Season of Light (5 page)

What is the alternative, Asa?

There was no dilemma after all, Asa decided. She would meet Paulin in the hotel atrium and take tea with him. Where was the difficulty in that?

Next day the weather was fine and Philippa sighed because Asa was indoors again. ‘If only Morton would come back and take you for a drive. Is there no chance that your friend Beatrice will call?’

‘If she did … perhaps she and I might take a walk together.’

‘Of course. That’s the solution. Why don’t you write her a note?’

So in the end there was no need for subterfuge. One Paulin was practically the same as the other. Philippa had given permission. If Didier happened to come, and there was always the dreadful possibility he might not, there could surely be no harm in walking a little way with him? At four Asa put on her bonnet and went downstairs. She saw him from the landing, pacing about by the desk, and her heart lurched with fear and longing. How astonishing that nobody else had remarked on his beauty; the turquoise handkerchief tucked carelessly into a pocket, the glossy tangle of his hair. He at once took her hand and placed it on his arm as if there was no question that it belonged there. ‘Shall we go out? Are you free? Should I perhaps go up and see your sister?’

‘My sister is resting …’

Outside, in the city, everything was sharply defined: a half-clothed beggar on the street corner too weak to raise a hand for money; a vendor of milk up from the country; the shadows of a man and woman linked together – Asa’s bonneted head close to Paulin’s shoulder. And where her ungloved hand, with its sapphire ring, rested on his arm, she felt a steady pulse.

‘In London,’ said Didier, ‘is it like this?’

‘I’ve been to London only once, though of course there are beggars everywhere, even in our little village. But in England few face actual starvation because the land is well managed. Here in Paris everything is so extreme. Even the heat of the sun feels cruel.’

At a crossroads they turned on to a road bordered on one side by a row of narrow houses, on the other by a high stone wall. ‘The Carmelite house of St Joseph,’ said Didier. ‘And there, number forty-seven, is my house. I have to collect some papers. Do you mind?’

His usually bright eyes were tentative and she trembled as she understood what he was asking, yet she could hardly wait on the street, so she followed him up a narrow staircase, by now almost blinded by terror and desire. At one point he paused until she was abreast of him and they stood only inches apart, catching their breath.

His apartment was shabby but airy and light with a long window overlooking the street. It smelt of coffee and of sun baking on to ink and parchment. And of Didier. In the monastery garden on the other side of the wall Asa could see a path fringed by beech hedges, beds of low-growing shrubs and a small stone building with no windows. The fact that Didier’s apartment stood opposite a religious establishment was reassuring; Asa grew calmer as she watched him search through a pile of files, apparently oblivious to her. His desk had a single drawer that was so crammed with papers it wouldn’t close. There were stacks of books and, partially hiding the bed, a varnished screen on which were folded various items of clothing, including the coat he had worn to the Odeon.

After he’d sorted his papers Didier cleared a chair for her and poured tepid coffee from an earthenware jug. Asa pretended that her attention was on the jug, which she thought the loveliest object she had ever seen, roughly glazed with a pattern of blue leaves on a translucent white background. In reality she was so aware of Didier that even his smallest action opened a seam of nerves along her skin. He drew up the only other chair and sat opposite, his knees nearly touching hers, elbows resting on his thighs. Though they rarely glanced at each other at first, gradually it became impossible to look away.

‘Tell me what you have been doing today,’ he said.

Asa’s lips felt thick and strange. ‘My sister is still unwell so I have been reading to her. But she was strong enough to sit in a chair by the window. I think we’ll be leaving in a couple of weeks.’

‘So soon?’

‘My brother-in-law is torn between fear of the journey and a longing to get her back to England.’

‘And when you are in England, will you stay with Monsieur and Madame Morton?’

‘No. I’ll go home to Sussex, where I live with my father and other sister, Georgina. She is ten years older than me. Georgina wanted very much to come to Paris, but she and Philippa don’t always see eye to eye and someone had to stay with Father.’

‘I must be grateful to your sister, then, that she chose you,’ and Didier’s knee, perhaps inadvertently, touched hers.

