Flowers Stained With Moonlight (19 page)

‘Anyway, it can’t really be true that young people never come here,’ I began. ‘My friends Sylvia and Camilla were here last winter.’

‘Ah yes, of course, of course. When the English matrons send their daughters, we receive them, naturally. But they do not stay. We play bridge, here, we talk politics, we talk about society and about the doings of our grown-up children, and they do not like it. Miss Wright, and little Mrs Granger, they came here in my corner also and we talked together. Twice or thrice, but not more often.’

‘What did you talk about?’ I asked with eager interest.

‘Miss Wright was so very interested in my work,’ he said with a shy smile. ‘I thought perhaps times have changed – the young girls talk to the old professor about his studies, while the elderly ladies chat about parties and clothes and wrong-doing of those around them. It seems backwards from when I was a young man, yes? But perhaps the time, it has not changed, and Miss Wright is an unusual young lady, yes? After I spoke to her, she studied much and the second time she came, she knew a great deal more than the first time, and we spoke most interestingly. She wished to write a book, she told me. She went much to the library.’

‘Really,’ I said, a little surprised. ‘I knew she was writing a book, but I thought it was a novel, a love story.’

‘Did she tell you so?’ he said, looking at me penetratingly.

‘No, not she, Sylvia told me,’ I replied, wondering if it was justified to be so extremely indiscreet.

‘Ah, Sylvia told you so. Yes, Sylvia would see it that way, perhaps.’

‘What do you mean? What was it she was writing about?’ I asked, my curiosity now seriously piqued.

‘I do not know what she was writing, but I know what she was studying, for it was I who led her to it,’ he said with dreamy satisfaction. ‘Marie-Antoinette, the fairy princess of France, the murdered child-queen. I have spent the whole of my professional life studying the fate of aristocrats during the French Revolution, and have published several books on the subject – in French, of course. Miss Wright read my books in the library while she was here, and came to talk
to me about them. A very intelligent young lady. She was fascinated by the story and asked me a thousand questions; even her little friend became interested and listened to me as I told them of the uncontrolled luxury of her life as Queen, which led her to mad decisions of buying and spending, and the terrible trials she underwent as a prisoner.’

‘I quite understand their being interested,’ I assured him. ‘I am sadly ignorant but the little that I do know is fascinating. I do hope you will not find it boring to repeat to me some of what you told them. What interested them the most?’

‘Ah, I remember that Miss Wright asked me again and again about the Princesse de Lamballe,’ he said happily. ‘I have spent much time and effort studying this lovely Italian princess, for many years the closest, most cherished friend of the unhappy Queen. She remains a mysterious personage, of which not much is known, compared to the immense number of facts and details we possess about her more illustrious mistress. Indeed, from all the many letters and writings and testimonies left by those acquainted with Marie-Antoinette, it is possible to penetrate her psychology to some degree, to follow some of her thoughts and feelings, for few people have ever been so completely and entirely observed and described and documented throughout the whole of their lives. Marie-Antoinette was formed by her mother, and when she came to France, her mother sent people to observe and describe her every move, her every word, her every action. And from their letters, a stunningly accurate portrait can be drawn. But her constant companion,
the Princesse de Lamballe, remains in shadow. Who was she? And what was the basis of her deep attachment to her Queen, which led directly to her arrest and death? What special role did she play in the Queen’s life, which was the cause of so much violent resentment and so many vulgar rhymes and songs, and which eventually caused the crowd to tear her from the courtroom and murder her on the streets, and promenade her head on a pike about the city?’

‘Oh, the Princesse de Lamballe,’ I cried in recognition – ‘I remember now that Sylvia told me about her! She was fascinated by the story – so she learnt of it from you?’

‘Certainly,’ he said with modest smugness. ‘I would not, myself, have spoken to them about the details of my historical theory on the importance of the princess in the life of the Queen, but I said something, and Miss Wright listened most intently, and then, the second time she came, she had read a great deal, and asked many profound and pointed questions. Aristocratic life before and during the French Revolution is not an easy topic to discuss, especially in the presence of young ladies, and most particularly those from polite English society, where your Queen Victoria does not allow it.’

‘Oh, come,’ I smiled, ‘certainly Queen Victoria is very strict, but I do not believe she actually forbids discussing the French Revolution!’

‘But it is difficult to speak of it if one cannot speak of passion and crime and illicit love, which we French know exist but English girls are brought up to believe does not.’

I laughed, and was about to assure him that English
girls were not so goosey as he believed, Queen Victoria notwithstanding, but we were interrupted.

‘Now, Gérard,’ called Mrs Clemming suddenly, from the depths of her armchair, ‘you’re not boring the poor girl with Marie-Antoinette, are you? Dear me, the man simply can’t keep off the subject!’

