Staring out of her kitchen window into the cobbled courtyard where summer flowers still bloomed in profusion, Clare yawned and rubbed her eyes, as she waited for the kettle to boil. Not entirely awake, she was just reaching for the coffee jar when a sudden sharp knock startled her.
Hastily, she turned off the kettle, wrapped her dressing-gown more decently around her naked body and went to the door.
‘Ah, mam’selle, you are safely returned. These flowers came early this morning. Your curtains were still drawn, so I did not allow the delivery boy to knock at your door.’
The dark figure waiting on the doorstep was holding a costume from the dry-cleaners, a carrier bag and a cluster of envelopes and cards, as well as the florist’s box in the crook of her arm.
‘Do come in, Madame Dubois,’ Clare said politely, as she tried to smother another huge yawn.
The old woman smiled approvingly as Clare began to relieve her of her burdens. Some of the young mam’selles and messieurs kept her standing at the door with their dry-cleaning and their parcels, because their rooms were so untidy, she suspected, but not this little English girl from Ireland. Even when a suitcase stood open, being packed or unpacked, her room was always so neat.
‘These are beautiful, mam’selle,’ said Madame encouragingly, as she lowered the box of flowers gently on to the dining table.
The other inhabitants of the bank’s apartments had warned Clare that Madame la concierge, was garrulous and nosey, but she had long since decided Madame was just lonely. She’d been widowed in the war and appeared to have no friends or relatives. Her mam’selles and messieurs had become her family, and her greatest pleasure was helping them. In return, she merely wanted a little share in their comings and goings.
‘Yes, they are lovely. I can’t think who they’re from. Shall we look?’ Clare replied. She opened the box, took out a sheaf of roses and freesias and found the card attached to the lid.
‘From London,’ she said, as she translated the rather formal message of thanks ‘for all her hard work’. ‘Unusual for English men to send flowers, isn’t it, Madame?’
Madame glowed.
‘I think perhaps you prefer French men, mam’selle,’ she said, looking pleased.
‘I think perhaps I might, if I ever met any,’ Clare laughed. ‘Apart from my neighbours here and one or two colleagues at the bank, I meet far more Americans than French men.’
Madame nodded agreeably and turned towards the door.
‘You must be very tired, mam’selle. It was so late last night. And you have had no breakfast yet.’
Clare thanked her and shut the door gratefully. The last thing she wanted this morning was to have to talk to anyone, but Madame was always so kind. Whatever the problem, she’d find a solution, and she’d never once forgotten anything she’d asked her to do.
Clare took the flowers through to the kitchen, filled her washing-up basin with water and put the flowers to soak, as Madame Givrey had instructed her. The tiny, bent old woman with a flower stall just outside the Metro was one of the first friends she’d made.
‘You love flowers, mam’selle?’ Madame Givrey said one day, when Clare chose a bouquet of white daisies mixed with bright blue statice. ‘Have you always lived in the city?’
‘No, Madame, you’ve guessed my secret,’ she replied, smiling broadly. ‘I’m a country girl. I used to grow my own flowers in window boxes my uncle made for me. Fuchsias and geraniums and lobelia. And I picked wildflowers too, for our table. Your flowers are lovely, but sometimes I miss the ordinary garden flowers, old-fashioned things like aquilegia and sweet william.’
‘And the wild roses in the hedgerows?’ she asked, her small dark eyes suddenly bright.
‘Oh yes,’ Clare replied, thinking of her favourite bush in the lane below the forge. ‘They only last a day or two, but they’re such a delicate colour, aren’t they?’
After that, she often stopped to talk. She told Madame Givrey she never bought flowers when she was going away because there’d be no one to appreciate them. The old woman had nodded approvingly. Flowers were to be treated with proper respect.
‘It is not just fresh water, mam’selle, that keeps flowers alive. Like ourselves, they need to be loved and cherished.’
The next time she chose a bouquet, Madame Givrey showed her how to cut the stems with a sharp knife.
‘Always let them drink properly before you put them in a vase, mam’selle. That way they will last longer.’
Clare switched the kettle on again, fetched the carrier bag with her bread and croissants from the sitting room and made breakfast.
