And yet that day they’d flown off together, he’d doubted she’d even be at the airport waiting for him. But no, there she was, looking so very happy, and so very different without her uniform, and she was happy because of him, and she was waving her passport, she was running right up to him and giving him a big kiss. “Not until we’re in France,” said Donald, really rather sternly, and Chrissie had said sorry—then she’d beamed at him, “Do you like my new suitcase? I bought it specially!” and she showed him some pretty little pink thing on wheels.
In Paris she had blossomed. She was the one who did most of the talking. She was the one, after all, who was studying French. She’d order for them in restaurants and wine bars, she’d be the one who’d make pleasantries with the locals. She gave him helpful phrases he could try out for himself, and he’d practice them at museums and souvenir shops, and she’d laugh. “I’m the teacher now!” she’d say. “I like being the teacher.” She said it rather a lot, and it hadn’t stopped being charming yet.
Charming, too, was the way she kept on using their false names. “Come on, Monsieur MacAllister,” she’d say, and take his hand to pull him along the Paris streets, or, “I’m hungry, Monsieur MacAllister,” when she wanted to stop for lunch, or, “Are you happy, Monsieur MacAllister?” when she caught him looking a bit too thoughtful. They’d given their false names to the receptionist when they’d checked into the hotel; Donald had wondered whether they should have chosen something more French sounding, but Chrissie didn’t think he could pull that off. She was Mademoiselle MacAllister, just mademoiselle—Donald had been prepared to call her madame, but the receptionist had automatically assumed she was his daughter, and perhaps it was better left like that. They ordered a double bed. The receptionist didn’t care.
Donald slept on the left, because he liked sleeping on the left. Chrissie slept on the right, and didn’t mind. And they lay side by side, and they held hands, and they kissed. They didn’t have sex. Donald said he didn’t think they should have sex until she was sixteen, then everything would be proper and aboveboard. She said that was fine. She had looked a little disappointed—or maybe she hadn’t, it was hard for him to tell, and he wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to be disappointed; he supposed he wanted her to be disappointed just a bit. Getting the sex issue cleared up was a weight off his mind; he felt guiltless, as light as air, what they were doing was perfectly innocent. When she kissed him she flicked her tongue across his teeth, and he liked that, he liked the courage she showed too—he wanted to say, Don’t you know I could just bite it off?—but he didn’t, she might think it odd. They both got undressed separately in the bathroom with the door shut, so he hadn’t seen her naked yet, but he could feel that nakedness so close in the dark, it was all lurking just beneath her pajamas. He wore pajamas too. His pajamas were the pale blue ones he’d worn for years, they were nice nondescript pajamas. Chrissie’s pajamas were covered with pictures of Disney characters, and that made Donald feel uncomfortable, and each night he vowed he’d buy her a new pair the next day, and he never did.
So, no sex, but the kisses were good, and Donald thought in time he might get better at them, maybe once he relaxed a little. Sometimes they’d kiss a bit in the morning when they awoke, and Donald would say they could just stay in bed and carry on kissing all morning and not bother with breakfast after all. But then Chrissie would say she needed a coffee and up they’d get.
Chrissie drank a lot of coffee, and smoked a few cigarettes, and said she didn’t do much of either in England but it was all right now she was on holiday. All the girls in France drank coffee and smoked, she was just fitting in. She would laugh and ask what was he going to do, put her in detention? Donald supposed he ought to mind, but it made her look a little older and gave more flavor to the kisses.
“Let’s just stay here,” she said. “Let’s never go back to England!” And it sounded like a joke, the sort of thing people on holiday always say to each other, but he took her at her word.
That evening it was the first time it didn’t rain, and they walked farther along the Seine than they’d managed before, and Donald got quite caught in the emotion of it, and they kissed in public for the first time. On the way back to the hotel he looked in the kiosk for the British newspapers, and there still weren’t pictures of him on the front pages.
They went back to bed, and cuddled, and Donald worried that his erection was poking Chrissie too hard in the back, but she didn’t say anything, and maybe she hadn’t even noticed.
He woke up, and she was gone. And he knew she was gone for good, and it was properly this time, not like on Tuesday when she’d popped down to the lobby for a cigarette. There was no note, not a thing, and he wasn’t ever going to see her again—not unless, he supposed, he saw her in court, because that’s where she’d gone, she’d gone to the police, she was with them right now, but would he even see her in court, maybe they’d protect her from the whole court experience because she was a minor? Yes, he was pretty sure her statement would be enough. And he knew that if he opened the wardrobe, he could see whether her clothes were still there, as well as that little pink suitcase—or look in the bedside drawer, he wouldn’t even need to get out of bed, just roll over and open the drawer and find out if she’d taken her passport. No. No. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t have to look. Not yet. He didn’t want to spoil the moment. Because there was a part of him that was pleased she was gone. That it was all over. That it was over at last, because it had to end at some point, why not now, and if now it meant the suspense was over, good, he could be happy. He was happy. He was happy. He stretched out wide beneath the sheets; the bed was all his.
