CHAPTER 8
Léonie woke with a jolt, thoroughly disorientated.
For a moment she couldn’t recall why she was wrapped in a woollen blanket in the drawing room, curled up in a chair. Then she looked down at her torn evening dress and remembered. The riot at the Palais Garnier. The late supper with Anatole. Achille playing lullabies through the night. She glanced at the Sèvres clock on the mantelshelf.
A quarter past five.
Chilled to the bone, and a little nauseous, she slipped into the hall and made her way along the passageway, noticing that Anatole’s door was also now closed. The observation was comforting.
Her bedroom was at the end. Pleasant and airy, it was the smallest of the private rooms, although nicely furnished in pink and blue. A bed, a closet, a chest of drawers, a washstand with blue porcelain jug and basin, a dressing table and a small claw-footed stool with a tapestry cushion.
Léonie stepped out of her bedraggled evening dress, letting it fall to the ground, and untied her petticoats. The lace hem of the dress was grey, grimy, hanging torn in several places. The maid would have a task to repair it. With clumsy fingers, she unlaced her corset and undid the hooks until she could wriggle out, then threw it over the chair. She splashed a little of last evening’s water, now ice cold, on her face, then slipped on her nightdress and crawled into bed.
She was woken some hours later by the sounds of the servants.
Realising she was hungry, she rose quickly and drew her own curtains and pinned back the shutters. Daylight had brought the unremarkable world back to life. She marvelled, after the excitements of last evening, at how Paris outside her window looked entirely unchanged. As she brushed her hair, she examined her reflection in the looking glass for signs of the night upon her face. Disappointingly, there were none.
Ready for breakfast, Léonie put on her heavy blue brocade dressing gown over her white cotton nightdress, fastening the ties at the waist with a lavish double bow, then stepped out into the passageway.
The aroma of freshly brewed coffee rushed to meet her as she entered the drawing room then came to a standstill. Unusually, both M’man and Anatole were already seated at the table. Most often, Léonie ate breakfast alone.
Even at this early hour, their mother’s toilette was immaculate. Marguerite’s dark hair was twisted artfully into her habitual chignon, and she had a dusting of powder on her cheeks and neck. She sat with her back to the window, but in the unforgiving light of morning, the faintest of lines of age around her eyes and her mouth were discernible. Léonie noticed she was wearing a new negligée – pink silk with a yellow bow – and sighed. Presumably another gift from the pompous Du Pont.
The more generous he is, the longer we shall have to put up with him.
Feeling a stab of guilt at her uncharitable thoughts, Léonie walked to the table and kissed her mother on the cheek with more enthusiasm than usual.
‘Bon matin, M’man,’ she said, then turned to greet her brother.
Her eyes flashed wide at the sight of him. His left eye swollen shut, one hand wrapped in a white bandage, and a ring of green and purple bruising around his jaw.
‘Anatole, what on earth—’
He leapt in. ‘I have been telling M’man how we were caught up in the protests at the Palais Garnier last evening,’ he said sharply, fixing her with a look. ‘And how I was unlucky enough to take a few blows.’
Léonie looked at him in astonishment.
‘It has even made the front page of Le Figaro,’ Marguerite said, tapping the newspaper with her immaculate nails. ‘When I think of what might have happened! You could have been killed, Anatole. Thank goodness he was there to look after you, Léonie. Several dead, it claims here.’
‘Don’t fuss, M’man, I’ve already been checked by the doctor,’ he said. ‘It looks worse than it is.’
Léonie opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again, catching a warning glance from Anatole.
‘More than a hundred arrests,’ Marguerite continued. ‘Several dead! And explosions! At the Palais Garnier, I ask you. Paris has become intolerable. The city is quite lawless. Really, I cannot bear it.’
‘There is nothing whatsoever for you to bear, M’man,’ Léonie said impatiently. ‘You were not there. I am fine. And Anatole—’ She broke off and fixed him with a long stare. ‘Anatole has told you he is fine. You are only distressing yourself.’
Marguerite gave a wan smile. ‘You have no idea what a mother suffers.’
‘Nor do I wish to,’ Léonie muttered under her breath, taking a piece of sourdough bread and spreading it liberally with butter and apricot preserve.
For a while, breakfast continued in silence. Léonie continued to throw enquiring glances at Anatole, which he ignored.
The maid came in with the post on a tray.
‘Anything for me?’ said Anatole, gesturing with his butter knife.
‘Nothing, chéri. No.’
Marguerite picked up a heavy cream envelope with a look of puzzlement on her face. She examined the postmark.
Léonie saw the colour slip from her mother’s cheeks.
