Another Country (3 page)

Chapter 6

In the métro, Leela scrubbed surreptitiously at her cheeks. They flamed. It was possible she'd overdone the highlighting gel, which she'd found in the beauty department of the Monoprix while making last-minute preparations for the party.

She tried to catch her reflection in the window of the train; she was sitting on one of the fold-down seats near the door. Against the darkness of the tunnel, the glass was smeared with swiftly passing yellow lights and their comet-like tails. She glimpsed herself: hair up, brown skin, and large, comically anticipatory eyes. The person in the reflection was someone she recognised, but who it was hard to believe represented her. The cheeks, yes, they were sparkling away. She sat back. She would reassess, at Kate's.

In the last few years, she and Amy had made a ritual of getting ready. Wine, cheap and horrible, was procured; Amy blasted out her favourite music on the stereo; they would dissect the feelings and motivations of their friends and current love interests, long circling discussions that adduced, with all the precision of the legal mind, pieces of evidence and conversations and inferences from them, amounting, often, to an extenuating and essentially uncertain summation of psychological ontology: ‘Maybe he's just insecure.' A phrase that became a joke between them.

Those moments of preparation contained aspiration, but also nervousness and self-obliteration – Amy, taking a palmful of foundation, would rub it all over her face, till her features were all but erased, then draw them back with eye- and lipliner, eyeshadow and mascara. In both girls, there had been a primitive uncertainty about cause and effect that still subsisted in Leela. It was what had led her to put a minimal dab of highlighter on her cheekbones then, unsure this would work, daub the stuff on her browbones, her temples, her collarbones, even her shoulders. The world was one thing, and it was colossal. One, next to it, was perpetually in danger of being forgotten. Tactics would have to be employed; but anxiety persisted about whether they would bear fruit.

‘Have you seen our bathroom? Oh my God. You've got to see it. It's horrific.' On the last words, Kate's voice dropped to a stage whisper. She pushed the door.

Leela peered into a narrow chamber painted in black gloss. ‘I love it!'

‘Really?' The other girl looked disappointed. ‘I think it's hanging, completely hanging. The girls' father did it.'

‘Our dad is crazy,' Eloise said cheerfully to Leela. She and her elder sister liked Leela, who basked in their approval. Amandine was a sweet girl, reserved but warm, and would have been nice to anyone. But she nodded silently at her sister's summing up. ‘Nina is sweet. But your French is better.'

Kate's room was unusual too: the walls were a deep, blue-red gloss that made it feel like a Chinese lac box. There was a single inadequate lamp, a sullen globe on the bedside table. Leela put down her bag. ‘Stay over,' Kate had said. ‘You'd have to sleep in my bed, but it's big, don't worry.' The bed had an iron frame, slightly fairy-tale-like. Leela's mind drifted onto a sailing boat with Henri, the girls' wicked father who had abandoned them in order to bob on the ocean with his American sweetheart. ‘It's an amazing flat,' she said.

‘Isn't it?' said Kate dryly. ‘Right, I've got to get ready. I'll just close the door. You don't mind if I strip off a bit, do you?'

She shut the doors into the passage and living room, and took off the floppy, flared black trousers she always wore, and a blue t-shirt. ‘I feel so fat,' she muttered.

‘You're not fat,' Leela said. She couldn't have judged the other girl's body as she would have her own: they were so different, Kate alabaster-white, straight-hipped, long-legged, but as she made embarrassed noises about herself and pulled on another pair of black trousers and a black shirt, and laughed, and said, ‘Right', and opened the blinds again, Leela envied the differences.

The telephone in the hall started beeping; she heard Eloise's voice, saying ‘Amandine!' and the other girl's murmur of protest from the kitchen where she was making tacos, then a flurry as the younger sister darted to the instrument. Leela had given Patrick the number in case he got lost; she had a premonition he'd arrived. She opened the door into the hall and saw Eloise, vigorous, certain, her blonde corkscrew curls bobbing. She was saying, ‘Oui … oui … Ah!' and then in English, ‘One minute. Leela!'

