by Claire King
Amandine sat back, taking a sip of wine but keeping her eyes on the tablecloth. ‘I was wondering,’ she said, ‘would you prefer to live in the city centre, or would you want to move back out to a village?’
‘I don’t imagine moving at all,’ I said, thinking of what my parents had said, feeling panic rise in my chest.
‘But in the future’ – she was choosing her words carefully – ‘living on a boat might not be very practical for you.’
‘I don’t know about practical,’ I said, ‘but they’ll have a fight on their hands if they try to take me off Candice. I can’t imagine being happy anywhere else.’
Amandine leaned back, staring into the profound well of her wine glass. ‘Good,’ she said quietly.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I’m trying to figure out what you really want. Now I know at least one thing you’ll fight for.’
‘Don’t mistake contentment for a lack of passion,’ I said. ‘We all need different things to make us happy. Sometimes it’s good to be satisfied with what life gives you.’
Amandine folded her arms. Her eyes glittered. ‘Haven’t you ever just wanted to say to hell with it? To bite off more than you could chew?’ From the corner of my eye I saw the waiter approaching to top up our wine. I held up my hand and he retreated discreetly. Amandine took a deep breath. ‘Do you know what,’ she said tersely, ‘I really hoped you’d choose the beef. You’re not a scallop salad kind of person, and I’ve had enough salad to last me a lifetime. If you’d chosen the beef we could have shared it.’
My confusion deepened. One minute she was alluding to moving house and the next she was angry with what I chose for dinner. I apologised. ‘You should have said. I did ask what you wanted.’
‘It can’t always be about what I want. You have to be hungry too. To not hesitate to ask for what you want.’ She clasped her fingers together, a tight knot in front of her on the table. ‘Maybe I should have been more outspoken. Maybe I should have said something. Well, I’m saying it now.’
‘Perhaps we can change our order.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not the point, Baptiste.’
‘What is the point?’
‘The point is I think we both wanted it. Yet we both settled for the fish.’
Ah. Everything became clear. Heat prickled on my face. Something like vertigo. I reached for a drink. Sharp bursts of apple stung the skin behind my teeth. My hands were shaking, feeling too large, too fumbling on the glass. I was aware that Amandine was watching me closely. She smoothed a lock of hair off her forehead and back behind her ear. The small diamond in her earlobe twinkled in the candlelight.
‘Do I need to say any more?’
‘No.’ I reached for her hand tentatively. She gave it to me with a sigh and the world contracted to the warmth of her skin, the pulse in her wrist.
‘Are you managing to play the piano again?’ Her voice had softened again. It was the kindest thing she could have asked.
‘A little,’ I said. ‘More and more.’
‘Good.’
I only released my hold on her when our meals arrived under silver domes. When the waiter lifted them to reveal the food we both looked down at the bright fresh salads, the soft white flesh of the scallops, the crescents of coral. It looked delicious, but we both knew the other was imagining a rare rib of beef and buttery potatoes. We laughed in chorus as the nonplussed waiter said, ‘Enjoy your meal,’ and hurried away.
Later, back out in the cold, Amandine paused on the grass outside St Sernin and stood looking up at the apse. It seemed like an odd thing to do, to stand there in the cold looking at a church you live right next door to. I waited at her side, kicking at the last of the snow, hunched up and dirty in icy clumps at our feet. That’s all there was left now, even down by the canal. All but the compacted snow had melted and in its wake snowdrops and crocuses were pushing up through the cold earth. We were on the cusp of spring. Amandine said nothing, just waited, until eventually I understood that I was expected to put my arm around her shoulder. I realised later that this was the moment, the opportunity before we reached the steps of her apartment building, when I could definitively turn the evening into something more than dinner, and that the onus was on me to do that.
By the time I had understood what I was supposed to do it already seemed too late. If I put my arm around her now after so long it would seem reluctant. Instead I pushed my hands down into my pockets and stared up at the church too, as though in thought. When it became clear I wasn’t going to touch her, she turned her whole body towards me, forcing me to look her squarely in the eyes.
