A Week in Paris (7 page)

Later, after they retraced their steps to the convent, Mère Marie-François made her excuses and went about her business. It was still only mid-morning, so Kitty fetched her coat and hat and went out to investigate her surroundings.

It was a splendid day for early autumn, the air cool but still, and with the music in the church fresh in her mind Kitty felt a bubble of joy rise in her. The city seemed to shimmer in a pearly grey light. She wandered along the quays of the Seine, under the plane trees, past the stalls selling old books and prints, then considered sitting outside one of the many cafés to sip a cold drink and view the façade of Notre Dame. However, she decided against it. Her uncle, though generous in his ambitions for her, had old-fashioned ideas when it came to a monthly allowance and she didn’t know yet how much things might cost. It would also involve her speaking more French.

She found a bench to sit on instead, which cost her nothing, and watched Parisian life go to and fro. There were impossibly chic ladies with toy dogs on leads, little girls dressed as fashion plates, their brothers in sailor suits, bent old women in black, equally dark expressions on their faces, sharp-suited office clerks, a studious young man with his nose in a book. A sinister-looking senior priest in full regalia hurried out of the cathedral and got into the back of a waiting car. When, however, a soldier in a short cape and a box-like cap tried to engage Kitty in conversation, she was forced to get up and walk away.

Returning to the convent and finding no signs of lunch being underway, she retired to her room to lie down. She was exhausted, having slept little on the journey, not to speak of the emotional strain of leaving England to come alone to a strange foreign city. The crisp linen pillow beneath her cheek smelled comfortingly of lavender, reminding her of home.

Kitty’s parents had both died soon after the Great War, when she was nearly three, too young to remember them clearly. They’d been sailing to India to start a new life, but had contracted typhoid on the voyage, died within hours of one another, and been buried at sea. By some miracle Kitty did not catch the disease, and on arrival in India had been taken back on the next available passage by a family who were returning to England. She’d been brought up in Hampshire, in sight of the sea, at first by her grandmother, who died suddenly when Kitty was six. After that, Uncle Pepper, Kitty’s mother’s much older brother (his real name was Anthony, the nickname Pepper conferred on him as a child for a reason everybody had forgotten) had made it his duty to become her guardian. The duty had become a pleasure when he realized that not only did she share his passion for classical music but that she also had a talent for the piano, which he became determined to nurture. There was a great affection between her uncle and herself, but he was a man of reserve – he had never married – and conducted their relationship with a grave formality and a high degree of protection.

Dear Uncle Pepper, Kitty thought as she drifted into a doze. She wanted to do well for him here. The last thing she heard was the church clock beginning to strike. By the time it reached twelve she was fast asleep. She didn’t wake until Sister Thérèse knocked on her door after Vespers and summoned her to supper.

At eleven the following morning, Kitty presented herself at the concierge’s desk of an imposing apartment block on the Boulevard St-Germain, near the Quai d’Orsay, and took the lift to the fourth floor. She was nervous. Though she had met Monsieur Deschamps once before, when he’d been on a visit to London and her teacher had arranged for her to play for him, now she was here she wondered if he would think he’d made a mistake agreeing to teach her. What would happen if she wasn’t good enough, after all?

She thought of the copy of Debussy’s Clair de Lune in her music case and hoped it was the right choice. When he’d first written to her, Monsieur Deschamps had asked her to bring to the first lesson a piece of music that she loved – and she did love Debussy. His free-flowing and dreamlike compositions made her believe the composer had been eternally yearning for a happiness beyond his reach, and something in her heart responded to that. She also hoped M. Deschamps would look more kindly on her because she’d paid him the compliment of choosing a French composer.

As it turned out, she need not have been alarmed. The plump little maid who answered the door showed her into a splendid drawing room decorated in Second Empire style. Here, M. Deschamps had just finished with his previous pupil, a sallow-skinned young man with a nervous, clever face and neatly cropped black hair, whom the teacher introduced as M. Ramond. The youth gave a nod of acknowledgement without meeting her eye, dropping a sheaf of music in the process, which Kitty helped pick up, whereupon he muttered a quick
merci
and fled the room.

