17. Canicule
I’ve never been a fan of summertime in Paris.
Bathed in spring sunlight, the sandstone buildings which line the River Seine take on the hue of clotted cream. Bare branches give way to delicate leaves and bursts of colour: the candyfloss pink of cherry blossom, the buttery yellow of laburnum. The skies are capricious: deep azure blues pale to washed-out watercolour greys; flighty, inconsistent clouds are chased away by brooding, purposeful cousins. The spring sun plays hide and seek. It caresses but rarely burns; it bears no malice.
But in the summer months, when temperatures begin to soar, my spirits sink. I brace myself for the arrival of la canicule.
In a heatwave the white sun blinds and scorches. An oppressive mantle of polluted air smothers the city, relinquishing its stranglehold for only a few short hours before dawn. At night, my bedroom window open, motorbikes revving at the traffic lights jerk me out of my fitful slumber. At the first murmur of an approaching street-cleaning lorry, I haul myself out of bed with a groan, slamming the windows shut before the drone becomes a roar. With the windows closed the bedroom becomes a sauna, the humid silence broken only by the whine of an urban mosquito.
Tadpole was a June baby, and the first summer of her life – marred by a record-breaking canicule – was an ordeal. From midday until nightfall the sun struck our windows with all its force, its heat penetrating deep into the stone walls of the building. The balcony floor was hot enough to fry an egg; the curlicued railings doubled as branding irons. The geraniums in my window boxes were bleached of all colour, their scorched petals crunching underfoot.
In semi-darkness, the shutters closed, I listlessly watched one rented film after another while baby Tadpole dozed on the sofa beside me clad only in her nappy, her hands curled into fists above her head. An electric fan whirred beside us, stirring the soupy air gamely enough but providing little actual relief. When our skin touched, perspiration glued us together. We took cooling baths and I watched over Tadpole with a new mother’s fearful vigilance, terrified she would overheat and dehydrate.
Thousands of elderly people perished in the heat that summer while their children and grandchildren holidayed in the south, oblivious to their plight. The morgues of Paris overflowed with unclaimed bodies: it was a national scandal.
While I had nothing so sinister on my conscience, guilt gnawed away at my insides all the same. I was horrified with myself for counting the days until the end of my maternity leave, looking forward to returning to the air-conditioned office, a haven of cool in the City of Heat. The ambient temperature wasn’t the only attraction: I craved adult company. I missed meaningless banter, frivolous gossip, deconstructing soap operas over lunch. Every morning, when Mr Frog left for his office, I was nauseous with envy. He had waived his right to paternity leave, telling me it was impossible to take a holiday, he was up to his eyes in work. I felt abandoned: left to face parenthood alone, cut off from my friends and family, held hostage by the heat.
Tadpole’s first summer drifted by in a hot fug of resentment. Even when it was finally over, I would never quite shake off the feeling that our home had become my prison. My life had been irrevocably changed by Tadpole’s arrival, while Mr Frog’s remained the same.
Hot on the heels of Tadpole’s second birthday, our unseasonably hot day out at the beach with James and his daughters heralded the return of la canicule. One evening after work the following week, Mr Frog, Tadpole and I waded sluggishly through the dense evening air. I felt as parched as my geraniums. A frantic day at work, the fetid stench of perspiration in the métro on the way home, a dash to the supermarket flanked by Tadpole to fill our empty fridge with provisions for the week ahead: all these things had sapped my energy. My batteries were almost flat.
Tadpole, who had refused categorically to be parted from her Dora the Explorer doll when we set out, infuriated me by trying to wriggle out of my iron grip at the pedestrian crossing. She’d always had a stubborn streak, and no doubt she was tired, but she had also begun exhibiting textbook ‘terrible two’ behaviour, challenging my authority at every opportunity. The words ‘non!’ and ‘no!’ cropped up with alarming regularity these days, followed by an almost audible exclamation mark. I fought the temptation to snap at her, nevertheless: our expedition today was an important one, and I wanted no tears or tantrums to mar it.
‘Mummy needs to hold your hand, honey,’ I said, without raising my voice. ‘There are cars on the road. It’s very dangerous.’
