Harm's Way Read online

  Vincent and I joined the rest of the group after lunch, and our small party began to straggle up the banks of the river towards the Champs-Elysées. Beth had had the foresight to arrange for us all to go to the Bastille party being held at the Salle Wagram, a huge eighteenth-century converted theatre and music hall. Nearly a thousand people were expected, and the dress code was strictly red, white and blue. I’d bought a blue dress that buttoned down the front, retouched a pair of battered red Minnie Mouse-style shoes found in a bargain basket at a second-hand shop, and completed the outfit with a white ribbon in my hair.

  As usual, the men had made the minimum effort, simply wearing striped shirts and jeans, but Beth drew glances in the street, fresh and beautiful in a 1950s-style blue and white polka-dot dress with a red sash that enticed the eye to her neat waist. I could smell the heat of the midday sun in my hair, rich and pungent like a sunbathing cat’s fur, and a rivulet of perspiration had already formed between my breasts. Although Beth, regretting her choice of shoes, clung to my arm through the crowds, her skin was not clammy like mine, which stuck to hers, reawakening waves of her scent with every perspiring step. Even in pain, she was dignified in the animalistic way that only women can be, and I felt weak in the face of it. There was something about Beth that made you want to feed off her strength: I derived more pleasure looking at her than I did watching Christian that day.

  Instinctively we both stopped walking as we saw that the normally uniform grey upward expanse of the Champs stretching before us was filled with an impressionistic mass of daubed colour, cluttered with people of all sizes.

  The men carried children on their shoulders, while rows of damp, pink faces shone around steaming crêperie stalls. Periscopes being sold on street corners, in order to afford onlookers a better view, captured solid gold prisms of light and projected them randomly across the crowds. Stephen had made sangria in an old two-litre Evian bottle which began to be passed around as soon as we’d found a spot by the roadside. Standing in front of Vincent I could feel his body giving off heat, while the arms around my waist could have been anyone’s for all the emotions they stirred in me. The procession seemed interminable. Nobody noticed or cared when Chirac finally passed by.

  ‘Remind me again why we didn’t watch it on telly?’ said Stephen as we fought through the slowly moving crowds to seek refuge in a nearby café.

  ‘Oh come on Stephen. You’re just grouchy because for once you haven’t got a date,’ I laughed.

  ‘Something I’m going to deal with pretty swiftly,’ he rejoined easily, pinching the skin on the back of my arm.

  Inside it was cooler, and the crispness of the gin and tonic cut through my stomach, unsteady and thick in the heat. Thankful that the group was large enough for me to allow myself to watch Christian unnoticed, I deliberately placed myself on the fringe of a discussion which required only the occasional nod. Vincent was discussing the pros and cons of de Villepin with a slight, pretty friend of Beth’s, so I permitted myself a few moments of sensual contemplation. Talking casually to Stephen, and dressed in a white cheesecloth shirt pulled tight against his broad shoulders, Christian had his sleeves rolled to the elbow, yet there were dots of dampness beneath his right armpit that merged into a small, transparent oval. There was something so sensual, so base in the suggestion of the warm body under that shirt that I had to look away. I needn’t have bothered: he’d barely glanced at me all day. Stephen had rapidly turned his attention to an elfin girl on the adjoining table, and I leant forward to ask Christian whether his restaurant would be full that night.

  ‘From the looks of things earlier on, I guess so. The place is crammed full of bloody Americans at the moment,’ he replied. ‘All they ever want is a beer for themselves and a cosmopolitan for the wife. Still, it keeps things ticking over nicely and the staff are grateful for the tips.’

  His was an apparently unexceptional life, yet there was nothing about it that didn’t interest me. I wanted to discover whether he liked Beth for the same reasons I did, what position he slept in, and what his school reports had said about him as a child. As soon as Christian stopped talking, the expression drained from his eyes and was replaced with a vacuous glaze. He looked stupid and beautiful, like a model in a magazine.

