Headline

by Imogen Robertson

  ‘Now you, Maud.’

  Maud hesitated. Around her the waters were still lifting and the rats were screaming and scattering into what escape routes they could find; above her was her friend, framed by the patch of wan Parisian sky. She put out her hand and let Tanya drag her out of the darkness.

  CHAPTER 22

  It was some time before Tanya could persuade Yvette to move or speak. Like a mother with a child, she managed at last to persuade her to come over to the water trough in the courtyard and clean some of the contaminated waters of the flood from her with the slightly cleaner water still coming from the old pump. She put her own coat round Yvette’s shoulders then went to Café Procope to beg towels and a messenger to send to Paul.

  With Maud and Yvette as well protected from the cold as she could manage, she led them the short distance to Paul’s rooms on Rue Racine. The concierge was a friend of Mr Allardyce’s so knew Tanya’s name, and on hearing it, and seeing her and her friends, she put her usual moral scruples aside and took them in. She brought hot water, blankets from her own store, and soup. Maud and Yvette let Tanya attend to them. Maud watched her remove Yvette’s filthy clothes and sponge her pale skin with soap and hot water, dry her and wrap her in blankets then wash the foul waters from her hair. Then she settled Yvette on the sofa near the fire and turned her attention to Maud.

  It was when she put her head back to let Tanya pour warm water from an enamel jug over her hair that Maud saw for the first time the livid bruise on the Russian girl’s cheek. She put up her hand to touch it with her fingertips.

  ‘Tanya?’

  The girl smiled and shook her head. ‘Don’t worry, darling. It left me dizzy for a while, but it was nothing to the sickness I felt when I came to and realised that monster had got past me. Don’t fret. Sasha and Paul will be here in a little while, and they will make a great deal more of a fuss over me than I have made over you.’ She poured another jug of hot water over Maud’s hair, lifting the strands apart with her fingers. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  Maud looked over to the couch where Yvette appeared to have drifted off into an uneasy sleep, wrapped in a mound of blankets. ‘He found her with the diamonds. He would have killed her if she hadn’t been so quick with her knife.’

  Tanya nodded, then took one of her towels from the pile and began to rub Maud’s hair dry between her palms.

  ‘What is she holding onto so tight? All the time I have been washing her she’s kept her hand clenched over something.’

  ‘Her knife, I think,’ Maud said. ‘She was searching for it in the water. Tanya, when Paul comes, do you think he might collect our things from the room in Rue de Seine and pay the woman? I have silver enough in my purse, I think.’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  Paul did what he was asked, though it took some time before he was reassured that Tanya was not severely injured. Tanya asked him for his trust and he gave it as easily as he had given his love. Sasha had come with him from the church and now mounted a furious watch over them all, seated on a stool by the stove and working her needles, getting up from time to time to examine them all for signs of fever.

  As soon as Paul had delivered their bundles, he left again to continue reporting the water’s rise. Maud watched his expression as he exchanged hurried goodbyes with Tanya in the open doorway, and thought her friend had as good a chance as anyone of happiness in marriage.

  Maud went behind the screen to dress. She slipped her feet into the cold damp leather of her boots and was catching the last of the buttons together when she heard the sound of something dropping to the floor and a low gasp from the main room. She emerged and saw Tanya kneeling by Yvette. She imagined that the knife had fallen from her hand finally as she slept, and that Tanya’s sigh was a sign she had found it with Morel’s blood on it . . . but when Tanya turned towards her and opened her palm, she was not holding the knife, but the golconda diamond.

  ‘Maud,’ Tanya said, her voice tight, ‘the knife is still there. When the waters go down, they will find him and it. She carved her name into it. She must get away.’

  Maud stared at the stone. Seeing it in Tanya’s palm, the way it shifted the light around it, it seemed ridiculous that even for a moment she could have been fooled by the fake she had seen. The diamond had a power and presence to it that could not be described or captured.

  She knelt down and closed Tanya’s fingers over it. She never wanted to see it again. ‘Do you think Yvette might like to come to England with me? We will need papers perhaps, but there will be some time before the waters go down.’

  Tanya touched Yvette’s forehead and she murmured something in her sleep. ‘Yes, yes I do. Oh Lord, yes, I think that would be best.’

