We'll Always Have Paris

by Sue Watson

  Later, Peter calls me back to say he’s sent me the photos on email.

  ‘Great. I don’t have my computer here – I’ll have to look at them later,’ I say.

  ‘No, you don’t have to wait, they are on your email now,’ he explains gently. ‘You can open the email on your phone and see them.’

  ‘Oh, really? How does that happen?’ I ask. It’s all a bit technical for me, bordering on magic really.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he says. I can almost see him smiling, he always laughs at my lack of technological know-how.

  ‘Hang on, I have a teenager here . . . ’ I say now, before it becomes complicated and he misconstrues my computer illiteracy for lack of interest in his work. ‘I need you to help me see Peter’s photos on a big screen,’ I say, making a large square shape with my index figure, pointlessly and rather helplessly.

  Emma rolls her eyes with a smile. She is also highly amused by my computer illiteracy.

  ‘I can do it . . . ’ Katie pleads. Oh God, I’d forgotten about sibling rivalry.

  ‘Nan, give me the phone.’ Emma is authoritative, ignoring her little sister. I hand it over. The little baby I used to rock to sleep now has her mother’s (and my mother’s) assertiveness – which is good for her, if a little scary for me.

  ‘Hi, Peter, it’s Emma here,’ she says.

  ‘I’m here too, Peter,’ calls Katie.

  ‘He says hi, now shut up, Katie.’ Emma is listening to him and suddenly starts laughing. ‘Yep, you’re right. She has no clue,’ she says, looking over at me with a knowing smile.

  ‘Hey, I hope you two aren’t talking about me?’ I’m delighted at this unexpected rapport between the two of them. He hasn’t yet had a chance to really get to know my granddaughters and it’s my dearest wish for them to love him too.

  ‘Let me give you my email address. You can send the jpegs to me and I’ll get them up on my laptop,’ Emma is saying to Peter. ‘They’ll be lost in Nan’s email. And even if she ever finds them, she’ll end up posting them on Facebook or Snapchat by mistake and before you know it they’ll have gone viral.’ She laughs as she twiddles one of the buttons on my phone so I can hear Peter’s voice too. Teenagers are so clever these days, aren’t they?

  After some more good-natured teasing we say goodbye and Emma puts down the phone.

  ‘Peter was saying that once he gave you his camera and you ended up taking pictures of pavements.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Nothing wrong with that – I was going through my pavement period,’ I say and they both laugh. I suggest we have hot chocolate and look at Peter’s photos and to my delight the girls agree. But then Emma gets up and leaves the room saying, ‘BRB.’

  I wonder if she’s annoyed and look questioningly at Katie, who’s gazing at the TV screen. ‘What does BRB mean?’ I say, wanting to know.

  ‘It means I’ll be right back,’ Katie monotones.

  I make the chocolate and when I return with three mugs on a tray Emma has settled on the sofa with the laptop. Then she does what teenagers do and uses her magic to get Peter’s pictures from the email.

  ‘It’s weird to think you can take pictures and develop them within minutes and send them anywhere in the world,’ I say, marvelling at the way life has moved on. I remember how Peter used to spend hours in the darkroom at college – it was a long, laborious process just for one photo. Neither of the girls marvel along with me at this – they are used to life being instant, all there at the click of a mouse. They never lived through the endless wait for holiday snaps to turn up at the local pharmacy, arriving weeks after the holiday was over, and at least half the photos flooded with light. My generation has lived through such enormous change, it makes me think about what Peter said earlier – the human spirit survives it all and carries on, just like the stars.

