The Confectioner's Tale (3 page)

‘J. G. Stevenson. I always forget that you’re following in his footsteps.’

I say nothing. We both know that my place at the university has more to do with my grandfather’s legacy than anyone will admit.

‘Stevenson had a connection to it then, this
Clermont
place?’ Whyke says, flipping the card over. ‘Do you know what he was doing there?’

I shake my head, struggle for the right words. ‘I knew that my grandpa had written about Paris, but I never knew he actually lived there. He told me about his university days, the war, but never this.’

‘Well, it certainly would be interesting to find out, but that’s the new biographer’s job, I suppose. What’s his name, Hill?’

‘Hall,’ I correct, trying to suppress a scowl as Simon Hall’s face elbows its way into my thoughts. ‘I thought maybe
I
could look into the idea, work it into my research?’

Whyke makes a doubtful noise and gives the photo back. He hooks his hands behind fraying brown hair.

‘You know as well as I do what people will say if you spend too much time studying your own grandfather.’ He hunts around for a working pen. ‘Look into it, if you want, but try not to get sidetracked. Shall we meet same time, next week?’

The stairs are cold after the warm clutter of Whyke’s room. I pause by the window sill, listening. The hallway is empty. I pull out the photograph again. It’s a portrait of a group, printed on cheap card that has yellowed and split at the edges.

My grandfather lounges to one side, as if only a moment ago he had flung himself into the seat, a stick-thin figure with a shock of pale hair. His nose is long and straight, not crooked like I remember. The picture must have been taken before he broke it.

Beside him are two people. One is a young man, not much more than a boy. He has an angular, handsome face, dark curly hair that threatens to escape its pomade. The second is a young woman, her lips and lace collar in focus, her face half-turned.

It is an unusual photograph for its time, candid and unarranged. I flip the card over. The word ‘Clermont,’ is scrawled in ink, next to a date and a place, in what I know to be my grandfather’s handwriting:
Paris, 1910.

Gently, I slip the photograph back into the folder. Perhaps I should have told Whyke about my confrontation with Hall, explained about this letter he has supposedly found, and the scandal. Yet there, at the back of my mind, is the fear I can’t quite vocalize: that the biographer is right. That my grandfather kept secrets, even from me.

I close my eyes, but I see it again, the place where I found the photograph. It was hidden at the bottom of a trunk, folded within an envelope that was labelled with only two words:
Forgive me.

Chapter Four

September–December 1909

The steam train groaned and clicked into place, like a huge creature settling its bones. Hands swarmed to its doors, wheels hurtled away stacked high with pallets and boxes, unloaded by the men and women who carried the day on their backs.

Gui jumped onto the tiles of the platform and craned his neck: above, the huge glass roof arched outwards, a sky held together by bolts. It too seemed alive, great grey girders furred with a skin of pigeons. On every side the walls sounded back the disorientating language of a new city, full of noise and swinging elbows and glistening faces.

Nicolas was at his back, poking him into the fray. Gui tried to focus on setting each foot in front of the other, though he was shunted and jostled, almost knocked down by a pair of raucous young men, their faces sharp, sacks balanced high on their shoulders. A porter roared a curse as a crate slipped from his grasp and smashed into the platform. Gui veered to avoid him only to collide with a woman with green stained fingers, picking through boxes of freshly cut flowers.

Nicolas’s face surfaced for an instant between the shoulders of the crowd, mouth open in a wordless shout. Gui staggered and was swept in the opposite direction. He could barely keep hold of his suitcase as he was pushed towards the opposite platform. An army of newspaper boys were shoving past him, yelling from beneath their bundles. He backed away hurriedly, breath coming short, searching for a way out. Then a space appeared, alongside an open compartment. Without a second thought, he dashed forward.

Too late he saw the pale glove grip the door, the tightly buttoned boot appear beneath rustling skirts and petticoats, descending towards the platform. He tried to stop but only managed to trip, crashing into the figure. The next thing he knew he was falling, the sound of a gasp following him as he sprawled across the tiles.

