Goodbye, Paris

by Anstey Harris

  Starting to make the little cello for my baby changed me. I allowed myself to celebrate, although I could still barely keep any food down and spent most of the day sipping at water and wishing the world would stop swimming in front of my eyes.

  I didn’t share the celebrations with David—they were just for me—and I didn’t tell him—then—about the diminutive cello.

  My pregnancy books told me that a fetus starts with its spine like a stringed instrument begins with its back and then grows a shape: ribs, shoulders, neck. I’ve never started a project with such enthusiasm. Or such love.

  I shaped the outline of the tiny back, cut it to a classic Brescian silhouette; it was barely longer than my hand. I planed beautifully striped maple into ribs so thin they were supple in my fingers. In the front of the shop, the phone rang.

  “Ms. Atherton?”

  “Speaking.”

  “My name is Shelley. I’m your midwife.”

  Everything was real. We, the baby and I, had an ally.

  “You’ve been referred to me by your GP. You’re eight weeks?”

  “Nine. Nearly nine.” Eight weeks and five days. I was proud enough to count my achievement in hours.

  “We wouldn’t normally book you in so early, but your doctor was worried about hyperemesis.”

  “I’m sorry?” A flash of worry for my baby, the growl of the lioness inside me.

  “Excessive nausea. She has you down as horribly sick.”

  I was relieved. “All day long, all night, too. It never leaves me.”

  “That’s very wearing.”

  To hear someone be concerned about my health and yet positive about my pregnancy was fantastic. David worried constantly over my discomfort but assumed it would be over very soon.

  “If you could come into the center in the next couple of days we can go through your details, get you checked in as a patient. And then . . .”

  I felt the slight pause in her voice.

  “. . . we’ll get you an early scan. Just in case. Hyperemesis is very common in multiple pregnancies.”

  “Twins?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  * * *

  Two days before the scan, at nine weeks and four days, the sickness stopped as suddenly as it had arrived. It felt as though the nausea had finally been defeated, squashed under the buoyancy of my excitement.

  David and I had been a stuck record. Every conversation took us over the same ground, made the distance between us wider but the longing for each other more intense.

  I was checked in by a different midwife from the one who had called me; Shelley was busy with a delivery. I imagined being in that same position, in this same building, in just seven months.

  The scan room smelt of metal. I climbed onto the bed and a smiling radiographer smeared my still-flat belly with cold, clear gel. He rolled a steel bulb, a giant ballpoint pen, firmly over my stomach. The speckled screen became the womb shape I recognized from my books and leaflets, and there they were.

  Both of them.

  Two identical kidney beans.

  Both as dead as cherrystones.

   Chapter Eight

  David’s and my history has been pushed behind boxes like the little lost pieces of that cello I made so long ago. It is an uncomfortable past, but it is the only past we have; we can’t change it, we can only build on it. Everything that has happened to us forms the investment that keeps us moving forward. We waded our way through such sadness that it has bonded us like little else could.

  Now I help David make his arrangements to leave. We are only twenty minutes from the Eurostar terminal at my house and when we go to Paris we always take the train. This time, David has to go all the way to Strasbourg in a hurry, so a plane is the only option.

  I pull up in the drop-off lane at the airport. This will be a tense and hurried goodbye. David will want to get it over with.

  “Thanks for driving me, darling. Sorry I’m in such a bad mood; I’m rubbish.”

  “It’s fine; I totally understand. And I’ll still be here whenever you get back.”

  We’re outside the car now and I stand on my tiptoes to reach up and kiss him. He takes both my hands in his and kisses the backs of them.

  “Come in with me; come into the airport. Let’s have a few minutes more.”

  “No, I’ll get a ticket. Or towed.”

  “You won’t get towed.” He scoops me into him, presses me against him, and kisses me long and hard. “I’ll pay your ticket. Come on. Give me five more minutes.”

