Paul strode briskly up the platform, the structural magnificence of St Pancras international arched above him. A muffled voice echoed incomprehensibly from loudspeakers bolted high up on the steel struts where rows of scruffy pigeons perched huddled, ruffling their feathers.
Paul buttoned his jacket with one hand against the icy wind that was funneling down the platform, thankful for the thickness and quality of the tweed. He checked the numbers on each carriage of the sleek, streamlined train, searching for the reservation number he had on the computer printout in his hand.
Typical, he thought, it would be the last bloody carriage of the lot, as finally arriving, he pressed the button to open the doors and stepped in out of the biting wind.
He stowed his worn, leather suitcase on the luggage rack and flopped down with a sigh of relief. The train was almost empty, a scattering of respectable looking businessmen, busy with their laptops, were the only other passengers.
Good, Paul thought, settling back into the comfort of the seat. He didn’t feel like making conversation with strangers today and was content to stare out of the window as the train slid slowly out of the station, past the graffiti covered bridges and scrappy back yards of London.
The Eurostar smoothly gathered speed and within minutes the repetitive rows of semis, the school football pitches and industrial estates of suburbia petered out into the Kentish countryside. Large ploughed fields, interspersed with small patches of woodland shot past his view, punctuated by tidy villages and the occasional expensive farmhouse.
It wasn’t until the train plunged into the darkness of the chunnel that the reality of what Paul was doing suddenly hit him. He sat up straight in his seat, shocked at his own impulsive behavior. If anyone was sensible and rational in their decisions, Paul liked to think it was him. Yet here he was, sat on the Eurostar, on his way to Paris, delivering a trinket for a possible criminal.
What exactly had he been thinking as he booked the ticket, packed a change of clothes and set off this morning?
It was pathetic that he’d go all the way to Paris, running errands for her. Had he really thought that would get her into his bed, or was he just helpful, or nosey?
What was he doing anyway fantasizing about a woman nearly twenty years younger than himself?
Paul felt a flush of shame rising up his neck and onto his cleanly shaven face. He knew he could never tell Julie about this trip. He’d certainly never done anything so spontaneous, so irrational or so romantic for her in all their 17 years of marriage.
As the train powered on relentlessly through the darkness of the tunnel, Paul’s mind reflected on the situation more deeply, seeing his own delusions with a sense of embarrassment.
Elodie wasn’t going to be there in Paris to meet him, let alone to fall into his arms. She couldn’t be, she was on the run and wanted and not just by your ordinary police either. Whatever kind of police those guys were, they definitely weren’t to be messed with. What if he was wrong and the innocuous looking trinket in his pocket was the thing they were searching for? If that was the case, looking at it from their perspective, he was definitely messing with them.
Again the memory of that steely grip on his neck, that expressionless face so close to his own, burst back into his mind and he felt his chest involuntarily contract, his breath coming faster and shallower.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered, a sense of panic rapidly flooding through him.
What if they came back to his flat, asked him where he’d been?
Could they have followed him?
He peered around the headrest of the seat nervously, checking the other passengers further up the carriage. As far as he could see, they remained oblivious to him, absorbed in their laptops or newspapers.
Paul forced himself to breathe. This was ridiculous, come on Paul, get a grip. Maybe a cup of tea and a bite to eat was what he needed, something to distract him and calm his nerves.
Paul got up and steadying himself on the back of his chair, set off shakily down the carriage towards the buffet car, checking every passenger he passed, half expecting at every moment to find himself face to face with that grey-suited, menacing presence.
The buffet car was nearly empty and Paul pondered indecisively for a moment in front of the array of plastic-wrapped sandwiches, croissants and panninis.
He ordered a cup of tea and an egg and cress sandwich encased in a see-through triangular box, hoping that his absorption in the mundane would give his rush of fear time to dissipate.
Paul made his way back to his seat, carefully balancing the scalding hot, plastic cup of tea. He sat down and bit into the creamy softness of his sandwich, wanting, for now, not to think about why he was on this train, hurtling at 250 mph under the channel towards France. But it was no good, his mind was chewing hard on the strange events he’d inadvertently involved himself in. He slipped his hand into his pocket to pull out the silk-wrapped stone that had propelled him on this impetuous journey. The silver necklace with the heart-shaped pendant Paul had bought for Elodie only yesterday, was entangled in the silk and the two came out into his hand together.
