by JH Fletcher
Rouen it would have to be, then, and hope that the military did not track her down. Not that it would make any difference to them. Once Claudette was out of the city, she would cease to be their problem.
Doing it, of course, would be another matter.
‘Best if we go by the river,’ Alain said. ‘We shall need a boat.’
The two women stared at each other, at him. What did any of them know about boats?
‘Jean Louis has one,’ Alain told them. ‘He uses it for fishing.’
Jean Louis, their landlord and the biggest rogue in Paris.
‘Can we trust him?’ Eugénie wondered.
Alain laughed. ‘I wasn’t planning to ask him.’
‘Steal it?’
‘Borrow it, rather. He’ll get it back, eventually.’
Jean Louis was not one of nature’s givers. ‘If he finds out, he’ll murder you.’
‘Have to make sure he doesn’t, won’t we?’
‘It’s a terrible risk.’
‘Got any better ideas?’
That was the trouble; she hadn’t. The river probably was their best bet. Yes, it would be dangerous, but less so than the roads. And for Claudette to stay with them would be the most dangerous thing of all, for the lot of them. No, Alain was right. Jean Louis’s boat it would have to be.
‘When do you think she should go?’
‘Tonight. If we make it three o’clock, there shouldn’t be anyone about.’
You hope.
‘Do you know where he keeps it?’
‘Yes.’
With Claudette out of the way, they would be safe. Eugénie should have felt pleased, but was far from it.
‘You’re not planning to go downriver with her?’
‘Of course.’ His look challenged her. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said.
It made her mad. Alain’s responsibilities were here, in this room, but she knew it was no use trying to talk him out of it. From his expression she could see exactly how he was thinking. He was the gallant knight coming to help the damsel in distress. Behind his stern expression, the image delighted him, and the ego that had been bruised so often by his inadequacies as a painter.
She was helpless in the face of such romantic nonsense, yet could not let it pass without saying something. ‘If they catch you, they’ll be here next.’
They both knew it yet, as always with Alain, bravado won the day. ‘They won’t catch me.’
Wearily, Eugénie gave up the fight.
So be it.
3
By the time Eugénie had finished feeding the baby, it was almost midnight. Only three hours remained, yet the prospect seemed interminable.
They lay down, Claudette in her usual place on one side of the room, Eugénie and Alain on the other, the children in between. Alain blew out the candle. Eugénie closed her eyes, but sleep was impossible.
You’re not planning to go downriver with her?
I’ll be back.
Easy to say.
She could not put into words or even thoughts the doubts that overwhelmed her now. She knew only that the seconds of their life were leaking, leaking, that now was a place diminishing rapidly, like a light disappearing into darkness. Dread filled her, yet there was nothing she could do about it. They were committed.
Only a few feet of darkness separated them from Claudette’s invisible presence but, under the pressure of the rushing minutes, Eugénie cared nothing about that. One thing alone concerned her, that she should experience to the full what time she had left with this man who had shared the last five years of her life.
Which meant only one thing.
She laid her hand upon him, felt him stir. Moved her hand. He was at once still, in his stillness listening, wondering, waiting.
Her hand moved.
‘No…’ His whisper an infinitesimal flicker of air amid the darkness.
‘Yes.’ Her response was equally faint, yet fiercer by far.
‘We can’t.’
‘We can.’
‘She’ll hear.’
‘No, she won’t.’
Probably he was right, but she was beyond caring, was determined, utterly. Knew only that she had to get him to the point where he cared as little as she.
Let Claudette hear, she thought. Let her listen, if she wants. I have a life, too.
Buttons, the stealthy parting of cloth. The first touch of flesh, naked beneath her fingers. Alain, participating now, cautiously at first, then less so, then eager. As eager as she. Both of them seeking the union of the flesh, the spirit, the culminating moment of all that had been their lives, of all the life that remained to them now.
Until at last … At last.
Oh.
And so, moving quietly from the peak, in tranquillity together. In peace together. In a sense of burgeoning kindness together. Kindness towards him, herself, all the world. Even towards Claudette, lying in fear and alone on the other side of the room. So far and so close.
‘Claudette? Are you awake?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want to come here? Beside me?’
Silence, at that. Then the sound of movement. The girl was there, in the darkness.
‘Lie down here. By my side.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can.’
Her heart going out to her, belatedly but, hopefully, not too late.
‘Come …’
Uncertainly, she obeyed. Lay beside her, plank-stiff. Eugénie put her arm around her.
‘You’ll be all right …’
Lulling the child that she was, lulling herself, now repenting her earlier cruelty.
Claudette sobbing. ‘I’m frightened …’
What self-restraint she had gave way, pierced by Eugénie’s unexpected kindness. Eugénie held her, weeping, to her breast and felt whole and, for the first time, hopeful that things might work out after all.
While Alain slept.
At three they rose. Silently they got ready, faces pale in the candle flame. Speaking softly, when they spoke at all, as though afraid of awakening the night.
