Dreams of Another Day, page 16
‘Dannie, you are kind,’ said Ming, feeling herself relax. ‘And you look wonderful,’ she added, noticing the skin-tight trousers, the black polo-necked sweater, the sootily made-up eyelashes and the flat shoes. ‘An existentialist, perhaps?’
‘But of course,’ she said cheerfully. ‘We all are in my class at the Sorbonne. This way.’
By the time they had reached the Métro, punched their tickets and forced their way on to a crowded train, Ming’s ear had begun to adjust to French, and she no longer had to struggle to understand what Dannie was saying to her. The last time she had been in Paris, Danielle had seemed no more than a child, but now she was full of talk about her philosophy classes and the man she loved. Ming listened amused and yet regretful that so few years should have brought about such an immense change.
When they emerged from the Métro and set off across the bridge into the pale grey quietness of the Ile de Saint Louis, Danielle took a packet of Gauloises out of her pocket with her free hand, and offered it to Ming, who shook her head. Dannie shook one out, took it between her lips, stuffed the packet into the back pocket of her trousers and flicked open her lighter. Ming was amused at her display of sophistication.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘let me carry the case for a bit.’
Dannie gave it up without a struggle and casually picked a piece of loose tobacco from her bottom lip. When they reached the door of her parents’house, she dropped the remains of the cigarette and ground it out under her shoe.
‘Don’t tell,’ she said with an engaging grin.
Ming promised and only a few moments later was being hugged by Natalie.
Anyone would have known her for a younger sister of Peter Suvarov, Ming thought, for she had the same intriguingly slanted eyebrows and long dark eyes, but where his glittered hers were calm and much kinder. Her face was differently shaped, too. With its wide cheekbones and small chin, it looked almost cat-like, which seemed to give her a cheerfully sensual air that was at odds with the extreme elegance of her clothes and hair. Her simply cut dark red dress showed that she had kept her slim figure, and her hair was as dark as it had been in her girlhood.
She and her husband lived in a huge flat on the first and second floors of a house on the unfashionable side of the secretive island that lies in the middle of the Seine. Facing north, the house was always in the shade and the big rooms were dark.
The flat was the antithesis of everything that Ming admired and was trying to achieve in her own. Where her rooms were coolly pale and filled with light on all but the dullest days, the Bernardones’ were decorated in rich, dark colours that seemed to accentuate the heavy gloom of the sunless house by day. At night, with the light of lamps and candles reflecting off vast looking glasses, silken fringes, gilt picture frames, and the dully gleaming bronzes, the great rooms came into their own with a magnificence to which even Ming found herself responding.
Natalie’s husband, Bertrand, had some political function to attend that evening and Dannie was going out with friends, leaving Ming and Natalie to dine alone, exchanging family news and catching up on their old friendship. They ate simply and as the meal progressed towards the cheese, Ming began to feel very much at home.
Although Natalie was a good fifteen years older than Ming, she had never taken advantage of her seniority as both Ming’s sisters and Connie were apt to do. Natalie had never given unsolicited advice, brought suitable young men to her guest’s notice, or asked questions about her private affairs, and that evening was no exception.
For once Ming felt tempted to confide, but ironically she found that she could not begin without some encouragement. Her reticence had been developed over the years since her twin’s death. At first she had hardly been able to say Annie’s name without breaking down and so she had stopped even trying to talk about her. Combined with their elder sisters’tendency to pass anything Ming told either of them to the other and on to their parents, that early experience had convinced her that it was better and safer to tell no one anything. What had started as a defence had become a habit that was so ingrown it was hard to break.
Instead of telling Natalie about Mark, Ming talked about the magazine and about the disaster that had overtaken Max Hillary. Natalie had never met him, but as she heard his story, she became almost as indignant as she would about a close friend.
