Every Mother's Son (17 page)

It was not quite dark and they could see the whole of what was little more than a village on the edge of Paris. Lights shone from the buildings, the cafés and houses, and the street stalls selling their wares. Then they walked round the basilica, which was already being used as a church even though it was not yet finished and was not likely to be for several years.

‘It seems as if we’re looking at history in the making,’ Charles remarked. ‘Perhaps if we come back in twenty years it might be finished.’

‘It’ll be another century,’ Daniel responded. ‘We’ll be middle-aged men!’

‘I’ll be an
old
man,’ François said. ‘I’m almost thirty now.’

‘You’ll have children of our age,’ Charles laughed.

‘First I must catch me a wife,’ François said ironically. ‘Then I shall make my
maman
very ’appy.’

They walked down again into the streets and he took them through several dark alleyways, where he said the artists lived in near poverty, to a basement where they could hear music and people singing and clapping.

It was an airless room with tables and chairs surrounding a small dance floor where a number of athletic men were dancing in a group, kicking up their legs and turning somersaults, while the audience cheered them on and hooted blandishments. The music was coming from a piano, a tambourine, an accordion and a fiddle.

François went to a bar counter and brought back three glasses of wine, putting them down on an empty table. Charles took out his pocket book and offered François money to buy a bottle of wine, which the Frenchman took.

‘I daren’t drink much more,’ Daniel said as they sat down at the table, whilst François went again to the counter. ‘I’m already well oiled with Madame Boudin’s wine. I want to remember where I’ve been.’

‘It’s late already,’ Charles murmured. ‘I shouldn’t think François would want to stay much longer if he’s working tomorrow.’

François came back a few minutes later with a bottle of wine, another glass and a dark-haired girl of about twenty clinging to his arm. She was dressed in a white frilly dress with black stockings peeping beneath it. ‘This is my sweetheart, Claudette,’ he said, giving them a sly wink. ‘She’s going to dance for us in a minute.’

Charles and Daniel had both stood up as she approached. ‘Mademoiselle,’ they said in unison, giving a short bow.

‘I thought you hadn’t yet caught a wife,’ Charles enquired, when François told them that Claudette couldn’t understand or speak English.

‘I haven’t,’ François said. ‘She’s not ze kind of girl to take home to your
mère
.’

Claudette looked questioningly at him and then at the two young men. Charles smiled at her and said softly, ‘
C’est une belle femme
,’ and she blushed prettily.

‘Did you say she was pretty?’ Daniel leaned across the table. ‘Cos she is, she’s beautiful.’

François grinned and said something to her and she glanced coyly at Daniel and then kissed François’s cheek. ‘
Je t’aime
,’ she said softly, before moving away.

‘She loves you,’ Charles said. ‘Do you not love her?’

‘Of course.’ François shrugged. ‘But I can’t marry her. She is a dancer, she can’t cook or keep house or any of ze things that would be expected of her. I love ze wrong kind of girl.’

The music started again and a group of young women rushed to the central floor, shrieking and catcalling as they began to dance just as the men had done, kicking up their legs and turning somersaults, all seemingly competing with the others. Some of the men in the audience put on their top hats and the dancers vied with each other to kick the hats off their heads. When they succeeded the men pressed a coin into their hands. François went to lean on the bar counter to watch.

‘I can see why François can’t take Claudette home to meet his mother.’ Charles’s voice was strained as he attempted to be heard above the noise. ‘She’s rather wild.’

Daniel nodded. The girls were dancing without restraint, and he had a sudden memory of his sister Dolly turning somersaults out in the paddock and not minding if her brothers saw her with her skirts over her head and showing her cotton drawers; but I wouldn’t like to think she was doing that in front of strangers, he mused. Men will get ’wrong message. They’ll think the women free in their ways even though there’s nothing to see but black stockings and suspenders.

When the dancing was over, François returned to the table with a girl on each arm. Daniel and Charles stood up again. One girl was dark-haired, plump and vivacious and he introduced her as Nanette. Daniel could see that Charles was attracted to her black hair, olive skin and brown eyes, a complete opposite to his fair colouring.

The other girl was blue-eyed, fair-haired and slender, and smiling at Daniel. She whispered something to François. He laughed and shook his head.

