Us

by Nicholls, David

  ‘City of Proust,’ sighed Connie, ‘the city of Truffaut and Piaf.’

  ‘You are having a nice time, aren’t you?’

  ‘Very much so.’ She reached behind her, searching for my hand, but the effort was too great and her arm dropped back.

  ‘You think Albie’s happy?’

  ‘Posing around Paris at his father’s expense? Of course he is. Remember it’s against his principles to show happiness.’

  ‘Where does he keep disappearing off to all the time?’

  ‘Maybe he has friends here.’

  ‘Which friends? He doesn’t have friends in France.’

  ‘Friends means something different now to what it meant in our day.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, he goes online and writes, “hey, I’m in Paris” and someone else says, “I’m in Paris too!” or someone says, “my friend lives in Paris, you should meet up.” And so he does.’

  ‘Sounds terrifying.’

  ‘I know. All those new people, all that spontaneity.’

  ‘It was hard enough having a pen-pal.’

  She rolled on to her front, latching on to something new. ‘Douglas, you had a pen-pal?’

  ‘Günther from Düsseldorf. He came to stay, but it wasn’t a success. Couldn’t eat my mother’s food. He was visibly wasting away, and I was terrified we’d get in trouble for sending back this malnourished child. In the end my father practically tied him to a chair until he’d eaten his liver and onions.’

  ‘Such golden memories you have. Did you get invited to Düsseldorf?’

  ‘No, strangely enough!’

  ‘You should find the address, track him down.’

  ‘Maybe I will. Did you have a pen-pal?’

  ‘French girl. Elodie. She wore an unnecessary bra and taught me how to roll cigarettes.’

  ‘So it was educational.’ Connie turned again, and closed her eyes.

  ‘It would be nice to bump into him, though,’ I said. ‘Every now and then.’

  ‘Günther?’

  ‘Our son.’

  ‘We’re seeing him tonight. I’ve fixed it. Now let me sleep.’

  We dozed to the lulling sound of Russian hip-hop in which, interestingly, only the profanities remained in English, presumably so as to offend the widest possible international audience. In the late afternoon, sitting and yawning, Connie suggested we rent bicycles. Still a little drunk, we rode the municipal machines, unwieldy as wheelbarrows, along whichever street we liked the look of.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’re deliberately getting lost!’ she shouted. ‘No guidebooks, no maps allowed.’

  And despite being too foggy to ride a heavy bicycle on the wrong side of the road, I adopted a devil-may-care, freewheeling attitude, knees clipping wing mirrors, ignoring the waved fists of the taxi-drivers as I smiled, smiled, smiled.

  46. françois truffaut

  The warm feelings continued into the evening. Connie had spotted an open-air cinema screen in an urban park not far from Place d’Italie and decided that we would go and watch a movie there. A stolen bedcover from the Good Times Hotel was our picnic blanket; there was rosé wine, bread and cheese, the evening was warm and clear. Even Albie seemed pleased to be there.

  ‘Will it be in French?’ he asked, as we established our base in front of the screen.

  ‘Albie, don’t worry, you’ll understand. Trust me.’

  The film was called Les Quatre Cents Coups, or The 400 Blows, and I recommend it. My own taste in cinema tends towards the thriller or science-fiction/fantasy genres, but despite the lack of actual blows it was very entertaining. The film concerns the misadventures of an intelligent but irresponsible young man called Antoine who ends up in trouble with the law. His amiable father, who is being betrayed by the mother, loses patience with young Antoine, and the boy is sent to a sort of borstal. Escaping, he runs towards the sea – he has never seen the sea before – and then, well, the film just stops with the young man looking into the camera in a challenging, almost accusatory way.

  In plot terms it was no Bourne Identity but I found myself enjoying it nonetheless. It was a film about poetry, rebellion, the elation and confusion of youth – not my youth necessarily, other people’s youth – and it had a profound effect on Albie, who was so engaged in the film that he temporarily forgot to drink excessively, and knelt erect with his hands placed on his thighs in a pose that I’d last seen on the gym mats at his primary school.

