A Week in Paris

by Hore, Rachel

  ‘Oh, I expect we’ll manage a mention,’ Adam said, with the mysterious air of a magician.

  ‘How?’ she wondered, surprised.

  ‘Trade secret. Never mind that though, Fay. I am sorry I didn’t come. Not least because I wanted to see you.’

  ‘What happened? You haven’t told me yet.’

  ‘I will, but I want to show you something. Here we are, it’s just down here.’ They’d come to a narrow side street, and Adam steered her down it, past various local shops and restaurants. They came finally to a very ordinary-looking bar with a couple of tables outside where he stopped and took her arm, gently turning her to him.

  ‘This is it. Before we go in, I ought to explain. There is somebody I want you to meet.’

  ‘Somebody . . . here?’ It was the ordinariness of the place that puzzled her. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘He’s called Saïd.’

  ‘Saïd? That doesn’t sound very French.’

  ‘It’s not.’ Adam hesitated, taking out his cigarettes as he waited for an arrogant old gentleman wearing a trilby and a fur collar to pass out of earshot. ‘Saïd is an Algerian. I’ve been helping him.’

  ‘Oh.’ Then, ‘Adam, it was you,’ she breathed, suddenly seeing it all. A glimpse of a man’s fair head in the crowd as the police dragged demonstrators away.

  He looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘I was there at the demonstration. I didn’t mean to be. I was walking back to the hotel and was drawn to what was going on in the square. I saw General de Gaulle. He was going to present medals, didn’t you say?’

  ‘To soldiers who’d been stationed in Algeria, yes.’

  Fay told him what she’d seen and what had happened to her, and Adam frowned as he concentrated on her story. ‘I thought I saw you,’ she finished, ‘but I wasn’t sure. Have you really been going to political meetings?’

  ‘You know my interest in the issue. The continued subjugation of the Algerians is an injustice, and I try to get incidents like this reported in the Chronicle. Not that my editor thinks our readers are bothered by what’s happening in a far-flung corner of the French Empire.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s probably right. And what about your friend Saïd?’

  ‘You’ll still come in and say hello?’ Adam looked eager.

  ‘Would he mind?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve told him about you and he’s keen to meet you.’ He threw away his cigarette and she followed him inside.

  The bar was empty of customers but for a moon-faced man sitting at a table reading a paper. The room stretched back, long and narrow, gloomy in its recesses. Adam greeted a spaniel-eyed youth tidying up behind the counter, introducing him to Fay as Armand Martin, and asking if they could speak to his father.

  ‘Mais oui, of course,’ the young man said, gesturing to the far end of the room. ‘Go through and find him.’

  They passed through a swing door into a small kitchen where a middle-aged man with the same sad look as Armand was frying thick slices of purple sausage in a spitting pan.

  ‘Ah, bonjour, m’sieur, m’mselle,’ Monsieur Martin greeted them, wiping his hands on the cloth at his waist and reaching for a plate of chopped mushroom. ‘You’ve come to see our guest? Take yourselves up. You know where to go. The doctor has been, as you requested, m’sieur.’

  Fay followed Adam up a flight of back stairs to a landing, dark and none too clean. Adam knocked on one of several doors, saying in a low voice, ‘Saïd, it’s Warner.’

  The door was opened by an Arabic-looking man with a wiry build and a direct gaze. He was young, maybe thirty, and his unshaven face was horribly bruised and swollen; he wore a bandage over one eye. ‘Please come in,’ he said in French, and as he pulled the door wide, Fay saw that his right arm was in a sling.

  They entered a small, sparsely furnished bedroom with a single window, across which a thin curtain was drawn. A folded newspaper lay on the untidy bed, its headlines shouting yesterday’s violence. There was a sharp stink of disinfectant in the air.

  ‘Saïd, this is my friend Miss Knox,’ Adam said.

  ‘Delighted to meet you.’ Saïd was dressed in clean clothes that were so big they were obviously borrowed. He spoke in English and gave a polite bow rather than offering his hand.

  Fay said a formal ‘How do you do?’ but couldn’t help adding, ‘I’m sorry you’re hurt. I was at the demonstration. It was terrifying.’

