Lying Together (18 page)

Ironically, the prospect of seeing Gerald again revitalized all the energy I'd once thought I'd regained as a result of leaving him. I looked at the room with a new eye. I photographed my chair in all its plainness, as if it were van Gogh's chair at Arles. I photographed the wardrobe with its doors open, a combination of strange angles and absurd gaping mysteries. I photographed my bed, with the cold little window above it almost aching with loneliness. I photographed myself in the mirror – shattered, divided. I felt enthusiastic about my street project for the first time since my arrival. I decided I would go down to the wholesale markets that night and see if I could catch Cherbal at his work. I hung around in the Place de l'Opéra taking long shots across the square, till the cafés closed and the streets emptied. Then I took the Métro to Les Halles. There was a lot to see and I got some good compositions. I looked out for Cherbal, but he was not to be seen. Some flower porters gave me a bunch of carnations and I was carrying them back home, stepping over the crates and debris strewn over the road, when I saw the little figure in black, hobbling along ahead of me, a bulging string bag in each hand. It was four a.m. and the streets were still dark, and I couldn't be sure at first, but I hurried alongside her and fell into step.

‘
Bonjour, Madame
,' I began, bending to look into her face. She looked up at me, slightly suspicious, slightly cross. Then she recognized me.

‘Ah,' she said, ‘my young neighbour. Good day to you, Mademoiselle.' She put down her shopping and shook my hand. A porter, doing a passable imitation of Cherbal with a lively hosepipe, sluiced our legs as he passed. Mademoiselle Regnier cursed him with an expression which was unknown to me, but elicited a ripe reply from the porter. Then she turned to me with a lovely smile, and I could see she had once been a beauty: ‘Take no notice. He is an ignoramus.'

I went to pick up her shopping bags, now lying in a puddle at our feet. ‘Let me help you with these. You're out very late.'

‘No,' she replied, ‘very early. They sell off the damaged fruit for next to nothing, and practically throw away the vegetables. Look at this –' She ferreted in one of her bags and produced a creamy white cauliflower. ‘I picked this up from the pavement. Perfectly good. You see, Mademoiselle, I am not rich. I must take advantage of opportunities.'

We walked back together, slowly. We climbed the eight floors even more slowly.

‘This is a long way up for you,' I remarked.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘One lives how one can.'

My old desire to know more about Mademoiselle Regnier took hold of me. ‘Will you have coffee with me, Madame?' I paused by my door.

‘
Non, merci, Mademoiselle
, I will not intrude.'

‘Oh, please. It would be
my
pleasure.'

She inclined her scarfed head with the graciousness of a princess and followed me into my room. Its bleakness struck me anew, as I saw it through the old woman's eyes.

‘You must forgive the mess,' I said, hastily clearing negatives and prints from the hard chair. ‘I'm not here for long. And I'm not at home very much.'

Mademoiselle Regnier sat down and put her bags on the floor at her feet. She glanced around the room with an expression that was almost rueful. The enamel jug was empty and so I went out to the landing to fill the cafetière. When I returned, Mademoiselle Regnier was studying the photograph of Gerald which I had left lying on the table.

‘Very handsome,' she remarked. ‘
Très, très beau.
He is your lover?'

I was disconcerted by her directness, and answered in rather a flustered fashion. ‘He was once. A while back. I'm afraid he's marrying someone else now.'

‘I see.' Mademoiselle Regnier looked at me and then the photo. ‘Then you would be better to put this man out of your life, Mademoiselle. Let him go –
Bye-bye
!' (She said that in English, waving her hand like a child.) ‘There is no future for you there. Believe me, Mademoiselle, I speak from experience.'

‘That's why I'm here – in Paris,' I said. ‘I've come to forget.' I avoided her eye, concentrated on making the coffee. There was a silence. The cafetière spluttered and splashed coffee over the cramped cooker. I lifted it and hastily poured two cups. Mademoiselle Regnier took one in her bony, misshapen hand.

