My cheeks burned as I did the same, trying to keep my hands steady. I didn’t look up, but from across the kitchen, I could feel Clémence’s stare.
It is nothing, I told myself. It is nothing.
June 1969
Outside the window, tall buildings and a grubby glass roof glide overhead as the train shudders to a halt.
Paris.
Fatigue and excitement make for a weird cocktail. It’s been a long night of trains and railway benches and the dark waves of the Channel, but I am here. I am actually here.
I stagger on to the platform with the rest of the passengers. Businessmen with thick glasses walk purposefully, swinging their briefcases; a group of girls wearing shorts exclaim in what sounds like German over their rucksacks. I think back to the Bill Perch who nervously boarded the train to Norwich. If someone had told me two weeks ago that I’d soon be standing at the heart of the busiest station in France, I would have thought they were completely bonkers. Perhaps I’m the one who’s bonkers. Right now it’s easier to grin at the sheer absurdity of life than to dwell on the consequences.
Above the concourse, the huge announcement board is clacking, revealing destinations that all sound mysterious and thrilling. My stomach gurgles with hunger. I could murder a bacon roll. At a kiosk across the way, people are smoking and drinking from minuscule cups, managing to look bored and rushed at the same time. No bacon rolls, but some moon-shaped buns. I point to one and the man behind the counter says something in rapid French. I hold out a handful of unfamiliar coins and he mutters to himself, grabs a few.
The bun he gives me is soft and falls into flakes as I try to eat it. Whatever it is, it’s delicious. It tastes of butter and leaves me licking my fingers and wishing I’d bought another six.
What would they say at home if they could see me, eating French food in Paris? When Louise brought my passport to the station her face was a picture. I wonder if she’ll keep her promise not to say anything to Mum and Dad, whether our sibling agreement of I’ll scratch your back still holds, or whether I should’ve given her another pound note for good measure.
Too late now. I’m here and so, once, was Emeline. Depot, Gare d’Austerlitz, Paris. One down.
Outside, it’s baking already. The traffic is honking and scooters are zipping between the buses and cars like insects. The sun is bright; the front of the Gare du Nord is grimy. I watch the crowd, trying to get my bearings. A girl wearing huge sunglasses is weaving through the chaos. An old woman shuffles towards the metro in a housecoat, a group of young men with long hair and silk shirts and bizarre hats stride past, talking loudly. It’s unruly, it’s elegant, it’s glorious.
Steph always talked about coming to Paris one day, for the fashion, but I bet she never imagined this. The thought of her brings a wave of guilt, remembering our telephone conversation. You care more about her than you do about me. I grimace to myself in the middle of the thoroughfare, at my inability to explain. No wonder she’s broken things off. She deserves better. Part of me feels awful, yet at the same time, I know it’s probably for the best. I made the choice to come here, to follow Emeline. Now I have to see it through.
The metro is packed, sweltering and confusing, but there’s a stop called ‘Austerlitz’ and doggedly, I ride the lines towards it. Depot, Gare d’Austerlitz. It isn’t until I’m ejected into the station that I realize: I have no idea what comes next. What does a depot look like? Through the crowd, I see a sign that promises ‘Information’. If there’s one thing I need …
The woman at the booth is dressed in a smart burgundy uniform, a matching hat on her cropped hair. She trills out a well-used ‘bonjour’ and looks expectant, her hand already on an English tourist map.
‘I’m, er, looking for the depot.’
Her smile falters. ‘Pardon?’
‘The depot? Gare d’Austerlitz?’ She still looks blank. Maybe I’m saying it wrong. I unfold the letter. ‘Here, it’s this address. I’m looking for someone.’
Frowning, the woman peers at the page. Her eyes flick across the words, the date.
‘Sir,’ she says, using a careful he might be a lunatic voice, ‘this letter is fifty years old.’
‘I know that, I was hoping the depot might have employee records, be able to give me the home address they had on file for this person. It’s a long shot, but it’s all I have to go on, and—’
‘The Chemin de fer du Midi does not exist. Not for thirty years now.’
