Adam Gould (20 page)

Somehow, talk now turned to Monseigneur de Belcastel who, in his day, said Madame de Commanville, had also appealed to ladies. Oh indeed, she insisted. There was a story about that too. Had none of them heard it? Glancing up at the asylum windows, she lowered her voice. ‘I shan’t tell unless you all beg me to. Why should I let you revel in what you hear, then have the luxury of disapproving. Do you beg?’

They begged and were told how, on the night of the famous château fire, Monseigneur de Belcastel had been in a married lady’s bedroom. Since he could not be seen emerging from it, without damaging both her reputation and his own, he let her leave ahead of him, then lingered behind until the coast was clear before doing so himself.

‘By then the wooden panelling was breaking up and, as he crossed the hall, a burning piece hit him on the face, which is how he got his scar. It is said that, when the conspiracy was discovered, he took the entire blame for it so as to atone for his sin!’

Adam, who guessed that Belcastel was now sacrificing his old allies to a new atonement, wondered how the monsignor could ever pay his serial moral debts. But perhaps this latest story wasn’t true.

Another week went by with no sign from Danièle, and Adam, encouraged by what had been said about the appeal of the forbidden, thought of pursuing her. How though? Her uncle was clearly possessive. The way he had burst into the room where Adam and she were sitting had been alarming. Besides, remembering her anxieties about her husband shamed him. Then he heard that the uncle had gone back to Brussels, taking her with him.

‘Sauvigny,’ Belcastel revealed, ‘hopes to raise more money with which to buy my loyalty. It seems King Leopold’s circle is awash with African profits, but he will have to stay there a while if he is to find out how to get any. No doubt he felt he couldn’t leave his niece alone, but didn’t want her to come here either.’

Adam winced, decided wincing was presumptuous and turned the conversation to his patron’s affairs.

Belcastel hoped to leave the asylum soon. He and le Père de Latour had been promised help by friendly government ministers, and Adam had been sent with several coded messages to the telegraph office. Because missionaries’ work abroad helped the country’s prestige, Latour had access to circles otherwise closed to the clergy, and a project was afoot to found and edit a newspaper which would promote the
ralliement
, as the truce with the Republic was now called. This task was daunting since the old Catholic press had taught its readers to view Republican Catholics the way a fox views the hunt. But Belcastel had agreed to take it on once his civic status had been straightened out.

‘There will be a position for you,’ he assured Adam, ‘if you want it. You’re surely not planning to stay here? Dr Blanche can hardly remain active for much longer. Dr Meuriot will soon be in charge and has already made it clear that he will run this place on more orthodox lines. So you won’t fit in, and Madame d’Armaillé won’t either. Ladies complicate life in institutions – except, to be sure, when the institution is run for and by them like the notorious Belgian one which houses the deranged Empress Charlotte of Mexico whose keepers collaborate with her illusion that her asylum
is
Mexico. Madame d’Armaillé might be more at home there than here. Refusal to acknowledge reality is part of her heritage. After all, her uncle refers to the Count of Paris as Philip VII of France. I know what you’re thinking. So used I. Well,’ Belcastel laughed with rueful malice, ‘times change, as they say, and we with them. If we’re sane.’

By the way, he added, Madame’s reasons for going to Brussels were to make inquiries about the men in the Force Publique. ‘It seems that there’s been news about her husband. Contradictory, but worth pursuing.’

Adam’s hopes now took a new turn. What if the husband were dead? Fool, he berated himself. If he were, she would look for an advantageous match! Marry again for birth, rank and money! She wouldn’t think of you!

Some time later another chat between the two men was slowed by a rain shower during their morning walk. Though the air was thundery, neither had an umbrella, and, as they loitered under a tree, Belcastel said he was sorry if he had lately seemed self-absorbed. ‘I keep fretting,’ he explained, ‘about this move I have agreed to make. Sometimes I think of that deranged lady I mentioned who reigns over an imaginary empire, and it seems to me that the Church is full of men who are mad in precisely the same way as she.’ Pausing, he clenched his mouth so that the skin on his jaw whitened. ‘The trouble is,’ he took up, ‘that I was used to our old, honest madness, and, in spite of myself, despise the sane trimmers with whom I shall have to work. Latour was telling me about the unfortunate natives in the Congo who are caught between Arab slavers and rapacious Belgians. As he described it, there is a sort of Christlike grandeur in their sorrow. He says they sing, over and over, in their own language: “Let us die! We want to die!” One can’t help reflecting that none of
our
friends think like that! So, why feel bad about deserting them?’

