The Dragonfly

by Kate Dunn

  Two or three marshmallows disappeared, swiftly followed by two or three more, as Delphine discovered that she did have an appetite after all. She made short work of the croissant and the milk shake, swinging her legs as she did so, something he observed with disproportionate relief.

  “What do you want to do? Today? What would you like?”

  The swinging stopped. “I don’t mind,” she hung her head and sat, taking up as little space as possible on her chair. “Are we going to Paris?” she asked, her voice sounding as if it had been ironed out, every wrinkle of emotion pressed away.

  He put his arm around her and she leaned against him. “We will be. We’ll go tomorrow, the two of us.”

  “Are you coming with me?” she quizzed him, needing to be sure.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  She nodded. “Will I see Papa?”

  “Yes, very soon,” he promised, heedless of the legal niceties, wanting only what was best for her.

  “You are coming with me, aren’t you?” She had a searching expression on her face.

  He nudged a marshmallow in her direction. “Yes, I’m coming with you.”

  ~~~

  As it turned out, none of them wanted to do very much. They wandered into town with that strange, wading sensation of walking through water, patient and slow. Tyler took Delphine to buy a few clothes while Colin, on the pretext of making some phone calls (although Holy God he did have phone calls to make – Michael’s solicitor, who confirmed that they were seeking bail for him pending the conclusion of inquiries, the family liaison officer, the insurance company, Madame Duvoisin) scoured the whole of Chatillon to find a pet shop. He wasn’t strictly speaking a cat person: they made his nose run and his eyes itch and they crapped in his garden at home, but a cat, a small one, was better than one of Hector’s little friends, and in the circumstances…

  Colin spotted Tyler and his granddaughter on the tow path heading for home. The kitten, in a ventilated cardboard box, appeared to be going through the spin cycle, throwing itself round and round and round and he was keen to hand it over to Delphine as soon as possible, but as he hurried to catch up with them, following the bend in the canal, he stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead of him, the great claw of the crane flexed and reared and dangling from its pincers was the Dragonfly.

  He set the box down, the better to shade his eyes. His beautiful, duck egg blue boat was showering half the contents of the lock onto the quayside, hopelessly incontinent. He followed its lurching progress through the air, the poor, sodden Dragonfly’s last flight. No final gleam, no flash of blue, no whip and flick of its tail. He watched the crane deposit it on the strip of land at the side of the lock keeper’s hut, heard the wail and scrape of the chains being removed. A write off, the loss adjuster had said. A write off.

  In another time, he would have loaded the remains back onto his trailer and carted them home with him, setting the boat up on the trestles in his shed, to spend the winter – many winters – loving it back to life. He gazed up at the empty sky. If you fall asleep by a stream the dragonfly will sew your eyelids shut. Stiffly, he stooped down and retrieved the box. The kitten let loose a stream of invective as he broke into a run, hurrying to catch up with the others.

  ~~~

  As romantic partings go, Colin’s leave-taking from Tyler had a few obstacles to overcome: the presence of Frederique the family liaison officer for one; and Delphine, who with some of her old spirit said it was cruel and unkind to keep the kitten in her box and kept opening the lid to comfort her because she was frightened, while Colin, although he understood that it wasn’t just the kitten who was frightened, kept trying to close it.

  “I’m going to call her Libellule,” she announced on their way into the station.

  “What does that mean?” he inquired, pocketing their tickets while scanning the departure board and watching Tyler from the corner of his eye.

  “It means Dragonfly,” she replied, as if that were obvious. “I’ll call her Lulu for short.”

  He tweaked her hat. “It’s platform two,” he said, “and we’ve got about a minute and a half…”

  With a gentle discretion that he was coming to admire, Frederique ushered Delphine and her frazzled charge up into the nearest carriage, while Colin and Tyler stood at ground level on the station holding hands, and then, fleetingly, holding each other.