‘Baptiste?’ My name condensed into clouds around her face. My heart became all of me, just the blood in my veins. It was incredible that she couldn’t see me exploding right in front of her. All the feelings I had for her, all the fear at the prospect of hurting her, all the regret at what I had to tell her.
I shrugged miserably into my jacket. ‘I only ever wanted to make you happy, Amandine,’ I said.
‘Then do it.’
‘You know I can’t. I’m sorry. I don’t want to make this worse than it is.’
‘You’re going to accept defeat just like that?’
‘You deserve someone you can rely on. Who’ll be there for you. What’s the point … ?’
Amandine folded her arms. ‘Don’t tell me what I deserve.’
‘Please don’t be angry with me.’
‘Goodbye then.’ The words were breathed, soft as air yet sharp as needles. She turned and strode across the grass.
For a moment I just watched her go. A shiver of déjà vu ran over my skin. That was happening more and more. They say that when you fall in love you feel as though you’ve known the other person your whole life. Was that what it was? I could almost feel the curl of the question mark around my throat, its tail reaching down through my ribs and punching me in the gut with its final jot.
I caught up with her on the steps as she let herself in, reaching out for her hand. But Amandine shrugged away from my touch. She turned, sadly. ‘Baptiste, I can’t keep pushing this. It’s gone on way too long. I’ve had enough. What I deserve is someone who loves me so much that they would fight to have me, whatever the circumstances. I’m the one who should be reticent about this relationship, not you. What have you got to lose?’
‘Everything,’ I said. But the door had already swung closed behind her, the lock clicking into place. The steps back down to the pavement felt like a precipice.
I trod the long, slushy roads back over to the port, the smoky smell of Toulouse still on my clothes. A stiff melancholy had settled over me and I thought I could walk it off, but I had just given myself more time to think before I could sleep, and the more I thought the more miserable I became. By the time I was approaching the canal I had had enough of my own company and just wanted to get home to bed.
As I tramped past the solid bulk of the apartment blocks two men hunched down into hooded coats approached from around a corner. I froze, stepping back under a streetlight and waiting for them to pass. As they got closer they slowed down, heads turned my way. The blood pounded in my veins. My lungs tightened. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, telling myself to calm down, to be rational. ‘Nutter,’ one of them said under his breath as they went by, giving me a wide berth.
I was still trembling when I got back to Candice, silent and sulky in the pitch-black night, water lapping against her flanks. For the first time in years it didn’t feel like coming home. I could have still been in the city now, I thought, in Amandine’s pristine apartment. In her bed. We could have been making love to each other, hushing and shushing so as not to be heard by her daughter. All over the city, couples would be climbing into beds big enough for two. Beds where they had made children together. Beds where they had not. Beds where arguments explode and are resolved, a turned shoulder slowly becoming two humans curled together, holding each other until the irritation dissipates. There is a solidarity
in that kind of long-grown love that somehow keeps things moving, I know. Something I never had. Sometimes things are just not meant to be.
Although I was exhausted I knew I wouldn’t sleep unless I spent a few minutes at the piano to calm down. Even though the cold had stiffened up my hands and it was certain to hurt, I needed the intimacy, the release. With my heart still pounding and adrenaline racing through my veins I sat down and took out a score, but when I opened it all I saw were flocks of little black notes, migrating like starlings across the page.
