Not that he possessed these things himself in any great quantity at the moment. He reflected on all of the innocent sounding self-justifications he had for getting to know her, all the reasons except the true one.
I would like to get to know her, he thought, maybe we could be friends. It’s good to meet new people especially from different parts of the church.
He didn’t know more than two or three things about Quakers, and she had already demonstrated that some of what he thought was knowledge was only prejudice. And yes, she was a nice girl, and indeed it was fun to meet new people but in the end he could not really deceive himself about his motives. There was more to this than finding out about the wider church, and he knew it.
He wanted to be alone with this girl for a while because she was lovely and she made his heart skip from the moment he saw her – the way she dressed, the way she spoke, the words she said. If he wasn’t careful he was going to find himself captured by his own thoughts about her.
He sipped the now lukewarm café au lait and resisted the temptation to look at his watch, and then he wandered downstairs to the bathroom again. The concierge recognized him as a recent visitor and smiled.
“She will be here soon, I am sure.”
“Yes she will,” he answered without thinking. Was it that obvious? He grinned like an idiot and dropped a coin into her collection.
“You like her, yes?”
“Yes I do.” I love her, no I don’t; I like her. I could love her, one day.
He retreated into the bathroom; shocked that his mind should stray so far from the defences he used to keep himself safe.
Standing there he could taste his own breathlessness, and he knew his body was telling him something when he found that it took several seconds for him to start to pee.
What is the matter with you, Conner? Get a grip!
He returned to the warm leather couches and polished brass of the café, and tried to say a useful prayer, to steady his nerves. But he did not gain that familiar sense of perspective that usually came with prayers. All he got was the spiritual equivalent of static; he was too close to it, too emotional, not centred enough in the will of God to gain anything further than a vague notion that this was okay, but good behaviour was required – as if it wasn’t always! One of the bow-tied waiters had taken his cup, but he could not bring himself to order another; he would wait.
Poppy Martinez was eight minutes late.
Outside the rain fell. Little drops of water weaved their way down the glass frontage of the café. The sight of it made him feel safe and warm as he watched people outside leaning into the wind of the city, huddled. He felt detached from all of them.
He began counting the small tiles that combined into a mosaic on the floor, and then he tried to regulate his heartbeat by breathing deeply while keeping his eyes off the revolving door where each movement held the potential of her arrival. For the first time he noticed the scent of the white lilies.
Poppy Martinez was ten minutes late.
Had he given her the right directions? Was she delayed? Had she called him and he had not heard the ringtone? He dug out his mobile. There were no messages. Then he remembered that he hadn’t even given her directions because she said knew this place already.
The entrance door continued to spin, and Conner continued to look away determined not to jump at every new arrival. The waiter asked him if he would like to order anything else.
“I’m waiting for a lady,” he said.
The waiter gave a conspiratorial nod, and disappeared. The café was filling up, bustling with customers and noise and the aroma of the lilies and espresso. He looked out on to the shiny wet of the cobbled road and the indistinct, bulking silhouette of Saint-Germain-des-Prés across the road.
Poppy Martinez was eleven minutes late. He would have to order something else soon, either that or leave.
The door spun again and Conner looked up, expecting to see a stranger.
But it was her; he recognized her and he waved. She spotted him and hurried over to the table.
“Hi! I’m so sorry I am late,” she said, slightly breathless.
“Don’t worry, I have only just got here myself.” It sounded like the pathetic lie that it was. He scolded himself and promised to himself that he would tell her the truth from now on.
And immediately he forgot about the brass and the leather and the tiles, and the Magots and his money, and he focused in on her. She took off her coat, and he could see that the rain had made her hair damp so it shone under the café lighting, and she smiled at him.
He stood, and she leant forward towards him, and as she kissed his cheek he felt the warmth of her and the press of her hair damp against his ear. He drew in the scent, which might have been perfume but could also have been just her, and something in him, deeply embedded, came to the surface and embraced everything. He closed his eyes and drew breath and then, fortunately, opened them again in time to see the bow-tied waiter approaching.
They shared coffee and warm milk and Poppy talked about her own work, and Première Vision, and the delights and disappointments of the fabrics they had seen.
She talked about her work, and Conner told her more about his band and their forthcoming tour. He could hear himself chatting, laughing, engaging in his familiar banter. He was here but he was also somehow disconnected, running on automatic, cruise control, but also intensely present. He tried to tell himself to calm down, but that was only a partial success.
He studied her movements in the most particular detail: the corners of her eyes and the movement of her hands, artist’s hands, the play of her hair just above her eyebrows. It was an enticing and dangerous pursuit. Each time she sipped the coffee a faint trace of moisture rested on her upper lip.
The café was warm and humid and she took off her sweater, and he looked aside as she did so. She wore a different blouse, but the style looked similar to the one she had been wearing earlier.