  We all sit together on the sofa, Emma in the middle, with the laptop on her knees, and Katie and me on either side. Watching the black and white moody shapes and structures swiping across the screen fills me with awe and reminds me how talented Peter is. I would have known his work anywhere – the process is smoother, the pictures more accomplished, but the essence remains. Sharp structures splashed with shapes of light, brickwork so beautiful and detailed, texture so real you think you can reach out and touch it. Ordinary people walking, standing, chatting – but he somehow elevates them into the extraordinary with his angles and compositions, his use of natural and artificial light. I feel I know these people, and glimpse their dreams as they wander anonymously along city streets alone and in human clusters. Peter could always get inside people’s heads, their hearts – seducing them into being photographed, and reproducing so much more than just a face or a shadowy figure. He tells such stories with his pictures, his ideas are brilliant and exciting and just looking through these photos I feel such pride.

  The pictures move seamlessly from France then and now, to Salford then and now. Little kids play hopscotch on grey pavements, a woman pegs out washing, letting it blow in the dirty, sunny breeze, then a recent shot of a busy dual carriageway knifing through the city, an old church juxtaposed next to a new concrete block of housing – old values and new lives. All these elements are special, and in Peter’s hands so much more than the sum of their parts. In these latest pictures he’s also discovered his signature flower pushing through rubble, a reminder of nature’s indestructible force among the concrete jungle of new and exciting structures.

  ‘Peter’s cool, isn’t he, Nan?’ says Katie, nodding like a confident art critic as the pictures pass by us.

  ‘Yes, he’s very cool.’ I smile.

  ‘Look at her – she’s gorgeous, is she a model?’ Emma asks.

  I lean closer to see the face of a pretty blonde girl standing among rubble, the caption underneath reading: Even in his earliest work, Moreton found his flower in the Manchester slums.

  I blush. ‘That’s his girlfriend.’ I smile.

  Both girls look at each other, then they look at me, touchingly hurt on my behalf, but I don’t torture them for long.

  ‘It’s me, the girl is me – I was seventeen when that picture was taken.’

  ‘Oh wow. How cool is Nan?’ Katie says, and even Emma seems impressed.

  ‘OMFG. You could have been a model. That is way cool.’

  I look to Katie for translation. ‘OMFG?’

  ‘It means oh my fuc—’ starts Katie.

  ‘Oh, okay, thanks, darling, I just got it,’ I say in time.

  I peer at the photo and see my reflection in the screen, an old lady wearing glasses looking at her younger self staring back. And I see the Rosie Peter loved before – the one with dreams and ambitions and the lopsided smile. The camera is almost beneath me and I’m smiling into the lens, bare arms outstretched in abandon – happy, crazy and in love. The cameraman clearly loves me in these photos and I him – and for the millionth time in my life I wonder just what might have been. I was the flower, the life and hope springing out of despair and my eyes water. I now know the future wasn’t the one she dreamed of, but that lovely girl with the long blonde hair had a good life. And now she’s getting a second chance at those first dreams. My throat constricts with a kind of sadness for the past, for what we once were, and knowing Peter was right, and life did have a way of working things out after all. But that was yesterday, and now I’m excited to see what those tomorrows will bring.

  Later, at home, I sit for a long time looking at Peter’s photos. Emma showed me how to download them from my email – she seems to understand that I want them (him?) with me until I see him again. I think it’s because Emma and I are both in love, and she understands that we may be almost fifty years apart, but in essence we’re the same.

  I gaze for hours imagining his trip, wanting to share his journey and look through these photos together when he returns. I want to know his thoughts, ideas, the stories behind these wonderful pictures, and I think about where he’s flying off to next in search of the light. Seeing the girl with the long blonde hair
, the tiny flower in the rubble, reminded me once more of who I used to be.

  I dig deep into the memories, reliving the day he took the photos of me. It was the day of the storm and I can feel the weight of air, bloated with smog and pressure, leading to the moments just before when you know the world can’t take any more and it will soon explode. Then the lightning and the passion, thunder rolling along as we made love in the lashing rain, gripping each other so tight, holding on to each other so we didn’t fall. Wet hair and clothes, rain on our kisses, exposed to the elements and each other. It was a time of taking what was ours, carefree abandon and a sheer lust for life – and I may not be as skinny, young, or beautiful, but I’m just as blonde, and I’m even more feisty. And I’m damn well going to be that girl again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Peter and I are having lunch in Oxford. It’s a chilly day and on my arrival at the train station he’s brought me to a lovely traditional old English pub. A fire is glowing in the grate and we’re eating good steak and kidney pudding which is going down well with the full-bodied red wine and delicious company.