  There was a light tap at the door and Sasha went to answer it. Charlotte was there looking weary but otherwise just the same. ‘I met Mr Allardyce at Saint-Sulpice,’ she said before they had even asked the question. ‘And he told me where you were. I thought I’d come along and be warm for an hour before going back to the refugees. It seems everyone knows you are here, by the way. There was a woman waiting in the street and she asked me to give you this, Miss Heighton.’ She passed her a piece of notepaper. Maud felt her body shiver as she took it. There was no other woman who might be waiting for them there.

  It read: Pont des Arts, an hour.

  Maud passed it to Tanya. ‘From Sylvie.’

  Tanya glanced at it then looked back at her. ‘Maud, you can’t go.’

  ‘Of course I am going, Tanya. You know that.’

  Tanya clenched her fists in frustration. ‘Then I shall come too. Charlotte, will you watch Yvette with Sasha until we get back?’

  Charlotte settled herself into one of the armchairs and glanced at the sleeping girl. ‘Of course I shall.’

  Maud was shaking her head. ‘Tanya, please, you have to take care of Yvette. You are getting married . . .’

  Tanya had already put on her long coat and was doing up the buttons angrily. ‘No, Maud. Don’t worry, I shall not interfere. But whatever happens . . . there should be a witness. You will not disappear into that horrible greedy river again with no one knowing of it. You don’t know what it was like, just to be told, to be told something like that by a stranger.’

  CHAPTER 23

  Pont des Arts oil on panel 29.3 × 23.6 cm

  Though this also seems to show the Seine in flood, the focus is on the effect of the lamplight on the snow that has gathered along the railings, and the landmarks of Paris have disappeared into the darkness behind it. The mood of the painting is simultaneously one of calm and threat. We are drawn towards an absence in the centre of the frame.

  Extract from the catalogue notes to the exhibition ‘The Paris Winter: Anonymous Treasures from the de Civray Collection’, Southwark Picture Gallery, London, 2010

  ‘Mademoiselle! By all that’s holy!’ Maud felt a hand on her shoulder. A policeman in gaiters and a short cape was holding her back. She could see Sylvie on the bridge ahead of her, lit by a gas-light on the centre of the bridge. The river roared around her.

  ‘Let me by, I don’t mind getting wet.’

  ‘That’s your choice, mademoiselle, but the road is unsafe. It falls away under you, look!’ He pointed along the quay, to the men building up the embankment in the sullen yellow glow of oil-lamps. The trees fell sideways like drunks, and the lamp-posts had sunk and tilted to their knees, though some were still lit, struggling to do their duty, to lift their lights above the water.

  ‘That woman on the bridge – I know her.’

  He turned round, and seeing Sylvie sitting on the railings of the bridge, he swore and blew his whistle till another policeman some twenty yards along the way signalled that he’d heard and pointed towards the bridge.

  ‘Let me go to her,’ Maud said.

  ‘We’ll go across together,’ the policeman replied. ‘If one of us falls in a sink-hole, the other one has to try and drag ’em out. You’ll be soaked, you know.’

&n
bsp; ‘I don’t care.’

  Tanya took Maud in her arms and held her a moment. ‘You must come back to us, Maud. All will be well if you come back to us.’

  The tenderness in her voice made Maud’s throat tighten and she found she couldn’t reply.

  The officer took her arm and together they battled through the dark waters which showed parchment yellow where the light reached them till they reached the steps up onto the bridge. Maud was soaked to her waist and felt as if she was dragging the river up with her as her heavy wool skirt pulled and coiled around her legs. She looked up. There was someone else on the bridge now with Sylvie. Another policeman was standing some yards from her, to the north. He held his hands wide and low like a man trying to urge a dangerous animal back into its cage. Maud and her guardian approached from the south.

  ‘Good evening, Maud,’ Sylvie said lightly, though she was still looking at the other man.

  ‘Sylvie.’

  ‘She has a gun,’ the officer to the north said, his voice calm but loud enough for them all to hear.

  Sylvie nodded. ‘Yes, I do. That is true. I do have a gun.’ She held it up into the lamplight to show them, clasping it between her two hands, a finger around the trigger, but somehow relaxed. ‘Gentlemen, I wish to have some private conversation with this lady. Would you be so kind as to retreat a little way?’

