A Place of Greater Safety (10 page)
Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
“That’s for you to decide. Between now and your wedding, can you contrive to be careful?”
“Look, I’ve got four years to pay this off. I’ll make a go of things.”
“Certainly, you can make money as a King’s Councillor. I don’t deny that.” M. Charpentier thought, he’s young, he’s raw, he has everything to do, and inside he cannot possibly be as sure as he sounds. He wanted to comfort him. “You know what Maître Vinot says, he says there are times of trouble ahead, and in times of trouble litigation always expands.” He rolled his pieces of paper together, ready for filing away. “I daresay something will happen, between now and ’91, to make your fortunes look up.”
M
arch 2, 1787. It was Camille’s twenty-seventh birthday, and nobody had seen him for a week. He appeared to have changed his address again.
arch 2, 1787. It was Camille’s twenty-seventh birthday, and nobody had seen him for a week. He appeared to have changed his address again.
The Assembly of Notables had reached deadlock. The café was full, noisy and opinionated.
“What is it that the Marquis de Lafayette has said?”
“He has said that the Estates-General should be called.”
“But the Estates is a relic. It hasn’t met since—”
“1614.”
“Thank you, d’Anton,” Maitre Perrin said. “How can it answer to our needs? We shall see the clergy debating in one chamber, the nobles in another and the commons in a third, and whatever the commons propose will be voted down two to one by the other Orders. So what progress—”
“Listen,” d’Anton broke in, “even an old institution can take on a new form. There’s no need to do what was done last time.”
The group gazed at him, solemn. “Lafayette is a young man,” Maitre Perrin said.
“About your age, Georges.”
Yes, d‘Anton thought, and while I was poring over the tomes in Vinot’s office, he was leading armies. Now I am a poor attorney, and he is the hero of France and America. Lafayette can aspire to be a leader of the nation, and I can aspire to scratch a living. And now this
young
man, of undistinguished appearance, spare, with pale sandy hair, had captured his audience, propounded an idea; and d’Anton, feeling an unreasoning antipathy for the fellow, was compelled to stand here and defend him. “The Estates is our only hope,” he said. “It would have to give fair representation to us, the commons, the Third Estate. It’s quite clear that the nobility don’t have the King’s welfare at heart, so it’s stupid for him to continue to defend their interests. He must call the Estates and give real power to the Third—not just talk, not just consultation, the real power to do something.”
young
man, of undistinguished appearance, spare, with pale sandy hair, had captured his audience, propounded an idea; and d’Anton, feeling an unreasoning antipathy for the fellow, was compelled to stand here and defend him. “The Estates is our only hope,” he said. “It would have to give fair representation to us, the commons, the Third Estate. It’s quite clear that the nobility don’t have the King’s welfare at heart, so it’s stupid for him to continue to defend their interests. He must call the Estates and give real power to the Third—not just talk, not just consultation, the real power to do something.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Charpentier said.
“It will never happen,” Perrin said. “What interests me more is Lafayette’s proposal for an investigation into tax frauds.”
“And shady underhand speculation,” d’Anton said. “The dirty workings of the market as a whole.”
“Always this vehemence,” Perrin said, “among people who don’t hold bonds and wish they did.”
Something distracted M. Charpentier. He looked over d’Anton’s shoulder and smiled. “Here is a man who could clarify matters for us.” He moved forward and held out his hands. “M. Duplessis, you’re a stranger, we never see you. You haven’t met my daughter’s fiancé. M. Duplessis is a very old friend of mine, he’s at the Treasury.”
“For my sins,” M. Duplessis said, with a sepulchral smile. He acknowledged d’Anton with a nod, as if perhaps he had heard his name. He was a tall man, fiftyish, with vestigial good looks; he was carefully and plainly dressed. His gaze seemed to rest a little behind and beyond its object, as if his vision were unobstructed by the marble-topped tables and gilt chairs and the black limbs of city barristers.
“So Gabrielle is to be married. When is the happy day?”
“We’ve not named it. May or June.”
“How time flies.”
He patted out his platitudes as children shape mud pies; he smiled again, and you thought of the muscular effort involved.
M. Charpentier handed him a cup of coffee. “I was sorry to hear about your daughter’s husband.”
“Yes, a bad business, most upsetting and unfortunate. My daughter Adèle,” he said. “Married and widowed, and only a child.” He addressed Charpentier, directing his gaze over his host’s left shoulder. “We shall keep Lucile at home for a while longer. Although she’s fifteen, sixteen. Quite a little lady. Daughters are a worry. Sons, too, though I haven’t any. Sons-in-law are a worry, dying as they do. Although not you, Maître d’Anton. I don’t intend it personally. You’re not a worry, I’m sure. You look quite healthy. In fact, excessively so.”
