A French Wedding (4 page)

*

When Juliette wakes it takes her a moment to remember where she is. She stares at the blue, floral pillowcase and then the thick brown carpet and, on it, her handbag, the top spread open, her phone facing up to her. She picks it up and scrolls through the messages. Fourteen of them, mostly from Louis, none from the person who had been in her dreams. The one that makes her feel warm and misplaced and guilty, as though she shouldn't have those kinds of thoughts in her childhood bedroom, except this is exactly where those kinds of thoughts had first begun. Juliette sits up and puts her feet against the carpet, taking a moment to absorb her surroundings. Her parents have kept the posters she put up with gold thumbtacks when she was a teen. The British bands she had loved – Duran Duran, Joy Division, The Smiths – and a large close-up of Kate Bush, looking misty and faraway and beautiful. There is a white chest of drawers in one corner with an oval mirror on the top and a shell-covered treasure box containing badges and earrings and hair ties.

Juliette had collected the shells and made the box with her father. They had gone together to the secret beaches, the ones that pirates had berthed in centuries before, burying their gold and jewels, tyrannising the locals. They had walked the lengths of those coves many times to find the loveliest shells in browns and pinks, colours of sunrises and skin and hens' eggs. They had chosen shells that were unbroken and strong, with lovely thick ridges to run fingers across. They hunted, too, for coins that pirates may have left behind, upturning rocks, flipping over clumps of seaweed and sliding fingers into crevices. Juliette's father told her of the legend of Ys, the most beautiful city in Europe, before it was destroyed by storm and sea, vanishing somewhere in the Douarnenez Bay, and though it was probably just a myth Juliette had been convinced she'd find evidence of it, too. A hairbrush of Dahut's or Gradlon's stolen key, some gem or rubble. On the way home they'd stop in at a bakery and pick up a still-warm wedge of
kouign-amann
or a generous square of
gâteau Breton
filled with a dark, sticky, sweet prune paste. Juliette's mother would be waiting for them at the kitchen window with one finger stuck in the pages of a book and the other hand waving furiously. She'd lean out and call to them too brightly as neighbours in dark dresses glanced up at her and Juliette felt heat come to her cheeks.

Juliette stands, glancing down for a moment at the old t-shirt and leggings she had pulled on in the dark in lieu of nightwear.

‘Dad?'

There is no reply. Juliette knocks gently on the door to his room. The door is unlatched and swings gently open. The bed is unmade. Juliette steps inside. The bed is covered with a nubbly, dark pink bedspread, not a duvet. The bedside cabinets, which were wedding presents, have one drawer each and gold feet. On her father's side there is a glass for water and a handkerchief. Juliette goes to her mother's side and sits on the bed. She opens the tiny drawer in the cabinet. It used to be filled with photographs and Juliette's school newspapers. Now it is cluttered with bottles of pills. She slides it shut again. There are two books on the top of the cabinet – the bible and a copy of ‘Tristan and Iseult'. Juliette picks up the latter and runs her fingers over the cover. It's dark green with gold embossing, dust gathered in the dips and ripples.
A man and woman embrace in the illustration, the gold of the woman's silhouette worn thin, probably from Juliette's fingers as a girl. Tristan and Iseult is the tale that led her mother, enchanted, to France, to this village, with a young husband in tow. Juliette lifts the book to her nose and breathes in, hoping to find a scent that reminds her of her mother, but the smell of the pages, though comforting, are not her. They are not cold cream and laundry powder and perfume scented like violets. If Juliette looked in the ensuite bathroom, she could probably find a bottle of her mother's perfume; she always bought it in threes. One for now, one for later, one for just in case. It was in a mauve-coloured glass bottle with a green lid.

Lavender's green, dilly dilly …

Juliette replaces Tristan and Iseult and picks up the bible. It is old, too, with a maroon leather slipcover declaring ‘Family Bible'. It didn't used to be in here. It used to be in the kitchen underneath the telephone book, brought out for the occasional quiz question or prayer, thumbed through on nights when Juliette's father had waited for Juliette to come home from a party or date.

‘Dad?' Juliette calls out again, bible in her lap. She wonders if her father has gone to church, to see Pere Michel. Or perhaps to the market to get food. He would do that if he thought it might make her stay longer. He would buy her favourite fruits, fetch a fresh loaf of bread and collect a broad, sticky wedge of
kouign-amann
in a brown, paper bag. He'd even buy new coffee grinds, though Juliette was the only one who drank coffee and there were three packets already in the pantry she had noticed last night. She pauses a moment and then opens the cover. On the inside is her mother's name:
Pamela Evans.
Juliette peers at the name scrawled underneath, in fresher ink and an unsteady hand. A name she has never noticed written there before.

