“I wouldn’t want to bore you,” I said.
“You are not particularly boring.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all day.”
As we walked past a vegan café, I noticed a woman of about my age wearing a white camisole with pale gray jeans and a camel cardigan. Somehow it looked exquisite and neat and expensive, in a way it never would on me. She had a bowlful of green salad in front of her, therefore embodying not only the style esthetic I aspired to, but the clean eating habits, too.
“So tell me: How did he ask you?” said Léo.
“He didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I just said. He didn’t propose.”
I’d been flustered and nervy all night when I’d found the ring, with every conversation appearing to be a lead-up to “the big question.” But he hadn’t asked me over a candlelit dinner in Santa Croce, or when we’d strolled hand in hand across the Piazza San Marco afterward. I’d constantly been on edge, my heart pounding with anticipation every time he’d paused to take a picture or point out something of interest. It had been excruciating.
“Why not?” asked Léo.
I watched Sylvie, who looked like she was berating someone on the other end of the line.
“I don’t know.”
It was like he could see inside my head. Why hadn’t Si done it? And, more to the point, was he still planning to? Venice would have been the perfect place. The two of us, standing on the Rialto Bridge (somehow there wouldn’t be a million other tourists doing the same thing), the churning waters of the Grand Canal below. The palazzos lining the shores painted in gorgeous shades of burned peach and faded gold with forest-green shutters. The pleasant aroma of fresh fish from the market mixed with sweet, fruity gelato. It occurred to me—and this was absolutely the worst-case scenario—that perhaps the ring hadn’t even been for me.
“Anyway, enough about proposals,” I said, casting about for a change of topic. “What were you doing in Venice?”
“Not proposing to people?”
He threw his jacket over the handlebars of the bike when I gave him a dark look.
“Why did you take the train, by the way?” I asked. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you were in such a hurry, wouldn’t flying have been a more reliable option?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Do I have to tell you?”
“Absolutely.”
He sighed, his hair flopping over his forehead. “I am not a big fan of flying.”
“You’re scared of it, you mean?” I said, ecstatic to have found something else to wind him up about. “Who’s scared of dying, now?”
He swept his hair back, looking faintly embarrassed. “You do not need to sound so happy about it, Hannah.”
“So you do have feelings . . . ,” I said, gleefully rubbing it in.
He tutted, pretending to fiddle with a dial on the bike.
“Okay, carry on,” I said. “Was your Venice trip something to do with work?”
“No.”
I looked at him quizzically, using my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, thinking longingly of my sunglasses, which I’d packed in my suitcase because I’d assumed I wouldn’t need them until we got to Amsterdam.
“Can you elaborate?”
“I went to visit my father,” he said.
“He’s Italian?”
He shook his head. “No, but my stepmother is. They just had a baby together, a boy.”
So his dad had remarried. “How do you feel about having a baby brother?”
He laughed. “It makes a nice change. I also have four sisters.”
“Four?” I said, smiling. It was nice to finally get some personal information out of him.
We passed the shop I’d seen earlier—Antoine et Lili—which was made up of three separate sections painted in glorious shades of sunshine yellow, mint green and rose pink. I stopped for a second to have a peek through the window at the most gorgeous Parisian homewares inside, cushions and linens and ceramic teapots and pretty candleholders. If I’d had the time and money, I would have bought a little something to take home—a bowl or a tea towel or something—so that our kitchen would always remind me of Paris.
I jogged back across to Léo. “How did your dad cope with all these women in the house when you were growing up?”
“To put it simply: he did not,” said Léo, looking out across the water.
So he hadn’t had it easy, either, then. When I’d first met Si, and had told him what life had been like for me, he’d tried to empathize, but I’d known he was struggling with it, because he only had his own near-perfect upbringing to compare it to. A memory flashed into my mind, of the two of us at Mum and Tony’s. I’d dragged him out into the hall to show him the “photo gallery,” as Mum called it, the eclectic set of photographs she’d had blown up, framed and hung on the wall by the stairs. There were a couple of the two of them, a nice one of them all dressed up for one of the post office’s Christmas parties. One of them walking hand in hand on Torbay beach at sunset. When it came to the pictures of me, I cringed. Mum had chosen a horrific sequence of unflattering shots, as though purposely displaying me in the worst possible light.
“This one’s my favorite,” I’d said, pointing to the school photograph taken when I was eleven, when I’d had a very attractive braces-and-monobrow combo, having not yet worked out that plucking my eyebrows was an actual thing. I recalled deciding, at the time, that I hated my thick curls and in the absence of straighteners and products (those would come later) they had felt almost impossible to manage.
Si had run his finger over it. “You look adorable,” he said, trying to be nice.
We walked up a couple of steps to look at another standout shot, taken on Mum and Tony’s wedding day: it was of Mum, a grim-faced, slightly chubby seventeen-year-old me, and Mum’s sister, my auntie Sinead, who had come over from Ireland and who was wearing a black-and-white psychedelic-print jumpsuit that would have looked less out of place at Studio 54. Despite there being hundreds of much better pictures to choose from, Mum had thought the one of me looking away from the camera and sporting a double chin would be the best one to stick on the wall for all to see.
