by John Tagholm
Beatrice stared at him. ‘Flotsam? Why do you say that?’
‘There’s a rootlessness about you. A sort of impermanence. A drifting quality, shall we say. Little girl lost.’ He looked over to her. ‘We never like to hear about ourselves, do we? Unless it’s positive, of course. That’s why I like my pretty pictures of the past. So much nicer.’
Flotsam. She found herself unable to tell him of the coincidence, although why she wasn’t sure. She thought of the skull washed up by the Thames, the shape that Harry had put on the bones and she could see the brown eyes looking at her. Somehow this stare was not that of a restless girl unsure of herself.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Well, I have some errands to run. No doubt I will see you later. Just click the door shut when you go.’
‘How are we going to leave things?’
‘Well, I guess that’s entirely up to you.’
And he was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY
She wakes early to the screams of the birds. The sun has yet to appear over the hills and the blue sky is veiled with grey. The water in the harbour barely moves and the boats are still at their moorings. She has time before her mother begins to prepare her for the day. She smoothes her hands down her body to confirm her ownership which she knows is about to be exchanged, not just for the gold and the property, but for a partnership which she could not yet describe. It was a barter she was prepared to accept, although she is uncertain of its dimensions. Today the boy would enter her in every sense and there is fear and excitement in her apprehension. She runs down the hill, steeper than the one in the grey town, but the exhilaration is the same, her long legs extending beneath her, the easy strides carrying her downwards to the harbour. She sees a fish break the water and she takes this as a welcome for her and for the day. The air is warm, edged with the smell of the sea, interlaced with all the perfumes of the land. It was easy to forget in this stillness that the sea and the land could be so harsh, could rise up and destroy as easily as they could delight.
They have arranged to meet just before sunrise and when he joins her they both point to the exact same spot where the sun would soon roar out from behind the rocks. He kisses her and she can feel him against her, pressing and obvious, but he would wait, they would wait, until later. This was a moment alone with him, before their families surrounded them and they became changed, plural and not singular. If they had wanted it to be different, she had told him, they could decide at this meeting. He had not completely understood but she knew that if her legs had decided to carry her away, to the hills and beyond, she could and that it would be understood, if not by the boy, then by her mother. But this is not what she wants and she embraces the boy one last time before these embraces became official.
Her mother braides her hair and holds it in place with two gold clips each heavily patterned. She enjoys the sensation of the hands on her, working towards making her look perfect and she remains quite still until directed to move by the gentle push this way or that. The sweep of her pale green silk costume is secured by a brooch of gilded bronze, nothing like as beautiful as the one that she had lost, but this was deliberate; it could not and should not be replaced. Around her waist her mother has made gold chains which hang in two sweeps, which she explains showed her position in the household. Finally, around her neck she places a silver pendant, a clear round rock held with delicate silver fingers, so that she could see clearly, her mother says, her future. She does not reveal the gold ring.
At the ceremony the two families come together, important in their different ways, the girl notes, in dress and look, the boy’s parents dark haired and short, her mother tall and more angular. When the boy looks at her they both smile for they know that they have a bond beyond the reach of those around them, to which only they have access. This separateness is finalised by the ring, the most delicately twisted band of gold, bright against her brown hand, which fits perfectly on to her finger. At this moment, there was no past or future, only the present and she places her other hand over the ring and feels the gold take its warmth and spread through her. This feeling intensifies later, when she watches him approach her, naked and unembarrassed. All that existed of time was in the seconds before she touches him and the moment he enters her, the brief stab of pain and then the overwhelming sensation of only being in that moment, of nothing else existing. She clings to this instant, this capsule which is not marked by the seasons’ passing, or recorded by the pen, but exists just for itself and would never change.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Beatrice sat in Joseph Troumeg’s kitchen and watched the red and gold birds in the garden cluster and chatter in the trees. She thought she might be like one of those birds, but with a useless wing, turning helplessly in circles in the dust on the ground, unable to defend itself or take off. The old restaurateur, who always gave the impression of being one step ahead of her, a meal prepared, the wine chilled, was also able to talk to her in a way that she found disturbing, to wing her and bring her to the ground. Some people call me a witch, he had said and she now knew what he meant. She considered that her resolve to find more about his background was also to do with a need to shed some light on her own, personal histories which each owner seemed determined not to examine.
