Sally (14 page)

I don't know.

She was halfway to the door when Richard knocked again and called her name; his name for her: ‘Sal, Sal, let me in. Please?' She stood frozen to the spot. She saw the letter box flip open. As it shut she darted back to her room. A watched mouse scurrying back into its hole. The cheese can wait.

I don't want it anyway.

You do, Sally. Oh, but you do.

Richard stood outside. Now he was cold. But he guarded the door. He stood patiently, occasionally looking through the letter box, trying to detect signs of life through the drawn curtains, attempting to knock and call as imploringly and attractively as possible. Lure her out, lure her back. But how? It wasn't going to work. Not tonight at any rate. Like a cat whose dignity had been compromised by a cocksure mouse, Richard quickly composed himself. He raised his hand and hovered over the bell. Then thought better of it. He sauntered away.

I don't really want the mouse. I only wanted to play. I'll come back another time. She will be mine. She has my name written all over her.

From her bedroom, Sally knew that he was going. She rushed to the window and pinched the curtains just enough to admit one eye. She watched him go. Excited. Disappointed. She watched the headlamps blaze into life, temporarily obscuring the car from sight. She heard the engine. She watched the swift, effortless three-point turn, and she watched the car slink away, rejected but graceful. Turning to the silent brightness of her room, she felt lonely.

Why didn't you knock some more?

Richard absent-mindedly took a left, a right, he crossed some lights and took another left. He had no idea where he was going or where he was.

Come on, mate. Stop a minute. Get a grip. Let's think this one through.

He thought it through and decided that Diana might have an answer of some sort. A bit late, past midnight, but then she was a night owl. He noted with a smile the gangly holly bush outside her house, its leaves inked black by the night, its berries still defiantly red. How very Diana. She was in and she was delighted and relieved to see him. They hugged and held on to each other like people mourning a lost friend.

‘What is she playing at? Is she playing? Has the whole thing been some long, perverted game?'

Diana looked at Richard. He sat stiff and forward on the sagging couch and looked decidedly wrong there without Sally. He clasped his hands, his arms on his knees, his hair tousled, his eyes tired. She felt enormous tenderness for him, but she felt singularly ill-equipped to offer him any truly worthwhile advice.

‘I honestly don't know. I've tried to talk. She's incredibly distressed.'

‘But,' panicked Richard, ‘but what
has
she said? Now? In the past? Think, Diana, help me here.' Diana thought and could offer only a sympathetic shrug.

‘Richard,' she shook her head and Richard watched her homemade holly berry earrings (were they real?) swing haphazardly in support. ‘Sally kept saying that you shouldn't have fallen in love with her. That it had spoiled things. Not that I know what “things” mean. She didn't tell me. I asked, I tried. But actually, I don't think that even
she
knows what “things” mean.'

Richard sat silent and pensive for a while. And then started with another needy ‘but'.

‘But, in the past, Diana. In the past?'

‘In the past, she's spoken of you, of you and her, with – well, with passion. With relish. I don't know, with a sort of
greed
. To tell you the truth, Richard, I've never seen her like this. She's so, well,
sassy
! But …'

‘But?'

‘I don't know. There was also an element of naiveté …'

‘Explain? Please?'

‘That would be impossible, Richard. It's just, well, just so
Sally
, I suppose.'

‘But I'm in love with her, with her sassiness
and
her naiveté. What on earth is so terrible about that?' Diana shrugged again, feeling hopeless. What indeed
was
so terrible about someone like Richard falling in love with someone like Sally?

‘Richard, Richard, give her time. I'm
sure
she'll come round, come to her senses and realize just what she has. What she is jeopardizing.'

‘Diana, has she ever told you that she loves me?'

‘No.'

‘Implied it?'

‘Richard, Sally has never used the “L” word. About anyone.'

‘Nor had I.'

