by Claire King
Then there was just the clatter of his footsteps hurtling along the corridor and down the stairs, and the bewildered huff of Pigal’s indignation.
The professor continued his lectures that next week, but rumours about this new turn of events spread fast and eyes accustomed to his peculiar comportment now followed him with renewed interest, as though he were a bomb about to explode. The next week I returned to his office, taking nothing with me but an empty notebook. He was there, waiting.
‘Molino, good.’
‘Sir.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘go on then. Let’s see what you’ve got.’
‘Sir?’
‘Impertinent questions. Ask them. Get on with it.’
So I did. You can’t even begin to imagine the chronic state of that man’s mind. It was driving him and his family mad. He probably had half a lifetime ahead of him, yet all he could see was time closing in. He slept two hours a night at best and most of his meals were eaten on the move. Even when he did sit at the table with his family he was distracted, making notes and lists and sketches of his ideas and his things to do. His wife was exhausted by his behaviour. His children found his intensity frightening. They were all withdrawing from him and he knew it.
‘You,’ he said after twenty exhausting minutes, ‘are going to tell no one about this. And you are going to keep coming here asking your questions until we work out how I get as much out of my life as possible without destroying everyone I love in the process.’
I had no idea what I was doing, my only qualification was a burning desire to figure him out, but logical questions seemed to evoke surprising answers, and somehow it worked. The next weeks and months changed his life. It changed both our lives. We both realised who we were supposed to be, and when you know that there’s not much can stop you.
Sophie leaned forward. ‘Where’s that passion now?’ she said. ‘When did you become so afraid of life?’
‘I’m not afraid, Sophie.’
‘I think you are.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I don’t think it’s too late.’
She picked a stray hair off my shoulder, brushing it from her fingers on to the floor and glanced back over at the men at the bar. ‘What plans do you have for next weekend?’
‘The usual. Reading, music, see some friends, take a walk, visit my parents.’
‘You are too young to be so set in your ways. That was a good story, but it’s what, twenty years old? Are you still going to be telling it in twenty years’ time or are you going to make some new ones?’ One of the rugby players was calling her over. She lifted a finger in acknowledgement. ‘We’ll start this Saturday.’
‘Sophie, you’re young …’ I stared down into my empty glass.
She stood, straightening her skirt ostentatiously. ‘More wine?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m done.’
‘Look at it coming down outside. Wait for a break in the rain or you’ll get soaked.’ She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and put her hands on her hips. A tattoo of a vine trailed over the fine skin on her inner arm. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘You have no opinion about the news because you never watch it and you can’t talk about your work because it’s confidential. But women like it if you have a passion in life, something to talk about. We can’t live on philosophy alone.’
Drowsy with red wine and the heat from the fire I shrugged hopelessly. ‘Since when have you been interested in how interesting I am to women?’
‘It’s a recent development,’ she said. ‘But I’m serious. Keep this Saturday free. Meet us in town. Big things are going to happen in the next few months. Be a part of it, not just an onlooker.’
‘Us?’
‘Me, a couple of my friends … and that lot.’
I looked over at the group of men by the bar. One of them caught my eye, and waved his fingers with a wry smile. Again, the knot was there in my stomach. I rose to my feet, making myself as tall as possible. ‘What did you draw for him?’ I asked casually.
Sophie raised an eyebrow. ‘Jealous?’
‘Hardly.’
On my paper square, as far from the kingfisher as she could get, she drew a tiny, angry dragon. ‘So, will you come?’ she said.
‘I might.’
‘You will,’ she said, the flames’ reflection burning gold and copper in her eyes.
17
The song of Spanish guitars rising into the evening air announced the first arrivals to the Last Sun party, a tradition I’d known as long as I’d lived on Candice and that some of my neighbours had known their entire lives. It was a farewell of sorts, the last towpath party of the year, held just before the long season where the sun stayed so low in the sky that we wouldn’t see it rise above the trees for months. The music was the sign for the rest of us to join them.
Sabine from the Yvonnick was firing up a barbecue on the broad, cluttered deck of her barge. Plastic chairs and tables had been set on the path, but her two teenage children and a handful of their friends were sitting cross-legged on the ground with their guitars. No one told them to get up; after the next rains, unless we had a very dry winter, the towpath would be humid until spring. Seated at the table, Marcel and Yvette from the Rouge-Gorge just upstream were wrapped up warm in coats and scarves, sharing a rolled-up cigarette. I walked over, my arms full of my contributions to the meal: a huge loaf of bread, cheese and some wild mushrooms I had found earlier in the week. ‘Good evening, Sabine, Marcel, Yvette.’ I waved over at the teenagers. ‘Hi, Manon, Gaëlle, everybody.’ Having no children of my own it was such a pleasure to spend time with Sabine’s kids. They were lively and bright, and their friends seemed to gravitate towards the canal too, so there were often several of them hanging about the towpath. There was a little one that tagged along too, too young for the other kids I suppose, but happy to call in and see me if I was around. He took a shine to Candice and her little garden. Always asking for a go on the piano, or planting olive stones and cherry pips in yoghurt pots up on deck. I was always pleased to see him. Having kids around makes us all feel younger.
