The people were unbowed, but in place of their usual jubilation and patriotic fervour was an angry unrest. There was just one topic of conversation among them: the crushing defeat dealt to the French forces at Châtillon. Details of the action were sketchy. Hannah heard it said that the French regiments had fired on each other in their panic; that they’d bolted at the first peal of the Prussian artillery, as Raoul Rigault had claimed. All sorts of retributions were being promised, against Prussian and cowardly Frenchman alike.
Hannah had marched more times than she could recall; it was one of the experiences barely known to her before Jean-Jacques that was now among the better parts of her life. She found an intense joy in surrendering herself to the multitude, blurring into an entity that was huge and ancient and unstoppable. That afternoon, however, she was distracted, beset with fears for Clement. Her twin had become doubly ensnared. He was caught in besieged Paris, a city in which he really didn’t belong; and he was caught between the thighs of a deceitful cocotte who sought only to bend him to her wicked ends. She expected them to be at the front of the procession – Laure displaying her prize, inviting him to wave at his sister and show everyone what Hannah Pardy really was. They weren’t there, though; no one she asked had seen them. It was as if they’d been lost, left back on the Buttes. This would surely run against Laure’s plan. It defied understanding.
Jean-Jacques appeared through a screen of banners, about halfway down the rue des Martyrs. They’d missed their rendezvous in Montmartre; the crowds had simply been too dense, too determined in their progress down to the centre. He was in conference with some well-known radicals – ageing veterans of the 1848 uprising, peripatetic speakers from the provinces, the proprietors of red newspapers banned under Louis Napoleon – a ragtag group of extremists and eccentrics over whom he towered in every sense. Noticing Hannah, he made an excuse and came to walk alongside her. They met as comrades but stood very close, his arm brushing gently across her back. There was a new pin in his lapel, enamelled with the number 197 – a battalion number.
‘I have accepted a commission,’ he said. ‘I am a major in the National Guard.’
Hannah looked up at his face – at the scar carved so deeply into his jaw that it had nicked the bone beneath. She found herself imagining what fresh injuries might await him outside the city wall, but buried these thoughts immediately: she would not play the hysterical lover, screaming and begging and tearing at her hair. Jean-Jacques was a soldier and the battle for Paris had begun. He had to fight.
The march cut across the rue Lafayette, merging messily with another coming down from the north-east. They’d reached the boulevard des Italiens – the grandest part of town. The workers’ chants echoed off the massive buildings; their boots rumbled over acres of smooth asphalt. Off to their left was the premises of a picture dealer Hannah had petitioned for several months soon after her arrival in Paris, trying without success to get the man to take on a single small canvas. The once-sumptuous shop now had a barren aspect, its wide window iron-clad and blank. Across the door, in red letters a foot high, someone had daubed the old revolutionary slogan: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
Jean-Jacques was up on a bench. ‘The Imperial army may have failed today,’ he proclaimed, ‘but the people have not failed. We will save this luxury and bourgeois wealth from the Prussians. We will save it, my friends, and then we will see it apportioned fairly, for the benefit of all!’ He pointed along the boulevard, in the direction of the place de la Concorde. ‘To the Strasbourg! City of my forefathers – a steadfast people, inspiring us with their resistance! Showing us what can be done – that these Prussians can be held back! To the Strasbourg!’
Those around echoed his call: To the Strasbourg! Their black-clad leader returned to the street, unruffled by his impromptu address; Hannah felt his hand rest briefly on her hip.
‘We should hurry,’ he said.
Ahead of them now, on the western corner of the place de l’Opéra, was the Paris Grand. The hotel looked deserted, a majestic hulk adrift among the crowds. They pushed on past the long row of plate-glass doors, already opaque with grime; and then a voice scythed through the shouts and the singing, calling Hannah’s name with commanding clarity. Elizabeth.
