A Dark and Distant Shore (114 page)

He did what he could, but cash was short and everyone nervous of accepting foreign bank drafts, because no one knew how long the siege would continue or how much worse things would become. By the end of December, the ration was an ounce of horsemeat a day. Butter was forty francs a pound, if one could find it, eggs thirty francs a dozen, cheese no more than a memory, and vegetables scarce and unpalatable. Francis didn’t know what Juliana was earning, but he did know that the average Parisian wage was five francs a day.

The American embassy was well stocked, and Francis had no compunction about begging, but he couldn’t beg to the tune of one square meal a day, or even week. So when he took food to Juliana, he was careful to stay and make sure that she ate some of it herself, instead of giving it all to the child. She smiled a little sadly when he tried to talk about it, and said, ‘I’m not hungry, you know, and she needs it so much more than I do.’

It was clear to him that she was remembering her baby son, dead a dozen years ago because, she had said quietly to Francis one evening, she hadn’t taken proper care of him. He found her response to the siege infinitely touching, knowing that she must be reminded, every minute of every day, of what she had lived through at Lucknow.

But she said thoughtfully, ‘It’s not as bad as you might imagine, though when I first heard the word “siege” mentioned, I fainted. Flop! Just like that! I was in the salon at the time, and poor Monsieur Worth was quite put out. If this had been only a village, I couldn’t have borne it, because the resemblance would have been too close. But Paris is so big that one doesn’t feel closed in, and there are people about, and the guns aren’t just a few yards away and aimed personally at
you.
’
Incredibly, she giggled. ‘Besides, it hasn’t even been a hundred days yet! It’s scarcely worthy to be called a siege. And not even any cannonballs whisking the roof from over one’s head – pooh! Siege, indeed!’

He couldn’t let it rest at that. ‘All that might be true for someone else, but not you. It doesn’t go deep enough, my darling.’

‘Doesn’t it? Perhaps not. Very well, then, I suppose this siege is almost a release for me. Something inside me has come awake again. I was so useless in Lucknow, and afterwards I couldn’t feel anything at all, not for years, except a kind of dull shame at always being such a failure, always weak when others needed me. It was that, as much as anything, that made me leave Theo, although I left when I did because everything was so dreadful that I felt as if I were being confined to the depths forever, without any hope of becoming normal and human again. It was no better here, at first. Not until I had my little Christy, and then left Arsène, and began to stand on my own feet.’

She looked at Francis, her eyes almost pleading. ‘Can you understand? Every time I look at her, and see her well and healthy and high-spirited, a little more of my numbness drains away, not only because I love her, but because she is a proof that I
can
be strong after all. And working at the ambulance has shown me that it isn’t just a small, limited strength. I don’t cower any more, and I’ve begun to
feel
again.’ Smiling, she went on, ‘Not only for you, you see? But even yet, though only now and again, something does – you’re right – bring Lucknow back to me, quite suddenly and horribly. It’s usually something small, like the butcher offering me a slice of elephant trunk from the zoo animals, the other day. He must have thought I was mad, for I could feel my face crumpling up like a child’s, and I couldn’t speak.’

He knew, when the first Prussian shell burst inside Paris itself on January fifth, that this couldn’t be other than one of the terrible reminders for her. It was, and for the next few days things were even worse, because the shells began falling at a rate of three or four hundred a day, between the hours of ten at night and two or three in the morning. The guns were trained from the south, so none of them had sufficient range to reach the Right Bank, where Francis had his apartment. But Juliana lived off the rue St Jacques, and that was on the Left Bank and very much in the danger zone. The strain that had been absent from her face since soon after he had met her, returned, but when at first he begged her to move to the rue de la Tour des Dames, she refused. Savagely, he wondered whether she was trying to put her courage to the final test.

