The Lost Luggage Porter (27 page)

'You'll not catch me taking any quantity of cash into a hotel here,' he said. 'A lot of thieving bastards, these fucking French are.'

A thought struck me: perhaps Hopkins thinks it not worth mentioning after all that my spectacles are false. Perhaps he thinks there's nothing in it. As we walked towards the 'Sortie', I noted the location of the telegraph office.

We stepped out of the Gare du Nord into a cobbled street. Over the road, in the rain and grey light, were cafes and restaurants with the widest fronts I'd ever seen, but all closed up, with seats stacked on tables outside. On the cob­bles ahead of us was a mouse - same as an English mouse; no better, no worse. It dashed off as a cart came along the street pulled by a horse that looked high-mettled and restive. There was nothing fancy about this equipage, but that horse knew it was French all right. We began walking across the road, and the cobbles seemed to swim towards us in ripples.

We walked on, turning left, right; I was following Samp­son, too done-in to ask questions, or to think about whatever game Hopkins was playing.

The buildings were tall, with windows in their roofs. Lanterns came and went, mounted on swan necks like thin, twisted trees, the gas still burning, though day was coming. We passed two smoke-blackened churches that were more like great theatres - all stacked up like mountains, with peel­ing posters outside. A blue, round something was stuck on to the front of one of them: sundial or clock? I slowly made out that it was a clock, and that the time shown was a quarter after five. Not two minutes later, the three of us were stand­ing outside the door of a moderately sized hotel. The name was written in gold paint against the blackened stone: Hotel des Artistes. Three French flags sprouted over the door. I remembered what the
Police Gazette
had said of Joseph Howard Vincent: 'Likely to be found in hotels'.

Well here we were, to the very life.

Sampson pressed a bell, and we waited. Directly opposite the hotel was another great black church, lamps and trees in alternation across its front, but its windows were all bricked up.

The door of the hotel was opened at last by a little fellow dressed in black and white; he was all smiles, so here was another kind of Frencher. We walked through the doorway: red carpet, more gold paint, some giant ferns, and paintings all around the walls of people half hidden in shadowy rooms. The place was quite swanky, or had been once. From the way he was speaking to him, I didn't believe that the lit­tle fellow in black and white knew Sampson, but I had the idea that Sampson knew the hotel.

Their chat ran on as the little man indicated that we should follow him up a winding staircase, and Sampson did not lower his voice a bit even though everybody in the hotel must have been asleep. As we walked, I felt my seasickness return on the endless, too-low steps and I wondered in a kind of fury how many of the sleepers in this place were artists. Sampson was quizzing the hotel bloke about something or other, and by my reckoning, the man half understood and half pretended to. What Sampson spoke was French, but it was a little off.

We were taken to the fourth floor, which was the top one. Hopkins took one room, and Sampson and I were to occupy the other . . . which was two rooms: a bedroom and a sitting room; or three, if you counted the privy and bath off to the side of the sitting room. Our quarters were pretty grand but gone to seed somewhat: red carpet a little bumpy; a black smudge beneath the mantel of the white fireplace, which was quite a museum piece, Ancient Greek style. All in all it was a cute arrangement, for I was put into the bedroom (which did give me the bed, whereas Sampson was evident­ly making do with the couch in the lounge), but I would have to walk past him to quit these chambers.

Well, I would do that if it came to it, and he could fire his revolver and bring the whole fucking house down. For the meanwhile though, I lay on the bed, and while I had resolved not on any account to sleep, my lights were out in a second.

I woke to see Sampson drinking wine from one of those plain bottles in the chair next to my bed. He wore trousers, boots, undershirt.

'What time is it?' I asked him, sitting up.

'Don't know, mate,' he said.

'Those two you shot in the engine shed at York,' I said, ris­ing to a sitting position, '. . . they might be dead; might be mortally injured.'

'Correct,' he said, taking another pull at the bottle.

