High City on a Hill (Ch10)

[igenlode]

Chapter 9 of Hertha was possibly the least successful to date, having been posted for weeks on both fanfiction.net and AO3 and garnering a grand total of zero reviews on either :-( (Either my 'regular reviewers' didn't like the chapter, or else they were away -- I am fairly certain that the FFnet reviewer hasn't even read it, because her country wasn't showing up at all in the stats, and the sample size is so small that I can usually identify individual non-Americans...)

However despite the lack of incentive I did finish typing up and tweaking Chapter 10, in which Hertha ends up giving Christine a lift to her father's grave; I had some trouble splitting these scenes, so we've got half a chapter here and then the rest of the graveyard adventure in the next chapter.

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Chapter 10 — “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”

I had grumbled over the chill and discomforts of Beauvais. It was hard to admit, even to myself, that my father’s familiar apartments on the Place Clignot-les-Pins seemed to have grown narrow and dark and constricted after the space and luxury I’d grown used to in the Hôtel Chagny as a Vicomte’s wife. Father was glad to see me, and grateful for the company, but there was a constraint between us that had not been there before, and my thickening body was only yet another reminder that I was no longer the girl who’d left this house for her wedding over a year ago.

The childhood books that had once held comfort were battered now and more shabby than I’d remembered, torn pages a sharp reminder of how Rudi and I had once squabbled over their possession. The French novels I’d been reading at nineteen, when I’d thought myself so sophisticated, had lost their glamour and revealed themselves as shallow and foolish or cynical by turns. My bedroom had not changed since last I lived here —though I shared it now, as I’d suspected, with an overflow of boxes from my father’s study that he’d failed to find space for elsewhere— but it felt as if it had belonged to someone else entirely.

It was not just that I had grown up; grown accustomed to being married and being my own mistress instead of the daughter of the house, and taking thought for what my husband might come to need rather than what my parents might think. It was that the household itself had been changed by my absence, and any gap I’d left had imperceptibly closed over.

There had been a time when my father had come home and talked over the day’s business with me after supper, but those hours were long gone. I’d lost touch with affairs at the bank, and any concerns currently on the ledgers might as well have been a closed book so far as I was concerned. Patient old Luisa, who’d reigned in the kitchen for years and always made me welcome there, had gone to live with her married daughter in Bruges, and the new cook was jealous of her prerogatives and not prepared to tolerate what she termed ‘interference’ in her domain. Anny, the parlourmaid, who when we were both much younger had once been prepared to giggle with me behind closed doors, was stiff and uncomfortable in my presence and called me “madame la Vicomtesse”.

And Mama — Mama made an effort to smile for my sake, just as she dragged herself by slow stages through the long ritual of washing and dressing every evening in order to reassure Father by joining us at the dinner table. It was a hollow pretence, and they both knew it. Left to herself, she would sit listless for hours with her fingers knotting and unknotting the fringes of her shawl, her hair lank and loose around her shoulders or thrust up all anyhow and slipping sideways in its pins. She did not weep. She was merely a drained shadow of herself, caught in the depths without even the strength to reach up towards the light.

Well, I had not come here in quest of a rest-cure. And if it was escape I was seeking, then there was no better way to find it than in concern for others.

There was all too little I could do for Mama. I too had grieved Rudi, and remembered him still in so many ways and at unexpected moments from day to day. But for me it was a wound that had healed, and the memories had lost their pang. In that stifling week of summer so long ago, something had simply broken in Mama that could not mend, and for which all the nerve specialists in the world had never found a cure.

It hurt, sometimes, to know that I was not enough; that nothing in my life I could ever do or be would overcome the dull weight of Rudi’s death. As a girl I’d wondered with resentment how my brother would have fared in my stead; whether, had I been carried off by some tragic childhood ailment, there would have been an exclusive shrine for me in my mother’s heart, in which I would have featured as a shining vision of innocence. In storybooks, after all, it was always the saintly little girls who died.

Rudi had not been a saint. He had been a long-legged boy on the brink of manhood, sometimes impatient with his little sister and sometimes kind. He’d had a lifetime of promise ahead of him, and he had been there for me since before I could remember. People died all the time, in fiction to make an improving moral point and in real life often for no reason at all. But somehow, as a child, it had never occurred to me that it could happen to us; that a part of my existence could be simply taken away without warning, and forever.