Hannah hadn’t been worried. She’d assumed that her mother would still be somewhere in the outer regions of the city, seeking adventure and noteworthy sights – that the chances of them seeing her were simply too remote to bother about. This had obviously been a mistake. A neat blue-grey hat was moving around a Morris column covered with tattered theatre bills; Elizabeth had been lying in wait outside her hotel and must have seen Jean-Jacques make his pronouncement from the bench. Behind her was a lean, bearded man, smartly dressed, wearing a jet topper and an aloof air. They closed in fast, preventing escape. Elizabeth kissed Hannah’s cheek and shook Jean-Jacques’s hand – appearing to note the feel of his artificial fingers as she did so.
‘Your scheme worked,’ Hannah said, scarcely keeping her temper in check. ‘You are here with us after all.’
Elizabeth gave her a cool smile before addressing Jean-Jacques. ‘Monsieur Allix, I must ask – are the workers marching against the Prussians today, or the men who have set themselves up in the Hôtel de Ville?’
To Hannah’s surprise, Jean-Jacques answered in serviceable English. ‘We wish to beat our enemy, Madame. We wish for revenge. It can be done.’
His accent was strange, a mix of Alsatian and American; Hannah guessed that he must have learned something of the language while fighting for the Union. Elizabeth tried to revert to French – which she clearly spoke better than he did English – but he insisted with a politeness that was faintly confrontational.
Hannah could only watch helplessly. The conversation that she’d managed to foil in the Danton was coming to pass. The two great figures of her life were meeting on a Paris pavement. They made for a peculiar pair. The authoress and lady traveller, polished and poised despite her poverty, seemed as always to have some other goal in mind, some hidden purpose; whereas the political visionary was being courteous but distinctly guarded, his hands crossed before him like a stone knight in a crypt. Hannah honestly couldn’t foresee how their exchange might unfold.
‘Our government, however,’ Jean-Jacques continued, ‘this provisional cabinet who have taken over from the emperor – they are not so determined.’
Elizabeth had assumed an absorbed expression, ignoring the jostling of passing workers. ‘Do you think they will attempt to make peace with the Prussians, Monsieur?’
‘They are rich men. Rich men never wish to fight. They care only for gold – for their business.’
This was said briskly, as if Elizabeth was a part of the problem he described, but she was nodding along in agreement. ‘What action will you take if the provisional government does move towards surrender?’
Jean-Jacques inclined his head, as if to say: there would be consequences. ‘“The goddess of revolt”,’ he recited, ‘“is the mother of all liberty.”’
As Elizabeth tried to place this quote, dropping a sheaf of eminent socialistic names in the process, a vigorous new chant started up around them, telling Prussia to prepare coffins for her sons. The march gathered speed.
‘We must get to the Strasbourg,’ said Jean-Jacques. ‘Excuse me, Madame Pardy.’
And so their discussion ended. Jean-Jacques was away, catching Hannah’s eye for an instant as he stepped from the kerb; he’d been civil but dismissive, as if Elizabeth Pardy was not in the least bit interesting or important. Hannah made to bid her mother farewell and follow him – but as she opened her mouth to speak Elizabeth’s grey-gloved fingers locked around her arm.
‘Lead on, girl,’ she said. ‘You must show me the best place to stand.’
Hannah stiffened, cursing inwardly; she should have anticipated this. Elizabeth had attended many popular demonstrations during her career, in France, Italy, Hungary and elsewhere – her published accounts of them, of her intrepid
exploits at the heart of them, had been one of the pillars of her fame. If Jean-Jacques’s manner had offended her she gave no sign of it; she had the firm satisfaction of somebody for whom everything was going to plan. Her top-hatted companion positioned himself to their rear. He was markedly less pleased to be joining the procession. Hannah knew his kind – he was one of Elizabeth’s journalists. Men like him had once dandled her on their knees; quizzed her constantly on topics of general knowledge; and then, from her early adolescence, subjected her to a barrage of lechery, often before her mother’s unconcerned gaze.
‘Montague Inglis of the Sentinel,’ Elizabeth informed her. ‘He’s proving a little more useful than he looks.’
Mr Inglis touched his hat-brim. ‘Charmed, Miss Pardy,’ he said. ‘Truly.’