  ‘I shan’t leave you with a gun pointing at you, miss,’ the man on Maud’s side said. She looked at him. He had a kind face, and was probably not much older than herself. There was no sign of fear on him. Only determination. She had a sudden vision of him walking down the Champs Elysées with his girl on his arm.

  ‘Please do as she says,’ she told him, and when he hesitated, ‘I promise she can’t hurt me. Let me talk to her.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘I know you don’t.’

  He looked into her face and she met his gaze steadily, evenly.

  ‘If she aims,’ he said, ‘don’t think, just run.’ He nodded to his colleague to the north and they both stepped backwards slowly a yard or two, while Maud advanced until she was in the middle of the bridge and facing Sylvie. Morel’s wife looked lovely in the lamplight. She was wearing a dark blue dress, close-fitting, with her fur-lined coat open over it. The snow fell silently onto her hair and shoulders, and along the railings either side of her while the river lunged and roared beneath them.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll shoot you?’

  Maud realised she had never thought of this moment. She had wanted Morel to suffer, imagined him suffering. When she thought of Sylvie it was only in the past. Sylvie walking in Père Lachaise, Sylvie stretched out reading in the drawing room, Sylvie lighting a cigarette and laughing. Sylvie stepping over her body. She looked just as beautiful as ever, just as graceful, as kind. Maud thought of how it had felt when she had rested her head on Maud’s shoulder, rested her light weight on her arm.

  ‘How many times can you kill one person, Sylvie? I think if you are holding the gun, the bullets would pass straight through me.’

  ‘Careful, Maud. You’ll make me curious to try. Strange. You were such a slight breath of a girl, tiptoeing about. You seem different.’

  ‘What can I possibly fear now?’ Maud asked.

  The slightly mocking smile fell from Sylvie’s lips and she looked sideways and down into the waters surging just below the bridge, their suck and groan as they pushed through the arches, carrying their loot of debris, planks and barrels with them. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nodded and continued to watch the waters while she spoke. ‘He shut me in at Rue de Seine – it took forever for the concierge to hear me. I ran out after him, and all I saw was you and your friends being led away from Cour de Rohen. I followed you to those rooms. I hoped perhaps he’d been arrested, but there were no police. I went back to the cellars and saw they were flooded.’ She paused as if trying to work out some impossible puzzle and her voice was wondering when she said, ‘I couldn’t calm him. I could always calm him – but not today. He thought he had seen your ghost, that you were in league with the river and coming to take him. He didn’t say “The river is flooding the cellars”; he said, “She is doing it – She is coming to take them. To take us”. Oh, I told him he was wrong, that he was imagining it. But he grew nervous when we couldn’t sell the diamonds and you began to appear to him. You never showed yourself to me, did you?’

  ‘No. Only him. It was he who threw me in the river like rubbish.’

  ‘Yes, but the plan was mine.’

  The words struck Maud in the centre of her being. It seemed to smash some dam inside her – and her feeling was one of release. Grief flowed from her and the river carried it away.

  ‘Have you ever loved anyone, Maud? Other than me? Someone who might love you back?’

  Maud shook her head.

  ‘You cannot know then, what it is like to love someone and not be able to save them. The pain of that! It leaves you breathless.’

  ‘I think I do know what that feels like, Sylvie.’

  She looked up at her under her long lashes and smiled suddenly, sadly. ‘I understand. Yes, perhaps you do.’ She lifted her chin and looked along the river behind Maud. ‘Paris is beautiful tonight. All this water, the way the light swims in it. Notre Dame behind you, covered in snow. It looks like a palace. Oh Maud! I loved him so very much, my handsome man. It’s strange. I knew he was dead before you told me. The moment I lost sight of him as he ran up the street this afternoon I felt my heart stop, my soul just snap out of existence, like turning off an electric light. I knew I’d never see him again.’

