The Train to Paris (19 page)

When we arrived, Bertrand came out of his workshop grinning all his mismatched teeth. He shook my hand. This excitement made his body quiver, as though it was going to collapse.

‘You, young sir, are my muse,' he said. I wondered if I had misunderstood. ‘Come, come through and see it.'

The shirt was draped on a mannequin. Thin stripes alternated between different shades of blue, tapering off into a floral design around the hem. But it was the stippled lining that Bertrand had added to the collar and the cuffs that truly set the piece off. I felt the linen, and concluded that it was neither too soft nor too coarse. Unlike the salmon pink shirt, which hung loose and shapeless, its collar was firm and it was long and slim. It wouldn't hang over my belt or bunch up around my shoulders; I could tell that it would accentuate the muscles in my arms.

‘It's fantastic,' I said. ‘Absolutely beautiful.'

‘It will do wonders for your frame. You see, it is the best cut I have made because it is so slender. Your torso was designed by angels.'

I excused this as a very French thing to say. He insisted that I try it on, and he even went as far as to take pictures of it from different angles. It was a superb cut. It held itself against my body like a second skin. I stood before the mirror, intoxicated by the figure staring back at me. Suddenly the shop assistant's opinion that I could have been a model was not so unbelievable. Élodie came to stand beside me. We were almost on the same plane, despite our variation in height. She held my tie, and she reached around my shoulder to hang it against the shirt, pressing the collar together. She touched my neck and felt my stubble.

‘How sublime that is,' she said. ‘You have outdone yourself, Monsieur Bertrand.'

‘Don't thank me,' he said. ‘Thank God for giving that boy his body.'

I wore the shirt out of the shop and we wandered down the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Élodie removed the sunglasses at last. Her eyes had recovered some of their old glow. I made the mistake of becoming too conscious of how happy I was. I had wanted to remember this afternoon, to be able to replay it in my imagination—and this made it difficult to enjoy now. I tried to see Élodie's gestures and mannerisms as a photographer would. She lived in the half-light, where she was neither luminous nor invisible.

‘He is a dear man,' she said. ‘Are you happy?'

‘Of course I am.'

‘Good.' She stopped on the corner. ‘What say we take a stroll through the Tuileries? We have enough time.'

We crossed the Concorde towards the Jeu de Paume. The crêpe vendors were doing good business despite the encroaching dark, and the tourists lined up to ride the Ferris wheel and photograph the city. The buildings across the river were starting to light up, standing out against a velvety backdrop. Not a breath of wind disturbed the delicate air, though it remained cold. I tried to repeat Élodie's work by pulling the scarf tighter around my neck, but only she knew how to fold it properly.

‘I'm glad I came today,' I said. ‘It's been fun, you know.'

‘Days with me aren't always fun. They can be damned unpleasant, too. You should count yourself lucky.'

‘I do. And it's easy to imagine. You're happier when I'm around.'

‘Do stop it. What did I tell you about saying cheap things? I don't need other people to be content. Nobody does. You, on the other hand, need all the help that you can get.'

‘At least I'm not pretending to be someone else.'

‘What do you mean?'

I was about to explain myself, but Élodie had gone rigid. I had never seen her so angry with me.

‘Nothing,' I spluttered. ‘I'm sorry, Élodie. You're right. But I'm worried about you.'

‘How very noble of you.' She returned to her old self at once. ‘Don't ask me silly things like that until I am drunk. And
please
don't worry about me. You should be worrying about one person right now, because you won't be able to get away with egocentrism when you are older.'

‘You pull it off.'

‘Me? Ha. I wish it could be that simple.'

She drew out a cigarette. How much of her life had she spent smoking? She had none of the little creases on her upper lip that so many regular smokers had. Nor was there a single hair on her face. Her skin was sleek and pure. It showed none of the work that surely must have gone into it.

Élodie led me into the park, meandering through the pathways until we ended up on a dark stretch of avenue. The naked trees extended to create a spindly tunnel. My breath clouded up before me, and I felt an accompanying shiver.