  He breathed in her outdoor scent of cut grass, then closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her hair. He was acutely conscious of every point at which their bodies touched, as if he were learning her longitude and latitude, mapping her in his memory.

  “Can we…?” he began. “Will you…?” He rested his forehead against hers. He could feel the downdraught from her eyelashes when she blinked. In close-up, her face had the strange, distorted beauty of a Picasso portrait, all intersecting planes and shadows.

  She brushed her lips against his with the lightest touch. “We can,” she murmured, “And what’s more, I will.”

  He could hear the blunted percussion of train doors closing. He held her closer. “Thank you, for everything – really, everything,” he said, kissing her. He flung himself up the steps and into the carriage. “Tyler–” he called back through the open window, the flare of her outlined in sunlight, a bright frame she broke through to reach up to him one last time.

  “This is for you…” She tucked a small package into his hand and he could see the private face he cared for becoming public once again as she squared her shoulders and raised her arm in a waving salute, then with the strength and grace he thought he could easily come to love, or loved already, she turned and walked back down the platform, her figure fading into the dusty light.

  ~~~

  Colin, his granddaughter, Lulu in her cardboard box, Frederique the family liaison officer and a workman with a bag of tools and what looked like lengths of skirting board, all piled into the lift at Madame Duvoisin’s apartment block, squashing in together, pretending that their bodies weren’t pressed uncomfortably close. Delphine was staring hard at the illuminated numbers which showed the floors flashing past, mouthing un, deux, trois… more of a child than she had seemed on their adventures; the summer bubble burst, the iridescence gone. As they walked along the corridor to the flat, Lulu complaining as the box knocked against her owner’s knees, she glanced uncertainly at him.

  “So is the butter melted, maintenant?” she asked with a wistful glance, starting to slip back into her French life, starting to slip away.

  He looped his arm around her. “Oh, it melted a long time ago. I wasn’t going to mention it, though.”

  She gave a sigh. “I thought so.”

  Madame Duvoisin was waiting at the open door, her fingers telling the pearls around her neck like rosary beads. She reached out her free hand, beckoning the child towards her with something you might mistake for impatience, if you didn’t know. Colin looked away as she pressed Delphine’s head against her diaphragm. Frederique the family liaison officer stared discreetly at the floor.

  “Alors,” said Madame Duvoisin, a note of trepidation in her voice, “There is something in the box, non?”

  “Lulu!” cried Delphine, liberating the frantic kitten who disappeared into the apartment in a tortoiseshell streak of terror. As the child sped after her, she gave a rapid explanation to her grandmother over her shoulder in French: Lulu is very fond of olives and fruit cake, but she doesn’t like lettuce, or words to that effect, and Colin was comforted to think that the cat, if it could ever be enticed from under the sofa or wherever it had taken refuge (an operation he didn’t particularly want to be a part of) would be there to mediate the world for Delphine, and that when it had grown and she had grown up too, she would be mended enough to speak up for herself. He rattled the change in his pocket, turning over coin after coin.

  “Delphine’s father will be freed on bail within a couple of days,” Frederique the family liaison officer was explaining in English, for his benefit. “Arrangements will b
e made for her to stay with him while she undergoes assessments. It will be good for the two of them to be together.”

  “And after that–?” Between her fingers, Madame Duvoisin’s pearls grated against each other like teeth, grinding.

  “The accent will be on treatment and support, not punishment. She will have psychological help,” Frederique went on, “And help from her family, of course…” she finished with an upward inflection, a professional suggestion of positive outcomes.

  Madame Duvoisin nodded; she glanced at Colin, her gaze saying nothing, volubly. “Will you be staying in Paris?”

  “For a little while,” he answered. “Until…” Michael’s name hung in the air between them. “I’m not sure if…” He turned a coin over in his pocket, running his thumb along its milled edge. “For a little while,” he said.