How can he be so dignified, d’Anton wondered, when his talk is so random and wild? Was he always like this, or had the situation made him so, and was it the Deficit that had unhinged him, or was it his domestic affairs?
“And your dear wife?” M. Charpentier inquired. “How is she?”
M. Duplessis brooded on this question; he looked as if he could not quite recall her face. At last he said, “Much the same.”
“Won’t you come and have supper one evening? The girls, too, of course, if they’d like to come?”
“I would, you know … but the pressure of work … I’m a good deal at Versailles during the week now, it was only that today I had some business to attend to … sometimes I work through the weekend too.” He turned to d’Anton. “I’ve been at the Treasury all my life. It’s been a rewarding career, but every day gets a little harder. If only the Abbé Terray …”
Charpentier stifled a yawn. He had heard it before; everyone had heard it. The Abbé Terray was Duplessis’s all-time Top Comptroller, his fiscal hero. “If Terray had stayed, he could have saved us; every scheme put forward in recent years, every solution, Terray had worked it out years ago.” That had been when he was a younger man, and the girls were babies, and his work was something he looked forward to with a sense of the separate venture and progress of each day. But the Parlements had opposed the abbé; they had accused him of speculating in grain, and induced the silly people to burn him in effigy. “That was before the situation was so bad; the problems were manageable then. Since then I’ve seen them come along with the same old bright ideas—” He made a gesture of despair. M. Duplessis cared most deeply about the state of the royal Treasury; and since the departure of the Abbé Terray his work had become a kind of daily official heartbreak.
M. Charpentier leaned forward to refill his cup. “No, I must be off,” Duplessis said. “I’ve brought papers home. We’ll take you up on that invitation. Just as soon as the present crisis is over.”
M. Duplessis picked up his hat, bowed and nodded his way to the
door. “When will it ever be over?” Charpentier asked. “One can’t imagine.”
door. “When will it ever be over?” Charpentier asked. “One can’t imagine.”
Angélique rustled up. “I saw you,” she said. “You were distinctly grinning, when you asked him about his wife. And you,” she slapped d’Anton lightly on the shoulder, “were turning quite blue trying not to laugh. What am I missing?”
“Only gossip, my dear.”
“Only gossip? What else is there in life?”
“It concerns Georges’s gypsy friend, M. How-to-get-on-in-Society.”
“What? Camille? You’re teasing me. You’re just saying this to test out my gullibility.” She looked around at her smirking customers. “Annette Duplessis?” she said. “Annette Duplessis?”
“Listen carefully then,” her husband said. “It’s complicated, it’s circumstantial, there’s no saying where it’s going to end. Some take season tickets to the Opera; others enjoy the novels of Mr. Fielding. Myself I enjoy a bit of home-grown entertainment, and I tell you, there’s nothing more entertaining than life at the rue Condé these days. For the connoisseur of human folly …”
“Jesus-Maria! Get on with it,” Angélique said.
Rue Condé: Thursday Afternoon
A
nnette Duplessis was a woman of resource. The problem which now beset her she had handled elegantly for four years. This afternoon she was going to solve it. Since midday a chilly wind had blown up, draughts whistled through the apartment, finding out the keyholes and the cracks under the doors: fanning the nebulous banners of approaching crisis. Annette, thinking of her figure, took glass of cider vinegar.
nnette Duplessis was a woman of resource. The problem which now beset her she had handled elegantly for four years. This afternoon she was going to solve it. Since midday a chilly wind had blown up, draughts whistled through the apartment, finding out the keyholes and the cracks under the doors: fanning the nebulous banners of approaching crisis. Annette, thinking of her figure, took glass of cider vinegar.
When she had married Claude Duplessis, a long time ago, he had been several years her senior; by now he was old enough to be her father. Why had she married him anyway? She often asked herself that. She could only conclude that she had been serious-minded as a girl, and had grown steadily more inclined to frivolity as the years passed.
