Goodbye, Paris

by Anstey Harris

  I look at her.

  “In this shop. You tune them up, you pick out little riffs for customers. It’s mostly pizzicato, but it’s still playing.”

  And Nadia is gone.

  The fire under my skin burns harder than ever.

   Chapter Four

  David and I met at a party. I was thirty-two and had just started to find my feet and myself. I’d ridden out a basic apprenticeship working hard for someone else’s profit and spent four years in an airless back room of a workshop in London. My days were spent squashed too close together between a sweating Dutch bow repairer and an Israeli double bass maker with an unpredictable temper.

  I’d had a few uninspiring relationships with men as gauche or distracted as me, but, since college, I couldn’t say I’d ever been in love. My work and my personal life moved forward in lethargic tandem; neither had quite found the spark.

  When my parents died within three years of each other and left me their little house to sell, I used it as a springboard to stop working for someone else. My dad had dearly wanted me to start a business.

  When I met David, I was just about to open my own shop.

  The couple hosting the party were lawyers; Natalie was a whippet-thin high achiever who played first violin in an impressive amateur orchestra. This party would be like everything else Natalie and Jonny had invited me to: a vaguely veiled attempt to set me up with their single friends.

  I’d go out with people once or twice, then shrink back into my shell, lock myself in with my cello and a bottle of wine. I screened calls and I practiced Dvorˇák.

  Natalie directed me through the house and out onto the patio. The double doors to the garden were open and venetian blinds clicked against the glass in the faint breeze. The first decade of the twenty-first century was drawing to a close; huge Romanesque planters and enormous concrete troughs were the fashion for gardens, choking with lobelia and hot, rude colors of pelargonium.

  Just past the forest of pots, a group of people stood with drinks in their hands. I looked around for someone to make a welcoming face, to smile or offer me a drink.

  A tall woman with red hair was making her goodbyes. “I don’t feel at all well,” she said. “I’m ever so sorry.” She smiled at me apologetically. “It’s honestly not you. I had already said I was going.” She put her hand at the top of her chest in that gesture polite people make when they want to avoid mentioning the fact that they feel sick.

  “I hope you feel better soon,” I said.

  The red-haired woman raised her hand and waved at a man on the other side of the lawn. He nodded towards her in recognition that she was leaving.

  He was completely different from everyone else at the party. He was older, possibly the oldest person there; I judged him as late thirties, maybe just past forty. He was unusually tall, distinctly handsome, and he was on his own. He saw me and smiled.

  My mouth was dry when I tried a half smile back.

  We introduced ourselves: David, Grace. We talked about the wine, the potted plants, the other guests. For the rest of the evening we laughed. Everything he said resonated with me. He made me sound funny; clever.

  “There is this idea where I live, in France,” David said, “and I didn’t believe in it at all until tonight.”

  I could barely breathe, my face still aching with the ripples of our laughter; it was hard to set my mouth straight and listen.

  “They believe in the coup de foudre,” he said, “the lightning bolt. The French say that it will hit everyone just once in a lifetime. It could be someone you see on the other side of the street, just one time, and never even speak to. It could be when you’re a child or just seconds before you die.”

  I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed the drop in our voices. No one had; we were the last people left in the garden.

  He talked calmly, as if he was discussing something rational, a fact. “Your life is never the same again. It is an appointment with destiny. It doesn’t matter what’s come before or what comes afterwards; it’s a moment for fate.”

  I looked it up a few days later. An overwhelming passion or a sudden and unexpected life-changing event.

  Just as David had said, the coup de foudre took no notice of anything that had come before it. It exploded into our lives, leaving tiny blisters of chaos behind it.

  * * *

  If I heard my story from an acquaintance, if I knew someone who had been sleeping with somebody else’s husband, trying for a baby amid the chaos of two lives and two houses and two separate sets of facts, I would think they were stupid. Naive and stupid. I am neither of those things; I never have been. If anything, I am too far the other way. I am prickly and bossy. I learnt the hard way that if you let other people make decisions for you, everything will be lost.

