The Train to Paris Read online

  10

  When I woke the sun was already high and the curtains were shaking in a breeze from the open window. There was no sign of Élodie. My mouth was parched and tasted of smoke and rotting tannins. My lips were swollen.

  I staggered into the bathroom. In the mirror my eyelids drooped, even as I tried to open them. I ran the basin full of cold water and kept my head beneath the surface for as long as I could.

  The bedroom was a mess. My clothes were strewn over the floor. Élodie had left her dress behind, and it lay on the carpet in a damp purple mound. I put a corner of the fabric to my nose. It smelt of nothing but chlorine. I let it slump into the puddle of water. She had taken all of her luggage. Had she paid for the suite? If not, it would make for an uncomfortable encounter with the concierge.

  There was a pile of cash on the side table. She had left a note on top, which said, For the train. I turned it over, and then I tried to find another note, or any other reminder of her presence. There was nothing. I counted the money. One hundred euros. It was generous, on top of everything else. The train would cost less. Or was she saying that I was only worth one hundred euros?

  I decided to order in breakfast. It would be worth taking advantage, if this was to be my last experience of total luxury. I checked the time as I put the telephone down. Ten o’clock. She had said that her train was to leave in the morning. She must have already gone. She had spent the rest of the night elsewhere, presumably with someone else. The note was a paltry reminder of our day together. Her script was perfectly formed and italic, written with a sharp nib. She must have used her own pen.

  The cooked breakfast and pitchers of coffee and orange juice were delivered as per my request. The steward laid them on the terrace, which was bathed in heat. I drank the coffee fast, although it did little to cure the headache. I shielded my eyes behind sunglasses.

  I was now charged with the task of finding my own way home. The rail strike would not have ended. Perhaps Biarritz had an airport; I considered asking the concierge. A good concierge found ways to achieve the impossible. He could find me a train ticket, given how much I was paying to be in the hotel. But then I remembered that I was not paying for it. It was imperative to avoid the concierge and keep what remained of my cool as I left.

  So I packed and left in good time. I had to get out of the suite. Its air was heavy and putrid. I decided to assume that Élodie had paid the bill. After all, it was not my responsibility. The hotel had neither my name nor my contact details. I might as well not have been there.

  The concierge was on the telephone when I came down the grand staircase. Keeping my pace brisk, I followed a straight line to the revolving door. But just as I was about to walk through I saw Vanessa out of the corner of my eye. She was alone in one of the gilded chairs with a suitcase between her legs. She was crying. I was about to stop and talk to her, but there was resentment in her eyes. That was last night’s world. I had to leave it there.

  Outside I followed the road west towards the beachfront, only breathing again when I felt safe that the concierge was not pursuing me with a bill trailing behind him. A taxi drove by and I waved it down. There was nothing left to do in this town, which looked different under today’s sun. It was windy, and the morning cloud cover was rolling away fast, replaced by thinner and thinner masses. The sunlight seeped in and out. The old buildings cast shadows that were gone again the next minute.

  The taxi took a considerable chunk of my bequeathed euros. There was to be no return trip. I would sleep on the concourse if I had to. The Biarritz station was more welcoming than its Hendayan counterpart. The pavement outside was lined with trees and shrubs, and its elegance was well preserved. I joined the queue to buy tickets.

  I was finding it difficult to separate what had really happened the previous day from what felt like a dream. I had been dragged along on an adventure to Biarritz with a woman for whom I had never been prepared. I had gone to dinner with her in a grand hotel, dressed like a playboy. Those were the irrefutable facts. And Élodie had certainly jumped into the swimming pool…

  That was the last clear image. After that, the memories became hazy and dislocated. It was undeniable that we had made love. We had made love. I wanted to say the words aloud, to shout them from the rooftop, because it was true. I was no longer the boy who could never muster the courage to follow his desires. I was the man who slept with beautiful women and drank champagne with them and wore a navy blue jacket and white trousers. Nobody would believe me. Ethan would dismiss it as a joke. He might have loved talking to girls, but he had never done anything like this.

