Читать книгу The Hurlyburly's Husband - Jean Teule - Страница 12

‘A girl, and now a boy: ’tis what is called “the King’s choice”!’

Constance Abraham, the wigmaker’s wife on Rue Taranne, waxed ecstatic as she gazed at the sleeping infant before picking him up. ‘Ah, praise be to God, is he not lovely, this little Louis-Antoine with his fair white skin. He is the image of his mother!’

But Athénaïs, standing next to her in the shop, was wringing her hands whilst Marie-Christine, now two years of age, tugged at her mother’s skirt. Athénaïs pushed her away: ‘Leave me alone.’

Louis-Henri de Pardaillan was sitting in a tall armchair being shaved. He looked at his wife.

‘Are you all right, Athénaïs?’

The marquise was not all right. She felt oppressed, had difficulty breathing, and had sudden violent urges to weep. The kindly, plump wigmaker’s wife thought she understood her malaise.

‘Don’t worry, my dear, this must be a post partum reaction; ’tis quite frequent. I had the same, did I not, after my son’s birth. Do you recall, Joseph?’

‘I do!’ exclaimed the wigmaker, trying a new wig on Montespan’s scalp. ‘Dear me, you became so sensitive that the slightest vexation, sometimes even a compliment, brought on a fit of tears or anger. You lost your appetite, you couldn’t sleep, and you were so distracted I wondered if you were not thinking about someone else.’

‘Boo-hoo!’

The fair marquise burst into tears. Her husband lifted the towel from his lap to wipe the shaving cream from his face. He pushed the copper basin in front of him away and got to his feet.

‘Athénaïs!’

He embraced his wife whilst their little girl clung to her, saying, ‘Maman, Maman.’

‘Do stop pulling on my skirt, you’ll tear it! Oh!’

Athénaïs wept profusely, knelt down and immediately apologised to the little girl. ‘Forgive me, Marie-Christine. I am not a proper sort of mother. I have no maternal instinct…’

‘But you do!’ protested Constance Abraham loudly, waking the infant still in her arms, who began to cry. ‘Have no fear, my sweet, a post partum depression never lasts very long. In the space of a few hours or a few days you will once again feel like the happiest of mothers. And you will want many more children.’

‘Particularly as you are fearsome fertile; your powder ignites easily,’ said the wigmaker. ‘Whenever your husband returns from the army, he finds you with child.’

Constance rocked Louis-Antoine, who continued to wail.

‘The only question one must ask is, after the first child who so resembles her father, and the second child who so resembles his mother, who will the third child resemble?’

‘Boo-hoo!’

The marquise stood up, shaken by violent spasms; she was in an extraordinary state of sadness and anxiety. Leaning over the railing of the mezzanine, the apprentices – holding curling irons, curlpapers, and sticky pomade made from cherry-tree sap for hardening the curls – were able to ogle Athénaïs’s breasts from directly above. As she sobbed, her breasts bounced, and they were bigger than ever, for they were about to produce milk, and several buttons on her bodice popped open. The apprentices leant further. Athénaïs’s skirt of watered silk swept over the tiles of the shop as she fled. Her hips swayed as she headed for the door at the rear and the stairway leading to their apartments. She called out in apology, ‘Forgive me – I am ridiculous!’

The apprentices were breathless at the sight of the shuddering curves of her bottom. Joseph Abraham, raising his head, discovered that more than one of them was fondling himself. ‘You up there, do you want me to come up and give you a hand?’

Montespan was distraught. He was sitting with traces of shaving cream on his chin, whilst wearing a wig that was still under construction, from which there dangled strands of hemp to tie the hair, and little wire teeth to untangle and restrain it.

Madame Abraham, calmly seeking to soothe the infant’s cries, slipped a fleur-de-lis comforter into his mouth. Louis-Antoine instantly sucked avidly, and silence fell.

‘Go upstairs and see to your wife,’ the wigmaker’s spouse advised the husband, ‘and find something to distract her. Don’t worry about the children, I can keep them until the morrow if you wish…’

‘By then I shall have finished your wig,’ added Joseph. ‘Give it me that I may curl it.’

Louis-Henri de Pardaillan, his hair disarrayed from trying on the wig, thanked his landlords. He gently stroked little Louis-Antoine’s cheek with the back of his index finger, and went over to his daughter, who worshipped Athénaïs as much as he himself did. Marie-Christine had been leaning against the wall beneath the bunches of fresh hair from Normandy that hung from the ceiling; now she lifted the blond strands on either side of her ears. She twirled her fingers and tried to make ringlets to imitate the hairstyle her mother had invented.