Illumination (4 page)

‘He isn’t easy to like, I have to say.’

‘Liking him isn’t necessary. He might be able to help us locate Hannah. All we have to do is put up with him until then.’

Inglis folded his long limbs into the cab, settling himself at the opposite end of Clem’s seat. The journalist was in high spirits, glad to have been liberated from the dullness of the Grand. He took a squashed-looking cap from his jacket and stuck it on his head. It was a kepi, he informed them, headwear of choice for partisans of the new republic – which made it an essential item for any man who wished to walk about the city and not be lynched either as a Prussian spy or an Imperialist.

‘The latter,’ he confided, ‘for the shabbier class of Parisian, is by far the more grievous offence.’

They went north, passing through yet more roadside army camps, the fires now casting tangled shadows over the fine buildings behind. Inglis held forth on the incompetence of the new republic, the destructive savagery of the masses, the immense wrongs done to the noble, fallen emperor; Elizabeth stayed very still, gazing out of the window.

Entering Montmartre felt abrupt, like walking behind a section of stage-set. The scale and precision of the boulevards disappeared, the cab creaking its way up into a web of crooked, sloping lanes. No one had fled this district; Montmartre was truly alive that night, crammed with its inhabitants. The mood was oddly jubilant, the erratically lit streets resounding with songs and laughter. Every man was in uniform, but not one worn by any of the regular troops; their simple blue outfits were halfway between those of soldiers and policemen, topped off with a kepi just like Inglis’s. The majority were drinking hard. They dominated the cafés and restaurants, debated on corners and lounged around shop fronts. Countless flags and banners were on display. The tricolour was the most popular – but another, plain red, was so common that it could easily have been mistaken for the standard of a new army, separate from that of France.

‘National Guard,’ Inglis said, his voice loaded with disdain. ‘The Parisian militia. Louis Napoleon had the good sense to suppress them, but they’re back with a vengeance now, claiming that they’re the ones to save the city.’ He pointed at a particularly large red flag, propped above the door of a bar. ‘And as you can see, in humble districts such as this, the units are already thoroughly infected with socialistic doctrine.’

‘The International?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘Among others. Reds of every stripe were all over Paris the moment the emperor was captured, spreading their sedition – sowing disinformation and slander.’ Inglis smiled bitterly. ‘Disaster piled upon disaster.’

The cab became caught in a herd of goats that was being driven into the city from the surrounding countryside. Inglis opened the door, leaned out to survey the brown, bleating backs, and suggested that they continue on foot.

‘I know the way from here, Mrs P,’ he said. ‘It ain’t far.’

Skirting the herd, he led them up a steep alley and across a courtyard. A good deal could be seen of the hilltop village Montmartre had been before it was swallowed by the expanding capital. Many of the houses were little more than cottages; whitewashed walls hemmed in gardens and orchards. Between a butcher and a tool shop Clem caught a glimpse of a broken-down windmill, the sails silhouetted against the darkening sky.

The rue Garreau lay a short distance beyond the courtyard. No. 34 was one of the larger buildings upon it, standing at the junction of two quiet backstreets, its floors stacked untidily like books on a scholar’s desk. A portly, middle-aged woman in a grey dress was climbing down from a stool, having just lit the gas lamp above the door. Noticing their purposeful approach, she wiped her hands on her apron and prepared to meet them. Inglis began to speak, assuming command, but Elizabeth stepped smartly in front of him. They had arrived at Hannah’s address; his usefulness was almost at an end.

Elizabeth bade the woman good evening and launched into a double-time explanation of their presence in Montmartre. Her French had remained remarkably fluent – whereas Clem’s, only ever schoolroom level, had rusted to the point of uselessness. Following the conversation was a struggle, but he managed to grasp that this woman was Hannah’s landlady – a Madame Lantier. Utterly overawed by Elizabeth, she was listening closely to what she was being told, her eyes open wide. She’d realised that they were relations of Hannah’s due to the family resemblance, the blonde hair and so forth, and that they had travelled to Paris to effect a reunion; Elizabeth’s talk of her tenant being in some kind of distress, however, came as a complete surprise.

‘
Les Prussiens, oui, c’est très grave, mais Mademoiselle Pardy …
’ Madame Lantier shrugged. ‘
Mademoiselle Pardy est la même
.’

