A Girl Called Flotsam

by John Tagholm

  ‘Your French is excellent, madame. Do you have any idea when they might have married?’

  ‘Sometime in the mid-30s, I think.’

  ‘Can you prove your connection to your godfather?’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t. Do I need to?’ She looked him in the eye and held his gaze for a moment.

  ‘Strictly speaking, yes, but since you have come this far let us see what we can do. What were the surnames?’

  ‘Troumeg and Leval.’

  ‘Let’s say sometime in the 30s,’ he said, smiling at her and she watched him access the files on his computer. ‘This is very kind,’ she told him and every so often he looked back at her as his machine chuntered through the marriages in the 19th arrondissement in the years before the war.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘There is no record here of such a marriage.’

  He stared at her, not wanting this to be an end, willing, she knew to help this woman in front of him. Beatrice recalled the year that all this started, the long hot summer not long after her father’s death, sometime in the middle of her first year as a teenager. For the first time in her life she was noticed, people would look twice at her, or boys more particularly, turning, talking, whispering. Already she looked older than her years and her long hair came down to her shoulders where the eyes of those onlookers would continue over her chest and down to her legs. It felt like an achievement, that she was being rewarded for being herself for the very first time. She revelled in it, this new power so suddenly and effortlessly handed to her and she used it indiscriminately. She frowned at the memory of the young girl who at first did not fully understand the consequences of the power she held. Later she did, but her path had been set. To be noticed, to be able to achieve it almost at will, became a necessity, almost a drug so that now, more than a quarter of a century later, the process of flirting with the man in front of her was a matter of almost habit, even though it was now justified as a useful tool of her trade. But here, in the grand mairie of the 19th arrondissement, beneath the elaborate stonework of the vaulted ceilings, she shook her head and the glimpse she had of her former self made her suddenly sad.

  The man continued to regard her with admiration and when she focused on him again she smiled and made to turn away but stopped and decided to take another chance. ‘Might Joseph Troumeg have been born here outside of marriage?’ she asked, widening her eyes at him. Beatrice could do this, she knew, use her looks to get what she wanted.

  The civil servant looked at her and smiled back, knowing that he was being manipulated but quite happy to play the part of puppet.

  He began to look through the catalogue of births. ‘We still have no record at all of a Troumeg on the larger register of names, but we have a number of Levals. What was the Christian name?’

  ‘Odile.’

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ he said. ‘This must be it.’ He swung the screen towards her, clearly pleased with himself and suitably rewarded with a winning smile from Beatrice.

  In front of her were the details of the birth of Joseph Leval on November 1, 1935; mother Odile Leval with her address, 23b Rue Manin in the 19th and her age, 20. There were two witnesses, Albert and Juliette Vaillard, Café Le Fin, on the rue d’Aubervilliers and the names of Odile’s parents.

  The space for the name of the father was blank.

  The man in the cord suit beckoned her towards the screen. ‘Look,’ he said, tapping a finger against the glass, ‘her parents are called Levy.’ He dropped his glasses down his nose. ‘Quite common between the wars for Jewish families to make their names more French. Levy to Leval is a small step, but significant. I expect she did it to protect the child.’

  Beatrice made a note of these details and then leaned across the counter again to put her hand on the chord forearm, leaving it there as she said thank you to his face and, by his reaction, quite making his morning. Walking back to her hotel, somewhere down the hill before the canal, a line of young girls snaked out of a school ahead of her, two by two, holding hands to cross the road, their teacher arms outstreched to halt the traffic. Beatrice watched them talking excitedly, their high-pitched voices filling the street and she slowed to a halt and allowed them to pass. Where was she in this group? Which young girl would have her needs, for surely there would be one, if not more? In this small Paris street, which she’d never walked down before and might never do so again, she was being pushed to remember something. She stood still, hoping to give substance to this powerful feeling. The line of children had disappeared, but she remained motionless on the pavement, her head slightly raised, her eyes looking at nothing.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Life was about to turn again.

  The sailor speaks to her as a grown woman, asking her to help her mother on the journey. He is very different from her father, but she feels just as safe with him and she watches the gentle way he escorts her mother on to the wooden deck. The river is still, the water at its highest and soon it would begin to ebb, tugging her away from the world that she has known all her life. On the quay stands her friend, her blond hair clear amongst the others gathered to stare in wonder and puzzlement at their departure. The group recedes and slips out of sight to become a memory as they drift down stream, pulled around the great bend where her father used to work and onwards to the wider river and territory she has never seen before. The wind takes the large sail above her and she hears the ropes straining as the men on the oars relax and break their rhythm. Slowly the flat land on either side becomes more distant and the line between it and the water harder to define. The boat rocks now and she holds on to the side, keen not to show her fear. The wind is behind them, the sailor says, and they are making good time. It would be more difficult when they turn back on themselves around the coast where the oarsmen would be needed to push them through the waves.