‘I'm here,' Leela said.

‘It's your friend – Patrick?'

Leela took the receiver. ‘Hello?'

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was Lucien, a childhood friend of the girls, and his girlfriend Claire. Just behind them, a familiar tall figure, booming as though to conceal embarrassment, ‘Hello Leela. Bonjour, bonjour.' Eloise had come to the door and was smiling. Patrick bent to do his kisses, and Leela encountered the soft cheeks of Claire, a beautiful girl with short hair, and Lucien, a perhaps equally beautiful boy, short, dark-haired. Patrick and she, old acquaintances, didn't kiss; it would have been too weird. But he was clutching a bottle and they all came in, and no sooner were they in the living room than the bell rang again. Eloise rushed out, crying, ‘Oh, it's starting!'

Leela, in one corner of the room, talked to Lucien and Claire about her job and their commuting. Claire was still living in Bordeaux, teaching and reading for the agrégation. ‘I already have the CAPES,' she was explaining with a weary face. ‘I just have to take the agrég, and then I can apply for a permanent job and we can live in the same place.' Lucien put his arm around her. The two of them were like appealing cartoon characters. Leela excused herself, and passed the chair where Patrick, still with his bottle of wine, now open at his feet, was sitting and accepting conversational overtures. Right now it was Eloise who crouched near him, lively and interested. ‘What are you doing in Paris?' she was asking him in French.

Patrick's voice boomed out. ‘Je suis flâneur. Je flâne.'

‘You can't
say
that,' said Leela, scandalised.

‘Non non, c'est bon, flâner, c'est ça,' said Eloise, thinking the disagreement was linguistic.

‘Mais c'est tellement prétentieux,' objected Leela. She hated being corrected, and never knew why she felt the need to do it to others. She left them to the rest of the conversation and gave Patrick a disapproving look directed at the wine, which he'd informed her he had no intention of sharing since it was nicer than anything anyone else had brought. She went to the black bathroom, peed, and while washing her hands examined herself in the mirror, then scrubbed off the rest of the glitter. What had she been thinking? From the hall she heard voices, parts of conversation, and Amandine's laughter. Her boyfriend, tall and grave, was here now, and Eloise's boyfriend was expected. A bearded, red-haired boy, Thierry, was talking earnestly to Kate. Someone brought out a guitar.

‘Salut,' Leela said. She smiled, and tilted her face for the inevitable kisses. Kate grinned at her. ‘I can't wait to take out my lenses,' she said. ‘Let's pretend to help clear up a bit.'

They carried sticky glasses into the kitchen. Amandine was doing the real cleaning. Eloise bustled, pleased with the evening; she dissected various strands of it. She passed them and smiled at Leela. ‘He's nice, your friend,' she said. ‘He's a bit spécial.'

Kate laughed, Leela too. ‘Spécial, is that a good thing? Like special?'

‘Mm. It's a bit like weird. But in a nice way,' Kate said.

‘Oh yes. I see what you mean.'

‘I like his nice deep voice,' Eloise said.

‘He's funny, isn't he?' Leela couldn't decide whether she wanted to praise Patrick or for them to stop talking about him.

‘Mm.'

‘You girls can go to sleep if you want, I'm just going to tidy a bit, we'll do the rest tomorrow,' Amandine told Kate. She smiled at Leela, her pretty face patient.

‘No, we'll help,' said Leela.

‘Honestly,' said Kate in an undertone, ‘there's no point, they'll be fannying about for a while, then they'll have their joint and go to sleep. Let's just crash. Aren't you tired?'

‘Okay.'

The bed was large enough for them to face each other and talk in the half-darkness.

‘Do they have a joint every night?'

Kate was nearly asleep. ‘Yeah. Just a little one. They have it with their tisane or hot chocolate. Their mother grows the pot.'

‘She's alive?'

