Adam asked whether hide-and-seek had not led to the odd fumble? ‘Where did you hide? In the schoolroom cupboard?’
‘Fumbles are healthy. They teach you that girls are as manageable as your pony. When I’m ready I shall marry one who is neither a biter nor a bolter and has a little tin.’
‘And – love?’
Keogh had shrugged. ‘Think small, Adam. Even in politics quite small reforms can break cycles of outrage and despair. There’s a big thought, so don’t say I lack vision. Anyway I know you’re really a practical chap. You ran Dr Blanche’s hospital. Help us with ours.’
Which was how Adam had come to find himself teaching Cait and a straggle of other girls thought to be promising and recommended by their parish priests. ‘We’ll take things slowly,’ Keogh had decided, and warned against expecting too much since, with regard to hygiene, the girls could have been living in the year dot. ‘People who have had to carry water from the well are thrifty with it. They can’t get used to the tap.’
This reminded Adam of the great water barrels which in his childhood had been carted from a nearby stream and on bright days leaked a silvery trail. The house now did have a tap and a water closet, but still no bathroom, only portable tubs which could be set up wherever one liked – preferably near a fire – and filled with water boiled on the kitchen range. Labour was cheap.
‘Accuracy isn’t Cait’s strong point either,’ Keogh went on. ‘She measures medicines by the pinch.’
When asked why local ladies – those good at organizing raffles – could not have taught her these things, he hedged. ‘I suppose,’ he admitted in the end, ‘the quick way of saying it is that Cait has a bad name.’
Well, Adam now knew why.
Unknown to himself, Keogh’s own name wasn’t too good. Neighbours were unsettled by the energy he put into raising funds to start a fish-canning plant or organize co-operative creameries. Change, to owners of mouldering and encumbered estates, could mean only collapse.
‘So you,’ one of these had challenged, buttonholing Adam in the village street, ‘work with the doctor? I’m told he thinks sharing in egg-production will teach us brotherly love. Fraternité, the French call it, don’t they? Much good it did them!’ And cackled at the century-old irony.
Adam was moved to wonder how much fraternity he would have found in the French parish he had once hoped to run. An old classmate, visiting him in Passy some time before, had amused the table with tales of the Breton one where he, as its curé, had had to take on the duties of a sage. Last winter, when the midwife broke her leg, he had been called upon to deliver a baby. How, Dr Blanche asked with professional interest, did that go? Not too badly, said the curé, thanks to advice from the local vet. Advice only, mark! Letting the vet do the job himself might have troubled his parishioners’ faith.
‘So what have you been up to?’ he asked Adam who, being loath to say that he had possibly damaged two women, denied having been up to anything.
The question bothered him though. How, while in love with Danièle, had he become entangled with Cait? To be fair, the entangling had been mostly her doing – and Cait in hot pursuit was hard to thwart. At Christmas, for instance, when Keogh invited people in, engaged a fiddler and had bunting strung through what would soon be the women’s ward in the new hospital, she had an avid gleam to her eye and kept pressing Adam to dance.
‘People wouldn’t like it,’ he had to remind her, ‘I am in mourning.’
‘Ah yes!’ She blushed.
She herself could not presume to mourn. That would have been an insult to Mrs Gould whose bid to make off with the piano must, since Keogh’s disclosures, be seen in a different light.
Smoothing feathers ruffled in that wrangle had led Adam into a dalliance with Cait, and this, in turn, to some pique when he failed to follow it up. She had clearly thought he would when she turned up on his doorstep bearing a house-warming gift.
‘Congratulations! You’re in possession! Piano still here? Alleluia!’ Then, seeing a photograph of his mother which he had hung in the drawing room, she had cried with mock aggression, ‘At last! A friendly face!’
It was, both knew, remarkably like her own, and the perception, vivid with innuendo, made Adam wary. From then on he discouraged visits.
Then, just before leaving for Paris, he gave a dinner for a few neighbours and invited her. He did this on impulse, telling himself that there was safety in numbers and saw too late that the other guests – gentry and carriage folk – were surprised to see her sitting at table instead of waiting at it. Perhaps to discomfit them, she wore a startlingly elegant silk gown which was too low-cut for the occasion.
