Paris Dreaming

by Katrina Lawrence

  As a beauty editor, I knew the power of Paris over women. Every day, my desk filled with goodie-laden bags containing the kind of sigh-inducing gorgeousness that can hail from only one place on earth: the City of Light and lipstick. It had been four years since I’d last journeyed to the beauty capital of the world, and it would be my first time there with a boyfriend. You can imagine my excitement. There was simply no skin potion that could conjure up the glow of being in love, in Paris.

  I’d been seeing Zack for a couple of years. We were practically living together, just not officially so. We had fun, sometimes a bit too much, and I could never shake the feeling that we were only mucking around, like kids playing at grown-ups, hosting tea parties in a cubby house, while wearing Mummy and Daddy’s shoes and clothes.

  At work, we were all about the modern phenomenon known as Impostor Syndrome; we seemed to run some version of the story every second issue. The upshot was basically this: despite how successful a modern woman is, she will never, deep down, feel worthy of acclaim. Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy? I at least tended to believe our own hype. And turning twenty-five didn’t help my confidence levels. We’d recently reported on another condition of modern life (women’s magazines love syndromes, as they make for great cover lines): the quarter-life crisis. As such, I’d started to fret about whether my personal life was in appropriate sync with my professional life.

  I won’t lie. I was getting anxious to take things to the next level. When Zack told me he had to go to an old friend’s wedding in London, to which I was not invited (in retrospect, the universe hanging up a huge warning sign, flashing in neon lights), I shrugged it off as casually as I could. Well, I had a bit of, ahem, market research to do in Paris anyway . . . oh, which happens to be close to London . . . hmmm, perhaps he could just pop over afterwards? Genius.

  First on the itinerary that I’d laboured over for weeks was a couple of days’ driving around la Champagne, a region just to the east of Paris, to drink lots of le champagne. I’d planned the jaunt as an apéritif of sorts to the Parisian feast ahead, something to whet the appetite, so to speak.

  After finally reaching Charles de Gaulle, I practically skipped out of customs into the arrival hall, scanning the crowd for Zack’s eyes. When I caught them, my heart flipped but quickly fell with a stomach-hollowing thud. I sensed it straight away: a certain froideur in his eyes, in fact in Zack’s entire body language. His smile seemed forced, chiselled out of cold stone. His arms were folded across his chest, as though in defensive mode, and it was with something akin to reluctance that he opened them to give me a quick hug, before grabbing my bags and leading me away.

  As I struggled to keep up on the march towards the hire-car office, I fought an urge to turn and run. For the first time, after a couple of years of lovely, light-hearted camaraderie, I had the distinct impression that our time together might be near its use-by date. That might seem like an extreme reaction, but the sensation was violently visceral at the time. Some people opt for fight, I usually choose flight.

  Friends would tell me that my tendency to paranoia when situations start to reveal themselves as less than perfect comes dangerously close to self-sabotage. I, however, like to see my heightened reading of a scenario as a sort of perceptiveness, allowing me to move into a pre-emptive mode of attack that protects me in the long run. I might hit the parachute button too early, but at least I don’t crash.

  I tried to decode the startling development. Did Zack meet someone else at the wedding? My old-fashioned women’s intuition told me no; there was an icy coolness to him that didn’t seem compatible with any inner flames of passion. Did the wedding simply freak him out? After seeing his friend get hitched, did he feel like he was next in line? I remembered a recent throwaway comment of his, slurred after a bottle of wine. ‘You’re just waiting in this little apartment of yours for me to come and rescue you, aren’t you?’ He was drunk, yes, but the words had rolled off his tongue a little too easily, as though he had voiced the thought several times before.

  ‘It’s 120 kilometres to the hotel,’ Zack told me as we settled into our car, in a formal tone that would nicely befit a chauffeur.

  ‘Oh . . . okay.’

  ‘It will take maybe an hour and a half to get there.’

  ‘Uh-huh . . .’

  Silence ensued for a few minutes, although it felt like hours.

  Then: ‘It’s going to be 26 degrees today.’

  Oh god, we were already talking about the weather. I needed a drink.