Paul smiled ruefully at the two trinkets nestled in the palm of his hand. He couldn’t help but be struck by the symbolism. It was his infatuation for Elodie that had brought him here, halfway across the channel, wrapped up, like the necklace, in a mystery that he neither knew nor understood anything about.
What had a nice girl like Elodie possibly done to bring her into such serious trouble, he wondered?
He just couldn't imagine.
Maybe he’d never know.
If only he’d found out a bit more about her in their evenings together.
He’d sat there like an idiot talking about himself for hours on end and learnt nothing at all about her.
Well, he’d drop the stone off at the address she’d given him, with the necklace as well, just to let her know how he felt about her.
Paul disentangled the necklace carefully and put it back in his pocket, unwrapping the stone and rolling it slowly between his finger and thumb. It was surprisingly heavy for its size but otherwise unremarkable, reminding him more of Julie’s dowsing ‘pendle-thingy’ than anything else. Paul carefully rewrapped it and put it back in his pocket. It was strange, he thought, but this odd little stone was all that connected him to Elodie and the romance that could have happened between them. Once he had delivered it, his link with her was gone. He might never see her again, he didn’t even have a photo.
Paul sighed, swallowing back his moment of sadness.
So, down to practicalities ... He’d drop the stone off and then what? Find a nice hotel in the city centre and have a decent meal with a few glasses of vin rouge, Paul thought, warming to the idea. He’d enjoy himself, finish his Christmas shopping, sit in cafes and relax for a couple of days. It would do him good. He deserved it.
His mind slipped back to the weekend he and Julie had spent in Paris, way back, before Tara was born. Despite the time lapse, the memories came back to him vividly. They’d walked miles, hand in hand through the avenues and parks, immersed in the smells of spring, fresh coffee and warm croissants. The first delicate pale, green leaves were on the plane trees and the window boxes were a riot of colour. He remembered eating strawberries on the Seine, and Julie's face laughing into his.
God it had been beautiful!
Suddenly the train burst out of the tunnel revealing a wide open, almost treeless landscape under heavy grey skies, threatening rain.
Paul’s rosy memories vanished as he realized it was hardly going to be like that this time. For a start he was on his own. And secondly, it was winter.
He sighed deeply, watching the bleak countryside racing by.
What had happened to all that love he and Julie had once had?
Where had it gone?
Eroded bit by bit, year by year by the pressures of kids and mortgages and jobs.
Paul washed the last of the now tepid tea down, grimacing.
God, life was
depressing, he thought, as he stared morosely out of the window. He’d done everything right. He’d studied hard, passed exams, got married, had kids got a mortgage. But where had it really got him? He’d recently got the car of his dreams, the expensive cream settee and the wide screen ... Hadn’t he dutifully followed society’s accepted recipe for happiness and success? True love and happiness were hard things to find and even harder to hold onto. Still, you had to make the best of things, that’s all you could do.
It wasn’t long before the countryside gave way to industrial sprawl, flashing through the outskirts of Paris till finally the train slowed down, smoothly rolling into the defined outlines of the Gare du Nord.
The Eurostar eased to a standstill. Paul shivered in the blast of cold wind let in by the opening doors and stepped out onto the platform. He followed the thin crowd of passengers letting himself be led along. And it wasn’t until he was through customs and found himself on a moving staircase going down into the main station that he realized that he really was abroad.
Paris!
It smelt and sounded so different from an english station.
As the staircase slowly descended, Paul surveyed the massive hall set out below him. He noticed there were a surprising amount of homeless people, dejectedly slumped around the walls of the station asleep or half-heartedly begging.
His eyes moved up to the huge, glazed archway in front of him. It was an impressive bit of architecture.
Below it, over the heads of the mass of milling people, Paul saw a red ‘tabac’ sign over a tiny shop and once off the escalator he wound his way toward it.