Mama did love me, I knew, and it was not Rudi’s fault that Mama had lost her way in the mists after he was gone. All Father or I could do was to cherish the times when the shadows drew back and she was able to reach out to those of us who remained, and be her old self again for however long the respite lasted: weeks, months, or even a year before the malaise was too much for her and once more inevitably the light went out.

This, too, would pass. Like Christine’s hold on my husband, in the end it must surely pass... and in the meantime I found ways to ensure the running of the household as best I could and to lift the weight of that failure from my mother’s shoulders at least. I put my arms round her for comfort when it seemed to help, and spoke of Rudi and of our old life, in the lilting nostalgic dialect that brought Vienna back vividly into the room. I combed and brushed out the long dark masses of her hair, of a weight and lustre that had once put mine to shame, and plucked gently free the scattering of silver threads that had begun to show. In the mornings, I studied my father’s newspapers so that I could make well-informed conversation when he returned, if long silences threatened to fall... and I found myself living day to day in anticipation of those evenings when Raoul would join us at dinner.

Father had been happy to issue an open invitation for my husband to dine with us any day he saw fit, just as I’d known he would be. It was the least he could do for the young Vicomte, he observed with a sad hint of his old twinkle, since Raoul had been so generous as to make him a loan of my renewed company, a gift for which at this moment he was unceasingly grateful.

I flushed a little and said nothing. I had allowed Father to believe that this visit had been at Raoul’s own suggestion, and I did not know whether my parents had truly not heard the gossip about Christine Daaé, or whether he chose to discount it out of courtesy.

So Raoul came to call by tacit agreement three times a week, and I was able to sit quietly during the soup course and watch him across the table, talking together with my father. The familiar burr of male voices lifted from my shoulders for the time being the responsibility of filling the silence, and once or twice in response to Raoul’s quick coaxing smile there would come a few words from Mama, seated at my side like a ghost held together only by the stiff silks of her gown.

I could not bring myself to ask Raoul outright about what was going on at the Opera. We had reached a tentative unspoken truce, and that was enough. But my father, making courteous conversation, was bound to bring the subject up from time to time, and from Raoul’s somewhat guarded replies I gathered that rehearsals had begun for the new production and —from the tone of what he did say— that things were not going well with the grand reopening plans, though he did not divulge why. At that precise moment Father had let slip an ill-judged comment on the deficiencies of Chalumeau, and Raoul, seizing upon it in hot defence, turned the conversation aside. The debate became an amicable argument on the merits of the French and German schools of composition respectively, and Raoul’s drawn, tense look eased.

The original plan, as I knew, had indeed been to reopen the Opera with a bravura performance of Chalumeau’s “La Reine de Navarre”. Old scenery flats had been brought out and overhauled, and enquiries set on foot to obtain an extra percussionist and a whole off-stage section of trombones for the grand march in the second act. Only the Ghost had chosen to make an entrance with his demands for the new season to feature a completely unknown self-penned work, and though Raoul had said nothing to disabuse my father on the matter, I did not think his obvious exhaustion of late could arise from Chalumeau’s bombastic warhorse of a production. It seemed to me I was not the only one for whom these evenings of talk by lamplight formed a welcome respite.

There were times, in these last two weeks, when I’d felt like taking Raoul by the shoulders and insisting that I was his wife and that I wanted to help. Whatever it was that was costing him sleep, it would surely be better shared... only I’d made a hysterical scene and returned to my father’s roof, and as it was I had no right to Raoul’s burdens at all.

It would mean mentioning Christine, besides. And that was a subject of which we did not speak.

So Raoul and I exchanged only the most trivial of remarks, and polite enquiries after the health of the coming child. I’d attended another appointment with the accoucheur, and was able to regale my husband with a selection of Dr Leverdier’s latest dictums, and raise a reminiscent smile. That sunlit afternoon when we’d laughed together at his father’s table had begun to seem all too painfully long ago.

The baby was moving more and more strongly now, and I had grown accustomed to the flutters of sensation that accompanied me throughout the day. By all evidence it bade fair to be a lusty infant, and doubtless endowed with a pair of lungs to match the vigour of those flailing limbs. From time to time, when the pummelling fell quiet for an hour or two, I would picture the child within me nestling curled and content like a sleeping kitten, and be overtaken by a pang of protective love so strong that it almost frightened me.

