A Week in Paris (13 page)

‘Oh, Adam, I suppose the man was breaking the law, but . . .’ and she told him about what she’d seen at the Métro. ‘It was the way everyone pretended it wasn’t happening that was so awful. As though a policeman attacking someone was normal and nothing to do with them.’

For a moment Adam didn’t say anything. He lit a cigarette and drew on it, staring into the distance with narrowed eyes. This silence troubled her even more. Finally, he spoke. ‘I’m afraid a great many people here would think that it wasn’t their business – that the gendarme was merely doing his job. They’d say the man was an activist, out to stir up trouble.’

‘But was he? He was selling papers when I saw him. I don’t know what he did to annoy the policeman as I was down in the station. He was trying to run away so he must have done something.’

‘The police don’t necessarily wait for an excuse.’ Fay sensed Adam’s suppressed anger. ‘Or if they need one they’ll make one up.’

‘Who do you think the man was?’

‘An Algerian. They’re refugees here from the fighting in their country. Algeria is not merely a French colony, it’s a formal part of France, but many there want independence like everybody else. There has been dreadful violence on both sides, but the French authorities’ repression in the country has been brutal, and many Algerians have escaped here – where they’re not wanted, of course. Not least because they’ve brought the struggle with them.’

To Fay, Algeria was little more than a large country in North Africa that she’d seen on a map in geography lessons. It wasn’t coloured red for the British Empire so the teacher hadn’t shown much interest. She must have read about the war in the papers, but can’t have paid much attention. It was someone else’s war, nothing to do with her or her life. Yet now, suddenly it was. She remembered the intensity of the man’s expression.

‘He must have done something to annoy the gendarme,’ she repeated stubbornly. ‘There’s no smoke without fire. A French policeman wouldn’t simply have attacked an innocent man, not without cause.’

Adam threw away his cigarette. ‘If that’s what you’d like to believe, go ahead. I should try to forget about it, if I were you. I’m supposed to be helping you enjoy yourself. Now, where shall we go? The Orangerie is just over there. Have you seen Claude Monet’s
Water Lilies
series?’

‘No, but I’d like to. Let’s do that.’

She fell into step beside him, feeling upset. He seemed distant with her and she realized that she’d annoyed him by her attitude, but also that he didn’t wish to discuss the matter further. Did Adam know more about the situation than he’d told her? She sensed that he’d thought her naïve. Yet nothing she’d ever known had prepared her for the violence she’d witnessed just now. She wished that he’d explained properly, but the moment seemed to have gone.

Surrounded by Monet’s huge canvases, Fay felt bathed in blue-green light. It was a curious feeling, peaceful, contemplative, and her troubled mind was soothed. She imagined the many hours and days and seasons the artist must have spent in that garden at Giverny, brooding on the colours of the plants and the changing effects of light on the water until the place became a part of him. She imagined the sounds of a garden, too, which an artist couldn’t paint, the sigh of the wind in the trees, birdsong, the ripple of the water from a fish’s tail. All these could be captured by music. Music, too, could paint a scene.

Adam smiled and sauntered across. ‘Marvellous, isn’t it?’ he said, turning back to look at a lily from a distance. ‘Those petals look white from here, but they’re actually made up of many colours. Must have driven the old man mad though, painting the same thing over and over like that.’

‘Or perhaps it kept him sane.’ With sudden heartache Fay thought of her mother. Music had always been Kitty’s way of expressing herself. Perhaps it gave her solace.

Adam considered this for a moment. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way. I suppose you could be right. Well,’ he continued, ‘one could look at these for ever, but perhaps you’ve had enough?’

‘I wish I could live with these around me,’ she said fervently. ‘I suppose you’ve seen them dozens of times.’

‘Only once before, actually. It’s surprising how little sightseeing you do when you live in a place.’ He laughed. ‘Of course, I’m privileged. I have more than my share of invitations to openings of shows and exhibitions, but there’s hardly any time for what you might call contemplation. There are always people I have to talk to, then I rush off to write it all down before the deadline.’

He smiled at her as they left the gallery and stepped out into the late-afternoon sunshine, and offered her his arm. She took it gratefully, relieved that he seemed his usual attentive self again.

