The Last Kings of Sark (19 page)

‘No, but I remember.
Visually.
I've always had very good hand-eye.'

(Sofi would reflect later, as she told a friend about this encounter, that Pip's neck was so muscley and veiny, and broke out in red clouds when he was nervous, that it reminded her of a penis. The friend had laughed, and made a face like she was being sick, and Sofi felt sorry, suddenly, for having said it.)

‘You're smoking loads,' Pip says not long after they move outside to the terrasse. ‘More than before.'

‘Don't you? We're adults now. What are you? At least six foot five. This is Paris.' She breathes in her cigarette so hard he hears the heat crackle through unburned tobacco. ‘Le Paris. Whatever. Nearly the same.' She blows out in the smile she uses for serving.

Arthur has finished folding napkins and is now playing barman. Cuffed sleeves, thick arms, a matte silver ring on his middle finger. He's slightly older than them both; when he smiles you can see frown-lines on his forehead. He comes out onto the terrasse and takes away their glasses. He asks if they want another, or nachos. He touches Sofi's shoulder, then lightly tweaks her earlobes with wide thumbs. He's just smoked a joint by the extractor fan in the kitchen, so is even mellower than usual. He takes their order and goes back inside.

‘Who's he?' Pip asks.

‘Him?'

‘Is he your boyfriend?'

‘God, no. He's from
Cornwall.
'

‘I think he likes you.'

‘Be fair. His name's Arthur. Old man name. He's like my brother. Can I suck on one of your ice-cubes?'

He nods.

‘Is she your first? This girlfriend.'

‘Not my first … y'know.' He looks at her. ‘But my first actual girlfriend, I suppose so.' An in-breath takes him by surprise. (So much had taken him by surprise. That he hadn't found it hard. That skin didn't shock him. That once you saw it, it was only natural to want to see more.) ‘It's just got a bit fucked. With the girl. Clem. I can't really talk about it. I don't know if – I think we might be making a big mistake.'

Sofi crunches through her third ice-cube now. She is not listening, particularly, to what he is saying.

‘That's nice,' she says.

‘Not really.'

When she realizes he has stopped talking and his chin is all dimpled, she strokes a finger over the bump-bone on his wrist. ‘Awww,' she says. The type of noise people make about animals on the internet. ‘You'll get through it. Everyone does. You're so handsome.'

The way she is touching him, calling him pet names, flattering him, it feels forced, almost formal. It is not like it used to be. It used to be as un-thought of as breathing.

Pip asks Sofi how she ended up here in Le Havre, and she mentions a Polish uncle and a man called Beni. She's vague. From what Pip gleans of the story, they're the same man. Then he asks where she's living, and whether she likes it here.

‘France,
c'est pas mal.
My uncle's got a couple of builder mates, but apart from that there aren't many Polish … The French are less
Daily Mail
about us. It's the Maghrebis they hate, and the Romans.'

‘Roma.'

‘And?'

‘But it's different, Sof.'

‘You're not allowed to do that any more. Correct me. Now I've forgotten what I was saying.'

‘About liking it here,' He motions with his hands in a way that means these white walls, and these windows. ‘Are you happy?'

‘What is this? I thought you didn't like exams.'

‘No. It's not that. But … well, don't
you
have questions you want to ask?'

‘Not really.' She's rubbing the ridged thumbwheel of her lighter against the corner of the table.

‘I do,' he says. ‘I have questions.'

‘Mystery,' she says,
‘mystery.'
She flares her eyes in that way she does, except that instead of looking excited she looks sad. ‘Isn't mystery better? Sometimes it's good to leave things be.' Something she once heard runs through her head like a ribbon. ‘You don't want them to become a photocopy. Not a bad photocopy. If something was great, sometimes you should just leave it.'

Pip tries to angle his straw to get to the last bit of brown liquid underneath the remaining ice-cubes. It makes a slurping sound. The islands of red on his neck have returned.

‘I don't mean here, with you, now,' she says finally, but she looks at the clock through the bar window. Proper customers will be coming soon, then she will be busy, then he will understand – he'll have to – and go. She wills the fingers of the clock to push round faster. A greyhound skittles past their table on matchstick legs, its owner two metres behind it, pulling another dog too, a boxer with a face like a bullet.