‘Voilà, Baptiste!’ The music paused to allow a small chorus of greetings.
‘Ooh, are those ceps? Hand them over.’
I passed Sabine the bag of mushrooms and pulled up a chair with Marcel and his wife. ‘I’m not the last?’
‘No, we’re still waiting for Etienne and René.’
‘It’s been a while, Yvette. Where’ve you been hiding?’
‘Busy times at the hospital.’
‘More than usual?’
‘For my ward at least. A lot of breaks being brought in from the protests.’
‘Really? People are getting hurt?’
She looked over my shoulder in the direction of the city. ‘Nothing too serious at the moment, mostly crowd-related injuries: ankles, noses, dislocations. But it’s getting rough on the streets. I don’t like the way it’s heading.’
‘Some people are spoiling for a fight,’ muttered Marcel.
‘That’s what they always say before sending the police in heavy-handed,’ Manon said, getting to her feet. When had she grown so tall? She was becoming a woman. And the spit of her mother, apart from their hair. Manon was blonde and cropped short whereas Sabine had long carmine hair, but it was clear the red was dyed in. They even shared the same expressions, like the impatient one Manon shot at Marcel. ‘To silence any voice that is inconvenient to the establishment.’
‘Ha!’ Marcel looked up at Manon. ‘You remind me of myself in sixty-eight.’
‘Then you know why it’s important.’
‘I think it was different back then,’ said Yvette. ‘What we wanted in those days seemed more fundamental. Or is it just that I’ve got older?’
‘No. We were fighting a corrupt state.’ Marcel blew a thin line of smoke out towards the water.
Gaëlle put down her guitar. ‘And so are we,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ve had work, you have your pensions when you decide to take them. But
our whole generation is looking at a system that’s broken. We’ll soon become a lost generation, going straight from college to unemployment to being unemployable. Which will mean when we’re your age we’ll have no pension to speak of. We can’t just sit back and accept that. What happened to Égalité?’
Marcel offered me the cigarette. The smoke was sweet and heady, but I passed it on. ‘And if you ruled the country?’
‘We need to get the old into retirement and free up some jobs for the young. That would be a good start.’
‘People like me for example?’ said Yvette. ‘Does it make sense for a perfectly healthy surgeon to spend the next thirty or forty years doing crosswords? Can your generation afford to pay me to put my feet up, because I’ve no plans on dying soon?’
Marcel grinned and gave his wife’s leg a squeeze. Gaëlle scowled. ‘It’s not funny,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing out there for us. No work, no money, and as for the environment …’
‘Exactly,’ said Manon. ‘The world has been left in a mess for the young and now we’re expected to pick up the pieces.’
Marcel waved a single index finger. ‘Manon, if you’re going to discuss the economy then try not to make yourself look ignorant by speaking before you think. We were born after the war. We had plenty of pieces to pick up ourselves.’
Manon shrugged. ‘Maybe if the government made better use of our taxes and spent less on wars we’d have some hope for the future.’
‘Since when do you pay taxes?’ called Sabine from the deck of the Yvonnick.
‘That’s not the point! I want to one day.’
‘And you will. And oh boy, then will we hear you complain.’ Sabine punctuated her phrase with a wave of her tongs. ‘Now, can you two lay the table please? These sausages are nearly ready.’
Etienne and René arrived at last, walking briskly up the towpath, their feet in perfectly synchronised pace. Etienne carried a plastic bag whose clinking grew louder as he approached, René a salad bowl covered with a cloth. He peeled off in Sabine’s direction and soon the two of them were bent over salads and bread boards, conspiring in whispers and backward glances.
‘What excellent timing,’ said Etienne, pulling up a chair. ‘A cold beer with friends is just what I need tonight.’
‘I thought that too,’ I told him, ‘but the conversation isn’t all that relaxing. We’ve gone straight on to politics I’m afraid.’
‘We’re going in to the protests on Saturday,’ said Manon, setting out plates and cutlery.
‘No you’re not,’ called Sabine, now cooking the ceps on a griddle over the flames. Their woody scent blew over to where we were sitting and my stomach rumbled. How did she make food so delicious in no time at all? It seemed there was no end to her extraordinary talents. Sabine had arrived after a messy divorce five years earlier, and renovated the Yvonnick from scratch herself. It was a big boat, almost twice the length of Candice, but with two teenagers she needed it. Even to this day she was constantly out fixing things. I’m not sure I’d ever seen her sit and simply relax. There was a time when Etienne and René were convinced we were perfect for each other. Sabine had found this hilarious.
‘We have to go, Mum,’ said Gaëlle. ‘It’s fine in the city centre. You know all the trouble is out in the suburbs.’
I put two and two together. I was meeting Sophie and her friends in Toulouse at the weekend. Now it made perfect sense. ‘Actually, it seems I’ll be going too,’ I said.
Etienne laughed. ‘Really? I never took you for a politico, Baptiste.’
‘It appears I promised a friend before I really knew what I was getting into.’
Ears pricked up. ‘A friend? Is she pretty?’
