Josephine's Garden Page 11

  This room would make a lovely nursery, she thought, as the winter sun streamed in. Painted lemon yellow and with a rocking chair placed by the window where she could lull her baby to sleep. She imagined wrapping the child snugly in lace shawls. Together they could watch the leaves of the plane trees along the Seine burst into bud and grow lush with each coming summer. Forty was not so very old, she told herself. Across the Seine, she could see a church spire rise above the plane trees, like a castle floating above the clouds; like a fairytale.

  In the first days of their marriage, Jacques was busy with his work and did not have time to entertain her. Marthe was accustomed to her own company and far preferred it to manufacturing conversation, particularly with strangers. Even living with her parents the days were often quiet and slow to pass. These living arrangements were unusual, but not unpleasant. They shared coffee together in the morning, sitting beside each other on the hard sofa beside the window. Then Jacques liked to take a walk, by himself, before he sat down to his letters and editing his journal in his room. Their meals were sent up from the bistro below, but Jacques ate at his desk. He was an independent man and she understood that. There would be time to get to know one another better and this awkwardness would ease. She picked up her bone crochet hook and her yarns and sat by the window where the light was best. But after a whole week of staring from her window at life passing her by, she was eager to venture out and explore.

  At first, it had seemed scandalous to take a walk in the streets without a chaperone. Old habits died hard, even in this new enlightened era. She walked the length of the Quai de la Mégisserie in watery sunlight wearing a stiff coat. Here along the Seine she saw everything and everyone, the wealthy and the starved. She felt part of this city but also apart from it, both tied and untied. Here she could brush and bump against strangers and feel their life force around her as she walked and yet remain anonymous.

  She smelled the sweetness of crepes and the heavy, warm aroma of soup simmering. She breathed deeply. Chalkboards announced dishes of sheep’s feet in white sauce, salted poultry and fresh eggs. For the first time she saw well-dressed women eating in public and it drew her up short in front of the bistro window, staring in at them, wondering if she would ever be brave enough to join them.

  Carriages clattered past her and the hawkers called to her, spinning her about in confusion. So much noise, so much movement. Vendors sold trinkets and souvenirs, tiny ships in bottles and miniature paintings of the General Bonaparte and his wife, Josephine. The likeness of the General made her stop and draw her coat tight around her.

  ‘They say he has taken Egypt!’ The vendor grinned at her.

  Reckless, she thought. How could he be so reckless with young men’s lives and still be so venerated? But she was careful not to let the disgust show on her face. It was not so many years ago that spies were everywhere: neighbours, friends, family, all willing to sell you out to the authorities to save themselves.

  ‘He is a glory to France,’ she agreed.

  ‘Two for the price of one,’ the vendor offered, holding out the miniatures. The hard face of the General and the soft one of his wife. What does she think of the slaughter? Marthe wondered, seeing her gentle doe-like eyes. Does she ask him what it is really like on the battlefield? Does she hear the men cry out in her dreams? Marthe blinked back tears. She hurried away before the vendor became too curious.

  When Marthe learned that Jacques had gone to Italy with Bonaparte to bring back his spoils of war, it had shocked her. He had followed in the footsteps of Michel, perhaps passing the very battlefield where he had fallen. Images of Michel’s death haunted her sleep. She saw him shot or bayoneted or trampled beneath horses’ hooves. Did other soldiers’ widows dream like this? she wondered. Did they churn with rage at the waste of their men? Or did they simply get on with the business of their lives?

  She would not read the papers or look at the miniatures of the General and his wife. She hoped Jacques had no more to do with either of them.

  Each day Marthe walked a little further in her explorations. She became familiar with the streets of her arrondissement, learned to recognise the families who lived in the old, wooden houses, and the fierce shopkeepers who struck the dirt and beggars from their steps with straw brooms. She became familiar with the landmarks, the church steeples, and walked all the bridges across the River Seine. Even the stray dogs began to know her. But as the weeks passed she was no more familiar with her husband.