How very different from yesterday it was, walking with Adam under the filigree shadows of the trees in the Tuileries Gardens. Paris wasn’t a place to be alone, Fay decided. It surprised her how at ease she felt with Adam. Although she had only met him that once, several years before when they were teenagers, it felt natural to be with him. Of course, she hardly knew him, hardly knew anything about him – there was the thrill of all that to come – but she must stop her mind rushing ahead. They found themselves talking about all sorts of things as they crossed Place de la Concorde towards the Champs-Élysées. Her work with the orchestra, the bedsit he occupied in Montmartre, whether the English-looking couple poring over a map together by the fountain might be on their honeymoon . . .

There was an air of gaiety about the gardens along the Champs-Élysées, in the bright music and flying horses of the merry-go-round, the colourful bobbing clouds of balloons for sale, the children riding donkeys, the kiosks festooned with postcards and magazines. They stopped at a café under the trees to drink a
citron pressé
and watched a model in a figure-hugging dress pose in front of a shiny red sports car for her photographer. Her stylish bob was not unlike Fay’s own, she noted – something to tell Derek. They continued their walk up to the roundabout, after which the expensive shops began. And there was the Arc de Triomphe ahead, glowing sublimely golden in the late-afternoon light. On they went towards it.

Maybe it was the sight of the arch, the sun glinting off the shop windows, or a traffic policeman’s urgent whistle – maybe, she thought afterwards, it was all these things combined, but suddenly Fay felt like a little child again, her ears full of the smash of breaking glass and young men shouting ugly words, and in her terror the world began to tilt. She threw her arms out to her mother . . .

‘
Fay!
’ she heard Adam’s voice as he caught her. She opened her eyes to look straight into his anxious face. ‘What’s wrong?’

Gradually the world stopped spinning. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, horrified. All around people were glancing at her warily. Everything was tranquil and normal. Nearby, a man was sweeping broken glass into the gutter with his foot. Red wine spread across the pavement like blood.

‘Are you all right?’ Adam asked.

‘Yes, I think so. No.’

He shepherded her gently into the back of a nearby bar, to a table in a private corner inside, hidden from curious eyes. When a waiter arrived Adam ordered two glasses of cognac, which were brought right away. Fay drank a mouthful and felt calmer.

‘What happened out there?’ he asked, his arm around the back of her chair, leaning in.

‘I don’t know,’ she said with a catch in her voice. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It’s like . . . Adam, do you remember that time in Notre Dame?’

‘Of course – the bell,’ he said, his face serious. ‘I’ve never forgotten it.’

‘It was like that again. You know, I’d never been in Paris before that, but now I’m not so sure. Frightening things keep happening. Here, a moment ago, I thought they were smashing the shop windows.’

‘They? Who is they?’

‘I don’t know – that’s just it. I thought I was with my mother, and people were smashing windows and shouting. Adam, I must have been here once and she was too. When I was very small.’

‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you,’ Adam said carefully, ‘but it seems unlikely, doesn’t it, if you’d never heard about it. That would have meant during the war.’

‘Yes, during the war,’ she said slowly. That would explain her fear, but what things might she have witnessed? The urgent tolling of a bell, the smashing of glass, then in the convent earlier, the thud of boots on the stairs. And yet she had experienced peaceful feelings too. She thought of stroking the smooth surface of the statuette in its niche. And the lovely voice of the singer she’d heard from the balcony last night – why had that seemed significant?

‘You’re right though,’ she said, crestfallen. ‘My mother wasn’t here in the war. She was in England, I’m sure she was.’ And then: ‘At least, I always
have
been sure . . . until recently.’

She explained about her mother, how she had had a nervous breakdown and was in hospital. That Kitty had tried to give her a clue, something she was to find out in Paris.

‘It’s possible that she hasn’t told me the whole truth about my childhood.’

‘I don’t know your mother and, Fay, I hardly know you, so it’s difficult for me to comment.’

‘Of course,’ she said. She felt the same rush of loneliness she’d felt the day before, while sitting in the Tuileries Gardens. He was being so kind, considering she was a near stranger, but there was a limit to how much she should expect from him. She shouldn’t cast her burdens on him. She must work things out herself. She must be strong.

She sipped the cognac gratefully and thought about her life, everything she knew about herself. Adam watched her quietly.