Violette Evans.

In a dizzying rush of memory Juliette sees her mother, at a time when her hair was dark and her skin smooth, sitting where Juliette sits now. Singing a lullaby. Crying. Pressing something to her chest. Something small and knitted. Juliette, the girl, watching from the door.

‘
Maman?'

Juliette closes the book quickly on her finger and yelps with fright when the phone in the kitchen rings at the same time. Putting the book back hastily she runs towards the sound. The phone once cream has aged to yellow. Juliette presses the receiver to her ear.

‘
Bonjour?
'

‘Juliette?'

‘
Oui
. Is that you, Dad?'

‘Oh good, you're still there.'

Juliette feels a stab of guilt that he assumed she might have already left; escaped. In the short pause Juliette hears the sound of the rubbish trucks grumbling up the narrow lane towards the cottage. It must now be late morning.

‘Where are you?'

‘I'm … I'm at the hospital.'

‘With Mum? Why didn't you wake me?'

‘I went early. I got a call. I didn't want to wake you. You seemed so tired.'

‘Dad. You should have –'

‘Juliette?'

The tone of her father's voice, the urgency, does something to Juliette's inner workings. Her breath catches in her throat. The sudden silence stretches thin and brittle, like toffee, about to shatter.

‘What is it?' Juliette whispers.

Now Juliette hears everything. The rubbish trucks growing louder, her breath, the sounds of the hospital in the background, beyond her father's laboured breathing, the sound of her own heart beating.

The rubbish trucks.

‘Darling …'

Juliette drops the phone so it bounces on its cord and races down the stairs. Photographs of herself, her child self, her young self, watch as she passes, a blur of unbrushed hair and too-big t-shirt and leggings that sag at the knees. Juliette yanks at the door and bursts out onto the street. The men look at her, momentarily distracted, gloved hands gripping grey and black plastic sacks.

‘
Arrête!
'

Juliette tumbles onto her knees.

‘
Pardon
?' one asks.

‘
Arrête!
' she begs again, lifting up her palms, grazed and starting to bleed. And then in English, ‘Stop! Leave them! Leave the bags!'

The two men glance at one another.

‘It's not rubbish!' Juliette sobs, still in English. ‘Leave it. Please leave it.'

The men lower the bags, placing them beside her. They stare. Juliette covers her face with her blood-flecked hands and cries.

‘It's not rubbish … It's not rubbish …'

Friday –
vendredi

Chapter 1

Max

H
e is probably driving too fast. Too fast considering he isn't on an AutoRoute, but he likes these back roads better. And he likes driving too fast. He likes the thrum of the engine coming up through the soles of his feet, through his legs, into his crotch. He likes gripping the steering wheel with just one hand, the wind biting the elbow of his other arm, hanging out the window. This car, slick and red as lipstick, purrs.

Max is going to be late. The others will all be there soon, just as he had asked them to be. Waiting for him. He can see them on the lawn, staring back at his house, Juliette fetching them long, cool glasses with fresh garden mint stuffed in. They will be travel weary. Impressed. Eddie and whomever he'd said his new girlfriend was, the American one – Betty? Nina and Lars, bless them. Their kid, though she probably wasn't a kid anymore. Hot Rosie and her awful husband, Hugo …

Helen.

Max had missed her earlier call but listened to the message. The deep, soft whir of her voice, edged by the effects of cigarettes and New York. Saying she was looking forward to it, that frankly she needed a break. Telling him she'd be there by nightfall and that later she'd be picking up her sister, the half-sister technically, Soleil. Max found it hard to pay attention to the details. Something shifted inside him at the sound of her voice. Something uncoiled.

Max rubs his eyes. He has been touring too much and drinking too much; operating on about five hours of sleep a night and it is no longer enough. The cocaine just takes the edge off and keeps him awake but he'll lay off it after today; he has promised himself. His eyes, tired and bloodshot, those strange khaki-coloured eyes, the colour of dark bay leaves, of swamp water, are his father's eyes. Not that he ever tells anyone that.

Max turns the music up even louder till he feels the blood pounding in his ears.
Don't think about him.

Helen is the only one of Max's friends who knows about his father, his family. The whole lot of it. He can count on one hand the number of people who know much about his childhood. Him and his dad, Helen – that's already three fingers. The other two are for social workers.

