Adam Gould (36 page)

‘Meuriot is uneasy at your visit. He thinks you’ll have trouble with the law.’

‘Should I stay somewhere else?’

‘No. I like having him uneasy. Shows I’m still in control.’

Returning to the
maison de santé
, Adam had found Blanche alone with a cigar and joined him for a stroll. The day was still warm, and a smell of freshly clipped box hedges hung in the air. Beyond the river, the sun reddened the metalwork of the Eiffel Tower, from the top of which, according to Maupassant, God had proclaimed him his bastard. Poor Guy. His mother, Blanche confided, had put his beloved yacht up for sale! His
Bel-Ami
. No doubt she thought of him as dead. Well, he might soon be.

The doctor too was feeling his mortality. ‘I’m seventy-two! It may be a race between myself and Guy.’ And indeed he looked evanescent. His eyelashes had faded, and his facial hair was like blown foam. He began to speculate about the police inquiry and the
magistrat
who wanted to see Adam. A
pro forma
precaution? Probably. ‘Politics interested them at first, but our poor friend had not been active lately and his and Father de Latour’s plan to launch a newspaper could hardly be called subversive.’ Latour, Blanche had heard, was going through some sort of crisis. His paper had lost money and was to fuse with one which had a different agenda. ‘They say the pope made a few contributions, then stopped. God’s vicar helps those who help themselves.’ A shrug. It could have been predicted. Moderation didn’t sell.

At table, there was some reminiscing about Guy’s flashes of brilliance when he first came.

‘It was the last flare of a dying lamp! You wouldn’t,’ Meuriot warned Adam, ‘want to see him now. He has more and more accesses of blindness.’

‘He who was so sharp!’

‘He was a luminary!’ Dr Grout, a fellow Norman, sighed loyally. ‘In fact,’ he reminded the others, ‘he used to be able to see in the dark! He was a nyctalops.’

‘And had keen vision for things which weren’t there!’

They discussed the use writers made of hallucinations, and how Guy had stimulated his by ether and other drugs.

‘First he took them for his migraines ...’

‘... then for stimulus.’

In their experience, the doctors agreed, writing was itself a drug. It had been that for Balzac, whose house was not a stone’s throw from this room, and for Nerval, who had been one of Blanche’s patients until he hanged himself on a lamp post.

‘Talking of not believing one’s eyes,’ said Meuriot, ‘I had a surprise visit this afternoon. Madame d’Armaillé is in Paris. It was you she hoped to see,’ he told Blanche, ‘but she couldn’t wait. She is here to see about letting her uncle’s apartment.’

So – Adam felt faint – his had not been a hallucination at all! The lady with osprey feathers had been she! When Dr Grout murmured something in his ear, he failed to understand and answered at random.

Next day he went to see the magistrate, a man, magnified by a vast desk, who wanted to know the source of the monsignor’s funds.

‘Belgium,’ Adam told him, ‘or possibly the Congo. The veteran Zouaves whose donations came through Sauvigny earned money in three continents. Once the papal state collapsed, twenty-three years ago, their swords were for hire.’

The other man said nothing, so Adam felt he should qualify this.

‘Mind, they were as likely to spend as to earn on these ventures. The monsignor thought them the least mercenary of mercenaries.’

The magistrate raised an eyebrow: one only, for a monocle was screwed into his other eye. It made him look exotic which, as the first Republican to confront Adam in an official capacity, was how Adam had expected him to look. He was civil though, and the interview was being conducted in a room with glazed bookshelves and soft armchairs.

‘Would you say,’ he asked, ‘that the monsignor hoped to change the world?’

‘
Monsieur le Juge
, his aim was to effect a reconciliation between the clergy and the Republic.’

‘A sane goal!’ The monocle flashed. Reflections from a yellow blotter gave it a ring of colour like a blackbird’s eye.

Mindful of Blanche’s anxieties, Adam observed that the line between sanity and folly could be hard to draw.

‘And did the vicomte – a man viscerally opposed to the
ralliement
– expect his funds to be used to promote it? Might there have been a second, secret, very different plan? How can you be sure, Monsieur Gould, that you were fully in Belcastel’s confidence?’

Adam said that, though he could not be sure that he knew
all
the monsignor’s plans, he would have had an inkling of any practical ones.

