Birdsong (4 page)

"And have you heard your minstrel again in your wanderings in the town, my dear?"

She looked down at her plate. "I was not wandering, René. I was doing errands."

"Of course, my dear. My wife is a mysterious creature, Monsieur," he said to Stephen. "No one knows--like the little stream in the song--whither she flows or where her end will be."

Stephen held his teeth together in order to prevent himself protesting on Madame Azaire's behalf.

"I don't suppose Monsieur Wraysford is familiar with the song," said Madame Azaire.

"Perhaps Monsieur Bérard would sing it to me." Stephen found that the words had escaped.

Madame Azaire let out a sudden laugh before she could catch herself. She coughed and Stephen saw the skin of her cheeks stain lightly as her husband glared at her.

Although he was annoyed with himself for what his host might take as rudeness, Stephen's face remained expressionless. Azaire had no spontaneous reaction, like his wife, nor, like Stephen, a contrived one. Fortunately for him Lisette began to giggle and he was able to rebuke her.

"Is Monsieur Bérard a good singer, then?" asked Grégoire, looking up from his plate, his napkin tucked into his collar.

"A very distinguished one," said Azaire challengingly.

"Indeed," said Stephen, meeting his gaze with level eyes. Then he looked directly at Madame Azaire. She had recovered her composure and returned his look for a moment, a dying light of humour still in her face.

"So you didn't pass the house again?" he said to her.

"I believe I walked past it on my way to the chemist, but the window was shut and I didn't hear any music."

The Bérards came again after dinner and brought with them Madame Bérard's mother, a woman with a wrinkled face who wore a black lace shawl and was said to have great religious sensitivity. Bérard referred to her, for reasons that were not explained, as Aunt Elise, and she asked the others to do likewise. Stephen wondered whether her married name carried painful reminders of her dead husband or whether it was some social secret of his wife's family that Bérard thought it better to conceal.

On that and later occasions Stephen watched the Bérards and the role they played in the lives of the Azaires. On the terrace, when the evenings grew warm enough, the five of them sat in wickerwork chairs breathing in the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine that lay on the lintels and window frames at the back of the house. Bérard in his stout black boots and formal waistcoat conducted his small orchestra with dogged skill, though he always kept the best parts for himself. He was an authority on the important families of the town and could speak at length on the role played by names such as Sellier, Laurendeau, or de Morville in the making of its wealth and social fabric. He hinted in a long and indirect way that his own family had had connections with the de Morvilles that, through the negligence of some Bonapartist Bérard, they had failed to ratify. His manner of criticizing this errant ancestor was to belittle the ingratiating habits of Paris society, particularly in its hunger for titles, in such a way that the failure of his forebear, who had remained stubbornly provincial, was portrayed as being virtuous in a timeless manner yet possessing in addition a greater finesse than that displayed by the more artful Parisians. This early Bérard therefore seemed both sturdy and refined, while his descendants themselves were consequently presented both as the inheritors of commendable virtue and as the guileless beneficiaries of superior breeding. It passed the time. It was a way of getting to the end of peaceful evenings, Stephen supposed, but it made him burn with frustration. He could not understand how Madame Azaire could bear it.

She was the only one who did not respond to Bérard's promptings. She barely contributed when he invited her to do so, but would speak, unbidden, on a subject of her own choice. This appeared to leave Bérard no choice but to cut her off. He would apologize with a small bow of his head, though not for some minutes, and not until he had taken the conversation safely down the path he wanted. Madame Azaire would shrug lightly or smile at his belated apology as though to suggest that what she had been about to say was unimportant.

Aunt Elise's presence was a particular benefit to Bérard, since she could be relied on to raise the tone of any conversation with her religious conviction. Her reputation as a person of patience and sanctity was based on her long widowhood and the large collection of missals, crucifixes, and mementos of pilgrimage she had collected in her bedroom at the Bérards' house. With her blackened mouth and harsh voice she seemed to embody a minatory spiritual truth, that real faith is not to be found in the pale face of the anchorite but in the ravaged lives of those who have had to struggle to survive. Sometimes her laugh seemed more ribald or fullblooded than holy, but in her frequent appeals to the saints she was able to dumbfound her listeners by invoking names and martyrdoms of the early church and its formative years in Asia Minor.

