Chapter Five

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paris, 1880

 

After sleeping away the morning, and spending the afternoon in bed together, hunger finally drove Archie and Gen from the haven of his studio. Downstairs, he ushered her into the little café she’d seen the night before when he’d brought her home with him.

The same waiter was there, leaning against the wall outside, smoking. When he saw Archie approaching with Gen, his eyes lit up and a roguish smile spread across his face.

“Well, well, now I see what’s kept you away, Archie.”

Archie smiled awkwardly and shook his hand. “Victor, this is my friend, Gen. Gen, Victor.”

Victor took her hand and made an inelegant bow over it. “Gen, a pleasure.” He was much shorter than Archie, a small, wiry man with jet-black hair and alert, dark eyes.

“Without Victor,” Archie told her. “I might have starved to death in Paris.”

Victor gave him a sarcastic smile. “With this cheap bastard running the café, we might all starve to death. Come, have a seat. I’ll bring you some dinner.”

It was simple food, a stew of pork and vegetables, and some bread to soak it up, but Victor slipped them a pitcher of red wine without charge as he peppered them with teasing questions and innuendo. Archie gave as good as he got, and Gen laughed until her sides hurt. When they’d finished their meal, Victor urged them to stay to keep him company through the rest of his shift. Archie’s eyes found Gen’s, and the hunger she saw there had nothing to do with food. They made their excuses to Victor and hurried back upstairs, tumbling naked into Archie’s bed once again.

The next morning, Gen reluctantly tore herself away from Archie, promising him she’d be back before dark. She’d been gone from home for two nights in a row, and, although her mother might be off with her own lover, if she’d been home to notice, she would worry. Besides, there was so much to do. She had to tell Maman about Archie and leaving for Rome. She had to go by the bookshop and give her notice to Monsieur Fouchard. And she still had to speak to Leo. She couldn’t leave Paris without at least attempting to change his mind.

If she knew her mother—and she did—she was sure the cupboards in the flat would be bare. Mundane tasks like shopping for food had always seemed completely beyond her mother’s capabilities. She stopped into the boulangerie on the corner of their street to buy a baguette and a few things to eat.

“Good morning, Madame Perneau.” The bell over the door tinkled as she let herself in. The warmth and delicious aroma of the morning’s baking still hung in the air, and Gen’s stomach rumbled. She had hardly noticed her hunger when she was with Archie, but now it came rushing back in—along with all sorts of lurid memories of Archie himself and their two nights and a day together. Her body flushed, and her knees weakened to such an alarming degree that she had to grip the counter momentarily to steady herself.

Madame Perneau came bustling out of the back, wiping her floured hands on her apron. She stopped short, and her eyes went wide when she saw it was Gen. “Geneviève! My dear, what are you doing here?”

Gen frowned in bafflement. “I’ve come for some bread.”

“So you’ve not heard?”

Her heart gave a hard thump of dread. “Heard what?”

“Leo’s been arrested! Our own Leo, whom I’ve known since he was a boy, the Lord protect him!” Madame Perneau crossed herself quickly.

“Arrested? What has Leo been arrested for?” Surely if Leo and André had already set off their bomb, she’d have heard about it as she’d made her way home from Montmartre. The streets would have been filled with the news.

“They say he was planning to blow up the Palais Garnier! Him and some man named André Gissart, one of those Communards from years back. The police said they were making a bomb in Gissart’s flat!” Madame Perneau shook her head sadly. “I can’t believe it. Our Leo. His poor mother is beside herself.”

“I can’t believe it either,” Gen murmured in a fog. Too late. She was too late. Guilt roiled up in her gut. While she’d been wrapped up in Archie, hiding away in his studio in Montmartre, Leo and André had started carrying out their hateful plan. She should have come home sooner. If she’d been here, if she’d talked to Leo, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Now, he was lost to her. André, despite his pardon, would automatically be viewed as suspect in the eyes of the French police, his guilt as good as certain. And now Leo’s too. Ten years ago, they’d rounded up the Communards and shot them dead. Oh, Leo…

“My dear, the police are looking for you too.”