  We talk about his marriage and he says he never really felt ‘right’ with Camille.

  ‘We had everything,’ he sighs. ‘And I remember once sitting at Heathrow in the VIP lounge waiting to go to some exotic location . . . I think it was Bermuda. All the pieces were there, she was lovely, the food was wonderful, the prospect of a comfortable first class flight to a five-star destination was pleasant. But that was all – pleasant.’

  ‘Wow, I’d have been doing star jumps all over the VIP lounge,’ I laugh.

  ‘Exactly. And you know me, I’m enthusiastic, I see the best in most situations, but looking back, I was about to have the most wonderful holiday . . . and I’ve never been more sad in my life. Just this inexplicable sadness. I never said anything to Camille, but I went to the toilets and cried, I just cried and cried quietly so no one would hear.’

  ‘What was it? Why do you think you felt so wretched?’ I ask.

  ‘Everything in place, except the one thing that mattered – I was with the wrong person. And the fact that all the other elements of the trip were perfect made me realise it would never work for me.’

  ‘So you knew then that your marriage was over?’

  ‘Yes, and a few months after that I introduced my wife to my rich banker friend who she’s now married to. I didn’t actually do this consciously, but I knew she had to have someone because I could never leave her. After you I could never leave anyone ever again.’

  I ask how they met and he says she turned up one night at his student house in Clapham, looking for somewhere to stay. The daughter of a shipping magnate, Camille had abandoned the academic life at Oxford for that of an artist. Apparently she stayed that night and never left.

  ‘How very bohemian,’ I laugh. ‘And how very you. A beautiful, rich, intelligent girl lands on your doorstep looking for a bed – it’s the stuff that young men’s dreams are made of. You never did have to try, did you, Peter?’

  ‘I suppose not. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? When you don’t have to give anything in return you just take and take and it doesn’t make for a happy life.’

  He puts down his knife and fork, peruses the dessert menu as I sip my wine.

  ‘We were in our late twenties when we married, having lived together for a few years,’ he continues, after we discuss then abandon the idea of dessert. ‘As you rightly say, fate has been kind to me – and everything in life has been handed to me on a plate. And so we started to think about children, assuming a baby was our right, as two spoiled brats might. Well why not? We were successful, fairly happy, been married a few years, money not a problem – a baby is what happens next, isn’t it?’

  ‘So you both . . . wanted children?’

  ‘Desperately.’

  ‘Really?’ Am I detecting a chink of darkness in the life of St Camille of the Renovated Farmhouse? I think rather unkindly.

  ‘Oh, I assumed you had such busy lives you’d chosen not to have children.’ Peter has told me all about his travels, his photographs, but his marriage is still a mystery to me; he’s never really opened up about it.

  ‘No. We had busy lives because we had no children. We tried IVF for years, but never hit the jackpot.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, it must have been such an unhappy time for her, well, for you both.’

  ‘She eventually came to accept it, but I struggled for a long time. I still wonder if it’s my punishment for rejecting you and our . . . baby, and even though we’ve talked and we’ve grieved I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself.’

  Neither of us say anything, but his words weigh heavily in the air between us, and I can’t help but think about Isobel and her own desire to have a baby and my heart hurts. And Peter’s heart will probably always hurt too. What happened will always be with him, but I think for both of us the pain has faded now we’ve shared our loss.

  ‘All that time I never realised. I imagined you living your big life and never giving me – us – a second thought. I didn’t even know if you’d remember me.’ In a strange way it comforts me all over again to know he always cared, it means I’m right to love this man now.