“Where have you been? Where have you bloody been?” He was embarrassed to realize he was shouting at her, and that he was crying too, and she just stood there in the doorway, that little mouth an O of childish surprise. She came to him. She tried to give him a hug. He pushed her away sulkily, though a hug was what he wanted most in the world.
“Please,” she said. “It’s all right. It’s a treat. I got us breakfast. Breakfast in bed, it’s a treat.” He was still crying, but he wasn’t angry anymore, and she giggled, she dared to giggle. She kissed away a couple of his tears, she pressed her lips to his face and sucked the tears in. “It’s all right. Hey, now. Baby. I went to the market. There’s a market out there, selling fresh fruit!”
Dressed as she was, she climbed under the covers beside him. She opened her shopping bag, let all the fruit spill out on the bed over them.
“Ananas,” she said. “Framboise. Pamplemousse.” She said the words slowly, as if to an infant; he repeated them back, and she was pleased. They cut their grapefruit in half with plastic spoons from the tea service; it was quite an effort, but they were game, and laughing, and the juice squirted everywhere. They sprinkled the grapefruit halves with crushed-up sugar cubes.
“What do you want to do today?” he said to her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll be better. Where do you want to go? Your choice.”
“Well,” she said. “I do have somewhere in mind.”
Donald knew that the moral responsibility of what they were doing rested solely upon his shoulders—that was how the authorities would see it, and his family, and his friends, and everyone he’d ever held dear. He accepted that. And indeed, he felt there was something almost heroic in that acceptance. When at night in his Chiswick flat he thought of Chrissie it was only of how he wanted to shield her from the world and all the ugly accusations it would throw at them. He would take full blame. He wanted to ensure that her life was never tainted by scandal, that when she left him (and one day she would, he knew she would, and even that gave him some thrill of self-sacrificial nobility), she could enjoy the rest of her life free from any recrimination.
But in his heart of hearts he couldn’t have let the relationship continue unless he’d believed that she was as emotionally culpable as he was. After all, she was the one who had started it.
And that was the ir
ony; before she had seduced him, he’d never given her even the slightest thought. If there had been a girl in his fifth-form class he might have fancied (and he hadn’t, naturally not), it would have been Sheila Bennett, who was blond and curvy and good at essays on film theory. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Chrissie, but there hadn’t been anything especially right about her either—at least, nothing so right that it could have tempted him. Chrissie sat at the back of the class, mostly, and didn’t say much, and the not much she did say wasn’t very interesting.
After class one day, Chrissie asked if she could speak with him privately. He said yes.
“There’s a teacher who fancies me,” she said. “And I don’t know what to do about it.”
Donald was duly shocked, of course, and asked who the teacher was.
“I don’t want to get him into any trouble.”
Donald said that she mustn’t worry about that, and that she should report the incident. And then he supposed that was exactly what she was doing, and he wondered why she wanted to report it to him. He asked what the teacher had done. What he had said to her.
Chrissie bit her lip. “Well, it’s not what he’s actually done,” she said. “Or what he’s, you know. Said.”
Donald was studiously patient. He nodded.
“But it feels weird, sir. Knowing there’s someone out there who desires you. Don’t you think?”
Later on, it was that desires that haunted Donald. It seemed such an adult word somehow. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose it must be.”
A few days later she came to see him again. “It’s you,” she said. “You’re the teacher. I’m in love with you.”
He thought it was a bad joke, that behind the door there was a gaggle of schoolgirls spying on them and sniggering, that this was a prank, a dare. But he looked at Chrissie, properly, and really for the first time, and her eyes were so big and earnest, and she was being so very brave, look at her, she was shaking, how brave was that? “Hey,” he said, “hey,” and he asked her to sit down, and she shook her head, and he said, “It’s going to be all right,” and “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” And all he really wanted to say was, Why? Why do you love me? Why?
She said it again.
“You don’t love me,” he said, and he tried to sound sympathetic, and he felt he was being such a good teacher and such a good adult. “You think you do, but you have all these hormones, and they’re whooshing about, and you’re confused.”
“I’m not confused.”
“It’s perfectly normal to have a crush. I had a crush when I was at school.” And he tried to think of one, and actually he couldn’t.
“I’ve tried not to love you,” she said. “Because it’ll be so very hard for you, won’t it?”
“Why?”
“When you start loving me back.”
He manfully resisted falling in love with her, and he was successful for very nearly three whole weeks.
Some days she wouldn’t talk to him after class at all, and those were the good days, and those were the bad days too. One day she cornered him beneath the blackboard and said she was so much in love that she was desperate, that she was frightened it was something she’d never be able to control, that she couldn’t live without him. She desired him. Beyond all measure.
He told her they couldn’t discuss her feelings at school. Well, where then? He’d give her a lift home in his car. But don’t meet him in the staff car park, he’d pick her up from a side road, somewhere nice and private. He knew he was being stupid, but he really did believe still he was just protecting her, he would do his best to talk her out of it.
They sat at the far end of a Sainsbury’s supermarket car park, which offered free parking to customers. She kissed him first and he kissed right back. Then they had to go inside the supermarket to buy some groceries so he could get a token for the exit barrier.
