Breaking and Entering (12 page)

Paris looked bewitching at this hour; its buildings throwing off the heavy blue-black duvet which had covered them all night, and emerging wet and naked; the murky sky dissolving into grey and glinting daylight. The plane trees lining the boulevard were reaching out their branches to each other, almost touching in a green tangle overhead. Every other street they passed reminded him of Penny: an ancient church he'd shown her, or a gallery they'd visited; the seedy little bar where they'd drunk
Kir à la Mûre
; the
confiserie
where he'd bought her hand-made chocolates. If only he could keep her here for ever. Each time she mentioned going home, it was as if the tubes and respirators which kept him alive and kicking were in danger of being suddenly wrenched out. But she was worried about Phil's reaction if he returned home himself and found she'd disappeared; even more disturbed by Pippa's increasingly frequent tantrums. He kept wondering if he should invite them to move in with him, but that would unsettle the child still further; anyway, did he really want a four-year-old creating mayhem in his flat? They had come to lunch on Saturday and Pippa had broken a vase – a present from his father, which was precious not in cash terms, but because presents from his parents were a rarity.

He was so engrossed in his thoughts, the cabby had to raise his voice: if Monsieur would be so kind, that would be forty francs – unless of course he had changed his mind and wanted to go further?

‘
Oh, excusez-moi
!' Daniel flurried, realizing with a jolt that they had pulled up at his door, a bookshop in the rue St Jacques with a
crêperie
on one side, a hairdresser on the other, and three apartments above. He jumped out of the cab, overtipped the driver, to wipe the disgruntled scowl off his face. He wanted everyone to smile today, even the gargoyles on the churches and the statues in the squares.

He unlocked the door to the tiny stone-flagged courtyard – ‘picturesque' in Penny's eyes, though actually it smelt of cats, and the dour stone walls were clammy-cold even in the summer. One of the offending cats was prowling on the stairs. He stroked its ears, and was rewarded by an affectionate miaou. It was more friendly than its owner, whose usual form of greeting was a brief condescending nod. With such stand-offish neighbours, how could he ask Penny to stay, let alone a screaming child? He had already received old-fashioned looks from Madame Morisseau, who happened to be passing at ten o' clock on Saturday night as he emerged from his flat with a fractious little girl in his arms and a miniskirted female in tow. No, the more he thought about it, the more impossible it would be for him to exchange his quiet respectable bachelor image for that of harassed family man.

And yet the flat was full of Penny, not just her bits and pieces scattered messily about, but her presence and her voice – her expressions of delight as she'd stood admiring his possessions: his prints of eighteenth-century Paris, his jam-packed shelves of books, his African masks on the wall above the sofa. He had always regarded the place as rather small and shabby, but she had pronounced it ‘fabulous'; had loved the old oak beams (woodworm and all), the brass bedstead with its sadly sagging mattress, even the cupboard of a kitchen tucked between the bedroom and the antiquated shower.

He made straight for the kitchen now, closing the door on the still effusive Minou, who had followed him up the stairs. If black cats brought good luck, then maybe Penny would stay another week in Paris – or stay a month, six months. He swilled out the cafetière and spooned fresh coffee in, hacked off a chunk of staling bread, then dashed to check the hot water tank. He was trying to do everything at once – shower, shave, snatch breakfast on the hoof, and tidy up as he went. The place was certainly a mess; its usual harmonious order totally disrupted, and not just by the child. But it had seemed absurd to waste time washing shirts or taking out the rubbish, when Penny was counting the hours till their next meeting.

He switched on the radio, tuned it to the news. He ought to know what was happening in the outside world, instead of focusing his whole attention on the new world between his legs.

‘…
et maintenant, de notre envoyé spécial en Grande-Bretagne: hier soir une explosion a complètement détruit une maison inoccupée à Streatham, dans la banlieue sud-ouest de Londres
…'

Strange how everything led back to Penny. She and Pippa lived in Streatham, with one sister round the corner, another half a mile away, and the third in Twickenham. He could hardly believe how much he'd learned about her in just under a week. Everything she'd told him had made him more aware of the differences between them, but somehow it didn't matter. What they had in common was so much more important: their tastes in sex, in bed.

