The Paris Connection

by Lorraine Brown

  “Mmm,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up.

  “What is your job, then?”

  “I’m a human resources administrator. For a small law firm in the city,” I told him in between mouthfuls.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Quite the opposite,” I said, laughing lightly. “I can’t stand it.”

  I pulled off a chunk of crispy pastry and popped it into my mouth.

  “Actually, it’s not the job, not really. It’s me,” I said, chewing. “I’ve been thinking about leaving for the last three years and have done nothing about it. They keep trying to send me on these management training courses but I make excuses not to go. Last time, I said I couldn’t make it because I had food poisoning and then I had to take an extra day off sick to make it look realistic. And the worst thing was that the following day it was somebody’s birthday and there was cake in the office and I had to pretend that I felt too queasy to risk it, even though—as you now know—cake is my favorite thing on earth.”

  He laughed. “You are funny, Hannah.”

  “And you ask too many questions.”

  “And here is another one. Why do you stay in that job if you hate it so much?” he asked, looking sideways at me.

  I dabbed at the side of my mouth with my fingertips, licking a smidgen of cream off my thumb. I’d wondered the same thing myself, hundreds of times. Fear of the unknown, I supposed. The idea that if I stayed where I was, I wouldn’t have to deal with the inevitable disappointment of trying something I actually cared about and being shit at it. And so I continued to get up, go to work, sit on the Tube alongside millions of other Londoners, and I accepted my lot, assuming that I couldn’t have it all.

  “It’s reality, isn’t it?” I told him. “I can’t afford to take risks. I’ve got bills to pay. Commitments. Things I have to save up for.”

  “Like what?”

  A tourist boat beeped its horn as it passed, its decks filled with tourists enjoying the sun, their cameras glinting and flashing against a backdrop of bright blue sky, which was now feathered with just the wispiest of white clouds.

  “I don’t know. Property?”

  He looked surprised. “You want to buy a house?”

  “I mean eventually. Yeah.”

  “And in the meantime you remain bored and fed up in this job that you do not like?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s the sacrifice, isn’t it, as you get older? Most of your hopes and dreams have to go out of the window.”

  “Do they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they have to?”

  I looked down at my ankle, turning it over to check it wasn’t swollen.

  “Actually,” I said, wondering whether I should tell him. “There’s this photography course I’m thinking of doing.”

  He took the empty paper bag from me and lobbed it into a bin about a meter away; it was a clean shot.

  “Like at a university?” he asked.

  I lifted my camera and took a quick shot of a pretty mint-green arched bridge downstream.

  “It’s a pre-degree course at Central Saint Martins.”

  When I’d mentioned it to Si, I’d felt like he’d tried to put me off. He’d said it sounded like a good way to spend money I didn’t have. That he didn’t know why I’d want to give up every Saturday for six months when we could be spending that time together. We’d never be able to go away for the weekend, he’d pointed out, and I’d said: When do we ever go away for the weekend? I hadn’t mentioned it since.

  “It’s an art school. In London,” I added.

  “I know Central Saint Martins, Hannah.”

  His know-it-all tone made me want to stop talking.

  “Sorry,” he said, softening. “Carry on.”

  I struggled to find the right words now that I’d lost my flow. How had I got started on this particular topic of conversation, anyway?

  “The course has got some complicated name,” I said tentatively, wondering what scathing observation he was going to make about it all. “Something about professional practice and a portfolio. It’s only part-time, but there’s loads of work outside of class.”

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped out a short text and then put it away, focusing his attention on me again. “This is possible for you?”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “And you have made an application?”

  I twisted my lens cap back and forth. “Not yet. The closing date is next Wednesday.”

  He got up and went to crouch on the edge of the bank, gazing at something in the water.

  “You must do it, oui?” he said, looking at me over his shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” I said, wishing I hadn’t said anything. “I’d have to upload a portfolio of fifteen or twenty shots.”

  “You have those?”

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “Probably.”

  To him—to most people, in fact—it was probably a no-brainer. It was only a short course; it wasn’t like I was committing to years of study. And I could just about afford it. I’d have to give up all the little extras like my morning Starbucks and my glossy-magazine fix. I’d take my own lunches in to work, that sort of thing. It was just that the idea of taking photography seriously, of thinking about it in terms of an actual career, felt like something that wasn’t meant for someone like me. And in some small way, chipping away at the back of my mind, I felt bad doing the one thing I knew Dad would have loved to do, if he’d only had the chance.

  Léo stood up and I lifted the viewfinder to my eye.

  “Stay there,” I instructed.

  He did what I’d told him to, putting one hand over his eye, pretending to be shy about having his photo taken.

  “Relax,” I said, adjusting the focus, taking five or six shots. “You look all stiff. Oh, and wipe your nose, there’s cream all over it.”

  He laughed, swiping his hand across his nose, and I caught him in a moment, looking relaxed and natural before he started posing and it looked wrong again.

  “Do I make a good subject?”

  “I don’t know until I get them developed, do I?” I replied.