  I had become quite accustomed to quaffing champagne. My job saw me attending at least one product launch per day, which almost always entailed a line-up of tuxedo-clad waiters bearing silver trays decorated with champagne-filled glasses.

  I love champagne for so many reasons, but mostly for its pure sensuousness — it appeals so deliciously to every single sense. First, there’s the eye-catching sparkle, and the subtly unique tint: a shade of gold or pale apricot or pearly-grey. Next, bring the glass closer, and you start to hear the effervescent hiss, the sound equivalent of tingles down the spine. Closer still, and a frenzy of bubbles bursts on the tip of your nose, an array of aromas exploding, bringing to mind colour-saturated images of orange blossom, juicy strawberry or green grass. As the liquid gushes over your tongue, still more flavours and fragrances permeate your mouth, perfuming you from within.

  Real champagne can only come from Champagne, a region encompassing less than 85,000 acres of vineyards. As Zack and I drove out of Île-de-France — the area that was basically the sum total of France way back in the time of the Franks — and into Champagne, we found ourselves whizzing past sloping hills covered in a rippled carpet of vines, lush and green with hope after a long icy winter.

  In springtime, the wines of Champagne can be found underground, furiously bubbling away in their bottles, as though ready to explode. All wines naturally ferment, when the yeast on grape skin meets the sugar in the juice and converts it into alcohol and carbonic gas. In Champagne, the process is halted into hibernation during the winter freeze, before picking up again when spring peps things up and sets bubbles back into action.

  Champagne had nothing on my stomach at that moment, which was churning with nervous energy. I tried to fill the gaps in the jagged atmosphere with some conversation. ‘Sorry,’ Zack said, looking straight ahead, jaw firmly set. ‘I need to concentrate on driving on the other side of the road.’

  Did I mention that I needed a drink?

  Champagne wasn’t always bubbly. Winemakers toiled for centuries to keep fizz and foam out of their wine, which was a rather glum pinkish-brown hue. As Paris sparkled into life at the City of Light in the 1700s, winemakers in Champagne worked out how to control the phenomenon of second fermentation, and the drink became as lustrous as the age.

  But champagne had its place in the worst of times, too. ‘In victory you deserve it,’ declared Napoléon, ‘in defeat you need it.’ The contradictory drink suitably hails from a region that, while breathtakingly lovely, knows much about misery. Napoléon also noted that the gently sloping countryside of Champagne was perfectly suited to battle. From the Romans to Attila the Hun, the Russians to the Prussians, French revolutionaries to German regiments, Champagne has been plundered and pummelled to a shocking extent; it’s arguably the most blood- and sorrow-soaked region on earth.

  Not that you’d know it, as you wind your way around the verdant fields, as pretty as a postcard with pink and red roses tumbling out from each row of vines. But even this rosy picture is not what it seems. To grape growers, the presence of roses keeps the potential of impending doom top of mind; these ornamentals succumb to disease before most plants, so they signal when grapes might be headed for blight. So much for romance.

  We arrived at our hotel, a turreted château rich in fairy-tale fantasy, and disconcertingly at odds with where our relationship seemed to be heading. More awkward still, we were upgraded to a suite, a toile de jouy-lined folly of a room complete with a velvet-curta
ined four-poster bed. Cringe.

  After I had gingerly unpacked, I noticed Zack standing at the window, staring out at the nearby ruins of a medieval fortress (perhaps another symbolic sign, courtesy of my friend the universe?). It was such a forlorn image that I found myself walking over and wrapping my arms around Zack’s torso, an instinctive consolatory gesture. ‘Okay, let’s get going,’ he said, a little too quickly, unfurling my arms and leading me towards the door.

  We drove to Reims, the capital of the region, for a visit to the house of Veuve Clicquot, that champagne that’s like liquid gold, sparkly sunshine in a bottle. So voluptuously full-bodied, it’s a blend that could have only been made by a formidably strong woman.

