Paris Trance (28 page)

‘It just goes to show,’ said Luke as they clambered back on their bikes like a gang of delinquents, ‘there is nothing in life more pleasurable than destroying things.’

They decided to take a different route home and soon became lost. The sun was slipping behind the remains of a cloud. Trees grew black. Birds were heading home (they could have been heading out but that seemed unlikely). Everything, it seemed, was packing up and heading home, even the clouds: only a few were left. They came to a railway crossing.

‘Let’s walk along the tracks,’ said Sahra.

‘Where do you think they’re going?’

‘In this world there is one path that only you can walk,’ said Luke, echoing Miles. ‘Where does it lead? Don’t ask: take it.’

They locked their bikes together and walked along the railway line, into the embers of the sun. Sahra kept looking behind in case there was a train coming. Alex said there was no chance.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because the rails are rusty, one. And, two, there’s no shit on the tracks.’ He was right but the other three still felt a little uneasy as they stepped across the sleepers. After a point it did not get any darker. Instead, the twilight became more intense. The light faded but the darkness glowed. They followed the rails which kept everything in perspective, lent an automatic purpose to their steps. It seemed possible to walk like this for ever. Then Nicole said she was hungry. The others agreed that they were hungry too, starving in fact. And thirsty. They turned back and walked in two pairs, holding hands.

The rails held what was left of the light. Black against the deepening blue, the last birds dipped by, also in pairs.

If initially it had seemed that there would be nothing to do but relax and read and cook, soon there was too much to do. The days were long but they were not long enough to contain all the happiness we needed to cram into them. How different from now when we have learned to measure out our happiness, distributing it evenly through the week so that there is enough to go round even though happiness is, precisely, an abundance, an overflowing, and even to think about rationing it is to settle for contentment – which anyone who has known real happiness rejects instinctively as the form despair takes in order to render itself bearable.

A few days before Luke’s birthday Nicole came up with another of her Put-Togethers. She retrieved the sunken TV from the river, removed the whole of the back and brought the rest home. For three days she let it dry in the sun and then installed it in the living room which – in order to keep the heat at bay – was kept dark. By placing the screenless walnut surround in front of a window, and blacking out the rest of the window, the TV broadcast a perfect image of the fields and sky outside. It was not just local TV, it was site-specific. The reception was perfect and for Luke’s birthday a customised version of
Brief Encounter
was being screened.

Luke sat in the darkened living room and watched Nicole and Alex playing Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard; Sahra took all the other roles. Alex was the only one who had seen the film and since he had only a vague recollection of all but a few lines, most of the script was improvised. In some ways Luke thought it an improvement on the original: it was in colour for a start, and the scenery was stunning.

‘It all began quite simply,’ said Nicole in her best English accent, ‘in the refreshment room at Milfordhampton Junction. I was trying to get to Altonhampton but the train had split and I was terribly, terribly lost. I walked out of the refreshment room along the platform when suddenly—’

At that moment Alex kicked a ball at her. ‘Oi,’ he called out. ‘Any chance of a shag, love! You look like you’re dying for it!’

That pretty much set the tone for the whole piece. When Celia said she was upset and confused Trevor passed her a strong joint and suggested she ‘have a toke on that’.

‘Might I?’ said Celia.

‘I’m a bit of an idealist really,’ said Trevor. ‘You see I have this idea that I would like to manufacture enough acid to keep everyone in the world tripped out of their minds for the rest of eternity.’

‘It sounds frightfully complicated,’ said Celia. When they began meeting for their afternoon matinées they consulted
Pariscope
to decide which film took their fancy.

‘What are you in the mood for darling?’ said Celia.

‘What about
Sous Les Jupes Pas Des Culottes
? Or
Les Suceuses
?’ said Trevor.

‘Oh I don’t like those highbrow art films. Isn’t there something lighter?’ said Celia.

‘What about
Pénétrez-Moi Par Le Petit Trou
?’ said Trevor.

‘That sounds interesting, let’s try that,’ said Celia, her eyes brightening.

It went on in this vein right up until Trevor’s final, heart-broken goodbye: ‘Fuck off then you prick-teasing slag!’

In response to this fond farewell Nicole walked towards the house until her face filled the screen in tight close-up. Luke got up and advanced towards the TV, assuming the role of Fred, the almost-cuckolded hubby.

‘Whatever your dream was, it wasn’t a very happy one was it? You’ve been a long way away. Thank you for coming back to me,’ he said, reaching through the screen and taking her in his arms.

