Hannah and Clement squeezed into the chamber. Moving towards the table was impossible; they had to settle for a place beside a window. Hannah’s thoughts went to her drawing materials, stowed as always in her vivandière’s bag. This frantic scene was worthy of a study, but there wasn’t enough room even to raise a piece of paper before your face; and the National Guard were continuing to jam themselves in, clambering up on bookcases and sideboards. Hannah could no longer see the conference table, catching only occasional glimpses of Flourens’s wagging, oversized head as he sauntered around firing out more orders and ultimatums. She turned to the window; the day’s light was fading.
‘He’s arrested them,’ reported a tall man in front of her. ‘Colonel Flourens has arrested the provisional government for failing to resign. Blanqui’s accepting it. The mayors are to be summoned. We have a commune. By the devil, citizens, it’s done!’
The red guardsmen congratulated one another, making themselves believe it. Hannah was unconvinced; it couldn’t be this easy. More would be asked of them than a few bold words. Sure enough, before the celebrations had properly begun there was a new commotion over by one of the other windows. A battalion of loyalist militia had been sighted: they were cutting across the square towards the Hôtel, forcing the red guards back to the very steps of the building.
‘Les Batignolles!’ someone cried. ‘It’s the men of Les Batignolles, damn them, come to the aid of their false president!’
The shouting grew louder. A dozen men joined Flourens on the conference table, insisting that they be heard. It was proposed that Trochu be taken to the entrance of the Hôtel and held at rifle-point – prompting a fresh storm of disagreement and dispute.
‘Heavens, Han,’ muttered Clem, ‘will you just call your man over? It ain’t right, us being shut in here with these fanatics. We need to leave.’
‘You’re assuming that I’m here against my will.’
‘Come off it, you’re a bloody painter – an English painter, not some blasted French revolutionary. This is all absolutely ridiculous.’
Hannah began to bristle. ‘That doesn’t matter a jot. I believe in what’s being done here, Clem. The people of Paris were promised elections when the Empire fell. These have been denied – postponed indefinitely. They were promised decisive action against the enemy, and this has failed to happen too. It’s becoming plain that this provisional government, these so-called republicans, are going to betray the people and instate another dictator like Louis Napoleon. Paris needs this change. She needs these brave men.’
This little speech left Clem mystified. ‘What the deuce are you on about? Another Napoleon? Do you really think that’s likely?’
Hannah considered her brother in his fake ouvrier’s outfit and felt a stab of disdain. ‘Look at yourself, Clem, will you? Stuck in Paris because you followed Elizabeth on a whim. Tangled up in this action because you were panting after that slut Laure and got lost. Everything in your life is a damned accident. You believe in nothing – you commit to nothing. Why exactly should I heed your opinion?’
Clem met her denunciation with infuriating good humour. ‘You may be onto something there,’ he agreed, taking out a cigarette, ‘but don’t try to pretend that you’re a proper part of all this. I saw you in Elizabeth’s suite in the Grand – your reaction to this Leopard business. Your face when she instructed you to make his portrait.’ He lit up, adding his smoke to the dense cloud overhead. ‘It took me back to those times in London where she’d have you paint some old lecher of her acquaintance to further the cause of Mrs Pardy. Or that evening in Chelsea just before you left – the one with the wallaby.’
Hannah frowned; this, she thought, is the true meaning of family. Your relations can instantly revive your most dismal, humiliating moments, the moments you long to forget. Like no one else, they can remind you what a wretched creature you really are.
‘We only went to her because we had to,’ she replied. ‘Some use may as well be made of her presence in Paris. It’s Elizabeth you have to thank, you know, for all of this. She was responsible for that letter. I’m sure of it. It’s been her doing from the start – one of her stratagems.’
Clem coughed on his cigarette; he shook his head. ‘Impossible. No Han, you’re wrong there. I saw it arrive. I saw her open it. Elizabeth is no actress. We were at breakfast – she was so startled she dropped the bloody teapot. Leaves everywhere.’ He took another drag, the ember glowing in the murky chamber. ‘You’ve no proof, I suppose?’
