back; and besides, he’d gained a definite impression that this fellow might be able to help. The photographer was pretty astute, that much was clear, despite his curtness. His perspective, as a resident of Montmartre who knew a little of Hannah’s life, could be exactly what was required.
If any original observations occurred to Monsieur Besson, however, he kept them to himself. While Clem rambled on he set about preparing his negative plate, coating it with treacle-like collodion, dipping it in silver nitrate and transporting it carefully to the camera.
‘It is good that you are still here, Monsieur,’ he said when Clem had finished, as he pushed in the plate. ‘Your sister may have need of you yet.’
Clem remembered his minute-long exchange with Hannah the previous evening. ‘She would disagree with you there, old man,’ he replied with a rueful chuckle. ‘She would most certainly disagree.’
Besson said no more. Taking off the lens cap, he wordlessly counted down the five seconds needed for an exposure; then he replaced the cap, slid out the plate and retreated again to his tent.
A cry rose from the gates, down in front of their position. Between the houses and the fortifications, Clem could see a dozen or so French infantrymen being led back into the city. They were young, as was every regular soldier in Paris it seemed, and they were plainly under arrest, their hands bound and their faces raw and bloody. Some had placards around their necks; they were deserters, those who’d fled under fire, being returned for punishment. The crowd jeered and spat, throwing whatever bits of rubbish they could find. Clem dropped his cigarette into the dirt and scraped over it with his boot. The battle had been brought disconcertingly close.
Besson emerged from the tent with the dripping negative in his hand. The image captured on the glass was visible against the pale canvas of the tent-flap. It was a failure, the contrast too strong: black rooftops and fortifications in the foreground with little else but whiteness beyond. Besson flexed his wrist and spun the plate towards the railway line, where it shattered against an iron track. He unbuttoned his jacket and sat down heavily on the grass.
‘It is no use. I am no photographer.’
‘Come now,’ said Clem, trying to be consolatory, ‘you know the process well enough. And you have this fine camera.’
‘It is not mine. I borrowed it. I needed the money.’ Besson winced. ‘Foolish.’
‘But you’re an associate of the great Nadar, are you not? Surely that counts for something?’
‘Not with photographs. I let the idiot Inglis think this so that he would employ me. My association with Nadar is in a very different sphere.’ Besson pushed back his hat and with some pride said, ‘I am an aérostier, Monsieur. A member of the Société d’Aviation.’
Clem was dumbstruck. Why the devil hadn’t he realised this sooner? It was virtually bloody signposted. The brittle Monsieur Besson had a clear scientific leaning, yet was also practical in manner and rather weather-beaten: the exact type drawn to ballooning. That strange suit had obviously been made to withstand the mishaps commonly endured by the aeronautical gentleman. The sketch he’d been working on in the cab had been of a gas valve for a balloon.
And then there was his link with Nadar, who had once been quite a name in ballooning circles, almost as prominent as he was among photographers. An exhibition of his innovations at the Crystal Palace a few years ago had inspired in Clem a brief mania for all things air-bound; a bundle of designs for winged dirigibles was still stowed under his bed in St John’s Wood. At the peak of his accomplishments, however, Nadar had been forcibly and very publicly removed from the heavens. There had been an accident on the North Sea coast, with serious injuries – Madame Nadar had only just escaped with her life. Many had chosen to regard it as divine punishment for hubris; Nadar had gone back to his photographs like a man chastened.
‘I thought he’d given it up. You know, after the crash.’
‘He has recovered his nerve,’ Besson said. ‘Nadar considers the balloon, the French mastery of free ballooning, to be a valuable weapon against our enemy. More so, certainly, than the photograph.’ The aérostier turned towards the city. ‘He is airborne now. Right there, above the Buttes Montmartre.’
Clem followed Besson’s pointing finger. Suspended over Paris, over the golden domes and ancient spires and grand boulevards, was a single white sphere, so tiny that it hurt the eyes to pick it out. The basket beneath, the men inside, could not be seen. It looked like a moon that had been fished from the firmament and roped to the earth. Clem stared; he took off his hat. Merely thinking of what it might be like up there, floating alone in that boundless sky, left him dazzled with terror and elation.
‘That one is fixed, of course – for observation only,’ Besson told him, ‘but we have our plans.’
‘Such as what?’ Clem demanded. His mind teemed with visions of bombs being tossed from baskets into the depths of the Prussian positions; of crack troops being delivered straight into the enemy’s headquarters; of cavalry detachments strapped beneath balloons, their hooves dangling in the air. ‘Do tell, Monsieur Besson!’
The Frenchman’s mouth curved downwards, forming a sort of reluctant smile – the first indication that anything resembling a sense of humour might exist within him. ‘We will fly out letters, dispatches, orders to the armies in the provinces. We will bring France together. The Prussians will not silence us, Mr Pardy. We will get word to the world of what they are doing.’
Clem nodded, a little disappointed by this answer. ‘And will you pilot one of these craft yourself?’
‘I will not. We are going to launch a great many balloons, more than the Prussians can count – or chase. Several shops are being set up to make them. There is to be one close to the place Saint-Pierre, in fact, in an abandoned dancing school. That is why I am living there. I shall oversee the work. Train the men who are to fly.’
A balloon workshop in a Montmartre dancing school! It was like one of Clem’s own schemes brought to life. He held out a hand to help the aérostier back to his feet.
‘Monsieur Besson,’ he said, ‘this I really have to see.’
The Café Géricault was on the rue des Acacias, a hundred yards from the place Saint-Pierre. Time was short – the march would be leaving for the boulevards at any moment – but Hannah could not ignore this. It was Lucien who’d directed her there. She’d encountered him in a bustling passage, quite by chance; clothing in disarray, missing his hat and one of his boots, he’d been so battered by drink that he appeared close to expiration. Having rejected her proposal that he join the march in the bluntest terms, he’d informed her that her twin brother had popped up again, not two streets away.
‘He’s with somebody, over in the Géricault,’ the painter had croaked. ‘One of Nadar’s men, I believe. Now please, Hannah dearest, could you possibly lend me five sous?’
The long room was so full that the bar itself was hidden from sight. Between the café’s peeling walls the noise of the lanes was concentrated, amplified fourfold; the mostly male clientele were drinking wine, coffee and spirits, and smoking as if the city’s tobacco reserves faced imminent confiscation. Clement wasn’t difficult to locate. Off to the left, against one of the frosted front windows, he stood out from the locals like a dusty brown