  By the time we left to make our way to the Salle Wagram, the streetlights had turned the café’s white awning a burnt orange colour. After queueing round the side of the building, we were greeted by a sight I would never forget. Ushers in wigs and Napoleonic costume were taking people’s coats, while a ten-foot drag queen dressed as Marianne, the emblem of France, complete with stilt-like stilettos filled with gloopy glitter, inspected the outfits before allowing people into the main room.

  It was a quarter to twelve, yet everywhere bodies gyrated to an insistent Raï beat and the mournful cries of an Arab woman, sun-flushed faces miming words to songs they didn’t know, smiles going cheap. Sucked into the whirlwind of dancers, Vincent and I soon found ourselves swaying together. Had he always been this keen to touch me? His arms were everywhere, whistling around my hips, brushing against my shoulders, detaching damp hair from my neck. The tiny kisses he inflicted on each inch of bare flesh were leaving trails of saliva down my arms, his stubble irritating my skin. I pushed him back roughly.

  ‘I’m going to get a drink!’ I shouted across the din, desperate to escape from him and thankful that he made no attempt to accompany me. By the time I’d reached the bar my dress was sticking to my back, and I could see that there were people four deep waiting to be served.

  Turning, parched and exasperated, to go back the way I came, I registered Christian alone, standing a little way off by one of the carved stone columns. As I approached, he saw me and smiled. He was holding a large ice-filled drink which glowed turquoise in the strobe lights.

  ‘Want some?’

  He held it out to me and I sucked half of it up, gratefully, spilling a few drops down my dress.

  ‘I was trying to get a drink at the bar but …’

  My back was against the column, and in the instant before his lips were on mine I recognised them as being as familiar as my own. It lasted a mere second, but as he disappeared through the oblivious crowds I looked down to see that my dress was undone, and felt the delayed sensation of his hands against my exposed breasts. Fumbling to button myself up, and moving sharply away from the column, as if blaming it in some way for what had happened, I began to laugh with surprise, with horror, with longing. Then I saw Vincent, a few feet away, looking at me with the mute stupidity of an animal.

  Five

  Paris was hung-over. Shopkeepers took down the battered flags from their awnings, and swept up dirtied strings of multicoloured paper from their plots of pavement, muttering ‘Bonjour’ to each other quietly, as though fearful of waking the sleeping city. It did not surprise me to see, when I woke, that Vincent was not lying next to me. From the look on his face the night before I’d known that I would never see him again. I didn’t care; I felt only relief at his disappearance, now certain that he would never tell Beth what he had witnessed. At first I’d thought he might do just that: walk over to her on the dance floor of that heaving club, whisper in her ear and watch as her expression turned to disbelief. The kiss had left me limp enough not to have cared if he had. But instead Vincent had turned and left. I hadn’t even tried to go after him, preferring to lose myself with strangers the rest of the night. I left around 5 a.m., without saying goodbye to anyone.

  The phone rang and I extended my arm just as far as I needed to unhook it with a finger. It was Beth, hesitantly asking if we could meet. After replacing the receiver, I remained completely still, my arm in mid-air, paralysed by the thought that somehow she knew. We met on the Pont Neuf, where a model in a transparent raincoat and black underwear was being photographed for a fashion magazine, and walked through the side arch of the Louvre into the main courtyard. Did she know? She was as talkative as usual, but there was tension in her demeanour. On either side of the Pyra
mid, shards of refracted sunlight danced on the sheets of surrounding water.

  Sitting wearily on the low marble border, I heard myself ask, ‘So what’s going on?’

  ‘It’s Christian.’ Beth ran a pale hand through the water. ‘He was in a weird mood when we got home, well, this’ll probably sound stupid to you …’

  ‘No,’ I urged, my voice metallic, ‘go on.’

  ‘Just that he seemed, I don’t know, distant – or something. The way we are together, in bed, Anna,’ she looked at me and shook her head smilingly, ‘it’s like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. There are no boundaries, nothing we can’t do in front of each other.’ She stopped, noticing my reddening cheeks. ‘Sorry – am I embarrassing you?’

  ‘No,’ I urged, wanting to know every detail now more than ever.

