The Paris Secret

by Lily Graham

  ‘I’m not going there so that we can have a big reunion, or to replace who I have. I love my aunt and uncle, my life in London. This is for me. I want answers, Freddy, I want to know what they have kept from me my whole life, and why. You just don’t get it.’

  Freddy didn’t understand, and he never would. His parents had lived on Simmonds Street in north London his whole life. He was a London lad born and bred, along with the rest of his family, who all lived not far from his doorstep. The furthest relatives he had lived in Edinburgh, and that was as varied as it got. He knew everything there was to know about himself, and his family. He belonged. Valerie was a foreigner. A girl who had a faint accent even now from her early years in her aunt’s care, where they spoke more French than English. As a result, despite the fact that England was the only country she really knew, when she went to school, and made friends, she was always marked out somehow as the French girl, yet she knew nothing except the bare basics of where she really came from.

  It was a topic that she was never encouraged to broach. ‘That’s in the past,’ Amélie would say; whenever Valerie mentioned Paris, her mother or the war, it was the same. The only stories Amélie shared with her about her mother were ones of her as a little girl. It never occurred to Valerie that it was because she hadn’t really known her to be able to tell her more. Valerie would only find that out much later, when the truth would raise more questions than she had answers for – about why she had been sent to live with someone who was for all intents and purposes a stranger.

  Some days she felt English, she truly did, despite her lack of English blood. Her bookish bent, her friends, her interests were English and it was home now, yet occasionally there were those little moments when it just wasn’t: when the lie came crashing down around her ears, when she heard French music, or the sound of a woman’s voice, and something tugged and choked at her heart, making her picture Maman. A woman she’d been told to forget, a woman she was told was better left in the past. But how could she forget her own mother? How could she just stop trying to find out what had happened to her? Why their lives had changed. She didn’t even know how her own mother had died; Amélie just said she had died in the war, not of what or how. Every time she asked, Amélie’s lips closed firm, like a clam. When pressed she’d say she didn’t know, though Valerie knew, even then, that this wasn’t true. All she really knew about her old life was that her grandfather had owned a bookshop in Paris, close to the river, and that somehow he was still alive, and perhaps he’d have the answers, the ones no one else would give her. It wasn’t a fairy tale: it was a quest, into her history, into her past.

  In the end, Freddy had bought the ticket.

  Chapter Four

  Paris

  There was a single light on a string hanging over the piles of books scattered on the dusty floor, some still in their boxes, needing to be put on the shelves. Beneath these piles was the same herringbone pattern of wood as in the apartment upstairs, though covered in scratches. Vincent Dupont didn’t see the dust, or the boxes. Or the overflowing shelves, not any more. If he had, he would have seen how much he needed the young woman who was unpacking her things upstairs.

  As it was, he was deciding on whether or not the disruption was worth it. There was something about the girl’s smile, a kind of innocence, that prodded at something he’d thought long buried away, deep inside – something he could well do without prodding right now.

  He grunted, and got to work half-heartedly unpacking one of the big boxes on the floor, his lower back throbbing in protest. Vincent Dupont could locate one of the ten thousand novels he housed within the store in a matter of minutes. Or at least, that’s how it used to be. Things were taking longer now. The dust was beginning to pile up, and sometimes a new order would come in and never be found again.

  The bell tinkled, and he looked up with a frown. He let out a small, impatient sound and rolled his eyes, reaching for a cigarette as Madame Joubert walked in. She was a handsome woman, tall, broad of shoulder, who appeared larger than life with her bouncing red curls and glamorous waft of perfume. Dupont steeled himself for what she was about to say.

  ‘And?’ she asked, bouncing on her size forty-two feet, which, as usual, despite her considerable height, were clad in high heels.

  ‘And what?’ he grunted. ‘Can I help you? Are you actually going to buy a book for once, Madame?’

  Madame Joubert laughed as she tutted, ‘Dupont, don’t be a grouch. Is she here?’

