16

MR CROCODILE

One Saturday morning, Sylvia is out and I’m upstairs for breakfast with my parents. My father hands me an envelope. ‘There is a letter for you, Catherine.’

I can’t read yet, so I have to ask him what it says. He puts his glasses on, opens the seal, pulls out the paper and reads: ‘Dear Catherine, I hate you. I hope your Daddy gives you a sound spanking. Here is a letter full of my dirty push. Love, Crocodile.’

Mr Crocodile is one of the people my father tells me about, when he isn’t talking about Romans, Greeks and Carthaginians. Crocodile is a low-down creature with scales and nasty breath. We have seen many pictures of him in books.

My father points ominously to a little wooden box lying on my mother’s table.

‘This came with it,’ he adds with a disgusted sigh.

We decide not to open it.

‘The nerve of that Crocodile!’

Later on, we go to the Bois de Boulogne Lake. My father asks me: ‘Would you like to see Mr Crocodile this time? He’s very eager to see you.’

He seems to have forgotten about the awful letter. I gather every ounce of politeness I possess.

‘I’d rather not, thank you.’

My father gives a discouraged sigh.

‘He was just asking about you again the other day, Catherine. I know you don’t appreciate him very much, but really, he’s rather lonely in that cave of his.’

I shake my head carefully. We are walking nearer and nearer the water’s edge. Between the trees you can see dark openings in the rock. My father crouches and points towards one of them.

‘His home is just in there, see?’

I give a tiny nod.

‘Won’t you say hello to him?’

‘Maybe he’s busy.’

He shakes his head, taking my hand again.

‘I don’t think so. Every time, I have to find an explanation. No wonder his feelings are hurt. Poor Mr Crocodile, he’s always asking after you.’

Now we are very close to the cave opening.

‘Maybe he’s asleep,’ I suggest.

‘Oh, no, he’s expecting you.’

My father sighs again as he feels me pull back.

‘I really don’t know what new excuse I can find this time.’

‘Can’t we go next week instead?’

‘We? Oh, but Catherine, Mr Crocodile wants to be quite alone with you. Of course, it doesn’t smell very nice at first, where he likes it best, in the mud at the very bottom of his cave, but you’ll soon get used to it.’

He turns towards the opening again. I stare after him in horror. But suddenly he swirls round, swoops down on me and carries me towards the twinkling lake.

‘All right, Catherine, let’s give him a miss. I’ll go and tell him you can’t come.’

He puts me down under a big oak and weaves his way back towards Mr Crocodile’s cave. I see him bend down to enter the yawning cave mouth and soon I hear echoes of his conversation with Mr Crocodile, who only grunts rudely in return.

I stare around me. Every tree, every leaf seems to share my relief. We all wait for my father’s return in the suspended wonder of escape. The Bois de Boulogne is a wood right in the middle of Paris. It has been ridden in, picnicked in, painted and written about. Prostitutes ply their trade there, children play and couples row on the lake or have lunch on the island. Every tree has known a murder, a declaration of love, a suicide. Wildness and death hobnob with balls and kites. My father is in his element. His step has become crisper, more fluid, jagged and alive, yet full of a powerful quiet. He knows the dense copses, the sandy paths, the short cuts, as if he had been active here with the Resistance. When we reach the lake, it glitters and glows in the sun. The cries and laughs from the rowboats and the splashes of the oars contain us in their watery song. Time has gone. It is no longer Saturday morning; it could be any morning in the world. If only Mr Crocodile didn’t live here.

With Alexandre, it’s only a few seconds afterwards that you can take in what is happening. He has rushed us to the boathouse. He’s already knocking on its shabby door. Who else does he know here, apart from Mr Crocodile? Now he’s swirling round and calling out to a giant who’s straightening up from behind a boat’s hull. He seems to know people are there before they materialise. The giant is wearing a very thick jumper and a cap. He focuses on us slowly and disbelievingly, as if he were not used to being addressed in this manner, as if he were more used to scaring people. I notice the stone-grey curls against the back of his neck. He could be a gypsy or a smuggler – people I instinctively approve of.