  I think about pushing him away, laughing, and telling him to be sensible, but instead I hook my arms around his neck and we continue to kiss. He lifts me slightly off the ground. “I wish I wasn’t going. I wish I’d just arrived and we were going home.”

  He never says that. Normally it is outside of the rules to compare one life to another, to make empty promises or comment on things that can’t be. His nerves are making him edgy.

  “Come on,” I say, and take his hand. “I’ll come and wait while you check in, but if this car’s gone when I come back, you’ll have to get off the plane and sort it out.”

  “Deal,” he says, and I lock the car with the remote fob.

  He just wants to be in close proximity to me when we get in. We aren’t really there for long; a lifetime of planes and trains means that David has all this down pat and rarely wastes ten minutes. Around us, holidaymakers wait in lines and small children sit sulkily on suitcases. David isn’t the only person in this queue with nothing more than a laptop bag as luggage, but he’s the only one of the people dressed in suits who is involved in a passionate goodbye.

  We don’t usually make this sort of fuss. We’re good at parting, just as we’re good at getting together again. I suppose, under the circumstances, I’m suddenly the stability. Mine is the house that he can predict, the home where things are still the same.

  Two American teenagers, all backpacks and baseball caps, are pointing at us.

  “You’re offending today’s youth with your public displays of affection,” I whisper into his ear.

  “They’re just jealous.”

  “Come on, go through security. You can do it.” I make a gentle gesture of pushing him away.

  He scoops me back up. “I’m going to miss you so much. I love you.”

  “And I love you, but I’m going to get a ticket.” I’m not a natural rule breaker; it makes me uncomfortable. “And those kids are staring. Maybe we should just go home?”

  “I wish, darling girl,” he says. “You can’t imagine how much I wish.”

  The teenagers are making faces by the time we pull apart. I walk away from David without looking over my shoulder. Looking back at him is too hard; I never do it.

  * * *

  I swing past the supermarket on my way home. I live differently when David is away. I buy easy food, the food my family ate rather than David’s salads and fresh fish. I play my cello.

  It’s late now, getting dark. I wander through the aisles looking at the people, wondering who else has just left their lover to go back to his or her family.

  It is testament to my lifestyle that I spend longest in the wine aisle. The choice of fruit and vegetables was easy; I spend enough time in France to be constantly disappointed by the English supermarkets and I long for the pungent strawberries and the smell of ripe melon that wakes my senses in France.

  I pick a few bottles off the shelf in a midprice range; not the cheapest plonk that will leave me with a hangover and stained lips, but not the sort that David would buy either. Ahead of me is a group of teenagers. They are clearly shopping for a party and their trolley is fairly typical. I can see crisps and bottles, the ubiquitous large dark plastic of cider and the clear glass of vodka. I hope there’re a lot more of them outside.

  “Grace.” One of them, tucked in the center of the group and out of my eye line, is Nadia.

  “Nad, hello. Fancy seeing you here.” I point with a grin at my trolley. Four rea
dy meals and five bottles of wine, a packet of cheese crackers and a bag of apples. “Party?”

  “It’s Harriet’s birthday.” Nadia points to the girl next to her. “This is Harriet.”

  “This is Harriet, my best friend, you mean,” says the girl, and laughs. Her accent is cut glass, she clearly goes to the same school as Nadia.

  “This is Harriet, who wishes she was my best friend,” says Nadia.

  I smile at both girls and remember Nadia’s diary entry. I hope I don’t blush.

  “I don’t want to sound all middle-aged and so on, but do you think you’ve got enough booze there?” I raise my eyebrows but make it clear that I’m friend not foe.

  “It’s not all ours. We’re going camping. A bunch of us.” There are three other girls with them and two boys lurk farther down the aisle.

  “And it’s not for Nadia at all.” Harriet makes a face. “She’s far too goody-goody to drink it.”

  Nadia shakes her head. “I gave up drinking; a bit ago. And Harriet can’t bear it.”