‘Mmm!’ The monocle was removed and polished so that its gleam grew even more like that of a blackbird scouting for a worm. ‘Did you know,’ came an abrupt query, ‘that his will leaves that money to you?’

‘Dr Blanche told me.’

Cheated of his surprise, the magistrate pressed his lips together. ‘It is a lot of money.’

‘Oh, I doubt if he meant me to keep it. Leaving it to me was probably a provisional shift. In the end he must have meant it to go to a good cause.’

‘There is evidence to the contrary, Monsieur Gould. This’ – the magistrate produced a letter – ‘is addressed to you, but, in the circumstances, we had to read it.’

Adam took the unfolded paper bearing a few lines penned in the monsignor’s characteristically dashing script. The down strokes were as fat as pickets.

Dear Adam
,

My advice is to use ‘our’ funds to do what private good you can. Aspire modestly. Don’t try to help any cause. Most overween. Even Pope Leo overweens when he talks of making France happy
.

The more ambitious one’s good intentions, the likelier, I have come to think, they are to backfire. Keeping the money from the madcap clutch of the quixotic Sauvigny is in itself a useful act
.

Looking up, Adam saw that the magistrate had his hand out for the letter.

‘We have to keep it, Monsieur Gould. The case has ramifications. Keep us notified about any change of address.’

Adam handed it back and left. He wondered whether Belcastel had died in a state of despair.

On the outer stairway, he recognized a bony silhouette in a once-white cassock. It belonged to a morose-looking Latour, who seemed to have aged ten years and was as bent as the letter C. As they clasped hands, Adam said, ‘I was thinking of poor Belcastel and took you for his ghost.’

The priest didn’t smile. ‘That is what I am,’ he claimed, ‘a kind of ghost going to see
le juge
! It sounds sinister, does it not?’

‘It sounds like the
Dies Irae
!’

Latour nodded glumly. However, while labouring up some more stairs, he called back over his shoulder, ‘Are you free on Saturday? Come and dine at the monastery. The food is bad, but we can exchange our news.’ And on he trudged, raising stiff knees with visible difficulty.

Outside, a swollen river heaved along both sides of the Ile de la Cité. At the Pont Neuf the divided current licked the tops of the arches, then flowed together at the apex of the small
place
on the other side. Under a surface glitter, it was thick with mud. A drift of tawny ducklings dissolved in a blur, while a swan, magnifying itself, held its wings half-erect. In amused imitation, Adam thrust back his elbows, arched his chest and raced down the quay.

Crossing the Pont Royal to the Left Bank he found he was heading for the rue St Guillaume and the apartment of the vicomte de Sauvigny. High walls revealed the tips of trees whose flowers flew like pennants. Some had fallen. Galaxies of a bloom, whose name he didn’t know, were being shattered. Spring’s gaudy havoc raged unchecked.

He must see Danièle.

For half a year now he had been restraining himself, and restraint bred paradox. It recalled notions such as the one that the last shall be first. The Christian storyline laid the ground for romance.

He told himself that he needed to see her if only to say goodbye. She owed him that. He would not press – well, not hard – for more. But was reminded of the delirium that came from betting a hundred to one on the racetrack.

Every so often you had to nourish your soul’s dream.

He wondered whether to lurk in her street. Wait? But a biting wind drove him to knock on her door and tell the unfamiliar manservant who opened it that he had a message from Dr Blanche for Madame d’Armaillé. The man put out a hand.

‘There is no letter. I am to tell her by word of mouth.’

He wondered if she might guess that a message delivered like this might be from him. Maybe she had had him in mind when calling on Dr Blanche? She had, after all, turned up unannounced, therefore on impulse. And her impulse had touched off his.

He was shown into an anteroom where he stood for minutes. Then, behind him he heard a woman’s voice.

‘Monsieur Gould?’ It was the maid, Félicité. ‘What a turn-up!’ Nodding and marvelling. ‘Do you remember me?’

‘Félicité?’

‘That’s right.’ She looked at him assessingly and was clearly enjoying the moment. What happened now must depend on her. Sure enough, her next remark was, ‘Madame won’t see you if I say it’s you.’

‘How can I persuade you not to?’ Laughing. A
douceur
, he thought and wondered how much.