  The sky darkened and the projection came into sharper focus, swallows darting across the screen like specks on the celluloid – or perhaps they were bats, or both – and Albie sat there, identifying violently with the character despite, I think it’s fair to say, having had a pretty stable childhood. Every now and then I turned to see his profile flashing white in the light of the monochrome screen, and I found myself feeling a terrific fondness for him, for both of them, for us, the Petersens, a little pulse of love and affection, a conviction that our marriage, our family, was not so bad, was better than most, and that we would survive.

  Anyway, it was all very atmospheric and congenial and all too soon it was over. The final image froze, Antoine Doinel was giving us that look from the screen, and Albie was rubbing his cheeks with the heels of his hands as if cramming the tears back into his eyes.

  ‘That,’ he declared, ‘was the greatest fucking film I have ever seen in my life.’

  ‘Albie, is that language really necessary?’ I said.

  ‘And the photography was amazing!’

  ‘Yes, I liked the photography too,’ I chipped in hopefully, but Albie and his mother were deep in an embrace, Albie squeezing her as they both laughed, and then he was running off into the summer night and Connie and I, too drunk to risk the bicycles again, held hands and walked home through the 13th, the 5th, the 6th, the 7th, love’s young dream.

  47. the intrinsic difficulty of the second date

  Despite my PhD, the intricate algorithm of what to do on a second date had entirely defeated me. Each restaurant seemed either too formal and ostentatious or too casual and downmarket. It was late February, so too cold for Hyde Park, and my usual preferred option, the cinema, wasn’t right either. We wouldn’t be able to talk at the cinema. I wouldn’t be able to see her.

  We arranged to meet on the campus quad outside the laboratory where I was working on my post-doc. Since leaving art school, Connie had been employed four days a week at a commercial gallery in St James’s. She had railed against the place – the lousy art, the customers with more money than taste – but it enabled her to pay the rent while she worked on her own paintings in the small east London studio she shared with friends – a collective was the term they used – each of them waiting for their breakthrough. As a career plan, it all sounded hopelessly unstructured to me, but the St James gallery at least meant she could pay her rent and eat. In a stammering phone call, I had instructed her on the bus routes open to her, the precise workings of the 19, the 22, the 38. ‘Douglas, I grew up in London,’ she had told me, ‘I know how to catch the bus. I’ll see you at six thirty.’ By six twenty-two I was beneath the clock tower, staring at the latest Biochemist, eyes sliding across the page without gaining purchase, still staring at six forty, hearing her before I saw her; the tap-tap of high heels was not a common sound on this part of the campus.

  In our digital age we now have the electronic means to summon up a face more or less at will. Back then faces were like phone numbers; you tried to memorise the important ones. But my mental snapshots of the previous weekend had begun to fade. Chaste and sober on a squally, gun-metal weekday, would I be disappointed?

  Not a chance. The reality, when I saw her, far exceeded my memories: the wonderful face framed by the raised collar of a long black overcoat; some sort of old-fashioned dress beneath it, rust red; carefully made-up; dark eyes, lips to match her dress. The scampi platter at the Rat and Parrot had ceased to be an option.

  We kissed a little awkwar
dly, an earlobe for me, hair for her. ‘You look very glamorous.’

  ‘This? Oh, I have to wear this for work,’ she said, as if to say this isn’t meant for you; eight seconds gone and already a botched kiss, an imagined slight. The evening stretched before us like a tightrope across some vast canyon. To mark the importance of the occasion, I was wearing my best jacket, raffish chocolate brown corduroy, and a knitted tie, dark plum. Her hand travelled to the knot and adjusted it.

  ‘Very nice. Good God, you actually have a pen in your top pocket.’

  ‘As a scientist, I have to. It’s my uniform.’

  She smiled. ‘Is this where you work?’

  ‘Over there, in the lab.’

  ‘And the fruit flies?’

