We'll Always Have Paris (17 page)

On my thirtieth birthday, we do go out, for once. My sister, who has come over to visit with a lemon sponge in a tin from her father, babysits and Olivier takes me to the Michelin three-star
restaurant just over the road. It is dark and intimidating, with thick carpets, shelves full of odd bibelots and a general air of granny’s parlour. A group of bankers on the next table are
talking incredibly loudly about office politics. Everything on the menu is so expensive I feel slightly faint.

A frosty waiter brings us an
amuse bouche
: it is a single sea urchin on a large white plate, darkly quivering, cold and gelatinous. Just as I am wondering if I can possibly hide it
somewhere, Olivier puts down his spoon.

‘We don’t have to stay, you know,’ he says.

‘What? We’ve already ordered!’

‘I mean in Paris. We don’t have to stay here. It’s not, you know, obligatory or anything. We could go back to London.’

I make a face. ‘Yes, but . . .’

He cuts me off. ‘Just think about it. You’re still on maternity leave aren’t you?’

‘Yes, theoretically.’

‘And I could easily get a job.’ This is true. I have never known someone so good at getting jobs. Olivier goes to job interviews for fun, just to keep his hand in.

‘But we can’t just give up!’ I’m horrified by this suggestion. ‘We moved here, properly. You don’t just give up after a few months because everything is too
hard.’

The truth of this hits me – everything
is
too hard. But that’s grief, surely? Anywhere would feel this shitty. And what kind of loser just leaves
Paris
? You
aren’t supposed to come here and be instantly filled with bliss and well-being. The whole point of a city like Paris is that you have to work at it. I am conscious I have not really been
working at anything.

‘We’re allowed to have made a mistake, you know.’

‘Hmm. I don’t know.’

The waiter returns and removes my uneaten urchin with funereal solemnity. I crumble my bread abstractedly and listen to the details of Toby and Josh’s ingenious swap deal on the next
table.

It can’t be a mistake. We are supposed to be here; this was the plan. I dismiss the idea out of hand and turn to my starter, which is some kind of scallop dish. Nearly everything on my
plate is white, thin translucent discs of scallop, some kind of foamy sauce, an unidentified white length of vegetable matter (possibly salsify). It’s eery, a sort of ghost dish. Olivier has
foie gras
, of course, and as he spreads some on an impossibly thin piece of toast, he waves it admonishingly in my direction.

‘You should think about it. Because I can’t decide this time. I pushed you into moving here; what we do next has to be your decision.’

As birthday announcements go – I’m taking you to Venice, here are a pair of Louboutins – I do not rate this one highly, but thankfully the dessert is rather lovely (it’s
a moussey thing with coconut and lime), and the rest of the evening passes without incident.

But now the thought is planted, I can’t help but wonder. Could we possibly leave?

Along with my patisserie habit, I am also developing something of a pharmacy problem. There are thousands of pharmacies to choose from: it seems as if every second shop in
Paris is a pharmacy, their green crosses flashing like a street corner emergency service, their windows full of seasonal urgings and warnings. I love Parisian pharmacies, and for years I have been
gripped by the life cycle of their window displays, which detail all the seasonal afflictions that can befall you. In the first sunny days of April the paramilitary weaponry of anti-cellulite
treatments and hayfever remedies comes out; in July there is the holiday medicine chest of Immodium, after-sun and insect repellent; September brings the ‘back to school’ vitamins; then
winter throat pastilles and cold and flu remedies. In-between times, there are urgings to consider the benefits of magnesium, or of fish oils, of mysterious skin vitamins or treatments for the
totally fictitious French affliction that is ‘
jambes lourdes
’, heavy legs.

‘My legs!’ I tease Olivier sometimes, slumping towards him Quasimodo-like. ‘They are SO HEAVY.’

‘It’s a real thing,’ he maintains, flatly. ‘Heavy legs is a genuine medical condition.’

‘It really isn’t though, is it? It’s absolute nonsense. Who do you know who has heavy legs?’

‘Lots of people! Are you really telling me British people don’t get heavy legs?’

‘No, because they aren’t real.’

