The Condor's Head

by Ferdinand Mount

  He had not seen her cry before and he thought it did not come easy to her, her sobs were odd little convulsions, like miniature hiccoughs.

  ‘No, listen,’ he said. ‘This is what I should have said to start with but when I am with you I always lose my place. It is not because I have fallen out of love with you that I am going abroad but because I am deeper in love than ever and I cannot stand it. I am not Saint-Preux but a regular run-of-the-mill Virginian who has fallen for a girl and can’t get over it. So the only hope is to try a fresh tack. I know I’ll feel the same way when I come back, I’ll bet my last dollar on it, but will you? If you don’t, then that will be the end of it and that will be the best thing for both of us. And if you do, feel the same I mean, then I’ll ask you to – no, I’ll damn well insist that you – come away with me, whatever you say to the contrary.’

  He had no clue as to how she would react. He reflected, a little to his surprise, that he had not given much thought to that side of things. This showed how absurdly egotistical all lovers were when it came to the point, or perhaps it showed how his going away came out of his desperation. It was a cry from the heart not a calculated stratagem.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘I believe you. I have always believed you, believed what you said, I mean, since we first met.’

  ‘Too dull to make it up, I suppose, that’s me, probably most Americans.’

  ‘Not at all. I have met several of your countrymen who can lie as well as we can. Mr Humphreys, for example, or Mr Morris, especially Mr Morris, he could pass for a Frenchman. Even Mr Jefferson may at least deceive himself from time to time though he would not stoop to an outright falsehood. But you are truthful.’

  ‘Still sounds to me like a way of saying dull.’

  ‘No, no, telling the truth is such a rare thing that it is, I don’t know, startling. But perhaps sad too, yes I think sad. Fiction is after all the way we cheer ourselves up.’

  He was not sure how much more he wanted to hear of this philosophising.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘You are right to call me back to the question of our relations. I was trying to get away from it – how unlike a woman, but then perhaps I am not a proper woman.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I have nothing to say, nothing worth saying, that is. You are going away and I am sad. When you have gone, I shall be sadder still. And that is how I shall remain until you return. Nothing else in life means as much to me as you do, nothing at all.’

  She stopped but it was obvious that she was only gathering her strength to go on. ‘Now,’ she said very quickly, ‘I will kiss you and turn away and you are not to follow me.’ He felt her lips on his, as quick as a bee’s sting, and then she was gone. He did not follow but through the long window he could see her in the yard stumbling over the little hedges she had planted and even through the window he could see she was crying.

  ‘Marriage, do not talk to me of marriage. If the world only knew what our sex has to put up with, they would do away with marriage this afternoon. Why is it that only the least fitted males choose to marry, let alone remarry? There is Mr Jefferson, dear, dear Mr Jefferson, the kindest and most sensible of men, a widower and like to remain so, I’m sure. And William, I may call you William, mayn’t I, since we are both from the Tidewater and we are to travel so far together, there you are, the next most sensible and dearest of mortals in Paris after Mr J and a confirmed bachelor, I can see. Why, by the time I was your age my daughters were almost grown up. And here I am yoked to the most impractical, inconsiderate and insensible human being in the universe. Mr Paradise has a great name in London as a scholar, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society and he speaks six languages but he has not a word of sense to utter in any of them and he is no more fit to manage his own affairs than a frog or a toad. I do not need to tell you, William, that I was born a Ludwell of Williamsburg and we expect our menfolk to carve out a name for themselves. Why, my father was President of Virginia and owned a good stretch of the north bank of the James river.’

  ‘I remember that on a clear day we could see across to your land from the top field at Spring Garden.’

  ‘Just so, and now if it were not for Mr Jefferson’s kindness we should not be able to pay the maid or the coachman. But much he cares about such things.’ Mrs Paradise gave her husband’s knee a sharp rap with her tortoiseshell fan.

  John Paradise FRS retained a negligent, defensive posture with his slim volume of Propertius held well up to his nose much as a pugilist maintains his guard. His knees, however, remained exposed and were accordingly subjected to a bastinado from the fan. Nonetheless, in such a confined space Mr Paradise made a magnificent show of being somewhere else entirely.