It was almost dark when she left his apartment and clicked shut the door beneath the cherub’s head. The restaurant was lit with a pale yellow light and the tall thin man behind the bar watched her as he wiped a glass. Somewhere in the streets up above her the noise of a party filtered down through the dark alleys, shouts of celebration and happy laughter. She walked back the way she had come and stopped to look down on the harbour, the rectangle of water reflecting the lights along the quays. She was startled by a noise behind her and began to hurry, taking a long, wide flight of steps between high walls of houses, on to another street which appeared to lead downwards to the sea. She broke into a run and was not entirely sure why. She had left her suitcase at the station and she returned to claim it before finding a hotel nearby. An orange fluorescent light burned just outside her window, sucking all but its colour out of the room, but it was quiet and she lay on the bed. She asked herself whether, having found Troumeg, it was worth staying in Marseille to talk with him further, but she decided that he would continue to block her progress. Troumeg was determined to write his own history, one which appeared to obfuscate his past and this made her more determined than ever to discover the facts about his childhood and early life. She could just hear the trains clanking in and out of the station and the distinct ring of the public address.
Troumeg was quite right. She would not want a film made of her own life and to the accompaniment of the sounds outside, she imagined what it might be like to interview herself and she began with a question that had been posed, or gently lobbed in her direction, by Troumeg: how come she was in a her late thirties, unmarried and without a boyfriend? And she knew the question was one she’d often asked but never answered, or if she had, in a most flippant way, saying this was the path she had chosen and that men were impossible. So how would she answer it now? She found the answer elusive, as distant as the noise of the trains, a background with little or no definition, a succession of men who, like the trains, came and went. Would she have dared ask herself why, pushed for a more specific response? Why did she chose the men in the first place and what was it they did wrong? And would she have dared ask what was it she had done wrong? What pictures would she have put to these sequences? How would she have visualised failure and repeated patterns of behaviour? She closed her eyes and thought of the shelves in her bedroom back in London which had altered with each arrival, some subtle changes, some more abrupt, photographs propped up, ticket stubs discarded, books stacked, mementos paraded to be cleared with each failure, only to gradually accumulate again and she saw in her mind a locked-off shot of the shelves with the clustering and clearing of each man’s presence. The thought made her sad and she he
ard the music behind the sequence which at first was slow and melancholy but the more she stared at the imaginary pictures, the more staccato and mad the accompaniment became, perhaps a hectic piece of solo harpsichord. Even as she knew that this would be an effective way of describing the arrival and departure of Joshua, Ben, Adrian, Anthony and the others, it would be merely slick, a surface representation of what had occurred. It would fail to address why and she knew she would have to interview her old boyfriends for this and she wondered if she could, if she was clever enough, or brave enough, to find the clues to what had gone wrong. Behind this lurked the larger question, the one that threw the others into sharp relief: did she want children? If her immediate reply was ‘yes’ and ‘there’s no rush’, which it had been on many occasions, why had nothing happened? Was Troumeg right; did the experience of her mother prejudice her view of having a family? As she had done many times before, Beatrice asked these questions in her head but the replies were faint and unspoken and so she could not be certain of the answers. Perhaps she had always wanted others to give her the clues but she had neither the parents nor siblings to help and perhaps she was too intolerant to listen to Amanda.
She was wide awake and stood by the window looking down on the patterned tiles of the pedestrian zone, black and white lozenges marching in line either way. She had been away for nearly a week, lost in a limbo of her own making, deliberately procrastinating about the Troumeg project. Soon she would have to commit herself and tell Graham Roth her decision and justify her not inconsiderable salary. But she wasn’t quite there yet and her hesitation was unfamiliar and, again, imprecise. Both Joshua and Ben had told her she was obsessed with her work and both had been uncomfortable about accommodating her work in their lives. That clarity had now deserted her.