“You make a lovely bridesmaid,” said Si, putting his arm around me.
“Shame about the turquoise satin meringue,” I said, grimacing.
Si laughed and followed me up to the landing. I ran my fingertip around the gold frame of the only photo I did like. It was of me aged about six months; I was lying on the living room floor, on the swirly-brown-and-orange rug I still remembered because we had it for years afterward, my legs kicking up into the air, a colorful rattle clutched in my right hand. We stared at the photo for some time.
“My dad took that,” I said.
“He’s got a good eye,” said Si, nudging me in the ribs. “Now I know where you get it from.”
* * *
• • •
Sylvie finished her call and turned to hand Léo a cigarette; she lit it for him, cupping her hands around his. They were both so beautiful, the canals shining behind them, the blue sky, the treetops, that I moved to put my camera to my eye and then thought better of it.
“You smoke?” she said to me as an afterthought.
I shook my head, although I could have done with one after what I’d just read.
“Here we are,” said Léo, coming to a stop outside a restaurant. The windows were opened up at the front so that most of the clientele were sitting outside, drinking beer in the warm July sun. When I realized the intimidating bunch of people gathered around a wooden trellis table were Léo’s friends, I wanted to turn round and run in the opposite direction.
“This is Hannah,” he announced, although I didn’t know why he’d bothered, since we weren’t pla
nning to stay. I smiled weakly. They mostly looked up. I’d assumed it was a cliché, but they really were all dressed in black, with odd colorful details—a belt, a scarf—thrown in for good measure. A skateboard was propped against the window frame. It wasn’t fair to make assumptions, but on first impressions, they seemed very caught up with themselves and how good they looked.
Léo parked the bike and pulled three chairs across from a neighboring table. He beckoned me into the seat next to him.
“How long are you planning to stay?” I asked him quietly, reluctantly lowering myself onto the chair and wishing I’d gone straight to the station. I was feeling unsettled after reading Si’s e-mails and telling Léo about the ring and didn’t think I had the energy to make small talk, which I found difficult at the best of times. It would likely turn into one of those occasions when I silently retreated into the background, observing the conversation rather than participating in it, until eventually people began to talk over me, forgetting I was there at all.
“It is boring for you, all this French?” he said, after a few minutes had passed and I’d had a fixed smile on my face as they’d all chattered around me.
I shook my head. “ ’Course not.”
Actually, being here in Paris had kind of reignited my love of the language, although I’d been too shy to say much myself. Maybe I’d think about doing a beginners’ French course sometime; they were bound to have them all over London. It was one of those things, like photography, that I’d always liked and had naturally been quite good at but had never known what to do with. It wasn’t like there were many French-speaking photographers round our way.
I watched him turn to say something to Sylvie, his shoulders sloping forward, his feet crossed at the ankle. There was an easiness between them, despite her thunderous exterior, and I could tell they were close, that they knew each other well. With the guys across the table, the ones wearing a uniform of black on black who had barely glanced in my direction, he leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands gesticulating madly about something. With them he was more forthright, more direct. And then I noticed that when we talked, he swiveled toward me, his back turned completely to Sylvie. I caught her eye over his shoulder a few times and, feeling awkward, drew her back into the conversation.
To my left was a girl called Clarice, the girlfriend of one of the guys in black. She was only twenty-two and lived above a club in the apparently very trendy Oberkampf area. She was nocturnal, she told me, and rarely ventured out of her flat while it was still light, which probably explained why her skin was so pale it was practically luminous. She had a long, slim neck and several piercings in each ear.
“How long have you been with your boyfriend?” I asked, hoping she spoke good English and feeling as though I ought to make an effort to talk to someone. I didn’t want Léo thinking I was socially inept; he’d only say something sarcastic about it later.
“Two months. Three, perhaps,” said Clarice.
“Still quite new, then?” I said.
“Do you think?” To her, three months probably felt like an age.
“What’s he like?” I asked.
Personally, I thought he loved the sound of his own voice a bit too much; I hadn’t seen him talk to her once, not that it seemed to faze her. I admired that about her, her self-assuredness, the fact that she didn’t appear to need anything from him, and I was envious that she’d cultivated an attitude like that at such a young age. I imagined Si and Catherine had been like that, too, when they were in their early twenties, full of bravado and the belief that they could do anything they wanted. I didn’t know about Léo. I felt like my first impressions of him were changing. Were the snippiness and the disparaging comments hiding something else, a part of him that was more sensitive, that perhaps hadn’t had it as easy as I’d thought?
“He is sweet,” said Clarice, twirling a stud in her ear. “Otherwise I would leave him, non?”
I was in awe of this girl, who seemed to have it all together.
“And how is it with Léo?” asked Clarice. “Where did you meet each other?”