Gen snapped out of her misery, staring at Madame Perneau. “What?”

“The police. They had your name. They were here on the block, asking about you. They knew you were Leo’s sweetheart. They want to talk to you.”

“But, why?”

“The police said you knew all about what they were up to. They said someone told them you’d been with Leo and Gissart when they met to plan it all out, but I knew that must not be true. You’d never get involved in something like that.”

Horror flooded Gen’s body, leaving her light-headed and weak. She swayed slightly, then reached for the counter. No, she mustn’t faint. There was no time for that. She had to act. “I have to go talk to Maman.”

“Don’t worry, dearest. They wanted to know where you lived, but no one told them. All the same, perhaps you’d better stay away from the neighborhood for a bit.”

Stay away from the neighborhood? She planned to flee the country with Archie, just as soon as she spoke to her mother. “Don’t worry, Madame Perneau, I will. Thank you.”

“Here.” Madame Perneau passed a baguette across the counter. “No charge. Good luck, my dear.”

 

 

“Maman?” Gen let herself into the flat, looking around frantically for her mother. “Maman, where are you?”

A muffled sob came from her mother’s bedroom. Gen found Suzette in bed, her hair a tangled mess, her eyes red and puffy from weeping.

“Maman, what is it?”

“Hercule sent a gift,” Suzette sniffed, indicating a blue velvet jewelry box on the table beside the bed.

The reappearance of LeVeq was unwelcome, but if he would patch things up with Maman, then Gen would have one less problem to worry about. She smoothed a few strands of blond hair away from her mother’s flushed, damp cheek. “That’s good news, isn’t it? I told you he would be sorry.”

Suzette turned her face on the pillow to look up at Gen. “It wasn’t for me. It was for you.”

Gen jerked away in shock. “No. Maman, no. I would never—”

“Of course not!” Suzette grabbed for her hand when she made to stand. “Not Hercule. Never with Hercule. He’s a beast. But Geneviève…we could go out tonight, you could wear one of my dresses. You’re so beautiful, so young—”

“Maman, no! How can you ask that of me?” The very idea made her nauseous. It was repulsive to her before, but now that she had Archie, it was completely unthinkable.

“Well, we must do something, Gen! It’s clear that my time has passed.”

“It’s only been a few days. Surely someone—”

“I was approached at a party last night,” Suzette said flatly. “By Madame Montefou.”

Madame Montefou ran a whorehouse. One of the best, to be sure, but it was still undeniably a whorehouse, where the women serviced men by the hour. There was a distinct hierarchy among the women who sold their favors to men. Women like her mother, who lived under the protection of wealthy patrons, were at the top. Working in a house of ill-repute was unthinkable for them. Any woman who did so would be admitting that she was washed-up, too old, done. If Madame Montefou had made her mother that offer, then Suzette was right. Her time was up. There would be no new protector to save the day.

But that didn’t mean Gen had to take her place. “I’m sorry, Maman, I know it must be hard to face, but I can’t do this. I won’t.”

“Too good for it, I suppose,” Suzette snapped. She was overwrought, Gen knew. It wasn’t like her mother to be mean or ugly. So she let the insult slide.

“I am, actually. You used to think so too. Wasn’t that what this was all for? So you could provide a life for me? So I could hope for better?”

Suzette’s eyes filled with tears again. “Oh, what was the point of any of it? Because here I am, old and used up, and without the money to pay even another month’s rent. I can’t protect you from anything, Geneviève. I never could. I am utterly useless. You’d be better off without me.”

“Maman, stop it. You know that’s not true.”

“It is. What’s the point of going on, Gen? What do I have to look forward to? Spending the end of my days walking the streets, lifting my skirts in filthy alleys for any man with a few francs?”

“Enough! That’s not going to happen.”