He chose a cheap street map of Paris from the rack and a bar of french chocolate and joined the queue to pay.
A revolving newspaper stand caught his eye and he turned it idly past the Paris match, le Figaro, and a New York Herald, until his eye was abruptly arrested by a black and white photo.
Paul caught his breath. It couldn’t be?
He peered closer at the pattern of pixelated dots.
There was absolutely no doubt about it. It may not have been her most flattering photo but it was definitely Elodie, the beautiful flowing hair, the full lips and those almond eyes.
Paul’s eyes flashed across the headline,
“French terrorist evades Police in London raid.”
He was stunned. He tried to scan the rest of the column but his eyes kept returning to her face, the word “terrorist” ricocheting around inside his mind.
When he realized that he was at the head of the queue he prized his eyes from the paper putting it with the map and chocolate onto the counter.
He couldn’t believe it!
Elodie, a terrorist!
She didn’t seem the type ... but could he have misjudged her he wondered handing over a 10 Euro note and taking his change.
His mind was reeling as his eyes jumped between the picture and the headline. Had he been so hopelessly infatuated that he’d failed to spot the obvious?
Of course not. She was Elodie, lovely Elodie. She was a vegetarian, she practiced yoga for God’s sake.
He moved away from the tabac thinking hard.
Should he deliver the crystal?
For all he knew the address she’d given him could be a terrorist headquarters.
Those Agents might have the place staked out and they were the last people he wanted to meet again. Paul turned around gazing distractedly across the throng of people towards the main entrance, trying to make a decision, when he saw something that made his heart miss a beat. Their slicked back grey hair and mirrored shades clearly visible above the heads of the crowded hallway, Paul saw three Agents enter the station, half a dozen uniformed gendarmes at their heels. Once inside the station, Paul saw them freeze for a moment, before all three heads swiveled slowly to look in his direction. The police spread out, covering each of the many exits as one of the Agents detached himself, striding purposefully towards Paul.
He could hear the Agents last words to him echoing in his mind, “If you have deceived me...”
Wasn’t that exactly what he had done?
He watched panic stricken, rooted to the spot as the Agent steadily approached him.
What should he do? Run? Where to?
He felt a hand firmly grip his elbow and he span round to find a shrunken old bag-lady.
‘Paul, you need my help,’ she said, in clear english looking up at him.
Surely he’d misheard, she couldn’t possibly have known his name. He took her in at a glance, from her worn out trainers, laddered tights and cheap raincoat, to her ragged brown skirt and filthy, matted hair.
He turned away from her, back toward the Agent, who was still steadily advancing through the throng.
Paul watched, transfixed with fear, the bag lady still gripping his sleeve.
‘He’s coming for you Paul,’ she said.
‘I know!’ he said, his heart pounding rapidly, his thoughts breaking into a fractal mess.
What could he do?
‘Give me your phone ...’ she said.
What? Was she mad?
There was no way he was giving his three hundred quid phone to an old homeless woman.
He didn’t need this right now! He shook his arm free of her and turning back saw that the Agent was still steadily advancing, only separated from him by a milling crowd of tourists.
‘Now!’ she commanded, with a hypnotic power to her voice.
Paul hesitated.
‘Now,’ repeated the bag-lady, and Paul obeyed, reaching mechanically into his jacket pocket to bring out his phone but stalled, still unwilling to give it to her. As the panic gripped his body Paul found his mind jammed, unable to process what was happening.
A hiss of exasperation escaped from the tramp’s lips and with surprising power she grabbed hold of Paul’s shoulder and seizing a handful of jacket and shirt and pulled him backwards.
It felt like a long backwards and Paul stumbled, tripping over his own feet. His senses of sight and hearing were suddenly distorted, the arched windows and the crowds appearing through an opaque veil.
‘Take off your jacket,’ said the tramp and Paul stunned, obeyed again.
The Agent stopped two or three paces in front of them and slowly raised his sunglasses to his forehead. Paul found himself looking with horror directly into a pair of emotionless, soulless, almost reptilian eyes. It took a moment for him to realize that although they appeared to be looking at each other, the Agent could not see him.
