The Long Way Home

by Fanny Blake

  ‘Why?’ Her irritation threatened to bubble over. ‘He’s a lovely man. If you’d made more of an effort you might have found that out for yourself.’

  Charlie looked doubtful. ‘If you say so. I did try.’

  ‘I wish you’d tried harder. I like him. He makes me happy, and that should be enough for you.’

  ‘I don’t trust him.’ Her latte gave her a milky moustache which she wiped off. ‘There.’

  Her forthrightness was shocking and hurtful.

  ‘Well, you should. You overheard a conversation, added two and two to make five. He was planning a surprise for me which admittedly I’d have hated so, thanks to you, I was able to stop it in time. Apart from that, he had to put up with a lot from you this weekend. Not least you being sick on him.’ She banged her cup back on its saucer.

  There was a shocked silence. Then they both began to laugh, quietly at first until they were laughing their heads off.

  27

  Paris, 1954

  As winter embraced the city of Paris, fewer people came to the Luco. But the mothers and nannies still appeared with their charges wrapped up in coats, hats and gloves. Occasionally a carer would push a wheelchair containing a well-wrapped patient to get the benefit of the biting fresh air. The trees stretched their skeleton fingers towards the sky while, beneath them, the flowerbeds looked bleak and empty. Wendy and May were still regulars there, often meeting other friends that they’d made together. After so many months, Emile and Amaury, Wendy’s boy, had become good friends too and would happily race around together, inventing games, hiding from their nannies. Wendy and May would wander through the different areas of the park, hunting for the boys while catching up on each other’s news. Wendy was a constant source of chatter, always ready with a bit of gossip about someone, or to talk about her relationship with Sam that was going from strength to strength.

  ‘He says he loves me.’ She clasped her hands together as if she were the subject of a pre-Raphaelite painting. ‘He even suggested I go to America with him. Imagine.’

  May felt a sickening pang of envy. If only Max had said that to her, everything might have been so different. ‘I wonder what Max is doing now.’

  Wendy tossed her curls. ‘Don’t think about him anymore. He’s not worth it.’ This was a typical reaction. She was a young woman who only existed in the here and now, an incurable optimist. The past was to be forgotten. She had dismissed Max as soon as the pregnancy was dealt with and clearly thought May should too.

  But it wasn’t that easy for May. Despite all that had happened, Max still haunted her dreams. In the world of her imagination, he changed his mind, returned to France only to sweep her and their baby off to a fantasy America, where their future was rose-tinted. There, Max was a successful writer after all and they lived in a white clapboard house where she looked after their perfect family of two children. They’d exist in a world of Hollywood films, Coca Cola, jiving to Bill Haley and the Comets, eating steaks and peach cobbler – all the things she had heard about.

  However, one lunchtime, between the end of her language class and the time she had to collect Emile from school, May went into the park alone to prepare herself for her charge’s boundless energy. That afternoon, they were going to the Parc Zoologique, Emile’s reward for tidying his own room. He was desperate to see the Asian elephants again. In the meantime, walking cleared her head, helped her think, and made a neat transition between one part of her life and the other. She valued having that time during which she could reflect on what had happened to her and what she would do next. So far, no amount of thinking had solved the problem. She would be staying with the Dubois till spring, when her year would be up, but she had nothing lined up for afterwards. Her parents were expecting her home, expecting to send her to London and Aunt Jess but Paris had cast its spell on her. She didn’t want to leave the city and the friends she had made there just yet.

  Although she had taken back her life and made new friends among her fellow students, none of them were as close to her as Wendy. She had deliberately held herself in reserve, keeping away from any deep friendships and particularly approaches from any man she met since Max had so badly burned her. She studied other people as if she was from another planet, trying to work out what made them behave the way they did. She watched lovers embracing in the Luco. How did they know when to trust one another? Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps you couldn’t expect that from a relationship. She couldn’t imagine ever trusting anyone again. She even doubted Wendy sometimes. After all, if she had told May her plan had been to sleep with Sam that night in Brittany, May might have been more careful about going with them. But it was possible that Wendy hadn’t planned anything but been spontaneous in response to her feelings. That was at least how she had explained it when May pressed her for an answer.

