Sweet Songbird

by Sweet Songbird (retail) (epub)

‘But – an American? There surely can’t be many Americans? And I have an address – an old one it’s true – but he might still be there, or someone might know where he’s gone—’

  Genevieve regarded her with kindly, thoughtful eyes. ‘It’s important to you?’

  Kitty remembered the warmth of friendship. ‘Very,’ she said.

  ‘Then – certainly we must try. Charles knows many people. But’ – she held up an elegant hand to stop Kitty’s eager thanks – ‘I don’t promise anything. He could be anywhere. You don’t even know if he’s still in Paris.’

  But he was. Just two days before both the Moulin d’Or and the Great Exhibition were due to open their doors to an eager public, and with no less excitement and last-minute panic afflicting the one than the other, a harassed Charles presented Kitty with a grubby scrap of paper upon which was scrawled an almost indecipherable address. ‘It may not be him, but the name is right, and he’s an American—’

  ‘Oh, Charles! Thank you!’ She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. Over the past few days, the hope of finding Jem, of renewing their friendship, of opening her heart at last to someone who knew so much of her relationship with Luke had greatly cheered her. ‘It must be him, surely?’ She glanced at the clock. ‘May I take the carriage now? I’d so like to find him as soon as possible.’

  ‘But of course’ – Charles raised a detaining hand as she turned to go – ‘but take Gustave with you. He’s a good lad. And big.’ He flicked the paper she held with his finger. ‘The Left Bank can be a strange place. I want my new star to be in one piece for the opening night!’

  (ii)

  Half an hour later, peering uncertainly through the carriage window at a tall and indescribably dirty tenement building as squalid as anything she had encountered in the stews of Whitechapel, she understood her mentor’s concern. The inevitable gang of street urchins had materialized by the carriage door as if by magic. Gustave’s whip cracked, and Kitty winced as one of the youngsters screeched. The ragged waifs withdrew a little, scowling. One small boy, his face and bare shoulders a mass of running sores, picked up a stone and made to hurl it at the carriage. The whip cracked again and the child yelped savagely as a lace of blood appeared upon his upraised arm.

  ‘Gustave! Non!’ Kitty scrambled inelegantly from the high step of the carriage. Gustave, an enormous young man with the physique – and, Kitty suspected, the sensitivity also – of a bull leapt down beside her, whip in hand.

  ‘M’sieu m’a prié de vous protéger,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Ils sont méchants, les gamins!’ He raised the whip again, threateningly, at the children. A small girl spat, accurately and scornfully. Gustave snarled and reached for her.

  ‘Gustave – no! Please! Stop now!’

  There was no misunderstanding the tone of her words. Reluctantly the young man straightened. The girl smirked saucily at him and made a small, foul gesture. Kitty’s months of coping with Croucher’s urchins stood her in good stead. With long, bony fingers she clipped the surprised child’s ear, hard. ‘Enough! Tais-toi!’

  The girl scowled threateningly. Kitty took her by the shoulders and swung her to face her, held her there, one long, commanding finger held before the dirty face. The child quieted and stood, watchful. Very slowly Kitty reached into her reticule and took out a coin of the lowest denomination she could find – she did not, she told herself grimly, want to be responsible for murder – and held it in front of the little girl. Pale, watery eyes fixed upon it. ‘M’sieu O’Connell,’ Kitty said quietly, ‘Jem O’Connell. Il reste encore ici?’

  The child neither moved nor spoke. The eyes that were fixed upon the coin did not flicker. Kitty closed her hand about it, hiding it. ‘Jem O’Connell,’ she said, firmly.

  A bigger boy pushed his way from the back of the crowd, sly eyes on Kitty’s closed fist. ‘Jem O’Connell—’ he said eagerly, reaching. ‘Oui – oui! Il—’

  With the shriek of a banshee the girl turned on him, leapt upon him with fingers extended like claws, raking his face. They rolled on the floor, fighting like two ferocious small animals, vicious and with intent to cripple.

  ‘Madame?’

  At a tug on her sleeve Kitty looked down into a grubby, cherub’s face with eyes as old as sin. ‘L’Américain? Vous cherchez l’Americain?’

  Even Kitty’s limited French was up to that. ‘Oui,’ she said. On the ground at her feet the boy, stronger and longer of limb, had overpowered his still-screeching opponent and, his fingers tangled in her long greasy hair, was trying to bang her brains out on the pavement. Kitty turned back to her small informant. ‘Où est-il?’

