Page 6 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
CHAPTER TWO
The weather was freezing, but clear: Paris was a place of long blue shadows, skeletal branches, and sooty spires scratching a sky the colour of a Norse goddess’s eyes.
James liked being back in Paris, and Paris, it seemed, liked to have him back, restoring him to its grubby bosom with a very Parisian nonchalance.
He even got his old lodgings back in the tall squeeze of a house in Montmartre: his old room at the very top was let, alas, but the room below that was vacant.
It was a little larger and more comfortable, though he missed the view over the rooftops.
But leaning out he could see down into the narrow cobbled street and watch its varied life go by.
There was a window-box outside his casement, empty now, but he thought he would plant it with geraniums – scarlet ones, which would blaze against the grey stone of the house opposite.
The neighbourhood hadn’t changed, nor its cast of characters.
They acknowledged him in their varied ways.
The pretty brown-haired girl in the blue apron in the boulangerie blushed and lowered her gaze.
The concierge of the big building on the corner – who on a fine day sat outside on a wooden chair – nodded to him, slightly closing her eyes like a big, dusty black cat.
The old man with the empty sleeve pinned across his breast, who always wore his medals as if to advance an explanation, raised his walking-stick in greeting as he stumped by, Le Figaro under his arm.
Monsieur Pompier, smoking a foul cigarette at the door of his hardware shop, beneath the entablature of hanging pots and pans, thrilled him with the first ‘ Bonjour, voisin!’ of his return.
He went to his favourite barber’s shop to have his hair trimmed, and the barber smiled and said, ‘ Ah, m’sieu’.
Vous êtes de retour? ’ then talked him into a shave with hot towels.
He stopped at the café with the blue check tablecloths on the rue des Saules and had his first café complet .
The proprietress, a wide but curiously flat woman – as if she had been rolled out, like pastry – left her high throne behind the caisse and brought it to his table herself, and called him mignon .
And on his first evening back, he went to Le Grenouille on the rue Gabrielle and had a tartiflette that sang with onions, washed down with a beaker full of the warm south, followed by a financier that melted on the tongue.
The proprietor was a circular man with a round, bald, shiny head, like old ivory, which he nodded as he sent him over a marc in a thick, squat tumbler.
‘ Gratuit ,’ the waiter muttered, as he slapped it down, bending to James’s ear.
He reeked of Gauloises and garlic. I’m home , James thought.
The only negative was the absence of Meredith.
She had gone home for Christmas, to the family ranch in Wyoming.
She had travelled as far as New York with Charlie and Fern, so he had assumed, for no thought-out reason, that she would come back at the same time as them.
But on his first day back at the office, when he had asked Charlie where she was, he learned that she was still in Wyoming.
Her father, who had been ailing for some time, had died on Christmas Eve.
Her three brothers were carrying on the business, but while they were hard workers and skilled with the stock, none of them was the least bit good with the books, so she was staying to run that side of it.
‘And she said she didn’t like to leave her mother just yet,’ Charlie concluded.
James always thought Charlie a very Parisian-looking man, short and stocky, with a bullet head, a rubbery, mobile face, and ears that stood out from his head as though he could prick them like a dog at what interested him – which was everything.
James had never met a more mentally energetic man.
Now Charlie’s face creased in sympathy for their absent colleague.
‘She told you all this,’ James mused, ‘so she must have – written?’
‘A cable at Christmas, and a long letter in January.’
‘Did she – was there any message for me?’
‘No,’ said Charlie, and then, as if in mitigation, ‘It was a business letter, really.’
James was hurt. He had not heard a word from her since she left before Christmas.
Now it seemed that she didn’t care enough for him even to send a second-hand ‘so goodbye, dear, and amen’.
It became obvious that she had not shared his feelings.
He had been in love with her; for her it had been just one of those things.
‘She’s never coming back?’ James said, subdued.
‘Obviously she has some family duties, but stay on the farm for good? That doesn’t sound like our Meredith. I told her there’s a job for her with me any time she wants it. We’ll just have to wait and see. I miss her as much as you, but we’ll have to manage.’
James was sure he’d miss her much more than Charlie, and not only on a personal level: he was expected to cover her job.
