Thomas, A Secret Life

by A. J. B. Johnston

  Yet, thinks Thomas as he gives the brioche another small bite, he will never embarrass Marguerite by being open about Hélène. He sees some men promenade their mistresses around as if there was nothing wrong with what they do. Thomas is not of that sort. He will keep his second relationship secret. It will be his hidden treat. He and Hélène will make sure they are discreet. Marguerite must never find out. Where and when he and Hélène will satisfy their longings remains the only detail to work out. There is his room of course, which Marguerite never enters without a knock. And Hélène will probably have the little cabinet down the corridor, which used to be Simone’s. They might even try some other places, just for a change. For instance, in the little storage room with a paillasse on the floor for old time’s sake. The challenge to remain undetected is a conundrum he will enjoy. They will learn to delve and span in silence, no cries or moans. Just the slap of two bodies having their way.

  Thomas savages a bite of the brioche, finishing it off.

  “Have you not eaten all day?” Marguerite asks. “You’re eating like … like I don’t know. Like someone who has not eaten in a month.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I was lost in thought.”

  “What were you thinking about to bite the roll like that?”

  “Be right back.”

  Thomas gets up and heads for the small room with the nearest chamber pot. It’s a place Marguerite has taken to calling the place of easement. Thomas doesn’t have to go badly, but he wants to finish his thought and to do so by himself.

  What more does he want from this life, Thomas asks himself after he’s closed the door and unbuttoned his breeches. To write. And for people to read what he puts on the page. When exactly that will come he has no idea, but the pile of his manuscripts is beginning to mount. As he begins to piss his mind goes blank watching the yellow stream circle round the inside of the pot. Eventually, he supposes, his desire for Hélène will abate. It’s in the very nature of wanting something that obtaining it is never enough. Something else always comes along. But there’s no sense in worrying about any lost desire for Hélène as of right now. The growing stiffness in his hand is proof of that.

  Thomas does up his buttons and puts the lid on the pot. The servants will empty it later on. “Oh,” he says aloud as he lifts the latch for the door. Hélène will soon be one of those. It could be her that has to clean up what he and Marguerite leave in the pots. “Shit,” says Thomas, not liking that thought. He wonders if Hélène has also realized that.

  —

  Thomas is at work in the magistrate’s office when back in Marguerite’s household the new female servant arrives to start life as a domestic replacing the thieving Simone. He is missing Hélène’s arrival and how she and Marguerite begin to establish how things will proceed. Thomas has an entire day to get through before he goes home and sees how Hélène is working out in reality as opposed to in his imagination.

  He flips through a folder containing dozens of documents from a murder case – the magistrate asked him to organize and summarize the contents – yet he finds his focus and attention will not bear down. He recalls Marguerite’s comment last night at table that the new girl was energetic and was coming with an excellent reference. That brought a smile. He’d crafted those words over and over until they were just right. “Good to hear,” was all he said.

  Thomas stands up from his desk. Instead of making sense of the murder case and summarizing it in as few words as possible, he is drawing a blank. It’s because he knows that he is only a half-hour walk away from Hélène. He imagines her settling into the cabinet, unfolding her things.

  Thomas tidies up the folder by putting all the documents inside. He ties the string and closes it up for the day. He’ll get to it tomorrow instead. His head will clear. For the rest of this day, he decides to turn to something that does not require him to think. He spends the afternoon going to one after another of the subaltern clerks. It’s a duty he usually avoids, though the magistrate has listed it as one of his responsibilities. At each stop he goes through whatever dossier the junior clerks are working on. One by one he tells each of them what it is that he is doing right or wrong. Someone has to pay for the long wait to see how Hélène is faring with Marguerite. He figures the misery might as well be shared with the junior clerks.