He, Paul, was invisible!
As the Agent’s eyes continued to search from left to right across Paul, the bag-lady wrenched Paul’s phone from his inside jacket pocket.
‘It’s a tracking device!’ she said, skimming it low and hard through the legs of the crowd. The Agent’s head instantly whipped round, following the trajectory of the phone. It came to a sudden stop under the wheels of a baggage trolley and Paul watched dumbfounded as a second later it crunched and shattered under its wheel. The Agent snapped his glasses down, covering his eyes and in ten swift paces he was bending down to examine the remains of Paul’s mangled phone.
He stood up slowly, the phone dangling from his hand.
‘We have lost him but he can’t be far,’ he said slowly. ‘Monitor the thought patterns of everyone leaving the station. I want him apprehended without delay.’
The Agent’s words registered crisply in Paul’s mind, contrasting with the distorted and muffled sounds of the station, swirling around him.
‘You have the crystal safe?’ came the voice of the bag lady.
When he nodded his assent she dropped his jacket on the floor, simultaneously swiping a neatly folded overcoat from a passing suitcase, which she handed to Paul.
‘Put it on, I can get you out of here,’ she said, starting to pull him toward the exit.
Paul obeyed, feeling his freewill had been temporarily suspended and let the bag lady drag him purposefully forward across the unreal, foggy mist that had enveloped th
e tiled expanse of hallway. As he was pulled past the passengers, benches and laden baggage trollies, Paul was unsure whether it was the world around him that had become illusory and insubstantial or whether it was in fact him who was somehow lacking physical solidity. His world had become dreamlike and ethereal and he was nothing more than a passive observer, strangely unable to assert any control.
What the hell was going on?
He tried to form words, forcing his mouth and mind to co-ordinate,
‘What are you doing to me?’
‘Obviously,’ came a strained reply, ‘helping you. I can only keep you in this space for a short time,’ she paused, ‘they can still track your emotional vibration. To get past them you must change your thoughts.’
Paul, could just make out the approaching doors, a line of uniformed figures were swimming and shimmering in the ripples of light coming through the entrance. Ahead he could see two Agents, one on either side of the doors. Although Paul couldn’t bring them into focus, their blurred outlines shot a new bolt of fear through him.
‘They can read your fear, they are looking for it ...’
Paul didn’t understand.
‘What do you mean?’
As he spoke their impassive faces swiveled in his direction.
The woman spoke again, urgently,
‘Choose another emotion.’
Paul’s mind still couldn’t comprehend what she wanted.
‘How?’
With a sudden, vicious swing, she kicked Paul hard on the shin. He was shocked and clutched at the bolt of fiery pain that his shin had become, hopping as the bag lady dragged him relentlessly forwards.
‘Ow! What did you do that for?’ his fear suddenly and powerfully replaced by a surge of indignation.
The Agents heads scanned past Paul and resumed staring intently into the hub of the station.
‘Anger will do,’ she said, as she maneuvered him deftly through the doorway out into the open street beyond. Paul was propelled forward amongst the crowd to the other side of the road, where a wide tree-lined avenue led away through the cold drizzle to the traffic-choked streets of Paris.
As they reached the opposite pavement, the woman’s guiding hand suddenly released him and his next step carried him back into fully conscious, ordinary reality. The hazy mist vanished, sharp definition springing back to the world around him as if he’d just stepped out of a dream. Instantly Paul was himself again, disorientated but fully present and alert.
Paul looked down at himself, his hands protruding from the sleeves of an unfamiliar, heavy, black overcoat, his fingers still clutching the map and chocolate he had bought.
Not only had the bag-lady vanished, Paul realized with an unpleasant jolt but so had his suitcase, jacket and worst of all, his passport and wallet!
He tried to replay in his mind the events that had just occurred in the station.
Had he been the victim of a particularly cunning robbery?
Or was he suffering from hallucinations?
Or both?
Whatever had just happened needed explaining but right now, his number one priority was to get his possessions back and return this coat to its owner.
