Harm's Way (6 page)

I struggled up, pulling my dress down clumsily, conscious of how much I despised that gesture in other women, and gave him the automatic kiss on the cheek. Still the intimacy of that act did not come naturally, and I felt that he must sense my awkwardness.

An hour, several bottles of wine and one spillage later, a discussion about the differences between France and England was in full flow. Nathalie and Marie, a friend of hers, were the instigators. Their comments on British girls' tendency to wear short skirts and no tights, even in winter, had prompted a surge of moralising interest from the women, and a more basic enthusiasm from the men. Christian had disappeared from view but was, no doubt, still either in the room or out on the balcony. I felt a sudden rush of desire for attention – to see every face turned towards mine – and feeling forgotten down on the floor I joined the realm of the standing and embarked on a well-used diatribe about how the French see the English, knowing that Beth had heard my turns of phrase before, but that the rest of the room, and Christian, had not. Gratified by the laughter I was getting, and the gradually expanding group around me, I started on an anecdote, knowing that the outcome painted me in a flattering light. It occurred to me that if an outsider had been observing me they wouldn't have liked me much. Christian's eyes flew into focus, and I felt them on me for a split second, while Beth's lingered on me a second longer.

As the evening wore on I realised that, though I had not yet been brave enough to look at Christian's face full on, or stand
near enough to overhear his conversation, I had somehow taken in the fact that one of his front teeth came forward a little more than the others, forming a broken triangular shape which forced his top lip to protrude slightly, and that his voice went up half an octave when he spoke English. His eyes were a dark-green colour flecked with gold, and slanted sharply at the edges, giving him the appearance of being either bored or amorous. I couldn't be sure whether he too felt that we'd been walking in circles around each other all night, but was determined to find out. Around one in the morning I found Stephen and Christian in the kitchen, laughing over a photograph of Beth pinned to the noticeboard.

‘My sister says that at university Beth was always the one to suggest something really stupid at the end of the evening, something they would both regret the next day,' Stephen was saying.

They laughed indulgently. I felt sick – and very young. I'd drunk too much red wine, my teeth and the roof of my mouth coated in a metallic layer of it, and suddenly felt
de trop
in my dress. Sitting down too heavily on a bar stool I looked up to see that Stephen had left the room. I knew Christian was still there, leaning against the sink, and could feel his eyes on me.

‘Are you OK?' he eventually asked in a strong
banlieue
accent.

‘Fine,' I answered, too quickly. ‘I shouldn't have had that last glass.'

Only then did I take the opportunity to look directly at him, drinking in the tortoiseshell eyes and dark strand of hair that lay like a scar across his forehead. He complimented me on my French, and I reciprocated on his English (‘ten years in the Parisian service industry is the best way to learn a
language'), and when he asked, I began to recount how Beth and I had met. He was sitting at the bar now, leaning forward on his elbows, listening. He said my name with a soft inflection on the final a, as though scared to break the vowel. How nice it would be, I thought, to hear him whisper it. That instant, Beth appeared, placing her hands on her hips theatrically and scolding: ‘What are you two doing in here? Come through next door.'

Back in the sitting room a group of people were arguing over the music, brandishing CDs they each wanted to hear. The ukulele player was asleep in the corner with his mouth open, two fillings discernible in the shadowy recess of his mouth. Opposite him, Nathalie gesticulated wildly to Marie about something neurotic. I looked at Beth and Christian, seated in the corner of the room. They were facing each other on the sofa, Beth pushing a strand of hair out of his eyes. Her sucked-in waist and extravagantly emphasised breasts betrayed the lusty confidence of alcohol. Who could resist her? But before I could break their intimacy by going over and announcing my intention to leave, the pair stood up and wordlessly made their way towards her bedroom, leaving the party in full swing.