  ‘How could I ever forget you? I know I was your first and I’d been with other girls, but I really loved you – I was just too young to handle the big feelings that came with that. But later, I thought about what we’d had and what we could have had and my life became meaningless – what was the point? My friends were taking their sons to football, worrying about their daughters’ boyfriends, the clothes they wore, driving them here and there. I envied them, teaching their kids to swim, ride a bike, play cricket – I even envied their trips to the dentist.’ He shakes his head. ‘I wanted it all. What do I have to show for my life? A few photos? Money in the bank? It’s all meaningless. Whole generations of happy, painful, beautiful life were being lived while Camille and I kept an immaculately decorated empty house,’ he says, running his fingers through thick, steely hair.

  I eventually reach out and touch his hand. I always thought he had everything, but it was me who had everything after all.

  ‘You never told me any of this, Peter.’ At the beginning I asked him about Camille, but he only ever wanted to talk about the art, the beautiful home; he never really revealed what their life was about.

  ‘I’m a photographer,’ he shrugs. ‘I observe and document other people’s lives, not my own.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean you can’t open up to people.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m good at what I do because I don’t share my feelings and aspects of my own life too much. After I left you I never really felt comfortable talking about myself, my life – I was ashamed about what I did and I continued to keep things to myself until now, with you. Camille always said that I never opened up to her and that’s how I wanted my relationship to be, but with you it’s different – I can finally begin to look at my life and the choices I made.’

  I’m moved that he feels able to talk to me. Everyone needs to talk, and however confident they may seem, or perfect their lives may appear to be, we all live with shadows.

  Later, we walk back to his house in the crisp autumn sunshine. I put my arm through his and he smiles as I tell him something outrageous Emma said. Back at his house he pours us both a large whisky; the afternoon is closing in and he lights a fire while I read a newspaper. Later we go to bed and an hour later we get up and have cheese on toast at his kitchen table and Albert purrs around our legs as Peter tells me funny stories about his trip. Then we light candles and sit on the sofa and he talks me through his photos and it just feels so good to be back again.

  The following morning Peter wakes me with a tray of toasted soda bread and home-made marmalade.

  ‘Stay in bed, darling, I’ve started the fire but as this place is so big it takes a while to warm up.’

  I sit up, still sleepy, still naked and not a bit self-conscious, save pulling the sheet up over
my breasts. He puts the tray on my lap and kisses me deeply.

  We finish the toast and coffee and he takes away the tray and I ask him to wait a minute while I pop downstairs. I wrap the sheet around me, grab my pencil case and run back upstairs, and start to set up his easel which stands in the corner of the room.

  ‘Oh, you’re going to sketch?’ he says, smiling.

  ‘No, you are. You’re going to draw me.’

  He smiles, he remembers.

  ‘You’re going to draw an old lady with nothing on before it’s too late.’

  ‘You’ll never be an old lady to me.’ He grins. ‘You’re Rosie Draper from Nightingale Road, the girl with the long blonde hair and the crooked smile. And I always said that one day I would capture you naked.’

  He gets off the bed and I drape myself across it as he adjusts the easel, checks his perspective by holding out the charcoal pencil.

  ‘I want to do everything we talked about back then, Peter,’ I sigh. ‘Starting with this.’

  ‘Me too,’ he says, walking towards the bed and kissing me, adjusting the sheet around me until it falls right.

  He stands behind his easel and I lie on the rumpled sheets, feeling like the artist’s model we all had a crush on in those far-off college days. I lean on one elbow, trying to cover my tummy with the sheets and he walks from behind the easel and gently pulls them away.

  ‘I want all of you,’ he says, walking back to his easel. And for the next couple of hours he scrutinises me, rubbing his fingers into the charcoal like he’s caressing my flesh. His eyes dance over my nakedness. And when the drawing is almost complete he climbs on to the bed and runs his charcoaled fingers all over my body. His lips kiss the charcoal bruises on my thighs and breasts and within seconds we’re making love.