Loving Amélie (15 page)

Chris had joined them for
Christmas lunch, before skulking back to his flat with Sara, to drink heavily,
lament the recent loss of Amélie and watch anything unseasonal they could find
in his DVD collection. Sara had borne her absence from Rick more stoically: and
rose cheerfully on Boxing Day to gather up armfuls of presents and take off to
visit her nephews and nieces, leaving Chris with his throbbing head under a
pillow of misery for most of the rest of the holiday.

Roy and Jean had taken the news
of his split with Amélie as he would have anticipated: with customarily guarded
dismay. His mother wept quietly, in bouts, normally out of his earshot: Linda
found her from time to time in isolation, and brought her back to the
gathering, where she attempted joviality in a crumpled party hat but with red,
swollen eyes and a ball of paper tissue in her fist. Roy spent about an hour
shaking his head and making whistling noises through his dentures; concluding
his period of mourning with the statement that ‘it was probably all for the
best, in the long run’. He had poured his son a particularly large whisky,
which wasn’t Chris’s tipple, but he downed it in one and made the earliest
excuse he could to escape his father’s stifling, silent sympathy and the
enforced Christmas cheer to get back to his own flat.

As Peter’s four-by-four bounced
capably up the M6, Chris stared out of the window and imagined how his parents
must have felt during their boys’ crisis times: when Peter was off the rails in
his youth; when Chris was wracked with the pain of lost love. He thought of
tiny Amélie, a world away from such things today, but not forever. How would he
cope with standing by and letting fate swallow her up? Or would he weigh in and
attempt to change the course of her history himself?

“Shall we have a pee break?”
Linda suggested.

Peter parked outside his
parents’ terraced house. Roy was no automobile expert, but he usually like to walk
around the Landcruiser and express his admiration. One of the neighbours had
said it was a ‘strange’ car for driving in London; but Roy had explained that
his son drove it to the French Alps every winter. The two men had contemplated
this like their own fathers might have contemplated the moon landing fifty
years earlier: a mission that might well be achievable, but by men other than
themselves.

 
His own car – a fairly dilapidated Citroen –
languished in the garage mostly these days, as Roy was losing his nerve behind
the wheel.

Chris was really the only
mechanically minded man of the family: he knew it was down to him to check over
his father’s car; but he rarely made the time these days.

He must: he
would
over
the next couple of days, he told himself; as he and Amélie stepped out onto the
pavement, where his father wasn’t there to greet them.

Jean had been discharged from
hospital and made comfortable in the back bedroom that used to be Peter’s. The
diagnosis wasn’t too terrible, Roy had explained at the foot of the stairs: she
had had a cardiac incident that caused her collapse, but there had been no
further blips on her heart monitor over the following twenty four hours. They
were told she was suffering from angina – thickening of the arteries
– and that she would need medication and regular monitoring. His father
looked quite cheerful about the news, which the children took as a
manifestation of general ignorance and abject relief, as he ambled into the
kitchen to put the kettle on while they headed up to see their mother.

“You must go in first,” hissed
Linda to Chris. “She will want to see you and the baby.”

She and Peter hung back, while
Chris pushed open the door, tacky with its decades of layers of gloss paint. He
saw the reflection of his mum’s bed in the facing mirror first, like a funereal
white pyre constructed for Ophelia against the backdrop of brown flowery
wallpaper.

“Is that you, Christopher?” she
said weakly. He knew her face was going to be beaten up. His throat contracted
with fear.

“I’ve got someone who wants to
meet you,” he said.

“She is the loveliest baby I
have ever seen,” said Jean.

“Present company excepted,”
added Peter, with a nudge to his brother.

Jean was undeterred:

“No truly,” she said, in a
wistful voice they might attribute to her medication. She was cradling Amélie
in her arms and smoothing her tiny collar. “She is.”

Chris focussed on his
daughter’s familiar softly rounded form rather than looking too closely at his
mum’s bruised face.

“We were thinking of taking Roy
to the pub for a hotpot,” said Linda, briskly. Neither she nor Peter had
removed their jackets. “He could probably do with finishing that pint from last
week!”

“Oh, yes please,” said Jean,
eyeing her daughter-in-law with plangent good humour. “He has been fussing
round me like I don’t know what. I’m not going to break. I’ve told him he won’t
get rid of me that easy.”

“We will bring some back for
you guys, too,” said Peter. He watched his mum for a moment, enthralled with
her granddaughter, and appeared happily relieved. He and Linda would gently
pump Roy for all the information they needed about her at the pub.

Chris heard the click of the
front door latch close behind them and was instantly at a loss for words. There
was no place for him to comfortably begin: he knew nothing about Amélie’s
whereabouts; he had no sensible plan for his baby’s future. He could say
nothing that his mother could possibly relate to, or approve of. He willed the
child to cause a distraction and ease his tension, but she rested contentedly
in her grandmother’s arms, reaching out for the necktie of her bed jacket with
patient, probing fingers.

“You had a little sister,” said
his mum, suddenly. “She didn’t live long.”

Chris had been taking in the
décor: remembering being allowed to sleep in this bigger room after a
particularly bad asthma attack. There was a photo of Peter still on the
non-floral wall: holding up a football trophy, looking pleased as Punch. Chris
recalled lying in Peter’s bed, wondering if his mum ever wished him away for
causing her so much anxiety, or wished him to be stronger and healthier like
his brother. It had been an idle, silly notion. He looked up into his mother’s
face: it was an eruption of bruises and black blood.

“I had a sister?” he said. “You
never told me.”

“She was born when you were
very tiny,” Jean continued. She looked down at Amélie. “I don’t think I was
ready for another little one, not really. Maybe she didn’t get the best start
inside me.”