  Her mother sits in the stern, on the chest that contains their possessions, clothes, tools, precious stones and metals. She is staring out to sea. How much easier it is for me, the girl thinks. She trusts her mother and understands her anxiety, the burden of her decision to uproot her family and she realises that one day such responsibility will come to her.

  The sailor joins them and begins to tell of the old port where they are heading, founded by the ancient Greeks. He speaks of its magnificent harbour and the ships that came from other lands to trade there and how the sea was so blue it almost hurt your eyes. The girl looks at the grey waters around them and tries to imagine such a blue sea, grateful to the sailor for making their destination so exciting and worth the difficulties of this voyage which, he says, might take twenty days to complete. He tells them he has a large house on the hill overlooking the harbour where he grows lemons and in summer the plants climb the walls to flower in bright orange and purple. The girl watches him take her mother’s hand and tell her that his own father was from the north, a Norsemen and his mother from the south and that he had sailed with his father from an early age, learning a little of the language of many different lands. As the day wore on he tells more stories of his adventures, about the storms at sea and the treasures he had seen on land and she preserves these in her mind, layers of history. Each day he tells them more, sharing his life and in turn she listens to her mother speak of her husbands and how she had become a jeweller. And so the time passes, the women taking turns to wash behind a screen erected at the stern, the men scrupulous in their attention to their needs. When he confirms that they have finally turned southwards, the storm comes and the waves lift them so high that all they can see is sky one moment before being plunged deep into troughs where they are surrounded by green walls of water. At first the girl is afraid, but she notices the men around her are unconcerned and she marvels at the way the boat rides the seas so that before long she becomes exhilarated by the rise and fall of their progress. When she sleeps the movement is a comfort and after seven days the memory of the blond girl on the quay is recalled less and less and she gives herself up to the life ahead of h
er, beyond the swells.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was happening again, the tentative steps towards another person’s life, the slow gathering of facts to help build the picture which would be presented as truth in the way that only television can. So, Joseph Troumeg was older than Beatrice thought, his mother younger and his father a mystery. Clearly there was a father, but was he an American journalist working in Spain who met his mother in Paris? For now, did it really matter? And was Troumeg merely an anagram of gourmet, as suggested in several articles she had read, just another part of the old man’s playfulness with his past? Troumeg didn’t want this intrusion into his life and Beatrice considered her motives for pursuing him and failed to come up with an answer. She’d had an uneasy feeling from the moment she left the mairie, perhaps a reaction to establishing a first finger-hold on to Joseph Troumeg’s real past, a tiny crack from which to explore further. Wandering aimlessly back to the hotel, she decided to call Amanda.

  ‘I thought you were in Paris,’ her friend said.

  ‘I am, but I wanted to speak to you.’

  ‘Mmm, what’s the problem?’

  ‘Do I always call you when there’s a problem?’

  ‘Sometimes. And you know that Harper has his rest about now, so clearly you want a natter.’

  Harper was Amanda’s fourteen month old son, although Beatrice was sure she hadn’t chosen this moment to call because she knew he might have been having his nap.

  ‘It’s about Joshua, isn’t it?’ Amanda said.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Or maybe Ben? Or what was the fellow before him? Chris, wasn’t it? Or was it Anthony, the one your mother liked? There’s a chef somewhere as well, isn’t there? Adrian?’

  ‘What about them?’ Beatrice said. Amanda had this ability to put her on the defensive.

  ‘Let me guess. You’ve plunged into another project and maybe you’ve met someone else and you’re worried that the same old wheel is turning yet again.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Well, it usually is Beattie.’

  ‘Except it feels different this time.’

  ‘What, you’ve met someone you really love? I think I may have heard this before.’

  ‘No, no. I haven’t. I suppose that’s the point. I don’t want to get involved again, at least that’s the way it feels.’

  ‘But you’ve also said that in the past.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘C’mon, Beattie.’

  ‘Joshua said that I was good at exploring other people’s lives and not my own.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘And I’m worried he might be right. Other people’s lives are a good way of ignoring my own.’

  Amanda softened. ‘They’re not necessarily mutually exclusive, you know. What are your symptoms?’

  ‘Well, doctor, two men have show a modicum of interest in me recently and this has made me, well, recoil. And I think I’m on to something with the next film project but I can’t seem to get that excited about it either.’

  Amanda Lodge was two years younger, but Beatrice accepted that in some ways she was wiser even if she often bridled at her direct approach.

  ‘A couple of questions, Beattie. Do you want a permanent relationship or are you happy with the flings you have? And what’s so special about Mr Joseph Troumeg in the first place?’

  ‘In order. Yes. No. And I’m not sure.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Beattie. This is the first time I can remember you hesitating before heading directly into another relationship destined to end up like the others.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I suppose that’s a plus, except it doesn’t feel like one.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I don’t know quite what to do. I have this feeling of dread, like something awful is going to happen just around the corner.’

  ‘Change might be about to happen, Beattie and it might not be for the worse. In a way you do know what’s going on, Beattie and you’ve done something about it. You called me. Look, I’ve got to go. Harper’s just woken up. You must have worried him as well. Let me know what happens.’

