Rutherford Park (35 page)

The man made a typically Gallic noise of dismissal. “She has not lived here for some time.”

“But she owned this house.”

The man laughed. “Owned?” he echoed. “She took the upper rooms. She owned nothing.”

William looked shocked. “And her son?”

“Wherever they go, they go together.”

William and Harry glanced at each other. “Do you know where she is now?” Harry asked.

“Past the church somewhere,” the old man replied vaguely, waving his hand. “On Rue Foyatier, so I’m told.”

“Which number?”

“How should I know?” The maid began to close the door. Behind it, they heard the old man hiss, “Foreigners.”

William tried to put his shoulder to the panel, but the door was
locked tight in his face. “We are your allies,” he called loudly. “If we are foreigners, then we are foreigners who will fight for France.” There was no reply. They heard the retreating footsteps of both the maid and her employer, and another door closing within the house. Briefly, William rested his forehead on the door. “And will die for her in our thousands,” he muttered to himself. Then, abruptly, he seemed to remember that Harry was at his side, and he straightened up, catching his son’s arm. “Rue de Foyatier,” he instructed.

They climbed the hill; it was by then past midnight. In the barred shadows cast by the moonlight they looked down the long, long drop of steps and the dark houses alongside.

Two gendarmes materialized from the shadows of the street. “Papers,” said the nearest man.

William took out their passports. “I am with the British Embassy,” he said.

They peered at him and Harry. “Permits, if you please.”

“I have none,” William confessed. He gave his name and explained that Harry was his son.

“What is your business at this hour?”

“I have come from England to find my daughter. She is missing.”

There was much sucking of breath and shaking of heads. “M’sieur, the streets must be clear by eight at night. You understand? You must go back to your hotel.”

They saw that further protest was useless. Turning away, Harry said, “No one in their right minds will open up to us now anyway, and we don’t know which number.”

William conceded defeat. “We’ll try again in the morning.”

* * *

T
he fourth of August dawned cool and showery, with a brisk wind blowing in the street.

William and Harry breakfasted quickly in an almost empty restaurant; on one of the pavement seats a raddled, florid-faced woman cuddled her dog and blew it kisses. When they got up to leave, she blew them a kiss too. “English?” she asked. “I very much love English boys,” she called after them. “For many years.” And she laughed.

At the tobacconist’s where William stopped to buy cigars, the man serving them was wringing his hands with anxiety. Many of his shelves were empty. “I have to go and register,” he told them. “I was born in Trieste, but I was brought here as a child. They can’t make me go back there.”

“Do they have that power?” Harry asked.

The man almost squealed in despair. “They have power!” he exclaimed. “We have to go home. That’s what they call it. But I’m Parisian, you understand? I don’t know Trieste, you see? I know no one there—it is absurd!”

They left him voicing his same complaints to the next customer. People were crowding the street, some with pinched and worried faces, others with expressions of superior fortitude. They heard more than one murmured conversation recalling the last Prussian invasion of Paris. “I shall raise another barricade,” an old man cried to a circle of younger friends on the pavement. They closed around him, and a middle-aged soldier, wearing a greatcoat hung with medals, curled a placatory arm around his shoulders, but the teenagers in the group glanced at William and Harry with fearful, confused faces.

William frowned. “We must call on the embassy. We must ensure our permits,” he told Harry.

“Now?”

“Not now. Helene now.”

They trudged back the way they had gone the night before, the mere four hours of sleeping telling on their pace. At Rue de Foyatier, they knocked on half a dozen doors before anyone had heard
of Helene. They were pointed down the hill, where the large houses became smaller, and to a green door behind a dilapidated railing.

It seemed an age before the door opened to their repeated knocks. But eventually Helene herself stood before them, a shawl clutched to her, her eyes red rimmed. Her mouth dropped open in shock when she saw who it was. “William!” she said. “What are you doing here?” She edged past them and looked along the street as if she had been expecting someone else, and was fearful of that person now appearing. Then she plucked the shawl closer around herself and raised her chin in the old head-tilted way with her smiling, mocking expression, as if she were the center of attention at some garden party, and not standing with uncombed hair and slippered feet at the street door.

