CHAPTER 5
Léonie and Anatole were shown to a private room on the first floor of Le Bar Romain, overlooking the street.
Léonie returned Anatole’s evening jacket to him, then went to wash her face and hands, and repair her hair, in the small adjoining closet. Her dress, although in need of the attention of her maid, she pinned at the hem, and it was almost respectable.
She stared at her reflection in the looking glass, tilting it towards her. Her skin glowed from their night-time chase through the streets of Paris and her emerald eyes glittered brightly from the light of the candles. Now the danger had passed, in her mind Léonie was painting the scene in bright, bold colours, like a story. Already she had forgotten the hate on the men’s faces, how terrified she had been.
Anatole ordered two glasses of Madeira, followed by red wine to accompany a simple supper of lamb chops and white creamed potatoes.
‘Pear soufflé to follow, if you are still hungry,’ he said, dismissing the garçon.
As they ate, Léonie related what had happened up until the moment Anatole had found her.
‘They are a curious lot, les abonnés,’ said Anatole. ‘Only French music should be performed on French soil, that’s the aim. Back in 1860, they pelted Tannhäuser from the stage.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a commonly held belief that they do not care about the music in the slightest.’
‘Then why?’
‘Chauvinism, pure and simple.’
Anatole pushed back his chair from the table, stretched out his long, slim legs and took his cigarette case from the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘I do not believe Paris will ever again welcome Wagner. Not now.’
Léonie thought a moment. ‘Why did Achille make you a gift of the opera tickets? Is he not a fervent admirer of Monsieur Wagner?’
‘Was,’ he said, banging a cigarette on the silver lid to tighten the tobacco, ‘but is no longer.’ He leaned into his jacket pocket and pulled out a box of wax Vestas and struck a match. ‘ “A beautiful sunset mistaken for a wonderful dawn”, that is Achille’s latest pronouncement on Wagner.’ He tapped his head with a mocking half-smile. ‘Forgive me, Claude-Achille as we are now supposed to address him.’
Debussy, a brilliant, if mercurial, pianist and composer, lived with his siblings and parents in the same apartment block as the Verniers on the rue de Berlin. He was both the enfant terrible of the Conservatoire and, reluctantly, their greatest hope. However, in their small circle of friends, Debussy’s complex love life attracted more notoriety than his growing professional reputation. The current lady in favour was 24-year-old Gabrielle Dupont.
‘It is serious this time,’ Anatole confided. ‘Gaby understands his music must come first and that is of course most attractive to him. She is tolerant of the way he disappears each Tuesday to the salons of Maître Mallarmé. It raises his spirits in the face of the continuing drizzle of complaint from the Académie, who simply do not understand his genius. They are all too old, too stupid.’
Léonie raised her eyebrows. ‘It is my belief that Achille brings most of his misfortunes down upon his own head. He is quick to fall out with those who might support him. He’s too sharp-tongued, too ready to cause offence. Indeed, he goes quite out of his way to be churlish, rude and difficult. ’
Anatole smoked and did not disagree.
‘And friendship aside,’ she continued, stirring a third spoonful of sugar into her coffee, ‘I confess I have some sympathy with his critics. For me, his compositions are a little vague and unstructured and . . . well, disquieting. Meandering. Too often I feel that I am waiting for the tune to reveal itself. As if one is listening underwater.’
Anatole smiled. ‘Ah, but that is precisely the point. Debussy says that one must drown the sense of key. He is seeking to illuminate, through his music, the connections between the material and the spiritual worlds, the seen and the unseen, and such a thing cannot be presented in the traditional ways.’
Léonie pulled a face. ‘That sounds like one of those clever things people say that mean precisely nothing!’
Anatole ignored the interruption. ‘He believes that evocation and suggestion and nuance are more powerful, more truthful, more illuminating than statement and description. That the value and power of distant memories surpass that of conscious, explicit thought.’
Léonie grinned. She admired her brother’s loyalty to his friend, but was aware that he was only repeating verbatim words he’d heard previously issue from Achille’s lips. For all Anatole’s passionate advocacy of his friend’s work, she knew very well that his tastes ran more to Offenbach and the orchestra of the Folies Bergère than to anything Debussy or Dukas or any of their Conservatoire friends might produce.
‘Since we’re trading confidences,’ he added, ‘I admit that I did return last week to the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin to purchase a copy of Achille’s Cinq Poèmes.’
