Paris Spring

by James Naughtie

  She reminded him that in Flemyng’s apartment he had told her that they were acquainted, but had not explained how he came to know. ‘I am going to be very frank with you. I am sure that Flemyng only met her a few days before she died. He will have known about her, of course, but it was on this last trip of hers to Paris that they spoke for the first time. The same is true of me. So how did you know?’

  Kristof asked the obvious question. ‘Why should I tell you?’

  ‘Because you and I are helping each other. We pursue different ends, but we’ve discovered that we need each other.’

  Her bluntness brought a pause in their conversation, which had been speeding up. They hadn’t bothered with coffee or wine, but they realized that with her statement they had come to an agreement. Kristof said that he’d fetch two glasses of wine, and went through the curtain.

  There was nothing on the table except Kristof’s book. It was a well-worn edition in dull maroon covers with the spine cracked and nearly gone. She put out a hand, and pulled it quickly across the table, surprised to find that it was not a German text, but The English Parnassus of longer poems, collected for schoolchildren. She was amused to see the poem on the page he had bookmarked.

  Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree…

  Hearing him with Pascal in the bar, she realized that he was about to return and just had time to look at the inside cover of the book. She was so startled by what she saw that she had to scramble to replace it before he swung the curtain aside.

  *

  Flemyng steered Freddy Craven towards rue du Bac, troubled by the tremble in the old man’s arm. But their words were warm. Flemyng said that he would take his advice in talking to Abel with care and without sounding an immediate alarm, though it would be difficult to conceal his concern, and his anxiety to tell his brother directly that someone – he knew he wouldn’t identify Kristof – was using his name to poison the well. But Craven’s advice was more precious to him than ever: the more fragile he became, the more Flemyng felt the weight of his debt to him.

  Echoing his thoughts, Craven said, ‘I am feeling very close to you on this one, Will. This time may be as important for us – you and me – as anything we’ll see on these streets.’ He pointed with his umbrella towards the gendarmes who had appeared on the next corner, as they had been doubling up at every road junction along the Left Bank all morning.

  Flemyng was moved to silence. He felt the old man gripping him harder as they approached the metro station. Craven turned, and put out his bony hands, laying one on each of Flemyng’s shoulders. ‘About your brother, try not to be too troubled. But come to me tomorrow, please.’ Before Flemyng could think of the right reply, he was gone down the steps, raising an arm in farewell without turning round.

  Back at his apartment he picked up pencils and a sketch pad. He was going to make an effort to relax.

  Taking a roundabout way to St-Germain-des-Prés – it was a route that he’d often walked with Isabel – he looked for a perch where he could enjoy the late-afternoon sun and draw for a while.

  Reaching the junction of two of the main thoroughfares in the Latin Quarter, he settled down to watch the scene outside the Café de Cluny. Riot squad trucks had come out of the side streets to make their presence more obvious and there were at least a dozen gendarmes at the confluence of the boulevards. The café was crowded, although evening had not yet come, and the noise from inside was carried to the streets. There was a regular wailing of sirens from somewhere not far away, and as he watched a band of students assembled near the café and began to chant some of the slogans familiar to him from Nanterre.

  Automatically, he began to draw the place with a thick black pencil, producing a dark sketch as if he had been using charcoal – the café astride the meeting place of two roads that were now filling with crowds, the police motorcycles lined up alongside, the flags that someone had planted in the flowerbeds across the street, flapping in the afternoon breeze. They were red and black, and among them the Viet Cong standard with its yellow star. The place was alive with movement, and uncertainty. As the crowd grew, the police approached and then retreated when the point had been made. He saw one student being pulled aside, then released. From inside the café, the noise grew louder and the place was so full that three harassed waiters were standing guard at the door to repel the crowd.

  Someone began to sing, and for a few moments there was a ragged chorus.