‘It is a way of remaining young and fresh,’ he said, pattering obediently towards her with a tender little smile. ‘The heart stays young with the contemplation of grace and beauty, and is still capable of love after the passage of decades.’ Unexpectedly, he took her pudgy hand and raised it to his lips with real affection. His eyes twinkled pleasingly, and I became aware that I was witnessing a silent declaration of love for the second time on the same day. It must be the influence of France.

Alas, I was prevented from learning anything further from the professor by having to join Mrs Clemming and her group, but it was not a total loss, for I made great friends with the lady with the sniff, whose claim to fame is that she is married to an elderly widower with a particle to his name; de la Brière, a minor aristocrat, in fact. This means that she moves simultaneously in two different circles of society; quite an elegant one, in which I fear she cuts but a poor figure as a mediocre specimen of a nationality which is, after all, that of France’s ancient enemy, perfidious Albion, and another, thoroughly British one, in which she is perfectly at home and is furthermore surrounded by a halo of glory due to the aristocratic names she is in the habit of letting fall in the course of the conversation.

At any rate, perceiving the deep impression made upon me by her mention of barons, counts and so on, she was graciously willing to invite me to her house, and by a miracle (consisting of serving up a great mixture of flattery and admiration) I succeeded in convincing her, in spite of many doubts and hesitations, to promise me to invite also the famous sister-in-law, who is apparently married, not merely to a minor aristocrat, but actually to a major one, the kind with a real title. Her desire to be admired for her high connections (I gather that Mrs Clemming’s little society does not give her sufficient satisfaction on that score, as they are probably quite tired of hearing about it) finally vanquished the hesitations caused by her wish to keep her glorious acquaintances to herself (and also, perhaps, by the difficulties involved in persuading them to pay her a visit. But I must not be unkind).

She has promised to fix a day as soon as possible. In the meantime, I must go tomorrow to pay a call on Mrs Hardwick of the British Embassy. I consider that today has definitely not been wasted.

Your loving

Vanessa

My dearest sister,

It is extremely late, nearly one o’clock in the morning. I am very tired and feel I should go to bed at once, but then, if I do not throw my thoughts and impressions upon the
paper, and share them with you as I always do while they are still imprinted fresh upon my mind, I am afraid that a long night of deep sleep will dull their sharpness and I shall forget most of what I saw and learnt.

For I must confess to you before anything else that I have actually been to a party, and that at this party, there were a great many things to eat and particularly to drink; most delicious and succulent things the latter were, sugary and innocent seeming upon the tongue, but actually most unexpectedly treacherous, so that after several hours I found myself tottering instead of walking, and am not at all sure how I could have arrived home if Arthur had not held my arm and recalled the way. Now that I think of it, he cannot have been so very cool-headed himself, for he sang me a very lovely aria as we went along, which I thought nothing more of at the time than that I had never noticed him to sing so pleasantly, but find rather surprising now that I write it down.

The darkness is complete except in the little circle glowing about my candle’s flame. My eyelids feel alarmingly heavy, and Annabel is already sleeping deeply, so I feel I must hurry to write, and clear up the mass of confused impressions in my mind. Let me begin at the beginning, and tell you how I went yesterday to call upon Mrs Hardwick, whose husband is a diplomat, and who used to be quite a close friend of Mrs Bryce-Fortescue in her youth.

I found her in, but she was on the point of leaving, apparently to walk her dogs. Still, she welcomed me kindly, although a little as though she did not really know what she
should do with me. She is very unlike Mrs Clemming, and does not seem to be interested in gossip, to the point that she seemed to make an effort to ask me even the simplest questions, and those were couched in the briefest of terms.

‘So you’re acquainted with Eleanor,’ she said abruptly, upon hearing my name. ‘In Paris alone, are you? No? With friends? Good, that. Not too lonely, then. Looking for something to do? People to meet? They all do. Can’t stand parties myself. Have to go to far too many of them, that’s the problem. Part of my work. And can’t have my dogs here. Only real company, dogs.’

I was surprised at this remark, in view of the very large Saint-Bernard she held on a leash and the two sharp-voiced terriers which bounded about her feet yapping unceasingly as we spoke. She caught my look.

‘Those are not dogs,’ she observed more telegraphically than ever. ‘At least, they are dogs, I suppose, but not my pack. Hounds, I mean. Best I can do here, living in a city.’

‘Oh, I see!’ I said, somewhat taken aback. ‘You mean you cannot hunt here. But surely there are many compensations, living in Paris.’

‘Awful place. Awful people. If you knew. But probably won’t have time to find out. English here just as bad as the French. Worse, maybe.’

‘Oh! And … I suppose you are obliged to frequent a great many people?’

