The Paris Stories

They chose a hotel in the Latin Quarter, five minutes from the Notre Dame. This was before the fire. The room is square, a squeeze, fifth floor, with a window box of dead flowers. ‘I’ll buy some to replace these for when we’re here,’ Zoe says.

‘Four nights,’ says Mark, ‘that’s all.’

Zoe kneels on a wicker chair to lean out the window. Her view is a narrow street with the cathedral beyond the trees on the far side of the Seine. It is late afternoon. Honeymoon, first night: why marry again? ‘The statistics are in our favour,’ Mark remarked. Together for three years, he is coming up for thirty-six, Zoe is thirty-eight, for him the first time, for her the second. Mark prefers things to be official, clear-cut, settled. Fine by her. She’s attracted to his self-disciple, his uncluttered thinking. While others make fools of themselves with knee-jerk statements, Mark is cool, articulate, considered. But why does he need her? ‘Despite the science, nobody can pin down what it is to fall in love.’ Mark said this to her, early on. ‘Extend that to any emotion, any action.’ He does know his life is calmer with Zoe. The motor tics: the nose wrinkling and biting the sides of his bottom lip – they’ve all but gone.

‘Let’s get some flowers this minute,’ she says, examining the indentations on her suntanned knees.

They cross the river and stroll down the shaded side of the Rue de la Cité for the Marché aux Fleurs. ‘The time of our lives!’ she sings out as they walk, single file, through the covered pathways, a multitude of flowers and plants rising either side in a profusion of colours and scents. Zoe buys a small tray of six pink and red begonias and a postcard for her mother who’d be very hurt if forsaken, out there in Florida.

They make their way to the Notre Dame and sit on a stone bench in the square to absorb the immensity of the western façade. ‘Place Jean-Paul II,’ Mark informs her. She places the flowers carefully by her feet. The tourist coaches gone, a scattering of people stroll round, some taking photos, mostly of themselves. The persistent glare is causing problems.

Mark reads aloud about the cathedral’s three portals. ‘The Last Judgement, in the centre, see it? The lower lintel shows the resurrection of the dead. The upper lintel has the archangel, Michael, weighing their souls. On Christ’s right the good souls are led to heaven, on his left the devil directs the condemned to hell…’

‘No messing about. Your domain, my love. You’re the Roman Catholic.’

‘I have no faith.’ He paused. ‘You know that.’

‘Sort of. Give me the child until…’

‘I have something to say,’ Mark says. An animal brushes past Zoe’s ankles. It’s a rat – its size startles her – scurrying out of sight with a shimmy of its shockingly long, thin tail. She keeps quiet about it. Any one thing could spoil this evening. ‘Are you all right?’ Mark asks. She must have gasped. ‘I should have told you this,’ he says and begins a story.

She senses from the start there’ll be no happy ending. She’s right. When he is finished she rocks back and forth and places a hand over her mouth, blocking her nose. For thirty seconds she does not breathe. ‘You knew what you were up to? Definitely? The father?’

‘Unknown.’

‘A porthole. Where were you heading?’

‘You unscrew the dogs.’ He’s miming. ‘The rusting hinges, the peeling white paint.’

‘You just did it, impulse.’

‘No. It crossed my mind the night before. I was lying there in the top bunk, my mother below me, the baby in the cot beside her. The baby was crying on and on. My mother sang a lullaby: Oh dear me my heart so sad, young man’s married who I should have had. The words – they’ve suddenly come to me. It didn’t work. He was screaming. But in the morning…’

‘Where’s your mother?’

‘She went to find something to eat and drink. I climbed down. She’d placed the cot on her bed. There’d be no fear for him, no pain. Once I had the porthole open, I was startled by the noise of the engines, the diesel fumes, the one moment of hesitation.’

‘What was in your mind as you went ahead. Be precise.’

‘I was doing the right thing. It was becoming impossible for my mother –the world collapsing around…’

‘Mmm.’ Zoe stands up and faces him, looking down on his bowed head. His hair is thinning. ‘You passed the baby through the porthole like posting a parcel. An errand. How did you tell her?’

Mark shakes his head.

Zoe smiles. ‘How could anyone?’

‘ “Hush it up – we must hush it up,” my mother said, her immediate reaction.’

‘Immediate? Nothing before that? Impossible. You’ve forgotten.’ Feeling faint, dehydrated, Zoe sits down at the far end of the bench to see her husband in profile, placing the begonias between them. ‘And you? You must have said something.’