‘If you will excuse me,’ she said, rising from the table and leaving the room before either of her children could protest.
The moment she was gone, Léonie turned on her brother.
‘What on earth happened to you?’ she hissed. ‘Tell me. Before M’man returns.’
Anatole put down his coffee cup. ‘I regret to say that I found myself in a disagreement with the croupier at Chez Frascati. He was trying to swindle me, I knew it, and I made the mistake of taking it up with the manager.’
‘And?’
‘And,’ he sighed, ‘the long and the short of it is that I was escorted from the premises. I had not gone more than five hundred yards when I was set upon by a pair of ruffians.’
‘Sent from the club?’
‘I assume so, yes.’
She stared, suspicious suddenly that there was more to the situation than Anatole was admitting. ‘Do you owe money there?’
‘A little, but . . .’ He shrugged and another flicker of discomfort snaked across his face. ‘Coming on the heels of all that has gone before this year, it has made me consider it might be wise to make myself scarce for a week or so,’ he added. ‘Get out of Paris, just till the fuss has died down.’
Léonie’s face fell. ‘But I could not bear it if you left. Besides, where would you go?’
Anatole put his elbows on the table and dropped his voice. ‘I have an idea, petite, but I will need your assistance.’
The thought of Anatole going away, even for a few days, did not bear thinking about. To be alone in the apartment, with her mother and the tedious Du Pont. She poured herself a second cup of coffee, added three spoonfuls of sugar.
Anatole touched her arm. ‘Will you help me?’
‘Of course, anything, but I—’
At that moment, their mother reappeared in the doorway. Anatole pulled back, touching his finger to his lips. Marguerite was holding both the envelope and the letter in her hand. Her pink-painted nails looked very bright against the sombre cream of the writing paper.
Léonie coloured.
‘Chérie, don’t blush so,’ Marguerite said, walking back to the table. ‘It is almost indecent. You look like a shop girl.’
‘Sorry, M’man,’ replied Léonie, ‘but we were concerned, Anatole and I both, that you had . . . perhaps received bad news.’
Marguerite said nothing, just stared intently at the letter.
‘Who is the letter from?’ Léonie asked in the end, when her mother still showed no signs of responding. Indeed, she gave the impression that she had almost forgotten they were there at all.
‘M’man?’ said Anatole. ‘May I fetch you something? Do you feel unwell?’
She raised her huge brown eyes. ‘Thank you, chéri, but no. I was surprised, that is all.’
Léonie sighed. ‘Who – is – the – letter – from?’ she repeated crossly, spelling out each word as if talking to a particularly stupid child.
Marguerite finally gathered herself. ‘The letter comes from the Domaine de la Cade,’ she said quietly. ‘From your Tante Isolde. The widow of my half-brother, Jules.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Léonie. ‘The uncle who died in January? ’
‘Passed away, disparu; “died” is so vulgar,’ she corrected, although Léonie could hear her heart was not in the rebuke. ‘But yes, in point of fact, the same.’
‘Why is she writing to you so long after the event?’
‘Oh, she has written on a couple of previous occasions,’ Marguerite replied. ‘Once on the occasion of their marriage, then once again to inform me of Jules’ death and the details of his funeral.’ She paused. ‘It is to my regret that ill health prevented me from making the journey and at such a time of the year.’
Léonie knew perfectly well that her mother would never have returned to the house in which she had grown up outside Rennes-les-Bains, regardless of the season or circumstance. Marguerite and her half-brother were estranged.
Léonie knew the bare bones of the story from Anatole. Marguerite’s father, Guy Lascombe, had married young and in haste. When his first wife died giving birth to Jules some six months later, Lascombe immediately gave his son into the care of a governess, then a series of tutors, and returned to Paris. He paid for his son’s education and the upkeep of the family estate, and when Jules came of age settled a fair annual allowance on him, but otherwise paid him no more attention than before.
Only at the end of his life had Grandpère Lascombe married again, although he had continued to live much the same dissolute life. He dispatched his gentle wife and tiny daughter to live at the Domaine de la Cade with Jules, visiting only when the mood took him. From the pained expression that came over Marguerite’s face on the rare occasion the subject of her childhood came up, Léonie understood her mother had been less than happy.
Grandpère Lascombe and his wife had been killed one night when their carriage overturned. When the will was read, it transpired that Guy had left his entire estate to Jules, with not a sou for his daughter. Marguerite fled instantly north, to Paris where, in the February of 1865, she had met and married Leo Vernier, a radical idealist. Since Jules was a supporter of the ancien régime, there had been no contact between the half-siblings from that point onwards.
