foot caught on a pair of outstretched legs, but his eyes did not leave Zéphyrine’s. A ripple of laughter circulated behind him, and Marie reddened slightly on his behalf.

  ‘Any abstentions? The motion is carried. This company is hereby declared a cooperative association. Now, fundraising …’

  Anatole shut the door on the discussion. He had reached her at last, and there she was, living and breathing before his eyes. Heavily, in fact: her cheeks were glowing.

  ‘Those stairs!’ she said. And sat herself down on the top step to recover. The long shadows of her eyelashes fell on her face. Anatole sat next to her, close enough to imagine he could feel t
he warmth rising from her skin. She fanned her face with her apron. The fringe of her shawl trailed near enough to touch.

  ‘If I’d known you were coming …’ he started. Nobody in the world had ever given him such difficulty in finishing his sentences. It was ridiculous. In the usual run of things, he was the kind of person who sometimes finished other people’s sentences.

  ‘Then what?’ she asked him, genuinely curious.

  ‘I – I don’t know. I suppose I could have met you downstairs. Told you what time I’d be free. Made an arrangement.’ Maybe she couldn’t tell the time. He had no idea what a girl like her might know.

  ‘Oh I see. It’s one of those polite things some people say. Gentlemen.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he admitted.

  ‘But it doesn’t really mean anything?’

  Was she flirting? It was hard to tell. She was very direct.

  ‘No, no, I’d never say anything to you I didn’t mean,’ he found himself confessing, and was delighted when she smiled but didn’t lower her eyes. ‘Anyway, I’m not exactly a gentleman. I never was and now I don’t suppose I ever will be. We’re all citizens now, aren’t we? Citoyens and citoyennes?’

  He moved a little closer. And she shuffled away.

  ‘And now the citoyennes are showing what they’re made of,’ said Zéphyrine, reaching into her skirt pocket. ‘Here. I said I’d return the money I took. I’m sorry. But we’re even now.’

  Anatole held out his hand for the francs she was offering. She took it in one of hers, and firmly pressed the coins into his palm with the other, counting each one out, then closed his fingers over them, as though she were entrusting money to a small child.