The Confectioner's Tale (9 page)

‘Dismal. You?’

‘Scientific breakthroughs take time,’ he says airily. ‘Why is yours so bad?’

I start to explain about Hall, about my grandfather, why I’ve been neglecting my work. He listens patiently, and I find myself telling him everything: the girl, the painting, the letter, and then, hesitantly, about Grandpa Jim asking for forgiveness.

He taps his chin when I’m done, mulling over my words. I’d forgotten what a good listener he is.

‘This whole scandal, it has to be something to do with her then,’ he says, ‘the girl.’

‘I think so too, but there’s nothing to prove it.’

‘Except for those words, “forgive me”.’ I wait for him to continue, but instead he stares intently at a beer mat, shoving it around the table. When he next speaks his voice is uncharacteristically serious. ‘Do you think your grandfather was, you know …?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think he was, maybe, in love with her?’

Alex is flushing pink, right to the tips of his ears.

‘No,’ I say, too quickly. ‘Something like that, he would’ve told me. We talked about how he met my grandma often enough.’

‘It’s not exactly the kind of thing he would confess to his granddaughter, P. Perhaps there were things he didn’t want you to know.’

‘Why does everyone think that?’ I try to swallow back the lump that has risen in my throat. ‘If that’s true, then it means he lied to me …’

‘I’m not saying that he lied.’ Alex’s voice is soft. His hand hovers at the edge of the table, as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. ‘Even if he did keep things from you, maybe he did it out of love …’

I take a large gulp of my drink.

‘Well, anyway,’ I try for a smile, ‘I have to find out before Hall.’

‘Is this really about Hall?’ Alex is looking me in the eye.

‘Of course.’ Quickly, I finish my drink, and reach for my bag. ‘Look, I’ve got to go—’

Alex grabs my hand. I stop, astonished. His cheeks couldn’t get any redder.

‘Let me know,’ he says, ‘if there’s anything I can do to help?’

I nod, and squeeze his hand in return. Alex lets go and reaches for his pint, nearly knocking it over in the process. Suppressing a laugh, I relax, and drop my bag to the floor.

‘Next round’s on me,’ he says and grins.

Chapter Twelve

January 1910

Gui did not go back to the pâtisserie the next Saturday, nor the one after that. He told himself that it was for the best. Besides, work on the tracks had resumed quickly after Christmas and was harder than ever. Every morning, a layer of snow coated the yard, turning first to slush, then to dense, pitted ice.

Their washing water froze in its bowl and had to be broken with the handle of a razor. Gui’s hands seized up around tools, screaming back into life when he took his turn working the furnace. Chilblains made the tips of his fingers swell and itch.

Some nights, he found himself reaching beneath his pillow, silently drawing Monsieur Carême out into the dark dormitory. In the weak moonlight, he turned the pages, and the voice of that architect filled his head once more. Before his eyes, the sketches and diagrams came to life. Sugar work spooled out like silk thread, crystallized into soaring towers and spires.

He imagined the ghosts of impossible scents, trapped and infused, just as he’d seen in the kitchens of the pâtisserie. Monsieur Carême summoned the essences of the world to his fingertips. Roses and violets from summer gardens, sun-drenched Sicilian lemons squeezed of their juice and mingled with juniper from the frozen north. Saffron threads and gold leaf from the Indies waited to be turned into something magical. And contained deep within all of this was a smile that flooded him with warmth, a pair of blue eyes, and the scent of chocolate …

A guttural snore from one of the men would break the spell and he would remember that he was cold, that the air around him was stale and damp, that Monsieur Carême would have sneered, had he been there in person.

So he hid the book at the bottom of his trunk and tried not to think about it, or about Mademoiselle Clermont every time the sky showed a patch of chill blue.

Instead, he threw himself into the life of a railwayman. He worked harder than any of the others; at night he fell onto his pallet bed and straight into a dreamless sleep. His arms grew stronger, his hands rougher, until he could put up a decent fight even to Léon, the largest man in the dormitory. Nicolas, for one, was delighted to hear that he had put a stop to his weekly sojourns across the river.

‘Dangerous, is what it was,’ his friend told him, as they planed down railway sleepers. ‘When you stayed for Christmas, I thought I’d come back to find you drowned in the Seine, a love letter to your bourgeois princess tied to your jacket.’