Léonie’s eyes flashed with temper. ‘Anatole, you gave M’man your word.’
He shrugged. ‘I know, but I could not help myself. The price was so reasonable and it is sure to be a good investment, seeing as how Bailly printed only a hundred and fifty copies.’>
‘We must be more careful with our money. M’man relies on you to be prudent. We cannot afford to run up any more debts.’ She paused, then added, ‘Indeed, how much do we owe?’
Their eyes locked.
‘Really, Léonie. Our household finances are not something for you to concern yourself with.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing,’ he said firmly.
Sulking, she turned her back on him. ‘You treat me like a child!’
He laughed. ‘When you marry, you can drive your husband to distraction with queries about your own household budget, but until that time . . .However, I give you my word that from now on, I will not spend a sou without your permission. ’
‘Now you’re making fun of me.’
‘Indeed, not even a centime,’ he teased.
She glared a moment longer, then surrendered. ‘I shall hold you to it, mind,’ she sighed.
Anatole drew a cross on his chest with his finger. ‘On my honour.’
For a moment they just smiled at one another, then the teasing look fell from his face. He reached across the table and covered her small white hand with his own.
‘To speak seriously for an instant, petite,’ he said, ‘I will find it hard to forgive myself for the fact that my poor timekeeping left you facing tonight’s ordeal alone. Can you forgive me?’
Léonie smiled. ‘It is already forgotten.’
‘Your generosity is more than I deserve. And you behaved with great courage. Most girls would have lost their heads. I am proud of you.’ He sat back in his chair and lit another cigarette. ‘Although you may find that the evening comes back to you. Shock has a habit of taking hold after the event.’
‘I am not so timid,’ she said firmly. She felt completely alive; taller, bolder, more precisely herself. Not distressed in any way whatsoever.
The clock on the mantelshelf chimed the hour.
‘But at the same time, Anatole, I have never known you to miss the curtain before.’
Anatole took a mouthful of cognac. ‘Always a first time.’
Léonie narrowed her eyes. ‘What did keep you? Why were you delayed?’
He slowly returned the broad-bellied glass to the table, then pulled at the waxed ends of his moustache.
A certain sign that he is not being entirely truthful.
Léonie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Anatole?’
‘I was committed to meeting a customer from out of town. He was due at six, but arrived rather later and remained longer than I had anticipated.’
‘And yet you had your dress clothes with you? Or did you return home before joining me at the Palais Garnier?’
‘I had taken the precaution of bringing my evening clothes with me to the office.’
Then with one swift motion Anatole got up, crossed the room and pulled the bell, stopping the conversation in its tracks. Before Léonie could quiz him further, the servants appeared to clear the table, making any further dialogue between them impossible.
‘Time to get you home,’ he said, putting his hand on her elbow and helping her to her feet. ‘I will settle up once I have seen you into a carriage.’
Moments later, they were standing outside on the pavement.
‘You are not returning with me?’
Anatole helped her up into the cab and fastened the catch. ‘I think I’ll pay a visit Chez Frascati. Perhaps play a couple of hands of cards.’
Léonie felt a flutter of panic.
‘What shall I tell M’man?’
‘She will already have retired.’
‘But what if she has not?’ she objected, trying to delay the moment of departure.
He kissed her hand. ‘In which case, tell her not to wait up.’
Anatole reached up to press a note into the driver’s hand. ‘Rue de Berlin,’ he said, then stepped back and banged on the side of the carriage. ‘Sleep well, petite. I shall see you at breakfast.’
The whip cracked. The lamps banged against the side of the gig as the horses jerked forward in a clinking of harness and iron shoes on the cobbles. Léonie pushed down the glass and leaned out of the window. Anatole stood in a pool of smoggy yellow light beneath the hissing gas lamps, a trail of white smoke twisting up from his cigarette.
Why would he not tell me why he was late?
She kept looking, reluctant to let him out of her sight, as the cab rattled up the rue Caumartin past the Hotel Saint-Petersbourg, past Anatole’s Alma Mater, the Lycée Fontanes, heading for the junction with rue Saint-Lazare.
Léonie’s last glimpse, before the carriage turned the corner, was of Anatole flicking the burning end of his cigarette into the gutter. Then he turned on his heel and walked back into Le Bar Romain.