‘It is barbarous,’ she said at one moment, her face wrinkling in disgust. ‘Everyone knows that the English are monsters of hypocrisy, but that … How is it that Peter says it? Yes, that takes the biscuit. To convict a man who prefers to make love with men rather than women and lock him up in a prison full of men with no woman to be seen! It is idiotic as well as cruel.’
Ming smiled at Natalie’s mixture of outrage and common sense, but they helped to reinforce her own still-shaky agreement. Then she grew more serious.
‘It has ruined Max. He skulks in one of Connie’s cottages, hiding under his false name, and won’t ever go to London in case he’s recognised.’
‘He should move here and live freely,’ said Natalie. ‘We have not persecuted men like that since the Revolution. Perhaps he could become your “Paris Correspondent”.’
‘I’m not sure that we’re big enough for a Paris Correspondent yet,’ said Ming with a rueful smile, thinking it time to change the subject. ‘As it is we only just manage to cover our costs; I know that Connie draws no salary at all – and mine is derisory. Besides,’ she added with a grandly theatrical gesture, ‘for the next issue at least, I am doing the Paris pieces.’
Natalie mockingly congratulated her, got up to pour them some more Armagnac and asked what aspect of the city interested Connie.
‘Oh, the romance of beautiful Paris, I suppose; it’s to be a moody travel piece,’ said Ming accepting the glass. ‘You know the sort of thing: the turning leaves on the chestnut trees, the mist over the Seine, the smell of baguettes as they leave the oven, the elegance, the glamour.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Natalie, wrinkling her nose. ‘I know. And even more tourists will come to disturb our peace. Don’t tell them about the Ile de Saint Louis!’
‘All right; I promise that. Perhaps I should ask Dannie to take me to her jazz club, and write about the life of a young Parisian existentialist. We don’t seem to have anything like them at all in London: just scruffy undergraduates in duffle coats drinking coffee in expresso bars. It’s terrible when even your students are more glamorous than ours.’
Natalie looked at Ming from under her lowered eyelashes and wondered why she sounded so disillusioned; there was amusement in her face and in her voice, but beneath it seemed to be real distress. Sitting with the light of a silk-shaded lamp falling across her face, Ming looked much older than when she had last been in Paris. There were lines around her eyes and lips, and the eyes themselves were infinitely more knowing than they had been in the old days. To Natalie those were signs of character rather than disintegration.
She thought that Ming was more attractive than she used to be and better dressed, although without the elegance she could so easily have achieved. Having heard from Flixe all about Ming’s inheritance, Natalie thought of suggesting a visit to one of the big couturiers. Just before she could think of a polite way of doing it, Ming looked up, caught Natalie’s eye and blushed.
‘You look as though you were about to be particularly tactful,’ she said, laughing a little self-consciously.
Natalie, taken by surprise, dropped the idea of new clothes and instead shrugged.
‘Not really, I was just wondering what had happened to make you so unhappy with life in London.’
After a long silence Ming tried to answer.
‘It’s not really London, it’s a combination of things. Partly the hypocrisy that seems to have got worse and worse since the war.’ She sighed. ‘And the horrible prospect of another one. I try not to be a bore,’ she added with a vivid memory of the elderly parson who had talked to her in Egypt, ‘but I can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Natalie slowly. ‘Bertrand thinks that some military action is inevitable now that the Canal Users’Association has failed.’
‘I suppose I could always write about that, too,’ said Ming, rather depressed at the prospect. ‘Do you think he might help me find out what is really going on over here?’
Natalie shrugged her shoulders. She looked remarkably pretty and surprisingly young as she sat with one leg tucked under her in a white-and-gold Louis XIV chair.
‘Who can say? I expect so. Like you, he thinks it is stupid to risk a war, but not many people here agree. You must ask him at breakfast.’
‘Thank you. Natalie, I’m already rather tired. Would you mind if I went to bed?’
‘Of course not. I’ll take you up. A few days here and you will feel better. You can walk and look at lovely things and perhaps even buy some new clothes.’