  By the time Thomas gets home in the evening the light is nearly gone from the sky. The day’s azure has gone deep and dark blue. It’s almost black overhead. Yet there is still a strip of light, a band of what looks like pale amber along the horizon above the Seine. Thomas takes it as an auspicious sign. As he climbs the steps of the building to reach Marguerite’s apartment on the first floor, Thomas reminds himself to be calm. He does not want to give the whole thing away. He has to be natural. He cannot seem overly happy. Still, it’s hard not to wonder how soon and where he and Hélène will have their first slippery dip.

  The moment he enters the apartment Thomas hears the singsong of voices in the salon. His wife and his lover are in an animated conversation. There is laughter back and forth. His head tilts back. He blinks in surprise. A mistress and her servant do not talk nor laugh like that. With a creased brow he wonders whatever is going on.

  He heads right away for the salon, then stops. He takes off his greatcoat and throws it on the chair in the hall. There’s a bright flicker coming from within the salon. It looks as if more than the usual number of candles are lit. That usually means his wife is entertaining. Yet the only other voice Thomas hears is Hélène’s. What’s going on? Entertaining a new servant? Thomas pushes wide the salon door and strides into the room.

  “There he is.” Marguerite has amusement on her face. “Oh, do come in, Thomas, do.”

  She puts a hand to her chest as she stands up from the divan. She comes to take Thomas by the elbow.

  “Hélène,” she says, turning to the young woman seated in the red upholstered chair on the other side of the room, “I’d like to introduce you to my husband. This is Thomas Pichon.”

  Hélène half rises. She curtseys from the front of her chair. “Monsieur. Delighted,” she says. The smile is slight, a little cautious, yet it tells Marguerite that Hélène is pleased to make her husband’s acquaintance for the first time.

  “What is it, Thomas?” asks Marguerite. “You look shocked. Are you all right?”

  “I’d forgotten about … about the new servant being here.” Thomas’s body has gone stiff. His eyes are as wide as they can be. Hélène is dressed in finery such as he has not seen her in ever before. “Forgotten she was to start today. That’s all. Hélène, is it?” he mumbles.

  Thomas avoids making repeat eye contact with her. He concentrates instead first on the area where her dress hangs down and touches the floor. As he looks up he sees what Hélène is wearing from foot to head. She’s not dressed like any servant Thomas has ever seen. She’s attired like, and holding her hands and head like, she belongs in a salon. In her silk and satin, and the lace cap atop her coiled-up hair, Hélène could be a lady, someone much like his wife. Thomas’s face cannot mask his surprise.

  “You must be coming down with something.” Marguerite clutches Thomas’s elbow. “Sit down right here.”

  “All right, I do feel … I’ll be all right in a moment.” Thomas steals another look at Hélène. Marguerite is adjusting her own dress, eyes elsewhere, and Hélène makes a pretend startled face for Thomas, then smiles like it’s a silent laugh.

  “Wait till you hear,” says Marguerite, seated back on the edge of the divan. She is facing them both, husband and newly engaged Hélène. “Are you sure you’re all right? You looked shocked a moment ago and now it’s like you’re cross.”

  “Fine, I’m fine.”

  Marguerite settles well back on the divan. She glances once at Hélène before she starts. Hélène smiles sweetly at her in return. The room is aglow. Marguerite has half a dozen candl
es lit, as if she were entertaining the entourage of the child king. The pale grey walls and the three seated faces dance in the flickering light.

  “Well, Hélène here has quite the story. To begin, she is originally from near Lyons.”

  “Is she?” Thomas feels his body start to shrink.

  “Yes, and listen. Her father is, I should say was, he was a noble. An écuyer. Yes, you’re as surprised as I was, I can see. I thought she was just a servant when I first met her, a pretty but nonetheless ordinary servant. Well, she’s not. Barely a month after her birth her parents died in an accident. The diligence they were riding in, it plunged into the Rhône. It was tragic. She was their only child. And what’s more she was with them at the time of the accident. A passing farmer rescued her from the river. You don’t look yourself, Thomas. Are you chilled?”

  “No.”

  “Well, all alone in the world she was, just like that. Do I have it right, Hélène?”

