Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien

‘Who has been gossiping to you about my affairs?’

‘The walls and gateposts talk of you, M. Danton.’ She paused, touched his arm. ‘Tell me something, will you? Do you dislike Max?’

‘Dislike him?’ he seemed surprised. ‘I don’t think so. He makes me a bit uneasy, that’s all. He does seem to set everyone very high standards. Will you be able to scrape up to them when you’re his mother-in-law?’

‘Oh, that’s – not settled yet.’

‘Can’t Adèle make up her mind?’

‘It’s more that the question hasn’t been asked.’

‘Then it’s what they call an understanding,’ Danton said.

‘I’m not sure whether Max thinks he has asked her – well, no, I must decline to comment. You need not raise your eyebrows in that way. How can a mere woman say what a deputy understands?’

‘Oh, we don’t have “mere women” any more. Last week your two prospective sons-in-law defeated me in argument. I am told that women are in every respect the equal of men. They only want opportunity.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All this is set in motion by that opinionated little creature Louise Robert, who doesn’t know what she’s starting. I don’t see why men should spend their time arguing that women are their equals. It seems against their interests.’

‘Robespierre is disinterested, you see. As always. And Camille tells me we shall have to give women the vote. We shall have them at the Riding-School soon, wearing black hats and lugging document cases and droning on about the taxation system.’

‘Life will be even more prosaic.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We may yet have our grubby little tragedies.’

SO HAS THIS REVOLUTION a philosophy, Lucile wanted to know, has it a future?

She dared not ask Robespierre, or he would lecture her for the afternoon on the General Will: or Camille, for fear of a thoughtful and coherent two hours on the development of the Roman republic. So she asked Danton.

‘Oh, I think it has a philosophy,’ he said seriously. ‘Grab what you can, and get out while the going’s good.’

DECEMBER 1790: Claude changed his mind. He changed it on an ominous December day, when iron-coloured clouds, pot-bellied with snow, grazed among the city’s roofs and chimneys.

‘I just can’t take it any more,’ he said. ‘Let them get married, before I die of the fatigue of it all. Threats, tears, promises, ultimata…I couldn’t take another year of it, I couldn’t take another week. I should have been much firmer, long ago – but it’s too late now. We’ll have to make the best of it, Annette.’

Annette went to her daughter’s room. Lucile was scribbling away at something. She looked up, startled and guilty, put her hand over her work. An ink blot grew on the page.

When Annette gave her the news, she stared into her mother’s face, her dark eyes wide, hardly comprehending. ‘So simple?’ she whispered. ‘Claude simply changes his mind, and everything comes right? Somehow I’d started thinking it was very much more complicated than that.’ She turned her head. She began to cry. She put her head down on to her diary and let tears flow over the forbidden words: let them salt her paragraphs, let them turn the letters liquid. ‘Oh, it’s relief,’ she said. ‘It’s relief.’

Her mother stood behind her, took her by the shoulders, gave her an incidental but vindictive pinch. ‘So, you’ve got what you wanted. Let’s have no more of your nonsense with M. Danton, either. You behave yourself, now.’

‘I’ll be a paragon.’ She sat upright. ‘Let’s get organized then.’ She scrubbed the back of her hand across her cheeks. ‘We’ll be married right away.’

‘Right away? But think what people will say! And besides, it’s Advent. You can’t get married in Advent.’

‘We’ll get a dispensation. As for what people will say, that is a matter for them. I shall not be worrying about it. It is beyond my control.’

Lucile leapt up. She seemed no longer able to contain herself within civilized bounds. She ran through the house, laughing and crying at the same time, slamming the doors. Camille arrived. He seemed mystified. ‘Why has she got ink on her forehead?’ he asked.

‘I suppose you might see it as a second baptism,’ Annette said. ‘Or the republican equivalent of anointing with holy oil. After all, my dear, there’s so much ink in your lives.’

There was in fact a spot of it on Camille’s cuff. He had very much the air of a man who has just written an editorial, and is worrying about what the typesetter will do to it. There was the time he’d referred to Marat as ‘an apostle of liberty’ and it had come out as ‘an apostate of liberty’. Marat had arrived in the office, foaming with rage…

‘Look, M. Duplessis, are you sure about this?’ Camille said. ‘Good things like this don’t happen to me. Could it be some mistake? A sort of printing error?’

