If I stay silent, this strange man in David’s skin will stop talking. If I use my silence to bargain with him, perhaps he will return my beautiful boyfriend to me.
“It’s just like when we first met. No more, no less. I’ve been enchanted by her. Just as I was by you. Still am by you.”
He leans towards me, tries to kiss my back.
I wrench away from him and then immediately regret the distance I have made; the inches between us that will split like an iceberg, flaking chunks of cold falling into my life.
“Don’t be angry. I’m being honest with you. It’s all I can be. It’s all I can do.”
“Are you asking me to stay with you? While you make a baby with this girl?”
He stands, pulls on his trousers and tugs at his belt. “I don’t know what will happen. My arm’s been forced, you know? I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“What about my baby?” My voice is a ghost in the room.
He puts his fingers to his temples, closes his eyes. “We were fucking great together, you and me. Fucking great. I didn’t mean to meet Marie-Thérèse. I certainly didn’t mean to fall in love with her. You have to understand that none of this was planned.” And then he adds, as if I am a child of limited understanding, “Please take that on board. This. Was. Not. Planned.”
A noise comes from within me, half hiccup, half sob. It is a belch of humiliation, a pain that refuses to turn into anger no matter how much I want it to.
All I can feel is loss. I am desperate for him to tell me none of this is true, delirious with the need for it to be a hallucination. Or even just a mistake.
“Grace, I’ve lied to my youngest child his whole life to be with you: he’s almost nine years old. I don’t have to lie anymore. I’ve left; my family is destroyed, devastated. My kids won’t even speak to me.”
He sits down again. I edge away from him in the bed and he puts his hand on my knee. Beneath the thin white sheet I am naked and his palm traces the bones of my leg.
“Every single thing I ever said to you was true. Every fucking word.”
“But you were sleeping with other people?” The depths of me beg him, without words, to say no.
“You never asked me that, Gracie. You never asked for it to just be you. You knew I was married when you signed up for this. You knew it was never just you.”
He exhales a sigh of frustration. “Don’t ask me to give her up, darling, I can’t. I only wish I fucking could.”
Inside my body, a bold—vivid—me screams that I would never ask that, that he’s welcome to her. They’re welcome to each other. The hidden me screams at him and slaps his face; pulls his hair and rips his clothes.
The outside me just starts to shake with impotence.
“You’re cold, baby. You’re shivering.” He gets up and shuts the window, an everyday act of concern, of kindness. And then he starts again with his litany of how much he loves me and how much he loves his girlfriend—only eight years older than Nadia—and what he’s given up.
The shaking won’t stop. My hands tremble and I cannot trust my legs when I try to stand. My tremulous voice croaks that I need to go to the bathroom and David has to help me, half carry me, through the door.
He pulls the door closed behind me in a peculiar gesture of modesty, given that we have just spent hours having sex in the room he is standing in.
I whisper that I have finished and he helps me back to the bed.
“You need to get some sleep, baby. You’re not doing yourself any good like this. Not either of us.”
My lips are too dry for sound to come out; it will catch on the sandpaper of my skin. I stare at him with round eyes and he responds by tucking the sheet around me, covering my body with the duvet.
“I’ve got to go, darling girl. I’m so sorry, I really have to. I’ll call you.”
My mind goes with him, back to the Trocadéro, into the art deco elevator and behind its ornate iron doors. My imagination travels into the cool, white hallway of his apartment, feels the breeze of the river coming through the long window, traces his striding legs as he crosses the elegant sitting room.
The last thing I picture, before I fall asleep still shaking, is his arrival in the arms of a beautiful young girl. My mind puts me through the pain of watching them kiss, and I turn away before they make love.
* * *
The journey home is the kind that people make when someone dies. I cannot concentrate; I cannot separate my reality from my imagination.
Just as I manage to process that he is not coming back—that he has gone—a plan we had made together for the weeks ahead pops into my mind and I am back at square one. I am still the person I was when I set off walking from Gare du Nord to meet my boyfriend. My default setting is hardwired for David to be in my life, to consume my thoughts.
As soon as I relax, I remember with a jolt everything that has happened in the last two days. It is a fresh and violent shock each time.
I try, in the gray seat of the train, to picture moments from our past, to pull on a clue and get it in my grasp. There are no clues. There was no preamble to this discovery. David and I never discussed who he was when we were apart.
I wonder how long he has been in love with Marie-Thérèse. I try not to think about how long they have been sleeping together.
The part of me that lived in the glamorous Parisian apartment is over. The would-be cosmopolitan high achiever with the handsome boyfriend, the brilliant career, is dead. Worse still, I don’t know when that person died.
Was the girlfriend staying in the apartment when I wasn’t there? Have we been tumbling into laundered sheets on alternate nights, watching separate concerts and booking different restaurants but living the same life?
She knows about me. David said that he had promised to give me up.
Give me up.
Give me up to what? To whom? It feels like he has given me up to an abyss, a churning crater that I can’t understand.
The train thunders through its same route. The sketched fields of northern France, the poppies, the orange farmhouses and small white vans, give way to the black of the tunnel. I wish for the rock to shrink, to grip the train and squeeze us until we are all just black. All given up.