‘Non! Veux pas!’ I sighed and hoisted her into my arms instead, where she bucked and squirmed, furious at being overruled.
Mr Frog strode ahead when the lights changed, a carton of assorted bric-à-brac in his arms, most of which I was secretly rather glad to see the back of. He whistled as he walked. Such cheerfulness seemed misplaced, indecent under the circumstances, and it unsettled me. Here we were, on our way to visit his future home for the very first time and, in my mind’s eye, I had imagined the scene as a gloomy funeral procession. He wasn’t supposed to be upbeat and happy. Surely, at the very least, the occasion called for a touch of solemnity?
‘We’re going to visit Daddy’s new house today,’ I explained to Tadpole, setting her down at the foot of the steps which led from the pavement up to the entrance hall of Mr Frog’s apartment block. His deux pièces was perched atop one of the more modern buildings overlooking the park. ‘Un immeuble de grand standing’ in estate-agent speak, which, translated into English, seemed to mean lots of marble-effect tiles and gold-coloured light fittings. Opposite the bank of intercom buttons on the first floor, a sign announced the presence of a concierge. I was impressed: so far, so chic.
As we filed into a mirrored lift – twice the size of its poor relation at what would soon become known as ‘Mummy’s house’ – I glanced at Mr Frog, who was no longer whistling. His expression was impenetrable now, and I dared not ask what he was thinking. Turning my attention back to our daughter, I resumed my speech, my voice infused with a forced joviality I didn’t really feel.
‘Sometimes you’ll be staying with Daddy at Daddy’s house, and sometimes you’ll be staying with Mummy at Mummy’s house,’ I explained as the lift drew to a halt at the eighth floor. I hoped the words were sinking in, but it was impossible to tell. ‘You’ll have two bedrooms, two beds, two potties… Aren’t you a lucky girl?’
Tadpole gazed back at me gravely, but did not reply. I decided to abandon my speech for now. It was too theoretical: she needed to see Daddy’s new home with her own eyes if it were to become real to her. I suspected she wasn’t the only one.
Mr Frog set down his box and unlocked the door, his hands fumbling with the unfamiliar keys. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, and we filed inside, one by one. ‘This is gorgeous!’ I exclaimed, amazed. The main room was spacious and bright and, as Mr Frog moved to open windows, the room was filled with a merciful cross-breeze. We were high above the surrounding buildings, and picture windows, each with its own balcony, lined three sides of the building. But the main attraction was the view from the living-room window: there, Paris was laid out at our feet.
‘Wow,’ I said, making straight for the largest balcony. Rooftops stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. ‘I thought the view from across the road was something special, but this tops it, for sure.’
‘Yes, it’s not bad, my view, n’est-ce pas? replied Mr Frog, lighting up a cigarette and resting his arms proudly on the balustrade. Tadpole peeped through the bars between us, her eyes following a passing aeroplane which traced a hazy white trail across the early evening sky.
We spent a few moments picking out the landmarks we recognized, their spires and domes rising above the slate roofs of residential buildings: the dome of the Panthéon, the spires of Notre Dame, the primary colours of the Pompidou Centre, the faraway Tour Montparnasse. It was a bigger, better, wide-screen version of my own beloved view. Even the Eiffel Tower was visible from here. From across the road we’d only ever se
en its lights reflected against the sky: Mr Frog’s new building had been hiding it all along.
As Mr Frog stubbed out his cigarette, I felt the clenched muscles in my jaw relaxing. I hadn’t been fully aware of how much I’d been dreading our visit until my pent-up tension began to dissipate. I’d pictured a drab apartment with peeling paint; a melancholy place where Mr Frog would eat TV dinners in front of a flickering TV screen. Imagining Mr Frog entertaining friends in his new bachelor pad, conjuring up an image of Tadpole pottering contentedly in the living room, her toys strewn across the pale parquet floor, my burden of guilt was instantly eased.
With some difficulty, we wrenched our eyes away from the view and followed Tadpole through to the bedroom, which looked out over a corner of the park. The balcony skimmed the tops of the trees on this side of the building, and when I craned my neck to the right, I could just make out the arched window of my living room.