‘You see, Philippa had almost given up hope of marriage, but then she went to stay with an aunt in Guildford – it was Georgina’s turn to go but she hates looking after anyone and had a cold so Philippa went instead. John Morton happened to be in the area looking for a plot of land. Georgina feels she missed her chance. So now she has gone to London with Father, who will be miserable, I expect. He hates staying in a town.’

‘Three sisters. Your family is like a fairy story, mademoiselle. And your mother is dead, like mine?’

‘She is.’

‘But no wicked stepmother.’

‘None.’

‘Perhaps that is why we are so drawn to each other – we are alike. That, and our acquaintance with Mr Lambert.’

‘Do you remember him, then?’

‘But of course. He and my father met long before I was born, when they were students in Geneva. They shared a preoccupation with the meaning of freedom, not to mention a love of the French philosophers and an admiration for Rousseau, who, as you may know, your friend Monsieur Lambert was privileged to meet when Rousseau was in England. I was a very young boy when Monsieur Lambert came to our house, and yet he spoke to me as if my opinion mattered. He encouraged me in my studies and wrote me a letter of congratulation when I was granted a scholarship to study in Paris.’

‘That is exactly Mr Lambert. The quality of a person’s ideas is all that matters to him, not whether they are rich or poor; man, woman or child. It never troubled him, for instance, that while he and Caroline are Dissenters, I am Church of England.’

‘And we are Roman Catholics, at least in name. I could hardly have studied at the College Louis le Grand otherwise. But I share with you, I’m sure, a belief in tolerance.’

Sipping Paulin’s coffee, watching the detail of him – a curl of dark hair on his forehead, the frayed corner of his cravat, the deep arch of the half-moon on his thumbnail – and listening to the words spilling from his eloquent mouth, Asa was conscious that an entirely different conversation was taking place; one so urgent that the words died on their lips.

At the end of half an hour a nearby clock struck five and Paulin reached for her cloak. ‘I am writing an article for an
affiche
– news-sheet, that is – on the imbalance within the Estates General. I must deliver it to the printer’s tonight.’

No need, then, for Asa to have felt so anxious. How foolish she had been not to trust him. But as she put on her cloak he reached over her shoulders and held the two edges together against her throat so that the length of his body was pressed to her back and his forehead to her hair. They stood thus joined as he whispered: ‘I have never spoken your name. Tell me your name.’

‘My name is Thomasina, though my sisters have always called me Asa.’

‘What shall I call you?’

‘Whatever you want. Anything.’

‘Thomasina. Thom-as-ina.’ Each syllable was like a kiss, and Asa thought his lips might touch her throat or cheek. But he broke away, took her by the elbow and ushered her from the room. In the street he said nothing at all and she almost had to run to keep up with him.

Outside the Montmorency he bowed and his thumb brushed her palm: ‘If I write, will you come to me again?’

All that night and the next morning Asa was determined not to see Didier again. She was furious with herself for deceiving Philippa and betraying her upbringing, especially her friendship with Caroline, whose father she and Didier had used as a conversational hook and to whom she could no longer write with honesty. If Didier planned to marry her, he should court her by conventional means. Why not? In a few years’ time, when he was established as a lawyer, he would be able to support her. Never mind what her family would say if she told them she intended to marry a Roman Catholic French radical. Of course, there was no question of him coming to England and living at Ardleigh. He was needed in Paris. Well then, she must wait, she thought, like every other respectable girl.

But the blue and white jug had been so beautiful, as had standing at his window and seeing sunlight in the leaves above the monastery wall. It reminded her of lying in the shade of the beech tree at Ardleigh. This was the confusion – with Didier everything seemed familiar yet utterly strange. It had felt exquisitely significant to the point of physical pain to have sat in his little room holding a coffee cup between her palms, yet it also seemed as right as reading a book in the Lamberts’ parlour, as right as walking on the Downs with her father to inspect the sheep. So how could it be wrong?

For two tormented days she heard nothing more from Paulin. Why should he remember me, she thought, when he’s busy making plans to change France for ever? And in the meantime Asa was restricted to the Montmorency or the interminable walks in the Luxembourg Gardens with her brother-in-law, who had become more aloof since Shackleford’s withdrawal. Once or twice Philippa, who felt less nauseous by the day, said she might join them. Time was running out.

Didier’s note, when it came, said:
Demain. À quatre heures. Chez moi
.

