Dream Paris (38 page)

We sat down on the edge of his bed and he began to rub the back of my neck.

“Why are you still so tense?” he asked.

“I didn’t think I was.”

“Perhaps we should say goodnight?”

“I don’t want to do that…”

He was teasing. I laughed, uncertainly.

Fully clothed, we tumbled back onto the bed. We lay on our sides, facing each other. He smiled at me.

“You’re very pretty.”

I smiled. I felt pretty.

“… but somewhere inside you, you’re still all locked up.”

“I’ve had to be.”

“You need to trust someone.”

“Why? They’ll only let me down in the end. Everyone does.”

“
Oui
, this is true. But it doesn’t matter. The time before that happens is when life is wonderful. This is one of those times.”

He placed a hand on my stomach. He bent one strong finger, dragged it over the rough grey material of the dress, dragged it down the side of the abdominal muscle. He ran the finger back upwards, I shivered as he touched the bare skin below my chin.

“Everyone dies in the end,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that we give up before we start. It’s the same with trust.”

Now he ran that finger down me again. I could see the little puckers that his nipples made in the tight material of his shirt. I reached out and touched one, made him gasp. The heat of his body felt so good.

“See?” He said. “There are moments in life that are what life should be. When everyone behaves as humans are meant to be, and nothing else can intrude.”

He waved his hand around the faded shabbiness of the room, with its faded wallpaper and trailing fern fronds.

“Now, I want you(2) to take off my trousers…”

The sudden shift in tone, that sudden command, the arrogance!

“Don’t speak to (1)me like that,” I said, putting all the authority I could into the words.

“Why, Anna? Sometimes you(2) must allow yourself to be led.”

“(1)I… I(1)…”

“Shhh, Anna. Let (3)me show you how it’s done…”

A
ND
I
LAY
in the night, relaxed and contented for the first time in months, breathing the strong musky scent of the man who lay beside me.

I didn’t know it then, but somewhere in the night the Dream Prussians had begun bombing…

THE MORNING AFTER

W
E WERE WOKEN
by the sound of banging on the door. I heard Francis’s voice, raised over a babble of French and English.

Luc rolled from the bed, slowly pulled on his trousers. He was so sanguine that for a moment I thought he might pause to light a cigarette. Me, I was busy trying to keep the sheet modestly around me as I attempted to pull on my dress.

Luc sauntered across the room and opened the door.

“
Quel est le problème
?”

Francis pushed his way in, wire spooling out behind him.

“Anna!” he called. “It’s your mother! She’s been arrested!”

“What? Why?”

Francis didn’t answer, he turned around blocking the doorway against the others waiting outside. “Get back! Let her get dressed!”

I was pulling on my dress under the sheet whilst discreetly trying to kick the used condom lying by the bed out of sight.

“Francis, what’s going?”

“I don’t know. It’s like the revolution started for real in the night. There are people out in the streets… Another fleet of Zeppelins arrived in the night, they’re dropping bombs…”

“
Silence!
”

Overweight and unshaven and looking as if he’d not slept all night, Jean-Michel Ponge pushed his way into the room.

“Miss Sinfield, I have a warrant for your arrest!”

“What! Why?” I had no time to ask for more details, others were crowding into the room now. Paul was there, speaking to Luc. I caught the word “
Révolution
” mentioned more than once. They were all shouting at each other in French. Everyone seemed to want to claim me, everyone was pointing at me, shouting. Everyone, that is, but Luc, who was pulling on his shirt, slipping on his shoes. Francis was squaring off to Jean-Michel. The scene was descending into a free-for-all. I took a deep breath.

“
Silence
!” I called, with all the authority I could muster. Given that I was semi-naked in a man’s bed, I didn’t do badly.

Everyone was looking at me.

“Why am I being arrested?” I asked.

“Conspiracy against the State.”

“I only came here to find my mother!”

“She too has been arrested for conspiring against the State!”

I looked at Luc for support. Luc, the revolutionary. Luc, who only last night was telling me to express myself, to do my own thing. Luc who had agreed that everyone lets you down eventually. I’d expected him to last longer than a few hours before doing so.

“Sorry, Anna, You cannot fight the
flics
.”

“Yes, you can,” I said. He said nothing, merely shrugged and went to join Mme Joubert, waiting by the door.

“You’re pathetic,” I said.

“We will fight when the time is right,” he said.

“People are rising in the streets, the Prussians are bombing, and this is not the time to fight?” said Francis, scornfully.

“
Allons
,” said Jean-Michel. “We need to leave.”

“Can I get dressed first?”

“
D’accord.
”

“It would help if you all left the room.”

They slowly withdrew. Francis was the last. He nodded to me before he went.

Five minutes later Francis, Jean-Michel and I were all in a large black car, speeding through the streets of Dream Paris.

O
H, AND DID
you notice who was missing from the previous little scene?

T
HE GENTEEL BUSYNESS
of the Dream Paris streets had been replaced by something quicker, something tauter, something much more on edge.

There was an atmosphere of a city holding its breath, waiting for the next move. We drove through a square filled with grey- and blue-clad workers – all turning their heads to follow our progress – then out onto a wide boulevard, the shops lining the road empty of customers, abandoned tables and chairs standing outside the cafés.

