Sweet Songbird

by Sweet Songbird (retail) (epub)

  Nothing happened.

  She knocked again, as hard as she could, and this time somewhere within she heard movement, a woman’s bad-tempered muttering, heavy, shuffling footsteps.

  The apparition that opened the door was the most fearsome she had ever seen. A squat, enormously fat woman, dressed even on this sweltering day in the many-layered dark, voluminous clothes of a country peasant and with a patriotically red, white and blue knitted cap perched ridiculously upon an iron-grey, untidy head, scowled at her fiercely. By her side, held not very securely by the scruff of its neck, a great red-eyed mastiff snarled, no better tempered from its looks than its mistress. Kitty felt the hairs of her neck stir beneath the twin, baleful glares.

  ‘Er – pardon, Madame—’ she stammered, stepping back a little. The mastiff growled menacingly at the movement and she froze. Sweat trickled uncomfortably between her breasts, soaking her bodice. ‘Je – je cherche M’sieu O’Connell. M’sieu Jem O’Connell—?’

  The name brought a remarkable and quite terrifying reaction. The woman’s heavy face convulsed with rage and she spat a torrent of obviously abusive French, spittle running obscenely from the corner of her mouth. Desperately Kitty resisted an overwhelming urge to turn and run. This was her only hope.

  ‘S’il vous plaît – lentement – je ne comprends pas—’ she managed as the woman paused for breath at last.

  The woman’s head jerked menacingly. ‘Américaine?’

  Kitty shook her head. ‘English.’

  The clouds of fury gathered again in the woman’s face. She spat very accurately at Kitty’s feet. ‘English? Pigs. All of them. They desert us, eh?’ The surprising English, like the girl’s a couple of days previously, was heavily accented and bore the unmistakable stamp of Jem’s own speech. On a faint lift of hysteria Kitty found herself wondering if Jem had set himself to teaching his native tongue to the whole of the female population of Paris. ‘They think we lose this war, eh?’ The apparition stepped forward threateningly and the dog snarled again. ‘Eh bien! After we slit Bismarck’s fat belly we come to England, eh?’

  Kitty found herself shaking her head a little wildly. She had been warned by a worried Charles of the growing anti-British feeling in the city but this was the first time she had actually encountered it. ‘I’m – I’m sure that most British people are most sympathetic to your cause, Madame—’

  The woman snorted, pushed her ugly face closer to Kitty’s.

  Kitty this time stubbornly stood her ground. ‘Please – I’m looking for Jem O’Connell. Does he still live here?’

  There was a short, expressive silence. ‘O’Connell,’ the fearsome woman said then, very clearly, having marshalled her linguistic reserves to the attack, ‘is a no-good son of bitches. A lying, double-cross bastard—’ She pronounced the last word in the French way, but there was no mistaking her meaning or her malice.

  The expletives lost none of their force for being spoken in the incongruous, distorted English, yet Kitty found herself fighting suddenly a manic desire to laugh. She had heard stories in those long-gone days of a Suffolk schoolroom of the harpies who had sat at the foot of Madame Guillotine with their knitting as the heads rolled into the baskets; this, surely, must be a direct descendant of one of them. She swallowed hard, fighting down the dangerous possibility of hysterical laughter; she did not for a moment think she would find it funny if the awful woman chose to release the even more awful dog. The tirade had slipped into French now. She waited until the woman ran out of words before asking, ‘What did he do?’

  That brought a further stream of unintelligible outrage. Kitty concentrated, trying to make some sense of the words. Then, still screeching, the woman extended her free hand and rubbed thumb and forefinger together in an age-old gesture, and all become clear.

  ‘He owes you money?’ Kitty held up her hand to stop the excited flow of words. ‘How much?’

  The two short words brought a sudden silence. Crafty eyes squinted at her, taking in the good clothes and the jewellery and resting in sudden greed upon the gold chain that hung about Kitty’s neck. ‘Two ’undred francs.’

  Kitty knew the sum must be outrageously exaggerated, but she did not argue. She unfastened the chain and held it out, swinging and glittering in the sunshine. ‘Would this cover it?’