I was going to be a mother. When spring wore on into midsummer there would be a newborn child to be placed into my arms... and that was no longer a matter of symptoms to be discussed, or changes taking place in my body, but of the existence of another being quite distinct from myself. and who would have to endure the unknown ordeal of the birthing chamber as vulnerable as I. This was not just a condition, like a queasy stomach or a case of the measles; for these months I was no longer one person, but two. It was something I’d always known, but somehow it had never quite seemed so real.

If circumstances had been otherwise I might have been busy with the preoccupations of any other expectant wife: furnishing my nursery, and browsing through the most delicate of fine lawns and linens so that the countless tiny garments needed for the baby’s first months could take shape. But back in the Hôtel Chagny there were caps and gowns and napkins by the dozen laid up in lavender for the coming of the next generation, embroidered smocks and dresses and exquisite carrying shawls — all of a quality one could scarcely obtain nowadays, as the old Vicomtesse had told me with wistful pride. She had taken me through the contents of all the chests herself when I was still a new bride, fumbling at the catches with fingers made crooked by her long illness, and turning over each and every layer lovingly until her wrists trembled and she had to sit down.

In addition there was a cradle of the newest and most perfect design that had been given to us as a wedding gift, and over which I’d exclaimed with delight. The suite of rooms in which the Vicomte Raoul had grown to childhood had long since been freshly decorated in anticipation of a new occupant, with accommodation for a nursery-maid to attend upon them. I already had everything a child would need, and I could not cajole my mother into shopping with me for fripperies of lace or ribbon, let alone the baby gifts that in other days might have brought her pleasure.

A visit to the dressmaker on my own account, however, was rapidly becoming less a question of luxury than of necessity. It would have done my mother good to join me, I thought, but I could not induce her to leave the house, and if I did not obtain a new wardrobe soon that would accommodate my expanding figure then I should not feel able to leave the house either. There was an excellent little woman I had been recommended in the rue Guerin, who could work miracles with discreet panels of lacing and long jackets in fashions cut both to conceal and to flatter, and it was clear I was going to need clothes with the capacity for considerable further adjustment.

~o~

Madame Walbroek, the dressmaker, proved to be a voluble creature who sized up my condition in an instant, even down to the various aches and bodily embarrassments I had not divulged. Her premises were both modish and comfortable, and at the end of our consultation I came away with a long list of purchases I had been convinced into buying, in addition to the order for two daytime ensembles and one for the evening, to be delivered as soon as they were complete.

I’d spent rather more than I had intended, but I had also enjoyed myself. I sank back in the seats of the carriage with a pleasant sense of dissipation, and glanced out of the window. We were just passing the side-entrance to the Opera. A moment later, a slim figure with a shawl pulled haphazardly about her shoulders came bolting blindly out of the artistes’ door, and seemed on the point of flinging herself into the street.

The driver reined up abruptly, with a clatter of hooves and a curse, and began to give vent to his feelings. The girl flinched, and turned up a blanched white face. It was Christine Daaé.

“Enough of that, monsieur!” I rapped sharply on the roof to cut short the tirade, and leaned out of the window, caught by a sudden unreasoning stab of panic. “Miss Daaé, has something happened — is there something wrong in there? In the Opera?”

Already images of disaster were welling up, memories I’d thought long forgotten; screaming faces in the crush, and the chandelier scything down, down... Had Raoul said he would be at the Opera House today? Try as I would, I could not remember. Why, oh why, had I sought so assiduously to avoid the subject?

“No— no, it’s nothing. I just—” Christine flushed, the colour on her pale face stark as greasepaint. “Forgive me, Madame. I didn’t mean to inconvenience you, or— or cause any alarm.”

The course of my thoughts had evidently been all too easy to read. Against my will I could feel the heat rising in my own cheeks.

“Clearly it’s not ‘nothing’.” I tried to keep my tone level, and achieved only a pompous echo of the governess I’d most disliked. I bit my lip; ploughed onwards regardless. “I think I have a right to know what’s going on.”