He lathered his face in the bathroom, shaving with great concentration. It wouldn't do to be bristly when he kissed her again tonight. He rinsed his razor, traced a P on the tiny steamed-up mirror. He was reluctant to wash her off – her stickiness and heat, her lush and private smells – or to allow his stern mint toothpaste to douse the taste of her mouth. He glanced down at his body as he stepped into the shower, inspecting himself with a new compulsive interest. ‘P–p–for penis,' she'd teased, the first time they'd stripped naked; then, kneeling at his feet, she had taken it in her mouth. He'd been absolutely electrified; still marvelled at her lack of inhibition – the way she made sex fun, removed all the sin and guilt. He couldn't imagine ever being so abandoned himself, but he rejoiced in the fact that for once in his life making love meant love, and not a perfunctory screw.

He gave his prick a cold blast from the shower. He had to get to work, wrest his mind from Penny. He wandered dripping from the bathroom, rubbing his hair on a towel. There wasn't a single clean shirt, so he chose the best of the grubby ones and hunted for a tie. Once dressed, he gulped his coffee, then riffled through the papers on his desk, sorting those he needed for the office. Beneath the pile of photocopies from
Education in Austerity: Challenges, Dilemmas
were half a dozen messy sheets scribbled in felt-tip. His poem! He'd composed it late on Tuesday night when he'd come bounding back from the hotel, far too high to sleep. Except ‘composed' was the wrong word. The lines had simply poured themselves on the page, with very little effort on his part. It was the first poem he'd produced in years – a sort of resurrection, his potency restored. And what had sparked it off was that phrase he had used to Penny: ‘Call me Daniel always'. Why the devil had he said that, when ‘always' was a word he didn't trust, and Penny was a virtual stranger? There had never been an ‘always' in his childhood; everything he'd cherished had ended prematurely, including childhood itself. Yet the word ran through the poem like a sort of leitmotif. His hand groped for his cigarettes; returned empty to the desk. He had promised Penny he'd cut down, though his natural inclination was to chain-smoke the whole packet, to give him courage to re-read the thing. Up till now, he had purposely avoided even glancing at it again, for fear his
tour de force
would be revealed as limping doggerel.

He sat down at the desk, steeled himself to skim through the scrawled sheets, his apprehension giving way to a new burst of excitement. It was the best thing he'd ever written. All it needed was a few small changes here and there to lick it into shape – he must cut that clotted metaphor, for instance, keep the whole thing taut. He seized a pen and started crossing words out, jotting down replacements; his mind and hand working at top speed. Once he'd given it a final polish, he'd make a fair copy and present it to its dedicatee, or, better still, read it out loud to her in bed. She might not realize it was a love-poem, with its deliberate understatement, its ironic mocking tone, and she certainly wouldn't pick up all his references to other poems. But what the hell? She'd still be thrilled; see him as a cross between Byron and Bob Dylan. Perhaps he'd write her a new poem every day, collect them in a book, even get it published so the whole English-speaking world would know how …

The phone shrilled through his reverie – Penny ringing from the call-box in the hotel. She often phoned just before he left for work, to tell him how fantastic he'd been, or to check the lunch arrangements, or simply to say that she was missing him already. He picked up the receiver, pen still in his other hand.

‘Penny, listen! I've written you this poem! What? Oh, I'm so sorry.' He switched to French, though his voice had shrunk to a hoarse and tortured whisper. He kept repeating, ‘
Je suis désolé
…' He was sorry, very sorry, but, yes, he
had
been out all night … A wave of sickness juddered through his stomach. This was retribution. If he hadn't been with Penny, his mother wouldn't have landed up in hospital – or at least wouldn't have gone there all alone. She must have been shovelled into an ambulance by cold impassive strangers, while her only son was wallowing in bed. He could hear that heartless phone, ringing, ringing, ringing in his dark deserted flat, while he was in a hotel room, clamped against a naked female body, oblivious to everything but its choked ecstatic cries.