‘If I set up a tripod just here,’ said Mr Frog with a sly smile, ‘I’ll be able to see exactly what you’re up to.’ He was teasing, of course, but much as I admired his ability to crack jokes at a time like this, alarm bells were also sounding in my head. I squinted down at the passers-by far below. Was it possible to recognize people from this height? Every morning I would pass by on the opposite pavement, conspicuous with my pushchair, on the way to Tata’s house. Would Mr Frog torture himself by watching us go by? Would I feel a prickling at the back of my neck?
It was beginning to dawn on me that his proximity, however invaluable from the point of view of sharing Tadpole’s time, might also be problematic. I didn’t much relish the thought of striding into the local bakery with James and finding Mr Frog there, queuing to buy a baguette. And what if I happened upon Mr Frog and a girlfriend one day as they said their goodbyes on the steps of his building? But it was too late to voice any concerns now. The benefits clearly outweighed the disadvantages and, anyhow, the lease had already been signed.
‘I’m going to buy you a new bed, and we’ll put it right here, in this corner,’ Mr Frog explained to Tadpole, turning his back on the window. He was planning a trip to Ikea in a rented van to equip his new place, the weekend after next. Once everything was in place, he’d finally move out.
‘Are you going to get curtains for this room?’ I asked, regretting my question almost as soon as the words escaped my mouth. I’d have to learn to bite back the urge to give advice about feathering his new nest. It was his, not ours. The same went for everything in his life. It was time to take a step back and let him get on with the business of making this new home his own.
‘I won’t need curtains, no, because there are shutters outside the windows.’ He grabbed a pole with a metal handle and demonstrated the mechanism. Wooden shutters descended like eyelids until we stood blinking in the darkness for a moment before Mr Frog slowly wound them back up again.
Tadpole giggled. ‘Maintenant, j’ai deux bedrooms!’ she cried, clapping her hands with glee. I looked at Mr Frog in amazement: my clumsy explanation in the lift, and Mr Frog’s just now, had not been a waste of breath, after all. We’d taken care to place the emphasis on everything Tadpole would gain, as opposed to what she would be losing, and our strategy seemed to have paid off: it didn’t seem to occur to her that this new development could be anything but positive.
‘How about we take a look at the other rooms?’ I suggested. Tadpole took this as her cue to scamper off along the corridor, eager to explore. ‘She seems to be taking this remarkably well,’ I added in a low voice, once she was out of earshot.
Mr Frog shrugged. ‘We’ll see,’ he said, with a clipped smile, devoid of any real warmth. ‘Only time will tell.’ The pride he’d taken in his new view, the joking in the bedroom had now given way to some new emotion. But whatever he was feeling, I was the last person who could offer any comfort, so I held my tongue and followed him along the corridor after our daughter.
Back at home, Tadpole in bed, I trudged through the living room, my arms filled with damp washing. Mr Frog was slumped on the sofa, the remote control within easy reach. Half the contents of the fridge lay on a tray on the coffee table before him, his usual improvised evening picnic. On the surface little had changed. We led our separate lives under the same roof just as we always had: we fed ourselves, I wrote my blog, he watched TV or worked on his laptop. I made no protest when he left his dishes in the sink or staggered in late, his breath heavy with alcohol. There seemed little point in seeking confrontation these days, and I was cutting Mr Frog more slack than I ever had before. The wait was nearly over.
Dumping the mound of intertwined clothes on the bed, I began to assemble the white plastic drying rack by the window. ‘You dropped something,’ said Mr Frog. I hadn’t heard the floorboards creak, and the unexpected proximity of his voice caused me to whirl round in surprise. The drying rack, not yet secured, collapsed in on itself and clattered to the floor. I held out my hand for the missing sock – or whatever it was he was holding in his fist – but he showed no sign of moving towards me, so, with a sigh, I rounded the bed. ‘I’ve never seen these before – are they new?’ said Mr Frog, his voice even and expressionless as he opened his fist to reveal my navy-blue knickers with the light-blue ribbons.
‘Yes, they are quite new,’ I admitted, reddening. Of all the things I could have dropped, why did I have to let go of those? It was tantamount to dangling my new sex life in his face; taunting him with the fact that I had been buying new underwear for someone else’s enjoyment. It wasn’t as if Mr Frog didn’t know what was going on, but spelling things out so clearly seemed unnecessarily cruel.