At breakfast the next morning the postman delivered a birthday postcard from Daniel.

‘How sweet of him to remember your birthday,’ said Sahra, going inside to make more coffee.

‘Let’s hope that’s not the only thing he remembered,’ said Luke. ‘Oh, could you bring some scissors when you come back Sahra?’ He handed Alex the postcard: a Bonnard showing his wife Marthe, standing in the bath, blazing with naked light. Alex passed the card to Nicole who gave it back to Luke. When Sahra came back he began cutting into it with the scissors.

‘You’re spoiling it!’

‘Only the top corner,’ said Alex, watching attentively as Luke cut into one of the two stamps. It was not stuck in the middle, only around the edges. Luke eased the scissors under the stamp and slit it down the centre. Underneath were two squares of grey blotting paper.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ said Sahra, reaching out her hand.

‘I rather think it is,’ said Luke.

‘
What
are they?’ said Nicole.

‘Well, whatever they are,’ said Luke, fiddling with the scissors again, ‘there are two more under the other stamp.’

‘Good old Daniel,’ said Alex.

That afternoon Nicole and Sahra made the most important discovery of all: the lake. One side of it was popular with tourists – at the weekend it was jam-packed – but they had found a track to the far side that was inaccessible by car and therefore almost deserted. The edge of the lake was dark, muddy. Your toes sank in as you entered the cold water and spooky-looking reeds waved around your ankles and shins as you got deeper. The women loved spending whole afternoons there, swimming, sun-bathing. Luke and Alex preferred to play tennis and come along later, sneaking up quietly, like schoolboys, hoping to discover their girlfriends naked. If they came for the entire afternoon they brought a football and played head tennis on the shore. Sometimes they stayed at the lake until late in the evening and then cycled home in the twilight, slowly, in a group, until Luke or Alex suddenly staged an impromptu speed trial as far as ‘that gate’, ‘that tree’, even the house itself. In the course of their time in the country Luke and Alex had worked themselves up into a frenzy of competitiveness. As well as killing themselves on the tennis court and, on windless days, monopolising the Ping-Pong table, they took any opportunity to throw down a challenge: running races (sprints and middle distance), stone-throwing (who could throw furthest, who could hit a Coke tin balanced on a stick pushed into the silt at the lake’s edge), skimming pebbles. The world had become an arena in which to test themselves against each other.

‘If we had boxing gloves we’d build a ring and I’d knock his fucking teeth out,’ said Luke as the four of them sat by the lake’s edge.

‘Luke!’ said Nicole.

‘How would you do that when you’d be in a coma with a broken jaw and brain damage?’ said Alex.

‘It must be an English thing,’ said Sahra, shaking her head.

‘Actually, I tell you what I wish was here,’ said Luke. ‘A place where you could jump from cliffs into deep water from incredibly high up.’

‘I
love
doing that,’ said Sahra.

‘Me too,’ said Alex. ‘Though I’d dive rather than jump.’

Back at the house Luke and Alex leaned a ladder against one of the walls and took it in turns to see who could climb highest using only their arms. This was a potentially dangerous game – for Luke. Alex was able to get to the top and down again but Luke could only get two thirds of the way up. By that stage he was too high to drop safely to the ground but his arms were so numb that it was only by wrapping his legs around the ladder and waiting for the fire in his shoulders to diminish that he found the strength to descend.

‘Luke, you’re so stupid,’ said Nicole when he was back on terra firma. ‘If you fall from there you’ll be back in plaster again.’

‘That’s exactly what kept me hanging on,’ laughed Luke, shaking the blood back into his hands. Undeterred, he continued practising, adding a few rungs every couple of days. While ostensibly taking a dim view of their boyfriends’ antics on the ladder, the women actually enjoyed this particular event.

‘It’s so horny isn’t it, watching men hanging by their arms like that?’ said Sahra.

‘It
is
isn’t it!’ said Nicole. ‘I was just thinking that.’

‘I always used to get turned on watching trapeze artists at the circus when I was young.’

‘Me
too
!’ giggled Nicole. ‘Don’t tell them that though. They’d probably rig up some kind of trapeze.’

Not to be outdone, the women organized a swimming race – the only event in which Luke and Alex did not compete against each other. A hopeless swimmer, Luke was reduced to refereeing. Alex, being strong, could swim well but could not keep up with the women who pulled ahead of him and then, having left him in their wake, achieved their own kind of victory, undermining Luke’s motto of ‘Victory at all costs’ (‘an inappropriate motto for a compulsive loser,’ according to Alex) by finishing neck and neck.