  A rapacious, filthy hand reached out. Quicker, Kitty snatched the chain behind her back. ‘Only if you tell me where he is,’ she said, knowing as she said it her danger. If the woman chose simply to release her dog…

  The sly eyes regarded her unblinking. The massive shoulders lifted. ‘I don’ know where ’e live.’ There was no denying the careless truth of the words, Kitty knew that instinctively, her buoyed-up hopes collapsing. Then, ‘But I know where ’e drinks—’ the woman said.

  * * *

  The bar of Le Mouchoir Rouge was the converted front room of a Montmartre cottage, crowded, thick-hung with smoke, cheerfully noisy as a monkey-house. Kitty stood on the threshold trying to adjust her eyes to the gloom. The place was filled to bursting and echoed with chatter and laughter. Predominantly the customers were men, and Kitty recognized with lifting heart the hallmarks of the artistic fraternity – canvases were propped against the wooden tables, paint-stained hands waved in Gallic conversation, or lifted glasses to be swiftly drained and as swiftly refilled. The scattering of women among the customers had a look she recognized also – striking if not always pretty girls with the challenging poise of the professional model. The walls were covered in paintings of that school that Jem termed realist, and so admired. Ignoring the curiosity and unwelcome interest in the eyes of a group of men who stood close by the door she stood on tiptoe and surveyed the crowd.

  ‘Bonjour, Mam’selle—’ A young man had sidled close to her. She ignored him. He laughed, making a quick aside to his watching friends that brought a gale of laughter.

  And then she saw him. Jem sat at a bare wooden table in a corner, a vociferous part of the rowdiest group in the room. He was smiling that wide, vivid smile that she found she remembered so well as a young man of florid complexion and flamboyant dress declaimed passionately, his hand on his heart. Other members of the party were chipping in noisily, obviously good-temperedly baiting the young man. As Kitty watched, a girl moved from her place at Jem’s side, languidly draped a long arm about the passionate speaker’s shoulders and kissed him long and hard upon the lips, thus forcibly stemming the stream of words to thunderous laughter and applause. At that moment, laughing, Jem turned and his eyes met hers. To her astonishment, knowing her own face to be alight with delight and greeting, she saw for a split second the laughter leave his face as if turned off by a switch, in its place a look of stunned and not altogether joyful surprise. Then the brilliant smile was back and he was across the room to her, hugging her, standing her from him to look at her, hugging her again, and she thought she must have imagined that strange moment of almost painful shock.

  ‘Kitty! By all that’s holy! What are you doing here? How on earth did you find me? Good God, girl, don’t you know there’s a war on?’ She allowed herself to be swept to the table, acknowledged unheard introductions, clinging to his hand as if to her hope of salvation. She had found Jem. Against all the odds she had found him. Now everything would be all right.

  * * *

  ‘Luke dead. Jesus Christ.’ Jem stood by the window of the airless and stifling attic that was his home, looking out with unseeing eyes across the wide and lovely vista of the roofs and spires of Paris to where the distant trees of the Bois shimmered in the heat. ‘Dead,’ he said again, and shook his shaggy fair head in a sharp movement, like a dog emerging from water, bemused disbelief and a muted grief in his eyes. ‘And in such a way.’

  Kitty said nothing. She had told her story steadily and without tears. Now she felt tired, drained of energy; almost without feeling.

  ‘My God!’ Jem came back to the table, splashed dark wine into a cracked cup, lifted the bottle questioningly to Kitty. She shook her hea
d. He tossed the drink back, poured more, then lifted his light eyes to Kitty’s. ‘And you’ve come here – despite the war – to look for the child?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kitty put her hand in the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the crackling paper of the pencil sketch. ‘This is all I have to go on.’ She held it out to him, watching with suddenly bated breath as he smoothed the creases thoughtfully and moved back to the light of the window. ‘Do you recognize it?’

  He looked for a long moment, then shook his head. ‘No.’

  Obstinately she suppressed once again the dreary rise of disappointment. ‘Would you – would you help me try to find it?’

