‘You will get over it,’ Lauren said. ‘I’ve been there, honey. I know.’
How could I tell Lauren that her litany of men barely qualified as lovers. Although Lauren was my friend she was totally unable to understand that my passion for Félix was destroying me and that while one part of Judith Flatland was packing her shirts and her shoes, the other was craving to sit with Félix beneath an alley of clipped limes in the Luxembourg Gardens, to spend a leisurely day amongst the Picassos in the Marais, to pass a darkened afternoon in the womb of the cinématèque, to listen to the clickety-click of the turnstiles in the métro, to stroll arm in arm around the Paris of Corneille and Rossini, of Balzac and Delacroix, of James Joyce, Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, towards the cool of his studio where love would come first and, after love, talk and, after talk a visit to the Buci market.
‘You made the right decision…’ Lauren picked up a skirt and folded it.
I snatched it from her hand.
‘I didn’t make the decision.’
It was made for me.
‘I hate to see you like this, Judith. I wish I could do something.’
I knew that I was beyond assistance, that no one could save me from the cataclysm that had overtaken me, least of all myself. I had started to drink and made inroads into the whisky bottle in the buffet, rinsing my mouth out with mouthwash before Jordan was due home.
Jordan, family passports in his hand – he liked to be in control and didn’t trust anybody with them – was looking impatiently at his Rolex, as we waited for Joey. He dispatched Helga to the bookshop to tell him to come immediately. I wondered, as I had wondered many times before, why airport jargon had to be so downbeat with its ‘final calls’ and ‘terminals’, as if we were all doomed. I had just scanned the ‘departures’ screen, in the vain hope that the flight to Boston had been cancelled and was about to check my hand baggage for the umpteenth time – candy and his Game Boy for Joey, books and a sweater for myself – when I noticed the red rose at my feet.
Lauren was busy talking to Jordan, and Michelle had wandered off after Helga, as my eyes scanned the passing crowds with their dilatory children and their warm coats for colder climes and their suitcases on wheels.
When I caught sight of Félix through the open front of the parfumerie, I was turned to stone.
‘I won’t be long,’
‘Not now, Judith,’ Jordan said, as the blood once more began to flow. ‘We’re late as it is. They’ll be calling the flight any minute.’
‘I forgot your mother’s eau de Cologne.’
I abandoned my hand baggage and the agony of the past few days and flew across the concourse towards the pink fasciaed boutique with its opaque shelves of Arpège, and Vol de Nuit, and Egoïste, and Fleur d’Interdit for little girls.
He was standing, in his black shirt and black trousers, among the seductive display of designer bottles and outsize flasks. His eyes were red and his chin stubbled and he looked as if he had not slept for days.
‘You lied to me Judith…’ I had never seen him angry.
‘No.’
I shook my head at a smiling pink acolyte who offered to envelop me in a free cloud of Opium, as I made my way to his side.
‘You lied…’
Heads, testing essences and tying ribbons, were turned as he raised his voice.
‘Tell me the truth.’
I thought that he was going to hit me, but he grabbed my arm.
‘Félix, please…’ I lowered my voice encouraging him to do the same. ‘People are looking.’
‘Tant pis.’
A French voice came over the public address system. The message was repeated in fractured English:
‘TWA flight 262 for Boston – ’
‘They’re calling my flight!’
‘ – immediate boarding. Gate number three.’
‘Félix, I have to go.’
‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘Jordan is waiting. I’m going to miss the plane.’
It was a full moment, during which the last-minute purchasers melted away, the serried ranks of distinctive boxes disappeared from sight and I was alone with Félix, before I realized that although he had released my arm, like Pygmalion, I was unable to move.
‘One minute, Judith. One minute.’
He drew me to him. I did not respond. Over his shoulder, behind the counter, I could see the stainless-steel clock with its stainless-steel hand calibrating the seconds.
Body to body in the fragrant grotto, my own immobile, I could feel his blood coursing through my veins as his mouth covered mine and the sixty segments of the one minute he had demanded of me were consumed in jerky strokes. There were five seconds left when I felt the wave hit and was carried away by the familiarity of the wall of water against which I was defenceless.
