The Champagne Girls

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘Some of the fellows are going in a deputation to the Ministry of Justice tomorrow,’ Philip said. ‘We must get the facts about this conspiracy!’

  ‘What conspiracy is that? The one Dreyfus has been involved in?’

  ‘The one he’s a victim of, Father! There’s no doubt ‒’

  ‘There’s plenty of doubt,’ Gavin intervened, frowning at his son and smoothing his beard with an impatient tug. ‘One imagines the government wouldn’t have brought a charge if there were no grounds ‒’

  ‘Then why don’t they make them public?’

  ‘But if it’s to do with military secrets?’

  ‘Good God, Father, if he really passed on the stuff to the Germans, what’s the point of keeping the evidence secret?’

  Frederic gave a laugh. ‘He’s got a point, Father-in-law! And you can be sure of this, my friends ‒ the German High Command is laughing and rubbing its hands to see the French Army making itself ridiculous.’

  ‘You agree it’s ridiculous, then, Frederic? There, Papa! Now Frederic knows the army ‒’

  ‘All the same, it’s going too far to accuse them of conspiring against this captain. Why should they? Why should they do anything so disgraceful? We have to suppose, my boy, that the men at the top are decent and honourable.’

  ‘Oh, now …’ Frederic said, on a note that held some cynicism.

  ‘You see, Papa?’

  ‘What does that mean, “Oh, now”? Are you saying the general staff are scoundrels, Frederic?’

  ‘They’re men, like the rest of us,’ was the reply. Frederic was selecting a cigar from a box whose contents were low. His conscience told him he ought to economise, but it had been a long afternoon, it was cold and dark outside, and he wanted to relax over a good smoke.

  ‘But you don’t think they have any reason to victimise Captain Dreyfus, surely?’

  He shook his head. ‘I know nothing about it. All I say is, you shouldn’t regard the court martial judges as beyond reproach. Senior officers can have a very blinkered view, you know. And Dreyfus is … well … there were problems.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Not at all. He was an artilleryman, I believe, before he was called to the general staff. No, he never crossed my path. But some officers are popular and some are not, and the gossip among my military pals is that Dreyfus was not well-loved.’

  ‘You’re not saying they would find him guilty on insufficient evidence, just because they didn’t like him?’

  Frederic took his time about lighting his cigar before replying. ‘Hm … It probably didn’t help him. If material has been going missing from the files and they had to find out who had taken it, for example … Dreyfus is the kind of man who might spring to mind as a criminal.’

  ‘How do you mean, Frederic, would “spring to mind?” Has he a bad character? Is he in debt, or something of that kind?’

  ‘He means, Papa, that Dreyfus would spring to mind because he is a Jew.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Captain Dreyfus comes from a rich Jewish family. His father is a manufacturer of ‒’

  ‘Come, come, my boy! What has that to do with anything?’

  Frederic snorted.

  ‘Freddi, stop being cagey and come out with it! Is there truth in what Phip is saying? Would the officers of the general staff suspect Dreyfus simply because he’s Jewish?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Frederic!’

  ‘If you’re going to disbelieve what I say, why d’you ask me? I tell you, Father-in-law, there are men on the general staff who hate the idea of having Jewish officers in the army. If anything goes wrong, well, inevitably, it’s their fault. They’re not natural soldiers, you see ‒ not like us true-blue French with our martial inheritance and our background of chivalry.’

  ‘Well … I must say I … This is all very distressing … But all the same, he’s had a fair trial. I mean, you can’t say there was no evidence against him ‒ they couldn’t possibly have brought a case if there had been no evidence.’

  ‘There may have been evidence, Father,’ Philip intervened angrily, ‘but we’re not to be allowed to know it. Those damned autocrats!’

  Gavin shook his head at his son in bewilderment. ‘I can see it’s a bit … odd. But I don’t see why you have to get so bothered about it, Phip.’

  ‘It’s because of Aunt Laura.’

  The other two men gaped at him.

  ‘Aunt Laura?’ Gavin echoed. ‘What’s it got to do with Aunt Laura?’

