The Last Kings of Sark (21 page)

He checks the métro map, even though they know where they're going. Nine stops, no change, his finger an inch from the plastic so he doesn't have to touch it. This is how he has adjusted to city living, by seeing it as a sort of maths. He leans over the track to look for the train. He's done that since they met and it's always annoyed her – it won't make the train come quicker, and what if he falls?

‘It's coming,' he says, turning back to her. He always seems a bit proud, as though he was the one who made it happen, his face like a child's again. When it stops, they push on. It doesn't look as if there's enough space for either of them – he's so tall – but once they're inside, four more people squeeze in after. The human body is soft and yielding, she thinks. We believe we are bigger than we are, but we are just like gas.

Pip leans close, and puts his hands on either side of her. ‘Sorry,' he says. ‘There's no room.' It's a wall he's built around her with his arms. Now she will not fall, and if she did, he could save her.

One more woman pushes on, pushes Pip and Clémence's heads together. ‘Fuck,' Pip breathes, ‘it's hot.' Their eyes snag for a second, then break free. All these other faces around them – painted eyebrows, purple weave, ponytails and saggy cheeks.

‘Sweat,' he says after that. He's not whispering. ‘I can feel other people's sweat. It's like going back into the womb—' He stops short. ‘Sorry. I didn't mean … I didn't mean about that. It's just the smell. It isn't normal.'

‘We speak English in France, you know,' she says. He's always loved the way she says ‘France': it rolls, it falls. ‘All of us, we do,' she goes on, ‘we understand you.'

‘I don't like this many people close to me.'

‘Lonely child,' she says.
‘C'est typique.'

‘
Only
child,' he corrects.

Two stops later, at Stalingrad, people pour out. The need to stand tight leaves with the crowd, so Pip lets his arm-wall fall.

It is just one man, alone, who steps onto the train.

How do we tell, almost instantly, the eyes which are best avoided? Neither Pip nor Clémence looks at this man, but they catch him in the corners of their sight. His legs do not bend at the knees, instead they move like wood. Each crash-landing sends a sweet-sour wind their way.

The second splits, and it becomes a story. Two things happen entirely at once. Just as this man comes on board, just at the very moment he sets foot on the train, a baby in a pram starts to cry at the other end of the carriage. From someone so small, it is a strong, high, wrenching sound. And you can almost see it land on the man.

At first, he cannot tell where the noise is coming from. His forehead jerks as if his eyes are chasing an imaginary wasp. If they allowed themselves to look at him, they'd see that one side of his face is gristled with scabs. He has a tall can of red Amsterdam in his hand and squeezes it until his matte fingers meet. The baby howls again, and then the man makes his own noise, as if his throat and his teeth have taken the corners of a cry and ripped it in half. He turns to face the infant. His head twists after the wasp one more time, and he starts to stagger towards the pram.

‘Non – non – putain,'
Clémence says, letting go of the metal pole and grabbing Pip's thin T-shirt instead. She turns her face as far away as she can. ‘I can't look,' she says. She needs Pip to know she cannot look, that she is a girl, that this makes a difference.

The man is making his terrible noise closer and closer to the baby, but he is not there yet.

‘What's happening?' Clémence stares at Pip's T-shirt, his chest, the faint push of his nipple.
‘Il fait quoi, là?'
He must look for her.

‘It's OK,' he says. ‘He won't do anything…' He can't, Pip thinks, it's a
baby,
there are rules.

But the man is getting closer. The mother is moving to put herself between them.

Clémence turns and quickly flashes her eyes in their direction. The man is so close now. The mother wants to turn to her baby, but she cannot turn her back to the man.

Men, Clémence thinks,
men.
There are all these other men, in suits and shiny glasses – proper men, safe men – and they are staring at their newspapers.

‘I…' She looks pleadingly at Pip, her forehead is chewed, she can't speak. The terrible man is shouting now, standing three feet from the mother. Cries are filling the train.

Pip's body is tightly tensed as if he might leap – he
might,
he
could
– but he stays exactly where he is. ‘It's … going to be fine.' (There are rules: you don't stand up, you don't look, you don't hurt a baby, there are rules.)