“Do you like it?” she said, waiting for his answer.
He looked at her, and he said, “Yes, it’s lovely…” …on you, he added in his mind.
“I made it myself over Christmas last year. Something to do after eating all that turkey.”
He laughed with her and noted the reference to turkey; he had assumed she was vegetarian.
The lilac blouse was embroidered with tiny autumn oak leaves. He stared at the variegated colour of the leaves, and was just starting to stare again at the rest of her when some sense of self-preservation called him back. They had been talking about simplicity and beauty and she leant forward slightly.
“Do you think,” she said with a reflective tone, “that a simple design can reflect beauty in the same way that a gifted composer might reflect beauty in a simple piece of music?”
“Absolutely,” he said, as if this were one of his fundamental beliefs, “if the designer is skilled enough, or the composer is talented enough, the right simplicity can say much more than complexity.”
You are lovely, Poppy, he thought.
“That is what I want to do, more than anything else in my work,” she said, leaning forward. “Find the genius in simplicity. Simplicity can bring beauty to any art form. It could apply to music, literature, dance, or design. The challenge is to find the beauty within.”
“You have to have a gift for it,” he said. “The best artists in any discipline make their art seem simple, even if it isn’t, perhaps especially when it isn’t.”
You really are lovely, Poppy.
The words came into his mind, unbidden.
She smiled at him. “Some of what you said about the Friends is right,” she said. “When I was a child I wore good clothes, but they had no colour, no life to them. They performed a function, but they celebrated nothing, spoke of nothing. When I compared what I wore then to the variety and beauty of nature I see now, especially in the autumn, there’s no comparison.”
“Beauty is elusive,” he said, “and I don’t think everything i
n the natural world is beautiful though, some of life’s colours are dark.” He turned and looked around him seeking to lighten the tone of the conversation. “There is beauty all around, though, if you look for it.”
“So what do you see that is beautiful here?” she asked.
He looked around and saw the white lilies, and was grateful for choosing this spot in the café. Her eyes followed his and alighted on them too.
“Surely,” he said with a half-smile, “not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these.”
They both laughed.
“They are beautiful, yes,” she said, “and they prove my point: simplicity can be beautiful.”
“I suppose,” he said, “if we were to look around Paris we might see other things that were beautiful in their simplicity.”
“Well, let’s see if that’s true, shall we?”
“Yes, let’s do that,” he said, and drank the last of his coffee.
Poppy insisted on settling the bill and they ventured out into the cold, bracing themselves against the urban chill of Paris in February. The rain was easing off and she took his arm with an easy informality, and they crossed the cobbles outside the café, making their way through the side streets and on to the pavement markets of the Left Bank. They passed another café frequented by real Parisians – office workers and local residents – and amongst them there was none of the leisurely confusion that marks out the tourists. The frontage of the café was tiled with the image of a clown bearing a tray of glasses, standing within a spiraling peel of orange. The rain was easing but the clouds were still heavy and ominous above them.
“Now look at this.” She laid her hand on his arm and he saw her, peering into a shop window at some Indian materials and jewellery.
“Come on.” She pulled him into the shop, and he was immediately confronted by the interplay of smells – incense and wood – mingling in the warmth. Around him, stacked on trays at regular intervals, were trinkets and fabrics, necklaces and earrings; all crafted with a kind of bold beauty, as if each stitch in the fabric and every hammer blow on the metal carried with it the confidence and talent of its creator.
He watched Poppy as she moved between the different artifacts, studying them in detail, and the aroma of the place brought up memories for him; reminding him of times past when he believed in a false Nirvana that had betrayed him. He stepped outside and took a couple of cold breaths to recover himself.
She tapped on the shop window to attract his attention, and pointed to a tray of earrings she had been studying. Poppy beckoned him in to look at them. He took one final breath and went back in to the shop. The tray contained pairs of small earrings carved into the images of different animals, all made from a dark grainy wood.
“Do you wear earrings, Poppy?” As he said this, he looked up and tried to get a glimpse of her ear lobes beneath the light ginger hair.
“Sometimes,” she said, “and these would be good because I could also wear them to the meeting.”
“Meeting?” he said. “Do you mean church?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So do you have earrings you wouldn’t wear to church?” said Conner.
“A few pairs, yes,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t you wear them?” said Conner.
“Because they might be a distraction for some, and I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
“Really? Isn’t that hypocrisy?” he said, rather shortly.
“Why should it be?”
“Well if you are going to wear something outside church shouldn’t you wear it in church as well?”
“Not necessarily. I choose not to give offence.”
“Isn’t that hypocrisy?” he repeated.
“No, that’s consideration, there’s a difference.”
He looked at her and realized that she was completely right.