“What’s to prevent it? It’s not as if I can find money some other way.”

Gen thought longingly of Archie and Rome. They were supposed to leave in a matter of days, but there was no way she could leave her mother now. Suzette was incapable of taking care of herself under the best of circumstances. If Gen abandoned her now, she might as well give her up to death.

“I know what we’re going to do,” Gen said briskly. “We’re going to Great Aunt Philomena in London.”

Suzette scoffed. “That dried-up old stick? Why on earth would we do that?”

“Because she’s your aunt. She’s all the family you have left.”

“Aunt Philomena’s entire business is built on spotless reputations. She won’t have me under her roof, Geneviève.” Just talking about her long-lost English family had Suzette sounding more British, as if she’d suddenly remembered she wasn’t actually French.

“I don’t believe that. All these years you’ve been in Paris and she still writes to both of us. She still thinks of us as family. She’ll help, I know she will.”

“And how would we ever get there? We have no money. It’s all so hopeless.” Suzette’s tears started again. Gen had to act fast. They had to leave for London at once. The longer she delayed, the harder it would be to budge Suzette. Her only hope was to hustle her away and have her halfway there before she could collapse into utter despair.

“I’ll pawn the rest of your jewels. Anything that will bring a few francs. It’ll be more than enough to buy passage to England. And perhaps, with what’s left, we can rent a little cottage outside of London. Somewhere no one knows us. We could start fresh. Wouldn’t that be nice, Maman?” That was a lie, but maybe Philomena might help her mother settle somewhere. Gen just had to get her there.

Suzette sighed and said nothing.

“I’ll sell everything today, and we’ll leave tonight. We won’t stay in Paris another day.”

Leaving would serve two purposes: it would put her mother back in touch with her aunt, the only person who might be willing to help them, and the French police couldn’t find Gen in London.

And as for Archie…well, she’d have to catch up with him in Rome a little later. Once she saw her mother settled, she’d follow him to Rome. She’d just have to wait a bit. The idea of being away from Archie was agony, but she had to escape the police and she had to get her mother to London. Once she’d accomplished both of those things, then she’d be free to act for her own happiness.

“What do you say, Maman? Gen said, forcing as much brightness and enthusiasm into her voice as she could manage. “Let’s go to London!”

Suzette managed a wan smile. “London sounds brilliant, Geneviève.”

She snatched the loathsome LeVeq’s gift off the table. At least he’d be good for something. “I’m going to the pawnbroker now. Why don’t you start packing? Just a small bag. We’ll buy whatever we need in London.”

Or, hopefully, Aunt Philomena would buy it for them, because Gen was not at all sure she’d raise enough pawning the jewels, but the last thing she’d do now was give voice to her doubts in front of Suzette. She had to make sure Suzette believed all would be well. Gen would deal with the rest once she got them to London.

Suzette caught her hand again as she rose to her feet. “You’re a good daughter, Geneviève, do you know that? A better daughter than a tired old whore like me deserves.”

“None of that, Maman. We’re going to do fine in London, you just wait and see.”

“Perhaps. I’m sorry I’m not more useful. You’re the one who always manages things when they go upside down, aren’t you?”

“It’s all right, Maman.”

“You’re more of a mother than I’ve ever been, even when you were little. And me? Just a helpless child, really. That’s all I’ve ever been.”

There had been times in Gen’s life when she sorely would have liked to have been a helpless child, with a mother who was capable of managing things. But wishing for it had never gotten her anywhere, and it wouldn’t help now. “Come now, stop being maudlin. Get up and get dressed. We’ll leave as soon as I get back, all right?”

“All right, darling.”

Gen was almost out the door when Suzette called her name. “Geneviève? I love you, you know. So very much. Even if I was sometimes a terrible mother.”

Gen smiled encouragingly at her. “Nonsense, Maman. You’re a wonderful mother. And I love you too. Now get dressed.”

