The Confectioner's Tale (24 page)

The glasses upon the table were long drained. Gui sloped over to the bar.

‘What cause for the costume?’ the bartender asked, indicating Gui’s whites.

Gui ignored the question. ‘What’s your cheapest?’ he asked. With Jim gone, he was in no mood to share his drinking, especially not with the group of drunks who were conversing with Balourde. The bartender pulled a bottle down from a shelf and hovered near the edge of the counter.

‘How will you be paying?’

Cursing, Gui remembered that Jim had paid for the previous drinks. All of his money was in the pocket of his jacket, back at the pâtisserie.

‘Look, I’m good for it,’ he tried. ‘You know where I live. I’ll bring it to you tomorrow.’

Face hardening, the man put the bottle back on the shelf.

‘Wait …’

Gui tugged appraisingly at the large gold buttons of the uniform. What did if matter if he ruined it? Without Jeanne, without the pâtisserie, he had nothing. He would have to beg the railway for his old job back.

‘These are fine work,’ he told the barman, his voice heavy. ‘Fetch a good price at the haberdasher’s.’

The bartender brought the bottle down again, eyeing the jacket suspiciously.

‘Let’s see.’

He took out a knife and sliced one of the buttons from the fabric. It gleamed on the dull surface of the bar. Mouth turned down into a speculative arc, the man scooped it into a pocket.

‘Fine,’ he sniffed.

Gui stripped the rest of the buttons without ceremony and took the bottle.

In his room, it was too quiet. Slowly, he shrugged off the ruined uniform, not caring that it landed in a crumpled heap. He would have burned it, had he the coal.

He pulled on his old trousers, the ones he had barely worn since the night of the flood. They made him think of Jeanne, of wading through endless streets with her in his arms. Gritting his teeth, he reached for the bottle.

There was a knock on the door. He weighed in his mind the small handful of people it could be and decided to ignore it. A few seconds later, the knock came again.

‘Go away,’ he murmured, struggling with the cork.

The door opened. It was Isabelle, half-dressed, a floral robe thrown over her undergarments.

‘Gui, what’s wrong?’ she ventured. ‘Why are you home so early?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘You trudged up those stairs so hard I thought the ceiling would fall through into Madame’s parlour.’ Uninvited, she stepped into the room and leaned against the wall. ‘What has happened? Did you lose your job?’

The cork wouldn’t budge, no matter how much he twisted it.

She took the bottle from him and placed it on the floor. ‘You were so happy this morning,’ she said softly.

He hadn’t realized that his hands were shaking. With Isabelle’s proximity came an image of Jeanne, breathless in their secret alcove, her mouth on his, telling him that she loved him. Now, another man’s lips would be touching hers.

‘Please don’t ask me,’ he whispered.

‘Very well,’ Isabelle said eventually, ‘how about I keep you company for a while?’

Gui nodded, grateful. Isabelle picked up the bottle. ‘“Parrot’s” Absinthe,’ she read with a laugh. ‘I wonder if that old fraud knows it’s supposed to be “Pernod’s”.’

Sitting in front of the tiny stove, the day grew old and died as they drank. As good as her word, Isabelle did not ask him what had passed, but talked about herself, her own misfortunes and hopes. He was glad; it helped to keep his mind from Jeanne. Isabelle told him about her childhood in Rouen, and how she came to Paris. He tried to listen, to ask the right questions.

Finally, Isabelle sat back and lapsed into silence. She poured them both another drink. Gui’s courage flickered. He knew he should tell her about that afternoon, about everything he had lost, but he did not want to live through it again. Before he could begin, there were footsteps in the hallway.

‘It is most likely the clerk from the end room,’ Isabelle soothed, but the footsteps did not stop. They came towards his door.

‘Wait here,’ he murmured, and crept to the frame.

There was a pause – someone outside listening – then a knock. He opened the door an inch, prepared to slam it shut if necessary. Puce’s face beamed up at him out of the darkness. The boy had lost a tooth since Gui had last seen him.

‘Monsieur du Frère,’ he announced, ‘glad you are at home. In my occupation as guide and general watchman of these fair streets, I stumbled across something that might interest you.’

‘What is it, Puce?’ he said with a sigh, opening the door further. Isabelle waved from her place by the stove, and the boy blushed.