  On the other hand, I also wished that none of it had happened. Or that she had at least stayed the night. Clearly I was nothing but another toy. She would much rather play with Ed Selvin. Would Selvin have jumped into the swimming pool after her? No, I thought: only I could ever be that foolish.

  I reached the end of the queue. The ticket hall was echoic. It felt as though I was standing on a stage before those lined up behind me. The ticket officer was a woman this time, and I thought she would be helpful.

  ‘Hello,’ I said in French. ‘I need to get up to Paris today, urgently. Is there anything?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but there is nothing. All booked out.’

  ‘Okay,’ I continued. ‘Well, its essential that I get up to Paris today. I have an important meeting.’

  ‘But if you did not book there is nothing to be done.’

  ‘Please,’ I said. I sounded unpleasant to my own ear. ‘This is very important. There has to be something.’

  She stared at her screen and typed while I waited, rapping my fingers on the desk.

  ‘All right, I do have something here,’ she said. ‘It is the last seat. First class. One hundred and thirty euros.’

  I was aware of the queue growing behind me. I presented her with the remaining eighty euros from Élodie’s contribution, and twenty that I had withdrawn in Madrid. I counted my coins and found that they amounted to a mere three euros. My hand shook as I laid them on the counter.

  ‘Can I get a discount on the rail pass?’

  ‘Give it here.’

  I reached into the front pocket of my suitcase. There was nothing in it. I fossicked, wondering if this were a tasteless joke the gods of travel were playing on me. In desperation I placed the case out on the floor and searched through all of my clothes and toiletries. I returned to the officer’s desk without the pass, and now she was neither friendly nor helpful.

  ‘I must have left it somewhere,’ I said. ‘Can I go and search for it?’

  ‘You may, but I will probably sell this seat if you leave the queue.’

  I had tumbled headfirst into a Fuseli canvas, with carnal fantasy replaced by a lady trying to do her job. I turned to the young man behind me, and asked in English if he could lend me thirty euros. He appeared to be an experienced traveller, with his backpack and hiking boots, and I hoped that my distress would attract his sympathy.

  ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘I will pay you back. But I need this now, very badly.’

  The young man took the notes out of his wallet with some reluctance. I gushed a stream of thanks and apologies and sorted out the ticket with the officer. No doubt she and everybody else in the queue were planning my execution.

  Shocked by how comprehensively I had lost my dignity before a group of strangers, I found a seat on the main concourse. The train that I had booked was the last of the day, and it seemed likely that I had indeed procured the last ticket. I would not be in Paris until at least seven o’clock, meaning I would be stuck with tortuous thoughts of Élodie Lavelle until then.

  Images of her were playing through my mind. I could still see her dancing on the terrace, with the darkened cityscape as her backdrop. And I could still feel her wet body beneath my fingers, responding to my touch. It felt impossible that such a thing could have happened. And the thought of the truth making its way to Sophie was paralysing. I would have to talk to her that evening, when
I made it back to Paris. I could try and tell her the truth, even though it was still indecipherable to me. Or I could lie about why it took me so long to get back from Madrid. I could tell her that I slept in the station in Hendaye. But she would not believe me, because I would not believe myself. I had read somewhere that true liars have full faith and conviction in their narratives.

  The young backpacker emerged from the ticket hall. I waved at him as he walked past, and he returned it. He seemed gentle enough. His skin was pale and veiny, and he wore round, wire-framed spectacles.

  ‘Sorry,’ the man said in a Birmingham accent. ‘I didn’t realise you spoke English. I hardly know any French.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Neither did I. Sorry.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m Marcus.’

  ‘Lawrence.’

  I got up to shake his hand, and I admired his railroad watch and his beard, which was thick and untended.

  ‘So I take it you booked your tickets in advance?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Good thing I booked it for the two o’clock, otherwise I’d be in trouble. Did you book for one of the cancelled trains?’