‘Well …’
‘Yes.’
The lock clicked as Alain turned the key; the door opened upon a breath of air.
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
His plan was to accompany Claudette downriver and then come back to Paris. Where Eugénie and the children awaited him. Where life, uncertain but infinitely precious, awaited him.
‘Go, then.’
A last embrace: of Alain and the girl, who hugged her back. Who, it seemed, had forgiven her. She hoped so; it was important that they should all forgive each other. Forgive even the soldiers who persecuted them, although that might be impossible.
Even Degas, she told herself, and smiled secretly. Only a saint could forgive that difficult, disagreeable man.
They went out. Eugénie stood by the half-open door. One final pressure of her husband’s fingers on hers. One glimpse of his shadow, moving down the stairs. Moving away. She knew, and would not permit herself to know.
Gone.
She turned, went swiftly back inside the room. She tidied her hair, went to the closet, took out a packet that she secured inside the bodice of her dress. Finally, she roused Aline.
‘Wake up, baby …’
The child stood swaying, eyes as round as owls’, while Eugénie dressed her. Then it was Marie’s turn. Thank God she was a good sleeper. She would need feeding before long but, for the moment, that could wait.
When all was ready, not giving herself time to think about the dangers of what she was about to do, she put Marie in a sling about her shoulders, took Aline’s tiny hand in her own, went out onto the dark stairway and closed the door softly behind her.
The children were with her, yet now, more than at any time in her life, she was alone. She tiptoed down the stairs to the street.
4
A quarter moon shone fitfully through clouds. Between the hunched shoulders of silent
buildings, the cobblestones gleamed, silver interspersed with black. On either side of the empty streets, the plane trees, heavy with new leaves, cast shadows that could have concealed an army. Everything was still, apparently at peace, yet was not. In a city under curfew, there would be foot patrols, guard posts, checkpoints. There would be watchful eyes and rifles, primed and ready, gleaming in the moonlight.
Alain and Claudette hugged the concealing shadows as they hurried down the hill towards the distant river where the cathedral pointed its lofty spire at the stars. The air stank of danger; so far, the silence had been broken only by the scuffle of their feet, the nervous panting of their breath, yet both knew that would change in an instant if the soldiers spotted them.
Alain glanced at the woman beside him. Even now, under the stress of mortal danger, his artist’s eye noted how the silver moonlight shone liquid in her eye, creating the contrast of black and white that, properly handled, would reproduce upon the canvas the exact impression of terror and flight.
His fingers itched. Perhaps, after he had got Claudette safely to her parents, he would have a go at it, see how it would come out. Yet another in the hundreds of projects that teemed in his brain, demanding to be expressed in a way that would bring them to life with all the immediacy that the new method of painting required.
Plein air: painting in the open air, instead of a studio. It would change art as absolutely as the Revolution had changed society eighty years before, create something new in the same way that the Commune had sought to create a world of brotherhood upon the ruins of the past. That hadn’t worked, but art would succeed where the Commune had failed.
Alain had no time for this crap about the Brotherhood of Man — you didn’t change human nature so easily — yet could not avoid a tremor of regret that it should be so. Most people knew instinctively what was right; why was it so difficult to put it into practice? Why, when self-sacrifice was universally admired, did the world’s rewards go to the mean, the avaricious, the cruel?
He had no idea, suspected no-one else had, either. The priests claimed to be experts, but Alain had no time for priests. Hypocrites, all. Where had they been while the Commune was trying to put into practice the principles that they preached? With the authorities, that was where, blessing with their soft hands the rifles that mowed down the innocent.
They reached the river and followed it westwards. Fear weighed ever more heavily upon them. Here they were in the open; at their side, the moon-bright water shone like a silver sword. If a patrol came upon them, there would be nowhere to hide. Yet already he could make out the distant warehouse and jetty where Jean Louis kept his boat. They hastened towards it, almost running in their eagerness to reach sanctuary.
With every step Alain spoke soft words of encouragement to Claudette and himself. ‘Once in the boat, we’ll be as safe as houses.’
They wouldn’t even need the oars, except to steer. The current would do their work for them. Or so Alain hoped. Unfamiliar with boats, he prayed it would be as easy as that. One way or the other, they would soon find out. They plunged into the shadow cast by the warehouse wall as the distant clock of Notre Dame struck the hour. As he had hoped, there was no-one about.
Anxiously they scurried along the jetty but could see no sign of a boat anywhere.
‘You said there would be one.’ Once again Claudette teetered on the brink of hysteria. ‘You promised … You’re sure we’ve come to the right place?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’ But had no idea where the boat might be.
‘Then do something!’
Exasperation prickled his skin. ‘Like what?’
Once more he stared about him, saw something he had not noticed before. Ten metres from the bank he could just make out a patch of shadow against the water. He stared with fresh hope. Was that it? Yes. He could see it clearly now. Out in the stream, a moored rowing boat bobbed bravely in the current. Whose boat it was he neither knew nor cared. Any boat would be fine, provided it had oars.