‘What?’ Daniel said. ‘What’s funny?’

François shrugged. ‘Chérie thinks you are very ’andsome. She asks, are you Italian?’

‘What else did she say?’

‘They ask, can they sit at your table?’

‘Of course,’ Charles said, pulling out another chair for Nanette. Daniel did the same for Chérie. She sat down and crossed one leg over the other, showing rather a lot of black stocking, but when Daniel sat down beside her she transferred herself neatly to his knee.

‘I don’t think you need an interpreter,’ François smiled, ‘so if you will excuse me I will go to find Claudette. I come back in a short time.’

Daniel found himself blushing as Chérie made herself comfortable and then gently scratched under his chin with her forefinger. She murmured playfully into his ear and he guessed that she might be commenting on his bristles. He hadn’t shaved since he’d left home and was now quite bearded.

‘It’s getting very warm in here,’ he told Charles over the top of Chérie’s head. ‘Do you think we ought to be leaving?’

‘It might be a good time, for I have had an invitation to go upstairs and I think that is what your mademoiselle might be suggesting to you too. Do you want to?’

‘Want to what – go upstairs? Do they mean—’

‘I rather think so!’ Charles laughed. ‘And I’m not sure if I’m ready for love.’

‘They’re not suggesting love.’ Daniel tipped Chérie off his knee and stood up. He gave a short bow and indicated that they were leaving. Chérie pouted and purred, patting his cheeks with her fingertips and pretending that she was heartbroken. He blew her a kiss and turned away. ‘Are you coming?’

Charles was kissing Nanette on her cheek and she also was trying to persuade him to stay. ‘It’s a pity,’ he murmured as he too turned away to leave. ‘But yes.’ He gave a sudden laugh as they walked out of the door and into the busy street. ‘Oddly enough, my father warned me to watch out for seductive young women.’

‘Did he?’ Daniel was surprised. Charles’s father seemed to be such a sobersides. Fletcher hadn’t warned him away from women. He probably thought I could make up my own mind about them, and of course I can; and it isn’t that I didn’t find Chérie attractive. She was beautiful and no doubt experienced in the seduction of men, but he didn’t want to go upstairs with her for the simple reason that he felt it would be a betrayal.

Chérie was fair-haired and blue-eyed and he guessed that if he could have understood her she would have been charming and witty, but when he looked at her he saw someone else, someone who had similar colouring, a wide smile and eyes that sparkled with humour, and was completely unattainable. Beatrice.

CHAPTER TWENTY

They became lost, but eventually found their way back to Madame Boudin’s house. She was sitting on a stool outside her door, smoking a small clay pipe, with a glass of red wine on the ground beside her. Her neighbour was with her. They seemed to have had a pleasant evening for they were very convivial.

‘
Bonsoir
,
mesdames
,’ Charles greeted them, and Daniel followed suit.

Madame Boudin asked if they would like a glass of wine and Daniel suggested to Charles that they should accept, to be sociable. When she went inside to fetch the bottle and glasses they sat on the doorstep.

It was a dry mild night, the sky full of stars and the air smoky from fires; they could hear the low murmur of voices coming from some of the shops that were still open, and laughter from nearby taverns.

They were both silent until Charles said softly, ‘I have no experience with young women. I don’t really know many, except for the daughters of my parents’ friends.’ He hesitated. ‘Tonight was the first time I have kissed a girl.’ He turned to Daniel. ‘What about you?’

‘Onny lasses at school ’year afore I left, and really …’ He laughed. ‘They were ’ones who were doing ’kissing. I’d rather have kissed my hosses, to be honest, until …’ It was Daniel’s turn to pause. ‘I didn’t want to kiss anyone until I was seventeen, but then I’d have liked to.’

‘So who was that? Whom did you want to kiss?’

‘Mmm, nobody you’d know.’

‘Someone living nearby?’ Charles insisted.

‘Yeh,’ Daniel said. ‘A farmer’s daughter. But she wouldn’t look at me.’ Then he added, giving Charles a clue, ‘She looks rather like Chérie.’

‘Well, you can have your pick here, it seems.’ Charles didn’t notice the lead. ‘But I think I’d rather wait until someone special comes along.’ He turned his head as Madame Boudin came back holding a bottle and two glasses and they both stood up again.

