Illumination Read online

  ‘What in blazes is naïve about it? Your plan was to deliver me to this Chelsea hermit of yours – to have him fashion me into a bare-breasted fancy for some banker to pant over in his study – so that he’d permit you to write a book about him and breathe life back into your wretched career!’

  Hannah was shouting now. Parakeets flapped and squawked in their cages; a stripe-tailed mammal scurried into a rear parlour. All conversation in the drawing room had ceased somewhere around ‘bare-breasted fancy’. Gentlemen’s shoes thudded across the faded rug; they were acquiring an audience. Aware that their host would be in it, and had probably heard her daughter’s pronouncements, Elizabeth rose to his defence.

  ‘The Venus may not be to your taste, Hannah – and you are, let us be honest here, very particular – but you must surely appreciate the thinking behind it. Beauty, that is Gabriel’s creed: the creation of an art that is independent from religion, from morality, from every conventional form. An art that exists only for itself.’

  ‘An art, you mean, that has been entirely severed from reality – that exists only in a perverse, febrile dream! At least the French painters he so disdains engage with life, with what is around them, whereas that daub in there – it’s like this damned house. It is a retreat from the world, an evasion, a refusal to—’

  A loud snort of amusement from the drawing room knocked Hannah off her stride. Elizabeth seized the chance to retaliate, asking what her daughter would have instead – pictures of pot-houses and rookeries, of dead dogs in gutters? – but Hannah found that her will to argue had been extinguished, shaken out like a match.

  ‘You lied to me,’ she said bluntly. ‘You told him nothing about my painting. You brought me here only to serve your own ends.’

  Elizabeth came nearer, lowering her voice. ‘Oh, spare me that injured tone! It was a harmless manipulation that might ultimately have yielded results for us both. You must not be so damnably sensitive, Hannah.’ Her manner softened very slightly. ‘There is hope yet, I believe, if we work in concert. Something can always be salvaged.’

  Hannah almost laughed; she took a backward step, then two more. Elizabeth’s grey eyes had grown conspiratorial, inviting her daughter to join with her as an accomplice – a standard strategy of hers when things went sour. Hannah would not accept.

  The front door was weighty, and its hinges well oiled; the slam reverberated through the soles of Hannah’s evening shoes as she ran down the painter-poet’s path. Elizabeth had insisted she wear her hair up, to show off the line of her neck. The real reason for this was now obvious; once out on Cheyne Walk she took an angry satisfaction in pulling it loose, the pins scattering like pine needles on the pavement as the ash-blonde coil unravelled across her back. The night was turning cold. Ahead, past the road, a barge chugged along the black river, its bell ringing. Hannah paused beneath a street lamp and considered the walk home: seven miles, eight perhaps, through several unsavoury districts. It was the only bearable option.

  Before she could start, Clement emerged from Tudor House. She watched her twin approach, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, moving from the gloom into the yellow light of her street lamp. His costume bordered on the comical. The formal suit he wore was several years old and cut for a rather more boyish frame; the necktie was escaping from his collar and threatening to undo itself altogether. It invariably fell to Clement to serve as the Pardy family’s mediator, a role that fitted him little better than his suit; he was an awkward peacemaker, prone to vagueness and the odd contradiction, but there was simply no one else to do it. His grin, intended to mollify, looked distinctly sheepish.

  ‘The woman is a monster,’ he began. ‘It cannot be denied.’

  Hannah wasn’t taken in. The aftermath of her ructions with Elizabeth followed a well-established pattern. She crossed her arms and waited.

  ‘I do think she’s embarrassed, though. These people really appear to mean something to her.’

  ‘They are ludicrous. A gang of reptiles.’

  Her brother, unfailingly decent, could not let this pass. ‘I say, Han, that’s hardly fair. A couple of them are pretty remarkable, in their way. There was this one little chap with the most gigantic head, a poet he said he was, who claimed to have—’

  ‘I suppose she is apologising for me?’ Hannah broke in. ‘Begging our host’s forgiveness?’

  Clement tossed away his cigarette. ‘Actually, when I left she was laughing it off – telling them that she had no idea that her daughter had grown so conventional, and asking for suggestions as to how it might be corrected.’

