A Place of Greater Safety (81 page)
Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
He had the satisfaction of seeing her pretty mouth, drop open.
“Are you in trouble?”
“No. But if people know I’m back I’ll have to report straight to the Convention. I want to sleep for twenty-four hours—no Riding School, no committees, no politics at all.”
“It’s what you need, I’m sure. But General Dumouriez—aren’t they expecting to hear what he said?”
“They’ll know soon enough. So you’ll help me to hide, will you?”
“I don’t see how one can hide such a large man as you.”
“Let’s try, shall we?”
“All right. Are you hungry?”
“We seem to be falling into a spurious domesticity,” he said. Abruptly he turned away from her and dropped into a chair, plaiting his fingers over his eyes. “I just can’t think, now, of any way to go on … of how to carry on my life. The only way I can honor her is by sticking to ideas she didn’t share … to say to myself, we didn’t see eye-to-eye, but she valued the truth. By pursuing that truth I move further from anything she believed or would have found acceptable … .” She saw that he was crying. “Forgive me for this,” he said.
She moved forward to stand behind his chair, a hand resting on the back of it.
“I suppose you loved her,” she said. “According to your lights.”
“I loved her,” he said. “I loved her by anyone’s lights. By anyone’s measure. Perhaps there was a time I thought I didn’t, but I know different now.”
“If you loved her, Citizen Danton, why did you spend your nights in other women’s beds?”
He looked up at her for a second. “Why? Lust. Policy. Self-aggrandizement. I suppose you think I’m blunt, insensible? I suppose you think I can tolerate this sort of inquisition?”
“I don’t say it to be cruel. I only say it because you mustn’t start regretting something that didn’t exist. You were dead to each other—”
“No.”
“Yes. You don’t understand what you are. Remember, she talked to me. She felt lonely, she felt under threat; she thought, you know, that you were planning to divorce her.”
He was aghast. “It hadn’t entered my head! Why should I divorce her?”
“Yes, why should you? You had all the convenience of marriage, and none of its obligations.”
“I would never have divorced her. If I’d known she was thinking that … I could have reassured her.”
“You couldn’t even see that she was afraid?”
“How could I? She never told me.”
“You were never here.”
“Anyway, I have never understood women.”
“Damn you,” she said. “You make that a point of pride, don’t you? Listen, I am familiar with you great men, in all your manifestations, and I’m sure I don’t know the words for how you disgust me. I have sometimes sat with your wife while you were saving the country.”
“We have to discharge our public duties.”
“Most of you discharge your public duties by beginning to drink at nine o’clock in the morning and spend your day plotting how you can stab each other in the back and make off with each other’s wives.”
“There is an exception to that.” He smiled. “His name’s Robespierre. You wouldn’t like him. Of course, it never struck me before how we must appear to you—a set of drunken, middle-aged lechers. Well, Louise—what do you think I should do?”
“If you want to save yourself as a human being, you should get out of politics.”
“As a human being?” he queried gently. “What are the other possibilities?”
“I think you know what I mean. You haven’t lived like a proper human being these last few years. You have to get back to the man you were before—” She gestured.
“Yes, I know. Before the folly. Before the blasphemy.”
“Don’t. Just don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing. But your judgements are very harsh, aren’t they? I’m not sure there is much hope for me. If I wanted to abandon my career, I don’t know how I’d begin to do it.”
“We could find a way, if you made up your mind.”
“We could? You think so?”
He is laughing, she thought. “If I had only heard of you, from the
newspapers, I should think you were a devil. I should be afraid to breathe the same air as you. But I know you.”
newspapers, I should think you were a devil. I should be afraid to breathe the same air as you. But I know you.”
“I see that you have set yourself a task. You mean to save me from myself, don’t you?”
“I was told to. I promised.”
When she thinks about it now she cannot be sure what the terms of the promise were. Gabrielle had bequeathed her children, but had she also bequeathed her husband?
T
he next morning she instructed the servants strictly. They were to mention to no one that Monsieur was home. She had come down early, before seven. He was already up and dressed, reading his letters. “So you are going out after all, Citizen Danton?”
he next morning she instructed the servants strictly. They were to mention to no one that Monsieur was home. She had come down early, before seven. He was already up and dressed, reading his letters. “So you are going out after all, Citizen Danton?”
He glanced up, and saw that she was disappointed. “No, I’m staying. But I couldn’t sleep … too much on my mind.”
“What if people come, and ask if you are back yet?”
“Tell lies.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes. I need time to think.”
“I suppose it would not be any great sin.”
“You are grown very liberal, since last night.”
“Don’t keep laughing at me. If anyone comes, I shall not let them in, and if I meet anyone when I go to do the shopping—”
“Send Marie.”
“I’m keeping her in. She might give you away. I shall say, I haven’t seen you, and you’re not expected.”
“That’s the spirit.” He turned back to his letters. He spoke kindly enough, but there was, too, a hint of weariness and boredom. I have no idea how to talk to him, she thought. I wish I were Lucile Desmoulins.
At nine o’clock, she was back, out of breath. He was sitting with a blank sheet of paper before him, his eyes closed. “Can’t write,” he said, opening them. “Oh, words go down, but they’re hardly soul-searing stuff. Good thing I own a journalist.”
“When are you planning to emerge?”
“Tomorrow, I think. Why?”
“I don’t think you can hide any longer. I saw your journalist. He knows you’re here.”
“How?”
“Well, he doesn’t know, but he thinks you are. I denied it, of course.
I’m lucky to be in one piece, I can tell you. He didn’t believe a word I said.”
I’m lucky to be in one piece, I can tell you. He didn’t believe a word I said.”
