The Last Words of Madeleine Anderson

by Helen Kitson

  But in reality there was only awkwardness, Simon and I standing in front of our respective doors, a thin wall and so much else separating us.

  ‘Sleep well,’ he whispered before inserting the key card into his door, and all I could do was smile and hope he couldn’t read the yearning in my eyes.

  He wanted to go shopping at Les Halles. I wanted churches, cemeteries. We argued.

  ‘It won’t be any different from any other mall,’ I said. ‘Why waste time trailing around shops?’

  ‘I want to buy some clothes.’ Determined, like a child.

  I shrugged, sulked, didn’t respond when he suggested I take a look around the church of Saint-Eustache while he shopped.

  ‘Oh, be like that, then,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll see you back at the hotel.’ And he stalked off, abandoning me. A petty squabble that left me with a stone in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to take home only pleasant memories. I wanted to remember the carousel at the foot of Sacré-Cœur, murky lamplight, cobbles slick with rain; his hand holding mine.

  I could have taken myself off to a cemetery, but the idea lost its flavour without Simon. I took the Métro straight back to the hotel and sat in the patio area with an espresso and a book, a tartan travel rug around my shoulders, woollen gloves doing little to warm my hands. Too cold a place to sit for long, yet I preferred to be alone outside than in my small hotel room. In any case, I couldn’t settle to read; couldn’t get past the feeling that the whole holiday was now spoiled.

  Simon turned up a couple of hours later carrying two shiny carrier bags with designer names on them. He was smiling, pleased with himself, eager to show off his purchases. I had little interest in women’s clothes, still less in menswear.

  He dumped the carrier bags on the table and sat down opposite me.

  ‘How can you afford designer clothes if you’re a student?’

  ‘My dad might not be my greatest fan, but he’s generous. Guilt money, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re happy to let him bankroll you, are you?’

  ‘It’s the least he can do,’ he said, refusing to meet my eye. ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’

  I brandished my book.

  ‘Did you look round the church?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You should have done. In the guide book it says Madame de Pompadour and Molière were baptised there. Shall we do the Louvre tomorrow?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Rihanna had a private tour of the place and took loads of selfies in front of the paintings.’

  ‘Very postmodern. But maybe no worse than all the tourists who snap away at the Mona Lisa. It’s not even much of a painting.’

  ‘Still in a bad mood, then?’ he said, more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘Just fed up.’

  ‘How about I get rid of these bags and then we find somewhere nice for coffee and cake? My treat.’

  I was the petulant child and he the grown-up trying to humour me, to get me back on side with sugary snacks. I had to snap out of this black mood, didn’t want him to think me one of those annoying women who must have everything their own way and can do nothing without a man in tow. Only the very young and the very beautiful can get away with such behaviour.

  Over coffee and a slice of Tarte Tatin, Simon told me about a novel he’d recently read, The Hopkins Manuscript by R C Sherriff, about a catastrophic natural event resulting in most of the earth’s population being wiped out.

  ‘Because there were so few people left,’ he explained, ‘all the old rules broke down. One survivor decided to live in the National Gallery. There was no one to stop her, no one cared about art any more, so she basically took ownership of all the paintings. Imagine if you were the only person left on Earth and you could live anywhere you wanted – any grand or public building – all yours for the taking. I’d go and live in a library.’

  ‘Presumably there wouldn’t be any electricity. You could only read on days when you could see to do so by natural light. Or with candles, until all the candles ran out.’

  He gave me an odd, uncertain smile. ‘Forget the practicalities.’

  ‘But I can’t. It would be cold in winter, too. You’d have to burn the picture frames, if you could find any matches to light a fire with.’

  ‘Do you have to be so literal? Can’t you just see the romance in it?’

  ‘I would like to.’ Impossible even to contemplate the idea of having a relationship with a man so much younger than myself. He would live for the moment. I would always be conscious of the fact that at some point, while he was still in his prime, he would look at me and see an old woman. The horror of imagining that moment would haunt me, ruining all the good times.

