Harm's Way Read online

  I likened my initial meeting with Beth to falling in love. If that were the case, then those first days of September were our belated honeymoon. Splashing through the puddles of rain that lacquered the pavements of Paris and ruined our shoes, we walked from one side of the city to the next, down the banks lined with booksellers, sharing muscat grapes, soon to be out of season, from a paper bag.

  She was enchanted by the discovery of Shakespeare and Co., a second-hand bookshop on the rue de la Bûcherie where expats and ambitious young poets congregated. We would browse the shelves silently, never once buying a thing, whispering our findings to each other so as not to wake the homeless students sleeping on battered sofas at the back of the shop.

  However, after the first week without him, my physical yearning for Christian became insufferable. I hungered for sensations that might appease the restlessness: going from one exhibition to the next, preparing elaborate plates of food I couldn’t eat, endlessly switching radio channels unable to settle on a song I wanted to hear and struggling every night to find a comfortable position in which to sleep. My twin infatuations had become one. Watching Beth try on a trouser suit in an expensive shop on the Champs-Elysées, I sat in the communal changing room transfixed by her perfect hourglass shape from behind. I wondered if he’d ever seen the knickers she was wearing – plain black silk with a scalloped waistband – and for a moment allowed myself to enjoy the image of the two of them together.

  Christian had explained this temporary period of absence from her life (and mine) claiming two of his staff were off sick. Perhaps it was true. Anyhow, it didn’t matter. The idea of us becoming a couple had never even occurred to me: how would I be able to keep Beth? No, I was quite content for things to carry on the way they were.

  Thursday was late-night opening at the museum, and a miscellaneous crowd filtered through the doors from six o’clock onwards; lawyers and bankers with RSI, still clutching their briefcases, escaped their computer screens to seek an injection of culture. I had missed lunch that day and glared at the forlorn suits, waiting for them to feel they had seen enough to go home so that I could run to the supermarket and buy sufficient food to fill my tiny fridge.

  Franprix lit up its shoppers like mannequins in a warehouse. Guided by the blazingly cool tubes of light lining the aisles, I zigzagged past the fruit and vegetables, narrowly avoiding running over a crouching infant with my diminutive Parisian trolley. Intrigued, the four-year-old followed me at a respectful distance to the delicatessen, where I retrieved a single oeuf-en-gelée from a fridge shelf above his head. His quietly judgemental gaze made me uncomfortable, and, stashing the packet furtively in my trolley, I hurried on. The choices I had looked forward to making earlier on in the day now seemed mundane, with every option failing to arouse my taste buds. Catching sight of myself in a mirror above the freezer, I noticed a smudge on my cheek, and began to wipe it off with my sleeve.

  ‘Trust you to find somewhere to admire yourself, even in a supermarket,’ came a voice from behind me.

  ‘Beth,’ I said before turning, recognising that ironic Irish lilt instantly. But my surprised smile froze when I saw who was with her. ‘Christian. Hi.’

  He looked unflinchingly at me and allowed a polite smile to spread slowly across his lovely, blank face.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘So, what are you two doing here?’

  ‘Errrm …’ Beth had cocked her head to one side and was frowning indulgently at me. ‘We’re buying food. Why? What do you usually come here for?’

  She had sensed my embarrassment and in a second would begin to wonder about the reason for it. I knew I had to say something, anything, quickly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Supermarkets are amazing if you open your mind to things … So what have you got in there anyway? Let’s have a look.’ I peered into the plastic basket Christian was holding. ‘Jesus, you’ve bought half the shop. I hope that’s not all just for you two.’

  As soon as I’d said it, I realised what it must sound like: a plea to be invited for dinner.

  ‘God, you’re right. Darling we’ve got way too much here. Why don’t you come and join us, Anna? We’re making a raclette.’

  ‘Oh.’ I played for time. ‘Isn’t that meant to be a winter dish?’

  ‘Look outside: winter’s pretty much here.’

  It was the first thing Christian had said to me, and I wondered whether, like poor dialogue from a romantic novel, he was referring to the end of our relationship. Suddenly the allure of the evening ahead, with all its enjoyable complications, flared in my imagination.

  ‘Well, I have always wanted to try it. Yes, why not. I’d love to.’

  ‘Were you just going to have a quiet one?’

  She’d said it kindly, prompting them both to look into my trolley as we walked towards the checkout, but suddenly it sounded like pity.

  ‘I wish,’ I replied quickly, darting a glance at Christian to see if he was listening and hastily resting my trolley with its tell-tale contents in a corner. ‘No, I was supposed to be having someone over for a drink but I might just call and tell them I’m not feeling well. I wasn’t really in the mood for it anyway.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ said Beth. And, like a perfectly functioning family, we formed a conveyor belt with our groceries by the checkout counter.