Suzette let out a weary chuckle. “I will. I promise.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

 

 

Gen hovered in the doorway downstairs until the street was empty before she hurried out. She’d pinned her hat on far forward, hoping the brim would shield her face, and she kept her eyes firmly on the pavement, walking as quickly as she could without drawing undue attention to herself.

Her heart pounded the whole way to the pawn shop, certain that at any moment, a hand would come down on her shoulder and she’d be seized by the police. But no arrest came, and she made it to the pawn shop, breathing heavily but otherwise fine.

The pawnbroker, a wiry, little unsmiling man she’d dealt with for years, seemed to be able to sense desperation in the air. He’d always been that way. The worse she needed the money, the harder he drove his bargain, and today was no different. But what could she do? If the police were looking for her, then frequenting pawn shops all over Paris, bartering for more, would be unwise in the extreme. The sooner she and her mother were out of the city, the better.

Gen had known she was lying when she assured her mother they’d have funds left over after the journey to find a little cottage somewhere in England to let, but now, she just hoped she had enough to pay for the fares required to get to London.

But first, she had one more dangerous trip to make. She had to see Archie and explain why she couldn’t leave for Rome with him as they’d planned.

Looking over her shoulder the whole way, she made her way through Paris to Archie’s studio. She walked, both to save the train fare and to stay farther off the main thoroughfares. Sticking to smaller side streets, she wound her way through Belleville and La Chapelle, up the steep inclines of the Butte, to the ramshackle lanes of Montmartre.

It was coming on evening by the time she reached the Place du Tertre. Only a few patrons sat outside the café below his studio. As sad as she was to be separated from Archie for what might be many weeks, even months, her heart began to beat faster as she rang the bell for his floor. She’d see him again. She’d be back in his arms for a few more stolen minutes. These touches and kisses would have to be enough to sustain her for the upcoming months in London.

There was no answer, not after her second ring or her third. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might not be home. As awful as it was to kiss him one more time and then be forced to leave him, not seeing him at all was infinitely worse. But she couldn’t wait for him. She and Suzette should have already left for London. Every minute they lingered in Paris was another minute in which the police might track her down.

She glanced around the square, but she didn’t see a single familiar face, not even Archie’s friend Victor from the café. Well, she had no choice. She’d have to leave him a note and her address in London.

There was a different waiter working in the café when she entered, wiping down the counter with desultory swipes.

“Excuse me, is Victor here?”

“He got the sack,” the man replied without looking up.

“He was fired? What for?”

“Stealing from the till, sneaking wine to his friends…shiftless bugger, he was. Manager let him go this afternoon.”

Oh, no. He was sneaking wine to her and Archie. Gen felt guilty, but there was nothing she could do to help him now. She couldn’t even afford to pay for the wine if she hoped to get her mother to London.

“Well, do you know where Archie is?”

“Archie?”

Did she really not know Archie’s surname? It felt as if they already knew every pertinent detail about each other. How had she failed to ask him such a basic question about himself?

“The artist? He lives in the studio on the top floor? Very tall?”

The waiter lifted his eyes and gave her a long, leisurely once-over. Then he grinned, slow and oily. “Ah, him. He’s gone too.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve just rung the bell. Do you know when he might be back? Or where he’s gone?”

“Not coming back,” the man said. “He’s gone home.”

Gen shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand. I saw him just this morning. He didn’t mention going home.”

“I don’t suppose he would, would he? But he’s gone, all the same. Cleared out all his stuff.”

A growing dread was filling her chest. “But…we were supposed to go to Rome together. He wouldn’t just leave. He must have left word for me. He would have told me how to reach him.”

The waiter smiled again, like it was all some enormous joke and she was the only one missing the punch line. “Look, love, it happens all the time with these rich blokes.”

“What are you talking about? Archie doesn’t have any money. He’s an artist.”

The waiter shrugged. “That’s just the story he told you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Turns out he’s a toff. A great lord with a title.”