Hannah didn’t react. She was stuck with her mother once again: pinioned to her side as they marched down the boulevard des Capucines. It was almost too ghastly to be real. The hopes she’d entertained in the Café Géricault now seemed quite absurd. Elizabeth Pardy would not be dwarfed by the siege of Paris. She’d strut about the beleaguered city as if it was a private pleasure park.
National Guard were everywhere, uniformed men saluting, hugging, making the usual pledges of brotherhood until death. Jean-Jacques was soon off among them. Left behind with Elizabeth and Mr Inglis, these bourgeois foreigners, Hannah weathered more slurs and hostile stares than she’d done for some months.
‘Heavens, Hannah,’ Elizabeth said, oblivious to this antipathy, ‘I do believe that you have fallen in with an authentic socialist revolutionary!’
‘Told you, Mrs P, didn’t I,’ chipped in Mr Inglis, ‘there’s a red plague in Paris, a regular contagion. Just look at this rabble.’
‘They want change,’ Hannah told him tersely. ‘A purging of the old evils. Fairness after the Empire.’
Inglis snorted. ‘A purging indeed!’
Elizabeth squeezed her arm. ‘I appreciate that, my girl. I applaud it, most enthusiastically.’ She glanced at the inflammatory phrases scrawled on the buildings; the shuttered windows and barred doors; the multitude of red flags. ‘But this is beginning to look rather serious. It might proceed in all manner of grave directions.’
‘Are you trying to scare me, Elizabeth? Was that to be your strategy to convince me to return to London?’
A tiny line bisected Elizabeth’s brow. ‘I made my journey because I believed you were in trouble. Any mother would have done the same.’
‘You are not any mother. You are not—’ Hannah took a breath. This wouldn’t help. ‘You must see that I’d never have gone with you. Paris is my home now.’
‘I can see, certainly, that there is much to keep you here.’ Elizabeth looked at Jean-Jacques. ‘He’s a fine one, I must say. Quite extraordinary. Mars in a plain black suit.’ Her lip curled. ‘Your virtue, I suppose, is but a fading recollection?’
Hannah flinched; she’d grown unused to such questions. Elizabeth’s attitude towards intimate matters had always been stark in its pragmatism – and far more direct than anyone who believed themselves respectable would accept. There had been a couple of uncomfortable incidents in Hannah’s youth, errors made while conversing in general society, before she’d fully understood how irregular her upbringing had been. Her mother plainly remained beyond shock or embarrassment and was expecting a full disclosure. She decided that she would not provide it.
Elizabeth was studying her with shrewd fondness. ‘I thought as much,’ she said, as if an answer had been supplied. ‘This is Paris, after all. Was Monsieur Allix actually the one to—’ She stopped, seeming to rebuke herself. ‘It is not my place to ask. I only hope you have obtained the correct preparations.’
‘You’ve been to my house, Elizabeth. You’ve poked through my things. What do you think?’
‘By Jupiter,’ murmured Mr Inglis, ‘what kind of a family is this?’
‘I think,’ Elizabeth said, ‘that your bond with this man is still recent, and perhaps a little cautious. He doesn’t actually live in the shed with you, does he? No, of course he doesn’t – a noble specimen like that would hardly consent to dwell among Madame Lantier’s courgettes.’ She took Hannah’s hand in hers; the palm of her old suede glove was rubbed smooth. ‘You are grown at last. It is so marvellous to see. Returning to Paris has brought back such memories of my own residence here … dear Lord, more than twenty years ago now. We weren’t in Montmartre, but somewhere very like it. A band of us occupied the same apartment. It was a heady time – the country was changing fast, as it is today, despotism giving way to freedom, and we gave everything we had to it.’
Hannah snatched back her hand. ‘Are you honestly saying that I remind you of yourself? I came here to work, Elizabeth, not be passed around by long-haired poets!’
Her mother’s smile didn’t waver. ‘And what work you have done. You are thriving in Paris, my girl. The liberty of the place has nourished you.’ She surveyed the march. ‘There are real benefits to be derived, you know, from situations such as these. Sieges tend to break down the barriers of ordinary acquaintance. I don’t suppose that you have considered this.’