  Paris is not really for lovers. Paris serves only to remind one of the transience of love, of life. The Pont de l’Alma, covered in graffiti: outpourings of grief and remembrance for Princess Diana. The Catacombs, thick with skulls and bones, the air sour, thin, signs near the payment kiosk warning those with heart or respiratory problems not to attempt it. And, of course, the cemeteries and their printed maps, checklists of death. How many can you find, photograph, cross off? Opposite the great wall enclosing Père Lachaise, a long row of funeral directors, florists, shops with sober black signs and tasteful gilded lettering, hearses parked in front of them. On every notable grave, scraps of paper bearing messages, weighted down with stones; small plaster angels; flowers, candles, even a tangerine on the double grave of Sartre and de Beauvoir.

  Simon indulgent, less enthusiastic than I’d hoped, bending down to stroke each cat that wandered over the graves. When he came across a black cat, he said, ‘We’ve got one like you at home.’ We? Home? For surely he was referring to Pushkin; and yes, he was, for he added, ‘I hope Pushkin’s all right.’

  ‘Of course she is. She’s in an excellent cattery. She’ll come to no harm. Cats don’t miss their owners the way dogs do.’

  Simon perched on the white grave of Paul Éluard, lifting the black cat on to his knees. The blond boy, the black cat, fugitive sunlight falling through the branches of bare winter trees. I took a photograph before Simon realised what I was doing. I wanted him to look exactly as he was, not even a suggestion of the tightness that results from knowing you’re having your picture taken.

  He held out his hand. ‘Let me take one of you.’

  I shook my head. ‘Not here. You made a nice composition, that’s all, you and the cat.’

  The cat soon sprang away from him and sat in the middle of the path to wash itself.

  Simon looked up at me, squinting against the bright sun. ‘Do you think either of us will ever write a story about Paris? About this Paris?’

  ‘This Paris?’

  ‘Our Paris, then, if you like.’

  ‘It doesn’t belong to us,’ I said.

  ‘You know what I mean. You’re being too literal again.’

  I took a drink from one of our bottles of Evian and handed another to him. ‘And yet I’m the one who finds cemeteries appealing. They seem to bore you.’

  He shrugged, the bottle dangling between thumb and forefinger. ‘I prefer the living to the dead, that’s all.’

  ‘How odd. That you should see it in those terms, I mean. Aren’t memories a kind of death, in that case?’

  He grinned. ‘Too philosophical for me.’

  I stretched out my arms. ‘This is France. Philosophy runs in the water.’

  ‘I hope not,’ he said, shaking the last few drops from his Evian bottle. ‘Philosophy’s worse than death. It makes you worry too much about the purpose of living instead of getting on with living. Come on – let’s leave the ghosts alone.’

  We took the Métro to Montmartre and spent the rest of the afternoon strolling along the back streets. He held my hand – to stop us losing each other, he said – and I wished I could accept the gesture lightly. I recalled my mum telling me to hold the hand of whichever neighbour was bringing me home from school. Each hand felt different, wit
h its own smell and texture. Some clammy, some floury. One was rough, one smelled of Gingham perfume.

  But Simon’s wasn’t just another hand. I couldn’t catalogue it, couldn’t even begin to describe it; it was just his and therefore perfect. I longed to take it to my lips, brush my mouth against his skin, inhale the smell of him.

  We paused to watch a thimblerigger taking money from unwary tourists, his routine polished, presented in English; his expression entirely shifty. I felt Simon’s thumb caress my palm.

  ‘Should we warn them they’re being conned?’ I said.

  ‘Why bother? They’re not putting their life savings down, are they? A euro or two at most.’

  And they laughed when they lost, a rueful shake of the head, plenty more euros where that came from, and a quick photo op with the cheeky conman, all good fun.

