by Jenny Colgan
All the taxis cruising the streets seemed to have lights on but didn’t stop. My heart started to jump a bit. Maybe the system was different here. Maybe if you had a light on that meant you weren’t free. So I tried hailing a few cars without lights, but that didn’t do me any good either, until one car with one man in it started slowing down a bit close to me and I turned tail and scampered up some steps. Then I turned around, worrying a bit about the sound of my shoes on the steps and wondering exactly how safe Paris was, after all. About ten people had warned me already about pickpockets. What about muggers?
I heard a footfall somewhere behind me. The streetlights, utterly charming though they were, wrought iron in the old-fashioned style, gave out picturesque circles of light. At the moment, though, I would have liked full-beam motorway service station blindingness. I could barely see my way ahead and hadn’t a clue where I was going. I started walking up the church steps a little faster. The footsteps behind me sped up.
Oh crap, I thought to myself. Oh god. I was stupid, after all, coming out by myself. I was stupid coming out at all, full stop, with a new flatmate I barely knew. I should have stayed inside and eaten packet noodles and, I don’t know, had a good cry or something. I moved faster, trying to see a street that led somewhere more wide open with more chance of company, but all the roads ahead seemed equally tiny and mysterious. Oh bugger.
Straight ahead was the outline of the huge church, the Sacré-Coeur. I decided to head for that, from some old-fashioned idea about sanctuary, but truly from the expectation that it would have some kind of big courtyard, somewhere with lights—you could see the floodlighting right across the city. I ran up more steps, and behind me, the feet were faster too, closing and closing, my heart pounding in my mouth, my hand searching in my bag for something I could use as a weapon. I closed on the great big old-fashioned iron key that opened the building door and told myself to aim for his eye.
“HÉ!”
The voice was deep and throaty, and I could tell by the tread that it was someone heavy. Shit. Right. This was it. The steps were closing in. I was in a small cobbled courtyard nowhere near the church, surrounded by boarded-up shops and tightly shuttered flats. Would they open up their shutters for me? I doubted it. Never mind, there were plenty of quiet-looking alleyways nearby.
“AAARRRRGH!!!!!”
I screamed with all my might and leapt on the dark shadowy figure, the keys outstretched in my hand, trying to stab them into his face. I caught him off guard, and he toppled over hard on the cobblestones, me coming down on top of him, still trying to get at him with the keys and screaming the worst obscenities I could think of.
I didn’t realize at first that there was an equally terrified screaming coming from underneath me. A pair of extremely strong arms was trying to keep me away from his face. I had reverted to English—extremely Anglo-Saxon—and was trying to whack him; he suddenly spoke in English too.
“Pleeze, pleeze stop…pleeze…I don’t mean harm. Any harm. Pleeze.”
The meaning didn’t filter through straightaway, and I was so crazy with adrenalin, I’m not sure when exactly I would have stopped, if a shutter at the top of the apartment block we were underneath hadn’t suddenly opened, and, without warning, a bucket of water poured down on our heads.
That stopped us. Panting, I realized I was sitting on top of the grumpy man from the bar. He was holding my hand in a vice grip at arm’s length, but I had already managed, I saw, to make a good bloody cut in his forehead. Seeing the blood, now being washed by the water, suddenly made me wobble.
“Oh,” I said, shock and faintness washing over me. I wobbled and nearly collapsed on top of him. He quickly moved his hands to my waist, holding me up.
“What the…what the HELL did you think you were doing?” I finally managed to gasp as I clambered up. I was soaking.
“I was shouting at you. Didn’t you hear me? I didn’t catch your name the first time.”
“You don’t follow a woman like that!”
“Well, you don’t march out into a foreign city if you don’t know your way home. Sami is fun, but he’s always going to choose the party over you.”
I brushed down my hair as he lumbered to his feet. His English was extremely good, only the merest hint of a French accent.
“So you were…”
“I’d come to find you. I was only meant to meet you anyway, and I’m heading back your way. Actually, I’m knackered. Sami is never where he says he’s going to be…”
“I can imagine,” I said, which was as close as I could get right then to an apology, with my heart still racing at a million miles an hour. “Oh God, I’ve hurt you.”
As if he hadn’t realized before, he put a large hand to his face, only to feel the blood trickling down. He pulled his hand away and looked at it.
“Gross,” I said, appalled. I felt in my bag in case I had a tissue, but I didn’t have one on me.
“That is awful,” he said, suddenly looking very wobbly himself. “Have you stabbed me?”
“Of course I haven’t stabbed you,” I said defiantly. “I’ve keyed you.”
He didn’t understand the word till I showed him the keys, then recognition dawned. My already anxious body suddenly pounded with fear that he was going to be furious. Instead, to my enormous, shattering relief, he shook his head, opened his mouth, revealing a white-toothed smile, and started to laugh.
“Come, come with me,” he said, then directed me up a tiny alleyway that looked forbiddingly dark. I had one more second of panic, at which he said, “Please. I certainly wouldn’t attack you again.”
