Le Temps des Cerises (11 page)

Jacques proceeded to tell them about the pigeons. They went out as cargo with the balloons and flew back with letters and messages from the rest of the world. These messages were reduced in size so that each bird could carry up to thirty thousand of them tied to his tail feathers.

‘Old Neptune,' Monsieur Pagini interrupted proudly, ‘brought back the news that Gambetta had arrived safely. It was his first successful flight. He is a bird of noble lineage. That night I got him his favourite dish of worms and honey.'

Everyone aahed and uummed with interest at this. The bird in question was pointed out, made much of and seemed to puff up a bit on all the attention. Like a
cocodette's
bosom, Alphonse remarked amusedly – an observation which didn't go down too well with Monsieur Pagini who huffed and ruffled up angrily on his stool.

‘It is a very inervative proceedure,' Jacques went on quickly, with great diplomacy. ‘These reduced messages are then taken to the Rue de Grenelle and read by magic lantern.'

Eveline listened in growing astonishment. It really was like stepping into a fairytale. Letters taken out by balloon, brought back by pigeon then read by magic lantern.

‘The pigeon is a sacred bird,' Monsieur Pagini announced solemnly then. ‘If I catch anyone dreaming of pigeon pie they'll feel the back of my hand.' And even in the darkness he could be seen to be looking in the direction of Alphonse.

‘Do many of them make a successful return journey, sir?' Laurie asked then, sensibly and suitably deferential.

‘That depends,' Monsieur Pagini replied thoughtfully. ‘Peter, for example,' he pointed to a box next to Neptune, ‘is easily waylaid. He is an idler, a flâneur if you like. He would go into every shop if you let him. Alice on the other hand,' he pointed to another box in the corner, ‘is a gourmande. She knows the only place she will get a cabbage leaf and a bar of chocolate is back home and she flies direct, in time for supper. Poor little Squeak, however, is nervy and picky as a woman with child. He needs a great deal of encouragement but he shows promise. I tell them all to beware of anything with a Saxon plumage.'

‘The Prussians train hawks to kill them,' Jacques explained.

‘How beastly,' cried Eveline.

‘Yes, it is war,' Monsieur Pagini replied calmly. ‘There is always war especially in the human kingdom.' And he told them a little of his life history: how he had always felt more akin to birds than boys; how he had run away from home to sleep in the treetops; how there was nothing like the feeling of seeing a bird return.

‘I can imagine,' said Laurie. ‘You give them their freedom and then they come back to you.'

Monsieur Pagini nodded sadly. ‘Yes, though some never return. That is their choice. You only ever see them again in your dreams.'

Jacques had so much to show them and wanted to get on before the practice flight to Moon City at two-fifteen. He led them down the corridor to Platform One and it was strange to see the dusty cushions from the trains piled high in corners with nobody to sit on them; and torn old posters on the walls advertising day trips to Champigny, Passy, Compiègne. How long had it been since anyone had been on a day trip to Compiègne?

A sober mood fell on the group as they descended to the rails, the din getting louder as they approached. Two men walked by deep in conversation, and Jacques pulled up, trembling with excitement though he refused to say anything until they were out of earshot.

‘That,' he cried when they had turned the corner, a gleam of adulation in his eye, ‘was Etienne and La Montain!' He stopped, as if they should know what he was talking about.

‘Go on!'

‘Etienne and La Montain! Etienne fell out of the
Celestial
and landed in a swamp just outside Paris. He lay there for hours with bullets skimming over his head then managed to escape over enemy lines by disguising himself as a cowherd. La Montain took a consignment of dynamite to Bourbaki's army
9
and got paid a thousand franc bonus for doing it.'

‘Blimey,' said Alphonse. ‘I really am in the wrong job!'

Jacques' eyes glimmered darkly. ‘Yes you are,' he said in a strange determined little voice which caused Eveline to look at him sharply. ‘Anyone who is not a balloonist is in the wrong job.'