There are no rules. When the train comes into the station, it stops with an almighty lurch. The shouting man remembers his can and tries to stop it from spilling, but he loses his footing, he tips away from the pram. As the doors open, though, both feet slam flat to the floor, sturdy. His rough face chases the wasp, and he turns back to the baby. No one gets on, and no one gets off. No one moves. The doors, about to close, begin to beep.

But the mother is a mother and she takes her chance. She takes a sharp step towards the shouting man and uses both hands to push. Her eyes are shut tight; there are times when no one can look. It happens very fast. But the man falls out through the doors as they close, his can hitting the floor of the carriage in front of the pram and spinning, spilling, on the spot.

The man roars one last time, but the door is shut. The base of his fist lands hard on the window; for the beer, for the baby. But the train moves on, the man is gone.

Clémence is still holding onto Pip's top. She is still holding her breath. It takes her a second to realize she can let either go. They have three more stops until theirs. Do they have a conversation? Perhaps. A film they'd seen, a mutual friend, a new café on his street. Maybe. But the whole time, the whole time, her hands and heart vibrate.

She stares and stares at the métro map. Normally she sees Paris clearly in its coloured lines. But now it's a tangle. She does not know where she is.

They talk to make noise. It's only when they are about to get off the train that they notice the baby has stopped crying.

Two middle-aged sisters – they must be sisters, they have matching eyes – have moved to sit next to the mother and child. They're perched on the fold-down seats, leaning over the pram, singing a lullaby. It is Portuguese, or Brazilian Portuguese: open, bouncing, squashy, and the baby is silent.

Off the train and on the platform now, Clémence stays still, watching the sisters sing until the doors slam shut. Humans are mostly, mostly soft and yielding. When the train pulls away, still, she stands. Instinctively, her forearm moves to protect her belly.

‘Clem,' Pip says, a gentle tug. Finally, he puts his arm around her shoulder, and guides her to the exit. He was going to say something about a happy ending, but he cannot. They walk up the stairs of the métro and as soon as they are back at sea level, he lets go of her.

‘It's this way,' he says. ‘I checked before I came. It's not far. It's easy.'

As they walk, she says that it's good of him to come. He says that he had a free day, and besides, he shrugs – he doesn't mean to shrug – it's for both of them. His eyes fall to her neck. So tight. Maybe he could still make it better.
Come away with me,
he almost says.
We don't have to do this. I could take you – all three of us – far away.
But he looks down at his watch again. They're just in time. Fine, it will be fine.

The doors to the clinic are white, as they thought they would be. Each waits for the other to push them open. Here, the journey ends.

Beni and the Kids, Part II

There was a barman at Le Paris who had been fired over thirty times. He was called Jamel and he was second-generation Algerian: face gutted with acne scars, Kangol cap, fifty euro patent brogues. Sofi didn't like him.

‘Ça va, meuf?'
he said to her as she wiped down the bar one late summer, late afternoon.
‘T'es délicieuse, toi. J'oublie.'
I forget.
‘Un milkshake. Fraise. Et mets du vodka.'

Beni couldn't get rid of Jamel because he owed him so much money. He would come in with a friend who had gold teeth and a shaved side-parting and they'd eat lamb tagine out of takeaway foil and drink straight spirits from behind the bar.

‘Beni and Alessio owe me thousands,' Jamel told Sofi this particular day, looking at her hair as if he might touch it. He had a cigarette behind his ear, and a toothpick in his mouth, which he dislodged from one tooth and passed with his tongue to another. ‘
Allez.
Just give me twenty from the till.'

Sofi said she couldn't, that it would get docked from her pay. Honestly, man, I already have nothing.'

When Sofi had first met Jamel, she'd taken the piss out of his cap, but since then, there'd been rumours of a shooting or stabbing – something bad he'd been involved with, or done. It was hard not to tread more lightly after that.

‘Honestly,' she said again. ‘Look at my shoes. I'm like Julia Roberts. I have to colour them in with a marker.'