  As she approached the formal gardens and the boating lake in front of the grand Palais itself, she recalled her first visit there. How innocent she had been then, how hungry for life and excitement. She would never have dreamed of all the things that had happened to her since: falling in love with this dazzling city; falling in love with Max; and then how everything that brought her such happiness had crashed down round her. What a different, more cautious person she had become as a result.

  The day was crisp and blue. She waved at Camille, a fellow student in her French class. They sat on one of the stone seats, flinching at the cold underneath them. As they talked about their last assignment, May’s eye was caught by a man sitting a little way along from them. He sat staring into space, his beret at that particular French angle, the lower part of his face covered by his navy-blue muffler. The man with the newspaper. She would recognise that hair with that beret anywhere.

  Camille noticed her looking at him. ‘I’ve seen him here before. He comes here alone and always looks so sad. I bet he’s not much fun.’

  She was right. He did look miserable. When he glanced in their direction May raised her hand in a little wave. She imagined he was wondering who she was and then remembering their previous brief encounter: the first Scottish person he had met in Paris. He saw May, recognised her and, to her surprise, turned his head away.

  ‘You know him?’ Camille was eager for gossip.

  ‘Not really. I met him here once before.’ As she explained, she stole surreptitious glances at him, wondering what his story was, what had brought him here, why he was always alone. She liked the fact that they were both from Scotland. In a foreign city, that felt like a bond.

  After that she spotted him another couple of times, always alone, sitting on the same bench, giving off the same sense of misery. She always headed in the opposite direction, curious but intimidated, and not wanting to be sucked in. The third time, he had his hand on the handle of a pram, pushing it back and forth, back and forth. Without stopping to think, she went over to him.

  ‘We met, do you remember? I’m from Dunfermline.’

  ‘Of course.’ He gave her a bleak smile. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Is this is your baby?’ As she leaned over the pram, an unbearable sensation of loss weighed her down. The tiny baby stared up at her, wrapped up so that only its delicate rosebud mouth, perfect teeny nose, and plump cheeks showed. Its eyes were clamped shut asleep. This was what she had given up. This was what she had killed. All the emotion she had kept battened down since the abortion came hurtling to the surface.

  ‘Oh.’ The word emerged in a breath.

  She yearned for the baby she would never have, mourning its loss all over again.

  ‘Eloise,’ he said, oblivious to the emotions churning through her.

  ‘She’s beautiful.’ She wanted to ask why he was alone with her. Why wasn’t he at work? Where was her mother? ‘How old is she?’ she said instead.

  He smiled. ‘Five weeks. Five long weeks. Her mother doesn’t want to know.’ He looked surprised that he’d said so much, and shook his head, despairing.

  This time May was not going to let him get away so easily
. ‘She’ll come round.’ She knew from the other girls that some women found becoming a mother more than they could handle. Without children of their own, they had observed the mothers of their charges and had become instant experts in the subject. But, like so many things, bonding with your child was often just a question of time. However, she couldn’t believe that any woman wouldn’t fall head over heels in love with a baby like this. She couldn’t help wondering what her own baby would have looked like. Would she (she somehow knew it was a girl) have had her dark hair? Or would she have had Max’s patrician blond good looks? Her hand went to her heart.

  ‘I hope so.’ He looked doubtful. He held out his hand. ‘I’m David Adair.’

  ‘I remember.’ She recovered herself, removed her glove and shook hands. ‘May Campbell.’

  And that’s how they left it.

  As she walked away, she felt a sob choke her. A baby, a perfect baby. She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. What was she thinking? What had she done?