  Flemyng was absorbed. Two students stopped beside him and looked over his shoulder as he drew, his pencil tracing the pattern of the ironwork on the dome above the café. Only when he paused did they speak to him. They wanted to tell of arrests at the Sorbonne, and the closing of the gates: everyone should know, they said. It was getting rough, and the riot police were beginning to enjoy themselves. Friends had been taken away. ‘What next?’ he asked them.

  ‘Occupation.’

  He folded his drawing book away, and crossed the street. Looking through the glass in the side door of the café he saw a few faces he recognized from Nanterre. The staff behind the bar seemed to have given up – some students were using the space to lay out posters on which they splashed slogans with paint. Flemyng was amused, but not surprised, to see Edward Abbott in the throng, managing to hold a coffee cup steady. As he watched, Edward turned and saw his face through the glass. He smiled, and lifted his cup. Flemyng saluted in return.

  A student behind him said that there was a fight down the street. The police had charged, and stones were being thrown. As he set a course for his apartment, aware that he would meet Abel in less than two hours, a phalanx of police cars sped along the boulevard and turned off towards the university, with a tail of motorcycles behind them that left a ribbon of black smoke in the street.

  *

  Kristof raised his wine, and said, ‘To our co-operation.’ Maria clinked her glass against his, saying nothing.

  ‘You went to the hiding place in the cemetery? And did you find anything there?’

  ‘We each realize that there are some things that can’t be shared between us,’ she said. ‘We both know why.’

  ‘The proprieties of our lives,’ he said. ‘But let me say this. You will know that I pointed you towards that place because I knew you might discover something. It is therefore not a surprising piece of news, is it? Nor a secret.’

  ‘There are boundaries that it’s right for us both to respect,’ she said. ‘Still.’

  ‘Because it makes us feel better?’ he said, and she caught a change on his face. The lightness disappeared as if a shade had been drawn down. ‘Let me tell you that I lost that feeling a long time ago.’

  She said nothing, in the hope that he would say more, and pricked by a feeling that she had glimpsed something new. But it was enough for him. Taking a drink, his happy face reappeared, and she realized how much effort it must always have taken to hide what lay behind.

  ‘I’ll speak for us both, then,’ he said. ‘Whatever you found, it will tell you that there was contact between Miss Quincy and some friends of mine. I know that, but I do not know who started the… correspondence, let’s call it that… nor the detail of what it involved. You know how it is. But your interest lies in what I know of the relationship between her and Flemyng.’

  Kristof said that it should come as no surprise. ‘She told my friend – the Terrified One.’

  ‘Why?’ said Maria, insisting that he continue.

  ‘She wanted to tell him how much she knew. It’s a way they all have, as you will know – those who stumble into our world.’

  Maria said, ‘And it was a mistake.’

  ‘Yes, of course. It is why she died.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  A city divided.

  Across the river from the Latin Quarter, in the warmth of early evening, the weekend calm was seeping in. At Benoit, where Maria had dined with Quincy, the lamps were lit and the room sparkled. Everything laid out in place, glasses ringing like bells, the chat
ter rising. In a score of dining rooms on either side of the rue de Rivoli an evening pace was set like a stately dance and the ritual established. Oysters lay in heaps outside on their mounds of ice with lobster tanks behind, and from every kitchen there was a spurt of steam and a blast of noise when a chef opened the back door for a smoke in the street. A rich scent hung on the air, with whispers of jazz underneath. Two cocktail parties had assembled in Freddy Craven’s apartment building. At the American embassy round the corner, they were partying for a ballerina.

  Flemyng, only a mile away on the other side of the Seine, was in another world, where there were signals of distress against a shadow of the unknown. The embers of a fire that had been started on a corner of rue de Tournon, two buckled lamp posts in the next street with their lights hanging off, rough slogans on the walls with the paint still wet, and outside the locked gates of the Sorbonne the lingering sting of tear gas and the remains of a crude barricade – the first – that had been pulled apart by police.

  As Flemyng walked to his dinner with Abel, all his senses responded to the change. The cafés were noisier, the crowds round the doors quivering at the prospect of action that they couldn’t predict, but that excited them. Their voices rose. On nearly every corner stood two or three gendarmes who on any other Friday would have been raising a glass to the weekend together, their kepis piled up on a bar.