‘You never bought stuff like that before,’ said Mr Frog, his arms folded, the offending knickers still dangling from his little finger. I couldn’t help wondering whether he was savouring my discomfort. His eyes were a stony shade of grey.
‘Well, you always said you preferred cotton,’ I retorted, resuming my wrestling match with the drying rack, unable to weather his accusing stare any longer.
Mr Frog left the room without another word and I hung up the washing with shaking fingers. When at last I turned, I found the blue knickers hanging from the top right-hand corner of my monitor.
‘It must be excruciating, having to live together while you wait for him to move,’ said James sympathetically. ‘But it must be really hard for him too. I was in his shoes once, remember? When my wife ended things, I could tell she couldn’t wait to move me out and her new guy in. I think I dug in my heels and stuck around for far longer than I should have done. I didn’t see why I should make things easier for her.’
I wondered if Mr Frog had been dragging his feet on purpose. It was true that it had been almost six weeks since our break-up. But to be fair, given the Paris rental market, he’d done really well to find a place so quickly.
‘I don’t suppose you made it any easier on yourself,’ I said cautiously. ‘By sticking around, I mean.’
‘Well, no, I don’t suppose I did,’ James concurred. ‘But I wasn’t at my most rational.’
It was Saturday evening and we were sitting in a tiny Mexican restaurant in Rennes. Sombreros hung on ochre walls; cheerful folk music played in the background – all of which seemed incongruous given the nature of our conversation. I’d noticed when we entered that the owner seemed to know him well, and I couldn’t help wondering who else James had brought here over the years. His ex-wife? Eve? Suddenly I longed to go back to his apartment. We seemed to function better behind closed doors; preferably horizontal.
‘Anyway, that’s enough of the doom and gloom,’ said James, steering the conversation purposefully away from Mr Frog. The whole point of escaping to Rennes was to leave my worries behind, not to allow them to cast a shadow over our weekend. James put his hand to his jacket pocket. ‘On a happier note, I’ve got a little something for you.’ For a split second I wondered how I would react if James withdrew a jewellery case. But there was no velvet box. Instead he handed me a jangling set of keys. ‘I wanted you to hav
e these. From now on, my place is yours. If you ever need to come here, if you ever need to get away, you’ll always be welcome.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, closing my fist tightly around my gift. I hesitated, wondering whether to reveal what I’d been thinking when his hand went to his pocket, and decided to take the plunge. ‘For a moment there, I half wondered whether you were about to pull out an engagement ring…’
‘I hope yon weren’t too disappointed?’ he said slowly, taking my hand in his, still clenched around the keys, and bringing it to his lips. ‘As a matter of fact, I would very much like to marry you one day,’ he added, his stare unflinching. ‘If you’d have me, that is.’
I gasped. It couldn’t be called a proposal, exactly, couched so cautiously in the conditional tense, but for the first time in my life I was with a man who could conceive of marrying me one day, and the idea thrilled me. All those arguments I’d paraded on my blog when I’d spoken of Mr Frog’s reluctance to tie the knot now seemed pitiful and misguided. He’d been right all along: pragmatism was no basis for making such a decision. But I’d quietly assumed that James’s divorce would have rendered wedding vows devoid of all meaning for him. Apparently I’d been wrong.
That night, as we lay spent and light-headed in crumpled sheets I finally said the words I’d held in check until now. ‘I love you,’ I whispered. ‘And I love the way you make me feel.’
The next day, the métro home from Montparnasse station was packed with sticky, scantily clad bodies, the air rancid with perspiration. The connections involved what seemed like hours of trailing along corridors and moving walkways, all the temperature of a slow oven. Emerging from the exit on to avenue Simon Bolivar, I breathed hot air thick with car-exhaust fumes into my lungs. I heard the familiar growl of traffic, the wail of distant sirens: these were the sounds of my adopted city.
I’d spent most of my train journey home hovering dangerously close to tears. Bidding James goodbye was becoming more of a wrench as every successive visit drew to a close. I felt like an amputee; as though I’d left some vital part of myself in his safe-keeping.
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