  I have spent twenty years working and building, establishing a reputation that is, literally, worldwide. I probably drink too much and I definitely don’t eat enough, but I do it when and how I want. I would love to go to France, to be closer to David. Life would be so much easier if we were just miles apart instead of me being stuck here with cultures and sea and tall unshakable cliffs separating us, but I can’t leave my business.

  That is the coup de foudre.

  * * *

  It is eleven o’clock. I have put coffee on for Mr. Williams. I have checked all my messages, kept an eye on the internet news. Eleven o’clock and all’s well.

  I see Mr. Williams through the glass of the shop door. He is wearing a gray silk cravat and a paisley waistcoat; fabulous in the dull everydayness of our twinset-and-pearls town center. His white hair is swept back into a sparse quiff and dressed with some sort of oil. He has his violin in a smart navy-blue case that I sold him last year. It is one of many and I suspect he changes them to match his outfit.

  He smells delicious as he comes in.

  “You look fantastic,” I say. “Special occasion?”

  “I like to make an effort now and again.” It is part of our dance; this is Mr. Williams’s everyday wear. “Is that coffee machine on?” The coffee machine is always on for Mr. Williams, has been once a week for ten years.

  We walk through to the back room and Mr. Williams looks fragile as he takes the one step down from the small dark hallway into the workshop. He holds on to the door frame with his empty hand to steady himself.

  The workshop is flooded with light; the windows are wide and tall and my varnish bench sits underneath them so I can see the colors I’m working on in natural daylight.

  I know why Mr. Williams likes coming into this wide back room. The shelves and the benches and the cupboards are full of alchemy. Bottles and jars, chisels and knives, powders and potions, line the walls. I have paintbrushes arranged in order of size from thick inch-round dabbers to tiny single-hair retouching brushes, hairs so fine they let me retouch varnish cracks on three-hundred-year-old wood without anyone seeing the join. There are tangy odors of chemicals and the smell of wood hangs here constantly; each morning fresh curls of shavings fall into a pile beneath my desk and perfume the room.

  “A friend of mine has just kicked the bucket,” Mr. Williams says.

  I am emptying biscuits onto a chipped gray plate and drop two on the floor, taken aback by his opener. “That’s very sad.”

  “Old as the hills, dear, a jolly good innings. May I?” Mr. Williams gestures to the high stool at my bench and I nod for him to sit. “Actually,” he says, “he left me a violin.”

  I look up, definitely interested.

  “Not quite what you’re thinking,” Mr. Williams says and smiles. “He made it himself.”

  This isn’t uncommon. There seems to be something irresistible to men, and it’s almost always men who dabble in woodwork, having a crack at a violin—like it’s the ultimate test of skill. I suppose I should be flattered.

  “It’s a lovely thing.” He strokes the violin case. “Not to play or perhaps even to look at, but it will be like still having a part of him.”

&nb
sp; I touch his arm. “Let’s have a look.” I unclip the silver catches on the front of the case. The instrument is sitting tightly inside. A red-and-white spotted handkerchief, definitely silk, is laid carefully across the front of it.

  “Hold on.” Mr. Williams takes something out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “Look at this first. This is Alan.” The black-and-white photograph is of three young men, probably no more than twenty-five years old. They are wearing morning suits and it is, presumably, one or other of their weddings. They are all devilishly handsome, with slicked-back movie-star hair and bad-boy grins.

  “And is that you?” I point at the beautiful young man on the left of the picture.

  “I haven’t changed a bit.” Mr. Williams winks at me and the gesture makes me laugh.

  “I was best man at both of Alan’s weddings.” He raises his eyebrows a little and, in the language of betrayal, I assume he means the second marriage had a similar start to mine and David’s. “He and his second wife, Anne, made my late partner and I godparents to both their daughters. The light that those girls brought to our lives . . .”