Hannah admitted that she did not. ‘She knows a great deal about my life, Clem. Things she shouldn’t. As if she’s been studying me.’
‘Yes, well, that’s just Elizabeth, isn’t it? It pains me to say so, Han, but you’re being unfair. That letter came from someone in Paris. In Montmartre, like you originally thought.’
Hannah saw that he was right; this intensified her annoyance. ‘Do you know who, by any chance?’
Before Clem could answer those around them began to step aside. Jean-Jacques had noticed the twins from the conference table and come over, that famous black coat quickly clearing a path through the militia. Hannah’s irritation lifted, dispersing in the smoke. He embraced her and laid his forehead briefly against hers. Never had he done such a thing in public; our situation, she thought, must be serious indeed. His skin was cool despite the room’s choking heat, a single bead of sweat rolling down the channel of his scar. He gave Clem a fleeting look of distaste – the kind you might direct towards a drunk who’d strayed into a library.
‘This is no place for you,’ he said. ‘Either of you.’
‘What’s happening?’ Hannah asked. ‘Is there really to be a commune?’
‘There has been some overstatement. We are negotiating. We want municipal elections, which will surely lead to a commune.’ Jean-Jacques glanced at the window and the ranks of loyalist militia outside; they’d come to a halt and were standing ready, waiting for an order. ‘I don’t like this, though. They’re trying to hold us here. Something is wrong.’
Hannah straightened her tunic, squeezing the material to stop herself trembling. ‘They’re going to retake the building.’
‘You must leave. There will be arrests. If you are caught, as a foreigner, you’ll be accused of spying.’
‘I want to stay,’ Hannah protested. ‘I’ll fight them if I must. I want—’ I want to stay with you.
‘They’ll put you before a firing squad.’ Jean-Jacques touched her cheek with his good hand; his eyes were black in the gloom. ‘I could not forgive myself if you were to be hurt because of this.’
‘I don’t—’
‘I can take you as far as the square outside. Go somewhere they would not think to look. Stay hidden for a few days.’
Hannah managed a nod. ‘Very well. A few days.’
‘What now?’ asked Clem; his dalliance with Laure Fleurot had plainly not improved his French. ‘What are we to do?’
‘Your wish has been granted,’ Hannah told him curtly. ‘We’re leaving.’
Jean-Jacques led them back to the summit of the grand staircase. The revolutionary clamour of earlier had subsided, the central courtyard taking on the character of a rowdy tavern, with laughter, songs and drinking. They were halfway down, crossing the landing, when the jollity around them was suddenly disturbed. There were shouts of alarm; the sound of doors being flung open; the thunder of boots somewhere below, in the base of the building. Jean-Jacques increased his pace, moving onto the courtyard floor.
‘This is it,’ he declared to everyone around him. ‘They are coming for us. It is time for us to show these bourgeois that we are the true men of Paris.’
Regular infantry began to appear from behind the staircase, red and white stripes emblazoned upon their dark blue tunics, beating people back with their rifles. The crowd dissolved at once, civilian and militiaman alike flying in every direction.
Jean-Jacques did his best to rally them, pointing at the staircase. ‘To the top of the stairs!�
� he cried. ‘Form a line, like you’ve been taught! Ready yourselves!’
Some of the red guardsmen obeyed, loping past Hannah and Clement, fumbling with their guns. ‘They’re coming in through a damned tunnel,’ one of them yelled, ‘a tunnel in the cellars! There’s hundreds of the bastards!’
