Finding Monsieur Right (2010) (41 page)

'It's really you.'

'Yes, it's me! Hi! Can I come in?'

'Of course,' Etienne said, letting her through and closing the door behind her. 'Tell me, is there a fire or something?'

'N-no, no fire,' Daisy said slowly.

The room she walked into was still warm from sleep. The window blind was down. She looked around, taking in a table and two chairs in front of the window, piles of books everywhere and the bed he'd just got out of, its white duvet flung back like the crest of a wave. Daisy put her bag down on the table next to an object of some considerable antiquity - Etienne's typewriter. She rubbed her face, took a deep breath and turned to face him. He was leaning against the door, his arms crossed. She threw herself into it.

'This is going to sound a bit mad but the thing is I got your letter today. Your letter from February. I mean, I've only just read it. I found it this morning.'

Etienne's eyes narrowed as he digested this news.

'I'm so sorry,' Daisy went on. 'It had been in my coat pocket all this time.'

Etienne, silent, continued to lean against the door. Daisy turned away to give him time and discovered that what he'd said was true: his kitchen was even more minuscule than Isabelle's. He
actually
lived in a garret. How utterly fantastic. She continued, ignoring her shaking hands, 'I thought I should tell you right away. Because until an hour ago, I didn't know. I didn't know anything!'

She glanced at him. He was looking pensive, rubbing the back of his hand against his mouth.

'What I mean is that if I'd ... if I'd found your letter in February, then I ... I would have been there to meet you on the bridge. That's all I wanted to say, really.'

Etienne let his hand drop slowly to his side. His eyes met Daisy's across the room.

'And so you came here right away, just like that?' he said, taking a few steps from the door.

'Yes!' Daisy said, rolling her eyes. 'Actually, I'm still in my nightie.' She pulled one side of her coat open. 'Ta-da!'

Etienne began to laugh. 'And I thought it was another amazing designer outfit.'

'No. Although,' Daisy said, looking down critically, 'now that you mention it, it might actually work, but with different shoes. Chunky biker's boots, perhaps. And this is really a man's nightshirt, so I think it would need a belt to turn it into daywear. That would be a lot more flattering, like a shirtwaister sort of thing. But I didn't have time to think about any of
that
,' she said hurriedly, remembering her purpose. 'I wanted to see you. I'm sorry I'm so horribly early. And horribly late, of course, as well.'

Etienne nodded, smiling. '
Mieux vaut tard que jamais
.'

'Better late than never? Yes, I think so, too.'

'You want a coffee?'

'That would be lovely.'

She attempted to follow him into the tiny kitchen, but it soon became apparent - after almost bumping into each other several times as Etienne reached for the kettle and realising that he would have to squeeze impossibly close to her to get at the cups and sugar - that there was only room in it for one person. She sat down at the table instead.

'How are you, anyway?' she asked nervously after a few moments' silence.

'Stunned, I think. But fine,' Etienne said, bringing the cups through.

'That's great. Because lately, I thought you seemed a bit ... down.'

'I was. Very down.'

Etienne poured them both coffee and offered Daisy the sugar bowl. She dropped one lump into her cup and stirred.

'I wish I'd known sooner, you know, about, um ... Do you have any milk?'

'Ah, no. Sorry.' He got up suddenly. 'I'll go out and get you some.'

My hero, Daisy thought.

'Please, no, it's fine,' she said hurriedly. 'I'm sure every-thing's still closed. I'll have it black like a French person. It'll be an adventure.'

Etienne sat down again. They each had a sip of coffee, then he said, 'I'm sorry. I'm not normally so ... You've taken me by surprise, completely. I can't believe you're here.'

'I am here. Really.'

'No, I don't believe you,' he said, his chin resting on his hand. 'It's a dream.'

Daisy reached over and gently pinched his arm. They laughed and the tension relaxed a little. Etienne caught Daisy's hand in his own. Slowly their fingers became entwined.

'Is this new?' he said, indicating the heart brooch on her lapel. 'I haven't seen it before.'

'Oh, I've had it for years. But for a while it sort of ... went missing. Then I found it again, quite recently.'

