The Way I Found Her (29 page)

For a while, I quite enjoyed dancing with Ingrid, but then she vanished of her own accord. She just slowly slipped away from me until I was alone, and so I waited, holding out my arms, for Valentina to come back. And when she was there again, I laid my head on her shoulder and thought, OK, she's back now and she's holding me and I can go to sleep . . .

Sergei woke me by licking my hand. The saxophonist had moved on and where he'd been a group of bongo drummers were setting up. They were women bongo drummers – white women with shaved hair and earrings, wearing tattered shorts and sandals. I stared at them and one of them stared brazenly back. They reminded me of the people I'd met on Violette's stairs, who'd asked me Sergei's name. So I got up and, keeping Sergei close to me, walked over the bridge and on.

I tried to imagine what a Kiev hotel would be like and how thorough the search for Grisha would be. I wondered whether, right now, Valentina was walking through Kotsiubinsky Park in search of a telephone connected to the outside world.

I wanted to ask Alice whether she'd given any pages of Valentina's book to Grigory, but I didn't. I just let this question, along with all the others, stay in a limbo of silence.

I called up Hugh, just to tell him I was fine. Grandma Gwyneth answered. She told me there was a threat of water rationing in England. ‘Water rationing, I
ask
you!' she said. ‘This is the wettest country in Europe and they can't get through a fine summer without cutting off the water. What are we coming to, Lewis?' I said I didn't know what we were coming to and I privately thought, I may never go back to England. Never.

When Hugh came on the line, I thanked him for mending Elroy. He said it did him good to hear my voice. He was starting to miss us really badly and only the building of the hut (which he now referred to as ‘the summerhouse') kept him from feeling miserable. I made myself enquire after the hut. He cleared his throat and said: ‘Well, Lewis, I think you're going to be surprised. I couldn't have made it what it is without Bertie's help, but together we're building something really rather beautiful.'

I couldn't believe he'd used the word ‘beautiful'; he was normally quite precise with language. I said: ‘Do you mean beautiful, or just OK?'

‘I think it's going to be beautiful,' he said, ‘but of course I'm biased. You can ask Grandma.'

Then he wanted to know what I'd been doing, so I told him about some of the things I'd seen: the mosaic building at Nanterre, the dog-grooming parlour, the Vigil at the Nevsky church, the woman drummers on the Pont des Arts. I didn't say I'd spent an hour inside a commissariat. I said I'd done a dance in the kitchen with Babba to celebrate the arrival of her work permit and that I was still enjoying
Crime et châtiment
. All this came out in one breath, like I had to say it and get it over with, and Hugh noticed this and was silent for a moment before he said: ‘Is everything OK, Lewis?'

‘Yes, it's good,' I said. ‘I feel I live here now.'

‘You know you can come home any time you want?'

‘Yeah.'

‘You're not lonely, are you?'

‘No.'

‘Only I was a bit surprised, when you asked me to send Elroy . . .'

‘I just suddenly wanted him, that's all. I mean, only for about fifteen minutes. I had a kind of regression, but it's passed.'

Then he said: ‘How's Valentina?'

I didn't let myself pause or hesitate for a single beat. ‘She's fine,' I answered. ‘The book's coming on really well, but it may not be finished by September. Mum may have to stay on . . .'

Hugh sounded suddenly irritated. ‘Oh no,' he said. ‘I don't think Valentina can expect that. You must both come back on the third. You have to be back for your birthday. Eh? Alice can finish the translation here. We can put in a fax, if necessary. Let me talk to her.'

‘She's out,' I lied.

‘OK. But tell her she must stick to the arrangements and Valentina must honour them. It was the summer holidays she agreed to, nothing more.'

I was glad when Hugh handed me over to Bertie. His voice was loud and burbling, like a highland stream, and he told me that the day-to-day routine of building with Hugh, then sitting in the garden in the evening drinking gin and tonic, had taken years off him. ‘Years!' he chuckled. ‘When you come home, you won't recognise me, Lewis!'

‘Maybe you should stay,' I said.