More and more soldiers were entering the courtyard, like a torrent of seawater flooding the hold of a sinking ship. Jean-Jacques got the Pardy twins to the double doors and then leaned in to kiss Hannah farewell; it was quick, three seconds only, but she felt it throughout her body, in every pore and strand of hair, down to the soles of her feet. By the time she’d opened her eyes again he was already striding back towards the stairs. The two sides were mounting up, the reds and the regulars, massing in formless gangs at either end of the grand staircase. Insults filled the air. Cartridges were loaded into rifles; stocks fitted into shoulders. In the middle stood Jean-Jacques and a civic official of some kind, both of them unflinching and stern, commencing a heated altercation. Hannah watched from the doors, faint with dread. You are about to see him die, she thought, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. For ten seconds nothing happened, besides more shouting; then twenty; then a full half-minute.
‘Time to go, Han,’ said Clem at her elbow, his voice quavering. ‘Now or bloody never.’
Hannah turned away sharply and hastened from the Hôtel. Out in the evening she waited to hear the fusillade – the cascade of gunshots that would signal her lover’s demise. Still nothing came. The loyalist National Guard had received their order and were slowly closing in. She went left, towards the river, her brother close behind.
A squad peeled off to apprehend them. ‘Stop!’ cried their sergeant. ‘Stop there!’
‘They think I’m one of you,’ said Clem. ‘They think I’m a bloody red!’
‘That’s a risk you run, Clement,’ Hannah snapped, ‘when you attend a socialist demonstration in working man’s clothes.’
Their hurried walk became a sprint, across the quay and onto the Pont d’Arcole. Hannah heard a huff and a scraping thud: Clem had stumbled, falling sprawled out across the pavement. She shouted his name with a mixture of dismay and frustration. Three loyalist guardsmen were on him, kicking eagerly. Dashing back, she pushed one of his attackers into the gutter and took a determined swing at another, her fist connecting with the man’s ear.
‘Red bitch!’ he grunted, his arm flailing. ‘You’ll get yours!’
A second squad arrived from the square, joining the man she’d struck as he advanced on her. The ultras liked to say that the militia from other districts were nothing but soft bourgeois – fat, cowardly shopkeepers waiting out the war, full of brave utterances but secretly very pleased with the provisional government’s passive stance. These men, however, were not at all soft or fat: they looked more like railway workers or market-porters, definitely not to be trifled with. Poor Clem was lying there like an empty coal sack. If Hannah stayed she’d be beaten or worse. They’d arrest her; they’d try to execute her. Her nerve failed. She started running again.
The life of a plein-air painter – carrying easels up hills and across large sections of the city – had made Hannah strong and fast. The guardsmen couldn’t catch her; she was even extending her lead as she reached the Ile de la Cité. This island, Jean-Jacques had once said, was the oldest part of Paris, the bud from which the rest had flowered. In recent years Louis Napoleon’s planners had razed its winding medieval streets, setting down an ordered grid in their place, as they had done to so much of the city; the cathedral of Notre-Dame, its jagged profile jutting up ahead, was almost all that remained. Hannah headed for the nearest building – the Hôtel Dieu. Four storeys high and plain, there was a bright light on its river-facing side that threw a deep shadow over the rest. She slipped around a corner into absolute darkness. Her pursuers, losing sight of her, soon turned back.
She leaned against a wall and put her face in her hands. Everything was in ruins. The red coup had been a disaster. What was going to happen to Jean-Jacques now – to her brother? Where could she possibly go where the provisional government’s men wouldn’t find her?
What was she going to do?
The door opened inwards, pressing Hannah against a framed print of a famous locomotive. Monsieur Besson walked through, reading that morning’s copy of the Gazette Officielle. The aérostier noticed her at once; the room, tucked beneath a girder at the top of the Gare du Nord, was so tiny that he could hardly do otherwise. He stood still for a few moments, the folded newspaper lowering slowly in his hand. Like many men in Paris he had put away his razor, allowing a thin dark beard to form around his moustache. He tossed the Gazette onto his cluttered desk and removed his hat. Hannah noticed that he was only an inch or two taller than she was.
‘The riot,’ he said. ‘The occupation of the Hôtel de Ville. You were involved. They’re after you.’
