I had already lost all sight of Augusta among the cheering partygoers. There in the middle of a cardinal’s festivities, to celebrate the death of a woman I had never met, I only wanted to see my brother, my other half. I began to push through the crowd back into the salon, trying to find Edgar, and when I finally did, he looked at me angrily:
‘What did Augusta say to you? What did you say to her?’ My brother’s eyes were red-raw, round with unexpected rage. ‘Have you spoiled things? Good grief, Benjamin, why must you always spoil things?’
Always? I thought. The room suddenly shook with a loud bang. The glass in the French windows rattled. The marksman’s gun fired out, birds and wings and guts were blasted and scorched, falling among the applauding guests and the orange blossom. I looked out across the courtyard. I could see Augusta Anson, standing with Sir Gideon Hervey, staring at us, a look of amusement on her pretty face. There was an air about them of gossip just revealed. Both of them pursing their lips like it was all such fun. I turned back to Edgar, who was furiously looking away. He had not seen his friends – or their cruelty.
Edgar and I returned to our room in grim silence. I slept poorly, turning and sweating. I did not understand why he was so angry with me. I had no intimation of the resentments he might feel. He was awake too, but neither of us spoke. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, Edgar was already dressed before I had a chance to get up. He said he was going out to get breakfast. I called his name, but he did not turn back. ‘Edgar, please wait.’ He left, not quite slamming the door, but an echo reverberated in the room. Throughout our childhood, the two of us squabbled as brothers do, but very rarely had we had serious fallouts.
At ten o’clock, I sat alone in our room. My brother still had not returned. We were due to take a tour of Paris by coach that day. Over a silvered pot of coffee gone cold and half a stick of bread untouched, I wondered what I should do. I picked up our mother’s guidebook, but I did not want to read what she had ruled we should visit. I put on my coat: the same one I had worn the night before we left London. Only then did I remember what I had kept inside its pocket: the scrap of paper I had rescued from the box under my bed. Now I pulled it out and read the words I had long before copied onto it. ‘Cardoso’: my mother’s maiden name. The address: ‘Rue des Rosiers’. I had quite forgotten about it. I returned the paper to my pocket.
At ten-thirty, I went out to the street to meet the carriage, and there was Edgar, sitting on some stone steps opposite, and the driver waiting for us. The man nodded and my brother saw me, got to his feet, sauntered across the street and got into the carriage, not saying a word.
We went first into the heart of the city, near the Tuileries again, and then beyond the Louvre down the busy Rue de Rivoli. The carriage circled over the bridges and the islands, where the traffic was moving in a slow file. From the window, I looked up and down the Seine, choked with boats. Boys on the right bank sat with fishing poles but did not seem very interested in catching fish. They called to each other and ran barefoot along the stone ledge of the river wall. The whole time, neither Edgar nor I spoke. I wanted to, but I did not know what I felt afraid of. Perhaps it was that I had nothing good to say of Sir Gideon, or particularly of Augusta Anson.
We passed the Hôtel de Ville. The carriage came to a momentary stop. My brother, alerted by our stillness, shifted in his seat. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Hmm,’ he replied, non-committally. But then his air changed again.
‘I am sorry that I was vile yesterday, Benjamin,’ he said. It surprised – and pleased – me that he should say it. Our eyes connected. ‘I don’t know why I did it.’ He sighed. ‘I know I am too excited by everything that’s happening here but I shouldn’t be vile to you. It’s just …’
He stopped, and for a moment, I thought he might be on the verge of tears.
‘What is it, Edgar?’ I asked.
‘It’s just that you are so clever, Benjamin. You have always looked at Mother with your ironic eye. And I know that none of this matters to you, really.’
‘I don’t think that’s true.’
‘Pfft! Of course it’s true,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think you care anything about the future, about the Company, about any of that. You don’t care about meeting good people, about being good people. You simply don’t.’
Up until that moment, I would never have thought that of myself. But sometimes, another person will utter something about you, and you realise that it is probably true. ‘I know you look at it all, Benjamin, and tut and think it’s just Mother telling us how to live our lives. But it matters to me. I want to be a success. I want to have friends. I want to go back to London with an address book full of invitations. I want Gideon and Augusta to …’ He sighed. ‘Well, just to like me.’I was tremendously moved by his words. Maybe I could have disabused him of this idea – maybe I should have told him about Gideon and Augusta enjoying watching us argue, but that would have hurt him, and I had no wish to do that. ‘I think they do like you, Edgar.’ Oh, I know it was a lie. ‘I wouldn’t worry on that score.’
He sighed again and I felt so sorry, and wished things had been different. Above us, I heard the driver call to the horses, and then his whip crack in the air. The carriage began to pull away. I put my hand inside my coat, into the pocket, and felt the folded paper between my fingertips.
‘I have something to show you,’ I said.
‘What is it?’
I took out the paper and handed it to him. He examined it for a moment, then unfolded it. ‘It’s an address.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Not far from here. Do you see the surname?’
‘Cardoso.’ He thought for a second. ‘What kind of strange name is that?’
‘Spanish, I suppose.’ I took a breath and felt my nerves. ‘It is Mother’s maiden name.’
‘What?’ he whispered. ‘How do you have this?’
‘I have had it for some time. I don’t know why I brought it but …’
Edgar’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Mother’s maiden name?’ he said, with some wonder.
‘Yes, like I say, I don’t really know why I brought it.’
He chuckled to himself. ‘Oh, I know why.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because, for you, Mother is a mystery.’ He paused and gazed at the paper in his hand. ‘How do you have this?’
‘I found it,’ I said, ‘a long time ago. I copied it down. I always knew about it.’
Edgar laughed. ‘You are such a frightful sneak, Benjamin!’ He looked down at the paper again. ‘Cardoso,’ he sighed. He stared at the name for a while. ‘Do you think that’s a grand sort of name?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Mother is a very educated person. Refined, I suppose.’
‘Perhaps,’ he began, in his hopeful little way, ‘Mother is quite grand. If she was grand and had married down –’ he looked up, both apologetic and conspiratorial ‘– to Father, I mean, that would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?’
I felt my brow knit. ‘I have often wondered who she really is,’ I said.