For a heartbeat, the entire world was winded. His lungs sat empty as he gazed up at the woman who had caught herself upon the side of the carriage, her ankle twisted beneath her. A dark hat slanted across her face, but beneath its brim he saw blue eyes, wide with shock. They stared at each other, stunned, their faces separated only by an arm’s length. Then the air rushed into his chest and he coughed, opened his mouth to speak.

‘Mademoiselle!’ someone cried from within the train, and bodies were materializing all around, voices angry and fingers pointing his way. He scrambled to his feet, too bewildered to apologize, and ran back into the mêlée.

The burning in his cheeks had subsided by the time he found Nicolas. He dragged his friend to the exit, looking over his shoulder all the while.

‘I told you to stick close,’ Nicolas scolded. ‘What happened?’

Gui rubbed at his back. It was beginning to ache from the fall. He’d been too busy thinking about the girl to notice it before.

‘Nothing,’ he mumbled, ‘bumped into some rich folk.’

Nicolas pushed back his cap ruefully and extracted a wad of papers.

‘You got to watch yourself here,’ he said briskly. ‘Come on, or we’ll miss registration.’

The instant the clerk stamped his papers, Gui’s life became a blur. He had no time to dwell on what had happened at the station, no time to think of anything at all among the haze of newness and rules and bellowed instruction. Then one day, just as abruptly, it all became routine.

The weeks fell away. They burned great holes in time as he learned to stoke the furnace in the ironworks, as he practised how to weld and hammer, to share the load of a sleeper on his shoulder. Muscle slung its way down his arms; his face grew wind-toughened from long hours on the tracks under the autumn’s fading sun.

Every so often he found himself alone, outside the makeshift dormitory where those who were not from the city fell onto pallet beds at night. The place smelled of gas lamps and unwashed bodies; he listened to the flip of cards on wood, the worn, wavering note of an accordion. Away from that close, stuffy company, he sometimes found himself thinking of a different Paris. A city where people wore silk and furs and had never picked up a hammer in their lives; where people like the young woman from the station lived. As he imagined it, the cold October air whispered to him of possibility.

Nicolas’s shout would pull him back, to damp clothes and musty bedding. The ticket inspector from their first journey was right, it was a hard life, harder than either of them had imagined, but Gui didn’t hate the work. Neither did he like it. He was too busy concentrating on landing hammer blows evenly, on squinting away a headache in the glare of the furnace. He did not even think about his home until many weeks later, when he wrote his mother’s name and street upon an envelope.

‘A whole month’s pay,’ said Nicolas, gazing lovingly into his pocket. ‘Look at it, Gui. I’ve never had this much money in my life!’

Gui stared down at his own wages, then resignedly tipped half of it into the envelope for his mother. She would struggle to get by without him.

The sleeping quarters were ringing with payday activity, a holiday feeling in the air. The rail workers crowded around a tiny square of mirror, to clean their ears and comb their beards. Creases were being pulled out of long-stored jackets, neckties folded to hide their worn edges.

Nicolas produced a bottle of cheap cologne, which smelled like gin and dead flowers. Unperturbed, he used it to smooth down his hair. Smiling, Gui declined the bottle and fought his way in front of the mirror. For a few seconds he stared. His eyes were the same as ever – like a muddy pond, his mother had always teased – but his face was leaner, browned by the wind and the sun. He raised a hand to his chin and saw his fingernails, blackened despite a trimming. He had begun to change.

He would have lingered, but Nicolas was waiting, his eyebrows raised in an expression that meant a special kind of trouble. An answering grin rose to Gui’s face. The two friends took to the streets, along with some of the other workers, snorting and shouldering each other in the cold air. They were a pack, all clean, pink faces and excitement, and the night spread before them, dark and bright as an animal’s eye.

‘
Attendez!
Wait!’ someone yelled.

Gui joined the chorus as they broke into a run across the Place Valhubert, racing for the omnibus that was pulling away from the centre. He leaped for the back step and swung up the twisting staircase with the others. They collapsed onto benches, laughing and panting, to the other passengers’ disapproval.