  ‘Who?’ he asked. Though of course he knew perfectly well who Madame Joubert was referring to.

  ‘Your new assistant. Where is she?’

  He gave a shrug, stabbing in the direction of the stairs with his cigarette. ‘A young English girl with an appalling sense of style is currently upstairs unpacking what should probably be thrown into the Seine. If that is who you mean.’

  ‘Dupont, be kind. She said she was a student. And she’s from England.’ As if that excused it. Madame Joubert was the kind of person who pitied anyone who hadn’t had the benefit of growing up in Paris.

  It was Madame Joubert, who ran the popular flower shop next door, who’d suggested that it was time that M’sieur Dupont hire an assistant when she’d found him one day half unconscious on the shop floor, having fainted from low blood sugar. The doctor who’d been called to the scene had warned that M’sieur Dupont needed to quit smoking and get some help at the store – the trouble was, he’d said it in front of Madame Joubert, who was like a dog with a bone. In the end, Dupont had agreed to only one of those things. He’d quit smoking when he was dead. Madame Joubert had helped him place the advertisement for a bookshop assistant in Le Monde, and after he’d chased off several French applicants, and later, when (with much scathing laughter) he’d shown her the letter written by an English woman named Isabelle Henry, it was she who’d convinced him to take a chance. Someone who could knowingly rile a Frenchman like that was obviously, in Madame Joubert’s opinion, made of stern stuff – and perhaps wouldn’t be as easily frightened off as the others. An essential attribute, she thought.

  Madame Joubert had read the English woman’s letter, in perfect schoolgirl French, and decided that someone with a library degree seemed like a sign from the heavens. Ignoring Dupont’s protests, she’d told him to write back and agree to her terms.

  ‘I’d have to hear her voice, which would be painful enough.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she’d said.

  ‘She offered to cook,’ he’d said, showing her the letter, stabbing at the girl’s words with a gnarled finger. ‘Of all the women in Paris who could look after me, you want an English woman to cook for me?’

  Madame Joubert had scoffed. ‘Because, Dupont, you dine at Michelin-starred restaurants every evening? Let’s not pretend, my dear man, that you are some gourmand. When every day it’s a baguette with the same fromage et jambon or a croissant for breakfast? I’m sure she can live up to those exacting standards.’

  He grumbled, but, of course, Madame Joubert got her way in the end. He wrote to the English girl that evening, but he drew the line at her cooking for him.

  Now, of course, he regretted giving in. She’d arrived, winsome and blonde, with enormous green eyes that looked as if they would tear up at the slightest bad word. How was he supposed to manage that? Besides, he couldn’t look at her – she reminded him too much of his daughter Mireille, and that was enough to make him want to walk to the Seine and throw himself in, though he would never tell Madame Joubert that, of course.

  It didn’t take Valerie long to unpack. Two dresses, and another pair of black brogues. Some undergarments, two cardigans, three blouses, a corduroy skirt, a pair of slippers, three pairs of stockings and two night gowns – these were the total of her wardrobe at present, and they fitted easily into the first two drawers of the bureau with plenty of room to spare. She put the suitcase under the bed, then took a seat on the stool, moving the small kettle to the floor, and looked out at the courtyard. Beyond
it she could just make out the top of the roof of the building next door. Even the rooftops in Paris told a story, she thought.

  Then she squared her shoulders, splashed some cold water on her face, and went downstairs to find her grandfather.

  She found, instead, the sizeable bulk of Madame Joubert.

  Clotilde Joubert raised high arching eyebrows, and waved a hand with red painted nails. ‘Ah, the English girl,’ she said, opening her arms wide. ‘Welcome.’

  Valerie smiled as the woman introduced herself. ‘I am Clotilde Joubert. I run the flower shop next door. I had heard that you were the new victim and thought I’d come and introduce myself – in case you ever need a reliable witness for the prosecution.’

  There was a disgruntled sniff from M’sieur Dupont, who had taken his seat behind the desk in the corner again and was currently loading a piece of paper into a navy blue typewriter, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

  ‘Ignore her, we all do.’