Elizabeth shot Clem a glance; this was not the author of their mysterious letter. She asked another question and an agreement was reached, the landlady nodding as she turned to open her front door.

‘She’ll show us Hannah’s room,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The blessed girl isn’t there, of course – she’s off in the city somewhere. But Madame hasn’t noticed anything wrong at all.’

Clem considered this as they followed Madame Lantier into her hallway. It made sense that she was unaware of his sister’s troubles. Who would want their landlady to know that they were out of cash, if they could possibly help it?

They were taken past the main staircase, through a pristine parlour and outside again, into the walled garden at the rear of the house. The air smelled of autumnal ripeness, of fat vegetables and soil; an abundance of tall plants thronged around a brick pathway, their leaves turning blue in the fading light. Madame Lantier had already started up this path, pushing through the press of vegetation. A little bemused, Elizabeth, Clem and Inglis went after her, holding onto their hats to stop them being dragged from their heads. After a few awkward yards they were back in the open. In front of them, set against the garden’s rear wall, was a small wooden outbuilding. The landlady was at the door, fumbling with keys.

‘Good Lord,’ Elizabeth exclaimed, ‘Hannah is living in a shed.’

The interior reeked of linseed oil, acrid and disagreeable after the sweet scents of the garden. It was dark; the single high window had been firmly shuttered. Clem could just discern a table, a stove, several easels and a number of black rectangles he took to be canvases.

‘Stay where you are, Mrs P,’ instructed Inglis. ‘Madame has found a lamp.’

An oil flame flared, illuminating the modest room and the hoard of paintings it contained. There were views of sunlit boulevards, of cafés buzzing with people, of skiffs on the Seine – of Paris in 1870. The compositions were irregular, lop-sided, done with apparent disregard for both the conventions of picture-making and the symmetries of the remade city. Clem took a few steps towards one of the larger boulevard scenes. The image grew less precise the nearer he got to it. He saw how little detail there was, and how few definite lines; its forms were on the verge of coming apart, of dissolving into each other. Brush marks had been left openly visible throughout. Buildings were pale tracks of grey; trees feathery flurries of green and yellow; the crowds on the pavements nothing but a profusion of intermingled smears. Madame Lantier carried the lamp to the table. The light glistened across the surface of the canvases, catching on tiny beads and ridges of pigment.

‘My dear Mrs Pardy,’ Inglis said, ‘I am so very sorry. Your poor daughter has obviously gone mad. The seedier side of Paris has corrupted her completely.’

Elizabeth had been making an initial survey of the paintings; now she turned on Inglis, dropping all pretence of amity. She would never permit anyone to criticise her children. That right was hers alone.

‘This blinkered response does not surprise me, Mont. How could someone like you possibly appreciate such boldness and originality?’

Inglis appeared unconcerned by this shift in her attitude. He was well used to hostility, Clem perceived – welcoming it, even, as a sign of the merciless veracity of his observations. ‘What is so original, pray, about painting like a drunk with a broom?’

‘This is the
real world
, not the finely finished fakery of your beloved Empire, with its voluptuous come-hither nudes and slave-market scenes. This is art swept into the present.’ Elizabeth looked over at her son, inviting him to rally to his sister’s defence. ‘Don’t you agree, Clement?’

Clem’s interest in painting was pretty casual, and inclined towards its technical aspects. The only time he’d become truly enthusiastic had been a few years previously when he’d developed a fascination with the actual manufacture of the paint – how the stuff was mixed and squeezed into those metal tubes. He’d even taken a couple of cautious steps towards setting up his own factory, an artisanal operation catering only to the first rank of painters, but the finances had quickly become impossible and he’d been forced to abandon it.

‘They’re very fresh,’ he said.

Elizabeth liked this. ‘Aren’t they? Why, the effect is like a spring breeze – a ray of living sunshine.’ She paused significantly. ‘Pass my notebook, would you?’

Inglis was clearly the sort who picked his battles carefully; sensing a disadvantage, he produced a cigar and pointed to the door. ‘I think I’ll wait outside, Mrs P – all this churning paint is making me nauseous. I’ll be ready when you wish to resume the search.’