40
There was a wet girl with a hungry dog. The rain brought her in. It had been pouring solidly for two days, the clouds so low for so long it seemed they had become snagged on the branches and the telegraph poles. A constant stream of water flushed the roads, sluicing the winter dirt of Toulouse into the gutters, readying it for spring. Inside the bar the damp air from rain-soaked coats and shoes clung to one side of the window-panes, the rain rapping like fingernails against the other. That night the place felt unfamiliar and disorienting; I always sat to the right of the entrance, whether at the counter or at a table, but there was a match on the TV that night and it seemed as though everyone had moved over to watch, even though no one could hear it over the buzz of voices. There wasn’t even standing room on the right side of the room. I pictured Jordi coming out worried that the whole bar would capsize, telling people to move over and balance the place out. The new perspective from my table against the wall on the opposite side of the bar made the place look as though I were dreaming it – recognisable, but just uncanny enough to put me on edge.
I ate my dinner slowly, hoping that Sophie would have time later for a chat although she had been offhand with me earlier. With Paris on her horizon she was pulling away from me, and I could feel the void opening up inside me where she had been. Perhaps it was her way of softening the blow. I picked at the food in front of me; I didn’t really have the appetite for it. The hollow ache in my stomach was not something Jordi’s cooking could fill. I lifted forkfuls of couscous and let the grains scatter back down on to my plate. I challenged myself to see how precisely I could skewer morsels of sausage on the tines of my fork. I watched how the sauce fell first in curtains and then in teardrops off the carrots. I recall the lamb being too salty, but the chickpeas were good – soft, fatty and satisfying. Then in she came.
She was a young woman of about twenty, bustling into the bar as though looking more for shelter than a drink. I hadn’t seen her before. She was slim, almost too thin, her dark dreadlocks tied through with orange cord, dripping on to the floorboards. She had a scrappy little dog on a frayed rope lead and as she sized up the place, looking longingly through the crowd of sports fans to the blazing fire, she didn’t notice how it shook itself dry on the doormat. The woman slipped around to the counter on my side of the bar and waited to be served. I watched her, glad to have an interesting distraction, the way she stood leaning on one hip, the thin coat she wore that was soaked through; my tendency to size people up was still very much alive. I had just tilted my wine glass towards my lips when, ‘Sophie Rousseau!’ the girl exclaimed. ‘I don’t believe it!’
I struggled to draw breath as months of confusion crystallised into perfect clarity. For me it was as though there was an avalanche in the room, yet Sophie was calm, continuing with service as though nothing was wrong. She embraced her friend across the bar, handed her a towel, poured her a drink. I fixed on her face as though I were seeing it for the first time: the up-curve of her lips, the strange tilt of her eyes. The skin was the wrong colour but there was no doubt. A surge of astonished energy filled me and I jumped to my feet, knocking my bowl to the floor. The dog on the rope strained in my direction towards the food scattered around my feet. Sophie and her friend turned and stared.
Five minutes later, the mess dealt with, Sophie sauntered back over with a fresh plate of food and a bottle to top up my wine.
‘Try not to give your dinner to the dog this time, Baptiste.’
‘It’s you,’ I said quietly.
She looked at me hard. ‘What’s got into you?’
‘I know who you are. You can stop playing games now.’ Why hadn’t I seen this? How could I have missed it?
Sophie looked at me gravely, pulling up the chair opposite and taking a seat. ‘Are you OK?’ she said.
There was a ringing in my ears. ‘You look just like your mother.’
‘Baptiste?’
I glanced up. The bar was still busy, and her friend was watching us intently from by the bar. I wouldn’t have her for long. ‘You’re the one who sent her to see me, Sophie.’
‘Yes. But you screwed it up all by yourself.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s wretched, thanks for asking. I’ve been trying to stay out of it, none of my business and all that, but frankly I’m pretty pissed off with you.’
Sophie leaned forward, her hypnotic eyes like a secret that had been hidden in plain sight. ‘How could you lead her on that way for so long, especially if you were in love with someone else?’
‘Someone else?’
‘Your client.’
‘Sophie, I was in love with your mother. With Amandine. She was the client.’
‘My mother?’ Sophie faltered. ‘My mother was never a client.’
