The Way I Found Her (36 page)

‘. . . 
At the theatre:
The two girls, my friend whose name is Valentine Blondeau and her sister, arrive wearing cheap scarves
.

‘Who is she?' I asked.

‘Can't you work it out?' said Moinel. ‘Remember when Meaulnes first finds the party going on at the lost domain and then the party breaks up because Frantz de Galais' fiancée never arrives?'

‘It's her? Valentine is the fiancée who never arrives?'

‘Yes. Meaulnes finds her waiting there, in front of the house once occupied by Yvonne. They've both gone there in search of their lost past, but they don't know each other.'

‘But what can we work out from that? Where was the house where they waited?'

‘As far as I can remember, we're never told. But I'm sure that what happens is that Valentine arranges a second meeting with Meaulnes, after the visit to the theatre. All we need to remind ourselves is where this meeting took place and on which day and we have decoded your note.'

I gave up on the salad. Moinel was scanning the text, which he held very close to his face. Then he read:

‘Moinel . . .'

‘Wait. Listen. We're getting to it. “
Unbeknown to her sister, Valentine gave me a rendezvous for tomorrow, Thursday
” –
Thursday,
you see, Louis! – “
at four, in front of the same theatre
. ‘
If I'm not there,
'
she said,
‘
come back Friday at the same time, and Saturday and so on
 . . .'”'

Moinel looked up. ‘There you are,' he said, ‘I think that's it: Thursday at four o'clock. Or Friday – and so on. You would have worked it out for yourself if you'd got to the end and they must have counted on this. They're the most literary kidnappers in the Western world – if kidnappers they are. But of course you won't go; you
mustn't
go! It's far too dangerous. You must give the note to Carmody.'

‘Go where?' I almost screamed. ‘It doesn't say which theatre!'

‘No,' said Moinel, his voice staying quiet and calm. ‘But we're told Valentine lives in a street “not far from Notre-Dame”. The theatre would have to be the one nearest to Notre-Dame; that's what I'd guess if I were your Porphiry Petrovich. Don't you think? It must be the Théâtre de la Ville or the Théâtre du Châtelet. We'll look at the map, but I'd put my money on the Théâtre de la Ville, which is very slightly further to the east.'

I wanted to give Moinel a hug. Once he'd led me to it, the coding seemed so simple and obvious. And all I could think about now was that only three days separated me from the moment when I would see Valentina again.

But then Moinel started trying to make me swear that I wouldn't go to the rendezvous. He said: ‘You're thirteen. Do you want to die?'

I knew nothing in the world was going to stop me, but I didn't say this. ‘I could die if I go to the police,' I said. ‘Look what the note says.'

‘OK,' he said, ‘don't go to Carmody – not yet. Do nothing. Hide the note and keep it safe, but you must swear
on your life
that you won't try to meet these people, Louis.'

I pointed out to Moinel that it hadn't been worth his while decoding the note for me if he was going to stop me acting on it. He replied that, like me, he enjoyed unravelling things, but that if I couldn't see what danger I was now in I was acting like a moron.

I thought, the time has come to lie. There's no other option. I said: ‘All right. I won't go, Moinel, but in return you have to swear to me that you won't tell Alice about the note. If Alice knows about this, I'll be sent home, definitely. So if you don't swear to this, I'll break my promise to you.'

‘Sure,' said Moinel. ‘It's a done deal.'

We were loading our supper things into Moinel's dishwasher when we came to this agreement. As he bent down, I could see that the roots of his tangerine hair were completely white. I thought, later, when I do break my promise to him, the thing that may really get to me will be my remembrance of this white hair.

As the day got nearer, I started to feel afraid. I was afraid because I'd realised that the sender of the note was probably the person whose head had appeared at my window. Instead of seeing Valentina on Thursday, I was going to see that face again, wrapped in its rags.

I tried not to think about this, but I knew that the things you try not to think about just take an alternative route into your mind via your dreams. So I gave Elroy a task. He used to have this task when I was about nine: I put him on dream-guard. I attached him to the gold bed head with a bit of string and he hung down, like a paratrooper, with his arms outstretched above my pillow, staring at the night.

What I tried to concentrate on was my plan. I thought Moinel might hang around secretly on Thursday afternoon, to make sure I wasn't going anywhere. But I knew how to get round this: I'd cover myself by seeming to be with Alice. If I left with Alice, at, say, two-thirty, he'd think I was safe with her. Under these circumstances, he wouldn't follow me. Then, all I had to do was to get from wherever I was with Alice to the meeting place by four o'clock.

The other thing that preoccupied my mind was the question of what I was going to take with me. I thought a weapon of some kind might be useful, just in case things got really terrifying, so I said to Violette: ‘If you were planning to defend your life, or someone else's life, with something from the kitchen drawer, what would you take?' I was hoping she might say a corkscrew or a garlic press or something and explain to me some brilliant voodoo method of using a harmless culinary utensil as a lethal weapon, but she didn't; she said: ‘I'd take a knife, stupid!'

So, when Violette had gone home, I chose a small knife, made by the firm of Sabatier, that Valentina used to use for chopping white onions. I sharpened it up and wrapped it in some kitchen paper. Even wrapped, the knife was small enough to go into one of my trouser pockets.

Then I remembered my promise to myself – that if ever I saw Valentina alive again, I'd take her a present. I looked through all my things, as if I expected to find some marvel there that I didn't know I possessed. But my things seemed sort of stupid and worn. What I really wanted to give her was something extraordinary, that she'd never seen before in her life.

On Wednesday morning, Hugh called when I was alone in the apartment.