‘Who said anything about love letters?’ Gui protested.

‘You did, the way you’d try to comb your hair flat every Saturday without anyone noticing.’

‘I did not!’

‘As you like.’ Nicolas winked. ‘I’m just glad you’ve come to your senses. Men like us have no business with sugar plums.’

Gui laughed then and felt better, as he always did with Nicolas. His friend was right. The longer he stayed away from the pâtisserie, the more foolish it seemed. It was a child’s fantasy, no place for him. He put it to the back of his mind, and tried to keep it there.

Perhaps he would have succeeded; perhaps he would have gone on to work the tracks, watched the years sweep across Paris from between two iron rails and never spoken the name ‘Clermont’ again, had it not been for the rain. The rain changed everything.

It came first as snow, then as sleet, and finally as a deluge that knew no end. Gui grew accustomed to the feeling of being damp, but nothing prepared him for the morning when he awoke to find his boots floating away. The water in the dormitory was ankle-deep and rising.

‘Shit,’ said Nicolas over and over, staring at the churning brown river that had once been the yard. They could not stay. Men hurriedly wrapped photographs and letters in oilcloth, hid them deep in their clothes. Just in time, Gui remembered Monsieur Carême at the bottom of his trunk. The water had seeped through and wrinkled the pages, but he swaddled the book tightly in a handkerchief, shoved it into the crack where the roof met the wall and where it might be safe.

The sewers had burst and the Gare d’Austerlitz was in chaos. Tracks were filling up into canals, water lapping at the platforms like an incoming tide. There were shouts and shrieks as people slipped, struggling to drag handcarts out of the flood.

A stationmaster recognized them as belonging to the railway and set them to work bailing out the tracks. Gui spent an unpleasant hour soaked to the waist, passing buckets hand to hand, but it made little impact. When they were shivering too much to continue, they hauled each other out and squelched up the stairs to the mezzanine, where a coffee vendor and roast-chestnut seller had set up business.

Gui inched as close to one of the burning braziers as he could, until steam began to rise from his clothes. The stationmaster handed him a mug of treacle-thick coffee laced with brandy. He gulped it gratefully. A man he knew to be the owner of the tabac booth was sharing rumours from other parts of the city, trying to stay dry by busily stuffing his clothes with yesterday’s newspapers.

‘Never seen anything like it,’ he announced as he crammed a copy of
L’Aurore
down the front of his shirt. ‘Looks like Venice out there, or a giant boating lake. I was born in this city and I wouldn’t know it to look at. Salpêtrière’s turned into a swimming bath and the Opéra district looks grim. Hear it crept up on them in the night from below. Stores, cellars, all underwater, and now the streets—’

‘What did you say, about Opéra?’ asked Gui, grabbing the vendor’s arm. The man ignored him, shaking him off.

Gui did not wait to hear any more. He pulled his sodden jacket tight about himself and set off down the steps, skidding in pools of mud. He heard his name being called but didn’t stop.

Outside, the water was shin-high, full of silt and debris. He waded along the embankment, stumbling on submerged objects. The water rose even as it sluiced into the river; the Seine hadn’t yet broached its banks but licked at them, like a great tongue thrashing.

The bridge had been barricaded with sandbags and old pallets. A hastily assembled task force stood guard, staring miserably into the rising river. Before he could cross, someone grabbed his arm.

‘What are you doing?’ panted Nicolas furiously. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling?’

‘I have to get past,’ Gui said, pulling free. ‘I have to go and help.’

‘It’s that place, isn’t it? Don’t go, Gui, they’ll deserve what they get. Let them know what it’s like to feel cold and scared for once.’

‘You heard them back there, Nicolas, the whole district’s in trouble! I can help.’

‘You think they’ll want you to stay,’ his said incredulously, seizing Gui’s waterlogged sleeve again. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You think if you act the hero they’ll forgive you for being poor and keep you around.’

‘You don’t know them,’ Gui protested. ‘I have friends there.’

‘What, that girl?’ Nicolas shook him. ‘Talk sense, Gui, she’s one of them, she’ll use you and throw you back here when she’s done.’

