A Week in Paris (47 page)

She must have fallen into a deep sleep again, for the next time she woke the sun was shining through the curtains and, somewhere close by, church bells were ringing. It wasn’t a frightening sound at all this time, not like at Notre Dame. These chimes were joyful, as for a celebration.

Sunday

After breakfast, Fay finally managed to speak to the curé on the phone and arranged to see him at the church at noon, after the eleven o’clock service.

She had packed, and was waiting for the porter to store her luggage, and wondering vaguely if Adam would ring again when the front door of the hotel opened. She glanced up, thinking it might be Sandra returning, and her heart lifted, for it was Adam who entered. The lobby was busy and he didn’t see her for a moment. She waved to catch his attention and he saw her and strode across.

‘Fay. Thank heavens, I was worried I might miss you.’ They regarded one another as if for reassurance, before he bent to kiss her cheek.

‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘I got your message and . . . Is everything all right?’

‘It is now, yes. I am so sorry,’ he said. They were both conscious of others listening. ‘Perhaps when you’re ready – if you’re not busy . . .’

‘I am ready, and I’m not busy till later. Thank you,’ she said to the porter. ‘You have locked the violin in the cupboard?’

‘Yes, mademoiselle. It is quite safe.’

‘Thank you. I’ll collect everything early this afternoon.’

‘How was the concert?’ Adam asked once they were out on the street.

‘Completely wonderful.’

‘Damn. I mean damn that I missed it.’

She laughed. Though she had wanted him to feel guilty, she had said ‘wonderful’ with sincerity. ‘Colin will be fed up that you won’t have been able to review it.’

‘Oh, I expect we’ll manage a mention,’ Adam said, with the mysterious air of a magician.

‘How?’ she wondered, surprised.

‘Trade secret. Never mind that though, Fay. I am sorry I didn’t come. Not least because I wanted to see you.’

‘What happened? You haven’t told me yet.’

‘I will, but I want to show you something. Here we are, it’s just down here.’ They’d come to a narrow side street, and Adam steered her down it, past various local shops and restaurants. They came finally to a very ordinary-looking bar with a couple of tables outside where he stopped and took her arm, gently turning her to him.

‘This is it. Before we go in, I ought to explain. There is somebody I want you to meet.’

‘Somebody . . . here?’ It was the ordinariness of the place that puzzled her. ‘Who is it?’

‘He’s called Saïd.’

‘Saïd? That doesn’t sound very French.’

‘It’s not.’ Adam hesitated, taking out his cigarettes as he waited for an arrogant old gentleman wearing a trilby and a fur collar to pass out of earshot. ‘Saïd is an Algerian. I’ve been helping him.’

‘Oh.’ Then, ‘Adam, it
was
you,’ she breathed, suddenly seeing it all. A glimpse of a man’s fair head in the crowd as the police dragged demonstrators away.

He looked at her enquiringly.

‘I was there at the demonstration. I didn’t mean to be. I was walking back to the hotel and was drawn to what was going on in the square. I saw General de Gaulle. He was going to present medals, didn’t you say?’

‘To soldiers who’d been stationed in Algeria, yes.’

Fay told him what she’d seen and what had happened to her, and Adam frowned as he concentrated on her story. ‘I thought I saw you,’ she finished, ‘but I wasn’t sure. Have you really been going to political meetings?’

‘You know my interest in the issue. The continued subjugation of the Algerians is an injustice, and I try to get incidents like this reported in the
Chronicle
. Not that my editor thinks our readers are bothered by what’s happening in a far-flung corner of the French Empire.’

‘I’m afraid he’s probably right. And what about your friend Saïd?’

‘You’ll still come in and say hello?’ Adam looked eager.

‘Would he mind?’

‘Not at all. I’ve told him about you and he’s keen to meet you.’ He threw away his cigarette and she followed him inside.

The bar was empty of customers but for a moon-faced man sitting at a table reading a paper. The room stretched back, long and narrow, gloomy in its recesses. Adam greeted a spaniel-eyed youth tidying up behind the counter, introducing him to Fay as Armand Martin, and asking if they could speak to his father.

‘
Mais oui
, of course,’ the young man said, gesturing to the far end of the room. ‘Go through and find him.’

They passed through a swing door into a small kitchen where a middle-aged man with the same sad look as Armand was frying thick slices of purple sausage in a spitting pan.