  He watched her in silence for a surprisingly long time, his face sombre. Then that well-remembered smile came again, fleetingly, warm and entirely charming. ‘I sure will. I guess needles have been found in haystacks before.’

  She pulled a face. ‘You sound like Pol. And Genevieve. And Charles. Do you really think it’s that bad?’

  He shrugged a little. ‘Who knows? We won’t know until we try, will we? Have you tried the cab drivers?’

  She stared at him. The simplest answer; and she had not thought of it. ‘Oh, Jem – how stupid of me – no, I haven’t.’

  ‘Right.’ He smiled again, and her heart lifted with hope. He toasted her with the battered cup, and for a moment it seemed to her that the gesture was wry, strangely self-mocking. ‘That’s where we’ll start.’

  * * *

  But yet again her hopes were doomed to disappointment. Try as they might over the next few days as they wandered the chaotic city streets that were a shambles of military vehicles and personnel, of wheeled gun carriages, ponderous cannon, marching men and heaped wagons of supplies, they could find no one who recognized Kitty’s picture. At last, on the day that they stood with the rest of cheering Paris and watched a tired-looking Louis Napoleon ride out of the city at the head of his colourfully uniformed army, they had to admit that the idea, good as it had been, had produced no positive result.

  ‘But at least,’ Jem pointed out as they watched the gallant cavalry parade past, colours bravely flying, ‘we do know something.’

  ‘What?’

  He turned to look at her. ‘If the cab drivers of the city don’t know the place, then it isn’t in fashionable Paris, is it?’

  She shook her head. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘I know Montmartre like the back of my hand. It isn’t there either, I’ll stake the price of my next meal on that. So – at least we’ve narrowed the field a bit—’ He glanced at her again, grinning like a boy. ‘How do your feet feel?’

  ‘Fine. Why?’

  He ran his hand through his untidy hair, tossing it back from his eyes. ‘Because from now on, little Songbird, we walk.’ The use of the old nickname was entirely natural. She was astonished at the small stab of pain it brought. ‘We’ll pound the pavements of Paris and we’ll find that confounded statue if it’s the last thing we do.’

  * * *

  They quartered the city, poring over a map that Charles had produced for them. Genevieve looked on in sympathetic exasperation, her practical nature outraged by the whole venture. ‘But – Kitty! Chérie! You cannot comb the whole of the city!’

  ‘Oh, yes I can.’ Kitty straightened, pushing the heavy dark hair from her eyes, drawing a small sharp breath as a hot needle of pain stabbed at her injured arm. ‘Michael’s out there. I’m going to find him.’

  Jem had glanced at her quickly. ‘You okay?’

  She nodded, though the sudden angry pain in her arm had taken her breath away. Impatiently she tried to ignore it; the arm had been all but healed when she left England – why should it be bothering her now? ‘I’m fine.’

  He looked at her for a moment longer, probing. She turned from him, back to the map. ‘Where do we start?’

  But in the days that followed, as they tramped the streets of the city and as the war news swung in a few short, disastrous days from victory at Saarbrucken to terrible and bloody defeat for the French army at Wissenbourg and Spicheren, the pain in her arm worsened. Beneath the bandages the skin was inflamed and burning. As the war news, all bad, filtered back to the city a new, darker mood engulfed Paris. The gay, improvident enthusiasm of those first days was gone entirely, and in its place a dangerous and unsettling disaffection, fostered and encouraged as always by the extreme Republicans for whom this city, the very cradle of violent revolution, had always been a breeding ground. A long, dispiriting retreat by the bulk of the French army had begun, falling back towards Paris. Suddenly the monstrous possibility of a Prussian army at the gates of the city became more than a nightmare with which to frighten children. Chanting mobs roamed the streets and packed the squares; street orators, who had waited, patiently, upon the hour, came from their attics and their cellars to whip up anti-government feeling and to preach righteous revolution. By the end of the second week in August passions were at white heat and it had become dangerous for any foreigner to be found on the street by the unstable, excited mobs. Jem himself was relatively safe – his French, though slightly accented, could pass as native. But Kitty had no such safeguard.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Jem said, firmly, ‘we’ll have to give up for a while. Give them a chance to settle down. I’m not risking having you walk into a mob that mistakes you for Madame Bismarck. They all but lynched a woman in the Rue Royale yesterday. And anyway’ – he held up a narrow hand to still her protest — ‘you’re looking done in. You need a rest.’