William was not in the mood for conversation. “Where is Louisa?” he demanded.

“Louisa?” she said. “How should I know?”

“She’s in Paris,” Harry interrupted furiously.

“She is?” Helene looked from one to the other. “Why?”

“Let us inside.” William barged past her into a gloomy hall. He walked forward, opening doors into rooms empty of furniture. At the end of the corridor, just before the steps to the kitchen, he turned to face her. “What is this?”

She shrugged. “It is my refuge.”

“From what?”

She looked away from him. “It is temporary.”

“I see,” he said. “You have been let down.”

“You might say so.” She gave a tremulous smile. “And if you don’t mind, William, I should prefer that you leave. I am expecting someone.” William nodded. He looked her up and down, raising an eyebrow; she blushed a deep color and turned away. “Well,” she said. “You have a little victory. I am as you see me, alone.”

“I wish no kind of victory,” William told her. “I only want my daughter. Where is Charles?”

She turned back to him. “You’ve come through Paris, I suppose. Can’t you guess?”

“Has he been called up?” Harry asked, suddenly realizing what she meant.

“All reservists are called up.”

“But he was working in London.”

She frowned in puzzlement. “Yes, that is what I mean,” she said. “He came back because he is a reservist. He came back two days ago and stayed here, and he left this morning.”

“This morning? To go where?”

She looked from one to the other again. “I don’t see why it is your business. Why in heaven’s name do you care where Charles is suddenly?” She stared at William pointedly. “You’ve never cared where he is until now, have you?”

Harry stepped forward, eyes bright with anger. “Your son took my sister away. He met her in London and he proposed to her.”

Helene caught her breath, and then began to laugh. “Why, that’s absurd,” she said. “Louisa was not here. He didn’t bring her. He didn’t mention her.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s a lie, a joke.”

“There is no joke,” William said. “Louisa left a letter saying that she was coming to Paris with him. That they were to be married.”

All three stood silently; at last Helene walked away, through a small door to the back of the house. Here, in what should have been the servants’ kitchen, she sat down at a small table where a pitiful breakfast had been laid—bread and coffee and a small bowl of figs. There were two plates, two cups. She waved her hand over them. “He got up at four this morning,” she murmured sadly. “We sat here. He had his orders. He had to go.” She showed them a piece
of paper on which she had written the name of his regiment and the time of the train, holding the sheet tenderly and then, with an unhappy moue of disgust, throwing it across the table towards them. William picked it up.

“There was no mention of Louisa.” Helene said the name with heavy sarcastic emphasis. She looked up at them both. “Perhaps she has made up a story,” she opined, shrugging. “She’s gone away with someone. But not Charles.”

“It’s not a story,” Harry burst out.

She raised a sardonic eyebrow. “How does she know him?”

“They were together in London.”

“Oh, yes? You saw them together?” She glanced at William. “Either of you?”

“No,” William said. “But it’s his description. And he called himself Maurice Frederick.” She frowned, but did not reply.

He put the piece of paper with the train time and the regiment name in his coat pocket. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he drew out the other chair and sat down opposite her. “Helene,” he said quietly, “in all these years, you have never given me the answer to this question. But you must give me the answer now. Much depends on it. Is Charles my son?”

She looked at him steadily. “I do not know.”

He shook his head. “I think that you do. I think that you have allowed me to be in ignorance. Perhaps it has been amusing for you. Perhaps you amuse yourself this way with others. But I must know.”

She remained silent, mouth set in a determined line.

“Good God,” Harry muttered, and he turned away and walked to the window, looking out onto a yard filled with decaying, sun-starved trees.

“Helene,” William prompted, “Louisa has no idea whom she is
with. She believes she may marry this man. She is in love with him. Have pity on her.”

A kind of glittering fury came into Helene’s face. “Pity?” she echoed. “For your child?”

“She is only eighteen.”