  A dirty finger pointed to a door, then up to the first floor, to an uncurtained window whose shutters were hanging loose and behind which Kitty was sure she discerned some movement. ‘Voilà,’ the child said.

  Kitty held out the coin. Almost before the movement was complete the urchin had snatched it and was gone, scampering down the street at incredible speed and disappearing around the corner into a maze of alleys and tall, shuttered buildings. Gustave grinned, kicked casually at the still-fighting children on the ground and said something in rapid French. The boy rolled off his smaller opponent and in a moment the whole yelling horde had poured off down the street in pursuit of the boy with the coin.

  Kitty looked up. A pale face had appeared at the window the child had indicated. ‘S’il vous plaît,’ she said to Gustave, awkwardly, ‘restez ici—’ She waved a hand. ‘I won’t be long.’

  He nodded, impassive now, leaned against the great wheel of the carriage, arms folded across his broad chest.

  Inside the tenement it was dark and smelled sourly of cats and of urine. A steep and narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs led to the first floor. The bannister was perilously rickety and several of its supports were missing. A little nervously she climbed, and found herself standing outside a peeling door on a dark landing. More stairs led upwards into the unappetizing mysteries of the upper floors of the tall building. She hesitated for a moment, then lifted her hand and rapped firmly with her knuckles upon the door. There was a moment’s silence, then the faint sound of movement.

  Kitty waited.

  Nothing happened. She knocked again, sharply. ‘Jem?’

  This time after a minute or so the door opened a crack to reveal a small, slovenly girl with an abundance of mouse-coloured hair and the slanting eyes and high cheekbones of an eastern princess in a face pinched with hunger and possessing that slum-pallor that Kitty recognized all too well. Her expression was sullen. She did not speak.

  Kitty cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘Please—’ she said, ‘er – s’il vous plaît’ – she stumbled on the words – ‘je – je cherche Jem O’Connell.’ She spoke the name very clearly and rather loudly, as if, she realized, embarrassed, she was addressing a backward child. She coloured beneath the girl’s hostile stare. ‘Jem O’Connell,’ she said again in a more normal tone.

  The lovely slanting eyes did not so much as flicker. Behind the girl, through the narrow opening of the door, Kitty could see a room of almost indescribable squalor. A stale smell of food, unwashed bodies and strong tobacco hung on the air, mixed with the tang of paint and of varnish. Kitty swallowed, an unpleasant stirring of her stomach bringing bile to her mouth. ‘Jem O’Connell?’ she said again, anxiety and uncertainty sharpening her tone despite all her efforts to keep her voice even. ‘Please – does he live here?’

  From the other side of the door came movement, a crash, and an incontestably American profanity. ‘Lucette? Who the hell is that?’ Jem’s voice, slurred and a little husky but unmistakable.

  ‘Jem? Jem – it’s me – Kitty. Kitty Daniels, remember?’ Kitty waited, then ‘Jem?’ she called again.

  Very slowly the door swung wider, revealing the room in all its sordid chaos. The only furniture was a small table covered in stained and ragged oilcloth and two unmatched and battered chairs. On the floor in a corner lay a mattress, the grimy bedclothes tumbled and unmade. The rest
of the room was a shambles of canvases, paints, brushes, dirty rags, boxes of odds and ends. Framed in the doorway, blinking in astonishment, stood Jem – not quite the fresh-faced, boyish Jem that Kitty remembered so well, but Jem nevertheless; his straight fair hair grown shaggily shoulder length, his unshaven face thinned to fragile planes and angles, his pale, green-blue eyes bloodshot. ‘Kitty?’ The word was spoken in astonished disbelief.

  ‘The very same.’ Kitty held out both her hands to take his. Leaned to kiss him. ‘Lord – what have you been doing to yourself? You’re all skin and bone!’ Beneath the gaiety her voice trembled slightly.

  ‘I’ve been – unwell—’ Distractedly he ran his hand through his wild, dirty hair. ‘Kitty! It’s really you!’

  ‘It’s really me.’