  In fact she needed rather more than that, and in the end she had to admit it. When she at last shamefacedly showed Genevieve her swollen and obviously infected arm her friend was horrified and justifiably angry. ‘You idiot! How long has it been like that? Mon Dieu! You could lose the arm!’ The Parisots had over the past weeks become increasingly worried over the situation in the city, and the strain showed on Genevieve’s face and in her shortened temper. The theatres had closed. Kitty knew her friend were contemplating leaving the city, suspected a little guiltily that she was the main reason for their staying. ‘I’ll send for a doctor at once,’ Genevieve said briskly and, with a quick glance that Kitty did not miss, added, ‘You cannot think of travelling with such an arm.’

  Kitty lifted her head sharply. ‘Travelling? Travelling where?’

  Genevieve was already halfway to the door. She spoke over her shoulder. ‘We are going to the south – and of course you must come with us. We cannot wait here to be trapped like rats by the Prussians, or murdered in our beds by revolutionaries. You’ve heard the news? That there’s insurrection in the city?’ She did not wait for a reply. ‘And more defeats. Bazaine’s retreat has been cut off. There is no one – no one! – to protect us.’

  ‘Gené—’ Kitty cut in, desperately.

  Genevieve rushed on. ‘God only knows what will happen to Paris now. So you see – we must go. All of us. But first – a doctor for your arm.’

  In the silence left by her going Kitty, nursing her now agonizingly painful arm, crossed to the window and looked out. The wide, beautiful boulevard was all but deserted, though beneath the window lay a broken placard and some leaflets, remnants of a noisy demonstration an hour or so earlier. On the pavement opposite, sitting on the kerb, his feet in the gutter, sat a dispirited-looking soldier, his rifle discarded beside him, his uniform filthy and his cap gone, in its place a bloodstained bandage. He seemed to Kitty to personify the broken hopes of that gallant army that had marched from the city, colours flying and bands playing, such a very short time before. As she watched, a file of Zouaves shambled by in the charge of a mounted officer. Their flamboyant uniforms were worn and dirty; they walked like men sleepwalking. The man on the pavement did not even lift his head to watch them pass. For the first time and through a rising haze of fever Kitty found herself in the grip of dread. It did not need an experienced eye to perceive that these were the harbingers of disaster, the remnants of a defeated and impotent army. She had at last to accept the truth that she had steadil
y ignored for so long: the enemy, any day, might indeed be at the gates of Paris. And Michael was somewhere here in the city, unprotected. Her head thumped. The skin of her face burned drily. She would not leave Paris. She could not. Not until she had found her son.

  Genevieve and the doctor found her an hour later crouched upon Genevieve’s elegant chaise-longue, trembling with fever, her skin on fire. Muttering and protesting incoherently she was put to bed, cool damp cloths laid upon her blazing body, the infected arm lanced and bandaged, bitter medicine forced down her throat. The next many hours were lost to her completely, in pain and delirium. Luke came to her and she called to him, desperate, as he turned from her. Michael played upon the bed, his dear, sunny little face turned brightly to her before crumpling to heartrending tears as unknown hands tore him from her. She fell then it seemed into a pit of darkness shot with flame. For an endless time she struggled, calling on Luke, on Jem, on someone – anyone – to help her. And then at last help came. A firm, cool hand held hers, a voice spoke, calmly and encouragingly. ‘Luke,’ she said. ‘Thank God.’ And she lapsed into healing sleep.

  She woke to dust-motes dancing in the gleams of sunlight that knifed through the gaps in the closed shutters. It was very hot. Through the half-open door she could hear sounds of near-frantic activity in the apartment. She moved her head a little. Beside her, asleep in the chair, his fair head lolling at a painful angle, his sharp-boned face in shadow, was Jem. At her movement he started awake and leaned forward. ‘Kitty? You’re awake?’