‘No wonder Madame left so promptly,’ she said, as she glanced at the kitchen clock. It was a quarter to twelve and Madame, who rose at some incredibly early hour, before the earliest of deliveries, always had lunch at noon.
She carried her tray through to her chair by the window, carefully pushed aside the pile of books and maps on her low table and made room for it.
‘Ouff!’ she exclaimed, as she flopped down. Simply talking to Madame and making breakfast felt like a day’s work.
‘A whole week,’ she said to herself, as she finished off her croissant, licked her fingers and sat back in her chair with her coffee. ‘I don’t have to do anything.’
This was the first piece of time she’d had to herself since the senior interpreter fell ill, right in the middle of the important five-day visit Robert Lafarge wished her to observe.
‘This is most unfortunate Mam’selle ’Amilton. Most unfortunate,’ he began, striding up and down his room. ‘We cannot ask these Americans to come again another time, so I fear you will have to take Monsieur Crespigny’s place. It is quite unreasonable to ask you, but I have no option. I have postponed this morning’s meeting for one hour to see what help I can give you. Will you do what you can?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t picked up all the technical terms yet, but the actual negotiations themselves don’t trouble me. The problem is the financial side, particularly the interest rates. Monsieur Crespigny uses a calculator to produce a very fast translation. I’m afraid I’ve never used a calculator, so I’d be much slower.’
The look of relief on his face almost made her smile.
‘That can be remedied very easily,’ he said, pressing a button on his desk. ‘My administrative assistant speaks little English, but he is exceedingly fast with figures of any kind, with or without a calculator.’
The door opened and the beautiful young man appeared.
‘Monsieur Paul, you have met Miss ’Amilton, haven’t you? Bien. Today you will assist her with our American guests. When a statement of a financial nature is made, you will make any conversion necessary to dollars or sterling, and pass the result to her. Also, you will carry up the technical dictionary and the large Larousse and find for her any French word with which she is not familiar, so that she can read the English translation for herself. Do you understand?’
‘Perfectly, monsieur,’ he said, with a bow to each of them. ‘It will be a great pleasure.’
Clare thought she detected a slight raising of Robert Lafarge’s eyebrows as he departed, but he said nothing.
She’d been terribly nervous before the meeting, held in the largest and most elegant of the first-floor reception rooms. She’d been introduced to all the visitors on Monday morning, but she’d not actually spoken to any of them. For two days, she’d just sat beside Jean-Pierre Crespigny, watching how he handled the negotiations, back and forth across the huge polished table.
Once she got started, it went far better than she could ever have imagined. At the end of the day Robert Lafarge had congratulated her, and the other members of the bank’s team gathered round to encourage her for next day.
Only moments after she arrived back in her room, a stack of papers to prepare for the morning, Madame Japolsky appeared.
‘Are you very tired, Mam’selle ’Amilton? It has been a very exhausting day for you.’
‘Yes, I am tired now. I didn’t notice until I stopped.’
‘Tomorrow will be just as long, you must go to bed early tonight,’ she said firmly. ‘On Friday, you will have a much longer day. There will be a reception here, seats at the Opéra and supper afterwards. This is the usual form when the bank entertains important visitors.’
The moment she mentioned the Opéra, Clare panicked. She’d absolutely nothing to wear, but Madame Japolsky had already thought of that.
‘I have spoken to Mam’selle Pirelli today about the question of an evening dress. We think you are the same dress size. I have arranged for her to bring in one of her own dresses tomorrow morning. You must be here in good time to try it on before you go upstairs. If it doesn’t fit, or if you do not feel at ease with it, I have made arrangements for her to go to our couturier and borrow a dress for you. At the bank’s expense, naturally. I’m sure she will choose something attractive and appropriate.’
‘It was too,’ she murmured to herself, as she looked out across the cobbled river quay and watched a solitary fisherman set up camp.
She’d never forget the visit to the Opéra. The performance itself was memorable, but what would always stay in her mind was the opera house itself, the rich red and gold decoration of the auditorium, the foyer with its vivid, allegorical paintings and the grand staircase, L’Escalier d’Honneur, she’d seen so often in postcards and illustrations.
