Adam Gould (12 page)

‘If you shout, I shall have to close the window.’

‘We are all pillars of salt. You too, François! You should stop writing. Never look backwards! Never turn round!’

There was still no mention of him in the press, which had found other fish to fry. Cardinal Lavigerie had been right to warn of dangers threatening the country. The Panama Canal scandal was dragging through the courts; ruined investors suspected the government of corruption, and the labour movement was gathering strength.

‘People outside this place are all madder than we!’

‘You could be right.’

‘But there are more thieves in here. They stole my brain and my hair! They’ll be back. Do you hear them?’

Shrieks rose from the exercise yard where the more dangerous cases were allowed to take the air.

By contrast a cannon, which had lain in the asylum lawn since the Prussian invasion, twenty-two years before, had settled into the ground, acquired a tilt and a patina and looked as peaceful as the cows chewing the cud further down the hill. Paris seemed unimaginably distant when you stood here where dense groves gave an impression of great space, paths disappeared among them and tall trees hid the perimeter wall. Only the Eiffel Tower, rising above the highest branches, spoiled the pastoral effect. It was now three years since its official inauguration.

In Dr Blanche’s drawing room a mild sloth prevailed, a readiness to sink into a deep divan and sigh. On a rug, a cat, flat as spilled gruel, meticulously stretched each limb. The doctor himself, plumply dignified in his skull cap, puffed at a pipe and delegated more and more practical decisions to Adam. His attention sometimes faltered now, succumbing to a haziness not unlike the morning mists which in this season masked views from the windows and swaddled the villa in threads of sieved sunlight. In a studio in the grounds his son, Jacques-Emile, led his own life, painting portraits and entertaining English friends.

Another damp day. Fractured sunlight blazed, and sparrows, apparently mimicking pockmarks on the shine of a wet wall, could turn out to be real bullet holes surviving from the last time Paris tore itself apart. Cardinal Lavigerie’s warning about fresh slaughter and outrages should be borne in mind. The monsignor decided to make peace with His Eminence even if he had to abase himself.

Dearest Guy
,

It was horrible to have to leave the other day without having a chance to explain why I came or to tell you how sweetly and often the three little ones ask about you. Lucien who, as you know, is now nine, is naturally anxious about his Papa
’
s disappearance from his life. I tell him you are in a hospital too far away for us to visit and that he will now have to be the father of our small family. This usually cheers him for a bit, though of course he still worries and misses your visits. His small sisters talk fondly of you too. They are all affectionate children and I had fancied that seeing them might have done you good. In fact it was to propose this that I came. I do see, though, that, as things are, bringing them would be unwise
.

I am hurt that you thought my visit self-serving, since I never asked for more than the security with which you generously provided us. The dream of a marriage – have you forgotten that it was once your dream too? – has long faded. Perhaps if we had been alone the other day, we might have taken a kind and even affectionate leave of each other. As it is, this letter will have to do. François Tassart, who was in a friendly mood, told me that you have good and bad moments. My poor, sweet darling, I do so wish I had seen you in a good one. Please save this letter to reread when the next of those comes and remember that both I and your children cherish memories of you at your best – which was dazzling! I feel like one of those mortals who had a quick fling with some god, then found the rest of the world forever dull. To be sure, I have my little demi-gods to prove that I didn
’
t dream it all. I do feel flayed though. I have to tell you that! Scarred and damaged. But I wouldn
’
t wish the past undone
.

‘So why won’t he see me?’

The vicomte had arrived unannounced. After all, he may have reasoned, Monseigneur de Belcastel could not go anywhere. And perhaps his aim had been to catch him unprepared? Doing what, Adam wondered? Entertaining Freemasons? Belcastel had said to say he was ill.

‘How ill?’ The vicomte, who was leaving town, claimed he needed urgently to see the monsignor before he did so. ‘What’s the matter with him? He was fit as a fiddle last time I came.’

Adam improvised. ‘He gets migraine headaches,’ he decided. ‘Quite severe. Has to lie in the dark for a day or so.’ The one who had had migraine headaches was Adam’s mother. He had borrowed a detail from a lost life.