“No, he’s not. We can’t be talking about the same man.”

The waiter sighed in exasperation and dropped his rag. “A man arrived this morning. Had a word with him upstairs. Then just like that, your man packed his things and left, with his visitor ‘my lording’ him all the way.”

The man’s words refused to sink in and make sense. It was like he was telling her a fairy tale about someone else entirely. “But…what about me?”

“You?” He lifted his eyebrows and smiled mockingly at her. “You were just his little Parisian entertainment, dolly. Happens all the time with these rich, fancy toffs. They slum it a bit, sample the local wares, and then they’re off. Don’t take it too hard.”

Gen was beginning to shake all over. Her legs felt as if they might not hold her up any longer. How could this be? Archie wasn’t Archie at all? He was some fancy, rich lord? What about Rome? Why would he have asked her to go to Rome with him when he meant to leave without her? But he hadn’t asked, had he? He’d explained why he couldn’t ask her, and Gen had offered. He’d never meant it at all. He’d never meant any of it.

Everything about him—had it all been a lie? Was he just putting on a show for her? She thought back to all the little things—his schoolroom-perfect French, his polished manners, his formal waltzing… And his disappearance was proof, right? If he was who he said he was, he’d be here right now.

Oh, what a masterful show he’d put on for her. Gen thought back over the last two nights. She’d gazed at him with adoring eyes and gobbled up every lie he’d fed her. She’d offered to leave her life behind and support him in Rome. As if he’d needed her help. What a joke. How he must have laughed at her naïve eagerness. She’d let him strip her bare and use her body until he’d thoroughly slaked his thirst for her. And, apparently, once he was satisfied, he was gone. She was just a used-up vessel, to be tossed to the side when she no longer suited his needs.

Gen turned away, stumbling out of the café, making it to the base of a tree in the square before her stomach emptied itself. She kept retching, her body convulsing as if it were trying to expel this horrible new reality. She vomited until there was nothing left, until she was spitting bile, her eyes watering, her throat burning.

Gone.

He was gone. And standing here outside his flat, a pathetic, abandoned woman, wasn’t going to bring him back. Her troubles still pressed in from all sides. She still had to leave Paris—now, tonight. Even now, the police might be on their way back to Belleville for her.

Straightening up, she glanced around the little square, to the café where they’d laughed and drunk just last night, up to the tiny, dirty windows of his studio, just above the bed where he’d made love to her for hours.

Good riddance.

Wiping the tears from her cheeks, she resolved they’d be the last she’d ever shed for Archie—or whatever his name might be. She would leave the memory of him behind her in Paris, along with her old life. When she reached London, she would become a new person, and never—not once—would she allow herself to look back on this with sadness.

 

 

She knew something was wrong the second she turned onto their street. Gen shrank back into a doorway, peering at the crowd in front of her building, terrified that she was too late, that the police had come to arrest her. But there were no uniforms in the crowd that she could see.

It was all her neighbors, nearly everyone on the block, clustered outside her building, talking and…Madame Perneau was crying, dabbing at her wet eyes with the corner of her apron. Monsieur Hébert, who ran the café, was patting her arm and making the sign of the cross.

In a panic, Gen stumbled out of her hiding place, running toward them. “Maman?”

Every face turned to look at her, and their eyes were filled with pity.

“Maman?” The shrill scream of panic sounded as if it came from someone else entirely, but that was her. She could feel the pain in her throat as she screamed again for her mother.

Monsieur Hébert and Raymond Gosse, the greengrocer, stepped forward out of the crowd, grabbing her arms when she would have shoved her way through to the door.

“Let me go! Where’s Maman? Let me through.”

Gen felt herself being pulled back, surrounded by well-meaning neighbors who reached for her, patted her cheeks, stroked her hair, but all she could think about was getting upstairs to Suzette.

It was Madame Perneau who said the words, wrapping her arms tightly around Gen and murmuring in her ear.

