Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
DEVELOPMENT
-Sophie-
One more sip, and I’ll go. Really. But I take a sip and think the same again. This beer is my treat, after all. And everyone needs a little treat. To keep them sane. Particularly in exile. There are worse places to be in exile than the peace of Quai de Jemappes in Paris. Even though the sun has started to pale and the glory of its reflection on Canal Saint-Martin that tempted me into the after-school indulgence has faded. But mon dieu I deserved it today. Those children at the elementary school! Why can they not get the right notes in their scales? It must be deliberate. They must know by now there are no sharps in C Major; I’ve taught them the rules often enough. How I wanted to smack their little fingers each time they reached for a black note. Pas de dièses! Smack. And in English too, so they got their daily bilingual quotient. No sharps! Smack.
I didn’t though. It’s all about restraint, I’ve learnt. Repression. There’s to be no violence, now. And besides, it’s not allowed. I might not be sacked, might be ‘lucky’, be sent off to some robust lycée to teach the rough secondary-schoolers. There, it would be a different sort of sharps to forbid them from. A far more dangerous sort. That I well recall.
As I take another sip of my beer, a man walks past me, whistling a tune to himself. A joyful little melody. A different man, a different key signature, from what I was used to. But such a familiar activity. And suddenly, there I am again, with Max. As he pottered from room to room, or from house to restaurant, or studio to home. Always the whistling, so annoying, yet so beautiful. So Max. And now here he is again in my mind. That whistle penetrating all. That’s what I get for my ‘treat’, my indulgence in this afternoon beer. The past, now present again.
Oh, why can I never remember how difficult it is to forget? Why could I not have known back then, as I perforated myself with the same number of pinpricks as those little dots of lights made in the sky, and me just as high, while I lay on that night-time grass in Bois de Boulogne? Why did I never remember that all you lose is a few days, not your real memories, the ones that (unfortunately) matter? Guillaume, or Will, if we’re being English, seemed to have found it easier. Although I suppose he might have started to remember, after I ran. Little Guillaume. Comme il était mignon. So very sweet. I remember when he was first born. Well, of course I do. I’m his mother (am I, still, does it count, when you’ve left your children?). You couldn’t forget bringing your son into the world. In the maternity ward, back in London, we took it in turns to cradle him. Max, bearded then, scuzzing his face against little Guillaume’s so that it tickled the baby into gurgles. So intimate, so loving. So back then. I drain my glass. It doesn’t do to reflect too much. I must focus on the moment. There are English tests to mark and written scales to correct.
“Tu veux une autre, Sophie?”
I shake my head and smile, walking away from the bar. I don’t want another beer. If I have one, the later memories, of that day, before Max went to the studio, will not be repressed. It will all hit me again. I know. Not like in the first six months, before I ran, when it was with me all the time. Whatever highs, whatever lows. The guilt, of leaving, and of everything.
“Domage!” says the barman. “À demain, ma petite rose!”
I do a casual wave over my shoulder. See me tomorrow? You wish. I have someone else lined up for that. Alain, my new beau, I’ll have you know. Except I don’t say that. I just swing my hips a little bit. Well, why not? The barman’s following me with his eyes again, I bet. Guilt and drugs do wonders for the waistline, for keeping a pallid complexion, and chemicals for keeping the hair that deep black-brown. Back when Max was alive, I’m sure I was rosier, rounder. Never fat, of course. But less European. If I went back now, none of those English schoolteachers, or the orchestra gang, would recognise me. Or look at me, even if I introduced myself. I know the English – married one, didn’t I? Even though his passions were distinctly more France than Angleterre. Yes, I know exactly what they would be like, those teachers, if I went back. They would stare at the floor, or talk about the weather, until one of them, envious of my figure, would blurt out an accusation. The others would tut and hush and apologise, and talk some more about the weather. But they would all look at me with that same accusation. The orchestra people would be horribly underhand – there’d be whispers in the second violins, gossip in the woodwind, and the odd hissed slur just before the conductor raised his baton. I wouldn’t be safe, even when the music started. Over-zealous bow movements would knock me in the face. My music would mysteriously have the critical page missing. My perfectly tuned violin would untune itself while I visited the bathroom.
And so I had to come back here and I have to stay. Away, safe, untroubled. At least by external influences. And of course, away from Guillaume. He won’t find me here. However hard he looks. I was anxious for a whole year, when he turned eighteen. That’s when people start looking, isn’t it, for their ‘real’ parents? But no. Nothing. And so, thirty years after it all happened, I can continue my life. No one here knows, no one will drag me back, no one will ask ‘And what do you think your son looks like now?’ Or, worse, ‘Oh, doesn’t he look so much like his father?’ And so I don’t have to think about it. If I try very hard. And I mean to keep it that way.
-Ellie-
OK, so maybe I should have told him about Max Reigate being dead earlier. But he wasn’t going to engage brain with my theory, was he, that way? Not very interesting to speculate over whether your mother may or may not have had an affair with a dead musician. No real outcome, no real hope. Plus why bother him with mourning the loss of his father when we didn’t know conclusively it was his father? I know what that loss is like. You don’t want to mourn it if you don’t have to. So it was all from the best of intentions, really. I wasn’t to know he was adopted. At least I gave him the extra Gillian tit-bit, even if I’ve no idea what it means. An olive branch. He should be grateful for that.
It’s a shame most of this is addressed, in my head, to Will’s back as he lies apart from me in bed.
Part of the purdah that he’s put me in.
Oh, it’s not an official purdah, of course. Officially, I’m forgiven. We had the showdown. We had the ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’ And we had my very cogent explanation. Perhaps not as cogent as the one I’m addressing to his back. I more gave him a summary – ‘I thought I needed to help you to the truth, and I needed to do it in stages.’ He was still upset, though, of course. I’d let him believe in a future that didn’t exist, get excited about a father he’d never meet, a man he’d never become etc etc. But I never knew he would turn out to be adopted, did I? I still thought his mother was his mother, just that there’d been a bit of a fling with a sexy pianist. Still would have been a bit of a headfuck, I guess, but not this much.
And you know, he bought that, I think. I thought. Began talking at mealtimes again. Making little jokes. I thought I was out of the doghouse. I thought maybe a bit of sex would help seal our reconciliation.
No.
He is tired a lot. Suddenly. The yawns appear as soon as I initiate anything.
Might be unconnected. Might be my belly. Might be – a general downness, I guess.
But whatever it is, it’s not great. Evenings are too quiet. Too soft. We can’t do the ‘sex makes amends’ bit.
It’s not all bad, though, I guess, this place we are now. I am kind of enjoying