Not Safe After Dark (24 page)

My chance came at the weekend, when the shit really hit the fan.

•

All week negotiations had been going back and forth between the government and the students. The university stayed closed and the students threatened to ‘liberate’
it. De Gaulle huffed and puffed. The Latin Quarter remained an occupied zone. On Friday the workers threw in their lot with the students and called for a general strike the following Monday. The
whole country was on its knees in a way it hadn’t been since the German occupation.

Thus far I had been avoiding the demonstrations, not out of cowardice or lack of commitment, but because I was a British subject not a French one. By the weekend that no longer mattered. It had
become a world struggle: us against them. We were fighting for a new world order. I was in. I had a stake. Besides, the university was closed so I didn’t even have a job to protect any more.
And perhaps, somewhere deep down, I hoped that heroic deeds on the barricades might win the heart of a fair lady.

So confusing was everything, so long running and spread out the battle, that I can’t remember now whether it was Friday or Saturday. Odd that, the most important night of my life, and I
can’t remember what night it was. No matter.

It all started with a march towards the Panthéon, red and black flags everywhere, the ‘Internationale’ bolstering our courage. I had found April and Brad earlier, along with
Henri, Alain and Brigitte, in the university quadrangle looking at the improvised bookstalls, and we went to the march together. April had her arm linked through mine on one side, and Alain on the
other.

It was about half-past nine when things started to happen. I’m not sure what came first, the sharp explosions of the gas grenades or the flash of a Molotov cocktail, but all of a sudden
pandemonium broke out, and there was no longer an organized march, only a number of battle fronts.

In the melee, April and I split off, losing Brad and the rest, and we found ourselves among those defending the front on the Boulevard St Michel. Unfortunate drivers, caught in the chaos,
pressed down hard on their accelerators, honked their horns and drove through red lights to get away, knocking pedestrians aside as they went. The explosions were all around us now and a blazing
CRS van silhouetted figures throwing petrol bombs and pulling up paving stones for the barricades. The restaurants and cafes were all closing hurriedly, waiters ushering clients out into the street
and putting up the shutters.

The CRS advanced on us, firing gas grenades continuously. One landed at my feet and I kicked it back at them. I saw one student fall to them, about ten burly police kicking him as he lay and
beating him mercilessly with their truncheons. There was nothing we could do. Clouds of gas drifted from the canisters, obscuring our view. We could see distant flames, hear the explosions and the
cries, see vague shadows bending to pick up stones to throw at the darkness. The CRS charged. Some of us had come armed with Molotov cocktails and stones, but neither April nor I had any weapons,
any means to defend ourselves, so we ran.

We got separated from the others, just the two of us now, and we were both scared. This was the worst the fighting had been so far. The demonstrators weren’t just taking what the CRS
dished out, they were fighting back, and that made the police even more vicious. They would show no quarter, neither with a woman nor a foreign national. We could hardly see for the tears streaming
from our eyes as we tried to get away from the advancing CRS, who seemed to have every side street blocked off.

‘Come on,’ I said, taking April’s hand in mine. ‘This way.’

We jumped the fence and edged through the pitch-dark Luxembourg Gardens, looking for an unguarded exit. When we found one, we dashed out and across to the street opposite. A group of CRS saw us
and turned. Fortunately, the street was too narrow and the buildings were too high for the gas guns. The police fired high in the air and most of the canisters fell harmlessly onto the roofs above
us. Nobody gave chase.

Hand in hand, we made our way through the dark back streets to my
pension
, which, though close to the fighting, seemed so far unscathed. We ran up to my tiny room and locked the door
behind us. Our eyes were streaming, and both of us felt a little dizzy and sick from the tear gas, but we also felt elated from the night’s battle. We could still hear the distant explosions
and see flashes and flames, like Guy Fawkes Night back in England. Adrenalin buzzed in our veins.

Just as I can’t say exactly what night it was, I can’t say exactly who made the first move. All I remember is that suddenly the room seemed too small for the two of us, our bodies
were pressed together and I was tasting those moist, pink lips for the first time, savouring her small, furtive tongue in my mouth. My legs were like jelly.