Her mobile rang and she didn’t recognise the number. She answered cautiously and was surprised to hear Troumeg’s voice and puzzled because she couldn’t remember ever having given him her number.
‘I couldn’t bear the thought of you having supper alone in this big, wicked city. May I take you out?’
It was a moment before she could summon a reply. ‘That’s kind. But I’ll pay.’
‘As you like. There’s a place you can’t miss along the north side of the harbour. Painted yellow ochre with Bouillabaisse in large blue neon lights. Half an hour?’
Joseph Troumeg had done it again, made her feel that all this was planned, that taking her to supper had always been on the cards. There was always a method behind his decisions, as she was beginning to discover and as she approached the restaurant she was fairly certain that this might be the site of his first venture as a restaurateur.
‘You’ve probably already worked out that this used to be mine, once upon a time a million years ago.’ He kissed her hand and moved the chair out for her to sit down. ‘Mind you, it was a bit prettier in my day. Then,’ he said with a laugh, ‘so was I. They do, however, some excellent fish.’
‘Massalia.’
‘Indeed. Not the first restaurant here to be called that, and not the last I should think.’
‘Do you have any pictures of it in those days?’
‘Alas, no. Filing is not my hot point. We had some, but you know how it is. Let me describe it, though.’
For the next few minutes Joseph Troumeg painted a picture of the restaurant he created over fifty years earlier. He reminded Beatrice of a man who saw everything but pretended to know nothing, or was it the other way round? His position as owner and maitre’d afforded him unparalleled access to the gossip, slurs, rows and rivalries of the town, information he absorbed, balancing different accounts of the same incident, comparing versions of someone’s bad behaviour, remembering prices paid for local properties and the grievances that followed, never allowing his knowledge to show, never betraying his confidences, showing incredulity when called for, shock or sympathy, laughter and concern, when appropriate like an actor on a stage, wonderfully concealing his real reactions and deductions to which very few, if any, gained access. It was a technique that had carried him through life and was keeping Beatrice at bay now.
‘Were you talking to your mother in those days?’ Beatrice felt a little rude cutting across his colourful account of the restaurant.
‘Ah, Beatrice, nose to the grindstone again. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t. The die had been cast, so to speak and I was on my own.’
‘Why Marseille?’
‘Why not Marseille? I knew a woman down here and used to come a lot.’
‘A girl friend?’
‘Sort of.’ He was smiling, quite happy, it seemed, to release this information. ‘She was the mother of a boy I was seeing. She had a small café up the back there and she was a great cook. I sometimes used to help her.’
If the first part of the sentence was new to Beatrice, the end was familiar. ‘And this boy was your lover?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t put it as dramatically as that. A friend, shall we say.’
Beatrice wasn’t sure which direction to follow. ‘Did you ever have a long term partner in your life?’ Troumeg had ordered bouillabaisse for them and the soup was delivered before he answered.
‘Of course,’ he said, spooning the rouille into her plate. ‘Not to be missed,’ he said. ‘Hot, hot.’
‘You’ve never talked about that.’
‘Neither have you,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s probably because I’ve never had a long term partner.’
‘’Bout time you started, isn’t it?’
‘Who was he?’
‘He died. But enough about me. I’m sure you’ll dig it all up in the end. It’ll stop you thinking about yourself. Now, have some more sauce.’ He scooped some more into her dish, his remark apparently incidental. ‘For such a public man I’ve always had a private life and I would like to keep it that way.’
‘Are well known people allowed to do that?’
‘This well known person is, especially since I’ve got this far. People like me for my books and restaurants and my TV programmes. They don’t care who my partner was, or is.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘It is for me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should be more grateful. It’s kind of you to take me out tonight and I shouldn’t be questioning you like this.’ Even as she said this, she wondered if she meant it.
The fish arrived on a trolley pushed by two waiters and what followed was quite clearly a well rehearsed tradition. A great white dish was put on the table at the centre of which was a large, heated stone. Around this the fish were carefully arranged before great ladles of saffron broth and potato were cascaded over the tableau to much delight from Troumeg.