Gui tore himself away and dashed for the barricade. This time, Nicolas didn’t follow.

On the right bank, the flooding was worse. Water bubbled from the ground in a noxious spew, widening through the streets until it was knee deep. The city was deserted. Those who did venture forth were drenched and desperate, carrying sandbags and bundles of planks. Roads that were ordinarily packed with carriages and motor cars were empty. In a street lined with shops, looters had taken advantage of the chaos; almost every window had been smashed. Gui waded past the destruction.

The way was endless. In one alley he encountered a woman and a child, clinging to a set of metal stairs. Their basement home was underwater. Soon afterward, he met a small team of volunteers in a boat and directed them back, hoping that the woman would still be there.

By the time he neared the Boulevard des Italiens, the shivering in his muscles had become a deep, constant shudder. The walk had taken hours. His trousers were sodden, the water in the streets sometimes reaching his thigh. He was exhausted from wading, tripping and wading again, but he pushed on. Nicolas’s words plagued him at first, but soon he found that it was easier to forget reasons and just keep moving. A few streets away from the pâtisserie he heard a commotion, sounds of a struggle: breaking wood, a woman’s scream. He quickened his pace as best he could.

Ahead was a walkway, hastily constructed between buildings like a bridge. A figure in black, a girl, was half in the water where the planks had collapsed. Around her were three men. Two grappled with her arms, a third ripped something from her hand.

‘Hey!’ Gui yelled, ploughing forward. ‘Let her go!’

He launched himself at one of the assailants, grasping a handful of threadbare shirt. The thief writhed free like a cat to wallow after his companions into the shadows. The fading light showed their faces: they were boys, thin and hungry, none of them more than fourteen.

The woman clung to the planks, spluttering out the filthy water.

‘Guillaume,’ coughed Mademoiselle Clermont. He could not explain how, but he had known it would be her.

‘What happened here? Are you all right?’ he asked, trying to help her onto the walkway.

‘We are flooded.’ She scrabbled for purchase on the sodden wood. ‘The whole ground floor, the kitchens. If the water rises any higher the damage will be dreadful. I came out to find the task force, but then I fell and they—’

She yelped in pain as he tried to lift her from the water, and clutched at his shoulders.

‘The boards collapsed,’ she said, teeth clenched. ‘I believe my leg is stuck, but I cannot feel, everything is numb.’

He glanced down into the murky liquid, boiling up from the sewers.

‘Can you wiggle it free?’

She tried and shook her head. He could see the panic in her eyes, already bright with tears. Gently he took her hands from his shoulders and placed them on the walkway before her.

‘Don’t let go of this plank,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to go under.’

The cold air was nothing compared to the freezing water that closed around his scalp. Clumsily, he groped out for her legs. At any other time his heart would have raced as he brushed her calf through the floating petticoat, but all he wanted to do was get her free.

He reached towards her ankle and found leather. Her boot was wedged tightly between two broken planks. His numb fingers felt like sausages as he tried to loosen the laces. It took a second breath of air and a third before they finally gave. Her foot squirmed free like a fish between his hands.

On the surface, he coughed muck from his nose and mouth.

‘Do you think you can walk at all?’ he croaked.

She leaned on her foot experimentally and her face flashed white with pain. Her lips had started to turn blue as she shook her head. He attempted to lift her, but they both nearly collapsed. Her waterlogged clothes almost trebled her weight.

‘You will have to take off your coat,’ he said over the increasing rain. ‘It’s too heavy.’

Without hesitation she struggled out of the long garment. Gui winced to see the costly velvet and lace brocade bundled up and muddy on the walkway. Her hat, too, was ruined; she threw it aside, wrapped her shawl quickly about her head and neck. There was something strange about the way she did it, almost furtive, but he was too tired to wonder.

The weeks of hard work paid off, for although his muscles leaped under her weight, they held firm. More than once his numb fingers began to slip and he tightened his grasp. If it hurt her, she did not complain.

By the time they reached the back door of the pâtisserie he could feel her shaking violently. Unable to let go, he kicked at the door and shouted, hoping there was someone to hear.

Light poured upon him, reflected blindingly on the water. Astonished faces met his. Someone pulled Mademoiselle Clermont away; his hands held on, stiffened into claws around her.