The whisky in Sofi's lemonade is making her tongue feel heavier in her mouth. She hopes she is not slurring.

They sit in silence for a while.

‘Listen, don't worry about your girlfriend. Girls are … All of this stuff is – I don't even know.' In the ashtray, all the filters are sticky pink. ‘Sometimes I think we fall in love just to have things to talk about.'

‘Talk about with friends?'

‘No, with the person you're supposed to be in love with. And with friends.' A sip of her drink gives her the confirmation she wants from him. ‘I think I'm delusioned.'

‘Disillusioned?'

‘Is that what they say? Whatever. Both.'

An African man in a pinstripe suit cycles past them, the hem of his jacket hanging over the back of his bike seat.

‘Once you've said you're in love, you have that to talk about. You get to make plans. Do you know what I mean?' It's the first time she's been honest. She uses different parts of her face. It does not last long. ‘Did you see that black man? He had a sandwich strapped to the back of his bike with a bungee.'

‘Carry on about love,' Pip says. It comes out quietly.

‘Wrapped in clingfilm. I think it was ham and lettuce.' She knocks on the window and motions to Arthur for another drink.

‘I don't think it's true what you said about love,' Pip says. ‘Sometimes I think you fall in love because you
can't
talk about it.'

‘Is it OK to say “black man”? It's not racist is it?' She looks at the clock through the window again. ‘Fuck. I really have to go back to work soon.'

‘It's OK,' Pip says. ‘Finish your drink. I have to go anyway.'

They go back into the bar and Pip takes his time to arrange his things: bag, jacket, sunglasses. He checks for his phone, twice maybe. He feels, somewhere at the back of his chest, as if he has lost something.

He shakes hands with the tattooed barman, says ‘Thanks, man,' and goes to kiss Sofi goodbye.
‘A la française,'
he says, accent still firmly British. Their faces do not touch.

‘You should come back again some time,' she says, mostly because she knows he will not. ‘Come back and bring your girl.'

‘She's not my girl any more.' He swings his backpack onto one shoulder.

‘Was it you?' Sofi asks.

‘What?'

‘What I was trying to say before. There's always one person who doesn't love enough.'

Pip does not say anything.

‘Don't you think that's true?' she says. She looks at Pip's shoes. He's wearing Converse. The white rubber toecap makes them look too big. ‘See you soon,' she says, and he does not believe her.

Pip notices, as he walks down the stairs to the door, that the bar is no longer playing music. The silence feels like people watching him. He pushes the heavy door open, and walks out onto the street. The concrete paving stones look different in the heat.

Then, ‘Pip—'

Sofi calls after him. Part of her still doesn't understand why he had come. All this way. It opened too many things up again. ‘Did you ever hear from her?'

Pip is standing in the middle of the road. He stops with his back to Sofi, then turns around. She's standing on the step of the bar, the arches of her feet balanced on the right angle. A moped drives between them. He shakes his head.

‘You never have?' she says.

He shakes his head again.

‘I thought about it all the time,' she says. ‘I promise you I did. It's just I can't any more.'

He nods. ‘Call me,' she says. He sees her brace herself. She tries to smile, ‘If you like.'

He nods again and holds a hand up in goodbye. For a second they stay like that, and then he walks away, ignoring car horns, walks away slowly, right down the very middle of the road.

The Chaperone, the Children

The path is steeper than a ski slope, an angle that tugs at ankles. My shoes don't have the right kind of soles so I take them off. I've brought strawberries, I can't afford to fall.

It might be the steepest path in Paris, it's certainly the steepest park. You've said you're somewhere near the top. I think you often make it hard to get to you. And it's so hot; with no shoes, the stone nearly burns.

The Buttes-Chaumont is a grass amphitheatre and eyes feed on passers-by once picnics are over. I look down to dodge pebbles and glass, then back up at the audience. Rows of gay men, mown hair and shiny chests, circles of girls, rosé, suncream, a pregnant woman, head on husband, smoking.

