Трейси Шевалье - The Virgin Blue

The man put his fingertips to his chest and flung them outwards in a gesture of defeat.

‘Now, we were discussing Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. You must excuse my French, sometimes it takes me a little while to say what I mean. What I wanted to say was that one cannot hear his – what do you call it?’ I put my hand on my chest and breathed in.

‘ Respiration ,’ Janine suggested.

‘Yes. It is impossible to hear it when he sings.’

‘They say that's because of a technique of circular breathing he learned from -’ A man at the other end of the table was off and running, to my relief.

Jean-Paul stood up. ‘I must play now,’ he said quietly to me. ‘You will stay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. You are good at fighting your angle, yes?’

‘What?’

‘You know, fighting your -’ He pointed to the back of the room.

‘Starting a bar-room brawl?’

‘No, no.’ He ran his finger round a corner edge of the table.

‘Oh, fighting my corner . Yes, I'll be OK. I'll be fine.’

And it was fine. No one brought up other American stereotypes, I managed to contribute occasionally, and when I couldn't understand what they were talking about I just listened to the music.

Jean-Paul played some honky-tonk; then Janine joined him. They ran through a range of songs: Gershwin, Cole Porter, several French songs. At one point they briefly conferred; then with a glance at me Janine began singing Gershwin's ‘Let's Call The Whole Thing Off’, while Jean-Paul smiled into his keys.

Later the crowd thinned and Janine came to sit across from me. There were only three of us left at the table and we'd fallen into that late-night comfortable silence when everything has been said. Even the balding man was quiet.

Jean-Paul continued to play – quiet, contemplative music, a few chords underlying simple lines of melody. It veered between classical and jazz, a combination of Erik Satie and Keith Jarrett.

I leaned across to Janine. ‘What's he playing?’

She smiled. ‘It's his own music. He composes it himself.’

‘It's beautiful.’

‘Yes. He only plays it when it is late.’

‘What time is it?’

She looked at her watch. It was almost two.

‘I didn't know that it was so late!’

‘You have no watch?’

I held out my wrists. ‘I left it at home.’ Our eyes lit on my wedding ring at the same time; instinctively I drew my hands in. It was so much a part of me that I'd forgotten all about it. If I had remembered it I probably still wouldn't have taken it off: that would have been too calculated.

I met her eyes and blushed, making things even worse. For a moment I considered going to the bathroom and removing the ring, but I knew she would notice, so I hid my hands in my lap and changed the subject, pointedly asking her where she got her blouse. She took the hint.

A few minutes later the rest of the table got up to go. To my surprise Janine left with the balding man. They waved cheerily at me, Janine blew a kiss at Jean-Paul and they were gone with the last of the crowd. We were alone except for the barman, who was collecting glasses and wiping down tables.

Jean-Paul finished the piece he was playing and sat silent for a moment. The barman whistled tunelessly as he stacked chairs on tables. ‘Eh, François, two whiskies here if you're not being cheap.’ François smirked but went behind the bar and poured out three glasses. He placed one before me with a brief bow and set another on top of the piano. Then he removed the cash register drawer and, balancing it in one hand and his glass in another, disappeared into a back room.

We raised our glasses and drank at the same time.

‘There is nice light on your head, Ella Tournier.’ I glanced up at the soft yellow spotlight above me: it was touching my hair with copper and gold. I looked back at him; he played a low soft chord.

‘Did you have classical training?’

‘Yes, when I was young.’

‘Do you know any Erik Satie?’

He set his glass down and began to play a piece I recognized, in five-four time with an even, stark melody. It fit the room, the light, the hour perfectly. While he played I rested my hands in my lap and removed my ring, dropping it into my dress pocket.

When he finished he left his hands on the keys for a moment, then picked up his glass and drained it. ‘We must go,’ he said, standing up. ‘François needs his sleep.’

Going outside was like re-entering the world after having had flu for a week: the world felt big and strange and I wasn't sure of my bearings. It was cooler now and there were stars overhead. We passed by the shutters with the painting of the woman and soldiers on them. ‘Who was she?’ I asked.

‘That's La Dame du Plô. She was a Cathar martyr in the thirteenth century. Soldiers raped her, then threw her down a well and filled it with stones.’

I shuddered and he put his arm around me. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘or you'll accuse me of talking about the wrong things at the wrong time.’

I laughed. ‘Like Goethe.’

‘Yes, like Goethe.’

Earlier I'd wondered if there would be a moment when we'd have to decide something, discuss it, analyse it. Now that the moment had arrived it was clear we had been silently negotiating all evening and a decision had already been made. It was a relief not to say anything, just to walk to his car and get in. In fact we hardly spoke on the drive back. When we passed Lavaur cathedral he noted my car alone in the parking lot. ‘Your car,’ he said, a statement rather than a question.

‘I'll take the train here tomorrow.’ That was it; no fuss.

When we reached the countryside I asked him to roll back the roof of the Deux Chevaux. He flipped it over without stopping. I rested my head on his shoulder; he put his arm around me and ran his hand up and down my bare arm while I leaned back and watched the sycamores whipping by overhead.

When we crossed the bridge over the Tarn into town I sat up. Even at three in the morning some decorum seemed necessary. Jean-Paul lived in an apartment on the other side of town from me, close to where the countryside began. Even so it was only a ten-minute walk from my house, a fact I was working hard to push from my mind.

We parked and got out, then snapped the roof back on together. The surrounding houses were dark and shuttered. I followed him up a set of stairs on the outside of a house to his door. I stood just inside while he switched on a lamp, illuminating a neat room lined with books.

He turned around and held his hand out to me. I swallowed; my throat was tight. When it came down to the final deciding moment, I was terrified.

At last I reached out, took his hand and pulled him to me, put my arms around him and clung to his back, my nose in his neck. Then the fear vanished.

The bedroom was spare but contained the largest bed I'd ever seen. A window looked out over fields; I stopped him from closing the shutters.

It felt like one long movement. There was no point when I thought, Now I'm doing this, now he's doing that. There was no thought, just two bodies recognizing each other, making themselves whole together.

We didn't sleep until the sun rose.

I woke to bright sunlight and an empty bed. I sat up and looked around. There were two bedside tables, one covered with books, a framed black and purple poster for a jazz piano concert on the wall over the bed, a coarse woven mat the colour of wheat on the floor. Outside the fields behind the house were bright green and extended far back to a row of sycamores and a road. It all had the same air of simplicity as Jean-Paul's clothes.

The door opened and Jean-Paul entered, dressed in black and white, carrying a small cup of black coffee. He set it down on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed next to me.