Pas de deux

Pas de deux

The intense midday sun failed to penetrate the little Parisian café, now mostly filled with students wearing their intellectual hearts on their sleeves and bemoaning the world they had inherited. No change here then, it was ever thus.

An older couple sat slightly apart. She blew a soft curl of smoke in his face. He remembered that habit. It had irritated him then and it irritated him now, forty years on.

 'What arrogance, what condescension,' he thought. He looked at her stained fingers and puckered skin. How had he ever found her attractive?

She eyed him speculatively. Old habits die hard and she had blown her cigarette smoke towards him, hardly seductive now. The sallow-skinned, slightly paunchy stranger at the care-worn table was scarcely recognizable as the brown-eyed seducer who had stolen her heart. Was this the man with whom she had spent long, languorous hours in bed, idly dropping piles of cigarette ash on the floor as they looked out over Paris rooftops? They had listened to the street noise below as pigeons cooed incessantly. Was this the man with whom she had shouted defiance at the barricades?

Without any warning, she spluttered then laughed. It was a full-hearted, rip-roaring, head-back bout of laughter. The man glanced around nervously. People were looking, but despite himself, he found himself smiling then laughing as well.

'What?'

'It's…' she spluttered before convulsing with laughter again. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks flushed. She was once more the woman he had loved with all his heart, the woman of his dreams.

She drew breath and a half sob came out, as she tried to compose herself. She smiled, a warm, gentle smile this time.

Discreetly the waiter skirted their table with his tray, expertly flicking away the invisible dust before placing two cups of coffee and a pack of Gauloises before them. He hovered before gathering up the francs and the pourboire.

 ‘Will that be all, M’sieur, Madame?’ he asked, already sashaying on to the next table.

'It's just that we were so full of ourselves, so pretentious,' she continued. 'Here we were, at this very table. We were going to change the world. And now here we are, sipping coffee – almost like a scene from Pagnol.'

Her one-time lover smiled in acquiescence as they shared a moment's silence.

'I'm glad you came.'

She placed a caring hand on his knee.

 'We shared so much. No-one else in my life remembers… Thank you for being there. Thank you for remembering.' He nodded.

She rose stiffly, tossing her scarf around her, a scarf that veiled an ageing neck but couldn't hide the hollow eyes. Rising to his feet, he bowed slightly as if to honour their past, his face impassive, apart that is, from the slightest tremor around his mouth, as she disappeared into the street from whence she had come.

-----§-----

He lowered himself gently onto the seat of the walking frame and looked out of the window. A slight drizzle misted the landscape, with its regimented trees and grass. Perhaps the weather was the reason why he ached so much. More likely it was the treatment – one bad week, one week in recovery then one good week before the cycle started all over again. He decided against turning on the television. Frankly, he was happier with his thoughts, memories of his pals who had fought alongside him in Algeria. Those had been good times despite the war. He fondly thought of the camaraderie there had been. He thought of Marie, his wife, gone from this world too long since. He smiled at the thought of their daughter, here every weekend, such a special young woman, such a memorable name.

 ‘Don’t fuss,’ he’d say to her, but he liked it really. In between the days were long, and the pain was sometimes enough to make him wonder why he was still on this planet.

He turned and fingered the envelope on the little table. Twenty years on. He didn’t have to read it. He knew it off by heart. ‘She’ had asked for a meeting. The cynical side of him had thought why bother, but the carer had jollied him into accepting. Surely at this stage it could do no harm. It would, after all, probably be the last time. He lapsed back into reverie. A well-known voice roused him.

‘Annick?’

Through blurry vision, he saw the love of his youth and he smiled. She had been willowy then, elegant in a simple way. Now, as his vision cleared, he saw the painfully thin, elderly woman before him as she shook the raindrops from her umbrella. He proffered her the vacant chair and her hands shook as she slowly manoeuvred it to face him.

‘You came then? Thank you. Shame about the weather we’re having.’