“I have my keys,” I said, nervously giggling as the adrenalin finally started to leave my body.
To my total surprise, the narrow alleyway opened out onto a wide, brightly lit thoroughfare that still had cars thundering down it and, here and there, a café still open. The man led me through to a tiny coffee shop, tucked away, inhabited by several Turkish men using a hookah and a dark-eyed proprietress with bags under her eyes who raised an eyebrow but nodded brusquely as the man asked her for two coffees and a bathroom.
I sat there quietly until he came back, his wound cleaned up somewhat, holding tissue paper to his head.
“I’m sorry,” I said again quietly. The coffee arrived. It was hot, black, and about 50 percent sugar. It was just what I wanted.
He shook his head, then glanced at his watch.
“Argh,” he said.
“Don’t show me,” I said. “I have to be up in a few hours.”
“I know,” he said.
I looked at him. “Who are you?”
He grinned and I caught something then…saw something in his face.
“I’m Laurent,” he said. “You’re Anna, I remember now. You work for my dad.”
- - -
1972
Thierry worked from first thing in the morning, but at noon he made a stated decision to close the shop for three hours rather than the traditional two. When Benoît Sr. suggested this was commercial suicide, he pointed out that Italian shops closed for four hours and would he rather that, and that people would wait.
They would.
Then Claire would put the children down for their naps, under the cheerful guidance of Inez, the housemaid, and slip out, Mme. LeGuarde and Inez swapping meaningful looks.
They would wander across Paris’s bridges, each more beautiful than the last—on one foggy day, which turned the city into black and white, like a Doisneau photograph, they strolled the Pont Neuf, every cobble, it felt to Claire, smoothed away by lovers meandering across it for hundreds of years.
Thierry would talk and talk—of flavors and schemes and what he had learned, in Innsbruck and Geneva and Bruges, and occasionally would remember to ask Claire what she thought of things too, but it didn’t really matter to Claire; she was happy to listen to him, to rejoice in her
understanding, which improved day by day, to revel in the warmth of his full attention, because when he got back to the shop, or went out, he would instantly be surrounded by people who wanted a piece of him—some business, or a word, or an idea, or to congratulate him on his taste or ask him about something in the newspaper. When they were in public, he was everybody’s. Tracing out their own, circuitous routes of Paris, he was all hers, and she found herself unable to ask any more.
Usually by the time he thought to ask her what she thought, it was nearing time for him to get back—never again in Claire’s life would time speed away from her as quickly as it did during those walks, those lunches. Three hours felt like the blinking of an eye, and she would float through the afternoon, so light-humored and good-natured that Arnaud and Claudette would cling to her, happily repeating the English songs she taught them, lisping along to “hun-eee oh! Sugar, sugar.”
Mme. LeGuarde kept a close eye on her and, when she judged the time to be right, casually came in to Claire’s room one night and sat down on the bed.
“Now, cherie,” she said kindly, “please tell me you know about contraception.”
Of all the shocking and strange things that had happened to Claire on her trip, none was as strange and bizarre as this elegant lady of the world referring to…well…matters. Of course she had a rough idea, picked up from her time at Chelsea Girl; she knew what a rubber was, kind of, and the girls spoke casually about being on the pill, although the thought of going to nice old Doctor Black, who’d known her since she was a baby, and asking him for pills to have sex, even if she had met anyone she’d have liked to have sex with apart from Davy Jones, was completely beyond her comprehension levels. The idea of these matters being discussed under the Reverend’s roof was simply impossible.
It being in another language helped, of course. But Mme. LeGuarde’s cool, confident manner in discussing sexual hygiene, as if it were nothing more nor less important than regular hygiene (which, indeed, in Mme. LeGuarde’s eyes, it wasn’t), was an eye-opener to Claire in more ways than one. Firstly, she declined the offer of prophylactics but promised to ensure they were used. Secondly, she took Mme. LeGuarde’s matter-of-fact tone and unflustered manner and stored it away somewhere. Years later, she was to end up taking all the sexual education classes in the school, as most of the other teachers couldn’t bear it. Statisticians in later years always marked down the lower rate of STDs and teen pregnancies in the Standish ward of Kidinsborough, an otherwise very deprived area, as a blip. It was nothing of the sort.
- - -
Of course, as soon as he said it, I realized immediately. Of course he was. The build, the dark brown eyes; he was far more handsome than Thierry could ever have been, but fundamentally they were very similar, down to the long black eyelashes and the spark of mischief in the eyes, now the panicking was over.
“You look…”
“Please don’t say I am like a thin version of my father.” Laurent looked down and patted his small stomach with a weary look. “Aha, not so thin.”
Actually he wasn’t fat at all—just big, with a barrel chest and broad shoulders.
“Well, you can’t look that much like him,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have stabbed you with those keys.”
“Well, unless he’s really difficult to work for,” said Laurent, downing his coffee. “Ah. That’s better. Am I dry?”
His curly hair stuck up in all directions and he had a lot of dark stubble on his chin.
“Do you have any big meetings tomorrow?” I said.