“She had a little pistol, the poor dear. Marguerite on the second floor heard the shot, but we were too late. She was gone by the time they got inside. I’m sorry, my dear, so sorry.”

Once again, the awful words someone was saying refused to take hold in her brain. Maman, who couldn’t be moved to get out of bed, had taken a pistol and—

Someone was crying, great ugly, raw sobs. It was many minutes before Gen realized it was her. Before she realized she’d collapsed into a heap on the ground. Madame Perneau hugged her against her ample breasts, rocking her back and forth as the horrible wails kept churning up from some deep well of pain inside.

Gen heard Raymond Gosse speaking softly over her head. “The police are coming to inspect the scene.”

The police. That was supposed to frighten her, wasn’t it? She was supposed to be careful. But why? There was someplace she was going, but it was so hard to remember now. Hard to remember anything at all.

“I’ll take her to our flat, poor dear,” Madame Perneau told him. “Just say you haven’t seen her.”

Upstairs, someone produced a bottle of laudanum, and a small dose was coaxed into Gen’s mouth. When the cottony darkness overtook her, she welcomed the oblivion. Anything to avoid facing the loss of everything, and everyone, she’d loved.

 

 

When she woke in a fog many hours later, she was disoriented and unbearably thirsty. She cracked her eyes open, making out the confines of the small, white-washed room in the darkness. She lay fully dressed on a narrow metal-framed bed. Her eyes were gritty from crying, and her throat was raw from screaming.

Slowly, everything came back to her, like jagged pieces of broken glass being fit back together. Maman…gone. Archie…gone. Leo…gone. And she was still in danger from the police. Like in Place du Tertre when facing Archie’s betrayal, she shoved it all into a room in her mind, a dark place she would not look into again.

There were hushed voices coming from the adjoining room. That’s what had woken her from the haze of the drug. She fought her way back to clarity, focusing on the words, trying to discern who was speaking.

Madame Perneau and…that other voice was her husband, Henri.

“She can’t stay here, Flora. The police have left, but they’ll be back.”

“The poor dear’s just lost her mother, Henri.”

“She’s got to have people somewhere who can take her in. For that matter, the girl’s fully grown. She can take care of herself.”

“If we cast that girl out of our house, she’ll end up just like her mother. You know that foul Baron LeVeq has been nosing around after her.”

There were more muffled words, the sound of a chair scraping across the floor, a heavy sigh. “A day or two,” Henri conceded. “Then she’s got to go.”

Gen waited until she heard them both shuffle off to bed and the flat had grown silent. Slipping out of bed, she found her boots side by side on the floor by the bed. There was a pitcher and a basin on top of a chest of drawers. First, she drank deeply to soothe her throat and quench her thirst. With the water that was left, she washed her face and hands, and tidied herself as best she could. There were a handful of hairpins in a chipped china dish on the chest. With them, she pinned up the long, heavy fall of her dark hair into a severe twist. The young girl who’d worn it down died tonight. She would leave Paris as a new woman and leave that stupid, gullible girl behind forever.

Checking the pocket of her skirt, she found all the money she’d been able to get for Maman’s jewels. With only one person traveling, she could make it all the way to London on the money easily.

Quietly, so as not to wake the Perneaus, she slipped out of their flat over the bakery and out into the darkened street. The crowd was gone now. The windows of her flat, across the way, were dark. No doubt they’d already taken Maman away.

She wouldn’t think on that.

She thought of nothing at all as she set out across Paris for the train station on foot. She didn’t think as she bought her ticket to Calais and boarded the train. She didn’t think as she watched the dark countryside of France slide past her window. She didn’t think as, in the pearly gray light of dawn, she found the first boat leaving for England and paid for passage. And she didn’t think as the boat pushed away from the dock.

The sun came up over the Channel as France receded in the distance. Gen didn’t look back even once. Her life in France was over, and Geneviève—the girl who’d lived it—was dead.