‘Ah, I didn’t know you had company …’

‘What is it?’

‘Well,’ Puce hedged, scuffing at the doorjamb. ‘I was asked—’

‘I told him that I was looking for you,’ came a voice from the darkness. Jeanne stepped forward. Her eyes were red in a pale face.

‘I am sorry if I am interrupting,’ she directed at Isabelle, ‘but I must speak with Monsieur du Frère alone.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

May 1988

‘It all makes sense, Professor, it has to be the explanation,’ I tell Whyke as he moves along the counter with his tray.

He ignores me. ‘Kaufmann phoned again this morning,’ he says miserably. ‘Told me she was going to report you to the faculty if she hasn’t heard from you by the end of today. Thank you,’ he directs at the cashier, absentmindedly patting his pockets. ‘Sure I can’t get you anything, Petra?’

Repressing a sigh of frustration, I order a cup of tea and join him at a table. He begins to eat his baked potato, tuna and beans with a resolute expression.

‘Sugar?’ he offers cheerlessly, pushing it my way.

‘No, thank you.’

‘I thought you took two?’

He looks so hangdog that I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve never taken sugar in my tea and let him drop two lumps into the bottom of the cup.

He sits back and stares at a baked bean that has escaped onto the table.

‘What are job opportunities like these days for an ex-don?’ he mutters.

Seizing the plate, I shove it away, where it stops just short of falling to the floor. Finally, Whyke looks up.

‘That’s my lunch.’

‘Professor, I need you to listen. Then you can go back to eating tuna and being defeatist.’

‘Two things I’m very good at.’ He gives me a hint of a smile. ‘Please, go ahead.’

Swiftly, before his attention strays back to his abandoned lunch, I explain Alex’s discovery from the previous night.

‘So there was an affair,’ Whyke says with interest. ‘It would certainly be the most obvious material for a scandal, especially in the case of a class divide. Such things were known to happen – seduction, blackmail and the like.’

His words take me by surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If your du Frère was a chef, then no doubt he was from a lower social class than Mademoiselle Clermont. In which case, he could have seduced her in order to extort money from the family. A scandal suggests irreparable damage to her or her reputation, rather than an embarrassing dalliance.’

I’m silent: part of me balks at the idea, even though I can see the sense in it.

‘Well, we can’t know for sure,’ I point out somewhat stubbornly. ‘All this is conjecture without that article.’

‘But I asked them to send out a copy,’ Whyke frowns. ‘I telephoned the reprographics team directly. When I told them how important it was, they pulled some strings and rushed it through.’

‘When was this?’ I ask, stunned.

‘Yesterday,’ he reaches for his lunch once again, ‘after I spoke to you. I’m not one hundred per cent sure that it will have arrived, but he did promise he’d try to get it in the last post.’

I don’t hear the rest of the sentence, because I’m scrabbling for my bag, nearly knocking over the mug of tea in my haste to get out of the chair.

‘Thank you, Professor,’ I yell, already halfway out of the door. ‘I’ll call later!’

‘Petra!’ he calls. ‘Your review is in three days!’

The journey back to college is a blur. I veer across junctions on my bike and pedal furiously past other students, all celebrating the end of exams. I dump my bike in the rack without bothering to lock it up and charge into the porters’ lodge.

My pigeonhole is filled with the usual rubbish. I fling it all out onto the floor, earning a frightened look from a passing first-year. There is nothing. No delivery slip announcing a registered letter, no unfamiliar envelopes. In desperation, I check the pigeonholes around mine, hoping it might have been placed in one of them by mistake. My excitement fades as quickly as it arrived. I scoop the papers from the ground and jam the fistful into the bin.

‘Miss Stevenson?’ a voice stops me. One of the porters is leaning out of the office, waving a flat, brown envelope in my direction. ‘This arrived earlier, registered post for you.’

I grab it and start tearing open the paper.

‘Something important?’ he asks mildly.

It’s the article.

Chapter Thirty-Four

April 1910

‘How did you get here?’

The question shattered the frosty silence.

‘I hailed a taxi cab.’

Her voice was stiff; she no longer seemed so sure of herself. Gui realized that she must have walked past Madame’s parlour in order to reach his room.

‘Found her at the bottom of the road, Gui,’ said Puce, ‘near the Chapeau. Not wise to take a cab into Belleville at night, Mam’selle.’