  What she knew of him came only from his diary.

  Alone in the house one morning, she had peered into her husband’s bedroom. She didn’t know what she had expected but, somehow, she was not surprised. The room was as she imagined a ship’s cabin might look like. A single bed against the wall. Shelves of books, a small, high window showing a square of blue sky, and his desk below strewn with papers. A battered journal lay open on the desk. She had been tempted but did not yet dare to invade his privacy and closed the door quickly.

  Jacques had explained that he intended to publish his account of the d’Entrecasteaux voyage he had sailed on to the South Seas. He hoped this would finance his more serious studies of the flora once his collections were returned. She noticed that he grew angry whenever he thought about his collections being held hostage by the British. He wrote many letters, hoping that some of them would get across the Channel to a man named Sir Joseph Banks. Jacques met the post every day, expecting that a message would arrive. ‘Damn this war with Britain,’ her husband fumed when the post did not arrive. ‘Must we be fighting on all our borders?’ It was the most passion she had yet seen from him.

  Occasionally Jacques spent all day away, visiting a new botanical garden in Versailles. On those days she gave in to temptation and crept back into his room to read the proofs of his expedition journal. It was like uncovering the secret life of her husband, somehow wrong to know him so intimately from these pages alone. Her guilt at invading her husband’s privacy was assuaged a little by the knowledge that he intended to publish his recollections publicly. In his words she recognised his stiff formality, but she learned of his sense of duty to science, his contempt of slavery and religion. This last had shocked her. She had not realised she had married an atheist. She learned he was not immune to beauty, that he cared deeply about justice and morality, but she wished that she could learn these things from tender moments of connection between them. A walk together along the Seine. Or a gentle touch when they shared the hard sofa. She kept waiting for a softening between them, for him to reach out to her. He had built a wall around himself and he would not let her in.

  Winter slowly became spring and Marthe abandoned her crochet and left the house every afternoon. She found a beautiful square to sit in and watch the people of Paris come out as the days grew warmer. Magnificent houses lined each side of the square with tall slate roofs and red-brick walls all linked to form the impression of a château. Once this had been a place for the aristocracy to exercise their horses, she was told, but after the Revolution paths and lawns had been laid, a statue of the King torn down and replaced with a tiered fountain and benches dotted around the perimeter. The Place des Vosges was a place for the people. Day after day she returned to the square, watching lovers promenade and mothers play with their children in the sand gardens.

  She always sat on the same bench and liked to see the pigeons strut and bob around her feet. Sometimes she gave them breadcrumbs and watched them jostle and flutter with excitement. From a distance the birds seemed a drab and uniform grey, but if you observed closely you could see how different each one could be. Marthe liked the way the light bejewelled the feathers of their necks, turning them amethyst and emerald.

  Each day Marthe bought a hard-boiled egg from a street vendor and peeled it slowly until she held the silky globe in the palm of her hand. Sometimes it was so perfect she couldn’t bear to eat it.

  At this time of the day, the governesses from the surrounding houses brought the children out to play. Marthe
watched them form their tight circle, black baby carriages pointing outwards like a barricade. Here the young women could gossip and be themselves, and she overheard snatches of conversation, private details about the households they worked for. Sometimes the babies cried and the carriages were gently rocked, backwards and forwards. The older children ran free, tumbling on the lawns and chasing the pigeons. A dog leaped into the fountain and the children squealed as it shook itself all over them. The governesses broke their circle, scolded the dog and dragged the children away. Marthe liked to hear the children laugh.

  Over the weeks she began to dress like these women in their practical shades of charcoal and grey. She moved closer, hoping to join their flock. She listened carefully as she plucked her egg of its shell and gathered their tales. Soon she grew to know each of the little rascals by name. Poor Florette had fallen in the coal scuttle and ruined her dress and received a thrashing for her clumsiness. Pierre stole a cream pie. Alain kept a pet rat in a drawer of his bureau. Higher and higher each of the governesses piled the misdemeanours. All the while, Marthe’s thumb worked to remove the shattered pieces of shell and gather them in her lap. Marthe never dared to offer words of conversation to these young women and they ducked their eyes from her as they scattered. She wondered what they thought of her sitting alone on her bench. Do they know I come to watch the children? She rubbed the prickly hairs beneath her chin. Do they see a barren spinster, too dried up and stick-thin to have produced a life?