  Looking back on that night, I find it hard to believe that I sat between those two, my conscience calm and my hands steady, eating the dishes Beth had painstakingly prepared, laughing at her jokes, once even kissing her on the cheek at a compliment she’d paid me. I don’t recall feeling any shame; initial discomfort faded as soon as we’d entered the flat. There seemed to be nothing more natural than spending the evening with the woman I adored and a man I desired. As soon as we’d walked in Beth had shrugged off her fitted Chinese satin jacket to reveal heavy breasts full of movement, the tips skimming against the thin cream jersey material of her top. Rather than feel the nudge of competition, I remember enjoying her figure, appreciating it like a man.

  ‘Now you two: make yourselves comfortable next door and open this.’

  She was made to be a mother, I thought, bossy and tender, warm and practical. She handed me a bottle of Fleurie from the top of the fridge, and Christian a corkscrew. A wall partially separated the kitchen from the sitting room, so that as I placed the bottle on the coffee table, steadying it with one hand and twisting the metal spike into the cork with the other, we were still able to hear Beth speaking to us from next door. Amidst the gongs of saucepans and slamming of drawers, she told us she was convinced she was going to be promoted. Her boss had praised her that day on a project she’d just completed on the forthcoming season’s Maoist look.

  ‘He told me he had “great things in store” for me. I mean, what else could he mean?’

  ‘Here, let me do that: you’re making a total mess of it,’ Christian whispered, dragging his teeth across his bottom lip in consternation at my miserable efforts.

  Picking my fingers gently off the neck of the bottle as though they were a bird with a broken neck, he put the wine between his knees and uncorked it in one swift movement.

  ‘So that’s all pretty good news, don’t you think?’

  From next door, Beth’s words had been tripping over each other in their continuous sing-song rhythm without me hearing them.

  ‘Great news,’ we chorused: she had just walked into the room holding a bowl of pistachio nuts.

  ‘If I do get a promotion, I might even move out of this place and get somewhere of my own.’

  The way she looked at Christian when she said this (‘of my own’ not ‘on my own’) with a barely perceptible widening of the pupils, left no doubt as to its meaning. Unimpressed by her homely female politics, I picked up a magazine and started casually flicking through pages sticky with colour, waiting for the threat of bad humour to dissipate.

  ‘So where’s Stephen?’

  ‘Out on a date with some girl he met on the métro.’


  ‘Really? My God, that boy is unbelievable. How does he do it?’

  ‘You know how he does it: you’ve seen him in action.’

  A bubbling sound from next door had sent Beth speedily out of the room.

  ‘Potatoes are done,’ she flung back through the partition. ‘Now we … Oh, damn.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got oil on my top. How did I do that?’

  Leaving Christian in the sitting room, I went to inspect the damage. With her chin to her chest, Beth was dabbing at the stain with a kitchen towel, darkening an already noticeable discolouration beneath her left breast.

  ‘Take it off and put it in some cold water. I would.’

  ‘Good idea. Keep an eye on the vegetables while I change.’

  I was doing just that when, a minute later, Beth called out from her bedroom. ‘Anna – can you help me with this a second?’

  Facing the mirror, her hair held high above her head with both hands like a Degas pastel, she was waiting for me in a dark-green shirt of the sheerest silk, a spine of tiny mother-of-pearl buttons breaking apart halfway up her back, where she could no longer reach them.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  The skin of her neck was even paler than the rest of her, sheltered, as it had always been, by her hair. In fascination I absorbed how the subtle gradations of colour on her back became translucent where the crest of her shoulders curved into her neck. A single curled wisp of hair, shorter than the rest, purer in colour and sweetly tender, had escaped her grip, and as I brushed it aside, I suppressed a furious impulse to press my lips against that unsuspecting skin.

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s a hook at the top.’

  ‘Yes – I got that.’

  ‘Good. We’d better go and check on things next door.’

  We sat in that tiny kitchen, chatting, cutting up mushrooms, peppers, ham and salami into geometric shapes which might have belonged in an infant’s play box, while I waited for my moment of disorientation to pass. Later, as Beth handed out the little iron trays of bubbling cheese to us, forgetting to put one on her own plate, her eyes creasing into slits at one of her own jokes, I noticed that her benevolence actually infused the air around her, so that she took ownership of the spaces she moved in. For a moment I pictured all three of us settling into some Jules et Jim-style scenario, until after dinner Beth threw a look my way. The significance of that raised eyebrow and kindly set mouth from a hostess is unmistakable, but Beth had never used it with me before. I was being asked to leave, which meant that I was not (as I had thought) in control of the situation: there was still something between Beth and Christian that bore no relation to me. I did not enjoy the feeling and I wasn’t sure which of the two my jealousy was directed at.

  Deciding to ignore her unspoken plea and delay my departure, I watched Beth scrape the plates clean of congealed cheese, each swipe of the knife making her tacit demand more insistent. When the last one had been placed in the dishwasher, I capitulated, resentful of the indelicate way I was being thrown out.

  ‘Where’s my coat?’

  ‘It’s on the back of the chair next door, darling.’

  The exchange was a fraction too rapid. Christian was already crouched in front of the television, a blue screen of flickering white ants, fiddling with the channels. Were they going to watch a film together after I left? Had they, in subdued voices while I was out of the room, already decided which one to watch?

