Paris: The Novel (101 page)

“You surely are not seeking to discover your real parents in the hope of monetary gain?”

“Not at all.” She gave him a quizzical look. “Are you good at mathematics, Mr. Fox?”

“Moderately.”

“Well, here is a very simple proposition. When this war is over, I’m sure everyone will be wanting to get married. But there’s a difficulty. The casualties have been so terrible that there won’t be enough men to go around, especially young men of my class. We all know that the casualty rate among young officers has been appalling. I dare say the heiresses will find husbands, unless they’re terribly ugly. And lots of girls will marry men they wouldn’t have looked at normally. The rest will have to remain spinsters, or become governesses if they haven’t the means. A few independent-minded women will find ways to fend for themselves.”

“I have the impression that you fall into that last category.”

“I think I probably do.” She smiled mischievously. “I am well aware, Mr. Fox, that to call a woman independent-minded is not usually a compliment.”

He smiled in turn. It seemed to him that any young man who didn’t want to marry this spirited young woman would be a fool. But she had a point.

“I don’t think you need despair of finding a husband,” he replied. “But you may have to be a little careful not to frighten them. Though there are some men,” he added, “interesting men perhaps, who find independent women attractive.”

“Well, my parents assume that I shall marry, anyway, and that then their work will be done. The idea of my earning a living is unthinkable to them. I know there’s been a lot of war work, but after things get back to normal … It’s not what people of our class do, is it?”

“Marriage isn’t so bad, you know.”

“Oh, I’m not averse to marrying, Mr. Fox, but I have to allow for the fact that I may not. And I think I want my life to be more of an adventure. Perhaps I can become a photographer, or go to America, or something like that.”

“And you have discussed these ideas with your parents.”

“A little. They are not enthusiastic, but I can’t help that.”

“I can’t think of any parents I know who would want their daughter’s life to be an adventure,” said James with perfect truth. “You have not quarreled, I hope?”

“No. But there’s trouble brewing. I can feel it.” She nodded thoughtfully, and he wondered what else had been said. “So if I am to lead my own life, Mr. Fox, I’d like to know who I really am. And I want you to tell me. Who were my parents?”

James shook his head.

“Even if all your surmises were correct, I could tell you nothing. Your father is my client, not you. I have never divulged a client’s private business in my life.”

“Couldn’t you tell me anything? Just a hint. Something to work with.”

“No, I could not. Nor do I admit any knowledge of the subject at all.”

“I really wish …,” she began, when there was a noise in the street. She turned and frowned.

Fox was looking toward the window too. The noise from Chancery Lane seemed to be turning into a roar. He saw faces appearing at the window
of the lawyer’s office across the alley. Then there was a shout from the alley itself. Moments later, footsteps came rapidly up the stairs. His own office door burst open without even the courtesy of a knock, to reveal his elderly clerk, suddenly flushed and with his half-moon spectacles not quite straight.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but the war is over.”

Everyone had believed that it must come soon. But the day London heard that the Great War had truly ended and that the Armistice was signed was like no other before or since. Four years of slaughter, done with. From street to street, from smokestack to steeple, from grimy terrace to stucco mansion, there was not a household, an office, a congregation that had not lost at least a friend. Thanks to the food shortages, there was not a child who had had enough to eat.

And now at last the great cloud over their lives was about to be lifted. The bleak, seemingly endless nightmare was over. The loved ones would be reappearing over the horizon.

As the news was heard, as the realization took hold, an extraordinary thing occurred. Spontaneously, like some huge chemical reaction, people started pouring into the streets. From shops, from offices, from department stores, even from Harrods itself, they came out. People were cheering, smiling, weeping with relief. All work stopped. People who had never seen each other in their lives embraced.

Outside the offices of Fox and Martineau, the sedate little alley was filling with the workers from legal offices. Twenty yards away, the traffic in Chancery Lane had already halted. The roadway was suddenly full of lawyers, clerks, typists, stationers, even wigmakers.

Louise went down the staircase with James Fox, whose tall figure was soon moving through the crowd outside, shaking hands to left and right. He let his old clerk pump his hand, and put his long arm around a secretary who had burst into tears.

Louise stood close to the door. She smiled and murmured kind words to at least a dozen strangers, but not knowing anyone, she had no reason to delve into the throng.

And then an idea suddenly occurred to her.

The passageway inside the door was empty. Everyone seemed to have
gone into the street. She went back up the stairs to Fox’s office, and looked in through the open door. It was quiet. Her eyes scanned the room. Apart from his desk, three leather chairs and a low table, there was no other furniture to speak of, apart from the bookcases on the walls. No sign of any filing cabinets.

She went to the next door along the landing. This was a secretary’s room. A large typewriter on a desk, some files, but only a few. Perhaps they kept the files in another part of the building, down in the basement perhaps. She tried the next door.

Files. Shelves of files. Some in boxes, some tied with ribbons, all rather Victorian, but clearly in order.

“Can I help you?”

She started. A young woman of about her own age. She smiled and tried to look relieved.

“I was seeing Mr. Fox. I was looking for a lavatory.”

“Of course, miss. This way.” She led her downstairs and toward the back, to a small room containing a water closet and a washstand.

“We’re quite modern,” the girl said proudly.

“Thank goodness I found you.”

“Shall I tell Mr. Fox you’re waiting?”

“It’s all right. We were in the middle of our conversation when all this happened. We went down into the street.” She smiled. “I’ll just wait. I’m not in the slightest hurry. What a day.”

“Yes, miss. Is there anything else?”

