A Week in Paris Page 2

  ‘It’s awfully hot, isn’t it?’ she said, fanning herself. She didn’t want him to think he had to stay with her out of politeness – that would be mortifying.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked and she nodded gratefully.

  They found a small side room with a bar from which Adam fetched lemonade. As they edged their way through the crowds with their glasses, looking for a place to sit, someone knocked into Fay, splashing her drink over her dress. Adam solemnly produced a handkerchief and they stood together in the cool air by an open window whilst she mopped up. Then they looked out at the silvery river, the soft lights on the bridges, each searching for something to say.

  ‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’ Fay said. ‘Have you enjoyed Paris?’ She cursed herself for such an obvious question, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Very much. It’s so sophisticated compared to London, isn’t it? Not that I don’t like London,’ he added hastily, ‘but when you read writers like Camus and Sartre you realize how stuck we English are in our old-fashioned ways.’

  ‘We’ve not really read them, I’m afraid. Our teacher Miss Edwards pointed out that café where they’re supposed to go – what’s it called, Les Deux Magots? But I think she finds what she calls their “irregular lives” a little shocking.’

  Adam laughed. ‘She seemed rather a brick today, your Miss Edwards, but I can well imagine.’

  ‘What do you make of Existentialism?’ she asked, genuinely curious. Miss Edwards had at least explained the philosophy, but made it sound grim.

  Adam glanced to where, nearby, a strapping boy was gesticulating as he told some funny story very loudly to an admiring circle. ‘It’s a bit difficult to explain in a nutshell,’ he said and she felt sorry that she’d asked. Perhaps he thought her too serious. People often did.

  The music changed to another waltz. ‘Oh, this is Strauss,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Our orchestra played this last year.’ She listened to the joyous swing of it.

  ‘You’re a musician, obviously,’ he said, watching her fingers move to the music.

  ‘I play the violin. And the piano, too, though I gave that up.’

  Fay’s mother was a pianist. She taught music at the village school and took in pupils at home. For a long while she’d taught Fay, but Fay had come to prefer the passionate voice of the violin. It expressed so many things she couldn’t put into words so that it became her voice too.

  It was when Fay outgrew the violin teacher in Little Barton that her mother had found Signor Bertelli. Long ago, before running off with his conductor’s young English wife, Signor Bertelli had been Leader of the most prestigious orchestra in Milan. Fay visited their flat in Norwich near the cathedral twice a week after school for lessons, painstakingly saved for by her mother. If she played well he closed his eyes and listened with an expression of dreamy pleasure, but if she hadn’t put enough work in, he would slap his brilliantined head in despair and groan, ‘No, no, no,’ as though grievously wounded.

  ‘I’m fond of listening to music,’ Adam was saying, ‘but a duffer when it comes to playing. I admire anyone who can scrape the catgut and get a few notes out of it.’

  ‘It’s not made of cat,’ she said, laughing. ‘I love it. It’s all I want to do.’

  ‘Good for you.’ He sighed. ‘I haven’t the faintest clue what I want to do. University, I expect. I’m thinking about languages – my French isn’t too bad. After that, I’ll see what turns up. Your glass is empty. Would you like another?’

  ‘No, thanks. I ought to see if my friends are looking for me.’

  ‘Yes, of course you must.’ He sounded disappointed.

  She was still clutching his handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry, it’s quite sticky,’ she said, holding it out to him.

  ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘I’ve plenty. I was given some of my father’s.’ A cloud of unhappiness passed over his face and was gone.

  ‘Oh. Well, thank you. I enjoyed dancing.’

  ‘So did I. Very much.’

  She didn’t see him alone for the rest of the evening, though they smiled complicity if they passed, dancing with other partners.

  Very early the next morning, Fay saw Adam arrive on the platform with the rest of his school group at the Gare du Nord as she was about to board the train. She gave him a tentative wave and his face lit up. ‘Bon voyage,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks. Vous aussi.’

  When she was sitting with the other girls she felt another pang of sadness, knowing that after today she’d probably never see him again. There was something about him that echoed a call inside her, though she couldn’t say what this something was.