There are only a few boats left on the shore, but all of them are turned over on their empty bellies. The boat keeper has a pot of paint in his hand. My father points at the hulls – all bottoms up – expectantly.

‘Could we have one of your boats, please?’

The man’s face is as closed as the door of his shed.

‘We rented the last available one five minutes ago.’

For a moment the air vacillates between them, calm and whole and peaceful – a landscape before it becomes a battlefield. My father doesn’t move an inch, then begs, joyfully: ‘Can’t you rent us one of those?’

For a moment, incredulity is a spasm on the boat keeper’s features. Then something changes in the chemistry of his body and he slowly rubs the nape of his neck with his free hand, before extending his other palm towards the furthest boat.

‘I haven’t started on that one yet …’

My father beams. ‘I’ll help you turn it over.’

The man rallies and runs to heave it upright without my father’s help, reacting to his warm, urgent voice. Almost everyone does. It could be their last chance to do something before a tsunami comes in, before Paris is burnt and the war is lost. All is settled so quickly the giant seems slightly out of breath and blinks at the money my father has stuffed in his hand as if it were hay or candy floss. Alexandre is already in the boat, calling me, his hand on the oars. The giant and I are left on the shore staring at each other, victims of the same sleight of hand.

Then, in a twinkling, with a wave and a bright smile, my father has whisked us to the middle of the lake, safe from Mr Crocodile (hopefully asleep by now in the bottom of his cave).

Rowing seems to come naturally to Alexandre. Again I have the feeling that he has been here before in other circumstances: his movements are oiled and economical, his hands know the nooks and crannies of the oars, which don’t make a sound when they drop into the water. Around us, the lake has expanded, making the sky enormous in response. When we reach the furthest point from the shore, the oars suddenly tumble higgledy-piggledy into the boat like drunken arms and legs. My father is throwing himself back comfortably, in spite of the chill, and putting his arms behind his head to gaze up at the clouds. All this makes us nearly capsize, but he doesn’t notice.

I wait, hoping his mind won’t return to the subject of Mr Crocodile.

‘Do you know, Catherine, I was in a phone booth in New York once. It was night, it was raining, it was during the Depression. There was an old black man on the street corner. I leaned out and asked him if he could give me the change from a dollar to make a call. He answered: “I can’t, Mister, but thanks for the compliment.”’

‘I can’t, Mister, but thanks for the compliment,’ he repeats. ‘This man’s answer was the whole of the Great American Depression, Catherine, and the dignity of one human being.’

‘Did you say anything else to each other?’

My father shakes his head sadly. ‘No, he just faded away into the night.’ He frowns. ‘That was the year I lost my dog Touts.’

‘Touts?’

‘Yes, that was his name. He was a black Scottie. You know, like the dog on the Black and White whisky label.’

I nod. He often gives me the empty boxes to keep, so I can cut out the dog. Now I know why.

‘Well, one night, Touts disappeared. I don’t know if he was stolen or if he got lost. I spent weeks searching for him in New York, through the nights because I was working during the day, calling Touts, Touts! But I never found him.’

We stare at each other. I whisper under my breath: ‘Touts.’

In his eyes I can see New York, where I’ve never been, the streets shiny with rain, my father’s clothes getting wet and his voice crying out Touts! in the dark. Then I realise: ‘You never had a dog again.’

He sits up and hangs his head. ‘No.’

We both grieve for Touts, in the boat in the middle of the lake. The splashes of other rowers, even their laughter, have disappeared.

He lets himself slide back again, his face turned up once more, drenched in sunshine. After a while, his gaze intent on the sky, he speaks again.

‘You know, little one, in New York, I also knew a woman called Marguerite. She loved me very much. I used to go and see her in her small flat.’

