Girl at the Lion D'Or (22 page)

Antoine named a man who was one of the youngest in the Cabinet, and who was said, even by opponents, to be one of the ablest. The man’s detractors had been unable to find examples of poor judgement in his career and so tended to say he was too ambitious, or too clever for his own good.

‘And what has he done, or not done?’ said Hartmann.

‘It’s a question of sex,’ said Antoine, sitting down again, and settling his glasses on his nose.

‘A woman? What’s the problem? Good heavens, look at Reynaud and that monstrous mistress of his.’

‘Not exactly women. Girls. Young girls.’

‘How young?’

‘Too young for the press to find tolerable, when it’s thirsty for blood. Too young for the government to be able to withstand.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I think so, Charles. I fear so. Even if they don’t fall on this one it will destabilise them further.’

‘How far has the paper got with the story?’

‘They say they’ve got all they need to run it, but I’m not sure.’

‘And is it true?’

‘You’re going to have a chance to find out. We’re meeting him this afternoon and he can tell us all about it.’

Hartmann lowered his head. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine how hard that man’s worked to get where he is? How he must have fought, what dedication . . . And he’s an outsider, too, isn’t he? To break into that coalition of old pals, to realise an ambition he must have been consumed by all his life . . . And then to risk it all – for this?’

Antoine nodded. ‘Exactly.’

Christine was sitting in the morning-room with her embroidery. From somewhere underground she could hear the intermittent thump of a workman’s pick-axe; through the window she could see where a thin wind was agitating the trees on the other side of the lake. It was two months since Hartmann had last made love to her. She remembered the occasion because it was in itself unusual, having followed an earlier gap of five weeks. When, so many months ago now, she had become pregnant she had feared that Hartmann’s reaction would be hostile and that he would abandon her; but Hartmann, whom she had loved but not trusted, had shown his worth by accepting fully the responsibility of his actions, and for the brief period of their engagement and subsequent marriage all had seemed well. Even the difficulty of the miscarriage had been overcome with equanimity, and the later discovery that she would never again conceive had seemed if anything to bind them more firmly together. Although she had misgivings about making love with no possibility of procreation, she took his continued desire as proof of his true feeling towards her.

Now that it seemed to have waned, she found all her old fears returning. She knew she was not beautiful, and she knew that, whatever Hartmann might have said to the contrary, he was disappointed that she was now sterile. She felt guilty towards him for this failure, but had hoped that she alone would be enough to satisfy and keep him; and so, since their marriage two years previously, it had seemed she was.

Christine stood up and walked over to the window. She gazed across the water, thinking of the trial that lay ahead of her and hoping she would have the strength for it. She had no idea whether Hartmannn had lost interest because he was making love to other women, because he no longer loved her, or whether all men went through periods of uninterest. Her instinct suggested that other changes were taking place simultaneously in her husband which might in some way be connected, though at the exact nature of those changes she could only guess.

She walked across the black and white marble hall and up the broad stairs, feeling the risen banister against her palm. A handle turned loosely in her fingers and she peered into the gloomy corridor ahead. In one of the bedrooms she paused and looked around her at the hectic confusion that spilled from the cupboards.

Above the mantelpiece she saw a long jagged crack in the plaster that ran up to the picture rail and reappeared above it in splintery tracks that crawled up through the cornice and out on to the ceiling above. She put her finger over the crack above the mantelpiece and ran it downwards, watching the thick grey dust tumble out.

‘Bring me some rum in a glass of warm milk, will you?’ said Antoine to the waiter.

‘Still the same problem?’ said Hartmann.

‘I’ve seen every liver specialist in Paris and I don’t think they have the slightest idea what to do. They wanted me to go to some awful spa and take the waters. My God!’

‘You drank too much when you were young, Antoine.’

‘Of course I did. So did you, Charles, and you seem to be all right.’

‘I wasn’t in the army long enough to learn the bad habits you had.’

‘What was it, six months?’

‘Two years. You know very well. And I tried to join up before, as you also know, but I was only –’

‘All right, all right. You’ll be showing me your medals in a minute. What are you going to eat?’