After dinner, her singing drew tributes. As she preened in her unsuitable dress, he recognized it as the one his mother was wearing in the photograph. Mrs Ross’s husband – a boozy colonel – cried ‘brava!’ and mumbled something about ‘old Gary’s fillies’. Cait was singing an encore when Keogh, who had driven her there, whispered to Adam that he had been called to a sick patient and must leave.
‘Can you see Cait home?’
‘Of course.’
But when the other guests had left, and Adam was making for the stables, she murmured, ‘I could stay.’
‘What about the maids?’
‘I’ll leave at first light.’
Naive? Or practised? He was tempted. ‘Let’s have a last brandy,’ he compromised, ‘for the road, then I’ll drive you back. You’re a lovely girl, but I can’t promise you anything.’
After which disclaimer, he let the drink ‘for the road’ prevent their taking it. She had, after all, been warned.
‘No need for promises,’ she murmured. ‘It’s a safe time.’
***
How much, Adam now wondered, had become known about this? During Adam’s visit, Bishop Tobin had seemed remarkably conversant with his affairs.
‘I hear that you and Con Keogh,’ Tobin had challenged, ‘ran a nurses’ training course! Busy bees the pair of ye! News travels fast in the wilds!’ Delight at welcoming Adam had to be tempered by teasing. ‘What do you think of my episcopal palace then?’
Smiling in self-mockery. The ‘palace’ was a roomy but shabby place which smelled of old, dampened tea-leaves – used for sweeping the floors – and equally damp red setter dogs. The dominant colour was mahogany. Tobin fussed pleasurably with wine, decanted two bottles, then asked whether Adam would keep pace with him if he opened a third or – why not? – a fourth? The occasion deserved to be toasted lavishly since, to a celibate, an old pupil’s return could be like that of a lost son.
‘So tell me about Keogh. I’d bet it was his idea that you charge trainees a fee! Six girls signed up, I’m told, whereas you’ll need only the one or maybe two for your little hospital. But the scandal that might attach to a man teaching one woman would not attach to his teaching seven! Hence the training course! Very practical and Protestant! Thrifty too! Isn’t it an odd thing that, though the sale of indulgences is said to have sparked off the Reformation, commerce is a Protestant speciality!’
‘What have you against Keogh?’ Adam asked.
‘Ask what he has against us! He says we infect our flocks with Mohammedan fatalism. But I say he’s the one fighting a holy war. Fear of Home Rule for Ireland puts the wind up chaps like him. They’re afraid we’ll take over. Hence the good works. Mark my words, when the Prods start those, it’s war by other means. Onward Christian soldiers! It’s good to have a Catholic like yourself working with him. Stake our claim!’
Talk had then turned to other things – la douce France and Tobin’s scrambled memories of Latin love verse which, he claimed, Adam used to take from his shelves and read on the sly. Since Adam had no such recollection, they argued agreeably, quoted inaccurately and sat up so late that the warming pan in Adam’s bed was stone-cold by the time he reached it, and the dawn chorus had begun. He shivered his way towards sleep and, on waking, found that the starched lace on his pillowcase had rubbed his neck raw, leavi
ng marks which looked like love bites. He wondered if the ascetic bishop went around with these and unknowingly gave scandal to Protestants?
***
‘Meuriot is uneasy at your visit. He thinks you’ll have trouble with the law.’
‘Should I stay somewhere else?’
‘No. I like having him uneasy. Shows I’m still in control.’
Returning to the maison de santé, Adam had found Blanche alone with a cigar and joined him for a stroll. The day was still warm, and a smell of freshly clipped box hedges hung in the air. Beyond the river, the sun reddened the metalwork of the Eiffel Tower, from the top of which, according to Maupassant, God had proclaimed him his bastard. Poor Guy. His mother, Blanche confided, had put his beloved yacht up for sale! His Bel-Ami. No doubt she thought of him as dead. Well, he might soon be.