  I felt suddenly depressed, my spirits lowering with the sun. My lips dry, unkissed. I wanted more than this chaste holding of hands; I could hardly bear the prospect of another night sleeping in my mean little bed, feeling like a child again. I envied the thimblerigger his glib sleight of hand, his easy patter.

  Simon put down a euro, winked at me, guessed right, right again, then wrong, as we all three knew he would.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s only money, isn’t it?’ He took another euro from his pocket, pressed it into the hand of an Algerian girl with outstretched arms. She ran after us. ‘No – no more,’ Simon said, shaking his head, then shrugged and gave her another euro.

  ‘Simon.’ I felt oddly irritated, as if the beggar was a rival for his love. She gave a graceful bow, didn’t try for three in a row. She was one of those wise people who understand when it’s time to back down, and that to expect too much is foolish.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A period of mild depression invariably follows any holiday, even an unsuccessful one. Mine had started on the journey home, the tears falling as our train drew out of the Gare du Nord.

  Simon squeezed my hand. ‘You’ll come back,’ he said. Not “We”, I noticed. Who would be with me the next time I visited Paris, or would I be alone? I didn’t see myself as a solo traveller. I liked the vision of renting a room for a month, spending my days in Paris as a flâneuse, wandering wherever the mood took me, getting by with a mixture of bad French and simple English. But I wasn’t that brave or resourceful.

  I sniffed, nodded, told myself not to be so childish.

  ‘When we get home,’ Simon said, ‘we’ll draw the curtains, pour ourselves some good red wine and read Les Fleurs du Mal to each other.’ He turned his face away to gaze out of the window, though for most of the journey there was precious little to see, and even the French countryside we passed through was flat and bleak, rather like Suffolk.

  It was a long journey with three changes of train. Before I unpacked I collected Pushkin, arriving home to find that Simon had already dealt with the suitcases and had even hung up my clothes.

  ‘Wasn’t sure if I should,’ he said, ‘just wanted to help.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I coaxed Pushkin from her carrier. She bolted upstairs. ‘I can’t face cooking. And we don’t have any milk or bread.’ The final straw. Simon sat beside me and let me sob, passing me the tissue box.

  ‘The Spar will be open,’ he said once my crying had subsided. ‘I’ll get bread and milk, though they might not have much left, and I’ll get wine, and while I’m out you can order pizzas.’

  He would have made a good nurse. He did some magic with wires and gadgets so that we could watch a slideshow of our Paris photos on the TV screen. We ate pizza straight from the box and drank overpriced plonk, both of which served to soften the jagged edges of my misery.

  ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ he said. ‘I know that’s just a thing people say, but it’s true.’ But memories would fade even if the photographs didn’t. In five, ten years’ time, I would remember only a few details in sharp focus, and they would likely be the ones I would prefer to forget. And Simon, what interest would he have in preserving the holiday in any but the vaguest of outlines?

  “Paris, yes, I first went there a few years back with a friend – acquaintance, really – just someone I knew for a short time…”

  There was no “our” Paris. There was his Paris and there was my Paris. There was some overlap, but the roads forked in crucial places. The memory of our separate rooms wouldn’t haunt him as it would me.

  After I’d finished work at the vicarage, Simon insisted we go for a walk. ‘We both need some fresh air. Everyone finds January depressing.’

  I lent him a scarf, though he insisted he never felt the cold.

  ‘Where shall we go, then?’

  ‘Just a walk around the village. You could show me the house where you grew up.’

  ‘It’s just an ordinary semi, same as millions of others.’

  ‘I’d like to see it anyway.’

  I always averted my eyes on the rare occasions when it was necessary to pass the house. Simon had to shake my arm to make me look at it properly.

  ‘Who lives there now?’ he asked.

  ‘No idea.’ A Christmas wreath was still fixed to the front door and there was a red Ford Kuga on the driveway; otherwise it looked much as I remembered it.

  ‘Did your friend live near here?’

  ‘Madeleine? Just down there.’ I pointed further down the road, but had no desire to be more specific.

