Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

In any case, they would have gone home by now. Christopher and Mary would be home together, loving, domestic, forgetting me.

There were one or two places to say goodbye to, since I would not be coming back. I had saved for the very last morning the Jardin du Luxembourg. The last time I’d visited was two years ago, I was fifty-five, only two years younger, but how different things were; I was mourning the child, bereft of my darling Anna Maria, but I still had my health, and some of my looks, and the blue-clad student had wanted me, and as far as I knew I would live for ever. This time I knew that no one would want me.

The world would be there even when I was gone. It would be, wouldn’t it? We hadn’t quite destroyed it. There were my chestnut trees, in full green leaf, though in close-up some of them looked a little sickly. They were still cared for, still geometrically polled, never mind that there were only a fraction of the numbers of strolling people who once thronged through these avenues. Walking was less popular now; the sprinklers whirled in solitary splendour. Paris seemed to live its life inside.

The green iron chairs gleamed in the sun, standing in fragile lines along the water’s edge like thin old people, nearly all of them empty. The edge of the metal dug into my thighs, I could feel the dull pain in my spine which would wake up and sharpen later. Those empty chairs. Once we came here together, we ate a huge sausage and he made me laugh, and everywhere there were children playing, the lake was covered with scudding toy boats and the thin-legged kids in their formal French clothes stood along the railings anxiously watching as their favourite boat set off across the waves. Christopher loved it, he loved young children, I didn’t see that because I didn’t want to, I didn’t take it in till it was too late, and even when I did I only thought about my hunger, my loss… He wanted children. I left it too late.

The chair was too painful, without conscious decision I found myself crouching on the grass, if only Chrisopher could come again, if only I could be young again, but not such a fool, such a stupid fool, I crouched by the lake in the blinding sunlight, an old woman crouching, face streaming with tears, and a gendarme came and questioned me in a tone more indignant than solicitous.

I said I had tripped; he didn’t seem surprised; old women fell down all the time, but (his expression seemed to say) they shouldn’t do it in a public place. He helped me up, rather forcefully. A pigeon splashed yellow on my handbag as I stood by the railings, collecting myself.

My plane was at six o’clock that evening. My luggage was packed; I had checked out of my hotel. Once I had walked everywhere in Paris. I loved this city because it was small, a human size, small enough to walk through. In my mind I strode athletically through Paris, to the Marais or the Botanical Gardens, the Petit Palais or the Musée Rodin, but my body couldn’t follow; I hailed a cab.

‘To the Trocadéro,’ I said.

When we got there the bounty of water and whiteness and diamond-bright light made me young again. The Trocadéro fountains had just been mended; they soared in the sun in an endless arc; I was running like a young girl towards them. The wind whipped the water across my face, ice-cold, knife-sharp as I ran up the steps, I did not remember there had been so many, a mountain of steps, so white, so wet, and I was going well, I began like a sprinter, for the first twenty steps I was a dancer, and young, but the truth pulled me back even as I ran on, the pain pulled me back even as I walked on, I panted on, limped on, sank down, deafened by my heart and the roar of the water.

— People were shouting. I heard them, dimly. There were people in Paris, after all. But they were shouting at me. I was alone. There was danger, perhaps they were stragglers from the rumoured armies of beggars who haunted the peripheries of Paris. I thought, dimly, Not so bad to die here. Christopher and I were once happy here. On the steps of these fountains he told me he loved me, and I didn’t hear him because of the noise… By the waters of Paris I sat down and wept. I was too tired to run away.

Hands on my shoulders. I closed my eyes. He pulled me round. It was Christopher. I was dead, or dreaming. It was Christopher.

He had been here looking for me for two weeks.

‘I knew I would find you. I went to all the old places. But you weren’t in any of the big hotels…’ He gabbled it out, staring at me, and I didn’t see horror or contempt.

He was an old man, in the surgical sun. He was old, but he was a white-haired eagle. Still elegant, where I was not, I was wearing comfortable travelling clothes; my legs were hidden; I wore old gym-shoes; he’d never seen me travel like this. He was immensely, frighteningly elegant, when he had straightened his jacket and tie, all awry from running after me (but later I found he had dressed for me; he’d set out each day dressed like a king; in Islington it would have been tracksuit and slippers).

Underneath all this, we were flesh and bone, the bodies which had loved each other. I forgot my pain. I walked with him.

We didn’t know where we were going. We walked along the Seine for almost a mile, the loud traffic preventing speech, before we realised we didn’t know; we had been walking like the blind, him clutching me, me clutching him; I followed Chris; Chris followed Alex.

‘Come back to my hotel,’ he said.

He hailed a taxi. He was still a gentleman, Christopher had always been a gentleman. He ushered me in through hotel reception as if I were a returning queen. He ordered champagne to be sent up. As I watched him talking to the barman I saw that his gestures had grown slightly stiff, as if the film was jerking into slow motion, but he came back smiling and everything was normal, to see him smiling at me was so normal. I knew that this story had only one ending. I knew we would go upstairs and make love.

We were back in yet another of the endless series of hotel rooms which had been our life. We were slipping off our shoes and coats, so simply, as we had done thousands of times before, we lay side by side on the enormous bed, so quiet and natural, it was all so familiar, an amazed happiness flowed through me (though I kept thinking there was something I should say, something I’d forgotten, but I mustn’t upset him).

The champagne was delivered. We sat up on the bed. He opened the champagne, that hiss of relief. He opened the champagne, but he didn’t pour it. He was staring at my face as if he was drowning.

‘I want to kiss your breasts,’ he said. With that intent stare he was still terribly handsome. I remembered what I had to tell, but I didn’t tell him; I was afraid; I wasn’t whole; it made me vulnerable. He might not want me, if I told. His body, as he stripped, was still the same body, thinner, frailer, but a beautiful body. Christopher could hurt me so absolutely…

I took off all my clothes. I didn’t look at him, or the mirrors that enclosed us like walls of ice, trying to freeze us into old age; these rooms were meant for the young and vain; I took off my clothes and bowed my head.

I knelt down. I found him. I took him in my mouth, Christopher’s prick, so small and soft. So warm. So human. I had longed for him. I had longed for this for so many years.

I kissed, I sucked, I teased, I rolled. (I was tired; my shoulder was hurting me. My shoulder, and perhaps my arm.) My knees began to ache; the carpet was thick, but I was too thin. His prick stayed small. I looked up at him. I couldn’t read the expression on his face.

‘Never mind,’ I said, he said, we said. I smiled, not seeing him, I started to cry, I went to the bathroom so he should not see; he poured champagne, I put my clothes on.