  “You like using film?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I prefer it. I like the romanticism of not knowing what you’re going to find. Sometimes I leave it months before I get a film developed so that I completely forget what’s on there. Then I can look at the images with fresh eyes.”

  I still got excited about collecting the old-school sealed envelope, its contents smelling of warm ink. The opening of it, the flicking through glossy print by glossy print, making a pile of my favorites.

  “It is the same with my music,” he said.

  “In what way?”

  He hesitated, searching for something in his jacket pocket.

  “Actually, it doesn’t matter. Tell me more about this course.”

  “Oh no,” I said, realizing what was happening. “You’re not getting out of it that easily. I’ve just told you a whole load of stuff I’ve never told anybody. Now it’s your turn. What about your music?”

  He tipped his head to the side. “You are good at reading people, aren’t you, Hannah?”

  “Yes I am. Now, tell me.”

  Raking a hand through his hair, he turned toward the canal and then back to me again. It was the most uncomfortable I’d ever seen him look.

  “When I am working on a song . . . ,” he said, rubbing his hand over his mouth.

  “Yes?”

  “I need to distance myself from it. For some time, if it is possible. When I have put it to the side for some weeks, a month or more, there is a chance I can hear what is not right with it. What is working and what is not.”

  “Okay.” I nodded encouragingly. “Go on.”

  “But this, of course, cannot be done if I
have a deadline. If I have to follow somebody else’s timeline. Produce a finished product when somebody else says so.”

  I tapped my fingernails on the bicycle rack.

  “Have you got a deadline at the moment?”

  “Kind of.”

  “It’s got something to do with Amsterdam, hasn’t it?”

  I waited. Then I widened my eyes at him, as if to say: Has it?

  “Yes,” he said, looking as though even admitting that had been too much for him.

  “Why is it so difficult for you to talk about?” I asked.

  “I am used to being the one who asks all the questions,” he said.

  “You don’t like talking about yourself?”

  He shook his head. “I do not,” he said. “And do not even think about asking me why, which I know is going to be your next question.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender. “God, I thought I was closed off.”

  I lifted my face up to the sky and breathed deeply. This part of Paris smelled different from where we’d been before. Sweeter, woodier. Less like car fumes.

  “Come,” he said, standing up, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Follow me. Five minutes’ drive from here is the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. The views are crazy, you will make some very cool photographs for your portfolio.”

  I bit my lip. “I shouldn’t, you know.”

  I’d already been much longer than I’d meant to be. I couldn’t risk it.

  “Think of your project, Hannah.” He bent down to tie his shoelaces. “And it is not too much of a detour,” he reassured me, looking up.

  “Just for a minute or two, then,” I said, running my hand along the railing as though it was a musical instrument, listening to the different notes it made.

  “It is 10:52, before you ask,” he said, waving his wrist in my face and making a big show of checking his watch. “We still have lots of time.”

  11

  We set off on the bike, crossing over the canals and driving uphill through an area that felt more suburban and lived-in than the other places we’d been to. Less of the apartment blocks with balconies and shutters I’d seen near the station and more of the sort of architecture I was used to in London, a mishmash of old and new, some seventies-style buildings, a hospital, a school, some sort of sports center. After navigating a mad roundabout where stopping at a zebra crossing with somebody on it didn’t appear to be a legal requirement, Léo pulled over and cut the engine.

  “Through here,” he said, pointing to a set of green iron gates. And then he stopped. “Your ankle,” he said with quiet concern. “It is a short walk, but it is uphill. It is too much?”

  I shook my head. “It’s much better,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  We walked through the entrance to a shady park with a sort of rocky, mossy feel; a different atmosphere again from the canals and the more central parts of Paris we’d already explored. I looked up, breathing in the scent of pine, noticing the way the treetops popped against the sky. I couldn’t quite believe I was here again, in this city I’d despised for so long.

  “I have another interesting fact about death for you,” announced Léo.

  “I don’t know why you keep harping on about it,” I replied, irritated. “I’m no more obsessive about it than anyone else.”

  “You want to hear the fact or not?”

  “Not.”

  “You are sure? It is a good one, about what was once below our feet, here in this park. Très macabre.”

  “In that case, definitely not.”

  I noticed how long his stride was compared to mine, how I was doing nearly two steps to every one of his. There was something oddly comforting about the twinge of pain I felt every time I put pressure on my twisted ankle.

  “Where are these amazing views you’ve been bigging up, then?” I asked.

  “This way.” He steered me across to a wide pathway that curved off uphill. “You will see, it will be worth the climb.”

  “It better be,” I said, my thighs already burning. I took off the hoodie, tying it around my waist, glad I’d left his jacket with the bike.

  “So tell me,” he said, his breath catching in his throat as we hit a particularly steep section. “How is it you are so good at reading people?”

  I swung my arms back and forth to try to build some momentum.

  “I’m not always,” I said. “Not with everyone.”

  He stopped to hook a tiny pebble out of his shoe and I was grateful for the chance to rest.

  “But sometimes you understand what is inside someone’s head?” he asked, setting off again.