Stepping carefully down its broad, shallow steps of multi-coloured marble, wearing Louise Pirelli’s blue silk dress, which was just a fraction too long for her, with Robert Lafarge on one side and the senior American official on the other, she felt thick carpet under her feet, was aware of the brilliant points of light overhead, the throng of well-dressed men and elegant women all about her, moving towards the open doors and the warm, velvety night beyond. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be Cinderella.
‘Say, Miss Hamilton, what’s that li’l red badge some of these guys are wearin’ in their lapels?’ the tall, slow-speaking Texan asked, as they descended.
As they crossed the foyer to the car, drawn up before the main entrance, with Robert Lafarge’s chauffeur standing beside it holding open the door for her, she explained how the Legion of Honour was awarded and why one saw such a large number of legionnaires at the opera. The door closed behind her, she sank gratefully into the deep leather seat, smiled to herself and wondered exactly where she’d be when midnight struck.
By now the fisherman had got as far as baiting his line. As she watched, a slight breeze caught a handful of fallen leaves. Curled and dry, they moved crabwise along the edge of the quay, until a fresher gust whirled them into the water. They floated away, another golden cargo on the brown waters of the Seine.
She stretched back comfortably in a large, upholstered chair. On the evening of the hot July day when Marie-Claude and Gerard drove her over from the Bois de Boulogne, the first thing she’d done was move the chair over to the window. She’d imagined herself sitting with a cup of coffee in her hand, looking out on the passing scene, watching the barges pass up river and down.
‘Not quite like that, was it?’ she said aloud, laughing at herself.
She just hadn’t appreciated how much work there would be. The few evening hours she spent in the apartment were almost always taken up with preparations for the next day. Papers to scan, maps to study. And whenever she did have a whole day at home, she had to catch up on her washing and ironing. There was shopping and letters to write.
Doing her housework, she often thought of scrubbing the kitchen floor at the forge house, or mopping up Mrs McGregor’s red tiles after Alan Brady’s shirts had dripped all over them. By comparison it was no effort at all to keep the apartment clean, but it still took time to arrange flowers, polish the windows, and keep it looking tidy. There hadn’t been much left for gazing idly out of the window.
After those exceptional first weeks life had been easier, but it was no less busy. Her colleagues on the financial side were amazed by the continual flow of requests for finance, but Clare was not surprised at all.
She often recalled that happy evening when Gerard declared he’d question her sanity if she didn’t take the job she’d been offered. After their meal he’d stretched out on one of the settees and begun to reflect on the whole economic and political situation in France.
‘You’ve come at the right time, Clare. I think we’re at the beginning of a period of enormous growth. It’s been brewing for some time,’ he began, ‘but now the Treaty of Rome has been ratified, France is really beginning to think in terms of the new European market. Unlike London. The problems with Algeria might have put the brake on, but since De Gaulle was granted full powers last month, business confidence has returned.’
He put his coffee cup down and waved his hand in the air.
‘Confidence is a term no one can define objectively, but we all know what happens when it goes up. And up.’
He laughed and threw his arms skywards in a great, expansive gesture.
As each new pile of submissions arrived on Robert Lafarge’s desk, she began to see exactly what Gerard meant. Food producers, wine growers, hoteliers, manufacturers of agricultural implements, children’s clothes, bathroom tiles. The list of companies requesting finance went on and on. It included items Clare had never even heard of, like extruded plastics and warp-knitted fabrics. She could understand the words, but could only guess what the processes were. They hadn’t even got into the technical dictionaries yet.
She looked around her room. Her suitcase still sat unopened on the settee. She’d been so tired last night she’d looked in the drawer for a clean nightie to save unpacking. There wasn’t one. Just like a couple of weeks back when she was packing for a three-day visit to Marseilles and discovered all her knickers were in the laundry basket. With no time to wash and dry them before the night train, she’d had to go straight out and buy some.
‘Perhaps I’d better buy some more nighties as well,’ she said, casting her eyes around the patches of sunlight that poured through the large window of her sitting room.
It was smaller than her room in Belfast, but much lighter, the pale primrose walls catching the light even on cloudy days. The furniture had been carefully chosen to match its proportions, so the room actually appeared more spacious than her old one, encumbered with a tall wardrobe, heavy sideboard and bulky settee. At night, the lights reflected in the river were so colourful, she sometimes sat for a little in her dressing-gown, curtains undrawn, lamps unlit, watching the barges moving by with quiet urgency on the gleaming water.