  ‘Oui,’ he said, feeling his jaw. ‘The gendarmes were brutal. But you should have seen what I did to them.’ He had the kind of quirky smile that made him easy to like.

  ‘That’s nonsense, of course,’ Adam said quietly. ‘Saïd didn’t lift a finger against them, Fay – didn’t even resist arrest.’

  ‘The doctor tells me I’ll survive.’ Again, that smile. ‘Maybe there is a rib cracked or two, but they’ll mend. I won’t be going out for a bit looking like this though.’

  ‘I should hope not, you’d frighten the horses,’ Adam said with a false cheerfulness. And when Saïd looked puzzled: ‘It’s something we say in England – never mind,’ Adam added hastily. He turned to Fay. ‘Saïd is my excuse for missing your concert. I was at the police station, trying to get him out of their clutches.’

  ‘They wanted to charge me with, how do you say, disorder,’ Saïd explained. She liked his expressive eyes and the way he spoke, with beautiful rolling Rs. ‘But Adam here, and his friend the attorney, they helped me. I am most grateful.’

  ‘It took some doing,’ Adam put in with a laugh. ‘Saïd will not keep quiet at the best of times.’

  ‘Ach, well, they were accusing me of ridiculous things,’ Saïd replied, trying to throw up his arms in horror. Instead he pressed his hand to his chest and grimaced. ‘Would you mind if I sit down?’ he said, and without waiting for a reply he sank onto the untidy bed with a grunt of pain. Fay sat in the only chair whilst Adam leaned against the doorjamb.

  ‘We won’t stay long. You should get some more rest. Also, it’s Fay’s last day in Paris and we have things to do.’

  ‘I have not had much sleep,’ Saïd agreed. ‘Monsieur Martin has been very good. He says I can stay here for a few days, but I think if it is safe I will go home today.’

  Shortly afterwards, they took their leave. Saïd looked exhausted, but his eyes burned with a passionate intensity when they said goodbye. ‘Vive l’Algérie,’ he said quietly, shaking Adam’s hand.

  ‘Vive l’Algérie, mon ami.’

  As they walked out into the sunshine, Fay pushed her arm through Adam’s and squeezed it in a sudden rush of tenderness.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. His expression was gentle, but there was amusement in it, too.

  ‘I was thinking about you helping that poor man. And there was me, this stupid, narrow-minded English girl who should know better, thinking that people like him who make a stand bring everything upon themselves. Until I saw what happened yesterday.’

  ‘You’re not stupid,’ he said, ‘or narrow-minded. It’s simply that you didn’t know.’

  ‘I am stupid. I never thought properly before, you see. About how you’re not responsible for where and what you’re born, but you can help what sort of person you are. Madame Ramond made me understand what a generous man my father was. You know, he and my mother needn’t have stayed in Paris in 1940. Nobody would have thought the worse of him if he had taken her to America, or back to England. But he didn’t go. He stayed and helped people. He didn’t mind about their nationality or religion or anything like that. He just helped them.’

  ‘He sounds a marvellous man,’ Adam said quietly and Fay, imagining that he was thinking about his own father, chose her next words with care.

  ‘You’re doing the same thing, Adam, don’t you see? By helping Saïd and his people.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to report their side of things. Saïd, his wife and children, have to hide in a condemned house. It’s so unjust, what’s happening to these people.’

  ‘I realize that now, but
I didn’t before.’

  They had reached the main road and were waiting to cross the street. On an impulse she turned to him right there on the pavement, reached up, wound her arms round his neck and lifted her face to his, till their lips almost touched.

  He bent towards her. ‘You are wonderful,’ he whispered, his breath mingling with hers.

  ‘No, it’s you who’s wonderful,’ she replied. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Oh Fay, I love you, too,’ he just had time to say before their mouths met in a searching kiss.

  Chapter 36

  She and Adam didn’t have much time left together in Paris, but there was one thing Fay had to do, and when she explained he agreed to accompany her.