Etienne nodded and placed her hand on his own heart. He then brought the palm of her other hand to his lips and kissed it. Daisy was grateful to be sitting down. The room was pitching a little.

'I think we should go out,' Etienne said after another pause. 'For a walk.' He stood up, still holding her hands. 'There are many things I need to say to you. All the things I wanted to say in February. And now it's morning. Look.'

Daisy looked: golden light was peeping out all around the edges of the window blind. She smiled at Etienne. Now they could see each other much better.

'Let's walk to the river,' Etienne said, smiling back.

Outside, the streets were still quiet, and for a while it was almost possible to believe that she and Etienne were alone in the city. They found a little more activity when they emerged onto the riverside. Some
bouquinistes
were already setting up their stalls. A few fitness enthusiasts jogged past them. Etienne and Daisy walked side by side along the Seine, past Notre-Dame and towards the Pont des Arts. At first they were both silent, then Etienne took her hand in his again and began to describe their first encounter in great detail: how Daisy had looked, what she had said.

'I wasn't prepared for you, you know, when you appeared in that pink coat, the one you said was lucky. I wasn't expecting you to be so beautiful. I thought you'd be more of a -'

'A fashion freak extraordinaire?'

'Well, my source was Clothaire. He did say you were
pas mal
,
physiquement
, but ... let's say that he has very rigid ideas about how girls should dress.'

'Yes.
Chacun a son gout
.'

'Exactly. And then, you turned out to be so incredibly interesting, far more of an expert than I'd been led to believe. You were a godsend. And ... by the end of our second meeting I was head over heels in love with you. It's lucky I recorded all our talks so I could play them back later. Because most of the time I was so distracted by your ... physical presence ... that I couldn't concentrate at all.'

'Is
that
why you were so quiet most of the time?'

'Yes. By Christmas I knew it was very serious. January was very hard for me. All I could think about was how to tell you, but I knew you had a boyfriend, and you seemed happy. Nor did I want to interrupt your train of thoughts. Our conversations were precious.'

Daisy turned to him, delighted. 'You were really interested in what I had to say?'

'Of course,' he said, surprised. 'Fashion is more than a passion for you - it's your philosophy of life. I couldn't have hoped for a more illuminating source of knowledge.'

They were now on the Quai de Conti. The Pont des Arts was in sight. They climbed the stairs leading up to it, walked to a bench near the middle and sat down.

'I chose this as a meeting place,' Etienne said, 'because the view is beautiful all around, wherever you turn.'

Daisy gazed off into the distance at the tip of the Ile de la Cite - pink houses and a tiny patch of greenery - then turned to him. 'How long did you wait? On that day?'

'For a while. Daisy, it really doesn't matter now.'

'Oh!'

He must have been there for hours, thinking up all kinds of reasons why she should be late. Any passing girl would have looked like her, but none of them ever was. Daisy could imagine how his mood, exhilarated and hopeful at first, had then gradually descended into the most terrible sense of disappointment and failure. And then he would have gone home on his own. It made her feel cold just to think about it.

'But you could have called me,' she said gently. 'Why didn't you?'

He frowned. 'Because you were supposed to be there, or not be there. It was the way I'd set it up in my mind.'

'And in the letter I didn't find.'

'Yes,' he said, laughing. 'There was a flaw in my plan. I've always been far too inclined to rely on abstract theory.'

'But afterwards, when we met a couple of days later, couldn't you tell that I had no idea that anything was going on?'

'I thought that ignoring it, pretending it had never happened, was your way of -'

'Of letting you down easy? Are you
serious
? You must have thought I was a complete cow!'

'No,' he said, looking at the river. 'I accepted everything that came from you.'

'How could you stand it?'

'Not very well,' he said, turning to look at Daisy. 'But it was worth it in the end.'

Daisy slipped her hand through his arm and put her head on his shoulder. They sat without speaking. Meanwhile she was turning a question over in her mind, about something that still confused her.

'Etienne? You remember my friend Marie-Laure? You met her once at the Sorbonne.'

'Yes, I think so.'

'Well, she told me that in order to be a brilliant big-shot
intello
like you, you had to be completely dedicated to the life of the mind and not care about anything or anybody else. That you had to be like ... a monk or something.'

