by R. M. Green
He gave the briefest of statements to a rather grave young police officer, who spoke surprisingly good English, who told him that it was very unfortunate but since Harper could not remember seeing his attacker or attackers, there was little the police could do except to sympathise. Harper thanked the officer for his kind words and repeated the mugging story to Patrick, and later the following evening again to Helene, and yet again to Audrey a few days after that when the four of them gathered in the Bernards’ apartment for dinner.
Several months passed in a most pleasant fashion as Harper was not plagued by nightmares about his all too near-death experience and he resumed writing his book, enjoying his surroundings and rapidly improving his French, thanks to seeing Audrey on a very regular basis. They weren’t exactly an item, but they were happy and relaxed in each other’s company and, according to the contented and not dispassionate opinion of Helene, it was only a matter of time before they would become an official couple.
One murky and drizzly autumn evening, Harper was walking along the Seine on the Quai aux Fleurs, near Notre Dame, with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a carrier bag full to the seams with raspberries, mushrooms and fresh shrimps in the other. He was going to attempt his most ambitious meal yet. He was making dinner for Audrey, who had become an occasional overnight guest at his flat, and tonight it was her saint’s day, which serves as a sort of unofficial second birthday for many Catholics, even non-practising ones, since it is a splendid excuse for a party. Harper had consulted with Inez and Lisa and was going to make a champagne, shrimp and mushroom pasta with shallots and parsley and a raspberry and champagne sorbet for dessert. He was whistling softly as he sauntered along and trying not to feel too pleased with himself.
He stopped to cross the street when he felt a sudden, firm pressure in the small of his back. His mouth went dry, his scalp prickled with sweat and he clutched onto the champagne bottle and the carrier bag handle as tightly as he could. Not again! Please, no! Had the assassin returned to finish the job this time?
“Please do not turn round, mon ami.” It was the same expressionless voice, yet still polite, Harper thought, his coping mechanism of concentrating on the minutiae of the man’s manners having kicked in.
“I know you ‘ave said nossing to zi police. Zat is good. I am very sorry about it all. You were not ze right person. Please forgive me and you shall not ‘ave any more problem from me again. Now, I ask you to stay where you are and count to twenty. Merci.”
Harper felt the pressure on his lower back disappear, and try as he might he heard nothing. He closed his eyes and counted to twenty, aloud and slowly. As he reached twenty, he opened his eyes again and without looking round, took a deep breath and crossed the road and went back to his flat. When he unpacked the groceries, he found his wallet with all its contents and his mobile phone in amongst the mushrooms.
Harper never heard or saw the man who so nearly shot him again and he and Audrey got married the following summer. The Bernards acted as official witnesses. Audrey gained a promotion in the news department and Harper gave up writing his novel, as it seemed rather tame. He got occasional work consulting for his former employers and took a substantial chunk of his inheritance and invested it in Lisa’s bookshop as a partner. Lisa and Inez wanted to go and spend a year travelling in Mexico so Harper looked after the cats and ran the shop while they were away, and would sit there behind the desk, the new local oracle for expats, fresh off the Eurostar, who might be feeling a little lost and in need of a kind word and hot cup of tea.
***
About ten months after installing himself behind the cramped wooden desk of the Coin Anglais bookshop, Harper was browsing through various book catalogues online when his mobile buzzed: a text message. Probably another promotional offer, he thought. He must receive a dozen a week.
It read: ‘Monsieur. You are a man of great discretion and outstanding qualities and courage as you have shown us. If you are interested in a special and highly profitable venture, please meet my associate on the Pont Neuf at six this evening. I am sure you will recognise him. There is no obligation and this invitation will not be extended again’.
The bell above the door rang as another customer stepped inside. Harper looked around the shop, thought about Audrey, thought about how far he had come and about what he wanted from life. Then he moved his thumb across the keypad on his phone and pressed a button.
‘Are you sure you want to delete this message?’ appeared on the screen.
