Napoleon's Last Island (17 page)

The problem was that Jane, aghast and believing herself right, reported the scene to my father. Rare anger suffused his face. I began to argue my case well – or at least I thought so. ‘You don't know and can't judge. He wanted me to play with the sword like that. Ask him! Go to him and ask him!'

My punishment, he prescribed, was to miss the proposed ball at Plantation House, envisaged as a levee of welcome for the Ogre. But even that did not stick in the end since Napoleon talked him round. The matter of the ball, however, would provide further asinine exchanges between the Emperor and me. If the reader believes that I am making some special claim over the antic regions of the Emperor's soul, then be assured that is precisely what I am doing. I was utterly convinced I was the playmate from the childhood he had never had and which he now possessed the time to pursue. My father's connection with him would be a far more substantial one in many ways, based on serious arrangements, and bearing serious consequences. And his connection to my mother … Well, that will be told.

Nor did the madness between us end with the incident of the sword. One day we had the Count Las Cases and Emmanuel to tea, along with the Emperor, Pierron having provided the cakes
even to our household and the Balcombes merely the china tea. I suggested a game of hide-and-seek, since that seemed best designed to discomfort the count, and the Emperor instantly agreed to it. There was no consultation with his chamberlain. There was no claim that he needed to get on with his history. As yet, it was rumoured, he lacked all the reference books that he required, and the bound
Bulletins of the Imperial Army
that would be of great guidance and act as an accelerator of the work, were still on their way to him. Thus if he might not in the future have time for us, the limitations of the library gave him the leisure now to play yet another child's game.

Later I would hear it argued, and above all see it written, that on the island the Emperor used his natural ease with other human beings as a means of gaining allies who could then plead his case in England, France and Austria. But what power did young Thomas, Will and Alexander have to speak for him before those high potentates? The truth was that a great deal of his ally-making was as natural to him as his own breath, and his power to win souls over had no higher purpose when they were the souls of children or slaves or servants or householders, none of whom had any management of the gales of opinion which swept the earth.

‘Come join us, Emmanuel,' he called to Las Cases' son, and the boy rose and did his best to be enthusiastic, ever desiring to be a good playmate.

The Emperor began to count loudly to allow us to scatter, and I saw as I ran for the back of the grape arbour that Emmanuel looked around as if he lacked the capacity to conceal himself. At last he simply descended to his knees and crawled under the table on which we had had tea, where his best protection was the neutral face his father directed at the abandoned tea and cakes.

It struck me that poor Emmanuel was no more to blame for his inability to play than the tone-deaf are for theirs to carry a song. An impulse to educate him in the automatic rituals of children rose in me as an urgent task, given his condition as a born adult and the competing fact that each morning now my mother quizzed me about whether anything had flowed from my body to signal that my childhood was over.

But with the cruelty of my years and my uncertainty about what a friendship with a boy his age would mean, I decided in the end not to give him the slightest merciful training in childhood. The Emperor, however, had plans to supply the lack. When he found me behind one of the maples he held me by the wrist and called to Emmanuel Las Cases, who crawled out from under the tea table like a summoned orderly, and at a nod from his father, ran to where we were.

When he arrived, the Emperor demanded, ‘Kiss this young woman, Emmanuel. She is shy and pretends a lack of interest in you, my young count, even to the extent of feigned enmity.'

I could think of nothing more obscene and struggled in his grasp, but he was determined to have it as a game. That was fine for him. It was an outrage for me. And with the heat of being so held, I felt at the same time the heat of rejection, in being defined as the object of kisses from a boy who had never known the gifts of childhood, when I had thought that I was somehow a freestanding votary of the Ogre himself, a votary who showed my devotion by repeated mischief. And now it was a child summoned to kiss me!

The Emperor's laughter filled the garden and as I struggled, I could smell his particular sweat, and the amalgam it made with his perfume water. I saw his teeth, darkened with liquorice, as he kept roaring in command and hilarity for pathetic young Las Cases, and in the end the strange boy did step forward and I could smell that he had had peppermint, and he lunged and laid his lips against my cheek, making a little squeak to go with it, and only to please his Emperor. The ninny was doing it like the Imperial Guards charging a redoubt, and his dutifulness made it all worse.