At the time they met, Claude was working and worrying his way to the top of the civil service: through the different degrees and shades and variants of clerkdom, from clerk menial to clerk-of-some-parts, from intermediary clerk to clerk of a higher type, to clerk most senior, clerk confidential, clerk extraordinary, clerk
in excelsis
, clerk-to-end-all-clerks. His intelligence was the quality she noticed chiefly, and his steady, concerned application to the nation’s business. His father had been a blacksmith, and—although he was prosperous, and since before his son’s birth had not personally been anywhere near a forge—Claude’s professional success was a matter for admiration.
in excelsis
, clerk-to-end-all-clerks. His intelligence was the quality she noticed chiefly, and his steady, concerned application to the nation’s business. His father had been a blacksmith, and—although he was prosperous, and since before his son’s birth had not personally been anywhere near a forge—Claude’s professional success was a matter for admiration.
When his early struggles were over, and Claude was ready for marriage, he found himself awash in a dismaying sea of light-mindedness. She was the moneyed, sought-after girl on whom, for no reason one could see, he fixed his good opinion: on whom, at last, he settled his affection.
The very disjunction between them seemed to say, here is some deep process at work; friends forecast a marriage that was out of the common run.
The very disjunction between them seemed to say, here is some deep process at work; friends forecast a marriage that was out of the common run.
Claude did not say much, when he proposed. Figures were his medium. Anyway, she believed in emotions that ran too deep for words. His face and his hopes he kept very tightly strung, on stretched steel wires of self-control; she imagined his insecurities rattling about inside his head like the beads of an abacus.
Six months later her good intentions had perished of suffocation. One night she had run into the garden in her shift, crying out to the apple trees and the stars, “Claude, you are dull.” She remembered the damp grass underfoot, and how she had shivered as she looked back at the lights of the house. She had sought marriage to be free from her parents’ constraints, but now she had given Claude her parole. You must never break gaol again, she told herself; it ends badly, dead bodies in muddy fields. She crept back inside, washed her feet; she drank a warm tisane, to cure any lingering hopes.
Afterwards Claude had treated her with reserve and suspicion for some months. Even now, if she was unwell or whimsical, he would allude to the incident—explaining that he had learned to live with her unstable nature but that, when he was a young man, it had taken him quite by surprise.
After the girls were born there had been a small affair. He was a friend of her husband, a barrister, a square blond man: last heard of in Toulouse, supporting a red-faced dropsical wife and five daughters at a convent school. She had not repeated the experiment. Claude had not found out about it. If he had, perhaps something would have had to change, but as he hadn’t—as he staunchly, willfully, manfully hadn’t—there was no point in doing it again.
So then to hurry the years past—and to contemplate something that should not be thought of in the category of “an affair”—Camille arrived in her life when he was twenty-two years old. Stanislas Fréron—her family knew his family—had brought him to the house. Camille looked perhaps seventeen. It was four years before he would be old enough to practice at the Bar. It was not a thing one could readily imagine. His conversation was a series of little sighs and hesitations, defections and demurs. Sometimes his hands shook. He had trouble looking anyone in the face.
He’s brilliant, Stanislas Fréron said. He’s going to be famous. Her presence, her household, seemed to terrify him. But he didn’t stay away.
R
ight at the beginning, Claude had invited him to supper. It was a well-chosen guest list, and for her husband a fine opportunity to expound his economic forecast for the next five years—grim—and to tell stories about the Abbé Terray. Camille sat in tense near-silence, occasionally asking in his soft voice for M. Duplessis to be more precise, to explain to him and to show him how he arrived at that figure. Claude called for pen, paper and ink. He pushed some plates aside and put his head down; at his end of the table, the meal came to a halt. The other guests looked down at them, nonplussed, and turned to each other with polite conversation. While Claude muttered and scribbled, Camille looked over his shoulder, disputing his simplifications, and asking questions that were longer and more cogent. Claude shut his eyes momentarily. Figures swooped and scattered from the end of his pen like starlings in the snow.
ight at the beginning, Claude had invited him to supper. It was a well-chosen guest list, and for her husband a fine opportunity to expound his economic forecast for the next five years—grim—and to tell stories about the Abbé Terray. Camille sat in tense near-silence, occasionally asking in his soft voice for M. Duplessis to be more precise, to explain to him and to show him how he arrived at that figure. Claude called for pen, paper and ink. He pushed some plates aside and put his head down; at his end of the table, the meal came to a halt. The other guests looked down at them, nonplussed, and turned to each other with polite conversation. While Claude muttered and scribbled, Camille looked over his shoulder, disputing his simplifications, and asking questions that were longer and more cogent. Claude shut his eyes momentarily. Figures swooped and scattered from the end of his pen like starlings in the snow.
She had leaned across the table: “Darling, couldn’t you …”
“One minute—”
“If it’s so complicated—”
“Here, you see, and here—”
“—talk about it afterwards?”