‘It was not a riot, Monsieur. We had to act before the new Prussian army arrives from Metz. We—’ Hannah stopped herself. This was not the way to secure the aérostier’s help. ‘I apologise for creeping in like this.’
‘How did you do it, exactly?’
‘I forced the window of the lost property office and found my way up.’ She paused. ‘Your name is chalked on the door.’
‘You’re quite the housebreaker, Mademoiselle Pardy, I must say.’
‘I need to hide. I can’t go home, or to my mother. I thought of you – of this place. Nobody knows that we are acquainted.’
Monsieur Besson closed the door behind him, hanging his hat on a peg. ‘We are acquainted, Mademoiselle?’
‘We’ve spoken a couple of times. In the lanes, back in Montmartre. And I’ve seen you at the launches of your balloons.’
He didn’t react. The devotion to Hannah identified by Jean-Jacques was nowhere to be seen. Right then, in fact, it seemed entirely possible that he might eject her – even alert the authorities.
‘You came to the Club Rue Rébeval that night.’
‘I remember. I still have bruises.’
Hannah’s cautious smile disappeared. ‘I halted it as soon as I could. Please believe me, Monsieur. If I—’
‘Do you imagine that I went to that meeting for you?’
This question was a touch too abrupt. There is Monsieur Besson’s love for me, Hannah thought: an awkward, burdensome thing that keeps starting into view despite his best efforts to hide it. He’d obviously been worrying that he’d revealed himself with his foolhardy behaviour in Belleville. A pained look crossed his face; he knew that he’d just made it worse.
‘The notion never entered my mind,’ she said.
The aérostier went to the office’s single, rounded window, staring out at the early morning sky. ‘I was there, Mademoiselle, to hear what the radicals were debating. To get an idea of their intentions. I was curious.’
‘Yet you did not simply listen, Monsieur Besson, did you? You made a rather prominent contribution.’
He bowed his head, bringing it close to the glass. ‘I didn’t plan to do that. My anger got the better of me. I couldn’t stand in that hall and be accused of spying. Those people speak of Paris as if everyone within the wall was a socialist. As if—’
Monsieur Besson was growing angry again now. Hannah had wanted to ask him about what had happened afterwards, what he’d said to her in that alley, but decided to return the conversation to more immediate matters. ‘They arrested my brother last night,’ she interrupted. ‘He was caught on the Pont d’Arcole, just outside the Hôtel de Ville.’
The aérostier was taken aback; some sort of attachment had plainly formed between him and Clement over the past six weeks. ‘But he is no radical. He has no political sense at all that I have seen. How on earth could this have happened?’
‘An accident, of course – a mistake. Typical of Clem. Something to do with that damned cocotte.’ Hannah drew in a breath. ‘It’s being said that any foreigners apprehended by the government are to be shot.’
‘Dear God.’ Monsieur Besson ran a hand through his thick, short hair. ‘You must not worry about this,’ he said, trying to be reassuring. ‘There is much talk of shooting, of summary executions for minor crimes. It is heavily exaggerated. When this war finally ends we will no doubt discover that very few were actually put to death – that hardly any of the grand, bloody deeds laid claim to by the men of Paris were actually performed.’
There was a veiled reference here; Hannah regarded Monsieur Besson tentatively as he gestured for her to sit at his desk. He turned to his small fireplace, crouching down to scrabble beneath the grate, picking out crumbs of unburned coal and arranging them in a pyramid. This modest pile was supplemented with just two fresh lumps from the scuttle. The aérostier was rationing himself. Fuel was set to become scarce – which could lead to a terrible crisis indeed if the coming winter was as harsh as predicted. He twisted a piece of blotting paper, pushed it into the pyramid and lit it with a match. The glow of the fire spread over him, over the green rug beneath his knees, colouring the chilly, monochrome office.
Monsieur Besson rose from the hearth, edged around to the other side of the desk and opened a large entry book. ‘Are you quite sure that no one saw you come in?’
Illumination Page 18