“Hannah, try some of this,” said Léo, passing me a plate of cold meats and pâté and olives. “Une assiette de charcuterie.”
I picked up a delicate, thinly sliced piece of prosciutto and dropped it into my mouth.
“Mmm,” I said to him in between chews. “Good.”
I passed the plate to Clarice.
“We met this morning,” I said, grabbing a napkin to wipe my hands. “At Gare du Nord.”
She looked confused and I laughed. “I managed to trip over his bag and twist my ankle, and then we both missed the train to Amsterdam. He blamed me and I blamed him, but we’ve had to agree to disagree on that one. He’s been showing me around Paris, persuading me that it’s not the awful place I thought it was.”
“You do not like Paris?” said Clarice, visibly shocked at the idea that someone was less than enamored of it.
“I had a bad experience here before,” I said. “Nothing to do with the city itself.” Although perhaps it had taken me until today to realize that.
“You and Léo seem like you have known each other for longer than a day.”
I glanced over at him. He was getting something out of his bag, a record, handing it across the table to Clarice’s boyfriend.
I took a sip of the wine somebody had poured me. “Do we?”
Léo shouted something to one of the guys across the table and then turned to me.
“I want to show you one more place,” he whispered into my ear. “Before we leave for the station.”
“What is it?”
“Montmartre,” he said, beaming. “You cannot come to Paris and not see Montmartre, and it is very close. You will get a tiny glimpse of how it was in Paris a hundred years ago. Parts of it are like taking a step back in time.”
I smoothed out imaginary creases on Sylvie’s skirt.
“This has to be the absolutely last thing you show me,” I said. I’d seen pictures of Montmartre: the Moulin Rouge, the Sacré-Coeur; it would be a shame not to see it if it was as close as he said. “And then I’m going straight to the station.”
He nodded, standing up. “Of course. It will be worth it, you will see.”
“Give me a second, okay?” I said, making my way through the bar, hugging the wall to avoid the bar staff with their white shirts and their black aprons, who were twirling about with huge trays of drinks. I used the loo and then stood by the sink, turning on the tap and letting ice-cold water cascade through my fingers. I barely registered the door opening, or Sylvie coming in.
“There you are, Hannah,” she said. “I wanted to see you before you go.”
“Me too. I was going to come and thank you for everything,” I said, turning to face her. “If you let me have your address, I’ll have your clothes dry cleaned and posted back to you.”
“There is no need. You can keep them if you like.”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t do that.”
She shrugged. “Léo has my details, he can give them to you. You are getting the train to Amsterdam together, yes?” She leaned her hip against the sink next to mine.
“Probably.”
“You know, he is usually very guarded around people. He does not let them get too close, not at first,” she said, turning on a tap, splashing her face with water.
“Yep, I can see that,” I said, thinking about his mood when we’d first met, how I’d passed him off as yet another arrogant Parisian. It was only now I was beginning to see a sweeter, softer side.
“With you it is different,” she said. “Hardly ever do I see him this relaxed.”
“That’s what you call relaxed?” I joked, but I noticed my heart was beating high in my chest. Surely she wasn’t suggesting what I thought she was suggesting.
“You know I have a boyfriend,” I
said, throwing it nonchalantly out there. I’d probably got the wrong end of the stick, anyway.
“Yes. Léo told me,” she said, taking a paper towel and dabbing at her face. “It is fine, with this boyfriend?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Léo seems very confident, non? Very sure of himself.”
“You can say that again,” I said.
“But really he is very scared of getting hurt. And so he begins these relationships with women who are not right for him.”
My eyes flickered across to the reflection of Sylvie’s face in the mirror.
“They are always very beautiful,” she continued, “but they are not a challenge to him. They are happy for him to be the fun Léo we all see and love, and they do not care about anything more, what might be happening underneath. And after a few months I say to him: How is it going, Léo? And it is always over.”
I swallowed. “Why?”
“He believes he can go through life on his own, that it is simpler that way. But I do not think this is true. We all need someone, non?” she said, screwing the paper towel into a ball and dropping it into the bin.
I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I think so, yeah.”
“I do not think he would be like that with you,” said Sylvie, reapplying her lipstick and then offering me some.
I took it gratefully, smearing some onto my lips with my thumb so that they had a sort of berry-colored stain.
“But of course, you have a boyfriend, so it does not matter,” she said.
“No,” I said, bracing myself on the sink. “I don’t suppose it does.”
I brushed past Sylvie to open the door. “I should get back,” I said.
“Enjoy Montmartre, Hannah,” she said, leaning closer to the mirror to apply mascara.
I walked out into the main bar, disoriented for a second, thrown by everything Sylvie had said. She was being dramatic, that was all. It wasn’t like she was a mind reader: how would she have any idea what was going on in Léo’s head? After today, we’d never see each other again, so what did it matter how well we got on? He was good company, a bit of fun, an excellent interpreter when I needed him to be.
The Paris Connection Page 17