  A few days later it was too cold to sit, so May joined David in his walk round the park. She walked beside him, peering down at Eloise who slept all the way round, aware that they must look like a married couple, like the family that could have been hers if Max hadn’t shipped out. Meeting David and Eloise had deepened her sense of loss and developed it into a longing for something to fill the void inside her. She and David passed the time reminiscing about Scotland: about the fireworks in Edinburgh on New Year’s Eve that she had seen the year before she came to Paris. He had been in the crowd too. About going to Portobello Beach in the summer. They had both been in the crowds lining Prince’s Street when the newly crowned Queen and Prince Philip made their state visit to the city and travelled in a coach to St Giles in 1953. They talked about walking in the hills, debated the merits of haggis, and he told her of the disappointment he shared with her father in Scotland’s dismal performance in the Five Nations Championship the year before. Being with him was like being at home. Talking with him gave her a sense of belonging and an inkling of homesickness that she hadn’t felt for a long time. When Eloise cried, he allowed her to take her from the pram and soothe her, making her heartache worse.

  ‘Put your hand here.’ He put his on hers and moved it to support Eloise’s head.

  Eloise looked up at her. May’s heart was lost in that moment.

  Once they went to a café, where they sat inside, lulled by the smells of coffee and hot chocolate. They shared a mille-feuille, laughing as her attempt to cut it in half ended in its creamy destruction, with pastry flakes all over the table. When Eloise woke up, David passed her to May so she could soothe her while he finished his drink. But she didn’t want to give her back. The warm curl of the baby’s body, the smell of the top of her head, tiny fingers clutching and unclutching, her constantly mobile face. May was fascinated by her, thrilled to be able to give her a bottle, taken aback by how strongly her own body responded.

  ‘Your wife must adore her now.’

  How could anyone not? She hadn’t asked about his wife since her first meeting with Eloise. Neither had he mentioned her, although she was a constant presence shadowing their walks.

  He shook his head as Eloise hung on to one of his fingers with all five of hers. ‘I’m afraid not. She didn’t want to have her in the first place, but I was so sure that once she saw her, she’d come round. I thought every woman loved their own baby unconditionally. But I was terribly wrong. What she wants is her life back as it was before.’ He sounded so hopeless.

  ‘Why was it so special?’ It was impossible to imagine a life that was too full to include Eloise.

  ‘She’s a fashion model.’ He spoke as if that explained everything.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ As May spoke, Eloise began to cry, quietly at first then, resisting any attempt to comfort her, growing louder.

  ‘Perhaps we should go.’ David looked apologetic. ‘This sort of thing doesn’t make me any friends. Perhaps I’ll tell you another time.’

  May respected his reserve. After all, he was not unlike her.

  Their meetings soon became a regular thing. At lunchtimes, she would meet him and walk or take shelter in the warmth of the café, depending on the weather. They sat on a green banquette in a corner between the counter and the window, savouring the smell of coffee, trying out the different pastries on offer. They never stayed together long because of Eloise and because David had to get her back to the nanny and to work while his wife had gone to the south of France on a protracted modelling job. Bit by bit, he began to talk about himself and what brought him to Paris. At last the story of his ‘marriage’ found its way into the open.

  ‘I fell in love with Céleste the moment I saw her.’ May sensed his relief as he began to unburden himself to her. ‘I remember her walking into the room at a house party outside Edinburgh one weekend. None of us had seen anything like her. The French would say “mignonne”. We were introduced and we didn’t stop talking all night. My friends were as astonished as I was that she felt the same way. I suppose we were an unlikely match but at the time you don’t think about that. She would say I’m set in my ways, though she didn’t think so then. And she’s a free spirit who tilts at life. I loved that about her.’ He stopped. ‘You don’t mind me telling you all this?’

  She put his hand on his. ‘Quite the contrary. I want you to.’

  He looked down at their hands, leaving them for a moment before moving his away. ‘I proposed to her two months later. I was so certain.’