‘Course, part of my job. Diplomat’s wife – got to meet people all the time. Parties – far too many of ’em. Even worse when I have to organise them myself. Cook is
wonderful – fortunately – but still, got to be there. We’re hosting one this evening, round at the Embassy, Rue du Faubourg St Honoré. Come, why don’t you? Come and bring your friends. How many? Four? I’ll tell the maître d’. Eight o’clock, then. Nice to see some fresh faces.’

I felt these remarks to be in the nature of a dismissal, and accompanied Mrs Hardwick out the door and down the stairs in silence, as no conversation was possible above the pulling, tugging, dashing, leaping and yapping of the dogs in their eagerness to plunge into the fresh sunshine. I then hastened to my teatime
rendez-vous
with my friends, eager to share the news about the evening’s invitation.

Their reactions were most varied.

‘It might be an awful bore, what?’ said Charles doubtfully.

‘Oh, how lovely, a real party here in Paris!’ exclaimed Annabel with delight, at the same time.

‘Yes, perhaps it’ll be wonderful after all,’ said Charles, exactly at the same time as Arthur said,

‘But we were supposed to compute Hermitian matrices this evening.’

‘Oh, come now,’ I laughed, ‘too much work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’

‘Do you think everybody will be very elegant?’ worried Annabel.

‘What does it matter if they are!’ said Charles. ‘Fresh cheeks are much prettier than pearls and diamonds any day.’

I looked at him in surprise, suddenly hearing him as
though for the first time, and felt a tinge of worry. I must take Charles aside at the first opportunity and try, as tactfully as possible, to make him understand something very important.

We repaired to our rooms after tea; Annabel and I to prepare ourselves, while Charles and Arthur expressed the intention of packing as much calculation into the next two hours as possible in order to make up for the lost evening of work. I even heard them saying something about rising early in order to have something concrete to show at their meeting with M. Hermite tomorrow afternoon. (It seems a little unlikely, considering the aria and other behavioural phenomena observed this evening, but one never knows.) In any case, they disappeared into their room where they made a great rustling of paper and pencils, whilst Annabel and I once again laid out our prettiest items and I allowed her to compose and select for the two of us.

In spite of the ample amount of free time which lay before us, we were late, of course; a great deal of inertia and confusion must necessarily be overcome before four people can be simultaneously ready to depart (I admit, from long experience, that it is generally much worse when some of them are children). By the time we were all arrayed neatly in our best and standing ready in front of the main entrance of the hotel, tapping impatiently because Arthur had dashed back upstairs for a handkerchief, it was a quarter to eight, and after walking along the Seine to the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré, somewhat slowly so as not to become hot and ruffled, it was nearing eight-thirty. However, as it turned out, this was a perfectly reasonable time to arrive; a great
many guests were present, but many others were not yet come.

We were ushered in by the gentleman Mrs Hardwick referred to as the maître d’, whom I would have called the butler. He bowed courteously at the door, and asked for our names in a humble murmur. He did, however, check against a list which he had discreetly hidden under a napkin, and cross off an entry marked ‘Miss Duncan and friends’. The room he then escorted us to was of noble proportions, spacious and high-ceilinged. A grand piano stood in one corner, its rich colour contrasting with the light polish of the parquet. The walls contained numerous paintings, and heavy curtains draped the enormous windows, not to shield the guests from the looks of curious outsiders, for the windows did not give directly onto the street, but perhaps to increase the intimacy of the room by preventing the guests from seeing the outer reality.

Taller than almost anybody else, very regal in black silk and pearls, Mrs Hardwick stood in the middle of the vast salon, receiving. She may not have been gifted with many of the social graces, and certainly not with that of making easy conversation or flitting from group to group, but she appeared adequate enough in the role of queenly hostess, looking down her nose and offering her fingers to the arriving guests nearly as though they were supplicants – radiating British superiority the while, quite as though she had not made such uncharitable remarks earlier that very afternoon. She looked very cool and composed. The dogs, fortunately, were nowhere to be seen.

The guests were a motley mix of nationalities, all apparently from the diplomatic milieu. There were many British and French people there, but also an assistant to the Greek ambassador, a Turkish gentleman with a fez, a tall and very quiet American with spectacles and various other specimens of all flavours. Amongst them circulated graceful and silent young men and women, laden with trays. Some carried flutes of champagne, others tiny discs of bread, all different from each other, each containing an astonishing variety of tiny morsels piled upon it; a currant, a shred of Italian raw ham, a dice of cucumber and a microscopic sprig of parsley, or else a scrap of smoked salmon topped by a point of cream and a tiny wedge of lemon. We made our way across the room to Mrs Hardwick.

