The Kiss (11 page)

‘It won’t be possible for us all to stay together in this crush,’ said Alec. He split them into small groups of three and four, appointing the most responsible in each as leader, and told them to return to the starting point afterwards. He was an excellent organiser.

Cormac took his small squad into the heart of the market. They trawled through rails of leather coats and cheap jeans and T-shirts and poked in boxes of old postcards and sepia-coloured photographs and
tangled jewellery and ceramic door knobs and moth-eaten feather boas. They bought a few odds and ends, not much. They didn’t have much money left by this stage; there was only one more day to go after this, a fact they were bemoaning already. Cormac had been amazed how much money some of the students had had at the start. Clarinda had had less than most; he got the impression that she and her mother were quite hard up. Mrs Bain worked part-time in an antique shop and helped out a friend who ran a second-hand clothes shop that sold ‘designer labels’. Cormac presumed that most of Mrs Bain’s dramatic wardrobe came from this source.

Clarinda, who was part of his group, bought herself a long string of blue beads that were the colour of gentians. She wore them when they were having lunch out there at Clignancourt, at a
café concert
called
Chez Louisette
and billed as
La dernière guinguette de Paris
. ‘What do you think, Cormac?’ she asked him, twirling the strand of beads round her long slender fingers. The pupils had started to call Alec and himself by their Christian names after the first day. They were mostly seventeen years old, and in their last year at school, so it did seem daft for them to have to go on referring to them as Mr This and Mr That. The relationship between teacher and pupil was becoming more casual by the day, the
dividing line more blurred. He had noticed her hands before. How could he not? He noticed the hands of all his students. They were of interest to him. He watched them as they worked and learnt from watching.

Clarinda was sharing his table, along with another girl and boy, a couple, who were having a problem keeping their hands off each other. Cormac suspected they were spending their nights together. He and Alec had discussed the matter but had decided to ignore it since the pair had been a couple long before they ever came to Paris. After seeing
The Kiss
, Robbie had dubbed them Paolo and Francesca, which had embarrassed them but had not stopped them from locking themselves into tight embraces whenever possible.

‘The beads match your eyes,’ Cormac told Clarinda, which pleased her.

They were in the upstairs gallery of the restaurant, occupying several tables. The place was packed and the atmosphere hectic. People were queuing in the narrow alleyway outside while perspiring waitresses ran to and fro slapping down plates of food and whipping the white paper covers off the yellow under-cloths the instant a table was vacated. When the concert got into full swing they had to scream their orders to be heard above the deafening sound system. Meanwhile, the proprietors, Armand and Richard, looking like twins
with similar glasses and moustaches, stood below, perfectly composed; or so they appeared.

The first singer was a woman who was going to
chante
Piaf. She stepped up to the dais wearing a grey trouser suit and stilettos, looking much more vigorous than Piaf had ever been. This woman would be able to take care of herself; there was nothing waif-like about her. Her short hair was grey and her orange make-up had been lavishly applied. Her voice, when she began to sing, had the harsher notes of Piaf’s voice, though not its pathos, but she knew how to give the audience what it wanted.
Je ne regrette rien
… She rolled her rs well. Cheers rang out, feet pumped on the floor. ‘This is great!’ Clarinda’s eyes were shining. She had drunk two or three glasses of cheap red wine, as had all the students. Cormac was enjoying himself too. He liked when things went over the top and entered the realm of camp. It was fun. Piaf’s stand-in reeled off all her best-known numbers and received rapturous applause, after which she came round with her little basket looking for offerings.

They were then treated to a rather paunchy man taking up the baton to
chante
‘Paris’.
Sous les ponts de Paris
… The audience swayed in time with him and some sang along, the women in the audience mostly, smiling to themselves, remembering past moments.
Following him came a guitarist, gypsyish, with wild dark locks and a gyrating belly, aping Elvis. After he had come round with his basket and the restaurant had subsided a little Cormac noticed they had finished their litre carafe of wine and ordered another.