I like the pharmacies because they are designed to look after you and little else in Paris is. I feel starved of kindness here, which is stupid of me; you don’t move to a capital city to
bathe in the milk of human kindness. If I wanted solicitous ladies who probably know at least one member of my family clucking over my babies in the street, I should have stayed in York. The acts
of kindness I do find in Paris are mainly institutional. The state and the city are a munificent presence in daily life in the capital: the provision of childcare, transport and leisure are a
matter of civic pride and considered a mark of civilization. It’s not all functional either. I admire the activities which the city lays on in summer for residents: Paris-Plage, the
artificial beach on the riverside which has spawned imitators across Europe; free cinema screenings; thoughtful, creative programmes of activities for children who aren’t able to go on
holiday.

But perhaps the most striking arena for this state-sponsored ‘kindness’ is healthcare. You will never want for a doctor in France, or for an X-ray, or a prescription. Indeed, I
discover, you can envelop yourself in the delicious balm of solicitousness, that feeling that someone cares, simply by walking into a pharmacy.

I start to do this more and more often, for the children’s various minor ailments or my own. Parisian pharmacists, I discover, enjoy hearing your lengthy description of your symptoms.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that they enjoy the prospect of selling you five separate products for a modest cough, but certainly they will treat them with the utmost seriousness. They will
ask you not one but four or five searching questions before pulling a bespoke selection of products off the shelves, complete with instructions and tips for use. It’s extraordinarily
gratifying, and soon our bathroom is full of superior multivitamins and professional-looking analgesics, antiseptic sprays and herbal supplements that promise inner tranquillity.

My habit really kicks in, however, when I hurt my knee. In October, after getting up from the floor of Theo’s bedroom slightly awkwardly, my knee finally gives up after years of twinges
and minor niggles, swelling grotesquely and painfully to the size of a football. My first port of call is, of course, the pharmacy up the street. There, after an initially frosty greeting, I am
enveloped in a cloud of concern once I show off my hugely swollen leg. A chair is produced. The head pharmacist is summoned from the back room and a small colloquy gathers around my right leg,
earnestly discussing its puffy, regrettable appearance. There is talk of ice and anti-inflammatories, of poultices and possible infection.

‘Was there a fall, an accident?’

‘No. Possibly a twisting movement. I heard a crunching noise.’

‘Hmm. You must go to the doctor.’

‘Yes, I know. I’m going on Monday. But what can I do before that? I can’t walk on it. I have two small children.’

‘Ah, yes. That is very trying.’ Some nodding. More conferring. ‘We will give you some Diclofenac. Normally, it is only available on prescription, but in the circumstances . . .
And a support. We must find the right one.’

An assistant goes to the drawers and comes back with a selection of foully unattractive beige support garments, which they hold up against me, lips pursed and eyes narrowed in appraisal.

Finally, a consensus is reached on a sort of angry-looking black elastic sausage; a pile of boxed drugs are placed upon the counter and I am ready to go, slowly, with orders to keep my leg
elevated, to apply ice, to eat before taking my pills, to be sure to go straight to the doctor on Monday morning. Even though my knee still hurts, I feel quite emotional: they were so nice to me!
It is all I can do to resist the temptation to hide my bag of drugs, limp up the street and start again in the next pharmacy.

The sweeping magnanimity of French healthcare is often portrayed as a black hole of needy, budget-busting enormity (‘
Le trou de la sécu
,’ people say, ‘The
Hole’, as if a giant financial mantrap were waiting to engulf the greedy children of the dependency culture). The vast French health budget operates with a sort of blank-faced,
state-sponsored kindness. ‘You matter,’ it says. ‘Your elbow hurts? We will send you for an MRI scan at terrifying expense. Your legs feel oddly heavy? Your doctor will send you
to an approved thalassotherapy centre, where kindly young men in lab coats will make you walk in line through thigh-high baths of cold water for half an hour every morning for a week with your
fellow sufferers, in the manner of racehorses with fetlock strain.’ You may have to close your eyes to some surface . . . well, disagreeableness in the process. Your doctor is likely to have
strong views, for instance, on your weight; and as a non-French citizen, trying to obtain the cherished
carte Vitale
(social security registration) that opens all these magical doors is
likely to leave you with psychological scars that no amount of thalassotherapy can erase. But persist. The El Dorado of a health-care system where no cost-benefit analysis applies, where no one has
heard of NICE guidelines or of quality of life units, is but another eighty pages of forms and a trip to a Stalinist office in Cergy-Pontoise away.