‘
Ah, bonjour, m’sieur, m’mselle
,’ Monsieur Martin greeted them, wiping his hands on the cloth at his waist and reaching for a plate of chopped mushroom. ‘You’ve come to see our guest? Take yourselves up. You know where to go. The doctor has been, as you requested, m’sieur.’

Fay followed Adam up a flight of back stairs to a landing, dark and none too clean. Adam knocked on one of several doors, saying in a low voice, ‘Saïd, it’s Warner.’

The door was opened by an Arabic-looking man with a wiry build and a direct gaze. He was young, maybe thirty, and his unshaven face was horribly bruised and swollen; he wore a bandage over one eye. ‘Please come in,’ he said in French, and as he pulled the door wide, Fay saw that his right arm was in a sling.

They entered a small, sparsely furnished bedroom with a single window, across which a thin curtain was drawn. A folded newspaper lay on the untidy bed, its headlines shouting yesterday’s violence. There was a sharp stink of disinfectant in the air.

‘Saïd, this is my friend Miss Knox,’ Adam said.

‘Delighted to meet you.’ Saïd was dressed in clean clothes that were so big they were obviously borrowed. He spoke in English and gave a polite bow rather than offering his hand.

Fay said a formal ‘How do you do?’ but couldn’t help adding, ‘I’m sorry you’re hurt. I was at the demonstration. It was terrifying.’

‘
Oui
,’ he said, feeling his jaw. ‘The gendarmes were brutal. But you should have seen what I did to them.’ He had the kind of quirky smile that made him easy to like.

‘That’s nonsense, of course,’ Adam said quietly. ‘Saïd didn’t lift a finger against them, Fay – didn’t even resist arrest.’

‘The doctor tells me I’ll survive.’ Again, that smile. ‘Maybe there is a rib cracked or two, but they’ll mend. I won’t be going out for a bit looking like this though.’

‘I should hope not, you’d frighten the horses,’ Adam said with a false cheerfulness. And when Saïd looked puzzled: ‘It’s something we say in England – never mind,’ Adam added hastily. He turned to Fay. ‘Saïd is my excuse for missing your concert. I was at the police station, trying to get him out of their clutches.’

‘They wanted to charge me with, how do you say, disorder,’ Saïd explained. She liked his expressive eyes and the way he spoke, with beautiful rolling Rs. ‘But Adam here, and his friend the attorney, they helped me. I am most grateful.’

‘It took some doing,’ Adam put in with a laugh. ‘Saïd will not keep quiet at the best of times.’

‘Ach, well, they were accusing me of ridiculous things,’ Saïd replied, trying to throw up his arms in horror. Instead he pressed his hand to his chest and grimaced. ‘Would you mind if I sit down?’ he said, and without waiting for a reply he sank onto the untidy bed with a grunt of pain. Fay sat in the only chair whilst Adam leaned against the doorjamb.

‘We won’t stay long. You should get some more rest. Also, it’s Fay’s last day in Paris and we have things to do.’

‘I have not had much sleep,’ Saïd agreed. ‘Monsieur Martin has been very good. He says I can stay here for a few days, but I think if it is safe I will go home today.’

Shortly afterwards, they took their leave. Saïd looked exhausted, but his eyes burned with a passionate intensity when they said goodbye. ‘
Vive l’Algérie
,’ he said quietly, shaking Adam’s hand.

‘
Vive l’Algérie, mon ami
.’

As they walked out into the sunshine, Fay pushed her arm through Adam’s and squeezed it in a sudden rush of tenderness.

‘What is it?’ he asked. His expression was gentle, but there was amusement in it, too.

‘I was thinking about you helping that poor man. And there was me, this stupid, narrow-minded English girl who should know better, thinking that people like him who make a stand bring everything upon themselves. Until I saw what happened yesterday.’

‘You’re not stupid,’ he said, ‘or narrow-minded. It’s simply that you didn’t know.’

‘I
am
stupid. I never thought properly before, you see. About how you’re not responsible for where and what you’re born, but you can help what sort of person you are. Madame Ramond made me understand what a generous man my father was. You know, he and my mother needn’t have stayed in Paris in 1940. Nobody would have thought the worse of him if he had taken her to America, or back to England. But he didn’t go. He stayed and helped people. He didn’t mind about their nationality or religion or anything like that. He just helped them.’