  I’d noticed that when he asked a question, he actually seemed interested in the answer, and not in that fake, faux-polite way that people sometimes were, because I was very tuned in to things like that. I noticed when people asked me something and then glazed over before I’d had a chance to answer, causing me to falter to a halt, deciding that my story wasn’t worth telling after all.

  “Not exactly. It’s more that I get a sense of what they’re thinking. Specifically, what they’re thinking about me.”

  He stopped walking for a second or two, looked across at me and then carried on.

  “I think I would rather not know what people think of me,” he said.

  I fiddled with my camera strap, loosening it a little so it wasn’t so tight across the shoulder. “That sounds like a healthier approach.”

  “Oui, I think so.”

  “For example, I have this thing where I’m constantly trying to work out whether people like me or not. I have a compulsion to know. I pick out all the little things that most people are probably oblivious to—their body language, the tone of their voice, whether their eyes flicker away from mine, whether they’re looking over their shoulder for someone more interesting to talk to and so on. And if I don’t get the validation I need, I instantly assume the worst: that I’m an awful person and therefore they must hate me.”

  There was a burst of something sweet in the air as we walked past an explosion of tiny purple flowers pushing between the cracks of a rock face to our right. I stopped to take a photo.

  “You think people are thinking bad things about you all of the time?” he asked me.

  I thought about it. “Not all the time, no. But I can tell when they are.”

  He shook his head. “It is your own paranoia, surely.”

  I ran the tip of my middle finger back and forth across my thumbnail, considering his reply.

  “I don’t think it is. Not entirely, anyway.”

  “Perhaps people like you very much, but they back off because you are so defensive that you give the impression that you do not like them.”

  “So you think I imagine it all?” I asked, skeptical.

  “The mind can play tricks on you. People can be nicer than you think, Hannah.”

  “Ever the optimist.”

  “I dare not suggest that you are anything other than positive,” he said, giving me a sideways look, the trace of a smile on his lips.

  I pulled a leaf off a passing tree and shredded it into pieces, leaving a trail of green fibers behind me.

  “What, worried I might cry again?”

  “Look,” said Léo, sweeping his arm out in front of him. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

  I couldn’t even hide my surprise this time. The park had opened up into a beautiful Japanese-style garden complete with a suspension bridge leading to a fairy tale–like island made up of craggy cliff faces. The soft green fronds of weeping willows draped onto the surface of the lake below. When I turned full circle, I realized we were surrounded on all sides by cream-colored buildings with zinc roofs and balconies, like a sort of Parisian Central Park.

  “Do you see the temple on top?” asked Léo, raising a hand to point.

 
I nodded, thinking how much I loved this place.

  “It is a copy of the Temple de Vesta in Tivoli, Italy,” he said. “If you go inside it, you can see for many miles, all the way to Montmartre.”

  I immediately lifted my camera and leaned against a post, snapping away, trying to capture the haunting quality of the temple. Then I zoomed in on a couple standing a few meters away. I liked the way they were leaning over the side, pointing at something in the water, whispering softly to each other. I became lost in the world I could see through my camera lens, losing track of the number of photos I’d taken. By the time I looked up again, Léo was already halfway across the wooden bridge, which shifted slightly as I stepped onto it, as though it wasn’t quite as stable as it looked. I held the railing for support.

  “Scared of falling, Hannah?” he called to me.

  “Well, given how clumsy I am . . .”

  He laughed, waving for me to catch up. The higher we climbed, the busier it became. Everywhere I looked someone was exercising, out for a run or doing press-ups on a bench or even yoga under the shade of a tree. It appeared to be a city of dog lovers, too, as I noticed most of their pampered animals were on ridiculously long leads, as though Parisian pets could not possibly be restrained.

  “You are tired? Enough walking?” asked Léo as I came up slowly behind him, the fact I’d only snatched a couple of hours’ sleep on the train finally catching up with me.

  “I’m fine,” I said, reluctant to admit I could do with a break. “Can we stop for a sec, though?” I asked. “I should try Si again.”

  Léo handed me his phone. “You need to check in?”

  “No, but he’ll be wondering where I am,” I said, wondering why I felt the need to explain myself. “That’s what couples do for each other,” I added. I pitied Léo’s poor girlfriend, if he had one. He hadn’t mentioned anybody.

  “You will tell him where you are?” asked Léo.

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

  I moved off the pathway, perching on the arm of a bench that had someone’s name carved into it, a dedication to somebody who had died. Those inscriptions always depressed me. I calculated their age in my head: sixty-eight. Too young. Nowhere near enough time to do everything you wanted to do. I glanced over at Léo, knowing he’d have something sarcastic to say if he knew I was thinking about death again. He’d crouched down, his back pressed against the trunk of a tree. I positioned myself so that I couldn’t see his face and dialed Si’s number. It rang three times before he answered and my heart began to race because I wasn’t sure what kind of mood he’d be in if, by some miracle, he did pick up. He was a sucker for a schedule, and for everyone sticking to it, and I’d have disappointed him with my inability to follow instructions and to be in the right place at the right time. It was past eleven now, so he’d have checked into the hotel. Catherine probably had him ironing tablecloths already.