by Joan Lingard
Coming back through Stockbridge, preoccupied with such unproductive thoughts, he bumps into Archie Gibson, his former headmaster and friend. He still regards Archie as a friend but they’ve fallen out of the habit of seeing each other. After his suspension it was too difficult.
Archie is about to go into a restaurant with two people, a man and a woman, neither of whom Cormac recognises.
‘Archie, hi there!’
‘Oh hello, Cormac. How are you?’ Archie is more embarrassed than he is; his time in the wilderness taught him to grow a thicker skin. Archie’s friends go ahead into the restaurant.
‘I’m not bad,’ says Cormac. ‘Surviving, at any rate.’
‘Good. That’s great. I’ve been meaning to give you a call.’
‘I’ve moved.’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘Sheila not with you?’
‘No, no she’s not.’ Archie clears his throat, finishing with a cough. He looks away. ‘Actually, we’re not together any more.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.’
‘These things happen.’
‘Too true.’ Cormac warms to the idea of renewing the friendship, now that they are in the same boat, in one respect, anyway. ‘Let’s have a drink one night, OK? I’ll give you a call.’
‘Fine, fine.’ Archie glances through the restaurant window.
‘You’d better go,’ says Cormac.
‘Yes.’ Archie’s throat is bothering him again. ‘It was most unfortunate, all that business.’
‘It was.’
Cormac leaves Archie and walks through to the Colonies, reflecting on Archie’s nervousness. He’s been left with the feeling that Archie would just as soon he didn’t bother to call. Maybe he’s just thrown by the break-up of his own marriage. He and Rachel used to think Archie and his wife were not a well-matched pair: she liked the glamorous life, cruises, expensive hotels; he liked hill walking and camping in the Cévennes. But they had agreed that one could never tell looking in on a marriage from the outside.
So Cormac goes home to watch Saturday night telly, which proves to be dire, and is half asleep when he hears the key grate in the lock and Sophie say, ‘It’s me, Dad.’
He looks at his watch. It is twenty to one, which is not bad, and he won’t even mention she’s late. This is what he’d call within bounds. It’s as well she has come in; he wouldn’t be in much of a state to cycle over to Mandy’s on the other side of town.
She has a mark under her right eye. He puts up his hand to touch the side of her face and she backs away. He frowns.
‘Is that a bruise you’ve got there?’
‘I bumped into a door.’
It sounds like a stock excuse, the first to come to mind. He pushes it no further but he’s bothered. He can’t show it of course as that would only cause more irritation on her part. She easily becomes irritable these days.
He makes hot chocolate for them both and they sit talking till two, which cheers him. He has always felt close to his daughter, until the last few months. She is talking about going to drama school; she’d like to be a director or producer, not an actor. She is producing the school play with another girl.
Romeo and Juliet: more star-crossed lovers, like Paolo and Francesca. Them! The crossing of stars appeals to Sophie. She loves Shakespeare. She loves Romeo and Juliet.
‘You must come, Dad.’
‘Oh, I will. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
He goes to bed feeling happier than he has done since he and Rachel took the decision to split. They agonised over it for weeks but, in the end, when they did decide, it seemed inevitable. And it still does.
In the morning, waking later than usual, he gets up to find a note on the kitchen table.
‘Gone out to meet Tilda. Back for lunch at Mum’s. Sophie xx.’
Fair enough. He doesn’t expect her to sit in on a Sunday morning and keep him company though he was going to suggest they went for a walk in the Botanic Garden. She used to love doing that with him when she was small. But she is no longer small and she doesn’t consider an outing to feed the ducks exciting. He longs to know what does excite her. He goes upstairs whistling to make the bed and tidy Davy’s room for his return that evening. He always complains loudly if Sophie has messed up his stuff. He’s a tidy boy, takes after him in that respect rather than his mother. Surprisingly, Rachel is not very tidy, except in her person, whereas he likes order and hates random mess. People knowing them, though not intimately, would imagine that their penchants for tidiness would operate the other way round. His studio might have looked messy to the casual viewer but everything in it was in a state of transformation, of being processed into some form of order.
As he is plumping up the downie he notices a bag sticking from under the bed. Sophie always leaves something behind. He pulls the bag out. It is a manky old sports holdall and should be thrown out. She doesn’t have to cart a thing like that about! They’re not that hard up, even though he is only earning tiddlywinks so far with his sandwiches. The rent and council tax are crippling and he has to pay off the loan on his equipment before he can go into the black.
He looks at the bag. The zip has stuck on some cloth halfway along, showing signs of having been pulled together hastily or, if he knows Sophie, impatiently. It is his excuse to open the bag: to release the trapped cloth in case it might be an important piece of clothing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have touched it; he regards other people’s property as sacred, including his children’s, and not to be tampered with. Unless one suspects them of something. Does he suspect Sophie? Of course he does. And of course he is curious, as well as a little apprehensive, to find out what is in the bag. Drugs? Every parent’s nightmare: to open a bag and find something nasty lurking in the bottom.