  Lucy Paradise was pretty, nobody had ever denied that. She was thirty-eight but in her calmer moments looked a good deal less. Her neat features and her trim little figure were of the sort to show off a flirtatious manner and she certainly did not despise such traditional wiles when she was in dire need of a favour. The trouble was that she was so quick to fly into a passion and so reluctant to quit one that she never practised those wiles for five minutes together. They had met only four or five times since the Paradises had come over to Paris but Wm had noticed almost immediately the way she would start off wheedling and fluttering her eyelashes, usually in the quest for a loan of some sort, but halfway through this delicate operation she would lose her temper and burst out in a scalding philippic, usually against her husband or against the lawyers who managed their dwindling estates. William had decided that if they were to cross France without the carriage being shaken to pieces by her explosions he himself would have to take charge of the practical business – the horses, the innkeepers, above all the disposal of the cash. He had, he explained, been in France for nearly four years now and had a fair grasp of the language.

  ‘Oh, as for language there’s no French spoken to match Mr Paradise’s. Mr Buffon said he had never heard such French in his life before. But my husband could no more order an egg to be boiled or a bed to be turned in French or any other language than he could fly to the moon. So we shall abandon ourselves entirely to your management, my dear William. I look upon the day you consented to join us as the first break in the clouds since that unhappy morning I threw in my wretched lot with Mr Paradise. At least I was the object of his affections then, was I not John [rap], but he has long since fallen out of love with me, have you not [rap]. I languish at the bottom of the ladder of his affections [rap]. He would rather any one of his blessed books than ten of me. I declare he thinks I cannot read, he thinks I am an illiterata, don’t you [whack]. When he is talking with Dr Johnson or Dr Burney, he waves me away as though I were a wasp or a fly, do you not so?’

  ‘Certainly I do not, my dear. Dr Burney spoke warmly of your singing voice.’

  ‘He could do no other since he was dining at our house in Charles Street and you had compelled him to accompany me at the harpsichord. I nearly died of shame. As for Dr Johnson, I do not recall him addressing a civil word to me on that evening or any other.’

  ‘Well, he does have a reputation as a bear, my dear.’

  ‘Nonsense, he fawns upon that stupid Thrale woman. You had poisoned his mind against me, or rather told him that I was entirely mindless and unworthy of his attentions.’

  ‘I would not dream of saying any such thing.’

  ‘You never remember what you have said in company. You are so fuddled by the time the company assembles that I wonder you can say anything at all. William, I look to you to regulate my husband’s drinking upon this voyage.’

  ‘Lucy, I hardly think that Mr Short—’

  ‘You will notice that he becomes remarkable lively when it comes to ordering the wine. If he were as diligent in attending to other business as he is to whether we should drink Rhenish or Burgundy, we would be rich beyond the dream of Midas.’

  Mr Paradise gave a weary smile, which illuminated his long dark face. Either his m
other or his father was Greek, he had said, Wm could not remember which; he had been brought up in Salonica and knocked around the world dispensing an unforced charm, which had made him welcome everywhere. He was unfailingly agreeable and he always knew as much about what people were talking of as they did themselves and made them feel that he felt just as they did on the question. His bona fides were unimpeached except by the occasional curmudgeon such as the old Scottish chemist who had growled when Paradise was elected by acclamation to the Royal Society, ‘But what has the fellow done?’

  ‘Well,’ said William, ‘I shall have my hands full with my principal business upon this tour, which is to keep a journal for Mr Jefferson. As always, he is abuzz with questions, which I am to satisfy.’

  ‘A journal, William, how fascinating.’

  ‘In the form of letters, you understand. For the first part of the tour I shall be comparing my notes with his own, but when I ride beyond Milan I shall be traversing ground untrodden by him. At all events I intend writing to him once a week.’