  ~~~

  Colin found a hotel in the northern suburbs of Paris, not far from where he had parked his car, what seemed like months ago now. When he stood in the middle of his single room and stretched his arms wide he could touch both walls. The wallpaper was covered in beige bamboo; he ran his fingertips over the raised design. There was a beaker on the glass shelf above the basin and he filled it with water, then he perched on the bed. The counterpane was made of quilted nylon which had bobbled in places and as he sat there, he found himself sliding inexorably towards the floor. Bracing his knees, he sipped some water. The Paris street was hazy beyond the grey net curtains. He pressed his fingers against his palm, recalling the feel of Delphine’s hand. It was a reflex of missing her. He felt as lopsided without her as she had been without Amandine.

  Alert to the danger of depressing himself, he set about unpacking his belongings, up-ending a rucksack full of underpants and socks and toiletries onto the bed. Straggled on the counterpane, they looked more like flotsam that anything he had left behind in the lock at Chatillon en Bazois. He needed new clothes, badly. He’d lost count of how many days he’d worn the same T-shirt, there was green slime and goodness knows what else on his shorts, and espadrilles were definitely not the footwear du jour in the capital.

  He checked his phone. Thanks to Frederique, everybody had everyone else’s phone numbers, but nobody was ringing anyone.

  He’d get cleaned up, that’s what he’d do and then he’d go and find something to eat. Perhaps he could make his way back to Gautier’s. He poked his head into the shower cubicle, which was not much bigger than the bathroom locker on the Dragonfly. The limp white curtain had hard water stains on it and the grouting was mottled in places. He started to empty out his pockets. Amongst the cargo, buried at the bottom, was Tyler’s little package.

  He sat back on the bed and ripped open the wrapping. Inside was a clear glass bottle containing a small scroll. He pulled out the tiny cork stopper and after several minutes of shaking it upside down, he teased the scroll through the narrow neck. The paper was tied with a length of duck egg blue ribbon. He undid the bow, unrolled the page and spread it out.

  The composition was slightly out of perspective, but a vast improvement on some earlier studies he had seen. It showed a small peniche with a cherry red prow and a valiant little day boat for fishing, sailing side-by-side through some rather crooked landscape, heading towards the sunset. The title of the picture was Wintering in Dijon.

  Colin blinked. He put the watercolour on the rattan table under the window, anchoring it with a bottle of mouthwash and his shampoo to flatten it out. He stood looking at it for several moments, until the sore strings of his heart, frayed and tangled up for so long now, somehow seemed less taut. He sent her a text: Book says Dijon excellent for wintering. Ducal palace worth a sketch or two. Good high-speed links to Bath…? Then straightaway he sent her another one, which just had kisses in it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Colin phoned his son without realising he was going to, as if the days and days since Delphine said I pushed her, and she fell hadn’t been a vertiginous trial of longing and reluctance, of not right now, but maybe later; as if the thought of doing it didn’t bring him out in a sweat.

  He dialled the number, those quick, slippery digits that Frederique had given him.

  “Hello?”

  The sound of his boy’s voice shot through him, the shock of it reaching right to his fingertips.

  “Michael…?”

  He was walking along the tow path of the Canal St Martin: walking as escape, walking as expiation. He stared at the green water lapping against the waterway’s green walls, the green railings at street level, the green branches arching under the ribbed blue sky: the long, urban nave of the canal.

  “Hello, Dad.”

  “Hello, my boy.” He didn’t want to sound too eager; he didn’t want to sound too cool. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. I’m at home. They released me yesterday…”

  “That’s great news.” In front of him, the tow path widened. A knot of people was listening to a busker playing the cello. He took a deep breath. “You don’t have to speak to me and you don’t have to see me if you don’t want to–”

  “I do want to.”

  “–I’d quite understand.”

  “I do want to see you.”

  “Oh.” Two cyclists went past in a blur, whirring, leaving behind them a slipstream of silver and blue. “Well, that’s good,” he said, his heart thudding in his chest. “I want to see you too.”

