Authors: Sasha Faulks
Revived by some solid hours’
sleep, Chris took in the scene of burgeoning babyhood and purposeful childhood
with a heart that could have been blowtorched by the pain of love and
attachment. Paul Bénard may have noticed this as he laid the table with
croissants and bread and coffee, and said:
“Ah, it’s too late to put them
all in a sack and throw them into the
Seine
.
Tant pis!
”
Chris looked out upon the scene
that his host had described from the long window of the breakfast room: it
might have been the inspiration for a painting by Monet, as the morning
sunlight suggested an easy vibrant palette of blues, greys and greens for the
statuesque trees and wispy reeds around the lake. The water twinkled serenely.
There was a wooden platform in the middle. Chris tried to imagine a young
Bénard and his sister Edith scampering around the garden and adventuring out
onto the lake: doing their best not to distract their father from his work, or
alarm their mother who might be resting somewhere in a room with the curtains
drawn.
“Can we ask Chris about her
breakfast, Bobo?” the elder child Sophie said to Bénard . She was wearing
spectacles that she had been chastised for forgetting to put on the day before;
which improved the slight squint in her gaze and made her look even more like
her uncle.
“The girls wanted to offer your
little piglet some baby food,” the latter said to Chris, who was reaching out
to his daughter’s grasping, inquisitive fingers.
“Baby food? Isn’t she a little
young for that?” he replied.
“Well, she is on the young
side,” said Bénard. “However, she may be in need of something a little more
satisfying than milk. This is maybe why she is not sleeping so well. And see
how she holds her head up, like a tiny demon? I think she may be ready.”
“I wasn’t prepared for solid
food just yet,” said Chris. “I have a kind of encyclopaedia at home in London,
which talks about introducing it at between four and six months.”
Amélie beat her palms
indiscriminately onto the tray of her highchair, working some bubbles out onto
her small, wet chin: Sophie and Cécile sat alongside her swinging their legs
and finishing their bowls of chocolate.
“I have seen the weaning of
many piglets: I am blessed with a lot of cousins and so forth. It is not
unusual for a baby to be ready for food a little earlier,” said Bénard. “We can
try her with some baby rice if you care to allow it: she will let you know if
she is not happy.”
With Chris’s tentative approval,
the girls retrieved a bowl and spoon from their uncle’s steaming dishwasher,
rinsed them from the kettle and made a mixture from a paper packet and some of
Amélie’s formula milk that looked a little like
Polyfilla
.
“It doesn’t look very appetising,”
said Chris.
“Try it,” said Cécile.
“He is English, it will taste
very good to him,” said Bénard; then raised his hand gently over his nieces’
enthusiasm to add: “Ah-ah, let the daddy feed his baby. This is the first time,
you see.”
The girls made deflated
gestures, but sat back obediently while Chris took a tiny spoonful of the pale
gloop and offered it to Amélie.
“She will fight you at first,”
continued Bénard, gently. He had thrown a tea towel over his broad shoulder and
had seated himself at Chris’s elbow. “But take your time.”
Amélie’s tongue rolled at the
spoon and she turned her face away. Under the critical eye of his young tutors,
Chris felt he should not be deterred and made a renewed approach. Although her
expression was mildly disgusted, Amélie’s mouth moved with interest as though
she was taking part in her first solitary dinner party in spite of herself.
Chris carefully scraped the soggy returns from around her chin and plied them
again. After a few minutes, Amélie may have swallowed around half a teaspoon.
She orchestrated an end to the proceedings with a frustrated wail and a
windmilling of her arms. Chris felt secretly elated.
“Bravo, Papa,” said Bénard. The
girls cleared away the dishes without prompting: satisfied that their request
had been acted upon but palpably disappointed by their lack of involvement in
its execution.
“You are extraordinary young
ladies,” said Chris, responsively. “Amélie and I cannot thank you enough for
your help.”
Two pairs of blue, darting eyes
– one pair a little diminished behind lenses – settled happily on
the Englishman’s face; their mass of bobbing curls not quite able to hold
still:
“We love to help. We love
babies,” they said.
Chris took some Euros from his
pocket and offered them to Sophie and Cécile who gasped, and looked in
exuberant hopefulness at their uncle for his approval.
“You may,” he said, with a nod.
“It is not necessary: but very kind of Monsieur Skinner.”
“
Ah, merci, merci.
Thank you!” the girls
trilled; and took their leave of the adults with a skip in their step and in
animated discussion about how they would spend their unexpected fortune.
Chris and Amélie arrived at the
Cimetière du
Père Lachaise
later that day in the company of a few straggling tourists.
He felt as though he had
arrived at a garden centre for the dead: and realised he couldn’t consult his
guide book for the whereabouts of Jim Morrison’s burial place as he had left it
on the Metro train around twenty minutes earlier.
The cemetery was unlike
anything he had ever witnessed in the UK. There were rows upon rows and avenues
upon avenues of graves, tombs, sepulchres: creating a mass testimony out of
stone and marble to the glory of life, in death.
Amélie slept in her buggy as
Chris paraded steadily around the site: he was able to sit down here and there
– rather glad that he didn’t have the distraction of a guidebook, in the
end – in order to take in the morbid majesty of his surroundings. He
lifted his face to the bright September sky – the easily overlooked canopy
of the rather gloomy conurbation below. It was, in some contrast, uncluttered
and cloudless: charged with azure promise and the occasional chirruping of
birds.
He wondered whether Amélie had
come here as a child, or in her youth; or whether there were members of her family
buried here. He felt sure there would be a story to tell, if she were with him.
