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. She put up a hand to massage her throat. ‘I thought I really did know you.’
‘I am afflicted by this, too. Lately I think I know everybody in Paris. It’s like a series of hallucinations.’
‘You do know Fabre, though. Can you do something for me there? Have a word, put him in a better temper?’ Then she shook her head. ‘No, forget it. He’s right, my voice has gone. I trained in England, would you believe? I had these big ideas. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.’
‘Well – what have you ever done, between jobs?’
‘I used to sleep with a marquis.’
‘There you are, then.’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘I get the impression that marquises aren’t so free with their money any more. And me, I’m not so free with my favours. Still – move on is the best thing. I think I’ll try Genoa, I’ve got contacts there.’
He liked her voice, her foreign accent; wanted to keep her talking. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Near Liège. I’ve – well – travelled a bit.’ She put her cheek on her hand. ‘My name is Anne Théroigne.’ She closed her eyes. ‘God, I’m so tired,’ she said. She moved thin shoulders inside the shawl, trying to ease the world off her back.
AT THE RUE CONDÉ, Claude was at home. ‘I’m surprised to see you,’ he said. He didn’t look it. ‘You’ve had your answer,’ he said. ‘Positively no. Never.’
‘Immortal, are you?’ Camille said. He felt just about ready for a fight.
‘I could almost believe you’re threatening me,’ Claude said.
‘Listen to me,’ Camille said. ‘Five years from now there will be none of this. There will be no Treasury officials, no aristocrats, people will be able to marry who they want, there will be no monarchy, no Parlements, and you won’t be able to tell me what I can’t do.’
He had never in his life spoken to anyone like this. It was quite releasing, he thought. I might become a thug for a career.
Annette, a room away, sat frozen in her chair. It was only once in six months that Claude came home early. It followed that
