Work in Progress

by Paul Thomas

  ‘New Zealand.’

  ‘Even further.’ She puts her sunglasses back on. ‘See this café? I’ll meet you here at six, okay?’ As she walks away she says, ‘Have a nice day.’ I don’t think she’s being ironic.

  My winning streaks tend to be short-lived so I’m tempted to go for the double but Samantha’s probably at work and I’ve got enough on my emotional plate for the time being. Instead I wander the Left Bank, guided by a fallible and sometimes duplicitous memory which ushers me down half-familiar side-streets in search of a bar or café that isn’t there and never was because it’s a montage of various half-remembered establishments where I once ordered felicitously or got closer to someone who mattered.

  Emily turns up ten minutes late and wary, as if on reflection she thinks she made it too easy for me.

  ‘I rang Mama,’ she says.

  Uh-oh. ‘And?’

  ‘I didn’t tell her. She would’ve tried to talk me out of coming and since that would have had the opposite effect, there didn’t seem much point.’

  ‘Well, if she thinks I’m a shit, it would follow that she wouldn’t want you to have anything to do with me.’

  ‘But she has no idea what’s become of you. You might be a different person, like Paul of Damascus.’

  This is said with such solemnity I can’t help laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ she demands. ‘Is that the laugh of a cynic who finds it amusing that anyone should think he’s capable of redemption?’

  ‘Not at all. Actually, I distrust the Road to Damascus syndrome, the moment of epiphany from which you emerge a whole new person. It happens in cults because they surrender free will and volunteer to be whittled down to a number. True redemption comes from within and takes time. It’s a work in progress.’

  ‘Is this part of it?’

  I smile but her expression doesn’t soften. ‘Not consciously.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  I tell her everything, starting with Samantha. Given its role in both our histories, I’ve been wondering what Emily will make of that convoluted love story.

  In fact it brings her to radiant life ‘But this is a great romance,’ she says, eyes aglow. ‘Have you seen her yet?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve only been here two days and I spent most of yesterday right here, waiting for you.’

  ‘I had an assignment.’

  ‘I wasn’t complaining.’

  ‘I want to be there when you meet her.’

  ‘Forget it. It’ll be hard enough without having my daughter, of all people, observing every awkward silence.’

  ‘You think of me as your daughter, do you?’

  ‘I do now. Do you mind?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of minding, it’s just a big thing to absorb, meeting a stranger who’s my flesh and blood. I know you’re my biological father but I don’t think of you in the Mama and Papa sense.’

  ‘It’d be strange if you did. To be honest, I thought there was every chance you’d tell me to leave you alone.’

  ‘Lucky I found out about the letters.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘The people you sent them to, Mama’s friends, had two children, a boy my age and a girl three years older. Daniel was the first boy I kissed.’

  ‘The first of many?’

  ‘You’d encourage that?’

  ‘I’d encourage you to have a basis for comparison before making a long-term choice.’

  She laughs. ‘I’m working on it. Anyway, the sister, Louise, wanted to know why her mother was writing Return to Sender on a letter addressed to me. She was told to mind her own business but Louise was very good at getting what she wanted from her father. He said it had to be their big secret but of course she told Daniel and Daniel told me.’

  ‘And you took it up with Patricia?’

  She nods. ‘I called her a liar because she’d said you had no interest in me. We had an enormous row. But you know what mothers and daughters are like — they hiss at each other and sulk, thinking bad thoughts, but they always kiss and make up. And, besides, it’s hard to hold on to someone when all you have is a little black and white photo on the back of a paperback.’

  We eat at another student hangout. When we were deciding where to go, Emily asked me if I was rich.

  ‘Phillipe, my stepfather, is rich — he has the franchise for almost thirty service stations. When he and Mama come to Paris, they always take me to expensive restaurants because that’s where they want to go.’ She shrugs. ‘The life of a student is like the life of an athlete: it doesn’t last long so you must make the most of it.’

  She wants to be a journalist — and a writer. I admit to having been through a lean period and am as upbeat as possible about Project Gatsby.

  ‘Mama says everything fell into place for her when she remembered something she was told when she started writing: stick to what you know.’

  ‘So we can expect more books about Toulouse?’

  ‘Well, variations on the theme.’

  ‘Service Stations of the Haute-Garonne, perhaps?’

  Emily scribbles on a paper napkin. ‘I’ll pass that on. With what — your kind regards? Best wishes? Love and kisses?’

  ‘Whatever feels right at the time. So you are going to tell her?’

  ‘I have to. If we’re going to stay in touch, I don’t want it to be behind her back.’

  ‘I vote we do stay in touch.’

  ‘You could email me chapters of your novel as you go and I could send back helpful comments.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘It would be very useful for me to see how a novel evolves.’

  ‘You realise you’d have to go the distance? I mean, your feedback could become a critical part of the process so if you got bored and decided you couldn’t be bothered any more, the whole thing might grind to a halt.’

  ‘What do you think I am — a dilettante?’ She lights a cigarette. ‘Mama hates me smoking. She offers me all sorts of bribes to give up. What about you?’

  ‘I think it’s a little early for me to be trying to change your behaviour.’