  ‘How admirable,’ she cried. ‘Mr Paradise has not written me above three letters in the twenty years we have been married, have you?’ But though she accompanied this last accusation with the usual thwack at his knees, she remained strangely pensive after Wm had disclosed the duty imposed on him. In fact, for the rest of that long day and the next, as the dusty post-chaise rumbled along the chalky roads through Burgundy, she was quiet, even docile, and made some show of civility towards her husband. Just beyond Auxerre, Mrs Paradise requested that the coach stop for a few minutes. She alighted and walked off behind a clump of bushes. It was a hot, sleepy afternoon but William became aware that John Paradise was wide awake watching him.

  ‘That was a smart device, the letters.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Even if you never write a line to Jefferson she will remain in mortal dread that you are writing a poor account of her to him.’

  ‘I swear I had no such thought.’

  ‘Well, you may count upon it she has. There is no one in the world she worships more or on whom she relies more, to bail us out you know. I fancy we may be in for a tolerable smooth ride.’

  And so they were. Every now and then she fell into a doze and let her head loll against her husband’s shoulder. In repose her little face looked like a girl’s and you would not have guessed an ounce of malice in her. All the same, it was a long journey and Wm was not sorry when they reached Villefranche and found a decent inn. He climbed the creaking stair, his hand resting on the greasy banister. Down below he could hear Lucy, now revived and thinking herself out of earshot, haggling with the landlord over the cost of clean sheets. He intended to ask for a couple of chops to be sent up but he fell asleep as soon as he lay down on the rickety iron bedstead.

  ‘William, William. The landlord says we must be off by eleven o’clock if we are to reach Lyons by nightfall. You must go straight to Mr Grand’s otherwise we shall starve on the journey.’ He stumbled off the bed, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, and shambled down the stair after her. ‘The fifty guineas from Mr Jefferson’s advance will not see us over the Alps and this is our last chance to draw on his credit. You would not wish our poor bones to be eaten by the wolves, I know you would not. I have a bill of our expenses here. I had to do it myself in a bad light, Mr Paradise being sound asleep. Our expenses are thirty-three guineas, which leaves us but seventeen. We shall never see Italy unless you make haste to the bankers.’

  In the slow methodical way he had learnt as indispensable in any business, large or small, Wm tallied up the items she had scribbled in her wild girlish hand. ‘You have written down last night’s supper twice,’ he said, ‘and omitted your share of the horses from Auxerre. I make the total twenty-eight guineas.’ He saw that she was about to expostulate but then thought better of it. Any parting on bad terms would surely find its way into the next letter to her dear Mr Jefferson.

  There was no question but that they must draw the whole amount of the credit. As the clerk handed over the money, he said, ‘You are Mr Short, are you not? This letter was sent on from Dijon. I fancy it has been galloping after you the whole way from Paris.’

  He knew the hand, of course: neat, springy, rapid, just like the way she walked he remembered thinking the first time he received a note from her, to thank him for accompanying her to the comedy and for the ices they had stopped off for on the way back to the rue de Seine. Even writing her name in his little grey cloth notebook had given him a stab of pleasure – ‘Ices, com. Ital., Mme de La Roche., 35 sous.’

  He turned in the bright sunlight, meaning to go over to the quay and sit on the stone parapet to read the letter. But Lucy insisted on dragging him back to the hotel to say goodbye to Mr P who had not finished his toilette.

  ‘You will come and stay with us in Bergamo, promise you will now. My daughter, little Lucy the Countess, Lucy Two we call her, is longing to meet you, she is starved of Virginian men, and Mr Paradise needs someone to talk to about Horace and Homer, because the Count’s English is not very good except when he is discoursing about his wife’s dowry. You will find the Italians very mercenary, I am afraid, William. It was quite a shock, I can tell you, for people like us who were raised to think it ill-bred to talk about money.’

  It was not until the post-chaise had rattled out of the hotel yard with Lucy blowing kisses out of its window and even John Paradise waving a languid paw that Wm was able to break open the little envelope.

  You were right to go away. It is easier to say goodbye at a distance. And that is all we have to say. I shall not forget our friendship but you must forget me.

  R.