  Hannah made a disgusted sound and walked off towards Westminster.

  ‘Come now, Han,’ pleaded Clement, trotting behind her, ‘hold here for a minute more. You’ve got to look at it from her side. Every one of those fine gentlemen in there knows what she was, how famous and rich and so on. And every one of them knows where she is now. It’s a terrible humiliation for her, really it is.’

  This was his regular line of reasoning and it had worked on many occasions. Elizabeth’s slide from glory, after all, had defined their lives. It had determined their transition to ever smaller houses, in less and less fashionable areas; the slow diminishment of their stock of valuables; the whittling of their domestic staff to a single elderly Irishwoman who washed the linen every other Wednesday. That evening, however, was different. Hannah felt it with unsettling clarity. Her brother’s appeals were not going to win her around.

  ‘I have been waiting for so very long for something to happen, Clem.’ The words came out heavily, slowing her to a stop. ‘She calls herself my best and closest ally. She loves to talk it up as a great cause – a battle waged for the whole of womankind.’ A hot tear collected against her nose. ‘And yet all she does are things like this.’

  Clement put a hand gently on her shoulder. He did his best, telling her that she must not lose heart and that her persistence was bound to bring rewards, but he couldn’t begin to understand. He had no wind driving him – no desired destination in life. Clem was content merely to coast through a seemingly random series of projects that were often adopted and abandoned within the same week. His present fascination, for instance, was with the electric telegraph, leading to obscure experiments with currents and lengths of wire. This mechanical inclination was unprecedented among the Pardys. Knowing nothing of such matters, Elizabeth had left her son more or less alone – a lack of attention that had shaped his character as profoundly as her interference had shaped Hannah’s.

  ‘You must come back, Han, at any rate,’ he concluded, ‘to reclaim your cloak and hat.’

  Hannah shook her head, wiping her eye on the cuff of her gown. Even this was unthinkable. Returning to her mother’s side was a certain return to disappointment, to antagonism and dispute. It was reducing her, wearing her thin. She could not go on with it; she refused to. In her bookcase, between Mrs Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans and Mrs Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, was an envelope containing nearly fifteen pounds, scraped together over the past few years. The purpose of this sum, only half-perceived before that evening, came to her with sudden force. Hannah looked along the river, away from London and everyone in it. She had to act.

  PART ONE

  City of Light

  Paris, September 1870

  I

  The platform was packed with people, well dressed and wealthy for the most part, jostling for places on a train that was about to leave for the provinces. They yelled and shoved, hitting at one another with fists, canes and umbrellas. Banknotes, bribes for the attendants, were being waved in the air like a thousand tiny flags. To Clem, fresh from the Calais express with a valise in each hand, the scene was positively apocalyptic. He stopped and tried to get his bearings.

  ‘Head left,’ Elizabeth shouted in his ear, pushing him forward. ‘We want the rue Lafayette.’

  The cab smelled of rice powder and a sickly citrus perfume. Clem heaved the bags up on the luggage rack and flopped into
a corner, reaching inside his pocket for a cigarette. Opposite him, his mother had arrayed herself in her customary fashion: perched in the exact centre of the seat so that she had a clear view from both windows, with a notebook in her lap to record her observations. She began to write, lips slightly pursed, the pencil scurrying from one side of the page to the other and then darting back. Clem pulled open the window next to him and lit his cigarette. His ribs were sore, bruised most likely; he’d been elbowed a good few times as he struggled across the seething concourse.

  ‘Deuced keen to get off, weren’t they? One would think the city was already burning.’

  ‘Those who grew fat under the Empire,’ declared Elizabeth, ‘who benefited the most from all that corruption and carelessness, are scattering like geese now that something is being asked of them in return.’

  ‘Well,’ said Clem, ‘that’s certainly one way of looking at it.’

  A vast military camp had been established in the streets around the Gare du Nord. Once-elegant avenues were choked with tents and huts, their trees stripped bare to fuel the fires that dotted the promenades, blackening the stonework with smoke. Soldiers sat in their hundreds along the pavements; peering down at them, Clem saw teenaged farmhands in ill-fitting blue tunics, their grubby faces vacant, rifles propped against their shoulders.