  ‘And – just look at you – you look wonderful!’ His eyes took in her smart afternoon suit, the little hat with its curling feather. ‘A full-blown Parisienne no less! And you’ve cut your hair – what on earth are you doing here?’ The sentences were disjointed. Kitty received the distinct impression that her unexpected appearance had completely confounded the young American. He shook his head again in astonishment, glanced over her shoulder. ‘Luke – is he with you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m in Paris alone. Working. I open at a new theatre – the Moulin d’Or – the night after next.’

  Gradually he was regaining control of himself. ‘But that’s marvellous!’ His smile was one of genuine pleasure, and was at last something unchanged from the Jem she knew. He reached for her hands again and held them. ‘Kitty Daniels! I’ll be double-damned!’ She suddenly realized he smelled strongly of drink.

  The girl who had opened the door moved to his side, her face truculent. Almost insultingly she let her eyes wander from Kitty’s well-shod feet to the small curling plume on the velvet hat. Kitty found herself blushing furiously. Jem slid an arm about the girl’s waist. ‘Kitty, this is Lucette—’ He spoke to the girl in swift, easy French.

  The girl lifted slanting eyes to Kitty’s face and made a small movement of her head that might – or as easily might not – have been construed as greeting.

  There was a moment’s undeniably awkward silence. Then quite deliberately the girl turned her back and walked away, into the room. Jem pulled a mild, apologetic face, and opened the door a little wider. ‘Come in. If you can stand it!’

  At close quarters the room proved even more of a shambles. Kitty hesitated, aware of Jem’s embarrassment. ‘I’ve – come at a bad time—’ she said, ‘I should have warned you—’

  He shook his head. ‘Of course not.’ Lucette stood by the window in sullen silence. Jem glanced at her in exasperation. She glowered at him. Kitty looked around. Canvases were stacked everywhere. Sheaves of drawings were strewn upon the table and upon the floor. In the far corner empty bottles lay where they had obviously been tossed, and left, some of them broken. Jem followed her gaze and grinned a little shamefacedly. There was another small, difficult silence. Then Jem spoke questioningly to Lucette in French. She grunted. He snapped in reply. Reluctantly she turned from the window, walked to a shelf, took down a ragged purse. Scowling ferociously she took from it two bank notes, separated them and made to put one back. Jem’s dirty, paint-stained fingers closed about hers and he deftly possessed himself of both the notes, which he held up with the air of a conjuror producing a rabbit from a hat. ‘We celebrate,’ he said.

  Kitty shook her head. ‘Jem – it really isn’t necessary. I only—’

  He stopped her with upraised hand. ‘Enough. I insist.’ He grinned suddenly and bowed, mockingly but affectionately, in Lucette’s direction. ‘We insist,’ he corrected himself. ‘The Café Barrette awaits, in all its doubtful splendour. Kitty, it is so very good to see you – I want to hear all the news. All of it.’

  They sent the carriage – whose presence outside his front door caused Jem much genuine hilarity – back to the Rue de Rivoli, much to Gustave’s indignation, with a message of assurance to the Parisots that Jem would see Kitty safely back. Then they set off through the chill, bright March streets for Jem’s favourite cafe. It was Kitty’s first visit to the Latin Quarter, and it was an experience she never forgot. The streets were crowded – students, artists, the Bohemian idle and the curious rich all jostled shoulder to shoulder. The bar to which they went was one where he and Lucette were obviously well known. Jem was greeted with good-natured camaraderie by staff and customers alike. In the corner of the crowded room a dark-haired young man with a neatly trimmed beard held court as he sketched the scene before him. As Jem passed the artist raised a friendly hand in salute. ‘Olà, Yankee—’ His eyes ran appreciatively over Kitty.

  Jem grinned. ‘Olà, Claude.’ He pushed his way to an empty table. Kitty and Lucette followed. Lucette had spoken not a single word on the walk to the cafe. She settled herself now, very close to Jem, her face still set in sullen lines, her mouth clamped tight shut as a trap. Jem glanced at her face, sighed a little, then brightened as he turned to Kitty. ‘Now. Absinthe and news, Songbird – not necessarily in that order.’

  Over the strong drinks Kitty told him of all that had happened since he had left London. Her relief at seeing his familiar, friendly face, however changed, in this unfamiliar and intimidating city, at speaking to someone who knew her – and Luke — so well broke down all barriers of reserve. At her brief and shaky description of the violent scene in the dressing room that had caused the final rift with Luke, Jem reached for her hand sympathetically, whilst Lucette sulked jealously beside him.