We'll leave Richard with Diana. He finds in her a tangible if indirect link with Sally, he finds her bohemian boudoir comforting and suddenly preferable to his comparably stark flat and his own, bad company. Diana will talk, she'll tell him the precious little she knows about the florid proclamations of love and the horrid tales of violence that Sally endured with the Jims and Jamies of her past. Richard will confide in Diana, he will use the ‘L' word with such conviction and sincerity that she will feel moved to the verge of tears. Richard will compare Sally with the women he has known, and will declare her incomparable. But though Diana will comfort him, and will bolster him with her own belief that he could be the best thing to happen to Sally only Sally doesn't yet see it, she will also rightly tell Richard that it is Sally who has to come back to him. He must discipline himself to steer clear until then. Because if, or when, she returns, it will be off her own bat. And if she comes back it will be for good and for real. But for now, leave her be. Disappear. It will be difficult, Richard, but it can be done, it must be done. Listen to Diana, heed her advice – she has both your and Sally's best interests at heart. Do as you're told. Sally is off to Paris. No, you can't follow her there.

So we'll leave Richard, floundering in his anxiety, desperate in his longing, sorrowful in his thwarted love. We'll go instead to Sally, we'll cross a lurching English Channel with her and accompany her through Paris. We'll watch what she does and we'll see where she goes; unseen witnesses to her most private world.

I
t could have been England. The weather was so English, rain and a lot of it; the countryside looked like England – a lush landscape divided and organized into patchwork fields. But it wasn't England. England was over the sea and far away. This was France and you knew it every time the train hurtled past a station or through a village. It was France because the rural architecture said so. It was France because the men and women that the train passed were so, well, rustic. Where does British Rail pass through that affords the passenger a glimpse of a farm-worker in partisan clothes and a battered cloth cap, astride an ancient tractor held together with twine and with time? How many rural stations in Britain are bedecked with ceramic tiles and festooned with flowers?

The children were quiet; the ferry crossing had been rough, quite a few had been sick and no one escaped feeling peaky. This, combined with the early start and the soothing movement of the train churring along, lulled the class into a dozy, hushed state. Sally sat with two seats to herself. She bagged the window seat while her bags sat grandly next to her. Across the aisle, Madame Pelisou (Head of French, Cleo to the staff) read
Paris Match
. Every now and then she pushed her glasses back on to her short nose. Everything about her was short: her stature, her hair, her fingers and their neat, square nails, her vowels, and of course her temper. She disliked children who did not try almost as much as she detested English bread. She was old but did not seem elderly, her true age being anywhere from mid-fifties to early seventies. Sally liked her. All the staff liked her. The children dreaded her. Madame Pelisou was one of a dying breed of French teachers who commanded a respect and achieved consistent top grades through a style of teaching that was unashamedly dictatorial, tyrannical and tough. She was most generous at handing out humiliation and punishment. Many a child had left her lessons covered in chalk dust or doused with water (how else would they learn what
un seau d'eau
was?). Many a child had been reduced to tears. Many a child had a week of break-times confiscated. Many a child had been on the receiving end of a menacing, icy stare and a venomously spat ‘Fool!' And yet not one child ever failed French and, deep into adulthood, the memory of Madame Pelisou remained vivid. With hindsight she was remembered fondly as a colourful and brilliant teacher. Sally watched her reading, saw her nod and frown and smile and tut. She looked up and caught Sally's eye and offered her a barley sugar.
Merci
.

By the time they reached Paris the rain had stopped and the city welcomed them, glistening grey and marvellously grand. It looked beautiful, enhanced by the post-downpour sunlight filtering between the buildings. A minibus awaited them and they travelled up the Champs Elysée and over the Pont Neuf heading for the Sorbonne where, down a snaking, overcrowded side street they found the pension that was to provide beds and breakfasts for the duration of their stay. For the children, this compared most favourably to their previous school trip under canvas in a waterlogged Welsh field. Now they were in France, in Gay (snigger snigger) Paris. Oh, la la!