Face hot, Gui accepted a hip flask and took a long swig. The liquid burned its way down his gullet as he leaned over the wooden side of the vehicle. The air chilled his skin, crisp in his lungs as the pavement swept by below. Advertisements and signs clacked against the side of the omnibus, staccato with the horses’ hooves. They broke free of the Left Bank onto the Pont d’Austerlitz and Paris rose before them, light and glass, stone and shadow.

Gui felt himself laughing wildly. He had truly arrived.

Chapter Five

March 1988

The photograph leaves me restless, unable to focus. I find myself drawn time and again to the sepia faces on the card, propped up on my desk. I have been missing my grandfather more than ever during the past few days; have longed to hear his dry, quick voice on the other end of the phone.

I search the faded inks of the image as if they will give up some clue. Grandpa Jim would have been younger than me in 1910, I realize. Sprawled nonchalantly in the chair, he would have been barely more than twenty-one. Raw in the world, sucking hungrily at everything Paris had to offer. What had he done, that he would live to regret, beneath the bright lights and in youthful folly?

Forgive me.

If not for those two words I could have dismissed Hall’s claims about my grandfather, I could have assumed that he was fabricating a scandal, just to sell copies of his book. But now, I feel a terrible uncertainty, a pang of hurt. I thought I knew everything about Grandpa Jim; why had he never told me about Paris?

I try to search for the word, ‘Clermont’, in the library but find nothing useful. There is no one else I can ask. My grandmother is long dead, my parents long divorced. I doubt that my mother would know, and I’m not on speaking terms with my father, not since he sold the house.

On Friday night I trudge through Cambridge’s dark and rainy streets, in search of a friendly face. My hair is plastered to my cheeks by the time I ring a bell, carrier bag in hand. A waft of perfume engulfs me as the door is thrown open, and I smile in relief. Cass hugs me with one arm and ushers me inside with the other.

‘For you,’ I tell her, handing over the bag. ‘I think I need your help with something.’

Cass grins as she pulls out a bottle of wine and a large bar of chocolate. ‘If you’re trying to bribe me, it’s working.’

It is cosy in her tiny kitchen, the rain pattering gently on the windows, and I feel at ease for the first time in weeks. Cass potters around, turning on the record player, while I find a couple of glasses.

Cass is one of my few close friends at university. She’s two years older than me and, technically, could be my supervisor, although the idea of that makes us laugh too much to consider it seriously.

‘Finally.’ She sighs, flinging herself into a chair and pushing a stack of papers aside. ‘I thought the weekend would never come.’

She pours the wine, filling the glasses to the brim. Cass is based at the History of Art department, and everything about her is generous: masses of frizzy black hair, infectious smile, always ready with a cheerful word or a sympathetic nudge.

‘So,’ she takes a sip, ‘what’s this thing you need help with? You were vague on the phone.’

I tell her about the photograph, about Simon Hall and his so-called scandal. She collapses into giggles when I describe what happened at his talk.

‘Can you imagine what he would say if he found this?’ I’m flushing with laughter and embarrassment as I hand her the photograph. ‘He’d see it as evidence of my grandfather’s secret, sordid past.’

‘I have to admit, I kind of agree with him.’

‘Cass!’

‘Sorry!’ She smiles ruefully. ‘I know it might be hard for you to consider, but “Forgive me”? Come on, Petra, he must have done
something
.’

‘Well, whatever it was, I need to know,’ I insist, reluctant to concede that she’s right. ‘Hall mentioned a letter that was written to Grandpa; he said it was proof of this scandal. What if it’s just a misunderstanding? If I can find out, then I can stop him before it goes any further.’

‘Stop Hall?’ Cass asks. ‘I think you’ll be fighting a losing battle, he
is
the official biographer, and he sounds pretty determined.’

‘He’s grave robbing,’ I take another gulp of wine, ‘and he could cause some serious damage to Grandpa Jim’s reputation.’

Cass holds up her hands in surrender. ‘All right, all right. So, you think this photo has something to do with it?’

‘I’m not sure. Hall said something about Paris in his talk, and that Grandpa was a young man when … whatever it was happened.’

Cass nods vaguely, squinting down at the faces. ‘Not much to go on. When did you say this was taken?’

‘Nineteen ten, if we go by the date on the back.’