  ‘No. It’s a long story.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the airport?’

  ‘There’s an airport?’

  ‘It’s around the corner. I would have gone there if I hadn’t already bought a return. It would have cost less, and they wouldn’t have given you an unassigned seat.’

  He was right. The seat number on my ticket was blank.

  ‘Damn,’ I said. ‘So I can’t sit down?’

  ‘Not unless there’s a free seat in the first-class carriage. I doubt there will be. This isn’t the best time to travel.’

  ‘And they charged me a full fare for it. How bloody typical. You know, I don’t care anymore. I just want to get to Paris. Where have you been?’

  ‘Went hiking in the Pyrenées. I wanted to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps and go fishing in Burguete. And the bullfighting was something else.’

  ‘You went to Pamplona?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marcus said, as though he had been itching to talk about it. ‘Have you ever been? It is the greatest thing.’

  He went on to explain it in detail. It was relaxing to listen without really taking it in. He sat down next to me, slinging his backpack to the ground with strong arms.

  ‘So after all that I was keen to have some time off before returning to the real world. And I thought that I should finish off the Hemingway tour by visiting another of his haunts. You know he gambled in that casino down by the beachfront? I went in and drank whisky and soda in his honour.’

  ‘What do you do in the real world?’

  ‘I teach English to unappreciative teenage boys in Manchester. Good to get away from it all sometimes. What about you?’

  ‘I’m studying art history. Not in the real world yet.’

  ‘As long as you’re not doing it to annoy your parents. That was how I ended up studying literature. I keep thinking, How different would it have been if I hadn’t wasted my time and lived my life at that age?’

  We waited for the train together and I stopped thinking about Élodie. When the train arrived, I joined the queue for the first-class carriages, waving goodbye to Marcus and promising to send him the money I owed him.

  I waited until everybody else was on board before taking one of the padded reclining seats. The conductor came around, dressed in the sort of uniform that suggested rank and responsibility. I handed him my ticket.

  ‘No, you cannot sit here,’ he said in French. ‘You wait until the car is full, then you take the empty seat if there is one.’

  I tried to explain myself and asked why I had been forced to pay full fare for a seat that I was not allowed to sit in.

  ‘Welcome to France,’ he said in English.

  ‘So when can I sit down?’ I asked.

  ‘After Bordeaux.’

  ‘And I have to stand up until then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And so I found myself in the corridor by the luggage racks. At least I had a view. The landscape was already changing as the train moved further away from Biarritz. It made a brief stop in Bayonne before curving away into the countryside. The whitewashed villas were becoming scarcer, changing to the more familiar French stone cottages. The barren Basque country gave way to woodlands, some with autumnal foliage beginning to show through. Then the woodlands disappeared, replaced by industrial estates and motorway overpasses. I wondered where Élodie was now, if she was already in Paris or if she and Ed Selvin were travelling somewhere else together.

  I struggled to remain awake. There was a weight in the air, a fatigue that filled the carriage. It would be a few more hours before they released us into the Parisian wilderness. I wanted to be there. Paris was not home, but at least it never changed.

  11

  The train was passing through Poitiers when I remembered the telephone number. I took the scrap of paper out of my laptop bag where I had thrown it and tried to decide what to do. It was an American number, although I didn’t know the area code. It could be anywhere, given Élodie’s endless itinerary. I wanted to call it. Whoever answered could perhaps shed some light on the mysterious lady.

  I had taken a seat. A lot of people had alighted at Bordeaux and there were no more stops before Montparnasse. Everything was quiet and peaceful in the carriage, and the train had picked up speed now it was on the Atlantique high-speed line. The catenary poles swept past, some of them distinct, some of them in a blur. It was becoming dark outside, the landscape fading.