With a tug the zip comes unstuck and he pulls out a pair of holey jeans, extremely holey jeans. Being caught in a zip wouldn’t affect their condition much. He knows there’s a trend from time to time for the young to wear jeans with holes in the knee and let the wind whistle through to chap their skin, but this is surely going beyond the boundaries of fashion. And they’re filthy. Bogging, they would have called them back home. So, too, is an old sweatshirt of an indecipherable colour, and as for the pair of trainers! Aren’t kids supposed to be fussy about what they wear on their feet? Nike or nothing. Not his daughter, obviously. These trainers are worse than anything Davy has ever had even after weeks of ball-kicking and kerb-scraping. And the whole lot stinks.
But there is no alcohol in the bag, or cigarettes, or drugs. That’s a relief. He puts everything back into the bag and shoves it under the bed with his toe and then goes and washes the smell off his hands. Sophie used to be so fussy about cleanliness; she sometimes had two baths a day, using up all the hot water. But she must have been wearing these clothes or else what was she doing with them?
After lunch he mentions it to Rachel. Sophie has taken Davy out to Inverleith Park to play football. They were both getting restless.
‘I don’t know what clothes you’re talking about, Cormac.’ Rachel frowns.
‘In an old blue sports bag.’
Rachel shakes her head. ‘Sophie doesn’t have a blue sports bag. I’ll take a look later when she brings her stuff back. But you know she won’t listen to me when it comes to what clothes she should wear!’
They discuss their children. Rachel thinks they’re not behaving much differently from how they were before, certainly not Sophie. ‘She’s totally wrapped up in her own affairs. It’s the age.’
‘Bloody awful age. Pity they can’t go to sleep and wake up when they’re eighteen.’
They hear the children laughing as they come up the outside stair. They arrive with glowing faces, and licking ice cream cones, which Sophie has bought. They met Sophie’s friend Tilda in the park, they say.
‘Tilda can’t kick for toffee,’ says Davy.
‘I’m not a bad kicker, though, am I, Davy?’ Sophie gives him a dig in the ribs. ‘Go on, ad
mit it! I gave you a good run for your money.’
Cormac and Rachel smile at each other, reassured, so that when Cormac returns home to find his Aunt Mary on the line within minutes of his opening the door, his spirits do not do their customary nose-dive.
‘How’re you doing, Aunt Mary? We’re doing great here. The kids are fine. I’m fine. Rachel’s fine. Sends her love to you all.’ Rachel has never been able to stomach Mary, the aunt of the sly remarks. Of course you won’t have time to make soup for your children, will you? Or iron their clothes. Or see to their souls. A heathen for a mother! And out all day, never in the house when she’s needed. Healing the sick, Cormac would remind her, but Aunt Mary doesn’t see why that shouldn’t be left to men.
‘Nice talking to you, Aunt Mary,’ says Cormac, managing to terminate the call before she embarks on what a poor son he is to his mother.
‘I think we’ll take Sophie over to Belfast with us when we go at Easter,’ he says to Davy. ‘We could have good fun, the three of us. We can go down to Bangor and kick a ball on the sands.’
‘She won’t want to come. She says she’s going away at Easter.’
‘Oh, she does, does she?’ The feeling of reassurance hasn’t lasted long. ‘Did she say where?’ If she thinks she’s going to Greece she can think again.
Davy shrugs.
‘Has she a boyfriend, do you know?’ Cormac disapproves of pumping one child to find out information about another. There’s nothing like having children for throwing all your principles out the window.
‘She knows lots of boys.’
‘I’m sure. But has she a steady boyfriend?’
‘She’s in love. I heard her telling Tilda when we were at the park.’
In love. That could mean all manner of things. It doesn’t necessarily mean she has a steady boyfriend. She could have a crush on her English teacher. That idea gives him pause for a further thought: it might be why she has suddenly become so enthusiastic about Shakespeare.
Chapter Nine
It was their last night in Paris and Cormac was packing his bag ready for an early departure in the morning. He was not having a nightcap with Alec this evening. Alec had said good night when they’d got out of the lift. He’d said it stiffly, adding, ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ He was not a man to forgive slights easily.
Cormac was surprised, then, when there came a tap on his door. Perhaps he had misjudged poor McCaffy. In a rush of bonhomie he opened the door wide, prepared to invite him in to share the last of the whisky.
‘Can I come in?’ asked Clarinda.
He half closed the door. ‘You certainly cannot! For God’s sake, Clarinda, what do you think you’re doing to me?’ The walls of the hotel were thin, and behind every wall on this floor there were students, one or two of whom might be asleep; but the majority could be counted on to be wide awake knocking back smuggled cans of beer and bottles of wine, having a party for their last night in Paris. He had seen the bulging carrier bags being carried in and had turned a blind eye, on the understanding that there were to be no drugs. He had delivered a stern lecture on that.
‘Please, Cormac,’ pleaded Clarinda. ‘I just want to be with you, to talk to you.’
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you! So, for Christ’s sake scram!’
She burst into tears. ‘You don’t have to be so horrible to me,’ she cried and ran along the corridor, making for the staircase, bypassing the lift.