‘I've had a lot of trouble with men,' she said finally, as she swallowed. ‘It is not too much to say that men have ruined me. Especially handsome men. Especially those. You see, Mademoiselle, I am not exactly the sort of woman it does you good to have coffee with. I have a bad reputation.'

I half laughed. ‘Surely not,' I said.

‘Assuredly so. People don't care so much now – now that I'm old. They put up with me now. But I've had a lot of hard words. No doubt Cherbal has given you his usual warning …' Her eyes twinkled attractively in the wrinkled mask of her face, a face still powdered, still a little rouged.

I didn't reply, but she obviously knew he had talked about her. ‘Well, Cherbal has not got much finesse.' She smiled. ‘A porter after all, only a porter. At least the men in my life had some charm, some culture …' She got up painfully slowly and went to the mantelpiece where I'd roughly arranged some contact prints. She picked out the pictures I'd taken of the women in Pigalle. It had been difficult to get those; the women had been annoyed when they saw my camera, turning their backs and making rude gestures. Two of them had threatened me in the end, saying I was embarrassing their clients and spoiling their livelihood, and I'd had to stop. Mademoiselle Regnier looked at them and said, ‘These are yours? You are a professional photographer, Mademoiselle?'

‘Of a kind.' I felt embarrassed. I took the prints from her and put them face downwards. ‘These are not very good. Just experimenting.'

She shrugged. ‘Don't be embarrassed on my account. It's a way of life after all. And you don't have to depend on one man, always waiting at his beck and call. But there you are, I was ignorant and stupid. But that's all in the past. Girls these days don't make that kind of mistake, do they? They're much more independent.' She picked up Gerald's picture again and then propped it up on the mantelpiece. ‘
Très beau,'
she said with a sigh. ‘
Très, très beau.
' And then she said it was late and she needed to lie down for an hour or two: ‘I'm always tired, but I never sleep. It must be my bad conscience.' She laughed, shook my hand and wished me good night.

On the Saturday I went down to the shops and got fruit, cheese, wine, eggs. I'd decided I could just about manage an omelette on the little cooker. I chose some pictures to pin around the room to show off my prowess. I'd developed my shots of Les Halles and I was pleased with them. I loved the sensual heaps of vegetables and fruit, the early morning light filtering through the darkness and the casual grace of the porters as they carried the crates about. I thought Gerald might be impressed.

He arrived about three. I heard his voice in the courtyard, loud and confident as always, interrogating Cherbal. ‘Eighth floor,' said Cherbal, pointing. ‘Right up to the top.' I sat on the narrow bed and waited for him. I felt panic-stricken, as if I were standing on a bridge, deciding whether to jump, and finding my feet suddenly leaving the rail. Simultaneously, Gerald knocked at the door.

He'd brought champagne and flowers. What a cliché, I thought. But I felt alive for the first time since I'd set foot in France. Gerald looked around at the room and frowned with disbelief. I knew what he was thinking. How could I have exchanged his soft sofas and silk lamp-shades for this condemned cell? He said nothing about it, however. He popped the cork and poured the wine into coffee cups: ‘To us!
Vive l'amour!
' And then he kissed me.

We drank the champagne and made love for what seemed like hours. The bed was too narrow and the wardrobe doors kept opening at inopportune moments and we were light-headed with wine, but I felt happy. I cooked him an omelette – a
pièce de résistance
, he said. But he couldn't wait for my elaborately arranged platter of cheeses; he had to rush because he was meeting a man at the Quai d'Orsay at eight. I started to panic: we hadn't discussed Sarah, we hadn't mentioned the engagement or what was to happen to us from now on. Gerald saw the look in my eyes. ‘Don't spoil things,' he said before I could speak. He gave me the sort of kiss that was unfair in the circumstances, grabbed his document case, and left. As I stood in the doorway, watching his elegant back disappear down the stairs, I heard the click of Mademoiselle Regnier's door, and saw her old brown eyes looking at Gerald, then looking at me.

I turned and went quickly back into the room. I looked at my divided face in the shattered mirror. Then I sat down on the bed, which was still knotted and wrinkled from love-making, and stared at the monstrous wardrobe, the hideous bidet, the ghastly table, the uncompromising chair. For Gerald's next visit it was obvious I would have to redecorate the room.

