Kitty grinned at her, her heart suddenly and absurdly light. ‘You think not? Tell Jem O’Connell that. He’ll prove you wrong.’
He came the next day.
For the first time the children had gone to rejoin their playmates on the landings and stairs of the tenement. Kitty had determinedly suppressed her own misgivings at the thought of letting them out of her sight and allowed them to go – such signs of normality were encouraging and the children had already been cooped up for too long. Louise had left early that morning, basket over her arm and with a purseful of the francs that were becoming more worthless with each passing day, in a brave but probably futile attempt to find a queue less than a mile long at a shop that might, eventually, open. Lottie, Kitty having dressed her inflamed injured legs as the doctor had shown her, slept restlessly, soothed by a drop from the precious phial. Kitty opened the door to a jaunty, rhythmic tap, her face wary. Her expression did not change at sight of her visitor.
‘Mornin’, ma’am,’ Jem said.
Kitty said nothing.
‘Heard tell you were short of a few things?’
She stepped back. Breezily he stepped past her. She barred the door behind him and led the way in silence into the kitchen.
‘Eggs,’ he said. ‘Only three I’m afraid, but the best I could do at short notice. Butter. No milk. I’m working on it.’
She stood rigid by the closed door for a moment longer. The mere sight of him had roused feelings she had spent the past harrowing days denying. Hurt. Humiliation. Fierce, physical need. ‘Where on earth did you get them?’ Her voice was perfectly cool and steady.
‘The Legation. Our Mr Washburne’s a generous man. Where’s Michael?’
‘Out playing.’
He glanced towards the door. ‘And Lottie? How is she?’
‘Bad. The doctor gives her no chance. But she’s alive and I can’t leave her. And Poppy won’t leave her mother and Michael won’t leave Poppy, so we’re all stuck here for a while. What’s happening outside?’
‘Nothing good.’ The words were succinct. She did not pursue them.
They stood for several moments in strangely communicative silence.
‘Friends again?’ he asked at last, tentatively. ‘I forgot to bring the sackcloth and ashes, but if you insist—?’
She shook her head. ‘It was my fault as much as yours.’ She gritted her teeth. My fault? Your fault? What were they talking about? Where lay the fault in love?
He shook his head. ‘I was drunk. Pissed as a newt. It was unforgiveable.’
She smiled very faintly. ‘It’s forgiven.’ Did he even remember the really unforgiveable thing? – Not the taking, but the rejection of love? She thought probably not.
He spat on his right palm, held it out. She slapped it lightly with her own, her heart aching.
He perched on the edge of the table. ‘So – here’s a mess. It was Spider, Louise said?’
‘Yes. He’d been following me. He attacked her. Threw her off the balcony.’
‘The police?’
She shook her head. ‘Of course not. Who’d send for the police round here? And what good would it do? Lottie herself’s a wanted criminal remember. They wouldn’t be as gentle as we’ve been. And if they moved her she’d die.’
He looked at her, contemplatively, for a very long time and, strangely, she found herself blushing. He stood up. ‘You’re one hell of a girl, Kitty Daniels,’ he said quietly, and reaching into the capacious pocket of his greatcoat produced, like a rabbit from a hat, a bottle of cognac. ‘Essential supplies,’ he said, soberly, ‘for the nursing staff. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a man about a cow.’
* * *
That bottle remained unbroached until the day several days later when Kitty ventured into the streets only to find herself caught up in the riots caused by the threat to ration bread – that last staple, life-preserver of the poor. The rich might still, by whatever means, find it possible to dine in some style: for the poor of Paris hunger had now turned to the threat of famine, and their children were dying. Kitty struggled home, frightened, avoiding the rioting mobs, and did not feel safe until she had dropped the heavy bar across the door and tucked the children into their bed.
Lottie watched her. ‘What’s – goin’ on?’ Her speech was slurred and difficult, but Kitty, looking into those implacable eyes, knew that the brain behind them was as sharp and hate-filled as ever.
‘They’re rioting in the streets. The government are talking of rationing bread.’
‘Bastards.’
Kitty tidied the bedclothes, plumped the pillows. ‘Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?’
‘Comfortable?’ Lottie repeated, bitterly.
Kitty sucked her lip, turned to stoke the fire.
‘What yer burnin’?’
Kitty inspected the sack of wood. ‘Looks like piano. Jem got it from somewhere. God only knows where.’