He swore and sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his socks and shoes, then he went after her. He took the lift and when he emerged he found the front lobby empty, except for the night porter, who was watching a small television set. Had he seen a girl, one of the students? asked Cormac. The man certainly had. The young woman had been very distressed; he’d tried to stop her, but she’d opened the door and run out into the street. Had he seen which way she went? He shrugged. Merci, said Cormac, and went out into the street himself.
He stood on the pavement and examined the street to the right and to the left. There was no sign of her, of anyone. The French were not late bedders, even the Parisians; they often ate as early as the British. It was Sunday night, too, and more than half the restaurants had been closed. They’d found a large boulevard brasserie to eat in, down on St Germain. He had sat at a different table to Clarinda and had made a point of not looking in her direction. She had been very quiet and eaten very little, which had been noticed by Alec, who had commented on it to Cormac afterwards and wondered if she was feeling all right. ‘Was she OK when she was with you at Meudon?’
A slight drizzle was falling, leaving drops of pearly moisture on the car rooftops. He had come out in his shirt. Tant pis. Where the hell had she gone? ‘Clarinda!’ he called tentatively, expecting no response and getting none. This damn fool girl was making him sweat. He wished Rachel were here; she would know how to handle it. He might ring her when he got back to his room and talk it over with her. She had had to cope with most human conditions in her surgery.
He went to the corner of the street where it ran into the rue du Cherche-Midi. It was remarkably quiet and still. A cat was yowling but that was about all. He began to walk in the direction of number 87. The room Gwen John had rented there had been her favourite of all the ones she had inhabited around Paris. In his mind’s eye he saw a room barely furnished with a wicker chair and a simple table on which rested a bowl of soft yellow primroses. The window, screened with white muslin, let light into the room. She painted it at dawn, for Rodin. She told him she had awakened to see the room in a different, almost mysterious light, and wanted him to see it too. How strange, thought Cormac, as he stood on the corner, that such a serene painting came from such a troubled soul. How odd, too, that he should have such a strong vision of that dawn painting when he was abroad on this dark night devoured by anxiety for the wellbeing of Clarinda Bain. He had thought Clarinda mature for her age and better balanced than many of the pupils; now she was acting like a child. He knew that was often how it was in the teenage years, with mood changes swinging wildly between two poles, but knowing it did not console him. He realised that he did not know what Clarinda was capable of. Throwing herself into the Seine? Surely not. Though he felt sure that Gwen John must have contemplated suicide.
As he neared number 87 he had a strong sensation that Clarinda – and the ghost of Gwen John – would be somewhere around here, hovering in the shadows, holding their breath, waiting for him to follow. He stood still to listen, trying not to move a muscle, as if he were playing the game of statues. Was it a game Clarinda was playing with him? A cat, perhaps the one that been yowling, ran out from under one of the parked cars. He began to walk again, very slowly, making as little noise as possible.
He had taken only a few steps when she moved. She came out of the shadows of a doorway on the opposite pavement and flew off on winged feet up the street. She took off so quickly and quietly that she surprised him and he lost a few seconds while he gathered himself together. She had a good start on him yet he did not doubt that she would want to be caught, at some point. If his heart would hold out until then! He could feel it pumping away under his damp shirt. He was glad of the cooling mizzle of rain on his overheated head. He could hear nothing but the thud of his own footsteps on the pavement and the harsh flow of his breath. He kept his eyes focused on the dark moving figure ahead.
She turned left at the end of Cherche-Midi onto the Boulevard Montparnasse. He redoubled his effort now that she was out of sight. When he reached the corner he could see no sign of her on the boulevard. There were a few people about but no one was running. He stopped there on the corner and let his heart subside for a moment. God damn her! She could be hiding in the shadow of another doorway, watching for him; or she might have crossed the road to go up the avenue du Maine. He had a sudden thought. She might be heading for the Montparnasse station, silly little fool that she was.
He waited for two cars and a motor scooter to pass, then he sprinted across the broad street and
a few yards along branched into the avenue du Maine. He still had no sighting of her but he pressed on, pushing himself as hard as he dared. The station was not far, especially when one was running. Then he saw her: she was leaning against the station wall, her back flat against it as if she were awaiting execution, or a proposition. A nearby light illuminated her face, showing up its planes and angles. She had good bone structure, would age well. He could imagine making a head of her though knew he would not.
He jogged up to her and confronted her, his hands on his hips, allowing his breathing to settle back into a normal rhythm.
‘Clarinda,’ he said wearily. Didn’t she realise she could be taken for a prostitute standing there? Didn’t she realise how provocative she looked and how dangerous was her mood?
‘Cormac,’ she said, shifting her position slightly, letting her shoulders droop.
‘You gave me a hell of a fright,’ he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘Running off like that.’ She was trembling and her long eyelashes glinted with teardrops.
‘Why do you hate me?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘I don’t hate you. It’s just that what you want from me is impossible.’
‘Nothing is impossible, if you want it enough.’
He has said that himself, more than once, but not for a long time.