Chris wanted to offer comfort;
reason. He couldn’t.

“They said her heart wasn’t
formed right. Hearts! Here we go,” she said. “But she looked, on the outside,
like a perfect angel. Not that you boys weren’t beautiful, but she was
something else. She looked a lot like your baby, Chris.”

“I...don’t know what to say.”

“There’s nothing to say,” said
his mum. “Good grief it was forty years ago.”

“What was her name?”

“Miriam,” said Jean. She looked
squarely at her son with eyes so lively that they elevated his spirits. “Don’t ask
why: it was your father’s idea.” She hoisted the baby in her arms a little. “I
would have been happy with a Janet or an Alison myself. I mean, have you ever
come across a Miriam?”

“Not that I can recall,” said
Chris, and they both laughed. He took Amélie to give his mum some relief, but
kept close. “I’m sorry, Mum, for...”

“For nothing, son,” Jean
interrupted, shifting in her sickbed. “You have your life to lead. I don’t want
sympathy and nonsense. Just bring her to see me, from time to time.”

Peter and Linda returned with
Roy in good cheer; and they all sat together while Chris and his mum ate
takeaway pub food. Roy enjoyed dandling his baby granddaughter on his knee; and
provided a placid commentary to the routines of feeding and bathing that followed.
Jean insisted on giving Amélie her bottles; reminding her husband incessantly
that she wasn’t an invalid.

“Will you be back on your
travels soon?” Peter asked his brother as they dried dishes later that evening.

“I doubt it,” said Chris. “But
the truth is, I don’t know. This has kind of knocked me for six.”

“I hear you,” said Peter, with
a slap to his back. He hesitated, like he would have said more, but thought
better of it. He left him in their parents’ kitchen, to dredge through the
television channels with Linda and Roy, Chris sensing that his brother pitied
him and his state of paralysis: confident that his own way forward was always
clearly road signed.

Chris got up early with his
daughter the next day; and made the most of his morning by giving Roy’s old
Citroen the once-over. He topped up the oil, checked the brakes and took it
into town for new front tyres. It ran surprisingly well; although, like any
engine, would clearly have benefitted from more regular exercise. He would
leave it to Linda to convince his father to sell the car and fully embrace
public transport: but for now, he enjoyed his own personal intervention; and
his morning’s tinkering and driving around with the smell of Castrol GTX and
fusty car upholstery in his nostrils. Maybe he would teach Amélie about cars
one day, so she wouldn’t need to rely on men to fix them for her. Or perhaps
she would be like her mother: an impossible student, whose patience ran out at
the same time as her understanding. The similarity would be infuriating, but
the anticipation of it gave him a thrill.

Back in London, Chris emailed
Paul Bénard who had been anxious to hear news of his mother. Graciously, the
Frenchman did not charge him for his early departure; but wished him a speedy
return. Chris stared at his computer screen. Amélie gurgled happily on her play
mat behind him, reaching for her toes in her own secret game. He had made an
appointment for her to have a health check at his doctor’s surgery. He wanted
to share a bottle of wine with Sara. His brain refused to transport him beyond
these few simple concepts.

He sent a message to Amélie:

The baby has met her grandparents. My mum had a
heart attack. When will she meet your parents?

He had time to make some supper
before he received a reply:

I am so sorry. I hope Jean gets well. My mum
has
met her. Did you
speak to my uncle in Paris?

No. Is he P. Benoit?

Yes. He will help us.

I don’t need help. I just need you.

I
need help. See him.

Chapter Fifteen

They had walked on Hampstead
Heath during their first spring together. There was just enough wind for kite
flying; and Amélie had been irresistibly drawn into the process: extricating
the strings from the lower branches of a tree – with Chris’s help –
for a group of Japanese teenagers.

They had seemed much too old
for flying kites, all of them, including his lover, he had thought, but was
captivated by her girlish enjoyment in the game and the easy way she was
included in their company. They chattered to each other in a version of
English, barely making eye contact, but whooping and giggling as the kite
– a bright orange and blue fantastical bird – took flight over
leafy London. She glanced at him by way of apology as he eventually sat down on
a nearby bench, having given up on waiting for her to resist the distraction
and move on with him. Some other passersby hesitated to watch the spectacle;
while he just watched her face, flushed with pleasure and offset by a cream
woollen scarf, her tongue fastened between smiling ivory teeth.

“
Au revoir!”
she shouted to the
youngsters, as she and Chris finally took their leave, linking arms.

“Au revoir!”
they chimed back,
delighting in their shared sense of being foreign in a foreign land.

It was a restaurant on Hampstead
High Street where Amélie’s uncle, Pierre Bénoit, had arranged to meet him that
day, more than two years later. Chris had opted for the Saturday, so that Sara
could babysit.

He had hoped to be early, but
Sara was running late, and ranting about a disagreement with Rick, as well as
wanting to hear all about his mother’s state of health; so he ended up arriving
half way through the Frenchman’s aperitif.

“I am sorry,” he said, offering
a hand of introduction. “I am sure you can guess my excuse.”

“Pierre Bénoit. It’s not a
problem. I live around the corner, so I am afraid it was my selfishness
bringing you across London to meet me.”

He was tall and lean, dressed
in an expensive charcoal suit and navy roll neck sweater. Around fifteen years
older than Chris, he was tanned and good-looking; with streaks of grey in his
well-cut chestnut hair. They sat outside, so he could finish a slim black
cigar: Chris declined the offer to smoke, but ordered two more drinks.

“Where do we begin?” he said.
“You are, I understand, Amélie’s uncle?”