  ‘They’re inside. Do you want to come and see?’

  ‘Am I allowed? I always assumed all labs were top secret.’

  ‘Only in films.’

  She grabbed my arms with both hands. ‘Then I have to see the fruit flies!’

  48. insectory

  She stared at the clouds of flies, her face close to the muslin, quite bewitched. It was as if I’d taken her to the unicorn enclosure.

  ‘Why fruit flies? Why not ants or beetles or stick insects?’

  Whether her interest was genuine, exaggerated or feigned, I couldn’t say. Perhaps she viewed the insectory as some kind of art installation; I know such things exist. Whatever the reason, ‘why fruit flies?’ was the kind of question that I longed to hear, and I explained about the fast breeding, the low upkeep, the conspicuous phenotypes.

  ‘Which are …?’

  ‘Observable characteristics, traits, manifestations of the genotype and the environment. In fruit flies, shorter wings, eye pigmentation, changes in the genital architecture.’

  ‘“Genital architecture”. That’s the name of my band.’

  ‘It means that you can see indications of mutation in a very short time. Fruit flies are evolution in action. That’s why we love them.’

  ‘Evolution in action. And what do you do when you want to examine their genital architecture? Please, please don’t tell me you kill them all?’

  ‘Usually we knock them unconscious.’

  ‘With tiny truncheons?’

  ‘With carbon dioxide. Then after a while they stumble back onto their feet and get on with having sex.’

  ‘My typical weekend.’

  A moment passed.

  ‘So can I keep one? I want …’ She pressed a finger to the glass ‘… that one there.’

  ‘They’re not goldfish at the fairground. They’re tools of science.’

  ‘But look – they really like me!’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because you smell of old bananas!’ Another moment passed. ‘You don’t smell of old bananas. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said you smelt of old bananas.’

  She looked over her shoulder and smiled, and I introduced her to Bruce, our pet fruit fly, to show that it was not only the art-school crowd who knew how to have a good time.

  49. caution

  The tour continued. I showed her the cold room, where we remarked on how cold it was, and the 37-degree room.

  ‘Why 37 degrees?’

  ‘Because it’s the temperature inside the human body. This is what it feels like to be inside someone.’

  ‘Sexy,’ said Connie, deadpan, and we moved on. I showed her dry ice, I showed her the centrifuge in action. Through a microscope we looked at cross sections of the tongue of a rat that had been infected with parasitic worms. Oh yes, it was quite a date, and I began to note the amused faces of my colleagues working late as usual, mouths open, eyebrows raised at this lovely woman peering into flasks and test tubes. I gave her some Petri dishes, to mix her paints in.

  When she’d seen enough we went, at her suggestion, to a tiny Eastern European restaurant that I had walked past many times without ever imagining I might enter. Faded, dimly lit, it was like stepping into a sepia photograph. A hunched and ancient waiter took our coats and showed us to a booth. At Connie’s suggestion, we drank vodka from small, thick glasses, then ate velvety soup a shade of burgundy, delicious dense dumplings and pancakes and syrupy red wine and sat side by side in the corner of the almost empty room, and soon we were fuzzy-headed and happy and even almost at ease. Rain outside, steam on the windows, an electric-bar fire blazing; it was wonderful.

  ‘You know what I envy about science? The certainty. You don’t have to worry about taste or fashion, or wait for inspiration or for your luck to change. There’s a … methodology – is that a science word? Anyway, the point is you can just work hard, chisel away and eventually you’ll get it right.’

  ‘Except it’s not quite as easy as that. Besides, you work hard.’

  She shrugged and waved her hand. ‘Well, I used to.’

  ‘I saw some of your pictures. I thought they were amazing.’

  She frowned. ‘When did you see them?’

  ‘Last weekend. While you were asleep. They were beautiful.’

  ‘Then they were probably my flatmate’s.’

  ‘No, they were yours. Hers I didn’t like at all.’

  ‘Fran is very successful. She sells a lot.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know why.’