The carer bustled in, dropped two sachets of instant coffee into plastic mugs and proceeded to add hot water from a flask.

‘Nice for you to have a visitor, Bertrand,’

‘Pardon?’ He shook his head, failing to grasp her words as they floated past his ears.

‘Let me adjust your hearing aid.’ She leant over, but it made little difference.

Annick took in the scene, the bright, modern clinical cleanliness, the same in every EHPAD she had ever visited. It was so different from the intimate, history-filled bars and bistros where they had met before. She looked at the man in front of her, no hair now. The chemo had seen to that. His body, bloated from the drugs no doubt, was hard to recognize and his washed-out skin was sickly pale. She breathed in deeply. Not much hope for conversation then.

She had always held the view that you could take a lot of things away but memories remained, however, experience was teaching her that those, too, could be destroyed. You didn’t have to wait for St Peter at the pearly gates to recount everything. Old age and senility spat out greatly-treasured moments and destroyed them forever.

‘You left Paris then?’ she essayed. He cupped his hand to his ear. ‘You moved away from Paris?’ she repeated.

‘Paris, ah Paris,’ he beamed and paused.  ’I left the great love of my life there. I should never have left her, but I went on to marry and have children happily enough. I even named one of them after her but my wife never knew. Sadly she’s long since gone.’

Annick wasn’t quite sure if he was referring to his wife or her. She wondered about his daughter Annick, named after his youthful, erotic, inspiring liaison with herself.

‘I wonder if you ever met her? There were so many of us in ’68. We manned the barricades, you know. You would have liked her if you had, I’m sure.’ As he spoke Annick watched the years drop away, seeing a vestige of his youthful enthusiasm. Minutes later his gaze faltered. Annick saw his body slump further into his seat. ‘What did you say your name was?’

Annick grasped his hands in hers and brought them to her lips.

‘Annick,’ But already he had drifted into the slumber that would ready him for his exit from this world. His cup of coffee remained untouched. She sipped hers thoughtfully and went to take a cigarette out of the packet before remembering where she was. She put the pristine filter tip back, remembering, remembering where she was…

-----§-----

Excitement had been in the air. She had been the first in her family to go away to University. The smell, the intoxication of Paris literally took her breath away after the odours of the bas court. She had transport – a black, shiny Vélosolex motorized bicycle of which she was so proud. She thought of her grandparents, always dressed in black, still with their faithful Bucephalus, the plodding heavy horse and cart; her father’s pride in getting a Vespa tricycle to take their produce to market. She loved and missed her family and friends, but she knew how hurt and confused they would be to see her in her life now, puzzled by her wearing tight jeans and slip-on pumps. She had seldom written and visited less.

She had been making placards for the next strike action in the bar with her new-found comrades, mostly country girls like herself in the process of reinventing themselves.  A group of young men arrived fresh from an all-nighter at the barricades, hair wild and eyes burning bright with lust for life, enthusiasm and maybe just a little fanaticism. Bertrand had stood out then. He was a little taller than most Frenchmen and, as those brown eyes turned fully onto her, she felt a delicious, dangerous tremor. Like a stoat mesmerizing a rabbit he had sauntered over. ‘Cigarette?’ he had proffered. As he bent low to light her Gauloise from his she blew a curl of smoke in his face…

-----§-----

She shook her head. Glancing up at the crucifix above the EHPAD door she quietly left the room and the sleep-filled spirit of the man she had loved, his brown eyes soon to be closed forever.

The sun had come out. The grounds felt fresh, sweet and clean after the rain. She watched three ducks cross the path, the drake looking very pleased with himself as two females waddled submissively after. Was it ever thus, one couple and one hanger-on?

She had never married, had children. Now she felt the love she had shared had not been just a youthful folly. Her love for him, born of passion and innocence, had metamorphosed into something unique. A token of their love lived on. He had named his daughter after her.

A ray of sunshine pierced her love-starved heart.

1626 words