And then, quite suddenly, she gave in. In a kind of useless desperation, he had gathered together the materials for a private banquet, and climbed the stairs to her apartment, just under the attics, bracing himself to make her laugh about it. ‘What do you think the butcher offered me? Four parakeets and some donkey sausages for sixty francs. A mere bagatelle! So I began raking the other shops. Rat pie? I rejected it, although the charcutier swore it wasn’t a sewer rat but a fine, fat one from the brewery. A cat for eight francs? I said no, again. And then one of the roof hunters offered me three sparrows for six francs, and that was a bargain I couldn’t resist! Then I saw a woman with a hen under her apron, and demanded to know how much she would take for it. “Take for what?” I hauled it out by the neck and said, “For this, of course!” I won’t tell you what we settled for, but I marched off to Roos’s with my three sparrows, my hen, and some butter and a half baguette I’d managed to extract from the embassy, and had it all prepared. So here you are, my darling – an exquisite, if truffleless
salmis de poule et passereaux à la
God-knows-what! Can you heat it up?’

Afterwards, without much hope, he said again, ‘Won’t you come and share my apartment with me? If it’s appearances that trouble you, I’ll move out!’

She looked at him, her eyes soft with love and a sadness that ravaged his heart. ‘Yes. Why not? I have been a poor mother to keep my child in such danger.’ She didn’t say that, this afternoon, it had taken her almost three-quarters of an hour to climb the stairs. Always, by the late afternoon, she was as weak as a kitten, although she could still hide it until he left her. Then, the dreadful coughing began, and the burning in her chest, and the feeling that her limbs were about to snap off.

But he knew. He had known long before she said to him, ‘No, you mustn’t make love to me, just for a while. I’m not very well, and you might catch something.’ He had been aware from the start of the danger he was running, but had put it aside as something quite unimportant. And he hadn’t argued with her in case she realized that he knew she was never going to be better again.

In the second week of December, he had sent a letter out to Gideon by one of the balloons that kept communications open between Paris and the outside world. The limit for private letters was four grammes, which didn’t leave much scope for literary refinement, and none at all if one wanted the privacy of an envelope. All he had said then was, ‘Don’t worry. I have found her and am looking after her.’ Now, despairingly, he sent out another. ‘When the siege is lifted, for God’s sake send us some food if you can. The need is urgent. You know my address. Thanks.’

At midnight on January twenty-seventh, the last rumble of guns faded and silence fell on Paris. The city had surrendered, with only a week’s food supplies left.

Thirty-six hours later, Gideon himself rode in through the Porte Maillot, with no baggage other than a clean shirt, soap, a razor and a toothbrush, and his saddlebags crammed with tins of milk, jam, tea, cocoa, sugar, butter, a ham, and a dozen tins of boiled beef.

The young man who welcomed him to the apartment in the rue de la Tour des Dames had aged ten years in the three since they had met, and although his expression lightened at the sight of Gideon standing there, his grey eyes remained sombre. Gripping the other man’s hand tightly in his own, he said only, ‘Gideon! Oh, Gideon. I’m afraid she’s dying.’

And then he saw, in Gideon’s face, what it would not have occurred to him to look for, and his own face went completely blank for a second before he said, his voice raw, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

Gideon didn’t acknowledge it. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Exhaustion, and strain, and being cold, and not having enough food, and bottling everything up when she should have screamed, or yelled, or thrown things. I managed to snare a doctor yesterday, and he says it’s galloping consumption and there’s nothing to be done.’

‘Does she know?’

‘I believe so. She’s been trying to hide it for weeks, for my sake and the child’s.’

‘
The child’s
?’

‘Yes. For God’s sake, come in, Gideon. Have a glass of wine – that’s something we’ve never been short of. We must talk before you see her.’

When Gideon went in, later, to the exotic best bedroom, he knew most of what there was to know. About Worth’s, and Arsène, and little Christian; Richard had chosen the name, years ago, in case little Luke had turned out to be a girl.

Francis hadn’t held anything back. He had said, ‘You have eyes, and I guess you can see something of what there is between us. I promise you, Gideon, she has been happy these last weeks in spite of everything. I believe you are too wise to let it hurt you.’

Too wise? Gideon thought. Never that. For it did hurt, quite damnably.

She was like a wraith, lying there in the huge, red-tented room. Once before, Gideon remembered seeing her eyes as huge as this, in the pale, peaked little face, but he recognized instantly that Francis was right about one thing. This time there was no anguish, only peace.

She smiled at him, though her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Gideon! Have you ridden to my rescue again? Tea, and butter, and bread, and oranges? And shawls?’