  The curé was waiting for them in the church as he’d promised, pottering about after the morning service, blowing out the candles. Fay introduced Adam to him and the older man shook his hand.

  ‘We have but a small congregation on Sundays,’ he said sorrowfully, ‘now that the nuns have gone, but some still come. The old connection with the school means something to families in the neighbourhood, although it’s a shame they can no longer rely on the convent for teachers.’

  All the time he was speaking, Fay was looking about, thinking, Here is where it all happened. The place was so peaceful now, it was difficult to believe it had been the scene of such terror and violence. Perhaps it was the years of prayer that had overcome it.

  She couldn’t help noticing the grand piano, set proudly in its own space beneath the windows, and shrouded by a thick brown cover.

  ‘Ah yes,’ the curé said, seeing her interest. ‘That is a fine instrument. Not played much now, which is sad, but it’s kept in tune. Do you play, may I enquire? You said you were a musician, I believe.’

  ‘I’m a violinist, but I do play the piano a little.’

  ‘Please, will you try now? I should like to hear it again.’ He went across and folded back the heavy cloth, then lifted the keyboard lid and set the piano bench in place.

  She sat where her mother must once have sat, suddenly feeling unequal to the task. She glanced up, desperate, needing reassurance, and saw shafts of sunlight shining golden in the gloom. Adam was standing close by, watching her quietly, waiting, and she could tell he understood.

  Now she knew what she needed to do. She arranged her fingers on the keyboard and after a false start or two, for she was nervous, she began to play the ethereal chords of the Moonlight Sonata.

  She closed her eyes and it was as though the music played itself, at first haunting, then building to a passionate climax. And when she opened them again, behind the slim figure of Adam, she sensed there was somebody else, a burly man with a head of thick cropped fair hair, sitting on a chair in the front row, his hat beside him. She couldn’t see his face clearly, but she knew who he was and somehow she knew that he was smiling.

  The music quietened and the final chord faded away. There was silence in the church. She glanced across to where she’d seen the familiar presence, but the chair was empty. Had she really sensed her father, or had it been her imagination? It was strange, and yet instead of desolation she felt oddly comforted.

  ‘Fay?’ Adam was before her. She smiled at him and a wonderful sense of peace flowed through her as she reached up and gave him her hand.

  Behind them came a sigh and the curé said quietly, ‘Bravo, Mademoiselle Knox – that was sublime.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely instrument.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, as he helped her close the keyboard lid and let the cloth drop back into place. ‘Was Madame Ramond of help to you? Did you find out anything more about your mother?’

  ‘Yes, I did, thank you,’ Fay said. ‘She’s been most helpful. It’s rather a long story, but my mother lived here in the convent for a time, just before the war. She’d come to Paris to study the piano and didn’t know anybody, so her guardian sent her here. It wasn’t long afterwards that she met my father and they married.’

  ‘Ah, so that is the connection with Sainte Cécile. And your father, what was his name?’

  ‘Eugene, but everybody called him Gene.’

  ‘Eugene Knox.’ The curé gave a slow, satisfied nod.

  ‘You said that there was something you wanted to show me?’ Fay reminded him.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ he said. ‘Come with me, please, both of you.’

  They followed him out through a heavy door and into the passage that must lead to the convent. But instead of continuing to the far end, he stopped a short way along next to an unassuming-looking door in the side wall and started to draw back the bolts.

  In the half-darkness, Adam’s hand grasped hers and squeezed. The curé turned a key and shoved at the door until it suddenly unstuck. It opened onto a narrow yard. They stepped outside and followed the curé’s black-cassocked figure along a flagstone path that took them to a small graveyard behind the church that nobody would ever guess was there. It was tightly packed with graves, some large and ornate, others more modest. Many of the stones were ancient and crumbling, the names on them no longer legible.

  ‘Hardly anyone comes here now,’ the curé said, his voice echoing against the walls that overshadowed this hidden place. He placed his hand almost fondly on a tall, leaning stone. ‘Mère Clothilde here died at the time of the Prussian siege, 1871. Now, over here somewhere . . .’ he set off to walk between the graves, eventually stopping at a small cross squeezed between two long coffin-shaped edifices, ‘this is Sister Clare, who died during the Occupation. I believe she was the last nun to be buried here. There was no more room after that. Father Paul, my predecessor, he is buried in Montparnasse. We laid Mère Marie-François to rest there, too. That was a sad day.’