  Change is what I’ve been good at, Beatrice thought. I can do that easily, move from one project to the next, one man to another. It seemed to her that it was the staying that was more difficult, that demanded more attention. She recalled her journey back from the mairie and the moment when she’d stood still on the pavement trying to give shape to a feeling that was demanding attention somewhere just out of vision. And, as is the nature of these moments, she thought, some part of the answer came to her now. The old wheel is turning again, Amanda had said and it was true that she worried that the results would be the same without her knowing why. But now she was beginning to see the shadow of the reason why. The first part of the equation came easily, too easily, the being noticed, the attraction, the attracting. For so long, she glimpsed, this is all she needed for it appeared to justify herself, to satisfy her need to be liked, to give shape to her existence. The success as a film maker, a clever organiser of others, a clear, intelligent and creative thinker, was somehow relegated to second place behind her other, more primitive need. She stored this information, not quite sure she understood it, still not certain of its dimensions.

  On one side of her she could hear the trains rattling in and out of the Gare de l’Est and on the other the cries of children in a school playground. She sat down on a bench outside a swimming pool and looked at the information she’d noted at the mairie. She had two choices: find rue Manin and the apartment where Joseph Troumeg may have spent the early years of his life, or the Café Le Fin, where the witnesses on the birth certificate had lived. She spread out her map and saw that she was close to the rue d’Aubervilliers, so she chose the second of the options and began walking northwards, the noise of the trains keeping her company as she went. Her pace was desultory, her mind distracted and so she was not really aware of her surroundings. It was only when she came upon the groups of people outside an old industrial building on her right did she focus. It was a handsome, restored red brick hall with a glass roof, now an arts’ gallery but until late last century, she read on a board attached to the building, the centre for all funerals in Paris, with thousands of hearses sent out into the city each year. She looked again at her notes from the mairie and wondered if Café Le Fin was named for this very reason. She didn’t expect it to be still there, but walking further up the road she saw the sign. The interior, with a zinc bar and dark, bent wood furniture and lace curtains on brass poles protecting the lower half of the windows, looked as it might have a hundred years earlier. She sat at a table in the window, the shadow of the lace making an elaborate pattern on her face. On the walls, black horses wearing ostrich feathers pulled glass-sided hearses accompanied by men in dark tails and top hats. The film maker part of her, the one that dealt in images and their meaning, saw the juxtaposition of life and death, the birth of Joseph Leval beginning nearby, the premature end of Flotsam a thousand years earlier and her own presence here, alone in this part of Paris so associated with death. She picked up a paper napkin from the table and wiped her eyes and would have liked to put it all down to her period, which was about to start, but knew that it wouldn’t be true.

  She ordered a hot chocolate and enjoyed the comfort of the sweetness, a taste that took her straight back to her childhood when the drink was rationed by her mother who saw it as an indulgent treat. It was no surprise to Beatrice to be drinking it here. Perhaps in a film about her own life she’d begin with hot chocolate, a symbol of sweetness to compensate for her mother. She smiled and applied the same logic to Joseph Leval, the camera returning to the place of his birth, the cries of a new born baby mixed over the sounds of horse and carriage on cobbles as a hearse sets out for another body.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon, the doldrums, when the café was caught between lunch service and the early evening drinkers. Beatrice sat alone in the dark room. Ahead of her a blackboard outlined th
e plats de jour: Sandrine Vaillard propose, it began but before she read the dishes, Beatrice fished out the paper from her pocket and realised it was the Vaillards who had been the witnesses at the registering of Joseph’s birth. Was this their daughter, or grand-daughter? Beatrice had picked up the trail once more and when the waiter returned he confirmed that Sandrine was indeed the owner and she would be back around six.

  When Beatrice wandered back down to the arts’ centre her mood was quickly distracted by the vibrant mix of art under the restored glass roof of the magnificent building, the installations and digital works on display, so much life in a place once given over to death.

  Sandrine Vaillard was a boisterous woman perhaps in her late fifties, with red cheeks and grey hair tucked in a bun behind her head. Beatrice told her she was making a film about Joseph Troumeg.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s famous and interesting,’ Beatrice said, wondering why she asked the question.

  ‘I’m named after him,’ she said, pointing at her chest. ‘My middle name is Josephine. My parents had me late and spoke of him often.’ Her voice trailed away as if she was about to say something else but thought better of it.

  ‘Did your parents ever speak of Joseph’s father?’

  ‘Mais, non,’ Sandrine said, emphasising the negative. And then she stopped, again weighing what she should say. ‘My parents told me that Odile was always very proud to be a single parent. Amazing in those days. She was ninety-two when she died.’

  Beatrice paused, doing the sums in her head. ‘So, she only died four years ago?’

  ‘Yes. I went to the funeral.’

  ‘But Joseph wasn’t there?’

  The patronne shook her head. ‘I don’t think they had seen each other for many years,’ she said. ‘Perhaps there was a reason for this, but things get lost in history, don’t they?’