by Heide Goody
“A little doesn’t count. I’ve got to tell you, Matt,” she said, placing a hand on his chest. “I’ve not had a chance to do half the things you have.”
“Not all of them good.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, feeling a righteous certainty grow within her. “I came down here to do stuff, make a stand, make an impact. But while I’m here, I am going to do all those things I failed to do in life. By Jove, I’m going to party all night, get absolutely cotton-picking drunk and, if the mood takes me, bungee jump off a bridge.”
“Well, good for you.”
“Quite.” Joan grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the entrance of Club Dinosaure.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“To get drunk and party all night.”
“Wait a minute,” said Matt. “I thought we were going to find your friends.”
“That can wait.”
“Okay.” Matt‘s hand squirmed in her grip but he was unable to break free. “I’ll buy you one drink and then we go find your friends.”
“Five,” said Joan, picking a number out of nowhere.
“Five. No, no. Two then.”
“Six,” she said.
“What? You’re meant to come down to meet me, not go up. Where did you learn to negotiate?”
“The siege of Orleans. I’m bloody Joan of Arc, me.”
Matt looked at her. The disbelief on his face was tempered by the smile he was trying to suppress.
“Three,” he said. “And that’s my final offer.”
“Three drinks. At least. You swear?”
“All the time,” said Matt.
“Can I help you, sir?”
Francis looked up at the black-suited and neckless man-mountain next to him. Francis’s covert reconnaissance mission had lasted a full twenty seconds before he had been spotted teasing apart the panels that formed part of the street-side security barricade in front of the Coureurs de Bois fashion show.
“Erm,” said Francis and looked round to see if he could see Claude among the shadows across the street.
“You need to go away now, sir,” said the man. “You don’t want to cause a scene.”
“Cause a scene?”
“We don’t want to ruin the evening for the lovely people, do we?”
Francis looked along to the entrance, the cordon ropes and the carpet, the white trellis arch through which smartly dressed men and immodestly dressed women walked without any hindrance. So close, thought Francis.
“I just wanted to look inside,” said Francis.
“Of course you did, sir,” said the huge man.
“If I could just…”
Francis made to move towards the entrance but, with a speed that was surprising for a man who was essentially spherical in shape, the security guard snatched Francis’s wrist and twisted it in a way his wrist had never been twisted before and which he hoped never to experience again. Francis squealed and doubled up.
“Let’s not do anything unwise, sir,” said the man.
By the entrance, another black-clad wall of flesh and a woman with a clipboard looked over.
“That weally hurts,” squeaked Francis.
There was the clack of heels on paving stones.
“What’s going on here?” enquired the woman with the clipboard.
“Just a trespasser.”
“No, no, no. Oh, my God. Is it you?”
Francis realised she was talking to him.
“Is it?” he said.
“Ante Dzalto?”
“Yes?” suggested Francis, hoping that that was the answer that would make the pain stop.
“Let him up! Let him up!” hissed the woman.
The pain vanished as abruptly as it had arrived and the guard helped Francis straighten up.
“Apologies, Monsieur… um.”
“Dzalto,” said the woman. “The famous Croatian designer. I recognised you by your delightfully ethnic kaftan, Monsieur Dzalto. I read an article about you in last month’s Harper’s Bazaar.” She turned to address the security guard sternly. “Mr Dzalto is at the forefront of the revolutionary Ergo-Eco movement.”
“Therefore the house?” translated Francis uncertainly.
“You are the most important man in the house,” said the woman. “Come this way.”
As the woman swept him towards the entrance, Francis waved to Claude across the street.
“My fwiend,” he said, adopting what he thought might be a Croatian accent.
“Friend?”
“He’s vewy shy. Come on!”
Claude ran out across the road, bottle in hand and his collar turned up to hide much of his face.
“This is Restani Krumpir,” lied Francis, plumping for something that he hoped sounded sufficiently suitable for a Croat. “He’s a…”
“Dadaist poet,” said Claude, glancing about furtively. “Are we going in?”
“I’ll put you down as Monsieur Dzalto’s plus one,” said the woman and ushered them through the entrance.
She grabbed the arm of a skinny young man.
“Leo. Please ensure Monsieur Dzalto and his friend are escorted directly to the VIP area.”
The skinny Leo bowed sharply and gestured for them to follow.
“I don’t know how you did it,” whispered Claude, stopping a waiter to swap his wine bottle for a flute of champagne, “but I like your style.”
Matt handed over a banknote at the bar and didn’t seem to be impressed with the amount of change he was given. He passed a bottle to Joan and she drank deeply.
“What’s this?” she shouted to be heard over the music.
“It’s beer,” Matt shouted back. “Or at least something that used to be beer or maybe once had a dream about being beer. It’s alcohol.”
Joan drank again.
“Why were people standing in a line outside?”
“They were queueing, Joan. Waiting to take their turn.”
Joan pulled a face.
“Is that what people do now, on account of there being so many of them?”