"I'm proposing an afternoon in the water gardens next Sunday," said Bérard.

"I wonder if I might interest you in joining us?"

Azaire agreed enthusiastically. Aunt Elise said she was too old for boating and managed to imply that such self-indulgence was not appropriate for a Sunday.

"I should think you're pretty handy with a boat, René?" said Bérard.

"I've got a feel for the water, it's true," said Azaire.

"Listen to him, the modest old devil," Bérard laughed. "If it wasn't for all the evidence to contradict him, he wouldn't even admit to being any good at business." Azaire enjoyed being cast in the role of self-effacing joker that Bérard had created for him. He had devised a way of inhaling skeptically when some talent of his was mentioned and following the hissing intake of breath with a sip from his glass. He said nothing, so his reputation for wit remained intact, though not to Stephen, who, each time Azaire modestly rolled his eyes, remembered the sounds of pain he had heard from the bedroom.

Sometimes from the safety of the sitting room he would fix his eyes on the group and on the vital, unspeaking figure of Madame Azaire. He didn't ask himself if she was beautiful, because the physical effect of her presence made the question insignificant. Perhaps in the harshest judgement of the term she was not. While everything was feminine about her face, her nose was slightly larger than fashion prescribed; her hair had more different shades of brown and gold and red than most women would have wanted. For all the lightness of her face, its obvious strength of character overpowered conventional prettiness. But Stephen made no judgements; he was motivated by compulsion.

Returning one afternoon from work, he found her in the garden, pruning an unchecked group of rose bushes, some of which had grown higher than her head.

"Monsieur." She greeted him with formality, though not coldly. Stephen, with no plan of action, merely took the little pruning shears from her hand and said, "Allow me."

She smiled in a surprised way that forgave his abrupt movement.

He snipped at a few dead flowers before he realized he had no proper sense of what he was trying to do.

"Let me," she said. Her arm brushed across the front of his suit and her hand touched his as she took the little shears from him. "You do it like this. Beneath each bloom that's died you cut at a slight angle to the stem, like this. Look." The brown petals of a formerly white rose fell away. Stephen moved a little closer to catch the smell of Madame Azaire's laundered clothes. Her skirt was the colour of baked earth; there was a dogtoothed edging to her blouse that suggested patterns or frippery of an earlier, more elaborate age of dressing. The little waistcoat she wore above it was open to reveal a rosy flush at the bottom of her throat, brought on by the small exertion of her gardening. Stephen imagined the different eras of fashion and history summoned by her decorative way of dressing: it suggested victory balls from the battles of Wagram and Borodino or nights of the Second Empire. Her still-unlined face seemed to him to hint at intrigue and worldliness beyond her obvious position.

"I haven't seen your daughter for a day or two," he said, bringing his reverie to a halt. "Where is she?"

"Lisette is with her grandmother near Rouen for a few days."

"How old is Lisette?"

"Sixteen."

Stephen said, "How is it possible for you to have a daughter of that age?"

"She and Grégoire are my stepchildren," said Madame Azaire. "My husband's first wife died eight years ago and we were married two years after that."

"I knew it," he said. "I knew you couldn't be old enough to have a child that old."

Madame Azaire smiled again, a little more self-consciously.

He looked at her face, bent over the thorns and dry blooms of the roses, and imagined her flesh beaten by her withered, corrupt husband. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed her hand, folding it in both of his own.

She turned swiftly to him, the blood rushing into her face, her eyes filled with alarm.

Stephen held her hand against the thick serge of his jacket. He said nothing. The satisfaction of acting on impulse had lent him calm. He looked into her eyes as though daring her to respond in a way not dictated by their social positions.

