the chimney with the owl’s nest that’s been there since anyone can remember … and the kind of owl it is … protected now because they are getting increasingly rare …
Well, Jason, it is a bit gruesome. But it’s history. It’s the way some things were. We can’t go through life not seeing what can happen and not caring what it is when it does. The limits of my knowledge are the limits of my world, that’s something a great philosopher said. Just remember that.
So switch off those mobiles now – yes, I mean it – you can’t take photos inside. (To herself:) Her merchant husband travelled across the sea, often leaving her for days at a time in his house off the Market Square, and Gerald, Count of Utrecht, came clattering down the streets one day looking to water and provision his horses, and the flower maiden fell for him, fell for him badly, with the consequences we know: the walled-up cell and the narrow window at tiptoe height.
Brigit:
– It was because of Gerald, Count of Utrecht, that I turned my face to the wall and wanted to keep to the dark and live here till all my flowers withered and my colours whitened without the sun to paint and fill them.
What Gerald made me do brought me here; what the feelings I had for him made me do. I wanted him to come to me more, more often, stay with me longer, and I resented the man I was married to even though I loved him.
Because he was there. Because he was in the way.
Gerald would send word he was coming, and then he’d fail to come, sending word again that he had business keeping him in another place. He gave his horse more care and attention than he gave me. I envied the plate with the food he fell on so ravenously. I was jealous of his glass, too, and the way he drank from it. I wanted to be the reins he held with such grace in his hands.
Honey, the golden work of the bees. A flower maiden’s closest company – they became my accomplices.
One afternoon in our garden, a swarm fastened on my husband, and stuck to him; the writhing, buzzing mass swathed him from head to foot; he flailed at them wildly at first but the poison worked quickly on his limbs and soon he couldn’t struggle. They stunned him and felled his great strength like a mast cracking. No beekeeper reached him to divert the swarm; nobody came in time to lift the pulsing mass of insects from his stricken body.
I was a widow.
I was alone at last.
At first Gerald came to me and he was glad and full of wonder at my courage in this sudden bereavement. He wanted to protect me, he said. But his feelings for me weakened, I could sense it. The more I struggled to keep them aflame and strong, the more he listened to the suspicion gathering around me … and I could count our time together running down.
Annie:
– No, Emma, anchorite doesn’t mean a woman who kills her husband. Anyone else have an idea what it means?
Someone who wants to stay at home?
That’s not quite it, but closer … Brigit Dorval was anchored here, so to speak, after she was walled up …
Yes, Ben, well done. Anchorite means a woman who becomes a hermit.
And why was she walled up? Katy – do you know? Yes, Sophie? Mmm, was it a way of making up for what … love … made her go and do? That’s right, up to a point. But they were different times – religious beliefs were very harsh. (To herself:) She went to the priest here at the church on Friday Market, and confessed. He wouldn’t bless her.
That hadn’t changed much with the years: my mum was a wicked girl, they told her, who had led astray a good man – oh, a man like my father wouldn’t have sullied his immortal soul had it not been for her wicked wiles … she should be shunned, an adulteress like her.
Brigit:
– The priest said to me, ‘There is one creature – hardly made by God, though all things are – a bird all others find abominable. When it draws near, other birds rally together to cry out and warn one another. They mob it if it comes any closer, to keep it away from their children. Like you, it once committed an act of depravity for which it will not be forgiven. Like you, it must hide its shame under cover of darkness.’
He cursed me to live like an owl in the wall. He said to me: ‘You will keep to the dark and all other living things will shun you. You are abhorrent to creatures of light and air, to all that is made of colour and laughter. Screeching will be your music, and others’ leavings your nourishment. You will foul your own nest.’
Annie:
– Outside, I want you to talk to the stall owners and see how many of these you can identify:
tulip bulbs
iris tubers
samphire
poppies
marguerites
The local growers specialise in flowers and there’s a strong connection to Holland. Which is … where?
Yes, Emma, Holland is in Europe.