Léonie sighed. ‘Well, then why is she writing to you again?’ she demanded.
Marguerite looked down at the letter, as if she could still not quite believe the contents of it.
‘It is an invitation for you, Léonie, to pay a visit. For some four weeks indeed.’
‘What!’ Léonie shrieked, and all but snatched the letter from her mother’s fingers. ‘When?’
‘Chérie, please.’
Léonie paid no attention. ‘Does Tante Isolde give an explanation for why she is issuing such an invitation now?’
Anatole lit a cigarette. ‘Perhaps she wishes to make amends for her late husband’s lack of familial duty.’
‘It is possible,’ Marguerite said, ‘although there is nothing in the letter to suggest that is the intention behind the invitation.’
Anatole laughed. ‘It is hardly the manner of thing one would commit to paper.’
Léonie folded her arms. ‘Well, it is quite absurd to imagine that I should accept an invitation to sojourn with an aunt to whom I have never been introduced, and for so prolonged a period. Indeed,’ she added belligerently, ‘I can think of nothing worse than being buried in the country with some elderly widow talking about the old days.’
‘Oh no, Isolde is quite young,’ said Marguerite. ‘She was many years Jules’ junior, little more than thirty years of age, I believe.’
For a moment, silence fell over the breakfast table.
‘Well, I shall certainly decline the invitation,’ Léonie said in the end.
Marguerite looked across the table at her son. ‘Anatole, what would you advise?’
‘I do not wish to go,’ said Léonie, even more firmly.
Anatole smiled. ‘Come now, Léonie, a visit to the mountains? It sounds just the thing. You were telling me only last week how bored you had become of life in town and that you stood in need of a rest.’
Léonie looked at him in astonishment. ‘I did, yes, but—’
‘A change of scenery might restore your spirits. Besides, the weather in Paris is intolerable. Blustery and wet one day, and temperatures that would not shame the Algerian deserts the next.’
‘I own that is true, but—’
‘And you were telling me how much you wished for an adventure, yet when an opportunity presents itself, you are too timid to take it.’
‘But Tante Isolde might be thoroughly disagreeable. And how would I occupy my time in the country? There will be nothing for me to do.’ Léonie threw a challenging glance at her mother. ‘M’man, you never talk about the Domaine de la Cade with anything other than dislike.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ Marguerite said quietly. ‘Perhaps things are different.’
Léonie tried an alternative approach.
‘But the journey will take days and days. I cannot possibly travel so far. Not without a chaperone.’
Marguerite let her gaze settle on her daughter. ‘No, no . . . of course not. But, as it happens, last evening General Du Pont suggested he and I might visit the Marne Valley for a few weeks. If I were able to accept his invitation . . . ’ She broke off and turned to her son. ‘Might I prevail upon you, Anatole, to accompany Léonie to the Midi?’
‘I am certain I could be spared for a few days.’
‘But, M’man,’ Léonie objected.
Her brother talked over her. ‘In point of fact, I was just saying how I was considering a few days out of town. This way, the two things could be combined to everybody’s satisfaction. And,’ he added, fixing his sister with a conspiratorial smile, ‘if you are anxious about being so far from home, petite, and alone in an unfamiliar environment, I am sure Tante Isolde could be prevailed upon to extend her invitation to me also.’
At last, Léonie caught up with Anatole’s reasoning. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘Could you be spared for a week or two, Anatole?’ Marguerite pressed.
‘Pour ma petite sœur, anything,’ he said. He smiled at Léonie. ‘If you wish to accept the invitation, then I am at your service.’>
She felt the first prickling of excitement. To be at liberty to walk in the open countryside, and to breathe unpolluted air. To be free to read what she wished and when she wished without fear of criticism or rebuke.
To have Anatole to myself.
She weighed the matter a little longer, not wishing it to be obvious that she and Anatole were in league together. The fact that her mother had not cared for the Domaine de la Cade did not mean that she would not. She looked sideways at Anatole’s battered, handsome face. She had thought the whole business behind them. Last evening had brought it home to her that it was not.
‘Very well,’ she said, feeling a rush of blood to her head. ‘If Anatole will accompany me and perhaps stay until I am comfortably settled, then yes, I shall accept.’ She turned to Marguerite. ‘M’man, please would you write to thank Tante Isolde and say that I – we – will be delighted to accept her generous invitation.’
‘I shall send a wire and confirm the dates she has suggested.’
Anatole grinned. He raised his coffee cup. ‘A l’avenir,’ he said.
Léonie returned the toast. ‘To the future,’ she laughed. ‘And to the Domaine de la Cade.’