The Last Banquet

by Jonathan Grimwood

  Things at home were less happy.

  Virginie disliked my tiger cub and had tried to ban Laurant from playing with the animal. He ignored her. She cried when a cart arrived from Versailles with half a dozen sad flamingos, which can be found in this part of France anyway but had obviously hated life at court. Within a month they lost their ghost-white hue, began to regain their pink and no longer looked like moth-eaten relics dragged down from an attic. Four lived, and I ate the others, cooking their tongues in the Roman style, using a recipe from Apicius. The fat, which was rich as goose fat, I drained into a bowl, let set and kept for special occasions.

  Virginie made clear she had no interest in roads or river flows, in improvements to our estate, the animals that now arrived every few weeks or so, or my recipes. After I began telling her how I planned to adapt the Apicius recipe, she turned on me. ‘What you fail to understand is I have no interest in any of your hobbies.’

  I cooked the dish all the same.

  To cook flamingo tongue

  First a note–the tongue is fat and runs along a deep central groove in the bird’s heavy lower bill. This plumpness is what makes it attractive to cooks. Take one tongue per guest and scrub well with a mixture of equal parts salt, water and white wine vinegar. Soak the clean tongues in fresh water overnight and then boil in new water for at least an hour. Let cool and carefully strip away the outer skin. Slice each tongue diagonally into finger-width sections and braise in freshly made butter over a high heat. Serve with an already-prepared leek and date sauce that has been flavoured with coriander, mint, cumin, crushed black pepper and good wine vinegar. (Adjust quantities based on the number of tongues, but allow at least eight dates per tongue and replace leek with onion if preferred.) As an alternative, fry one red onion per guest in a shallow pan with cumin, ginger, saffron, a little crushed dried chilli and crushed black pepper, until onion is clear. Add cubes of tongue and braise well, along with three diced tomatoes per tongue, and one large wine glass of water. Now add twelve dried dates and eight dried apricots per guest and cook very slowly for at least an hour. Serve à l’Indien (over rice). Tastes like chicken.

  After this meal my wife withdrew into herself until she was a ghost of the woman she’d been, and that woman was already a ghost of the girl I’d first met. Becoming more worried than ever, I wrote to Charlot, who wrote to his sister, who wrote a polite and distant reply that read as if addressed to a passing acquaintance. Charlot quoted extracts in his return letter.

  Life continues as it always has, she wrote. When not scribbling his recipes, Jean-Marie works incessantly for the good of others, Laurant continues to grow . . . The only time Virginie seemed animated was when she mentioned Hélène, who had grown pretty and remained as clever and industrious as she’d always been. She hoped Hélène had a happy life and Charlot and I read her own unhappiness in that line. What was to follow came as no surprise to Charlot and that was a huge help to me. He turned aside the gossip and kept rumour at bay. The fact he came to see me, stayed with me and left reluctantly, swearing his friendship, helped protect my good name.

  On a Sunday afternoon, after her usual attendance at mass in the morning and a light lunch alone in her room, Virginie took a book of poems to a bench by the lake where Tigris was not allowed. She disliked Tigris and resented my having made such a fuss of burying Felis, the cub’s mother, the previous week. I had my reasons, of course. The cooks were used to my peculiarities and thought little of my retiring to the smallest of the kitchens to work on a sauce. Obviously, it was not the sauce that interested me but what it covered. Tiger meat turned out to be sour and stringy. Well, meat from this one did. But it tasted well enough fried with onions and seasoned with black pepper and turmeric. I chose the spices for the colour of her coat, obviously.

  Maybe Virginie did read poems for a while. I’m not sure when she took Laurant from the nursery but it was Manon who told me she’d sent him up for an afternoon’s rest and he was missing. Maybe I knew. The bench by the little lake was certainly the first place I went looking. I went alone, having told Manon to search the house without alarming the servants. There would be time enough for that later if necessary. I saw the splash of white in the water before I was halfway along the path. I ran, what man wouldn’t, recognising his wife’s dress rippling like weeds on the surface of a lake? Of Laurant there was no sign.

