‘I do, sometimes, and I think it’s rather wonderful.’ It was also infectious, everything paling beside it, as if there was no other way to live.
‘It makes me “hard work”. Fatiguant. It’s not what anyone wants.’
‘They can want what they like. You said being real is what’s important. Just be yourself…’
‘…because everyone else is already taken?’
‘Oscar Wilde! Nobody could put it better. I was going to say, because you’re lovely the way you are.’
His smile developed like an old-fashioned photograph. ‘This is why it’s so different with you,’ he said. ‘We just are who we are, two people, no labels. When you come, it’s your voice I hear, it’s me you’re talking to. I was in such a bad place before you – I couldn’t imagine the rest of my life. Everything was so fucking dark, like being trapped underwater.’
To think that I could be somebody’s light.
Lying behind, he wrapped himself around me, stroking my feet with his. I felt his heart rate slow, the muscles relax in the arm that held me. ‘I’ve never felt this close to anyone,’ he said in my ear. ‘I don’t need anything else to make me feel good any more. This is all I want, every single day.’ I pushed him flat on the bed and our mouths fastened together until we were dizzy. I took a breath of something sweeter than air.
I wanted to come, and cry and laugh in this new voice of mine, to silence the warning bells, because I’d never felt so good either.
Chapter Thirty Eight
By now I was on first-name terms with Mokhtar, the pizza delivery guy. ‘Vous venez le matin aussi?’ he said, grinning, as we crossed paths in the courtyard. He was right – I didn’t normally come to the studio this early. The residents who saw me regularly must have guessed at my liaison with Jean-Luc, although according to him many of them had illicit dealings of their own. The men would not be so tolerant when it came to their wives, sisters and daughters. The women, some of them wearing hijabs, didn’t seem to see at me at all.
I was here now because I couldn’t make time later. Without my knowledge my mother had invited the other participants from her painting course in Provence to look me up if they were ever in Paris, which not many people would do on such a tenuous connection. Having agreed to meet the woman from Alaska at the Musée d’Orsay café at four o’clock, I decided to treat myself to an afternoon at the museum, which I could justify in the name of work; several of the paintings in our next book were displayed there, including two in which Baudelaire himself appeared. And a surprise morning visit to my lover, pourquoi pas? We’d parted on an exceptional high.
Jean-Luc opened the door in his underwear but had already turned his back when I came into the studio, gesticulating unseen at the person at the end of the phone. Whoever it was had got him out of bed, the covers up in a heap. ‘Why can’t you accept it?’ he spat into the handset. ‘I’m not going to change my mind!’
It seemed that I’d discovered the cause of his troubles, walking in on the tail-end of the California romance I’d suspected back at the start. I didn’t mean to be heartless but if it was no more than that, I was relieved. Break-ups are tough and Jean-Luc needed to be with somebody who got him. He threw the phone on the bed so hard it rebounded and landed on the wooden floor, where it separated into three pieces, the battery coming to rest inches from my foot.
‘Fuck!’ he said, just as he saw me standing there.
‘I’m sorry to intrude. This is obviously a bad time,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll see you later in the week?’
He caught me as I went to leave. ‘Don’t go, Alexandra.’
‘Is it girl trouble?’
‘What?’
‘The phone call. I couldn’t help hearing the last bit. You did let me in, remember?’
He laughed. ‘No, for God’s sake! There is no girl. That was my mother.’
‘Ah.’ Just as well I hadn’t said anything. Geneviève would have been able to identify me from a single word. ‘You don’t normally take her calls. Is it a special occasion?’ That was a cheap shot. I’d been trying to persuade him it would be less stressful just to go to dinner at his parents’ place than expend so much energy avoiding it.
‘I went for a drink with my dad yesterday but apparently that’s not good enough.’
‘Put some clothes on.’ This ran against the normal pattern for us and he was about to protest. ‘All in good time. Do you want to talk about it?’ With the knowledge that my theory was wrong came an urgent need to get a few things straight.
