‘You can’t eat feet,’ said Pippa.
‘You can,’ said Daniel. ‘People do in France.’
‘With shoes and socks on?’ Pippa asked, her eyes opening even wider.
‘Well, I’m not sure about the shoes. We couldn’t have them anyway, because they don’t begin with P.’
‘Pigs are my favourite animals.’ Pippa had regained her confidence and was almost flirting with him now, head tipped to one side, pink tongue-tip poised between her lips.
‘Well, in that case,’ Daniel said, ‘perhaps you shouldn’t eat them.’
‘I’m having chips, not pigs.’
‘Yes, that’s right – pommes frites. But you can have something else as well.’
‘Ice-cream!’ she yelled, eyeing the exotic-looking contents of a tall glass sundae dish, which had just been whisked past on a tray.
‘I’m afraid that begins with G – la glace. But if you wouldn’t mind a peach with it, and some delicious raspberry sauce, then you could have a P–P–Pêche Melba.’
‘What’s a P–P– …?’
‘Look, pipe down, you two,’ Penny ordered, raising her eyes to heaven in a pretence of irritation. ‘Here come the drinks – at last!’
Daniel subsided, astonished at himself. He was talking to a child and actually enjoying it; teaching her, diverting her, had even made her laugh. And all without a drink. He sipped his Pernod, which tasted almost tolerable, consulted the wine list again. They’d be limited to P-wines: Pouilly Fuissé, Pomerol … No, wait a minute, he’d promised something fizzy – well, not exactly promised, but it would still be rather fun. He ran his finger down the list of sparkling wines, dismayed to see there wasn’t a single one of them beginning with a P – only champagne, and that would break the bank. Perhaps the whole idea was over the top, and they should stick to fizzy water. After all, these girls had nothing to celebrate. Even apart from the crisis in her marriage, Penny’s life seemed sad and rather constrained: the cloistered childhood, the talent unfulfilled. He presumed her widowed mother had insisted that she earn her living the minute she left school, rather than ‘waste her time’ on art. How different their two backgrounds were: five females in her household, and a dearth of education, whereas he’d been pitchforked into prep school with no women but the butch and brutish matron, and had still been knee-deep in his studies at the age of twenty-four.
Almost absent-mindedly he took a large swig of his drink, instantly recoiling at its kick. He had forgotten quite how powerful Pernod was. It might be wiser to lay off the wine, with a busy afternoon ahead, or he’d be floundering through the rest of the day in an alcoholic haze.
He cursed himself for remembering work, aware now of the fact that they’d been sitting here a good twenty minutes and hadn’t even got as far as ordering their food. He was normally back in the office by two – if he left at all. On busy days, lunch was just a coffee at his desk. Thank God he’d told his colleagues he was calling on his mother, having already filled them in on last night’s little crisis. If he was still shovelling in peach Melba at half past three or four, they’d assume poor Madame Hughson had taken a turn for the worse.
Pippa looked up from her Pepsi which she was gulping through two straws. ‘Where’s Daddy?’ she asked suddenly.
Despite the surrounding hubbub, the silence was disquieting. Penny hadn’t answered, but her face had changed again – defensive now and bleak.
‘You said we were going to see him,’ the child insisted, crumpling one of her straws.
‘Yes, we … are. Quite soon.’
‘Where is he, then?’
‘I told you, darling, he’s having a little holiday.’
‘But why didn’t we go with him?’
‘He … he had to leave earlier than us. But we’ve come to Paris to find him.’
Daniel watched the child’s expression – confusion and anxiety. The green eyes met his own again, appeared to be trying to make sense of him.
‘Does he know where my Daddy is?’ she whispered to her mother.
Penny chewed her lemon-slice, then sat studying her glass.
This second silence was longer. Images from the earthquake in Armenia started seeping slowly into it from some corner of his mind. He and Georges and André had been discussing the disaster before they left for lunch, but only now did its full impact really hit him – the demolished homes and devastated families. One of the child-victims had been photographed in close-up; a kid of roughly Pippa’s age, sobbing for its parents.
He straightened the straw, replaced it in her glass. ‘Have you ever had champagne, Pippa?’
She shook her head, subdued still.
‘It’s a fizzy wine which goes pop when you open it. P–P–POP! And it comes in a big bottle with gold stuff on the top. It’s really a special drink for grown-ups, but I wondered if you’d like a tiny bit?’