Etienne stared at her. 'A monk?'

'That's what she said. And that's also how I felt about you.' She bit her lip and fell silent.

'Ah, so you thought I was above carnality,' Etienne said pensively. '
Tres interessant.
'

Daisy glanced at him sideways, still a little worried. 'But I mean you're
not
, are you? Above it, I mean?'

He held her gaze. 'Daisy, I would love to throw you down on this bench right now. Surely you realise that.'

'Oh. OK,' she said breathlessly. 'I mean, I do realise it.'

He gently squeezed her arm with his. 'You want some breakfast? Shall we go back? We'll get some croissants on the way, if you like.'

'That would be lovely.'

As they stood up and faced each other, some of the original tension returned. After a couple of heartbeats, Etienne drew Daisy's face to his and kissed her mouth. It was a tremendous relief to let herself fall against him and to kiss him back extensively. How amazing, Daisy thought as she reluctantly pulled away to get her breath and gazed into his dark eyes, that you could get this close to someone physically and still find him so enigmatic.

There was a brief pause, then: 'You know what would be terrible?' Etienne said seriously, tracing the outline of her mouth with his thumb.

'N-no. What?' Daisy managed to say.

'If after all that - the letter you didn't find, the misunderstanding, your visit this morning - we turned out not to be compatible. Sexually.'

'Oh, yes,' she whispered against his shoulder, 'that would be terrible.'

'It always comes down to theory
and
practice, doesn't it? I don't know, perhaps we should experiment a little, just to be sure.'

'That's a good idea.'

'Like this, for example,' Etienne said, sliding his hands under her coat and proceeding to kiss her throat with slow, tormenting deliberation, and just hard enough for the bridge they stood on to start pitching at a most languorous pace. Daisy closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She could have sworn that the Pont des Arts had come free from its shackles and was now travelling slowly down the Seine, like a raft in the middle of the ocean.

'So,
not
a monk, then,' she murmured after a moment.

'No, absolutely not,' he said, the expression on his face a bewitching mixture of shyness and desire. 'Still interested?'

'Yes!' Daisy said, clasping her arms around his neck. 'And I would say, based on this highly scientific experiment, that we are
fairly
compatible.'

Through half-closed eyes she watched over his shoulder the approach of two buskers carrying a guitar and a saxophone. Sunburnt and dishevelled, they looked like Australian surfers on a year out. They hesitated for a moment, looking around, then chose a spot opposite the bench where she and Etienne had been sitting. The one with the guitar put down his open case on the floor and arranged a small pile of CDs next to it. The other musician stood looking out at the river, entranced. Daisy could see his point. It was the most perfect springtime morning. Trimmed with green, the waters of the Seine shimmered gloriously in the sun as the first white riverboats of the day slowly made their way under the bridge.

She pulled back a little to look at Etienne's face and smiled up at him saucily. 'So tell me,
Monsieur
, did your off-the-scale intellect ever allow you to think about me sometimes, in your bed at night?'

'All the time. I didn't sleep that much, so I did a lot of thinking. And when I did manage to fall asleep, if I was lucky, you would be in my dreams.'

'Nice dreams?'

'Oh, very, very nice,' he said, kissing her hair, 'once in a while.'

'I see.'

'Yes. You don't mind?'

Daisy shook her head, smiling. She was listening with one ear to the first tentative jazzy strummings of the guitar, the first exploratory arpeggios of the mellow saxophone.

'But you know, most of the time,' Etienne went on, stroking her face and looking into her eyes, 'I had these terrible anxiety dreams, like nightmares. It was always the same: I looked for you everywhere in the streets at night. Half the time I didn't even know where I was or where I was going. It felt like I would never be able to find you again. Daisy, why are you crying? I hope they're tears of joy.'

Daisy nodded, unable to speak. The tide had now risen fully, that elusive memory was now bobbing on the surface of her consciousness. What had been on the tip of her tongue was Etienne's name - that was all! Her dreams, her dreams! That was what they had meant, from the very beginning! Oh
my
, as Chrissie would no doubt put it. So this was, in fact, it - the real biggie.