She sighed and adjusted her chair so that her bare legs caught the warmth of the sun.
‘What I miss most is being able to have a quiet think,’ she said to the empty room. ‘Feast or famine, that’s the problem.’
Back in Belfast, she’d had all the time in the world to sit and think. Too much, in fact. Often, she’d been bored, just as often lonely. Now she scarcely had time to be bored and was hardly ever alone. Even when she travelled and would have liked simply to watch the passing countryside, or let her mind float through the piled-up clouds, she was sure to have documents to be read before she arrived.
What she found most difficult of all was arriving back with her mind full of Bordeaux, or Lyons, or Marseilles, the sights and sounds of the city, the experience of working with new people, the words and expressions she’d learnt. She always had the greatest desire to sit still, even in the cramped office, with the banging and hammering of the builders moving closer all the time, but the next piece of work was waiting for her, or one more set of visitors arrived at reception. When the telephone rang on her desk, it was a real effort to get up and go out to greet them.
‘I’ve landed, Marie-Claude, but I’m not sure when I take off again. I’m going to have a bath to try to get my head shirred,’ she’d confessed to Marie-Claude on the phone, one evening.
So long ago now, on the beach at Deauville, speaking English because Marie-Claude had asked her to, she’d let slip the old expression.
‘Shirred? Please, what is “shirred”?’
‘Possibly it relates to the textile industry,’ she’d begun. ‘Fabric is drawn together so that it lies in parallel ridges. Or perhaps it relates to the sediment settling to leave a liquid clear,’ she continued, quite sure that Marie-Claude would want a proper explanation. Then she caught the look on Marie-Claude’s face.
‘Oh, Clare, you are so sérieuse,’ she said, bursting out laughing.
‘Yes, I am,’ she’d admitted, ruefully. ‘Sorry. Maybe it’s my Scots ancestors and their respect for the “word” and for book learning.’
Ever after, it became a part of their shared language, just as it had been a part of what she shared with her grandfather.
She thought of him limping in of an evening, after a day of continuous comings and goings at the forge, longing for the comfort of silence and his pipe by the fire.
‘Ach, sure I need to get my head shirred,’ he’d say, as he pressed the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with a well-practised thumb.
‘Four years ago this month,’ she said softly.
As vividly as if she were standing at the door of the house, she saw him walking down the lane to the forge on that lovely, frosty October morning, a bent figure in a flat cap and work-worn clothes. As the sun passed its zenith, she went on sitting, letting herself move round the dark kitchen, her own small bedroom, the ‘boys’ room’ with her table and books. She stepped out into the orchard, cycled down well-known lanes and visited places she’d not had the chance to think of for what seemed a very long time now.
Suddenly, she jumped up from her chair and shivered, the sun now long past its zenith. ‘Time to shower and dress,’ she said, and laughed at herself, aware how often still she spoke her thoughts out loud when there was no one around to hear.
As she pulled on her trousers, tucked in her shirt, she realised she was absolutely starving. She’d have to go shopping, but not until she’d looked at her post. She went to the cupboard, found a solitary tin of pâté and dipped gratefully into Madame’s carrier bag for more fresh bread.
Back in her chair, she sorted her post into little piles. Two cards and three letters in one and a bank statement, an electric bill and a charity appeal in the other.
‘Oh, Louise,’ she laughed, as she picked up one of the postcards and tried to translate the Italian below the picture. A very large man was ogling two slim, but well-endowed young women in bikinis. It reminded her of seaside postcards from her childhood. She couldn’t quite manage the Italian on the front, but scrawled on the back Louise had written, ‘Wish you were here,’ in English, and then, in French, the suggestion that they have a holiday together without ‘le grand Monsieur’, Robert Lafarge’s nickname among the younger staff.
Clare laughed, so pleased at the thought of someone as lively and vivacious as Louise Pirelli wanting to holiday with her. Louise was the most striking woman she’d ever met. With wonderful blue-black hair, devastating dark eyes and a beautifully shaped figure, she turned heads wherever she went. At the bank, she was a constant trial to Madame Japolsky.
