The Sparks Fly Upward (44 page)

‘Can't say her heart was in it,' he said. ‘No appreciation of life's pleasures, that one. You know this is damn ridiculous, don't you?'

She was afraid that it was but
if
Blanchard had betrayed her, he would also have to betray Ffoulkes. He must view the knowledge Condorcet had of him as an infection that had been passed on to her and from her to Ffoulkes. The man could not allow them to ruin him by bringing it back to England where he would be damned as a traitor. She supposed it all depended on whether he put his friend's life above his own. From her experience of the man, she doubted it.

Of course, he would have had to have acted quickly and so would the Committee of Public Safety if it was to have laid a trap outside The League's Paris lair. But Ffoulkes had come by the long route of Babbs Cove to Gruchy. Blanchard could have sent his letter or his agent the quickest way, via Dover to Calais.

‘There it is.' They were approaching a shaded alley leading off the other side of the road. ‘House on the corner. A small thing but we call it home.'

She made him pause while she inspected the place from across the way. It was safe enough to do it; the lane they were in was congested with people, some looking up to where a poet was declaiming his ode to the Republic from the overhanging window of a café, some listening encouragingly to a mother who was dictating a letter for her soldier son to a street scribe. A man leading a donkey cart down the narrow street was having a sweaty altercation about his right of way with two others who were rolling barrels up it. The noise was such that she and Ffoulkes could confide into each other's ears, like lovers, without behind overheard.

From what she could see of the house, The League had chosen well. There was a front door leading into the alley and a side door that gave on to the street she was in. A window above a gable showed that there was yet another escape route, this one leading to adjoining roofs.

Ffoulkes's beard tickled her ear. ‘Satisfied? Can't ask you in, sadly. Have to change into my business clothes. Old soldiers ain't expected to call in on graphite importers. I'm away at the moment, in Canada, negotiating for some. Graphite's good business, actually; I'm thinking of going into it in real life.'

‘Mmm.' It looked well enough but from here she couldn't see down the alley; there might be a dozen watchers in its depths. If there were, did they have Ffoulkes's description? On the other hand, even she hadn't recognized him at first. ‘Let's just walk past the door, make sure.'

‘God Almighty.' But he crossed the street with her and they ambled into the alley together. It was rather charming; a dusty but willing fig tree splayed shadow over the dipped stones. The narrow terraced houses on both sides prickled with signs displaying the trade carried on in their ground floors—a huge, leather boot, a barber's pole, an enormous pair of spectacles. Down the far end, at a small smithy, a horse was being shod, its reins attached to a ring in the wall, watched by a man in shirtsleeves sitting on a bucket. They might have stepped into a tiny village.

Philippa felt silly; the place was a cul-de-sac—by entering and leaving they would attract suspicion. Then she thought, I've lived in fear too long. Ordinary people aren't suspicious.

Ffoulkes solved the matter by advancing towards the man on the bucket. ‘Hey,
copain
, where in hell's the bloody section house around here?'

‘Next street, bottom of the hill.' The yelled exchange made the horse nervous and the man had to get up to help the smith calm it. ‘
Holà
, you bugger.
Holà.
'

They walked off, Philippa feeling silly. ‘Well,' she said, defensively, ‘there
could
have been somebody there.' As a recompense, she would have to take him home to Mme Vernet. There would be no danger in harboring him while he changed into his business clothes.
And I don't mind so much now. I don't want him to go. Damn.

They went back up the hill, making for Gravediggers by cutting through the deserted square outside Saint Sulpice. As they crossed, he swerved and sat down on one of the benches.

‘What is it? What's the matter?' she asked.

‘There was,' he said.

‘There was what?'

‘Somebody there.' He looked up at her without seeing her. ‘Fella on the bucket. He's a Sûreté man. Seen him before. Had to give him the slip once. Followed me and Snuffy Throgmorton through the length of Les Halles.'

