‘Oh, mamma, how can you say that?’ cried poor Kicky. ‘I feel like throwing myself into the Seine. It would be a good riddance.’

  ‘Yes, and add to the disgrace. A very fine idea. The trouble is, your papa and I have been too lenient with you from the first. It is the same with Gyggy and Isabella. You are all three of you selfish and inconsiderate, and have never shown the faintest sign of gratitude for all that has been done for you.’

  ‘Dear mamma, I am grateful. Indeed I am. I don’t know what I should do without you. I owe everything to you. You surely do not think I wanted to fail in the examination?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. I am too shocked and disappointed. Failing in your Latin, too—one of the subjects most necessary in your future career in chemistry. Of course, I know what it is: it is all this drawing.’

  ‘But, mamma, I only sketch for amusement.’

  ‘Exactly. Amusement. You put the matter in a nutshell. Your generation thinks of nothing but amusement. Isabella grumbles at three hours’ practice a day, because she has not enough time for amusement. You fail in your bachot because you prefer amusing yourself with a pencil—and generally at other people’s expense, I have noticed. Don’t think I did not catch a glimpse of that caricature of your Uncle George the other day, because I did. He would have been exceedingly flattered, wouldn’t he? A nice tribute to a godfather who made you a handsome present of twenty francs when he went away, I must say. As for Gyggy—I have neither the time nor the patience to work myself into a rage about him. His faults are all too obvious. Why I should find myself the possessor of three such selfish, ungrateful children I do not know.’

  ‘Oh, mamma, please, please, stop.’

  ‘Well, I am not going to tell your papa. You will have to break the news to him yourself. A fine surprise it will be to him when he greets you in London to hear that his eldest son has been failed in his baccalauréat—after all the grief and worry he has had over his poor brother, too.’

  ‘Mamma, wouldn’t it be better if I wrote to him, and did not go to London?’

  ‘Certainly not. It was always arranged that you should go on the fifteenth, and on the fifteenth you shall go. What your papa will arrange for you I do not know. It is extremely probable that we shall all live in London in future. His last letter hinted at the possibility. His business prospects appear brighter there than here. It will be a good thing for Isabella, at any rate. I shall take care that she is sent to a good college.’

  ‘But what about Gyggy, mamma?’

  ‘Eugène will have to stay in France. Your Aunt Louise will make herself responsible for him. Now it is time you went to bed. I have had a long and extremely exhausting day, and my head is splitting.’

  She kissed him on the forehead and left the room, leaving a little trail of camphor behind her—she had worn her winter furs to Boulogne—and Kicky was left alone. He wandered to the window and leant out, his head in his arms. ‘It’s beginning,’ he thought, ‘what I have always dreaded; the start of a new life, the breaking up of the old. To-morrow I shall be a man. This old, careless, irresponsible life is finished. I shall never be happy again. Never more. I don’t want to go to London. Oh, God, why must things ever change? Why can’t time stand still? Nothing will ever be the same again. Perhaps I shall have to live in London all my life, and years later, when I am old and grey, I shall come back here, and the house will be pulled down, and nobody will recognise me, everyone will be dead. I shall go and buy sweets from Madame Liard, in the rue de la Tour, and she will serve me like a stranger.’

  The familiar smells came up to him from the street below, and the dear, familiar cries. There was old Gaston, with the wooden leg, who was the concierge at the house opposite. He always came out about this time to sniff the air. A fiacre clopped by over the cobblestones, and the cocher drew rein at the end of the street to allow the hourly omnibus to pass. The cafés were lighting up, and Kicky could see a waiter rubbing the tables with a cloth.

  The air was warm for May, and it was laden with homely smells—French coffee, and endive, and burnt bread. Someone was laughing in the house next door. In the distance came the muffled rumble of Paris, the sound that Kicky had heard now as far back as he could remember. Sometimes, in the vacances, he and Gyggy used to return late, in the last omnibus, and there was something mysterious and compelling in this Paris seen by night—the lamps at the street corners, the twinkling cafés, the gay, inconsequent strolling of the passers-by; there was a sense of buoyancy in the air, a pleasant levity.

