Birdcage Walk

by Helen Dunmore

  On the third morning I wake and know that it is time to leave. I am strong again and I am afraid to take too much food out of the old woman’s mouth. I promise myself that I will return and pay her when I can, but I know that it is not with money that I can repay such a debt. She is as unconcerned by my leaving as she was by my arrival. She watches me wrap myself in my cloak and she lifts Diner’s coat to me, but I shake my head. I shall not take it. She looks at it, pinching the broadcloth between her fingers. She knows how good the cloth is. I push it into her arms, for I don’t believe it will bring her the bad luck that it would bring to me. She may lay it over her cot on the coldest nights or if she wants she may sell it.

  The frost still holds but there has been no more snow. The air is so bright and sharp that it makes me gasp. I am over the threshold and she is already closing the door to keep in the warmth. She will forget me soon enough. No doubt she is already crooning to her chickens, rummaging in their nesting-places in the hope of finding an egg.

  For three days I have been hidden from my own thoughts, but it seems now that Diner walks beside me. A woman may die from a fall, if the heavy weight of a man bears down on her. It is credible.

  I see her run and stumble. I see her brought down.

  30

  June 1789

  Lucie chooses her silk. There are four bolts laid out on the counter, each a different variation on the theme of grey. They range from silver to pewter. She takes off her gloves to feel the quality of each. The best way is to hold the silk to your cheek and caress it, because the skin of the face is so much more sensitive than the skin of the hands. However, she has found that people in England are ignorant about such matters. They look askance when you pinch fruit, smell fish or press a cheese to be sure that it is ripe. They say, ‘You can do that once you’ve paid for it,’ which she did not understand when she first came.

  She is not going to hurry this. Mr Gilliam has shown her several silks which she would not even call grey. There is too much blue in them. She will ask him to take each bolt to the shop door again, because she needs to see how the silk responds to the light. Of course she will be wearing it by candlelight, in the Assembly Rooms, and that light cannot be reproduced in such a small space as this shop. But she will try her best.

  Mr Gilliam suggests that if he brings the silk to the window, that will give her a very fair impression of its quality, but she shakes her head. She knows that he prefers not to be seen holding a bolt of cloth in the doorway, but if he wants the sale, then that is what he must do.

  The pewter is, after all, a little too dark. It will set off her hair and skin but it will be passed over. People who have no taste will think it dull. She does not want a dress which needs to be furbished with touches of colour; she wants a silk which will speak for itself.

  Papa would approve of her carefulness. He has worked hard all his life, from the age of eleven, and he is among the best tailors in Bordeaux. Or he was, before he fell ill. He continues to work, but he is very slow now. Thank God, he has always saved and lived frugally. It used to annoy her when she was younger. She could not understand why they continued to live in two rooms, when they might have afforded a small house as long as they went a little outside the city. He dressed plainly. The cut was good but each coat had to last. He said that people did not want to see a tailor growing rich at their expense. It made them think that he charged too much.

  Papa salted away his money. She never knew how much he possessed but she believed it had become a handsome sum over the years. He was able to give her a dowry, very much to John’s surprise. He had thought that she was a poor girl, a little milliner without resources or background. Lucie supposes that if he had wanted her less, he might have calculated more.

  This silk is a gift from Papa. She did not ask for it or expect it. She is married now and far from France. She wants him to take care of himself, not to indulge her. He sent the money in a letter.

  ‘Spend it at once, and on yourself,’ he wrote. ‘Write and tell me what you have bought, and how you look.’ She had to read it over twice to believe it. Her careful, frugal father who never wanted to spoil her, who told her to dress modestly without making herself conspicuous. She was a milliner, not a woman of fashion, and her clients would prefer to see her dressed in decent black.

  She will surprise John. He will have no idea, until he sees her on the night of the ball at the Assembly Rooms. He does not much care for dancing but he will dance with her in this dress. He has not been himself lately. It is because he is always working too hard. He becomes angry with her for no reason, and questions her over where she has been and what she has done. One has to take such things lightly. She laughs and tells him that her life is very much less interesting than he thinks. She goes to the shops, she sews, she tries to read a little of the newspaper that he brings home in order to improve her English. He works long hours, which she understands and respects. That is necessary, if a man is ever to build up his business. It is how she grew up with Papa. As soon as she was old enough she began her own training and she too worked assiduously to master her craft. She can call herself a milliner. It is not nothing.

  These silks. She hesitates between two of them. Although she has not said so to Mr Gilliam, she has already dismissed the other two from her mind. She is thinking of how the silk will fall. She will not make the dress herself, because there is enough money for her to take the silk to Mrs Iles, who will do it better.

  Mr Gilliam holds a bolt of silk to the light. It is the most silvery of all, and yet the sheen is subtle. He turns it this way and that. He unwraps a yard to show her how it falls. She feels it between her fingers. Suddenly, daring, she lifts the silk to her cheek and rubs it, just a little, a caress. He looks askance but he has no need. She never powders.

  ‘This one,’ she says.

  The silk is wrapped in tissue paper and then made up into a parcel. Should he send it? asks Mr Gilliam, but she says no, she will take it with her. She has decided to go straight to Mrs Iles.

