Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien. Hilary Mantel
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Annette thought, that was only for greater verisimilitude. ‘Oh really,’ she said crossly, ‘if you’re going to impersonate Camille, at least get it right. If you go on like that you’ll get a crick in your neck.’ Adèle put her hand over her mouth, and snorted with mirth. ‘You’ve got to do it like this,’ Annette said, demonstrating. ‘You don’t simultaneously toss your head back and shake the hair out of your eyes. The movements are actually quite separate.’
Lucile tried it, smirking. ‘You could be right. Adèle, you have a go. Stand up, you have to stand up to get the effect.’
The three women jostled for the mirror. They began to splutter with laughter, then to shriek and wail. ‘Then there’s this one,’ Lucile said. ‘Out of my way, minions, while I show you.’ She wiped the smile from her face, stared into the mirror in a rapture of wide-eyed narcissism, and removed an imaginary tendril of hair with a delicate flick.
‘Imbecile,’ her mother said. ‘Your wrist’s at quite the wrong angle. Haven’t you eyes to see?’
Lucile opened her eyes very wide and gave her a Camille-look. ‘I was only born yesterday,’ she said pitifully.
Adèle and her mother staggered around the room. Adèle fell on to Annette’s bed and sobbed into the pillow. ‘Oh, stop it, stop it,’ Annette said. Her hair had fallen down and tears were running through her rouge. Lucile subsided to the floor and beat the carpet with her fist. ‘I think I’ll die,’ she said.
Oh, the relief of it! When for months now, the three of them had hardly spoken! They got to their feet, tried to compose themselves; but as they reached for powder and scent, great gouts of laughter burst from one or the other. All evening they’re not safe: ‘Maître Danton, you know Maximilien Robespierre, don’t you?’ Annette said, and turned away because tears were beginning to well up in her eyes and her lips were twitching and another scream of laughter was about to be born. Maître Danton had this exceedingly aggressive habit of planting a fist on his hip and frowning, while he was talking about the weather or something equally routine. Deputy Maximilien Robespierre had the most curious way of not blinking, and a way of insinuating himself around the furniture; it would be marvellous to see him spring on a mouse. She left them to their self-importance, guffawing inside.
‘So where are you living now?’ Danton inquired.
‘On the rue Saintonge in the Marais.’
‘Comfortable?’
Robespierre didn’t reply. He couldn’t think what Danton’s standard of comfort might be, so anything he said wouldn’t mean much. Scruples like this were always tripping him up, in the simplest conversations. Luckily, Danton seemed not to want a reply. ‘Most of the deputies don’t seem very happy about moving to Paris.’
‘Most of them aren’t there half the time. When they are they don’t pay attention. They sit gossiping to each other about clarifying wine and fattening pigs.’
‘They’re thinking of home. After all, this is an interruption to their lives.’
Robespierre smiled faintly. He was not supercilious, he just thought that was a peculiar way of looking at things. ‘But this is their life.’
‘But you can understand it – they think about the farm going to seed and the children growing up and the wife hopping into bed with all and sundry – they’re only human.’
Robespierre flicked a glance up at him. ‘Really, Danton, the times being what they are, I think we could all do with being a bit more than that.’
Annette moved amongst her guests, trying to discipline her grin to a social smile. Somehow it no longer seemed possible to see her male guests as they wished to be seen. Deputy Pétion (self-regarding smirk) seemed amiable; so did Brissot (a whole set of little tics and twitches). Danton was watching her across the room. Wonder what he’s thinking? She had a shrewd idea. She imagined Maître Danton’s drawl: ‘Not a bad-looking woman, considering her age.’ Fréron stood alone, conspicuously alone; his eyes followed Lucile.
Camille, as usual these days, had an audience. ‘All we really have to do is decide on a title,’ he said. ‘And organize the provincial subscriptions. It’s going to come out every Saturday, though more often when events require it. It will be in octavo, with a grey paper cover. Brissot is going to write for us, and Fréron, and Marat. We shall invite correspondence from readers. We shall carry particularly scathing theatre reviews. The universe and all its follies shall be comprehended in the pages of this hyper-critical journal.’
‘Will it make money?’ Claude asked.
‘Oh, not at all,’ Camille said happily. ‘I don’t even expect to cover costs. The idea is to keep the cover price as low as possible, so that nearly everybody will be able to afford it.’
‘How are you going to pay your printer, then?’
Camille looked mysterious. ‘There are sources,’ he said. ‘The idea really is to let people pay you to write what you were going to write anyway.’
‘You frighten me,’ Claude said. ‘You appear to have no moral sense whatever.’
‘The end result will be good. I won’t have to spend more than a few columns paying compliments to my backers. The rest of the paper I can use to give some publicity to Deputy Robespierre.’
Claude looked around fearfully. There was Deputy Robespierre, in conversation with his daughter Adèle. Their conversation seemed confidential – intimate almost. But then – he had to admit it – if you could separate Deputy Robespierre’s speeches at the Riding-School from the deputy’s own person, there was nothing at all alarming about him. Quite the reverse really. He is a neat, quiet young man; he seems equable, mild, responsible. Adèle is always bringing his name into the conversation; she must, obviously, have feelings towards him. He has no money, but then, you can’t have everything. You have to be glad simply to have a son-in-law who isn’t physically violent.
Adèle had found her way to Robespierre by easy conversational stages. What were they talking about? Lucile. ‘It’s fearful,’ she was saying. ‘Today – well, today was different, actually we had a good laugh.’ I won’t tell him what about, she decided. ‘But normally the atmosphere’s quite frightening. Lucile’s so strong-willed, she argues all the time. And she’s really made her mind up on him.’
‘I thought that, as he’d been asked here today, your father was softening a little.’
‘So did I. But now look at his face.’ They glanced across the room at Claude, then turned back and nodded to each other gloomily. ‘Still,’ Adèle said, ‘they’ll get their way in the end. They’re the kind of people who do. What worries me is, what will the marriage be like?’
‘The thing is,’ Robespierre said, ‘that everyone seems to regard Camille as a problem. But he isn’t a problem to me. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had.’
‘Aren’t you nice to say so?’ And yes, isn’t he, she thought. Who else would venture so artless a statement, in these complicated days? ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Look over there. Camille and my mother are talking about us.’
So they were; heads together, just like in the old days. ‘Matchmaking is the province of elderly spinsters,’ Annette was saying.
‘Don’t you know one you could call in? I like things done correctly.’
‘But he’ll take her away. To Artois.’
‘So? One may travel there. Do you think there’s a steep cliff around Paris, and at Chaillot you drop off into hell? Besides, I don’t think he’ll ever go back home.’
‘But what about when the constitution’s made, and the Assembly dissolves?’
‘I don’t think it will work like that, you see.’
Lucile watched. Oh, mother, she thought, can’t you get any closer? Why don’t you just grapple him to the carpet, and have done