Platform One was a spectacle. Trestle tables ran up and down the length of it, covered in bolts and bolts of cloth that were being stitched together by a score of women, some with machines, some by hand. The work produced a steady hum like the spinning of old spinning wheels or a hive of industrious bees stitching a magnificent trousseau for their queen. Orange-shaped segments of cloth were hanging from the iron-columned aisles and swayed in the breeze like banners in a cathedral.

‘Is it true,' Eveline whispered to Jacques, ‘that society women have given up their silk and taffetta dresses for the enterprise?' She rather liked the idea of a bunch of society women's dresses flying through the air like witches on broomsticks.

‘No,' Jacques replied. ‘That is a myth. They are made with cotton then varnished.'

Partially inflated balloons lay stretched out on the rusted rails between the platforms, tethered to old gas lamps. Everyone gasped at the sight of them, peering over the platform edge. Eveline thought they looked like a bunch of giant mushrooms; Alphonse said no, more like a row of whales and Laurie was moved to declaim a verse from Victor Hugo:

Human audacity…

To tame the wind, tornado, sea-foam, avalanche?

In the sky a canvas, and over the sea a shelf!

‘Each balloon has a capacity of seventy-thousand cubic feet,' Jacques informed them sternly. ‘And consumes the equivalent of seven tons of gas.'

‘No wonder we don't have any street lighting left!' grinned Alphonse.

Jacques hustled them on; though they were held up on the way out by a commotion going on in what appeared to be a broom cupboard.

‘The Professor is writing in the air again,' shouted a sailor, carrying a sandbag of ballast.

‘The Professor is trying to design a steerable balloon,' Jacques explained. ‘It causes him great aggravation.'

They joined the crowd, eager to catch a glimpse of the Professor. They saw a large man in an ill-fitting frock coat, surrounded by boxes and a hat-like contraption on his head. He was writing in the air with a stub of pencil.

‘Oh dear,' sighed Jacques. ‘He writes in the air when he is angry or out of paper.'

‘They say he has a great mind yet he lives in a ménage à trois,' a seamstress chipped in with an edge of malevolence.

‘He has been to Zanzibar,' another piped up.

‘I don't know about all that but he is exceedingly tiresome,' said another.

Oh?

‘He is English.'

Ah!
They needed no other explanation. They beat a silent and hasty retreat but not silent or hasty enough for the Professor suddenly burst out of his broom cupboard.

‘Balloons!' he thundered after them. ‘Just like women. Fickle and full of gas. They soar above you all high and mighty, radiant with beauty but when you climb aboard and they've got you in their clutches that's a different story. You see their true colours then alright. They burp and fart just like the rest of us. Not to mention temperament! Up and down, up and down, round and round till you're giddy as a ruddy kipper. Design a decent woman and in my opinion you've got yourself a decent balloon!'

‘I'm inclined to agree,' laughed Alphonse as they staggered down the corridor. ‘Fickle and full of gas!' He eyed Eveline wickedly and she smiled back gratefully. Thank goodness he'd come along. It would have been unbearable without him. She and Laurie had hardly exchanged a word all afternoon; he'd just sent her the occasional sidelong glance full of self-pity and despair. Sometimes she wanted to shake him and she enquired now in a challenging voice: ‘What do
you
think Laurie? Are we all fickle?'

He coloured up to the roots of his fair hair. ‘I suppose I must defend womanhood from the professors and the… politicians. If they are fickle it is because we make them so.'

‘Defend away! Defend away!' cried Alphonse. ‘But it won't alter the facts!'

‘The Professor is not that bad,' Jacques said then in a just tone. ‘Sometimes he tells me about his ménagerie à trois and how it upsets him.'

The three adults stared at the boy. He was teaching them a lesson today and no mistake!

Next up was Platform Six: the two-fifteen practice flight to Moon City. The Conductor stood brass-buttoned and uniformed, issuing orders and shepherding sailors to their positions. Two baskets hung from the girders, suspended on a pulley system that was being operated by a group of men hanging about on Platform Seven. One or two onlookers cheered and catcalled, geeing on the practice pilots but the Conductor scowled and bade them be quiet or be off. Eveline expressed alarm as she watched Jacques line up behind a brawny sailor.

