Eureka Page 6

  Restless, she had sought distraction abroad. She had always fancied the idea of foreign correspondent, and her editors at the Chronicle – with whom she was often at loggerheads – were only too pleased to have a productive but difficult employee at a safe distance. She had gone first to New York for six months, returned to London in the summer of 1966, and left again after a month for a secondment in Paris. She had lived on the top floor of an apartment building on the Rue Montalembert. The noise of traffic this high up was muffled to a murmur. Her next-door neighbour was a retired diplomat whom she would nod to whenever their paths crossed outside the iron-wrought cage of the lift. She kept the volume of her Dansette respectfully low, guessing he wouldn’t be a fan of Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon.

  And there, save for Christmas at her mother’s in Sussex, she had stayed. She liked the city, its wide leafy boulevards and gregarious nightlife, and singlehood didn’t oppress her the way it had in London. She buzzed about the place on a scooter, Belmondo-style, scattering the grubby pigeons as she mounted the pavement to park. It was the scooter that had started it all, really. She had been out late one night at a dinner party on Avenue Foch and was rather liking the man with the dark, willingly amused eyes sitting next to her. His name was Didier Laurent, and he worked at Reuters. They happened to leave at the same time; with the last metro gone, she wondered how he would get home. When it turned out he lived a few streets away from her she offered him a lift. He laughed in surprise when she returned a minute later astride the scooter and told him to ‘hop on’. But he did so, and they razzed merrily through the midnight streets back to the seventh.

  Wind-blown on arrival at his place on Rue de Lille she took up his offer of a nightcap. She could hear Revolver playing on the hi-fi as they climbed the stairs. In the living room a dark-haired woman lay on the couch, smoking, and with an inward sigh Freya realised a good-looking man like Didier would naturally have a good-looking girlfriend at home. He introduced her as Claire, his sister, and she breathed again. They drank Armagnac. Claire, two years older than Didier, was a violin teacher and played part-time in a band. Shy at first, she opened up once they began talking about music and Freya let slip that she played the piano. Across the room she could sense Didier watching her, wondering. She was wondering, too. When he was on the scooter he’d held his arms around her waist, but lightly; maybe that had been enough.

  He called her the following week, and they met for a drink at a bar on the Rue du Bac. In the early-evening light his face seemed softer, less defined, and out of his office suit he looked younger, too. The squarish heavy spectacles he wore she assumed were an hommage to Yves Saint Laurent; no, he corrected her, to Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. It transpired Didier was quite the film fiend, and for a while they talked about recent stuff they’d seen – Truffaut, Polanski, Bergman. He became animated, though, when the subject turned to Reiner Werther Kloss, a young German director whose latest, The Private Life of Hanna K, he called a masterpiece. She watched his face as he explained, and felt herself warming to him, as she did to people driven by passions and who talked about them as though they really mattered. As she’d got older she’d noticed how some of her friends affected a cool indifference to things, and the affectation somehow became what they were: she saw it as a warning. A journalist couldn’t afford to be starry-eyed, of course, you needed a streak of scepticism for the job. But there was much to be said for someone who had the right fire.

  Much to be said for Didier altogether, she thought, as they progressed from bar to bistro, and the conversation took a promising sideways turn into personal matters. His parents were both academics at the Sorbonne, high-flyers, and consequently he had spent much of his youth surrounded by grands intellectuels. He considered them a narcissistic breed, and had pulled away from their narrow milieu into journalism. His sister had already resisted the parental path by choosing to play music. They had both lived away from Paris for a while, surviving on low-paid jobs, determined to be independent. Freya asked him whether their choices had made them all that different from M. and Mme Laurent. Didier wasn’t sure, though his parents were too self-involved to care either way. He said this with a smile.