‘Yes, but what about the depot? Is that still here?’
I must sound increasingly desperate, because a man in a similar uniform sidles into view and mumbles something to the woman in French. She whispers back before turning a cool smile on me.
‘The depot is for train staff only, monsieur. I’m afraid we cannot help you.’
This can’t be happening. ‘Please, you really don’t understand—’
‘Bonne journée, monsieur,’ she reels off, already stepping away from the booth.
‘Wait!’
She’s gone, and what’s worse, the supervisor man reappears to make a shoo motion at me. I have no choice but to wander out of the station. Even if there were signs to the depot, I wouldn’t know what to ask when I got there. Idiot, Perch. Idiot. Throw your life away on a whim, why don’t you? Like a piece of paper from fifty years ago was going to help you find Emeline.
There’s another kiosk selling the crescent-shaped buns. This time, I buy four. I sit in the hot sun against the station wall, watching cars and taxis battle it out on the forecourt. Three and a half buns down, and I start to feel a bit sick.
‘They will make you fat,’ a light voice tells me.
The burgundy-suited information girl is standing above me, a half-smoked cigarette in her fingers. I try to swipe away some of the crumbs clinging to my mouth and chin.
‘What?’
‘In France, we say pardon,’ she tells me, crouching down beside me, careful not to scuff her shiny court shoes. ‘I am sorry, back there. My boss was watching. But you have me wondering.’ She smiles around another drag of her cigarette. ‘What is this letter, from so many years ago? It is a mystery, non?’
For a minute I wonder if it’s a trick, but she only raises her eyebrow at me, smoking politely. I reach for my jacket.
‘This Jean-Baptiste Gosse,’ I tell her, handing the letter over, ‘I need to find him. He knew someone, a woman I’m looking for.’
‘Ah, an affaire de coeur?’ the woman says delightedly, throwing away her cigarette. ‘A love affair?’
‘Not exactly.’
The woman just gives me a knowing look and begins to read the letter.
‘Ah, bon,’ she says after a while, ‘so you look for someone at the depot who knows this Gosse?’
‘Oui,’ I tell her. ‘I mean, yes. I know it’s crazy, but …’
‘Allez.’ She jumps to her feet. ‘We will go and ask.’
I stand too, shedding crumbs. ‘What about your boss?’ She just shrugs.
I follow her through the station, along an empty platform and eventually out on to the edge of the track itself. As we walk, she asks more questions about what I’m doing, about Emeline. I find myself describing her, what she looked like, things she wrote in her diary. We eventually come to a big wooden shed, open at one end. A group of men in oil-stained overalls are lounging on pallets and old metal chairs, smoking. Most of them have muscles the size of tree trunks. I’m suddenly very glad to have a guide.
But they seem friendly enough, especially when the girl offers around her packet of cigarettes. They talk casually for a while, until one of the older men exclaims something and there’s a flurry of activity, as one produces a pencil and another a scrap of paper. I find it pushed into my hands.
‘What’s this?’ I ask her.
‘They say they don’t know any Gosse, but the old union men, they have a little club. They meet at a bar every day over in the Butte-aux-Cailles. Some of them work for the railway their whole lives, so they might
remember. You can ask them.’
‘Thank you,’ I nod to them, ‘I will.’
One of the men comes forward, grips my hand with his huge fingers.
‘Petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid.’
‘What did he say?’ I ask the girl.
‘He wishes you luck.’
The day is getting hotter, and whatever fanciful notions I had about Paris being a city of cool refinement are fast disappearing. No Eiffel Tower or posh shopping streets here, instead an entire district that looks like a building site. Tower blocks are going up. The sun bounces from the hot concrete and makes my mouth feel dry as a bone.
The girl’s directions finally take me away from the baking tarmac and into a quieter neighbourhood. This is more like it; the Paris I’ve seen at the pictures. The buildings are older, crooked and weathered with wooden shutters and balconies and pots of flowers, tiny attic windows sprouting haphazardly from the roofs, thrown open to the summer weather. Music pours down into the street below. I hear familiar words and realize that it’s the Rolling Stones, making themselves at home even here.
