by Adam Thorpe
‘We can’t possibly be late. They’ll never forgive us. People like that don’t. They’ll always remember. It’s not done to be late with people like that. They take offence, people like that. High society. At least I got the flowers. They cost a fortune, too. Gladioli, dahlias. But you have to. Big ones. Lovely colours. Now we’re going to be late.’
‘Don’t worry, Maman.’
‘It’s Friday, everyone’s going home. But there’s hardly anybody coming in the other direction, look. Oh, you put one foot wrong in high society and you’re never forgiven, dear. Types like that.’
The people staring down from the bus’s rear platform were smiling as if they could hear her. One old man in a beret waved at me with his fingers, and to my horror I started blushing; I usually didn’t mind if old people did that sort of thing. My mother was twitching her face badly, not even noticing everyone staring down at us. I wished I’d stayed at home. The fumes from the chugging bus made me feel sick and had completely covered the sweet smell of the centre of Paris. Sweat trickled from my armpits. I stared at the map, as if that might help things. I could see Jocelyne’s parents opening the door and looking at their Swiss watches and staring at us as if we were tramps. We still weren’t moving. It was approaching six o’clock minute by minute on my watch. I could see her parents opening the door again and again. I tried to make them look friendly and full of smiles, but they never were. Anyway, it would probably be a maid. I pictured this maid frowning at us, with gold and marble statues behind her in the hallway. I wanted to go to the toilet. More people were running along the pavement, weaving between the others. I had always been told not to run in the street, it was what urchins did.
‘It must always be like this,’ said my mother. ‘Fancy. Friday evening. Everyone finishing work. People don’t work as they used to, of course.’
A man in a black pullover hurtled down the side of the bus and past my open window, so close I could hear him panting. His shoes came right up behind as he ran and he kept twisting round. The sirens in front of us had got stuck.
‘Maybe there’s been an accident,’ I said.
‘That police van’s going the wrong way,’ my mother pointed out.
It was one of the big, old-fashioned black types my uncle called a ‘salad basket’, going up very slowly in our direction but on the outside lane the other side of the boulevard. In fact, a little blue Simca passed on the lane in between, going the correct way.
‘Fancy that,’ said my mother. ‘I suppose the police are allowed to do anything.’
A few policemen in kepis were trotting after the van, as if they’d been forgotten. A group of people gathered around the policemen and I saw a kepi falling onto the road. Then the group started to run off and the policemen in black helmets appeared and got mixed up with the ones trying to run off. Some of these started rolling on the pavement as if it was grass. A man behind was taking pictures of them and got jogged. He carried on, with the camera hiding his face.
‘What’s going on there?’ I asked.
‘Where?’
The traffic moved just at that moment and my mother followed the bus, the people on the back not really looking at us any more. One man was reading a newspaper, holding it over the railing; a St Raphael poster was pasted on the back of the bus and each time the man turned the page I could see the top of the bottle. We heard yelling and shrieks through my open window and my mother said, ‘There’s the Sorbonne. It’s where all the cleverest lot in the country go. I knew someone from there, once. A nice boy. Very clever. Look at all these people.’
There were so many people that all I could make out were faces and hands and hairstyles and legs with shoes kicking up behind as they ran. There were people running in front of us and behind us and I was sure my mother was going to knock someone over. Then we stopped. There was a nasty sour smell that made my eyes sting. I looked at my watch. We were ten minutes late.
‘How long is it now?’ I asked.
‘Everyone has to shout so,’ my mother said, raising her voice over the noise.
‘How long is it now?’ I asked again, almost shouting myself.
‘A nice boy,’ she shouted, perhaps mishearing me, ‘with an awful lot of money! But I turned him down! I’d met your father, that’s why!’
I felt annoyed with her for coming this way, and didn’t react. My sister had told me about her university having thousands of students, so obviously it was a stupid way to come. Some of the students were just holding their bags and watching the world go by. There were older people, too, including ordinary elderly ladies in long coats and men in suits and hats. There were a lot of the black helmets mixed up with the crowds. A young man bumped into our car and yelled at us with a big mouth. His shirt was hanging out.