They agreed to go on a date. No, not a date, Donald said—it was just a meeting, they were meeting up. That Saturday, they went to the cinema. Donald had wanted to see the new Scorsese but then realized that his new girlfriend was beneath the appropriate age, and they’d settled for some rom-com instead. A cinema was good, to be out in public—it meant that they wouldn’t make a mistake like last time. They both sat there in the darkness, and they didn’t kiss, didn’t even touch, they were both well behaved. They were so well behaved that Donald relaxed completely and wondered what on earth the problem was—so they were just friends, and what was the harm in having friends?
Afterward he took her to an Italian restaurant half an hour’s drive away so they wouldn’t be recognized. The conversation was easy. She was such a mature girl, he had had no idea, and she knew quite a bit about current affairs and politics and art—and her opinions were so clearly her own, she wasn’t just parroting her parents’ views, she was fiercely forthright on a couple of points where she disagreed with them and he found that ferocity enchanting. She was witty, and he was on good form too, he made a few wry comments that made her laugh. He bought her wine, and she stroked his leg underneath the tablecloth with her foot, and then, later, she stroked his hand.
He made her understand the need for discretion.
“Because they wouldn’t understand, would they?”
“They wouldn’t understand,” he agreed. “But it’s nicer like that, isn’t it? Because what we’ve got, it’s ours. It’s ours, and nobody else’s, and it’s pure. Don’t tell anyone, not even Maureen Slater, Maureen Slater’s your best friend, isn’t she? Is she? Or is it one of the other girls?”
Chrissie agreed not to breathe a word to Maureen Slater. She was very good at the whole discretion thing, and in class sometimes she barely looked at him, and if she did, it was with such bored indifference that her entire face seemed to change. He admired how she could do that. It hurt him.
They broke up three times—always, as she’d say with a laugh afterward, because he’d been “thinking too much.”
Chrissie had suggested they go to Paris together. Her parents wouldn’t mind, she said, she’d just say she was going on holiday with a friend. Donald couldn’t believe he’d agreed. He couldn’t believe they had actually gone. He couldn’t believe how happy having her all to himself made him.
That morning when she went out to get fruit from the market they had their very first argument.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be better. Where do you want to go? Your choice.”
She didn’t even have to think about it—she had her answer right away, and that surprised him.
Fine, he said. Of course they could do that! If she had a certain restaurant in mind, then of course they should go there. (Was it expensive?)
She said she didn’t know. She didn’t think it was expensive. No, it wasn’t expensive.
Fine, he said. It didn’t matter anyway. Not even if it was expensive! They could afford to splash out on a decent meal! What sort of restaurant was it?
She didn’t know.
He said, fine, that was all fine.
She said it was supposed to be very romantic, and she gave him a wink that he didn’t much like, it felt a little too self-conscious. The place had been recommended to her by a friend. The friend had been certain they would enjoy it.
She went to the wardrobe, and to her little pink suitcase, and from a side pocket took out a sheet of paper. On it her friend had written down the restaurant’s address, even drawn a fairly detailed map to help them find it.
She said it was a bit of a distance, and she tilted her head in some sort of apology.
He said, “Who’s the friend?” And at that she tilted her head to the other side, shrugged.
He said, “I thought we’d agreed. We wouldn’t tell anyone we were going to Paris. What we were doing. Who’s this friend, who’s giving you restaurant tips? Is it a girl from school?”
She said it was no one from school. Did he think she was that stupid? She wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t tell a kid. No, this
was a grown-up. The word grown-up made her sound so childish.
And he hated this, that their second argument was so hot on the heels of their first, but he had to know, he couldn’t let it drop. “A friend of your parents?”
No, a friend of hers. She had her own friends. God, did he think he was the only grown-up friend she had?
He wanted to hit her, and he’d never felt that way before, not about anybody.
She said, “I’m so tired of you thinking what we’re doing is bad. It isn’t bad. And you’re not a bad person. I don’t think you’re a bad person.”
The rage went out of him, and he felt so tired, and he sat down hard upon the bed.
She said, “You’re not a bad person, baby.”
He said that he knew he wasn’t.
She said, “We have to go to the restaurant. I promised my friend. And he went to so much effort. I don’t want to let him down.”
He gave a nod, just a little nod, but it was enough, it was agreed.
And in spite of that, they managed to have a good day. They went to the Louvre. Chrissie saw some paintings she liked, Donald saw some he liked too, and they stood in the queue for the Mona Lisa and were surprised how small it was. David told Chrissie that one of the men pictured in Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa looked like Mr. Turner the PE teacher, and Chrissie thought that was very funny, and she found a portrait that looked just a little like Miss Bull. Everything was going so well, and Donald thought the upset of the morning might be forgotten—and then he offered to buy her a pastry at a boulangerie and she smiled and said she wouldn’t, she didn’t want to spoil her appetite for later.
They went back to the hotel, Chrissie wanted to get changed. She wheeled her little pink suitcase into the bathroom; she was there for the best part of an hour. While she was busy, Donald looked through the guidebook to see whether Paris had anything to offer they hadn’t done yet; it hadn’t.
Seize the Night Page 38