  ‘Aunt Laura is Jewish.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be absurd!’ said Frederic. ‘Aunt Laura is a Catholic ‒ she goes to church with the rest of us most Sundays.’

  ‘Her people are Jewish,’ Philip insisted. ‘Great-Uncle Simeon in New York ‒ the very name, it’s Jewish.’

  ‘Oh, if you’re going to go by names,’ laughed Frederic, ‘I know a fellow called Korngold but if anything, he’s a Calvinist ‒’

  ‘It’s not a joking matter!’ Philip cried. ‘From the moment Dreyfus was arrested and charged there have been all kinds of sneers and innuendos about ‒’

  ‘Good God, boy, nobody thinks about that kind of thing.’

  ‘I wager Aunt Laura thinks of it,’ Philip insisted.

  ‘Nothing of the kind. Your aunt never gives it a thought, I’m sure.’

  He was wrong.

  In the New Year, when the ground around the village of Calmady was grey with frost over hard clay, Laura Fournier-Tramont received a letter. She read it several times, her dark brows drawn together in perplexity and something like pain. When her husband came in from his morning ride around the estate she had hot coffee brought, and then handed him the letter to read.

  ‘I want your opinion, dear,’ she said. Robert read it. He sat silent after he had put it down.

  ‘I have half decided to accept the invitation,’ his wife said.

  Still he said nothing.

  ‘You don’t think I should?’

  ‘Laura, you don’t enjoy committee work. Even when you sat on charity committees, you got nervous and upset.’

  She chuckled. ‘That was one of the compensations for losing so much of our money ‒ nobody invites me on to charities any more, I’m not valuable enough.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘But this is different, Robert. This isn’t a charity, it’s a demand for justice.’

  Robert hesitated. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘how do we know that justice has not been done?’

  ‘Because everything has been done in secret! And Captain Dreyfus has continually insisted he is innocent.’

  ‘But surely ‒ every criminal insists on his innocence if he can.’

  ‘Monsieur Dreyfus is not a criminal, Robert.’

  ‘How can you know? You have no acquaintance ‒’

  ‘Phip went to the Ecole Militaire to witness the ceremony where he was stripped of his regimentals. He told me the man seemed to be bewildered at what was being done to him. He cried out to the detachments from the Paris garrison, “Soldiers! An innocent man is being degraded! Long live France!” ’

  ‘Phip should not have told you anything about it,’ Robert said angrily. ‘Why should he inflict his political views ‒’

  ‘I asked him, Robert. I spoke to him by telephone, asking if he would be in the party of journalists invited to witness ‒’

  ‘You asked him? It was your idea? But, Laura! I had no notion you took any interest in the case!’

  She sighed. Choosing her words with delicacy, she said, ‘It was forced on my attention.’

  ‘But why? Why?’

  ‘There have been little remarks … Oh, of course, dear, you wouldn’t notice. And people forget when they speak in front of me that I have Jewish blood …’

  ‘Laura!’ He leaned across to take her hands. ‘Laura, people say silly things ‒ it’s simply a manner of speaking, an old habit that dies hard.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I know that. But … when they spoke of Dreyf
us as naturally guilty because he wasn’t a true Frenchman ‒’

  ‘Oh, that’s nonsense! He’s from Alsace ‒ I was brought up there. No one is more French than a man from Alsace since the Germans annexed it in 1870!’

  ‘Robert …’ She shook her head. ‘You’re being naive. They didn’t mean only that he’s from Alsace. They meant that he’s Jewish.’

  Her husband didn’t know how to gainsay it. He had heard the men in clubs discussing the story. They took it for granted Dreyfus was guilty. The newspapers were almost unanimous in supporting the verdict: Patrie, Eclair, Libre Parole, Matin ‒ everyone except perhaps L’Autorité, and the world knew that the editor of that journal was a Bonapartist, likely to disagree with anything a Republican government did.

  And in most of the reports, the point was always made that Dreyfus was a Jew. If he had come from the south of France, no one would have kept on pointing out that he was a Provençal or a Dauphinois. There was a difference, and Robert couldn’t deny the fact.

