22

Early the following morning we settled down to planning our brief visit to Paris. Frances and Lexi had done the sights before, but I hadn’t and time was short. I was invited to nominate two places of interest. My choice of the Eiffel Tower was vetoed by Lexi. It was boring, overrated and best viewed from afar. Notre-Dame, my second choice, was acceptable, but no one could visit Paris without seeing the Louvre. In the end we found ourselves deposited at the Louvre by Lexi to look around while she went shopping. She left us instructions to meet her at a particular café in the Champs Elysées at one. When we arrived, footsore from pounding through the galleries, we found her ensconced at a table with Lawrence, an empty bottle of champagne between them. Frances later explained that Lawrence attended an architects’ conference in Paris every year at this time and regularly met up with them, although Lexi seemed to present his arrival as a fortuitous coincidence. ‘Look who’s here!’ she exclaimed as we threaded our way between the tables towards them. ‘Surprise surprise!’ said Lawrence, raising his glass. He was wearing city clothes – a blue and white striped shirt with a dark suit, the jacket of which was slung over his chair. It occurred to me that he wasn’t bad looking – for a man of forty-something, anyway. His face was tanned; when he stopped smiling small white creases showed at the corners of his eyes and mouth as if he even sunbathed with a smile on his face.

‘Shall we find somewhere cheaper to eat?’ said Lexi, gathering up her bags, but Lawrence waved her down, and, summoning one of the roving waiters, ordered four bowls of mussels, some wine and two Cokes for us. I was beginning to get used to having decisions made for me. It was what happened when someone else was paying the bill.

‘How do you like Paris, Abigail?’ Lawrence asked.

I replied that I’d been here less than a day but so far liked it very much.

‘I’ve been coming here for thirty years,’ he said. ‘It’s my favourite place.’ The mussels arrived just as he was in the middle of an extended account of his first trip to Paris at the age of sixteen. ‘It was an exchange visit organised by school – considered quite adventurous in those days. My opposite number was a lad called Alain who was as hopeless at English as I was at French. We spent the entire two weeks grinning at each other and shrugging. The father was a dour little civil servant who was out at work all day and couldn’t take us anywhere interesting, and Madame didn’t speak a word of English – well, she didn’t seem to speak at all as far as I could see, she just produced this endless, alien food at every meal. It was absolutely miserable. But he had this cousin called Delphine who did know a little English, so they dragged her over from Versailles to talk to me and show me Paris – I think they were feeling bad that I was obviously not enjoying myself – and of course I fell madly in love with her and the whole visit was suddenly transformed. And then the fortnight was up and I had to come home and that was that.’

‘Didn’t you keep in touch?’ demanded Frances, letter-writer of distinction.

‘We did write for a couple of years, and then the letters stopped, so I finally wrote to Alain and asked after her, just in passing, and I got a letter back saying they were all devastated because she had drowned in the Seine – trying to rescue a dog apparently.’

‘Oh!’ said Frances. Neither of us had expected the story to take so tragic a turn. If it had been Mr Radley telling it we would have suspected fabrication.

Our bowls of mussel debris were carried off and replaced by four trays of snails in garlic butter, and four crochet hooks. I closed my eyes. I had already filled up on the bread.

‘No way,’ said Frances. (It was she after all who had to be given a vegetarian option during the dissection class in Biology.)

‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said Lexi, selecting a shell and starting to gouge. ‘You’ll eat a steak but you won’t eat a snail. What’s the difference?’

‘I’ve trodden on snails,’ said Frances. ‘I’ve seen the stuff that oozes out of them. But if my inconsistency bothers you I’ll give up steak as well.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Lexi, outmanoeuvred. They were all looking at me to see what I would do. I picked up my crochet hook. Loyalty was all very well, but I couldn’t be expected to take up all of Frances’ battles, and it would have looked a bit ungracious after Lawrence’s hospitality. When next a tureen of casseroled guinea-fowl arrived at the table I could feel the sweat begin to break out on my brow. I eased the button of my skirt undone and the zip burst open like an overripe fruit.

The afternoon wore on. It looked as though Notre-Dame would go unvisited. Still, I had my catalogue of the Louvre as a souvenir of Paris to take home. I had wanted an ice cream and felt obliged to break into one of my hundred-franc notes by buying some item of cultural relevance of which father would approve.

Frances’ obstreperous mood seemed to have set in for the day. Apart from her abhorrence of the snails she made no comment about the food, which was delicious, even to my untested palate. When Lawrence lit up a cigarette between courses, she flapped the smoke away irritably, and when Lexi reached for a second glass of wine she let out a great hiss of disapproval. And then just as the dessert trolley approached – usually the highlight of the meal for Frances – she suddenly jumped up and said, ‘Look, there’s a phone here – I could call home and check everything’s okay.’ And she started rooting for her purse.

‘Not just at this minute surely?’ said Lexi.

‘Why not?’ said Frances. ‘I want to see if Growth’s all right. And find out if Dad’s sold any paintings. I won’t be long.’ And she strode off in the direction of the booth. Lexi shrugged, and then pushed her own chair back. ‘I suppose I’d better go and have a word, too,’ she said. ‘Or they’ll feel neglected.’