Madame had taken Clare to the office the two girls would share. A surprisingly small room, straight out of Dickens, a complete contrast to the Second Empire elegance of the rooms she’d seen so far. Louise was perched on a stool, swinging her shapely legs, her very high heels lying on the floor, her jacket draped over the back of a chair.
The tight-lipped expression on Madame Japolsky’s face made it perfectly clear that such a relaxation in dress was not acceptable. Even out of sight in these back rooms, jackets and shoes were to be worn.
‘You were feeling unwell, Miss Pirelli?’ asked Madame Japolsky acidly, as she stared at the discarded jacket.
Clare tried not to smile, for Louise looked the very picture of health.
‘Oh yes, Madame. Suddenly, I felt so unwell,’ she replied, rolling her eyes and putting her hand to her stomach.
It was exactly the gesture poor Jessie made once the morning sickness got going. A look of horror crossed Madame’s face, till she realised she was being teased. She drew herself up to her full height and turned to Clare.
‘I will leave you with Miss Pirelli for the moment,’ she said, an icy edge to her voice. ‘She will show you the staff rest room and bathroom.’ She paused significantly. ‘I hope she will also explain the standards of personal presentation we expect from all our staff,’ she added, as she swept out of the room.
The moment she was gone, Louise burst out laughing, then held out both her hands to her.
‘She is impossible, n’est-ce-pas? But I will tell you how to keep on the right side of her and what to watch out for.’
In that first exhausting week, however, they hardly laid eyes on each other. Instead, Louise would leave little notes on Clare’s desk. ‘Headache tablets and cologne in my drawer. Please use,’ was decorated with a very sad pussycat. ‘If you need something to take home for your supper, try Ricardo in Rue Scribe,’ showed a very contented one.
Louise had been so delighted, too, when her own newest evening dress fitted Clare.
‘Don’t worry about dropping your champagne and canapé, chérie, Madame Japolsky will foot the cleaner’s bill,’ she said, as she helped her out of the dress and back into her costume. ‘Good luck with your Americans.’
Even when they were going off in different directions and had only five minutes in the staff cloakroom, Louise would tell her the best place for a quick lunch or the nearest place to buy stockings. When eventually they found themselves working together in their cramped office, they shared the funniest of the misprints, new words they’d never met before and their observations on the state of Madame Japolsky’s temper.
The other postcard told her that a costume and an evening dress were ready for fitting at her earliest convenience and that the autumn collection was now available should she wish to view it.
She turned to the letters. They were from home. She recognised the handwriting on all of them. She turned them over in her hand, remembering her very first Sunday evening alone in the apartment. After moving her chair to the window, she’d set up the dining table and written to her grandparents, Jessie and Harry and the Wileys. She’d also sent wee notes to all the people in her address book. Three months later, hardly any of them had replied.
It made her so sad that the people she’d shared lectures and seminars with for four years simply couldn’t be bothered to write even a postcard. Only one girl out of the Honours year had responded. Mary McCausland thanked her for her congratulations, wished her luck and told her to make sure she got in touch when she came home to visit.
But there was one nice surprise. She’d never imagined Keith Harvey would make much of a letter writer, but he’d sat himself down regularly to tell her about his teaching job in Belfast and pass on news of mutual friends. She read quickly through his latest effort, as lively and amusing as the rest.
‘What do you do, Clare, when someone is being rude or unpleasant? Do you try to give an English equivalent? Or do you clean it up? I’ve just read Zazie dans le Metro and greatly extended my vocabulary!’
There’d been nothing from Liskeyborough. Not a word from Uncle Jack or any of her cousins. Granny Hamilton could be excused, because of the state of her hands, but her dear brother might just have scribbled a word or two to tell her they were all well.
The next letter was Charlie Running’s. She smiled when she saw how thick it was. He’d done a lot to make up for her family’s silence. Although he seldom mentioned Robert, she knew he still missed him. What really surprised her was the enthusiasm with which he reported his historical researches.
His first letter had contained a vivid pictorial account of the deployment of troops at the Battle of the Yellow Ford, together with sketch maps. In the next, he told her he’d discovered a row of trees had disappeared between a late eighteenth-century map and the 1835 Ordnance Survey. He was sure they’d been cut down in 1798, to make pikes for the United Irishmen. All he had to do was prove it.