‘Are you sure?' She couldn't believe she'd proved her point, now couldn't bear it that she had.

‘Bloody great mole on his upper lip.' He had a hand over his forehead and was gasping, like someone who'd just been sick. ‘Jesus,' he said, ‘Jesus God.'

Philippa sat down and put her arm round his shoulders, holding him close. An elderly woman came up to them, full of sympathy. ‘
Le pauvre. Un blessé de guerre?'

‘Oui, madame
.' He was, after all, badly wounded. ‘
Mais il se port bien mieux maintenant.'

‘
Cette guerre, quelle peste, quelle peste
.' The woman walked away, shaking her head sadly.

After a while he managed to control his breathing but he still wouldn't move, just stared sightlessly at the Florentine frontage of the church—an ugly thing, Philippa had always considered. ‘We ought to go,' she said gently. She had to get him indoors before Citizen Marcoz came home—it wouldn't do to load that conscience by presenting it with yet another man with a price on his head.

Ffoulkes got up at last and she guided him into the lane that crossed the bottom of Gravediggers, looked to see if the street was empty and tried to hurry him up the hill. They'd left his walking stick on the bench, she realized; just as well he'd forgotten it, since he didn't seem to be aware that he was walking at all.

She had to prop him against the wall, like a drunk, while she unlocked the wicket gate and went into the courtyard to see if Citizen Marcoz was in his lodge. The deputy kept his door key under a flowerpot by his door. It was still there; he wasn't home yet.

She returned to the street. Ffoulkes hadn't moved. ‘Jesus God,' he said again.

‘Get in,' she said, and pushed him through the wicket, holding his head down so that he didn't hit it, went in behind him and took him to Mme Vernet to be mended.

 

 

SHE had been afraid that he would interrupt the ordered tenor of life at Number Fifteen and he did—for her, at least.

Mme Vernet took him in her stride. There was, of course, little else she could do. Since this stranger knew of Condorcet's presence in her house, it was better that he, too, be sheltered in it rather than risk arrest by the National Guard while wandering the streets. Philippa had presented her with a fait accompli—he was here, the damage was done—but she accepted it gracefully.

She asked to interview Ffoulkes alone in the parlour, a session he later described as ‘like being questioned by the Inquisition, without the thumbscrews.'

Afterwards, Philippa, who was preparing supper in the kitchen, heard her escort Ffoulkes upstairs. She waited with trepidation. When Mme Vernet came back, she began setting the table, only the pecking tic of her lips showing that she was disturbed. ‘I have put your young man in the attic.'

‘Not my young man,' Philippa said, hastily. ‘A family friend. Madame, I am sorry. I didn't know what else to do.'

Mme Vernet ignored that. ‘It appears that M Collet has aided others in avoiding execution,' she said.

‘Collet?' From the first she had been anxious that her hostess be aware that she was taking in a guest equally as dangerous as Condorcet himself and had told her that he was English and a wanted man.

‘Geoffre Collet, corporal, is the name on his papers,' Mme Vernet said without emphasis. ‘I am required to know nothing more about him other than the fact that he helps to take those in danger out of the country.'

Philippa marvelled that Ffoulkes had told the woman that much. The boots of most of The League's clients had stamped too hard and too often on the faces of those they ruled to meet Mme Vernet's requirement of virtue. Perhaps he hadn't gone into detail.

Anyway, Mme Vernet, it appeared, was making the best of a bad job, her mouth pecked away at what could be salvaged. ‘I have elicited his assurance that when the time comes he will assist both you and the gentleman upstairs to England and that until then he will do nothing to put us in further danger; he will not, in fact, leave the house.' For the first time, she sighed at the burden she carried. ‘It will not be long, I believe. We are on our last chapter.'

Daringly and with gratitude, Philippa kissed her. Even more daringly, she teased her. ‘Did you find him virtuous?'

Mme Vernet did not smile back. ‘Competent,' she said.

