The Last Banquet (31 page)

The horse reared at the big cat’s appearance and threw its rider.

Georges picked himself up, red-faced and furious, and turned on Tigris, raising his whip . . . Common sense saved his life. I forgot to mention that the year before I left for Corsica, she killed a gardener who entered the chateau and made it as far as the stairs between my study and my chamber on the third floor. He had no reason to be there, and when I pointed that out the other servants accepted he was there to steal and my tiger was not at fault. The point was Tigris would have killed Georges if he struck her and, even in his fury, the boy had sense enough to realise this.

Turning he lashed his horse, which rose onto its hind legs and screamed as he lashed it again. One of my grooms came running to still the animal and Tigris turned as if her work was done. It was. I knew I’d been right in what I saw behind Georges’ eyes. One day he would treat my daughter like that if they were to marry. She was fierce and beautiful and strong-willed, and he was weak. There are men who treat their wives and mistresses that way as a matter of course. I know men who say women should be beaten on the first night to let them know what will happen if they displease. That a single truly savage beating right at the beginning negates the need for later beatings unless that’s what you want to do. I have never whipped a woman in anger or as punishment. Neither my wives, my mistresses nor my daughter. I have never seen the need. I would not let another man do what had been done to that horse to Hélène.

At a window in a tower opposite mine, two women were watching, one taller and older and less richly dressed than the other. I only knew this because I knew them, not because my eyes could see clearly at that distance. One of them was my wife, the other my daughter. Though they were unconnected by blood I could not help feeling they had somehow conspired to keep me in the dark over this.

‘Naughty,’ I said, when the door pushed open.

Tigris simply looked at me and slumped back into her favourite spot on the carpet, closing her milky eyes and beginning to purr. She sat there with the noise of gears grinding coming from the back of her throat while I pulled a sheet of good paper from a drawer, found a new steel nib for my quill, flicked open my ink and began to write.

My dear Emile

Your son Georges came to see me today to declare his love for my daughter and ask for my permission to let him court her. Hélène is still very young and has had a difficult childhood. You know that I hold you – and by extension your son – in admiration. So it is with great regret . . .

1771
Elopement

T
he recriminations heaped on my head were worse than the worst storm of the coming winter. Hélène was door-bangingly angry, loudly furious and driven from one rudeness to another in a litany of my failings as a father, the hideous tedium of our chateau, and the unfairness of life, until all I wanted to do was what I feared Georges would do if I let them marry, and take a whip to her. Even Manon did not hide her disappointment in me. She sighed and looked at me sadly and pretended to believe Hélène when she retired to her chambers claiming a headache that kept her away from family meals for five days. I wanted to send for her but my wife dissuaded me.

Manon came to my room at the end of that week in her nightgown, with her Chinese banyan over it tied tightly at the waist. Her feet were hidden inside red Moroccan slippers with little curled up toes. Her hair tucked under a cap. I understood she was here to talk, no more. ‘Why?’ she said simply.

‘He whipped his horse.’ When Manon said nothing, I added, ‘You saw it. You and Hélène were at the window. I know you saw it.’

‘The beast threw him.’

‘It shied at the sight of Tigris.’

‘And who released the tiger?’

‘Tigris released herself. The point is he thrashed his horse because he couldn’t whip my tiger. If he had, we wouldn’t have this problem.’

‘Jean-Marie
. . .’

I apologised, only half meaning it. I hated it when we quarrelled and always ended up saying sorry first, though she claimed I never said sorry and it was always she who had to make the first move. Her way of giving me back some pride, I imagine. Patting the bed, I waited for her to sit beside me, which she did, stiffly, until I moved away slightly to show I understood why she was there and she relaxed a little. So much of human negotiation is unspoken and depends on gestures we learn early to read.

‘You need to talk to Hélène.’

My face must have shown reluctance because she repeated it more firmly. ‘What do you think your daughter is doing in her chambers?’

‘Slamming doors and sulking.’