  They ended up back at her place, smoked some dope, and he stayed the night. Over the following weeks they got to know one another, going for meals or to the cinema just off the Rue Saint-André des Arts. At first she had thought that age might be a stumbling block – she was eight years older than him – but if he wasn’t going to make an issue of it there seemed no reason why she should. She met his friends, who seemed to number as many women as men: it struck her as an unusual ratio. In her experience the British male, and especially the British male journalist, tended to pal up with his own sex; women were regarded as either girlfriend fodder or background decoration. She was even taken to meet the parents, Paul and Odette, at a lunch in their high-ceilinged, book-clotted apartment overlooking the Seine. To Freya they were less intimidating than she had been led to believe; indeed, they were charming in their welcome, and quite ready to tease one another’s academic ostentation.

  At the end of lunch Didier had to dash off on a work assignment, so Freya walked back home with Claire. It was the first time they had been alone together. Quiet in company, Claire was more at ease one to one, and amused Freya with a drollery she had perhaps not registered against Didier’s louder personality. Up close she could see the resemblance between brother and sister, in the fine-contoured face, sallow skin and lively dark eyes, yet there was a difference of effect that made them an interesting pair. Claire was a refined, recessive version of Didier, a watercolour to his bold oils. Back at Rue de Lille they listened to music for a while, and Claire talked about her band, who played ‘sort of rock’. Freya must have pulled a face at that, because Claire laughed and said, ‘You would probably hate us.’ No, no, Freya protested, I’d like to come and see you. Claire looked sceptical for a moment, then said she was calling her bluff: they were playing at a bar in the Marais next week, she’d put her name on the door. ‘And Didier too?’ she asked. ‘No, just you,’ Claire replied. ‘He’s sick of coming to see us.’

  So she had gone, alone, taking a seat in the smoky cellar bar while a support act went through their droning, clangorous set. She found herself oddly nervous during the wait for Claire’s band; perhaps she would hate them, after all; you could never tell. When four whippety mop-haired youths ambled onstage with Claire, in sleeveless T-shirt and jeans, and they broke into a mellow mid-tempo number laden with harmonies and reverb, she felt herself relax. It was derivative – they clearly wanted to be the Byrds – but they could play, and Claire’s violin lifted the sound with plangent folky overtones. Her abstracted look of concentration as she bowed away was innocently beguiling. The songs were of a jangly texture that made them hard to differentiate, though the audience greeted each one as though they were cult favourites. The one surprise came at the end, when Claire, loitering in the shadows till now, discarded her violin and, without preamble, sang the closing number in a clear, sweet contralto. It got the loudest applause of the night.

  Freya waited a few minutes before going in search of her. She was hovering at the door of the dressing room when Claire spotted her and hurried over, dark hair moist with sweat, then threw her arms around her. Her skin felt almost feverish to the touch. Yet her eyes glittered in delight, as if she hadn’t seen Freya in years and this was a longed-for reunion. She wondered at first if Claire had taken something, but then it dawned on her that this ‘high’ was actually the disinhibiting after-effect of performance. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she kept saying, and Freya, laughing, said that she’d have come earlier if she’d known this was the welcome awaiting her. She was introduced to a couple of band members and their girlfriends, slumped on a sofa, but she could feel Claire’s eagerness to get away, just the two of them.

  When they set off through the Marais Claire unselfconsciously linked her arm through hers and chattered on about the gig; she always felt
the exhilaration of it for hours, she said. They stopped at another bar where, over a bottle of wine, Claire became confiding, intense. She wanted to know what Freya thought of the song she’d performed at the end. It turned out she’d written it herself, it was about a break-up, and she solemnly recited the lyric again. Sensing her need for approval, Freya said that it had reminded her of Sylvie Vartan, even a bit of Dusty Springfield. Claire looked down, nodding, and after a pause said, ‘So you mean it was not very original? Clichéd?’ No, that’s not what she meant, at all: just because a song reminded you of someone else’s didn’t mean it was derivative. Every song, even the greatest, looked back to an influence. But that argument found no favour with Claire, who fell to brooding, as if her talent had been undervalued. Freya, wondering how she could be so prickly, tried to restore the mood by asking questions about the band, how they had met, how long they had been playing together …