  ‘The river’s over there, isn’t it?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Yes. Just beyond the cul-de-sac where Madeleine lived.’

  We were standing barely five hundred yards from the spot where Madeleine had drowned. I’d never been near the river since her death and had no intention of doing so now.

  ‘Why did you never move away from here?’ Simon asked. ‘Why stay in the same place if it holds such bad memories?’

  ‘I suppose I always hoped the memories would fade or become overlaid with better, stronger ones.’

  ‘You should go back to where she died. The actual spot. Then you’d see it’s a place like any other. You’ll feel nothing, I promise.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s getting dark. I don’t have a torch.’

  ‘We won’t need one. Don’t you want to start writing again? Don’t you want to start living? You never will until you’ve laid her ghost. This is part of it.’

  Eventually I agreed, but it had nothing to do with writing, everything to do with proving she was really dead. Whenever I dreamed about Madeleine, which was often, her face was caught in a rictus of horrified surprise, her clothes sopping, her skin pale, almost translucent. One hand splayed out, but no one there to grip it, to save her.

  ‘How old did you say she was when she died?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘That’s younger than I am now. It must have been rough for you.’

  ‘And for her parents.’ Could one ever get over the loss of a child? In the early days, shortly after Madeleine died, I spent a lot of time at her parents’ house. Together we mourned. We swapped memories, pored over photo albums, passed tissues to one another. My parents tried to dissuade me, told me it was morbid, and over time the Andersons’ attitude changed. They shut the door on the past, changed the subject whenever I brought up Madeleine’s name. I wanted them to look upon me as a surrogate daughter. They picked up on that, but they knew it wouldn’t do. I didn’t compensate, I merely reminded them of what they’d lost.

  Their response was muted when my book was published. I was careful not to brag about it, but it hurt me deeply when I overheard Mrs Anderson speaking to a woman in the post office.

  ‘All the while she was pretending to grieve for Maddie she must have been writing that book, feathering her own nest.’ Of course it hadn’t been like that at all, and I didn’t understand her sour attitude. After that, I avoided her.

  ‘It’s a pretty spot,’ Simon said. ‘No fishermen, either, to spoil the view.’

  ‘Hardly, at this time of day.’ My g
aze travelled to the river. Water that sparkled under the sun’s rays now took on a leaden, sinister appearance. ‘I’ve always been frightened of water. With the trees and everything, I’m always reminded of that painting of Ophelia lying on her back, palms up, flowers trailing after her.’

  Ophelia’s lips slightly parted, her dress reminiscent of a bridal gown. A pretty corpse, not twisted and bloated, hair and limbs tangled in river muck.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ he said.

  But I did. And I thought about Virginia Woolf searching for stones to put in her mackintosh pockets, placing her hat and cane on the river bank and then wading purposefully into the Ouse. Did she weep?

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ Simon repeated. ‘Come on.’ He dragged me to the river’s edge. ‘Look into it,’ he said. ‘No dead bodies, no ghosts.’

  But the branches of the trees overhanging the river whispered like the murmurings of a ghost. I didn’t believe in spirits, in any kind of life after death, and I knew that any ghost I thought I heard was my own conscience. I was alive and she was dead – where was the sense in that? I’d done so little with my life; the mark I’d made on the world was no more than a dirty thumbprint. But self-pity was even more loathsome than blaming myself for a death that wasn’t my fault.

  ‘I just wanted her to live, and I’d rather be haunted by her ghost than think of her spirit being snuffed out completely. I tried—’ To live through her? To make her live through me? Not quite that. Not really. ‘I tried to keep her memory alive, but everything fades eventually.’

  ‘Even love,’ Simon said. He took my face in his hands and kissed my forehead. The kind of kiss a priest might bestow on a penitent. Simon’s lips were cool against my skin.

  ‘D’you remember that first letter I wrote to you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I do.’ I’d kept it, slipped inside a plastic wallet and stored in the box I risibly called my cuttings file.