41
For long minutes you said nothing, just sat there on the edge of the bed, staring at your hands as if trying to place them. Your fingernails have grown long and you refuse to let me cut them. Above us rain hammered on the deck. To the south thunder grumbled. The dense air beyond the windows was sullen and grey and on the windowpanes condensation glittered and slid.
When I reached cautiously for your hand you took it without question, then frowned and looked slowly around the room as though trying to get your bearings. Your eyes skimmed the walls where I had hung a few framed photographs and some of Sophie’s drawings. Most of the drawings were smaller than the palm of my hand; Sophie could get right to the heart of something in just a few strokes. The one that used to be your favourite was the smallest of all – a tiny, impertinent-looking kingfisher – but you no longer see anything but art in those sketches. They could just as well have been picked up from junk shops. It’s the same with the photos. They are mostly places, boats in harbours, meadows, horses, a dragonfly hovering above the canal. I keep photographs of people to a minimum; it frightens you to see yourself pictured with people you don’t know in places you don’t remember. I keep just one photo of you on display: a small driftwood frame by the piano, where you and I, or you and Amandine, smile hopefully out from the past.
‘We all start off as raindrops,’ you said finally, ‘but we all end up in the sea.’ You had fixed on a sunset photograph I’d hung of the oyster beds down on the Mediterranean coast. I closed my eyes. I like it when you talk this way. You could always find a perfect analogy to make life sound more beautiful than it is.
I thought back to that very first time I came to Candice. I’d picked up a splinter from the handrail along the gangplank and you took it out, saying something about splinters that was at once unremarkable and yet terribly profound. Your hand was so large around mine, your eyes kind and enquiring, and an astonishing sadness had rushed in at me from nowhere, a sadness I didn’t even know I had that knocked me sideways, hard. I must have felt the beginnings of it even before that, because I had lied to you about being pressed for time and then felt bad afterwards for getting our relationship off on such a dishonest footing. If only I had realised just how distorted the truth was. Perhaps I liked believing that I had met a man genuinely interested in what made me happy; it made a change from being the one everyone turns to for help. When I was with you I could surrender the controls, even just for an hour. I liked, too, that you were clearly attracted to me and yet did nothing about it. Yes, you would say odd things to me sometimes, always trying to figure out what made me tick, but I took it as a game. A drawn-out flirtation. It was fun, at least to begin with. Unwittingl
y I had played along with the fallacy. When Sophie told me what happened at the bar that night it explained a lot. My perspective of you shifted again, as though I had been looking at that optical illusion, a goblet before, now two faces in silhouette.
I had been silent for too long and you too had drifted away into your thoughts. You yawned, stretching your arms wide. I leaned in hoping for an embrace, but you didn’t notice me and got to your feet, still wearing creases in your brow.
‘Baptiste?’ I said, but you were already moving away.
I followed you down the corridor, hanging back in the entrance to the sitting room, where you had gone directly to the piano and were standing, perplexed. After a few moments your fingers reached out and you raised the lid with a clatter. The keys shuddered, letting out a soft complaint that echoed within the box. Your hands used to caress those keys, your fingers spread wide across them, the architect of a melody. Some part of you still knows how it used to be, but now information is missing. Connections weaken and snap, weaken and snap. Your frown deepening still further, you crossed to the galley and rummaged in the pot of spoons and spatulas on the counter and returned holding an old, scratched wooden spoon with which you began to strike the keys. Knowing you would soon realise something was wrong and feel foolish, I feigned distraction, turning away from you and busying myself with the stove where the logs were burning low.
I used to love how you could read me, how I couldn’t hide a thing from you and nevertheless you wanted me without reserve. Not any more. You are still so attuned to me: the words I choose, my expressions, every visible truth. But now when I feel like this I must do all I can to protect you from it, and since I cannot hide my emotions I have to free myself of them. I empty myself of the pity, empty myself of the feelings of injustice, empty myself of the sadness. I stoke the fire, make the tea, water the plants, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, until I am calm, until my self is poured away and there is nothing but space to let you in. Some days it works better than others.