  It was no use. Claire had withdrawn into herself, and though she still responded her answers came without her previous enthusiasm. Outside again, Freya felt annoyed; she couldn’t get on with someone so thin-skinned, and she didn’t know her well enough to have an argument about it. They had reached the door of her apartment block. Freya leaned in to deliver a conciliatory kiss goodnight, at which Claire seemed to wake up to their imminent parting – she’d been in a daydream, she said, though it had been more like a sulk. After a stiff little waltz of farewell she turned away down the street. Inside the darkened hallway Freya leafed through her post while she waited for the lift’s cage to descend. She was wondering how she would describe their evening to Didier – perhaps to omit the sour ending – when a knuckle-tap at the door surprised her. Through the glass she saw Claire, her expression moodily contrite. She let her in. ‘I wanted to say sorry,’ Claire muttered. She hesitated a moment before cupping her hands around Freya’s face and pulling it towards her. Freya, bemused, hadn’t much time to react before Claire’s mouth was urgently on her own. For a moment she thought it was an extravagant seal on her apology, but the kiss went on, their mouths locked together, and only with the whirring clunk of the lift’s arrival did they draw apart.

  They stared at one another through the murk, breathing hard. What had they just done? Freya stepped away and pulled back the folding metal door of the lift. She could smile and say goodnight, pretend that what had happened was a moment of madness, or even that it hadn’t happened at all. The velvety darkness of the hall held them in weightless suspense. She could feel the ghostly imprint of her lips.

  ‘You’d better come up,’ she said, holding open the door.

  By the time she saw Didier the next day she had rehearsed the tone of voice – breezy – in which she would tell the story of her evening with Claire. Most of it was true: they’d had a great time, the band was cool, Claire’s song had brought the house down, they’d gone for a drink together afterwards and talked about all sorts. Didier listened with a half-smile, pleased that his girlfriend and his sister had got along well on their first outing. Exactly how well he could never know. Even as she was talking her mind’s eye was saturated with Claire’s face, with Claire’s naked body in her bed.

  Freya had slept with women on and off for years, had once even fallen in love, so her attraction to Claire was not a bolt from the blue. But it was confounding nonetheless. On the one hand, the physical resemblance between brother and sister made it feel like some Shakespearean comedy of misunderstanding, with herself as the blundering patsy to be pitied and then forgiven. On the other, the blood relation drastically compounded the betrayal: it was unpardonable; it cried out to heaven for vengeance. She experienced a sudden irrational fear that Didier might smell Claire on her, like an animal picking up the musky secretions of its kin. Of course he remained quite unaware, screwing the lid on her guilt a notch tighter. He was talking now, and she tried to attend to him. But it was her she was thinking of and their near-hallucinatory night of kisses and cries as grey light crept into the bedroom towards dawn.

  In the morning, side by side, Freya had given in to curiosity and asked Claire about her sudden prickliness at the bar – all she’d done was to make an innocent and quite flattering remark about her song. Claire looked penitent at this; she admitted her sulk had been more or less wilful. She had felt overwhelmingly attracted to Freya and, realising the danger ahead, had decided to retreat before it was too late. She thought the best tactic was to start an argument and thus torpedo any chance of deepening intimacy. But Freya had refused to take the bait – she wouldn’t fight. ‘Rather uncharacteristic of me,’ she said wryly. Of course, Claire said, she saw how monstrous it would be of her to make a pass, and how embarrassing if Freya should recoil. As for Didier finding out, she shuddered just to think of it. And yet it was more complicated than that, for guilt wasn’t her sole motivation. She had seen what she wanted and therefore had to find a way of impeding it. But why? Because the heart’s desire was only worth achieving if you had to struggle for it, Claire said. Her mother, who had been in analysis for years, could probably explain it – she couldn’t.

  At the time Freya had thought Claire’s psychological games-playing merely perverse. In retrospect she ought to have seen it as a warning. In the days following she made sure that Didier stayed at her place lest they ran into one another at Rue de Lille. She told herself it was an error, a spontaneous and foolhardy misadventure in love. She had been reckless, but she had got away with it. When Didier mentioned a dinner at a friend’s to which Claire had also been invited, she made an excuse not to go. But for how long could she keep avoiding her without him suspecting something?