Natalie escorted her guest to a grand and gloomy bedroom which was hung with old claret-coloured curtains. She turned down the bed and made certain that the hot-water bottle she had put there earlier had not grown tepid. She kissed Ming’s cheek and told her not to get up in the morning until she had rested as long as she needed.
Ming returned the kiss, feeling fully relaxed for the first time since Julia’s picnic, and that night she slept better than she had for months.
The next morning, after an enticingly French breakfast of bitter coffee and croissants during which Bertrand promised to collect as much information for her as he could, Ming set out on a conscientious search for material for her article on the sights of Paris.
Natalie had said apologetically that she had unbreakable commitments for most of the day and that Dannie had to attend her classes at the Sorbonne. Ming had told them both truthfully that she was not averse to having a private day in which to rediscover the parts of Paris she had loved and the three of them had gone their separate ways.
Ming went, as she had done ever since her first childhood trip to the city, to the towers of Notre-Dame. There, alone amid the gargoyles, she looked out over Paris, reminding herself of it and of her own freedom. Most of the landmarks were familiar and easily identifiable, particularly Sacré Cúur, dazzlingly white and unlikely against a thunderous sky. Turning her back on Montmartre at last, she gazed down across the river towards the lovely gilded dome of the Invalides and tried to put a name to the buildings in front of it.
Footsteps and cheerful American voices disturbed her silent contemplation of the beige-and-grey roof-scape and she moved on to look down towards the Ile de Saint Louis. From the informed conversation she could not help overhearing, she learned that on the top of a neighbouring department store there was a panorama that identified all the important landmarks that could be seen.
Taking advantage of the tip, she left the tower and made her way instead to the more prosaic vantage point. There was a woman already there, standing quite still with her back to the precipitous staircase. She seemed unaware that there was anyone else on the roof and so Ming was as quiet as possible as she looked down at the painted representation of the view.
Signed and dated 1922, the panorama named every landmark she could distinguish. Delighted with it, she walked slowly round the circular terrace, discovering exactly which building was which and making notes for her article.
Just as she was looking back at Notre-Dame and identifying the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, which she was determined to include in her list of sights, the other woman moved.
‘Ming!’
She looked up at the sound of Natalie’s voice.
‘Hello,’ she said, trying not to sound surprised. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ answered Natalie, rather embarrassed to be found apparently sightseeing when she had told Ming that she would be busy all day. ‘I always come up here at this time every week.’
‘But why?’
Natalie pointed with her gloved hand to a section of the panorama. Ming leaned forward to read: ‘Direction de St Petersbourg’.
‘Oh, Natalie.’ Ming wished that she had chosen any other time of day for her sightseeing. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
Natalie shook her head.
‘There’s no need. It’s very sentimental of me, but it’s the only contact I have with home. I can’t go there. We can’t get letters back from any of the family. We don’t know who is alive and who is dead. It is … difficult.’
The restraint of the word Natalie had chosen moved Ming.
‘Do you remember much about Russia?’ she asked gently.
‘Very little detail really, just impressions and vague memories.’ Natalie brushed some dust off the edge of the panorama and leaned against it in her fur coat. ‘We had to leave when I was seven, but it was home and I’ve never managed to stop feeling … deprived. If our parents had been able to come too it might have been easier. But it’s a long, long time ago now. I must not keep you from your itinerary.’
‘You’re not. Do you suppose Peter misses Russia as badly as you?’
Natalie’s dark head nodded.
‘I’m sure of it: and not just Russia and the family, but all his idealism about the revolution; all the things he wanted for everyone. It must be worse for him, because he was part of it all and he must look at Russia – and East Europe – and hate what he did.’
‘I always forget that,’ said Ming, finding it hard to imagine the attractive, cynical, civilised man she knew so well as a fiery student revolutionary.
Natalie watched her face.