  ‘Actually,’ she says ‘I think it’s a little late.’

  ‘Well, it looks to me as if Patricia and Philippe have done a pretty good job.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a little early for you to reach such a conclusion. You should get to know me better before you pay any more compliments.’

  ‘A very sensible suggestion,’ I say, ‘and that’s the last compliment you’re getting tonight.’

  ‘Now the rules of our collaboration must be fair to both: you’ll have to work in a disciplined manner so I know when to expect the next chapter. If I become hooked, it would be unfair to make me wait too long.’

  ‘You’ve got yourself a deal.’

  We shake on it.

  It’s 7.30 am and already humid. I’m loitering opposite Samantha’s apartment building, trying not to look like a plain-clothes cop or a public nuisance.

  At ten to eight she appears, the all-American beauty in her golden maturity. She’s wearing a white shirt, black trousers, sneakers and sunglasses. Once her backpack is sitting comfortably, she sets off towards the river.

  I cross the road on an intercept course. For a good-looking woman in the big city she doesn’t have great antennae because I don’t register with her until I’m within striking distance.

  Before she can run, scream or kick me in the balls, I say, ‘Hello, Samantha.’

  Her mouth falls open and she whips off her sunglasses. A few faint lines spoke out from the corners of her eyes and her jawline is no longer geometrically defined but the rest is largely as I remember, including the transparency of her expression.

  ‘Max? Where the fuck did you spring from?’

  ‘The ends of the earth.’ She doesn’t get the reference. Why should I have expected otherwise? ‘Literally. New Zealand.’

  ‘New Zealand?’ she repeats. ‘You’ve come all the
way from New Zealand?’

  I nod.

  ‘But how did you know where I live?’

  I explain about Stanley and the bloodhounds.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ she says. ‘You’re here to see me?’

  ‘Well, you and one other. And Paris.’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You could invite me to join you for coffee and a croissant.’

  ‘I kicked that habit years ago,’ she says. ‘It’s herbal tea and muesli these days.’

  ‘Is that why you look exactly the same?’

  ‘Hey, I appreciate flattery as much as the next girl but let’s not go overboard. Time catches up with us all, one way or another.’

  ‘It’s barely laid a glove on you. Besides, when a man’s come twenty thousand kilometres, he’s permitted a little gallantry, isn’t he?’

  ‘I can’t argue with that.’

  We go to a health-food place where I have orange juice and fruit salad. Nine hours ago I was drinking Armagnac and smoking one of Emily’s Marlboros but this has a lot going for it too.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Let’s fill in the missing years. You first.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘You can set the groundrules: full disclosure or the Reader’s Digest version.’

  ‘How will you know?’

  ‘Believe me,’ she says, ‘I know a highlights package when I hear it.’

  ‘Woman’s intuition?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Logic, common sense and bitter-sweet experience.’

  The smile seems friendly enough and the tone is light but there’s a message in her still, unblinking eyes: whatever fairytale or sob story you might have had in mind, forget it; I’m immune.

  I tell it pretty much as it was and is. She shakes her head over the porn episode and asks me what I was thinking.

  ‘Now that’s what I call cutting to the chase.’

  ‘And what’s with tracking down your daughter after all this time? Are you on some kind of life-begins-at-fifty trip?’

  ‘Maybe I’m just getting sentimental in my middle age.’

  ‘So how’s it going?’

  ‘So far, so good,’ I say, ‘but let’s see what happens when the novelty wears off. At the moment we’re like a couple of strangers sitting next to each other on a long-haul flight, striking up a friendship courtesy of an airline computer.’

  ‘I always think those airplane hook-ups are the social equivalent of throwaway lighters,’ she says. ‘They come cheap and they don’t last and there’s something to be said for that. You promise to keep in touch but you never do. Around the time they start collecting the headsets, you scale it back to polite chit-chat because you know the plug’s about to be pulled on what is, let’s face, it, an artificial connection. Then you touch down and it’s over. So over, in fact, that if you see the other party at the baggage carousel, you avoid making eye contact.’

  I shrug. ‘Yeah, well, maybe that’s all it is — a brief, artificial connection.’

  ‘No, Jesus, that’s not what I meant,’ Samantha protests. ‘I was going on to say that you’re not like strangers on a plane because the connection’s based on a lot more than a boarding pass.’ I suppose I should take her word for it but I’m not entirely convinced. ‘I imagine you’ll be a regular visitor from here on?’

  This is a neutral inquiry rather than a wish. I shake my head. ‘Assuming I’m welcome, I’ll come as often as I can afford, which won’t be often. I’d like to think we’ll be email pals, though — me and Emily, I mean.’

  ‘I’m on email, believe it or not.’

  ‘Well, it’d be nice to stay in touch.’

  Any moment now she’s going to look at her watch and discover she’s late for work. My stomach flutters with nausea, a prelude to the heartsickness of rejection.

  Again, I might have read her wrong or she might have had second thoughts. Perhaps she saw vulnerability in my expression and it reminded her who she was dealing with.

  ‘How about I tell my story?’ she says with a smile that doesn’t require interpretation. ‘When we’ve got the past out of the way, we can focus on the here and now.’