‘About sex?’ he said, picking his jeans up off the floor and pausing before putting them on.
‘Noo, about what’s going on with your mom. The two of you seem to have issues, to put it mildly.’
‘That is the last thing I want to do. I mean, no man would choose to talk about his mother when he could have you.’ He snuggled up to my neck.
‘Stop it, Jean-Luc, I’m serious. You will not be “having me” unless we have this conversation. I’ve seen how this is upsetting your mother, and it’s clearly affecting you too.’
He could even sulk prettily.
‘What’s the problem? It’s such a shame when you’ve only just come back. She was looking forward to spending some time with you.’
‘Look, I know you’re trying to help and you think you know my mother, but you have no idea what it’s like to have to deal with her. You really wouldn’t understand.’
‘You’d be surprised.’ I didn’t elaborate, having nothing constructive to contribute from my own experience as a maternal combat veteran. ‘Your mom loves you, I know that much. If you could only hear the way she talks about you.’
He shot me a dirty look. ‘You think I haven’t? I spent years listening to that shit.’
‘Sure, she overdoes it but there were things any parent would be proud of. How about when you got the top score in France in that exam, what was it again?’ Suddenly I could picture the Malavoines’ living room, right down to where we were all sitting, the first time I heard that story. It was the day I’d met the eighteen-year-old Jean-Luc for all of ten seconds.
‘The bac de philo. She was trying to impress you, as if you cared. There’s no such thing as the best score in France. The perfect son she talks about is an être imaginaire, not me. Believe me, you’ve only heard what she wants you to know. I got the highest mark you can get, and so did other people. And it was nothing to do with her. That was down to me and László, and to luck – one of the essay questions was something we’d talked about a lot. And I didn’t even write what I really thought, I just gave the answers they wanted.’
‘You and László were in school together? For some reason I thought he was older.’
‘He is older. He’s thirty-two. He’s in Budapest this summer but he was my philosophy teacher from when I was sixteen – it was his first job. My mother paid him to tutor me so I could get that score. He never took the money or gave me any lessons though. We used to hang out here and drink beer and smoke shit and talk, or play football with the kids over there.’ He tipped his head toward the narrow strip of park that ran alongside the railway tracks.
I tried to manage the look on my face. ‘So you’re telling me you used to drink and get high with your philosophy teacher in this apartment? What kind of a person does that? I’m talking about him, by the way, not you.’
‘He’s not a paedo, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Jean-Luc said. ‘Il aime les mecs et les meufs. László likes men and women, but never kids. He doesn’t agree with the way society puts labels on people, pressuring them to live a certain way without questioning it. He was a big influence on me.’
‘I can see.’ Just as well Jean-Luc and I had ‘no labels’ – I didn’t like to think what mine would be.
‘I mean, I was already thinking that way. I just had never met anyone who wanted to have that kind of conversation with me.’
‘What was the essay about, just out of interest?’
‘Vivons-nous pour
être heureux?’
‘Do we live to be happy? Is the purpose of life… Gosh, there’s a question!’
Jean-Luc closed his eyes and I could hear the emotion in his breathing. ‘László was there when I didn’t have anyone else, okay? If the right person appears in your life when you need them, you don’t send them away.’
I felt tears springing up as I reached for his hand, realising I’d missed the important part. ‘Too bad he’s not around now you’re back.’
‘It is. But on the other hand, if he was here we’d have nowhere to go.’
‘True,’ I said. ‘Does he know about us?’
‘Yes. I asked him, László, my friend, do you mind if I use your apartment to make crazy love to a beautiful woman?’
‘Sure you did. And what did he say?’
‘He said avec plaisir. So, I’ve answered all your questions. Are you going to make me feel better now?’
I took off my top so I could feel my skin against his bare chest. ‘Oh, I can do that,’ I said, sighing as he proceeded to undress me. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Carresse-toi. C’est si beau de te voir jouir.’
