by Adele Geras
‘No, I’m okay,’ she said. In truth, she was nearly asleep. Mickey had made tea, drunk it with her, listened to the details of last night’s revelations and then said, ‘Okay, Nessa, we can talk about this later – let’s just relax now, there’s plenty of time for everything. What about Tamsin, though? Have you told her?’
Nessa sighed. ‘I don’t want to think about it. Gareth says we have to tell her straight away, but I don’t see why, really. I’d rather wait till everything’s sorted out and the legal side taken care of. I’m dreading it, if you want to know.’
‘Do you know what you’re going to say?’
‘My ma, with her enormous expertise in leaving offspring high and dry, told me exactly what was needed: We still love you … this won’t change the way we feel about you … we still like each other lots and lots but just can’t live together, that’s all. God, it’s too Trisha Goddard for words, Mickey! And it’s not even true. I can’t stand him at the moment, if you want to know.’
‘Still, she’s right. I’d add – tell her it isn’t her fault. Tell her it’s got nothing to do with her.’
What was going on? Nessa felt tears coming into her eyes, her throat filled up with what felt like a lump of something or other – was there such a thing as a lump of misery? – and before she quite knew what was happening, she was weeping. ‘I’m sorry, Mickey,’ she sobbed. ‘It was that – what you said – I remember thinking that. Exactly. I remember saying to Justin, trying to shift the blame, really, a bit, it’s your fault. Our fault. We’re naughty and horrible and that’s why she’s gone. How ghastly I was, even then, but now I can feel it. How it used to be. How sad I was for ages when she went, in spite of Matt and Phyl doing their best. Oh, God, what will I look like if I can’t stop crying?’
‘It’s okay, you’re allowed to cry.’ Mickey came and knelt next to Nessa’s chair and began to stroke her knee, very gently, as though she were an animal to be calmed down.
Nessa said, ‘I need a tissue, Mickey. My nose is bubbling in a totally ghastly way.’
‘Here you go. Kleenex on demand.’
‘Thanks. What would I do without you?’
‘You don’t have to. Do without me, I mean. I am, as they say, here for you. You can come and stay for a few days if you like. If that’d help.’
‘No, thanks, love. I’m not moving out of that house. For all I know Gareth would move in and change the locks.’ She giggled. ‘No he wouldn’t, of course he wouldn’t. It wouldn’t occur to him. I’m sorry, I’m hysterical. Can we go for a walk or something? I feel – restless.’
‘Sure. I’ve got to go down to the village and pick up something for supper. We’ll go the long way, through the wood. Okay?’
‘Lovely. Can I borrow some old trainers or something? I can’t walk in these.’ Nessa stuck her feet out.
‘No,’ Mickey said, smiling up at Nessa. She’d gone back to sitting on the floor. ‘They’re not used to Manolos at the village shop.’
‘Manolos! I wish – these are Russell and Bromley.’
‘Lovely, though.’ And then Mickey put out a hand and ran her fingers quite slowly up the back of Nessa’s leg, and then down again. Then she withdrew her hand and stood up and Nessa did too. She could still feel an echo of the tickly, shivery feeling of Mickey’s touch on the silky fabric of her tights. She’d never had a woman caress her like that before. It was a caress. There was no mistaking it. It was strange in a way she couldn’t have described. She followed Mickey out to the hall, a little trembly. Well, it was natural to feel like this after all the crying she’d been doing. That must be it. She wasn’t used to emotional upheavals. Was this what people meant when they talked of someone feeling vulnerable? Yes, she told herself. It must be. That’s what I am. Vulnerable. Like a snail out of its shell.
*
‘It’s lucky we’re here this month and not last.’ Matt gazed out of the window of the Eurostar train at the housing estates on the outskirts of Paris, which looked to Lou just like estates on the English side of the Channel. Perhaps a little cleaner on the face of it, but rushing past at high speed wasn’t the best way to get to know somewhere.
‘Why, Dad?’
‘Because it’s April now and we can sing “April in Paris”.’