One more keystroke, ‘ok’, and it was done. Harper looked up at a slightly lost-looking backpacker.
“Yes, Miss, can I help?”
TRIO
Charlotte’s Brooch
For the last three years, Charlotte had been coming to see ‘her’ cameo brooch nestling serenely in its midnight blue velvet-lined case. The case was on the bottom shelf of the display window of the tiny Polish-owned boutique in the Gallerie Valoi at the Palais Royal. It wasn’t the most precious, or even the most beautiful brooch in the window of Kuzemko’s, but every Thursday afternoon, for the last three years, Charlotte had stood outside in the covered aisle lined with stone columns, and gazed at the dun oval with its ivory-white bas-relief profile of an unknown eighteenth-century lady. The secret, small thrill of finding the brooch still there week in, week out was a delicious, tiny pleasure. They had made an unspoken bargain, Charlotte and the brooch; as long as Charlotte appeared every Thursday, then the brooch would not allow itself to be sold. And so, for three years, they faithfully kept their silent tryst.
If the lady on the brooch could give you her impression at these moments, she would tell you that Charlotte’s heart-shaped face, framed by soft, red curls, was serene. She would say that her pale skin was smooth and her brown eyes shone with the sort of inner light that only those who have suffered on account of their intelligence and free spirit, trapped within this most ordinary of worlds, possess. She would add that her slightly too sensuous lips, kissed with the palest touch of rose lipstick, were pressed lightly together with the merest hint of a smile dancing at the very furthest corners of her mouth. She would conclude that Charlotte was beautiful.
Every Thursday afternoon for three years, Charlotte would tarry in front of the window of Kuzemko’s, lost in her reveries. After five minutes she would close her eyes for a few seconds, sigh a sigh that seemed wistful yet content, then she would look briefly at the other pieces in the window, paying her respects lest they should feel jealous at her attention to the brooch. Then she would turn and walk away back to the other world.
But today was different. Today, instead of walking away, Charlotte went to the door of the shop. Her gloved hand lightly held the long brass handle – she paused an instant, then pushed. The little bell tinkled its silvery welcome as the door swung open and Charlotte stepped inside.
Josephine’s Cat
Josephine had a cat: a large, lazy ginger-tom. She met him one day on the steps of the back door of her apartment building, picking through the shredded remains of a rubbish bag that had been put beside the overflowing green wheelie-bins. The cat was filthy, skinny and had half of one ear torn away. He looked the sort of cat that would be so self-reliant and mistrustful of people that any friendly human approach or kind word would be greeted by a feline look of contempt, a hiss and a swift escape over the wall. But Josephine’s overly big heart melted and she sat on her haunches, some yards from the animal, and clutching her knees, she just stayed there, silent and immobile. Presently, the alley ruffian looked at her, stretched indifferently and strolled diffidently over to her. Still, she did not move or utter a word. Finally, the orange cat stopped just a few inches in front of her. He stretched again and Josephine would later swear that he appeared to shrug as if to say, “Oh well. If this fool wants to love and take care of me, who am I to disappoint her.” Then he jumped nimbly onto her lap and allowed himself to be swept up in her arms, cooed
at, kissed, hugged and later, fed, cleaned and even endured a visit to the vet for shots and the imposition of a hideous green flea-collar complete with silver bell, and took up principal residence on the kitchen windowsill of Josephine’s cosy two-room flat.
“Well, we better give you a name, cat,” said Josephine one evening a couple of weeks later. She was sitting on her bed, legs tucked underneath her, tapping out a few paragraphs of her thesis. The cat, already significantly sleeker and glossier than a fortnight previously, jumped onto the bed and rubbed himself sensuously and self-indulgently against his flatmate.