  You sang for no reason; you laughed because you must.

  And now Kicky had to leave it all behind him, and set out for London, which was dim and murky and unfriendly, so he had always heard. He must say good-bye to Monsieur Froussard and Madame, and the dear funny pension, and the boys; walk to-morrow along the quays for the last time, and perhaps snatch a hasty visit to the green, tangled Bois, and the Mare d’Auteuil. If only papa would invent a bottle that would contain all the scents and sounds one loved, so that in London, in his black and lonely moments, he could take off the stopper and release the smells of home! Sniff Paris, for one brief and magical moment, on the still air. But Louis-Mathurin, with all his imagination, had never gone so far as that, and Kicky had to leave Paris without any reminder of the home he loved except the pictures he made for himself in the back of his mind.

  He felt like a criminal on his way to prison as he kissed his family good-bye, shaking hands with old Charlotte, who had been with them for years and wept openly at his departure, waving to p’tit Jean-Jean, the son of the boulanger next door, glancing for the last time up at his bedroom window, the shutter of which banged a forlorn farewell. And he knew he would never hear it again, or return to the little bedroom he shared with Gyggy.

  Dear, brave, comic Gyggy, fighting to keep back his tears, turned a somersault in the street to make Kicky laugh. This was the last Kicky saw of him for six interminable years—for he was a man when they met each other again—and, turning round and looking over the back of the fiacre, he waved to him, waved to the long, leggy figure with the shock of chestnut hair, as though he left part of himself behind and was saying goodbye to his own boyhood.

  His misery was acute as he drove through the streets of Paris for the last time. It seemed heartless and incredible that that man, standing on the pavement reading his morning paper, would go about his daily life in the usual way, work at his office, lunch at his little restaurant, return in the evening to his pleasant, familiar home and his own bed, and he, Kicky, would be hundreds of miles away in an alien land. If only they could change places. A chiffonier padded in the gutter, a stub of cigarette behind his ear, and later in the day he would rest himself under the warm sun, his filthy cap over his face—it would be better to be him, without a care in the world, than Kicky Busson du Maurier, who had failed in his baccalauréat.

  All the way across the north of France, and again in the steamer that was to take him the whole way to London Bridge, Kicky was wondering what to say to his father when he arrived. Kind, jovial papa, who had never scolded him, and was never angry except once—and that was when he had seen someone ill-treat an animal, and then he had gone straight up to the fellow and knocked him down—papa was so vague he might even forget to meet him. But he had taken such an interest in Kicky’s work the last time he had been home, and had said that they must work together in a laboratory and give the greatest scientific discoveries of all time to the world. What agony of disappointment would be his when he learnt the dreadful news! Mamma had so rubbed in the shame of his failure, and the terrible effect it would have upon papa, that Kicky was seasick for the entire voyage, even though the sea was as smooth as the proverbial mill-pond.

  And going up the London river, of course, it began to rain—that relentless grey drizzle from a leaden sky so depressing to the newcomer—and what with seasickness, and homesickness, and the sickness born of nerves, Kicky was in the depths of despair as he watched the dirty water, full of wisps of straw and sodden bread and orange-peel, and saw the murky chimneys and the roof-tops of London draw nearer through the evening mist.

  The boat drew alongside London Bridge with a groan and a shiver and the clattering of chains, and the air was hideous with rough cockney voices and unfamiliar sounds, Kicky faltered down the gangway, a poor, woebegone fellow with a small portmanteau in either hand, and there was papa waiting for him, a mad, incongruous figure under an enormous scarlet umbrella.

  He waved violently—in tremendous spirits, of course—while Kicky’s heart drooped to the bottom of his boots. Papa kissed him on each cheek, and then, seeing his reluctant eyes and his miserable little face, he threw back his head and burst into a shout of laughter.

