Significance (11 page)

It seemed a long time since she ate at La Coquille Bleue. And an even longer time since, after an hour at the beach, she stood under the shower in her hotel room feeling the grittiness of sand on the tiled floor.

Earlier that day Lucy had explored a small side street. Or not a side street but a cobbled alleyway with a drainage trench cut down its centre. On one side was the back entrance to a restaurant, the clatter of pots and pans being washed could be clearly heard and someone inside was whistling a pretty but repetitive tune that she recognised but could not name. At the furthest corner of the lane was a little shop with a profusion of old china and lace and porcelain dolls prettily arranged in its small window. Lucy pushed the door open, setting off an old
-
fashioned brass bell that jangled violently. A woman of around forty years of age looked up from a walnut bureau near the back of the shop. She was sewing something small and delicate, black velvet with jet buttons. She was repairing it, in order to sell it, that much Lucy surmised, and also that the woman was happy, at peace with herself. Content.

‘
Bonjour
!' Lucy said.

The woman replied warmly, then her eyes fell to her handiwork again and Lucy understood that she was free to browse at will. She was cautious at first about touching anything, but some objects proved to be irresistible; a beaded purse with subtle chevron patterns, a stylised pink satin elephant, a tiny silver rocking chair that Lucy set moving very gently with a little push.

There were so many shelves to explore and she wanted to see everything. And the more she looked and lingered the more she felt she ought to buy something, wanted to buy something. There was such a delicious rush at the thought of alighting on the perfect object, of possessing it, capturing it, then bringing it back to her hotel room and putting it in a place of honour, where she could admire it.

She had felt a little like this when she had bought all her new clothes, the thrill of spending money recklessly, the sense of the changes she was making. The old cautious self cast off, her new self an adventurer.

She picked up a heavy black canvas collar that was decorated with brightly coloured glass beads, cowry shells and silver coins. It looked African, yet the coins showed an oriental
-
looking lion on one side, Arabic script on the other.

Then she came to a ceramic bowl that was brightly – even garishly painted in shades of burnt orange, lime green and glorious golden sunflower yellow.

Nothing bore a price tag in the shop so Lucy had hesitated until now to ask how much anything was, but she found herself bearing the bowl aloft in both hands to catch the shopkeeper's attention.

The woman, who must have been keeping a subtle eye on her customer all along, responded by holding up ten fingers.

Leaving the shop with the wrapped bowl cradled in her arms, Lucy felt she must have cheated the woman in some way. Ten Euros for such an exquisite object! In London it would have cost so much more. No doubt it wasn't terribly old or valuable, but so beautiful, so bright and cheerful. She would buy fruit to put in it: peaches and apricots and pears. And she would return to the shop in another day or so, she would find other treasures in other shops. She would discover where and when the flea markets were held and she would buy pictures, mirrors, old tin toys, vintage clothes.

Back in her room she had unwrapped the bowl and put it on the chest of drawers and filled it with the fruit she'd bought, then she sat on the bed to admire it. She remembered, distantly and a little indistinctly, a postcard a friend had sent her long ago: a painting of a Japanese doll seated on a large round dining table, an ivory
-
coloured box with a duck
-
egg blue lining behind the doll and other objects scattered nearby. And the room beyond, with its small window, was painted in tones so muted it almost became a flat plane of mere smudges, as if the room had been invaded by a dense fog. For a long time Lucy had kept that card propped up on a mantelpiece in a room in a shared house in Glasgow. Then, between one thing and another, moving to another house, going home to her parents, her ‘breakdown', the postcard had been lost. It was there in the background in a snapshot she'd taken of three friends posing in absurd fancy dress before they'd set out for the street party. They'd all taken magic mushrooms that night and their expressions were exaggerated, crazy, the little picture of the Japanese doll the only sober and steady thing in the room. Then it was lost and she could not remember who had painted it.

She got off the bed and took a peach from the bowl, bit in. Sweet perfumed juice poured over her hand and dripped down her chin.

Sight, smell, touch, taste; all these senses were filled. Only her ears were denied in this orgy of pleasure, the near silence of the room could be, at times, quite maddening.

And so, out.

She has drunk quite a bit; red wine, a glass of
Pastis
with water, more red wine, a brandy, an espresso and now here in front of her on the table another brandy, half of it already in her stomach.

She gazes at the double seat opposite, dirty mustard
-
coloured leatherette, a mirror image of the one she is sitting on. When she has left the café the two will reflect one another more perfectly without the interruption of her form.

She is thinking too much, too deeply, too drunkenly. She remembers other times when her mind seemed to hone in on a subject, to shine upon it brightly, to seek and find illumination. Then darkness. As when she was working on an essay on the Scottish designer and architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Form and function were part of it, which she had vaguely been aware of as she began to write her essay. That's the funny thing, her life as she looks at it is bisected by Charles Rennie and his furniture and architecture. He didn't really cause her to have a breakdown, he just happened to be there at the exact centre of it. He was all around her too, anyone studying art in Glasgow was in his thrall as he'd designed the building.

She can remember the sense of being both connected to the world and outside of it. Aware of dazzling beauty while being terrorised by it.

A friend, Noel, had been giving her big white capsules which he filched from his parents' house. He told her they helped you focus your mind, gave you all this energy and allowed you to stay up all night and oh, yes, an extra bonus for chicks (his words) you'd lose weight too. Lose weight and lose your mind.

She did both.

Her life before. Her life after.

Once you have gone mad, had a breakdown, stared into the abyss, you are always afraid it will happen again. But will you know?