Adam watched the unscarred cheek flush darkly.

‘Mind,’ Belcastel rallied, ‘I would not be waffling like this if I did
no
t feel bad. It’s a stark choice when His Holiness does a 180-degree turn. Yet I, I tell myself, have some leeway, unlike the natives of the Congo. Our world is myriad. I can learn to trim. I can even teach you to help me, Gould.’

Adam made a supportive grunt.

‘Yes, well!’ The monsignor, after – presumably – turning for moments on the spit of his conscience, admitted being in two minds about the paper he was to edit. But then, as Latour had pointed out, a man of two minds was just the man for the job. ‘Knowing how opponents think helps. Besides, if I get abuse from my readers, along with shit-smeared letters, why – dixit Latour – I’ll be working off guilt for having caused similar abuse to be hurled at His Eminence. Clemency is not much in evidence these days among the senior clergy. They’re too busy walking their tightrope towards the secular world! Ours is an unpromising time.’ Belcastel waved at a heavy raincloud. Fat drops were starting to fall.

He and Adam were now heading for shelter by making zigzag dashes between protective clumps of trees. The lawns had been mown the day before, and the hem of the monsignor’s cassock was crosshatched with grass cuttings. Walking – a new habit with them – had drawn them close, for both favoured a lively pace and Belcastel talked volubly as they strode.

Though Adam was the vicomte’s replacement as Belcastel’s confidant, there could be no confidences going the other way. He could not confess his interest in Madame d’Armaillé, although he enjoyed bringing up her name. Even the shape of its syllables in his mouth gave him pleasure and, as with a prayer, the sounds seemed to make a connection with her. It had been a surprise when this shivered along his nerves the first time her name was spoken – not, as it happened, by him but by Belcastel who, shortly after her visit to
him
, asked Adam if he thought she would be a useful element in the
maison de santé
. Was she, he had wondered, quite stable? A flurry of feelings had promptly assaulted Adam – suspicion that he was being tested, contempt for his own caution, eagerness ... In the end he said ‘yes’.

Then she didn’t come.

As it turned out, far from being suspicious, Belcastel was disarmingly trusting. Last week he had asked Adam to open a bank account into which to put Sauvigny’s money. No, not in the name ‘Belcastel’. This wasn’t feasible while its bearer was officially a lunatic. But, once the charges against him were dropped, he could be declared sane. The men he had been shielding were now out of the law’s reach in London and so could be safely named; the climate was conciliatory and the cardinal’s influence would help. But such things were slow, and the money could not stay here.

‘Might be snaffled! By magistrates, as some sort of fine! Why let that happen?’ It wouldn’t do either to involve Father de Latour who would want it for the new pro-
ralliement
newspaper. That would be too unfair to Sauvigny.

To explain his clash of scruples, the monsignor sketched the history of his moral shift. Fourteen years ago, he revealed, when the last pope died, Sauvigny and he had revived a long defunct secret society, les Chevaliers pour la France et pour la Foi or cff. Ensuring that France and Faith were equally well served was not easy but, as in a three-legged race, it was vital to keep in step. That was what the original cff had been for. Adam hadn’t heard of it, had he? No! Secrecy had been its strength. Other networks – pious masonries really – sworn to revive the old order, had been more visible. The cff kept to the shadows. If one of Belcastel’s granduncles had not been a member, he would never have known of it.

‘It was pious and ruthless and was dissolved in 1826. Did you know that the confessor of Louis XVIII’s mistress used to prepare her for sessions with her royal lover? Drilled her in politics!’ Belcastel smiled. ‘We may presume she needed no other coaching.
Our
target was Rome. We hoped to softsoap the new pope’s advisors and so secure support for our monarchy. The activities of our wilder elements – blackmail and bribery – were never part of our plan. We tried to win a hearing by making donations to the papal coffers.’

‘That didn’t work?’

‘No. So some of us began to feel that God wasn’t with us. Don’t look surprised. You may prefer not to say “God”. Say “the spirit of the times”. You see we couldn’t control our wild men.’

‘And this new money?’

‘Was to be used here in France to win churchmen’s sympathy – starting with mine. Sadly, it came too late. Now I have other loyalties – which can be uncomfortably demanding. My new masters want me to trample on the old. But I shan’t do it.’ Belcastel straightened his shoulders. Why, he challenged, should his change of allegiance not be effected in an honourable way? Why should only rogues change their minds?