  He looked up and saw a middle-aged man, weather-beaten with a friendly look on his face, standing a few yards away, politely waiting for him to finish reading.

  It was Monsieur de l’Aye, the friend of Mr Jefferson’s who was to show him how to make wine. They had met the day before, coming into the town.

  ‘Not bad news, I hope.’

  ‘Oh … no, only confirmation of news I had received earlier.’

  ‘Good, good. My old rattletrap is waiting in the road when you are ready.’

  They drove through meadows beside the Saône. Cows as white as unicorns were munching the long wispy grasses. On patches of wasteland reddened by dock leaves there were goats tethered to long ropes – they made the best goat’s cheese in France, Monsieur de l’Aye said. This side of the river there were low blue hills, on the far side the tops were covered with snow. He was reminded of the country round Albemarle and Amherst, and resolved to tell Mr Jefferson so when he next wrote.

  Monsieur de l’Aye swung the carriage up a long chalky track between vines, then stopped the horses and hopped down to pick a bunch of grapes, which he presented to Wm. ‘Here, try these, they are much like the Volnay grapes whose wine you had last night.’

  ‘They resemble the wild grapes that grow back home in Virginia and – yes – they taste absolutely the same. There is a vine at my father’s that grows on an old oak tree, all by itself and in the full sun. My father tried his hand at making wine from it one year. It came out quite agreeable, very sweet, not at all like the Volnay.’

  ‘Ah, that is the art, to keep out the sweetness without losing the bouquet.’ Monsieur de l’Aye rubbed his fingers together in a gesture to express the subtlety demanded by the process. He was like an old peasant, Wm thought, though without an ounce of cantankerousness. The Château de l’Aye was a fine old house that had no pretension to it. The dining room was a plain sort of room, simply furnished just such as you might find in Albemarle rather than in a financier’s mansion at Philadelphia. While they were dining on a rich mutton stew, at the other end of the room the women of the house were sewing and repairing a long tapestry rug together.

  After dinner they sat by the fire and Monsieur de l’Aye talked of the harvest. Wm let his thoughts wander back to Surry County. He imagined a vineyard blooming with grapes, stretching all the way up from the home
orchard to the old oak tree. They would make wine as easily as they now made cider. But who would ‘they’ be?

  In his bedroom he wrote to Mr Jefferson and told him of his smooth ride with the Paradises and their friendly parting, and of Monsieur de l’Aye’s vineyards and a dozen other things that had caught his eye on the journey. And he ended with a message that he knew would be welcome: ‘I have not time to tell you how certainly and with how much pleasure I experience that I can quit Paris without regret, notwithstanding what you think to the contrary. When I say I do not regret Paris I mean Paris without any person from America in it.’ It was a roundabout way of putting the matter, but he could not bear to mention her name, not yet, and anyway the mails were always read.

  He looked on those next few weeks as a recuperation, like learning to walk unaided after an accident. He abandoned himself to all the sensations of travel – the gentle gliding of the water diligence down the Saône to Lyons, then the winding road up to Geneva, that dignified Protestant city with its shimmering lake and the mountains beyond, then the slithering, soaking-wet, fog-sodden passage over Mont Cenis and at last the first sight – how long he had dreamed of it – of the orange roofs and steepling bell towers of Italy. In Turin he heard Lolli play, something by Haydn he fancied, but he was in such a daze he could scarce attend to the music. And as they were rattling through Piedmont he quite forgot to visit the rice mill at Novara, which Mr Jefferson had particularly asked him to do. He took up Lucy’s invitation to call on them at Count Barziza’s castello outside Bergamo. He even egged on Johnny Rutledge to meet him there. The whole of Italy lay before him and he intended to see every inch of it.

  So it was without any back thoughts about the Paradises or their mercenary son-in-law that he clattered up the stony track to the Castello Barziza, a great dismal barracks of a place with the plaster cracking off its walls. And when he saw Mrs Paradise tripping down the grim outdoor staircase in the courtyard, he almost jumped from his bony hack to embrace a fellow countrywoman.