  As chance would have it an old friend of their parents was now in town and Paul and Odette were throwing a little soirée at their place for him: a refusal was out of the question. Nearly three weeks had passed since the fateful encounter, time enough perhaps for the dust to settle, though there wasn’t an hour when Freya had been able to stop thinking about it.

  Chez Odette and Paul was already packed when she arrived. Down a corridor she saw Claire deeply engaged in conversation with a professorial type – it was an older crowd, a mixture of academics and writers, equal parts chic and sérieux, with a few students keeping up the end for youth and dishevelment. Didier fetched her a drink and she loitered in his wake, happy to play second fiddle among strangers. The main room, murmurish at first, grew louder and merrier as the serving staff kept the drinks topped up. Freya had got stuck with a severely bespectacled philosophy graduate whose talk was probing the limits of her French when Claire appeared without warning at her side. She was wearing a beautiful short silk dress in crimson and gold. Her make-up seemed more vampish than usual, especially around her dark eyes, and Freya wondered if it had been applied for her sake or the party’s. Having greeted the philosopher with emphatic courtesy she said, ‘May I take Freya off for a moment? There’s something I must show her!’

  At which she grasped Freya by the hand and led her through the press of bodies and along another corridor where the party thinned out. She opened a door at the end and ushered her inside. It was a bedroom, where guests’ coats had been piled on the bed. She closed the door and with a snake-quick movement pressed Freya against it.

  ‘Are you angry with me? Why haven’t you phoned?’ Her gaze seemed to accuse and implore at once.

  ‘No, I’m not angry, just confused. And worried as hell that Didi may find out. I didn’t trust myself to phone you, to be honest.’

  ‘Has he said anything to you?’

  ‘No … You?’

  Claire bugged her eyes. ‘He asked me whether we’d argued, because you hadn’t been round. I think he knows something’s not right.’

  This is madness, thought Freya. I have cheated on a good and decent man with his own sister. If Didier found out, there could be no future for them. Even if he forgave her, it was over. Claire was someone who needed to play games.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ said Claire, searching her face for clues.

  Freya
shook her head. ‘I hardly know. Except that this … this is all fucked up.’

  ‘You blame me for seducing you. Don’t you?’

  ‘What?’ she said with a snort of irritation. ‘Of course not. It takes two to tango, as the song goes.’

  ‘Ah, as I thought. You are angry,’ said Claire, averting her eyes.

  ‘I will be if you say that again. Stop playing the victim, for God’s sake. All I’m trying to do is think straight – don’t make it more difficult.’

  Chastened, Claire backed away from her and perched on the foot of the bed. Freya moved to the window, which overlooked the sluggish grey ribbon of the Seine, studded here and there by a gleaming boat. A granular blue light lay over the evening like gauze, the shade of the city’s romance with itself. I love Paris in the springtime … She had expressed puzzlement at Claire’s habit of wilfully obstructing her own desire, and yet hadn’t she done exactly that with Didier? She had discerned something secure in him, and out of perversity, or stupidity, had sabotaged it.

  She dragged herself away from the view back to Claire.

  ‘You said – just before – you had something to show me?’

  Claire looked intently at her, and then half smiled. Still on the edge of the bed she used her fingertips to slowly, soundlessly slide her dress above her waist, concertinaing the slithery silk. She wore nothing beneath. The white of her limbs seemed to glow in the thinning light. With her gaze still on hers she wriggled backwards onto the bed, opening her legs as she did, and as Freya reached out to brush the inside of her thigh she knew that perversity and stupidity had been only bit players in her undoing: what had really brought her low was this, hot-eyed desire, the touch of flesh on flesh. Lying across the piled coats on the bed she inhaled their owners’ mingled scents of perfume and cigarettes, and suddenly she was a student again, rollicking in a strange room while a party went on outside the locked door. The forgotten thrill of youthful insouciance was irresistible. Beneath her stirring hand she felt Claire’s breathing gather and quicken, urging them both on in frantic pursuit of the moment: her cheeks were flushed as she threw back her head and gasped in abandon, and shuddered.