‘Never forget, Clare, the active role that France played in Ireland’s struggle for freedom,’ she read, laughing wryly at his next comment.
‘I wonder if you’ve had time yet to explore the history of those, like Matilda Wolfe Tone, who had to remain in France after the 1798 rebellion “for the good of their health”.’
The last was a note from Harry, a single sheet, the back of an invoice, as always.
Dear Clare,
I’m sorry I haven’t managed to write since the baby was born but she’s kept us busy. She and Jessie are grand even though they say she was at least two weeks early. We’re going to call her Fiona Caroline after nobody in the family. Then there’ll be no arguments. Any chance of you getting a holiday at Christmas to come over and see us? Jessie sends her love. I know she misses you. And so do I.
Much love,
Harry
She sighed as she looked at the familiar invoice form and the Ulster stamps on the discarded envelopes. Was she homesick? Only a few days earlier, she’d been asked the same question and it had taken her completely by surprise.
‘Mam’selle ’Amilton, Monsieur Lafarge wishes to see you immediately in his room.’
Totally absorbed in translating a document, she looked up, startled, into the coal-black eyes of Madame Japolsky. Her stomach lurched with apprehension, till she remembered Madame had been in a bad mood for days and everything she said had an ominous edge to it. There was nothing at all unusual in Robert Lafarge sending for her. He did it quite regularly and he was never anything other than courteous.
She hurried up the long staircases and tapped at his door.
‘Viens.’
To her surprise, he addressed her as Mam’selle Clare for the first time, a departure from his usual formality. He waved her to a corner by the window where two comfortable armchairs turned their high backs on the room and looked out over the Place de l’Opéra below.
‘You are preparing for our London visit, no doubt,’ he said easily. ‘I have a question to ask you. When the directors of this consortium came to us here some weeks ago, I observed that you watched one of them, Monsieur Langley, a great deal …’
He paused, as Clare looked slightly embarrassed.
‘I would appreciate it if you would give me your opinion of this gentleman.’
Clare took a deep breath, suddenly aware his question was not just a compliment but a responsibility.
‘He reminded me of … someone I once knew well, a young man with a similar background, what the English themselves call “the public school type”. I felt he was doing his best to be enthusiastic about a project in which he has no heart. He was making a considerable effort. He had done his work thoroughly in preparing his arguments and his figures. I’m sure he is very competent and perfectly trustworthy, but he has no feeling for the importation of fruit.’
Robert Lafarge nodded briefly and looked pleased. He then asked her for her opinion on the other members of the group of businessmen proposing to link a whole network of French and Italian co-operative producers directly with the English market.
‘Thank you, Mam’selle Clare, you have been most helpful. We may speak again of this matter in London after our next meetings.’
He seemed to be about to stand up, but changed his mind and settled back more comfortably in his chair.
‘Your friend, the one who has a gift for drawing animals, how is she?’
Clare beamed with pleasure.
‘Jessie. She is very happy. Her first child was born two weeks ago, a little girl who already has blonde hair. She’s too busy to write to me, but her husband, Harry, who runs the gallery where I worked as a student, writes me notes on the back of invoice forms. I’m afraid he’s quite besotted with his daughter. I’m sure she’ll be horribly spoilt,’ she said, smiling.
‘You will go and see them soon, perhaps? You must certainly be entitled to some holiday.’
‘I … hadn’t thought of it …’
‘Remember that your airline tickets can be purchased through our reception. There are significant discounts,’ he said practically. ‘You are not homesick.’ He paused and regarded her steadily.
She was not sure at the time whether his words were a statement or a question. Certainly she hadn’t known how to reply. She turned over the envelopes in her hand. What did homesickness feel like? That was the problem. Was it there in the disappointment she felt when friends didn’t write to her? Or was it an absence? A vague, unnameable sadness?
She shivered, feeling a sudden chill, though she’d switched on the heating while she was making lunch, and the light autumn sunshine was still warm on her face and legs. Perhaps she’d better go shopping. The letter from London was probably no more than an acknowledgement from the bookshop with which she’d just opened an account. It could certainly wait.