  “I’ve seen far worse amateur work than this.” I hold the violin up to the window. “The varnish is really pretty.”

  “I think so.” His skin wrinkles up around his eyes when he smiles. “Do you think you could fix it for me—make it playable? I’d love to use it as my everyday instrument, think of Alan every time I play it.”

  “I think that’s an absolutely beautiful idea.” And I do. There’s a lot I could do to make this instrument work. Straightaway I can feel that the belly is too thick and the action too high. The whole thing is heavy and dull in my hands. “It won’t be particularly cheap, I’m afraid. Shall I do you an estimate for the work and then you can decide which bits you really need and which you don’t?”

  “No, Grace.” He is firm. “It costs what it costs. I know you’ll be fair and, frankly, I’ve got enough money to see me out. There might even be some left after I’ve expired.”

  I write Mr. Williams’s name on a brown paper label and tie it around one of the violin’s pegs. There is one slot left at the end of the rack and I stretch up on my tiptoes to slide the violin’s neck into the velvet-lined recess in the shelf.

  I put his coffee down on the bench and move the plate of biscuits towards him. Mr. Williams always appreciates buns or biscuits with an almost indecent enthusiasm. I suspect he had a wartime childhood, but I’d never ask him; he is sensitive about his age.

  “What a lovely girl you are, Grace.” When Mr. Williams smiles, his large ears move upwards into his white hair and the sides of his face crease into deep lines.

  “Your violin will have to get in the queue, I’m afraid. I have some bits I need to do on my Cremona cello first and a couple of jobs on the bench. Will it wait?”

  “He’s already dead, dear girl, and I don’t think that situation’s going to change much over the next few months. Is this your grand competition cello?”

  I nod and I pick the cello up off its stand. I put it on the bench, lying on its side so that we can look at it together.

  “It’s very beautiful.” Mr. Williams dares to touch the edge of the cello.

  He’s right. Everything has gone just the way it should with the instrument. I didn’t experiment with varnishes, wondering whether this or that might give a better shine, testing if a little more red or a little less yellow might mix me the perfect shade. Instead I stuck to the things I know. I concentrated hard on bringing together all the experience of eighteen years of making. Eighteen years of trial and error and lessons, of successes and failures, triumphs and disasters.

  “How does it sound?” Mr. Williams asks. “As good as it looks?”

  “I haven’t tried it.” I smile. “Not so much as a ping on the A string.”

  In my imaginary world, I’m going to cook David a special dinner, dressed up smart, and then have a formal unveiling and first play. In real life, it will just be me—in jeans and a T-shirt—locked away in the inauspicious setting of the workshop, too afraid to play in front of him.

  “I can’t wait to hear it,” says Mr. Williams, because he has no reason whatsoever to suspect that he won’t. “How incredibly special.”

  There is a sudden and loud ring at the front door of the shop. I make a face at Mr. Williams; we don’t like our chats interrupted. “Hang on, I’ll just sort this out,” I say.

  My heart leaps, literally, and I feel an intense emotion at the top of my throat. David is at the door. He has a key to my house, but he’s never needed one to the shop.

  I open the door and let him in. I don’t kiss him till he’s inside the shop; this is a small town and I never know which of my customers might be walking past—kissing a handsome man in my shop doorway is not what they expect of me.

  He hugs me tight and I can smell his aftershave.

  “What are you doing here? I’m so excited.” I reach up and kiss his cheek. His skin is soft, closely shaven.

  “I had to do some damage limitation. About the press.”

  I gesture quickly towards the open doorway where Mr. Williams can probably hear everything we say. “I’ve got a customer in the back.”

  I lead David by his hand into the workshop.

  It’s neat and organized in here, but with my varnishing bench, my woodwork bench, and the tall stand that holds my band saw, it’s cramped with three people.