  The water from Maud’s dress was pooling beneath her like an extra, deeper shadow in the lamplight. Sylvie made a noise halfway between a sob and a laugh. ‘Such a little thing. A tiny movement of the wrist. A drop more laudanum and you’d have drowned, just disappeared, and he would be alive and we would be happy. Damn it.’ She tilted her head back and blinked rapidly, not letting her tears fall. ‘I was such a fool! I was afraid you would taste it in the wine. I should have known I could have added the whole bottle and you’d have drunk it all down like a good girl and thanked me. Always so grateful! So helpful! It made it so easy. I couldn’t believe we had found such a sweet fool. And now here you are to judge me. Perhaps you do look like a ghost, after all. Perhaps you are dead. Surely my dear Maud would be leading me to safety by now? But you just stand there and judge. Not like nice helpful Maud at all. Are you real? I’d like to know.’

  Maud looked straight into her blue-grey eyes: they were calm, curious. She took in the curve of her waist, the tight cut of her dress across her shoulders, the lace on her chest, the curls of blond hair over her small ears, the single pearl earrings, caught like globes of smoke. ‘I am Maud Heighton. You and your lover tried to kill me, but I lived. I told the Countess what you had done, and we stopped you selling the diamonds. I let Morel see me, hoping it would make him mad. And yes, I do judge you.’

  Sylvie swallowed, then licked her lips and took a great shuddering breath. ‘What a beautiful night this is.’ She looked up into the sky. ‘Oh, the glory of it! Very well, Maud. You have that right. Judge away.’

  She lifted the gun and placed it between her teeth and pulled the trigger. A mist of red appeared in the air behind her. Maud lurched forward, but while the sound of the shot was still cracking in the air, Sylvie’s body crumpled and fell backwards into the black waters. The policemen ran forward from either side of the bridge and Maud collapsed onto her knees. The officer who had helped her across, crouched at her side. ‘Are you injured?’

  She shook her head and he left her. She couldn’t breathe. It was as if the air stuck in her mouth. She put her hands on the ground in front of her and tried desperately to make her lungs open and find air. The world swam and quivered around her; whistles blew and somewhere she could hear Tanya screaming. With an enormous effort, she struggled to her feet and ran from the bridge, lurching through the
vile waters, until she felt her friends’ arms around her again, gathering her up and pulling her free for the second time.

  When Paul Allardyce returned to his rooms that night he found they were filled with sleeping women. They had made nests for themselves on his sofa and chairs. His fiancée was asleep on his second-best greatcoat by the stove and her maid snored next to her on an armchair, using his steamer trunk as a foot stool. He crept through them and collapsed on his bed, where he slept dreamlessly in his dirty clothes.

  CHAPTER 24

  27 January 1910

  The river had almost reached Boulevard Saint-Germain and the cellars were filling on both sides of the street. It was easy for Sasha to deliver some note of pretended appeal to the concierge which sent her a safe distance into Rue Mazarine. Dawn was still an hour away when Maud walked briskly through the hall and up to the first floor. The door was unlocked, as she had thought it would be. One key was still in the cellar in Morel’s coat, the other belonged to the concierge and would never leave the ring on her belt. The image of the moment Sylvie pulled the trigger kept appearing in her mind like the pulse under her skin, the explosion of red under the lamplight.

  She let herself into the flat and flicked on the electric light. The smashed vase on the floor reminded her of Mrs Prideux. She walked through the drawing room to Christian’s room. It was the part of the apartment she hadn’t entered before. The bed was unmade, an angry twist of blankets and sheets. His sickbed. His desk was up against the right-hand wall, cherrywood and roll-topped. She pushed it open and began to make her way carefully through the papers. She looked in herself for grief or doubt, for guilt, but could not find anything so simple. She was bruised, hollowed-out, and her heart seemed to beat slowly – an exhausted animal finally allowed sight of home, but not there yet. Whatever she had to feel about the Morels would come later – slowly, she hoped. Home. Not Alnwick, but Richmond or Darlington perhaps. Somewhere honest with wide landscapes. Countryside you could walk through for days on end where the light changed because of the moods of the sky, not the electric glare of Paris. Peace. There she would be strong enough to feel, let these bruises heal. The Quaker families in Darlington had built libraries large enough to keep Yvette happy for months, and James had mentioned there was a lady doctor in town. He seemed to approve of her. If the town could accept a lady doctor they would probably accept a female painter and a Frenchwoman.