‘That’s quite unnecessary,’ my mother said. ‘Put your window up. Youth today. So rude. No manners, of course. And they’re supposed to be the clever ones, here.’
‘Couldn’t we walk?’
‘Please, Gilles! Give me a blessèd break!’
I snorted and looked out of my window again, resting my forehead against the glass. A few black helmets with their sticks were helping a girl with long blonde hair under the tree nearest to us. She had her arms around her face and her mouth was wide open, as if she was upset. For some reason I had started to have the tune of Benedictus Dominus Deus going round and round in my head. There was blood on her face. We jerked forward again as a stick came down on her hair and then we went quite quickly – at ten kilometres an hour. I felt a huge relief, as if we had taken off in a space rocket. A whole line of five or six black police vans were parked on one side of the road. I recognised the Wimpy Bar and could taste strawberry milk-shake in my mouth. At the junction of the Boulevard St Germain I kept telling my mother to turn left but there were too many people milling about and the black helmets were in a row blocking the correct way with shields.
‘I think they’re sorting out the traffic,’ I said. ‘They must be special traffic police. A girl fell over. She had blood—’
Something hit the bonnet of the car with a surprisingly loud thump.
‘Was that us?’ my mother cried. ‘Have we hit something?’
‘I think it was a big stone.’
‘What? It’ll chip the paint. They’ll never forgive us, those types don’t – they’ll say we should have left earlier, they’ll laugh and say we don’t know Paris and we aren’t—’
Her words were drowned by the siren of a passing ambulance which was having to prod its way slowly through everything.
‘—and is so mad,’ she finished, gripping the wheel, her spectacles moving up and down with each heavy blink of her eyes. ‘Really. It’s not the same as in my day. Madder and madder. Too many young people. I just wish you hadn’t insisted on coming, Gilles—’
‘Turn left up there,’ I shouted, interrupting her, a feeling creeping into my heart like a big empty room. Twenty past six. Everything always turned out for the worst. It was because I hadn’t done good, simple deeds of charity.
I had worked out another way to get there, if we couldn’t turn round and go down the Boulevard St Germain; it would only take a little longer, in fact. It looked very simple on the map, on the white roads between the yellow blocks and the names of streets – but when I lifted my eyes I saw nothing but confusion. Then within seconds the people running about got fewer and we were again moving quite fast. My eyes and nose were prickling, now, and my mother’s hand was over her mouth.
‘Awful smell, dear,’ she said. ‘It must be pollution.’
‘Turn here,’ I ordered, sticking my hand in front of her.
There was a lot of mess on the road we turned into, and a clothes shop with round windows like an aeroplane’s had had them smashed by something. Maybe there had been a demonstration. They ought to make them out of perspex, I thought, like on aeroplanes. I imagined people being sucked out of an aeroplane as we carried on down the street. It was quite a narrow street, but hardly anyone wa
s running about, now, because we’d left the university. We stopped at traffic lights halfway down. A man was lying on the pavement in front of a café holding his head – obviously a tramp, although he had a smart macintosh on. Nobody in the café was helping him, they were looking calmly through the glass doors or just sitting by the windows and not even looking out. Some of them were black people, I noticed, and this reminded me of the famous American priest who was shot dead before Easter.
With a shock I saw a red puddle beneath the man’s head, and red coming out from behind his hand that was holding his head. I wondered about telling the traffic policemen grouped on the pavement opposite. I thought of the Good Samaritan and pictured myself telling them, their black helmets nodding and the whole group running over with their long white sticks to help, then praising me afterwards; when we went off again I felt very bad that I hadn’t got out of the car and told them. I hadn’t even told my mother, but that was because I didn’t want to bother her – she was so nervous by now that if I told her that a man had fallen over and cracked his head open she’d probably scream or burst into tears.
The last few streets seemed very quiet. Large, calm buildings passed us; an old church; a little grassy square; park railings with women and their prams on the other side. I said the address, still unsure of the number, getting nearer and nearer as I told my mother the way. With a lurch I saw the name of Jocelyne’s street ahead and told my mother to turn right.