‘Stay? You mean stay in Devon with you lot?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh no. Couldn't do that. You can't have me and Grandma hanging around in the house.'

‘We could. Why not?'

‘No, no. Lovely thought. Not suitable, old chap. Lovely thought, all the same.'

When I put the phone down, I thought, that's what ought to happen. Gwyneth and Bertie ought to come and live in Devon with Hugh. Then if Alice and I never go back, he won't be lonely.

I sat on the hard telephone chair, thinking about this. A surge of worry for Hugh – and for Bertie and Gwyneth – went through me. I pictured their washing flapping on the clothes line: Gwyneth's bulgy knickers like bloomers, Bertie's frayed old vests, Hugh's shorts made from cut-off jeans, his towelling socks. I thought, they could be in a tragedy and not know it yet.

Without noticing it, I'd started doodling on the little pad Valentina kept by the telephone. Among twirls and circles, I'd written the name Gail O'Hara and suddenly I forgot about the household in Devon and focused on this. Seeing the name written down, I realised that the computer file labelled GOH in Valentina's Apple must hold a mass of information about Gail O'Hara – far more than I could ever get from Violette's friend Lisette-Marie.

Carmody hadn't returned Valentina's computer. Presumably, he and his men were going through the stuff in it, so if there was any link between Gail O'Hara and what had happened to Valentina he'd suss it out. But I also thought, if I had access to the file, I could do it faster; I'd know what was important and what wasn't, and if there were any gaps Lisette-Marie might be able to fill them in.

I called Carmody's number. Last time, he'd had his hand poised over the telephone, but now there was no answer from his office. I dialled renseignements to get the number of the commissariat and rang this and asked for Carmody. After waiting for about five minutes, the receptionist told me Carmody wasn't in the building. I left my name and number and a message asking him to call. ‘Louis qui?' asked the receptionist. ‘Louis Little,' I said, ‘Little comme Petit.'

Then I went into Valentina's room and stood at the door, looking at the bed and the dressing table and the cupboards that were tidy again and filled up with coloured shoes. I was wondering whether Valentina had kept back-up disks for all her computer files and whether these had been hidden somewhere the police hadn't searched. I hadn't found any disks in her desk and Mrs Gavrilovich hadn't found any in the bureau, as far as I knew. I thought there had to be a back-up disk of Valentina's novel and there might be others with this one, if I only knew where to look.

Being in this room always made me feel sexy. I remembered lying on the bed with Valentina the evening she got back from the hospital and going in and out of a beautiful sleep while she told me about Anton's dreams of a house in the Luberon hills. In a drawer somewhere would be the satin nightdress she'd been wearing then, washed and ironed and put away by Violette.

I closed the door of the bedroom and began going through the drawers. I was half looking for the computer disks and half for the nightdress. I found the nightdress and took it out and held it up, letting it unfold. I laid it against my cheek. It was silk, not satin, slinky as a glove. And despite the washing it smelled faintly of Valentina, as if her body had just stepped out of it. I wanted to lie on the bed and take my clothes off and lay the nightdress over me and drench it with all my pent-up love, but I was afraid Alice might come in and find me, so I folded it up again and took it to my room, where I hid it under my pillow with Alice's gold chain.

When I got back down, Alice was in the salon, smoking one of her thin little cigarettes. ‘What have you been doing?' she asked.

In the night, I fucked Valentina's pink silk nightdress about four times. It was like having a snake in bed with me – the snake out of the garden of Eden. As I finally drifted off to sleep, as the birds started singing, I thought, I'm like a drug addict, I can't control my cravings; I'll die from longing or from a surfeit of pleasure, one or the other. I wanted to ask someone – a doctor, say – whether these feelings were normal for a boy who would be fourteen in three weeks' time.

And then in the morning, when I got up to go and meet Moinel at the Deauville, I felt so exhausted I could hardly move my legs or lean down to wash my face. And what I kept thinking was, perhaps I'm harming Valentina by fucking her in my mind? Perhaps if I stopped myself doing this, she'd come back? Perhaps it's all my dirty thoughts that have put her in danger?