They had taken a taxi to a restaurant in the rue du Faubourg St Honoré. Every sound seemed to be muffled by the thickness of the velvet drapes and the plush upholstery of the chairs and benches. The talk around them was in murmurs, and the loudest noise was that of corks being slid from wine bottles by the assiduous waiters. Hartmann turned the conversation to the minister he was due to meet.

‘Have any other newspapers got this story?’ he said.

‘No, and you can be sure they won’t be getting it if your friend the editor has his way. Only he and the reporter know about it.’

‘And the minister.’

‘Yes.’ Antoine sipped the milky liquid in his glass.

‘And does he seriously expect that I can dissuade the editor on the grounds that I’ve worked for the paper in the past?’ said Hartmann. ‘Does he think I can stop them printing something which is not only a good scandal in itself but which would also serve their political ends?’

‘But the editor
is
a friend of yours, isn’t he?’

‘Not a close friend. And this is like giving a dog a juicy bone then saying, “Please don’t eat it”.’

‘Or a man with a young girl,’ said Antoine, ‘and saying, “Please don’t touch her”.’

Hartmann looked up from his fish and saw Antoine gazing at him in the half-mocking, half-bullying way that had frightened him when he had first encountered him as a senior officer. What did Antoine know? Was the reference to him, or to the minister?

‘Exactly,’ he said.

‘In that case, Charles, if your personal magnetism is not enough, you’ll have to find some very good legal reasons.’

Hartmann went over the possibilities in his mind. ‘That may not be easy.’

‘But that’s what you’re paid for. I’ve told the minister you’re the foremost expert in Paris on newspaper law.’

‘Thank you,’ said Hartmann unenthusiastically.

‘And naturally you want the Popular Front government to continue in power?’

‘I do or I don’t – what does it matter? I take the brief to do the job as best I can, that’s all.’ Hartmann paused. ‘And because it was you who asked me.’

Antoine inclined his head in acknowledgement. He went on, ‘But you do want Blum’s government to continue, don’t you?’

‘I think Blum is an honest man, I’ve said that, and I think France needs someone who can hold it together against the Fascists in Germany and those within who want to destroy the country – the people who tried to bring the Republic to its knees a stone’s throw from where we’re sitting just two years ago.’

‘The riots, yes indeed the riots . . . But what a ragbag of a government, don’t you think? And a pact with the Communists?’

‘If the support of the Communist party is the price you have to pay to keep the Republic intact, then we have to pay it. Though I think they’ll stab Blum in the back whenever it suits them.’

Antoine ordered some more rum in milk. ‘Did you vote for them?’ he said.

Hartmann smiled. ‘I wouldn’t tell you, Antoine. I think the only imperative in voting today is to vote for any government that does not contain Pierre Laval.’

‘Pétain says Laval is the man of the future.’

‘What the hell does Pétain know?’

The waiters plied them with further food and drink. Hartmann was surprised by the way Antoine seemed to accept what appeared to him to be a political disintegration, but supposed that when one’s masters had changed as often as Antoine’s had in the last ten years one became resigned to turbulence.

‘I take it,’ he said, ‘you don’t like Blum’s government.’

‘I’m a public servant. It’s not for me to have opinions. Just like you, Charles, I accept my brief and –’

‘Come on, don’t be pompous.’

Antoine laughed. ‘Well, do you honestly think from what you know of me that I would like a government led by a socialist and supported by Communists? A government whose accession to power brought the largest strikes this country has ever seen? And which threatens the possessions and livelihood of the fat bourgeois like me?’

Hartmann smiled. ‘You’re not a fat bourgeois, Antoine. A trifle corpulent, some might say, perhaps, but –’

‘I know what you really think of me, Charles.’

‘Do you? Do you really?’

‘A time-serving middle-aged bourgeois with a house in the country, who –’

‘You can go on as long as you like, but you won’t dissuade me from my good opinion.’