He assured the nurse he would come at once, panicked by her urgent tone. Yet he still clung to the receiver, unwilling to let go, bracing himself to ask that one dark question. ‘
Elle … elle n'est pas
…?' No, he couldn't say it – dared not even think it. Yet the unspoken word hung in the air, numbing his whole body. All his recent sleep-starved nights seemed to have caught up with him remorselessly. His eyes were sore and smarting, his legs as weak as straw. The scrap of bread he had eaten was bloating and fermenting in his gut. And he wasn't even clean – about to visit his mother in a soiled and sweaty shirt, with his body probably smelling of a woman's.

The nurse had said ‘
Au revoir
,' but he seemed physically unable to put down the receiver, as if replacing it would cut the umbilical cord, kill son as well as mother.

He stared blindly at his poem. The words he had thought so brilliant were nothing but black stains. Suddenly, he slammed the phone down, tore the paper into shreds, dumped it in the garbage-bin, then grabbed his mac and hurtled out. The street was jammed with traffic; windscreen-wipers frantic; impatient drivers leaning on their horns. Not an empty cab to be seen. The metro would be quicker, but he couldn't face the crowds – the thought of those packed coffins, joined nose to tail and shuttling underground. How could they put his mother underground? They hadn't had the time yet to get to know each other, become proper mother and son.

He blundered through a puddle, spattering his shoes. He'd probably find a taxi in the boulevard du Montparnasse, but it would take a miracle to reach it. The narrow pavements were clogged not only with pedestrians but with displays of fruit and vegetables, deliveries of fish. His mother was fighting for her life and these crass moronic stallholders were polishing red apples, or slapping skate on slabs. The damned rain didn't help – early morning shoppers entangling their umbrellas, then wasting time apologizing; cars spraying him with water as they all but grazed the kerb.

At last he reached the crossroads, almost sobbing with relief as he saw a girl just paying off a taxi. ‘
Attendez, attendez
! he shouted, wrenching open the door and promising the driver double if he could make the hospital in ten minutes.

He swallowed his fury at the negative response. He could hardly blame the fellow for the rush hour or the rain, or the fact that every light turned red at their approach, or a lorry started backing out in lumbering slow motion, forcing them to yet another halt. He unclenched his fists, willed his foot to stop its nervous tapping. He must calm down or he'd be no help to his mother. Let her be all right, he implored, and I'll never see Penny in my life again.

He realized he was praying, to the God who wasn't there; pleading, making bargains – the hardest, cruellest bargain it was possible to make.

‘Get on, get
on
!' he muttered, seething at a new delay – a cleaning van, like the one he'd seen an hour ago, blocking half the road. The green-clad men were still sluicing all the pavements down, their relentless hoses attacking secret dirt. If only they could purge him too, wash his rutting night away, so that when he saw his mother he wouldn't feel such shame, wouldn't have to weave a web of lies. Perhaps there'd be no need for words, and they could just clasp hands in silence, while he imbued her with his own health and strength. Surely she wasn't as ill as they'd implied? They were probably exaggerating, frightening him on purpose as a punishment for staying out all night. After all, he had phoned her several times last week (rushed, impatient calls, he realized now, with a shudder of remorse), and she'd seemed absolutely fine; said he mustn't worry about making time to see her – she understood the pressures of work better than anyone. The pressures of work … He had never worked less in his life: sloping off at four, spinning out his lunch-hours, and so obsessed with Penny that the figure sitting at his desk was a mere set of empty clothes; the real Daniel having floated back to the Hotel Paradise.

Perhaps this crisis was a warning to him, a salutary shock to bring him to his senses while he still had time to put things right. Once his mother was discharged, he'd devote his evenings and weekends to her – work at fostering a relationship he'd so culpably neglected. He began running through the things they'd do as soon as she was well enough: gentle strolls in her favourite park, visits to museums, meals together, even excursions to the countryside.

The cab was speeding up, thank God, and they must be nearly there. He recognized that spiky modern sculpture they had passed a week ago, when he'd accompanied his mother on her first dash to the hospital. Could it only be a week ago? It seemed like another lifetime – his existence now divided into before and after Penny. Except he mustn't think of Penny, must banish her from his mind, focus every shred of energy on his mother.