by Simon Mawer
What would her father say? Or her mother? She can imagine the shriek of horror – their dear little Squirrel, with a price on her head and half the Paris police looking for her! – as though it were a disgrace to be wanted as a criminal, whatever the circumstances. Should she have taken the extra seat and flown back to England? She would have found safety, real safety. Where would have been the disgrace in that? No more glancing over the shoulder, no more living with the flutter of fear trapped in the pit of the stomach. And sleep, she’d have been able to sleep. Instead she’s here, somewhere in France. But that is why she came in the first place, after the man called Potter quizzed her in that bare room off Northumberland Avenue: not for Clément, not for Benoît, but for France, that strange abstraction which means so many different things to different people.
The train rattles on, stopping at every station, passengers getting on and off, whistles blowing – the ordinary currency of travel in the heartland of France. Vierzon comes with a clattering of points, the carriage jolting sideways, acres of sidings and rows and rows of goods trains waiting to move and a voice on the public address system announcing ‘Vierzon ville’. Where Julius Miessen got on the train that time. Julius Miessen who followed her through Paris. Her nemesis. She pulls her suitcase down from the rack and edges along the corridor behind the other passengers. Someone helps her down onto the platform and wishes her ‘Bon voyage, Mam’selle’, and she smiles in acknowledgement. The Toulouse train will be arriving at platform two.
Toulouse means Benoît. He’ll be wondering where she is, what she’s doing. She’ll appear out of the blue like the last time, perhaps meet with him as they did before in the railwayman’s flat. Passion is a crude, physical thing. It makes her feel uncomfortable, walking along the platform with strangers, remembering. Can they smell the passion on her? Does it transmit through the air? Clément and Benoît. How can she have come to this, the convent girl who had kept her virginity until she was twenty years old, whose sexual longings were always clouded with guilt? Two men within days of each other. The kind of thing that once horrified her. Promiscuity, prurience, sin – a whole thesaurus of immorality. Perhaps it’s the unnatural life she is leading, her personality split between Alice and Marian, the one doing what the other can ignore. Create yourself a cover for every eventuality. Be real to yourself. Live the person you are pretending to be.
Laurence Follette, a student, returning to the Southwest from Paris where she has been for the last week visiting friends. Laurence Follette, weighed down with tiredness, humping her suitcase over to platform two, thinking of Clément, of a bomb that might blow cities to dust, of Benoît standing before her naked as though nudity is the most natural thing in the world.
She could be in England. Now, at this moment, in England. But she’s here in France, which is where she’s meant to be, where she wanted to be, where her mission lies. She dozes, awkwardly, on a bench, trying to stay awake for the train announcements, her head falling towards her chest and then jolting upright.
Yvette. Did Yvette really give her away? Yvette, the mother whom she mothered. Yvette who slept with Emile. Once, that would have been impossible to imagine, yet now everything seems possible, even a voice calling her out of sleep saying, ‘Marian? Marian Sutro?’
‘Yes?’
It’s the oldest trick in the book. It’s the pitfall of bilingualism, the moment when the wrong switch is thrown, the wrong response given, the wrong word uttered.
Yes.
She’s not Marian Sutro, she’s Laurence Follette, student, living near Toulouse.
Yes.
She looks round and they’re standing there, two men in dark blue suits and heavy overcoats, and between them, smiling faintly, the Alsatian woman.
It’s like the bullet that hits you – you never hear the shot being fired. She moves to rise from the bench but it’s too late, far too late. Someone has already grabbed her by the upper arms to hold her down. There’s a brief struggle to handcuff her while passengers look on indifferently. A girl being taken into custody. It happens all the time. Who knows why? Who cares?
Simon Mawer was born in England in 1948 and spent his childhood moving backwards and forwards from England to Malta and Cyprus. He has lived in Italy for over thirty years, teaching at an international school in Rome. He is the author of two works of non-fiction and eight other novels, including: Mendel’s Dwarf, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize; The Fall, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize; A Jealous God; The Bitter Cross; The Gospel of Judas; and The Glass Room, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009.