I got the apartment.
One room on the third floor. A small kitchen leading off it, and a closet-sized bathroom leading off that. A postcard of the Côte d’Azur with a giant cactus in the foreground was stuck above the kitchen table. There was a blue enamel coffee pot on the sink, and in the rack above it were some plates and bowls.
The room was bright with sunlight, the parquet floor shone. There was a table and two chairs, a mattress, even a clothes rack. I marvelled at all the comfort in such a small space. The French really knew how to live.
I skated across the polished floor to the long windows, fenced by wrought iron painted black. The iron curled around to something vaguely resembling a snake’s head in the middle and reminded me of the little balcony on Nora’s old house in Glebe. I placed the flat of my hand against the window and felt each undulation in the glass. I traced the edges of the oval handle, so worn each coat of paint was visible, telling the years like the bole of a tree trunk. The walls, nicotine yellow, were pitted by nails here and there. Pale squares marked where pictures had once hung.
The street, on the hill of Montmartre, fell steeply to the left. The buildings were small, peeling and leaning, like my own. I could get anything in the shops along this street. There was an African voodoo shop with a vast range of magic oils and elixirs, an antique store, a Thai restaurant, a large office where people gazed at word processors, a denture showroom where men in white coats could be seen bent over moulds of teeth, picking and carving; and, at the end, where stairs dropped to the next street down, a patisserie whose specialty was tarte tatin.
Through my window I could see a Basque flag flying from the balcony opposite. Further along, an alsatian stood on his hind legs, resting his paws on the iron railing and sniffing the street.
The apartment belonged to friends of Libby’s from Strasbourg. They had bought it for their daughter, who was studying in the States this year. There was no bond, no lease, and the rent was cheaper than Hôtel des Etrangers. The telephone was already connected.
I rang Chantale. She said she would be over as soon as possible with a bottle of champagne and my mail. I sat by the window with the telephone in my lap. I picked it up again and rang Libby.
– I’m going to take it!
Libby sounded cautious. She said she thought they hadn’t decided yet.
– But Libby, I got the key from Yvonne last night.
– Very well.
There was a cool silence. A woman in a red skirt hurried across the street, leeks bristling from her shopping basket. I picked at the grime on the old telephone. I told Libby how grateful I was.
– Are you sure you’re going to stay, Siobhan? she said. You won’t suddenly leave, will you? You musn’t muck Yvonne around, you know.
– Yes, of course. We discussed all of that last night. She told me—
– Good. Libby cut me off softly.
She went on to remind me of how difficult things were in this city. There were plenty of other people Yvonne could give the apartment to. I didn’t like her reminding me. I was sick of reminding myself. Anyway, the apartment had been empty for months. I watched a skein of cloud drift up the sky. It was going to cover the sun. I bit my nails and listened to Libby. I felt like a child who had just won a race, only to be told the others had been disqualified.
– Now listen, Siobhan, I’m terribly busy till the end of the year, and I’m afraid I won’t have time to see you till January.
– Perhaps you could ring at the end of the month. January, that is.
I unpacked my things. There wasn’t much; it didn’t take long. I walked around my apartment. That didn’t take long either. I stood in the middle of the room rubbing the ends of my hair together. Now I was here, now I had what I’d been busting my guts for, I didn’t know what to do.
I sat by the window feeling the pimple on my lip. I heard my mother saying, Leave it alone. You’ll get a scar. The scar was forming, and I couldn’t leave it alone. Scabs are irresistible.
My same old restlessness, my same old inertia. I was a doer with paralysed hands. I was a dreamer who’d lost her imagination. I was a fighter with no opponent.
By my watch it was about nine o’clock in the morning in Sydney. I rang my mother reverse charges.
She said she was pleased for me but she sounded cautious, just like Libby. Why the caution? Where was the danger? Was it in me? I wished! While Libby had worried I wouldn’t stay, my mother worried I would. She hated me asking for more money; no matter what, she always hated it. The skid marks of cloud were moving higher. A line thickened over the rooftops. It was as though someone were pouring dense grey smoke into my piece of sky. Slowly, it filled with cloud.
– I worry about you coming home penniless, Siobhan.
– Why? What difference does it make?
– Well, I suppose it depends on what you achieve, doesn’t it? she said icily.
I felt my hackles rise.
– Not really. Why?
I held the phone in the crook of my shoulder to get at an itchy bite. I might as well have put the phone down altogether because no voice was coming out of it. Bed bugs had moved into my room at Hôtel des Etrangers shortly before I moved out. At the time, I didn’t realise I was under attack. Now the red spots were showing. I wished I hadn’t bitten my nails – I couldn’t scratch.
This silence was exasperating me. I exasperated it back.
– What would I be achieving in Sydney anyway?
I got a sigh for response. I pictured Mum standing by the corkboard, cat-scratched, searching amongst all the old messages there for something to say. She could only think that I should go back to study and she no longer saw the use in suggesting it.
But there was always the possibility she might, and I remembered the university fees I’d wasted, all those reference books bought but not read, and my hackles stood stiffly at forty-five degree angles.
– What does anyone achieve anywhere? I’m not just going to sit at home looking at my bank balance. I’m only twenty-one.
There was a sharp intake of breath.
– Really, Siobhan! I don’t want to spend my money talking about this with you now.
– What? You’re spending your money talking about the way I should be spending mine.
– Nonsense. You spend it how you like. I don’t have to agree with you, do I?
– When else can we talk about it? Long distance calls aren’t going to get any cheaper, are they?
– Oh really, Siobhan, I can’t be bothered with these silly … rhetorical questions.
Now that the cloud had come over, my reflection was developing in the window. I screwed up my face and postured about. It must have been overcast in Sydney too, for there were no bird calls in the background. Just click, buzz, burr, and a faint suspiration. Mum sighing; Mum was always sighing.
Or was it sobbing? I gripped the phone. I didn’t want to make her cry. I did, but I didn’t want to hear it.
– Mum.
– Oh dear, she said, telephones are dreadful.
A lime-green motor scooter came roaring down the street. The rider wore a lime-green boiler suit with the words Trottoir Net stencilled across his back. He steered carefully along the gutter, vacuuming dog turds into the green boxes behind his seat. The racket put a stop to our conversation. I watched the man do his job, thinking how my mother would have liked a trottoir net for the backyard. All her curses, her fence repairs and plastic bottles, never stopped the Kelly’s dogs from using her front lawn as their toilet.
The motor scooter moved down to the corner, and my mother’s voice returned.
– Everybody else will be here for Christmas. We’ll miss you. You know that, don’t you darling?