She stared at him, unsure.
‘Well, look, why don’t I order some, so you can try a sip or two?’
‘Does it begin with a P–P–P?’
‘Well, one brand does – Perrier-Jouet, and that’s half a P–P–P.’ It was also worryingly expensive. Yet he had to lighten the mood, banish P for Papa, rebuild the shattered villages.
‘Champagne costs a bomb!’ Penny demurred. ‘And I feel guilty as it is, with you coughing up for all this …’
‘It’s much cheaper over here,’ he lied, registering the fact that not only had he misinformed her, he had also interrupted her – two violations of his parents’ stringent code (three, if he included unwarranted extravagance). But he somehow wanted to spoil this pair, to change their diet of filched croissants to something P for princely; even change their lives – conjure up instant trips to exotic foreign capitals, cruises down the Nile, French lessons and art tutors, rich Daddies, faithful husbands …
He signalled to their waiter and ordered the champagne, then tried to get some decisions on the food. Pippa refused anything beyond chips and ice-cream, but Penny plumped for pigeon aux pettts pois, which gave her three Ps on the trot. He upstaged her totally by choosing petit pâté de Pézenas and then the plat du jour (an extra P in itself) which happened to be palette de porc with purée de pommes de terre and poireaux à la Picarde. Then he wished he hadn’t – he wanted her to win – began suggesting more P-vegetables to accompany her pigeon.
‘I’ll burst!’ she protested, though eventually agreeing to both the petites pommes persillées and the salade panacheée.
‘You’ll go p–p–pop!’ said Pippa. ‘Like the drink.’
‘Yes, and here it is,’ said Daniel, watching the waiter zigzag between the tables with their champagne held aloft.
Pippa observed the whole palaver with fascinated eyes: ice-bucket, white napkin, and finally the POP. She jumped back in surprise, gazing at the whoosh of bubbles exploding into her glass.
‘Well, aren’t you going to try it?’ Daniel prompted, once all three glasses were filled.
The child took a cautious sip, and sneezed, flinching away distrustfully. ‘It tickles my nose,’ she complained.
‘But do you like it?’ Daniel pressed.
She dipped her finger in the glass and licked it, sat considering the taste. ‘It’s not as nice as Pepsi,’ she concluded.
‘Would you prefer another Pepsi, then, instead?’
‘No, I want another P–P–POP.’
‘Pippa!’ Penny remonstrated. ‘You’ll bankrupt this nice man.’
‘What’s “bankrupt”?’
Daniel wondered how to explain the term, though he was more concerned with ‘this nice man’. ‘Nice’ was rather a bland word, nothing like as flattering as ‘good-looking’, but she had said it very warmly. She had also moved her hand towards his on the table: not touching – nowhere near – but still a gesture of affection and acknowledgement. He fumbled for his glass, perplexed to see a cigarette expiring in the ashtray: a long cylindrical tube of grey. He couldn’t even remember lighting it. ‘Why don’t we drink a t
oast?’ he said. ‘A P-toast. How about “to Paris”?’
‘No,’ said Penny. ‘To Phil. We’ve got to drink to finding him.’
Daniel put his glass down. He was damned if he’d drink to some heartless philanderer who could abandon his wife and daughter, waltz off without a backward glance and leave them penniless.
‘You eat toast, you don’t drink it.’
Pippa’s interruption punctured his annoyance. Crazy to be angry with a man he’d never met. And, after all, he had only heard one side of the story. Phil might be sitting with his Arab girl, not a million miles from here, telling her how impossible his wife was.
He glanced across at Penny, trying to imagine her as a nagging shrew or cruel vindictive mother. She was chattering away to her daughter, giving a demonstration of the liquid sort of toast. ‘You raise your glass like this,’ she explained. ‘And then you say “To Daniel”, or “To Mummy”, or “Good health”, or …’
‘Or “Happy birthday, Pippa”,’ he chimed in.
‘But it’s not my birthday,’ she informed him. ‘Not for ages and ages.’
‘We could always pr–pr–pretend it is,’ he joked, wishing they could all lay claim to birthdays, which might justify a long and boozy lunch. He had started his champagne already, without waiting for the toast, gulping it like water, hardly knowing why.
