A Place for Us (35 page)

“And do what?” She looked up uneasily as the door swung open.

“Flo, you’ve just won a plagiarism case that says you wrote the biggest-selling book in recent memory on the Renaissance. Students come from all around the world to the Courtauld just to hear you lecture. You know that admissions to your course rose by nearly sixty percent after you joined us?” She shook her head. “You’ve written three other books. You’re—you’re about to be in demand. Get used to it. Stop thinking you’re not part of the rest of society.”

“Sure. Okay.” Florence picked at the worn trim of the stool. “Sure. It’s just . . .”

Jim said gently, “Just what?”

She glanced up, and caught his kind gray eyes staring at her. She thought how well she knew him, how lucky she was that, in all this, she still had a friend, one friend.

The fact that she’d kept in a special bag a tissue Peter Connolly had left at her apartment. The lists she’d kept of things they’d done, found in one of the manuscripts he still had. The stories, repeated over and over to colleagues, the notes she’d written him . . . The mug he’d used that she never washed. A piece of pink paper stuck to the fridge, a flyer advertising a joint lecture at the college:
Professor Connolly and Professor Winter
. Seeing their names printed together had continued to give her a thrill long after the paper grew faded and crinkled in the sun.

Florence had always told everyone that she didn’t care what they thought of her. She had told Daisy she didn’t care about the notes left on the bed, the wasps’ nest, the constant pinches and bruises her sister
gave her that no one ever seemed to notice. Only once had she cracked and told Ma, creeping into the kitchen while Daisy was out with Wilbur, silent tears running down her grubby face. And Ma had kissed her and said, “Oh, Flo. You have to learn to get on with other people, birdie, instead of telling tales. Like I say. Fight back.”

And Florence was left with her mouth open, her tongue dry, wanting to speak but too frightened.
I think she might kill me if I fight back.

It had always been easier and safer to retreat into her own mind. And who was there who could help her, who would listen? She had burned her boats with everyone, really, except Jim. As she smiled awkwardly into his kind face, she knew she couldn’t talk to Jim about it. She liked him too much. She could feel the doors sliding shut, feel herself pulling the trapdoor in, retreating. The fact was she’d been living in her own world for so long she wasn’t sure if she could ever live anywhere else again.

Jim interrupted her thoughts. “What will you do now?”

Clearing her throat, Florence tried to sound businesslike. “I think I might go back to Florence next week. Get on with some work. A new paper for the
I Tatti
Studies
Harvard journal on the relationship between Lorenzo de Medici and Gozzoli and how the latter controlled Lorenzo’s public image, you know, not only the frescoes but—” She saw that Jim was staring at her with a slightly glazed expression, and she stopped. “Anyway, I need to work. Most of the summer, I suppose.”

“What about the TV people?”

“Oh, they were just being nice, don’t you think?”

“They’re not charity workers. You should call them.”

“Listen, Jim,” she said, wanting to change the subject, “thank you. Thank you for everything the last few months. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Gone mad, probably. Thanks for having me to stay too. It’s great that Amna doesn’t mind me clogging up the house.”

He laughed. “I don’t think she’d be bothered one way or the other.”

“When’s she back?” Jim had said something about Istanbul for a conference, but conferences didn’t last a month. Florence had been so wrapped up in herself lately, it only occurred to her now that this was unusual.

“Oh. Well, she’s back. Back a couple of weeks ago, in fact. It went well.” Jim nodded, then looked into his glass.

“Is she?” Florence didn’t understand. “Oh. Where is she, then?” She
wondered if Amna had been eating breakfast with them every day, chatting about history or academic gossip in the evenings while making pasta in the kitchen, and she simply hadn’t noticed in her self-obsession.

“Florence, we’ve split up.”

“Who?”

“Good grief, concentrate. Me! I mean, me and Amna.”

She shook her head, blindsided. “I didn’t know that.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“You should have said.” She felt embarrassed. “I wouldn’t have stayed if—”

He laughed. “What, like a Victorian maiden? You don’t think it’s appropriate for us to be in the house alone without Amna as a chaperone?”

“Don’t laugh at me,” she muttered, flushing.

“I’m not, sorry.” His nice old face grew serious, and he said, “I never saw her. She was away three weeks out of four. The house is too big for one person waiting for the other person to come home. And—well, no big surprise, but there’s someone else.”

“Oh. Oh, my goodness.” Florence impulsively put her hand on his, which was wrapped round his glass. “I had no idea, Jim. I’m so sorry. I feel I’ve been no friend to you while it’s been going on and you’ve been . . .” She could feel herself wanting to cry again, and dug her hand into her thigh.
For God’s sake, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Wait till you get home. You can indulge it then. You can do what you want with your life then.