I awoke twice that night. The first time nagged by a needling sensation so akin to jealousy that I refused to subject it to full consciousness; the second feeling petulant and dissatisfied. I'd always despised girls who flirted their way through insecurity. Although in my view, even the worst behaviour could be excused by lust, any other motivation was deeply shameful. Pulling on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, I left the flat thinking I might go for a run, but instead weaved my way
disconsolately along the already bustling river banks in search of equilibrium. I had counted three bridges, a dozen sun-glazed second-hand bookstall owners and five posters of Freud's profile – ‘What's on a man's mind?' – before a reassuring thought edged itself to the surface.

It was the intensity of my friendship with Beth that made me want to feel involved in this new relationship she was forming. My thoughts were simply a reaction to being marginalised. I wanted to call Beth and hear in her voice that I had betrayed none of my emotions the night before. Perhaps I might even admit how attractive I found Christian, laughingly tell her how lucky she was. Saying the words might erase all this negativity. Then the image of them both breakfasting, enjoying that indecent hunger that the first night brings, blackened out all my reasoning.

I dived into the nearest métro and made my way to the Musée Rodin in the seventh arrondissement. Rather than go inside (I had already been there twice since my arrival in Paris) I found a bench to sit on in the gardens behind it, and watched a student drawing the limbless copper statue which rose from the middle of the pond on a plinth stained jade-green by years of rain water. But the convulsed, naked figures around it only reinforced the sensation that everyone was revelling in an intimacy from which I was excluded. And no matter how many times I re-ran the evening in my mind, the truth was that when Beth had interrupted my conversation with Christian, ushering us out of the kitchen, for a split second I had hated her.

When she called by the flat on Sunday night looking pallid and wanton after a weekend spent in and out of bed with
Christian, I noticed that her eyes had acquired a glaze nothing could penetrate. We sat, shoulders touching, on my window-box-sized balcony. And while Beth kept her excitement warm by recounting snippets of her conversations with Christian, compliments he had given her (‘He says he likes the birth mark I have on the inside of my thigh; he says it looks like Italy') and described, with a complete lack of modesty, the sexual epiphany she had experienced, I stared across at the dirty plastictubing of the Centre Pompidou, wondering how on earth they would ever clean it, and how dull women can become when speaking about the objects of their affections.

That evening something in our friendship was displaced, though only one of us felt it.

Summer was in full flow, and Paris was heady with expectation. Beth had kept her honeymoon period with Christian to an impressive minimum. Although the two had more or less vanished for ten days, her gregarious nature soon prevailed. When the four of us began to meet up again in the evenings I had felt as much excitement about our outings as a teenager preparing for a date; I never asked myself why, or whom I wanted to impress more: Beth or Christian.

I had not exchanged a single private word with him since the night of the party, having put the tensions of that night down to drunken paranoia. I knew no more about Christian than the little Beth had told me, but I did know that she, like all excessively kind women, liked to collect broken men. Christian was no different: his father had left when he was twelve, leaving him to support his mother and a younger half-brother, now a small-time drug dealer living in one of the vast concrete jungles on the outskirts of Paris that the government had built to deal with their immigration problem. Eyes glossy with admiration, Beth had told me that every month, Christian sent his mother over half the salary he earned managing a large, impersonal restaurant in Bastille, subsisting on what remained by living in a tiny
‘chambre de bonne'
in the sixteenth. One night, when walking behind them to a café on boulevard Voltaire, I noticed Christian's gently tapered fingers, their tips iridescent on the naked small of Beth's back where her shirt had ridden up. I felt
oddly indignant at their apparently genuine attachment to each other after so little time. Unable to understand the sourness of my emotions towards the first friend I had come to love, and increasingly crazed by the nocturnal banging on the wall, I decided to seek out a diversion.

That Thursday was funk night at the Rex Club. Stephen and I had arranged to join the others there after a brief catch-up of our own. A quick drink beforehand turned into several mojitos so strong they made your eyes water, and by the time we decided to leave, alcohol had stolen two hours from the evening. It was well past eleven. Conscious that my gestures were extravagant and my laughter too loud, I followed the blue strips of lighting lining the staircase into the club. Beth and Christian were standing, self-conscious in their sobriety, by the back wall. Annoyed by the obvious dislocation of our moods, I was pleased to spot Anne-Sophie, a girl from the museum gift shop, dancing with a large group of friends in the middle of the floor. I made my way over to her, and with a nod of recognition, placed myself on the fringe of their circle.

