LITMIR.BIZ

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of her husband’s friends had been observant: and everybody knew. Claude had a host of interested acquaintances. The question was contended for in robing rooms (scouted at the Châtelet but proposed in the civil courts as the scandal of the year, in the middle-class scandals division); it was circulated around the more select cafés, and mulled over at the ministry. In the gossips’ minds there were no debates, no delicately balanced temptations and counter-temptations, no moral anguish, no scruples. She was attractive, bored, not a girl any more. He was young and persistent. Of course they were – well, what would you think? Since when, is the question? And when will Duplessis decide to know?

      Now Claude may be deaf, he may be blind, he may be dumb, but he is not a saint, he is not a martyr. Adultery is an ugly word. Time to end it, Annette thought; time to end what has never begun.

      She remembered, for some reason, a couple of occasions when she’d thought she might be pregnant again, in the years before she and Claude had separate rooms. You thought you might be, you had those strange feelings, but then you bled and you knew you weren’t. A week, a fortnight out of your life had gone by, a certain life had been considered, a certain steady flow of love had begun, from the mind to the body and into the world and the years to come. Then it was over, or had never been: a miscarriage of love. The child went on in your mind. Would it have had blue eyes? What would its character have been?

      AND NOW THE DAY HAD COME. Annette sat at her dressing-table. Her maid fussed about, tweaking and pulling at her hair. ‘Not like that,’ Annette said. ‘I don’t like it like that. Makes me look older.’

      ‘No!’ said the maid, with a pretence at horror. ‘Not a day over thirty-eight.’

      ‘I don’t like thirty-eight,’ Annette said. ‘I like a nice round number. Say, thirty-five.’

      ‘Forty’s a nice round number.’

      Annette took a sip of her cider vinegar. She grimaced. ‘Your visitor’s here,’ the maid said.

      The rain blew in gusts against the window.

      IN ANOTHER ROOM, Annette’s daughter Lucile opened her new journal. Now for a fresh start. Red binding. White paper with a satin sheen. A ribbon to mark her place.

      ‘Anne Lucile Philippa Duplessis,’ she wrote. She was in the process of changing her handwriting again. ‘The Journal of Lucile Duplessis, born 1770, died? Volume III. The year 1786.’

      ‘At this time in my life,’ she wrote, ‘I think a lot about what it would be like to be a Queen. Not our Queen; some more tragic one. I think about Mary Tudor: “When I am dead and opened they will find ‘Calais’ written on my heart.” If I, Lucile, were dead and opened, what they would find written is “Ennui.”

      ‘Actually, I prefer Maria Stuart. She is my favourite Queen by a long way. I think of her dazzling beauty among the barbarian Scots. I think of the walls of Fotheringay, closing in like the sides of a grave. It’s a pity really that she didn’t die young. It’s always better when people die young, they stay radiant, you don’t have to think of them getting rheumatics or growing stout.’

      Lucile left a line. She took a breath, then began again.

      ‘She spent her last night writing letters. She sent a diamond to Mendoza, and one to the King of Spain. When all was under seal, she sat with open eyes while her women prayed.

      ‘At eight o’clock the Provost Marshal came for her. At her priedieu, she read in a calm voice the prayers for the dying. Members of her household knelt as she swept into the Great Hall, dressed all in black, an ivory crucifix in her ivory hand.

      ‘Three hundred people had assembled to watch her die. She entered through a small side door, surprising them; her face was composed. The scaffold was draped in black. There was a black cushion for her to kneel upon. But when her attendants stepped forward, and they slipped the black robe from her shoulders, it was seen that she was clothed entirely in scarlet. She had dressed in the colour of blood.’

      Here Lucile put down her pen. She began to think of synonyms. Vermilion. Flame. Cardinal. Sanguine. Phrases occurred to her: caught red-handed. In the red. Red-letter day.

      She picked up her pen again.

      ‘What did she think, as she rested her head on the block? As she waited: as the executioner took his stance? Seconds passed; and those seconds went by like years.

      ‘The first blow of the axe gashed the back of the Queen’s head. The second failed to sever her neck, but carpeted the stage with royal blood. The third blow rolled her head across the scaffold. The executioner retrieved it and held it up to the onlookers. It could be seen that the lips were moving; and they continued to move for a quarter of an hour.

      ‘Though who stood over the sodden relic with a fob-watch, I really could not say.’

      ADÈLE, HER SISTER, came in. ‘Doing your diary? Can I read it?’

      ‘Yes; but you may not.’

      ‘Oh, Lucile,’ her sister said; and laughed.

      Adèle dumped herself into a chair. With some difficulty, Lucile dragged her mind back into the present day, and brought her eyes around to focus on her sister’s face. She is regressing, Lucile thought. If I had been a married woman, however briefly, I would not be spending the afternoons in my parents’ house.

      ‘I’m lonely,’ Adèle said. ‘I’m bored. I can’t go out anywhere because it’s too soon and I have to wear this disgusting mourning.’

      ‘Here’s boring,’ Lucile said.

      ‘Here’s just as usual. Isn’t it?’

      ‘Except that Claude is at home less than ever. And this gives Annette more opportunity to be with her Friend.’

      It was their impertinent habit, when they were alone, to call their parents by their Christian names.

      ‘And how is that Friend?’ Adèle inquired. ‘Does he still do your Latin for you?’

      ‘I don’t have to do Latin any more.’

      ‘What a shame. No more pretext to put your heads together, then.’

      ‘I hate you, Adèle.’

      ‘Of course you do,’ her sister said good-naturedly. ‘Think how grown-up I am. Think of all the lovely money my poor husband left me. Think of all the things I know, that you don’t. Think of all the fun I’m going to have, when I’m out of mourning. Think of all the men there are in the world! But no. You only think of one.’

      ‘I do not think of him,’ Lucile said.

      ‘Does Claude even suspect what’s germinating here, what with him and Annette, and him and you?’

      ‘There’s nothing germinating. Can’t you see? The whole point is that nothing’s going on.’

      ‘Well, maybe not in the crude technical sense,’ Adèle said. ‘But I can’t see Annette holding out for much longer, I mean, even through sheer fatigue. And you – you were twelve when you first saw him. I remember the occasion. Your piggy eyes lit up.’

      ‘I have not got piggy eyes. They did not light up.’

      ‘But he’s exactly what you want,’ Adèle said. ‘Admittedly, he’s not much like anything in the life of Maria Stuart. But he’s just what you need for casting in people’s teeth.’

      ‘He never looks at me anyway,’ Lucile said. ‘He thinks I’m a child. He doesn’t know I’m there.’

      ‘He knows,’ Adèle said. ‘Go through, why don’t you?’ She gestured in the direction of the drawing room, towards its closed doors. ‘Bring me a report. I dare you.’

      ‘I can’t just walk in.’

      ‘Why can’t you? If they’re only sitting around talking, they can’t object, can they? And if they’re not – well, that’s what

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