‘Do you mind if I seize the moment?’ Lawrence asked when they’d gone, indicating his cigarettes. He offered me one, which I turned down, before lighting up and leaning back in his seat and beaming at me as if we were confederates, old buddies. We did have something in common of course – we weren’t Radleys.

‘She’s a funny girl, Frances,’ he said.

‘In what way?’ I asked guardedly.

‘She’s an odd combination – wayward and yet judgemental. You wouldn’t think the two would go together. She was completely out of control as a child – always running off and spending the night on Highbury Fields. Lexi was convinced she was going to go right off the rails. But now the judgemental side seems to be taking over. I’m willing to bet she’ll end up a pillar of the community – a district nurse or a magistrate or something. You wait and see.’

I wasn’t sure if I should defend Frances from the charge of impending respectability. It was hard to tell with Lawrence whether or not an insult was intended. ‘She wants to be a film star,’ I said. ‘Or a dog-handler.’

‘Mind you,’ Lawrence went on, ‘between ourselves the whole family isn’t exactly what you’d call normal. Apart from Lexi. Rad’s an odd bloke – intelligent all right, but there’s a sort of coldness there, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ It felt scandalously disloyal to be discussing the Radleys while their backs were turned, but at the same time I was riveted. I never normally had the chance to see them through someone else’s eyes. And although I had been ready to leap to Rad’s defence the moment his name was mentioned, Lawrence’s comment wasn’t easy to dismiss. There was something a little chilly about Rad. I had noticed it when he was acting, and had wished he was more like the character he was playing.

‘I can’t imagine how he and Mr Radley get along on holiday together. They’re so different.’

‘Oh, Michael,’ said Lawrence, as if this was a whole new subject which would need lengthy consideration. ‘There’s certainly rivalry there – all on Michael’s side of course. His trouble is he hates the fact that he’s no longer twenty. He likes hanging around with young people, but at the same time he’s madly jealous. He did have a decent job once, did you know that? At the Department of the Environment. But now, what is it? School caretaker? Bell-boy? Night-watchman? I forget.’

‘Pizza delivery,’ I said.

‘Christ,’ said Lawrence, shaking his head.

‘But it’s painting he’s really interested in, isn’t it?’ I don’t know why I felt obliged to stick up for him.

‘Have you seen his paintings?’ said Lawrence.

I nodded. ‘Some.’

He tutted sadly. ‘I’ve told him they’re absolutely putrid, and he agrees, but he will keep on. He thinks it’s solely a matter of persistence: if he splashes enough paint on to enough canvases eventually he’ll produce something decent. But you don’t want to take too much notice of his helplessness. I’m convinced it’s an act. Left to himself he’d be as competent as anybody. It’s all designed to …’

I never did find out what it was designed to do, as Lexi and Frances reappeared and Lawrence changed tack smartly. ‘I didn’t order pudding as Abigail was already bursting out of her skirt and you two weren’t here, so I’ve just asked for coffee,’ he said. ‘Everything all right at home?’

‘It’s been raining all the time, so Dad hasn’t been able to take any of his paintings around in the Spitfire,’ said Frances, ‘but he’s entered one of his pictures of Mum in a national portrait competition.’

‘He says he’s submitted it in the name of Lazarus Ohene because it sounds more convincing than Michael Radley,’ said Lexi.

‘Doesn’t it make you feel creepy – all those judges and people seeing what you look like with no clothes on?’ asked Frances.

‘Not particularly,’ said Lexi. ‘It’s not an especially good likeness, if you remember. It’s the “blue and bloated” one.’

‘Oh.’

‘Goodness, is that the time?’ said Lexi, glancing at the waiter’s watch as he poured the coffee. ‘I’m afraid Notre-Dame has had it for today. Will Sacré Coeur do instead? We can walk there from the hotel this evening.’

Next to us a group of French teenagers had just finished eating and was about to disperse. The departees were orbiting the table giving and receiving two kisses on each cheek.

‘These continental farewells can take all day,’ said Lawrence as we stood up to go. ‘Consider yourselves kissed.’ And he waved us off before sitting back down again and taking out his newspaper. We were on the Metro, heading back to Montmartre, when Lexi realised she had left her sunglasses behind.

‘Oh damn,’ she said, taking off her red straw hat and tipping the contents of her handbag into it. ‘They were my best ones.’ As she rifled through lipsticks, powder compacts, wallets, combs and pieces of paper, we offered to go back to the café but she shook her head.

‘Perhaps Lawrence will notice and pick them up,’ suggested Frances.

Back at the hotel Lexi lay on the bed with her hands across her chest like a knight on a tomb; Frances wrote up her journal and I settled down to read my Louvre catalogue to discover that I had picked up the Dutch language version by mistake.

I was woken in the early hours by the sound of two men brawling outside the window. Clientele from the cinema opposite, inflamed by the piggy perversions, no doubt. Frances remained comatose beside me. I dragged myself over the lip of the bed, suddenly desperate for the loo. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark I could see that Lexi’s bed was empty. I lay awake for some time after that, listening and waiting, but my eyes soon felt heavy and I let myself slip off. When I woke finally at seven Lexi was already up and packing, the lost sunglasses perched on the crown of her head.