Opposite me was Vincent, a friend of Anne-Sophie's I'd met once before and registered as having something attractive about him, if only in the shadowed groove of the line leading from his nose to the central join of his top lip. Taller than most Frenchmen, and less slight-shouldered, he became an instant target. We danced a couple of feet apart – held together by our eyes alone – and when the DJ made a bad choice of record, I pulled back a little, checking an imaginary message on my mobile, and waited for his approach.

‘I didn't expect to see you here,' he started in loud but unsure tones.

‘No – I was bored and decided at the last minute to pop down,' I lied pointlessly.

Behind him a girl with a sticky aubergine bob and too much eye make-up appeared.

‘Vincent,' she shouted, without acknowledging me,
‘viens dancer.'

‘In a second,' he replied into a curved palm as he tried to light a cigarette.

Scowling, the bob approached and blew out the flame before he was able, then disappeared into the crowd. I laughed.

‘Sorry about that. She's an ex-girlfriend: I guess she felt threatened by you.'

Making any French girl feel insecure was so flattering as to be worth celebrating, so I let Vincent lead the way to the bar where we downed bitter cocktails from tall glasses. Our conversation was dull, but its subtext, adolescent in its essence, kept me interested. Spotting an opportunity I pulled Vincent over towards where Stephen, Beth and Christian were half-swaying, half-chatting on the dance floor. Vincent moved in behind me, linking his arms loosely around my waist, his breath warm against my bare shoulder. Beth was oblivious, lids semi-closed and arms held high above her head, too intent on keeping moving to notice. And while Stephen interrupted his conversation with Christian long enough to lift an eyebrow suggestively in my direction, a flicker of sobriety crossed Christian's face as he took in the picture. One tiny glance, if you're looking for it, will tell you all you need to know: those quiescent eyes were unmistakable.

A little before five we stumbled into the dark-red shadows
and sobering chill of boulevard Poissonnière, where cackling parties dispersed throughout the street. Beth had been desperate to leave for some time, but stood alongside the others, hugging herself as Vincent and I exchanged numbers and a forgettable parting kiss. Left too late in the evening, it had inspired only a kind of enjoyable indifference on my part. As our shared cab sped across a Paris still glittering with timid lights, our ears ringing, a silence descended. Wedged in between Stephen and Christian, his arm protectively around a somnolent Beth leaning her forehead against the window, I suddenly felt that the evening had ended too soon. Christian stared ahead, seriously, but as we neared my flat, where I was to be dropped first, he turned and, so close I could smell the alcohol on his breath, whispered, ‘I didn't realise you were the kind of English girl who kisses anyone who asks.'

The taxi had stopped, and Stephen was holding the car door open for me. I might have thought I'd misheard, were it not for the feel of Christian's cool eyes on my back as I climbed out, without even a polite kiss goodnight.

Next morning, not wanting to get hold of Beth on the phone, I called Stephen's mobile and suggested brunch at Le Café Charbon in Oberkampf. We sat on the over-heated terrace discussing the events of the previous night, pausing with closed lids to absorb the sunshine pounding our faces. I felt grateful I hadn't mentioned Christian's comment when I saw him and Beth weaving their way through the tables towards us. Pale-faced and smiling, Beth led the way. Christian followed with downcast eyes.

‘Did you ask them to come along?' I whispered to Stephen, angered by the ubiquitous couple.

‘Well, I mentioned we were coming here,' he replied defensively. ‘Why? Shouldn't I have?'

‘I just thought it would be nice to …' but before I could invent an explanation, Beth was pulling iron chairs gratingly across the pavement from an adjacent table. She fell sensuously on to one, obliterating our sunlight.

‘What a night that was, eh? What kind of state were you in Steve!' Kicking the leg of his chair teasingly, she scolded him for ignoring a mutual friend of theirs in the club, with whom he'd had a romantic dalliance several weeks ago.