‘A young man who is in an ’urry,’ M. Deschamps said in heavily accented English, his sad brown eyes twinkling, and she warmed to him all over again. He was tall and long-limbed, like a species of large bird. A heron, perhaps, or one of those comical Malibu storks she’d seen pictured in the
National Geographic
magazine in the dentist’s waiting room at home. Yes – a Malibu stork in an old-fashioned black suit and stiff-collared white shirt. He bowed low to her as though she were royalty and asked politely if she was well, and whether she liked her home at the convent, then moved straight to the business at hand.

‘What do you have to play for me?’ He gestured for her to sit on the stool, then flicked up his coat-tails as he took a wooden chair beside her.

She brought the music from its bag and opened it out on the piano with shaking fingers, calming herself by silently counting down from five as her previous teacher had taught her. Then she began to play. She stumbled at first, but the music quickly cast its enchantment and she closed her eyes and allowed her fingers to take over. The room and M. Deschamps beside her, turning the pages, seemed far away. There was only the music. So it was a shock when her teacher’s voice broke in: ‘Stop, please.’

She withdrew her fingers from the keys, wounded.

‘Start again,’ he said briskly, ‘and while you play, listen to the tune in the top line. See – here, and here – you go too quickly and do not allow it to sing. We will spend a little time on this, then I’ll find you some Mozart. Your left hand is not strong, but I have exercises for that.’ The hard work had begun.

The time passed quickly and before she knew it, it was one o’clock and the maid was knocking at the door to call her master to luncheon.

‘Very well,’ he said to Kitty, consulting a pocket diary. ‘Thursday at the same time. And in the meantime, practise, practise, practise.’

‘I wondered . . . was I all right?’

‘All right? No, of course you were not all right. That is why you have come – to learn. Whether you succeed or not, Mademoiselle, is down to you. What you are made of. We will see. We will see.’

He smiled in a kindly enough way, and with that she had to be content.

April 1961

Paris

Lois had given Fay her Oyster White nail varnish for Paris, and Fay loved the way it gleamed on her fingers as she played her violin. It was Tuesday, the West London Philharmonic Orchestra’s first morning in the city, and they were rehearsing in an Art Deco concert hall, their base for the tour.

At lunchtime they were set free with a stern warning from their conductor, Colin, to be back by seven for the concert that evening. Fay laid her precious old violin carefully in its case, the wood still warm and vibrant from hours of playing. The practice had gone well; she was alive with the pleasure of the music, the soaring theme of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony resounding in her mind.

As she loosened the bow and wiped the violin strings, she was brought back to earth by a nasal voice saying, ‘What about you, Miss Knox?’ She looked up to see Frank Sowden, one of the older first violinists, his barrel chest thrust out importantly, as though compensating for his shortness. His sensuous lips, small bright eyes and greying goatish beard reminded her of a satyr. ‘Might we be graced with your company, young lady?’ She was used, now, to the pompous way in which he spoke. ‘A few of us are partaking of lunch at a restaurant on the Boulevard Haussmann.’ Perhaps he was being friendly, but it was disconcerting the way he didn’t quite meet her eye, his gaze instead sliding down her body.

‘It’s nice of you to ask,’ she replied, trying her best to look regretful, ‘but I’m going sightseeing. I hardly know Paris, you see, and I don’t want to waste a moment.’ This was half the truth. The other half was that she only had a little money, her fee as a stand-in and the allowance for daily expenses being very small, and she didn’t want to find herself in a situation where Frank insisted on paying for what was likely to be an expensive meal. He’d brushed against her on the stairs of the hotel the night before in a not-quite accidental way that made her wary of him.

‘Fair enough,’ Frank said bluntly and turned away.

Anyway, it’s not quite a lie
, Fay told herself as she stowed her instrument in one of the Green Room cupboards. Her still-surprising new reflection looked back at her from a wall mirror and she wrinkled her nose at it. She was only in Paris a short time, and planned to make the most of it. It was with a sense of freedom that she pushed open a door at the back of the theatre and found herself outside on a busy street.