  ‘Here, Papa,’ he called when I shouted his name.

  By the time I reached him he’d scrambled to his feet, but he’d been sat on the far side of a beech tree peeling the nuts that littered the ground around him, discarding the husk of the nut he’d chosen before finding another. ‘You’re meant to be resting.’

  ‘Mama said . . . ’ he protested, lip quivering.

  Scooping him up and keeping his head turned away from the lake I carried him back through the formal gardens and up the stone steps to the chateau. Manon stood near the top, one hand on a balustrade, her other against the base of one of the urns that broke up the balustrade. She must have seen what was in my eyes because she took him without being told and carried him inside. I could hear her chatting as they disappeared through a salon door towards the hall and the main stairs up to the nursery.

  Virginie hung facedown in the water, her arms limply at her sides, her back bobbing with the waves that the wind made and her hands and feet slightly below the surface, one shoe missing. I found it on the lake’s edge, which was where I dragged her, surprised at how heavy the water in her dress made her. I was trying hard to avoid the unthinkable but then found myself thinking it anyway. I was lucky to find Laurant still alive. Perhaps she’d taken pity; perhaps she simply wanted him close so she could say goodbye. He’d told me as I carried him that she’d said he should wait behind the tree.

  She’d known what she was doing.

  The little lake at the end of the formal gardens was reserved for family, a place where we could go to be out of the gaze of those who kept the chateau functioning. It had once been one of Virginie’s favourite spots . . . The sun was hot and the afternoon young and the idea came to me as I struggled to lift her. Virginie believed, and if the Church knew she’d taken her own life they would refuse to bury her in hallowed ground. For her sake, for Laurant and Hélène . . .

  Removing my shoes and stockings, I slipped into the water and unbuttoned her dress. My fingers shook and the buttons were slippery but in the end it was done. Her chemise was easier to remove. Her body was unchanged by motherhood. Her hips no thinner or thicker than the first time I saw her. She bobbed in the tiny waves, her legs trapped by the shallows, her hips and back and shoulders free-floating. She’d come to the lake with her hair undressed and it spread across the water as if she slept on a pillow. I felt the tears well up and wondered how much of this was my fault. There would be time for that later. For now, I needed to hurry.

  Leaving Virginie where she floated, I took her dress and wrung it out as carefully as I could, removing most of the water. I was afraid the stitches at the hems would burst with my twisting but they held and when I shook the dress out to remove the creases it was already halfway dry. I spread the dress on a bush in direct sunlight, as I had done once before many years ago on a river’s edge. Having wrung out her chemise in the same way, I hung that beside her dress and went to wash the mud from her shoes. Our last hour alone was spent with me sat on the bench where my wife should be sitting, while her clothes dried in the sun and she floated in the water, as much in the shade as I could manage. The lake did more than hide her from idle gazes; it cooled her body and kept it from spoiling. I rolled her over once, knowing how blood could pool in resting meat, and wondered at my coldness. I should be weeping or on my knees and yet my initial tears were already drying and my main concern was how fast the dress would dry.

  It was late afternoon before her dress and undergarments and shoes were ready and I could pull Virginie from the lake and rest her in the shade of the bush on which he
r clothes had been drying. I drove what water I could from her lungs by pressing on her back, and then dressed her clumsily, pulling the chemise over her head and buttoning the dress. Her shoes were clean enough for my servants not to notice one had been in the water and the other lost in mud at the edge of the lake. I wrung out her hair and dried it with the inside of my jacket, combing it with my fingers as I’d done when we were young. Finally, I sat her on the bench and took the upturned book of poems and rested them on her lap, folding one arm across the book. The sadness took me then. This was the Virginie I knew, sat with her book on a bench in the gardens. Tears rolled down my face and I knelt beside her, drying my tears in her lap.

  That was how Manon and Laurant, Charlot and his family found me.