And there it was, exactly as Hannah would have forecast: they’d been together for less than five minutes and Elizabeth was attempting to reclaim control. The procession had slowed to a halt before the columns of the Madeleine, too swollen to fit down the rue Royale. As they waited for this jam to clear Elizabeth imparted her advice. It took a predictable path. For one who hadn’t set foot in France for almost twenty years she knew a great deal about the Paris art world, the naturalist style Hannah had adopted and the whereabouts of its most prominent practitioners.
‘The grand prize, naturally, is Monsieur Manet. He is the head of your school, is he not? Creator of the Olympia? I gather that he does much to promote women artists – even ensuring that his female protégés are shown alongside him in the Salon.’ Elizabeth’s tone grew reproving. ‘To be frank, Hannah, you should really be on friendly terms with him already.’
Hannah kicked at a fresh crack in the asphalt. She’d vowed that the only way she’d ever encounter Edouard Manet and his set would be if they sought her out after noticing her pictures at the Salon exhibition – for which her submissions had now been rejected two years in a row. There was no chance at all of her mother being able to understand this. She said nothing.
Elizabeth let it pass. ‘I’m told that he used to be commonly found in the Café Guerbois in Les Batignolles. It has closed, however, and its regular patrons taken flight, a fair number of Manet’s friends among them. They say that he has enlisted in the National Guard, in the artillery – I’m sure we can discover where he is stationed. He’ll no doubt be feeling isolated and starved of artistic conversation. Obtain a pretty gown, Hannah, and perhaps the services of a hairdresser. Take along one or two of those canvases I saw in that shed. It could transform your fortunes entirely.’
This speech was unpleasantly familiar. Hannah shrugged off her mother’s arm. ‘Do you mean that I should offer myself to him, like you offered me to that painter-poet of yours in Chelsea? Do you think Manet might fancy having Mrs Pardy pen a book about him as well?’
Elizabeth frowned, feigning forgetfulness. ‘What on earth are you—’
Hannah pointed at the red banners cramming into the rue Royale. ‘A war is being fought here – a war – and you are plotting my next strategic seduction. Monsieur Manet has set aside his brushes, Elizabeth. He has joined the militia. And I intend to do the same.’
She said this in anger, simply to oppose her mother, but knew immediately that she meant it. Here was the answer. She thought of Jean-Jacques’s lapel pin; of Laure Fleurot in her vivandière’s uniform. It was so simple, so absolute and perfect, that she wanted to jump in the air.
‘You aren’t in earnest,’ Elizabeth pronounced, the smallest hint of uncertainty in her eyes. ‘You can’t be. I don’t for a second presume to tell you what to do, Hannah, but you are quite unquestionably English. This i
s an affair for the French. You might feel very close to this dashing demagogue of yours, but in the end we can only hope to be spectators.’
‘Too bloody right,’ said Mr Inglis, biting the tip off a cigar.
Hannah faced her mother. ‘What, then, of your time in Paris twenty years ago? What of giving the cause of liberty everything you had?’
‘I meant marching and writing – making speeches and singing songs. Excuse me if I didn’t take up the flag of a citizen army! Goodness, girl, how can you be so perverse? And what in heaven’s name makes you think they’ll have you?’
The crowd began to move again.
‘They’ll have me,’ Hannah said, ‘I’m sure of it. I’m going to enlist the next chance I get. Look at these people, Elizabeth. Listen to the guns, for pity’s sake.’ She walked forward. ‘Paris no longer has any need for painters.’
The workers’ march emerged onto the place de la Concorde. Dusk was approaching, grey and flat after the overcast afternoon. Someone beside Hannah sang the first words of the ‘Marseillaise’, and the next instant the whole parade was belting it out as loudly as possible. Elizabeth and Mr Inglis were lost behind a wall of bellowing militia. Hannah was caught in a rush of bodies; she couldn’t see her mother or anyone else she knew. She was alone, suddenly vulnerable, hemmed in by National Guard. Fingers were soon pinching at her thighs and waist; drunken propositions were barked in her ear. A lamppost passed and she grabbed for it, hooking an arm around its iron stem and climbing up to safety.
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