Kate snorted. ‘Yeah. But she lives in Provence. She's got a new family, a little son. Her husband's not that keen on the girls.'

‘They couldn't live with her?'

‘I think they're happier this way, to be honest. Though it's sad, isn't it …' Kate's voice dipped under the covers, a bird diving beneath waves.

‘They're like little orphans,' Leela said. As so often, she was saddened by her interpretation of other people's loneliness.

‘What did you think of Thierry?'

‘He seems nice. He likes you, doesn't he?'

‘He asked me out, but I'm not sure, I don't know.'

Leela was overwhelmed by the possibilities. ‘You could see how you felt.' The darkness was closing in, their voices becoming distant from each other. Her own voice sounded unreal.

‘Maybe … I dunno. Good night, our kid. Fais de bons rêves.'

‘Good night,' said a sleepy voice, fading into the darkness.

Chapter 7

Rushing up the stairs of the school, she bumped into the wall; she tried, as she climbed, to keep her still-damp hair out of her eyes, also to open her bag and examine its contents. Catastrophically, there wasn't time to take out and replace each item. She was late, and it wasn't even her class.

‘
Oh!
'

She collided with something warm and felty. An arm came out towards her.

Leela, murderous but reflexively polite in this other language, muttered, ‘Sorry! Sorry!'

‘Ça va, mademoiselle?' The voice was deep, annoyingly mellifluous. She half looked up, as far as his chest, grabbed at her Carte Orange. It fell to the linoleum-covered step; she began to dive after it. The black-clad arm got there first. She noticed the hand: brownish, smooth-skinned, nails neatly shaped. She took a step back.

‘Here.' The stranger held out the grey plastic case. Leela accepted it, forced herself to look at his face – all she wanted, ever, eternally, and in this specific moment, was to slide round the corner, hair over her face, all her possessions more or less attached to her. ‘Thank you,' she said. The man smiled. He was in early middle age, dark-skinned, dark-haired, brooding, looked like he'd put his eyeliner on in a hurry.

‘Excuse me,' Leela said. She smiled, skirted him, and continued to bolt up the stairs to the third floor. She scooted past the staff room; the door was ajar and she feared Mme Sarraute, the coordinator of foreign teachers, would be standing there to watch her arrive late. As she reached room 3.14, she shoved the Carte Orange back into her bag, rooted around for the texts, and opened the door.

Four adults in their thirties and forties looked at her, tolerant but surprised. Leela began to explain herself, first in French, then, recalling the rules, in English. ‘I know you're expecting Miss Molloy, but she's had to go to England for a few days. I'm taking her classes this week. I wonder if you'd mind introducing yourselves? My name's Leela Ghosh –' she pronounced it correctly, but they wouldn't ‘– and I also teach here –' pause for smile ‘– so, shall we begin?' She turned to the man, suited, crumpled looking, on the left of the semi-circle. The students, or clients as the school preferred to call them, sat on high chairs with a flip-out mini desk. The arrangement made them look like disgruntled toddlers.

‘What's your name?' She produced an encouraging smile.

‘'Ello, I am Martin,' the man in the crumpled suit said. He smiled, first at Leela, then, a little more slyly, at the rest of the group. He pronounced his name as though it were English.

‘Martin.' Leela smiled. ‘And you?'

The stern looking woman next to him smiled. Leela saw an anxious high achiever. ‘I am Catherine.'

‘Hello Catherine. And –'

The door opened and the man from the stairs came in. He smiled silkily. ‘Excuse me, I am late,' he said. He made his way to the empty seat near the door, took off his coat, and sat down with an air of contentment.

‘Leela. Have another drink.' The whisky, golden and vaguely rank smelling, was already gurgling into her glass. ‘It sounds like you need it.'

She smiled, and looked at Patrick, pouring the drink, and Simon, next to him.

‘Totally,' Stella said. ‘So he just followed you onto the bus? What a weirdo.'