“Then you’d better go and give him your apologies, and tell him—in confidence—that he is right. Appeal to him to protect me from marauding committeemen—tell him I haven’t decided yet what I ought to do about Dumouriez. And tell him to drop anything he’s doing tonight and come and get drunk with me.”
“I’m not sure I ought to convey that message. It’s dissolute.”
“If you think that’s what people do for debauchery,” he said, “you’ve got a lot to learn.”
N
ext morning, Louise was up even earlier. Her mother came blundering out of her bedroom, fastening her wrap. “At this hour!” she said. She knew very well that Danton’s servants sleep, not in the apartment, but on the mezzanine floor. “You will be alone with him,” she said. “Anyway, how will you get in?”
ext morning, Louise was up even earlier. Her mother came blundering out of her bedroom, fastening her wrap. “At this hour!” she said. She knew very well that Danton’s servants sleep, not in the apartment, but on the mezzanine floor. “You will be alone with him,” she said. “Anyway, how will you get in?”
Louise showed her the key in the palm of her hand.
She let herself in very quietly, opening and closing doors to the study, where Danton would be if he were up; but she doubted he would be. Camille was standing by the window: shirt, breeches, boots, hair not brushed. There were papers all over Danton’s desk, covered in someone else’s handwriting. “Good morning,” she said. “Are you drunk?”
She noticed what a split second it took for him to flare into aggression. “Do I look it?”
“No. Where is Citizen Danton?”
“I’ve done away with him. I’ve been busy dismembering him for the last three hours. Would you like to help me carry his remnants down to the concierge? Oh really, Louise! He’s in bed and asleep, where do you think he is?”
“And is he drunk?”
“Very. What is all this harping on intoxication?”
“He said that was what you were going to do. Get drunk.”
“Oh, I see. Were you shocked?”
“Very. What have you been writing?”
He drifted over to Danton’s desk, where he could sit down in the chair and look up full into her face. “A polemic.”
“I have been reading some of your work.”
“Good, isn’t it?”
“I think that it’s incredibly cruel and destructive.”
“If nice little girls like you thought well of it I wouldn’t be achieving much, would I?”
“I don’t think you can have kept your part of the bargain,” she said. “I don’t think you can have been very drunk, if you wrote all that.”
“I can write in any condition.”
“Perhaps that explains some of it.” She turned the pages over. She was conscious of his solemn black eyes fixed on her face. Around his neck there was a silver chain; what depended from it was hidden in the folds of his shirt. Did he perhaps wear a crucifix? Were things perhaps not as bad as they seemed? She wanted to touch him, very badly, feeling under the pious necessity of finding out; she recognized at once a point of crisis, what her confessor would call the very instant of temptation. He felt the direction of her gaze; he took from inside his shirt a chased-silver disc, a locket. Inside—without speaking, he showed her—was a fine curled strand of hair.
“Lucile’s?”
He nodded. She took the locket in the palm of her left hand; the fingers of her right hand brushed the skin at the base of his throat. It’s done—in a moment it’s done, finished with. She would like, at one level of her being, to cut her hand off. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll grow out of me.”
“You are incredibly vain.”
“Yes. There seems no reason why I should learn to be less so. But you, Citizeness, will have to learn to keep your hands to yourself.”
His tone was so scathing that she almost burst into tears. “Why are you being so nasty to me?”
“Because you opened the conversation by asking me if I were drunk, which is not considered polite even by today’s standards, and also because if someone trots out their forces at dawn you assume they have stomach for a fight. Get this very clear in your mind, Louise: if you think that you are in love with me, you had better re-think, and you had better fall out of love at lightning speed. I want no area of doubt here. What Danton is allowed to do to my wife, and what I am allowed to do to his, are two very different things.”
A silence. “Don’t bother to arrange your face,” Camille said. “You’ve arranged everything else.”
She began to shake. “What did he say? What did he tell you?”
“He’s infatuated with you.”
“He told you that? What did he say?”
“Why should I indulge you?”
“When did he say it? Last night?”
“This morning.”
“What words did he use?”
“Oh, I don’t know what words.”
“Words are your profession, aren’t they?” she shouted at him. “Of course you know what words.”
“He said, ‘I am infatuated with Louise.’”
All right; she doesn’t believe that; but let’s get on.
“He was serious? How did he say it?”
“How?”
“How.”
“In the usual four-in-the-morning manner.”
“And what is that?”
“When you’re married, you will have the opportunity to find out.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “I think you’re evil. It’s a strong word, I know, but I do think it.”
Camille lowered his eyelashes bashfully. “One tries, of course. But Louise, you shouldn’t be too brutal with me, because you’re going to have to live with me, in a manner of speaking. Unless you’re going to try and turn him down, but you wouldn’t try that, would you?”
“I’ll see. But I don’t necessarily believe you. About anything.”
“He wants to sleep with you, that’s the thing, you see. He can’t think of any way of doing it, except by marrying you. An honorable man, Georges-Jacques. An honorable, peaceable, domestic sort, he is. If I had formed the ambition, of course, it would be rather different.”
Camille suddenly slumped forward, elbows on the desk, hands over his mouth. For a moment she didn’t know whether he was laughing or crying, but it soon became apparent which it was. “You can laugh if you want,” she said bleakly, “I’m getting used to it.”
“Oh good, good. When I tell Fabre,” he said between sobs and gasps, “about this conversation—he won’t believe me.” He wiped his eyes. “There’s a lot you must get used to, I’m afraid.”
She looked down at him. “Aren’t you cold like that?”
“Yes.” He stood up. “I suppose I had better get myself together. Georges-Jacques and I are being elected to a committee today.”
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