She’d felt an excitement as soon as she arrived at the Gare du Nord late the previous afternoon, clutching her violin and a suitcase, while the others in the party were tired and tetchy from a choppy Channel crossing. So much was instantly familiar from her school trip five years before. Even in the Métro, the oil-and-rubber smell, the hot blasts of air from the tunnels, the squeal of brakes from the approaching train were somehow different from the London Underground, and peculiar to itself. She recognized the kiosks selling newspapers and magazines, the advertising columns covered with bright posters of Miles Davis playing the Olympia music hall and a film by François Truffaut, the precise Parisian French in her ears, spoken too quickly to follow.

It wasn’t simply sightseeing, there was something else she had to do this afternoon, something important. She must begin her search for the convent whose name she’d found on the label in the little rucksack. She’d no idea where to start. The hotel might tell her, perhaps.

L’Hôtel Marguerite, a modest establishment with no restaurant, only a bar where they served tartines and coffee for breakfast, was situated nearby in one of the side streets behind the Madeleine. Fay was sharing a room with a flautist, Sandra, a willowy blonde who was one of the few other female members of the orchestra. She consulted the tourist map they’d each been given and found her way easily. However, there was nobody in reception when she arrived, and although a notice invited her to ring a miniature hand-bell for service, no one responded to the high tinkling.

Where now? she wondered, going back out into the sunshine. A post office, she supposed – they would have some kind of directory. She walked over to the Place de la Madeleine, past the great Roman columns of the church and down a road beyond on the other side of the square lined with market stalls. The post office she came to had its blinds drawn down, closed no doubt for the long lunch-hour.

She was quite hungry herself by now, so she bought a length of crusty baguette with ham and sat on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens to eat, throwing the crumbs to some scruffy-looking pigeons. A solemn-faced boy of three or four trotted by, one hand pulled by a woman wearing an elegant short white boxy coat, the other clutching a toy windmill. Fay smiled at him, but he merely stared back incuriously and this made her feel unwanted.

To throw off the mood she consulted the map again. The Louvre was nearby, but she’d visited it last time and didn’t feel a pressing need to go again. Instead, she set off along the Rue de Rivoli, looking at the fashions in the shop windows. She stopped at a kiosk to buy a copy of
Mademoiselle
with the latest hairstyles for Derek, before deciding to turn down a road that led to the river. On the Pont Neuf she loitered to watch the motor launches pass underneath, enjoying the breeze and the clear spring light, before crossing onto the Île de la Cité and following a narrow street that wound its way to Notre Dame. She caught her breath at the sight of the great west face of the cathedral, and remembered what had happened to her the last time she was there. This momentarily brought Adam to mind. Adam. It was odd that she sometimes thought of him. She considered going inside, but the memory of her fear put her off. Instead she bought a postcard of a gargoyle, which she wrote to Lois.

On her way to the hotel, she saw that the post office by the Place de la Madeleine was open so she joined the short queue inside. When it was her turn at the counter, she stumbled out her request to a stern woman in black-framed spectacles who sat behind a grille. The woman fetched a crisp new directory and thumbed the pages till she came to the one she wanted, running a practised finger down the columns. Eventually she looked up at Fay and shook her head. ‘
Non
,’ she said, closing the book. ‘
Cela n’existe pas
,’ in a tone that brooked no argument. Fay thanked her and retreated in embarrassment. The implication was clearly that not only did St Cecilia’s not exist, it never
had
existed – and Fay was a fool for asking. It felt a significant defeat. She bought a stamp for Lois’s postcard and hurried out.

Her spirits had recovered by the evening performance. Her attention was firmly on the music, on making her instrument sing, her eyes partly on the score, partly on the conductor, so that the song of her violin became subsumed in the great swell of sound that filled the concert hall. It felt better with an audience. Not only were the acoustics different in a room full of people, richer and warmer, but the air was vibrant with their expectation. The applause when it came made Fay feel part of something huge and important.