I find myself on a street lined with shops, awnings protecting goods from the fierce heat. There’s a cobbler, a cheesemonger, a wine merchant, all squashed together.
The girl’s directions have run out, so eventually, I show the piece of paper to a man selling fruit. He nods in recognition. I’ve got no idea what he is saying, but he points the way. Around the corner, there’s a park that isn’t much more than a dirt square, shaded by trees. A faint toc, toc noise comes from the centre. I catch sight of a group of men there, playing a game that looks like bowling. At the edge of the park there’s a bar, with the name I’m looking for. I take a deep breath. Second time lucky.
Outside, a group of old men sit, keeping their drinks company. The bar has definitely seen better days; the same goes for the men.
‘Bonjour,’ I try. They peer up at me. Some are beetle-eyed beneath huge, hairy brows, others look tough as old beams. ‘I, er, I’m looking for someone.’
They answer in French, and I answer in English and none of us has a clue what’s going on until one of them goes to fetch the bartender, who speaks a smattering of odd American English.
With his help, I finally explain what I’m after. Then, they’re all excitement. They usher me beneath the awning. I find myself sandwiched into a chair, between two men who introduce themselves as Jean-Paul and Paul-Claude.
While they pass around the letter from Gosse, the bar owner brings me a drink, a glass with an inch of some clear spirit in the bottom. It smells powerfully of aniseed. Not wanting to be rude I try to take a sip, but the men all around me exclaim and laugh and take the glass away, pour a measure of water into it. The liquor turns cloudy white, like what they’re drinking. It’s sort of refreshing.
Inside, the walls of the bar are thick with photographs. They’re all railway related, pictures of trains, of work crews, of men in overalls on unfinished stretches of track, posing with the sleepers and rails, in the act of knitting the country together.
I’m feeling almost drowsy by the time the bartender waves to catch my attention.
‘Michel say he work the depot for forty year,’ he translates for a man with a huge grey beard, ‘and he never know no one call “Gosse”.’
‘Attendez!’ a man in a crushed felt hat exclaims. ‘Maybe …’ He waves his gnarled hands, searching for the words. ‘Un chevalier d’industrie?’
The men around him guffaw, but one of them looks thoughtful and starts speaking slowly, squinting as though he could peer back through each decade to see the past more clearly.
‘What did he mean?’ I whisper to the bartender. ‘A “chevalier”?’
‘A chevalier d’industrie, it is funny way to say someone is …’ He racks his brain. ‘A crook, a thief, you know? Someone who make money on the black market.’
The thoughtful man interrupts, explaining something in detail to the bar owner who nods and purses his lips in agreement.
‘Carlo say,’ he repeats for my benefit, ‘that in those days they have an agreement, all the men who work the depots. Maybe they do not see when things go missing from the train.’ He shrugs meaningfully. ‘Maybe in exchange they get some money. He think your “Gosse” was maybe a black-market man, on the freight trains.’
Carlo’s eyes are screwed tight. He’s muttering beneath his breath. The old men around him are all shouting out helpful words at the same time.
‘He think he remember a man like this,’ the bartender says over the noise, ‘but with different name. Something like a bug, he say—’
‘Puce!’ Carlo’s head shoots up like a decrepit jack in the box. ‘Bien sûr, Puce!’
‘“Puce”?’ my head is reeling.
‘It means “flea”.’ The bartender smiles, listening again. ‘Carlo say the Puce he remember was from Belleville. Bellevillois, they are proud. If your Gosse is alive, and is in Paris, he is there.’
April 1919
One by one, the days trickled into weeks, and Cerbère shrugged off the last of winter’s hold. The days dawned brighter, the sun shone warm, and though la Tramontana still sent people hurrying for cover and turning up their collars, summer was undoubtedly on its way.
I felt myself changing, the good food working upon me. I was less gaunt than before, I noticed, when my reflection flashed across the copper pans; there was colour in my cheeks. My palms healed. The criss-cross of scars was ugly, but they rarely bothered me, except on wet days.