In the bright light of the other side, the cliff rises up to my right and the weald of Kent declares its green slopes. The closer I get to home, the worse I feel. There is nothing left. This is worse than college, worse than the miscarriage; both of those events—although I couldn’t see it at the time—left fragments of hope, translucent ghosts of future to grasp at. This is the end of my world; the undoing of the past of it and the obliteration of what might have been. This is the end of “one day.”
I cannot go back into my house. I cannot sleep in a bed that has “David’s side.”
I drive to the shop instead of home. I clench my teeth and grip the steering wheel; it takes every piece of me to concentrate on the road. My mind wrestles the whole way back, trying to find a reason not to drive into the walls, off the corners. I tell myself that I need to find a place where I can only hurt myself, where there is no risk of taking anyone innocent with me.
I unlock the door, slam it tight behind me. I shoot the bolts across the bottom to make sure I have cut myself off from the outside world and any rescue. This is where I want it all to end, where I have chosen to be.
I walk through to the workshop.
In the corner is my Cremona cello. It shines under the striplight. Its perfect varnish is an allegory for all the veils I have chosen not to look behind, all the smoke and mirrors of my life.
I pull back my leg, bent at the knee.
I point my French loafer to the ground before I swing my foot forward and through the front of the cello.
* * *
What we know as a cello is actually called a violincello, hence the grammatical shortening to ’cello. It is part of the violin family, whereas a double bass is technically part of the viol family.
The separate
pieces of a cello are held together using hide glue. Hide glue is made by boiling down connective tissue of animals. The glue is water soluble and can be undone at any time. Science has not come up with a more appropriate adhesive for violin making.
Two of the commonest—and most serious—injuries to any string instrument are sound post or bass bar cracks. When force is applied to the outside of the instrument, the tender belly cracks across the stronger interior pieces. Lines running down from the bottom of an f-hole to the base of the instrument are usually bass bar cracks on the right or sound post cracks on the left. The belly, being softer wood than the maple back and ribs, has always been more prone to damage than other parts of the instrument.
The cello is one of the few instruments with the vocal range of a human.
Chapter Fifteen
The first voice I hear belongs to Mr. Williams. Behind that there are other voices, but I can’t make them out.
I don’t bother to listen. I can hear Mr. Williams cooing and worrying. His voice is a blanket and I use the safety of it as an excuse to close my eyes again.
* * *
Nadia’s voice is like breaking glass. “Holy shit, Grace. Way to go.”
Behind her, Mr. Williams continues his noises of peacemaking and platitude. The words are indistinct, but the sounds are enough on their own.
“You couldn’t fucking make it up.” She is taking little or no notice of him.
I feel the gush of air as Nadia drops herself down somewhere near my face. I open my senses if not my eyes and try to understand where I am.
I am in a bed that is not mine. I can tell this from the softness of the pillows ballooning onto my cheeks at either side and from the warmth of a heavy duvet smothering my whole body, cocooning it. I can guess, without too much effort, that this is Mr. Williams’s house.
I have a horrible feeling, a memory as faint and elusive as smoke. I know why I’m here. A guilt, a horror and a crashing sadness fill my mind.
I am less clear on why Nadia is here and I wish she’d go away.
“I’m assuming it’s got everything to do with David.” Nadia is relentless. “I’ve read the article.”
I open my eyes. It is definitely an older person’s house. The walls are beige and covered in a variety of landscape paintings. The light is gentle and filtered through unlined curtains with a pale pattern of stripes.
“What article?”
“I assumed you’d read it. I thought that’s why you . . . you know. Why you smashed everything up.”
“Nadia. These questions can wait.” Mr. Williams shoos her out of the way and I catch sight of her face without turning my head when she stands up. She has come out without her makeup on and she looks young, soft.
“Grace, dear, can I get you a glass of water? I have some here on the nightstand.” He sits on the edge of the bed.
I move my eyes slowly to the left. There is a carafe with a clean glass tumbler upended over its mouth. I nod.
Mr. Williams lifts the glass to my lips and I let him because every inch of me hurts. It is a dull pain, muscular and deep. “What article?”
“Shh, really, Grace. All things in good time. Let’s get you back in the land of the living first.”
I struggle upwards, raising my shoulders off the pillow. My head feels as if it is made of lead and I can barely support its weight. The inside of my mouth feels swollen, the skin on my face tight.
“Jesus, Grace. You look awful.” Nadia’s voice is very loud.
“That’s enough, Nadia,” Mr. Williams intervenes. “Go and make yourself useful. See if the oven’s up to temperature yet for the bread.”
Nadia leaves, presumably to do as she is told. I am so glad she’s gone.
“Is it David? Is he in the papers?” My voice sounds like someone weak and old. Someone defeated.
“You really must have a drink and get sorted out first, Grace.” Mr. Williams helps me shuffle up onto the pillows. I am wearing a white T-shirt, too big for me. I have never seen it before. “It is David, yes. It’s about him. But waiting ten minutes isn’t going to change it.”
“Is he OK?”