‘You can sing it, I’m not going to.’ Lou stood up and pulled her jacket from the overhead rack. ‘I love this train – why can’t all trains be like this?’
That morning, getting ready to go and meet her father at Waterloo, Lou felt the kind of excitement that she associated with school trips. When she arrived at the Eurostar terminal, Matt had been waiting for her. Of course he had. Her father always arrived so early at railway stations that he frequently managed to catch the train before the one he was going for. Lou had admired the airport-style departure lounge with its cafés and shops full of touristy things that you’d never buy anywhere else – biscuit tins with the Union Jack on them, for heaven’s sake. Why would you want one of those?
‘We can’t turn up empty-handed,’ Matt said, as they walked through the Gare du Nord. ‘Let’s get her some marrons glacés. If she’s popped her clogs, we’ll enjoy them.’
‘Honestly, Dad, what a way to talk about your great-aunt.’
‘Alleged great-aunt. Possibly deceased. I’ll be more respectful if she’s who she says she is. And let’s get a cab.’
They came out of the station. Matt said, ‘Paris is doing its Paris in the spring thing, you see.’
‘Dad! Stop it with the Paris clichés. You’re driving me mad!’
But the clichés were hard to avoid, because Paris was, from the view Lou had of it out of the taxi’s window, living up to all of them. A cloudless blue sky, sunshine, trees wearing misty veils of green and the buildings just as clean and elegant as she’d imagined. It was strange coming to a city you’d never visited before but whose ‘look’ you knew so well from a hundred posters and movies. What she hadn’t been prepared for was the beauty of the real thing.
‘Isn’t it fabulous, Dad?’ she said. ‘And ta for the taxi. I’d never have taken one if I’d been on my own.’
‘If we’re only here for a few hours, we ought to avoid spending some of that time down a hole.’
Matt leaned back against the leather headrest. ‘D’you mind if I ask you a personal question, darling?’
‘No … not at all. You sound very serious.’
‘I don’t mean to. I’m just nosy, really, about what you’re up to. Are you writing a novel?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘It’s occurred to me as a possibility, that’s all. Are you?’
‘No, Dad. It’s not a novel. And I’ll tell you soon, promise, only I want to keep it to myself for now. D’you mind?’
‘Of course not. As long as it’s going okay. How you want it to go, I mean.’
‘I think it is. I’ll tell you soon, I promise.’
‘Okay.’ Matt smiled at her. ‘Back to tourist mode again. Look, there’s the river.’
A bateau mouche was passing under the bridge just as they drove across it and on their left, Lou caught sight of the unmistakable façade of the cathedral of Nôtre Dame.
‘Not a word, Dad. Don’t say it.’
‘Say what?’
‘Possibly the bells! The bells!’
‘Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Never seen it, though I know the cliché, of course!’
They laughed as the taxi made its way at alarming speed through streets that were suddenly narrower and far less grand than the main avenues. The people were normal: not tourists, not movie stars, but men and women going about their business. The butchers’ shops, the pâtisseries, the flower stalls, the cafés with their striped awnings, still looked as though they were part of a stage set, but at least there were fat old women and shabby men walking about, some of them carrying black string bags and others, gratifyingly, wearing berets.
The taxi left them standing outside a door with the number ‘4’
on a blue plaque screwed on to it. Suddenly, Lou felt nervous. She’d managed not to think from the moment she left home this morning right up until this second. There had been so much to look at that pushing thoughts of Mme Franchard out of her mind hadn’t been too difficult. After all, she’d sat up late on Tuesday night, thinking of questions to ask and things to say. Now, here they were. Perhaps she didn’t live here any more. Quite probably she was dead, as Dad had kept suggesting.
‘We should ring this bell, I think,’ Matt said and pressed it firmly. Nothing happened.
‘You were right, Dad. She’s not here. She must, as you said, have popped her clogs. Let’s go. We can get some coffee or something.’
‘Nonsense, not giving up yet. She’s old. Perhaps it takes her a long time to get here from wherever she is.’
‘Oui?’ Lou was startled to see the door opening. A woman peered out at them. She wasn’t young, but she was nowhere near eighty. Not Mme Franchard, then.