Annette couldn’t stop the images – didn’t want them, but couldn’t stop them. The swish of her skirts as she strode about this room, telling Camille to get out of her life. The rain pattering against the windows. And that kiss, that ten-second kiss that would have ended, if Lucile had not walked in, with a locked door and some undignified gratification on the chaise-longue. She cast her eye on it, that same item of furniture, upholstered in fading blue velvet. ‘Annette,’ Claude said, ‘why are you looking so angry?’

‘I’m not angry, dear,’ Annette said. ‘I’m having a lovely day.’

‘Really? If you say so. Ah, women!’ he said fondly, looking at Camille for complicity. Camille gave him a cool glance; said the wrong thing again, Claude thought, forgotten his Views. ‘Lucile seems equally confused about her feelings. I hope – ’ He approached Camille. He seemed to be about to put a hand on his shoulder, but it wavered in the air and dropped loosely at his side. ‘Well, I hope you’ll be happy.’

Annette said, ‘Camille, dear, your apartment is very nice, but I expect you’ll be moving to somewhere bigger? You’ll need some more furniture – would you like the chaise-longue? I know you’ve always admired it.’

Camille dropped his eyes. ‘Admired it? Annette, I’ve dreamt of it.’

‘I could get it re-upholstered.’

‘Please don’t think of it,’ Camille said. ‘Leave it exactly as it is.’

Claude looked faintly bemused. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it then, if you want to talk about furniture.’ He smiled, gallantly. ‘I must say, my dear boy, you never cease to surprise.’

THE DUKE OF ORLÉANS said: ‘Are they? Isn’t that wonderful? Do you know, I never get any nice news nowadays?’ Some months previously Lucile had been brought for his inspection; he had passed her. She had style, almost the style of an Englishwoman; be good to see her on the hunting field. That toss of the head, that supple spine. I’ll give them a good present, he decided. ‘Laclos, what’s that town-house of mine standing empty, the one with the garden, bit shabby, twelve bedrooms? Corner of thing street?’

‘OH, WONDERFUL!’ Camille said. ‘I can’t wait to hear what my father says! We’re going to have this amazing house! Plenty of room for the chaise-longue.’

Annette put her head in her hands. ‘Sometimes I lose hope,’ she said. ‘What would happen to you if you didn’t have so many people to look after you? Camille, think. How can you accept from the Duke a house, which is the largest, most visible bribe he could come up with? Wouldn’t it be a shade compromising? Wouldn’t it lead to a little paragraph or two in the royalist press?’

‘I suppose so,’ Camille said.

She sighed. ‘Just ask him for the cash. Now, speaking of houses, come and look at this.’ She unfolded a plan of her property at Bourg-la-Reine. ‘I have been making some sketches for a little house I should like to build for you. I thought here,’ she indicated, ‘at the bottom of the linden avenue.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because I value my holidays, and I don’t intend to have you and Claude in the same house sneering at each other and having meaningful silences. It would be like taking weekend excursions to Purgatory.’ She bent over her drawings. ‘I’ve always wanted to design a sweet little cottage. Of course, I may in my amateur enthusiasm leave a few vital bits out. Don’t worry, I’ll remember to put in a nice bedroom for you. And of course, you’ll not be exiles. No, I’ll come tripping down to see you, when the mood takes me.’

She smiled. How ambivalent he looked. Caught between terror and pleasure. The next few years will be quite interesting, she thought, one way and another. Camille has the most extraordinary eyes: the darkest grey, as near-black as the eyes of a human being can be, the iris almost merging with the pupil. They seem to be looking at the future now.

‘AT SAINT-SULPICE,’ Annette said, ‘confessions are at three o’clock.’

‘I know,’ Camille said. ‘Everything’s arranged. I sent a message to Father Pancemont. I thought it was only fair to warn him. I told him to expect me on the dot of three, and that I don’t do this sort of thing every day and I don’t expect to be kept waiting. Coming?’

‘Order the carriage.’

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH Annette addressed her coachman. ‘We’ll be – how long will we be? Do you favour a long confession?’

‘I’m not actually going to confess anything. Perhaps just a few token peccadilloes. Thirty minutes.’

A man in a dark coat was pacing in the background, a folder of documents tucked under his arm. The clock struck. He advanced on them. ‘Just three, M. Desmoulins. Shall we go in?’