‘Crying,’ Manon said, but had the grace to admit that banging doors and sulking, plucking at the little Spanish guitar Charlot had given her years before, and reading sad poems also played its part. ‘You need to make your peace.’

‘How can I possibly . . . ?’

‘Tell her what you told me. Give her your reasons. Explain.’

‘She’s a child.’

Manon looked at me fiercely. ‘How old do you think I was when I married? How old when I had my child? How old when I came here to feed Laurant?’

‘You told me you were nineteen.’

‘I lied,’ Manon said simply. ‘I needed the job and lied. I was fourteen when I married, only just fifteen when I had my child, sixteen when you bared my breasts in the maze the day you employed me, twenty when you finally took me to your bed. At Hélène’s age I had been wed, bedded, and given birth.’ She looked around her. ‘This world of yours keeps children young.’

No,
I thought.
Yours makes them age too fast.

When had it become my world? Except it always had been. I knew when Manon felt the difference between us. A sudden tightening of her face at a generalisation about peasants, a silence after the louder of our neighbours had visited, her admission she found Jerome blind and arrogant and so removed from any world she knew he could have been a different species. Seen through her eyes Jerome did indeed look different. The loose mouth, the puffy bags under his eyes, his habit of scratching his groin without care for who was around, the fact he never seemed to treat Manon seriously. He’d visited a handful of times since we married and he’d been polite enough. Jerome was never rude unintentionally and he knew better than be rude to my wife whatever he thought of our marriage. It was the fact he acted as if Manon was a child who needed everything said twice and clearly.

‘Go,’ she insisted. ‘Talk to your daughter. Leave Tigris here.’

I knocked at Hélène’s door, and announced myself when she asked petulantly who wanted to disturb her now. My answer shocked her into undoing the bolt. Her room was decorated in maroons and purples. I assumed Manon was behind the changes. The last time I visited it had been pink and my daughter still slept in a child’s bed. Hélène waited, and since I was her father and it was my job to speak, I did. I asked if she’d seen Georges whip his horse repeatedly across its face and said any man who could do that to his hunter would do the same to his wife. I cared for her, whether she believed it or not. In fact, I loved her for herself and because she reminded me of her mother. Whom I had loved very dearly. The words were hard to say and surprised me as much as her.

She reminded me the horse had thrown Georges, insisting he could have been killed and had acted from shock when he whipped the animal. Anyway, Georges would never mistreat a woman, he was too charming and clever and handsome and ambitious. I resisted pointing out he was handsome for a small town and should he reach the peak of his ambition he’d still be more lowly placed than any of our neighbours’ sons, who were no less handsome and had temperaments that were substantially less ugly. Was my belief that he was cruel my only objection? she asked me. When I said yes, she asked if that was true.

Of course, I told her. She knew I was a democrat, that I had corresponded with Voltaire, that I did what I could for my peasants. I welcomed the arrival of the professions. I saw no reason why the cleverest of the middle classes should not be allowed to rise. My daughter’s eyes softened at this and she hugged me.

By morning she was gone. A horse missing from my stables and her day clothes vanished. Everything else remained where she’d left it, including her jewellery. On the table by her bed was a letter:

Dearest Papa

Georges is not the man you think him to be. He is charming and clever and has always been unfailingly kind to me. I know you will grow to love him as I do when you know him better. All he wants is to be a part of this family, as I will become a part of his. Forgive me for this.

Your loving daughter Hélène.

I sent messengers to the mayors of every town within a hundred miles telling them to have the local watch look for my daughter. I wrote to the bishops stressing she lacked my permission to marry and since she was noble needed the king’s approval to wed; I expected them to make sure their priests knew that. I wrote to Paris to tell the authorities what had happened. I wrote to Charlot, since the girl was his niece, knowing he would begin his own investigations. Then I had my hunter saddled and went to see Emile. Our meeting was short and uncomfortable. I said I felt his son’s temperament was wrong for my daughter, that I could not approve their marriage, and this elopement destroyed any chance I might change my mind. If he chose to believe it snobbery or an insistence on my rights, that was his choice and his right.