‘I sometimes think that that is why he has always behaved so badly to people he loves,’ she said slowly, ‘as though having lost so much he can’t ever let himself believe that he won’t lose everything again. I think he protects himself against that fear by pretending not to care for anything.’
Ming stood, quite still, staring at Natalie for so long that eventually she said:
‘Are you all right, Ming?’
‘Yes. It’s just that I had never thought of that. It makes such sense.’
‘I must go,’ said the other woman, ‘if you are really all right. I’ll see you at dinner.’
‘Yes, thank you, Natalie. Don’t worry about me. I was just surprised,’ answered Ming.
For the rest of the day, Ming kept thinking of Natalie’s insight into her brother’s state of mind. As Ming sat in the dark, gilded cosiness of the Sainte-Chapelle, idly noticing that the pillars looked just like rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, she wondered whether her own predicament might owe as much to a fear of losing what she badly wanted as Peter’s did. The idea certainly made sense of the apparent contradiction that in a world where people were as hostile as her anonymous letter writer, the thing that seemed to frighten her most was Mark’s love.
As she walked about the streets, noticing the elegant ironwork of balconies and railings here, the perfect carving over a doorway there, Ming began to look back at the events of the summer with more rationality than she had achieved in London. Gradually she began to think she had been absurd to refuse him what he had so badly wanted after Julia’s picnic. She had refused because she could not bring herself to many him, but the two were not inextricably linked. Looking back she seemed idiotically naïve.
What harm, she asked herself, would it have done anyone for her to make love with Mark?
That afternoon, after she had eaten an omelette and frites in a tiny brasserie in the Marais, she ordered a cup of coffee and pulled her big notebook out of her bag.
Instead of making notes for her article on the shabbily beautiful Place des Vosges and the Marais hotels as she had originally intended, she wrote to him:
My dearest friend,
What a mess I have made of things between us! I am sorry for it. If I had not been so muddled about it all, I might have been better able to understand my own feelings. The measure of them is the misery I have felt since we left each other after Gerry’s lunch.
The whole idea of marriage still seems tricky, but I can’t bear the thought of your being angry with me – or unhappy. I have realised how silly I was that day we picnicked on the river with the Wallingtons. Perhaps it was just my conventional upbringing that made me deny us both what we wanted. I have begun to understand more and I would so much like to see you when I get back.
I shall be here for another ten days or so, staying with Peter Suvarov’s sister. Their telephone number is the one at the top of this letter. It would be lovely to hear from you.
Ming
The days passed and there was no telephone call from Mark and no letter. While Ming waited, she worked hard on her travel piece on the city and wrote chattily to her parents and to Jack Hazeldene, who was still training with his men on Malta and waiting for the government to make up its mind.
Dannie did her best to help Ming see every different aspect of Paris, taking her to the jazz club in St Germain-des-Prés, to Jean-Louis Barrault’s theatre and even to see Roger Vadim’s new film Et Dieu créa la femme, which surprised Ming with its frankly erotic shots of the naked figure of Brigitte Bardot, including one of her lying on a beach with the waves foaming up under her.
With Dannie, Ming drank onion soup at dawn in Les Halles one day and ate crêpes Suzettes at a tiny restaurant in Montmartre the next. On sunny days they walked in the various Paris parks and listened to Edith Piaf from what sounded like a hundred wireless sets.
Occasionally as she was wandering alone around Paris, thinking and collecting material, Ming would imagine that she might suddenly see Mark emerge from a Métro station or a restaurant. She hardly ever ordered a cup of coffee without looking at the occupants of the other tables in case he was there, and when she prowled about the churches and art galleries of the city, she looked behind her every so often.
On her last day in Paris she thought that she actually saw him. A man of similar height and broad shoulders was walking ahead of her across the short bridge from the Ile de Saint Louis towards Notre-Dame. He had Mark’s floppy brown hair, and Mark‘s way of walking: an apparently casual stroll that covered a lot of ground very fast. Suddenly breathless and happy, Ming called out to him.