“Most people do,” said Matt, “and who knew that you could just stride to the front and demand entrance because you’re Joan of Arc?”
Joan looked down at the figures on the sunken dance-floor, moving through the frenetically stuttering lights. The music was so loud it seemed to pass right through her, as though she were listening to it with her bones, not her ears.
“This is great!” she shouted.
“Is it?”
“I’ve never heard music like this. The beat. The drums. It’s like we’re inside a heart, beating. No, it’s like a military drum.”
She grinned and turned to Matt. In the flickering half-light of the nightclub, he appeared to be something other than just a man she had met in the street.
“When we were marching on Troyes I met this friar, Brother Richard.”
“Who’s doing what now?” said Matt.
“It was 1429.”
“What? Today?” Matt looked at his watch.
“I was leading the French army to Riems. We passed through Troyes. Our soldiers were starving. There was nothing to eat. But we were lucky. This friar, Brother Richard, had been in the town and had been preaching to the townsfolk that the end of the world was coming. Armageddon.”
“Armageddon,” shouted Matt. “I heard that bit.”
“So what did the townsfolk do?” shouted Joan.
“I don’t know.”
“They planted beans.”
Matt nodded.
“Why?”
“Because beans grow quickly. The people of Troyes believed – wrongly I admit – that they had very little time left and so used it to the fullest. They grew beans and, even though they were wrong, their crop saved us from starvation.”
Joan chinked her bottle against Matt’s and drank the last of it. Matt grinned.
“You know before you stepped out in the big wide world, that place you escaped from…”
; “What about it?”
“By any chance, did it have big high walls and strong gates and lots of people in white uniforms?”
Joan nodded, impressed.
“That’s amazing. How did you guess?”
“I’m a copper,” said Matt.
“Copper what?”
He gave her a look.
“So what’s the meaning of it?”
“What?”
“Your bean story.”
“I don’t know,” said Joan. “I suppose that when you’ve not got much time, you’ve just got to seize the opportunities. Plant beans. Dance.”
“Dance?”
“Dance!” she said, took his bottle from his hand and dragged him towards the dance-floor.
Squashed in amongst the party hubbub at the periphery of the catwalk show, Francis and Claude made their plans.
“We do something dramatic,” said Claude. “We make a scene.”
“The big nasty man who twisted my arm said we didn’t want to make a scene,” said Francis. “What’s a scene?”
“A bold statement. Make people take notice. Here.”
Francis looked at the fresh glass of champagne in his hand.
“For courage,” said Claude. “Look at that. It’s sickening. What’s that? A fur bikini!”
“A fukini!” said Francis drunkenly. “Disgwaceful. In my day, people took the furs of animals for essential warmth but that… thwee – what is it? Gerbils? – thwee whatevers died just to cover her thingies and doo-dah.”
“Chinchilla,” said Claude.
“Is that what they call it? We must act, comwade.”
“Yes, yes. After a bit more fortification. Wine! We need more wine!”
A woman sidled up to Francis.
“Mr Dzalto? Can I get your opinion on tonight’s offerings?”
She thrust a black electronic device with a flashing red light in front of Francis’s face.
“Press,” whispered Claude in his ear.
“Press what?” Francis could see nothing to press.
“Journalists,” said Claude. “Like the seagulls following the trawler, hoping for sardines.”
“I like seagulls,” said Francis.
The woman seemed to take this as a positive sign. “So, do you approve of the clothes on show tonight?”
“No,” declared Francis vehemently. “I would rather see these women naked than parading around in these obscenities.”
“If everyone was naked, wouldn’t that put you and your fellow clothes designers out of business?” she asked with a wry smile.
“What is your name, child?” he asked.
“Aurélie.”
“Listen, Aurélie. If nakedness was good enough for Adam and Eve in the Garden, then it is more than good enough for us,” he said.
Claude nudged Francis in the ribs.
“Brilliant plan, comrade.”
“Eh?”
“Aurélie, if you’ve got a friend with a camera, get them over here now.”
“Why?” said Francis. “What are we doing?”
“We’re going to throw a couple of sardines their way.”
“Okay,” said Matt, stepping out onto the pavement and waggling his little finger in his ear. “I think I’ve gone completely deaf.”
“Music’s better when it’s loud,” said Joan, a grin fixed on her face.
“Yes, I’m sure I used to believe that too. I think I also used to believe dancing was fun.”
“You were amazing,” said Joan. “Your dancing. Like nobody else in there. Where did you learn it?”
“School disco.”
“There’s a school of disco? Wow.” Joan stumbled for a moment and clutched Matt’s arm for support. “I think the alcohol has gone to my legs. I need a sit down.”
“No,” said Matt. “We need to find your friends.”
Joan looked up and down the street.
“I’m too tired to walk. Where’s your Ferrari?”
“Same place it always was,” said Matt. “My dinky little Fiat is parked somewhere on the Left Bank.”
“Is it far?”