At Hallerton, I had not slept properly for what felt like years, at least not without the help of morphine. In Cerbère I worked so hard that most nights I fell into bed and did not stir until the sea birds started up their racket at dawn.
Sometimes the chores seemed never-ending but I did not complain, because every day, after lunch and the traditional rest, Clémence and I would start cooking. Soon, I was able to gut and fillet all manner of fish, could tell a dried bixto chilli from a noria. I was learning to make a little go a long way and to waste nothing. Every night, twenty or thirty townspeople piled in to the Café Fi del Món, and Clémence cooked what she thought they needed.
When a dispute between two neighbours raged through town, dragging whole families into the mess, she cooked a huge communal rice dish. We filled it with lemon and saffron, flakes of salt cod, mussels and cockles and soon people were crowded around, scooping it straight out of the pot, swapping shellfish and laughing over which mussel shell made the best pair of tongs. When a much-loved grandmother of the town died, we made chicken stew, warming and savoury, rich with brandy and herbs, to soothe grief.
Clémence could tell where a llangostin had come from by the colour of its shell, where a goat had grazed by the taste of its cheese. She knew the town in the same way: as a collection of individuals, each influencing the complex whole. As for me … I did not yet know what my role was. For one thing, I could not forget the rush of heat that came with Aaró’s nearness. The more I dwelt upon it, the more the feeling intensified, until I was barely able to return one of his smiles without flushing.
Do not think about it, I told myself severely, but simultaneously another voice whispered, Why not? This is not England, you are not Emeline.
‘Sauce,’ Clémence announced, snapping me out of a reverie. For a horrible moment, I wondered if she could read my thoughts.
‘Pardon?’ I could feel my cheeks turning traitorously pink.
We were sat on the kitchen step, descaling the fish that Aaró had just brought. ‘Sauce,’ she demanded again, ‘what are the essential sauces?’
‘Butter?’ I said absent-mindedly, scraping at the fish. A shower of scales flew off. The dirt beneath our feet sparkled with them.
Clémence threw her fish into the box and picked up another. ‘You think we have butter to spare? How many cows do you see around here?’
Not many, I had to admit.
‘Bread?’ I ventured, trying and failing to keep my thoughts on track.
‘You English … I do not even want to know what that is.’ Clémence flicked her knife over the fish. ‘No. There are four sauces you must remember. Picada, allioli, samfaina, romesco.’ She ticked them off on her fingers with the knife. ‘Picada you have tasted. It is garlic, herbs, nuts. And allioli. Aaró makes that.’
‘The garlic paste?’ Even the memory of it made my mouth water. ‘It was delicious. He’s very good.’
‘Of course he is. I taught him.’
‘What are the other two?’ I picked up another fish.
‘Samfaina. It is the taste of the sun. Ripe tomato, aubergine, peppers, stewed together like a ratatouille. Romesco is chilli peppers, almonds, pine nuts, garlic, and something secret. That we will make soon, for the calçotada.’
‘For the what?’
She only smiled mysteriously. ‘You will see.’
My head spun with questions, but there was work to be done, food to prepare, floors to sweep, thoughts to avoid. Later, Clémence taught me how to fry onions, so slowly and gently that they melted into a rich, dark ooze. Sofregit, she called it, and told me that it was not a sauce but the backbone of every dish. She showed me how it went hand in hand with a picada: the sting to the sweetness, the thorn to the rose. I fell asleep with the scents of the kitchen clinging to my hair.
But that night my sleep was far from untroubled. I dreamed of Timothy, of Hallerton. It was crumbling and collapsing as though decades had passed, rather than weeks. I could hear him crying somewhere, and I raced up the stairs towards his bedroom, only to emerge in a different part of the house. I ran past peeling wallpaper and rotting floorboards only for the same thing to happen again and again. I couldn’t reach him, and his sobs became quieter, and I knew that if I didn’t find him soon, I never would.
I opened my mouth to shout his name and found myself awake, sitting up in bed, my heart pounding, eyes stinging with tears. The feeling of guilt was more than I could bear. I buried my face in my hands and tried to rid my mind of the sound of those sobs.
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