When I do go to the doctor, my elephant knee earns me a gratifying further amount of professional solicitude and state-sponsored munificence: the doctor looks pleasingly concerned and orders me
a very swift MRI scan. After she has studied the results, I get a prescription for a series of twenty-four ‘
rééducation
’ physio sessions, each an hour long, to be
cashed in at the physio of my choice (this is apparently the kind of thing Parisians actually have: a preferred physiotherapist). I find one in the phone book that seems to be relatively close,
call up tentatively, and make an appointment.

Christian, the physiotherapist, operates out of a sweaty basement behind the Avenue des Ternes, about ten minutes to the west of our apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. His studio is equipped
with a few Swiss balls, a feeble-looking exercise bike and a couple of benches where he hooks you up to electrodes or makes you lift medicine balls. I go to the basement twice a week for remedial
quadriceps strengthening and I quite enjoy it: apart from anything else, I get to talk to human beings to whom I am not related, which is a rarity. It is a cheery place. The other clients are
stripped of their carapace of Parisian elegance and seem vulnerable and human in baggy T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms: it feels very normal, somehow. We do our exercises companionably to the
accompaniment of middle-of-the-road pop from Europe 1 and sometimes people even chat, about the weather or the TV or local gossip. It’s a weak kind of camaraderie, but I’m so grateful
for it.

Christian the physio, in particular, is good fun. He tells jokes and teases his clients and asks questions: how did I end up in Paris? What is London like? As he prods and examines and chivvies
me, it is impossible not to feel a little special. I find myself thinking how easy it would be to become the kind of elderly lady who always has an ailment or two on the go, a worrying cough, an
indefinable weakness, to ensure I get enough of that feeling of concern, the sense that my problems merit attention. Perhaps I might develop Munchausen’s syndrome? I can sort of see, now, the
appeal of Munchausen’s.

In the end I don’t have to do anything of the sort for attention, because something else entirely unexpected happens.

Initially when I go off cake, I assume it’s just a post-Christmas thing: I feel puffy and bloated too after weeks of overeating. I can’t get excited about my beloved
délice café
, but I have been eating two of them a week for months, so perhaps I just need a change. It’s time for the
galette des rois
, anyway, the puff pastry
and frangipane Epiphany cake. Theo picks a ‘Finding Nemo’ themed one from the bakery round the corner, fixating on the garish crown. The
galette
is such a nice idea and I enjoy
the feeling of belonging the traditions engender (the youngest hides under the table and calls out who should get each slice, then whoever gets the
fève,
in our case a tiny Nemo
figurine, in their slice is the king or queen for the day), but when it comes to eating my slice I’m seized with nausea.

The queasiness continues: I can’t face
flan
and I don’t know what to have for breakfast: none of my usual
pains au chocolat
or Paul chocolate brioches tempt me in
the slightest. I want toast and Marmite and later in the afternoons, I find myself craving cheese and onion crisps (Jill could probably help me out). Realization dawns improbably slowly, it seems
so unlikely and so unfair, but one evening I am moaning about feeling sick and Olivier turns to me with a frown in the kitchen, where he is washing up, and asks:

‘You couldn’t be pregnant, could you?’

‘No,’ I say, decidedly, even though technically, I absolutely could be. We do still have sex, despite combining several of the top ten stressful life events in one convenient annual
subscription package, despite the neighbours, despite everything. We aren’t in a great place, but unhappy sex is not necessarily bad sex and we cling to one another, grateful for the solace
of a warm body. More often than I realize, I think, we have sleepy, barely conscious, sex, a reflexive reaching out for comfort.

I haven’t been taking the Pill either, partly because I am still breastfeeding and partly because it was a protracted business conceiving both boys. I can’t bring myself to believe I
could get pregnant accidentally. The thought of visiting a Parisian gynaecologist has put me off too – abstinence (forever if necessary) seems preferable, but then we fall into bed and have
more half-dressed, half-asleep sex and the dangerous cycle continues.