He passed the bottle over to me, and I took a quick go on it.

'Which would you rather?' I asked, giving it back.

'Me?' he said. 'I'm easy.'

I gained my feet and walked over to the window.

'If it came to court,' Sampson said, 'and they'd only taken injuries, I'd say I was shooting to miss.'

'And if they were killed?'

'Say the same. Can't swing for attempt, you know.'

I opened the window, looked out. French rooftops; French smoke coming out of them, meeting solid white, winter day. As I looked down, my gaze fell further than I'd bargained - down on to a railway valley: a dozen tracks cut between white cliffs of houses. On the wall opposite was written 'Vins', which meant 'wines'; it was like the word 'vine' so you could cotton on to it easily enough. I looked below again, and two trains crossed down in the pit, somehow giv­ing me the idea - by the equality of the exchange - that it was about midday.

'It won't come to that though,' Sampson was saying from his chair. 'Arrest, charge, committal, trial, verdict, sentence, periods of hard labour ... I can't be fucking doing with it, so I sweep away, little Allan, back and forth . . .'

He was sitting forward in the chair, waving his arm from side to side.

'Sweep
away ...
it's like when you're walking through the tall grass with a cane in your hand, and you want the bloody stuff out the way, so on you go slashing to the left and to the
right...'

'The
clean
sweep,' I said.

'Bingo,' he replied. 'And you'd do it yourself if you could, mate, and so would he.'

He turned to face the door, where Hopkins was standing.

'How are we off for the readies, Sam?' he said, moving his room key between his fingers, as though his hand had a mind of its own. 'I'm in low water, just at present.'

'Hark at the divvy hunter,' said Sampson, now standing up, and with a grin on his face, adding,'... Share-out'll come soon enough.' Then he turned to me saying, 'I warn you, Allan, it won't be quite a three-way split.'

I recalled that he'd held back payment to the goods yard clerk, and I thought: he's generous in the tap room - but it

was evidently a different matter with larger amounts.

Sampson was putting on his coat, saying, 'Shall we take a turn through Paris, lads?'

I put on my own coat, and walked into the main room. Sampson, following, asked, 'Where's your glasses, Allan?'

'Reckon I'll not bother with 'em,' I said. 'Fact is,
I. ..'

Hopkins was in the sitting room, looking out of
its
win­dow, which gave onto the same railway scene as the one in the bedroom. He had not stirred at the mention of the glass­es, so no explanation seemed called for on his account, and Sampson had evidently lost interest in the subject, for he said, 'Let's away,' moving towards the door.

------ ---

As we walked, it came on to rain.

Everybody in Paris wore smaller clothes; they were small­er people. It was a proud place: soldiers, flags, stone angels, golden domes. Patriotic-like, even though I recollected from school history that they were always at each other's throats. All the cyclists scorched, all cab drivers shouted, and the sound of Paris - apart from the traffic - was the clash of plates and glasses, and the waves of chatter coming from the restaurants and bars. It was odd to think that all this had been going on all my life without me knowing.

The words over the shops would go along a certain way with English but then they'd take a wrong turning, as with 'Fruiterie'. That or they'd stop some way short of their goal, as for instance 'Tabac'. We passed under a sign in the form of a golden snail.

'They do eat snails, little Allan,' said Sampson, 'and they're proud of it.'

'Less cargo,' said Hopkins, walking along behind, and, when I looked back he gave one of his secret smiles.

Had he quite forgotten about the incident of the glasses?

A French dog came by. French dogs were different: nerv­ous and unstrung, and they paid no mind to the food in the streets. Food was everywhere, spilling out of the shops and restaurants. The Frenchers were boiling up soup on street corners, standing guard over barrels of oysters, and it all called for a sight more than three meals a day.

We came to a stand outside some dining rooms.

