The soirée was a great event; I could with only a touch of hyperbole say that it transformed my own position in France and (at the same time) added an important footnote to the history of the French courtesan. For much of the day I took my ease; reading the newspapers over my morning coffee, going for a walk along the beach, passing a few moments in conversation with recent acquaintances briefly encountered. And then, at lunch, I had my meeting with Wilkinson; we ate together at a restaurant in the town, and had a perfectly pleasant, though entirely useless, conversation. He went on at great length about some rare bird he had spotted in the mountains, and was so excited – apparently it had not been seen since some legendary Spanish ornithologist had recorded it in the 1850s, and Wilkinson believed that he had won undying fame in the world of bird-lovers as a result – that he could talk of little else. I told him about the coal, which pleased him, but he quickly went back to his birds once he had absorbed the information. All he said was 'Good, good. Very pleasing.' He had no requests about anything else the Government needed to know. Apparently I was beginning to be trusted to work that out for myself.
But it was pleasant enough and it saved me a good deal of weary memorandum writing later on, so I was satisfied. I also mentioned my remarkable meeting of the previous day, for I was aching to tell someone and knew that Wilkinson was about the only person in the world it was fair to confide in. He, after all, had been partly responsible for Virginie paying off her debts and launching herself on such a meteoric career. Besides, I was proud of her, and vain about my sagacity in spotting something that Lefevre had entirely overlooked.
'In that case, I must meet her,' he said gaily, and my heart sank. 'A soirée, you say? Excellent, I will come with you.'
'I really don't . . .'
'I have long desired to meet her; I feel as though I know her so very well.'
'I very much doubt she would want to meet you.'
'She does not know of our association, I hope?'
'Of course not.'
'In that case, what possible objection could she have? I would like to thank her, and I think I know the best way to do it. Don't worry, Cort. I'm not going to ruin your mascot. Quite the contrary. She might at some stage prove very useful.'
He would not be dissuaded, and I heartily repented of my sudden garrulousness. I should have kept absolutely silent; but the levels of discretion I was forced to maintain were quite unnatural. I am not by nature a gossip, but all men need someone to talk to. I had no one in France, and the sudden appearance of Wilkinson made me treat him with more trust than he should have received. No harm came of it, but I had, nonetheless, made a mistake which stemmed from youth and naïveté. I never repeated it.
At nine in the evening I picked him up from his boarding house – one which cost less per week than mine cost per night, as he pointed out – and was at least consoled to find him properly dressed. I had feared he would arrive in tweed jacket and hiking boots, but from somewhere or other he had acquired the necessary garb and, although he was not a man who could ever look elegant, he
Much to my surprise, he was a brilliant performer, for these sorts of occasions are little more than theatre. Whereas my style was to remain silent and listen, Wilkinson revealed an unsuspectedly ostentatious side to his character. He spoke French loudly and badly, with many gesticulations to make up for his grammatical eccentricities; he told anecdotes of doubtful taste to old dowagers which had them gurgling with pleasure, he leaped from topic to topic with gusto, recounted tales of horses to horsemen, birds to hunters and politics to politicians. He was, in fact, a great success; even more so when he left the party for half an hour, and returned with the Prince of Wales.