  Madame Joubert shrugged a shoulder. Valerie got the scent of flowers, and wondered if it was her perfume or if it simply radiated from her pores. Either way it was inviting, and she liked the older woman immediately.

  ‘I am Isabelle,’ said Valerie. ‘Isabelle Henry.’

  ‘A French name?’

  Valerie hesitated: should she tell the truth – that she was born in France? But before she could decide, Madame Joubert peered over her shoulder at the line that was forming outside her small shop. ‘Excuse me. I must go back – I just wanted to come and say hello. Come in any time, when you need to have your faith restored that there is something good in this world…’

  Valerie bit back a laugh.

  There was another grunt from the back of the shop. ‘That one spends too much time sniffing roses, it’s rotted her brain.’

  Valerie grinned. She could tell that despite their words, they were firm friends, or if not, at least as close to it as was possible.

  M’sieur Dupont grunted at her to start emptying some boxes, and to use the stamp with a large G for Gribouiller on the inside cover. ‘You don’t use stickers?’ Valerie asked.

  The look he gave rivalled Medusa’s. She took that as a no, and got to work. She feared, though it was nearing evening already, it was going to be a long day.

  Chapter Five

  Vincent Dupont was the kind of man who made first impressions count. He certainly lived up to the one he’d made on Valerie when she’d first arrived, and if it was possible, during her first week at the Gribouiller he grew even more cantankerous as the days went by.

  It seemed the time for niceties had passed. Especially when it came to the smooth running of his bookshop – and any ideas she might have for its improvement.

  He’d objected, his old blue-veined cheeks growing red, when she’d begun putting the books she’d started to unpack from some of the many unopened boxes onto the shelves, alphabetically. He shot up out of his chair fast, his blue eyes outraged.

  ‘Non, non! I will explain the system to you: it is a well-oiled machine. Attention.’

  Which was how Valerie discovered on her first day the first real hurdle of their relationship: the Dupont System. A system of organisation whereby books were ordered according to whether or not the author had lost his mind. This was followed by the year of publication, the only concession he made, as time could excuse some, but not all things. ‘He didn’t know better then,’ he said, for instance, of Émile Zola (this mainly referred to the author’s disdain for the Eiffel Tower, and not to his work, it later ensued), ‘but Alexandre Dumas certainly should have,’ throwing a copy of The Three Musketeers (his criticism, in the main, was based on its length and tendency towards over-romanticism) into the waste basket for emphasis. (A rather shocked Valerie promptly dusted it off and put it back on the shelf, when he wasn’t looking.)

  ‘Too flowery,’ was the work of Molière, which went in a section labelled ‘Migraines’ in his almost illegible pencil scrawl on a small piece of paper tacked with a blue pin to the shelf, the word underlined several times by slashes of pencil.

  ‘Too English,’ was the only pronouncement for a slim volume of Wordsworth’s poetry, which was put in a section called ‘Anglais Fou’, crazy English. ‘Yes, the countryside is a balm, mon Dieu, but pull yourself together, M’sieur Wordsworth, stiff upper lip and all that, s’il vous plaît…’

  Dupont, it seemed, enjoyed nothing more than getting a rise out of his customers.

  Valerie wasted her breath trying to explain that a system that didn’t judge the reader’s taste would perhaps result in better sales – surely the entire point of having a bookshop in the first place. This suggestion was met with two hands raised as if to scrub her words away, a snort of ‘Pah’, and a tirade about the fact that he’d had the shop for over forty years, and it was his duty – however tiresome the mantle of the burden – to stopper the rising swell of stupidity in the streets of Paris, which, he warned, grew with each passing day, by encouraging his loyal customers to avoid rotting their brains with drivel.

  And yet his customers, few though they were, were loyal, Valerie couldn’t help noting. Brave, too. They seemed to come more for the lecture from Dupont than anything else.

  Like the man who left smiling, clutching his copy of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility proudly, even though he’d actually wanted to buy the latest James Bond book by Ian Fleming.

