Across the flowers, Nic smiled encouragingly. He knew how the speech would go.
‘Every culture must have its museums and a country without them is a country that either deliberately, or unwittingly, destroys its past. That is always a danger signal.’ She paused for a long moment. ‘You could argue, therefore, that museums are as much political entities as cultural ones…’
Experience had taught her that she had only a couple more minutes to keep the audience’s attention.
‘Why a museum devoted to broken promises?’ She looked directly at one of the smarter women with expensively slicked-back hair and minimal make-up. ‘Which one of us has not experienced a broken promise in our lives? Either we made it and broke it. Or, someone made one to us and failed to keep it. The consequences can be funny, tragic, fleeting or life-long. However small, however large, those broken promises matter.’ She gathered up the finale. ‘There is, too, the possibility that a promise you considered to be broken was, in fact, not broken. But it takes time to see it. Who knows? The reflections on, and the interpretation of, an event can be many and, as we mature, the perspectives shift. That is one of the reasons that the turnover of objects in the museum is a constant one.’
May shot a look at Nic.
The scent of the lilies sifted through the room. Someone coughed.
‘What is true, I think, is that we find it hard to accept that everything must end: joy, pain and life itself. But while we are here, observing a ritual, or making a formal gesture, offers comfort and the prospect of coherence. Donating to the Museum of Broken Promises, where the objects are treated with care, reverence and a little humour, can open up the healing process. The stories we tell about ourselves are not always completely truthful. Or, we fail to see clearly what we have done. The museum offers the chance for it to settle and for…’ she slowed, ‘the truth to become clearer.’
She paused, assaulted suddenly by the memory of snarling panic and fear. Of running. The pain of her injured hand. Weeping.
The exhaustion of having broken her heart.
‘I say all this because I know…’ Her old, troubled history was marshalled into words, ‘I know from personal experience what it is to break a promise.’
She sat down to enthusiastic applause.
That evening after work, Laure ordered the taxi to drop her at the Canal Saint-Martin. After the luxury, she needed to ground herself in the streets where life was ordinary and harder. Dropping in at Chez Prune, she ordered a double espresso and drank it down gratefully. It was a trifle bitter but it did her just fine.
Chez Prune was full and she exchanged one or two greetings before leaving. She was in no hurry to get back home and lingered on the bridge over the canal and concluded that the water seemed clearer, less rubbish-strewn.
Every day the cluster of tents lining the banks grew more numerous. The fall-outs and victims from capitalism. The irony was not lost on Laure.
She turned north and took the long way around, past peeling plane trees, the tabac, the grocery, the old tannery on the corner with its rusting ironwork and the medieval hôpital.
As she rounded a corner, she almost collided with a young couple. She was in shorts and he in cargo trousers. Both had rucksacks. ‘I don’t know where we are,’ he was saying in English. ‘We’re lost.’
The girl did not bother to look around but dug into her pocket and produced her mobile. ‘Google will tell us.’ Together they peered at the small screen, oblivious to Laure pushing past them.
Paris is in my blood, she decided and it was a supremely satisfactory thought. I will grow old here.
Back in the apartment, Laure sank down onto the sofa. The window was open. She had kept it so in the hope that Kočka just might return but it was growing chilly and, in a few minutes, she would shut it.
Her mobile rang a couple of times but each time she ignored it. Having earned it, she was going to indulge in the luxury of silence.
After a while, she got up and shut the window. Having been asked to work up her speech into a more substantial article for publication in an art journal, she sat down at the table and opened her laptop.
A hideous screeching from outside interrupted her and she leapt over to the window. In the courtyard outside, Madame Poirier was beating with a feather duster at a small form cowering under the bush with the white blossoms.
Within seconds, she was out the door and down the stairs. ‘Madame, stop it. Stop it at once.’
Madame Poirier placed a hand on her hip. ‘Excuse me?’
But Laure wasn’t listening. She was on her hands and knees beside the object of Madame Poirier’s brutality. ‘Kočka,’ she said, ‘Oh Kočka, you’ve come back.’