  Barbe-Nicole Clicquot is nothing short of a legend in these parts. In the early nineteenth century, the wily widow (veuve) — the first woman to run a champagne house, and an internationally successful company, at that — invented remuage, a process for easily removing the pesky sediment that used to plague bottles of champagne. It was a game-changer, making champagne more commercial than ever.

  Our tour took us down into the depths of the crayères, vaults that date back to Roman times. The Romans had their slaves quarry the chalky soils of Champagne for stone with which roads and towns could be built; it turned out, centuries later, that the leftover cavities made for ideal spaces in which to store and age champagne. We were told how these tunnels all link up to form an underground city of winding roads that would stretch for almost 500 kilometres. During wartime, life was thrown upside down. Literally. People sheltered in the cellars for months on end, sleeping side by side, mirroring the bottles lined up in racks. While bombs tore into the city above, its subterranean residents dined by candelabra in the cold, clammy depths, sipping on the finest champagne as they defiantly continued to live life as best they could. Births and deaths occurred; most probably bust-ups, too.

  For the finale of our tour, I finally got my hands on that much-needed drink. Today, however, the champagne tasted bitter, as though my body chemistry had soured. It even seemed to lack its usual sparkle, I thought, holding up my glass with a left hand that was decidedly lacking in any kind of sparkle itself.

  Suffice it to say, dinner back at the château that night was not the romantic, oyster-fuelled affair I’d had in mind when booking weeks before. Citing a stomach ache, Zack retired early. I took myself to the lounge and ordered a flute of rosé champagne.

  Rosé champagne is typically the syrupy drink of romance, not relationship breakdowns, but I found its creamy sweetness soothing rather than cloying, as though it was restoring my body’s emotional balance. These days, the most popular bubbles tend to be dry (or brut) but every girl knows the importance of a well-timed sugar fix. Right then, its candied femininity felt fortifying, swirling a surge of feel-good endorphins through my body. I was surprisingly clear-headed for all the bubbles, which was helpful, as I was already mentally rewriting my itinerary, for a Parisian holiday for one.

  The next morning, there was a knock at the door. They were most terribly sorry, but there had been a mistake . . . We’d been given the wrong room and could we possibly move to that smaller one down the corridor. Shocked from the shame of it all, we nodded and — lamer still — proceeded to move our own bags. Down the hall in our dinky new room, Zack went back to bed, dramatically clutching his supposedly sore stomach.

  I wandered down to the breakfast room, and was stopped in my tracks by the glamour of a couple checking in. They were evidently the successful claimants to the room from which Zack and I had been so unceremoniously ejected. And rightly so: they looked like movie stars, with their bouncy hair and tailored linen, and were entwined in such a passionate embrace that I blushed. Get-a-room just didn’t cut it for them; they were get-a-suite status. Zack and I, as a couple, obviously hadn’t fooled the French, those masters of matters of the heart.

  I spent the morning lying by the pool, Zack mostly in bed. In the afternoon, I ensconced myself in a velvety couch in the bar, and sunk into a hazy champagne-induced blur. I once caught sight of Zack out the window, wandering around the ruins. I wondered if he got the symbolism.

  Later that day, we finally found ourselves back in our room together, unable to ignore l’éléphant any longer.

  ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ I asked.

  ‘I think so.’ After pretty much avoiding all eye contact for a day, he finally looked straight at me. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I didn’t need a why, I just desperately wanted to flick past the final pages of this chapter, and propel myself into the next. Zack wanted to move on quickly, too; he’d already booked a flight back to London.

  An eternity of polite smiles and stilted words later, it was time to check out. I brooded in silence all the way back to Paris (mortifyingly, every radio station seemed to be playing Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’). Looking determinedly out the side window, I watched the fields flash by and attempted to put my present drama into perspective by reflecting on the horrors that this land has seen: the blood spilled, the countless bodies buried, the deadly gases released and cannons fired . . .

  No wonder the vines there weep. The French call it les pleurs de la vigne; in spring, the sap — warmed by the sun — starts to flow, dripping from the wounds inflicted by relentless pruning. And yet, it’s the explosion of corks, not guns, that has won out. Champagne has become a symbol of the French will not only to survive, but to survive in style.