  She’d stuffed his handkerchief in her coat pocket and her hand closed over it now. What was it that he’d said? That he’d inherited a lot of handkerchiefs from his father. The implication struck her. Perhaps he, like her, was fatherless.

  Fay’s father had died when she was a toddler and she had no memory of him. He was American, Mummy had told her. A doctor, dedicated to helping people, and he’d been killed in the war, in an air raid. Fay couldn’t recall the house that Mummy said they’d lived in, either. It had been in a leafy part of London, apparently, near an old walled park stocked with deer that kings had once loved to hunt. Mummy had shown her a picture of the house. It was pretty, part of a Georgian terrace, painted white and with a tiny front garden full of roses, which her mother adored. Two years after Fay’s father’s death a stray doodlebug had dropped on that house in broad daylight, destroying it and most of its contents. ‘It was lucky that we were out,’ her mother said. Fay thought this sounded wrong. Why should they have been lucky and her father unlucky? Luck, it seemed, was very capricious. The piano had also survived. That, apparently, was lucky, too.

  Fay’s clearest early memories were of Primrose Cottage in Little Barton, which Miss Dunne, a much older friend of her mother’s, had lent them after the bomb, when her mother decided they should leave London for the relative safety of rural Norfolk. Since then, family life had always been her and her mother. They rarely heard from Daddy’s family in America, just a card from his sister at Christmas. Miss Dunne had lived twenty miles away on the Norfolk coast, where they visited her occasionally, but she died when Fay was ten, leaving them the cottage.

  Fay knew by now not to ask too many questions about her father and her early life, because when her mother was made to think about the past a glazed, unhappy look crossed her face. Fay hated making her mother feel sad. Occasionally, not often, there were bad days when Kitty Knox was so sad she didn’t leave her bed and Fay had to manage for herself.

  That evening, safe at home after the long journey, Fay laid the kitchen table for supper and told her mother about the trip. ‘From the Eiffel Tower, we could see right across to Sacré-Coeur. It looks like a Russian Palace, with turrets, and its dome shines golden in the sunset. That’s funny, though, because up close it’s white.’

  Kitty set down the shepherd’s pie on a mat. It was piping hot and the browned forked pattern of the potato glistened with melted cheese, the way Fay liked it. She smiled across the table at her daughter’s rapturous face. ‘It must have been marvellous,’ she remarked, pulling up her chair. She remembered the thrill of that view of Paris spread out below her, the Seine like a silver ribbon striped by bridges, glinting between the buildings.

  ‘After that we walked along by the river. Oh, I adore those little stalls. Honestly, though, Margaret bought a postcard of that naked statue, David. It’s a good thing Miss Edwards didn’t see. It’s not even in Paris, is it? Mags couldn’t have claimed it was a souvenir.’

  Kitty tried to look stern. ‘Certainly not.’ She dished up a generous plate of pie for her daughter, then served herself. No, she was being greedy. She scraped some back. Lately she’d had difficulty doing up her skirts. It was to do with being forty, she supposed. Or the new nerve pills the doctor had given her, which were definitely making her sluggish. She pushed the bowl of home-grown greens across to Fay, who wr
inkled up her nose and transferred a single soggy leaf to her plate.

  ‘Where else did you go?’

  ‘Notre Dame.’ To her dismay Kitty saw her daughter’s happy expression grow troubled. ‘Do you know,’ Fay said, ‘something peculiar happened to me there?’

  ‘What was that?’ Kitty held her breath.

  ‘I made an awful fool of myself. A bell started to strike. It was dreadfully loud and went on and on, and the noise frightened me. Miss Edwards had to calm me down. There was a boy . . .’ She stopped, because her mother was giving her such a worried look.

  ‘A bell?’ her mother frowned.

  ‘Yes,’ Fay said, a little hesitant. ‘It reminded me of something.’ She looked at her mother for a reaction.

  ‘And what did it remind you of?’ Those huge blue eyes, Kitty thought as she helped herself to greens. She felt a moth-like flutter inside, of fear. Had she looked as vulnerable as Fay at that age? She wanted to reach out and reassure her daughter, to fold her close and smooth her hair as she always had, but perhaps, in her seventeenth year, Fay was getting too old for that. There was, after all, a new maturity about her. The trip had been beneficial, she supposed, but Kitty hadn’t wanted her to go.