Claude flapped a balance sheet in the air. “Vaguely,” he said. “No more than vaguely. But then the comptrollers are vague, and it gives you an idea.”
Camille took it from him and ran a glance over it; then he looked up, meeting her eyes. She was startled, shocked by the—emotion, she could only call it. She took her eyes away and rested them on other guests, solicitous for their comfort. What he basically didn’t understand, Camille said—and probably he was being very stupid—was the relationship of one ministry to another and how they all got their funds. No, Claude said, not stupid at all: might he demonstrate?
Claude now thrust back his chair and rose from his place at the head of the table. Her guests looked up. “We might all learn much, I am sure,” said an under-secretary. But he looked dubious, very dubious, as Claude crossed the room. As he passed her, Annette put out a hand, as if to restrain a child. “I only want the fruit bowl,” Claude said, as if it were reasonable.
When he had secured it he returned to his place and set it in the middle of the table. An orange jumped down and circumambulated slowly, as if sentient and tropically bound. All the guests watched it. His eyes on Claude’s face, Camille put out a hand and detained it. He gave it a gentle push, and slowly it rolled towards her across the table: entranced, she reached for it. All the guests watched her; she blushed
faintly, as if she were fifteen. Her husband retrieved from a side table the soup tureen. He snatched a dish of vegetables from a servant who was taking it away. “Let the fruit bowl represent revenue,” he said.
faintly, as if she were fifteen. Her husband retrieved from a side table the soup tureen. He snatched a dish of vegetables from a servant who was taking it away. “Let the fruit bowl represent revenue,” he said.
Claude was the cynosure now; chit-chat ceased. If … Camille said; and but. “And let the soup tureen represent the Minister of Justice, who is also, of course, Keeper of the Seals.”
“Claude—” she said.
He shushed her. Fascinated, paralyzed, the guests followed the movement of the food about the table; deftly, from the under-secretary’s finger ends, Claude removed his wineglass. This functionary now appeared, hand extended, as one who mimes a harpist at charades; his expression darkened, but Claude failed to see it.
“Let us say, this salt cellar is the minister’s secretary.”
“So much smaller,” Camille marveled. “I never knew they were so low.”
“And these spoons, Treasury warrants. Now …”
Yes, Camille said but would he clarify, would he explain, and could he just go back to where he said—yes indeed, Claude allowed, you need to get it straight in your mind. He reached for a water jug, to rectify the proportions; his face shone.
“It’s better than the puppet show with Mr. Punch,” someone whispered.
“Perhaps the tureen will talk in a squeaky voice soon.”
Let him have mercy, Annette prayed, please let him stop asking questions; with a little flourish here and one there she saw him orchestrating Claude, while her guests sat open-mouthed at the disarrayed board, their glasses empty or snatched away, deprived of their cutlery, gone without dessert, exchanging glances, bottling their mirth; all over town it will be told, ministry to ministry and at the Law Courts, too, and people will dine out on the story of my dinner party. Please let him stop, she said, please something make it stop; but what could stop it? Perhaps, she thought, a small fire.
All the while, as she grew flurried, cast about her, as she swallowed a glass of wine and dabbed at her mouth with a handkerchief, Camille’s incendiary eyes scorched her over the flower arrangement. Finally with a nod of apology, and a placating smile that took in the voyeurs, she swept from the table and left the room. She sat for ten minutes at her dressing table, shaken by the trend of her own thoughts. She meant to retouch her face, but not to see the hollow and lost expression in her eyes. It was some years since she and Claude had slept together; what relevance has it, why is she stopping to calculate it, should she also call
for paper and ink and tot up the Deficit of her own life? Claude says that if this goes on til ’89 the country will have gone to the dogs and so will we all. In the mirror she sees herself, large blue eyes now swimming with unaccountable tears, which she instantly dabs away as earlier she dabbed red wine from her lips; perhaps I have drunk too much, perhaps we have all drunk too much, except that viperous boy, and whatever else the years give me cause to forgive him for I shall never forgive him for wrecking my party and making a fool of Claude. Why am I clutching this orange, she wondered. She stared down at her hand, like Lady Macbeth. What, in our house?
for paper and ink and tot up the Deficit of her own life? Claude says that if this goes on til ’89 the country will have gone to the dogs and so will we all. In the mirror she sees herself, large blue eyes now swimming with unaccountable tears, which she instantly dabs away as earlier she dabbed red wine from her lips; perhaps I have drunk too much, perhaps we have all drunk too much, except that viperous boy, and whatever else the years give me cause to forgive him for I shall never forgive him for wrecking my party and making a fool of Claude. Why am I clutching this orange, she wondered. She stared down at her hand, like Lady Macbeth. What, in our house?