And a seed took root in her thoughts then, a seed that sprouted and grew rapidly and that was, she realized then, really the only solution to all of this. But she didn’t say anything to Jim, who was watching her intently.

“I’m fine about it,” he said. “It’s been over for years, really, and now I can get on with life. Leave it behind me.” He cleared his throat. “Do you understand what I mean?”

They stared at each other. “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps I do.”

“Everything’s changed,” Jim said, and he shifted a little closer to her; but Florence’s knees knocked against the stool that was between them, and she flung it away impatiently so it rolled on the floor. As Jim picked it up and set it right again, she watched him and knew that she wasn’t in any state for this, not now, probably not ever.

Dear Jim. With a monumental effort she plastered a smile on her face and said, “Let’s change the subject. I want to know what you thought about Talitha Leafe. I heard from someone at the academy that she asked David Starkey out before she went for Peter. She’s apparently a well-known TV historian stalker. Have you come across her before?”

Jim was silent for a moment, and then gave one of his delighted chuckling laughs and shifted his weight on the stool, and she was glad to have made him smile, to leave everything else behind, to be gossiping and talking about someone else for once. When she got back to Florence, that’s when she’d take the next step, the final one. Not today.

Cat

S
INCE THEY HAD
come back, all Luke could do was ask when they’d be seeing Southpaw again. When they would be going back to England. He still cried when Cat left him at crèche, though nearly five months had passed. He was four and naughty now, when during the supposedly terrible twos and threes he had been sweet-natured and gentle. She had braced herself and contacted Olivier to ask if they could come and visit him in Marseilles. Now that she was stronger, perhaps it was time to loosen the reins a bit, let Luke get to know his father, though her every fiber screamed that this was not what she wanted for him.

But Olivier had completely vanished. She’d e-mailed him several times, even called him, though she dreaded speaking to him. All to no avail. Cat even went back to Bar Georges and asked Didier if he’d heard from him. Didier thought he’d left Marseilles and gone to live in La Réunion. A new girlfriend who owned a jazz club on the island, in Saint-Denis, had offered Olivier a regular gig, Didier said. He had given Cat a café cortado on the house while Cat stood at the bar, shaking with rage and then relief. Pure, sweet, relief, at the idea that Olivier might just not be her problem anymore, that the guilt she felt and the worry that he might, like a bogey monster of her childhood nightmares, appear from under the bed and snatch her son away had gone, that that might all be over.

So now it really was just her and Luke, and he was more difficult every day. He seemed to have grown nearly a foot since Christmas. He was too big for the small, intricate apartment. He was rude, and so badly behaved that Madame Poulain now refused to look after him when Cat
went to the doctor about her swollen toe. She had stubbed it on a treacherous cobblestone, dodging a group of Italian schoolchildren by Notre-Dame, two weeks ago, and it had grown huge and turned an angry red, like a cartoonish injury in an Asterix book. She couldn’t sleep, and every time she moved in bed, pain shot through her like a bolt of fire. It was waking Luke up too.

“I’m not taking care of that child. He is
méchant
,
a horror. He is a bad child. He draws disgusting animals.”

“I know—I apologize. . . .” The dragon in green pen on the bathroom wall still hadn’t come off, despite Cat scrubbing it twice a day for the past week.

“And he sticks his fingers in his eyes and calls me rude names.”

Cat, clasping her hands in the doorway, had paused. “What does he call you?”

Madame Poulain had shaken her fist. “A troglodyte. He says”—she had cleared her throat—“that his great-grandfather taught it to him. Disgusting that he does this, puts lies in the mouth of your dear dead
grand-père
.”

Cat’s shoulders had started to shake, almost involuntarily. It kept happening to her, this feeling when she didn’t know whether she was about to laugh or burst into tears. “I’m so sorry,” she had managed to say. “So sorry. Please, if you could just—”

But Madame Poulain had refused, and Cat had had to drag Luke out with her, screaming and crying, “No! Stop trying to snatch me!” across the bridge toward the boulevard Saint-Germain and the doctor.

This afternoon, two days later, it was still pouring with rain. As Cat hobbled along uncertainly, one bandaged toe now encased in a cartoonlike plastic boot, she slipped on the cobblestones again, and nearly knocked over a smartly dressed old man. She clutched him by the shoulders. “
Excusez-moi, Monsieur
.”

He turned to her. “It’s quite all right,” he said, in a voice so like Southpaw’s it made her heart stop. “Don’t apologize. It’s treacherous out here.”

She went on her way, trying not to cry, though as it rained harder and harder she gave in to it. How did he know she was English? That she didn’t belong here, more so than ever?

•   •   •

“Luke, please will you clear away your pens and help me set the table?”