I felt a sense of outrage once the kiss had been consummated and I heard the Emperor hooting, while I choked on the bile of this cruelty disguised as play.

‘Quick, Emmanuel, run,' cried the Emperor. ‘Run, my boy!'

The younger Las Cases' face was flaming unattractively now. The Ogre pretended he was on the verge of losing hold of me. Whether he knew it or not, he had inflicted a scalding memory
on both of us, and now the young count did turn and fled, taking to the steps, into the door of the Pavilion and up the ladder to his room, where he knew I was not permitted to enter.

Meanwhile, the Emperor had begun to count to ten, and as he released his hold on me I lashed out at him with my elbows, and then ran across the lawn and up the stairs and entered the Pavilion. I was bewildered. This had been a serious ploy of the Ogre's. Stealing his sword hadn't been enough vengeance to balance it. But I could not pursue the younger Las Cases to his room. I ran out of the Pavilion again and up the lawn and into the house, aware at every step of my awful pantaloons. I went to my bedroom, calling on Sarah to help undress me. Later Jane came in.

‘Why were you so distressed?' asked Jane. ‘It was only a bit of byplay.'

It was as if she had been won over to the imperial side. I could not have explained to her, or even begin to explain to my mother, who came in to speak to me later and to solace me, the nature of my grievance. Nor could I understand my night tears and my sleeplessness, with that childish mark of the young count's mouth on my cheek and with the itch of vengeance crackling away under my skin.

In the morning Gourgaud was at the door with a note from the Emperor, a message of apology to my mother, saying that he had perhaps teased me too far, and in reparation he requested the company of Jane and myself that evening to play whist in the Pavilion, until now forbidden to us – though I had broken the prohibition the night before. Even so it was as if he were graciously opening up all his territory to the Balcombe girls. For though the Pavilion belonged to my father, or, more accurately, to the East India Company, it did not
seem
to do so under this new arrangement.

I could refuse to go, but my mother kept asking me to explain why I was reluctant. I was unable then to clarify my chagrin. So off I went to the Pavilion, in a strange mood of vigilance and sense of recrimination, and in inner sullenness.

As we entered, we were warmly greeted by the Ogre himself and by General Gourgaud. Gourgaud was happiest in the evenings, when General Bertrand and the Count de Montholon were down in the valley of Jamestown with their wives at Porteous's boarding house. I noticed that Las Cases had been seated in a corner and given the job of maturing the cards at a side table, obediently spinning them out of his hand, taking the edge off them until they could be dispensed smoothly.

‘My partner will be Jeanne,' announced the Emperor, ‘because I can depend on her not to impale with a sword.'

He had already announced that we would play for money – for five francs Napoleons. He said he would have some brought to us if we needed them. But we had had a few of these coins presented to us a year before by a ship's captain who knew my father, so I brought them out of my locket and plonked them on the table, I suppose, like a fishwife or tavern-owner's daughter.

We sat at table – I was teamed with the odious Gourgaud – as Las Cases delivered the cards.

We were in the strange situation of gambling money which carried my adversary's profile, a laurel wreath encircling his receding hair, thin in the years of power as it now was in exile. Our bets were placed and the Emperor declared, ‘Very well.'

Gourgaud and I won the first game, and the Ogre must have considered that adequate reparation to me, for in the second game he began to peep under his cards as they were dealt here, held up his best ones for Jane to see, and distracted Gourgaud and me with small squeaks and moans, and sudden comic movements I did not find funny. They showed, however, that the tit-for-tat games were not done with, since in these situations the child's play ends only in the emotional collapse of one infant and the chastisement of the other. Yet there was no one to chastise the Ogre.

Now he revoked – that is, failed to follow suit, despite being able to, which I knew from having counted the cards so earnestly, like the young fool I was.

I said to him, ‘You have cards in that suit. I know it and so do you.'

He made the normal banal denials – ‘Me? I am a simple fellow, Betsy.' He was so delighted with himself that his laughter came nearly to choke him, and amidst it he demanded in a throttled voice that I pay up my Napoleons to Napoleon. At last Cipriani entered and told us that refreshments were ready in the marquee below.