How to reach it was another question. There was no time to waste. No way could they escape downriver in daylight and that, at the end of May, could not be far off.
Once again, eyes hunting, he hurried along the jetty. He discovered a line secured to a stanchion. Quickly he unlashed it. Eyes fixed on the distant boat, he began to haul, breathing a sigh of relief as a ripple formed about its prow. He continued hauling; within minutes the boat was bobbing alongside the jetty’s wooden piles.
One question remained. Did it have oars? He checked anxiously. Saw two in the bottom of the hull. Thank God.
‘In you get …’
The boat rocked violently as Claudette clambered aboard and sat down.
He joined her, still clutching the mooring line. The hull bucked wildly; Claudette shrieked in alarm.
‘Move over!’
Somehow they sorted themselves out.
Alain picked up the oars. They might have been vipers, the way he held them.
‘Don’t just sit there,’ Claudette told him tartly. ‘Shove off!’
‘Right.’
His heart was banging like a drum. If they were having problems while they were still moored to the jetty, how would they manage in midstream, at the mercy of the current?
Alain looked at the girl. ‘Can you swim?’
‘No.’
Neither could he.
We’ll have to learn as we go along, he told himself. They’d better; their lives depended on it. Either way, it was too late to worry about it now. He took a deep breath, dropped the mooring line, rammed the butt of the oar against the jetty and pushed as hard as he could.
The current seized them, swung the tiny boat around — only now, with the river all around them, did they realise how tiny — and propelled them rushing downstream.
5
Eugénie’s cousin lived in a cottage at the end of a narrow, stinking lane. A kennel ran down the middle of the street; in the darkness it was hard to avoid, and Eugénie’s feet were soaked by the time she reached her destination.
All the way from the apartment, her heart had been in her throat, eyes watchful for patrols. At least that worry was now behind her; no soldier in his senses would come, by night, to a place like this. She knocked on the shuttered window and waited. Had to do it twice more before a grumbling voice inside the cottage showed that she had roused her cousin at last.
‘Who is it?’
‘Eugénie.’
‘It’s the middle of the night, for God’s sake!’
She was not going to stand in the street and argue about it. Instead knocked again, louder than ever, until at last, cursing beneath his breath, Michel opened the door.
‘What do you want?’
Nice greeting.
She shoved past him into the squalid interior. Only then, Aline still clutching her hand and Marie sleeping in the sling around her neck, did she answer him.
‘We want shelter.’
‘What’s wrong with your own place?’ He stared at her suspiciously. ‘Not in any kind of trouble, are you?’
‘Of course not.’ If she said anything else, he’d chuck them straight back out again. ‘I’ll tell you about it in the morning, all right? All I want now is somewhere to sleep.’
Michel wasn’t too bad a fellow, for all his grousing; he found them a patch of floor space and a rug to lie on. No doubt the rug was full of fleas, but she wasn’t going to let that worry her. Fleas or not, a rug was a lot better than the street, or the bare boards, come to that.
Through all the trauma of the night, Aline had said nothing. Now she did.
‘Where’s Papa?’
‘He had to go away. With the lady.’
‘Will he be back?’
‘Yes.’
Please God, she thought.
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
Aline shifted uncomfortably on the wretched rug. ‘I don’t like it here. I want to go home.’
‘Tomorrow.’
&n
bsp; Tomorrow, when all their problems would be resolved. Perhaps.
Michel went back to bed, still grumbling, taking the scrap of candle with him. Fumbling in the dark, Eugénie fed Marie and changed her, then lay down beside Aline and waited for sleep to come.
It took a long time.
She was angry. More, furious. Jealous, too, but that she would never admit, especially to herself.
One simple word stood in the darkness, etched in flame.
Why? The flame was black with fury. Why had Alain done what he had, endangering all of them? Why had he not kept the door, his ears, shut to the wailings of that wretched child?
She knew the answer; oh yes. For vanity. Even, perhaps, for lust.
Very well. If he came back … Good. If not, she would not sacrifice herself or the children to his conceit. Which was why she had come to this rat hole. In case the soldiers went to the apartment to look for them.
At last she slept, or at least dozed, disturbed by fleas, by floorboards armoured with splinters, by dreams of blood and gunfire and flight. Four hours later, she awoke to a morning grey with rain, with no way of finding out whether Alain was safe or not.
6
By daybreak they had left the city behind them. Empty fields lined the banks. The dangers of Paris were past, but others, even more formidable, remained. Alain and Claudette clung white-knuckled to the rowing boat’s sides as it swung to and fro in the grip of the current. Now it was light, the river was even more menacing than it had seemed in darkness. Breaking waves and crosscurrents were everywhere, while whole trees caked in yellow foam plunged upon its surface.
The original plan had been to let the current carry them all the way to Rouen, but they were no longer interested in anything like that. They had learned that water was for sailors; all they wanted was to get ashore as quickly as they could and finish the journey on foot, never mind how long that might take.
