A Place of Greater Safety. Hilary Mantel
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man with never a good word to say about anybody. When Camille came in, he was tapping papers together on Paré’s desk, and at the same time complaining that his wife was putting on weight. Camille saw that he was specially resentful this morning; for here he was, down-at-heel and seedy, and here was Georges-Jacques, with his good broadcloth coat nicely brushed and his plain cravat a dazzling white, with that general money-in-the-bank air of his and that loud posh voice … ‘Why are you complaining about Anna,’ Camille asked, ‘when you really want to complain about Maître d’Anton?’
Billaud looked up. ‘I’ve no complaints,’ he said.
‘Aren’t you lucky? You must be the only man in France with no complaints. Why is he lying?’
‘Go away, Camille.’ D’Anton picked up the papers Billaud had brought. ‘I’m working.’
‘When you were received into the College of Advocates, didn’t you have to go to your parish priest and ask him for a certificate to say that you were a good Catholic?’ D’Anton grunted, buried in his counter-claims. ‘Didn’t it stick in your throat?’
‘“Paris is worth a Mass,”’ d’Anton said.
‘Of course, this is why Maître Billaud-Varennes doesn’t advance himself from his present position. He also would be a King’s Councillor, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He hates priests, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Billaud said. ‘As we’re quoting, I’ll quote for you – “I should like to see, and this will be the last and most ardent of my desires, I should like to see the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest.”’
A short pause. Camille looks Billaud over. He can’t stand him, hardly likes to be in the same room, Billaud makes his skin crawl with distaste and a sort of apprehension that he can’t fathom. But that’s just it – he has to be in the same room. He has to keep seeking out the company of people he can’t stand, it’s become a compulsion. He looks at certain people these days, and it’s as if he’s always known them, as if they belong to him in some way, as if they’re his relatives.
‘How’s your subversive pamphlet?’ he said to Billaud. ‘Have you found a printer for it yet?’
D’Anton looked up from his papers. ‘Why do you spend your time writing things that can never be published, Billaud? I’m not asking to needle you – I just want to know.’
Billaud’s face mottled. ‘Because I can’t compromise,’ he said.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ d’Anton said. ‘Wouldn’t it be better – no, we’ve had this conversation before. Perhaps you should try pamphleteering yourself, Camille. Try prose, instead of poetry.’
‘His pamphlet is called “A Last Blow against Prejudice and Superstition”,’ Camille said. ‘Doesn’t look as if it will be quite the last blow, does it? Looks as if it will be about as successful as all those dismal plays he wrote.’
‘The day when you –’ Billaud began.
D’Anton cut him off. ‘Let’s have some quiet.’ He pushed the pleadings at Billaud. ‘What is this rubbish?’
‘You teach me my business, Maître d’Anton?’
‘Why not, if you don’t know it?’ He tossed the papers down. ‘How was your cousin Rose-Fleur, Camille? No, don’t tell me now, I’m up to here.’ He indicated: chin height.
‘Is it hard to be respectable?’ Camille asked him. ‘I mean, is it really gruelling?’
‘Oh, this act of yours, Maître Desmoulins,’ Billaud said. ‘It makes me quite ill, year after year.’
‘You make me ill too, you ghoul. There must be some outlet for your talents, if the law fails. Groaning in vaults would suit you. And dancing on graves is always in request.’
Camille departed. ‘What would be an outlet for his talents?’ Jules Paré said. ‘We are too polite to conjecture.’
AT THE THÉÂTRE DES VARIÉTÉS the doorman said to Camille, ‘You’re late, love.’ He did not understand this. In the box-office two men were having a political argument, and one of them was damning the aristocracy to hell. He was a plump little man with no visible bones in his body, the kind that – in normal times – you see squeaking in defence of the status quo. ‘Hébert, Hébert,’ his opponent said without much heat, ‘you’ll be hanged, Hébert.’ Sedition must be in the air, Camille thought. ‘Hurry up,’ the doorman said. ‘He’s in a terrible mood. He’ll shout at you.’
Inside the theatre there was a hostile, shrouded dimness. Some disconsolate performers were hopping about trying to keep warm. Philippe Fabre d’Églantine stood before the stage and the singer he had just auditioned. ‘I think you need a holiday, Anne,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, my duck, it just won’t do. What have you been doing to your throat? Have you taken to smoking a pipe?’
The girl crossed her arms over her chest. She looked as if she might be about to burst into tears.
‘Just put me in the chorus, Fabre,’ she said. ‘Please.’
‘Sorry. Can’t do it. You sound as if you’re singing inside a burning building.’
‘You’re not sorry, are you?’ the girl said. ‘Bastard.’
Camille walked up to Fabre and said into his ear, ‘Are you married?’
Fabre jumped, whirled around. ‘What?’ he said. ‘No, never.’
‘Never,’ Camille said, impressed.
‘Well, yes, in a way,’ Fabre said.
‘It isn’t that I mean to blackmail you.’
‘All right. All right, I am then. She’s … touring. Listen, just wait for me a half hour, will you? I’ll be through as soon as I can. I hate this hack-work, Camille. My genius is being crushed. My time is being wasted.’ He waved an arm at the stage, the dancers, the theatre manager frowning in his box. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’
‘Everybody is disgruntled this morning. In your box-office they are having an argument about the composition of the Estates-General.’
‘Ah, René Hébert, what a fire-eater. What really irks him is that his triumphant destiny is to be in charge of the ticket returns.’
‘I saw Billaud this morning. He is disgruntled too.’
‘Don’t mention that cunt to me,’ Fabre said. ‘Trying to take the bread out of writers’ mouths. He’s got one trade, why doesn’t he stick to it? It’s different for you,’ he added kindly. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to write a play, because you’re such a complete and utter failure as a lawyer. I think, Camille dear, that you and I should collaborate on some project.’
‘I think I should like to collaborate on a violent and bloody revolution. Something that would give offence to my father.’
‘I was thinking more of something in the short-term, which would make money,’ Fabre said reprovingly.
Camille took himself into the shadows, and watched Fabre losing his temper. The singer came stalking towards him, threw herself into a seat. She dropped her head, swayed her chin from side to side to relax the muscles of her neck: then pulled tight around her upper arms a fringed silk shawl that had a certain fraying splendour about it. She seemed frayed herself; her expression was bad-tempered, her mouth set. She looked Camille over. ‘Do I know you?’
He looked her over in turn. She was about twenty-seven, he thought; small bones, darkish brown hair, snub nose. She was pretty enough, but there was something blurred about her features: as though at some time she’d been beaten, hit around the head, had almost recovered but would never quite. She repeated her question. ‘Admire the directness of your approach,’ Camille said.
The girl smiled. Tender bruised mouth.