Adam Gould (30 page)

As if poor Monseigneur de Belcastel – by then lying under a sheet in the morning room – were alive and suffering from some faintly disreputable malaise!

Sauvigny, perhaps from military instinct, let Meuriot pull rank, and Dr Blanche did not protest. He had spent his last energies on Adam, with whom, not long before, he had been
en tête à tête
, when Meuriot walked in, accused them of sweeping something under the carpet, and demanded to know what it was. There had been nothing for it then but to give him a sanitized account of the fracas with Guy in which the opium was not an overdose but an appropriate quantity which had been prescribed by Blanche. Meuriot accepted these mitigating points, but Adam saw that the real significance of the exchange was that Blanche felt obliged to provide them. Meuriot had taken over.

It was no surprise then, that, when news came of the monsignor’s accident, Blanche could not cope. He closed his eyes, and his face crumpled. Quite suddenly he had to lie down.

By contrast Meuriot, when he returned, looked forceful. He presented a persuasive version of events. Belcastel had been responsible for accidentally closing the shutter; he had stepped on his own dressing-gown as he climbed the ladder – there was a tear to prove it – had lost his footing and had fallen against the garden roller. He had been alone. Two questions remained to be settled: why had he gone there at all and how had the vicomte come to find him?

Meuriot’s jowls shook impressively as his large, authoritative head, amplified by a vigorous growth of grey side-whiskers, slewed about. ‘You,’ he eyed the vicomte, ‘were no doubt looking for him? The maidservant, who says he followed you outside, must have got things wrong. She is a young featherhead and quite undependable.
You
followed
him
,
n
’
est-ce pas
?’

‘I ...’

‘And found him dead. In the dark? You had come here, I am told, “between two trains”, precisely to see him? So you were in a hurry and when you saw him making for the loft, you followed him. It is perfectly logical. Nobody is to blame. It was, as I said, an unhappy accident – especially so as the poor, dear man was cured and due to leave us in a day or so.’

Blanche, Adam and Sauvigny were silent. Each may have been waiting to see if one of the others would speak. Then the moment for speaking passed.

Meuriot nodded. ‘The other question remains. Why did the monsignor go to the loft in the first place? Mmm? Someone must have an idea.’ Waiting, he sighed irritably. This time silence wouldn’t do.

To his own surprise, Adam heard himself say, ‘He sometimes went there to read his breviary. He liked to lie in the hammock. It was a place to be alone.’ This was almost true. The monsignor had, after all, gone there once.

‘In the rain? In his dressing-gown?’

‘Perhaps he had left the breviary there and was anxious about it? It was a gift from the comte de Chambord and very precious to him.’ This was an outright improvisation.

Again Meuriot nodded. He looked relieved.

Adam had spoken from habit. Fixing things was what he had done as Dr Blanche’s factotum and right-hand man. The question remained though: what had really happened? Better perhaps not to know. Monseigneur de Belcastel would not have liked a scandal.

A milk dray was holding up the hackney cab. Looking out, Adam saw that they were nearing the station. They could be there in five minutes. The silence felt like metal, like stone. He
must
break through it. ‘Well,’ he managed to say, ‘between us we averted a scandal! It was the least we could do for poor Monseigneur de Belcastel.’

The vicomte sighed.

Dazed, Adam decided. Not angry: dazed. Hoping to rouse him gently, he sighed too. It was the pitch of the voice, he had found with inmates, which mattered most. ‘Don’t worry,’ he cajoled soothingly, then, more soothingly still: ‘I know that it’s hard. I myself sometimes worry that I bring bad luck to people I care for. It’s like a fate.’

This, it struck him, might not be a wise thing to say if he wanted the vicomte to consent to his friendship with his niece. Not that the vicomte was listening. His hand moved. It had pulled something from an inner pocket. It was Danièle’s crimson neckband. Sauvigny dangled it on his forefinger.

‘Oh dear,’ thought Adam. ‘
Zut
!’

‘I took it,’ the vicomte told him, ‘when I went back in. From the nail on the rafter. I couldn’t leave it there.’

‘You know how it got there,’ Adam was inspired to lie. ‘Madame d’Armaillé gave it to the monsignor after he persuaded her to trust His Holiness. As a token of her trust.’

Sauvigny screwed up his eyes and held the red circle so that it caught the sunlight that was now breaking through the rain.

