Paris Requiem (20 page)

James rose slowly. He was about to ask about Marguerite when instead, in what he felt was an utterly unnatural gesture, he found his arm round his brother’s shoulders.

‘Where did you say that bed was, Raf?’

P
rofessor Charles Ponsard’s private consulting rooms were situated on the Avenue Hoche just beyond the Arc de
Triomphe
. The street had only recently been hewn from the surrounding countryside. Everything was greenery and flowering fruit trees and limpid light.

As Marguerite’s carriage, kindly sent together with footman, pulled up in front of a prepossessing mansion in Second Empire style, Ellie squeezed James’s hand with palpable excitement.

‘If wealth has anything to do with skill, Jimmy, I think I’m in luck. The good doctor will be my salvation.’

Her manner belied the trace of irony in her voice and James, responding to the first, smiled solid reassurance.

With the footman’s help, Ellie was quickly in her
wheelchair
and up the flower-lined path. A naked Venus on a high pedestal beckoned to them from its far end. Ellie saluted her. ‘I need all the gods at my side, Jimmy. Even her.’ She adjusted her hat to a slightly rakish angle and looked up at him for approval.

‘You look quite lovely, Ellie dear. Really.’

Her laugh fluttered and came to an abrupt halt as a liveried servant opened the door. The man ushered them into a Pompeian vestibule, took James’s hat and asked their names in a polite hush. James had the odd impression they were attending a soirée rather than a medical consultation.
Simultaneously
the bizarre notion that this might all be part of the treatment leapt into his mind only to vanish when they were shown into the waiting room.

The dark wainscoted space had the slightly menacing aspect of a medieval chamber. The light was tinged by the colours of the high, stained-glass windows. Griffins and
gargoyles
and serpents clung to every piece of ornate furniture. Carved and painted wooden figurines held up candelabra in niches which might as well have been stations of the cross. Crests and bronze shields hung from the walls.

A rigid little man with scrawny arms and gnarled fingers squirmed in a baroque prayer stool, his face twitching spasmodically. On the opposite side of the room, sheltered within an alcove, a woman of queenly proportions sat utterly still in a high, stiff chair, one hand resting on the winged back of some scaly creature. The black folds of her dress looked as if they too were carved. Only the low murmur of her nurse’s voice as she read from some book testified to her waking presence.

A shadow passed over Ellie’s face as she took all this in. James moved her quickly into a far alcove and placed himself in her line of vision.

‘The doctor has a taste for the Gothic,’ he said lightly.

‘Hmm.’ The two spots of pink on Ellie’s cheeks throbbed, soaking up what colour there was in the room. ‘Let’s hope it’s only in furnishings.’ Her smile trembled slightly. ‘I rather like it, myself, Jimmy. Raf described Zola’s house to me and I imagine it just like this. Smaller, of course. Isn’t he fortunate to have met the great man?’

James kept up the patter until they were alone in the room. Then, unable to stop himself, he asked, ‘How did you come to meet Olympe Fabre, Ellie? You said the other day that you had met her before Raf.’

A flurry of emotions he couldn’t decipher played over her face, but she answered evenly enough. ‘It was at Madame de Landois’s. Soon after we got here. It was at one of Marguerite’s five o’clocks. Isn’t it silly, Jim, how they trot out all these anglicisms? Le five o’clock. Le smoking. Le jockey club – and all the time they despise the English.’

James brought her back. ‘So Olympe came to one of the five o’clocks.’

‘Yes. She sang. And Marguerite played the piano.’ Her voice trailed off as if she were imagining the scene.

‘And …?’

‘And then we chatted. Olympe had never met an American woman before. Her curiosity was quite delicious. And I … well, I’d never met an actress before.’

She stopped talking abruptly and clutched the arm of her chair with a hand grown transparent. The blue veins stood out against its pallor like welts.

James tried to change the subject, pointed to one of the crests on the wall. But she didn’t hear him.

‘You know what I wish, Jimmy,’ she said at last, ‘wish more than anything, even more than getting my strength back. I wish I had never induced Raf to go to the theatre to see her with me. That’s what I wish.’

‘Oh Ellie. None of it has anything to do with you.’ He tried to steer her into less perilous waters. Gossip. There was nothing Ellie liked better than gossip. He told her a little about the people he had most recently seen in Boston, asked her about Charlotte and Mrs Elliott and Harriet and then said, ‘Tell me about Madame de Landois, Ellie. Have you ever met her husband?’