  ‘You have failed,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to tell me. Your expression is enough. Don’t worry; it doesn’t matter a bit. We’ll go and have some dinner and forget all about it.’

  And off they went together, arm in arm, Kicky’s heart nearly bursting with love and gratitude and relief, while Louis-Mathurin, singing at the top of his voice, charged the surly passers-by, the ragged urchins, and the solemn London policeman with the point of his scarlet umbrella.

  Part Four

  10

  No 44 Wharton Street, Pentonville, was a very different place from the rue du Bac in Paris, and Kicky wondered how existence there was to be endured at all. His mother and Isabella came over in the autumn, and it seemed as though they were to settle in London for good. Kicky ached for Paris, for his old life at the Pension Froussard, and his companions, and Gyggy, but he was condemned instead to become a pupil at the Birkbeck Laboratory in University College.

  Quite undaunted by his son’s failure to pass his baccalauréat, Louis-Mathurin decided that a further study of two years would be profitable to the boy, and, as he happened to know Dr Williams at the college, the matter was easily arranged. Kicky was very disheartened. He thought that papa would realise his total unsuitability for a scientific career, and would permit him to take up music or drawing professionally. Papa never suggested anything of the kind. As for mamma, she insisted with so much emphasis that Kicky was the luckiest person in the world to have so much done for him, possessing a father who not only forgave him for his failure but arranged for him to become a pupil for two years at University College, where he would have the most wonderful opportunities, that he dared not utter the mildest protests, for fear of disturbing the family harmony. It was better to say nothing, and make the best of things, than risk an explosion in the home. Besides, Kicky was far too tender-hearted to bear the thought of hurting papa’s feelings.

  Papa was exactly like a big, overgrown schoolboy, with his tremendous enthusiasms and his fantastic ideas for improving the world, and he made an excellent companion. Kicky had seen little of him during those last years in Paris; he had been away a great deal, and Kicky always at school, but here in London they were thrown together, taking long walks very often on Sundays, to Hampstead or to Richmond, Louis-Mathurin striding out like a long-distance athlete, his arms waving, his grizzled curls blowing in the air. He talked vaguely of business in the City, which he was supposed to be carrying on in his late brother’s name, but what exactly he did in the office Kicky never found out. His speculations were no longer a secret. He simply could not keep the excitement to himself. Ellen, when the first shock of discovery was over, shrugged her shoulders from long habit and awaited the inevitable sequel. Ruination would come one day, sooner or later, and for the children’s sake she hoped it would be later.

  She supposed there must be a certain fascination in obtaining something for nothing—a hundred pounds from five—and it was very useful of course, when a lucky investment enabled her to send Isabella to an excellent daily school; but she could not approve of the method; it was against her principles.

  Besides, it was not always certain. Some days he lost, and then came the little demand upon her income, and a casual enquiry as to when she expected her next dividend from Boulogne.

  Kicky, naturally, heard nothing of this. Money matters were not discussed in front of him. He knew that his father was poor—Mamma had insisted upon this from his earliest days, and had impressed upon him that extravagance was the greatest evil in the world—but why he was poor she did not say.

  Papa was a genius, of course, a great inventor, but somehow or other nobody seemed to have heard of his inventions. He could not help being aware of this in Paris, amongst his school friends, and so he fell into the habit of not discussing the matter, and hoped sincerely, for his father’s sake, that these mysterious inventions were appreciated in some other country—South America, perhaps, or Australia. Papa was great on philosophy, and had tremendous likes and dislikes in ancient history. Like all atheists, he possessed in full many of the most Christian qualities: great tenderness to children and to animals, a hatred of human suffering, extreme generosity, and an eager willingness to help others in distress. His second brother, Jacques, died suddenly in Hamburg (the Bussons were notoriously short-lived) and left a wife and three children in want. Louis-Mathurin, with an excess of good feeling, sent for the widow and her daughters, even taking apartments for them near by in Pentonville, but, as ill luck had it, their arrival clashed with an unfortunate speculation, and Louis-Mathurin found he could do very little for them.