  ‘Are you off?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘Sure you do.’

  Taking advantage of the moment he hoisted himself up by the arm of the sofa. I kissed him peremptorily on the lips and whispered: ‘When can I see you?’

  ‘Beth and Stephen are having dinner with the old couple from downstairs next Tuesday …’

  Terrified we would be heard, I mouthed: ‘Come at eight.’

  I left jettisoned by the thought that Beth had stepped into the role of the wife with tiresome friends. As the door closed I stood for a while, deciding between the elevator or a four storey descent, determining whether or not to let this fling with Christian become something more serious.

  It was on the Monday, while awaiting the arrival of two omelettes in the brasserie on the corner of quai Voltaire and rue du Bac that my phone gave a tell-tale hiccup: a text message from Stephen.

  ‘Beth v low. Help me cheer her up tonight?’

  Unable to wait until after lunch to find out more, I excused myself and rang Stephen back from the shoebox-sized lavatory out the back of the restaurant.

  ‘It’s me. Hi. What do you mean low? Why?’

  ‘Her father, you know.’ I covered my mouth with my hand, lest he should hear my sigh of relief. ‘Beth’s aunt rang last night: apparently he’s not in a good way. Anyway, there’s not much we can do, but …’

  ‘Of course there is. Why don’t I come over and bring some lovely take-away from Le Mille-Pâtes. That way neither of you have to cook.’

  Beth, who had declined to share a bottle of wine with us that evening, stopped peeling the label off the Evian bottle for a moment and looked up with a smile.

  ‘This is delicious, Anna. You shouldn’t have – you must have spent a fortune.’

  She looked lovely that night: clear-skinned and full-faced with the lights in her eyes dancing genially, the last waltz of lovers who would not be spending the night together.

  ‘My dad rang this morning,’ she’d said, as soon as she opened the door, desperate to confide her fears in me.

  I pressed my lips together in silent sympathy, wishing I could stem the morose thoughts seeping from her, but knowing that the truth was inexorable, and that the guilt that paid for every carefree second she spent in Paris away from her father would curdle all that was good in her until she returned, if only briefly, to Ireland.

  ‘Beth, why don’t you take some time off work and spend a couple of weeks with him back home? I just think it’s the only thing that will put your mind at rest. And I’m sure your boss would understand.’

  The suggestion had been made out of friendship, but the possibilities for Christian and me surfaced amidst a wave of other thoughts.

  ‘It’s not that, Anna. I know I can go back there any time I like. But what’s the fucking point? He wouldn’t even recognise me. Do you have any idea what that’s like? For your own father to look straight through you?’

  I didn’t. And I had never heard Beth swear before. I was as shocked as when, as a pious ten-year-old, I’d peered down the stairs at a dinner party my parents were holding to see my mother smoking a cigarette. It wasn’t so much the fact that she occasionally smoked that had enraged me, but the sensual languor of her pose. The next morning over breakfast I’d lost my temper with her, then, quite without explanation, had burst into tears.

  ‘Anyway, it’s boring, so boring for you two to have to listen to this. Hell, even I’m bored by the whole thing. Anna, do you mind if I just go to bed? I’m afraid I’m not great company tonight.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  I made a move to hug her, but she had already got up and begun clearing the table.

  ‘Leave that – for God’s sake. Just get yourself to bed.’

  We waited, eyes downcast, until we heard her bedroom door clicking shut. Stephen sighed and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Jesus. That poor girl. Do you know how long she’s had to live with this? Her whole life. I can even remember Ruth telling me that, at school, when they were both studying for A levels, Beth would have to leave early at least twice a week to drive her mother to the hospital for check-ups. The teachers all knew, of course, but she’d have to get up in the middle of their maths class, pack her things and walk out, in front of everyone. Then she had to cut short an internship with some amazing Italian designer and return home. Her dad had been found miles away from the house in his pyjamas trying to climb on to one of the neighbours’ horses.’
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  ‘God.’

  I was uncomfortable with details, seldom able to mould my sympathy into an adequate phrase. Giving advice or reassurance felt as unnatural to me as a foreign language: fearful of saying the wrong thing I stumbled over every word.

  ‘I know so little about Alzheimer’s … but it’s horrid, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Conscious of how banal our conversation sounded, how little it helped Beth, we sat in silence until Stephen regretfully finished his cigarette and I wondered whether to leave.

  ‘Where’s Christian?’

  I hadn’t been ready for the question and my rushed answer sounded defensive.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Why?’

  ‘No reason. But she could probably do with a shoulder to cry on right now, and I’m beginning to wonder whether he gives her enough support about this.’ Stephen closed his eyes and drew his fingers symmetrically together from the furthest edge of both cheekbones to the end of his nose in a manner that betrayed his enjoyment at passing judgement.

  ‘Sometimes I think there’s just too much history between us for me to be of any real help. I know that sounds odd, but knowing someone too well sort of makes their advice redundant somehow. Should we call Christian and get him to come over?’