‘
In the dark
?’ The vicomte seemed to find this perverse. ‘Has he seen the
Petit Journal
?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

The vicomte had a copy. ‘Well, give him this,’ he instructed. ‘Can I trust you? You’re the ex-seminarist, aren’t you? No doubt you studied things priests don’t need to know instead of those they do? I’m not blaming you! That’s how it is now. Young clergy, I’m told, study the -isms: Kantism, Cartesianism and so forth. Well, we know what they produce – disloyalty! A few swift kicks in the backside would do some of our Reverend friends more good than any -ism. I am not talking of anyone we know, you understand, but of certain puffed-up personages who need bringing down to earth with a reminder of who butters their bread. The Count of Paris – this is what you’re to tell Monseigneur de Belcastel – has warned in private letters that if Catholics do badly in next year’s elections, persecution will start again.
Then
the clergy will see that they’ve backed the wrong horse! Can you remember that?’

Adam said he could.

‘There’s something else.’ The vicomte worried. ‘It’s confidential. All right? Our agents have learned that, last winter, telegrams signed by a certain cardinal’s valet reached Rome warning confederates there to prevent French royalists being granted an audience. The confederates had a code. The nuncio was referred to as “a salesman”, the Church as “the business” and the pope as Petronillo.’ The vicomte grimaced. ‘Their metaphors betray them. Indeed, who is to say that they are metaphors at all?’ Running a hand over his bald head, he asked, ‘Are you taking this in? Do you even know who I’m talking about?’

‘Yes. You are talking of mad or vicious gulls, jokers, double-dealers and liars among the French clergy.’

Sauvigny stared, then nodded. ‘That is exactly who I mean.’

Dear Mademoiselle Litzelmann
,

I am writing on Monsieur de Maupassant
’
s behalf to say that, although he cannot write letters any more, yours was read to him during one of his remissions and moved him greatly. He asked me to tell you that, although it is too late for him to make any formal decisions about anything – his condition is volatile and, as you saw, we have to be careful not to get him agitated – he understands your distress, reproaches himself for failing to appreciate the generosity of your impulse in visiting and begs you to believe that, in moments when he is most fully himself, he remembers you and your precious Lucien, Lucienne and Marthe-Marguerite with warm affection. He wants you to know that what he feels for you all is unique in his life. He enjoyed domestic calm and closeness with nobody else. Not even in his own childhood. He trusts you to bring up the children better than he could have done. He too feels flayed and scarred, and perhaps the fact that you both suffer means that you have come closer to him than anyone else
.

He asks me to assure you of his affection and esteem
.

In the monsignor’s apartment, discomfort writhed, and new urgencies rasped visitors’ nerves. After the vicomte’s departure for Belgium, military-looking men of a certain age started to arrive by the carriage-load, closeted themselves with Belcastel and could be heard wrangling in lowered voices. When they left, he was ironic and prone to paradox, which, with him, was a sign of unease. He had rings under his eyes and was not quite his old affable self, although he still insisted on offering his guests Marsala and slightly stale cakes which stuck in their throats. Adam heard them coughing and was called more than once to bring jugs of drinking water. The monsignor did not lay out his monarchist regalia for these visits, and, after the second one, remarked that though a small dose of madness could generate energy and courage – consider the saints – it could not safely be given free rein.

‘That’s particularly true in politics and religion,’ he told Adam. ‘I hope I’m not shocking you. I am too worn out to curb my tongue. I have just spent two hours with some virtuous, but dangerously mad friends.’

‘Trying to curb them?’ Adam ventured.

‘Well, we have more than enough of that sort of thing right here, wouldn’t you say? Listen to that.’

‘
Mer-de, de, de
...’ It was Maupassant’s hoarse, tense voice. ‘
Dieu de merde! Merde de Dieu
!’

To the Provincial of the White Fathers

My dear Father de Latour
,

Presuming on the bonds between our families, I write to beg your intercession with Cardinal Lavigerie. Knowing his magnanimity, I am praying that he may see his way to forgiving the injury I did him. Your advocacy could tip the balance
.

I have only just learned for whom he was speaking when I emulated his militancy and, having a weapon to hand, used it against him. Need I say that I am devastated and anxious to make any amends which, if I may quote his words
, ‘
honour and conscience permit
’
. As a young priest, I admired him intensely. Later this admiration led me to use his methods rather than to respect his person. Now that his calvary is over, mine has begun
.