FRENCH COFFEE

I
t was the beginning of the conference, and Jim knew already that he was out of step with the Europeans. For one thing, he was too big. They seemed such tiny guys, these French and Spaniards, these Italians and Belgians. They nipped round him like tugs round a liner. And they nipped about intellectually too. While he was trying to work out the language, they were on to something else. He felt out of things; his high-school French stilted and plangent, his accent risible with its slow childish drawl. He listened to the Europeans slipping smoothly between one another's languages – and felt a fool.

He'd managed to deal with breakfast only because there'd been a woman at his table. Babette had seen his hesitation with the waiter, had guessed his problem. ‘He asks if you want coffee with milk. And if you want bread or croissants.' She smiled encouragingly. She wore a yellow scarf wound round her head and was smoking a cigarette.

He'd seen her the night before, at the opening seminar. She'd asked a question in French. He didn't know what she'd said – someone had forgotten to translate it. There'd been a bit of a linguistic free-for-all after that, and he'd felt like he was the only one who didn't know what was going on. Some of the delegates got very excited. A woman with long blond hair had walked out, shouting. The chairman, French, had given a shrug of theatrical proportions.

Jim smiled, first at Babette, then the waiter. ‘Oh,
oui.
Milk –
lait.
And some croissants, please.
Merci.
'

The waiter rushed off impatiently. Jim turned to his rescuer. ‘Gee, thanks. I haven't got the hang of this yet. I'm glad at least someone speaks English.'

‘Not very well, I regret.'

‘Well, better than my French.'

‘Perhaps you can speak German? A lot of people –'

‘No.'

‘Spanish?'

‘Not really. Hello and goodbye. Things like that.'

‘Italian?'

He shook his head. ‘I guess I only speak American.'

He felt ashamed. He'd spent hours with the phrase book on the flight over. He'd begun to feel confident as his school exercises returned to his memory. He'd counted to twenty, he'd asked himself the time, he'd enquired after his health, he'd reminded himself of colours, he'd asked directions to the Town Hall. But the moment he landed, it all went out of his head. In Customs, in the Arrivals Hall, in the queue for taxis, he'd been assaulted by a barrage of vowels and consonants crushed unrecognizably together. Everything he tried to say was met by a series of blank, cross faces. He felt like a deaf man, asking everyone to repeat everything
. ‘Je ne comprends pas!
' became the one phrase he could state with conviction.

Babette had noticed him the previous night, too. How he'd stood out. Not just because he was so tall and broad in the chest – and tanned in the comprehensive way only Californians could make look natural – but because he'd looked lost and disarmingly puzzled. He'd carried a notebook, rather obviously new, but had written nothing in it. He'd chewed his pencil instead, watching people's faces and gestures; clearly oblivious to most of what was being said. The translation service hadn't found its feet yet. Philippe had skimped on that, asking delegates to volunteer on a rota basis, but they'd got caught up in the arguments themselves and had forgotten their duties. Philippe would have to sort that out, she thought. But she wasn't convinced he would; he was already edgy trying to cope with last minute cancellations, rearranging the schedules of the key speakers, making sure all the lodging arrangements were satisfactory.

‘Is your room okay?' Babette knew Americans expected high material standards; student residences didn't always fill the bill. One professor had refused to share sanitary arrangements with some other participants and had had to be moved out to a three-star hotel.

‘I guess. I was so jet-lagged I'd have slept in a barrel.' But as she'd brought the subject up, he thought he'd probe a little. ‘Although I am a little confused as to bathroom etiquette round here.'

‘
Bathroom
etiquette?' Babette frowned.

‘It's just kinda public.' He winced. ‘This morning, for example, the women –'

The waiter slid himself between them, deposited a bowl of
café au lait
in front of Jim and laid a basket of croissants on the checked cloth, muttering something.

‘What? What did he say?' He watched the waiter. His efficiency with the tray and the cloth and the dishes exuded contempt for the non-francophone.

