The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (27 page)

The momentary weakness is pushed aside. There’s a box of cleaning things beneath the basin. She upends it and steps up to reach the lid on the top of the cistern. The valves will go in there. She can’t hide them anywhere else, but she can tape them to the underside of the lid, exactly as they showed her at Beaulieu, and then return to reclaim them some time later. ‘Unless they’ve called the plumber in the meantime,’ the instructor said. He
meant it as a joke, but it doesn’t seem so funny now. Nothing seems funny: fear chases away humour.

She slides the lid back, steps down and composes herself. She even touches up her make-up in the cracked and discoloured mirror before going out and finishing her meal. The Citroën is still there. ‘They don’t seem to be doing much,’ she remarks as she pays her bill.

‘You never know,’ the waiter replies, guardedly.

Picking up her suitcase she heads towards the door and the dank outside, and the
traction
with its anonymous occupants. Her wooden heels clip on the
pavé
in a brisk percussion. She strides with confidence, her public façade belying the fear inside and the foreign presence pressing against her womb.

She draws level with the car.

Nothing will happen. She is merely unsettled by the strange environment, by Paris with its grim poverty, its cowed silences, its passivity. She has got the wind up for nothing whatever. They aren’t looking for her, they aren’t interested in her, they are only doing what they always do: instilling fear and uncertainty.

As she passes the car, the passenger door opens and a woman gets out, a small, almost dainty woman, dressed not in a uniform raincoat but in a leather jacket with a fur collar.

‘Come here!’

Alice stops. A woman is worse than any man. A woman knows the intricacies of the female mind and body. A woman knows what women can do.

‘Me?’

‘You.’

The single word, peremptory. Expecting to be obeyed. She crosses to the car and stands like a schoolgirl summoned by one of the prefects, the prefect who is always ordering you around, the prefect who seems to be amused by you alone.

‘Papers.’

Her papers are scrutinised. But papers mean nothing: they lie
as often as they tell the truth. That is the nature of the things. The woman’s small, almost perfect, almost pretty face looks up at Alice. It is framed with golden curls but the features are hard, like porcelain. ‘Lussac? Where’s that?’

‘The South-west.’

‘So what are you doing here?’ The woman’s French is native, her accent Alsatian. She’s a hybrid like Alice is a hybrid. An amalgam of things. German and French, English and French, it doesn’t make much difference. A bastard.

‘Visiting.’

‘Visiting who?’

Never give away more than you are asked. Never volunteer information. Appear amiable and slightly slow-witted.

‘Friends.’

‘Why do you have friends in Paris?’

‘I used to study here.’

The woman considers this, looking up into Alice’s eyes. ‘Where are you from?’

‘The South-west. I just said—’

‘Where were you
born
? Where were you brought up?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Geneva. It says on my card. Geneva. But my parents were French.’ And while Alice speaks, the woman lifts her head almost as though she is sniffing at the words that issue from Alice’s mouth, searching for hints of accent, assonances and intonations that may prove, or disprove, her story.

‘French from where?’

‘Grenoble.’

A nod. Apparently she is satisfied that what Alice says is true, that there are hints of Switzerland and the French Alps in her victim’s voice. ‘Your case.’

‘My case?’

‘Yes, your case. Open it.’

‘Oh, I see. Of course.’ An ingénue: willing, confused, apologetic, slightly frightened because no one is entirely legal these days. She looks round for a place to put the case, and, deciding
that there is nowhere more convenient, opens it on the ground. The woman crouches to rifle through her things, leaf through the underwear and the sweaters, the sanitary belt and towels, the skirt and jacket, her slender hands going down into the corners like small animals searching through undergrowth for things to eat and coming up with three brown paper packets. ‘These?’

‘Presents. Coffee.’

‘Where did you get them?’

‘Toulouse.’

‘Black market?’

‘No.’

The woman sniffs them, smiles and takes one for herself, returning the others to the suitcase almost as though she were presenting Alice with a gift. She straightens up.