  The discussion is delicious, in the little room beside the surgeon’s at Jacob’s Well. Lucie has respect for Mrs Iles, who knows what she is about. The room is modest but Mrs Iles has the latest patterns and quickly understands what Lucie wants. There is a great art in making a dress which moves with the body perfectly, and although Lucie is not sure that Mrs Iles possesses this art, she knows her silk. She knows how to show its beauty to the best advantage. She measures Lucie with great care, asking her to lift her arms, hold out her arms, bend from the waist. She even asks Lucie if she will dance a few steps across the room. Lucie does so, swaying through the small space in her stays.

  Mrs Iles will cut out the dress. They fix a date for a second fitting, but in spite of herself, Lucie appears doubtful about this. Mrs Iles assures her that it is no matter if Lucie cannot manage it. She has taken the measurements most exactly.

  Lucie does not explain that it is hard for her to go out alone: John does not like it. The dress will certainly be ready for the Assembly Ball. The fee is set and she decides that she will pay it now, for otherwise John may see that she has money. Mrs Iles is to be trusted.

  The afternoon is balm to Lucie. She is safe here. There are no misunderstandings between her and Mrs Iles. This is Lucie’s world, and she understands it. No one will question her here. She is a very good milliner who has served her apprenticeship and gone on to build up an excellent clientèle. She has always worked hard. John did not want her to start up a little business here in Bristol. He said that there was no need for it. She was a married woman now, and he was able to provide for them both. But sometimes she wonders if this was the beginning of the difficulty between them. When they first met, she did not depend upon him as she does now. She did not watch his frowns and smiles with an anxious heart. If he smiled, she was smiling too. If he frowned, she asked him what was the matter. She went home each evening, took off her dress and washed herself and then she put on a plain cotton gown to do the housework and pr
epare the evening meal for Papa and herself. She was content.

  Ah God, what is she saying? John is a good husband to her. She has left her home and France, her clients and the little streets where she is known and her custom is familiar. She has done all this and it was the right decision.

  He is nervous. He works too hard. These things lead to misunderstandings between them. He imagines things that are not real. He ponders over them as if he wants to madden himself. One day he is cold with her; the next he grasps her to him so fiercely she cannot breathe.

  Or perhaps it is the language. Lucie speaks English poorly. When she does not know what to say, she smiles.

  He says that he will take her to hear the nightingales. She does not want to go into the thick dark mass of forest on the other side of the water, but she will not refuse him. Things have been bad lately. Once he tore up a letter from her father before she was able to read it.

  ‘Your life is with me. Why do you cling to the past as if you prefer it?’

  She thinks how his face will change when she tells him her news. He has not guessed, even though he watches her body like a hawk. Men are not as good at counting as women are. There’s a new taste in her mouth and a sour twist in her stomach each morning.

  They cross the water. It is a perfect evening, warm and still. She lets her hand drift in the current as he rows. He looks young today, as he used to look in France when he came to her father’s house. She could almost persuade herself that he is that same man.

  ‘John,’ she says.

  He looks up. A row of drops shivers on the blades of his oars.

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ she says.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Not now. Later, when we are listening to the nightingale.’

  ‘I wish you would not smile like that!’ he says violently, and she drops her head. This water is endless. What are they doing here? She cannot imagine. He loves her; this is why she came to England. This is why she finds herself in a wooden boat on a dirty river with a man who tells her not to smile.

  They land. They follow the track through the meadows and he helps her over the stile. Now they are among the trees. Light filters through and flies buzz in her hair. The wood is rank with nettles, ivy and clinging vines. It smells of meat that is rotting. She thinks there must be an animal here which has hidden itself away to die. A deer perhaps. She puts her hand on his arm.

  ‘I should like to go back,’ she says.

  ‘You have not heard the nightingale.’

  She nods dumbly. There is no point in saying anything. Misunderstanding is so thick between them that it has become a third language which neither of them speaks.

  ‘Here is the glade,’ he says, and they stop. She can hear nothing.

  ‘Of course you can. Listen.’

  He catches hold of her, turns her to face him. He does not know his own strength. He is not looking at her even though his eyes are on her face. She makes a sound in her throat.

  ‘Listen!’ he says and he shakes her hard. She bites her tongue and tastes blood. He is still shaking her, jerking her head this way and that so she cannot properly see anything. She feels something hot spurt out of her. She has wet herself. He holds her so hard that she cannot pull away from him. She twists in his grip, forward and then back. She ducks and her mouth gets to his hand and bites, as hard as she can. He cries out. For a second his grip slackens. She claws and bites and now she is free of him. She runs, stumbling over the rough ground. He is after her at once. Her skirts catch on brambles but she rips herself free and scuttles into the undergrowth where she will be smaller and faster than he. She is not thinking now. Her mind jags with terror and she plunges on. Her shoes fall off. A branch knocks her head and she whips herself under it and runs on.