‘I don’t remember much before I was five,’ she said eventually. ‘My father was killed when I was two or three, I believe, then our house in London was destroyed by a bomb, but I don’t even recall that. Surely I would, something as important as that.’

‘You might have blotted out the memory – and the other memories that are coming back to you now, if they
are
memories. Look, to be honest, I don’t remember much about the time when I was five either, but what I do fits in with what I know about the rest of my life. Chasing our old tabby cat under my bed, for instance, and my mother scolding me for getting covered in dust. Rather than for cruelty to the cat, note.’ He smiled, and she sensed that he was trying to make things normal.

‘Then there was the famous occasion when I was four and rescued my baby sister from a pond. I remember that because people treated me like a little hero. What I told no one was that I hadn’t stopped Tina falling in the first place. There – no one else knows how wicked I was and now I’ve told you. I’ll have to swear you to secrecy or kill you.’

‘At least you rescued her.’

‘I did, at considerable risk to my own safety, I must add, though it wasn’t much of a pond, more of a garden pool. There were goldfish and she wanted to touch one. I should have grabbed her but there was something fascinating about the idea of her falling.’

Fay laughed. His ruse had worked, she felt brighter now. The bar was a cheerful one, with red and white raffia chairs. The paper faces of Toulouse-Lautrec’s poster girls gazed up from under the glass tops of the tables, glamorous, beguiling.

‘I always worried that I couldn’t remember.’ She started to tell Adam everything, about her father’s photo and the little rucksack with its label, which she took out and showed him, about visiting the convent and how she was seeing Nathalie Ramond the very next day. ‘I’ve no idea who she might be, but there’s a chance, just a chance that she can help me.’

Adam was as interested as she hoped he would be. ‘It’ll do no harm to try, anyway,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re lucky. What are you doing tonight, by the way? Perhaps you’d have dinner with me?’

She bit her lip. ‘Oh Adam, I can’t, what a bore. There’s a reception at the British Embassy. The whole orchestra is expected to go. In fact, I ought to go back to the hotel now to change.’

‘Of course,’ he said smoothly, but obviously disappointed. ‘Perhaps tomorrow night. You’re here such a short time. I’d like us to make the most of it.’

She beamed at him. ‘That would be lovely.’ The musicians were to be left to their own devices the following evening, and perhaps the others wouldn’t mind if she didn’t join them.

Adam hailed a waiter and paid the bill. ‘I’m not certain what time I can get away tomorrow, but I’ll leave a message at your hotel.’

As he put her in the taxi, she said, ‘Thank you for everything.’

‘It’s my absolute pleasure.’

In the cab she gently touched the place on her cheek where he’d kissed her goodbye.

Thursday

The next morning after the short rehearsal, Fay and Sandra sailed forth to explore the boutiques of the Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré. ‘Strictly window shopping,’ Sandra said firmly. Neither had cash to spare for Parisian
haute couture
, but it was lovely to pretend. Tall and slim with good bone structure, Sandra would have been an ideal mannequin. Under the appreciative eye of the corseted saleswoman in Pierre Cardin, she dared to try on a suit in black and white hound’s-tooth check with fashionably large buttons and a Peter Pan collar, but in the end managed to escape the woman’s persuasive murmurings with purse intact. Around the corner they visited a department store where Fay pounced on a blue and white Hermès headscarf of whispering silk, whilst Sandra tried on shoes without success, bemoaning the tiny feet of Frenchwomen.

‘
C’est un cadeau?
’ the chic shop girl asked in crisp tones when Fay paid for the scarf.

‘
Oui, c’est pour ma mère
.’

‘
Ah, bon. Pour votre mère
,’ the girl said, her voice softening, and as Fay watched her wrap the scarf with pretty paper, she breathed a prayer that her mother would be well enough to want to wear it soon.

Outside the shop, a woman with a face as wrinkled as a prune was selling violets and they each bought a posy, breathing in the delicate fragrance. They browsed for somewhere inexpensive for lunch, choosing in the end a family-run café in a back street where they ate hearty helpings of boeuf bourguignon. Sandra confided, eyes dancing, that she had a date with the dapper French film-maker Fay had seen her flirting with at the reception the night before.