  The edginess reflected Flemyng’s mood, which refused to let him settle. He felt welcome flashes of lightness – Abel was in town – but then darkness rolled back in, despite his hope of dispelling it. No escape.

  Craven’s advice was right. They should talk, share some secrets, but he would leave aside the horror of Kristof’s accusation. There would be time.

  Yet he was still drawn to another course. To warn his brother, clear the air and wipe away the stain.

  Anything else would be betrayal, and there had been enough of that.

  But he thought of Freddy Craven, and his pleading eyes. Taking time would be painful, but he owed it to the old man.

  He arrived at La Coupole within a few minutes of the appointed hour for the drink before dinner that Abel wanted, and before he opened the door he looked through the window under the wide scarlet awning, trying with both hands to blot out the last of the sun. His brother was already there, as Flemyng had known he would be. Abel was leaning against one of the green marbled columns, with a painted art deco nymph seeming to dance on his head, and through the flowing reflections on the thick glass Flemyng could see that he had a cocktail on the bar. He was a picture of contentment.

  Pausing outside to collect himself, Flemyng pushed open the door and gave his best smile.

  Abel saw him at the door, ducked through the tables and put his arms out. He was in white shirt and blue jeans. Slim, brown and full of health.

  They hugged. Flemyng whispered his thanks for Abel’s presence and they stood close, basking for a few moments in the colours and the light, and surfing together on the warmth of the crowd.

  ‘You look good,’ he said, and Abel smiled.

  ‘Not at all bad, and this town makes me happy. I need that. Difficult times.’

  They talked easily for a few minutes and intimacy flowed back naturally, the lines on Flemyng’s cheeks softening a little and his face less drawn. He ruffled his black hair in a show of relaxation. Abel described dark days at home, spoke about the war, and they played a little with the uncertainties on the horizons of their world. Neither mentioned Quincy. Flemyng cast off his thin tie and got out of his jacket, hanging it over Abel’s on a brass hook at the bar, then opened two buttons on his shirt. He gestured towards the windows, and a wailing police car passing along the Boulevard de Montparnasse. ‘There’s a current running. A surge. You can feel it.’

  Abel said, ‘I’ve been with Maria.’

  ‘Leave that for now,’ Flemyng said. ‘Family first.’ He knew his nervousness must be obvious to his brother, but Mungo was important. ‘You’ve spoken?’

  ‘On the phone, twice. He sounds fine but he’s concerned about you. I know because he’s sounding more fatherly.’

  Flemyng was smiling. ‘I was going to say the same about you and him. You know how he likes things to be settled, predictable. He feels a little out of it. Hardly surprising.’

  Their limbering up was taking them into territory that both knew was not right for La Coupole, where dinner was a theatrical experience under the painted dome, every table catching some light and a waiter always in earshot. The wrong place. When they had dealt with Mungo it was time to move away.

  Flemyng had chosen a small restaurant a short walk from the boulevard in the direction of Saint-Sulpice, where he cherished a particular table near the back window, occupying a corner with an elaborate wooden and glass screen to make it private. The proprietor loved the table, because it gave him power. Flemyng had found it soon after arriving in the city, and he and Craven had often broken bread there.

  ‘So we’re in the snug,’ said Abel as they arrived.

  ‘Alone,’ Flemyng said.

  They pleased the waiter by accepting his suggestions, ordering quickly. He opened a bottle, laying the cork in front of Flemyng like a trophy.

  ‘Let me pick up on Mungo, before we start,’ Abel said, making the point that there was business to be done afterwards. ‘You’re right about him being nervous. That’s hardly new. But with you, there’s something else. Why’s he alarmed?’

  They were cocooned in their corner, neither overlooked nor overheard. Through the glass they could see the churning dining room – families, well-fed men sitting alone and shrouded in napkins, at least one noisy party of students – and it made their privacy more precious. The low ceiling above them had a yellowed portrait of Venus, long stained by smoke and almost lost in the gloom.

