Levels of Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

Essex.’
    She looked at him a little uncertainly. Was this a fact or a joke?
    ‘A southerly, a south-westerly takes you to Essex. You need a good constant blowing westerly to get you across the German Ocean. But to reach France, you would need a northerly, which is somewhat rare and unreliable.’
    ‘So you will not visit me by balloon?’ she asked flirtatiously.
    ‘Madame Sarah, I would visit you by any means of transportation now or yet to be invented, were you in Paris or in Timbuctoo.’ He startled himself with this sudden gust of declaration, and took more cold pheasant as if it were a matter of urgency. ‘But I have a theory,’ he continued, a little more calmly. ‘I am convinced that the winds do not always blow in the same direction at different heights. So if you were caught in … in a contrary wind …’
    ‘An Essex wind?’
    ‘Precisely – if you were so caught, you would release ballast and seek the higher altitudes where that northerly might be found.’
    ‘And if it is not?’
    ‘Then you would end up in the water.’
    ‘But you know how to swim?’
    ‘Yes, but it would do me little good. There are some balloonists who wear cork overjackets in case they land in the sea. But that strikes me as unsporting. I believe a man should take his chances.’
    She left that remark hanging in the air.
     
    The next day, all that stopped him from feeling pure exultance was the question: had it been too easy? In Seville, he had spent many hours learning the language of the fan from a solemn Andalusian señorita: what this gesture, that concealment, this tap really meant. He understood and had practised gallantry on more than one continent, and found much charm in female coquetry. What he had not come across before was such straightforwardness, the acknowledgement of appetite and the unwillingness to waste time. He knew, of course, that all was not entirely straightforward. Fred Burnaby was not so naive as to imagine that he was being entertained merely for the attraction of his person. He realised that Madame Sarah was no different from other actresses, and that presents were expected. And since Madame Sarah was the greatest actress of her day, the presents must be similarly resplendent.
    Burnaby had previously been in full charge of his flirtations: the girl, nervous of the vast uniform in front of her, would need calming. Now, things were the other way round, which both perplexed and excited him. There was no shilly-shallying about rendezvous. He would ask, she would grant. Sometimes they met at the theatre, sometimes he came directly to the rue Fortuny, a place which – now he had time to examine it – struck him as half mansion, half artist’s studio. There were velvet-clad walls, parrots perching on portrait busts, vases as big as sentry boxes, and as many soaring and drooping plants as at Kew. And among such riot and display lay those simple things the heart desired: dinner, and bed, and sleep, and breakfast. A man scarcely dared ask for more. He could hear himself living.
    She told him about her early life, her struggles, her ambition and her success. And about all the rivalry and jealousy that success provoked.
    ‘They say terrible things about me, Capitaine Fred. They say that I roast cats and eat their fur. That I dine off lizards’ tails and the brains of peacocks sautéed in butter made from monkeys. They say that I play croquet with human skulls wrapped in Louis Quatorze wigs.’
    ‘I can’t see the sport in that,’ commented Burnaby, frowning.
    ‘But enough of my life. Tell me more about your balloons,’ she asked.
    He pondered. Lead with the ace, he thought. Best foot forward, best story forward.
    ‘Last year,’ he began, ‘I made an ascent from the Crystal Palace with Mr Lucy and Captain Colvile. The wind was moving between southerly and westerly and back again. We were above the cloud, and our guess was that we were probably crossing the estuary of the Thames. The sun was full