  ‘Well, last night it was different.’

  ‘You slept together last night?’

  ‘Yes.’ She seemed surprised at the interruption. ‘It was brief and, well, rough, then as soon as it was over he shrank away from me and fell asleep on the other side of the bed. I’m sure I’m reading too much into it, but it was just a bit disconcerting – as though he were angry with me about something.’

  I had difficulty hiding my smile of relief.

  ‘Is that all? My God, Beth, he was probably drunk – and tired. It was pretty late by the time we got home.’

  She was beaming, relieved. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but – and don’t take this the wrong way – I’ve slept with a few more men than you over the years, Anna, and trust me, you can tell a lot from the way a man behaves in bed. Normally, we can’t get enough of each other. It’s like both of us have the same compulsive need to just touch each other; sometimes we just do that, and nothing else, for hours.’

  I swallowed hard and waited for any trembling in my throat to vanish before attempting to speak. I had slept with two men, three now, counting Vincent, none of whom had provoked anything like the feelings Beth had described to me.

  ‘Still,’ she went on, ‘if there were anything wrong he’d never have suggested we go away together, would he?’

  ‘Go away together?’ I managed feebly, my smile a painted grimace on my face. ‘Just like that? I mean – you haven’t known him that long … Do you think it’s a good idea? Where would you go?’

  ‘His uncle’s got a little house on the Île de Ré that we can use,’ she explained absently.

  I was shocked. The kiss must have been fuelled by alcohol, or perhaps to test whether his instincts about me being an ‘easy English girl’ were correct. And I’d unquestioningly accepted his advances, despite having every reason not to.

  ‘Well,’ I said, feeling the stone walls of the courtyard vacillate around me, and knowing that I should talk, say something. ‘That sounds pretty exciting. And it couldn’t have come at a better time: you were just saying the other day how tired you are; how badly you need a break. You should definitely go.’ This last phrase reinstated me in my important position as her friend, I felt, giving me back a vague sense of power.

  Beth looked surprised.

  ‘Oh, I’m going to.’

  Pure happiness broke out on her face. She put her arm around me and squeezed my waist tightly.

  ‘I should trust youth over experience,’ she laughed with delight. ‘Because it’s just like you’ve always said: I should stop questioning things and just go with them.’

  I couldn’t remember saying that, but if I had I wished I hadn’t.

  ‘I know it’s still early on, but I’ve never met anyone quite like him, Anna. I can’t even find any points of comparison with other men because it’s all so different. And I know the fact that he’s French plays a part, but the important thing is that he feels the same way about me, which I think he does – otherwise he wouldn’t have suggested this.’

  She was silent for a while, pushing back the cuticle on her thumbnail as though the action might help quantify in some precise scientific way just how dear she was to Christian.

  ‘But Jesus, here I am going on about my life and I haven’t even asked how things are with Vincent.’

  ‘Oh.’ I cared about as much about Vincent right now as about the line of ants weaving their way behind my left foot. Less, in fact, as they at least gave me a reason not to look at Beth. ‘Well, I’m not that keen on him,’ I said, angling the tip of my flip-flop on a wayward member of the procession and pushing gently down on it. ‘In fact, I doubt I’ll be seeing that much more of him.’

  Beth looked shocked. Even the closest friends, I reflected, fail to notice what is going on around them when caught up in their own relationships. As if to confirm this she stood up, brushing imaginary dirt off her skirt.

  ‘Really? I’m surprised. I thought you two were quite good together. I even thought maybe he might turn out to be your first love.’ She smiled, leant forward and tucked a lose strand of hair behind my ear.

  I was irritated by the maternal nature of the gesture, the tantalising waft of her scent, everything. Until that moment Beth had never adopted such a tone with me. Now, there she was, smugly pushing me towards this insignificant person, this nothingness. And all so that she needn’t feel guilty about her own liaison, about leaving me behind as she went off with Christian. I bit my lip to avoid spitting out the few words it would take to wipe the smile from her face.

  ‘I’d better go home and pack.’