They sat for another half-hour, drinking wine, looking up at the stars and listening to the sounds around them, and then someone nearby began to play an accordion and their hostess and her neighbour started to sing, and although Daniel didn’t understand the words, the plaintive elderly voices and the evocative music seemed wistful. A longing for something unattainable ran through it, reflecting Daniel’s mood.

When the music and singing finished he turned and smiled at Madame Boudin, gently clapping his hands, and she patted the top of his head understandingly.

They said good night to the two women, and Daniel added ‘
Merci
,
madame
’ to Madame Boudin, who nodded affectionately at him.

The next morning they ate a hearty breakfast of eggs and ham and drank strong coffee, and clutching their street maps they set off towards Paris and their day of culture and sightseeing. They headed down towards the Louvre and the Tuileries, but the Louvre wasn’t open yet so they wandered off to look at the gardens.

Daniel read in the guide that the Tuileries had had a chequered history. The gardens had been designed in the sixteenth century and continued to be developed right up to the time of the French revolution, when Louis XVI was imprisoned in the Tuileries Palace with his wife, Marie Antoinette, and their son. In the present century the Emperor Napoleon I carved up some of the land to make a new street and used the lawns for military parades, and following the Franco-Prussian War the Communards flew their red flag over the palace. When the army arrived to move them out, the Communards burned down the palace, leaving it in ruins, which was how it was now as Daniel and Charles stood gazing at it.

‘They didn’t want anyone else to use it and so they burned it to the ground,’ Daniel said. ‘Sacrilege, wouldn’t you say?’

Charles agreed that it was. ‘But it will be rebuilt eventually. The people will speak, surely? It’s their garden now and open to everyone.’

They returned to the Louvre. Charles was excited to be visiting, Daniel less so; he had little knowledge of art but was prepared to be open-minded. He was astounded by the size of the building, and had thought it would be filled only with paintings; he hadn’t expected to see displays of Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities in such good condition in their glass cases.

Charles was overawed by the collection of drawings and paintings and pointed out to Daniel a picture by the English artist, Reynolds, of a small fair-haired child depicting Innocence, and another of young ladies in a garden. Then: ‘Look here, Daniel. That could be you.
Man with a Glove
. By Titian. There,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I always knew you were of Italian stock.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Daniel stared hard at the portrait, which he admitted was very fine. ‘He looks like a gentleman.’

‘The eyes,’ Charles said. ‘His eyes are like yours. He is an aristocrat, it’s true, or at least that’s what it says in the catalogue, but it could be you!’

Daniel grinned and shook his head, and they moved on to look at other paintings until they came to da Vinci’s portrait of the
Mona Lisa
. Charles was in raptures over her beauty. ‘Look at how the artist has captured her stillness, her calm, and that soft sweet smile. She’s the kind of woman I want to marry. I know now what I want to do with my life.’

And I know what I want to do with mine, Daniel thought as he followed Charles up and down the galleries. Or at least I know who I’d like to have in my life, but I also know it’s impossible. Charles is wrong about that portrait of a man with a glove. He’s nothing like me; he’s not even like those schoolboys who came to Charles and Beatrice’s party and thought they were such gentlemen, although they weren’t. This man with a glove is cultured; he’s got breeding. Charles has it too but doesn’t know it, and I’ll never have it. Not in a million years.

After several hours they became tired and hungry and Daniel eventually said, ‘Enough! We’ll never see everything in one day; it’s so big, and I’m starving!’

‘So am I,’ Charles said. ‘Let’s go, but I’ll come back one day.’

‘We’ve onny one more day in Paris,’ Daniel reminded him, ‘and we must walk along ’Champs-Elysées to see Napoleon’s arch. Then ’next day we’re off to Switzerland and Beatrice.’

‘Oh, Beatrice won’t mind if we’re a day or two late,’ Charles said airily.

‘She will,’ Daniel contradicted him.

‘Do you think you know my sister better than I do?’

‘As well as,’ Daniel answered back. ‘I’ve known her as long as you and you know she’ll be waiting for us.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ Charles said gloomily, adding, ‘but she won’t begrudge us a few more days sightseeing in Paris, surely?’