Can you, as a successful crusader – even Arab slavers acknowledge the White Fathers
’
success – imagine my mental agony? I struck a blow against our own side! To say that the lines were camouflaged only aggravates my anguish. For why did God not enlighten me? Remorse corrodes, and a man in my plight can think the unthinkable. You see how I need His Eminence
’
s forbearance. Will you speak for me? Might you come here and let me explain myself? I cannot come to you – though this may change. Once the civil authorities are satisfied that we have indeed broken with the monarchists, charges against me could be dropped. Dare I ask if you might help with those too? I know the government values your order
’
s contribution to France
’
s civilizing and scientific mission. How could it fail to, since your missionaries so often go ahead of the fighting men? You once wrote to me from some wild outpost near Lake Tanganyika where a small group of you were – I quote from memory –
‘
devoured by insects, living on stale hippopotamus meat and upholding the honour of the flag, while awaiting the day when France can take possession of these lands
.’
A half joke? A true hope? It shows why, as the great Republican, Gambetta, told His Eminence ten years ago:
‘
anticlericalism is not for export
’
. Today it is even less so. Thanks to men like yourself, France has so far outstripped all other missionary countries that – I read this in one of your pamphlets –75 per cent of those in the field are French
. Bravo, mon Père!
Can you use a scrap of your credit on my behalf so that I may leave here, serve the Church again and atone for my mistakes?

You have a right to know my (pained) opinion of the royalists, which is that we should distance ourselves from a party which, for all its conspiracies, has proven incapable of winning. Making it a point of honour to bury oneself in the folds of its vanquished flag is an indulgence which we owe it to the Church to forgo
.

Please accept the expression of my respectful devotion
,

A pale sun slides its arc across a swampy sky, and Adam has again been asked to talk to Guy, who could benefit from stimulus.

‘Never mind,’ say the doctors, ‘if you get no answer. Just keep trying.’

‘Do you remember my telling you,’ he asks the patient, ‘that I couldn’t bear to talk about my mother?’

Guy’s red, flaking eyelids quiver and pleat.

‘That,’ Adam decides, ‘was because at one time I’d talked about her too much. I kept telling about her suicide in confession in the hope that the priests would say she couldn’t have done it. She was pregnant when she died, and I needed to think that no Catholic woman would risk condemning two souls to hell, hers and her unborn child’s.’

‘
My
mother,’ Guy squinnies from a single eye, ‘suffers from goitre. The light makes her scream. Once it drove her to try and strangle herself with her hair and they had to cut it off. She mustn’t see me like this.’

‘We won’t let her come.’ Adam wonders if he should stop humouring Guy.

‘Tell me more about yours. Do you think she did kill herself?’

Adam pictures and tries to shrink his old pain. He sees it first as a brown cloud, then as blood soaking the front of his mother’s riding habit when she fell at a fence she should not have tried to jump.

Remembered voices mumble.

‘... while the balance of her mind ...’

‘Shush!’

Another wonders, ‘Did she not see the wire?’

‘Saw it too late, maybe. Maybe it jumped up after a horse ahead of her dislodged a stone!’

‘That rogue of a farmer shouldn’t have had wire there at all!’

Rags of memory gleam like blanks in a negative print. Or a stack of prints. Under that dark wetness must be whiteness, and under that more blood. And deep within, though he never saw it, the foetus. A male, he heard later. A brother.

How, some priests queried, could
he
have seen anything at all? Aged twelve? Wasn’t all this imaginary? Honestly now! And he, having encouraged their incredulity, wanted to agree but knew that she must have been taken from where she fell and that he must have followed. He would have been on his pony and she perhaps in a cart. Unless they rigged up some sort of stretcher. This bit is blank, so he can only guess. Taken, anyway, to a cabin where her clothes were cut open with a tailor’s scissors. Even now he can summon that sound of steel labouring through layered wool. Failing to cut, then cutting. After that, memories of confessionals and cabin get entangled because someone was praying in both. Reciting the
Memorare
, begging for a miracle. The next thing he remembers is her coffin.