  ‘What, now? When were you two thinking of leaving?’ My words stung, made me feel like an outsider looking in.

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. Christian wants to leave first thing tomorrow morning. And actually that suits me too – it’s all pretty quiet at work at the moment.’

  We walked silently back across the bridge and I found myself disliking it for being quite so picturesque, so smug and consistent in its own beauty. Beth was musing out loud about which clothes she should pack, and I, unsteady on my feet, tried in vain to decipher the whole turn of events. Was Christian doing this because he felt guilty? Or was it because of a genuine fondness for Beth? As I darted a sideways look at her happy profile, my heart lifted. I alone knew that what made her look older that day were the wrinkles of joy sharpening her eyes, that because she’d once had to let out the skirt that she was wearing, it was only ever worn on ‘fat days’. He couldn’t love her like I did.

  The photo shoot was finished now, and a browbeaten photographer’s assistant was busy clearing away what seemed an unnecessary amount of equipment. I spent the remainder of the day pacing my flat, berating myself for having let a Parisian backdrop temporarily erase the cynicism I was so proud of.

  An interminable succession of covered, over-ripe days followed. In the evenings I tried to keep busy, spending one suffocating night with desiccated friends of my parents, another accompanying Isabelle to an art launch, and the rest of the week insatiably drinking in the lesser-known parts of Paris. But my discoveries were less exultant without Beth by my side: standing before Moreau’s lurid depiction of Salomé in the eccentric one-man museum it had taken me nearly an hour to find, I half turned to share my thoughts with her, only to find that she was not there. I found squares, shops and lost corners of Paris so wonderful that I would pretend to discover them weeks later with Beth by my side, simply to be able to relive the moment with her. I was dismayed when, having sent her an excited text message about a period costume shop behind the Place Monge that I had chanced upon, I received a perfunctory ‘sounds fun’ in return. Since she had left, her messages had been short and sparse, with a ring of politeness about them I couldn’t stand. And yet the information I crammed into my otherwise empty days failed to block her out. Still I found time to picture Beth brushing a strand of hair out of Christian’s eyes, imagining, with a shiver, his hands on her hips, the way, she had once blushingly told me, he liked to hold her steady.

  * * *

  Vincent never called again. But Stephen was not so easily dismissed.

  ‘What do you mean nothing,’ he said so loudly in
the halls of the Louvre that a far more conscientious guard than I immediately shushed us.

  ‘Just that nothing’s happening there. We haven’t spoken to each other in a while. It was never a big deal.’ I shrugged.

  ‘Oh, I know what’s going on here.’ He grinned, inadvertently obscuring Rubens’ Wife from the collective gaze of a group of Japanese. ‘I was the same at your age – too many temptations out there to stick to just the one person.’

  I laughed, thinking how little he knew me, and how our friendship would probably not exist if it weren’t for Beth.

  ‘So you’ve changed a lot over the years,’ I murmured sarcastically. ‘Seriously, though, I just didn’t particularly like him. He was wet … you know I can’t bear that.’

  We went on to Georges, a new restaurant that fascinated us both on the top floor of the Centre Pompidou. The waitresses, in skin-tight leather trousers, were so beautiful that nobody cared if the service was a little slack. I was unable to concentrate on the conversation, waiting in vain for Beth to reply to a message I’d sent hours earlier. Despite my best efforts, the subject turned to Christian.

  ‘So come on: what do you think of him?’ Stephen leant forward expectantly across the white Formica table. ‘Because I thought he was OK when I first met him, but now I’m beginning to wonder. I mean, Beth’s no fool, I know that, but she’s at the time of life where she wants things – things I can’t imagine he’s going to give her. And you want to see some of his friends.’ His face was lowered to within an inch of the table. ‘They look like the cast of La Haine.’

  Stephen was a snob, which usually amused me, but this time I decided not to give him the answer he wanted.

  ‘Maybe she’s just enjoying herself.’ I got a kick out of saying the exact opposite of what I thought. ‘Do you know any other forty-year-olds like her? Because I don’t.’