The cat’s tormented eyes locked onto Laure. By the look of her, she had been starving, possibly injured, and was too weak to do anything.
With a cry, Laure gathered her up. She stank of rubbish, and God knew what else, but Laure never been so grateful to see anyone, or anything. ‘You’ve come. Even though you can barely move, you came back.’
‘If you take that cat indoors, then I must file a complaint with the landlord,’ said Madame Poirier.
Kočka’s head was resting in the crook of Laure’s arm. ‘File away.’
‘You will have to leave.’
‘Then leave I will. But the cat is with me for tonight.’
Walking back into the apartment, Laure banged the door shut with a foot and carried Kočka over to the cushion that she had previously occupied and laid her gently down on it.
Kočka blinked, unfurled a trifle and settled. Laure fetched water and a few of the cat biscuits and fed them one by one to her. ‘To the vet with you,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow.’
She sat back on her heels, understanding finally that a transition – and a transaction – had taken place. ‘It looks as though you’ve become mine.’
There was a knock on the door.
It was May, clutching an expensively packaged bouquet. ‘The Rottweiler masquerading as your concierge asked me to give you these. They were delivered earlier. At least, I think that’s what she said. She seems angry.’
Laure inspected the bouquet. Orange roses… orange roses?
The colour was not her favourite. She found it unsettling. ‘Nic gave me a translation of the speech,’ said May. ‘I could see you got them eating out of your hand. One of the women cried, the one with the cropped hair.’
‘Thank you.’ She made no move to invite May in but couldn’t resist the tease. ‘I think you enjoyed it?’
‘It was so smart. Can’t wait to tell the folks back home.’
‘So you do talk to your mother?’
‘Nope. Not Miss Melia.’
Laure was getting to know May and was pretty sure the chippiness in her last comment masked anger. She allowed the extravagant length of black-and-white ribbon that tied up the bouquet to slip through her fingers. ‘It’s not my business but, perhaps, you should. She is your mother.’
May appeared to be fascinated by the flowers. ‘I’ve spent more time thinking about whether or not to cosy up to a mother who hates the sight of me than you would credit.’
‘Is it hate?’ interjected Laure.
‘Well, surely to God, it’s not indifference. And it’s not love. So, it’s hate. It stuck in the craw once, but not any longer. But…’ May’s face darkened. Then she grinned. ‘Other people can listen to me. And they do.’
She continued to hover on the doorstep, metaphorically on tip toe and raring to go. ‘I have questions. Big ones. Serious ones.’
Laure was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. ‘Five minutes,’ she said and stood aside. ‘You sit down, you get up and you leave. No snooping.’
On entering the room, May gave a small cry. ‘The cat’s back. That’s great.’
Laure placed the bouquet on the coffee table. She had a sense that something, long dug deep into her, was uprooting. Whether it was a natural, or unnatural, process she did not know, only that Kočka had
been a trigger.
‘Five minutes,’ she reminded May.
May sat down, facing Laure. ‘I’ll come clean. I’m good at what I do and I can usually hack it. But, with you, I’ve only got so far. We dodge around the questions. That’s my fault as much as yours but I like you very much, Laure.’
‘You mean you like Nic,’ Laure interposed gently.
‘Yes. I like Nic.’ She leant forward. ‘Here’s the thing. Why give up a promising career in your foreign office? No value judgements here, but it seems odd. Were you sacked?’
‘Actually, no.’
Actually, Laure had sacked herself. Petr had been acute in his assessment – she would give him that. The quasi-undercover life of the embassy that she thought would make sense to her did nothing of the sort in the end, only added to the muddle of regret and recrimination that she carried around. It had been a miscalculation.
May pressed on. ‘I know that you were probably in low-grade intelligence gathering in Berlin. Who wasn’t?’
‘You and I are done,’ she had told Petr. ‘Done.’