When she returned to her guests—the perfumed blood under her nails—the performance was over. The guests toyed with
petits fours
. Claude glanced up at her as if to ask where she had been. He looked cheerful. Camille had ceased to contribute to the conversation. He sat with his eyes cast down to the table. His expression, in one of her daughters, she would have called demure. All other faces wore an expression of dislocation and strain. Coffee was served: bitter and black, like chances missed.
petits fours
. Claude glanced up at her as if to ask where she had been. He looked cheerful. Camille had ceased to contribute to the conversation. He sat with his eyes cast down to the table. His expression, in one of her daughters, she would have called demure. All other faces wore an expression of dislocation and strain. Coffee was served: bitter and black, like chances missed.
N
ext day Claude referred to these events. He said what a stimulting occasion it had been, so much better than the usual supper-party trivia. If all their social life were like that, he wouldn’t mind it so much, and so would she ask again that young man whose name for the present escaped him? He was so charming, so interested, and a shame about his stutter, but was he perhaps a little slow on the uptake? He hoped he had not carried away any wrong impressions about the workings of the Treasury.
ext day Claude referred to these events. He said what a stimulting occasion it had been, so much better than the usual supper-party trivia. If all their social life were like that, he wouldn’t mind it so much, and so would she ask again that young man whose name for the present escaped him? He was so charming, so interested, and a shame about his stutter, but was he perhaps a little slow on the uptake? He hoped he had not carried away any wrong impressions about the workings of the Treasury.
How torturing, she thought, is this situation of fools who know they are fools; and how pleasant is Claude’s state, by comparison.
T
he next time Camille called, he was more discreet in the way he looked at her. It was as if they had reached an agreement that nothing should be precipitated. Interesting, she thought. Interesting.
he next time Camille called, he was more discreet in the way he looked at her. It was as if they had reached an agreement that nothing should be precipitated. Interesting, she thought. Interesting.
He told her he did not want a legal career: but what else? He was trapped by the terms of his scholarship. Like Voltaire, he said, he wanted no profession but that of man of letters. “Oh, Voltaire,” she said. “I’m sick of the name. Men of letters will be a luxury, let me tell you, in the years to come. We shall all have to emulate Claude.” Camille pushed his hair back a fraction. That was a gesture she liked: rather representative,
useless but winning. “You’re only saying that. You don’t believe it, in your heart. In your heart you think that things will go on as they are.”
useless but winning. “You’re only saying that. You don’t believe it, in your heart. In your heart you think that things will go on as they are.”
“Allow me,” she said, “to be the expert on my heart.”
As the afternoons passed, the general unsuitability of their friendship was borne in on her. It was not simply a matter of his age, but of his general direction. His friends were out-of-work actors, or they slid inkily from the offices of back-street printers. They had illegitimate children and subversive opinions; they went abroad when the police got on their trail. There was the drawing-room life; then there was this other life. She thought it was best not to ask questions about it.
H
e continued to come to supper. There were no further incidents. Sometimes Claude asked him to spend the weekend with a party at Bourg-la-Reine, where they had some land and a comfortable farmhouse. The girls, she thought, had really taken to him.
e continued to come to supper. There were no further incidents. Sometimes Claude asked him to spend the weekend with a party at Bourg-la-Reine, where they had some land and a comfortable farmhouse. The girls, she thought, had really taken to him.
F
rom quite two years ago, they had begun to see a great deal of each other. One of her friends, who was supposed to know about these things, had told her that he was a homosexual. She did not believe this, but kept it to hand as a defense, in case her husband complained. But why should he complain? He was just a young man who called at the house. There was nothing between them.
rom quite two years ago, they had begun to see a great deal of each other. One of her friends, who was supposed to know about these things, had told her that he was a homosexual. She did not believe this, but kept it to hand as a defense, in case her husband complained. But why should he complain? He was just a young man who called at the house. There was nothing between them.
O
ne day she asked him, “Do you know much about wild flowers?”
ne day she asked him, “Do you know much about wild flowers?”
“Not especially.”
“It’s just that Lucile picked up a flower at Bourg-la-Reine and asked me what it was, I hadn’t the least idea, and I told her confidently that you knew everything, and I pressed it”—she reached out—“inside my book, and I said I’d ask you.”
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