Jamel ordered a steak and asked for it bloody. When Sofi was washing up, leaving her watch and bracelets on the bar, Jamel grabbed them and ran out, the greased bones from his tagine kicked all over the floor.

‘That little shit!' Beni said when she told him. ‘I'll kill him.' But Sofi wasn't allowed to tell the police because of all the money Jamel was owed. ‘You're getting new ones – a new watch. We'll sort it out between us.'

‘It was only from Argos,' she said.

‘I'll get you a better one. I'll get you the best there is.'

He spoke certainly, comfortingly, like thick bread.

Beni promised to take a few of the kids to a Paul Simon concert too – a day trip to Bercy; Sofi would finally see Paris – but that didn't happen either.

*   *   *

There were good days, bad days, days with fierce blazes of both. The only other time Sofi cried was after Pip had been in to see her. She had disappeared during evening service, and Arthur the Cornish king found her smoking a spliff in the doorway of the African hairdresser's opposite.

‘Your eyes are raining,' he said, then coughed, embarrassed.

‘Your English is worse than mine,' she told him. ‘Sorry. This is yours.' She offered him back the joint. ‘I jacked it from your pocket.' She had a bottle of whisky at her feet.

‘Who was that guy?' he said. He'd wanted to ask this.

This question seemed to make Sofi sadder.

‘Old boyfriend?'

‘No,' she said. ‘No, not really. Just someone I used to know.'

Arthur helped her up, and she told him she didn't know why she couldn't stop crying. She put a finger on his tattoo as if she thought that might help.
Triangles,
she thought.
The world's not round at all. Everything always ends up in triangles.

His shaven head shone brown-gold in the streetlight. He had a short white scar on his hairline and he wrapped strong, chalky arms around her. She felt then, that even if her legs fell loose, she would still be standing. That was the first time they kissed.

*   *   *

After the second winter in the snow dome, Sofi had to leave. She was getting calls every day from Crédit Mutuel, and from Bouygues, the phone company she could never pronounce. Before the calls stopped, she phoned home. Her dad said her mum would be happy to have her back, that it worried her what Sofi's life was like there. He did what dads do and passed the phone to his wife. Sofi told her mum that she was sad, and that she'd probably never get to Paris now. Her mum said she thanked God every day that her daughter had never made it to the Moulin Rouge.

By then, Beni had lost his spot in his corner. He came in less now, once a week maybe, and didn't stay for booze or breakfast. The grapevine said he was fighting with Alessio, or suicidal, perhaps both, no one really knew. He never answered his phone any more. Sofi sent him a message saying she was leaving, and that she needed her money. She said she missed him, and the Beatles. She said she hoped he was all right.

Four days later, Beni called on the tinny work phone.

‘Throw yourself a goodbye party in the restaurant. Invite all the kids. I'll come, and I'll get you your money. On my honour, girl, I'll get you your money.' The reception was so bad she could hardly hear him.

The party got out of hand. They smoked inside and made Long Island iced teas with far more than four spirits. They ate whole-fish-long panels of smoked salmon out of the fridge, and people kissed in the kitchen. When the day-sleepers from the port tried to come in – a beat woman in a miniskirt and a man she'd found – they gave them a crate of Beni's beer and then locked them out, so it was only the kids. Someone wrote Sofi a goodbye card, liquid eyeliner on napkin. Arthur held her, arms round from behind, and showed her that on the fifteenth step, on tiptoes – careful – you could look through buildings and see a tiny, bright slice of the Le Havre sea. Months and months, all those windows, she had run up and down the stairs and thought she had seen everything. But some things you don't get until right at the very end.

Beni never came, so she never saw him again. They kept drinking; drinking to him, ironically and not ironically, they drank from bottles. Glasses were broken.

Around midnight, Beni called her.

‘Kid,' Beni said. ‘The ketchup.'

‘What?' she said. ‘Are you here?' Phone to her ear, she did a full circle. She looked for him.

‘Far away,' he said. ‘Ketchup, look behind the ketchup.'

No one knew how Beni did it, because only one week later, Le Paris shut down. Bailiffs arrived and took everything from the inside, including the sinks.