‘When I was working in Berlin, Germany was pulling itself together. Information was being traded all over the place. Ordinary citizens, businessmen, retailers. There’s nothing unusual about that. In a transition people will try and find out what they can. They have to.’
That meant she had reported back to David Brotton about Petr and his business activities. Such as she had uncovered.
‘You had a bad time in Prague.’
‘You have no basis for that assumption.’ Laure’s response was curt.
‘Aha,’ said May. ‘You did.’ She shifted in the seat. ‘What do you think about this. You go to Prague, all shiny and new and innocent. Something happens there. Possibly a man? Or a political shock?’
‘Czechoslovakia was a communist country. Of course it was different.’
‘So two systems, communism and capitalism, are battling away in you.’
‘May, you should be writing fiction.’
‘Your time there leaves you unsettled or, perhaps horrified or disgusted, so you dip your toe into diplomatic waters. It’s a bit half-hearted. You are still unsettled and something is nagging away at you. So you try something else…’
Laure’s mobile shrilled. It was Simon who she had been trying, and failing, to contact for the past twenty-four hours. ‘May, I have to take this.’
Simon’s voice was in her ear. ‘Your unknown sponsor will be pulling out. His or her reasons? He or she feels that the museum is now well established, and you will be obtaining funding from other sources with no difficulty.’
Laure eyed up the rooftops framed in the window. Things were changing. As always. Pleasingly, the thought of how she must absorb herself in new options for the museum, the many meetings to hack out a way forward and the preparation of myriad documents did not depress her. ‘We’re incredibly grateful. Is there any way we can thank him or her?’
He chuckled. ‘Offer your body?’
‘To her or him?’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.
She finished the call. Placing her phone down on the table, her eye was caught by the orange roses and the coils of expensive ribbon.
My God. A memory struggled to the surface.
She was then tearing at the cellophane surrounding the roses to find the gift card.
May cut off her next question. ‘Are you all right?’
Laure was rigid with shock. May reached over and prised the card gently from her. ‘Is it bad news? Can I help? Do you need something?’ She cast her eye around the room. ‘Water?’
‘No.’
‘Is it anything to do with that photo that came? Nic said it had an effect on you.’
‘No.’
Not quite true.
‘Is it to do with the museum?’
Laure clasped both hands together. In her inner ear, voices from another world competed. Some of them ghosts? Despairing. Defiant. Funny. Scabrous.
But not the one she had longed over the years to hear.
‘Laure?’ May sounded anxious. ‘Should I get someone?’
Laure leant over and placed the card on the table. ‘Do you know what it says?’ May shook her head and Laure translated from the French. “‘I have paid my dues.’”
‘Sounds Old Testament,’ said May.
She made herself draw in long, slow breaths to steady her stomach. May sat down beside her and put her arms around her shoulders. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You can lean on me.’
And Laure did so, finding a surprising comfort in May’s thin, whippy arm.
‘What’s happened?’ asked May. ‘Something has.’
Laure struggled to answer. ‘Nothing.’
‘For God’s sake, it isn’t nothing. It can’t be. You’re the colour of the sheets in my grotty hotel and you’re about to throw up. It’s something.’
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Laure.
‘Yes, you can,’ said May. She placed her hands on Laure’s shoulders. ‘You can.’
Laure looked into the blue-grey eyes and the complications that lay behind them. ‘I can’t trust you.’
May sent her a crooked grin. ‘You can for a couple of hours.’
*
It was very late in the evening when May let herself out of the Laure’s apartment.
Laure remained motionless in her chair. Drained. Purged?
She had told her story to the least likely person she could ever have imagined telling it to.
At the end May commented: ‘It’s not surprising you feel like you feel.’
How would you know? Laure almost asked but something in May’s expression stopped up the words.
May read Laure’s thoughts. ‘Because I’m damaged, too.’
She had insisted on unearthing the half-bottle of brandy stowed in the cupboard and pouring out a healthy dollop for each of them.