I went out without seeing Alice, who was having a bath. I left her a note asking her to walk Sergei, but I didn't say where I was going or when I'd be back. I knew that one of the things that would happen that morning was that Hugh would telephone her, but I said nothing about this either. I was sure that Alice wouldn't mention Valentina's disappearance to him; she wanted to keep all her secrets silent and safe. As I went down the stairs, I said softly in Alice's Scottish voice: ‘Two can be as secretive as one, bonny lady.'

Moinel was already at the Deauville when I got there, at the table we'd occupied before. The moment I sat down, two apricot pastries were put in front of me with a foaming cup of coffee. I thought, Moinel's really thin but he understands about hunger better than most people.

He was drinking orange juice and he smiled as I ate. I had the feeling that because I felt so famished all the time my table manners were becoming disgusting. Crumbs from the pastries snowed my thighs.

On my way to the café, I'd remembered that I should have telephoned Carmody again, to tell him about the GOH file. I looked up from the food and asked Moinel: ‘Did you ever meet the translator that Valentina had before Alice? The American who stayed in her flat?'

Moinel made a face like he'd just been stung by a bee or by a horrible word. He put a hand up to his cheek. ‘Don't
talk
about that one!' he said.

‘Why? What was wrong with her?'

‘Gail. That was her name. In my darkroom, I sometimes heard her through the wall. She was like a gale!'

‘What did you hear?'

‘Shrieking. Insults. She was crazy. She didn't know what she was saying. My theory was she was a junkie.'

I was so impressed at Moinel knowing the word ‘junkie', like Valentina knowing the word ‘dawdle', that my mind didn't immediately recognise the seriousness of what he'd said. ‘Where is your darkroom?' I asked.

‘In the attic. I knocked two attic rooms into one. It's a work of art, my darkroom, the envy of my friends!'

‘Are you a photographer now?'

‘I'm lots of things. One of the things I do is photograph furniture – for magazines like
Connoisseur
and for sale catalogues.'

I told Moinel that my room was in Valentina's attic and that the room with the Wurlitzer must be next to his darkroom. Then I thought, why was Gail screaming in the attic? What were she and Valentina doing up there?

‘Do you think Gail slept in the attic?' I asked.

‘I presume she did sometimes. That was when I used to hear her, when I was in my darkroom.'

I was silent for a moment, giving my mind to the idea that Valentina had once chosen a drug addict as a translator. ‘How do you know Gail was a junkie?' I asked.

Moinel shrugged. ‘I don't,' he said. ‘It's malicious of me to suggest it. But she looked ill a lot of the time and she behaved like a crazy person, so I infer it.'

I began to clean up the pastry crumbs with my paper napkin. ‘Is it easy to get drugs in Paris?' I asked.

‘I don't really know. I suppose in any big city it's easy, if you know who to go to.'

Moinel called over one of the athletic waiters then and paid the bill. He kept his money not in a wallet, but in a little gold clip in the shape of an M. I saw that he was a neat, fastidious man and the only wild thing about him was the colour of his hair. Moinel was about forty-five and underneath the tangerine, I supposed, its natural colour was grey.

We got a taxi to the hospital. I'd hardly been in any taxis and I liked the way this one was driven really fast. On the way I saw a sign on a garage window saying ‘Voitures blindés à louer'. I knew what a
voiture blindée
was from the TV programme about Caen: it was a tank. I thought how brilliant it would be to ride to Valentina's rescue in a tank, just bulldozing my way smash bang through every obstacle.

They knew Moinel at the hospital reception desk. The minute they saw him come in, the two receptionists smiled and said, ‘Bonjour, Moinel. Ça va? Oui?'

He explained that we had to go to
Radiologie
and they gave us directions in the way that people do when they know their way round a place and you don't – exactly the way we gave directions to parents at Beckett Bridges School – not stopping to see if you're following their instructions or not.

We set off down a corridor. I hadn't often been inside a hospital. I asked Moinel if he didn't think it was spooky to think how many varieties of illness people could suffer from. He smiled and said a hospital was like an illness department store, with designer-illnesses and infinite choice. Then he said: ‘You see how English my sense of humour became in Pimlico?'