Christine’s eyes fell, with a little helpless shake of the head. She took a deep breath. “Truly, truly there’s nothing amiss. I was being foolish, that’s all. The rehearsal... the singing... I couldn’t stand it any longer. I don’t know what to do. I wish, oh, I wish—”

A tear spilled over, and then another, as she broke off. “Oh, if only I could see Papa!”

It was the last thing I’d expected. I’d been conscious of rising resentment and of distaste for any spectacle of her sufferings on my husband’s account: of anger at the fears I’d let slip. There’d been the compulsion to pluck at an open wound, and needle her into admissions I knew I had no desire to hear. But her outcry was not that of a woman and a rival, but of a child betrayed.

Compunction caught at my heart. “Christine, what is it? Is there nothing I can do? Surely the management—”

“I— I can’t go back in there.” She caught at the edges of her shawl with a determined gesture; tugged it more closely about her shoulders, and looked up and down the street. Her hands had closed unconsciously into fists, and she swallowed down a sob. “I need a cab. Or if you really want to help...”

“Here.” Intended or not, the imputation stung. I leaned forward. Managed the door, with a struggle, and swung it open. “Of course I’ll take you up. Get in. Now, where is it you want to go?”

I don’t know what I’d anticipated — the railway station, perhaps, or the telegraph office: an escape to some friend out of town. She had the look of one bent on flight from Paris altogether. But she hung back, flushing, and when at last she could be induced to climb in, the address she gave was one I’d never heard.

The driver repeated it back, dubious. “Out to the cemetery, madame? You sure?”

Taken aback in my turn, I glanced across at Christine, who nodded and looked away. I sighed, steeling myself for a long and jolting ride. “The cemetery — if the horses will do it.”

“Oh, it’s a fair step, but the horses will do it right enough. Only... it’s a rough quarter, madame, and not many folk about.”

Not many fit for a respectable banker’s daughter, he meant, let alone a Vicomte’s wife. Whatever lodgings and pot-houses might surround the place, they would undoubtedly be inhabited. “If it’s dangerous—”

“It’s not.” Christine was still trying to find a place in the corner amidst all the purchases I’d piled there. She let a parcel of corsetry slip from her lap and made to rise. “But if you don’t want to go, I quite understand. I—”

“Sit down.” I took the intimate garments from her, remembered I had no lap of my own, and found space for them between us on the seat. “Is that the place where your father lies?”

He’d been a foreigner; I wondered for the first time if he had been a Lutheran. If Christine herself —for all the Ghost’s jibes at my own forefathers— even attended Mass.

Christine nodded. “Yes, it’s Papa’s resting-place. I told myself I would go out there every week, at first. But then I had to work so hard, and I had so little time, and—”

Her voice shook a little, and she broke off.

“He wasn’t there,” she said after a moment, muffled. “I know that sounds silly, but... we’d always been so close, and somehow I thought— I thought I could still talk to him, and it would be the same. But there was nothing. Nothing. He couldn’t hear. I couldn’t feel him at all. Just cold stone angels, and emptiness, when I wanted him so much. And in the end I— I couldn’t go any more. I’ve even wondered, sometimes, these last few months, if maybe the Ghost was sent because of that, to... to punish me—”

“Don’t say such things.” I cut her short, a little shocked. “The Ghost wasn’t sent by your father or by any heavenly power, and you know it. He’s a man, a wicked, petty man who used his voice-tricks for nothing but pure greed.”

“That’s not true.” Christine’s face was averted, and in the shadows within the carriage I could not be certain of her expression, but desolation echoed through her words. “I wish— I almost wish it were true. I wish it could be that easy. But it’s not. That’s what they don’t understand, any of them, not even—”

She broke off again, fingers pleating in the fringe of her shawl. “I have to do what they want. But I can’t. Only I have to, but I can’t... Papa— Papa would understand. Oh, if only he were here... If only I could decide what to do!”

I reached out and caught her hands before she could pull the threads apart. “Well, we’ll go to his grave, if that will set your heart at ease, and you can pay your respects. And along the way, I think perhaps you’d better tell me just what it is you say everyone at the Opera wants from you, and what this impossible choice seems to be.”

And then, curtly, for the driver’s benefit: “Very well, you have the address — drive on.”