“Hmmm. How about Tobias? No? Monty? No, not Monty. Rusty? Doesn’t grab you, eh? OK well, you choose. When you have, just let me know.” Josephine went back to her typing. The cat, curious at the darting movements of Josephine’s slender fingers over the keys, went to investigate and sitting between her hands, he watched the busy fingers tapping away. Deciding that this was a good game, he stretched forward a paw and slapped the keyboard a few times. Josephine stopped typing and watched the screen. One by one, the characters k-o-o-j-2 appeared. The cat withdrew his paw and turned his head to look at Josephine.
“Kooj2? That’s the name you want?” The cat, responding to the soft, rich tones of her voice, walked up to her face, which was now resting on her palms, her elbows on the bed.
He gave her a small butt on her upturned nose as if to say, “It’s not the name I want, silly girl, it is my name.”
“Well, Kooj2, time for some milk.”
And that was it. Josephine and Kooj2 wandered into the kitchen to see about the milk.
Samuel’s Balcony
Samuel stood on his balcony and looked out at the city going about its business below him. Grasping the cool, green-painted metal rail to steady a slight twinge of drunkenness and vertigo, he said aloud, in a voice that could have been all at once, disbelieving, wondrous, rueful and oddly, nervously optimistic, “Bloody hell, I did it! I am actually in bloody Paris!”
The opened French windows leading to the kitchen of the sixth-floor apartment on the Rue Rivoli and half-emptied bottle of Bordeaux on the beech wood table within accounted for his presence on the balcony and also for his mild unsteadiness. However, how Samuel came to find himself in Paris was a rather more complicated story.
The bare bones of Samuel’s situation would be too corpulent and unwieldy to recount if fully fleshed. Suffice to say that he was thirty-four34 years old and recently, but almost painlessly, ditched and divorced by his independently very wealthy (at least, “Daddy” was wealthy which was almost the same thing), artist wife of nine years, who had abandoned him to take up with a twenty-five-year-old lute-player and folk-singer called Barry, who wore a caftan, lived in a gypsy caravan in Solihull and had an almost deviant interest in Prokoviev and the writings of John Donne. Having only had a couple of brief student couplings at university before meeting and marrying Diana (whom he had wooed away from a rather frightening lesbian called Brenda who had a penchant for strawberry ice-cream, Ancient Greek and S&M, often in combination), Samuel felt more like an awkward teenager with women rather than the successful, good-looking-in-a-careless-way, gentle, humorous advertising copywriter that he was. He found himself freshly divorced and alone in a picture-postcard cottage in Buckinghamshire with no real friends and a vague feeling that he had missed out on something; that somewhere, just out of his earshot and vision, the world was having fun.
He took two weeks off work, sat down in the kitchen of the cottage with an iron kettle on the Aga; an old, brown and seemingly bottomless teapot which was missing the lid, ever since Diana had launched it at him for suffocating her muse (which meant that he had been somewhat less than enthusiastic at the suggestion of letting her roll around with Barry in front of him); the phone numbers of all the takeaways in a ten-mile radius that would deliver to this tiny hamlet; and a case of good, red Burgundy. He set to work writing out all the things he liked and wanted to do and all the things he disliked and didn’t want to do. He scarcely thought about his ex-wife, let alone pine for her. As far as he was concerned, Diana and Barry could bounce around the caravan quoting John Donne to each other until doomsday and, “Good luck to them both,” he toasted, polishing off another glass of Pommard which went surprisingly well with lamb rogan josh and garlic naan.
His list took several editions to perfect, and the stone-flagged kitchen floor was strewn with crumpled A4 sheets, paper aeroplanes, fans and other unlikely origami. However, on day eight of this slightly inebriated, tea-curry-pizza-crispy-aromatic-duck fuelled exile in his chocolate-box hermitage, Samuel leant back in the unvarnished oak chair and holding one hand on the back of his neck kneading the knots, he held the completed, definitive ‘Declaration of M’Independence’, as he had christened it, aloft in triumph. Three months later he was at Waterloo station about to board the Eurostar to take him to Paris and a new life. A better life. His own life.