‘It was for her – something like that. With the baby around we had nothing to gain, neither of us. I needed my mother to myself.’

‘A secret, shared between you and your Mum.’ Zoe shields her eyes with her guide-book. ‘The thrill of it all.’

‘Thrill?’

‘Oh yes.’ It is now, her breathing so hard to manage, her rushing heart – saving this man. ‘His name, Mark?’ She takes her flask from the rucksack. She takes a sip. The water is warm. ‘What was the name of the little boy?’

People pass to and fro, some alone, others in twos, three Japanese women with masks on, all of them talking at the same time. One of them stuffs a plastic bag full of picnic remains into the bin a few feet away. Three rats, hiding beneath, scuttle away. He took a life: that’s what he did, sitting there now as if shutting down. Does he think of himself as still basically the same person – child killer? No, he thinks of his life in episodes, she’s sure of this, the nine-year-old Mark a stranger to him now. ‘Your mother?’

‘Vanished. Those who knew about the baby assumed she’d taken him with her.’

‘No “Goodbye.”?’

‘I don’t know. I must have missed her, like a favourite toy handed on, but children don’t reflect.’ They do. Zoe knows different; they do. Questions about the mother. She’s tried to ask about his mother in the past but now there’s so much more she needs to know. Who knew there was a baby? Were they planning to meet anyone at their destination? Did Mark’s father look after him immediately?

‘The first time we talked to each other, Mark, in that bar, very dark, the alcove…’

‘Kentish Town Road.’

‘…something there, a shadow of catastrophe shared.’

‘I don’t remember feeling that,’ Mark states, his expression, as so often, unreadable.

‘I have a story too.’ She clasps her hands. ‘Fourteen. I was at a friend’s farm for a few days, summer holidays, 1999, the Norfolk coast. Her name was Becky. A surprise invitation. I didn’t know her that well but off I went. Holidays can be lonely for boarding school kids. It was a large white house surrounded by fields, a couple of long, ugly outbuildings right next to it. We had single beds in Becky’s room with a view of the sea obscured by trees. A full-length mirror was fixed to the wall facing us. Two bullet holes in the glass stared at me like dark eyes. The week before she shot at herself with a BB rifle. “Dad told me to stop firing inside the house and I wasn’t getting a new mirror.” In the morning of my first full day, Becky explained we needed to fill two plastic water pistols and led me to a lean-to wash-house. Beneath a window facing the garden was an old enamelled cast iron sink with a brass tap. What were these for I asked. She laughed. “Top secret.” We were heading through the long grass of the field which dipped down to the coastal road lined by a row of trees. On the far side ran the sea-wall. Two chestnut ponies strolled towards us. We gave them a pat. As we headed down to the bottom of the field Becky stopped beneath one of the smaller trees. “We’ll need to jump down fast if we have to escape,” she said and placed her foot on the lowest branch, grabbing my arm to yank me up. We climbed high enough to break arms and legs should we fall. We were waiting for a motorbike, straining to hear the whining sound. A few cars streamed by, two trucks, a large tractor. “Wow,” hissed Becky, “a Steyr 9190. They cost around seventy thousand pounds. Mum will know the owner. She’s an expert.” Half an hour passed. Becky shook my ankle. “Hear it? The high pitch? Ready?” I was to aim for the visor. “If the rider stops and runs towards us, don’t move. Not until I say.” She grabbed my elbow. First thing was the thin, hgh-pitched sound at the far end of the straight, the bike the size of an insect. Within three seconds, no more than that, the violence of the engine’s roar overpowered our entire surroundings. The rider was in black, leather suit, helmet and visor. I aimed and pressed the trigger, certain I’d miss but the bike swerved with an agonising squeal, careered onto its side, skidding across the surface of the road, throwing off the man. Separated, machine and human slid towards the sea wall, slamming into the concrete. The body was still, one leg splayed out at an impossible angle. An arm moved, the head lifted. Any moment, he’ll stand up I told myself, shaken, not seriously hurt. Becky had already dropped to the ground. She was on her feet. “Jump,” she shouted. “Fucking jump.” I crashed through the branches, landing on my right hip. I scrambled after her, limping. “This is hell!” I yelled to the sky, the fields, Becky. “A nightmare!” The man was badly injured, had to be, no one to rescue him, in excruciating pain. “Round to the back,” Becky said. The house, at last. She opened a side door. We crept through a narrow passageway of old waxed coats on hooks, up a back staircase and collapsed on our beds, the two bullet holes staring down on me. Feeling sick I rushed to the toilet, knelt down and cried. When I returned Becky stared at my blotched face, my red eyes. “We’ll get away with it,” she said. The following morning, Monday, Becky’s mother drove us to Cromer. We ate cod and chips at lunchtime on the front, attracting the seagulls. I left most of mine, burying chunks off fish into the shingle. In the afternoon we walked to Overstrand and back. On the way Becky told me that if the rider had been seriously hurt the police would have called to check if we’d seen or heard anything. I yearned to believe her, but knew they still might. I had a terrible, sleepless night. Tuesday lunchtime, Becky’s mother showed us the article and the face of the man: page five, Eastern Daily Press, a poor photo, out of focus: David Price, 24. On that one-mile stretch of road three riders had been killed in two years. Here was the fourth. David Price worked in an Estate Agent’s office in King’s Lynn.’ Zoe stops talking, keeping her eyes, as she has done throughout on the good souls.