No wonder he always switched back to French for sex talk – it sounds more hot than dirty and he knew it. ‘Um, thanks, but I like it better when you make me. What is it with men wanting to watch women touch themselves? Isn’t it kind of a waste when we’re together?’
‘Who says you can’t have both? You know it’s not a waste.’
I stretched, my arms reaching up into the air, feeling a cascade of sensation the length of my body, starting at my fingertips. My right hand followed involuntarily, pausing on my belly, pressing hard. It’s so intriguing, all these zones: touch one place and feel it in another. ‘You’re really making me want to.’
* * *
I didn’t so much walk back across the courtyard as float. It was raining and I didn’t care. Nothing could affect me in my bubble; I could feel the flush lingering on my cheeks. We could switch between states in an instant: sadness and elation, stress and excitement, post-coital satisfaction and… sheer horror.
As the double doors leading to the street closed behind me, a cab pulled up right outside, its passenger leaning forward to pay the driver. It was Jean-Luc’s mother. If I entered the code to go back in, Geneviève would see me. If I walked off in either direction, she would see me – the car door was opening now and there was no way I could make it to the corner before she got out, even at a run. There was no guarantee she hadn’t already seen me from inside, recognising the unusual blue and white skirt she once admired that reminded us both of Matisse.
I dashed into the only possible bolt-hole: the kebab place beside the apartment building. The inscrutable pairs of eyes that had seen me so many times fixed on me in pity and surprise. The man behind the counter said something urgent to one of the others, who pushed a chair in my direction. My head dropped down between my knees and for a few seconds there was a warm, fuzzy blackness at my temples. I’d forgotten to eat breakfast. ‘Ma’a,’ said the older man, ‘sokkar.’ They gave me water and a sticky chunk of baklava and we stayed like that for a long time, watching the rain pelt down. There was an almighty crack of thunder directly overhead. Refusing more food and trying to block out the sight and smell of greasy meat on a spit, I drank a glass of sweet mint tea in small sips before the downpour came to an end. One of the men went outside and looking up at the sky he said, ‘Inshallah, it is over now.’
Chapter Thirty Nine
Vanessa was with me in the kitchen, leaning on the doorframe and feasting on her nails as she explained her theories about race relations, a burning issue not just for France but for her too following Asradi’s exhibition. There wasn’t room for both of us and I was the one making dinner but since she was sounding rational and articulate I was trying to listen, thinking of those men in the café, so steeped in their culture yet so at home in Paris. They had been so kind to me. Although her father was in the living room, as usual Vanessa seemed to prefer my company. I hoped that would change when they went to Nice.
‘But there hasn’t been any trouble recently, has there?’ I said. ‘I haven’t heard anything on the news.’ I hadn’t been following the news all that closely, I’ll admit.
‘True,’ she said. ‘But it might be about to kick off again.’
Just as I was about to enquire how she would know, the doorbell rang. There was no entry phone system in the building, which meant the caller was right outside in the hallway. For that reason, it didn’t happen often. ‘Are you expecting anyone, Philippe?’
Philippe was so busy emailing his brother to set up fishing trips that he didn’t even look up from his laptop. The buzzer sounded again, for longer, and I pushed past Vanessa with a sigh.
‘Geneviève! Quelle surprise!’ And it really was, the worst kind. Had she seen me leaving the studio? I threw the towel I’d dried my hands on behind the door as I invited her in, glad the apartment was looking presentable. Philippe got up to greet her and made Vanessa do the same, pushing her in Geneviève’s direction. Neither of them looked very happy about it.
‘We were about to have an apéritif,’ I lied. ‘Vanessa, could you fetch the rosé in the fridge – and some glasses, please?’ Without this level of micro-management she would be capable of delivering the bottle alone as if we were supposed to pass it around and swig from it like ados.
‘I won’t be staying long,’ Geneviève said. ‘I was visiting a friend in rue Servandoni and we decided to go to Mass at Saint-Sulpice.’ I breathed again. There was no sign of Geneviève abandoning her habitual decorum to cause a scene. Between my ability to relive every past chagrin in technicolour and to conjure up new ones, I wished I had a less active imagination.