‘Er …’ Lou’s French, such as it was, had run away to a very distant corner of her brain. Where were the words when you needed them? ‘Nous cherchons pour …’ No, wrong. Wrong. Chercher means to look for so you don’t need ‘for’ as well. The voice of Miss O’Callaghan, her French teacher at school, came back to her briefly and Lou pulled herself together. ‘Nous cherchons Mme Franchard. Je suis … (no!) je pense que je suis la grande-nièce (was that right? Too bad if not) de Mme Franchard. Nous sommes de la même famille.’
Lou smiled, quite pleased with her effort, and the woman still holding the door smiled back.
‘Ah, c’est vrai? C’est tout à fait étonnant. Elle m’a toujours dit …’ Lou listened to a long speech of which she understood very little, but managed to work out that Mme Franchard had told this woman that she had no family – that was the astonishing thing. So who was this woman? Lou took a deep breath and wished her father could help her, but no, he was standing by, looking pleasant and respectable and that was it. She’d have to do it.
‘Est-ce que c’est possible de parler avec Mme Franchard? Est-ce qu’elle est ici? Dans cette maison?’
Not exactly Voltaire but she’d made it clear that she wanted to talk to Mme Franchard and asked whether she was here. Lou didn’t want to get into dying. She knew the word for ‘death’ (la mort) and the infinitive (mourir: to die) but didn’t fancy tackling stuff like tenses. Was it the Japanese who only had a present tense? Amazingly sensible.
Out of the stream that emerged in reply to her question, Lou grasped two things. The first was that this person was a concierge, a kind of caretaker. Her name was Solange Richoux and yes, Mme Franchard did indeed live here. Solange held the door wide open with an air of triumph and led them across a kind of inner courtyard to another door which had a small brass card-holder next to it and on the card, in faded brown ink, Lou read the name: Madame Manon Franchard. Solange had taken a bunch of keys out of her overall pocket and was about to open the door when she turned suddenly and said, in broken English for some reason – maybe what she had to tell them was so important she couldn’t leave anything to chance – ‘She is antique, Mme Franchard. She has more than eighty years. I go in first. I tell. She does not hear so good.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Lou. ‘That’s a very good idea. Bonne idée!’
‘Don’t look so worried, Lou,’ Matt said.
‘But she’s here, she’s alive. We’re going to see her. Oh, God, I’m so nervous. What if she’s—’
‘You come now.’ Solange was back, and beckoning them with her finger, looking for all the world like someone out of a fairy tale. And the apartment they stepped into could also have come straight out of a spooky story. Lou and Matt followed Solange down a dark and narrow corridor and into a room that opened off to the right. At first, Lou couldn’t see properly, but behind her Solange was switching on a light, which didn’t help much, but which was something. The whole room was full of books. As well as shelves-full on the walls, there were piles of them on the floor, and a kind of path between these tottering mountains of mostly hardbacked volumes led from the door to an armchair in which a small, thin, wizened old lady sat surrounded by newspapers. She was dressed in black and was skeletally thin. Her skin was almost translucent and seemed stretched over the bones of her face. A strong, beaky nose and a gaze which was still quite sharp and must once have been piercing gave her the look of a bird. She wore two pairs of glasses on gold chains round her neck, and – was that a cat? Yes, there was definitely a cat curled up on the table next to the armchair. Ginger by the look of it, and quite oblivious to all the goings on. Only an ear pricking at the sound of their footsteps and a snore every so often convinced Lou that the creature wasn’t an ornament. She wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to have found a stuffed pet in a room like this.
‘I’ll do this, Lou,’ said her father and she was grateful. ‘I’m good at old ladies, though I’ve not seen anything like this in my life. Surely so many books must be a fire-hazard?’
‘Go on, Dad, she’s waiting,’ Lou whispered, as Solange said, ‘Approchez, approchez. Mme Franchard wish to see you. Speak.’
A thin, clear voice, quite at odds with the Dickensian setting, came from the corner.
‘Please forgive my indisposition. I am too old to rise to greet you, but please speak now.’