Sabine came over with the meat. ‘Men will do any old foolish thing for a pretty girl,’ she grumbled. ‘Did you not hear Yvette saying people are getting injured?’ A chill wave of foreboding coursed through me. I suddenly had my own doubts about going into Toulouse. I didn’t enjoy the city at the best of times and the thought of crowds made me shudder.
‘Baptiste can look after us!’ grinned Manon.
‘I’ve told you, you’re not going.’ Sabine looked over at me. ‘It’s no place for children.’
‘We’re not children,’ protested Gaëlle.
‘Well, yes, in this case you are.’
Etienne flipped the cap on a bottle and poured the beer slowly into a glass. ‘Your mum’s right,’ he said. ‘It might have been fine in the centre so far, but they’re expecting real trouble. Everyone’s on edge at the bank. You should stay out of it.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘We’ve been making a riot plan.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Nope.’ Etienne shook his head. ‘I think all the banks are. There’s plenty of precedent already in Europe and we could be next. Better to be prepared for the worst.’
I thought back to the newspaper article, what had they called it? Boiling point? ‘So you really think there could be riots?’ I said.
Etienne took a long drink of his beer. ‘All I know is it’s a powder keg out there. It would only take one spark to set the whole thing ablaze. Maybe it will happen this year, maybe not for ten years, who knows?’ He unfurled on his chair, stretching his legs out and his arms up to the sky, taking a deep breath. ‘Anyway, I’m not here to talk about work, so back to pretty friends,’ he said. ‘I happened to notice the most beautiful woman visiting you earlier this week. Is that who I think it is?’
‘That beautiful woman is expecting me to make her happy, not miserable,’ I told him.
‘My darling stupid friend. Why would you think you would make her miserable?’
‘Even if she weren’t a client – which she is, making her strictly off-limits – what would a woman like that want with a middle-aged bachelor who lives on a boat? It would all be very romantic to start with, but when the novelty wore off she’d only want to change me, move me on to dry land and cut my hair. I’d be nothing but a disappointment.’
‘Ah, just a client. But I see you’ve put some thought into it anyway,’ said Etienne with a grin.
I shrugged. ‘Well, as you say, she is beautiful. But she’s my client so that’s that.’
‘Surely there could be an exception to the rule if …’
‘No, there can’t. And no, before you ask, the friend I’m meeting on Saturday isn’t going to get you an excuse for buying a new hat either.’
Marcel laughed. ‘There are plenty of smart, beautiful women who are happy to live out here,’ he said, winking at Yvette. ‘Some of them insist on it.’
‘It’s such a pity about you and Sabine,’ said René, finally taking his seat.
‘OK, enough of that,’ Sabine said, raising her glass to the rosy skies beyond the plane trees. ‘We’re all here. Here’s to the Last Sun, and our good health until we see him above the trees again.’
‘Good health!’
‘And Baptiste,’ she said, ‘If you can’t stay away from town at the weekend, at least don’t go starting any riots.’
18
‘Are we on holiday, Chouette?’ you asked, gazing out of the window at dragonflies skirring across the water.
‘We’re on a canal boat,’ I said gently.
‘I can see that.’
‘Candice.’
I waited. You frowned at the brown water slipping silently past. Please, not this, I thought. If you lose Candice you’ll have lost yourself. You reached for the piano, softly pressing down a single chord and letting it fade into silence. ‘But this is not the sea. I thought … I had this dream once where I was on a canal boat on the sea,’ you said. ‘It’s been so long since I saw the sea.’
I put my hand on your shoulder. ‘Come upstairs,’ I said.
It was warm in the wheelhouse, the sun pushing through a haze of stratus clouds. I opened the canal-side door and joined you by the wheel. ‘Look at the wheel,’ I said. ‘See where the varnish has worn? This boat has seen some adventures.’
You looked uncertain, but you laid your hands on the wheel as though there might be magic in it.
‘You’ve told me a lot of stories, standing right here,’ I said. ‘I think it’s my favourite place on Candice.’
Your chest rose and fell, rose and fell. I stood at your side and told myself I must remember the good in this. Not why we are here, but that we are here, together. The way your hands look at home on the wheel, and the length of your eyelashes, which I only noticed recently because I didn’t dare look right into your eyes. The smell of you, like fresh air and tree bark. Make this what I remember later, I prayed. But of course neither of us gets to choose.
More and more your mind lets precious moments perish as though they mean nothing, creating blind spots that you fill in with fear and fantasy. There’s a cruelty in that, as there is in my mind, which discards nothing. The shape of the place in my life that was empty before I met you. A kiss. A cool breeze that came like a caress across my skin as I lay on my back on your bed in the sweltering heat of an early summer, the burn of your toes touching mine and the zither of cicadas in the night. It was your bed then, not ours, a strange and exciting place to be naked. You had won me, or I had won you.
Then there is the time I found the violin case open and the instrument missing, the hurt in your eyes as you accused me of stealing it. The time you were panicked and furious with me for suggesting you put on your glasses, convinced you had never worn glasses despite being unable to read your own handwriting. I couldn’t calm you that night and had to walk the freezing towpath in my nightdress to rouse Marcel from his sleep. Then there is the woman from St Sernin calling to tell me you were there at her door yet again.