‘Thank you, Puce,’ Jeanne said softly.

‘I’ll go.’ Isabelle wrapped her gown tighter about herself. ‘I believe that you and the mademoiselle have matters to discuss in private.’

‘That would be welcome.’ The coldness in Jeanne’s voice was unmistakable, but Isabelle merely nodded, taking Puce with her.

As the door swung closed, Gui heard Isabelle promising to find Puce some sugared treats as a reward. They were alone. Jeanne’s eyes were bright, fixed on the small stove. The coiled worm of anger in Gui’s gut began to stir again when he saw that her engagement finger remained bare.

‘You didn’t need to be so rude,’ he snapped, retreating to his place in front of the fire. ‘Isabelle is a friend.’

‘I know what she is.’

‘What does that mean?’

Jeanne was silent, resolutely looking anywhere but at him.

‘I said, what does that mean?’ he pushed.

‘For God’s sake, Guillaume, she was barely dressed,’ Jeanne burst. ‘I knew you lived in Belleville, but I didn’t think you shared a roof with …’

‘With who? Say it, Jeanne.’

‘With prostitutes and criminals and who knows what else!’

‘Can you hear yourself?’ Gui was on his feet again. For some reason, the sight of her fine clothes in that shabby room enraged him more than her betrayal. ‘Isabelle is my friend, yet you treat her like she’s nothing, like you’re better. You’re acting like one of
them
.’

‘I am “one of them”!’

He turned away then, overcome by the hopelessness of it all.

‘Are you engaged to that man?’ he said.

‘I came here to try to explain.’ Her voice was taut with emotion. ‘It was arranged such a long time ago, I never thought—’

‘Are you engaged to him? Yes or no?’

‘That is not what I am trying to tell you.’

‘Answer the question.’

‘Yes,’ she broke, almost defiantly. ‘At this moment, I am engaged to marry Leonard Burnett, and it seems that I might as well go through with it.’ She fumbled with the door, wrenched it open. ‘I am sorry to have disturbed you and your “friend”.’

The door drifted closed, the sound of her rapid footsteps disappearing down the stairs.
Let her go
, a voice in his head told him. It sounded like Nicolas.
Better that it should end here, for both of you.

Gui dragged the cork from the bottle and took a swig of the cheap liquor. It stung his nose and he coughed, trying to rid his throat of the burning sweetness. Nearby, in another attic room perhaps, a gramophone was playing, the melody warbling across the roof like a lost soul.

He saw what could have been. A place for them to be alone, truly alone, closed off by four, rickety walls and the orange light of a stove. What did the rest of it matter, here? The night could have been theirs, stolen and hidden away, to burn itself up like the last pieces of coal in the hearth.

Cursing, he threw himself through the door, taking the steps two at a time. He flashed past Madame’s parlour, where a first client was taking tea. Pushing aside the curtain he stumbled down the stairs, out into the street. It was empty. He swore again.

‘Did I forget something?’ a voice asked bitterly.

She was standing behind him, a handful of change in her gloved palm. Her eyes were rimmed with red. His arms went around her then, and at first she stood stiffly beneath his embrace.

‘I am sorry,’ he murmured into the soft fabric of her shoulder. ‘I just want you. I don’t care about the rest of it.’

‘Of course you do.’ The tears she had kept tightly held began to unravel. ‘I saw your face, at the pâtisserie, after the announcement. It frightened me. I wanted to scream at them all, tell them to go to hell.’

He laughed, pulled away.

‘That would have made me proud,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine—’

She kissed him then, a heedless kiss. He tightened his arms with growing urgency, before managing to drag his mouth away. The coins had spilled from her hand and lay like quicksilver at their feet. Several Belleville children were already creeping forward.

‘Come on,’ he smiled, pretending not to see, ‘we can’t stay out here.’

Before the stove, her bare shoulders looked like a painting; oil upon ochre. The chemise fell from one arm, then another. Her hair was loose, tangled above her chin. She held his gaze. The burn stretched from neck to collarbone, an uneven V-shape of scar tissue arching across smooth skin.

The bottle of absinthe was three-quarters empty, but even so they trembled, as if from cold. They were sheltered from the world by a flimsy lock, by the anonymity of the poor. It would be enough to protect them, if only for tonight.