Madame Pelisou suggested that she took the room on the floor where the children were, so Sally had a little room without a view but pretty anyway on the floor below. Diana had been considered for the trip but had requested Florence the following year. Sally thought about this as she unpacked. Uncharitably, she felt relieved that Diana was not in Paris.

I'm not having anyone telling me I ought to reciprocate Richard's love, that Richard's love is good and desirable. I don't want it and I do not want him either.

The bed invited one to snuggle down deep and Sally fell asleep, cosy and exhausted, staring distractedly at a corner of the room where the wallpaper was coming away in a perfect furl.

‘Marcus, come here
now! Venez ici
! Rajiv, stop it. Class Five, settle down. Thank you. This is Notre Dame. This is a Gothic cathedral and we're standing in front of the west portal that dates to the 1220s. Marcus, you are really pushing it. Thank you. This is the main entrance so the sculpture is
didactic
– there are lessons to be learned by reading the stories depicted by the sculpture. Also, way back then, everything would have been painted in vivid colours. So, before people came to pray they would be confronted by all these tales in the sculpture. Now, why do you think that was so important? Alice?'

‘Because most people couldn't read?'

‘Absolutely! Marsha?'

‘Also because they might learn from the scenes and then go inside and pray extra hard and properly.'

‘Absolutely. Look up there, that's the Gallery of Kings. If you look above that, the sculpture depicts the Last Judgment and the Resurrection. Now those are the archivolts and if you look hard, you can see that the scenes up there are of the Damned and the Blessed. Look, there are the blind riders of the Apocalypse, and here are the Damned being shovelled into the mouth of Hell. It's so fantastic! Now, these are called the socles and in the socles are carved
person-if-i-cations
of the Virtues and Vices. These were to show the people the ways of life of which God either approved or disapproved. Look (Mar
cus
!), see over here, this man is hitting a Bishop so this is a warning against sins against the Church. But this vice was the worst – it's a monk running away and deserting the Church altogether. And here are the goodies: Faith over here, and then Hope and over there Charity. So in the olden days, you'd come along to church and you'd see all these terrible sins and above them, sinners being thrown to Hell – as Marsha says, you'd go into the Cathedral and pray pretty hard!'

The children stood, necks craning, heads back, mesmerized (apart from Marcus who was more interested in the donkey with the straw hat and sun-glasses). Madame Pelisou winked at Miss Lomax.

Bien
, let's go inside.

The class stood stock still in hushed reverence. From the impossibly large nave windows, light hung silent in dusty, gossamer walls. From the east end, the rose window burst forth glorious colours and ethereal light. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, children and teachers alike were cast under the Cathedral's enduring spell. Marcus was held motionless by the stare of the stone-weary face of a saint; Marsha closed her eyes as light from the stained glass blessed her face in a mosaic of colour and warmth; Rajiv looked up and up and up and still did not reach the vaulting; Alice stood against a column and hugged it tight, her outstretched arms covering a mere fraction of its circumference. Sally was thrilled, thrilled to be back in Paris and charmed by the response of the children. It was a job persuading them to leave after a good hour.

Just wait until they see Sainte Chapelle tomorrow!

In stark contrast, the Pompidou Centre that afternoon provided endless and irreverent fun for Class Five. They stared and they frowned and they sniggered their way through. Shrieks of ‘Call that Art?' and ‘I could do that' and ‘That's crap!' assaulted Sally's ears. She was now genuinely relieved that Diana was not with them.

She'd have wept.

‘I know it's just one colour blue, Alice, but don't you feel a sense of space? That the colour describes the space around it? That shape and colour represent movement and space?' Miss Lomax tried to reason.

‘No,' came a defiant answer.

‘But,' Miss Lomax pressed, ‘why does painting need to represent
something
? These modern painters believe that painting need represent nothing but itself. The very act of putting colour on canvas justifies its existence.'

‘Still think it's crap,' fidgeted Alice, who was actually starting to see Miss Lomax's point, but was too galled to admit it.

‘Language!' warned Miss Lomax.