He asked me how I was after my illness and I said I was fine. He didn't sound that concerned or interested because he started on immediately about the hut. He said it was finished! He sounded like he'd just completed the Forth Bridge. He said: ‘All that's left is to paint the interior and this is why I'm ringing, to ask you what colour you think Mum would like it to be.'

I was completely silent. I couldn't think of any colours. All I could think of was that moment, in my room, when Alice had taken a breath and started to tell me about ‘things you never intended . . . things that don't necessarily last . . .'

‘Are you there, Lewis?' asked Hugh.

‘White,' I said. ‘Paint it white.'

‘Isn't white dull? Isn't it cold? What about magnolia?'

‘Yes, or magnolia. Magnolia's good.'

‘Or do you think she'd like a brighter colour, like terracotta or red, even?'

‘I don't know, Dad,' I said.

There was a pause and I heard Hugh say something to Bertie or Gwyneth. ‘Bertie's suggesting green,' he said. ‘He says green is the most restful colour for the eye.'

‘Yeh,' I said. ‘Green's OK.'

‘But I can't remember if Mum likes it, can you?'

I thought of her dark-green velvet dress, the one she'd worn the night the face came to my window, the night she'd come home at three in the morning, and I said: ‘Dark green, she likes. I know.'

‘What about one wall dark green, then, and the other three magnolia, or the other three terracotta?'

I gave up on this conversation. I said: ‘You decide.'

Then Grandma Gwyneth came on the line and said: ‘We're so excited here, darling! This hut really is a masterpiece. We're dying for you to see it. I never thought Bertie and Hugh could pull off something like this, but they have, bless them. And we think Alice is going to love it – absolutely perfect, in summer, for her work.' Then she said, in a whisper: ‘But Hugh's missing you so, Lewis. He's counting the days now. Couldn't you come back at the weekend and then Alice can follow on? I'm sure your air ticket could be changed. They say there's only going to be another week of this wonderful weather . . .'

‘I can't, Grandma,' I said.

‘Why not, sweetheart? Think of the lovely swims you can go for. The sea's never been so warm in twenty years, apparently . . .'

I told her my last days in Paris were going to be very important, that there were friends I'd promised to see and thousands of things to do that I hadn't done yet. I hoped she wasn't going to ask me what things or what friends, and she didn't. She just changed her tack, because really and truly, even though she was fussy, she was a sweet and lovely woman.

When I hung up, I remembered that Alice had told me Bertie and Gwyneth had been about to go home to their flat in Salisbury, but there they still were, babbling about masterpieces and green paint. So then I thought, I really hope Hugh has invited them to live there, for always. I hope they've agreed and put their flat up for sale.

Part of me wondered if I would ever return to the rue Rembrandt after my meeting with the writer of the
Meaulnes
note.

This gave me the idea that I wanted to say a sort of goodbye to Didier, so on Wednesday afternoon I climbed out on to the roof and stood in the shade of the water tanks, looking all around for him. Alice was back in the apartment, so I thought he would be there, but at first I couldn't see him.

He appeared by me silently, as if he'd been two metres away all the time and I hadn't spotted him. He had a sad smile on his face.

‘Didier,' I said. ‘You're a philosopher . . .'

‘Not really. That's too grand a word.'

‘Yes, you are. Sort of. And I've been meaning to ask you something.'

His eyes flickered behind his glasses. He could tell I was in this serious kind of mood and he was worried about what I was going to say. ‘Ask me what?' he said.

‘Well,' I said, ‘my father once said to me – when we were meandering about by the sea – that I should think of my life as a rock pool and my quota of happiness as a tiny little shrimp in the pool and then I wouldn't be disappointed. Do you think he was right?'

Didier crouched down into his bird stance. The bird on his neck was shiny with sweat. He let a bit of time pass before he answered. Then he said: ‘There was a period in my life when I might have said that. I wasn't optimistic. But now, no. I would say he was wrong. What do you think, Louis?'

‘I don't know yet,' I said. ‘I haven't lived long enough. That's why I wanted to ask you.'

We were quiet. The heat from the roof shimmered all around us. Then Didier suddenly said: ‘I was very happy until my father died. Then angry and miserable for a long time. When something seems random and almost without cause it always strikes us, I think, as particularly unfair. And then we truly suffer. But we get over it in time.'

‘Are you talking about that day on the Salpêtrière dome?'

‘Yes.'

‘You never told me. You were going to tell me and then you didn't. What was it that came out of the sky?'

Didier didn't pause. He just went straight on. ‘An air balloon,' he said. ‘You know these things? It had been raining, but now the sky was clearing and I saw it a long way off, a striped balloon coming towards us. And I pointed it out to my father, because I knew he'd always wanted to do that – go up in a hot-air balloon.'

‘And then?'

‘Well, he looked at it. That's all. He took his eye off the scaffolding, just for a split second, to look at the balloon.'

Didier stood up. He took out a cigarette and lit it. I knew he wouldn't say anything more and wouldn't expect me to say anything. We just hung around, saying nothing.

And then I looked at him, alone up here on this enormous roof and thought, he's marooned. He could choose to stay in his life with Angélique or he could choose to abandon her and go off with Alice. But right now, he can't decide. He's choosing not to choose.

‘Goodbye, Didier,' I said after a while. ‘I guess I have to go now.'

When Thursday morning came, I said to Alice: ‘In all the time we've been here, I've never been inside the cathedral of Notre-Dame.'

She was working in her room. I thought, if she knew, as she will one day, that Valentina has stolen half her ideas from Grigory Panin's
Secret Life of Catherine the Great
, she would go completely and absolutely insane.