  The duke had come from Saulx, drawn apparently by the flatness of Virginie’s reply to his letter and the sadness of my last to him. Lisette was with him, and their son. The boys had Tigris with them on a lead. She was getting too big to be led but her blindness made her more docile than nature intended. They were grinning. At least they were until Charlot froze and ordered them back to the house. Manon took one look at me in tears beside Virginie and said she’d take them. After a glance from Charlot, his wife said she would return to the chateau too.

  ‘When?’ he asked, once we were alone.

  ‘Just now. I thought she was sleeping.’

  He looked down at his sister, eyes closed in the shade, her hand draped across a book split at the spine and worn at the edges from use, and smiled sadly. We both knew what Charlot was thinking, that she looked happier now than at any time in the last five years. Losing Jean-Pierre began her sadness, having Laurant made it worse. Only I knew it had taken the lake to end it.

  ‘I’ll stay with you until the funeral.’

  He took my hand as if to shake it and kept it gripped. The years had given his face a gravitas his youth had never hinted at. Somehow he’d turned from the wild one, dangerous and beautiful, to a solid member of the nobility, a counter­weight to the dissolute fops who’d encouraged the king so disastrously in our recent and ruinous wars. His friendship could make or break a man’s life and prospects, and looking into his eyes I knew I had his friendship for life. Whatever doubts he might have had about my marriage to Virginie, and I had no idea if he had had doubts, they were gone. He gripped my hand one last time and let it drop.

  ‘Do you want me to stay with her while you send for servants?’

  I shook my head. ‘You go,’ I told him. ‘I’d like a few last minutes alone.’

  Charlot looked at me with pity and turned away, his back heavy and his head bowed with grief as he left the garden Virginie and I had made for ourselves when we were young enough not to know how young we were, and life was happier. I knelt beside her, and breaking the private habits of a lifetime, because I only paid public dues to religion, I closed my eyes and prayed. When I opened them again it was to stare across the lake into the bushes beyond. There was a flash of white as a small girl stepped back into the shadows. Hélène. How long she’d been watching, I had no idea.

  Funeral

  I’ve been told that François Couperin cannot really be considered the heir of Jean-Philippe Rameau, but since they were both French, both famous and both composed for the harpsichord people talk of them as if they’re interchangeable. Virginie certainly spoke of them as if they were brothers, Rameau the elder and a little more serious, Couperin younger and known to be flighty, although Couperin died the year I first met her brother and Rameau was dead before she was born.

  I hired musicians from Bordeaux who claimed to have played at Versailles and charged accordingly. The afternoon of Virginie’s funeral they alternated between her favourite two composers and the women smiled at me through tears and the men took me aside and said seriously it was touching how deeply I’d cared for her.

  Only Charlot muttered that he’d always hated that tinkling rubbish but if his sister had liked it he supposed I was allowed. Emile came across to say he remembered Virginie playing the piece the musicians were playing. No doubt he was right.

  What matters is intelligence and ability, not bloodline.

  That should have been a harmless enough statement from a man like Emile Duras. His grandfather and father had been lawyers, he was a lawyer . . . If I’d been feeling difficult I’d have said he’d already established his bloodline—a bloodline of the law. In time he could hope to become noblesse de robe. If not him, then his son certainly.

  Instead I just nodded. We were at Virginie’s funeral and I was making my round of those remaining at the chateau. Many had come to the church, the law stating that weddings and funerals must be open to all; fewer came to the feast afterwards, but still enough to make a sizeable crowd. It was inevitable Emile would be invited. He was my oldest friend and had known Virginie when she was young. If our lives had drifted apart it was because they no longer ran on parallel lines.

  Emile was someone now. A representative of the local assembly, as well as a successful lawyer. I knew he had ambitions to represent the third estate at the assembly in Bordeaux. He wore expensive shoes with pompadour heels in cork and leather that added a good three inches to his height. His coat and waistcoat were dark blue with fine black embroidery on the edges, deep cuffs, and pocket flaps. His waistcoat reached his thigh. A fob chain vanished inside a pocket. Seeing my glance he pulled out a small pocket watch. ‘Thomas Mudge, London,’ he told me. ‘It has a detached lever escapement. It’s the newest thing. No one in Paris is doing this yet.’