  She never settled back in California. The people and the things she’d missed didn’t live up to the yearning she’d invested in them. Her friends were glad to have her back but couldn’t get over what she’d done — as they saw it, wasted some of the best years of her life. And when it finally dawned on them that France wasn’t an aberration that she’d got out of her system but an expression of her difference, they became wary, as if she’d been infected with an old-world bug that had hollowed out her American core. The greatest lifestyle in the history of mankind was on offer but she couldn’t bring herself to embrace it. Perhaps that was the problem: you didn’t embrace it, you succumbed to it.

  Surfing was still fun but the beach scene was an illusion of permanent adolescence. The girls obsessed about their tans and the guys were only interested in the next wave. Until the sun went down and their thoughts turned to sex, which, they assumed, any girl still on the beach was up for.

  The intensity of the self-obsession shocked her. There was no longer any restraint or attempt to disguise narcissism or naked ambition so that they could be excused or interpreted differently. People claimed to be spiritual and in touch with their feelings but it was just another excuse to talk about themselves. She soon learned the code: self-esteem meant breast implants; achievement meant recognition; a good time meant cocaine; love meant sex.

  After two years of it, she had to get away. She got a job with the World Bank in Paris, co-ordinating policy advice for developing countries. On a visit to the Philippines she met a Swiss doctor working for Médicins Sans Frontières. Idealistic francophone Swiss was perfect: French without the superiority complex. They got married on a Mauritian beach.

  ‘It didn’t last,’ she says. ‘But I guess you knew that.’

  I nod. ‘I wouldn’t have got in touch otherwise.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It would’ve seemed like stirring up your existence for no real purpose.’

  ‘That’s a very all-or-nothing attitude, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, I just think that when people have got their lives on a nice, even keel they can probably do without that sort of blast from the past. Apart from anything else, who the hell wants to answer all those questions afterwards?’

  ‘Aren’t you the thoughtful one?’

  ‘Well, up to a point. I don’t imagine you spend every night eating tuna out of a can and watching old Alain Delon films on TV.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been there. I married a man who couldn’t be in Paris for more than a couple of weeks without getting itchy feet.’

  ‘What was his problem?’

  ‘He just couldn’t switch off. You know, I understood he didn’t work nine to five but twenty-four seven? Basically, if he wasn’t in some hell-hole saving lives, he wasn’t happy, which isn’t a great recipe for a chill-out vacation in the Canary Islands, let me tell you. So the field trips got longer and the breaks got shorter and, well, being a student of human behaviour, Max, I’m sure you can figure out what happened next.’

  ‘You had an affair?’

  ‘A serious affair.’ She sighs. ‘With a colleague.’

  ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘Touché. Anyway, Guillaume found out …’

  ‘How, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘Same old Max: still a fiend for the gritty detail. He just knew. I’m not cut out for adultery — can’t act and can’t lie. Guillaume was typically noble: he forgave me and blamed himself for not being the husband I deserved. By the time he finished I felt like the lowest form of life on the planet.’

  ‘They’re ruthless bastards, these saints.’

  She nods. ‘Tell me about it. Then he pissed off to Darfur.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Funny you should ask,’ she says. ‘He’s in Switzerland, at his parents’
place. He got sick — so sick the doctors have confined him to the First World for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘Let me guess: he wants to kiss and make up?’

  ‘Damn, Max, you’re on a roll. I’ve been to see him a couple of times and, yes, the suggestion did come up.’

  ‘And you replied …’

  She looks at me with her head on one side as if she’s not sure which version to give me. ‘Well, here’s this guy I thought was the love of my life but who kind of fucked me up and who I cheated on, propped up in bed looking as weak as a kitten, saying it’d be so different now because all he wants to do is work in a proper hospital and come home to me every night — oh, and by the way, he’s never stopped loving me. What would you say?’

  ‘Something along the lines of let’s talk about this when you’re back on your feet.’

  ‘That’s pretty much what I said. But in the meantime the proposal’s on the table so I think about it — even when I don’t want to.’

  ‘Meanwhile, the colleague with whom you had a serious affair …’

  ‘… Got posted to head office in Washington DC where, as it happens, I’ve just been offered a fantastic job.’

  ‘Is it just me or has it suddenly got a little crowded in here?’

  ‘Still glad you came, Max?’

  ‘As I said, I didn’t expect there’d be no one else in the picture. I’d have to say, though, the queue’s a little longer than I’d hoped.’

  ‘And I don’t think you should expect them to be as accommodating as Serge.’

  ‘No, I guess that would be too much to ask.’

  She leans towards me, her eyes full of certainty. ‘You and Emily aren’t those travellers bumping elbows on a 747. That was us.’

  ‘So how come we’re still making eye contact?’

  The distance between us dissolves in her slow-burning smile. ‘Another time, Max; another plane.’

  We arrange to have dinner. Emily never let up on meeting Samantha and in the end I gave in. For my sake as much as hers — who knows when or if I’ll get another chance to introduce my daughter?

  Samantha and I are at the bar waiting for our cocktails when Emily arrives. She kisses me on both cheeks and says, ‘Hello, Papa.’