  He went back to the original plan. ‘I don’t think you are suited to political activity, dear. I can’t understand why the committee wrote to you at all ‒ yours isn’t a name that springs to mind in connection with a campaign of this kind.’

  ‘They already had my name,’ Laura said, colour coming into her thin cheeks. ‘I wrote to Madame Dreyfus expressing sympathy after the “degradation”.’

  ‘You did! I had no idea of that, Laura!’ She said nothing. It began to dawn on Robert that his wife had been unhappy for some weeks now, and he hadn’t even been aware of it. He drew her closer by the hands he was holding and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Of course, sweetheart. If you feel so strongly about it, you must join this Committee for Open Justice. But I must warn you, it’s a hopeless cause.’

  It certainly seemed so. A few good-hearted people worked hard, writing letters to anyone who might have influence on the possibility of bringing into the open the evidence against Alfred Dreyfus. They had no success over all the months of 1895, and yet their work was noticed, both by those friendly to them and those who thought they were either wrong-headed or working to annoy the government.

  On a day in the beginning of the following year, David Fournier-Tramont was delivered to his home in Calmady by an anxious teacher.

  ‘David!’ cried Laura, called to the sitting room by a flustered maid.

  He had an arm in a sling and a piece of sticking plaster on one temple. There was a yellowing bruise along his jawline. He drew back with a grunt of pain as she tried to put her arms about him in alarm.

  ‘Don’t Mama ‒ I’ve got a broken collarbone.’

  ‘But how? What happened? Monsieur?’ She turned to the black-clad teacher.

  ‘There was a fight, madame. Your son is better off than the other boys, I assure you.’

  ‘A fight?’ Laura was amazed. David never indulged in fisticuffs. He had his friends and his enemies, of course, but he never settled differences with blows.

  ‘The school doctor set the collar-bone and, as you see, has treated the contusions and cuts. He says he’ll come to no harm. But we thought it best, madame, that he should come home to recuperate.’

  ‘Of course, of course! My poor silly boy, what have you been up to?’

  ‘Nothing, Mama.’

  ‘Come now, to get into a fight is not nothing. What was it all about?’

  ‘Nothing important, Mama.’

  She turned to the teacher. ‘Can you explain this, sir?’

  She thought the teacher looked embarrassed. ‘There’s nothing to explain ‒ some boyish upset, that’s all. But the other boys … I mean, particularly the ringleader …’

  ‘Ringleader?’ Laura cried in alarm. ‘You mean my son was set upon by a gang?’

  ‘I regret I don’t know what happened, madame. All we can say is that there was a battle on the playing field yesterday afternoon and that David rendered one of his assailants unconscious. Unfortunately, that boy is the son of a rather influential man … Madame, I think it would be best if you kept David at home for the rest of the term.’

  ‘Until after Easter? Certainly, if you wish it.’

  ‘We can perhaps then discuss whether he can come back for the summer term ‒’

  ‘Whether …? Sir, he must come back ‒ he has to sit his exams.’

  ‘Of course, of course, there should be no problem by then. Everything will have calmed down.’

  Laura saw that he didn’t want to be drawn further. She remembered her duties as a hostess, ordered refreshments, sent a man to see that the carriage horses were rested and given oats. When she had seen him off about an hour later, she went to David’s room.

  The lad was sitting at a table by the window, a book in front of him. As she came in, he hastily turned a page with his good hand. But he hadn’t been reading.

  ‘David, what does all this mean?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Mama. Just a stupid fight.’

  ‘But you never get into fights.’

  ‘This was different.’

  ‘How was it different? And why did a whole group of boys set upon you? What had you done?’

  ‘I’d done nothing!’ he flared. ‘It was them!’

  ‘They had done something wrong?’

  Her son had recovered himself. ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he muttered.

  ‘Of course I’d understand. Tell me.’

  But he stubbornly refused.

  It was extraordinary. He’d always been close to her, closer than her daughter Gaby. But she couldn’t get anything out of him.

  When Robert came home from a business trip to Rheims, he had to be given the news. He looked taken aback, and she saw that he was tired and in pain ‒ sometimes his back troubled him greatly after a day spent travelling.