  ‘I know I’d never been to Paris,’ Fay said as she picked up her knife and fork, ‘but sometimes it felt as though I had. Don’t you find that odd?’

  Kitty’s fear spread its wings and she placed a hand over her heart. ‘Very odd,’ she echoed. She then reached for her fork and took a mouthful of food, but despite the cheesy topping and the rich gravy, found it without real taste.

  ‘Perhaps it was in a previous life,’ Fay said. ‘Do you remember that book about reincarnation I found in the library? The people in it all said they were once someone famous and that can’t be right. Some had to be ordinary, a peasant or a street musician. I wonder if in my past life I lived in Paris?’

  ‘Not in the Revolution, I hope. That would have been a bit too exciting.’

  Fay laughed and Kitty sipped some water, daring to relax. Her daughter had always been prone to these flights of fancy. She was still so young and innocent in many ways, her darling daughter. Kitty had tried to keep it that way, to give her a proper childhood. Girls grew up so quickly nowadays. They wore too much make-up and exuded a sort of knowingness. Take Fay’s friend Margaret. Her mother had her hands full there.

  But don’t let Fay turn out like that, please, she breathed, not my dear little Fay. Yet she had to face the fact that Fay was a young woman now. And pretty, too. She was developing a lovely figure, which even that awful gymslip couldn’t conceal.

  No, Kitty hadn’t wanted Fay to go to Paris, she had to admit that. The girl was young for her year. Most of the others were already seventeen. The trip had only been for four nights, but Fay had never been on a school trip away before and, well, why did it have to be Paris?

  In the end she hadn’t been able to resist Fay’s pleading. Margaret and Evelyn were going and that meant Fay simply must go or she wouldn’t have been able to bear it, so Kitty had given in and scraped together the money.

  Fay would be all right, she had comforted herself. Margaret was a menace, self-centred, too aware of her fresh-faced good looks, but Evelyn was a nice girl, as you’d expect of a vicar’s daughter. So silly of Kitty to panic really. Of course Fay would come back safe. But when four days ago she’d watched the train depart it was as though the invisible cord that connected her to her daughter had been stretched to breaking point.

  ‘A bit of peace and quiet for us then,’ Evelyn’s gentle mother had sighed as the train disappeared into the distance.

  ‘That poor Miss Edwards. I hope our Marge behaves herself.’ Margaret’s handsome mother gave a sardonic little laugh. Five children, the woman had, and the youngest one not her husband’s, or so people said.

  Kitty couldn’t speak for the lump of sadness in her throat.

  She remembered how she’d left the two women and walked back to the bus stop, wrapping her arms round herself as though the spring breeze had turned cold. Fay’s departure had been like the past repeating itself. And the worst thing was that there’d be more of it from now on. Her precious only child would grow up and leave home. What would she do then? Why did it have to be this hard?

  She knew why. Because of what had happened. The past was always with her, it simply would not lie down. It made her over-protective.

  Fay’s next question broke upon her thoughts.

  ‘Seriously, Mummy, are you sure I’ve never been to Paris before? Not when I was little?’

  For a moment Kitty was dumbfounded. Her instinct was to lie. She’d told so many lies, what harm would one more do? But those hadn’t been proper lies, she argued with herself, only white ones, the sort you tell to soothe someone you love. Her daughter’s limpid gaze implored her for an answer. She opened her mouth to say ‘no’, but Fay got there first.

  ‘I suppose we couldn’t have done. The war would have been on.’ She’d answered the question herself.

  ‘Yes, the war was on,’ Kitty said, relieved. ‘No one could travel to Paris then. Most of France was cut off when the Nazis occupied it in 1940. Like so much of Europe.’

  Fay looked thoughtful then said, ‘So why did the city feel so familiar? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, my love.’ But she did. She remembered all right. It was impossible to forget the things that had scarred her for a lifetime.

  Some day she would have to explain everything to her daughter. There had been times she nearly had, when Fay had asked probing questions. But then Kitty would look into those trusting blue eyes and the words just wouldn’t come. She simply hadn’t been able to speak of the terrible things that had happened. She couldn’t have borne to see her daughter’s face fall, to have her turn away, to reject her.