‘Fabulous. A bouillabaisse such as you have never seen before. Rascasses, dorade, becaisse de la mer, heaven.’
Beatrice wanted to laugh at this dramatic presentation and couldn’t help see it as another sequence in the film, Troumeg delighting in the food being served in his old restaurant and she watched him animatedly discussing the fish with the two waiters.
For a while they ate, variously spooning the fish directly from the large plate on to their own, or, better still, straight into their mouths. Troumeg told her how he had learned to cook, all drawn from familiar material and for a while she was happy to sit and listen. He ordered some more wine and after it had been poured she leaned forward to speak to her host.
‘It seems to me,’ she said, ‘that a succession of men have wasted my time.’
‘That’s quite an admission coming from you,’ Troumeg said, sitting back in his chair. ‘But I think true. But why can’t you spot them coming?’
She shrug. ‘There’s the rub, I guess.’
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘stop looking and it’ll happen.’
‘I have,’ she said.
‘Well, let’s see, shall we.’
They chatted on and he began to tire. They left not long later, the old man escorted to the door by the restaurant staff like
a movie star. Outside he turned and began to climb the hill to the old town and he waved a good night to her without turning round. She waited until he had disappeared from view before taking a final look at the harbour and the fortified entrance through which ships had sailed for three thousand years and more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
She lies naked on the bed. No wind blows through the room and the heat presses down on her. The hills absorb the sun and hurl it back on the town. It has been like this for many days and life is lived in the shade. She puts her hands on the rise of her stomach and then slowly downwards to rest between her legs. It would happen soon. The families had celebrated the news and she felt part of the order of things. Her mother had told her she had been the same age when her first child, her sister, was born. She described the birth and explained the baby’s death a year later in a way that did not frightened her. Life goes on, she had said and you were my gift and soon there will be another. This morning the heat makes it impossible to think of the effort of birth. She watches beads of sweat coalesce and travel down her body. Even the birds are quiet. There is no energy left to be wasted. She remains still and heat rises from the white rocks. Time is compressed and expanded. There has been no gap between the young girl who ran down the hill in the grey town and the one who lies motionless in the heat and yet there seems an eternity between the two.
The heat increases and the air changes colour. The clouds arrive like a silent army and midday becomes dusk. The clouds are bloated like her, dark grey bellies fused with yellow. It was all meant to be, the storm and the baby. Her mother had said the sign would be the rush of water and as the thunder crashes above and the first great drops of rain fall to disappear in the hot dust, she knows she is beginning. Her mother arrives at the door and her face smiles and shows no fear. And then time is lost again. The flashing light accompanies the pain and the rain keeps beat with her heart. She can smell the hot wet stone. She knows the woman from the town who had delivered many babies is there as well. Her face and hair are wet but this is not the rain. Now the thunder and lightening came together, hammer blows on the roof of the house. Rain water snakes across the floor. Or was this pool her own water? She cries out and her mother encourages her, shouting along with her. With the rain comes the wind and she feels it cross her body. Her mother wipes her face and squeezes water into her mouth. Then she calls out, not for the baby, but for her husband. Was he at sea? And her mother kisses her and tells her he is waiting nearby for a beautiful baby. She is swallowed into time once again and hours are seconds and seconds hours. The flashing lights have stopped and the rumble is distant when she feels her body empty. In this moment of exhaustion comes a baby’s cry and then on her stomach is placed a life which charges her own. She sees it is a girl. Her dark hair is flattened to her skull but on her face is a smile, she is certain. Slowly the room resumes its dimensions and her husband is there, stooping to kiss his daughter. The air is clear and clean and a sheet is placed over her and the baby. The child’s warmth was her warmth and they are fused outside the stomach as they had been within. Her mother and the other woman step back into the shadow of the door and she is left with the baby and her husband and time starts again. The mountains have retreated to release the town and somewhere a bird begins to sing. And the baby sleeps.