  Marthe knew she was torturing herself by coming here. With Claude there had been no children in the thirteen years they were together before his death. Not even a half-term babe or a false hope. Nothing. Claude’s family all thought she was barren. It was what they whispered—loud and rude—when she could not give Claude an heir. But was there something wrong with her or Claude? This question had haunted her through her married life. Should she have taken a lover? Then at least she would have known for sure. Her marriage to Michel might have given her a family, but she was robbed of him. She stood quickly and brushed the shards of eggshell from her lap onto the path.

  Was it wrong to hope for love? True love? To have a small face turn up to you and glow with joy as though you were the only person in the whole world that mattered?

  Tears slipped down her cheeks. This marriage to Jacques was her last chance for happiness. She carried the delicate, bare egg cupped in her hand all the way back home.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Spring 1799

  ‘Barras, you must help me.’ Rose burst through the doors of his study in the Luxembourg Palace, relieved to find her former benefactor alone. ‘I have been foolish—I am ruined!’

  She fell to her knees beside his chair. Barras did not look up from his papers.

  ‘Stupid beyond measure,’ he said evenly. ‘And now the whole world knows it. You have made him a laughing-stock.’

  Rose squeezed her eyes closed, feeling tears seep through her lashes as she dropped her head. ‘You must help me, I have no one else.’

  ‘Did I not arrange this extremely fortuitous alliance for you? And what have you done? Thrown it in my face. Why should I help you?’

  Rose pushed to her feet. ‘I need protection!’ She felt like a child again, stomping her feet, demanding more sugar cane to suck. She took deep breaths. This tantrum would not help.

  ‘You are a grown woman who should have known better.’

  ‘I fell in love, God help me. Don’t you remember how that feels?’ Hippolyte’s love had cocooned her, like a blind caterpillar, kept her blissful and unaware of how much she had at risk. But, was it any wonder that she had formed so little attachment to her husband? Her marriage was one of snatched messages and long distances. These wars had kept him from her, these wars were to blame. ‘Oh, Barras, have I ruined everything?’

  ‘Bonaparte has learned of your affair, Madame. He is distraught and his anguish has been poured into letters that were intercepted by the British navy. They ridicule him, they see him weakened. The English have printed the letters in their press, and it will not be long before your infidelity is widely known here. You dance on the precipice of ruin, Madame.’

  His words were grave but Rose could see that Barras was enjoying himself. He hated that Bonaparte was beloved by the nation. She still had hope that he would help her.

  Barras probed her sore heart. ‘And where is your handsome Hussar now?’

  Rose stood still, her hands clenched into fists. She did not know.

  The loss of Hippolyte Charles was still raw. Since the details of her affair were printed by the British press, he had disappeared. She could find no one who could take a letter to him. She still loved him, and in truth she had never thought beyond that simple fact. How they were to continue when Bonaparte returned from his wars, she had no clue. Life was for living and spending, not planning and saving. But the revelation of the affair had changed all that. Perhaps he was making it easier for her by staying away.

  ‘You should not have gone into business with him,’ Barras continued.

  Rose felt the hairs prickle at the base of her neck. She watched Barras warily. How much did he know?

  ‘I know everything, dear Rose, I can even read your mind.’ Barras laughed. ‘You forget, I am the Directoire. Nothing escapes me.’

  Her nostrils flared. It was galling that she must throw herself on his charity once again.

  ‘To be cuckolded so publicly is one thing, but war profiteering? Horses dying, men starving—the reports are not good. There is nothing Bonaparte hates more than people cheating his armies.’