  One day she would have to tell her – but not yet, please God. Not yet.

  Chapter 2

  March 1961

  London

  Fay was humming to herself as she tripped up the dingy stairs to her flat, violin case in hand. The hum was a snatch of a song that had been haunting her all afternoon, very melancholy, very French, the sort sung by some waif on a street corner in a husky voice that caught at the heart. She couldn’t think where the tune had come from, it had just popped into her head and made itself at home. Perhaps it had something to do with the piece of news she’d received that morning.

  It was the middle of March, sunny, with that clear light that made grimy old London look washed clean. On her way back from her rehearsal she’d noticed with pleasure the daffodils in Kensington Gardens opening into flower. The evenings were still chilly. She’d have a bath later if Lois hadn’t hogged all the hot water. First she’d grill some Welsh rarebit for supper. If her flatmate hadn’t finished off the cheese.

  The flat was on the first floor of a cream-coloured building near Whiteleys department store in Bayswater and it had two principal advantages. Firstly, it was only a short step from here to the Albert Hall, where the orchestra Fay currently played for was based; secondly, the flat on the other side of their living-room wall was empty and the elderly man living above very deaf, so no one ever complained about her practising. Downstairs was Jean-Paul’s, a hairdressing salon, and Fay enjoyed catching glimpses of the clientele emerging with fashionable crops or elegant updos. Jean-Paul, who was a sweetie and had asked the girls to call him by his real name, which was Derek, said he couldn’t hear her violin over the noise of the dryers but wished he could, so there were no problems there either.

  There had never been any question as to what Fay would do after she left school four years before. With rigorous coaching from Signor Bertelli and the determined support of her mother, she had secured a place at the Royal College of Music, from which she’d graduated six months ago. She played wherever she could get work but hoped that a permanent position with the West London Philharmonic Orchestra might open up soon. It was because one of the second violins had injured himself that she was pra
ctising with them at the moment.

  On the landing, she stopped mid-hum, hearing the jangling tones of Cliff Richard and The Shadows, Lois’s passion of the moment. She opened the door of the flat to find her flatmate in housecoat and slippers, lounging on the sofa, fair hair in rollers, painting her fingernails Oyster White.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ Lois’s plummy tones rang above the music. ‘I’ll be out of your way in two shakes. Simon’s fetching me at half-past. How was your day?’

  ‘Lovely, thanks.’ Fay put down her instrument and shrugged off her coat, looping it over a hook. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh, mad as ever. Rescue that, will you?’ The Shadows had faded, to be succeeded by an irritating scratching sound. Fay went and lifted the stylus then stopped the turntable. The sudden silence was blissful.

  Despite their different tastes in music, it was hard to be annoyed with Lois, a bright, cheerful girl employed as a secretary in an advertising agency and currently dating one of the account managers. Fay had answered her newspaper ad for a flatmate a few months before and they’d taken to one another at once. She liked sharing with Lois because she was even-tempered and didn’t penny-pinch, and also because she was out most of the time. The downsides were few, but principally derived from Lois’s inability to do anything quietly at any time of day or night, and her somewhat erratic approach to housekeeping.

  Fay started to say, ‘I had a bit of good news actually,’ but was too late. Lois had jumped up, blowing on her nails, and was flying to her room. ‘There are chocolate eclairs in the kitchen,’ she called behind her. ‘Help yourself,’ and bang went her bedroom door.

  In the shabby kitchenette Fay explored the pantry and was relieved to find both bread and cheese for her rarebit. There was even a scraping of mustard left in the pot. An éclair would finish supper off nicely, she decided, as she lit the grill and laid a plate on the chipped Formica. Lois, who didn’t like cooking and often ate out, rarely bought proper food, only treats.

  As she settled on the sofa with her supper, Lois, now dressed, emerged from her bedroom in a cloud of Worth’s Je Reviens and started to stuff the contents of one handbag into another. ‘Heck, I nearly forgot,’ she said, examining a scrap of paper. ‘Somebody left this downstairs by the phone.’