‘I am not looking for money.’ Delicately, her upper lip twitched like a rabbit’s. This, in someone so self-possessed, was touching. ‘Not that I’d say “no” to it.’

Both smiled.

He produced some notes. Was it more sordid to bribe a maid, he wondered, or to refuse her?

She plucked a largish one from his hand. ‘This is fair.’ She folded his fingers over the rest. ‘But you must promise not to upset her. It’s easily done these days, so don’t ask her questions or argue. She needs comforting. If you can do that, do. But only if she wants you to. Understood?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come then.’ Opening a door, Félicité led him back across the hall where, he now noticed, boxes were piled on top of a large trunk. ‘See,’ she nodded at these. ‘The place is to be let. We’re leaving – supposed to leave in just over an hour. For Belgium. Her husband’ s expecting her.’

‘But then ...?’

‘You might change her mind. Try! Luck is with you, Monsieur Adam, or you wouldn’t be here now! Luck and Félicité. Don’t let us down!’ With a quick swoop, she caught his hand and slipped it inside her bodice next to her skin. ‘That’s to stiffen you!
Courage
, Monsieur Adam! Press her tenderly. Don’t give her time to have scruples.’ For seconds, her hand held his against the breast of which she was clearly proud. When he jerked his away, she whispered, ‘Don’t worry. This is part of the service. The secret part.’

By now they were at another door. Cautiously, she knocked, opened it, put her head around it, announced: ‘A visitor for Madame,’ motioned him in, then closed it behind him.

Danièle, seated at an escritoire, was shaking ink from her pen. She did not look up.

Adam spoke quickly: ‘I had to see you.’

She got to her feet.

‘We never said goodbye.’

She backed from the escritoire. ‘You!’

‘Yes.’ He was standing just inside what he now saw was the vicomte’s library. ‘I shall leave if you want me to.’

Félicité would not have approved.

But then how could someone as set against scruples as Félicité guess that they could be bonding?

‘Shall I go?’

She didn’t answer.

Was Félicité listening on the other side of the door? Casting up her eyes at his lack of sense? Stroking her warm breasts and remembering the chill of his hand?

‘Danièle, do you want me to leave?’

‘No!’ She walked into his arms.

He sighed. ‘I’m ...’

Stopping his mouth with a finger, she took his wrist and drew him after her out of the door – Félicité, if she had been lingering, had gone – up the main stairs and into her bedroom.

What followed was not happiness.

Their first frantic bout of love-making was an inventory of body parts: here I, you, we are whole and together again! My cheek fits the hollow of your shoulder. Ah, and here’s this! Yours. Mine? Ours.

‘We’re one!’

‘Yes.’

Exultant. Possessive. Anxious. The second time they made love, he heard himself say – the weather seemed a calming topic – that in Ireland an unseasonably fine day was called ‘a pet day’ because there might not be another. When she took this for a description of their tryst, he regretted providing it.

How brief was the tryst to be?
Was
it a goodbye? How – he puzzled over Félicité’s instructions – could he press Danièle while soothing her? She seemed as fevered as he.

So who here was thinking responsibly? And how dangerous was the duellist husband away in his rural retreat? Might her servants betray her? Félicité? No, but what of the man who had opened the door? He, Adam saw in hindsight, had a disturbingly insolent look. Viperish? Or was that thought self-important? Maybe the fellow’s mind had not been on Adam at all?

Better keep delirium within bounds. Had a half hour gone by? Adam’s watch was on a dressing table. He didn’t want to be seen reaching for it.

Of course they could never be one or fused or even trusting! And yet he wished their skins would melt. He imagined being her Siamese twin. Sharing a heart and brain. Feeling at last and for the first time complete.

‘Without you, I feel – amputated.’ Instantly, without knowing why, he saw that that word was wrong.

‘
What
?’

He felt her freeze.

‘Adam, you’re spoiling things!’

Her anger shocked him. ‘May I not say ...?’

‘Hush!’

‘Very well, I’ll hush – though words matter.’

‘That’s why they’re dangerous – especially that one!’

It was like finding Eurydice and not being allowed to look at her. Like forgetting a vital password.

His view was tremulous, as if he were seeing a reflection in moving water or flawed glass. Touching her, he felt tomorrow’s absence.

Danièle!

Maybe he should simply get up and leave? At the thought, desire flared and he started to make love to her again.