The doctor too was feeling his mortality. ‘I’m seventy-two! It may be a race between myself and Guy.’ And indeed he looked evanescent. His eyelashes had faded, and his facial hair was like blown foam. He began to speculate about the police inquiry and the magistrat who wanted to see Adam. A pro forma precaution? Probably. ‘Politics interested them at first, but our poor friend had not been active lately and his and Father de Latour’s plan to launch a newspaper could hardly be called subversive.’ Latour, Blanche had heard, was going through some sort of crisis. His paper had lost money and was to fuse with one which had a different agenda. ‘They say the pope made a few contributions, then stopped. God’s vicar helps those who help themselves.’ A shrug. It could have been predicted. Moderation didn’t sell.
***
At table, there was some reminiscing about Guy’s flashes of brilliance when he first came.
‘It was the last flare of a dying lamp! You wouldn’t,’ Meuriot warned Adam, ‘want to see him now. He has more and more accesses of blindness.’
‘He who was so sharp!’
‘He was a luminary!’ Dr Grout, a fellow Norman, sighed loyally. ‘In fact,’ he reminded the others, ‘he used to be able to see in the dark! He was a nyctalops.’
‘And had keen vision for things which weren’t there!’
They discussed the use writers made of hallucinations, and how Guy had stimulated his by ether and other drugs.
‘First he took them for his migraines ...’
‘... then for stimulus.’
In their experience, the doctors agreed, writing was itself a drug. It had been that for Balzac, whose house was not a stone’s throw from this room, and for Nerval, who had been one of Blanche’s patients until he hanged himself on a lamp post.
‘Talking of not believing one’s eyes,’ said Meuriot, ‘I had a surprise visit this afternoon. Madame d’Armaillé is in Paris. It was you she hoped to see,’ he told Blanche, ‘but she couldn’t wait. She is here to see about letting her uncle’s apartment.’
So – Adam felt faint – his had not been a hallucination at all! The lady with osprey feathers had been she! When Dr Grout murmured something in his ear, he failed to understand and answered at random.
***
Next day he went to see the magistrate, a man, magnified by a vast desk, who wanted to know the source of the monsignor’s funds.
‘Belgium,’ Adam told him, ‘or possibly the Congo. The veteran Zouaves whose donations came through Sauvigny earned money in three continents. Once the papal state collapsed, twenty-three years ago, their swords were for hire.’
The other man said nothing, so Adam felt he should qualify this.
‘Mind, they were as likely to spend as to earn on these ventures. The monsignor thought them the least mercenary of mercenaries.’
The magistrate raised an eyebrow: one only, for a monocle was screwed into his other eye. It made him look exotic which, as the first Republican to confront Adam in an official capacity, was how Adam had expected him to look. He was civil though, and the interview was being conducted in a room with glazed bookshelves and soft armchairs.
‘Would you say,’ he asked, ‘that the monsignor hoped to change the world?’
‘Monsieur le Juge, his aim was to effect a reconciliation between the clergy and the Republic.’
‘A sane goal!’ The monocle flashed. Reflections from a yellow blotter gave it a ring of colour like a blackbird’s eye.
Mindful of Blanche’s anxieties, Adam observed that the line between sanity and folly could be hard to draw.
‘And did the vicomte – a man viscerally opposed to the ralliement – expect his funds to be used to promote it? Might there have been a second, secret, very different plan? How can you be sure, Monsieur Gould, that you were fully in Belcastel’s confidence?’
Adam said that, though he could not be sure that he knew all the monsignor’s plans, he would have had an inkling of any practical ones.
‘Mmm!’ The monocle was removed and polished so that its gleam grew even more like that of a blackbird scouting for a worm. ‘Did you know,’ came an abrupt query, ‘that his will leaves that money to you?’
‘Dr Blanche told me.’
Cheated of his surprise, the magistrate pressed his lips together. ‘It is a lot of money.’
‘Oh, I doubt if he meant me to keep it. Leaving it to me was probably a provisional shift. In the end he must have meant it to go to a good cause.’
‘There is evidence to the contrary, Monsieur Gould. This’ – the magistrate produced a letter – ‘is addressed to you, but, in the circumstances, we had to read it.’