  ‘And you didn’t see him again?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Didn’t give him a chance to apologize?’

  She cast him a disbelieving look. ‘Apologize? Luke? He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.’

  He had taken his hand from hers. Pensively he was watching her, turning his glass in his hand on the table with little, regular movements. ‘You’ve probably done the right thing. Giving it all a chance to blow over. When you get back—’

  ‘No!’ She was herself surprised at her own vehemence. She shook her head. ‘No, Jem. I’ve made up my mind. There’s no going back. There can’t be.’

  ‘I doubt Luke sees it that way.’

  ‘I don’t care what Luke sees. I’m finished with him. I can’t stand it any more. The uncertainty. The fear. The violence.’ She caught her breath. Tears were very close. ‘I can’t stand it any more,’ she repeated, and took a too-big mouthful of absinthe, nearly choking herself.

  ‘But – you still love him. Don’t you?’ Jem’s voice was so soft it was barely audible above the noise about them. His eyes were strangely veiled.

  It was a long time before she answered. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, bleakly. ‘Sometimes I think I hate him. Sometimes I think I’ll die without him. Is that love?’

  ‘Sounds to come pretty close to me.’

  She shook her head. ‘I want no part of it. Luke and I are finished, Jem. I swear it.’ She smiled a small, self-mocking smile. ‘He’s probably forgotten all about me by now. With half the female population of London ready to fall at his feet, he doesn’t need me.’ To break the tension of the moment she sipped her drink again, pulled a face. ‘Jem, this is absolutely gruesome! How can you drink it?’

  He picked his up, tossed it back at a gulp, linked his hand to hers again, laughing. ‘I, my sweet Songbird, can drink anything!’

  Lucette, shut out, looked from one to the other, her eyes lingering on their linked hands. Kitty tried to draw away, but Jem would not let her. His light eyes were suddenly challenging upon the French girl. Kitty, recognizing all too well the signs of a stormy relationship, shook her head fiercely at Jem.

  Suddenly and without a word Lucette stood, and leaving her drink untouched stalked away from the table.

  Kitty watched her go, troubled. ‘That was silly,’ she said quietly, ’and quite unnecessary. We’ve upset her. I’ve upset her. I wouldn’t have done that for the world—’
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br />   He stopped her. ‘Don’t think about it. She’s a good kid and she’s seen me through some bad times. But she doesn’t own me. She knows that, or she should. We have an arrangement. She has to learn to stick with it, or quit. Don’t worry about Lucette.’ The tone of his voice indicated clearly that the subject was not open to discussion. She watched him for a moment, sensing again that deep reserve that she was sure was rooted in the savage wound caused by his own betrayal of his family, and by their rejection of him. Impulsively she squeezed the paint-stained fingers that still held hers. ‘Oh, Jem – I’m so glad I found you! Please – don’t be angry if I ask – is there any way I can help you? I have money now.’

  It was too clumsy. He shook his head sharply. ‘No.’

  ‘But – I’d really like to. We’re friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘I won’t take your money, Kitty.’

  ‘But why ever not?’ She was exasperated. Hadn’t she just seen him take Lucette’s? Where was the difference?

  He shook his head stubbornly. ‘Leave it, Songbird. Just leave it. As you say – we’re friends. Let’s keep it like that.’

  She gave in. Shrugged. Changed the subject. ‘You’re painting again, at least?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad. I was afraid you’d given up.’

  ‘I nearly did. But Paris took it upon herself to change my mind.’

  ‘I believe,’ she said, only half joking, ‘that you’re in love with Paris. No woman stands a chance against her.’

  ‘You could be right.’ He drained his glass. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Your offer of money—’ She opened her mouth. He stopped her, grinning. ‘You can buy us another bottle,’ he said.

  For more than an hour, then, he talked, entertainingly and fluently, telling her of his life in Paris, painting a picture far removed from the opulent extravagance of the city Kitty had so far seen, speaking with fire and enthusiasm of the brotherhood of artists who fought to break the iron grip of established rules and confining formulae, of poets and writers who struggled to expose the decadence of a society whose glittering surface barely disguised the rottenness at its core, and of young and gutter-tough insurrectionists who worked for revolution and the rule of the common man. It was a world away from the Imperial balls, the demi-mondaines who rode in their carriages in the Bois, the salons, the cafes, the bright lights of the Rue de Rivoli.