For a moment there was no sound but that of Lottie’s difficult breathing. Then, ‘What ’appened – to that – little shit – Spider?’ she asked, evenly.
Kitty straightened, a hand to her aching back. ‘Nothing. He got away.’ She turned. ‘There was nothing I could do, Lottie. How could I have stopped him?’
Her only reply was the tremulous breathing. Kitty turned towards the kitchen door.
‘Kitty?’
Something in the tone stopped her. ‘Yes?’ She approached the mattress, perched on the edge.
Lottie’s face was working. ‘What ’e said – that right? Luke’s – dead?’
Kitty nodded.
‘In the fire?’
‘Yes.’
Lottie turned her head on the pillow. A tear trickled and then slid swiftly down the emaciated cheek.
Kitty could not find it in her heart to comfort her. ‘Jem brought some brandy,’ she said. ‘I’ll open it.’
* * *
Christmas approached and still Lottie clung to life, if such an existence of pain and paralysis could be described so. Kitty tended her, and the children, with the help of Louise and occasionally of Jem, of whom however she saw relatively little, although his gifts, via Louise, continued to sustain them. The weather was brutal, unremittingly and searingly cold, as if still the elements themselves threw their weight behind the city’s enemies. At the beginning of the last week of December another attack on Le Bourget, dogged again by poor planning and poorer security, ended in disaster. As the news trickled back to the city Kitty waited for Jem, but he did not come. Sleepless, she lay imagining him wounded, dying, dead. Or in the arms of someone able to comfort him better than she had done. On Christmas Eve, unannounced, he arrived. He was unhurt and in remarkably good spirits. He made no mention of the battle. From beneath his greatcoat, with the air of a practised magician, he produced presents – an almost-new doll for Poppy, a wooden toy soldier for Michael, two bottles of wine, a bag of frost-blackened potatoes and – wonder of wonders – a skinny chicken.
‘Jem! You must have done murder!’
He shook his head. ‘Nope. Just asked nicely. The Legation’s still well supplied.’
‘You’ll come for dinner tomorrow?’
Avoiding her eyes he shook his head. ‘Sorry. I volunteered for duty with the Ambulance.’
She did not know whether to believe him or not.
That evening she and the children sang together the carols she had taught them and she saw again the gleam of tears on Lottie’s face. Outside, the city was silent, as were the guns on this holiest of nights. Kitty wondered that the Prussian invaders about their campfires could be worshipping that same child of peace to whom hymns were being sung and precious candles lit within the besieged city that they were trying to starve into submission. Tomorrow – Michael’s birthday, as well as the Christ Child’s – the slaughter would begin again. Suddenly the whole thing seemed monstrously pointless. What madness in man produced such bloodsoaked lunacy?
She had no present for Michael for his third birt
hday, except to sing for him that special Green Willow song that had become his favourite. ‘Next year,’ she said, hugging him, ‘you shall have two presents. Two big presents,’ and she tried to ignore the forebodings. Next year? How could she promise for next year when she could not begin to guess what might happen tomorrow?
And so the strange Christmas passed; and now there were whispers, frightening whispers, that the encircling army had come to the end of its patience. The rumours grew and the rumours were strong. Paris was to be bombarded.
Louise brought the first, disturbing gossip. ‘Mon Dieu, Mam’selle! – they mean to kill us in our beds!’
‘Calm yourself, Louise! We’ve heard such rumours before.’
‘But – the guns, they can be seen! And didn’t you hear last night! Already they bombard the Avron Plateau—’
‘The guns are always there. And the Plateau’s a military target. They wouldn’t dare bombard the city. It’s barbaric! They’d lose all support in Europe. In the world.’
Louise, unconvinced, sniffed in injured fashion. ‘I hope you’re right, Mam’selle.’
Within two days Kitty had more immediate things to worry about. A day or so after this most unpromising new year had arrived, with no warning Lottie’s temperature suddenly soared and her breath rattled frighteningly in her chest. It was hours before Louise could track down the doctor. When he came at last, smelling strongly of spirits, he shook his head. Pneumonia. More people were dying of it than were being killed by the godforsaken Prussians. In Lottie’s weakened state there was nothing to be done. He shrugged. Perhaps it was a blessing.