And what are the people there called? And the language?
No, not Hollandish. Anybody else? Yes, Dutch. Very good, Sophie.
Holland, also known as – anyone?
Not you, Sophie. Anyone else? No? The Netherlands. They’re in fact directly east of us as the crow flies across the North Sea (which traders used to sail over, back and forth). You can see Dutch gables and other signs of Dutch culture here, like the flower trade itself.
Brigit:
– Father Damian showed me the gap between the interior and exterior brickwork of the church’s structure. He wielded the trowel and left the narrow window at tiptoe height in the wall.
From the dark, my thoughts hunt for sounds stirring beyond: I can catch their quiver and tremor as you pass by and on Fridays I can hear the flower market and speak to you from my solitude.
A Chatelaine in the Making
AFTER CLARA’S FATHER, the young corporal Gaspar Dufay, fell in the mud at Verdun with a bullet through the heart, Clara began to dance. Her mother, Eglantine Dufay, made her costumes, sometimes dressing her as a doll, or a cherry (in summer), a holly berry (at Christmas) or a pixie, and would sit watching her closely while Clara performed in cafés and bars; three years later, the little dancer was noticed by a customer, a tall gentleman in a top hat and gloves, and procured a place in the corps de ballet at the Paris Opéra. Clara became one of that select and celebrated company known as les petits rats, whom Degas has immortalised in the famous bronze, statue with her upturned face and a real tutu. In the photograph which the unfortunate Gaspar had in his pocket close to the entry point of the German bullet that killed him, the little dancer was curly-haired and chubby – consistently inspiring her first audiences to coo, ‘Comme elle est adorable!’ as they fixed their monocles to see her better.
By the age of nine, however, Clara had changed; she’d grown rangy, with a surprisingly long, thin neck, wrists and back, like the saluki dogs coming into fashion in that pleasure-loving decade after the First World War; in the chorus, dancing en pointe and wearing the flounced muslins of a wili or a sylph, she moved with an easy languor that belied the difficulty of the steps and arduousness of the régime. For, in spite of the hours, the rigours, and fatigue of the dancing, the Opéra became a place of safety for Clara, with allies in the company and friendly faces in the pit, where the musicians played so beautifully: the violins’ sweet singing lines and the music’s intricate rhythms gave her passage to an enchanted island where she could reach the grace inside her, beyond the turbulent world of the smoke-filled cafés where she had skipped and strutted as a tot.
Yet she was growing tall, taller than most of her partners in the chorus line.
The gentleman in the top hat and gloves had continued to take an interest in the little family. He was an inventor, a collector, and a designer who specialised in curiosities, which he sold to other collectors. He had a reputation as a great connoisseur. He supported Clara’s mother, who was now making fans, and painting them with scenes inspired by their benefactor’s taste for chinoiserie and other Oriental moti
fs. M. de Grivegarde, for this was the tall gentleman’s name, backed the boutique on the rue St Honoré where she could sell her creations: Chez Eglantine: Fabriquant – Eventails – Aigrettes – Fantaisies.
To Clara, M. de Grivegarde was Tonton, her odd old uncle who made funny jokes and even funnier faces, and liked to show off queer things he’d found and even queerer things he’d made. He was so ancient that he had seen the Emperor Napoleon and Empress Joséphine in the flesh and even contrived for Joséphine a silver rose, of a species she cultivated in her gardens at Malmaison, which wound up and sang a serenade in the voice of the Emperor after the imperial couple had been so sadly forced to part.
On the day of Clara’s fourteenth birthday, Tonton called for her at the stage door with a bouquet of white roses. Her birthday fell two days before Christmas, when it is impossible to find roses. But there he was with two dozen of them. Petits rats are forbidden to go out before a performance, but Tonton slipped a wad of notes to the stage door porter to sing dumb and turn a blind eye.
With her birthday so close to Christmas, there was always the danger that it might be swallowed up. Tonton was very aware of this:
‘Ma petite Clara,’ he’d say, ‘I shan’t forget; I’ll make the day memorable. You are growing up now and who better than I to show you the world?’