Something in his voice reminds me of the old black man. ‘Did she fade away too?’

He nods sadly, wearily – nearly ashamedly.

‘Did you love her?’

He stares at me. ‘She was a sincere, lovely woman. A sweet woman. She was sensitive, intelligent, well-read.’

Women love my father. He has an enormous tummy, his skin is like satin and he smells of honey – maybe because he eats a kilo of it a week. I nod and ask again: ‘But did you love her too?’

In my father’s stare there is no answer, but a sort of bewilderment instead.

‘I had to come back to France.’

‘But why? Why didn’t you stay with her?’

He’s still looking at the sky. ‘She begged me to. I nearly … did.’

We stay silent. The whole boat seems to be swallowed by the water. He shakes his head.

‘I had to go.’

He doesn’t explain, not straightaway, not until a long time afterwards.

‘Didn’t you call her on the telephone?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ever see her again?’

‘No, never.’

There is an uncharacteristic slowness in his voice. His eyes, his whole presence, have gone funny. We wait. We don’t say anything anymore. The reflections on the water seem to have dimmed. The laughter in other boats seems strained. He lies back and stares at the clouds sauntering along on this cold spring morning. When I speak, my question seems to hang among them.

‘Did you live in America for a long time?’

There it hangs, thin and threadbare above the water.

‘Haven’t you noticed I have an American accent?’

During that boat ride, I discover that my father lived for twenty-four years in America. There is something about him that makes his past, present and future all now. Echoes of America, of the French Nivernais where he grew up, of his forthcoming plans, all pool out in large concentric ripples.

The war is there also, waiting in the wings, holding its breath. My father has one surviving connection from his time in the Resistance. Roland Pré is silent and thin, with a face like wax. When he comes over, they don’t talk about it but it’s there, with them in the room, in their glances, in the silence that comes and goes, in their strange, small smiles of regret, in their hands that stray to each other’s shoulders. They are distant, almost formal with each other, yet helplessly familiar, intimate, as if warding off something, a fear they also yearn for.

My father rarely speaks of the Resistance, but now without taking his eyes from the sky, he suddenly does. Maybe only this can sweep the lingering image of Marguerite away.

‘Once I was the contact for a British pilot. I was chosen because I spoke English. Our meeting had been set for the Saint-Lazare train station. He was standing exactly where it had been arranged, at the top of the Metro steps, just where they come up in the middle of the station. I found him easily – a parachuted Englishman with “English” written all over him. I walked up and stood next to him casually, without looking at him, but before I could slip him my address, he murmured from the corner of his mouth, without moving his lips, “Scram, I’m burnt,” and ran down the Metro steps, drowning himself instantly in the crowd. Obviously the Gestapo had sprung his last hideout and were tailing him to catch other fish. He was warning us to cease all contact. I never found out what happened to him. I didn’t even know his name.’

He lies there perfectly still. The sky is a cold, blue screen above, as if the clouds had been frightened away.

‘Maybe the Germans didn’t catch him. Maybe he got away.’

His eyes stay up there in the sky; only his lips move.

‘I remember his features as if they were drawn on my mind.’

The fact that he doesn’t look at me makes his words even more final. I hold on to the sides of the boat.

‘He saved my life, he saved the whole cell by cutting himself off. Yet he had almost zero chance of survival without us. How could he ask for anything with his English accent, how could he know who to trust? Without his contact in the Resistance, he was a dead man.’

His voice dies out. I don’t say a thing. It feels like a trapdoor has slammed shut. When I look around again, I don’t recognise anything – not the lake, not the other boats, not the trees, not even the sunlight. He rows in and hops out, without a word. When I clamber up after him, nothing seems quite the same. The boat keeper, standing beside his painted hulls, stares at my father as he walks away. Trotting behind, I turn around and wave; he lifts his hand.

Mr Crocodile has vanished from my mind.