  “But of course.” The servant – is she still a servant or has she become something else? – sneaks a peek at Thomas. He’s sure that’s laughter he glimpses in her eyes.

  “Well,” continues Marguerite, “without any family to look after her, and her true heritage not known, the poor thing was taken in by the farmer and his wife. And that’s where and how she was brought up. Like any other ordinary peasant child.”

  Marguerite glances again at Hélène. The servant cum visiting lady nods approval and urges with a hand gesture for Madame to keep on.

  “Her family name and her claim to whatever inheritance might rightfully have been hers, it vanished in the river with the accident. The farmer who saved her life had accidently taken away the child’s true place in society. It could be a novel, I swear. Poor Hélène grew up in simple surroundings, as I have said, and once she became old enough she went out into the world. Into service, of course, not knowing who she by birth really was. And that’s where she has been ever since. Can you imagine? I mean, Thomas, really, can you imagine?”

  Marguerite looks to Hélène for fresh confirmation. Hélène smiles in return. Marguerite next turns to Thomas, as if expecting him to make his own contribution to the wellspring of sympathy and understanding in the room.

  “How do you know all this?” His tone and narrowed eyes suggest that he is not yet convinced. “It sounds....”

  Marguerite winces. Hélène lowers her gaze to study her hands, which are now clasped in her lap. The finely dressed servant strikes a pose of silent prayer.

  “Oh, Thomas,” says Marguerite.

  “I’m sorry,” the husband says. He cannot very well claim to know the truth about Hélène, because then Hélène would likely tell Marguerite all the rest. The would-be lady has caught Thomas in that. “I don’t know what to say,” is the best he can do.

  “Nor do any of us,” says Marguerite, “but we have some work to do on her behalf, that much is clear.”

  Thomas sends a fierce squint in Hélène’s direction. It’s a look Marguerite doesn’t catch.

  “Well, I don’t mean to keep you,” says Marguerite as she gets up. Thomas turns to his wife with blinking eyes, and after a delay rises to meet her as she comes his way. She takes her husband by the elbow and steers him to the door. “I wanted you to meet Hélène, that’s all. She’ll be in service with us for a while, well, a light duty of course as my lady companion. More importantly, we have some paperwork to find to support her story. To show that she’s been wronged. We are going to set things right, mark my words. Set things right. Secure her lost birthright. Find her a husband. We’ll enlist our cousin, Madame Dufour, for that. And perhaps your patron, the magistrate, will give you advice on how to proceed.”

  Thomas opens his mouth to say something but there’s nothing he has to say. He barely glimpses Hélène again before he’s out the door. It isn’t exactly a push from Marguerite, more of a guiding touch. Whatever it is, in no time at all Thomas finds himself out in the hall. He sees his greatcoat spread out across the wooden chair. He shakes his head at that choice. He wants to feel completely enwrapped. He goes a little further on, to where his rarely used cloak waits on a peg.

  —

  There’s more than a slight chill in the air as Thomas emerges from the building into the night. He is more than a little dazed. He does not want to think about what just happened. Hélène has played a trick on him. He has to let it sink in. To do that he has to walk. He has to let his head empty out. Only then will he allow any thinking about Marguerite and Hélène creep back in.

  Somehow it has turned bitterly cold over the span of the quarter hour he was inside. It may be spring according to the calendar, but it feels like winter out here. He’s glad he brought the cloak. Round his shoulders he pulls it tight. He could have used a hat, but his white-powdered wig at least is snug. He’ll warm up as he walks along.

  Maybe it’s always like this when it’s the death of one season and the birth of another. The old will not just go away. It has to hang on to have a final say. The Seine is certainly showing it. Thomas stops to watch the river give up its warmth to the air. A blanket of mist is issuing from the flowing dark water as it courses by. Funny, the Seine is the main constant in this city yet it’s not constant at all. On and on it flows.