Customs officers stopped her in Bordeaux about to board a ship for Portugal. Emile’s company had recently opened an office in Lisbon and I wondered how much he knew of what his son intended. When she returned, however, Hélène insisted that running away had been her idea and that Georges had been shocked when she arrived on his doorstep in the early dawn declaring her love and suggesting they elope. I learnt all this from Manon, since Hélène retreated into furious silence every time she saw me. It was Manon who had the task of examining her, since I refused to involve the local doctor. This took place in Manon’s room while I waited outside with the door slightly open.

She told my daughter to lie on the bed and there was a rustle of skirts and a long silence broken by Hélène’s sobs as Manon did what I’d asked her to do. The silence lengthened and the sobs loudened and I heard a whisper of reassurance, and then the sound of Manon washing her hands in a bowl. She came to the door with her fingers still wet. ‘Intact,’ she said. I looked at her and she scowled. ‘Do you doubt me?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Probably wise in the circumstances.’

She shut the door in my face and that was the last I saw or heard of either of them that day. I took the knowledge that my daughter was still a virgin despite having spent three nights in Georges’ company up to the study, where Tigris raised her head, examined me with milky eyes and lowered it again. Even she seemed disappointed in me. I tried to write my notes on a meal I’d eaten but the words wouldn’t come and I couldn’t pin the tastes to the page. After a wasted hour of blotting my letters and crossing out words I took myself down to the lake where Virginie had died and sat myself on the bench where I’d once sat her body when it was dressed and dry.

What had Hélène seen that day?

We think we know what they see when our children look at us but what do they really see? Sitting on that bench, and remembering what it was like to be seventeen, and how much I had loved Virginie when she was that age, I wondered how badly I had got it wrong. Whether I should have simply let my daughter marry Emile’s son, whether there was still time to change my mind. Night fell and made the decision for me. I returned to the chateau to find a letter waiting for me from Charlot, a second letter from him having already been given to my daughter. Hélène’s letter was an invitation to Chateau de Saulx, where, he said, she could recover from her recent upsets and learn to enjoy herself again. My letter promised to keep her safe. I wondered if I was wrong to be offended and read in that promise an implication he could succeed where I had failed.

Corsica had given me a deeper taste for my own company than the one I’d already possessed before going, and a fiercer eye with which to watch the world around me. I saw us as Pasquale Paoli would have seen us and found myself disliking what I saw. When a letter came from Versailles the following year – signed by the king but first dictated to some clerk by Jerome, I imagine – offering my son a position at court, I called Tigris and took Laurant and my big cat for a long walk, and told my son I would not stand in his way. Maybe he heard the reluctance in my voice because he asked what I would have him do instead.

‘There was talk of a commission,’ I said. ‘When I returned from Corsica there was talk of offering you a commission when you were old enough.’

It was clear from his nod that Laurant considered himself old enough now. He already stood a hand taller, and looked enough like his mother to discomfort me. Staring across the little lake, where he’d sailed boats as a child, he admitted he’d considered the navy. So it was settled. I wrote saying my son had a fierce desire to serve His Majesty at sea. I could have added
Where the air is likely to be fresher,
but restrained myself.

The boy left a month later; I’ve barely seen him since.

After that my life shrinks. The birds wake at dawn, thrushes and larks, robins and sparrows; they wake with the day and settle themselves come dusk. And so do the animals and the animals’ owners, my peasants who live like animals themselves. Candles are expensive and finding food is as much as many of them can manage. My life falls into a similar pattern. I wake early, sleep early, tie myself to the rhythm of the land. Servants retire and are not replaced. Manon asks if we are become poor and I say no, I am simply glad of the peace. She should hire as many servants as she needs. We take on another girl to scrub floors and two boys to help in the stables. If she hires anyone else I don’t notice.