“We can make it, I’m sure. If you managed to march all the way from – where was it? – Troyes to Riems.”
Joan linked arms with Matt and leaned on him for support as they walked.
“I do wonder if you might be mad,” said Matt conversationally.
“My mother said I was touched by angels.”
“Well, there’s a worrying statement, depending how much you want to read into it.”
There was an entirely novel whirling sensation in Joan’s stomach and she held onto Matt more tightly until it subsided.
“What are these?” she said and pointed to more than a hundred little padlocks attached to the railings of the bridge they were crossing.
“Love locks,” said Matt. “Young couples inscribe their initials on the lock and then attach it to fences, gates, whatever. I believe this bridge is particularly popular. The lovers put their lock here and then throw the key into the river.”
Joan moved from the support of Matt’s arm to the sturdier but colder support of the railings. A glass-roofed boat was emerging from directly beneath them. A distance ahead there was a party of some sort on a pontoon by the side of the river.
“This city never sleeps,” she said. “Why do they do it?”
“Do what?” said Matt.
“Put the locks here.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s the kind of cute, dumb thing people do. A symbol of the unbreakable bonds of love.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“If you say so. I think the city government regards it as vandalism. As for unbreakable, give me a piece of wire and half an hour, I’m sure I could have most of these off.”
“Don’t you dare,” said Joan, giving him a gentle slap on the shoulder. “You are a cynical man, Officer Rose. My friend, Evelyn, warned me against talking to British people.”
“You know, you sound very French, when you make that dismissive little 'pff’ noise when you talk. What did your friend say about British people?”
“I do not make a noise like that,” said Joan, trying and failing to replay the conversation in her head. “Evelyn said that what British people say is usually the opposite of what they mean.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he said happily.
“I bet you don’t even believe in love,” she said.
“Love?” Matt gave it some thought. “I believe in lust. I believe in the biological imperative to find a mate. I believe that we are controlled by a soup of hormones and chemicals that bond us together. That’s love.”
“That is not love,” said Joan. “I’m talking about the union of two souls. A pure emotion. An earthly reflection of God’s love for us.”
Matt grimaced.
“I can’t quite buy that.”
“I wasn’t offering it up as opinion.”
“Then we’ll have to disagree. I mean, yes, emotion is just another way of talking about our physiological reaction to the world around us. But souls? God?”
“What about them?”
“No offence meant, but those kinds of concepts are entirely meaningless to an atheist.”
Joan was surprised. She knew there was a word ‘atheist’ and that it was attached to a concept and a meaning and, if she thought on it, she knew that there were, somewhere, people who didn’t believe in God, but she didn’t actually expect to meet one. In her heart, she hadn’t really believed that they genuinely existed.
“You don’t believe in God?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I used to believe as a child but then, along with Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy, I put God to one side. The universe doesn’t need him.”
“No,” said Joan firmly. “Without God, we’d be nothing. He is the ultimate, the only explanation for everything. To deny God is to deny the wonder of creation.”
Matt shook
his head.
“Quite the opposite,” he said. “The way I see it, God removes all wonder from existence. What is life? God made it. What is love? It comes from God. Why are we here? Because God put us here. It’s monotonous. Take God out of the equation and suddenly the world is more miraculous. That the laws of physics should make a universe like ours and that, in one tiny corner of that universe, on a planet that’s just the right distance from its sun for life to exist, the forces of chance and evolution have led to the creation of two people, you and I, and that we should find each other here…”
“You speak as though we are lonely and insignificant specks in a loveless void,” said Joan.
“No. Flip your perspective around, Joan. We’re the centre. We’re everything. Two conscious entities, brought together at this point in space and time against all probability. It’s you and me against the universe, kiddo.”
Joan realised that Matt had her hands in his at the same moment that he did.
“That is,” he said, withdrawing his hand, “it’s not necessarily you and me. I mean, you and me. I mean, it could be but I was just making a point – hang on! I know that wolf!”
He pointed at a shadow sprinting along the embankment.
“So do I,” said Joan.
Christopher was seriously considering moving seat or simply leaping overboard to get away from the sound of the Aberdaron WI.
It was astonishing that the women could find such hilarity in the pictures they had taken of members at the Louvre. It was equally astonishing that they had taken them in such numbers that it had provided entertainment for them for the entire river cruise. It was further astonishing that Christopher had not spotted exactly when their lady-like chuckles had transformed into shrieking cackles.
“Honestly, Lord,” he said, “back in my day, we would have burned them as witches. I don’t suppose you could see your way to shutting them up?”
At that, a sudden bang from above silenced the women. Something large and furry had landed heavily on the glass roof.
“Oh, Christ!” quailed Miriam.
“What is it?” shrieked Val, staring at the four fat feet padding along the ceiling.
“Calm, ladies!” commanded Agnes.
There was a shout from the driver ahead. Agnes began to reply but was interrupted by the smashing of glass as the roof finally gave way and a great shaggy beast fell into the passenger cabin.