Helene barked out a cynical laugh. “Darling,” she replied, “when did you show
me
any pity?” She waved her hand as if to brush away his questioning, confused expression. “I know your opinion of me, in truth,” she continued in a harsh voice. “Oh, you have extended hospitality, I suppose. You have allowed me into your home, though an invitation was not exactly forthcoming. And, although you found me certainly diverting when we met, when we discovered we were of the same blood so long ago—yes, then you found me good enough company, is that not so? The outrageous woman in Paris. Where men of your kind came to have women who would do what Englishwomen would not do. Oh, yes,
then
I was your darling, William. And you cannot deny it.”

“I do not deny it,” William said in a low voice.

“Nor should you,” she exclaimed. She took a moment, and tilted her chin again. “But then, I was not good enough to marry,” she added bitterly.

“You never wished to marry!”

She leaned forward, arms on the table. “And would you have married me, William?” He said nothing, but dropped his gaze from her face. She smiled coldly. “No, you would not. You married that whispering besotted child, that girl with a fortune instead.”

Silence fell. Harry, hearing his mother described this way, turned slowly back to face Helene. Ignoring his baleful glare, she continued looking at William. “You deserved to be punished,” she said finally. “For treating me with such carelessness.”

At this, William, despite himself, crashed his fist on the table, making her flinch. “With carelessness?” he exclaimed. “I have supported you. You have done all but blackmail me. You have implied that Charles is mine. Tell me the truth.”

A small triumphant smile came to her face. “And now you have lost your daughter,” she said. “How apt. I have lost my son to a war. I may not see him again. And you have lost your child to disgrace.”

Their eyes locked, and at last William saw the truth in her. “He was never mine,” he said.

“No,” she admitted. “Never yours.”

“And all these years…”

“You would not marry me.”

“You never wanted to be married!”

“Did you ask me?” she demanded. “Did you?”

He stared at her in complete bafflement. “You always told me…” he began. “Other men…”

“You did not ask. You married
her
.”

Suddenly, shocking them both, Harry began to laugh. They looked up at him. “It was some other man’s son,” he said. “But none of them would marry you. So you got your revenge on some poor devil in Bergerac by driving him to his death, and you got your revenge on my father by stringing him along for money.”

Helene had sprung to her feet. “You don’t know!” she said. “So do not insult me!”

Harry smiled coldly. “It is not possible to insult a woman like you,” he said.

Helene gasped, and then, after a few seconds, her expression completely crumbled. She slumped back again into her chair. “My son is all I have ever had,” she said, and tears came to her eyes. “He is the one constant of my life. And now he has gone.”

They watched her weep.

“Helene,” said William softly after a moment or two. “Did you tell Charles that I was his father?”

She had pulled a handkerchief from the depths of the dressing gown, and wiped her face. “No,” she murmured. “I told him the truth. He has known for some time. His father died when he was young.”

Harry looked at William with sudden deep sympathy; instinctively, he put his hand on his father’s shoulder; then, in a moment of mutual embarrassment, he dropped it again.

“He was an artist. He died of tuberculosis,” Helene whispered. “He was my love in a way that you were not, and never could be. I met him a month after you had left Paris in 1892; we were together all summer. He died in December, and Charles was born two months premature soon after. So premature that you were able to believe the possibility that Charles might be yours.”

“And allowed me to believe.”

“Yes.”

Harry had been shaking his head in disbelief and disgust. “For money,” he said. “For revenge.”

She made no reply; she leaned her head on one hand and looked past them to the pale morning light from the window. “You have no idea what it is to be alone, and to be a woman making her way alone, and you have no right to condemn me,” she said. She drew herself up a little in her chair. “Revenge is a very tawdry emotion. I have merely been pragmatic. I have done what had to be done to survive.”

“And Charles?” William asked. “You sent him to me, to Octavia, to cause trouble between us.”

“I did not,” she said quickly. “He has told me what he did, but I did not approve of it. He has no claim on you.”

“He wanted an inheritance.”