‘So here you are,’ she said, extending her hand to each of us in turn, and looking downwards upon us (not that she was really taller than the men, but she looked downwards at them anyway. An excellent tactic to master). ‘Good to see you, good to see you,’ she went on. ‘A pleasure. Do any of you speak French? You do?’ she said to Annabel. ‘You’ll be a real boon to me, my dear, if you will.’ With an effortless gesture of the hand, she attracted the attention of a lonely gentleman holding a glass of champagne and standing at some distance from her, much as some people, blessed with the gift of authority, effortlessly attract the attention of waiters in restaurants while others are condemned to remain humbly unnoticed although they may gesture and wave their hand a dozen times in order to ask for more wine or for the bill to be brought.

‘Now, you’ll converse with Monsieur Olivier,’ she said, the authoritarian ring in her voice quite audible although muted behind an air of jollity, as though she were proposing a great pleasure to all concerned. ‘
Venez, venez, monsieur, rencontrer une charmante jeune amie anglaise
,’ she added for the benefit of the approaching gentleman, fluently albeit with a strong British accent, and Annabel found herself accepting a
flúte de champagne
from Monsieur Olivier’s hand, and chatting to him lightly as though she had no will of her own.

I was hoping to escape the same fate, but Mrs Hardwick had every intention of using her guests to neutralise each other to maximal effect. Charles, the next in line, was introduced to a dowager lady whose ample bosom was built up by stays to alarming proportions, so that her glorious emeralds lay upon it rather than hanging from her neck, while Arthur found himself speaking English at a snail’s pace to a sallow-cheeked, black-haired and melancholy-eyed Spanish beauty. The very second Mrs Hardwick turned to deal with me, I took the bull by the horns.

‘I should so like to meet anyone who is acquainted with Sylvia,’ I said flutteringly – ‘I
am
sorry, I am so very inexperienced in society, and it truly would help me to have a common friend to talk about.’

‘Sylvia, Sylvia, what Sylvia is that? Oh, you mean Eleanor’s daughter.’

‘Yes, she was here last winter – surely she must have met many of the people here now,’ I continued hopefully. Mrs Hardwick was too distracted to ignore my request and
insist on something else; other guests were approaching and she wished to dispose of me quickly and without argument.

‘Oh, certainly,’ she said, glancing about her, a little at a loss. ‘Here, you’d better ask my husband. He’ll remember better,’ and she directed me towards a diminutive gentleman whom I had absolutely not spotted until that very instant, although he was greeting guests assiduously at a mere arm’s length from his wife.

I approached this gentleman quite timidly, but he seemed delighted to meet me, and I had immediately to revise my initial impression of an insignificant little man in the shadow of his wife. Small and slight though he was, Mr Hardwick was a consummate diplomat; suave to the point of liquidity, he greeted me as warmly as if I were exactly the person he had most desired to see at that precise moment, and I was quite carried away by the delight radiating in his sunny smile, the way he looked directly into my eyes, and the kind, familiar gesture with which he laid his hand upon my arm; only later did I notice him behaving similarly with nine out of ten of the other guests he greeted.

As he was so very welcoming, I decided to proceed to action at once.

‘Mrs Hardwick would so like me to meet some of the people here, as I don’t know anyone except my friends,’ I began.

‘Oh, now, we can surely remedy that very soon,’ he smiled, and as though by a natural reflex, his eyes roved swiftly over the assembled crowd. I spoke quickly.

‘I did hope to meet some people who were acquainted
with Sylvia, my friend Sylvia Granger. Perhaps you remember her. She visited here last winter.’

‘Naturally I remember Mrs Granger; I never forget anyone,’ he said. I suppose it is due to a professional habit which must be quite useful and even indispensable – how awful to be introduced, in the home of the Prime Minister of some Republic, to some gentleman who says ‘Of course we are already acquainted’, and to have no idea whom he might be! I imagined, peculiarly, that my own face, form and name would be inscribed in the inscrutable and secret agenda hidden behind the friendly mask for all eternity – or at least until the man himself should have disappeared into the grave.

‘A charming young lady,’ he went on. ‘She attended at least two of our parties.’

‘Who was she with?’ I asked suddenly, as an idea started up in my mind. ‘With your memory, perhaps you can tell me – I – she—’

I stopped, confused because of the abrupt oddity of my request, and hesitating between excusing myself on the grounds of shyness, or explaining untruthfully that Sylvia had spoken to me about so many of the kind guests at his excellent parties. But though he glanced at me with amusement, the echo of flattery in my words caused him to answer my question without any detours due to curiosity, and his words caused my hair to start up upon my neck.

‘She came the first time with a lady friend, a very lovely girl, I remember, a real statue; tall and dark. I should remember her name. Yes, Camilla, of course. A perfect flower, a very suitable name. I quite enjoyed her company.
My wife’s friends do so often bring a breath of change to our familiar professional gatherings. I was very sorry not to see her again. The second time Sylvia attended a party here, she was accompanied by a gentleman.’