Illumination. Matthew Plampin
that she could not fully conceal: the umbrage and injury of a rejected parent, made to see the extent to which their child has cast off their influence. Clem recalled the suitors Hannah had endured back in London – a procession of fey artistic types, selected by their mother, as different from this scarred Frenchman as could readily be imagined. He tapped his cigarette into one of the brass ashtrays fitted to the cab door.
‘It isn’t just a question of soldiering with this chap, though, is it? He’s one of that crew we saw swaggering in the lanes. He’s a red.’
For a couple of seconds Elizabeth said nothing, staring straight ahead at the empty seat before her; then she drew in a breath and brushed again at her now spotless gown. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it would seem so. But “red” is a designation that encompasses nearly all of those who dwell away from the grand boulevards. There is much discontent after the perversions of the Empire – much desire for change, for a fair society. Monsieur Allix will certainly be among those demanding to be heard once the war is over and a permanent mode of government needs to be put in place.’
Clem turned to the window. They were moving at speed along the rue Lafayette. All of the soldiers they’d seen there the afternoon before were gone; out at the wall, he assumed, or off parading somewhere. ‘So you’re quite … happy with Han’s situation in Paris?’
‘Lord above, Clement, is this really how I raised you? To be passing judgement like a table-thumping paterfamilias? This is not London, my boy. Such matters are viewed very differently here – more sensibly, in a manner that accords with the workings of the human heart.’
‘That wasn’t my meaning,’ Clem said hastily, ‘not at all. I was merely checking that you’d reached the same conclusion as me about that deuced letter – that it was nothing but a mean trick, a hoax. Han thinks that it was the work of her rivals, trying to embarrass her. She said that there were many possible suspects, and that—’
Elizabeth was no longer interested in the letter. ‘You must tell me how you fared last night. Why, I hardly saw you after we arrived at Danton.’ There was a pointed pause. ‘You seemed to be getting on rather well with those people.’
‘Against all expectation, I have to say. It—’
‘I took the liberty of looking in your room before I left the Grand. The bed hadn’t been slept in.’
Clem was growing uncomfortably warm, as if he sat before a roaring grate on a midsummer afternoon. ‘Yes, well, my attempts to converse with Han’s friends proved rather more—’
‘Then,’ Elizabeth went on mercilessly, ‘you meet me in the lobby, barely able to contain your glee. And I recall that in fact I did catch sight of you somewhere in the back of the café-concert, just as I was leaving with Mr Inglis. You were in the company of a flash young thing in the most revealing dress, who—’
‘We’re there.’ Clem ground out his cigarette and struggled to his feet. ‘Come on, we’ve no time to lose.’
He hauled their bags down to the pavement, handed a coin to the driver and went on ahead. Elizabeth had seen through him at once, of course she had, and would now be making allusions to his Parisian adventure for months to come. It was hard to be annoyed by this; indeed, as Clem strode through the station doors a grin broke across his flushed face. A night with a Parisian cocotte was a seamy enough experience, he supposed, but he felt transformed by it – as if Mademoiselle Laure and her perfumed lair on the boulevard de Clichy had left a sizeable dent in his being.
And a dent it most certainly was. Clem’s body was etched with fresh scratches; there was a bite-mark on his shoulder that he was pretty sure was bleeding beneath his shirt. His left elbow, too, was burning with the weight of Elizabeth’s bag. At one point Laure had rolled them over with such force that they’d tumbled off the side of her bed, wrapped up together in her fine cotton sheets. They’d landed heavily, bashing joints and bruising muscles, but her lips didn’t leave his for an instant. He’d never been kissed with such determined ferocity; it was almost like being attacked, but with an end so sweet it made him quite breathless to remember it.
The concourse was deathly quiet. Clem’s grin disappeared. The only people to be seen were a scattering of worried-looking civilians and some army officers gathered around a map. Overhead was clean air, free from all trace of smoke and steam. Every rivet along the iron girders could be picked out; the morning sun laid a chain of bright rectangles across the limestone floor. The ticket-gates were locked, the booths closed up; and past them, at the platforms, was a long row of dormant locomotives. Clem heard a distant creak and some shouting. Teams of labourers were derailing carriages, turning them sideways to block the station’s mouth.
Elizabeth had stopped by the entrance.
‘We’re too late,’ he said.
‘I can see that.’
Perspiration prickled across Clem’s skin, stinging in his various Laure-inflicted lesions. He set down their bags. In no time at all they had gone from a position of reasonable hope and security to one of total, unsalvageable disaster. He was not going home to his attic study to hide himself away among his designs and models; he was staying in Paris to be shelled and shot at by the Prussian army. It was a bizarre sensation, something like the bottom falling from a pail.
‘So what the devil do we do now? There’s no other way out. We’re trapped, Elizabeth – we’re bloody well trapped.’
Cool as a country church, Elizabeth Pardy swivelled on her heel and started back to the cab stand. ‘The Embassy,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘They will be able to advise us.’
The British Embassy was located in a large mansion-house behind the Champs Elysées. There was no flag above the door; a number of windows had been smashed and a detachment of French soldiers stood at the gate.
‘Your nocturnal antics aside,’ Elizabeth told Clem, ‘we British are not popular in Paris. I’ve been hearing about it all night. The Queen is known to be on confidential terms with the Prussian royal family – Kaiser Wilhelm is her daughter’s father-in-law, for God’s sake – yet she has done nothing whatsoever to rein them in as they rampage through France and menace the capital.’ She asked directions from a soldier before heading inside. ‘I really can’t blame them for hating us, can you?’
Clem, lugging their bags, had no reply.
The embassy was extremely busy. Several dozen anxious Britons, mostly shop-keepers from the look of them, had collected in the ambassadorial courtyard, talking loudly of the Prussians and their famous guns. Elizabeth led Clem through a set of double doors, up a staircase and into a crowded reception room. Everyone was yelling and fuming and throwing their arms about. They demanded action, threatening all manner of repercussions; they called for their ambassador as one might for an insubordinate servant; they offered bribes, money, jewels, even houses, in exchange for safe passage out of Paris. Elizabeth was attempting to discover if any form of queue was being observed when a man climbed onto a chair on the other side of the room and asked for quiet. Straw-thin with a very English pair of mutton chops, he looked both harried and rather bored.
‘My name is Wodehouse,’ he announced in a flat voice. ‘I am in charge here in the absence of—’
‘Where’s that wretched ambassador?’ someone shouted.
‘Lord Lyons left for London yesterday.’
This provoked an explosion of discontent. ‘Treason!’ they cried. ‘Cowardice!’
‘And he advised you, ladies and gentlemen, he advised you in the strongest terms to do the same. You were given plenty of notice to leave. You have chosen to remain at your own risk.’
‘Well then, sir,’ a stout lady declared, ‘I shall go! I am an Englishwoman, and I shan’t be shut up like a beast in a pen! I shall just walk out of the nearest blessed gate, and let’s see our Fritz try to stop me!’
This met with a cheer. In moments a company of twenty or so had assembled, readying itself for