‘Louise – for tonight, would you stay and care for the children?’ Kitty’s own head ached and her limbs were heavy with weariness. For nights on end she had barely slept. ‘Move the other mattress into the kitchen for them. Use the last of the wood to light the stove.’ She looked down in pity at Lottie’s fever-bright face. ‘There’s no need to conserve it now—’
She settled down beside Lottie, watching with helpless compassion the painful struggle for every breath. She remembered Lottie, fair and beautiful, standing upon the stage of the Song and Supper Rooms; remembered her, too, lovely and laughing, hanging onto Luke’s arm, utter devotion in her eyes. Almost as if the thought had reached her, Lottie’s eyes fluttered open. ‘You there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Luke’s dead.’ The whisper was so faint Kitty could barely hear it.
‘Yes.’
‘In – in the fire.’
‘Yes.’
‘It was an accident – the fire – I didn’t mean to—’
‘Lottie – please – don’t talk. I don’t think it can be good for you.’
‘Only meant to take little Mick, yer see – Luke’s kid—’
‘Lottie—’
‘I – knocked over a lamp. It sort of exploded—’
Kitty waited. She could hear the fatal rattle of the other girl’s breath in her chest.
‘Then – when I realized – all them folk dead! I – well, I ’ad ter get away, didn’t I? Away from London, till the fuss died down, an’ I could let Luke know—’ Shining tears slid down the parched, thin face. ‘Paris was – the on’y place I’d ever been outside London. An’ Lily – I remembered my friend Lily—’ She stopped a moment, gasping. ‘Some friend!’
‘Lottie – please! You must stop.’
‘Didn’t mean to kill – anyone—’ Her breath was coming in agonizing gasps. Through the rattle in poor Lottie’s chest Kitty was aware of a strange new sound, a distant, shrill whistle. ‘I wanted little Mick’ – Lottie gasped – ‘for Luke – ’e should ’a bin mine.’ Her voice lifted. ‘’E should ’a bin mine!’
The explosion was terrifying in its unexpectedness. It seemed close enough to be in the street outside. The candle flickered. Instinctively Kitty threw herself forward, covering Lottie’s body with her own. In the next room one of the children shrieked, and Louise screamed. There came another explosion, and another. The world rocked, and settled.
‘God Almighty,’ Kitty said, dazed, ‘they’re shelling the city.’
Lottie had not relinquished her superhumanly strong grip upon Kitty’s hand. She seemed not to have noticed the explosions. She pulled Kitty to her, half sat, gasping for breath. ‘Poppy,’ she said.
Kitty forced her gently back onto the pillow. The children were crying. The night air sang again with the menace of death. ‘I’ll look after her. I promise. As my own.’
Lottie’s eyes were glazed. She let out a great sob. ‘I’ve always hated you. I still – hate you!’
‘I know.’
Lottie fell back onto the pillow, letting go of Kitty’s hand, the last of her dying strength deserting her. ‘I loved ’im,’ she said. ‘That was my trouble. I bloody loved ’im—’ and, as an explosion in the street outside rocked the building to its foundations and glass flew, Lottie Smith died.
‘Mam’selle! Oh, Mam’selle—’ Louise was shrieking hysterically, in English and in French. ‘Nous sommes morts! Oh, mon Dieu! They bomb us—!’
Kitty was through the door and into the kitchen in three strides, her feet crunching on shattered glass. ‘Louise! Shut up or I’ll slap you! Now – help me! Quickly! The table—’ She dragged the heavy table clear of the window, grabbed a blanket from the mattress. Glass tinkled. ‘Michael! Poppy! Get under the table!’ The terrified children crawled under the sturdy table. Kitty threw the heavy blanket over it. ‘There. You’re safe now. In a little house, you see? Oh, Louise! For God’s sake calm yourself.’
‘But, Mam’selle—’ Louise’s protest was cut off by another shattering explosion. Smoke and the stinging smell of high explosives drifted through the dark opening of the window. Louise screamed.
‘If you do that again,’ Kitty warned grimly, ‘I will slap you. Hard. I swear it. Now – give me a hand with this mattress. Rest it against the table, so. There. That makes a shelter for us. We can just squeeze in, and it’s extra protection for the children—’ The words were cut off by the vicious whine of another shell. ‘Get down!’
They huddled in the shelter of the mattress and the table, clinging to each other, the children curled like small frightened animals in their laps. In the courtyard outside Bedlam reigned. They could hear shouts and screams, children crying.