‘Fine words from a lawyer. To tell the truth, I don’t think it makes much difference. If Blum doesn’t fall this time, there’ll be others.’ Antoine wiped his mouth on a huge linen napkin. ‘I’d give M. Blum one year at the outside.’

‘And then?’

‘Daladier, I should think.’

‘Daladier! Good God, not him again. Not even he can be thick-skinned enough to come back after that humiliation. Riots and deaths and –’

‘You don’t believe all that Daladier the Killer nonsense, do you?’

‘Of course not. It wasn’t his fault, but the fact remains that he was in charge when the mobs ran riot and he lost his nerve. A show of force the following day was all that was needed.’

‘He was an infantryman. He was appalled at the sight of blood on the streets of Paris.’

‘We were all infantrymen, Antoine, and none of us liked seeing blood.’

‘But he’s durable, Daladier. Don’t underestimate him.’

‘There have been worse,’ said Hartmann. ‘I think he’s honest, all right, but hardly the man for the hour. You might as well say we’ll have the ludicrous Chautemps back next year.’

Antoine called for the bill. ‘I wouldn’t put that beyond the bounds of possibility, either. Come on, Charles, try to look a bit more cheerful. We’re going to try to save a minister. The least we can do is cheer him up.’

Anne was helping to clean the town bar after lunch when Mattlin came in. He gave her a half-smile, revealing a broken or possibly twisted canine on the left side of his mouth. Anne could never be sure if he was pleased to see her or not. He came in often enough, yet seemed irritated at having been distracted from more important matters. He always made Anne feel apologetic, even before she had said anything.

‘How did you enjoy your weekend away?’ he said, the half-smile stretching out a little further.

‘Very much, thank you.’

‘And how were your friends down there?’

‘Very well, thank you, monsieur. What would you like to drink?’ Had she imagined the sarcasm in the word ‘friends’?

Mattlin had some coffee. He watched Anne move about the bar and briefly wondered what she would look like with no clothes on. The doctor’s widow on the boulevard had told him she no longer wished to see him, since she had had an offer of marriage from a respectable businessman in le Mans. Mattlin had been forced to recall Jacqueline, the postman’s daughter, and seduce her afresh. She had initially been proud and unwilling after the abrupt way Mattlin had earlier dismissed her, but she was quickly flattered into submission. Still, it could only be a temporary arrangement.

‘Would you like to come out to the pictures with me one evening?’ he said.

‘Thank you, monsieur. It’s very difficult for me to get the time off in the evening.’

‘Or on your afternoon off, then? Surely the old boy lets you have one afternoon from time to time.’

‘Yes, but I have to go to work sometimes. And the next free evening I have I’m going with Mathilde, a friend I’ve met.’

‘Working, eh? Is that for Hartmann, down at his house?’

‘Yes, monsieur. It’s kind of him to let me work there. But I work hard.’

‘I’m sure you do, Anne. He was away about a month ago too. I wanted to organise some tennis, but Jean-Philippe told me he’d gone to Paris. A strange time to work, at the weekend, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know. He hasn’t discussed his business affairs with me.’

Anne, who had been evading questions all her life, did not find Mattlin’s prying difficult to handle. All that worried her was that he would tell stories to other people.

‘I’m surprised Christine lets him go away to Paris on his own like that,’ said Mattlin. ‘I’m sure he’s still got a lot of old friends there, if you know what I mean.’

‘Not really, monsieur.’

‘I’d have thought Hartmann would have preferred a weekend in the country.’

As Anne disappeared into the kitchen with a tray full of dirty ashtrays and glasses, Mattlin was struck by an idea.

Christine’s name reminded him that she had a cousin, Marie-Thérèse, who lived not far away. He had met her once at the Hartmanns’ for dinner, and, although she was snobbish and rather silly, she had a bright look in her eye, a pert manner and a large, dull husband. She was a woman whose nerve-endings seemed close to the surface. The patina of respectability, though hard, was probably very thin. The prospect excited him.

A few moments later, the door from the street opened and Roussel came in, looking distracted.

‘Ah, the very man I want to see,’ said Mattlin, moving over from the bar to shake his hand.