Las Cases was still sitting at the table, observing the game with all the solemnity as if his master had been negotiating a treaty with the Tsar of Russia. I was sure that he blamed the Emperor's frivolity on my influence.

The Ogre sent his servant Ali St Denis to summon young Las Cases from his garret. ‘We can't leave little Emmanuel out,' the Ogre told me dolefully. ‘He yearns for his mother, as indeed do I for mine.'

I was desperate that our reciprocal madness should now end, though I could not yet see how that could be managed. When everyone was gathered, we left the Pavilion and descended the steps towards the marquee. I hung back. I refused the courtly invitation of Las Cases and Gourgaud to precede them, and left the Pavilion sullenly, behind the young Las Cases who, with averted eyes, had invited me to go ahead. Since I would not accept this graciousness, he shrugged briskly and went out himself.

The pathway down to the lawn level was of flat stones, and for decorative effect slaves had been persuaded to border the descent with the island's boulders, black and pocked. These cooled lumps of lava channelled us into a descending single file, the Emperor leading, Gourgaud, Las Cases next, then Jane, Emmanuel and me.

As Jane went, she lightly touched the rocks on either side with outstretched fingers. I now ran down a step and barged into the grey-clothed back of the young count. He fell with his hands out to protect himself, and thus pushed Jane, who collided with the back of the chamberlain, who involuntarily pushed and collided with Gourgaud, and so in that limited defile Gourgaud fell against the Ogre, achieving his normal wish of being as close to the man as possible, while I believed I had now made the conclusive gesture.

Emmanuel, who had fallen heavily not only against Jane but also against one of the volcanic rocks, righted himself and turned on me and hurled me back against the boulders. Almost at once the boy's father loomed up behind him, glowering at me. The impact with the rock had expelled all the air from my lungs. I thought breathlessly, I haven't killed the Ogre but his stupid boy has killed me.

Getting some air back, and being convinced of my own survival, I called out like someone who had suffered a mortal indignity,

‘Oh Boney, this Emmanuel creature has hurt me.'

The mood of mischief had obviously not worn off the Emperor and he leaped up and climbed the stairs again in his normal agile way, the others, having recovered their balance, making way for him.

‘Who did the pushing?' he asked. And then, his dark eyes not done with sport, he looked at young Las Cases. ‘This brute?'

‘It was all an accident,' I told him. ‘I tripped, and Emmanuel turned on me.'

He wrapped his arms around the young Las Cases and said, ‘Betsy, you may punish him.'

And though I knew him somehow a victim too, I began to hit Emmanuel across the face, feeling his flesh like a shock, and then to slap him open-handedly across his body, liking the impact against his clothing better, doing him no harm but immensely damaging his dignity. By the lights from the Pavilion I saw tears on his face, and felt the urge to stop and make an alliance with him against all of them, but yet again swallowed. Behind me I heard Count Las Cases ask the Emperor, ‘Your Majesty?' He wanted clemency for his boy.

The Ogre let go and the young count made off to the Pavilion.

His father came up and asked the Emperor to forgive him, and asked whether he could join his son. Before he left, he turned to me and said in English, ‘You are a disgrace, mademoiselle. My son is in delicate health.'

I felt something within me break with a snap I was sure could be heard. ‘Am I to blame for your own child?' I demanded.

I walked away wordlessly back to the house, wanting them all dead and reduced to ashes, but not as passionately as I desired death for myself. It seemed to me that my life had become impossible since the Ogre had expanded to take up all its cubic volume, and there was no corner in which there was a remaining habitation for me, merely the bed in which I desired to expire.

I lay with a hot brow in my bed all that night, and did not sleep, and then lay there through a day in which I did, in a profound slumber, and then through another night, sticking determinedly to unconsciousness. I was confident, however, that I had broken the enchantment. My mother visited me regularly and stroked my brown hair, which I'd inherited from her. I would have been in trouble with her had my mental state, my collapse from the effort of removing my childhood from the Ogre's, not been so grievous.