‘I thought you’d like to know,’ said Adam. ‘You see, he and she were in the garden one day when the rain came on, so they took shelter in the loft. He had been telling her about the pope’s hope that all Frenchmen could be at peace. So, as the neckband was a memory of the guillotine ...’

‘A memory of our relatives’ martyrdom.’

‘And an incitement to revenge ...’

‘Did he say that?’

‘He said that making a cult of the wrongs done to us bred pugnacity and self-righteousness. His mind was full of the topic. You see, he was preparing to write some articles ...’

‘... for his newspaper?’ The vicomte nodded knowingly. ‘I heard about that.’

‘Well, it seems he was persuasive. So Madame d’Armaillé took off her neckband and ...’

‘Ah,’ said the vicomte, ‘I see! I see! You have set my mind at rest. I knew I shouldn’t pay the least attention to that base, disgusting letter.’

Adam pretended not to hear this. Instead, he went on talking about the dead man and, quite soon, both he and the vicomte were obliged to take out their handkerchiefs and flick away tears.

‘It
was
an accident,’ Sauvigny said abruptly. ‘Not planned. Not controlled. An accident. And of course it happened in the dark.’

‘Yes.’

‘We always thought we should control everything. It was why we wanted the king – and indeed the king pope,
il papa re
. But, well, there you are, everything ended in a muddle, and now we have a new, treacherous pope, so it’s just as well that he’s
not
a king, but is penned up like a lion in a zoo in his little toy leonine city, ha. That’s its name, did you know? And he’s Leo! I shouldn’t laugh. It’s a shame that poor Belcastel died violently. He was a man of peace.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m glad anyway that I learned the truth.’

‘Yes.’

‘I wish,’ said the now garrulous vicomte, ‘you weren’t leaving. Poor Danièle will need a friend.’

Neither man believed that he had been lied to, and each knew that his own lies had been benevolent. When they parted at the station, they embraced.

While watching the vicomte’s train steam from the station, Adam realized that he was free to miss his own. This thought so compelled him that, by the time the engine smoke dispersed, he had found the
consigne
, dropped off his bag and headed for the post office where he composed a telegram urging Danièle to send a reply care of Thady Quill.

Remembering Dr Meuriot’s warnings against lingering in France upset him briefly and he spoiled two telegraph forms. But seeing his message set out on official paper put him in good heart.

Some things were not yet out of his hands!

He would stay at Quill’s. She could meet him there or, if the place was distasteful to her, in a tearoom. Perhaps in the Bois? She could wear a hat with a veil thick as a bee-keeper’s, and who would know her? He imagined her muslin frock – green and pink – flowering under it. They could go where they liked, even boating on the river as Guy used to do – though it was now too cold for that.

Was his idea reckless?

By striking down Belcastel, death had made lesser risks look puny. Poor troubled Belcastel! Wincing, Adam crumpled the form, nibbled a hangnail and stared, for an unseeing moment, at a blotting-pad where traces of past urgencies cringed in mirror-image. Then he picked up the scratchy, post-office pen, rewrote his message – practice was improving it – and sent it off. If he and Danièle were to have a future, they must meet. Talk. Make plans! There was no need to leave today. There would be later trains. There would be trains next week!

He had some cash: his salary and a small amount belonging to the dead monsignor who would not have begrudged its use. It would do for now. He set off on foot for Thady Quill’s.

His step was buoyant and the air fresh. Street vendors were selling hot buckwheat pancakes and roasted chestnuts, and on a poster a red-gowned woman danced. Capering in parody, a bearded beggar raised imaginary petticoats, and for seconds was a woman too. Laughing, a real woman threw coins into his cap. Paris had never seemed so pleasingly protean! Adam, as he told Thady, whom he found mouldering drearily in his shop, felt as though he had emerged from a cocoon. It was maddening to have to leave, but he kept quiet about why he must. Thady – a gossip! – had best be given an edited account of his plight.

‘Arrah go on!’ was Thady’s puzzled response to this shifty rigmarole, followed by: ‘Breaking outa your cocoon is what you shoulda done years ago!’