  Thomas sets off at a slow pace as if he’s measuring his steps. “Don’t I wish?” he scoffs. No, he’s not measuring anything. He simply isn’t sure where to go. What he wishes is to be able to stroll with purpose and to some destination. For the moment he has neither. So his pace is a scuff and a shuffle to begin.

  Somehow, God only knows how and why, somehow his plan went wrong. Of course, it’s Hélène who sent it astray. She made a fool of his intentions with that storybook story of hers. She took her own life, losing her parents in one river, and dressed up as a complete lie in another river. And with noble parents to boot. Then there’s her clothes and her bearing to go along with the pretense of being someone she’s most definitely not.

  Fair enough, Thomas supposes. His body concedes the point with a grimace and a shrug. He picks up his pace. Maybe he had a come-uppance headed his way for wanting just a bit too much. Maybe all one is supposed to have in life is a thin slice, a single piece at a time. If so, his scheme is lost. Thomas rubs his hands together. The friction brings a bit of warmth. He has to find a way out of this unexpected box. Two young men with strutting walks and long bats in hand round the corner up ahead. Thomas slows down to peer at them. The bats make him nervous. They can be up to no good. The bats are weapons, nothing else. Thomas makes out that both of the young men are wearing the turned-up cloth caps a person normally only wears in their rooms when in a state of undress. He’s heard about these two. The “nightcap thugs” they’re called. They roam the streets looking for people to strike down and rob. Thomas would have expected to see them much later and in a different part of the city, but there they are. He’s not about to find out what they have in mind. The two have not seen him so Thomas spins round and sets off back the way he’s just come, to the other side of the river, along the Quai des Augustins.

  As he crosses the river on the narrow footbridge he hears a dog barking. Then shouts. The sounds are coming from somewhere to the west, out of sight by a street or two. There are other footpads about. He’ll not go anywhere near there either. Paris in the dark is a much more dangerous place than it is by day. He will not venture into the twist and turn of night-cloaked streets unless there’s some purpose in play. At the moment he sees none. The barking and yells sound to him like there’s a theft or a beating in progress, maybe even worse. Someone is murdered in Paris every second night or so. He has enough to worry about with the confusion surrounding Hélène and Marguerite. He doesn’t need any more than that.

  He decides he’ll follow a criss-cross route back and forth across the Seine. Right bank to left bank then left to right and so on as long as it takes. He’ll make a c
ircuit until he’s back where he began. He has been on each of the bridges over the past twelve years but never woven all together in a single walk. He’s curious to see how long it’ll take to do all the loops. An hour, maybe two, he guesses. Their names spring to mind, a checklist he has to complete: the Pont de la Tour, Pont Marie, Petit Pont, Pont Grammont, Pont Saint-Michel, Pont Nôtre-Dame. There might be one or two more. The walk will empty out his head of all his troubling bits, making room for solutions to appear. When the circuit is over and he’s back on the Pont Neuf, the bridge closest to his home, the green king Henri will signify that it’s time to go back to the rooms. Back to where Marguerite and Hélène are apparently becoming friends.

  The footsteps add up, and just as Thomas expected, they empty out his cares. Crossing the building-lined Pont Saint-Michel, its rickety wooden structures on both sides and overhead, he focuses only on his stride. He avoids the contents of emptied chamber pots as he hurries by. The outstretched appeals of homeless beggars, children as well as adults, receive from him not even a glance. It’s no different on the second bridge, the equally built-upon Pont au Change. That’s one whose name he had not recalled. His pace is good. He surges past the slow walkers and the cripples who call out for donations. His head at last is completely clear. The worry about Hélène double-crossing him and what harm her phony story might bring is gone. So too is the concern that Marguerite might uncover what he did to little Simone. His wife will not find out about that. The fired servant is gone.

  It’s nothing but send the warm air out and bring the cold air in. The chest expands then it falls back. The legs are good. The hands finally have some warmth. The cloak is doing its job. There’s heat beneath his arms and down his back. Funny how sweat begins, like tiny, hot insects emerging from the skin. Now that he’s warmed himself he has to keep going. He doesn’t want to chill.