‘Just
bon appetit.
'

‘Oh, right. So let's tuck in.' Jim looked round for a plate. There was only a small square of flimsy paper napkin in front of him. He reached for a croissant, and bit into it self-consciously. The flakes of pastry fell all over the table: ‘Excuse me.'

‘But you were saying – about the women?' Babette's eyes were round and prominent and golden brown. Bedroom eyes, he would have said. She was a good deal younger than he was, but those eyes were well-travelled.

‘Well, I didn't like to ask. I mean, I thought I'd made a mistake. They were all – well – hardly dressed. I mean they were wearing T-shirts but just covering … you know …' He gestured, hand cutting across his lap.

Babette finished her cigarette, ground it into the ashtray, smiling. ‘How terrible for you.'

Jim watched her small fingers prodding the cork tip. As the acrid smell drifted upwards he couldn't help commenting, ‘Say, don't you have a no-smoking rule in restaurants round here? Back home you can't smoke anywhere now. Except the john. And even that's getting problematical.'

Babette shrugged, watched his eyes. ‘You Americans think too much about health.'

‘Well, I guess it's important. That's why we're all here after all.'

‘Of course.' She was gathering her stuff together – a stylish handbag, a serious-looking cardboard folder heavy with manuscript. ‘Excuse me, I have to talk to someone. Perhaps we can meet later. You can tell me what else you have observed about – bathroom etiquette.'

She got up and went over to another table. It was dominated by the loud voice of Philippe Leconte, expounding in three languages. Every so often there was a burst of laughter. It all sounded mature and witty. As he saw her bend elegantly over Leconte's shoulder, Jim felt envious, embarrassed. He was an unsophisticated middle-aged man with unsophisticated anxieties. How could he have said all those things about ‘bathroom etiquette'? Okay, it'd been on his mind all morning, but why did he have to blurt it all out like that, like he was totally naïve?

But he felt naïve. He'd been feeling that way since touchdown on French soil. His customary props – language, status, know-how – had been knocked from under him. He no longer felt secure as an adult, let alone a tenured professor of fifteen years' standing. He was still recovering from the shock of finding himself taking a leak in mixed company. He'd opened the door marked
douches/sanitaires,
seen the urinal in the corner, and assumed in spite of the absence of the word
hommes
that this was the safe haven of the men's room. He'd had a hell of a shock moments later to find half-clad women walking past him to the showers, as he stood there dick in hand.

After breakfast, he walked to the conference hall. He looked round for Babette. She was sitting next to Leconte, looking chic in her light brown suit. Its colour seemed to merge with her skin. She looked up, caught Jim's glance and waved almost imperceptibly with her fingertips. He waved back more clumsily, feeling conspicuous as he towered head and shoulders above everyone around him, a Gulliver in the midst of the Lilliputians.

The translators were operational this morning, and Jim could just about follow the introductions and opening speeches. He wasn't sure how he was going to cope for a whole week; the concentration needed for flipping between two languages was something else. He studied the schedule for the day. As usual, interesting speakers were always on at the same time. But he decided to stay put for Hans Muller's talk on aspects of memory loss. It sounded relevant to his own research. And more to the point, Germans usually spoke English.

But before Dr Muller could begin, Leconte was on his feet again, explaining, in rapid conversational French, something about lunch. It was very important, he seemed to be saying. There would be two sittings – delegates would possess either red or yellow tickets and should make sure to do … something or other. This something or other was vital –
imperatif
. At the end Leconte asked in English if everybody had understood: ‘Okay?' he said, grinning around at everyone. There was a general murmur of assent. Jim gazed quietly at his blue ticket, but guessed that if he followed the others he'd manage. Everybody round him seemed very much at home, busy in conversation with one another. A Babel of voices rose around him like walls. But he had no one to chat with. Babette was miles away.