  The widow, who had believed her brother-in-law to be a successful man, was naturally a little annoyed, and poured long tales of woe into Ellen’s ears of how she had been deceived and dragged over from Hamburg, where she had kind friends, to apartments in Pentonville and no prospects.

  It was all very awkward, and the upshot was a definite estrangement between the two families, Madame Jacques returning to Hamburg after a month or two. Ellen wrote off to Louise indignantly, saying, ‘It is all very well, but why we should be expected to take responsibility for your brother’s family I do not know. He had certainly never done anything for us. Louis suggests that you write to Palmella, and for the sake of your old friendship he might be able to help them. Personally, I doubt the success of your mission. Beyond a few books at Christmas and birthday time the Duke has not been much of a godfather to Eugène, and as for calling Kicky Palmella after him, we might have spared ourselves the trouble. At any rate, I have forbidden Isabella to correspond with her cousin Josephine, as it is not very pleasant that the girls should write to one another when their parents have quarrelled.

  ‘We are all well, but Christmas is not an agreeable time for us, and Louis is very uncertain with his speculations. If only he would make some more money we could put it towards Isabella’s education. I find it very difficult to keep up her music; it is impossible to be a brilliant player without three hours’ practice a day. You would be disappointed in her appearance if you saw her; she certainly was a lovely child, but her beautiful complexion is gone, and her front teeth give her continual pain, and I fear she must lose them in two or three years’ time. The dentists all say that the decay comes from the stomach. What a pity that she was not allowed to dine at one o’clock like all other children, but Louis would insist on his fad of dining at five. I am quite in despair, knowing what she must suffer with false teeth. Louis himself feels better since he left off beer, and drinks but rum and water. I am quite distressed at the thought of all you are doing for Eugène and I trust he will repay your goodness by exemplary behaviour.’

  Which letter would suggest that the nature of Ellen Busson du Maurier did not exactly mellow with the years….

  Louis-Mathurin, on the other hand, sang and joked at fifty-five with greater freedom than he had done at twenty-five, and was as pleased as a child when he visited the Birkbeck Laboratory at University College and was allowed to look at all the bottles and mixtures ranged on the shelves, about which Kicky, even now, knew very little. He would try to evade science as a subject of conversation, and would persuade his father to talk poetry, or music, or sport—anything, in fact, but chemistry—and Louis-Mathurin, easily led, would hold forth for hours at a time while Kicky swung his legs and listened, and thought how pleasant it was not to be doing any work.

  Kicky was going through rather a difficult period. He hated his surroundings for one thing—the grey-drab respectability of Pentonville, and the dreary apartment where they lived. He had no pleasure in returning to it after a long and uncongenial day at the Birkbeck Laboratory, where the little work he did was monotonous and his fellow-students were loud-voiced and smutty-minded.

  His passion for music increased tenfold; he would beg a few shillings from his mother and stand in the gallery queue for Covent Garden, and sit perhaps, when he was admitted, somewhere right away at the back with his chin in his hands and his eyes closed, drinking in the sounds that had meant so much to him ever since he had lain as a tiny child in his cot and listened to his father.

  Music took him right out of his dissatisfied adolescent self that could find no beauty in chemical bottles, and wafted him, as though by magic, into an enchanted land. These figures who strolled so gallantly in Verona or Seville were real to him, and he moved amongst them, from his bench in the gallery, fighting their duels, wooing their women, singing the songs they sang with the same careless rapture. The world of fantasy was his world; he lived in a dream, and the pale young man with the square shoulders who tramped home to Pentonville was only a shadow.

  The National Gallery and the British Museum were other methods of escape. On his free afternoons he would take a scrappy sandwich lunch to one of them, and sit for hours at a time before one particular picture or thing of beauty, drugging himself with the appreciation of colour and line and form, until the attendants looked at him suspiciously, as though he were a lunatic escaped from an asylum, and he would have to get up and walk away in pretended unconcern, humming under his breath.