Her laugh tumbled through the stillness of the room. ‘Jimmy, you should see yourself. Your eyes have turned the most glorious blue. You’re utterly electric with
inquisitiveness
. Don’t tell me you’re growing sweet on Marguerite. Marguerite the magnificent.’

‘Really, Ellie.’

‘Really yourself, Jim boy.’ She laughed again. ‘And no, for your information, I’ve never met le Conte de Landois. In fact, I sometimes think he doesn’t exist. She just invented him to make her life easier. She’d be quite capable of it, you know. She’s fearsomely clever. Much too clever for the likes of us.’

‘I’ve never heard you say that about anyone, Ellie.’

‘Perhaps not. But then Marguerite is unique. And uniquely generous.’ She paused. ‘Yes. I can’t fault her.’

‘She speaks highly of you, too.’

‘Does she?’ She gave him an astute look. ‘Yes, perhaps she does. As I said, she’s generous. She took a real interest in Raf during his first stay here, introduced him to everyone who’s anyone. Though not Olympe.’ Tears leapt into her eyes. ‘No. That had to wait for me.’

‘Mlle Norton? Professeur Ponsard is ready for you now.’ The servant moved to push her chair.

Ellie clutched at James’s hand. ‘Come in with me, Jim. I want you there.’

Professeur Ponsard’s consulting room bore witness to the same decorative tastes as his waiting room. But here an
accumulation
of prongs and hammers and strange appliances littered a side table, like so many torture instruments. Behind the vast oak desk at which he sat hung an antique tapestry, slightly threadbare, depicting a classical scene. James made out a temple and a centaur before the man leapt up to greet them.

Surprisingly, the doctor had the open countenance and brown complexion of a countryman. His movements were
quick, his eyes lively, and as he addressed Ellie in particular, there was a mixture of that authority and gentleness in his manner which induced ease and trust.

‘I take it you wish to have your …’

‘Brother.’ Ellie filled in for him.

‘Yes, indeed, your brother at your side, Mlle Norton. Quite right. Quite right. If it makes you feel more comfortable, that is all that matters. I don’t think that today, for this first
diagnostic
visit, I shall need you to undress. No, no.’ He looked deeply into her eyes. ‘Now, take your time and tell me precisely what it is that is troubling you and how and when it all began.’ He gestured at her with a friendly flourish of his arm, like a ringmaster.

‘It be … began,’ Ellie started with a hesitant stammer, ‘yes, it began when I was at the Louvre with a friend. A pounding in my head, a terrible headache, worse than I’d ever
experienced
. Here.’ She pointed to her left temple. ‘Everything started to swim before my eyes. An indescribable dizziness, as if the walls were moving, closing in. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. My limbs were too heavy, utterly exhausted. I forced myself, made what felt like a final effort and fled from those swirling walls into the open air. I thought that the freshness would revive me. But no. Instead there was this tingling
sensation
in my right leg, as if my stocking were constantly slipping down. And both of my feet felt helpless, unresponsive, the toes prickling with their own life. I thought I would fall. My friend helped me home.’

‘Yes, go on.’ Dr Ponsard was half kneeling before Ellie, now, a small hammer in his hand. ‘Please go on. This won’t hurt at all.’

‘What are you about to do, Doctor? I don’t want to be undressed.’ Her voice rose into shrillness.

‘I’m just going to take off your shoes and stockings. Yes. We’ll just lift your skirt up a little.’

Ellie seemed to shrivel in her chair. Her face turned chalk white as Ponsard touched her and eased her stockings down her legs. They lay in two rounded clumps at her feet.

‘Carry on, Mademoiselle. Tell me about the progress of the pain.’

James watched him hammer and prod and pinch the length of her limbs. The sight of his sister’s legs startled and moved him. They were preternaturally thin and seemed oblivious to the doctor’s manipulations. But her face was alive to the doctor’s hands. There was a sudden excitement in it, mingled with what he could only call mortification. It made him turn away.

‘Do continue, Mademoiselle. You got home and then what?’