‘You know when I came here the other morning and you were in bed?’ April said as she unbuttoned my shirt.

‘Yes,’ I said, tugging at her jeans.

She slipped my shirt off my shoulders. ‘I wanted to get into bed with you.’

I unhooked her bra. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t think you wanted me.’

We managed to get mostly undressed before falling onto the bed. I kissed her breasts and ran my hands down her naked thighs. I thought I would explode with ecstasy when she touched me. Then she
was under me, and I buried myself in her, heard her sharp gasp of pleasure.

At last, April was mine.

•

I lived on the memory of April’s body, naked beside me, the two of us joined in love, while the country went insane. I didn’t see her for three days, and even then
we were part of a group; we couldn’t talk intimately. That was what things were like then; there was little place for the individual. Everything was chaos. Normal life was on hold, perhaps
never to be resumed again.

The university was closed, the campus hardly recognizable. The pillars in the square were plastered with posters of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevara. There was a general strike. Everything
ground to a halt: the Metro, buses, coal production, railways. Everywhere I walked I saw burned-out vans and cars, gutted news kiosks, piles of paving stones, groups of truncheon-swinging CRS.
People eating in the cafes had tears streaming down their faces from the remnants of tear gas in the morning-after air.

And every morning was a morning after.

I spotted Brad alone in a side street one night not long after dark, and as I had been wanting to talk to him about April, I thought I might never get a better opportunity. He was on his way to
a meeting, he said, but could spare a few minutes. We took the steps down to the Seine by the side of the Pont St Michel, where we were less likely to get hassled by the CRS. It was dark and quiet
by the river, though we could hear the crack of gas guns and explosions of Molotovs not so far away.

‘Have you talked to April recently?’ I asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘I was wondering if . . . you know . . . she’d told you . . . ?’

‘Told me what?’

‘Well . . .’ I swallowed. ‘About us.’

He stopped for a moment, then looked at me and laughed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.’

I was puzzled by his attitude. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘is that all you have to say?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Aren’t you angry?’

‘Why should I be angry? It didn’t mean anything.’

I felt an icy fear grip me. ‘What do you mean,
it didn’t mean anything
?’

‘You know. It was just a quickie, a bit of a laugh. She said she got excited by the street fighting and you happened to be the nearest man. It’s not the first time, you know. I
don’t expect April to be faithful or any of that bourgeois crap. She’s her own woman.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said it didn’t mean anything. You don’t think she could be serious about someone like you, do you? Come off it, Richard, with your tatty jeans and your little goatee beard.
You think you’re a real hip intellectual, but you’re nothing but a joke. That’s all you were to her. A quickie. A laugh. A joke. She came straight to me afterwards for a
real—’

The blow came from deep inside me and my fist caught him on the side of his jaw. I heard a sharp crack, distinct from the sound of a distant gas gun, and he keeled over into the Seine. We were
under a bridge and it was very dark. I stopped, listened and looked around, but I could see no one, hear only the sounds of battle in the distance. Quickly, my blood turning to ice, I climbed the
nearest stairs and re-entered the fray.

•

I had never imagined that love could turn to hatred so quickly. Though I had fantasized about getting rid of Brad many times, I had never really intended to harm him, and
certainly not in the way, or for the reason, that I did. I had never thought of myself as someone capable of killing another human being.

They pulled his body out of the Seine two days later, and the Anarchists claimed that he had been singled out and murdered by the CRS. Most of the students were inclined to believe this, and
another bloody riot ensued.

As for me, I’d had it. Had it with April, had it with the revolution and had it with Paris. If I could have, I would have left for London immediately, but the cross-Channel ferries
weren’t operating and Skyways had no vacancies for some days. What few tourists remained trapped in Paris were queuing for buses to Brussels, Amsterdam or Geneva, anywhere as long as they got
out of France.