We drove past a group of people crowding around the black-and-white shapes of three Pierrots. Someone was waving a stick.

Zeppelins thrummed overhead, so low we could see their big yellow bellies almost scraping the rooftops. The people in the upper stories of the buildings looked out of the windows in awe. We hurriedly reversed from a little square where Pierrots lined up in ranks in the middle.

“When did this begin?” I asked Francis, sitting sideways on the seat beside me.

“I don’t know. The first I knew anything was wrong was when I felt the ground shaking from the bombs.”

“Where were you?”

“Outside your room.” He spoke the words matter-of-factly.

“Were you listening?” I felt myself turning crimson, half with embarrassment, half with anger.

“Of course not. But I’m supposed to be guarding you.”

There was no judgement in his gaze. I realised that any judgement about last night would come from me, anything I saw in his reaction would just be a reflection of my own feelings. And I didn’t feel bad. Quite the opposite.

Jean-Michel was shouting at the driver in French. A wave of people suddenly engulfed the car, running with the flow of traffic. They blocked the light, they rocked the car. I felt my insides shrink: you could hear the anger in their voices. Gradually I realised the anger wasn’t directed at us, but rather at something up ahead.

I could smell smoke. The crowd briefly parted and I saw fire up ahead, fire rising up into the sky. A ladder of fire reaching up into the heavens.

“What is it?” I wondered.

“It’s a tower,” said Francis. “They’re burning an Eiffel Tower.”

“But why?”

“
Faites demi-tour
!” called Jean-Michel.

The driver was trying to turn the car around. The anger of the crowd had ignited, it burnt so much brighter than before. I turned and twisted in my seat to see what had upset them. They were pointing to the Eiffel Tower. The canvas wrapping that had covered the main structure was burning away and the interior, hidden for all this time, was slowly revealed. And as it was revealed, so the roar of the crowd increased.

“Oh,” said Francis. “Look at that. They’ve been lied to.”

“I think we’ve all been lied to,” I said.

A piece of wrapping caught fire, broke free of the tower and rose burning up into the air.

“That
is
what I think it is, isn’t it?” said Francis.

“I think so,” I replied.

I looked harder. Beneath the wrapper there was nothing more than the skeletal structure of an Eiffel Tower, just like we have back in Mundane Paris. There may have been ants in that tower, I don’t know. That wasn’t what was agitating the crowd.

What was whipping them into the fury was the colour scheme of the tower itself. Because as the wrapping burned and peeled away and more blue paint was revealed, as more red paint edged in white appeared, it became more and more obvious just who the tower belonged to.

“That’s a Union Jack,” I said.

“There’s more to this than just your mother,” said Francis.

I didn’t answer. He was clearly right. Over on the horizon I saw another fire flickering around another tower.

T
HE WEATHER HAD
changed. We arrived at the
Grande Tour
under grey skies. Its canvas wrappings snapped and fluttered in the wind. I’d never seen weather like this in a year of living in Dream London. Even the elements seemed to be conspiring in the change.

The
Place du Grande Tour
was empty at the moment. The rebellion was still spreading, I guessed. The final march on the centre of power was still to come.

We got out of the car and hurried across the flags, Jean-Michel at my side, calling out to the scared looking lift attendant.

“
Ouvrez les portes
!
Laissez-nous passer
!”

The wind battered us as the doors closed and we began to rise.

“What have I done wrong?” I asked Jean-Michel, miserably.

The lift doors opened and we hurried down a corridor. I recognised it, I’d been here before. I knew where we were going and I felt my stomach tighten in fear. I knew what lay in wait for us ahead.

We were entering the Star Chamber. I was terrified.
Keep to the walls!

Jean-Michel was preparing for the big drop. He’d summoned the leaders here. All of them. Mme Joubert and M Duruflé stood by the man who’d been missing from all the events so far: Mr Monagan, the spy. No surprises there. And standing next Mr Monagan I saw Kaolin, beautiful as ever in a yellow-striped gown. And next to her…

“You!” I shouted. “You lying bastard! What are you doing here?”

“Anna!” said Mr Twelvetrees, fly eyes glinting in the light. “Is that you I can hear?”

OLD FRIENDS

T
HERE ARE PEOPLE
who know how to pull the threads that make other people twitch at their bidding. Francis would like to have thought he was one of them, but he wasn’t. He thought he was one of those big extrovert jolly-boy sort of men and he probably was, but that’s not enough. You need something extra. I’ve seen it in men and women. My mother had it, so did Therese Delacroix. There’s a type of person who just wants to control. The cream, or the scum is probably a better word, of the rugby-playing, bow-tie-and-dinner-jacket-wearing breed. The perfectly coiffed, power-dining, charity-organising type. The sporty over-achievers with voices that everyone can hear that push themselves to the front of the queue and take control, who want to be in charge for being in charge’s sake, never mind if they know what they’re talking about. They look down on competence and understanding, thinking it’s not as important as networking and bullshitting. Mr Twelvetrees was one such man. I used to look down on people for not standing up to them. I don’t anymore. When it came down to it, Mr Twelvetrees was just as adept at controlling me as anyone else.