  ‘Lord above,’ he murmured, ‘there must be an entire division out here.’

  Elizabeth glanced at the mass of infantry for a couple of seconds and then resumed her note-taking. ‘Efficiency must be our watchword,’ she said as she wrote. ‘We’ll meet with Mr Inglis, we’ll go to Montmartre to find her, and then we’ll bring her straight home. Do you hear me, Clement? The three of us will escape this city together.’

  ‘How much does your Mr Inglis know?’

  ‘Simply that I have some urgent business to attend to before this situation with the Prussians comes to a head.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘He isn’t someone I would necessarily choose to place my trust in, but the streets of Paris have been quite transformed since I last numbered among its residents. I doubt I could even find my way from the Madeleine to Notre Dame after Louis Napoleon’s barbaric interferences.’ She finished a page and flipped it over, the flow of words barely interrupted. ‘Mr Inglis, however, has lived on the rue Joubert for longer than anyone cares to remember. His assistance can only speed things along.’

  The cab turned a corner, wheeling from sunlight into shadow; a detachment of field artillery clattered past, the crews shouting to each other from their positions on the mud-encrusted guns.

  Clem had lost the taste for his cigarette. ‘Whatever’s best for Han,’ he said, leaning forward to drop it out of the window.

  They carried on into the heart of fashionable Paris. Clem marvelled at the crisp geometry of the streets, the monumental ranks of six-storey buildings, the endless rows of tall, identical windows; to one used to the crumbling muddle of London, the effect really was staggering. A neat enamelled sign, its white letters set against a peacock blue ground, informed him that they had reached the boulevard des Capucines, generally considered to be among the most splendid of the emperor’s recent redevelopments. It had been kept free of soldiers, but in their place was an atmosphere of singular desolation. The magnificent shops had their shutters down and their awnings rolled; the gutters were clogged with mud and litter; the strolling, stylish crowds had long since fled. Hardly anyone at all could be seen, in fact, and Clem searched about in vain for a porter when they alighted before the Grand Hotel. Elizabeth went inside directly, pushing apart the heavy glass doors, leaving him to pay their driver and carry the bags.

  Clem had friends who swore by the Paris Grand, waxing lyrical about its delightful society and many modern luxuries. That afternoon, though, it was like stepping into the atrium of a failing bank, the air charged with impending disaster. The crystal chandeliers were turned down low to conserve gas. Several of the public rooms had been roped off, the main bar was closed and a sign in front of the lifts informed guests in four languages that they were out of use until further notice. Only a handful of people were passing time there; exclusively male, soberly dressed or in uniform, they conversed quietly over their coffee cups.

  Elizabeth was standing by the reception desk with a tallish man at her side. Some way past forty, with a sandy beard, he was wearing a green yachting jacket and shooting boots. He’d just kissed her hand and had yet to release it; she’d adopted a classic, much-employed pose, angling her head carefully to display her nose and jaw-line to their best advantage. Both were smiling.

  ‘Mr Montague Inglis of the Sentinel,’ Elizabeth said as he arrived before them. ‘Mont, this is Clement Pardy, my son.’

  Clem knew the Sentinel. A popular, rather frivolous paper with pretensions to being upmarket, it catered to those who aspired to a life of dandified loafing. He studied Mr Inglis more closely. The journalist’s practical costume was belied by the costly gloss of his boot leather, the expert barbering of his beard and the diamond in his tiepin: the size of pea, this stone was surely worth more than the Pardy family had to its name. Clem set down the bags and the two men shook hands. Inglis’s oar-shaped face was strangely vicarish, but weathered by fast living; his probing, watery eyes appeared to be running through some unknown calculation.

  ‘Heavens,’ he said, his voice low and slightly hoarse, ‘the last time I saw this young buck he was still messing his britches. First trip to La Ville-Lumière, Clement?’

  ‘It is, Mr Inglis.’