“I should go outside if I were you. Everyone else seems to be there.”

She went into the washroom, waited a minute, then looked out again. The coast was clear. She went quickly upstairs again.

The files were in alphabetical order. It took only a minute to find her father’s files. They were contained in two boxes.

There were quite a lot of papers. Letters in connection with some property he’d purchased a few years ago. Various deeds. His will, revised not long ago. She didn’t bother to read it. She went right through the first box but found nothing. She opened the second. The top papers in this box were ten years old, She began to peel though them. Fifteen years ago, eighteen. She was nearly at the bottom of the box.

ADOPTION. A sheaf of papers wrapped in a ribbon. She opened it. A summary sheet. Child’s name: Louise. Chosen by the birth mother,
agreed to by the client. The birth was in Sussex, the mother’s name Corinne Petit. An unusual name. Unless the mother was not English. French, perhaps, or Swiss?

Father’s name: Not given. She searched through the other papers to see if she could find it. There was no clue. Until she came to a note. It was from the firm’s Paris office. It was not long. It thanked the then partner in the London office for his discreet handling of the business and remarked that his client Monsieur Blanchard was most grateful. It was signed: James Fox.

He knew then. He knew everything.

“You realize that I could probably have you arrested.”

His voice. He must be standing behind her in the doorway. She did not turn.

“I doubt that you could. Or that you would. So you actually arranged my birth, and my mother was Corinne Petit. Was she French?”

No answer.

“And who is Monsieur Blanchard? My father, I assume?”

She heard him sigh.

“Corinne Petit is dead. She was a nanny for some years. Then she married and, sadly, died in childbirth. I promise you this is true. Her family had turned her out when she became pregnant. She had nowhere to go. She was very young. I have no hesitation in saying that I did the best thing possible for her and for you. It was sheer luck that I had heard from our London office about your parents, who wanted a child and couldn’t have one of their own.”

“And my father?” Now she turned. “Monsieur Blanchard: Is he dead too?”

“You are assuming he was the father. He might have been helping a friend, with a completely different name.”

“You won’t tell me.”

“Certainly not. Are you going to raise this with your parents?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I shall have to tell them how you came by the information. Otherwise they might suspect me of a breach of confidentiality.”

“I shan’t tell them. It wouldn’t get me anywhere even if I did.”

“I am sure you are right. Will you promise me that? I must defend myself.”

“Yes. I promise.”

“To save you more wasted effort, I closed our Paris office at the start of the war. There is nothing for you to find in that quarter. As for Blanchard, it’s a common name, and the father you seek may not have that name at all. I should be sorry if you wasted your life looking for someone whom you would never find.”

“Is he alive?”

He paused, and chose his words carefully.

“It’s years since I was in France.” He shook his head sadly. “Their war casualties have been worse than ours, you know. Far worse.”

“Well, anyway,” she said brightly, “the war’s over, and it seems I’m French.”

“Personally, I’d have said you were English.”

But being French sounded more of an adventure to her.

“No,” she declared, “I’m French. Good-bye, Mr. Fox. Do I owe you a fee for this consultation?”

“I’d settle for an armistice,” he answered with the hint of a smile.

After she’d gone, he sat at his desk for a while. Then he laughed. He wondered whether to tell Marc that he’d met his daughter. He supposed that would be a breach of confidentiality. Could he tell Marie about it? No, he thought. Better not. Her family wouldn’t like it.

•  1920  •

Marie Fox had certainly not expected to become a widow when she did. But in the spring of 1919 she’d lost her husband, James.

The great influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919—the Spanish flu, as it was called—did not enter the popular imagination of the age. Yet it killed more people than even the Black Death nearly six centuries before. In Britain, a quarter million people died; in France, nearly half a million; in Canada, fifty thousand; and in India seventeen million. Around the world, of those who caught the flu, between ten and twenty percent died. The death toll was especially high among the young and fit. Not only was it a human tragedy, but a huge statistical event. In the United States, as a result of the flu, life expectancy fell by ten years.

But there were plenty of deaths among the middle-aged as well.

The flu came in great waves. In England there had been two waves in 1918 and a third in March 1919. It was the third that carried off James Fox.

He became sick one afternoon. That night the aches and fever of flu began. All through the next day he grew worse, and during the night it seemed he was developing pneumonia. The following afternoon, as Marie watched, he began to turn a strange, pale shade of blue. And not an hour after teatime, she heard the rattle in his breath, and he left her.

Marie was holding his hand when he died. Despite her protests, Marie wouldn’t let their daughter, Claire, into the room. “Those are the doctor’s orders, and it’s what your father would want.” Marie was lucky not to catch the flu herself. Claire did not catch it either.

For the rest of that year she and Claire remained in London.

For Claire, at least, London was her home. She had gone to the Francis Holland School, near Sloane Square. This suited her parents’ religious compromise, for though Church of England, the school was so High Church that its observances could almost have been mistaken for Roman Catholic. Its academic standards were unsurpassed. French at the school was even taught by a Frenchwoman—a concession that lesser schools might have viewed as rather suspicious, but which Francis Holland could carry off with aplomb. Since Claire’s parents had always made a point of speaking French in the home, she always came out top of the class in that subject.

But her friends were English. The games she played, the entertainments she went to, the music she loved were all English. And her mother was content for this to be so. Marie had been happy with James in London.

As the months went by after James had gone, however, Marie could not help feeling a little lonely. She missed her own family in France. And toward the end of the year, she began to think that perhaps she should take Claire to see her family in Paris for a while.