In a way, Philippa decided, Mme Vernet was relieved that Condorcet would be in experienced hands when he went and, furthermore, in those of a man. For all that she upheld the ideal of liberty, fraternity and equality, for all that she could wipe the floor with most of the male sex, Mme Vernet still believed that men were the lords of creation and was happier to leave them in charge of it.

Nevertheless, there was no doubt that, while he remained, Ffoulkes's presence had sharpened the knife edge on which the household balanced.

‘He has retired for the night,' Mme Vernet said, ‘He refuses supper. I suggest you take this tray up to M Condorcet and tell him about the new arrival.'

Ffoulkes might not have been hungry but he hadn't gone to bed. Nor did he. As she reached the landing with Condorcet's tray, Philippa could hear him pacing in his attic room above her. He was still pacing when she went to her own bed.

His world has changed
, she thought. Betrayal was a wickedness that, for him, had existed only outside the enchanted circle in which he'd had his being. It was to be expected of lesser mortals, the French, the lower classes, politicians. But this plunge of the knife had come from Brutus. Now everything must be reassessed; school days, university, the adventure of The League,
especially
The League. When had the poison entered the bloodstream? How far had it spread?

Looking back on his behalf, Philippa saw a telltale stain that went back years; not betrayal as such, but perhaps the envy that had led to betrayal. She remembered that Blanchard had challenged Ffoulkes to a wager on almost everything—which raindrop would reach the sill first, how many apples on a coster's barrow—and won more times than not. If they played for something with the cut of a card, he'd won every time.

Cut you for it, Ffoulkes
.

Trivial things sometimes, others not so trivial. In her presence Ffoulkes had lost a cricket bat to Blanchard and a loved pointer bitch. Snuffy Throgmorton had told her of a prize bull that had passed on the turn of a card and he'd wondered, though without suspicion, what the town-loving Blanchard could possibly want with such an animal.

Damn, Boy, not again. Bloody Monday, you've the devil's own luck
.

Because Andrew, rueful, trusting, had not questioned his friend's honesty, she hadn't, either. What she
had
questioned was how a friend could dispossess another of valued things with such amused callousness. She had put it down to her own lack of understanding of the rough-and-tumble of an exclusively masculine playground.

He's jealous of everything Andrew has
.

And now he knows, too
, she thought, listening to the floorboards of the room down the corridor crack and crack again as the pacing went back and forth.

Is that how it began? Had selling Ffoulkes's trust been the start of a glissade that led to selling people and, in the end, to selling Ffoulkes himself? Or had it been plain old lack of money, to keep up the style of life that other members of The League had inherited and Blanchard had not?

Don't feel sorry for him, she told herself. Yet how terrible to struggle in the mental quicksand that sucked at Blanchard every day. The man was his own punishment; he had imagination beyond anything Ffoulkes would ever experience. He'd recognized her love for Andrew and sympathized for a moment. Loved him, too, probably. And, with mud clogging his own nostrils, hated him for the innocence of the air he breathed.

Let him roast in hell
, she thought, and went to sleep.

 

 

THE next morning Ffoulkes was offhand with her—as if it were her fault, as if, without feminine interference, he and Blanchard could have continued their old relationship. When Mme Vernet offered to take him to Condorcet's room and introduce him, he gave a stiff refusal. ‘Perhaps later, madame.'

The old Philippa would have seethed inwardly, the new one waited until they were alone in the kitchen and faced him with his own illogic. ‘It's not fair. You're blaming me and Condorcet. You'd rather have gone to the guillotine than know that Blanchard was prepared to send you there.'

He was furious. ‘I don't know what's got into you. That's ridiculous. '

By the afternoon he was more reasonable. He begged Mme Vernet's pardon and asked humbly to be presented ‘to the great man.'

Mme Vernet, being occupied in doing something interesting with beans and an onion, gave the job to Philippa.

As she tapped on Condorcet's door, they heard the verbal bookmark—‘n equals nine is provable'—being put into place on the other side of it.