  ‘Damn shame – it’ll very probably be your last as well.’ The journalist switched his attention back to Elizabeth. ‘My dear Mrs P, I must insist that you tell me more about why you’ve picked this moment for a visit. You are aware, I take it, that my poor Paris is doomed?’

  He said this casually, as if confirming a dinner arrangement. Elizabeth’s response was equally light-hearted; she twisted a dyed curl around her finger as she spoke, resting her elbow against the reception desk.

  ‘That would seem to be the case, Mont, would it not? Why, in all my travels I have never seen so many blessed soldiers!’

  ‘Yes, the boulevards have been quite defaced by that godforsaken rabble. Awfully depressing. And the Grand! My God, look at the place! A brilliant company used to assemble here every evening for champagne, billiards, some gossip before the theatre; now they’re all either on the wing or in uniform, out filling sandbags by the city wall.’ Inglis clapped his hands, raising his voice in sardonic triumph. ‘Another capital result for the new republic! Vive la France! Vive la liberté! Bless my soul, I hope that villain Favre and the rest are pleased with what they’ve accomplished.’

  Elizabeth’s smile had grown strained. They were political opposites, Clem realised, despite the show of friendship; Inglis was a supporter of the Empire whose collapse at the beginning of the month had brought his mother such satisfaction. This flirtatious performance would only withstand so much before she felt compelled to strike out. Clem decided that he would change the subject.

  ‘What news of the Prussians, Mr Inglis?’ he asked. ‘How close do the latest reports put them?’

  Inglis ignored him. ‘Madam, I do believe that you have yet to answer me. Why are you in Paris? Is it a new project, a new Mrs Pardy volume after all these years of inaction, so tormenting for your public? An account of my city’s final hours, perhaps?’

  Elizabeth was being goaded; her laugh had an edge. ‘Goodness no, this is not a writing expedition. I am here for my daughter, Mont. Hannah, Clement’s twin. She lives in Paris – has done so for nearly two and a half years.’

  Inglis was unconvinced, but he let the matter go for now. ‘Is she married to a Frenchman? An Englishman with business interests over here?’

  ‘No, she is not.’

  ‘A school, then – some manner of ladies’ college?’

  Clem dipped his head, squinting at his boots; they looked scuffed and cheap against the Grand’s patterned marble floor. This Mr Inglis knew very well that Han
had run away to Paris and was feigning ignorance so that Elizabeth would have to recount the details for him. For all his sociability he was trying to embarrass her.

  Elizabeth, however, refused to be embarrassed. ‘Hannah is a painter,’ she said, her nose lifting, ‘of quite extraordinary ability. She came here because she felt that female artists are taken more seriously in France than in England. She had – she has my complete support.’

  Inglis took this in. ‘And she wishes to return home, does she, to escape the coming trials?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ Elizabeth replied, remaining matter-of-fact. ‘She hasn’t contacted us for some months now. But we did receive this.’

  She nodded at Clem, who reached inside his jacket for the letter – a single sheet covered on both sides with measured handwriting, making its case, in English, with eloquent directness. Both of them knew it almost word for word. Hannah was out of money, it claimed, friendless and destitute, trapped in Paris as the city faced a devastating ordeal that it might not survive. Her nationality would be no guard against a rain of explosive shells, or the lances of the Uhlans as they charged along the boulevards. They were her last and only chance; if they had any love for her they would go with all haste to No. 34 rue Garreau, Montmartre, Paris. It was unsigned, and offered no clues as to the author’s identity.

  ‘That is what brought us to Paris, Mont,’ Elizabeth said. ‘That is why we’re taking this risk.’

  Inglis skimmed the letter, a corner of the page pinched between his immaculately manicured fingertips. ‘She is in Montmartre,’ he said.

  ‘A recent change. The address we had for her was in the Latin Quarter. I don’t know why she has moved.’

  The journalist handed the letter back to Clem, as one might to a butler. ‘Dear lady, you’re in luck. I’m well acquainted with the 18th arrondissement and would be happy to accompany you on this mission of yours. I was up there only yesterday afternoon, in fact, to pay a call on a photographer I know – an associate,’ he added, ‘of the great Nadar.’