‘I’ve never done office work,’ he protested. ‘I don’t know how.’
‘You’ll soon pick it up. Correspondence, answering the phone, making arrangements,’ said Charlie. ‘Any intelligent person could do it.’
Charlie was kind, and tried to ease him into the job.
James did not know shorthand, so he dictated his letters slowly at first, though when his thoughts flowed he tended to forget and gallop ahead.
James developed his own scheme of abbreviations, which sometimes he could understand afterwards and sometimes not.
Typing was painful at first, with many mistakes, frantic hunting over the keyboard in search of the apostrophe and anguished cries of ‘Where’s the “q”?
I can’t find the “q”!’ But though he never learned to type with more than two fingers, he got quick enough to give satisfaction.
Making arrangements meant setting up a network of useful contacts, and using common sense, patience and good French.
It was more difficult when he had to deal with officials, for Gallic bureaucracy seemed to be designed to make clear a distinction between the mighty bureaucrat and the supplicant citizen.
Meredith had obviously had her own methods and short-cuts, and Charlie had never understood the word can’t , so James laboured to keep up, and went to bed most evenings mentally exhausted.
Much of his work was concerned with Charlie’s next ‘adventure’: a trip to Russia.
If French bureaucrats were devoted to arcana, Russian officials were twice as bad, adding a layer of deep suspicion to the passion for secrecy.
Getting permits and visas, arranging travel and accommodation, and setting up meetings were all twice as difficult.
The greatest surprise came when Charlie said, ‘I think you’d better learn some Russian.
You’ve got a natural gift for languages, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to pick it up.
It will make all the difference – even though I believe a lot of them speak French.
People are always flattered if you try to speak their language, however badly. ’
James looked up from his desk in surprise. ‘I’m not going with you, am I?’
‘Of course. We were going to take Meredith, and now you’re doing her job. Can you shoot?’
‘Rifle. I was considered a fair shot back home,’ James said, perplexed. ‘But—’
‘Oh, I’m sure they won’t let us carry a gun.
I was just thinking out loud.’ He slapped James encouragingly on the shoulder.
‘There won’t be any trouble. Just make sure you have all the paperwork in perfect order.
A piece of paper with the right signature on it gets you a long way in countries like that. And learn some Russian!’
‘And what is my lovely wife doing today?’ Kit Westoven asked.
He was magnificent in a dressing-gown decorated all over with exotic birds, his thick glossy hair carefully waved, his chin shaved as smooth as silk.
There was nothing impromptu about it when Kit appeared en déshabillé : his man, Ponsford, would have died rather than let anyone see his master less than perfectly turned out.
Emma, already dressed, was breakfasting in her sitting-room. His dogs pattered in after him – elegant Sulfi and Eos – and joined Emma’s mongrels Alfie and Buster under the table. They hadn’t seen each other all night. Wildly waving tails tickled her legs.
‘Lunch at the Savoy with Mipsy Oglander and Kitsy Brownlow,’ she answered his question.
‘I’m hoping to get them to invest in my Macklin Street scheme.
’ This was the latest of her Weston Trust projects – buying up slum properties, demolishing them, and building blocks of flats for the respectable working classes.
Kit considered. ‘Mipsy Oglander, possibly – she has more money than she knows what to do with. But Kitsy Brownlow? Perry isn’t exactly swimming in oof, you know.’
‘I do know. I don’t really expect her to come in, but she’s good company and Mipsy can be rather hard work.’
‘You know Perry Brownlow’s been made lord-in-waiting to the King?’
‘I heard. But it was expected, wasn’t it, after he was equerry to him as Prince of Wales?’
‘Hm, yes, but David isn’t exactly known for his deep, abiding loyalty to his chums.’ His eye suddenly fixed on the slice of toast that Emma was holding. ‘Is that my kumquat marmalade you’re spreading about so liberally?’ he demanded indignantly.
Emma’s hand stopped, knife suspended. ‘It’s what they brought in. I didn’t notice.’
‘I do think it’s too bad of you! You know how hard it is to get hold of,’ he complained.
‘I don’t actually. From where?”