  ‘I’m sorry to wish this on you, Robert. But he won’t tell me what he’s been up to.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him,’ he said. ‘Leave it with me, Laura.’

  He limped up to his son’s room. David was changing for dinner. He turned with his stiff collar in one hand, collar-stud in the other. ‘Oh... So you’ve come to read the riot act, have you, Papa?’

  ‘I’ve come to ask what the devil’s going on! What have you got yourself into, you young fool?’

  ‘I haven’t “got myself into” anything ‒’

  ‘Well, I’d say you’re in some disgrace ‒ brought home and told to stay there!’

  ‘It’s damned unfair!’ cried David, throwing the collar on his dressing table in anger. ‘It should have been Boiledieu who was sent home!’

  ‘Who’s Boiledieu?’

  ‘He’s the one who’s the main troublemaker. As a rule I just ignore him, but yesterday he went too far!’

  Robert eased himself into a chair. ‘Your mother says you won’t tell her what it was all about.’

  ‘Papa, I can’t tell her! She’s the last person …’

  ‘What?’ His father jerked upright in his chair. ‘What are you saying, David?’

  ‘It was what they were saying about her. They were calling out things …’

  ‘About your mother?’ Robert was totally at sea. ‘What could they possibly be …’ Then the faintest of ideas began to form. ‘David?’

  ‘They were saying she was a treacherous Jew, who supported the traitor Dreyfus.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Her name’s among those on the heading of those letters they sent out, isn’t it, Father? Somehow Boiledieu’s father had got hold of one and told him about it, and ever since then Boiledieu’s never stopped going on and on about it. I didn’t care at first ‒ it was just a load of rubbish about busybodying and things like that. But this last week …’ He looked at his father. ‘In the past few days they’ve been going on and on about Grandfather Simeon and his “dirty money” and American interference and how Mama’s a foreigner who ought to keep her nose out of France’s affairs and … and … well, I hit him.’

  Good for you, thought Robert. Aloud he sa
id, ‘It seems he hit you, too.’

  ‘Him and four of his friends. He’s got a lot of friends. He’s a popular chap, as a matter of fact ‒ I quite liked him until he got going about Mama and how she wasn’t to be trusted because she was Jewish. I said to him, “In that case you’ve got to say I’m not to be trusted either” and he said nobody could trust a Jew and that we were all foreigners who ought to get out of France.’

  Robert sighed. ‘What nonsense.’

  ‘Papa, it’ll be better if I don’t go back at all. Boiledieu isn’t going to apologise and if he doesn’t, I’ll hit him again.’

  ‘Now, look here, David ‒’

  ‘I know what I’m talking about. It’s not that I mind taking him on ‒ it’s that Professor Spirron says it’s disrupting school discipline.’

  ‘He doesn’t blame you for it, surely.’

  ‘No, no ‒ if he’d thought I was in the wrong he’d have expelled me. I tell you, I mucked up Marcel Boiledieu good and proper, and I didn’t do too badly on Thigreau either!’There was a faint pride in his own exploits. But his basic good sense was dictating his words. ‘Even the masters are beginning to take sides. Of course, most of them don’t want any bother and those that are interested in Dreyfus think he got what was coming to him. But one or two are beginning to say perhaps there was something fishy in the case, and the poor old Prof wants me out of the way so he can have some peace.’ He paused, colouring up and looking absurdly like his mother in that moment. ‘The only solution would be if Mama gives up her campaign work ‒ and we ought not to ask that.’

  ‘But your exams, David ‒’

  ‘I can sit those somewhere else. I’m officially entered, all the paperwork’s been done.’

  ‘But what about tuition?’

  ‘Oh, I can keep up to standard with my books. If I feel a bit uncertain you can hire a tutor for me. But I’m not really worried, Father, I’ll do all right without the lycée.’

  They discussed it for a time. Then Robert said: ‘It may be that you’re right. But don’t talk to your mother about it. I’ll tell her some tale, it’ll be all right.’

  ‘Just as you say. Papa. Now help me with this rotten collar ‒ I can’t manage with one arm in a sling.’