He smiled back. ‘No shawls. I couldn’t find any palaces to loot.’ He sat down and took the almost transparent hand in his. ‘No oranges, either. You should have let me know about the baby, you dreadful girl!’

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Not yet.’

‘She’s so sweet, my baby. Strong and healthy. Very much alive. I managed it this time, Gideon, dear.’

Lifting her hand, he held it to his lips. ‘Couldn’t you have managed it without reducing yourself to this state?’

‘Oh, no! I couldn’t, don’t you see? She needed everything. Don’t you understand? I didn’t dare...’ she was helplessly anxious to convince him, and hadn’t the strength to do it.

‘Hush, pet.
Hush!
I do understand.’

Before his smile, she relaxed again, and there was a weak mischief in her defiance. ‘I wasn’t going to be beaten this time. I was
damned
if I was!’

‘Language! That’s what comes of all this bourgeois insistence on earning your living.’ He knew he was talking down to her, as if she were still the pretty child who had clung to him on the fishing boat all those years ago. But it was an easier note to strike than any adult one.

‘I managed that, too. Poor Monsieur Worth. He’ll open again soon. I hope he finds someone who can understand my filing system.’

It was an admission, but he wouldn’t acknowledge it. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he said reprovingly, ‘that you’ve even remembered me, slaving away at the family chronicle. Damn the files! What about the diaries?’

‘Heavens! Are you still doing that? How funny. I’d forgotten. It’s like another world. No, Gideon, dear, no diaries. I’m sorry.’

The small, emaciated hand with its oval, bloodless nails, moved in his. ‘Are you tired?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Should I leave you to sleep?’

‘In a minute. Gideon, you’ve always been so good to me.’ She stopped, gathering breath. ‘We mightn’t have another chance to talk. It will soon be too hard for me, I think. Gideon, I won’t be here much longer...’

He opened his lips to protest, but she stopped him, her smile a little twisted. ‘No, don’t be idiotic, Gideon. I
know.
And you must be able to see. I don’t mind, really. After all the sad years, Francis has given me so much happiness. It’s the best time to go, in the fullness of happiness. Strange, but I’ve been remembering Vilia. She said something like that to me when my father died, though peace of mind was all she was talking about. I remember it because that kind of softness seemed so unlike her. How is she?’

‘Well enough in body. But she hasn’t been very – approachable – since Sorley died.’

‘Has he gone? What a pity. I liked him. Poor Vilia. There was a time when we didn’t get on very well, but it doesn’t matter any more.’

Her eyes were distant, and he could see that the world to which she had belonged for most of her life meant nothing to her now. He prompted her gently. ‘You wanted to say something.’

‘Did I?’ Her heavy lids fluttered. ‘Oh, yes. It’s easy for me to go, but Francis will be hurt. And the baby.’

Gideon put his free hand over his mouth, aware that it was beginning to tremble, but managed to say, somehow, ‘You’ve fought so hard to raise her. You can’t just go, now, and leave her.’

When he glanced up, her eyes were open on his and there was a loving mockery in them. ‘Silly Gideon! It’s not a matter of choice. You can’t force me back into the world just with words, you know.’

‘No.’

‘I wanted to ask you. Will you look after them for me?’

‘My dear, I’ll try. But Francis is a grown man.’

‘We haven’t talked about what will happen when I’m gone. He thinks it helps me to pretend, and perhaps he’s right. But I can’t go on pretending, now. It’s too near the end for me. If he wants to take my baby back to America with him – would that be best? He would love her so much.’ She gave a little gasp. ‘Oh, Gideon, Gideon! Don’t look so stricken, my dear. It hurts me more than anything.’

Blinking, he said, ‘It’s what you want that matters. Christy can go with Francis, or come home with me. Amy and I would love her, too. We have a little boy of almost the same age.’

A light came into her eyes. ‘Oh, Gideon, have you? I’m so
glad
for you. Is he a darling?’

Gideon’s strangled chuckle helped him to subdue the rising tears. ‘That’s not quite the word. He’s a living terror!’

Her eyes laughed back at him. ‘Just what a boy should be, in fact. I don’t know, my dear. It’s just that, in a way, I feel that Francis and little Christy belong together. The two well-springs of my happiness.’