‘I thought you just watched the practice flights,' she cried, tugging at his arm.

‘Oh no, Sis,' the imp beamed back at her. ‘If there's a man down I step in for the day.'

‘Two at a time,' called the Conductor, going up and down the line, checking the baskets as the men on Platform Seven brought them level with Platform Six. They were kitted out with grapnel rope, anchor, sandbags of ballast, all the equipment needed to replicate a real balloon – though there was no envelope above the basket, of course, and no valve lines. The Conductor brought out a little green flag.

‘Everybody ready?'

The men on Platform Seven responded with another little green flag.

Eveline watched nervously as the sailor stepped into the basket followed closely by Jacques. The car spun sickeningly for a minute, then settled. The sailor had crouched down immediately, too perilously tall for the basket whereas Jacques could stand quite happily upright, his shoulders just reaching the edges. He waved and beamed at them, thumbing his nose at Alphonse then turning serious as the Conductor approached.

‘Mathers and Renan, we are about to ascend. What do we do, Mathers?'

The sailor rubbed his nose thoughtfully. ‘Throw out the anchor,' he suggested.

‘Throw out the anchor!' cried the Conductor. ‘Alright then, try it.'

Poor old Mathers heaved the anchor out of a large canvas bag and lowered it – all fifty feet of it – over the side of the car until it clanged on the rails. At a sign from the Conductor the men on Platform Seven let out the rope and the basket descended with a bump to the ground.

‘Oh dear, oh dear!' The Conductor peered down at them. ‘Is that what you did on board ship, Mathers? Drop the anchor and ascend among the coral reefs?'

‘No sir.'

‘Renan, what do we do to ascend?'

‘Throw out Mathers,' Jacques replied cheekily, ‘I mean ballast.'

‘Right then, off you go.'

Jacques threw out a sandbag and the balloon gently ascended until it was halfway up between the platform and the girders. It spun a little as they all looked up at it.

‘You've gone a little too high, Mathers. What would you do to correct it?'

‘Sit still and don't move!' the sailor replied nervously, his nose just visible over the basket.

The Conductor sighed and gestured to the men on Platform Seven. The basket spun and jerked from side to side until Mathers' nose looked decidedly green.

‘Renan?'

Jacques pulled an imaginary valve line. ‘Lose a little gas, sir.'

‘Correct.' The balloon dipped slightly. ‘You are above the clouds, Renan, please describe what you see.'

Jacques called out over the basket in a clear confident voice. ‘I am at about ten thousand feet. If it is daylight I shall see the shadow of the balloon against the clouds. If it is night I shall see only blackness. The barrow-meter will have lowered because the tempitcha of the air will have grown cooler. I must not remain in cloud too long for fear of vapours adding weight to the balloon.'

‘How does he know all this?' Laurie asked in a whisper and Eveline shrugged her shoulders. Could this be Jacques whom the Brothers despaired of ever teaching the catechism? Jacques who made excuses to evade the washing up and making his bed? Jacques who carved his autograph on the legs of the school desk and stowed half-eaten apples in the spine of his spelling book? She felt proud yet a little guilty: she hadn't ever really listened to him when he warbled on about the balloons, too busy with her own cares and concerns.

‘He's a natural,' said Alphonse, thumbing his nose at the little urchin in the air.

The Conductor fixed his eye on Mathers. ‘You've had to land in a violent storm. How do you deflate the balloon all at once to stop it dragging you away to certain death?'

‘Throw out the grapnel rope, sir,' said Mathers with utmost confidence. ‘Throw out the grapnel.'

From the look on the Conductor's face it was obviously the wrong answer. Laurie felt a little sorry for the man crouched up there in his basket. It must be very confusing being spun and pulled in all directions. He knew for a fact he wouldn't want to do it.