Mostly, I felt numb in the aftermath of killing Brad, though this was perhaps more to do with what he had told me about April than about the act itself, which had been an accident, and for which
I didn’t blame myself.

April
. How could she deceive me so? How could she be so cold, so cruel, so callous? I meant nothing to her, just the nearest man to scratch her itch.

A quickie. A joke.

I saw her only once more, near the Luxembourg Gardens, the same gardens we jumped into that marvellous night a million years ago, and as she made to come towards me I took off into a side
street. I didn’t want to talk to her again, didn’t even want to see her. And it wasn’t only April. I stayed away from all of them: Henri, Alain, Brigitte, Nadine, the lot of them.
To me they had all become inextricably linked with April’s humiliation of me, and I couldn’t bear to be with them.

One day Henri managed to get me aside and told me that April had committed suicide. He seemed angry rather than sad. I stared at him in disbelief. When he started to say something more, I cut
him off and fled. I don’t think anyone knew that I had killed Brad, but clearly April lamented his loss so much that she no longer felt her life was worth living. He wasn’t worth it, I
wanted to say, remembering the things he had told me under the bridge that night. If anyone was the killer, it was Brad not me. He had killed my love for April, and now he had killed April.

I refused to allow myself to feel anything for her.

The people at Skyways said I might have some luck if I came out to the airport and waited for a vacancy on standby, which I did. Before I left, I glanced around my room one last time and saw
nothing I wanted to take with me, not even April’s silk scarf, which I had kept. So, in the clothes I was wearing, with the 500 francs that was all the Bank of France allowed to me withdraw,
I left the country and never went back.

•

Until now.

I think it must be the memory of tear gas that makes my eyes water so. I wipe them with the back of my hand and the waiter comes to ask me if I am all right. I tell him I am and order another
pichet
. I have nowhere else to go except the grave; I might as well stay here and drink myself to death. What is the point of another miserable six months on earth anyway?

The girl who reminds me of April crushes out her cigarette and twists a strand of hair. Her lover is late. I dream of consoling her, but what have I to offer?

‘Professor Dodgson? Richard? Is that you?’

I look up slowly at the couple standing over me. The man is grey-haired, distinguished looking, and there is something about him . . . His wife, or companion, is rather stout with grey eyes and
short salt and pepper hair. Both are well dressed, healthy looking, the epitome of the Parisian bourgeoisie.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.’

‘Henri Boulanger,’ he says. ‘I was once your student. My wife, Brigitte, was also a student.’

‘Henri? Brigitte?’ I stand to shake his hand. ‘Is it really you?’

He smiles. ‘Yes. I wasn’t sure about you at first. You haven’t changed all that much in the face, the eyes, but you . . . perhaps you have lost weight?’

‘I’m ill, Henri. Dying, in fact. But please sit down. Be my guests. Let’s share some wine. Waiter.’

Henri looks at Brigitte, who nods, and they sit. She seems a little embarrassed, uncomfortable, though I can’t for the life of me imagine why. Perhaps it is because I told them I am dying.
No doubt many people would feel uncomfortable sitting in a cafe drinking wine with death.

‘Funnily enough,’ I tell them, ‘I was just thinking about you. What are you doing here?’

Henri beams. ‘Now
I’m
the professor,’ he says with great pride. ‘I teach literature at the Sorbonne.’

‘Good for you, Henri. I always believed you’d go far.’

‘It’s a pity you couldn’t have stayed around.’

‘They were difficult times, Henri. Interesting, as the Chinese say.’

‘Still . . . It was a sad business about that girl. What was her name?’

‘April?’ I say, and I feel an echo of my old love as I say her name.
Ap-reel
.

‘April. Yes. That was around the time you went away.’

‘My time here was over,’ I tell him. ‘I had no job, the country was in a state of civil war. It wasn’t my future.’

Henri frowns. ‘Yes, I know. Nobody blames you for getting out . . . it’s not that . . .’

‘Blames me for what, Henri?’

He glances at Brigitte, who looks deep into her glass of wine. ‘You remember,’ he says. ‘The suicide? I told you about it.’