Thady’s mood was fractious. His wife had scolded him in front of two of their employees, so to punish her he felt obliged to punish himself by refusing the lunch she had prepared as a peace-offering. No self-respecting husband could afford to be won over by a dish, however tasty, of
blanquette de veau
! Thady was proud of his wife who was shrewd, personable and worked hard. But in any partnership showing weakness was unwise. The upshot was that Adam too had to forgo the
blanquette de veau
and eat with Thady in a greasy
gargote
smelling of reboiled soup. The bench they sat on was bolted to the floor, so they had to stand up when other clients needed to squeeze past. There was a dead fly in the water-jug and the cloth had gravy stains.

When they were finally settled in front of a litre of
gros bleu
and wedges of greyish bread, Adam asked what had started the conjugal tiff.

‘Nothing. Next to nothing! But that,’ said the didactic Thady, ‘means everything, as you’d know yourself if you’d ever lived with anyone. Ah, but sure you’re the nestling that fell from the nest too soon to learn about families. Any news of your old man?’

‘He’s dying.’

‘Ah God, Adam, I’m sorry to hear that.’

Adam burst into tears. It was a nervous reaction. Mechanical. He had felt nothing until he saw Thady’s sympathy. Now he felt deceitful.

‘Ah Jesus! And he’s only how old? Fifty-five, is it now? Did you say he had a wasting disease? Ah God love him!’

The good side of Thady’s gossipiness was the interest he took in other people. ‘So that’s why you’re off to Ireland! I was wondering. Well, you’re doing the right thing! You’ll be a comfort to him now, and knowing that will be a comfort to you later. You’re like all the Irish! Good-hearted! All soul! Warm!’

Adam didn’t argue. He guessed that the ulterior aim of this praise was to set up a contrast between high-hearted Irish dash and the narrow views of Thady’s French wife. In the war museum of Thady’s mind, Adam – like one of the tailor’s dummies in Thady’s shop – was no doubt at this moment wearing a heroic and slightly battleworn uniform. Madame Thady, if represented in this same imagined space, would be wearing blinkers.

‘She’s a valiant woman,’ Thady acknowledged. ‘But unforgiving.’ He ordered two glasses of
marc
and, after downing one, was moved to claim that we Irish, due to our long acquaintance with grief, had achieved a spiritual development rarely found in others. As our bodies suffered, so our souls had thrived. Ergo, he argued, while absent-mindedly sipping Adam’s
marc
, we were less attached to property than the money-grubbing French, and wouldn’t kick up a huge fuss when someone made a small mistake and maybe lost a little family money. Despondently, he emptied the glass and stared at the wall.

Adam didn’t ask what mistake Thady had made, but was led by some injured muttering to connect it with a consignment of carefully mended dress uniforms which had not been rendered proof against moths. Had the oversight been Thady’s? The topic, clearly, was best left unprobed.

‘Look at you,’ Thady enthused sadly, ‘rushing to forgive your old man who, there’s no denying it, made a right balls of his and your affairs. The French say you can’t please the goat and the cabbage, but
he
did neither. If we say
you
were the goat – no disrespect intended – and his estate was the cabbage-patch, well ...’ Thady’s quick-snipping tailor’s fingers mimed havoc. The goat had not been let near the cabbages. Yet where were they? His fingers sank limply, abandoning their mime.

‘You mean there’s nothing left?’ Adam had had hints in letters from Ireland that he might be his father’s heir. Heir to what, though? Debts? A thankless duty to come and maybe – oh God! – take responsibility for the widow? ‘How bad is it? Have you heard?’

Thady either hadn’t heard or wouldn’t say. But what, he challenged, sticking to his theme, did money matter when in the long run we’d all be dead? Charity, not blame, was the mortar that kept things together. A man like Adam’s father needed it more than most. ‘He’ll blame himself,’ said Thady. ‘He’ll be haunted at the end! But you’ll be there to comfort him and redeem the past!’

Fortified by another – then another –
marc
, he gloated grandly over Irish high-mindedness and so praised Adam’s good heart that Adam, who had not drunk at all, was fired by this vociferous approval.

It struck him, though, that Thady, being used to promoting moth-eaten goods, might be a poor judge of affection, and he began to pity his father, who perhaps deserved better than Adam had it in him to provide. He would have
liked
to love his defeated old progenitor but, remembering his trouble with Guy, feared unmanageable pity, and to cool things, reminded Thady that to err was human and to forgive divine.

‘I’m not a god yet.’