‘Thank you, Madame. You’re very kind’ Matt said.
‘I go to make the thé,’ Solange announced, picking her way back through the books to the door. ‘I return soon.’ She disappeared and they were left alone with Mme Franchard.
Lou listened as her father explained what had brought them to Paris. He told Mme Franchard who he was, how he was perhaps related to Madame’s sister and how very interested he was in finding out everything he could about his great-aunt, because his own father was dead. Lou thought it was no wonder that the old ladies of Haywards Heath and beyond wanted her father to draw up their wills. He was so comforting. He had such a pleasant manner and such a lovely voice. And she could sense his emotions as he spoke. He was clearly quite moved by the occasion. He was quite handsome, too, she realized. You never think of your parents as handsome or pretty – they’re just your father and mother, but Dad was rather gorgeous in a middle-aged sort of way. Lou felt quite proud of him. Now he was talking about her. Lou blushed when he described her as her grandfather’s favourite but she stepped forward when she was beckoned to come closer.
Mme Franchard peered up at her. Then she swapped the glasses she was wearing for another pair that were lying on the table and once she’d put them on, she stared at Lou for what seemed like ages.
‘En effet …’ Mme Franchard breathed and took a hankie from a pocket in the depths of the knitted garment that was draped over her shoulders. ‘You are Louise? The same name, the same face. C’est incroyable … liens … you bring that photograph over there … the big one.’ She pointed to a dim corner of the room and Lou saw two or three silver frames peeping out from behind a pile of old letters, and pages torn from newspapers and magazines. This flimsy paper wall almost hid them from view but she went over and picked up the largest of them, which was about the size of a postcard. It showed two young women sitting in a garden under a tree which could have been the twin of the one she liked looking at in the library in London — an apple tree in full bloom. One of the girls was thin and dark and even in the bad light and even after the passage of what was practically a whole lifetime, Lou could recognize Mme Franchard.
‘This is you,’ she said, putting the photograph into the old lady’s hands.
‘Oui, and this is my Louise. You see how she is. So resembling you. Incroyable. I feel … I feel bouleversée. How do you say? Turned up and down?’
‘Upside down,’ Matt said and leaned over to see the photograph. ‘My goodness, Lou, it’s quite striking. This Louise does look like you. Really. It’s not just …’
‘Let me see.’ Lou took the frame from Mme Franchard and gazed more closely at the photo. This Louise is prettier than I am,
she thought. Better dressed. Her hair’s not a mess tied up in a ponytail. She wore it in a way that reminded Lou of the Duchess of Windsor: parted in the middle and with a kind of roll all round the head. You did that by pinning the hair on to a sausage-shaped thing, which Lou knew because she’d been in a school production of An Inspector Calls. But it’s true, she thought. She does look like me. How odd, how worrying and fascinating and strange, that such things could happen: that a random collection of cells and enzymes and whatever else made up a person could arrange itself twice into a person, who was in some ways the same and in others completely different, separated by years and years. Lou shivered.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do look like her. I can see that.’
‘And you are named like her.’
Lou nodded. She knew of that connection, and had always been proud of it.
Solange came in at that moment and performed the walk through the books, which must have been even more hazardous when you were carrying a tea tray, but she was clearly used to doing it. She also poured the tea and handed it round before leaving the room again.
‘You must be alone,’ she announced from the door. ‘You have much to speak.’
‘Tell us, Madame,’ Matt said. ‘Tell us about your sister, Louise.’
6
‘It’s so lovely,’ said Ellie, ‘to have the chance for a proper chat. Such ages since we last met. I’ve been meaning to get in touch since the funeral. Such a palaver, getting settled into the new flat and so forth.’
‘Yes, it must have been,’ said Phyl. ‘Have another scone, Ellie.’ She had no intention of taking up that particular baton. She didn’t want to hear Ellie’s moving-in stories.
‘I won’t, thanks, though they are delicious. I’m sure you must have baked them yourself. You’re such a wonderful homemaker.’
Phyl smiled. ‘I’ll just put the kettle on again. I could do with another cup – how about you?’