‘I have definitely made up my mind,’ said Clarinda, ‘I am going to come to Paris after I finish at art college.’

‘Every day won’t be like this.’

‘I wouldn’t expect it to. But I could come here and sketch some of the people.’ She had a talent for catching the essence of a person in her drawing.

The other two at their table were so totally absorbed that he and Clarinda had no option but to converse together, as he said to Alec later, when they were discussing the day and Alec said, ‘You and Miss Bain seemed to be having a real
tête-à-tête
. Heads together, eh!’ ‘No other way to be heard in that madhouse,’ Cormac retorted. That was what he would say when he came to be investigated, using slightly different words, expanding a little so that they, his interrogators, would get the picture.

We were told, Mr Aherne, that on that visit to the flea market at Clignancourt you appeared to be talking intimately with the girl in question. Tête-à-tête, would that describe it?

It must have been Alec McCaffy who so described
it, but if he were to ask they would not reveal their sources. It didn’t take much to work it out, however. He might have said, though did not, that he had seen Mr McCaffy
tête-à-tête
with a girl called Effie who was going to university next year to do geography, so that Mr McCaffy had a special interest in her, just as he had in Clarinda Bain, who was going to study art. But all that was yet to come.

After they had settled the bill, which came to more than they had anticipated, and left the restaurant, the students were in boisterous mood. They sang
Je ne regrette rien
at the tops of their voices, exaggerating their words and gestures. Alec hoped they were not too drunk. Cormac told him not to worry. ‘They can take it. I bet they can sink a lot more at their own parties. They’re just in high spirits, intoxicated by the scene as much as the wine.’

Clarinda wanted to go back to the booth where she had bought her necklace; she had seen one that she thought that her mother would like, in jade green.

‘You can’t go off on your own,’ objected Alec. They had a rule that no student was allowed to go alone anywhere, even to the small grocer-cum-greengrocer across the street from their hotel. ‘It’s like a maze, this place, you could get lost without trying.’

Cathy and Sue wanted to buy something that they
had also seen earlier and suggested that the three of them go together. Cormac volunteered to accompany them. ‘You go on ahead, Alec,’ he said, ‘and we’ll catch you up. Wait for us at the Métro if we don’t see you before then.’

Alec led the rest of the students away and it was unfortunate that two of them chose to throw up just seconds after they parted. They deposited the undigested aftermath of their
poulet et frites
lunch, washed down with
vin rouge,
over the merchandise of a carpet seller. Half a dozen Afghan rugs had been liberally spattered. Mayhem broke out, with the carpet seller dancing with rage and screaming profanities (at least Alec presumed that was what they were) and neighbouring stall holders coming running to join in and shout, also of course in French, which Alec had little understanding of, except for the word
compensation. Compensation pour le
nettoyage.
For the cleaning, a girl, who was studying for a French Higher, translated for him.

‘Run back and get Cormac, quick!’ he instructed one of the boys. Cormac could speak French reasonably well.

But by then it was too late, for Cormac and his group had vanished down one of the many alleyways and the boy himself almost got lost trying to make his way back. Alec had to try to sort out his own mess.
The girl who was doing the French Higher tried to negotiate with the carpet man but she said she couldn’t make out his accent; also, he kept shouting, which didn’t help. The only thing Alec could think to do was to open his wallet and offer a hundred franc note. It was tossed aside.
Une insulte!
He did get that one, too. Several students scrambled after the note, almost getting themselves kicked on the head by onlookers. A couple of the girls were becoming semi-hysterical, giggling uncontrollably. More screaming and dancing on the spot by the carpet seller ensued until six hundred francs was raised and they were allowed to pass. Until then their way had been solidly blocked at both ends. As Alec led them out of the market towards the Métro he swore that he would never again take a party of students abroad. He reckoned they’d got off relatively lightly with sixty quid, though it did leave them rather short, and of course one of the students would be stupid enough when they got back to tell her mother and the mother would come up to complain to the headmaster. One way and another, their trip to Paris was to achieve notoriety.