He wondered if he'd made a mistake coming here. He was a bit old to start this kind of thing. Not that he was new to the conference circuit – over the years he'd regularly gone north to Toronto and Vancouver, south to Mexico City, and west to Japan. And at some time he'd visited most everywhere in the States that had a department of neurophysiology worth its salt. But he'd missed out on Europe; as a student, as a tourist, and as an academic. That's what had made him come now. France, in particular, with its reputation for gaiety and romance, had attracted him. He'd suddenly realized that his life had gotten a whole lot duller since Betty had divorced him, and the worst thing was he hadn't noticed. His daughter had said it would be great for him. She was a Europe veteran, a much-travelled member of the Spring County Episcopalian choir. ‘You'll love it, Dad,' she said, her warm voice hugging him down the phone.

His son had gone for the underbelly: ‘You can't speak French, can you? D'you reckon you'll be okay?'

‘Who says I don't speak French?'

‘Well, you never helped me any.' Charlie always whined. Even at twenty-four he was remembering high-school grudges.

‘I don't remember you ever asking for help.'

‘I didn't. I thought you only knew science and math.'

‘So I can still surprise you. Anyway, I'm going. It'll be an opportunity to get a response to my research paper.'

‘Hey, don't say too much before publication. You don't know these guys.'

‘I think I'm old enough to look after myself.'

He wondered now if that were true.

Babette was only half listening to Hans Muller. She'd heard him before in Vienna. And Amsterdam. It was the same sort of stuff; not really her area of interest. So it was easy to concentrate on Philippe, his profile judiciously grave in the next seat, his body thin under his designer shirt. Stress never stopped him looking immaculate. He was inordinately vain, something she had initially rather liked about him. It had amused her. ‘You're pleased with yourself, aren't you?' she'd said, that first time in Bavaria.

‘Of course,' he'd said, showing a larger-than-life set of perfect white teeth. ‘That's why I'm so good to be with.'

It had been true. For three years, those snatched meetings in European cities had been the highlights of her life. International fornication; no time to get into boring habits. But he'd been tense recently, preoccupied; not so much fun. She had seriously wondered if there'd be any point coming here this summer. She had to finish her current project by October or her increasingly paranoid Head of Department would freak out. She'd almost not filled out the application form, but the prospect of the Loire valley had been an inducement. Philippe had said they'd go to Blois and Anjou, take a picnic, find a
dégustation
, get drunk. ‘But not too drunk, you know,' he'd said, laughing seductively down the line. It sounded for a moment as though things would be on their old footing.

But now she was here, he wasn't finding time even for breakfast together, let alone anything as romantic as
déjeuner sur l'herbe.
He'd booked them both into a hotel (two kilometres from the university in discreet consideration for his wife and daughters in Toulouse), but he'd been so busy he'd not set foot there yet. He'd whispered to her in a corner the first night: ‘Babette, my sweet, I'm so sorry – but you know Gregoire has left me with everything to do – and none of the speakers are coming at the right time – either a day early or two days late. I'll be up all night working it out. It's crazy.'

Babette didn't want to make demands. She left that to the wife in Toulouse. But she knew that the hunger had gone from their relationship. As she watched him, saw his mind so wholly concentrated elsewhere, she began planning to end the affair. Vanity had had its day. A little humility might now be piquant. And she had a fancy for the big, blundering American.

‘How ya doin'?' A welcome voice whispered at the back of Jim's head as Hans Muller's applause rippled away and the audience stared to disperse. He turned. A pale man with horn-rims was extending his hand. Jim recognized him vaguely.

‘Roger Greenberg, Columbia, remember? Guess you've just arrived.'

Jim pumped his arm gratefully. ‘Hi there, Roger. Jim Benchley, California Institute. Great to see you again. It's a real relief, finding a fellow American. I was feeling all at sea.'

‘Not been to Europe before?'

‘That obvious, is it?'

‘Hey, don't worry, you'll get used to it – get your eye in, so to speak. Or should I say ear?' He laughed, wheezily. ‘And this is my wife, Sophie. We come every year.'

‘What, here?'

‘Wherever something interesting's going on. Madrid last year. And I hear talk of Milan or Frankfurt next spring. The important thing is to book early, get your own en suite.'