‘Right?’
‘Yes,’ I said, in a squeaky voice. ‘That street there.’ I cleared my throat. My eyes were itching and watery and my nose felt sore. I stretched my neck to look in the driving mirror and saw to my horror that my eyes were quite red and puffy, as if I had really been crying.
‘You look very handsome, dear,’ said my mother. ‘Please concentrate. What’s the number? That’s 110. We’re on the right side. It’ll be that side. Keep looking on that side. I can’t look,’ she added, looking carefully.
‘52bis.’
The houses were tall and wide, with big old doors. Because of the width of the houses, the numbers took a time to go down: 82 … 70 … 58 … I was convinced by now it was 25bis, in fact, and kept checking on the left. The cars parked under the trees were very smart. Nothing seemed to be moving. The street was cobbled and we were going so slowly that they made us bump. 52bis. I felt my stomach turn inside out and only just tightened my buttocks in time. I kept repeating to myself: Joce-lyne invited me.
There was a space a little further on and my mother parked, not keeping the bonnet lined up properly and scraping the kerbstones again. We got out, my mother brushing her dress. She looked even whiter from her powder than she had in the car: the evening light was somehow paler than at home. Her lipstick was slightly smudged, but I didn’t say anything, even when she’d looked in her hand-mirror to check her face. She took off her slippers and put on the very smart high heels my uncle had bought in the Champs-Elysées for her thirtieth birthday, that she hardly ever wore these days because her feet had changed; she nearly tripped over on the short walk to the house, clicking along very loudly. The pavement was old and bumpy. I was carrying the huge bunch of flowers and the cellophane wrapping kept crackling and rustling next to my ear. She brushed my fringe as if it had dirt on it and I told her to stop. I needed to go to the toilet. It was six-thirty We were half an hour late.
‘52!’ she said. ‘Bis.’
I was sure it was the wrong house.
‘What’s the time, Gilles?’
‘Six-thirty.’
‘Very rude of us,’ she panted. ‘Traffic. Now remember I might need to talk to Raymond on his own, dear.’
At that moment I realised that she was here mainly for that – for a private chat with Raymond! That’s why she’d agreed to bring me. It made me feel unimportant just at the wrong moment. The smell of the flowers made me feel sick.
The dark-green doors were huge but peeling, with thick curly ironwork instead of windows. I could feel a sort of cold dampness through the ironwork, as if the doors gave onto a dungeon. We stood on the narrow step and saw that there were three buttons to press. She pressed the one with the right name next to it, written in porcelain. Only then did I realise it was the right house. There was no sound from inside. I felt an idiot, holding the flowers. Every time I moved I was almost deafened.
‘Should I press it again?’ she asked. ‘There might be a concierge. I’m not sure if they have the whole house. It seems awfully big for three. Shall I press again?’
I shrugged, my voice completely blocked by a sort of lump in my throat. We were probably too late for the show, now. I widened my eyes to let the cool spring air dry them. They still stung. My mother was wiping hers under her spectacles on the corner of a handkerchief.
‘I must have an allergy,’ she said. ‘There was this article on pollution. That’s different from polluting a temple, of course. Pollution is what factories and too much traffic—’
‘Maman, shush.’
The ironwork was covered in black, like sooty dust. The whole street was a bit peeling and sooty, in fact. It didn’t look as I’d imagined it. There were old lamp standards curving over and on the one nearest to us I could see an old poster, half torn away. Someone had put it up crookedly. The interphone crackled and a dim voice was saying something through it. I realised that the poster was like one of Van’s – like the Vietnam posters that I had put up with Carole. It was exactly the same, in fact. I could read VICTOIRE au and TOUS and Bombardements U.S.! and then the whole phrase went through my head – La VICTOIRE au Peuple Vietnamien TOUS contre les Bombardements US.! La VICTOIRE au Peuple Vietnamien TOUS contre les Bombardements U.S.! …
I had stuck that actual poster up, with Carole. We had been down this actual street while Jocelyne was fast asleep. I even recognised the lamp standard, though everything else looked different in the day. The poster had rippled on the ridges in the metal and almost touched at the back. The blood-red ink was now pink and the paper looked as if it had been painted on. My mother was announcing us in a stupid, posh voice. She had to say it twice, as if there was a problem – using our family name the second time. A buzz sounded and then stopped as my mother pushed at the huge peeling door. It wouldn’t open. I couldn’t believe that I had put up a poster almost in front of Jocelyne’s house. It had survived exactly two years, even though it was all ripped and faded and ancient-looking.