“I can’t, not yet,” Luke answered. “I have to finish . . . this . . . Gruffalo . . . very carefully. It’s very impotent.”

“Important. No, you can finish it later. After supper.”

“He is a monster,” said Madame Poulain into her vermouth.

“That’s right,” Cat said absently. The rain dripped through the tiny crack in the steamed-up kitchen window. The stench of drains and rubbish from the tiny galley kitchen hung in her nostrils. Her broken toe ached more than ever—she was sure now that going to the doctor had been a mistake. They’d strapped it so tightly to her second toe that now all of her foot, rather than just the big toe, throbbed with pain.

Suddenly Madame Poulain screeched at Luke. “Put these things away. Away! It is my house, my rules, you dirty, naughty boy.”

“Madame Poulain—” Cat said wearily.

“No!” shouted Luke. He picked up the felt-tip pens, like candy-colored plastic sticks, and threw them, all of them, at Madame Poulain. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate being here! You are horrible, you keep us here like a witch, you should let Maman go! I hate you! I hope that you turn into a bird and fly away into an electricity pylon and
zzzzzzzap
! You get fried and you die and it’s really horrible!”

As Cat watched, frozen in horror, Luke picked up the nearest pen, a bright acid green, and ran over to the white wall. Her phone rang, buzzing loudly on the table beside her and jerking her into action. She ran over to him and scooped him up from behind, swinging him around away from the wall.

“Luke! No! You don’t, you
don’t do that!
” She plucked the pen out of his hand and slapped his wrist—she felt it was a pathetic action, and he gave her a strange, almost humorous look, and that half-sob, half-laugh wave of emotion swept over her again. She swallowed it down. Her phone rang again and she knocked it off the table in fury.

“Take the child upstairs and leave him there. And then . . .” Madame Poulain hesitated, and Cat saw that she didn’t know what to do next, and neither did she, Cat. They had no formal arrangement, no ties that bound them together. They were not family.

As Cat stood there panting, holding a screaming Luke, her phone rang again, on the floor. She released him too suddenly, and he jumped onto her foot, stamping on her strapped-up toe. Cat screamed too, a
great big howl of pain, and Luke looked up at her, his dark eyes huge. She stroked his hair. “Sorry. It’s my toe. I’m—I’m fine.”

Madame Poulain did not move, so Cat very slowly hobbled over to the dining table, reached down, and picked the phone off the floor. She put her arm around Luke’s shoulders. “Please, Luke. Say sorry.” Ignoring the searing pain in her foot, she answered. “
All
ô?
”

“Is someone being murdered in there?” came a clear voice. “It sounds like it.”

“Who’s—who is this?” Cat said slowly. “Is that you?”

“It is, darling.”

“Gran?” Cat whispered into the phone. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m downstairs,” said Martha.

“
Where?
” Cat swallowed.

“I’m downstairs. Waiting outside. You said I should come and visit. Well, I’m here. Is now a good time? I heard the most awful sounds. Even with the rain.”

“Now . . . now’s a very good time,” said Cat, laughing. She didn’t know what else to do. “I’ll buzz you up.”

She looked around the crowded, bright apartment, like an antiques shop. At Madame Poulain’s cold, furious face. At Luke, scared and cross, arms folded, looking at the floor. “No. Stay there. I’ll come down. I don’t want you to come up here.”

“What, darling? You cut out for a second.”

“Wait a moment.” It seemed clearer and clearer by the second, like the sun coming out.

“When will you be back?” Madame Poulain said icily. “I need more vermouth, and some ice. Who is that, Cat? Who’s downstairs?”

“My grandmother,” Cat said. She pulled Luke onto her lap. “Luke, let’s put on your shoes.” She looked up at the thin, lined face. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, Madame Poulain. Don’t wait for me. I’m going to call Henri. He’ll come over and help you. Luke, put on your coat, please.”

Madame Poulain’s eyes seemed to grow entirely round, her eyeballs bulging from her sunken skull. “Don’t you dare to say that. You said you would clean the bathroom this evening. I need it done tonight and before my wash.”

Cat opened the drawer of the bureau and slid two passports into her
jeans pocket. She didn’t know why, just that the card file of her mind was flipping over and over, the thoughts that constantly raced through her head of what needed to be done, what she had to take here or there, what she could afford, what she owned, all neatly, precisely itemized; and she realized then that all she needed was Luke. And the means to get Luke away from here, away from this overheated glass menagerie, away from the shadow of Luke’s father, who hadn’t even been in touch since their return, away from this strange, beautiful little island living that was, day by day, slowly torturing them both to death.

Her heart was thumping so loudly in her chest she thought it might burst. “Good-bye,” she said, buttoning Luke’s coat up. “Thank you.” She pulled on her old mac and grabbed her handbag, opened the door, and, hobbling down the steps as fast as she could, calling to Luke to follow her, eventually reached the bottom of the stairs.