So true to his word, he was now wishing her a very happy birthday and making a big, old-fashioned sweep of a bow, as if he might be mocking her. But she knew his weird and awkward ways, and she took the bunch of roses and dropped a stage curtsey in response.
‘And I offer you my congratulations, ma petite Clara,’ he went on, ‘on becoming a young woman.’
They were walking together down the avenue de l’Opéra and turned left into the rue St Honoré.
‘Are we going to see Maman?’ she asked, as they drew near to Chez Eglantine.
‘I’ve a different treat in store,’ replied Tonton.
So Tonton was taking her out on her own; this had never happened before.
The candied fruit in Verlet’s window was piled high in wooden crates for the season; Clara stopped to gaze at the café’s famous spécialités, glinting with caster sugar and gleaming with waxy highlights like jades of different colours: translucent pears and luscious peaches like Japanese lanterns, frosted pineapple trapezoids, lustrous spheres of plums and mirabelles and greengages, small round star-dusted mandarins, crystallised ginger jujubes, deep-black wrinkled prunes, and scarlet and blue gleaming beads of berries like strange rosaries.
‘You can have one – only one, mind – if you will let me have a little bite. You will, ma petite, won’t you?’
Clara looked at them through the window; so gorgeous, so many, she couldn’t decide. She’d tell Tonton he must decide which one; but she knew she would drink a grand chocolat au crème Chantilly, which would keep her warm inside till the end of the performance that night.
There was a bit of a queue for a table at Verlet’s and they stood near the counter where M. Gérard – Tonton was exchanging pleasantries with him – was serving at the coffee grinder, scooping and measuring out the different coffee beans and fragrant tea leaves for customers’ tisanes. Tonton was telling M. Gérard it was Clara’s fourteenth birthday, and she became aware that people were looking at them inquisitively. She was used to Tonton’s peculiarities when they were at home with her mother, but as she followed others’ eyes in the small, crowded space of Verlet’s front room, she could see why he would draw everyone’s attention. He wasn’t much taller than her now but he seemed vast, in his patterned and belted tweed coat à l’Ecossaise, his broad-brimmed velours hat, the gold fob watch that played a little tune every quarter, his big round spectacles, and the high stiff collar he liked to wear, which was pushed up under his jaw so that his head looked rigid, like a ventriloquist’s doll’s, over his frothy jabot. But here, out and alone with him, she felt conspicuous.
How to move through the packed salon de thé to their table without disturbing the other customers worried her; she wondered if she should take off her coat before she sat down, but there wasn’t really room. So she kept it on, until M. de Grivegarde signalled to the waiter and bundled it with hers, and handed them both to the young man, who carried them off, giving Clara a look over his shoulder – a kind of smirk that sharpened her sense of unease. She kept tightly in her place against the wall, looking down at the foamy peak of cream in the glass in which Verlet’s served their grand chocolat, and the lucent crystallised peach on a dish beside it.
‘Ah, if only I could give myself such treats,’ sighed Tonton, rolling his eyes at her spoon, loaded with the lovely light creamy puffcloud. ‘You must eat for me and let me experience the pleasure by proxy. Youth! How you warm our creaky old bones!’ Then he closed his eyes, as if suddenly in pain.
He did have such a very odd way of saying things and doing them, Clara couldn’t help thinking. And she wondered how her mother felt about Tonton’s funny mannerisms, his fluttering hand gestures and sudden grimaces, stretching his eyes and rolling them, then shutting them for much longer than usual.
He looked taller, sitting down, but he really was the strangest figure, Clara realised, when you saw him next to other people who were not at all like him. Out of another time, really.