‘Silly thing,’ said my mother. ‘It won’t open.’
I’d expected a maid to open the door, dressed in a bonnet. Instead we had to be very quick off the mark.
‘Oh dear,’ said my mother. ‘She’ll buzz again, I’m sure.’
She didn’t. My mother had to ring again. I handed her the flowers and said that I’d try to push the door this time. Seeing the poster had made me sad and a bit shy. I suddenly couldn’t care about Jocelyne and the stupid ballet show. The voice took ages to crackle out and my mother put on the same silly posh voice, explaining how the door ‘didn’t work’. The buzz came on again and I slammed my hand against the door and pushed just in time. It swung so easily after a little click that I nearly fell over, like Tintin falling into the Temple of the Sun.
21
It was damp and dark and cold inside. It didn’t feel like an inside, in fact: it was a bit like a garage. There wasn’t a chandelier or a carpet flowing down the staircase or a gold statue or a fancy fountain; instead, there were rough slabs of stone on the floor and a strip of chipped marble around the walls with dirty cream paint above it, peeling off in flakes. I could make out a sort of iron cage next to the staircase.
‘I suppose we go straight up,’ whispered my mother. She had the flowers in one arm and her white handbag dangling from the other. I felt guilty, not offering to hold the flowers again.
The staircase was bare stone too, with a wobbly old banister. The stairs were very wide, though. I started to go up them but my mother was moving towards the iron cage.
‘She said to try the lift.�
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‘We can go up the stairs,’ I said.
‘She said to. If that’s what she said, dear …’
‘OK.’
‘And would you please take the flowers. I can’t hold everything, dear.’
I pressed on a big handle and the cage door opened. We stepped in, a bit nervous. I had to close the door myself; it made a crashing noise that made my mother jump. I squashed the flowers a bit with my arm, by mistake.
‘Which floor?’ I asked. ‘One, two, or three?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘Haven’t you been before?’ I asked.
‘No,’ my mother said. ‘Not really.’
‘Never?’
‘Try three. We can always walk down if it’s wrong.’
I pressed a button and there was a hissing sound, like a piston in a factory. We jerked and started to go up, very slowly. I couldn’t believe the lift was automatic: it seemed too old, and the way it moved made me think of it as a person, or as if somebody was winding it up. It had no ceiling on it, so we could look straight up the shaft. Right at the top, above the mechanism, there was a skylight.
‘It is a piston,’ I said. ‘It’s a piston lift. Really old.’
‘Is it?’ said my mother. ‘As long as it doesn’t break.’
I wanted to tell her to stop twitching her nose and not to hold her handbag against her tummy with both hands, but couldn’t find a polite way to. I’d become nervous again myself: the lift felt like a cage hanging in a dungeon.
‘If it breaks,’ I said, ‘they’ll find a couple of skeletons in a few years’ time.’
‘I expect so,’ said my mother, not really listening, looking up through the open cage. It made coughing and wheezing noises as it pushed its way up.
It stopped with a bump and a big sigh, as if it was exhausted. We got out quickly, in case it went down again automatically. The wide stairs finished where we were, but some very narrow steps continued up. The only light was from the skylight. We were in a corridor with about five doors; there was a strip of matting on the floor and a wooden sculpture of an old beggar at one end with wormholes in it. It was very quiet, which made the crackle of the flowers’ cellophane even worse. We knocked on the first door. There was no reply. My mother opened it and immediately closed it.