The Confluence of Events
At precisely three-fifteen, just as Charlotte stepped lightly onto the flagstones outside the shop with a thrill in her heart as clear and musical as the bell of the shop door, Josephine came rushing down the stairs of her apartment building and flew out into the street narrowly avoiding a collision with a postman’s trolley and a very startled elderly gentleman, sporting a silver moustache that a retired musketeer would have been proud of.
Issuing apologies in French and English, Josephine left the old soldier staring after her, half vexed at nearly being knocked off his feet and half intoxicated with the imperceptibly scented air left by Josephine’s perfume and the rapidly retreating shape of her silhouette.
“Ravissante,” was all he could muster and fell to reverie of beauties past, conquered and unconquered.
As usual, Josephine was late. She had a tutorial with her supervisor and Dr. Villon did not like to be kept waiting; his ire was always manifested by arch sarcasm and much tutting. His study, where he held his tutorials, was an attic in the Rue Saint Honoré; it always smelled of cats, stale cigarettes and some cheap musky male eau de toilette, although Josephine had never seen a cat, saw him smoke or caught the faintest whiff of this cologne from Dr. Villon when he was reading over her shoulder as she struggled with some obscure Mediaeval text.
She half sprinted into the Palais Royal quadrant at the very moment that Charlotte was walking in the opposite direction, her hand clutching on tightly to the little velvet box, which did not contain the brooch, much to the lady on the brooch’s chagrin, but rather a simple gold and onyx antique ring. She knew Patrick would love it and as it was a time for changes and to break with everything that had been expected of her all her life, she was going to offer it to him when she proposed that evening.
Getting up from one of the green-painted iron benches in the garden of the Palais and stretching contentedly and exaggeratedly, Samuel stuck his pencil behind his ear in a somewhat pretentious way then thought better of it and put it in his shirt pocket and gathered up his sketchpad, and was about to wander off in search of a glass of wine. As he looked behind him for a final check that he had left nothing behind, he saw a swirl of blonde hair and a multi--coloured scarf with a vaguely oriental design dancing like the tattered banner of a charging Carolingian knight in the slipstream of a young woman dashing headlong along the covered walkway, and definitely not in the restrained rather, un-exuberant Parisian fashion. Fascinated, Samuel did not notice the red-headed woman rather dreamily ambling in the opposite direction. Then he saw her. Then he saw what was about to happen. Before he could react, the lithe power of running graduate student collided full on with the love-struck Midwest rebel and both women collapsed in an undignified but, in Samuel’s eyes, very attractive heap.
Ever the gentleman and hero of his own unwritten novel, Samuel rushed over to the stunned pair and offered both hands, extended in succour. He felt the smallest of pulls on one hand as the younger woman leapt up as if on springs and the sl
ightly, but only slightly, heavier tug on the other hand as the more mature woman arose a little more cautiously.
Then horror!
“My ring! Where is it?” the dismay and distress was as if of a mother for a missing child, “It was in a little blue velvet box, I must have dropped it.” And she began a feverish search with panicked eyes that saw nothing.
Within a few seconds all three were ravenously scanning the grass, the path and the shop doorways in the immediate vicinity. Josephine had forgotten all about her tutorial and Samuel was for the moment, in his head, Sir Galahad seeking the Holy Grail.
They spotted it at the same moment, cunningly hidden under a large amber and yellow leaf. Josephine and Samuel lunged at precisely the same instant and the clash of heads was inevitable and the sound, impressive. Giving a little gasp of alarm, Charlotte, the ring forgotten for just that second, rushed over to give what assistance she could. But she stopped short. Samuel and Josephine both rose a little gingerly from the collision, both with one hand on their respective foreheads nursing a rapidly forming lump and both with the other hand holding the little blue box.
No one spoke.
There was a pause and both hands offered the box to Charlotte but seemed reluctant to let go of each other.
Stepping close, Charlotte gently prised the box form the two hands and joined them back together.