  My first day alone in Paris, I did what all heart-hurt women the world over do: wallowed in chocolate. I was sitting cross-legged on the cobbled western quay of Île Saint-Louis, shaded by a parasol of leaves held aloft by a gnarled old plane tree. All around me were couples, gazing into one another’s eyes and stroking one another’s skin under the golden glaze of the sun’s rays, but I didn’t mind so much, because I had my own guy: Bert.

  That would be Berthillon, the city’s most famous purveyor of glaces and sorbets, proudly hailing from this delightful little island. I’d ordered a double of chocolat noir and citron — the rich and sweet dark cocoa creaminess set off by a sour and icy citrus edge. It complemented my mood, which was oscillating between nostalgia and bitterness.

  I’d checked into my room, originally — and excitedly — booked for two, in a quaint hotel on the main strip of the island. Straight out of central casting, it could have been a location for a light-hearted romcom about a couple romping around Paris. Its ceilings were striped with wooden beams from which hung a large chandelier, and its walls papered in florals and dotted with oil paintings of blush-cheeked duchesses — the very picture of romantic luxury. Then again, perhaps the full-blown femininity of it all was a regular Australian guy’s nightmare. It was going to push my credit card to the limit, but as a kind of post-break-up therapy, this girlie haven could be worth every centime.

  Once my senses were filled with feel-good cocoa vibes, I wandered across the bridge that links Île Saint-Louis to the larger island, Île de la Cité, past a busker wringing yearning wails out of his violin. A kind of magic starts to happen as you cross there, as the chiselled arches and elaborate spires of Notre-Dame soar into view — a gravitational pull, as though Paris is drawing you towards its very heart.

  This is where Paris began, when Julius Caesar and his troops marched into town in 52 BC, conquering the Celtic fishing tribe known as the Parisii. Lutetia Parisiorum was a boomtown waiting to happen; as an island, it was naturally protected from enemies, as well as boasting a prime position as a trading port. Lush fertile land stretched for miles, and plentiful stone reserves allowed the Romans to build their majestic arenas and famously efficient highways, spreading the city southwards.

  After the collapse of the Roman Empire and the so-called Dark Ages, Paris began to come back to life, as stone masons, sculptors and stained-glass artists conspired to beautify the island city. It’s almost impossible to imagine what the Île de la Cité looked like in the Middle Ages, as much of it is now lumped with staid government buildings
. But look around and you can catch an occasional peek into the past. As I strolled along the prettily named Quai aux Fleurs, I noticed beamed towers and dormer windows that have barely changed in five centuries; I could almost picture the medieval maidens sighing through the glass with longing at the lives and loves they couldn’t have.

  I was lucky to live in a time when women could do anything, I reminded myself — as my magazine always reminded our readers. You couldn’t, however, have anyone. The magazine was wrong on one front: it was impossible to make a man love you if he didn’t.

  At number 9–11 on the quai of flowers, a plaque marks the site where one of history’s most passionate relationships bloomed. ‘Former home of Héloïse and Abélard, 1118, rebuilt in 1849,’ it reads. The medieval duo has been immortalised in wrought iron, their sculpted heads craning from each of the curlicue-covered doors, tormentingly out of reach of one another. I instinctively stretched out my hand to console Héloïse’s smooth, solemn forehead, before quickly withdrawing it into my pocket, a little abashed at my show of emotion for a door. I sheepishly looked around; a middle-aged woman walking past proffered a knowing smile, as though acknowledging a fellow member of a secret society. Any Parisienne who has ever had her heart crushed well understands the power of the epic tale of Héloïse and Abélard, a love story so eternal in its emotions that it entrances to this day.

  Pierre Abélard was a brilliant-minded man (and knew it), who ventured from his small village in Brittany to the big Parisian smoke in the early twelfth century, in search of expanding his inner horizons. The unerring arrogance for which he would become renowned developed early. He would endlessly question the logic of his professors’ lines of theological reasoning, infuriating religious authorities. The iconoclast soon took to teaching himself, and with his dashing mix of philosophy, poetry and songs, he was a magnetic figure who attracted a loyal, adoring following.