‘But birthday doesn’t begin with P.’
‘No, you’re right. It doesn’t.’
‘Pigs begin with P,’ the child remarked authoritatively.
‘Yes … So shall we drink a toast to pigs?’
She nodded, raised her glass.
‘Or how about to polar bears, or porcupines, or porpoises?’ Hell! He must be pissed already – P for pissed. Hadn’t he just told himself that Pernod was a treacherous drink, especially when augmented by champagne, not to mention lack of food and sleep? He had been up all night with his mother, had found nothing in her store-cupboard beyond Complan and dried prunes, and had survived a tough morning on three small cups of coffee. He made a half-hearted attempt to stop the waiter refilling his glass; secretly relieved when his ineffectual hand-flapping was ignored or misinterpreted.
‘You’re cheating,’ Penny objected. ‘They’re all English Ps.’
‘Porcupines are French – pores-épics. And maybe platypuses, I can’t remember the word for them. And how about a praying mantis? I wonder what the hell they are in French.’
‘I don’t know what the hell they are in English!’
Daniel felt shocked. Surely Penny had heard of them? He’d been familiar with the word himself as long as he could remember. Admittedly they were as common in Africa as spiders were in England, so he’d had an unfair advantage. All the same, he couldn’t help wondering what other areas of ignorance Penny might reveal, and had to hide his disapproval of her cheerful unconcern. He gripped the stem of his glass, suddenly seeing in his mind again that intimidating scene he had witnessed as a lad of barely seven: the female mantis blithely gobbling up the male, immediately after mating. It had probably contributed to his first misgivings about sex, his first vague unspoken fears of being swallowed.
He dismissed the gruesome image, resumed his jokey tone. ‘They’re big green insects – rather vicious chaps, I’m afraid, which feed on other insects, and sometimes gulp down their own young.’
Pippa was all eyes. ‘Where do they live – in the zoo? Or can you keep them as pets?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve got a couple in my flat – very hot and bothered ones, with bubbles streaming out of their heads.’ He was describing himself, he realized: a drunken preying mantis who was talking arrant nonsense and feeling quite okay about it.
‘You’re a fibber!’ Pippa accused.
He nodded in agreement. A fibber and an absconder. He had suddenly decided not to return to work that afternoon. Dammit, they owed him a day off after all his hours of overtime. He’d make a second phone-call from the restaurant, tell them his mother couldn’t be left alone (having just told her that a crisis had occurred at work). Yes, a fibber, he reflected with an uneasy twinge of conscience. And a souse, he added, downing more champagne to dilute his sense of guilt.
Penny clinked her glass to his. ‘Well, I’m drinking to my pâté, she announced. ‘Because if it doesn’t come soon, I’ll start chewing up the tablecloth. I’m absolutely ravenous!’
‘I’ll see if I can hurry them up.’ Daniel craned his neck, searching vainly for a waiter among the sea of heads. But there was no rush, he reminded himself, not now. They had all afternoon to eat, or to do anything they pleased. ‘Look, I’ve got a suggestion,’ he ventured. ‘When we’ve had our lunch, let’s …’
‘If we ever have it,’ Penny interjected.
‘Actually, I think it’s coming now. Yes, that’s our waiter, isn’t it?’
Penny sat back in relief as the stocky fellow served her with her pâté – a generous portion, studded with black olives. The toast was cut in triangles and swathed in a napkin to keep it hot. She unwrapped a piece, daubed it with pâté, then passed it to her daughter. ‘So what were you saying about after lunch?’ she asked, sniffing Daniel’s soup appreciatively as it was ladled from the tureen.
Daniel didn’t answer till the waiter had withdrawn. He never liked to talk in front of strangers. ‘I … I thought I’d show you Paris. I mean, we’ll look for Phil, of course. That’s the whole point of the exercise.’ Another lie, he noted, spreading his napkin on his lap. ‘But we could still continue the P-theme. Paris is positively bursting with Ps. There’s the Panthéon, the Picasso Museum, the Pompidou Centre, the Petit Palais, the Pyramide. And Pippa would probably like the planetarium. And if you fancy a little wander round the shops, Printemps sells everything but the kitchen sink – and probably that as well. Or we could always …’
‘Hang on, hang on! We’ll never manage that lot in one afternoon, and anyway I haven’t brought a pushchair, and I doubt if Pippa’s legs will last the course.’