‘This is nice, isn't it?' Élodie said.

‘I don't like that word.'

‘What?
Nice
? It describes anything and everything.'

‘It's saying something else.'

‘Good boy, Lawrence. At this rate you will be a true cynic by the time you're thirty.'

‘If I'm lucky. Were you always as sarcastic and spiteful as you are now?'

Choosing to ignore this, she made for a park bench. This filled me with hope that she might confess something, anything. We sat together in silence, while I tried to think of a way to prod a single honest word out of her. I wanted to know why she was who she was, why she handled herself so precisely and never showed her true feelings—whatever they were. She and Marcel must have been married for a long time, and it must have hurt her to have it come to an end. I remembered seeing her in the clothes shop last week, and how desperate she sounded when she shouted at the assistant. She may have been in control now, but it was a tenuous grasp.

A lone pigeon perched amongst the blanket of fallen leaves on the verge. He moved his head in nervous spasms, like a lonely old neurotic confronted with something new and unfamiliar. It took him a while to catch sight of us on the bench. When he did, he flew off into the barren canopy of trees. Élodie continued smoking her cigarette. The smoke made her head drift in and out of focus beneath the street lamp.

‘That's better,' she said, once she had finished the cigarette and tossed it to the ground. ‘Come, we must get indoors.'

‘Perhaps we could get a drink somewhere first,' I said. I wanted to delay our return to the apartment for as long as I could. ‘I know a place on the other side of the Pont de Solférino.'

‘Yes, why not? I could do with a drink.'

An underground passage on the park's edge took us to the bridge, where the arches stretched out gracefully to admit us. It could have been a bridge to heaven, if not for the graffiti scrawled on every railing. Light hung distant in the sky, spilling over the top of the steps. A
clochard
had set up camp in the tunnel's recess, clinging to a bottle in a paper bag. He shouted something at us as we walked past. Élodie paid him no attention, and her stride did not slow.

‘Do you ever give them money?' I said.

‘There is no point. I once shared a
clafoutis
with a
clochard
. He waited outside our pâtisserie every day, and he would ask for something to eat. I was a little girl. I did not understand.'

‘So what happened?'

The Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, on opposite banks of the river, were swamped by inky shadows. Élodie lit another cigarette and the flickering lighter removed some of the gloom in her face, highlighting the sharp line of her jaw and the hollow in her chin.

‘Nothing happened,' she said. ‘And I never saw him again.'

There was something oddly tragic about the way that she told this story.

I chose a café by the Assemblée Nationale, which was quieter than most. Élodie ordered a cognac, while I decided to try a Scotch whisky. She was almost impressed.

‘What?' I said. ‘I need to keep warm somehow.'

‘Perfect. Let's see what you make of it.'

We stood at the bar. I caught a glance of myself in the mirror behind the shelves of glassware and was taken aback by the young man in the tailored shirt casually glancing at me, as if asking what business of mine it was to be staring at him.

When the whisky arrived I drank too much of it, and it burnt its way down.

‘You didn't run into Ed by chance today, did you?' I said. ‘You arranged to meet him, with me.'

‘What makes you think that?'

‘I talked to that girl, whoever she is.'

‘Ah.' She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Well, yes, if you must know. I thought it would be nice to catch up, and I knew you would never agree to meet me if Ed was going to be involved. It turned out to be for the best, did it not?'

‘Maybe. But I'm confused—you keep contradicting yourself. How well do you really know him?'

‘As well as I know any of my acquaintances. You might get the wrong impression, because I happen to get on well with just about anybody. I have to.'

‘Why do you have to?'

‘It gives me purpose. We all need purpose.'

She took a mouthful of the cognac, closing her eyes as she swallowed. Huddled over the bar and clinging onto her glass, she was as stiff as an old daguerreotype. I wanted nothing more than to see her react naturally to something, as she had to the music in Biarritz. My interrogation had produced the opposite result from what I wanted. Once again she crawled out of the space I had forced her into, and she pretended that she had never been there.