‘We must stay here,’ Kitty said, determinedly. ‘It’s ridiculous to run around in the open. We’re safer here. It can’t last long. We’ll be all right.’ She prayed her voice sounded firmer and more convinced in the others’ ears than it did in her own.
The night hours passed like endless days. The bombardment eased, then renewed itself with brutal vigour.
‘They seem to be landing further away,’ Kitty said at last. ‘Michael – do stop wriggling! You’re kicking me black and blue!’
‘Want to pee,’ Michael said.
‘Oh, Lord. Wait a minute.’ She scrambled from her refuge and fetched the bucket from the corner. With the glass gone from the window the room was bitterly cold. Through the glassless gap snow swirled, and she could see a square of sky, the heavy snowclouds lit blood red with the flash of the shells and the reflection of fire. ‘Here. Be quick.’
Remarkably cheerfully, Michael did what was necessary then crawled back under the table again. With the resilience of childhood he seemed already to have lost his fear. ‘Pretty lights,’ he said.
‘Where’s Ma?’ Poppy’s voice, desolate. ‘Where’s my Ma? Is she all right?’
Kitty gathered the child to her in the darkness.
Outside, the cannonade erupted again in fire and fury as Paris huddled, all but defenceless, beneath the rain of death.
* * *
Jem arrived with first light, and Kitty had never been so pleased to see anyone in her whole life.
‘Lottie or no Lottie we’re getting out of here—’ He stopped, his eyes taking in, in the half dark of a January dawn, the tableau of the sheet-covered corpse, Poppy crying quietly beside it.
‘W
e can’t leave her—’ Kitty began.
‘You can. And you will. No more harm can come to her. Which is more than can be said for you. I’ll come back later to see about the arrangements for burial. For now we need to get you out. Over the river. The Right Bank hasn’t been touched – it looks as if the Prussian guns don’t have the range to reach across the river. You can’t stay here. The apartment in Montmartre is safe. Now – come on! The bombardment’s stopped, for the time being anyway – but it’s chaos out there. The bridges are blocked solid. Well – at least we don’t have to worry about the goods and chattels. Leave everything. What you stand up in is what you bring. Kitty – do you think you can manage Michael?’
‘Yes.’ Kitty swung the child up onto her hip.
‘Right. I’ll take Poppy.’ Infinitely gently he bent beside the sobbing child and took her hand. ‘Poppy – you must come away. To somewhere you’ll be safe. You understand that, don’t you? Your Ma would have wanted it.’
With the utter trust she had shown in Jem from the first meeting, the child did not demur. Silent and docile, her tear-stained face a mask of grief she allowed herself, like a lifeless doll, to be dressed in her warm outdoor clothes and hoisted pick-a-back onto Jem’s back.
‘Right,’ he said then, ‘stay close to me, Kitty. Louise – you follow Mam’selle and stay close. Comprenez? Ready? Off we go—’
As they set off, gingerly, down the rickety, glass-strewn steps the door banged eerily in the wind behind them, Lottie’s only companion.
The streets of the bombarded Left Bank were a shambles. Refugees fleeing their threatened homes dragged carts and barrows piled high with possessions, crying children clinging to the adults, their parents on the whole silent as grimly they trudged through the thick, new-fallen snow towards the bridges that spanned the Seine. Men and women with burdens of a poverty-stricken lifetime stumbled in the uncertain footing, the hems of the women’s skirts heavy and clinging with the moisture of melted snow. Kitty saw an old woman, hobbling, grumbling, buffeted by the crowds, and grown children, fearless and excited, dashed about with uncaring exuberance, cursed by those slower and more burdened than they. Their party was indeed lucky, Kitty realized, to be able to abandon possessions and travel encumbered only by the light weight of two half-starved children. They forged on, Jem spearheading their progress with a grim determination that made it a struggle to keep pace with him. Around them the signs of the night’s bombardment were clear, scarce covered by the new-fallen snow. Smoking craters in the road, fire-damaged, windowless houses, abandoned, their doors standing open in parody of welcome, left so as their inhabitants fled. Here and there small gangs were looting, ignored by the stream of fleeing humanity that made steadily for the bridges. Sickened, Kitty averted her eyes: surely even animals would not behave so to their own kind at a time of common disaster?
Sweet Songbird Page 60