Cormac and the three girls had meanwhile gone on their way looking for the booths that they had seen earlier, which were more difficult to locate than they had anticipated. They made a few false turnings
before Cathy and Sue found what they were looking for. Clarinda said she thought hers was just round the corner. Cormac told the other two girls to come and get them as soon as they’d done their shopping.

Clarinda couldn’t find the booth round the first corner, yet she could have sworn that that was where it had been. They tried the next one and there it was and the necklace that she thought her mother would like. She bought it without any fuss; the transaction couldn’t have taken more than five minutes, after which they returned to the place where they had left Cathy and Sue, but of them there was no sign. They must have taken a wrong turning themselves. Cormac and Clarinda set out to look for them, stopping at one or two booths so that Cormac could ask if anyone had seen two girls, one with short blonde hair, the other reddish-brown and curly, about the same height as the girl he was with, speaking English. No one could recollect girls of that description but there were many people about, so many girls, of all kinds and colours. Who would notice anyone in particular in such a crowd?

Cormac and Clarinda found themselves back at
Chez Louisette.

‘Could I have a coffee?’ asked Clarinda. ‘I think I need to sober up.’ She giggled.

It sounds, Mr Aherne, as if you allowed the pupils to consume rather a large quantity of red wine? And then, after the lunch, how come you were on your own with the girl in question?

The restaurant had only a few customers since the afternoon was drawing to a close and most of those who wished to lunch had already done so. They sat at a downstairs table and drank black coffee and were serenaded once more with
chansons de Paris
. Elvis seemed to have knocked off. Cormac was beginning to wish that he could himself but he had two missing students to find.

You say you got separated from the other two girls, Mr Aherne? Was it not your responsibility to see that that did not happen?

They didn’t find them for the reason, simple enough, that the girls had managed to link up with the rest of the group and had continued with them to the Métro station where they had waited for ten minutes to see if Cormac and Clarinda would appear. When they did not, Alec decided that they should not wait any longer since the two who had vomited were miserable in their smelly shirts and trainers and two, who had not yet vomited, were feeling that they might.

It seems odd, Mr Aherne, that the other two girls
who had got separated from the main party managed to join up with it again yet, you, who had been at this flea market before and could speak French, failed to do so
.

Cormac and Clarinda searched until the shopkeepers and stall holders were packing up.

‘We’d best head back,’ said Cormac, ‘and see if Sue and Cathy have got there before us.’

When they reached the Métro station they saw no sign either of the two girls or of anyone else from their group. A Romany woman sat on the ground near the entrance nursing a wan-faced baby.

‘
Que belle!
’ She grinned at Clarinda, opening her mouth to display a few broken teeth at the front.

Clarinda immediately pulled out her purse and thrust some francs into the woman’s hand.

‘Was that wise?’ murmured Cormac.

He had no sooner spoken than they were set upon by a number of other clamouring gypsy women and girls who appeared as if out of nowhere. Cormac tried to flap them aside as he might a posse of buzzing flies but they were persistent, and in the end he and Clarinda had to take to their heels and outrun them. He noticed Clarinda’s bare arms were scratched.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said with a shrug. ‘They’re poor.’

‘I know.’

Suddenly he realised that at this moment he was not so well off himself. He had used the last of his money to settle the lunch bill. ‘Got any cash on you?’

Clarinda shook her head without engaging his eye. She had given her last franc to the woman.

What to do now, wondered Cormac, who felt like a drink more than anything else. They had bought carnets of Métro tickets for the group but Alec had those in the red knapsack he carried on his back.

‘We’ll just have to walk then, won’t we?’ said Clarinda brightly.

‘It’s a long way,’ said Cormac gloomily. ‘We’re right out at the
périphérique
that runs round the outside rim of Paris.’