‘Turn to face the car. Hands up on the roof. Legs apart.’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

So Alice stands spreadeagled while the woman’s hands go over her body, under her jacket to feel the sweat of her armpits, then round the front to cradle, for a long moment, her breasts. She can hear the woman’s breathing close behind her. The hands move gently, appreciatively against her nipples, then on, down her flanks and over her thighs, then suddenly, with a shocking intrusion, up her skirt so that one of them, the right, cups her between the legs, feeling her through the cotton of her knickers. Alice gasps with outrage. The hand continues, a small exploring rodent, feeling and seeking, up her belly then back down and into the cleft between her buttocks, even touching, through the cotton, her anus. Then both her hands are sweeping down her thighs and the ordeal is suddenly over.

Alice turns. The Alsatian woman is impassive, lighting a cigarette as though nothing has happened, as though her fingers haven’t scurried through the most intimate parts of Alice’s body,
as though all that has taken place is the normal intercourse of search and inquiry, what happens these days in the benighted city. ‘You can go,’ she says. ‘Just go.’

For a moment Alice fumbles with her suitcase, pushing things in order, closing the lid and trying to force the locks closed. Thoughts stumble through her mind, an untidy mix of fear and shock and relief. And gratitude. She can go. She has been violated, but she can go. Her hands are shaking, but she is free to go, the Alsatian woman showing no further interest in her but leaning into the open door of the car and saying something in German to the figure behind the steering wheel.

Don’t show relief. Relief is the worst. Anyone can be anxious, fearful even; but relief means that something has happened that merits their attention.

Trying not to show relief, Alice picks up her suitcase and continues her walk across the square towards the far corner, walking calmly and with purpose without looking back. Nothing happened or will happen. Don’t hurry, whatever you do, don’t hurry.

She gains the sanctuary of the buildings and turns out of sight. There are few people around, and no one who takes notice of a lone woman carrying a suitcase through the streets of Paris. Half the pedestrians she has seen are carrying suitcases. Suitcases are the motif of the city, redolent of hoarded, trivial treasure and impermanence.

On the wall a plaque announces:
RUE DE L’ESTRAPADE
.

L’estrapade
is a torture, she knows that. Something tearing, like the rack. Above the roofs she catches a glimpse of the dome of the Panthéon, where heroes lie buried, the lesser gods of a secular state. But now the God of the Old Testament rules the city, with jealousy and murderous revenge. At the end of
the road there’s a triangular
place
, a place of convergence with trees and two benches and an old woman sitting talking to sparrows that skip and hop and yearn for breadcrumbs that are no longer found in the starveling city. She stops and considers what to do.

Never hesitate, never appear to be at a loss. If you are undecided you excite interest. People wonder what you are looking for, where you have come from, what your business is. But she
is
at a loss: she has lost all sense of perspective and proportion.

A young woman walks past pushing a pram. She catches Alice’s eye and there is a momentary recognition, a faint unvoiced smile of sympathy. For a dreadful moment Alice wants to call out to her, for help, for comfort, for some plain human contact. But the woman has moved on and she is on her own, confronting the door of number two and the board of names and numbers and brass bell pushes. One of them reads
Pelletier, Appartement G
. As she hesitates to ring, the door opens and a man comes out. He nods
bonjour
and holds the door open for her and she slips inside into an archway and the luminous green of an inner courtyard.

To her relief there is no concierge in the
guichet
to ask awkward questions about who she is and what business she has here. Stairs rise into shadows and a lift shaft ascends, one of those open frames within which a platform of steel filigree rises and falls with clocklike precision, a piece of machinery that moves with all the predictability of ordinary mechanics.

Wave mechanics is not like Newtonian mechanics
, Clément told her.
With wave mechanics you must cast out all idea of certainty
. At the time she had no idea what he was talking about; now it seems perfectly clear. Cast out all ideas of certainty.

She takes the lift to the top floor, where there’s an imposing door on the left hand side with the letter G dead in its centre and the name
Pelletier
engraved in brass. When she rings, the door is opened by a maid, a sour and shrivelled creature who must have spent years keeping unwanted visitors at bay. She
considers Alice’s inquiry as though it might be some kind of affront. ‘Mam’selle Pelletier is not at home.’