"Monsieur. Please let go of my hand." She tried to laugh it off. Stephen noticed that there was not much pressure of withdrawal from her hand itself to accompany her words. The fact that her other hand held the pruning shears made it difficult for her to extract herself without pulling in some way that risked making her lose her composure.

Stephen said, "The other night I heard sounds from your room. Isabelle--"

"Monsieur, you--"

"Stephen."

"You must stop this now. You must not humiliate me."

"I have no wish to humiliate you. Ever. I merely wanted to reassure you." It was a strange choice of words, and Stephen felt its oddness as he spoke, but he let go of her hand.

She looked into his face with more composure than she had managed before.

"You must respect my position," she said.

"I will," said Stephen. It seemed to him there was some ambiguity in what she had said and that he had capitalized on it by using the future tense in his acquiescence.

Seeing he could not improve on this advance, he dragged himself from her presence.

Madame Azaire watched his tall figure retreat across the grass to the house. She turned back to her roses, shaking her head as though in defiance of some unwanted feeling.

*

Since his flight from the room in the factory where the workers took their meals, Stephen had found a café on the other side of the cathedral to which he went each day for lunch. It was a place frequented by young men, students or apprentices, many of whom sat at the same tables each day. The food was prepared by a sturdy Parisian exile who had once had a café in the Place de l'Odéon. Knowing student appetites, he served only one dish, but in quantity, with bread and wine included in the price. His commonest dish was beef, with custards or fruit tart to follow it. Stephen was halfway through lunch at a seat in the window when he saw a familiar figure bustle past, her head lowered, with a basket on her arm. Her face was concealed by a scarf but he recognized her by her walk and the tartan sash at her waist.

He left some coins spinning on the table as he pushed back his chair and went out into the street. He saw her disappear from the corner of the square and go down a narrow side street. He ran to catch her up. He drew level just as she was pulling the bell handle outside a double door with flaking green paint. Madame Azaire was flustered when he accosted her. "Monsieur... I, I wasn't expecting you. I am delivering something to a friend."

"I saw you go past the café I was in. I thought I would come and see if I could help carry anything for you."

She looked doubtfully at her basket. "No. No, thank you." The door was opened by a young man with brown wavy hair and an alert expression. His face showed recognition and urgency.

"Come in," he said and laid his hand on Madame Azaire's shoulder as he ushered her into a courtyard.

"This is a friend," she said uncertainly, indicating Stephen, who was lingering in the doorway.

"Come in, come in," said the man and closed the door behind them. He led the way across the courtyard and up some stairs to a small apartment. He told them to wait in a cramped sitting room in which the shutters were closed and piles of papers and leaflets lay on the surface of every table and chair. He returned and pulled back a curtain, letting in some light on the cramped and squalid room.

He waved his hand at it and apologized. "There are five of us living in this little place at the moment." He held out his hand to Stephen. "My name is Lucien Lebrun."

They shook hands and Lucien turned to Madame Azaire. "Have you heard the news? They have agreed to take back the ten men they sacked last week. They won't back down on the question of pay, but still, it's a start." Feeling Stephen's quizzical eyes on her, Madame Azaire said, "You must wonder what I'm doing here, Monsieur. I bring food to Monsieur Lebrun from time to time and he gives it to one of the dyers' families. Some of them have five or six children--even more in some cases--and they find it hard to live."

"I see. And your husband doesn't know."

"He doesn't know. I couldn't involve myself with his workers one way or another but the dyers are a separate group of people, as you know."

"Don't be apologetic!" said Lucien. "A gift of food is just an act of Christian charity. And in any case, the injustice done to my people is outrageous. Last week at the local meeting of the syndicate--"

"Don't start on that again." Madame Azaire laughed.

Lucien smiled. "I despair of you, Madame."

Stephen felt an acid worry at the familiar way in which Lucien addressed Madame Azaire. He did not feel particularly concerned with the politics of the strike or the ethical nicety of Madame Azaire's position. He only wanted to know how she had come to be on such easy terms with this forceful young man.

He said, "I think it's time I went back to the factory. Your husband is going to show me the finishing process."