‘Very good,’ nodded Philippe, who went through the motions of Catholicism, albeit not to the point of attending Mass unless there was a party involved. He was good at concealing this from Geneviève.
‘Henri tells me you’re too busy to go to Nice, Alexandra.’ Before I could get a word in edgewise, she continued. ‘So I had an idea the two of you might like. Or the three of you, perhaps,’ she said, looking at Vanessa with distaste. At that, Vanessa slammed the tray down on the table with a grunt and made herself scarce.
As Philippe made no effort to play host, I set to work opening the wine, a Bandol we’d been looking forward to. There was to be no let-up on the Côte d’Azur theme until he’d packed his bags and left. I went to the kitchen in search of some olives or crackers to accompany the drinks. Needless to say, we had neither. The awkward silence in the living room told me they were waiting for my return.
‘So,’ Geneviève said, as I sat down, ‘Henri and I thought you could join us this weekend at my sister’s near Honfleur. That way you’ll get a little break from Paris.’
When I caught Philippe’s eye he was trying to stop himself grinning and I pieced it all together in an instant: Henri had orchestrated this. They couldn’t seem to get enough of each other.
‘That’s so kind,’ I said, not trusting myself to look at my husband again. There was no point – he wasn’t going to help me out.
I handed her a small measure of wine. She was looking at me expectantly but on her face my memory superimposed her expression the day we ran into each other in the Bon Marché grocery store. That excruciating moment was still lingering and now there was another – had she seen me or not? I’d never been comfortable in her presence but that was nothing compared to the crawling unease she produced in me since Jean-Luc had come back. They talk about ‘fight or flight’ – I didn’t have either option. The Malavoines were so tightly woven into the fabric of our lives that there was no escaping them without ripping it end to end.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That would be lovely, won’t it, Philippe?’ As Geneviève turned toward him I grabbed a second’s respite from my false smile. It must have used different facial muscles from usual and they were smarting with the strain.
‘Véronique’
s place?’ Philippe asked. Like him, Geneviève had an entourage of siblings.
‘Yes, do you remember, Alexandra? The one right on the coast.’
‘Oh yes, I remember,’ I said. ‘I liked it very much.’ Philippe and I had spent a weekend there, not long after we married. It was a typical Norman country house, half-timbered, with a steep tiled roof. I was already formulating survival strategies: long walks, taking charge of the kitchen (Geneviève didn’t really cook), studying the news so I could talk with the men and not find myself marooned with her as so often happened. But there were limits: if I asked to go out in a boat with them, Philippe would know for sure something was wrong.
‘That’s settled then,’ Geneviève said, with the satisfaction of someone whose will is rarely disputed. ‘Come for dinner on Saturday and stay the rest of the weekend. The traffic going back shouldn’t be too bad at this time of year.’
I listened for the elevator to be sure she’d gone. ‘You knew about this,’ I said to Philippe. ‘Is this the real reason you’re not leaving for Nice until Monday?’
‘Not at all. I told you, there won’t be space for me and Vanessa in the house until then. We can hardly share a room!’ He motioned to me to sit back down. ‘I don’t see what you’re so upset about. Geneviève means well, you know. Henri says she finds you distant – did you realise that? She didn’t have to make an effort with you when we got married but she always has. You could try being a bit more gracious.’
‘I said we’d go, didn’t I?’ It wasn’t exactly true and I certainly couldn’t claim to have been especially gracious. Geneviève hadn’t phrased it as an invitation, more of a fait accompli. ‘This dinner’s not going to cook itself,’ I said, retreating because I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Philippe. I was in danger of throwing a fit and forcing him to choose between me and the Malavoines – in fact, that could be a neat way to resolve all of our problems because as things stood I doubted any such gamble would go my way. Always made an effort! As if I’d have cared if she didn’t. I should never have played along with this charade; Philippe had other friends whose wives I didn’t know. Geneviève was more than twenty years older than me, for God’s sake!
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