  “Can’t bear how boring you are now.” Harriet’s smile is viperous.

  “Have you got hot dogs, then?” I ask, trying to change the subject. “You need hot dogs. And bacon.”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” says Harriet, who shoots me a look that makes me glad she’s not Nadia’s best friend at the moment. Harriet has long blond hair and a superior air. There were lots of girls like her at my school too; part of me despised them, but part of me yearned for them, to be one of them. I feel for Nadia.

  “Am I still working Saturday?” she asks.

  “Ah, I’m not sure. David’s gone back. Early.”

  To her credit, she doesn’t flinch. I wonder if she’ll tell Harriet where he’s gone as they leave.

  “Doesn’t matter, I’m coming in, anyway. I have something I want to talk to you about,” she says.

  “OK, Nadia. That’s cool,” I say before I remember that she will want to talk about my playing in private. Then I hate myself so much for saying “cool” in front of the glamorous Harriet that I can’t think which is worse.

  In a space between my flying thoughts, I realize that Harriet will have judged me long ago. She will have looked me up and down; taken in my flat pumps, my jeans, the T-shirt that is slightly faded. She will wonder why I haven’t got makeup on or why I keep my hair so short. Perhaps she’ll decide I’m a bit too old for little silver hoops in my ears and the slight short spikes that I still tease my hair into. She’ll trip her judgmental eye down my arm and, at the same time, check for nail varnish and a wedding ring.

  Perhaps she’ll be more impressed when Nadia tells her I’m a mistress.

  * * *

  When I get home I choose an apple, cut it into fours, and put it on a plate with a few crackers. I open a bottle of wine and carry it all into the sitting room.

  My whole body itches to play my cello, but I want to find the right piece. I bite into the apple and leaf through my music. I have shelves and shelves of sheet music. All of my past is recorded in them, notes in the gaps between the staves or little drawings where I need to remind myself to lift my bow or move my fingers into an odd position to catch the gap between one note and the next.

  Sometimes I find little scribbled notes such as buy cheese or meet Mike Monday. The writing shows how old I was when I wrote the message; I’ve been collecting sheet music since I was young. I don’t even remember who Mike is.

  I take my cello from its stand and unscrew the spike. I don’t have to measure it, although I know how long it took to get right when I was a child. I tighten the bolt and pluck through the four strings to see how far astray they’ve gone in the last two days. They’re not bad. I adjust the fine tuners on the tailpiece and don’t have to use the pegs; it’s not that far out.

  I get twitchy without playing. It is something I’ve done most days of my life since I was eight years old. It’s more than a habit. David always notices the twitchiness and it’s another reason that we both wish I could just play with him here. I haven’t told him that I picked a tune when he was in bed; I think I meant to.

  I tighten my bow, rub it with rosin, and begin to play. I am, and have, all that I need.

  My special interest in music, and the things I love the most, are traditional tunes in variations written by composers. “La Follia” is one of the commonest examples: there is a popular—and wonderful—version by Corelli, the one David took me to that night in Paris. There is a crazy and striking one by Vivaldi. Liszt, Beethoven, and Handel have all written versions of the theme. I love that these musical themes and all they stand for can trickle down through centuries, that they never dull. There is scarcely a composer who hasn’t borrowed a tune from folk music; from Bartók and the Romanian folk dances to Vaughan Williams and “Greensleeves.” I’ve been collecting and playing them for decades. If I’d finished my music degree, my dissertation would have just trotted onto the paper by itself with list after list of examples and all my experiences playing them and all the reasons they are so wonderful.

  I find the music for the Vivaldi version, but I haven’t got the energy to play it. The end calls for some serious physical jerks and I’m not up to that today.

  I sip my wine and try to call a piece to mind. I know it as soon as I see the folded dog-eared corner of the music. “Libertango”; an Argentinean tango seething with passion and darkness and brought to life by Astor Piazzolla. This piece isn’t tender or mournful or sotto voce; this piece isn’t even decent.