Inside, it was like a lady's bedroom: mirrors, lace curtains, fancy, tangled lamps. We watched through the window. At a table just inside the door sat a man with big ears and a cigar and from sideways on, he looked like a cannon. Were the faces all different, or was it the difference of the place that made them seem so? At a table further in sat the real prize: a man who was the spit of Napoleon himself, with a beaky nose, puffed-up chest; scant hair pushed over to the side. Sampson said, 'I know this spot', as if the fact was just coming to him. He pushed open the door, we walked in and I looked straightaway at a little sign above a cur­tain: 'Telephone'.

We were shown to a table. Sampson said something, and then one of the clear bottles of wine was brought. Sampson knew the word for that, all right. We'd drunk it off before the menus were passed to us, and Sampson asked for another by saying: 'Encore.'

Outside the rain was falling more heavily, but the restau­rant was bright and jolly There was a fireplace to one side of us, with a huge mantelshelf, on which sat giant, empty bot­tles of champagne which put me in mind somehow of the gas cylinders.

I looked again at the 'Telephone' sign, and saw that Napoleon was walking towards it, pushing back the cur­tain, giving me sight of the instrument. It looked nothing like the English ones.

Sampson, smoking a cigar, said: 'If they know you here, they put you in that back room,' and he pointed through to a part of the restaurant where the tablecloths and napkins were even whiter, the red wine redder, the lamps still more jungly and flower-like.

'But they
don't
know you, do they?' asked Hopkins.

"They do not,' said Sampson.

"Thank God for that,' said Hopkins, putting back more wine.

He turned to me and grinned, and I thought: he's going to rat on me now - let on about the glasses. But instead some­thing beyond the window caught his eyes, and he was up and out into the street. He walked away to the left, out of sight, and returned a minute later, grinning fit to bust. At the table once more, he produced a pocketbook - a French one. There was a small paper inside, covered with tiny handwrit­ing, and some of the colour-run notes.

'Bit of all right,' said Sampson.

'Real fag-ender, this was,' said Hopkins proudly, 'side pocket, sitting on top of a handkerchief with just the tip pointing up.'

'You saw that all from here?' I said.

'Lynx-eyed, en't he?' said Sampson, looking at me, and there was silence for a space, so that once again I thought the matter of the spectacles must come up, but instead the food arrived. It was the Plat du Jour (dish of the day) that Samp­son had asked for and the turn-up was that it was sausage and onions, albeit of superior flavour. As Sampson called for more wine, Hopkins, who was tipsy by now, sat back in his chair and said: 'Tell you what, mates, I do miss the Garden Gate though.'

He just sat there grinning for a while, and I knew he'd made a plan of some sort.

Half an hour later, we were walking by the river which came through the city in a stone channel. There were lines of flat barges, all covered up with tarpaulins as if to say: this is all French business, none of yours. We walked on into a park, where indoor chairs were placed outside. A man sat at one of them with an easel before him and an umbrella over his head; he was painting a fountain with stone horses set all around the edge. The design made it look as if the horses were trying to run away but were trapped by their hind legs; trapped by being painted. We sat on the chairs underneath a dripping tree, and I fished out of my pocket
Paris and its Environs.

'Can I have a look at that, mate?' said Hopkins. He seemed in better spirits now. I handed him the book, and he fell to reading in the 'Language' section. 'Only two things you real­ly need,' he said after a while: "Une biere, s'il vous plait", then "Ou sont les toilettes?'"

'What's "Would you like a fuck?'" said Sampson, who was watching a young woman sauntering under the trees. But Hopkins was now looking at some other part of the book.

'I tell you, I mean to have a ride tonight,' said Sampson.

There were many baby carriages being pushed about in the park, all going in different directions, each carrying a new human who would do the same in time. I could not bear

to think of the wife. Had she decided that I'd skipped, taken fright at the thought of fatherhood? I dragged my thoughts in the direction of the seated artist, but his umbrella remind­ed me of Lund, the fellow who'd put me in this fix - it was all his doing.