Ellie took a deep breath. ‘That night, the pain was
monstrous
. It was as if someone were thrusting a knife under my toenails. Rats gnawed at my feet. If I turned on the light, I knew I would see them, but I was afraid. And my head hurt so. The slightest movement was an agony. Then the needles began, sharp, long, everywhere on my limbs, my nerves. Like giant wasps. I think I must have fainted, because when I woke, the doctor was there. Dr Giroud. He was bathing my forehead with vinegar water and he gave me an injection which stopped the pain for a while. But a few hours later it started again. Two days after that, I lost all sensation in my legs. At first it felt like a blessing. But I couldn’t walk.’ She sobbed once. ‘I haven’t walked, since. And I’m so tired, Doctor. So very tired.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Ponsard was soothing.

‘Mercifully the pain has stopped now. Will I walk again, Doctor?’

‘We will see. We will see.’ He had placed some kind of
octopus
-like battery appliance with protruding wires and
electrodes
on the floor and he applied one cupped end now to her leg as he fiddled with a dial. ‘Tell me, Mademoiselle, have you had any episodes like this in the past. Any other nervous pains like the ones you just described to me so graphically.’

‘Nothing like this, Doctor.’ She looked up abruptly at James.

‘Would you rather I waited outside, Ellie?’

‘No, no. Stay, James. You might as well know it all.’ She was frowning, her eyes filled with fear, as the apparatus moved up her thigh. ‘I … I have certainly suffered from mental anguish before, Doctor. A kind of buzzing in my head. The ideas, no the words going round and round until the world feels as if it’s disappearing into a great gaping void and me with it. There have been bouts of vomiting, too.’ She bowed her face in something like shame. ‘Black bile that needed to be spewed up. Yes, and terrible headaches. They stop me from sleeping. From eating. And the tiredness is extreme. As if all my nerve cells were
hors de combat.’

The doctor nodded sagely. ‘And you have attempted cures.’

‘At home. In America. Yes. I went to a clinic in New York. They exercised us. A whole daily ritual of exercise and hot and cold baths. It did help. Yes. And once I had a complete rest cure. Nothing but food and sleep. Nothing.’ Her voice trailed off, her face a pitted mask.

‘And recently? Have you suffered some kind of shock.’

Ellie sank further back into her chair. ‘No, Doctor. I had been well. Indeed happy.’

Ponsard was standing again, looking deeply into Ellie’s eyes. ‘Now, Mademoiselle, now that we’ve had a little
muscle-stimulating
electricity, I want to send you to sleep. A deep, good sleep, which will relieve your fatigue. And perhaps it will help other things, too. We shall see. Here. I will put my finger here on this spot on your forehead. Do you feel the sleep coming?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ellie’s voice was tiny, childlike.

‘Ah, but you do. Your lids are growing heavy. So very heavy you can’t keep your eyes open. You are so tired. You need to sleep.’ He passed his hand over her eyes, his voice incantatory. ‘Yes, and your limbs feel so heavy too, you can’t move your
arms, not even your little finger. No, you are quite asleep. Soundly asleep. A deep, restful sleep.’

The doctor paused, then bent to lift Ellie’s arm. James watched it fall as if it was subject only to gravity.

‘Now, Mademoiselle, I want you to get up. To open your eyes and to get up very slowly. Very, very slowly. Yes, that’s it, give me your hand now.’

With utter astonishment, James saw Ellie rise from her chair and take a few slow steps. She was looking straight through him, her eyes unblinking.

‘Yes, that’s good. That’s very good. And now I want you to take a few turns alone around the room. Give those legs of yours a little exercise. Very good. Very good. Keep going until I ask you to stop.’ Ponsard spoke in a deep,
spellbinding
baritone.

Suddenly James thought of a novel that had been all the rage some years back, a silly, shoddy, yet strangely powerful book about a character called Svengali who had held a young woman under his hypnotic sway. He cast a baleful glance at Ponsard, who seemed altogether immune to his suspicions.

‘You see, Monsieur, your sister’s problem is not in her legs,’ he said softly. ‘There is no actual motor paralysis. If I am right in my diagnosis, she is suffering from hysteria. Her susceptibility to hypnosis is part proof of that. In your country, I believe they would call her condition a hysterical motor ataxia.’ He looked up at James expecting acknowledgement.

‘Her legs are indeed paralysed, but only when she is in her normal waking state. In this altered, this hypnotised state, as you see, she moves perfectly well, if a little weakly because her muscles are dwindling. Now tell me,’ Ponsard smiled
engagingly
. ‘Is there any history of epilepsy in your family?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘No spasms or fits?’

The ward at the Salpêtrière leapt into James’s mind and he shook his head vigorously.