  I play it first as it appears on the sheet music. Then, after a huge gulp of wine and wiping beads of sweat from my forehead, I play it to a piano backing that I have on CD. I play faster and faster and it swoops through my head like a drug.

  I put on another CD; I’m halfway through my wine bottle: Grace Jones singing “I’ve Seen That Face Before,” that’s the “Libertango” too, and I play it loudly over the top of the recording.

  I’m breathless and laughing by the time I finish and I text David.

  take me to argentina. it’s a need not a want.

  He texts back almost immediately.

  the french press have found me.

   Chapter Nine

  I don’t do anything else with my evening but drink wine and search the internet. I finish the bottle before I find what I’ve been looking for. I misspell things in French and cannot get my computer to put accents in the right places. The search would be easier in English, but of course the UK sites are silent on the story.

  It’s hard to admit, even to myself, but what I’ve been waiting to see is a picture of David’s wife. I wonder if I’d do it if I wasn’t drunk. I feel a sudden stop inside, a jolt of reality, when I find the photograph.

  David’s wife has aged really well. She has barely changed from the night I saw her at Jonny and Natalie’s party. My memory of her was accurate; tall and thin, well turned out and elegant and, thankfully, not like me in any way. I have always been confident that David wasn’t just looking for a younger version of his wife, but it’s nice to confirm it. She and I are, in every way, different.

  In the photograph I find online, they are side by side. Nothing in their body language suggests any sort of intimacy, past or present. They stand, almost shoulder to shoulder, with their hands by their sides but not touching. She is every bit as strikingly attractive as he is. Her mouth is set in a straight line of determination or distaste.

  David’s wife looks angry, but then I would be too if my family’s privacy had been invaded by the media, if the world were asking awkward questions of my husband. The caption below the picture names her as PROMINENT HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATE DOMINIQUE-MARIE MARTIN. She was introduced to me at Natalie’s party as Marie. I have always assumed she had taken her husband’s surname, but she obviously hadn’t. David only refers to her as “my wife” or as his children’s mother. Only now I realize that I didn’t know her name before this moment.

  I open a second bottle of wine and resume my search.

  I
have searched the internet for David’s wife before. I used Marie Hewitt, her husband’s surname and her second name. I didn’t find anything of note, and of course that satisfied me.

  By searching Dominique-Marie Martin, I unfold court cases and international transgressions that she has resolved. Her eye for injustice is respected worldwide.

  I click through the online image files of her. She doesn’t put a foot wrong in the pictures; her clothes, her shoes, her hair, all flawless. There are no photographs of her children—and I’m grateful for that—and no more pictures of her and David together.

  David employs a PR specialist to keep him out of photographs and media comments; it is imperative that translators at his level stay in the background. There are a few corporate shots of him—beautifully groomed and with an incredible presence—but nowhere near as many as there are of his wife.

  I wonder how he would feel about me searching, digging into the side of his life that is hidden, crossing a boundary we laid down by tacit agreement. It feels grubby to know about the woman he is married to.

  When I was little, Pandora’s Box was one of my favorite stories; and now, I wish I’d listened.

  * * *

  I’m drunk and maudlin, but at least there is no one to watch me. David’s wife has always had the best of him—no one’s fault—but from the cheap seats, that’s how it feels.

  The day we lost our babies, David left France to get to me in such a hurry that he forgot to take the wedding band from his finger. In the aftermath of our sadness, as we waited to be sent home, the midwives referred to him as my husband and credited the loss to both of us rather than just to me.

  It was David’s loss too. David had been immovable in wanting to end the pregnancy, only because he knew from experience that he would love the babies just as much as I did by the time they were born. Were to have been born.

  Our lives had moved miles while we had been inside the hospital; we went in as two separate people fighting over a possibility and came out, less than twenty-four hours later, as a couple stripped of choice.