He imagined the two sulky sisters Angélique and Amélie strutting around the
lanes in his midst, ignoring the significance of the gravestones and squabbling
over a notebook or a stolen cigarette. Angé would win the argument through
perseverance and elder sisterly guile; and Amé would carry her defeat home in
stubborn silence, pacing behind her with arms crossed. Not unlike Peter and
Christopher, in a different world.
Chris unwrapped a ham sandwich
that Bénard had packed for him from the kitchen; not entirely sure whether it
was permitted (or whether it would just be considered improper) to eat in a
cemetery. The soft crust and salty meat melting in his mouth was too good to resist,
however, and he had devoured his brief lunch before a disgruntled onlooker or
his own conscience had the chance to get the better of him.
He strolled until the novelty
of grave spotting for notables was overtaken by his desire to find more
refreshment: conscious also that Amélie would not rest for much longer; and
would be in need of a feed and change. He found Moliere raised up on broad
stilts - as if to elevate him from the condition of a less ordinary dead person
– and eventually poor old Jim Morrison, who was destined to reside in a
terminal bed of relatively drab grey stone, albeit dressed with some fresh
bunches of bright flowers and handwritten messages of affection and respect.
He whistled “Light My Fire” on
his way to the Metro station; conceding that Bénard had been right about the
oddly uplifting nature of the
Cimetière
. The sense of human endeavour to preserve the memory of
the dead in one somewhat congested spot seemed to serve as a reminder of the
blessing of life –
any
life, whether extraordinary or not.
They found a pleasant café
dedicated solely to the art of the iced cupcake, where Chris was able to change
Amélie and give her a bottle, before indulging in some of the sweet cakes and
coffee himself. He chose two particularly pretty examples, decorated with
fondant sweets and glitter, to take back to the
Hotel Bénard
for Sophie and Cécile.
When they eventually made it
back to base, they found Bénard at his now familiar station behind the
reception desk, tapping at his computer with the telephone headpiece tucked
between his ear and his neck. He duly ignored Chris and Amélie, until they
attempted to pass him on their way to the lift; when he cut short his discourse
of garbled French and arrested them with:
“At last, Monsieur Skinner! I
have been attempting to contact you. Is your phone not working in Paris?”
Chris pulled the gadget from
his pocket to discover that its generally blank face was, in fact, completely
dead.
“Damn! My battery must have
gone. I usually charge it overnight.”
“I have two messages for you.”
Bénard lifted first one then another square of paper from where they had been
speared onto a particularly vicious looking spike: it looked like an
administrative torture weapon.
“You do? Who would be
contacting me here?”
Chris’s mind lurched, not
unusually, towards Amélie. Dare he hope that she had followed him to Paris? He
looked for a positive sign on Bénard’s amiable face as he took the paper
messages; but the hotelier was busy redialling his last caller and continuing
his former conversation with a degree of haste.
The first message Chris read
was from Linda.
Call
ASAP.
The second was from a P.Bénoit.
There was a landline number written next to the name.
Bénard came swiftly from his
call and planted his fat forefinger firmly on the first piece of paper:
“Your sister-in-law?”
“Yes,” said Chris, hazily. “But
this one: that’s Amélie’s surname. Was someone calling me from somewhere here
in Paris? Was it a member of her family?”
Bénard shrugged:
“I have no idea,” he said. His
finger had remained in place. “This is the one more urgent, I think.”
Chris was wracking his brains
for a remembrance of a cousin or an older relative that Amélie might have
mentioned.
P?
In the still of his hotel
reception, Bénard had dialled the number on the first piece of paper and handed
the receiver to Chris:
“This is family,” he said.
“Chris, is that you?”
said
Linda’s very English voice, suddenly cutting through him like the squeak of
crystal glass against a linen tea towel.
“God, at last! Look, you’re going to have to come
home: your mum’s had a heart attack.”
Chapter Fourteen
Chris would have preferred to
make the train journey up to Birmingham – even with Amélie and all her
baby paraphernalia – but Peter was volunteering to drive them in his Landcruiser.
The
EuroStar
shuttle
back to St Pancras had provided a relatively quiet opportunity for him to order
and organise his mind before seeing his parents; and he wanted more time.
His mother, Jean, had collapsed
in the supermarket. It was a Wednesday: she would have gone on her own –
for faggots for their tea – while Roy would have been having a lunchtime
pint at the pub: The Wagon and Horses. He would have received the news like a
blow to his skull. She would be in his mind’s eye bruised, maybe bleeding.
Christ, even dead.
Chris had slept fitfully on his
last night in Paris. Amélie hardly stirred; only feeding once at four thirty.
He felt sick and afraid for his mother, his father.
He was an absent, self-obsessed, uncaring son. He had
cocooned himself in his own despair for most of the past year. He had become a
father himself and had continued to wallow – coming up briefly for air
when other people applied their shoulder to his buckling wheel – while
his own parents, now
grandparents
, had not even entered his inner field of vision. How
could he have let that happen?
Edith Bénard had driven him to
the
Gare du
Nord
with Sophie and Cécile, who fastened themselves to him like tight
little barnacles that their mother had to prise away from him when they were
ready to leave. Paul had also embraced him warmly before he left.
“Good luck and
bon chance,
Chris
Skinner,” he said. “You have another challenge now, with your little piglet. I
hope to see you again.”
He had last seen his parents
– fleetingly – at Christmas. Peter and Linda had invited them to
stay in London, in their usual way, which meant they were welcome for as long
as they wanted to be there. There was a larder full of festive food and drink;
and people coming and going – including members of Linda’s family –
so that whenever Peter and Linda were working, Roy and Jean were generally
taken care of. They were reluctant sightseers, but they had accompanied Linda’s
parents to the theatre and out for dinner: an occasion that they would have
referred back to with gratitude and awe for some weeks, if not months, to
follow.