“That bad, huh?” he said. “Hmm.”
“So why did Sami want to introduce us?” I said.
“Oh, Sami likes to think he knows everyone.” Laurent thought about this and qualified the statement. “Okay, he does know everyone. He thought it was funny, you turning up.”
“Why?”
“Well…because.”
“What?”
“Because he knows my dad and I…we don’t get on that well.”
It was hard to imagine anyone not getting on with the avuncular Thierry.
“Oh no! Why not?”
Laurent held up his hands. “Just father-son stuff…nothing, really.”
“He seems pretty happy to me,” I said.
Laurent looked quite fiery. “Really? That is why he weighs six hundred pounds maybe? This is what a happy man looks like?”
I looked nervous. “Well, your mother seems to keep him in line.”
“That’s not my mother.”
I figured I’d probably said enough for one night, as Laurent finished his coffee up. He looked up at me, his smile back, his shortness forgotten.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I make a very good first impression.”
“Apart from the attempted mugging and the terrible parent issues,” I said, “you’re doing totally fine. Do you want me to pay for the coffee too?”
He looked a little shocked till he saw I was joking.
“No,” he said. “Are you any good? At chocolate, I mean. Not violence.”
I shrugged. “My old boss said I had a nose, whatever that is. But your father does things very differently. I’m going to try my best.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Maybe I should poach you.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, smiling. Suddenly I felt exhausted. “I…I owe someone a favor,” I said. “To stay. And do what I’m doing.”
I looked around onto the street, still thronged with night people.
“Even if coming to Paris is a bit…”
“Un peu trop?” said Laurent quietly, in French. A little too much?
“It’s been a long day.”
“Come on then,” he said. “I came to take you home. I will.”
I followed him out onto the street, wondering where his car was. But it wasn’t a car. Tucked up just under a railway bridge, about three hundred feet away, was a beautiful shiny little powder blue Vespa.
“Only way in town,” he said, when he saw me look at it.
“It’s cool,” I said.
“It’s essential,” he said, even though he looked too big for it. He unlocked the seat and handed me a pale blue helmet that matched the bike, putting on a vintage black one with large old-fashioned goggles of his own.
“What is this, the girl’s helmet?” I joked, before realizing it smelled partly of hairspray. Well, of course, he must have a girlfriend. Probably tons. I felt a little odd putting it on.
“You’ve been on a scooter before?” he asked.
“Oh no, I haven’t,” I said, the helmet halfway up my head. “Is it just like a bike?”
“No,” he said, scratching his head. “No, it really isn’t. Uhm. Just. Okay, move when I move, okay? Like, if I lean over…”
“Lean the other way, for balance,” I said promptly.
“Uh-oh,” said Laurent.
“No?”
“The opposite. When I lean, you lean.”
“Won’t we fall over?”
“Probably,” said Laurent. “How bouncy are you?”
- - -
Riding through the Parisian dark, clutching a large man on a tiny bike (with a man bag over his shoulder—all French men had them, I noticed; they seemed to make perfect sense), I tried to follow his lead as to when to lean (it got easier after the first few times). It was hard to predict though, as he never signaled and often didn’t wait for lights to change, simply plowing straight ahead. The first few times, I buried my face in his soft leather jacket. After that, finding myself still alive, I attempted to trust him and began to take some notice of my surroundings.
We roared down the Champs-Élysées, its broad pavements and tall white buildings glowing in the moonlight, and the buildings, tall and stately, glowing in the lights. The cars honked, and every time we turned slightly toward the left, I would
see it there, following us like the moon: the great, unmistakable form of the zigzagging Eiffel Tower, lit up with spotlights like a VIP, which of course, she is. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, standing there so brazenly, nothing tall around her that could lessen her impact.
“What are you doing?” growled the voice on the front of the bike as I twisted my body to get a better look.
“Sightseeing,” I said back, half my answer lost in the wind rushing past us.
“Well, stop it. Follow me.”
And he grabbed my right knee quite forcibly and tugged it more tightly around his waist. I clung on tighter and let the sights of Paris come to me as they would; a church here, its square belfry askew; the great shop windows of the stores glinting in the streetlights; the occasional snatches of west African rap from passing cars; once, on a street corner, a couple slow dancing to music only they could hear. A crescent moon, a gentle scent of perfume and flowers as we passed the Place des Vosges, the air fresh but not cold against my skin, Laurent in front still traveling at what seemed to me terrifying speeds, the old street lamps flashing past us.
Suddenly, even though I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing, not really, and quite possibly with the help of two martinis, I felt amazing. Nobody, nobody in the world, apart from Laurent, who didn’t count as I didn’t know him—nobody knew where I was, or what I was doing, or what I was up to. I didn’t know what lay ahead, I didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life, whether I was going to succeed or fail, meet someone or stay single, travel or go home.
It sounds so stupid seeing as I was thirty, had no money, eight toes, a garret rental with a socialite giant, and a temporary job. But suddenly, I felt so free.
1972
Spaghetti Bolognese.”
“No.”