  Fay listened to all this, wondering why he’d brought them here.

  ‘This is beautiful.’ Beside her, Adam was examining a stone statue of an angel, its wings sheltering the grave of a long-dead priest.

  ‘Yes, though I would prefer something much plainer myself when my turn comes,’ was the curé’s dry comment, ‘such as these over here – come, this is what I want to show you.’ He picked his way across the cemetery until he came to an area in the middle where there were a dozen modestly labelled graves even more closely spaced than the others. His eye scanned the scattering of gravestones, then he stepped across to one marked only by a simple cross, like Sister Clare’s. Another nun? wondered Fay, as she moved alongside. She stared down at it. In a vase before the cross was a single red rose, full blown, its petals starting to fall.

  She crouched by the grave to examine the words cut deep into the stone, and as she read them a ripple of shock ran through her. She glanced up. ‘Adam,’ she whispered. She stared at the stone again, the words fixing themselves in her head. Eugene Knox, 1912–1942, and underneath, In forever loving memory.

  ‘My father,’ she breathed. Adam came to crouch beside her and laid his hand on her arm as he read the words.

  ‘I thought this must be him, my child,’ the curé said, coming to stand behind the stone. ‘I am sorry I did not remember this the last time you visited, but I rarely come here. The name Knox, when you said it, was familiar to me – but the way you said it was different to the way I pronounced it in my head, so I did not make the connection. Still, there is a reason that I ought to have done.’

  He pointed to the dying rose, its petals scattered on the ground. ‘Every spring, one of those arrives. An early rose – I don’t know where they find it. There’s never any message, only the instruction to lay it on the grave. Mère Marie-François was very old when I came here a few years back and her mind was going, poor woman. She said the young man had been killed in the war, but she mixed up the story with others about airmen escaping and a girl she called Sofie. It made no sense to me.’

  ‘Poor lady,’ Fay said. ‘She was right though about my father being killed in the war. I’m afraid that it was here in the church that it happened.’

  ‘Was it?’ the curé said, dismayed. �
�I know that Father Paul used to hide people from the Nazis here. I found a letter from one of them in the drawer of his desk, thanking him.’

  Briefly, Fay explained everything to him.

  ‘What a very terrible story,’ he said when she’d finished. ‘And Madame Ramond told you this? I did not know about her past here as Sister Thérèse. Mère Marie-François’s mind was very confused in her last days.’

  ‘Did she know who sends the rose every year?’ Adam asked.

  ‘I don’t remember us ever speaking about it,’ the curé said sadly.

  ‘I think I know who sends them,’ Fay said with quiet confidence. There could only be one person in the whole of the world who would remember her father every year and who would send him one of the flowers she grew – a red rose, the symbol of passionate true love. Her mother.

  Fay and Adam walked hand-in-hand back across the river towards Notre Dame, to where it had all begun for them. As they approached the magnificent façade with its air of lightness and grace, they exchanged smiles. ‘Would you like to go in?’ Adam asked, but Fay shook her head.

  ‘It’s beautiful, but I’ve had enough of gloomy places for the moment,’ she said. ‘I’d rather find somewhere to sit down in the open air.’

  They found a café overlooking the river with tables scattered outside and soon Fay was warming her hands around a large cup of creamy white coffee, whilst Adam sipped a tiny espresso.

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said, ‘that my father was buried there and my mother knew all the time. It’s such a shock, and this might sound strange, but I feel I’ve found him properly now.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Adam said sincerely. ‘It must make such a difference to you.’

  There was the slightest of catches in his voice, and he did not speak for a while. Fay wondered whether he was thinking about his own father, who was very much alive, but with whom his relationship was tainted. She wanted to say something to him, but couldn’t think what. Perhaps it was something she could help him with in the future, to find his way back to him. Surely his father loved him and there must be hope.