‘Now,' she said, ‘let's have no more of this silliness. Tell me something about art. The most fascinating thing you can think of.'

This temptation was difficult to resist. I launched into an explanation of Manet's revolutionary use of brushstrokes to accentuate the surface of the painting. She pretended to be interested, asking all the appropriate questions.

‘Keep going, darling,' she said. ‘Please. I am intrigued.'

‘No, you're not. You want me to distract you.'

‘And what's wrong with that? When you are a little older, you will understand what it feels like to be so beautifully distracted.'

When you are a little older
. I did not want to be a little older, if this was the hollowed shell that awaited me.

‘I do understand,' I said. ‘On one level, I do understand. But I don't understand
why
.'

Élodie put her glass down, and she wrapped an arm around me. She ran it down my back as she had earlier, and she breathed into my ear. Her breath was warm. I could feel her.

‘Nobody understands why, darling. And nor should we. Hell, I can't think of anything worse than understanding. I would rather be blind. Hey.' She shook me by the shoulder. ‘Remind me never to let you have whisky again. It is not your drink.' She moved my glass to the other side of the bar top. ‘Now, what were you saying about Manet?'

We had moved into a different space. She could still abandon me, I reminded myself. I wanted to ask her again why she had left me in Biarritz—the real reason—but she would present me with the same response. I went on about Manet, but my voice had become weak. We should have been talking about something else.

‘You make it sound terribly dull,' she said. ‘It can't be that dire, can it?'

‘I thought you were interested?'

‘No, more fascinated. Fascinated that anybody would consider taking that subject. Why did you? Was it because that girlfriend of yours was taking it, too? I can imagine the two of you meeting in a tutorial, you not understanding your own charm, going on about Monet and Renoir like you knew what you were talking about. I'm sure nobody else ever talked to her in the same way. I've hit on something, haven't I? You're upset.'

That was an underestimation. My chest rose and fell in a series of gasps.

‘Don't go there, Élodie,' I said, trying to keep hold of my composure. ‘Please. If your husband is off limits, then so is Sophie.'

‘Don't compare the two. She is a distraction, darling. And, unlike Marcel, she is not a bad person. Consider what is really important here. You have to be honest with her.'

‘Like you know anything about honesty.'

‘Honesty is not as straightforward as telling her the truth. Think about that. And, for God's sake, stop worrying about her. I am sure she has already found another boyfriend. You want to call her now, don't you? Tell her how much you love her so that you don't feel guilty about spending the day with me? In that case, go off and do it. Or come to my party. Whatever you do, don't linger in the middle.'

She checked her watch, which hung limp from her wafer wrist, and downed the last of her cognac.

‘We should get going,' she said. ‘We must get the rest of the champagne chilled before company starts to arrive.'

The tumbler of whisky was on the bar top, and it was half-full. I took it in one gulp, to wipe the conversation clear from my memory, and to bolster myself for whatever was to come.

20

The apartment had heated
up since our departure. Our unfinished glasses of champagne had gone warm, but I finished mine anyway. It did not dance around my mouth as it had earlier. Élodie began to lay the Italian hams on a swirled crystal platter.

‘Oh darling, I almost forgot,' she said. ‘We need to cut your hair. Take that beautiful shirt off and have a wash in the bathroom.'

The bathroom was hollow, like a polished granite cave, if caves had steel lighting fixtures. There was an egg-shaped marble bath with a metal tap rising from the floor. I knelt by the bath and with the detachable shower head washed my hair. It was so brittle that a lot of it fell out. I used the nearest bottle of shampoo. Soon the whole room was perfumed with the same scent of lavender I remembered from Élodie's hair when we had made love in Biarritz.

I felt Élodie's hand on my back. I started and dropped the shower head. She had removed her coat and her dress. Her breasts were as smooth and round as they were in my memory, and I could have reached out and touched them to remind myself that this was no dream, that they were as perfect as the rest of her figure.