But I am only looking for you. I don't want to be squinting when you see me, I don't want to fall with these strawberries. I want to see you first, choose how I walk towards you, when to smile.

You catch me before I catch you, though; you half get up, shoulders off the grass, lie back down, wave. You are not alone. I knew that, but I thought there would be lots of us, not just one other person.

We're not sure how close we have to be before we shout hello, or another opening line. I've prepared a few, but sound doesn't carry in the park, there are too many other voices and noises and wind. So we wait until I've nearly sat down. You go first. ‘Hey Jude.' You tell me I've arrived for the first drops of rain.

No, I want to say, I just brought strawberries. It's you who brought the rain. I look at the boy next to you. I kiss him first because it might make you jealous. A third person can be so difficult.

I sit down, maybe too close, but the picnic blanket's small. And anyway, it's not a blanket, it's a Carrefour bag you've ripped along the side seams. You've budged over a bit, but I'm just sitting on a handle really. ‘Sweet spot,' I say, but I can feel stones through the plastic. I feel hotter than I should. I want to make you laugh, you laugh so loudly. ‘Just go straight to normal' never works, it's always a bit strange for the first minute or two. I think we're both trying too hard. I know that I am. We normally warm up so well that each time we meet, we expect to go straight to heat but it's not like that.

You ask me what I did last night, then I ask you. We have two days to fill in. We do it in sketches, taking it in turns to draw lines, all of it unchronological, because that's how people talk. The other person, your friend, whoever he is, doesn't say much. He texts, he can't decide whether to keep his cap on, he comments on the rain. You turn to me and it's us who talk.

We say nice things to each other and put each other down in equal measure. You think I think you're old, you think I think you're not serious. You think I hate all Americans in Paris. Not true. Actually, I've always thought Chicago's a good place to come from. That lake is like a sea. I say you have a tiny insect on your eyebrow, but it flies away before I get to brush it off.

We look at each other for just too long until one of us says ‘What?' It's me this time, but it's happened before. We're trying to look into each other's minds, but the ‘what?', whoever asks, neither of us answers. What? Nothing. No, really, what? Nothing. I want a cigarette because everyone else on the hill is drinking bottles of beer. I steal one from our chaperone, but it's a Gauloises bleu. ‘The statement cigarette,' you say, ‘straight to the lung. You won't like it.'

We haven't been alone since it happened. Not really, really alone. We've sat next to each other at canal-side gatherings, gone by ourselves to the bar when others were dancing, you held my hand to pull me down a corridor, pushed me against the wall and kissed me, briefly, but it was outside your front door and it was open. Never really alone. Ten minutes in McDonald's doesn't count. We spent it queuing and I couldn't stop laughing because of the haircuts, and because you are an adult and still you wanted chicken nuggets. You said it was an American thing. You got a Happy Meal, you told me you were still a kid inside and fed me a chip with your thumb and index. That wasn't the time to say the ‘what?' we want to ask and get an answer.

Now we're in a park, on a steep hill. You came with a chaperone and I came with strawberries. As you say, I also came with the rain. It's funny; the drops are fat (on skin, they leave a splash the size of a ⇔2 coin), but the sky is blue. We wonder where the blue will blow. We lick our fingers to find out. We hold them out to each other. They stay wet. No wind.

Everything is in limbo. Half the hill cup their palms to the sky, as if counting how many raindrops they catch will tell them whether they have to leave. Most groups are making signs of moving. Picnic blankets are held ready to be turned into makeshift umbrellas and mothers check if there's enough paté in the packet to make it worth taking home. Still, there is a good chance the rain might never really come. If the drops are fat, they are also few and far between. The other half of the hill is sticking tight. They will ride out the storm in Speedos and sundresses. I say something about the ‘Club Tropicana' video, and speak-sing the only line I know.

There should be a rainbow somewhere but we can't see it yet. You doodle on the plastic bag with your finger and test the water: ‘Maybe we should just go now,' you say, ‘or it will rain, and everyone will run, and…' You stop at ‘and'. I don't want to go, I just got here. I want to risk it. I want to stay with you. I don't mind the rain, these dots of cool, it's refreshing.