  He brings her down. She smashes headlong on the stony ground and he is on her. She hears his breath in her ear. She hears the night—

  31

  July 1793

  Six months have passed since I lay on the hen-woman’s floor. It is late July. Stock-doves purr from the woods on these warm and sleepy days. We eat cabbages, carrots and early potatoes from our vegetable garden. It is Philo who harvests them. She likes to shake soil off roots, and slash through cabbage stalks. The chickens are hers too. We keep our own goat and it provides more than enough milk for Thomas. He is crawling everywhere now.

  There is a letter from Susannah. It has not come through the post, but has been brought first to London from Paris by a friend, and then onward. It was sewn into the lining of his cloak, which is the way with such letters. Susannah ought not to have returned to Paris, Augustus says, but it was impossible to persuade her not to go. She shares a room with a teacher of music, a Girondist like herself. They live quietly. They do not speak at meetings or draw attention to themselves. They are witnesses, Susannah says.

  Augustus has tramped from Bristol to bring the letter. He will spend some days with us now, talking late into the night with Will. I hear their voices through the open window, and smell the smoke from Augustus’s pipe. I go out to join them.

  Charlotte Corday has been guillotined. She chose to kill one man in order to save a hundred thousand: or so she said. The question has been debated endlessly between us since Augustus first read Susannah’s letter aloud last night. Augustus is for the Gironde, but even so he cannot approve of the assassination of Marat. Mademoiselle Corday said at her trial that Marat was perverting the Revolution, and this is why she killed him. Whichever way one looks, there is blood.

  Susannah stood at the Place de la Révolution for the execution of Mademoiselle Corday. She waited for hours in the rain and so was close enough to see the event clearly.

  ‘Read her account again, Augustus,’ says Will. Augustus unfolds the letter, clears his throat, adjusts his spectacles and begins:

  ‘You cannot imagine the crowds, my dear friends. The guard had to draw their sabres to prevent Mlle Corday being torn to pieces before they could get her to the guillotine. She remained composed. The noise all along the Rue Royale and in the Place was indescribable, but when she laid her head under the blade there was silence. You cannot imagine how steadfast she was. Her shift was soaked through with rain and her hair was in spikes where they had cut it short. The head fell. It was very quick: she stood, she knelt, she was no more. There was an instant of confusion, and then something happened which I have never seen or imagined possible. The assistant of the executioner – a carpenter, they say, whose duty is the correct functioning of the whole apparatus – seized the head, lifted it by the hair high for all to view it and then slapped the face hard. Her cheek flamed red where the blow was struck. The crowd gasped. They cried out in shock, as if at an abomination. Even those who had been ready to kill Mlle Corday with their own hands called for the blow to be punished.’

  We too are silent. Augustus folds the letter carefully. At length he says, ‘Charlotte Corday sacrificed her life, as I suppose, for the sake of her ideals. We may disagree with her, but such firmness of purpose demands our respect.’

  He looks from one of us to the other. In the old days I might have thought him pompous but now I perceive – or think that I perceive – a deeper uncertainty.

  ‘On that logic, any man may kill if he does it firmly enough,’ says Will.

  Mademoiselle Corday’s cheek reddened under the blow, as if she were still alive. It was not enough for the executioner’s assistant that she was dead. He slapped her to insult her. There must be more punishment. To kill someone is satisfying but then they are dead. They have got away. A body may be mauled and dragged about the streets but the spirit has escaped. If the man who slapped Charlotte Corday had been able to do so, he would have taken up her lifeless body, stitched her head back on to her shoulders, returned her to prison, tried her again, convicted her, jolted her through the streets on a tumbril, waited for her to kneel, signalled for the blade to drop—

  ‘Did Susannah know Charlotte Corday?’ I ask, and Augustus shakes his head. />
  ‘No. Mademoiselle Corday was not part of any circle in Paris. She lived in Normandy, and came to Paris only for the purpose of killing Marat. This will be a disaster for the Girondists, Lizzie, among whose number I count myself.’

  But you are not in Paris, Augustus, I think.

  ‘You must convince Susannah to come home,’ I say. ‘What purpose can it serve to watch such horrors?’

  ‘She is determined.’

  ‘They are all determined, it seems to me. What ideals are these? Charlotte Corday had a kitchen knife and her opponents had a guillotine blade. The result was the same.’

  ‘Sometimes blood must be shed for the greater good,’ says Augustus.

  ‘I might kill for Thomas, if anyone threatened him. But I would not shed blood for words,’ I say.

  ‘Do not distress yourself, Lizzie,’ says Will. He flaps out his handkerchief and offers it to me. It’s only then that I realise I am crying. Tears run over my jaw and into my ears. My nose fills with mucus. I bury my face in Will’s handkerchief and blow hard.

  ‘In your condition, Lizzie …’ says Augustus, patting my shoulder awkwardly.

  Charlotte Corday is dead and Susannah will not leave Paris. I have killed one man so that a hundred thousand may live. That is what Mademoiselle Corday said at her trial. It sounds very fine. I suppose that she believed it and so she went to her death with a composure that was admired by all. She set her teeth to endure the jolt of the cart over the cobbles, the cold, the rain that plastered her shift to her breasts. I have killed one man so that a hundred thousand may live. But can that be true? Can any death be so justified? I believe not.