‘I didn't even realise, till he lurched towards me. I was trying to stamp my ticket, because my Carte Orange ran out this morning. I turned around, and he was leering at me and saying Mademoiselle. The bus braked, and I nearly fell over; he tried to steady me, but I pulled away, and I got off right then, when it stopped …' She paused and looked around. She was aware of three people paying her attention: it made her stumble. She giggled. ‘But he got off after me and stopped me in this really theatrical way, ‘Mademoiselle, je vous prie!' and peered at me. You know, one of those people who bring their face really close to yours? He had a very deep voice and he said, “Did my gaze disturb you?”'

‘Oh Jesus,' said Stella. Leela was aware of Patrick smiling at Stella, though he was still listening.

‘Yeah, it was really cheesy.'

Simon chuckled. ‘Then what did he do?'

‘He said if I didn't go for coffee with him he'd feel terrible, and he had something very important to ask me, as one human being to another, and would I please just drink a cup of coffee with him for a quarter of an hour. And to be honest I didn't want to walk home and worry about him following me, because we were so close to my house by then, so I did.' She closed her eyes for a second. What she hadn't been able to recount, and felt queasy admitting even to herself, given the loathsomeness of Guillaume, for that was his name – was that when his hand had slid over hers in the bus, her first sensation, and perhaps the thing that had made her lurch, had been of its warmth and heterogeneity – the fact of being touched by someone else, who wanted to evoke something in her body. It had not been unpleasant. And yet, of course, she hadn't wanted it, a conflict that brought about inner revolt, and made her jump off the bus as it stopped.

‘So what did he want?'

Leela sighed. ‘I think he's just lonely. And weird. He wanted to talk about his wife, who's leaving him. He can't see his son and daughter, he's upset about that, naturally. He tried to persuade me to go for a drink with him.'

‘I hope you didn't say yes?' Stella said.

‘No, ugh, no. I told him it's against the rules of the school. He tried to argue and stuff but I said I had to go. I didn't want to walk towards my house, just in case. So I came back this way, and that's when –' Leela indicated Patrick ‘– I phoned. I hope I'm not intruding.'

‘Leela, not at all. It sounds like a horrible day.' Patrick was as warm as ever, in as generalised a way; Stella too, in a way that both comforted and desolated Leela, for Stella sat close to Patrick and an unspoken complicity was between them. She was half aware also of Simon, watching her steadily and with some amusement. She looked at Patrick's hands on the table, square, reddish (‘I have Irish farmer's hands,' he would declare) and at Simon's, curled around his glass. She couldn't read his expression; it was neither sympathetic nor indifferent, and this drew her to him.

‘Leela, we were thinking of going out for a drink when you called. How does that sound?'

‘Uh, yeah, sure.'

‘We were thinking of going down the road to the Lizard Lounge.'

‘Okay,' Leela said. She'd passed the bar, and marked it as too fashionable for her. But they walked down in pairs, Stella and Leela ahead, and Patrick and Simon behind, smoking. Leela was aware of Patrick talking and Simon laughing, then responding, and Patrick guffawing. She envied their ease. Stella was being sweet, though. She tucked her hair behind one ear and touched Leela's arm. ‘I hope you're not feeling too weirded out by that creep,' she said. Leela wondered how much to play up the incident. Would it work? Would being wronged or vulnerable endear her to Patrick?

‘It was a bit creepy,' she said. ‘Especially because it happened near where I live. But I think it'll be all right.'

‘That sort of thing keeps happening when you first move away,' Stella was saying as they neared the bar, from which dance music could be heard thumping. ‘I remember when I was in South America –'

They were inside now, looking for a place to sit, and though the bar was dark and the music loud, the atmosphere was essentially civilised. The table was small, and cuboid leather stools were wedged around it. Stella threaded her way in, then Patrick. Leela sat next to Simon, their legs folded like jackknives, knees touching.

‘What are you drinking?' he asked.

‘I'm not sure. What are you drinking?'