‘He sounds a marvellous man,’ Adam said quietly and Fay, imagining that he was thinking about his own father, chose her next words with care.

‘You’re doing the same thing, Adam, don’t you see? By helping Saïd and his people.’

‘I’ve been trying to report their side of things. Saïd, his wife and children, have to hide in a condemned house. It’s so unjust, what’s happening to these people.’

‘I realize that now, but I didn’t before.’

They had reached the main road and were waiting to cross the street. On an impulse she turned to him right there on the pavement, reached up, wound her arms round his neck and lifted her face to his, till their lips almost touched.

He bent towards her. ‘You are wonderful,’ he whispered, his breath mingling with hers.

‘No, it’s you who’s wonderful,’ she replied. ‘I love you.’

‘Oh Fay, I love you, too,’ he just had time to say before their mouths met in a searching kiss.

She and Adam didn’t have much time left together in Paris, but there was one thing Fay had to do, and when she explained he agreed to accompany her.

The curé was waiting for them in the church as he’d promised, pottering about after the morning service, blowing out the candles. Fay introduced Adam to him and the older man shook his hand.

‘We have but a small congregation on Sundays,’ he said sorrowfully, ‘now that the nuns have gone, but some still come. The old connection with the school means something to families in the neighbourhood, although it’s a shame they can no longer rely on the convent for teachers.’

All the time he was speaking, Fay was looking about, thinking, Here is where it all happened. The place was so peaceful now, it was difficult to believe it had been the scene of such terror and violence. Perhaps it was the years of prayer that had overcome it.

She couldn’t help noticing the grand piano, set proudly in its own space beneath the windows, and shrouded by a thick brown cover.

‘Ah yes,’ the curé said, seeing her interest. ‘That is a fine instrument. Not played much now, which is sad, but it’s kept in tune. Do you play, may I enquire? You said you were a musician, I believe.’

‘I’m a violinist, but I do play the piano a little.’

‘Please, will you try now? I should like to hear it again.’ He went across and folded back the heavy cloth, then lifted the keyboard lid and set the piano bench in place.

She sat where her mother must once have sat, suddenly feeling unequal to the task. She glanced up, desperate, needing reassurance, and saw shafts of sunlight shining golden in the gloom. Adam was standing close by, watching her quietly, waiting, and she could tell he understood.

Now she knew what she needed to do. She arranged her fingers on the keyboard and after a false start or two, for she was nervous, she began to play the ethereal chords of the Moonlight Sonata.

She closed her eyes and it was as though the music played itself, at first haunting, then building to a passionate climax. And when she opened them again, behind the slim figure of Adam, she sensed there was somebody else, a burly man with a head of thick cropped fair hair, sitting on a chair in the front row, his hat beside him. She couldn’t see his face clearly, but she knew who he was and somehow she knew that he was smiling.

The music quietened and the final chord faded away. There was silence in the church. She glanced across to where she’d seen the familiar presence, but the chair was empty. Had she really sensed her father, or had it been her imagination? It was strange, and yet instead of desolation she felt oddly comforted.

‘Fay?’ Adam was before her. She smiled at him and a wonderful sense of peace flowed through her as she reached up and gave him her hand.

Behind them came a sigh and the curé said quietly, ‘Bravo, Mademoiselle Knox – that was sublime.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely instrument.’

‘Tell me,’ he said, as he helped her close the keyboard lid and let the cloth drop back into place. ‘Was Madame Ramond of help to you? Did you find out anything more about your mother?’

‘Yes, I did, thank you,’ Fay said. ‘She’s been most helpful. It’s rather a long story, but my mother lived here in the convent for a time, just before the war. She’d come to Paris to study the piano and didn’t know anybody, so her guardian sent her here. It wasn’t long afterwards that she met my father and they married.’

‘Ah, so that is the connection with Sainte Cécile. And your father, what was his name?’

‘Eugene, but everybody called him Gene.’

‘Eugene Knox.’ The curé gave a slow, satisfied nod.

‘You said that there was something you wanted to show me?’ Fay reminded him.

‘Yes, there is,’ he said. ‘Come with me, please, both of you.’

They followed him out through a heavy door and into the passage that must lead to the convent. But instead of continuing to the far end, he stopped a short way along next to an unassuming-looking door in the side wall and started to draw back the bolts.