  Alone, without a crowd, they began to loosen up. ‘You can imagine how the embassy feels,’ Flemyng said, looking up with his head back. ‘Jumpy as hell, and I’m probably letting it show. Did I tell you that Pierce Bridger’s turned up in our midst? Just what we need.’

  ‘Never mind him,’ Abel said. ‘We need to talk about Quincy. Maria showed me what you and she found in the cemetery.’

  ‘Showed you?’ said Flemyng, straightening in his chair.

  Their waiter appeared, and they paused for breath. They had begun to eat when the conversation resumed.

  ‘Come on,’ Abel said, digging his fork into his steak tartare. He was speaking quietly, which made it sound more urgent.

  The darkness that could easily bring a shadow to Flemyng’s face had come down. ‘What did she tell you?’ he said.

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘In that case you’ll realize how much we don’t know.’

  Abel said, ‘Like whether Quincy was meant to pick it up, or whether she was the delivery boy.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Flemyng said they still had to accept that Quincy was in touch with the other side, whatever the story of the list turned out to be. ‘The envelope was used before. It wasn’t her first time.’

  ‘Do her connections bother you?’ Abel asked.

  ‘I’ve seen it before, but… yes.’

  ‘Disappointed?’ his brother asked him.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Flemyng.

  ‘Writer, spy or both. I wonder if she knew,’ said Abel.

  They ate for a minute or two without speaking. Abel picked up.

  ‘I should say that these names mean nothing to me. They’re going through our system, but nothing yet. New to your people?’

  ‘As far as I know, yes.’

  Flemyng said, ‘Thanks. We’re agreed, then, about Quincy.’ A statement not a question. If he was waiting for something else, he didn’t show it.

  They held another natural pause. The waiter filled their glasses and they spoke of Paris for a few minutes.

  ‘How long will you be here?’ he asked Abel.

  ‘Hard to say. Calls at the embassy. People to see. You know.’ He gave his brother th
e name of his hotel. ‘A week, maybe.’

  ‘That long?’ As he spoke, Flemyng put a hand inside his open shirt and began to massage his scar.

  ‘And then?’ he added.

  ‘It looks like London for a while. A spell.’ Picking up his brother’s discomfort, he said quietly, ‘Did you know?’

  ‘A little bird…’

  ‘Who?’ said Abel.

  ‘Freddy Craven.’

  ‘Ah. The old bird himself. Did he tell you how?’

  ‘No. He just heard something along the way.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Abel’s eyes were wide and his gaze was insistent. Flemyng, still running his fingers along the scar, had lost some of his poise. The younger brother was in command.

  ‘There was nothing else, I promise.’

  ‘Promise? That word isn’t necessary, Will.’

  Abel took up his glass, allowing a pause to take hold. He offered no explanation for his summons to London, and turned the conversation back to his brother. When he’d taken a drink, he said, ‘I’m going to say this, and it’s a probably a good thing. Mungo’s right. What the hell is wrong?’

  Flemyng buttoned up his shirt as if he’d been caught undressing, and picked up his own glass. ‘Nothing you don’t know about.’

  Abel waited.

  ‘The Quincy business is awful. Bridger’s terrible. It’s haywire. I’ve got a colleague who drives us mad.’

  ‘That’ll be Bolder,’ Abel said. Flemyng didn’t respond. ‘But that’s you at your best, Will. And Paris like this.’ He waved to the outside world. ‘Irresistible. Think of what you can write for London.’

  Flemyng rallied. ‘I know, and it’s only beginning. But…’

  ‘Whatever it is, say,’ Abel said. ‘Brother, I care.’

  Flemyng smiled – with an effort that Abel noticed – and stretched a hand across the table. ‘I don’t know what Maria said about Quincy and me. But I’d hoped for something. Maybe it hit me harder than I knew.’

  ‘And?’ said Abel.

  ‘It’s not usually a friend who dies.’