Clem handed the notebook to his mother. She started writing straight away, angling the page towards the lamp. ‘I mean they’re recent,’ he enlarged. ‘Not wholly dry. Some are less than a week old, I’d say.’

The room was clean and as orderly as an office. Sketches were stored away in folders, brushes and palette knives in jars, paint tubes heaped in a large cardboard box. A bookcase held a select library – works on art mostly, but also histories and a couple of slim volumes that looked like political tracts. There was no trace either of the corruption Inglis had mentioned or the miserable poverty described in the letter. Off to the side was a Japanese screen printed with a pattern of swooping swallows; behind it Clem could see a mattress, the corner of a battered chest and two winter coats, one black and the other blue, hanging from a nail in the wall. The black one, he realised, was made for a man.

‘Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe that Han is the only person living here.’

His mother followed his gaze. Such a discovery would have left any normal parent mortified, furious, raving about scandal and disgrace. Elizabeth, however, merely blinked; then she turned to study the paintings again.

‘This is how artists are,’ she said. ‘It has always been thus, in Paris especially. Perhaps this friend is the reason she has moved out here, to Montmartre – although of course such a contrary step is typical of her.’

Their eyes met. For all Elizabeth’s offhand tolerance, the same questions were occurring to them both. Was it this other resident, this man, who had written to them? Or was he the true source of danger?

Elizabeth resumed her grilling of Madame Lantier, rather more intently than before; Clem, meanwhile, walked further into the outbuilding, hunting for clues. Several unfinished works were propped away in a corner. Two were portraits: a young woman dressing, and a man sitting beside a window. The style was strikingly intimate and informal. The woman was perched on a wicker chair, a satin ballgown hitched up to her knees. She had an angular, impish face that hinted at an appetite for pleasure of all kinds; her tongue poked out between her lips as she reached for a stocking that lay crumpled on the floorboards. The skin of her bare shoulders had been painted in broad, butter-like strokes, the different tones left unblended beside one another. Just two shades of orange had been used to render her short coppery hair, and the bunched fabric of her gown was but a mesh of purple-pink diagonals.

The portrait of the man had a more considered effect. Clean-shaven and gravely handsome, he was sitting forward on a bench, his thick black hair brushed back from his brow. His coat was black as well, and his gloves; this austere figure, equal parts preacher, lawyer and soldier, had been set against a stretch of plain cream wallpaper, a contrast that fixed the eye upon him completely. In his hand was a slim green tome that Clem recognised as one of the political volumes from his sister’s bookshelf. He was looking out at the viewer, his expression resolute but also reassuring, caring even, as if he was alone with a close comrade-in-arms.

Clem crouched to examine the picture further. Something he had taken to be a flaw, a crack in the paint, was no such thing. A dark scar ran down the left side of the sitter’s face, running like a tear-track from his eye socket to the line of his jaw.

Over by the door, Elizabeth’s voice was growing louder and more impatient. Clem stood up, thinking to go to Madame Lantier’s aid, when he noticed a black strip on one of the other paintings in that corner, behind the two portraits. He pulled it out. Little more than a sketch, largely uncoloured, it depicted what looked like the inside of a small common theatre. An audience had gathered in the murky atmosphere, faces and hats and jackets blurring into an indistinct mass. Before them was an imposing, black-coated orator – the man from the portrait. He’d struck a simple pose, chin raised and right arm extended; his glove was a black V in the middle of the canvas, rendered with a single mark of the brush. Someone, Hannah it looked like, had scrawled a date along the bottom:
12th Septembre, 1870
.

Clem held it up for his mother and the landlady to see. ‘
Madame
,’ he called, ‘
où est ça, s’il vous plaît?
’

The landlady told them that it was the Café-Concert Danton, a place of indifferent reputation only a few streets away. She pointed to another café scene, saying that it showed the Danton also; and another, over on the far side of the room.

‘We should go there,’ Clem said. ‘Han’s clearly a regular. If we don’t find her we can come straight back.’

Elizabeth agreed. Madame Lantier provided directions and they left the shed at once. Inglis claimed to have heard of the Danton; he slowed his pace, though, dropping to the rear. His usefulness had expired, they all knew it, but he plainly had no desire to return to his lonely table in the lobby of the Grand. Clem suspected that they were stuck with him until they departed the city.