Spread your wings and take to the sky

The night the Inspector yanked me aside was the hottest that summer. I was already late and my boss, her eyes a dark warning, had enunciated in her accented English:

“YOU MUST NOT BE LATE AGAIN.”

I always intended to go to bed, to rest, to recover after the graveyard-shift. Mostly, I didn’t. Somewhere, along the train ride home my eyes, heavy with sleep, would flutter closed, my head loll against the window.  Then I’d be jerked awake by the sudden stop at Les Halles. The temptation to explore the city in the gentle morning heat would be too great. I was nineteen and I’d pulled off the impossible: away from home, with a gang from college, in part-time jobs and cheek-by-jowl accommodation.

In Paris, I was uprooted, and, alongside moments of terror, I revelled in the pure glee I felt at being there. I breathed in and out, under the birdcalls, past the markets springing to life, the buzz and chatter of early morning coffee drinkers at street side cafés, through the narrow streets and elegant squares, and into the leafy cool and green of Canal St Martin and the wakening day. I’d catch floating snatches of conversation, the rattle and hum of a nearby café, a waiter taking orders in rapid French.

My school French, constrained and mumbling, had blossomed into something more whole-hearted. I’d mastered colloquialisms and learnt how to speak French, certainly. It was more than that though. I could communicate. I understood the mannerisms, when to jut out my chin to emphasize a particular point, how to fait les bisous without bumping noses, that going for un cocktail meant a drink, singular. I felt I belonged.

A friend from college found our accommodation. He’d arrived a few months earlier and was firmly installed as the indispensable receptionist, fixer and smoother for a bijou family-run hotel. Perched between an artisan shoemaker and a fromagerie, the hotel was situated on a street so narrow, even for the Latin Quarter, that your elbow could easily brush the ornate, gilt-edged front door, with its constantly dinging bell.

I’d seen him calm and coax the most unwieldy tourists, dishevelled and weary from long haul flights and clamouring for room keys and recommendations. They were charmed by his quick smile and readiness to share his local knowledge of where to go. He’d ring local restaurants and get last minute tables, happily haul suitcases up winding stairs and judiciously slip between his decent French or an amped-up brogue depending on the guest’s nationality.

He fixed it for us to stay, gratis, in a former staff room, a small studio, accessible only by climbing the uneven backstairs that spiralled from the ground floor to the hotel eaves and, using the stick hook, pulling up the attic shaft.

You emerged, as if rising out of the sea into a garret room high-ceilinged with a sloping wall. In the room were a few mattresses simply covered and a square skylight through which the sun slanted, illuminating the dusty floor. In the early evening, I would hear the cacophony of singing, laughter and chatter from outside curling into the room and on the floor below someone using the traditional squat toilet, the surge and rush of the flush and the slow trickle of the cistern filling. I felt weightless there, high above the ground, a feeling of everything important about to begin.

Ours wasn’t the Paris of elegant pavements and pale stuccoed buildings rising into the skies, tiny tables outside cafes and bustling bistros. It was subterranean Paris, le metro, with its coloured lines and portentously named stops each one telling their specific story.

It was meeting on Pont des Arts, drinking cans, strumming guitars, the girls in pairs or threes asking the yacht owners moored on the Seine below if we could use the head.

It was working in fun fairs, scooping ice-cream at Hagen Daaz, or pulling pints in Irish pubs.

I worked at Euro Disney for most of that summer.  At one of the resort hotels-its exterior huge, pink and sprawling like a billionaire’s mansion, the interior, abundantly embossed with anchor motifs and ocean creatures. Our job was to clear away all human traces from the preceding. I pushed the vacuum cleaner through the deep-pile carpet, gleamed up tables and chairs, stacked condiments high-the Disney way. I worked with two colleagues, Javier, the Spanish guy, with bright blond hair and Yvette the French girl who oozed elegance and insouciance even as she scraped off gum from under tables. Sometimes we snoozed on the shiny banquettes.

I usually took my lunch break at four am with the kitchen porters who took me under their wing. We’d trundle up on a golf buggy to the staff canteen, long and low-roofed and open all night. They’d call me l’Irlandaise and laugh and tell me stories of Senegal and family and home in their quick-fire, staccato French.

At five, the croissants arrived, flaky, golden crescents, wafting buttery and warm in stacked-high pallets. I manoeuvred them into the staff lift and onto each of the low-lit residential corridors, where take-away breakfasts were set out on a covered trestle-table. Cross-legged, I sat on the floor, assembling cardboard coffee cup and croissant holders.  The occasional guest weaved past, reeking of booze, typically too focused on making their way back to their room to register my presence. One night was different.

“Hello” he said.

He was a tall man, standing staring down at me, his gaze sliding over my face, my body, my legs, his glance calculating. I hadn’t heard him coming and scrambled gracelessly to my feet, heart pounding. Forcing myself to meet his gaze, I reached for the pallet lift and pulling its big steel frame in front of me, I walked past him, silently counting the steps towards the lift. I glanced around when I was at the lift and he was still there staring after me, his mouth a thin-lipped smile.

From seven to nine, I served tables, big American style platters of pancakes, and orange juice and bottomless breakfasts for tired parents with excited kids kicking their legs on the banquettes we’d napped on earlier and throwing crusts and crumbs onto the carpet for me to clean later.

That night, the hottest of the summer, I was late and already the narrow, cobbled streets with their jewel-box shop fronts were saturated in low evening sun, streaked by long, stick shadows. I hurtled along; circling the group of girls, arm in arm, wobbling on high heels, past the café tables buzzing with chatter and laughter, plumes of cigarette smoke spiraling in the air.

I turned sharply at the corner with the lone trumpeter, the long mellow notes of Summertime creating a clear widening circle in the air. I stood, momentarily transfixed, humming along with the bright, metallic sound, and tossed a coin into his case. He smiled at me, his teeth a brilliant white against the dark mouthpiece, one hand cradling the dull brass-gleam of his instrument, the other tipping his fedora to me.

That night, descending into the Metro’s subterranean depths the heat was stifling, unyielding, a solid entity filling the space. Of course, I was wearing the uniform. Mandatory. Even for the graveyard shift. Its bulky, un-breathable fabric increased my languor and stymied my customary shimmy through the barrier tailgating the legitimate ticket holder in front.

“Mademoiselle” the Ticket Inspector said, one hand still gripping my sleeve, the other beckoning someone over.

“No ticket, you pay the fine!”

In stumbling French, heart pounding, I pleaded with him.

I’d just arrived! I was yet to be paid.

The Inspector continued to stare me down, black brows knitted, eyes narrowed. From the station entrance, the trumpeter had struck up Summertime again and the clear, buoyant notes floated towards us. His colleague, slim and olive-skinned, stood beside him, silently listening to our exchange. From her handbag she fished out a hand-held electric fan. She clicked it on and slowly rotated it around our huddle, the gentle, cool breeze wafting towards each of us.  

The Inspector’s mouth twitched and glancing from his colleague to me he said in slow, clear French.

“Allez-y! Next time, you have your ticket”

We grinned at each other, me and the Ticket Inspector and his colleague and  they both wished me Bonne Courage.  I smiled and waved as I moved towards the train, the languid rise and fall of the trumpets’ notes still ringing in my ears.