Adam took the unfolded paper bearing a few lines penned in the monsignor’s characteristically dashing script. The down strokes were as fat as pickets.
Dear Adam,
My advice is to use ‘our’ funds to do what private good you can. Aspire modestly. Don’t try to help any cause. Most overween. Even Pope Leo overweens when he talks of making France happy.
The more ambitious one’s good intentions, the likelier, I have come to think, they are to backfire. Keeping the money from the madcap clutch of the quixotic Sauvigny is in itself a useful act.
Pray for me,
Belcastel
Looking up, Adam saw that the magistrate had his hand out for the letter.
‘We have to keep it, Monsieur Gould. The case has ramifications. Keep us notified about any change of address.’
Adam handed it back and left. He wondered whether Belcastel had died in a state of despair.
On the outer stairway, he recognized a bony silhouette in a once-white cassock. It belonged to a morose-looking Latour, who seemed to have aged ten years and was as bent as the letter C. As they clasped hands, Adam said, ‘I was thinking of poor Belcastel and took you for his ghost.’
The priest didn’t smile. ‘That is what I am,’ he claimed, ‘a kind of ghost going to see le juge! It sounds sinister, does it not?’
‘It sounds like the Dies Irae!’
Latour nodded glumly. However, while labouring up some more stairs, he called back over his shoulder, ‘Are you free on Saturday? Come and dine at the monastery. The food is bad, but we can exchange our news.’ And on he trudged, raising stiff knees with visible difficulty.
***
Outside, a swollen river heaved along both sides of the Ile de la Cité. At the Pont Neuf the divided current licked the tops of the arches, then flowed together at the apex of the small place on the other side. Under a surface glitter, it was thick with mud. A drift of tawny ducklings dissolved in a blur, while a swan, magnifying itself, held its wings half-erect. In amused imitation, Adam thrust back his elbows, arched his chest and raced down the quay.
Crossing the Pont Royal to the Left Bank he found he was heading for the rue St Guillaume and the apartment of the vicomte de Sauvigny. High walls revealed the tips of trees whose flowers flew like pennants. Some had fallen. Galaxies of a bloom, whose name he didn’t know, were being shattered. Spring’s gaudy havoc raged unchecked.
He must see Danièle.
For half a year now he had been restraining himself, and restraint bred paradox. It recal
led notions such as the one that the last shall be first. The Christian storyline laid the ground for romance.
He told himself that he needed to see her if only to say goodbye. She owed him that. He would not press – well, not hard – for more. But was reminded of the delirium that came from betting a hundred to one on the racetrack.
Every so often you had to nourish your soul’s dream.
He wondered whether to lurk in her street. Wait? But a biting wind drove him to knock on her door and tell the unfamiliar manservant who opened it that he had a message from Dr Blanche for Madame d’Armaillé. The man put out a hand.
‘There is no letter. I am to tell her by word of mouth.’
He wondered if she might guess that a message delivered like this might be from him. Maybe she had had him in mind when calling on Dr Blanche? She had, after all, turned up unannounced, therefore on impulse. And her impulse had touched off his.
He was shown into an anteroom where he stood for minutes. Then, behind him he heard a woman’s voice.
‘Monsieur Gould?’ It was the maid, Félicité. ‘What a turn-up!’ Nodding and marvelling. ‘Do you remember me?’
‘Félicité?’
‘That’s right.’ She looked at him assessingly and was clearly enjoying the moment. What happened now must depend on her. Sure enough, her next remark was, ‘Madame won’t see you if I say it’s you.’
‘How can I persuade you not to?’ Laughing. A douceur, he thought and wondered how much.
‘I am not looking for money.’ Delicately, her upper lip twitched like a rabbit’s. This, in someone so self-possessed, was touching. ‘Not that I’d say “no” to it.’
Both smiled.
He produced some notes. Was it more sordid to bribe a maid, he wondered, or to refuse her?
She plucked a largish one from his hand. ‘This is fair.’ She folded his fingers over the rest. ‘But you must promise not to upset her. It’s easily done these days, so don’t ask her questions or argue. She needs comforting. If you can do that, do. But only if she wants you to. Understood?’
Adam Gould Page 28