‘It was your aim?’ Mark asks. ‘How do you know?’

‘Becky didn’t press her trigger. She said she did; she didn’t.’

‘Still think about it much?’

Zoe senses something close to rivalry. How well had she dealt with it?

‘Not every day, not every single day.’

‘Becky?’

‘She lives in Scotland last I heard. Aberdeen. We’ve not kept in touch.’

‘So, killers both.’

Zoe kisses him on the cheek, needing to. ‘Let’s get a beer.’ She leaves the begonias and on they go, seeing this, pausing by that, stopping for a forgettable prix fixe, as if the stories were never told.

Back in their room Zoe says: ‘It’s brought us together, Mark, more than ever. Somewhere inside us, we had this knowing about each other.’

‘Too much of a claim, Zoe.’

She deserts him to have a shower, standing in the bath, the curtain pulled across, the steam and the noise of the water noise contriving a relief of isolation.

In bed – for she is with her husband again – Zoe asks herself in the silence, how much love does she need to have. Was it something inconceivable? She tells him about the scar on her back. ‘Below my left shoulder blade. It’s faded over the years but you’ll feel a little path of raised bumps. As Becks and I ran back up the field, we scrambled beneath barbed wire fencing close to the house. I caught my back on it, ripping my top. The wound hardly bled at all; it stung that’s all. Becky placed back some small flaps of skin as best she could.’ Zoe lies flat on her tummy. ‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Touch very lightly. One finger. A very slight ridge.’

‘Maybe.’

Mark strokes her body from her neck to her toes. Those hands on the backs of her knees, tickling her, unbearable – all those millions of tiny nerve endings going crazy, the electrical signals stimulated by the distal phalanges of the fingers of the hands of the man who killed a baby, scooping up the little bundle of possibilities and releasing them into the darkness of the ocean.

Mark shifts his weight, his left leg across her thighs.

‘So tired, Mark.’ Quite a day.

In the morning she’s woken by men in green washing down the streets. She says to Mark: ‘I’ll follow you down to breakfast in a few minutes, toast for me, that’s all – tea.’ Five minutes, less than that, to pack. She gathers her things from around the bed and the bathroom. She takes a moment to brush her teeth. She turns to the room. There’s all his stuff around, jeans on the bed, pants and socks in a clump on the chair and yesterday’s Le Monde on the carpet, the citrus smell of his Hugo Boss, the TV left on: Télématin with Julia Vignali. ‘She gets it right,’ Mark told her.

In the small dining-room, Zoe sits opposite Mark and pours her tea, holding the stainless steel lid down with the tip of her middle finger.

Mark is reading The New York Times. ‘Listen to this. An aircraft with the largest wingspan ever to fly, has made its maiden flight over California.’

‘The scar. There is no scar on my back, Mark, no David Price, no farm, no Becky.’

Mark takes a small bite from his croissant and licks the apricot jam off his fingers. ‘No bullet holes?’

‘No mirror.’

Mark’s teeth are playing with his bottom lip. ‘Your story – you were trying to be kind.’

Zoe stands. ‘I have to go upstairs, Mark. Order more coffee for yourself. There’s no rush.’

She leaves the room and passes the reception desk to the lift. She presses the button for Floor 5. Down the corridor she walks, unlocks the door and sits on the bed. ‘Why would he tell a story like that?’ she says to the room. ‘Why?’