This was the nub of his torment: fear of becoming a rogue. Warily, he and Adam circled the dilemma: giving the vicomte’s money to his opponents would be unfair to him; returning it to him would be unfair to them.

‘Put it in
your
name,’ Belcastel finally told Adam.

‘Adam Gould?’ Laughing.

‘Yes.’ Belcastel was grave.

‘But I could make off with it and cheat you. Or people could think I had.’

‘Ah, yes.’ The monsignor nodded. ‘In today’s France people could think anything. I,’ he made a point of insisting, ‘trust you.’

But Adam insisted that they must sign a contract before a notary whom he would fetch here for the purpose. It struck him, as they agreed to this, that he and Belcastel had more in common than either had supposed. Their inner lives were vivid. Scruples and doubt were filters between them and action. I must
do
something, Adam resolved, and I must do it soon. If I don’t, the dreamy, mad contagion which the kitchen staff fears will stupefy me.

As they stepped up their pace to avoid the coming rain, the monsignor’s comments came in short, asthmatic gusts. ‘When Madame ... d’Armaillé comes here,’ he panted, ‘you must not ... tell her any of this.’

‘About the money? The newspaper?’

‘About either.’

‘Very well. But
is
she coming?’

‘I believe so. Any day now. Didn’t the director tell you? Ah, of course, he’s been ill.’

The mist was condensing in fat drops. There was a flash of lightning followed by thunder.

‘Best get out from under the trees.’

‘We’ll be drenched!’

‘No,’ Adam remembered, ‘I know a place where we can shelter.’

He led the way through the kitchen garden to a loft above some disused stables which he had come upon last year when following a hen which was laying out. He had found her eggs in a nest of old hay and guessed from the musty fragrance that this had once been a storage place for apples. He now hid there when he wanted to be alone and, over some months, had rigged up a hammock, brought in a supply of candles and stacked books on the airy, porous shelves which must have been designed like that so as to keep the apples dry. Sometimes, while lazing in the hammock, he wondered about the hen whose place he had taken, for once he cleared away her eggs – there was a surprising number of them – she stopped coming back. A loner, was she? Or a hen with a yen to be let hatch out chicks? But she hadn’t done that and the eggs, when smashed, had proven as rotten as a madman’s dreams. Sometimes, when he came here, Adam studied a manual of stenography, but mostly he just mooned, telling himself that he was making plans. Thady Quill had offered to take him into his business, and Adam had not yet said no. He shied from the notion, though. An old-clothes man!

‘There’s money to be made,’ Thady had urged. ‘And what else counts these days? Look at this government! Every second minister is for sale. Have you followed the Panama Canal shenanigans at all?’

Thady didn’t remark on Adam’s lack of expectations from his father. The offer made the point.

‘Are you going to go back to the sem then?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Moodily.

Remembering this much chewed-over exchange, Adam felt suspended between personae. Belcastel had now as good as offered him a position. But it was contingent on the monsignor’s hopes of having himself rehabilitated – and how serious were those?

Rain drummed; drips from a leaking roof stirred memories, and an old rhyme blew through Adam’s head.

A red rosy apple,

A lemon or a tart?

Tell me the name

Of my sweetheart.

While the storm lasted, the monsignor stayed cocooned in the hammock and read his breviary. Gusts rattled the tiles and Adam lay on a storage table redolent of long-gone apples: a cidery reminder of childhood and Hallowe’en, that day of days which had licensed rowdy behaviour.

Drowsily, his train of thought shunted back to those old festivities and the man who planned them. Wanting companions for his pupil, Father Tobin used to invite locals in for ‘a spot of rough and tumble’ – which could turn rougher than foreseen. One game required players, with hands behind them, to seize apples from a tub of water. Good training perhaps for hobbled lives? Other apples hung on strings, and Adam’s memories now bobbed as elusively. In one his father’s mouth nuzzled under a skirt, steadied a low-hung apple against a leg and bit – what? Mama’s shriek was startling, but Papa denied he had bitten her. Of course not, silly! It was the
apple
he had bitten! His laugh froze when Father Tobin banged down his glass of mulled wine and walked from the house. This was unusual for Tobin, a tolerant man, educated in France, who was said to have been banished to this bog because of ‘dangerous thinking’.