‘Dis le, Judith.’ The words were no louder than a caress. ‘Let me hear you say it.’
‘…final call for flight number 262 for Boston…’
Jordan would be beside himself. I looked at Félix.
‘Excusez-moi!’ We were in the way. People, clutching their pale pink plastic carriers bearing the logo of the parfumerie, were trying to get by.
‘I love you.’ I loved him. ‘I love you. Je t’aime, Félix. Que je t’aime.’
‘Mon amour.’ His arms were round me, sapping my strength.
‘Mom…’ I hadn’t seen Michelle approach. I realized that she was not only addressing me but that her voice was gentle. Prising myself loose from Félix’s arms, and without looking back, I followed my daughter out of the store.
I sat in the aisle seat. Jordan liked to sit by the window. In an ideal world he would have like to fly the plane. I presumed that Joey had reappeared from the bookshop with the comic he was devouring in the seat in front of us, that our hand baggage had passed through the X-ray machines, that we had presented ourselves, in the nick of time, with our boarding passes at the appropriately numbered gate and that, despite all the alarums and excursions, we had actually made our flight, because we appeared to have not only to have taken off but to be suspended high above the clouds.
The flight attendant, in her red uniform, her long fingernails painted to match, was demonstrating the safety instructions:
‘Your life vest is stowed under your seat. When directed to do so by the crew, remove your life vest from its container and pull it over your head…’
A tear coursed down my face. This time I was crying. Looking in the hand baggage for a Kleenex, I found the plastic snowstorm and watched, mesmerized, as the tormented white flakes settled round the Eiffel Tower before replacing it in the bag.
Joey took his innocent blond head out of his comic.
‘What’s green and goes up and down, Mom?’
‘Pull the tapes down, passing them around your waist and fastening them securely in a double bow at the side…’
‘I have no idea, Joey. What is green and goes up and down?’
‘A gooseberry in a lift!’
‘In your seat pocket there is a card which contains details of the escape routes…’
Across the aisle, Michelle was talking animatedly to a broad-shouldered young man in the seat next to her. Helga, masticating a stick of gum, was stowing Joey’s belongings.
‘The emergency exits are on both sides of the aircraft…’ The scarlet-tipped fingers were extended, back and front and side to side. ‘They are clearly marked.’
There was a ping as the warning signs were extinguished. Jordan released his seat belt and opened the briefcase on his lap. Inside it, beneath a photograph of himself, the headline in the Wall Street Journal read:
‘Golden Share Waiver. Pilcher Bain Clinch Merger.’
Beside the newspaper, on top of his neatly stacked papers, was his memo-recorder. Our eyes met and I saw him for the first time in weeks. Making no comment on the fact that I was crying, he put an arm around me. The Flatlands were going home.
About the Author
Rose
mary Friedman has published 25 titles including fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, which have been translated into a number of languages and serialized by the BBC, while her short stories have been syndicated worldwide. She has also written and commissioned screenplays and her stage play Home Truths and An Eligible Man toured the UK. She writes for The Guardian, The Times, The TLS and The Author.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ALSO ON EBOOK BY ARCADIA BOOKS
NO WHITE COAT
LOVE ON MY LIST
WE ALL FALL DOWN
PATIENTS OF A SAINT
THE FRATERNITY
THE COMMONPLACE DAY
THE GENERAL PRACTICE
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
THE LIFE SITUATION
THE LONG HOT SUMMER
PROOFS OF AFFECTION
A LOVING MISTRESS
ROSE OF JERICHO
A SECOND WIFE
TO LIVE IN PEACE
AN ELIGIBLE MAN
GOLDEN BOY
VINTAGE
INTENSIVE CARE
THE WRITING GAME
Copyright
Arcadia Books Ltd
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First published in 2004
This Ebook edition published by Arcadia Books 2013
Copyright © Rosemary Friedman 2004
Rosemary Friedman has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–909807–38–9
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