‘Will she be back soon?’

‘I have no knowledge of Mam’selle’s movements.’

Alice smiles. She needs to win this woman’s confidence, at least for a few minutes. ‘What a shame. It would have been such fun to surprise her. And Monsieur Clément, is he at home?’

‘He is here, yes.’

The answer brings a flood of relief. ‘So could you call him?’

The woman sucks on her thoughts. ‘Who shall I say …?’

‘Let’s keep it a surprise, shall we? Let’s see if he remembers me. I haven’t seen him for many years. We are old family friends, from Geneva. When I was a young girl I used to worship him.’

Sympathy battles with jealousy across the maid’s face. She obviously worships him as well. Eventually sympathy wins and she allows Alice to step forward into her kingdom. ‘I will see if he is available.’

Alice waits in the hallway, sitting on an upright chair like a domestic waiting for an interview, her suitcase on the floor beside her. She picks nervously at her nails, thinking of Ned. Ned is here and he is not here, both at the same time, like that bloody cat they told her about, the cat that was both dead and not dead. What was the name? Schrödinger. Schrödinger’s Cat.

‘It’s horrid putting a cat in a box!’ she protested, and the two boys laughed at her stupidity.

‘It’s a thought experiment, you idiot,’ Ned exclaimed.

Entanglement was a term they used, entangled particles. And now she feels the entanglement of past and present, of Marian Sutro and Anne-Marie Laroche, of Ned and Madeleine and Clément.

‘Can I help you?’

She looks up, startled. He has appeared in the corridor leading off the hall, standing back from the light so that his face is in shadow. But she recognises him just the same, the small,
precise agony of recognition that makes her flush as though she has been hit across the cheek.

She gets to her feet, feeling foolish – a child once again, reduced to explaining herself to an adult who probably doesn’t care any longer. ‘Clément,’ she says, ‘it’s me. Marian.’ The name sounds strange in her ears, as though she is talking about another person, someone she, and he, once knew.

‘Marian?’ His expression changes, from puzzlement to something approaching apprehension. Apprehension in both meanings of the word: recognition, but also fear. ‘Good God, what on earth are you doing here?’

‘I thought I’d look you and Madeleine up—’

‘I thought you were in England—’

‘And I need somewhere to stay.’

‘To stay? Of course you may stay.’ He comes closer and puts his hands on her shoulders. He seems bigger where once he was thin and rather awkward.
Dégingandé
, her mother used to say. His looks seem to have been hardened by the four years since she last saw him, as though a piece of sculpture that was once polished to an unearthly beauty has been roughened up by a chisel. He leans forward and kisses her, on one cheek and then the other. ‘My God, how extraordinary,’ he says. ‘My little Marian is not so little any more.’

‘I was exactly the same height then.’

‘I wasn’t referring to height.’ Now he’s smiling. Perhaps the apprehension was only an illusion, a trick of the light. His smile is what she remembers, how he found amusement in all things, even the most serious; and the way his mouth articulated the smile, the mouth she so admired and now finds that she admires still – something feminine about it despite the masculine chin in which it is set, something quirky and ironic. ‘Come,’ he says, with his hand at her back for guidance. ‘Come into the
salon
. Leave your suitcase. Marie, who observed that you seemed a little
défraîchie
– how would you say that in English? Unfresh? I see you only as charming and a little wind-blown – anyway,
Marie will see to it. Would you like some coffee? I can offer you some real coffee, believe it or not. Is that what you would like? I seem to remember Squirrel used to loathe coffee, but I suspect things have changed now, haven’t they?’

Squirrel. The sound of her nickname, a name that no one ever uses outside her family, ambushes her. Clément’s arm is round her shoulders and she finds herself weeping, a fearful sensation of helplessness that she despises at the very moment of feeling it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says through a blur of tears; and that small, hard fragment of her personality that calls itself Alice or Anne-Marie Laroche or anything other than Marian or, for God’s sake, Squirrel, watches with contempt this lachrymose creature being folded into Clément’s arms and comforted by the texture of his pullover against her cheek and the touch of his hand on her head.