  ‘She’s very talented, and she’s my friend.’

  ‘Of course, but I still loved yours. I thought they were very …’ I searched for some artistic term. ‘Beautiful. I mean, I don’t really know much about art—’

  ‘But you know what you like?’

  ‘Exactly. Also, you can draw terrific hands.’

  She smiled, looked at her own hand, splayed the fingers and then placed it over mine. ‘Let’s not talk about art. Or fruit flies.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘How about last weekend instead? What happened, I mean.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said and thought, here it is, the bolt gun. ‘What did you want to say?’

  ‘I don’t know. Or rather, I thought I did.’

  ‘Go on.’

  She hesitated. ‘You go first.’

  I thought a moment. ‘Okay. It’s very simple. I had an amazing time. I loved meeting you. It was fun. I’d like to do it again.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s all.’ It was by no means all, but I didn’t want to alarm her. ‘You?’

  ‘I thought … I thought the same. I had a happy time, unusually. You were very sweet. No, that’s wrong, I don’t mean that, I mean you were thoughtful and interesting and I liked sleeping with you too. Very much. It was fun. Your sister was right – you were what I needed.’

  I had found myself in this situation often enough to recognise the imminent arrival of a ‘but’ …

  ‘But I don’t have a very good track record with relationships. I don’t associate them with happiness, certainly not the last one.’

  ‘Angelo?’

  ‘Exactly. Angelo. He wasn’t very nice to me and he’s made me … I suppose, I want to be … cautious. I want to proceed with caution.’

  ‘But you want to proceed?’

  ‘With caution.’

  ‘With caution. Which means?’

  She considered for a moment, biting her lip, then leant forward. ‘Which means that if we got the bill right now and went outside, if we found a taxi and went home to your bed, then I’d be very happy.’

  Then she kissed me.

  …

  …

  …

  …

  …

  ‘Waiter!’

  50. the wild party in room 603

  The party started at a time you might reasonably expect most parties to stop, the usual treble and bass boom-tsk of electronic music soon replaced by a low-frequency oom-pah oom-pah with a distinctive comb-and-paper buzz.

  ‘Is that … an accordion?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ mumbled Connie.

  ‘Albie doesn’t play the accordion.’

  ‘Then he has an accordionist in his room.’

  ‘Oh, good grief.’


  Now the asthmatic chug resolved into four familiar stabbing minor chords, played in rotation, accompanied by much foot-stomping and thigh-slapping percussion, provided by my son.

  ‘What is this song? I know this song.’

  ‘I think it’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.’

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘Listen!’

  And sure enough, it was.

  When – if – I thought of accordionists, the word suggested an olive-skinned male wearing a Breton top. But here, Nirvana’s howl to youthful alienation was bellowed by a primal female voice, a kind of soulful town crier, with Albie now accompanying her on percussive guitar, his chord changes always just a little way behind.

  ‘I think they call it jamming,’ I said.

  ‘As in jamming your fingers in your ears,’ said Connie.

  Resigning myself to a long night, I turned on the light and reached for my book, a history of World War II, while Connie sandwiched her head between two foam pillows and assumed a horizontal brace position. The accordion, like the bagpipes, is part of the select group of instruments that people are paid to stop playing, but for the next forty-five minutes my son’s mysterious guest pushed at the musical limits of the squeezebox, regaling much of the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of the Good Times Hotel with, amongst others, a boisterous ‘Satisfaction’, a sprightly ‘Losing My Religion’ and a version of ‘Purple Rain’ so long and repetitive that it seemed to stretch the very fabric of time. ‘We are enjoying the concert, Albie,’ I texted, ‘but it’s a little late’. I pressed send and waited for the message to be received.

  I heard the bleep of a text arriving on the other side of the wall. A pause, and then ‘Moondance’ sung by emphysemic wasps.

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t read my text.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Perhaps I should call reception and complain. What’s French for “remove the accordionist from room 603”?’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Seems a bit disloyal, though, complaining about my own son.’