  There was silence on the line as the two of them acclimatised to the notion that they could fix a meeting place and just turn up, that bridging nine years of separation could be that simple.

  “So where shall we–?” / “Do you want to–?”

  “You go first,” said Colin.

  Michael cleared his throat. “A psychologist is coming here to see Delphine later on this morning. Perhaps I could meet you somewhere? I’ve got a parcel I need to post.”

  “Anywhere–” said Colin, his heart still ticking like a clock; a slow continuum of all the time spent waiting, the chronology of loss, of stupid, stupid waste.

  “What about the Buttes de Chaumont? It’s a park near where we live. I’ll meet you at the metro.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” he said, finding his voice, his mouth dry. “I’m on my way.”

  ~~~

  He messed up the Metro – he followed the line towards Nation instead of Porte Dauphine, taking the interchange at a swerve in his hurry, but he’d been running towards this for years and years and he couldn’t stop now. He sat on the train listening to the slow pneumatic hiss of the wheels on the track, urging them onwards. He walked the length of all the carriages to the one in the front to be closest to the exit, but when he arrived at Michael’s station, it said Sortie at the far end of the platform and he began to run again: up the stairs, through the barrier, up and up.

  He raced panting into the daylight, shouldering past some bloke who was on his way down, and there, leaning against the railings, was his son. Colin stopped dead in his tracks. The proportions of his face had changed: his eyes were more striking, his head was shaved. He was so thin. It is easy to assume that suffering brings wisdom, but perhaps it just brings pain.

  Michael hunched his shoulders diffidently and shoved his hands into his pockets. “How was your journey?”

  They were shy with one another. They were like acquaintances, trying to find what common ground they shared.

  “I went the scenic route…”

  They regarded one another, puzzling over each small revelation: how they had changed, what they had become.

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  Michael stared down at his chest and stomach, as if they were unfamiliar too. “Yes, I suppose…”

  “I haven’t! I’ve spent too long in Burgundy.”

  “I don’t know Burgundy.”

  “It’s very beautiful.”

  “We always went to Brittany for the holidays…”

  “Delphine said.” Colin hesitated, “She showed me her album. I saw pictures of…” W
hen it came to it, he didn’t have the courage to say her name, “Of her mum. She was looking very happy.”

  Michael glanced behind him and then glanced back. “Yes. Well…”

  Neither of them spoke. They stood in loose proximity, like strangers disassociating themselves. “I need to post this,” Michael produced a small package from under his arm. “It’s a book,” he said. “For my cellmate. To say thank you.”

  Colin watched him as he crossed the road, weaving his way between the cars, sliding the parcel into a post box, then weaving his way back, conscious of all the tremulous trajectories that children make, from their first, faltering steps to the long walk away from home.

  Then they set off, heading for the park. “I’m sorry – for everything. That’s what I’ve come to say. I thought that letting you go was in your best interests,” the words came blurting out of him. “I loved you so. More than I loved your mother. I shouldn’t say that, I know.”

  Michael was staring at the ground, listening to his Dad speaking, taking in the sound of his voice, the effect of it.

  “I didn’t want you to feel torn. I never wanted you to have to choose between us.”

  He remembered the phone call in the prison, his Dad’s excuses: parents sometimes have to make difficult decisions. He half expected a kanga to tap him on the shoulder and tell him that their time was up. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “I tried to make it up to you, with Delphine…”

  “It’s forgiven and forgotten. Honestly. Let’s put all of this behind us.”

  Colin made a sound; fighting the squall in his throat, the weather in his chest.

  “Are you alright? Shall we sit down?” Ahead of them was a bench with a view out over the ornamental lake. It was a rustic fantasy: a cliff face, a waterfall, a small suspension bridge and a cluster of city trees that lacked the vigour of their country cousins. Nothing that day seemed quite real.

  “How is she?” Colin asked when he had sat down and steadied himself and then because he couldn’t stop himself, “How did it happen? Tell me. What did she do?”