Having made up his mind, Paul turned determinedly back towards the station entrance, only to freeze a second later, struck by a bolt of fear. There, directly beneath the huge clock, standing between the colossal stone pillars stood an Agent, unmistakably holding Paul’s tweed jacket in one hand and the mangled remains of a mobile phone in the other.
The Agent stepped forward into the wet street, scanning from left to right. Paul reacted instinctively, ducking behind the broad trunk of a plane tree.
He was trembling all over, held in the grip of a fear stronger than he’d ever known.
Before his frazzled mind had had time to make a decision, Paul’s body and instinct took over and he found himself running hard down the Boulevard away from the Agent and into Paris.
He ran for a few frantic minutes, too scared even to look back for signs of pursuit, intent only on getting as far from the station as possible. His lungs were screaming for a rest. He ducked into a side street and slammed himself against a wall, his whole body shaking now with fear and adrenaline.
For a minute all he could do was breathe great racking gulps of air into his lungs.
He had to get a grip, calm down and think. He was acting like a lunatic!
Twenty paces down, across the street, Paul saw the garish neon front of a cafe. The lights were on, a pop tune drifting out on to the road and a huddle of people stood outside under an awning smoking cigarettes and chatting.
In the darkening afternoon light the place had a welcome feeling about it and Paul was drawn across the puddled tarmac towards it.
That’s it! He’d have a beer and think things through. He was a rational intelligent man after all and there had to be an explanation.
Paul walked over the sawdust strewn tiled floor, through the comforting babble of conversation up to the bar and ordered a glass of beer. Luckily he’d put his change from the station shop in his trouser pocket, a habit, he thought irrelevantly, that had always annoyed Julie because the coins would fall out and rattled around in the washing machine.
He paid and sat down in the corner opposite a huge, flat screen television and ignoring the images of half-naked women pouting into microphones, Paul tried to put his thoughts in order. The sweat on his back was clammy and his shirt clung to him uncomfortably. He hung the stolen overcoat on the back of his chair.
The events in the station were just so damn surreal.
What exactly had that bag-lady done to him?
Invisibility was pure fantasy wasn’t it?
Either, Paul realized, he’d have to conclude that she was some kind of magician or that he was seriously losing the plot. The problem was, neither of these two possibilities were acceptable.
She’d asked about the crystal, he remembered.
How on earth could she know about that?
But then, there were even stranger things that needed considering. For example, could anyone actually have eyes like that Agent and what was it they’d said about “monitoring thought patterns”?
It was all much too weird. Could it have been a fit, or some kind of nervous attack? But then he remembered that invasive feeling he’d experienced with the Agents in his flat. He’d felt mentally violated as if they were helping themselves to his thoughts.
Paul took a deep gulp of fizzy, french lager and wiped the foam from his mouth. There just wasn’t a sensible, all-encompassing explanation for the events he’d just experienced, Paul decided, but he’d still have to make a decision about what to do now.
After another few sips of the cold refreshing beer, Paul made his mind up. The best thing to do, he thought, was drop the stone and the incriminating address in the nearest bin and go back to the station straight away, explaining he’d had a nervous seizure or something.
After all, what had he really done wrong?
Once the crystal was dumped, nothing, if you didn’t count the theft of an overcoat. He’d come here on a shopping trip and they’d just have to believe him and return his things.
It didn’t matter about the phone, he could claim on the insurance as soon as he got home.
Paul looked up as the pop song abruptly ended, making way for a News flash. The words “TELE INFO” filled the screen and Paul raised his glass to drink the last of the beer. He stopped, paralyzed, his glass midway to his mouth as he saw his magnified picture staring back at him across the busy cafe with the words, “TERRORISTE ALERTE” emblazoned in red letters beneath his mug shot.
He tried to focus on what the presenter was saying, understanding only odd words in his state of shock.
“Gendarmerie” “Paul Sutherland” ... “Gare du Nord” and there it was again, that word, “Terroriste.”
Seized by another gut reaction, Paul grabbed his new overcoat, turning the collar up to shield his face from view and stumbled back
out onto the anonymity of the Parisian streets.
Elodie: December 16th
2012 The Secret Teachings of the Next Door Neighbour Page 5