A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

Seine departement. She found it hard to get excited about that. But he was good-looking too.

She had taken him to meet Gabrielle a fortnight ago. She had thought him very polished, at his ease; not that Gabrielle would set out to intimidate anyone. She could read approval in Gabrielle’s eyes; she squirmed in pleasure to think that tomorrow she would be able to sit with Gabrielle and talk artlessly, casually, about Claude Dupin and say, didn’t you think he was this, didn’t you think he was that? If Gabrielle were really really in favor, if she liked him as much as she seemed to, then perhaps she’d have a word with her parents, and they’d say, well, you’ve always been grown-up for your age, perhaps fifteen is old enough? Why wait? Life’s too short.

But just as everything was going along politely, quietly and wonderfully—in poured Citizen Danton and his crew. Introductions were made. “Ah, the infant prodigy,” Citizen Fabre said. “The famous child administrator, a wonder from his cradle. Now let us see what we see.”

And he had viewed Claude Dupin through his lorgnette.

Citizen Herault had given Claude Dupin a sort of glassy stare, and seemed unable to comprehend who or what he was. “Gabrielle darling,” he had said, and kissed their hostess; he seated himself, poured himself a glass of Citizen Danton’s best cognac and proceeded to amuse in his loud drawly voice with anecdotes about Louis Capet, whom of course he’d known intimately. This was bad, but Citizen Camille was much the worst: “Claude Dupin, I have longed to meet you,” he sighed, “I have lived for this moment.” He curled up in a corner of the sofa, put his head on Gabrielle’s shoulder and fixed his eyes on Claude Dupin’s face: continuing, from time to time, to sigh.

Citizen Danton had subjected Claude Dupin to a sharp interrogation about the department’s affairs; she did not blame him, it was the way he worked. Claude Dupin was on his mettle, and his replies were intelligent, assertive, she thought; only, when he said anything particularly to the point, Citizen Camille would close his eyes and shiver, as if it were too exciting for him. “So young, and so perfectly bureaucratic,” Fabre murmured. Louise did think that if Gabrielle had any regard for her she might induce Citizen Camille to take his head off her shoulder and stop being so satirical. But Gabrielle seemed to be consumed by merriment. She placed her traitorous arm around Citizen Camille, and looked sickeningly affectionate.

As soon as they had come into the room—she could not deny it—Claude Dupin had seemed to shrink. He looked plain, ordinary. Once Citizen Danton’s questions had been answered, he had lost interest in him. Thereafter, Claude Dupin experienced difficulty in wedging a word into the conversation. She decided it was time to go. She stood up. Claude Dupin stood up too. “Don’t go so soon!” Fabre cried. “You’ll break Camille’s little heart!”

Citizen Danton caught her eye. He made her look up into his unnerving face. He didn’t precisely smile.

She was foolish enough to tell her mother about this upset to her feelings. “I don’t know if he’s … quite what I want. Do you understand me?”

“No, I do not,” her mother said. “Last week on your knees begging me to order up the wedding breakfast, and this week telling me he’s a mere nothing by the side of that evil bunch of people you meet downstairs. We should have kept you at home, we should never have allowed you to mix with them.”

Very quietly, her father reminded her mother that he owed his living to Citizen Danton.

And now, downstairs (she ran up and down, every couple of minutes), Dr. Souberbielle had been in to see Gabrielle, and the midwife had arrived. Angelique Charpentier caught her at the door, shooed her out. “Look, my dear, you think you want to be here, but you don’t. Will you please believe me?” Mme. Charpentier looked, at this stage, quite collected. “Everything is going nicely, just according to time. Off to bed with you, now. In the morning we’ll have a lovely baby for you to play with.”

Upstairs again. She felt a furious resentment. She is my friend. I am her true, her best friend; I cannot help being fifteen, I should be with her, I am the one she wants beside her. She thought, I wonder where Citizen Danton is tonight: and with whom? I don’t, she thought, have as many illusions as they suppose I have.

Ten p.m.: her mother put her head around the door. “Louise, would you come down? Mme. Danton is asking for you.” Her face said, this is against my better judgement.

Vindication! She tripped over her feet in her haste. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” her mother said. “Are you prepared?”

“Of course I am.”

“I warn you, she isn’t well. The labor has not progressed. She has had—I hardly know—some kind of upset, convulsion. Things are not as they should be.”

She ran ahead of her mother. They met the midwife coming out of the room. “You’re not letting this child in?” the woman said. “Madame, I can’t answer …”

“I told her last week,” Louise cried, agonized. “I said I’d be with her. I said, if anything happened, I’d look after the children.”

“Did you? Then you’re a little fool, aren’t you? Making promises you can’t keep.” Her mother lifted her hand, and flicked her smartly on the side of the head.

At midnight, Louise went upstairs again, leaving Gabrielle’s apartment at her own request. She stretched out on her bed, half-dressed. The closed, solemn faces of the women appeared behind her eyelids. Lucile had been there, no longer making a joke about anything; she had sat on the floor, still in her riding boots, Gabrielle’s hand drooping into hers.

Louise slept. God forgive me, she thought later; but I did sleep, and all that had happened wiped itself from my mind, and I dreamed cheerfully, inconsequentially, and of nothing I would later care to report. The morning’s first traffic woke her. It was February 11. The building seemed quite silent. She got up, washed in a perfunctory way, pulled herself into her clothes. She opened the door into her parents’ bedroom, just a crack; looked in, saw her father snoring, saw that her mother’s side of the bed had not been disturbed. She drank half a glass of stale, flat water, quickly unplaited and combed out her hair. She ran downstairs. On the landing, she met Mme. Charpentier. “Madame—”she said.

Angelique was muffled into her cape, her shoulders drawn up, her eyes on the ground. She pushed past Louise. She didn’t seem to see her at all; her face was glazed, streaked, angry. Then at the head of the stairs she stopped. She turned back. She said nothing; but then she seemed to feel that she must speak. “We lost her,” she said. “She’s gone, my sweetheart. My little girl has gone.” She walked outside, into the rain.

Inside the apartment the fires had not been lit. On a footstool in the corner sat the nurse, Lucile Desmoulins’s baby fastened to her breast. She looked up when she saw Louise, and covered the baby’s face with her hand, protectively. “Run away now,” she said to her.