‘Well, let’s fit in just a couple of things, and then stop for tea in Pons. Or we could find a bench in a P for parc. Or sit and rest by the Seine.’
‘That’s an S, not a P.’
‘Ah, but the bridges are all P, though – P for pont – and there are some wonderful old bridges here. The Pont Neuf is my favourite. You can see right along the …’
‘Mummy!’
‘What?’
Pippa slid down from her chair and started jigging. ‘I want to go pee-pee.’
‘Oh, strewth, Pippa darling, you do pick your moments, don’t you!’ Penny jumped up to her feet, hastily cramming in a piece of toast and pâté before grabbing her daughter’s hand. ‘Mind you, you’ve done jolly well to last this long. That’s thanks to Daniel’s medicine.’ She smiled and squeezed his arm. ‘It’ll probably take us an age to fight our way to the loo and back, so don’t let your soup get cold.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured, having no intention of starting his meal without them. He watched them skitter off, then pushed his plate away and sat holding his arm just above the elbow – the exact spot she herself had touched. It had only been a light and fleeting touch, yet his whole left side was tingling.
He gave the arm a slap. He was behaving like some mawkish adolescent, going completely over the top. This girl meant nothing to him – she wasn’t even his type. She also happened to be married, and if he really had her welfare in mind, he would call a halt to all this P-tomfoolery and help her find her husband, instead of embarking on some drunken spree round the tourist spots of Paris.
‘Hypocrite!’ a voice chipped in, the voice of the champagne. ‘You know you haven’t a dog’s chance of tracking down a man with no address in a city of eight million people. And, anyway, you don’t want to find him, do you?’
‘No,’ he admitted silently. ‘I don’t.’
He reached out for his glass. He had still not drunk his P-toast. ‘To Penelope,’ he mouthed. ‘Who is personable, and pretty – not to mention prolix – but who m
ay well prove a problem, unless I change my mind and head straight back to work the minute we’ve had lunch.’
Chapter Five
‘Just look at that fantastic sky!’ Penny shaded her eyes from the glare, then switched her gaze to the rippling, shimmering surface of the Seine, its drab olive-green ablaze. ‘Did you lay it on for us specially, Dan?’
Daniel laughed, uncomfortably aware of all the clichés – the Technicolor sunset, the picture-postcard view, even the lovers on the next bench along: mouths meeting, arms entwined. All the scene required was the statutory Parisian artist with beret and wild beard, slapping crimson lake and vermilion on his canvas, to compete with fiery nature. He stretched his legs indulgently, leaned back against the bench. Today he was the artist, composing sonnets in his head, setting street-names to music, working Penny’s flaming hair into his own romantic riverscape. Could he still be drunk, he wondered? Surely not, when they had spent all afternoon walking off the lunch, then sobered down with English tea, and had now stopped for a breather in the most historic part of Paris, with the Pont Neuf just behind them and Notre Dame a pigeon’s flap away.
‘I want to go on a boat,’ Pippa clamoured. She was standing by the railings, inspecting a large motor-cruiser tied up just below. It was moored so close that they could see the smallest details in its cabin, even without moving from their bench: a plastic Virgin Mary staring with distaste at a plaster Venus de Milo; a photo of the owner’s wife and family smiling shyly from the wall; a single long-stemmed plastic rose too gangling for its vase.
‘No,’ said Penny. ‘We’ve done quite enough for today, and if you’re not tired, I jolly well am!’
‘We’re on a boat already,’ Daniel remarked, with a sidelong glance at Penny. He hoped that she was joking. His aim had been to divert her and entrance her, not to wear her out.
‘We’re not!’ The child rounded on him indignantly and smacked the back of his hand. She had grown bolder with him throughout the afternoon – trying to grab his lighter, pleading for ice-creams.
‘Well, we’re on an island which is shaped like a boat, and we’re sitting in the very front, where the captain always sits. Wait! I’ll draw it for you.’ He picked up a horse-chestnut twig, stripped off its remaining leaves and used it as his pencil. The ground was dry and dusty, perfect for a sketch. He scrawled the outline of the He de la Cité, with pointed prow and rounded stern, added a few choppy waves to indicate the river, and finally three matchstick figures, poised on the boat’s sharp nose.
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