  At dinnertime he made trout with roasted potatoes in what he called ‘a fishwife butter sauce’ that mainly consisted of butter and lemon, and that was, Valerie had to admit, delicious. ‘My mother’s recipe – she came from Marseille,’ he explained, when she asked. ‘Though she wasn’t a good fishwife,’ he said, with a chuckle that descended into a cough.

  At first, he wouldn’t elaborate on his mother, Margaux, except to say, ‘She came to her senses, and came to Paris, leaving my father to his wine and his women in the South.’

  Valerie didn’t really know what to say to that, except to stop herself from exclaiming that her great-grandfather was a philanderer.

  ‘But she had some money from her parents – that’s how she bought this apartment.’

  ‘How old were you when you moved here?’

  ‘A boy. Six or seven. I opened the shop below at the age of fourteen.’

  ‘Fourteen?’

  He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t that unusual then, and we had the space.’

  ‘Did you always want to run a bookshop?’ she asked, imagining him as a small child reading books on the banks of the Seine, talking to students from the Sorbonne.

  But he just snorted. ‘Pah. What else was I going to do – open a bistro?’

  Which was about as much opening up from him as she could expect.

  Over the course of the week they fell into a routine. Monsieur Dupont arose at six and was in the shop by seven. Valerie made breakfast – he trusted her with the task of getting croissants from the bakery on the corner, at least. Though the coffee she made was drunk with curled lips, just as the baguettes she assembled were prodded at before he nibbled the edges, reluctantly. ‘This jambon, where did you get it – the supermarché?’ The supermarket was akin to the devil, she was to find.

  ‘No, the butcher, the one you said.’

  There was a sniff. ‘He must be having an off day.’

  A mere second later: ‘The baguette…’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she sighed.

  ‘It’s stale,’ he said, prodding the soft, chewy centre.

  Valerie snorted. ‘It came fresh out of the oven ten minutes ago. I stood in line for half an hour for that baguette.’

  Another sniff. ‘Maybe we should try the bakery on the Rue des Minuettes.’

  Trying a bakery in another street was like stating he would travel to the moon. It was also an empty threat.

  It became clear soon enough that no matter how much time passed, aside from the odd baguette, which he picked at, he point blank did not trust her in the kitchen, despite the fact that she insis
ted that she’d grown up with a French relative, which was how she’d explained her impeccable French.

  ‘Pah, in England?’

  ‘Have you even been to England?’ she asked. ‘I think you may be pleasantly surprised.’

  This was met with a look of utter derision, as if she were a house cat trying to tell a lion how fierce she was.

  ‘I grew up in London,’ she explained. ‘The food there is very good – perhaps not all restaurants, pubs and cafes are as fantastic as in Paris, yes, but there are definitely some that could give a few a run for their money.’

  To her surprise, though, he nodded, waving a hand in a gesture of acknowledgement. ‘Ah oui, London, that’s different, yes. Dickens,’ he said, with a small, concessionary nod. As if that one word and one man alone elevated the city in its entirety. There were to be no arguments against M’sieur Dickens, she was to find.

  She frowned. ‘But London is in England.’

  He screwed up an eye, and waggled his hand as if to say it was and it wasn’t. A pile of cigarette ash landed on the floor as a result. She wouldn’t admit it to him, of course, but she supposed his opinion wasn’t wrong.

  His groaning certainly made the days go by fast.

  His fuse was about the length of an eyelash, and it erupted regularly, and with vehemence. And then it was over just as fast, like a cloud passing over the sun, and she soon grew used to his outbursts.

  Though the first few days, it had her clenching her fists, and her stomach roiling.

  They had had their first real argument on the second day that she was there, when he’d attacked one of her favourite authors, calling Marcel Proust a waste of paper.

  It had lasted precisely thirty-seven minutes, and he had paused only to make them coffee before continuing the argument. If she’d asked for tea that would only have made the argument last longer. He refused to stock it, saying it made the kitchen smell.