  My thoughts about Élodie were no longer so clear, either. She had treated me so cruelly, so blithely. Yet I could not restrain a fantasy in which she appeared on the train at that moment. I could see her, walking between the carriages and somehow keeping her footing despite the unsteady movement around her, and those ridiculous heels. She would be wearing the white leopard-print dress again—the one that showed her back with its scar and imperfections—drawing on a cigarette and breathing the smoke into my face.

  When the train arrived at Montparnasse I had a lump in my throat that I couldn’t get rid of. I had not eaten. This was accentuating a hollow in my stomach.

  As soon as I got off the train I searched for a bathroom. I ran cold water over my face again, confronting myself in the mirror. Streaks of grime intersected with my image. I rinsed my mouth and told myself that this was the real world, unembellished and bare.

  The city was alive as it always was on a warm summer evening. Many people were out and about, and the café terraces on the Rue de Rennes were filled with men and women in sharp suits and dresses. I might as well have been a tourist, with my worn-in travel clothes.

  I crossed the road and turned up the Rue de Mézières, which connected to the Place Saint-Sulpice. The orange sky sat between the two mismatched towers of the church. I had never been inside the church, and although my body ached and wanted nothing more than to be fed and rested, I felt an urge to pause for a few minutes of contemplation.

  Inside it was refreshingly cool. Saint-Sulpice was resplendent in its ornamentation, but it was austere enough to give a slight sense of unease. In the middle of the aisle I took in all the sculptures, the cracked stone arches and the marble columns that rose high over the congregation. Thuribles hung from the ceiling, and the scent of flowers and incense wafted through the church. It reminded me of Élodie’s scent.

  I decided to take a seat, since the thought of going straight to the apartment was not appealing. The wheels of my case resounded in the high-ceiling church. I put it between my legs and allowed my eyes to wander over the surface of everything. There was a monumental white Madonna and Child statue between the marble columns. She cast her eyes down over the congregation, while the child looked up at her inattentive face with a majestic longing. The statue was lit from above and this cast their shadows onto the wall.

  The sun was setting behind a cloud, emerging to send rays through the southern row of windows. Light fell on the c
racks and crevices in the floor tiles, and I could see the imprint of three centuries in them. I could see myself, too, reflected in the marble. My face was worn and unshaven, and my mouth was downturned.

  The light passed away as fast as it had come. Everything was cast into shadow again. There was an old woman sitting a few rows up from me. Her eyes were closed; she must have been praying. I had never prayed before. Could I pray too, even though I had nothing to pray for? My desires had been realised, and not in the way I had intended. Now fear had taken their place. I closed my eyes.

  The congregation dispersed. As I was about to leave with them I noticed a candle holder, which had a few spaces left. I fished for the last few coins in my pocket. I tried to think of a person for whom I could light this candle, and I looked up at the Madonna for guidance. Nobody came to mind, but I lit it anyway. The flame sprang into life as I held the wick out to another and it danced before me.

  I walked briskly towards the other end of the Rue Saint-Sulpice. Ethan would have to let me into the apartment if he was not playing a show that night. He specialised in a fashionable revival of New Wave, and he was something of a genius at it. He had a record out on a Swedish label, yet he was a year younger than me. The intercom was broken, and with no security chip I had to call him from the hotel next door. The concierge recognised me from the last time this happened, and he gave me the telephone reluctantly. It was a luxurious hotel, the comfort and polish of which reminded me of Biarritz. I imagined Élodie walking in with her suitcase and asking for the best room, and both of us spending the night here, with more champagne and more caviar, and making love again.

  Ethan met me in the lobby, with his unkempt ginger hair and his boyish grin. His eyes glinted in a way that suggested he was always glad to see you, and his arms were big and spread wide to welcome me and help me with my suitcase. He had not shaved once since we had met, and his adolescent beard meandered all over his chin and down his neck. He was wearing his faded Hawaiian shirt and a corduroy jacket that smelled of cigarettes. He used to wear that jacket instead of his blazer, in the days when we were imprisoned at school together, and his old orange Volkswagen was our escape. He sold that car to pay the first instalment of the rent. That had been his only contribution.