  ‘Monsieur L’Ingénieur.’

  He flushed slightly at my gentle mockery but I could see he was pleased. I mentioned a problem with a weir on one of my rivers and he listened carefully and made two useful suggestions: that I rebuild the weir in brick, and that I consider straightening and widening that bit of river and linking it to the Canal du Midi. The frequency of barges would increase and the extra revenue collected in taxes could pay for the river-widening and weir. I thanked him for his good advice. He’d married again after the death of his first wife and now had a son to go with his daughters.

  Before Emile and I talked I’d been watching his son. A handsome young boy of eleven or twelve—already close to his father in height and probably destined to be taller. Looking at Emile’s wife I could see where Georges Duras got his height, his figure and his blue eyes.

  The boy was dancing attendance on Hélène like one born to be a courtier. And though my nine-year-old daughter pretended not to notice I could see that she was flattered. Smiles had been rare since her mother died. Manon had tried talking to her and got nowhere. Charlot’s wife, whom Hélène adored, did little better. But here she was, talking to Emile’s son as if they’d known each other forever.

  ‘Let them be,’ Charlot said, materialising at my side.

  I smiled, took his advice, felt grateful my daughter was prepared to talk to anyone, and wished the day would be over. Only when the last of the mourners had gone would I have my own chance to talk to Hélène, who’d been avoiding me, and to Manon, who was doing the same. A week had passed since Virginie died and most of that had been taken up by administration and formalities. Jerome had already warned me the second week was worse. He based this on losing his oldest sister but said he imagined losing one’s wife would be much the same. He came, of course. Jerome was one of us. An original.

  ‘I hear you’ve reduced the banals again . . . ’

  Charlot meant the duties peasants paid to have their flour ground by my miller and their bread baked in one of the communal bakeries. ‘The last harvest was bad,’ I told him. ‘The one before little better.’

  He sighed and patted me on my shoulder. ‘Peasants will always tell you the last harvest was bad, this year’s will be terrible and next year’s probably worse.’

  ‘I should talk again to Emile.’

  Charlot smiled. ‘Ever the diplomat,’ he said, before returning to
his wife and leaving me wondering what was diplomatic about what I’d just said. He smiled at me across the room to say he was with me, that all of my friends were with me, as Emile turned and smiled to see me coming. His was a tighter smile. We’d seen almost nothing of each other since Laurant was born and little enough before that. He had his law offices in Paris and Limoges. I’d been told his company acted for wine shippers in their disputes with vineyard owners and had handled more than one compli­cated inheritance case. He was known to be clever, none of us had ever doubted that, but in the intervening years he’d developed a reputation for ruthlessness as well. He left his enemies not only poor but broken.

  All the same, Emile smiled. And glancing to where my daughter and his son talked—their heads close and their voices low—said the words that shaped the last third of my life. ‘What matters is intelligence and ability, not bloodline. Don’t you agree?’

  Charlot’s father would have regarded that as blasphemy, but I was not Charlot’s father or even Charlot. So I nodded and thanked him for coming, in such a way as to avoid implying that I’d thought he might not. We gripped hands and he told me how sorry he was, how he knew what it was like to lose a wife, how impossible he found it to consider life without her replacement. Of course, he understood things had been complicated . . . Of course he did, everyone in the room did. People danced around the subject of Virginie’s illness with varying degrees of delicacy and Emile showed more finesse than most. I turned the conversation to more general matters and somehow we ended up talking about religion, a subject on which Emile was indiscreet. ‘I’m not sure the people can cope without the idea of God,’ I told him. ‘Without spiritual heights to which they can aspire, like young men looking at a rock face and daring each other to climb. If we abandon our belief in God we become God and take his powers.’