‘A beer.'

‘Is it weird to have a kir after drinking whisky?'

He looked down at her, amused. ‘Not if you want to.'

She asked the waitress for a vodka tonic. Simon and she sat watching her slender back as she walked away.

A song Leela knew came on. She began to hum along indistinctly. Simon grinned. She grinned back. ‘Shit. Shouldn't sing in public. I may be slightly drunk.' He laughed, and patted her knee, a brief touch of a warm dry hand. The drinks arrived.

Simon was saying something, and she was distracted, smiling and leaning closer to hear, and also looking across the table where Patrick was partly hidden by Stella. He was laughing. Leela half closed her eyes to hear what Simon was saying. She glanced up to see Patrick looking at the two of them. He smiled at her, a smile so depressing that a hard resolve formed in her.

‘There's something in your voice – a slight Irish accent,' she told Simon.

‘Really?' He looked sceptical. ‘I did live in Dublin for a couple of years, but that was a long time ago.'

‘No, but the way you pronounce some words – something you just said, I can't place it but it was there. Dublin, how was that? I'd love to live there.'

‘Have you been?'

‘No … I've just read lots of books set there.'

‘Joyce?'

‘Joyce, and Beckett, and a couple of more recent things. This writer called Dermot Bolger.'

‘
The Journey Home
? It's a great book.'

‘It really is.' She was carried away with enthusiasm, a quiet part of her noting that the music had faded, and the bar seemed darker, or the lights travelling through space more blurry, slowing on their way to her. But if that's what he wants, she thought vindictively of Patrick, then decided to forget him. ‘I've never met anyone else who's read it. Such a good book.'

‘It is. And this other book I read when I was there – I suppose a sort of dumbed-down version of Joyce in a way,' he said. ‘But I had a friend who read a lot and recommended it to me, very funny,
The Ginger Man
.'

‘I loved it. That scene where he's trying to leave his wife and he's wearing her sweater …'

‘And it's unravelling?'

‘Yes.' She laughed. ‘I read that when he was writing it he went to pubs and cafés with people and wrote down their stories and that's what he used for the book.'

Simon smiled at her. She smelled something, perhaps his scent – cologne, and under that, a fundamental smell of musk and perspiration, not unpleasant. An excited if uninvolved part of her noted it: You are smelling a new man. Another part, more sceptical, preserved a silence. Meanwhile, she was still talking. ‘… when I was younger, I mostly used to read American writers. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joseph Heller. A bit of Saul Bellow. I loved Salinger.'

‘There's a perfect age to read all of that,' Simon was saying. She looked up at his face, skin a little tanned, lines around his eyes and mouth; he had delicate European skin that couldn't stand the sun. And his hair, sandy and thick, was tangled, a bit dry. His shirt looked unironed. But he was tall, broad-shouldered. She made these observations to herself, and a delight rose up in her: this was a reasonably handsome man, and he appeared to be interested in her. She coaxed herself: isn't this a good thing?

‘So what were you doing in Dublin?' she was asking him, but the bar was closing. Or they were leaving. Definitely they were leaving. The bill appeared, and Simon, still talking to her, paid it. They were now outside, where the air was colder. Patrick lit a cigarette. He and his dark woollen jacket made a tall, familiar presence that caused Leela to ache.

Stella came up and patted Patrick's elbow. ‘You'll walk me home, won't you?' she said.

‘Of course.' He took a puff of his cigarette and smiled at Simon.

‘I'll make sure Leela gets home,' Simon said.

How well they were arranging everything. Leela smiled, unsure whether to feel touched or irritated.

Stella came forward, smiling with genuine warmth. She kissed Leela on both cheeks, and said, ‘Bye. It's been a horrible day, but it's over now. Just forget it.'

How does she know? Leela wondered, then remembered her earlier story. Oh yes. ‘Thanks,' she managed.

Patrick patted her on the shoulder. ‘Bye Leela. Call me, or I'll call you.'