  May was astonished. ‘But that’s so quick. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’ But what he was telling her was like a story from one of the women’s magazines that Wendy was sent from home.

  ‘But I was so sure we were a perfect match. And she was too. I proposed on Arthur’s Seat after we’d climbed up there at dawn: the best place to see the city.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘And she said yes.’

  ‘Did you marry straight away?’ May was rapt, enchanted by the romance of it all.

  ‘No. She hated Scotland. I wanted us to marry in St Giles, where my parents and sister had married, but she’d none of it.’ He crossed his legs and started rocking the pram. ‘She’d only marry me if I came back with her to Paris where she belonged.’

  ‘There are worse places.’ She had seen plenty of churches, so much prettier than the dour cathedral of Edinburgh, that she could imagine getting married in.

  He gave a rueful smile. ‘True. And I thought it would work, that I’d get a job through one of my father’s contacts, and we’d live happily here. But I gave up everything, including the family business – you know Adairs, the big department store on Prince’s Street? My younger brother’s in line to be manager now instead of me, even though his ambition was to be a lawyer. I grew up knowing that’s what I’d do and now I’ve forfeited all that.’ His pain was obvious as he stopped and stared at his lap.

  ‘So you came here,’ she prompted. ‘What then?’

  ‘To begin with, it was better than I could have dreamed of. We had our flat, each other. Nothing else really mattered. I got this job and Céleste picked up the threads of her old life. Everything boded well. But if she was a fish out of water in Scotland, so I’m a fish out of water here.’

  ‘What do you mean? You’ve got the beret.’ She tried to joke him out of his sadness.

  ‘I don’t fit in to her world. They’re actors, models, artists – people of the night. I like walking the fields, listening to the skylarks, managing the business. It was only months before I knew it was a terrible mistake.’ His voice dropped. ‘And so did she.’

  In the café, over coffee and a madeleine each while Eloise slept, he told her what happened next. ‘We were on the brink of going our separate ways. I felt desperately sad but would have gone back home without much harm done to anyone else – just my hurt pride and loss of face. But then she told me she was pregnant.’ He paused to peer in the pram and adjust Eloise’s blanket. ‘I couldn’t have
been happier. I hoped, no, I believed the baby would bring us together again, and I believed she thought that too. In fact it’s been quite the reverse. For her, nothing’s changed. She wants the life she had before Eloise was born; she’ll have it. You already wouldn’t guess that she’d just had a baby. We’ll never marry now.’

  At last he had told her the truth.

  ‘I’m sorry. That’s such a sad story.’ What was there to say? Both of them had made wrong choices that had affected their lives irreparably. She couldn’t help being reminded of Max. Perhaps this is what would have happened to them if he had stayed. Once the baby was born, he’d have realised his mistake and disappeared. Perhaps she had a lucky escape after all.

  ‘And Eloise?’

  He put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Céleste’s family?’

  ‘She doesn’t see them. They disapprove of her and seem to have disowned her. She hasn’t even told them about Eloise. I’m not sure what’s going to happen but we’ll muddle through. Perhaps she’ll come round.’ But he didn’t sound convinced.

  The next time they met, David was distraught, unshaven, his face grey with anguish. He began to speak before she had a chance to sit down. ‘Céleste isn’t coming home. She’s moved in with the photographer, Jean-Luc.’ He shook his head. ‘I simply can’t believe it.’

  May was appalled to see a tear run down his cheek, then another. She had never seen a man cry before. She reached out her hand then withdrew it, worried it might be seen as too forward, yet she ached to comfort him. Instead she waited, speechless, for more.

  ‘And Simone, our nanny, won’t work without another woman in the apartment so she’s left too.’ He shook his head as if unable to process what was happening to him. ‘As if she couldn’t trust me. I’ve only ever wanted one woman – Céleste – but it’s too late.’

  ‘Is she taking Eloise?’ An unexpected sense of panic engulfed her as May realised how much their meetings meant to her.