Mr. Williams nods. “He’s fine, which is a lot more than I can say for you.”
The burning in my eyes feels like I am crying, but nothing lands on my cheeks. I remember—in a photographic flash—a tableau of me, weeping on the shop floor. Literally on the shop floor; my front flat against the carpet, my hopeless arms and legs spread out. Occasionally I whacked the rough carpet with the flat of my hands, scuffed against it with the tops of my feet as I screamed. I don’t want to think about it.
“I was drunk.” This new version of me is as thin as paper.
“I know.”
“I went down to the shop cellar when I got back from Paris. There’s a sofa down there, a little sitting room with a low ceiling.” I don’t know why I am pointing out these details.
“I know.” Mr. Williams nods his head slowly. He still has the water glass in his hands and he offers it towards mine.
I wrap my fingers around the glass. Its coldness is comforting; I am surprised to find I can still feel ordinary sensations. “I don’t know what I drank. I wanted to die, I think.”
The ends of my fingers are covered in tiny scabs, carpet burns from clawing at the floor, scratching at it pointlessly with my desperate empty hands.
Mr. Williams doesn’t speak, but he nods his head. I catch his eye but have to look away; the sadness in his face is crucifying. His hand trembles slightly as he takes the glass back from me.
“It was a terrible thing that you did. So awful.”
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut as if that will close my ears, my memory.
“I can’t believe you could harm the violins, all those beautiful instruments.”
Horrible pictures streak in front of my closed eyes. Inside my head I see my foot going through the cello, I hear the grating wood bending against itself, splintering into matchsticks. I think I can imagine myself doing more. I hope—halfheartedly—that I didn’t take the neck of a viola and swing its body and shoulders into the violins hanging from the racking. I wish with all my being that I am just pretending I kicked over all the cellos and swept the workbench of instruments.
I feel sick as I smell the memory of the dust, the fresh open wounds in the wood, the spilt varnish, and the leaking glue. I pray that these things are all hallucinations; I put my hands to my face and sob. I know they are not.
I retch and lurch forwards as the clearest image comes to my mind. My French loafer, my thin ankles, my bony knee, stamping down furiously on the fragile body of a half-size Italian violin; an instrument that had survived two world wars, outlived countless owners.
I truly hate myself, and the retch turns into a full-blown vomit.
The vomit spills onto the clean bed linen. Mr. Williams jumps into action with towels and buckets, but the damage is done.
I lie, helpless, in a pool of damp red, clouds of dirty, stinking pink surround me and I can feel dribble hanging from my chin.
Mr. Williams starts to talk. I think he does it to change the subject, to pretend that I am not covered in my own sick and incapable of doing anything about it. The stench of putrid wine and acid feels right, feels like it fits.
My life is over.
“I’d come by the shop to see if you were back.” He is rubbing the sheet with the corner of a towel. It makes no difference to the color.
“I looked through the window and assumed you’d been burgled. Burgled? Vandalized? I don’t know. Something.” He drops his head down so that he isn’t looking at me. “There was chaos, smashed instruments everywhere. The glass front of the counter was shattered, smashed to smithereens with everything else.”
Nadia’s disembodied voice comes up the stairs. She’s shouting something about bread and ovens. Mr. Williams walks over to the door and calls down some instructions. I don’t care what they are, I just want her to stay downstairs, to stay away from me.
I start to cry, although I don’t know whom I’m crying for or why. It is a totally pointless exercise and it will bring nothing back.
“So I called the police,” Mr. Williams continues. He wipes my pillow with the towel but leaves the spit drying on my face. My jaw is slack and open like a doll.
“The police broke in and that’s when we found you.” He stands and folds up the towel. “The ambulance came, but they were fairly certain you had just drunk yourself unconscious. We brought you back here last night after they’d had a good look at you in the hospital.”
“ ‘We’?” I wonder, just for a moment, if “we” means David.
“Nadia. One of her friends saw the police cars and called her. She and I took turns watching you during the night.”
Flakes of wood and shards of varnish drop into my memory as he speaks. The screams of strings snapping and the wailing of the fractured wood won’t leave me. I am fighting for breath.
“I called a locksmith; they’ve made good the shop front . . .”
He was obviously going to add that everything is safe, before his voice trailed off as he realized there is nothing left to save. I have destroyed it.
“Mr. Williams?”
This is the worst of my pain. This is the worst moment of my life.
“Alan’s violin? It was on the workbench.”
He shakes his head. It is one death too many; there are no words.
* * *
Nadia speaks in whispers through the dark. Her voice is soft but intended to wake me up. She calls my name gently and sits down on the edge of my bed.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
She lies back on the pillow, on top of the covers, and shuffles herself down the bed so she is lying next to me, perched on the very edge.
“I was really scared.”
I haven’t heard this voice for years. The angry fledgling-adult Nadia is gone; this is the voice from inside her, beneath the barricade. “I thought you were going to die.”
“I’m really sorry.”
She sniffs and I can hear that she is stifling tears. I tug the corner of the thick duvet. I feel the weight of her in its resistance.
Goodbye, Paris Page 13