Alcohol loosened her tongue and Laure heard herself confessing, ‘When you’ve experienced something so… blazing… it’s difficult afterwards, perhaps impossible, to settle. Or, for me, it was. Anyway, I didn’t trust myself any more. I was married for a time, you know. And it didn’t work for me. I regret that and what I failed to bring to it. But, with luck, you can find a substitute.’ She spread her hands. ‘And I did.’
May nodded and then asked: ‘It’s curious that you have never really pushed to find out what happened to them all. Why?’
‘I did.’
May was sceptical. ‘Especially now. There’re so many ways to trace events, people, the truth. As your mystery sponsor obviously did. Perhaps…’ she looked down at her empty glass. ‘You didn’t want to? Not really.’
Laure had no answer.
CHAPTER 24
Prague, 1986
LAURE PEERED OUT OF THE WINDOW THAT LOOKED DOWN into the courtyard of the Kobes’ apartment.
A figure with brown hair and wearing a striped waistcoat loitered under it. Laure undid the catch and leaned out. ‘Have you been throwing stones?’
Tomas grinned up at her. ‘Whenever do I not?’
With her heart in her mouth, she smiled back. ‘You think you’re Romeo.’
He shaded his eyes. ‘I do, and you’re my beautiful Juliet and I’ve come to take you away from the house of discord.’
Laure glanced back over her shoulder. It was Saturday and Petr had taken the children out to an aunt who lived outside Prague and wouldn’t be back until the evening. Eva had briefly emerged from her room earlier in the day but had returned to it and shut the door. ‘Give me five minutes.’
When she emerged from the entrance, Tomas snatched at her hand. ‘Today is a day to forget everything. Except us. But you’ll have to hurry up.’
‘How did you know I would be free?’
‘I felt it,’ he said with utmost seriousness and she burst out laughing.
Parked up in the courtyard were two bicycles in, more or less, reasonable condition. ‘You can ride a bike?’ Tomas was suddenly
doubting and she laughed, too, at his expression. ‘I thought we could cycle along the river and eat at a place I know outside the city.’
Tomas led them down to the tow path – Laure more unsteady than she cared to admit – and they headed south out of the city. Before long, the houses which flanked it had narrowed to a ribbon. As they skidded over the dry ripples, the bicycle wheels sent up plumes of dust and, having got her balance in, Laure picked up speed to match Tomas.
The river traffic thinned and the noise levels dropped and the sounds of summer took over. Water splashed, pigeons sounded, there was an occasional blast from a tinny-sounding transistor radio. Rising from clumps of honeysuckle was the hum of foraging honey bees. From the large, working farmyard came an aroma of dried mud, and a fainter one of horse.
The unused muscles in Laure’s legs and buttocks made themselves felt. Sun beat down onto her hands and her back. Would she get freckles? She didn’t care.
Tomas was in front of her, which granted Laure the luxury of watching him unimpeded and she registered each detail greedily. His left foot turned inward on the pedal. His forearms were burnt deep brown. His hair had been roughly cut at the nape.
From time to time, Tomas looked back to check she was OK, a gesture that gave her more pleasure than she could ever imagine.
‘Fancy a swim?’ he called over his shoulder as they approached a bridge. He wheeled right and led her alongside a tributary flowing into the main river.
They rode upstream for a mile or so. Here it was to venture into a landscape that had enchantment laid on it. Apart from the sky, river, trees and birds, there was nothing. No one. This was solitude that couldn’t be far removed from the garden of Eden, she thought, awestruck by the silence, by its intrinsic other world-ness.
Poplars grew down to the water’s edge, their roots creating a gradient that would make it possible to get in and out of the water. Tomas parked his bike and, with a groan, dismounted.
‘Out of condition?’ Teasing Tomas was a delight – because he didn’t always like it.
For a second, he was disconcerted. Then he wasn’t. He caught her by the wrist. ‘You witch.’
The river sent ripples against its banks. In the field behind Laure, the bone-dry crops rattled and rustled against each other and birds on the watch for insects and grain dived earthwards and rose back into the air with piercing cries.
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