Once again Asa’s feelings veered from ecstasy to an agony of indecision. The next day Morton had an engagement and Philippa said she would rest but perhaps get up later. All afternoon Asa walked about the hotel or sat in her room attempting to read while outside the window the city teased with its racket and energy. As the clock chimed three thirty and Asa was pacing her room thinking, Shall I go? I cannot, a maid knocked and announced that a gentleman was awaiting her in the parlour below.

Didier must have come to fetch her.

But it was Shackleford who stood amid the stunted orange trees, apparently fascinated by the little fruits and dressed in a mist-coloured riding coat with three collars.

‘Miss Ardleigh, forgive the intrusion. I wanted to enquire after your sister, and to say goodbye.’

He was infuriatingly hesitant. Time was passing yet Asa had no choice but to offer him tea. After dithering for a moment he said he would drink a glass of lemonade. Now that her chance of seeing Didier was under threat, she knew that the only thing that mattered was that she should run to meet him in the rue du Vieux Colombier.

‘I am going to Italy, Miss Ardleigh, and then farther afield, so I doubt you will see me again.’ Shackleford stood with folded arms, tapping the brim of his hat against his elbow.

Go, go, go, she thought.

‘I know you think very little of me, Miss Ardleigh. I cannot regret what I feel for you, but I regret what was said between us in the Palais Royal. It was far too soon. I hardly know what came over me that I should have pressed you so early in our acquaintance … that I could ever have expected …’

Asa took a sip from her glass and stared at her lap. Just
go
.

‘I wanted to say that I hope one day you and I shall meet on better terms. After all, we are cousins, of sorts.’

In her frustration Asa glanced at him suddenly, as if the directness of her gaze might force him to leave. He smiled wryly, and his features became more defined; a crease between jaw and cheekbone, and rather deep, complicated furrows in his forehead for a man said to be under thirty. ‘That’s why I came. That’s all; to ask you not to judge me too hastily.’

The clock on the mantel struck the quarter. ‘I wish you a very pleasant trip in Europe, Mr Shackleford.’

‘I shall probably not stay in Europe. Who knows? My father has all kinds of plans for me. Africa. The Americas.’ He paused, expecting her no doubt to ask further questions or even to berate him once more for his family trade. Again those unsettling eyes scanned her face. ‘I’ll be on my way, then. Give my kindest regards to your sister, Miss Ardleigh.’

If she didn’t say another word he would be forced to leave immediately. Sure enough he sighed, bowed and with only one backward glance, was gone.

In a flash Asa was up the stairs, had seized her cloak and bonnet and glanced in the mirror. She noticed that her cheeks were pink and her eyes burning. But as she crossed the Cherche-Midi, weaving between a couple of wagons, it occurred to her to look back – she thought she’d seen a man wearing a grey coat standing at the street corner as she emerged from the hotel. Yes, it was Shackleford, who had now clapped on his hat and was striding away. Surely he hadn’t caught sight of her. A horse obscured her vision and when she looked again he was gone.

She was nearly a quarter of an hour late. Didier was waiting for her at the street door and dashed forward to meet her, holding up his hand as if her excuses were an irrelevance. Again they climbed the stairs in silence, but this time, when they reached the middle landing, he took her hand and did not let go until they reached the apartment, where he again poured coffee from the leaf-patterned jug and sat a little closer, so that her knees were actually enclosed by his as they drank.

‘What have you been doing, Mademoiselle Ardleigh, since I last saw you?’

‘Very little. I am late because, just as I was leaving, my cousin Mr Shackleford came to call.’

‘Ah yes. I know him.’

‘His family wealth comes from slavery. I want nothing to do with him.’

‘You are a harsh judge, mademoiselle. Must a man be criticised for what his father has done? I have seen Mr Shackleford time and again in Paris. To his credit he has friends everywhere, among all types of people, and he admires you very much.’

‘When my father dies,’ said Asa, ‘Shackleford’s older brother will inherit Ardleigh. You see, our English laws are as unjust as the French. Because the property is entailed through the male line we three girls will have nothing and Georgina and I will be homeless. So not only is Shackleford the son of a slave trader, he will also be a cuckoo in our nest. Can you blame me for turning him down?’