And if you decide to go on holiday alone, to dye your hair blonde and buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes, does this mean you are going mad? No, of course not. It was a form of renewal. Of rebirth. It was healthy. Invigorating.

If Thom walked in here now, Lucy thought, if somehow, by some weird chain of coincidence he happened to come to France, to this town, and this bar, he would not recognise me. He would stare at me. He wouldn't be able to stop himself. And he would desire me. There would be recognition and confusion in his eyes. I'd smile at him, nice white teeth, looking even whiter because of the red lipstick I'm wearing, and he would smile back hesitantly at first, then pow! He'd get it.

‘Lucy! Oh my God, Lucy. You look … You are…'

He'd move closer. All the other men in the bar would pay attention, they'd be witnesses, the enthralled audience seeing this beautiful moment in the love story of Lucy and Thom.

‘Lucy. You look beautiful!'

Was that all she wanted really? Just for Thom to notice her again? So that she could feel whole again. Because, the truth be told, for some time she'd been feeling not only taken for granted, but invisible. Invisible in the way that the objects which surround us every day are. We see them and we don't see them. Walls, kettles, pictures, the window and what's beyond it, the bed, the bathroom sink, the tube of toothpaste, the chairs arranged at the dining table, one, two, three, four. A chair is a chair is a chair.

Unless it's concocted by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, in which case its regular, centuries
-
old, tried and tested dimensions are stretched and distorted out of all proportion.

It is the human body which dictates the particular form a chair takes. It is the human form which governs the scale of architecture. You don't mess with a chair unless there is a reason to – think of scaled
-
down chairs for children, or the high chairs that umpires at tennis matches sit on, or the ones designed for lifeguards at the beach. Or electric chairs for killing people, with straps and wires and God knows what else attached.

Lucy sipped the last drops of brandy slowly. She savoured it and thought that if someone offered her another she'd take it only if she then struck up a conversation. Maybe.

Or maybe she'd be good and begin her walk back to the hotel.

Or, and this is what she would have done if she was back in London, she'd hail a passing cab. Except that this small town didn't seem to have marked cabs, and certainly not black London cabs, cruising the streets waiting for a fare.

So she'd walk. It wasn't far anyway. If it was cold she'd put her cardigan on. She'd walk briskly, which would warm her up, and as a woman walking alone after midnight, the briskness was essential anyway.

The last mouthful of brandy. Not a mouthful at all. The last dregs which seemed to dissolve on her tongue and disappear rather than be swallowed.

She put the glass down on the table. Took her cardigan from the top of her bag and put it around her shoulders, loosely tying the arms together to keep it in place. She put her cigarettes in her bag, along with the matchbook Scott had given her. She wriggled out of the booth and stood at the end of the counter waiting to pay.

Standing up and walking four yards to the counter had set off renewed waves of interest among the men. Some just looked at her in that interested disinterested way; the way they might take in the sleek lines of a flashy car they happened to see parked in the street. One of the younger men managed to catch her eye and he licked his lips.

The bartender raised both of his hands in the air to show his distress.

‘You are leaving us?' he said.

The older man at the bar, the one who had bought her a drink, said something in angry quick
-
fire French to the man behind the bar.

The bartender nodded, his expression had grown serious.

Lucy was certain that the subject of this debate was her. The two men talked back and forth. She stood nearby with a twenty euro note held aloft in a meaningful way.

A phone rang. A mobile trill. Familiar. The Simpsons' theme tune. Then, near her, movement. The young African, in one gesture, retrieved his phone from his pocket, flicked it open and moved past her towards the door. She heard a voice; a retreating refrain, the language animated, happy, a language that was not French, not English, but the language of home. His home.

Her attention was momentarily torn in several directions. The African, his familiar cartoon ringtone, the bartender ignoring her need to pay, the older guy with splashes of plaster, cement, dirt on his clothes. As she scanned the room, her gaze fell on one of the younger labourers as he leaned back in the booth, shuffling the deck of cards, and his eyes bored into her, eating her, travelling boldly up and down her whole being; eyes, mouth, neck, tits, ass, legs then back to eyes again.

Outside sitting on the window ledge, the back of his red tracksuit flattened out and creased on the glass, lit from within, darkness around and beyond him, the young African.

‘Excuse me!' she said, leaning over the bar, waggling her twenty euro note, deliberately ignoring the younger guy's eyes.

‘Ah sorry, sorry. Our friend here is concerned for your safety. You have far to go?'

‘Oh.' Lucy was embarrassed and at the same time irritated. Their concern was touching, but it also reminded her of her vulnerability. Reminded her that she was prey, was object, not subject. Was little girl lost. ‘I'll be fine,' she said, ‘but perhaps I could call a cab?'

The bartender looked sympathetic, conveyed what she had said to the big guy as if he could not understood her schoolgirl French. They debated some more.

Lucy suddenly feels self
-
conscious. Raw. With edges that bleed.

‘Hey, listen, I'll be fine,' she says. ‘Can I just settle up?'

‘You want a cab?'

‘No, no, really. My hotel is just a few minutes away.'

The big old guy shifts himself, moves off the stool he's been glued to all night, puts a big paw on her arm. The fingers are as rough as sandpaper. She reacts. She overreacts. Badly. Flinches, steps away. She has insulted him.

‘I'll be fine,' she says again, puts the twenty on the counter, turns on her heel, takes a step, then hesitates and turns back to the two men. ‘Sorry,' she whispers in English, then shakes her head. ‘Thank you. I'll be fine.' Head up, bag over shoulder, heels clicking over the wooden floor. The sound of her coming, the sound of her going.