  ‘I did not know they were replacing good food with bad!’ She hated to hear the whine in her voice.

  ‘No? But you enjoyed the profits nonetheless.’

  You shit, she thought. Barras, who had grown fatter in his time in France’s government, dared to lecture her for wanting to take care of her own future. ‘I gave him contacts, that is all. It is what I am good at. People.’

  ‘Distance yourself from these people, Rose, that is my advice. Both the Bodin Company and your young lover.’ Barras stood and wrapped her in his patronising embrace. He patted her back. ‘Come now, don’t cry, Rose. We understand each other, you and I. We are alike. We are both driven by self-interest, first and foremost. I wouldn’t trust you so much if you weren’t.’

  ‘I am not like you.’ She raised her chin defiantly and felt more like a child than ever.

  Barras laughed. ‘What do you want, Rose?’

  This was her moment. She held her breath. ‘A house. A house of my own.’

  Barras pulled away from her and returned to his desk.

  Rose continued in a rush. ‘I have found a country house, a beautiful home, I know Bonaparte would be happy there.’ She remembered her first glimpse of Malmaison. The house was more like a manor house than a grand château; it felt like a family home. ‘It has such charming environs,’ she went on, remembering the grassy slopes and woods, ‘that Bonaparte will forget all this unpleasantness.’

  Barras barked out a laugh. ‘Unpleasantness!’

  She ignored him. ‘All I need is the down payment, but Bonaparte’s brother will not advance me my annuity. You know how his vile family hate me!’

  ‘How much?’

  She swallowed. ‘I need to borrow fifty thousand francs.’

  Barras steepled his fingers to his lips. ‘A risky investment. If Bonaparte returns he will more than likely divorce you and refuse to pay your debts. If he has not survived this campaign in Egypt, as some reports suggest, well, who will pay your debts then, Madame?’

  Rose gasped. Was her husband dead? ‘What have you heard? Tell me, Barras!’ The depth of her emotion shocked her.

  ‘The news is not official, it lacks confirmation. But amid the hazards of war, in a hostile country, amid barbarians, who can tell?’ Rose narrowed her eyes. She had heard the rumours that her husband had been assassinated before but refused to believe them. There were always rumours on a campaign, whispered repo
rts sent by her husband’s enemies meant to weaken his support. These days, with the Directoire jealous of Bonaparte’s success, she suspected Barras himself to be behind these attempts.

  ‘If I am widowed then I need your support more than ever,’ she said, beginning to pace, feeling her anxiety rising. ‘Joseph will turn me out without a centime.’

  She crossed the room to the high windows to look out on the Luxembourg Gardens. People gathered around the ponds and strolled along the neat paths. The clipped trees were bursting with spring growth. It reminded her suddenly of the convent, the women taking turns about the formal garden. She remembered anew what it felt like to be stripped of everything. I will not go back to those days, Rose vowed to herself. I need a home of my own.

  When Alexandre had evicted Rose from his family home and moved her into the convent of Penthémont, Hortense was not yet one year old and still with her wet nurse. Rose was forced to leave her daughter behind with her husband’s father. At the age of twenty she had lost her marriage, her daughter and her home. She carried her son Eugene in her arms and would not let him go.

  ‘This is an educational facility for girls of the elite classes,’ the abbess had told her. ‘But we do take women in need of a rest, such as yourself.’

  Rest! Rose would not rest. She intended to fight her husband’s accusations in court. Rose had been an utterly faithful wife. How could she not be, confined as she was to her husband’s family home with his father and her aunt for company, and not a friend of her own in all of France! But she smiled at the abbess and assured her that she was indeed very tired.

  Before long she had the measure of the place. The convent was a haven for discarded women. Fortunately for Rose, it was filled with chic, sophisticated Parisiennes. Their rooms were lavishly appointed. Rose saw great works of art, tapestries and fine furnishings whenever she peered through an open door. The relatives of these women did not spare them luxury. Most of the women here were old and inconvenient, shuffled off to make room for younger mistresses.