She flung open the front door. There, in a great yellow mackintosh with a hood, stood Martha, her green eyes ringed with dull brown circles. She was smiling.

Cat said nothing, just flung her arms around her, sobbing into her squeaky yellow chest. Martha pulled Luke into her embrace and the three of them stood on the narrow little pavement, clutching hold of each other.

“Gran!” Luke shouted, breaking the grip first, and leaping up into his great-grandmother’s arms, so that she staggered back and nearly stumbled. “Gran, you’re here! You are here!”

Cat caught her grandmother, felt how thin she was. She hugged her again, tears flowing along with the rain down her face, and she realized then what it was, this feeling of half sadness, half happiness that stalked her all the time lately. It was love.

“Let’s go and get some hot chocolate,” she said, steering her grandmother away from the apartment. “I think we could all do with it.”

Martha took Luke’s hand. “Of course. Do you—need an umbrella? What about your fearsome-sounding landlady? Does she need to know where you’ve gone?”

“I’ll call her in a while and tell her we’ll be back later,” Cat said. Up above she could see the thinnest seam of silver in the sky. She breathed in, and then she said, “But we might not. We might just never go back there again.” She gripped Luke’s other hand. “What do you think about that?”

She was asking Luke, really, not entirely serious, half-acknowledging that it was clear now that their situation had to change, but Martha said, “I think that’s a very good idea.”

Cat glanced at her. “I was joking really,” she said.

“I know, but—do you have to go back? No. I mean, pack up and get your things, of course, or I could do that, or, you know what?” Martha squeezed Cat’s hand and crouched down next to her grandson. “I could go back to the flat now, get your passports, and we could all go home tonight. Back to Winterfold.”

Cat’s hand was shaking as she took out the passports. “I’ve got them here.”

“Why?” Her grandmother laughed.

“I really don’t know. Just that—I heard your voice.” She started crying. “And I thought we need to be able to not go back there. I’m always trying to think of a way out. All the time.” She hiccuped. “I’ve got used to it.”

“What else do you need?” Martha said quietly.

Cat looked at her son. “Nothing else,” she said. “But we couldn’t do that—so rude to Madame Poulain, and . . .” She trailed off. The idea of walking away from here—it was intoxicating, like drinking champagne. Knowing this bit was over, these years of living this thin, sad, lonely life. She felt almost light-headed. And then she looked at Luke’s face.

“Look, my darling girl, it seems fairly simple,” Martha said. “I need you, Cat. You need me. Luke needs more than this.”

Cat hesitated, then said, “Yes. We do. Yes.”

They hugged again, squashing against a wall to let a chic elderly lady walk past with her little dog. She stared at them from under her umbrella: Cat’s hair swinging in wet black strings around her smiling face, Luke jumping up and down, and Martha, her hands over her eyes, trying not to cry. Her small, Gallic shrug said it all:
Crazy English people.

Cat picked up Luke and hugged him tight, and she put her arm round her grandmother as they walked along the road.

“Why are you here, Gran?” she said. “I mean, what made you come?”

“Something Lucy said,” Martha replied. “I’m not sure I can explain, not yet. Not till I’ve finished it all.”

The rain thrummed on the pavements and the swollen gray-blue
Seine churned below them, the golden spires of Notre-Dame black in the afternoon gloom. “You don’t have to explain.”

“I do. To you, and to Florence, you see. I’ve got things all wrong.” Cat tried to speak, but Martha said, “I have to put it right. I was always trying to be in control, you know. I was wrong to try to protect you from the truth all those years. You and Florence.”

Luke was fiddling with the toggles on his raincoat, twisting them round and round so they spun out in a corkscrew, the tension released. Cat watched him. “What’s it got to do with Florence?”

“I’m going to see her after you, if she’ll let me. She’s won her court case. I’ll tell you then.” She shivered. “This really is appalling weather. Where’s that hot chocolate place, then?”

“Yes, appalling,” Luke agreed cheerfully. “Appalling weather!”

“It’s just around the corner,” Cat said. She shook her head, water flying everywhere. “Do you—I should go back and get some of Luke’s things afterward, shouldn’t I?”

“Of course you should, and I’ll come with you. You don’t need to run away like a thief in the night, you know, Cat. And I would like to see where you spent all this time. I’d like to meet Madame Poulain. Then we will leave, and I promise you won’t ever have to go back there.” Martha nodded to herself. “Right. That’s . . . that’s done.” She gave a little shiver. “And it was easy! Wasn’t it?” She looked down. “Would you like to go home after that, to Winterfold, Luke? Would you like to come and live with me for a bit?”