  “Mr. Williams, this is my friend David. He’s surprised me with a visit from Paris.”

  “How do you do?” Mr. Williams shakes David’s hand and they exchange small talk and pleasantries. “I’ll let you young people get on with it.”

  David is fifty-two; it’s been a while since he’s been called a young person, and it makes him smile.

  * * *

  David and I are alone. I pull down the blind in the workshop so that no one walking down the road behind the shop can see in, and I kiss him for a long time.

  “I can’t believe you’re here.” I am blinking back tears. I didn’t think I would see him for weeks.

  “I have to try and shut this stuff down. It’s everywhere, the bloody hérosmystère. If anything, it’s getting bigger.”

  “Why here?” I ask. “Isn’t it more important to shut it down in France?”

  “I can get an injunction, very quickly and easily, in the UK. It’ll damage my business if I’m suddenly a recognizable face; I can’t be high profile in my personal life and invisible standing next to a client.”

  David’s work can be very sensitive. He is at the top of the legal translation tree and stands, somber-suited and innocuous, behind some very important people during very delicate negotiations. He works for powerful people who need an expert they can trust with their lives.

  “France is bloody terrible,” David says as he wilts onto the chair beside my bench. “The press in France says what it likes when it likes; ours is far more controllable.”

  “Ours” is not lost on me. I walk over and stroke his hair, push his fringe out of his eyes. One day I will be responsible for his haircuts, booking him into the salon I go to, the one who—I think—cuts with more style than his barber in France.

  I want so badly for him to be staying for a while. He doesn’t have any luggage, but maybe it’s in the car. He keeps a selection of “English” clothes at my house. He looks far more French when we’re in Paris, dresses in a very different way.

  * * *

  David looks tired. Normally he doesn’t look his age; he could pass for early forties. His hair is graying slightly at the edges but is mainly still brown and his skin is free of wrinkles. He spends a good deal of time in the gym and is toned and fit, his broad shoulders in proportion with his height.

  “Were things OK in Spain?” I ask. This isn’t the same question as “How was Spain?” We never discuss David’s children or his wife; not because he wouldn’t answer, but because we live in this play world, a make-believe bubble where he’s just been away on business and now he i
s home. If we dissected his relationships, the moments he spends with his family, he would feel disloyal and dishonest.

  David’s wife knows that he’s in love with someone else. She knows where he is when he’s away. All three of us leave it at that.

  * * *

  David and I were the last people left at that party in Natalie and Jonny’s garden. We had hung around talking. We had laughed and smiled and spun out our stories until there was no one left but us, and the hosts were sitting—tired—around their kitchen table drinking herbal tea.

  “Golly, I am sorry,” David said, shaking Jonny’s hand and kissing Natalie on each cheek.

  I reddened slightly as his skin touched hers, wished it was me.

  “I had no idea it had gotten so late.” David grinned at them. “How embarrassing; what dreadful guests we are. I shall see your friend here safely home and then toddle off to bed.”

  “Thanks for inviting me,” I said out of politeness, when all I could really think about was how to avoid David going home once we’d gotten as far as my house.

  * * *

  It was a beautiful evening, scents of the neighboring gardens rose up on the air and few cars passed us in this end of town. We walked down the road and David reached out and took my hand. He twined his fingers into mine and we walked side by side, knowing already that this was how we belonged.

  When we stopped to cross the road, it was the pause I’d been waiting for. David looked up and down the road for traffic, then, as he turned back, he reached down and kissed me.

  All the hurt that had kept me company since college, all the hopeless relationships I’d made faltering false starts with, all the years I’d been mousy and shy and hidden inside myself; it all melted in an instant.

  It took longer to walk back to my house than it should have. We stopped, giggling, to kiss under summer streetlights, our backs damp against dewy hedges, dusty on railings.

  I felt completely different about my little house the second that David was in it. It felt like a home, like a palace. It felt warm and safe and settled.