“Of course, it is,” he said. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She smiled at him and took a pair from the tray. Holding them up she studied each one intently, and then she placed them on the palms of her hands and showed them to him. He found himself looking past the jewellery, at the little creases that traced across her palms, and the texture of her skin. Those crisscross patterns that were part of her history and that would have started to develop even while she was being formed in her mother’s womb.
“What do you think of these, Conner?” She was holding two little Indian elephants carved with a detail that gave each figure its own personality. Now that he looked at the earrings, he could see how much beauty there was within them.
“I think they are the best ones on the whole tray,” he said, and it was true.
How had she picked these out? In a few seconds she had spotted them amongst all of the others. Maybe, he thought, the act of her choosing them had made them special in his eyes, or maybe she had simply seen the good taste and simplicity innate within them, and she had seen it immediately because that was her gift.
The sky seemed very dark now, against the luminous warmth of the shop, and far away the wind blew a spatter of drops from an awning against the window. He watched Poppy as she studied the little elephants, and he suddenly remembered Alex’s carved elephants, sitting on her mantelpiece, once owned by her parents. His eyes smarted with sudden moisture.
“They’re lovely,” he said, and he found that he had to clear his throat. “Are you going to get them?”
He smiled and then blinked and rubbed his eyes.
“I think I will,” she said, and then she looked at him. ”Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, and I think these are wonderful.” He nodded at the earrings.
She took them to the shop counter and paid for them.
Dusk yielded to darkness, and as they made their way down to the Îsle de la Cité, the rain gave way to an icy wind. An old man with a bush of beard scuttled past them, clutching a brace of plastic bags. Poppy took Conner’s arm again and they walked together, and she pointed out over the shimmering darkness of the Seine, washing past the Pont Neuf. The eastern face of Notre Dame flooded with a pale light and they went down into the Metro.
“I know where we can get some dinner,” she said, and he nodded.
Poppy knew exactly where she was going, and Conner was happy to follow. The train arrived and they boarded, the carriage was crowded and as it rattled and swung, she held him to steady herself.
They ended up at Le Troyon; she had seen a positive review of the place in a British national newspaper a couple of weeks before.
When they arrived there was a table available for them, and they were not disappointed as they enjoyed the mood of the place with its subtle sights and sounds: soft light, smooth jazz, a New Orleans backdrop to French cuisine.
They ordered from a chalkboard, choosing the special, and Poppy talked some more about her passion for design and colour, clothing and the complex simplicity of the natural world.
If Conner was nervous, then this was a sweet fear; and the excitement of being with this girl was all the more pleasurable because he didn’t know what was happening, or where this would go. He realized in the half-light of the restaurant that what he faced now wasn’t a temptation to lust but an invitation to take a risk, to expose his character and history, to re-examine old wounds. Occasionally, he would find himself in the mood to be honest, to say what he really felt. What scared him was the fact that this normally happened with people he had befriended over time, with people he could trust. Now he found himself slipping into the mindset with Poppy, a girl he had only just met. What would he tell her tonight?
“You remind me of my stepsister,” he said.
“Really?” she said. “That’s Alex, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s Alex, she has a bit of a vision as well; her dream is to bring God in to the arts; into music and drama and writing and painting, and fashion I suppose through her work with Daisy.”
“We should all dream if we can,” said Poppy, “Daisy dares
to dream about her work; that’s why it’s so good she was able to come here this week. To fulfil something that is deep within her.”
“Tell me about Daisy, if you can,” she continued.
Conner smiled, and shook his head in feigned exasperation.
“What can I say about Daisy? She’s on a journey. You know, she used to be really hard, I mean emotionally hard. I remember seeing her at a big family party a few years ago, and she seemed thin and hard and angry, like she hated everyone and everything but she couldn’t have told you why.”
“But she has changed recently,” said Poppy. “You can see it in her. She used to behave like someone driven by some internal bitterness, now she is different, happier, more relaxed. It’s difficult to describe. She isn’t burdened anymore. What happened to her?”
“Something did happen to her,” said Conner.
“Can you tell me about it?” said Poppy.
“It’s a bit weird,” said Conner. “Just tell me about it,” she said.
“Do you believe in demons, Poppy? I mean real personalities not figurative ones?”
“You’re not suggesting that Daisy was possessed are you?”
“Not possessed, I tend to think of it more as, well, harassed.”
Poppy looked at him unsure of what he meant and, actually, unsure of her own thoughts on the subject. She had never experienced anything that she would call demonic.
“So you think she was harassed by demons?”
“Yes I do, but they’ve gone now.”
“Gone? Like they’ve been cast out of her?”
“Something like that.”
There was silence between them for a moment. Demonic possession was not a subject either of them had been expecting to come up in their discussions.
“What does Daisy think happened to her?” said Poppy.
“I don’t think knows for sure,” said Conner, “and perhaps it’s better for her to answer that question. But I think she would say she’s happier now, a lot happier.”
Cain's Redemption Page 8