Some of the company recognised who he was, she could sense it from their reactions; he was known in the sort of circles who frequented Verlet’s, where the chocolat was the best in the city. It was his know-how that had helped spread the craze in Paris for anything and everything Oriental – for lacquered furniture and golden screens and Persian garden swing-sofas with a fringed canopy overhead; his music boxes and ornamental clocks with figurines in kimonos twirling parasols were admired by all the top collectors, or so her mother said, and her mother benefitted in her shop from the way Tonton led the vogue for chinoiserie.
Smiling at her as she tried to drink politely, he then produced a package, done up in pale blue tissue and trailing silver ribbons, and pushed in towards her, tapping it with one of his long fingernails, said, ‘Here is your birthday present from me. I took advice of course from Mme Eglantine – your dear mother. You are very precious to me, and this is something precious I have made specially for you. You’ll soon be a mademoiselle, out in the world, and when you are, you will need lots of useful things to look after you, and make sure all is as it should be. So this is a practical and useful present, even a necessity, and I hope as well that it will bring all kinds of unexpected pleasures to a very pretty young lady like you, ma petite Clara.
‘Go on,’ urged Tonton, still smiling. His teeth were the oldest-looking part of him, and he was usually careful not to smile so widely that he revealed them. ‘Open it.’
She untied the ribbon and carefully lifted the tissue paper from a square box of elegant buff-coloured card, ruled in pale blue, with ‘Fabrication Grivegarde’ incised in its snug lid. Inside, nestled in a bed of mauve satin, was a cluster of silver trinkets on a hoop of silver, like a charm bracelet, but there was no slipper or a kitten or a miniature of Notre Dame or tennis racket with a pearl tennis ball, as she had seen on gifts to others among the bande of petit rats.
‘It’s called a chatelaine,’ said Tonton, ‘and it’s because …’ He paused for dramatic effect and rolled his eyes in that odd way he had. ‘You’re no longer a little girl. You are a chatelaine in the making.’
The cluster was so brightly polished it shot lights from the box – yet it was surprisingly chunky.
Tonton lent over: ‘Take it out of its box. Look at it piece by piece. Each one of the ornaments has unusual properties at your service. Secret springs and magic powers: the comb for your hair’ – he picked it out from the hoop – ‘will let you put up your hair in any style you like … The key will open doors when you need to …’
He showed her how to open the clasp that attached each of his creations to the silver hoop.
She noticed a pair of scissors made in the shape of a stork with a long beak.
‘That pair of scissors will cut you the fabrics you choose in any shape you want,’ murmured Tonton.
There were a dozen other devices – including a needle case with needles in it, already threaded; a thimble incised with a ring of dancing putti; and a penknife that itself opened up to reveal a fan of different instruments – a buttonhook and a pair of tweezers …
Clara began trembling. ‘Oh, oh, Tonton,’ she cried. ‘It is all so so pretty!’
‘You’ll have plenty of time to discover each and every one of these little devices,’ he purred in response.
One of his creations was even odder than the rest, thought Clara, as she picked out from the array a podgy little old man, like a wizened gnome from a picture book. When she tried to work out what it could be, she saw – she thought she saw – him give her a wink.
‘By the way now,’ remarked Tonton, seeing her start, ‘that little toy is the most vital thing of all – can you guess what it does?’
Clara shook her head.
‘It’s a bottle stopper! It will keep the fizz in champagne fizzing for – not quite days and nights, but long enough!’ Tonton was laughing and nodding. But he then stopped and grew solemn. ‘I have something important to impart to you today, something more than usually important, my dear.’
Clara looked up from the strange stopper. She was excited, but also afraid. Tonton was going to tell her he was marrying Maman. This lavish birthday treat and the wonderful present were to prepare her to be happy about it. Clara knew Maman was hoping for that. Though she didn’t expect to. It would be unusual for a gentleman in M. de Grivegarde’s position to marry someone like Maman, Clara knew even though she could not have expressed the reasons in so many words, not exactly. But if Maman and M. de Grivegarde were married, everything would be less precarious for them. Maman had never said as much, but Clara understood that if her mother became Mme de Grivegarde she wouldn’t have to please Tonton so much.
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