Although he did not enjoy swimming Luke did like going out with Nicole on the blue lilo she had bought in town. They lay across it, using it to keep them afloat, kicking with their legs for propulsion. When they had gone a good distance from the shore they clambered aboard and sat on it together, their combined weight pushing it a foot beneath the surface. Using it like this was well outside the lilo’s performance envelope, but each time they went out they strayed a little further from the shore, passing through sudden bands of cold and warmer water until Luke judged, one day, that they were in the dead centre of the lake. As he lay on the lilo with Nicole in his arms, her tanned body pressed against him, the sun drying them, Luke wondered what would happen if the lilo exploded, burst, sank. Would he be able to make it back to the shore? It was a freshwater lake. There was no salt to keep him afloat. The water was dark. Reflected in it he could see the single cloud that skirted the sun. Nicole’s wet hair was streaked across his arm. He glanced across at her. She was wearing her yellow swimming costume. Her eyes were open, smiling oddly, watching him.

‘You’re thinking about drowning aren’t you?’

‘I was actually, yes. Or at least wondering if I would drown.’

‘If what?’

‘If the lilo burst.’

‘We can see if you like.’

‘What do you mean?’

Without replying Nicole reached down and pulled the stopper. Air whooshed and bubbled out of the lilo. It began deflating immediately.

‘Nicole!’

In his panic Luke capsized the lilo and they both rolled under the water. When he bobbed up again, spluttering, he saw Nicole clinging to the lilo, reinserting the stopper. He stroked towards her. The lilo sagged but was still floating.

‘Fuck Nic.’ He rested his arms on the lilo, his face close to hers. ‘You’re crazy. What if you hadn’t been able to get the thing back in?’

‘Then you would have seen how stupid you are, thinking about drowning like that, little boy Shelley.’

His anger vanished immediately. ‘You’re right, I would have done,’ he said, leaning across the lilo and kissing her.

‘I wouldn’t have let you drown,’ she said.

‘I love you,’ he said, aloud, for the first time.

‘I’ve heard you before,’ said Nicole.

‘When?’

‘In the mosque was the first time. But I heard all the others too, my love.’ She put her arms round his neck, kissed him.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said.

‘It’s your loving me that makes me beautiful,’ she said.

Cycling home they stopped by an oak tree. Luke lacked a vocabulary of landscape. He didn’t know the names of trees or birds, could identify only the most rudimentary crops: wheat, rape, vines. As a result he saw the landscape only in the vaguest terms: trees, fields and colours. Yellow, shades of green, slopes and gradients, the shadow-drift of clouds. Even as he noticed the landscape he was, simultaneously, oblivious to it. He looked but could not listen. It appealed only to his eye. There was nothing for him to learn from it, it had nothing to tell. Perhaps the fact that he knew the name of this tree is why the scene struck him so forcibly.

They propped their bikes against the oak. The wheat had been taken in on either side of the road. The grass was scorched yellow: it had been months since there had been any rain but that did not matter. Life here had adjusted long ago to the huge thirst of summer. There were a few scars of cloud; otherwise the sky was empty blue. The light struck Luke almost as a moral force. Nicole was sitting on the grass at the edge of the road. Her hair was still wet. She took an orange from her bag and offered it to him. He nodded and she tossed it to him. Luke retreated a few paces and then threw it back. Nicole caught it easily and threw it to him again. Luke walked further back. Nicole stood up and clapped her hands. Luke threw her the orange which she caught, just. Then she stepped back and threw it to Luke who had to stretch to catch it, head tilted up to the sun. They continued throwing the orange back and forth like this, the distance between them increasing all the time. The orange looked like a planet as it hung in the blue sky. Neither of them dropped it but, as the distance between them increased, so the accumulated impact of catches made it leak. Snags and rips appeared in the peel. It became mushy and then Nicole’s fingers grasped the sky instead of the orange and it splatted on the road. She raised her hands, shrugged, smiled, wiped her hands on her dress. Began walking towards him. The road wound out of sight behind her. On either side of the road were fields of wheat. The oak cast a shadow across the road. She was wearing plimsolls, her white sleeveless dress, a single bracelet. Her hair was long, still wet, black. She walked towards him but, even as she moved, there was a stillness about the scene, something Luke recognized, something it shared with other moments from his life that he could neither recall nor anticipate. A windlessness, a silence. The landscape breathing and rippling. Time going nowhere else, staying.