It never works to try not to think of something once you've started thinking about it. Max knows that from thinking about Helen every single day of his life since he can't even remember when. Actually, that isn't true. He does remember. It was summer. Helen was sitting next to Rosie on the grass in the common area outside one of the lecture blocks. She wore a long skirt hitched up to her thighs and she was laughing. Rosie's hair was white-blonde and cut just like Debbie Harry's on the Blondie record Max's dad owned, while Helen's was long and tangled at the back, dark as Christmas pudding, the kind other people's families ate. She wore swingy earrings that moved when she did. Her thighs were the colour of cream. Max watched her for longer than was socially acceptable. She must have felt his eyes on her. He remembers her getting up and walking over. She was barefoot. He remembers not being able to look away, and grinning like a young boy, which he never did. Especially not when he was a boy. She asked him for a light and he pulled a green plastic lighter from his pocket. ‘I'm Helen,' she said
.

Helen.

Helen.

Dear Helen.

Max has said her name in his head about ten million times since that day. He knows the texture of it in his mouth without even having to say it aloud. He knows how it would feel to call it out in the middle of lovemaking or to say it in a whisper into the tiny shell of her ear, amongst the dark and tangle of her hair. Max shudders. He feels himself growing harder and presses down on the accelerator.

Helen.

Max wills himself to stop thinking about her. It is stupid. It is always stupid. This is the hopelessness of trying not to think about something once you have started. His thoughts tip to the other end of the spectrum, like an hourglass suddenly turned.

Dad. Fucking Dad.

See? It's impossible.

It didn't start right away. It started when his mother left, when he was six and a half, or at least that's how Max remembers it. His mother had been there, he tried to remember – she was a pretty murky, fuzzy kind of memory now – and then she wasn't there. A click of the fingers. A vanished mother. It was Max's fault his mother had left; his father told him that often. And because of it his father beat him. It was one of the few reliable aspects of Max's life. His dad had always been sullen, angry, but suddenly the rage poured out onto Max. His father beat him on the back, on the legs and stomach. He avoided Max's face. He kicked him down the stairs and once held his head down in the kitchen sink until Max was half drowned. There had been a used-up tin of baked beans in the dirty water. Max's father stomped on him, threw him against walls, doors and the table and whipped him with his belt. Or the cord of the toaster. Or kettle. He called him the names the kids at school hadn't made up yet.

One night Max's father threw him out into the street. Max was twelve. For a brief moment he was elated, freedom like a bright taste in his mouth. Then he realised he was coatless and it was the middle of a London autumn, almost winter. He walked only half a block, the impossibility of leaving dousing him like cold water, before turning around and trudging back to that wretched green door. Curling himself, shivering, on the doormat, waiting for his dad to let him back in, which he eventually did, at dawn. Max's very worst moment of cowardice.

Max swerves.
Christ. Was that a cat?
Photographs of his mother. So few of them. Grainy ones with rounded corners; she seems to be looking past the camera. Perhaps she has already spotted her other life, the one she is going to escape them for. A photo of her at the seaside pulling windswept hair away from her mouth, wearing an orange-and-white-striped swimsuit. Another of her on a couch, holding Max as an infant. She wears a pale blue dress and black eyeliner and looks, somehow, emptied out.
I don't want this baby. This isn't my life.
There had been no one to tell Max why she left, exactly, and where she had gone. His recollections were strange and mixed up and sometimes his brain pieced memories together out of those few photographs. Hadn't they been to the seaside together? Eaten ice cream out of cones? Hadn't she worn a yellow swimsuit, not an orange-striped one? The truth stuck too fast to fantasy.

Have I passed Rennes?

Passed?

Passed.

Past.

It is pointless to think about his mother. To wonder. What kind of woman leaves her child? What kind of woman leaves her child with a monster? It was a devil's trade. Max's life for hers. It was unforgiveable.
Max will probably never see either of his parents again, if they are still alive, will probably never live in England again. Paris is his home now and it suits him. The sky and slate roofs the same colour, the lumps of still-soft dog shit on the pavement, the smell of coffee, of baking bread, of caramel, cigarettes and urine. The women. Neat, with woollen coats, pretty scarves, slender legs in pantyhose. Lips like ripe cherries. Paris will do.

That woman, his neighbour who lives in the small, ground-floor apartment, Claudine, would probably have something to say about all that. About his family, about the women. Not to mention the coke. She is a social worker. She smiles too much, asks too many questions and is always carrying bunches of fresh flowers. She likes those tall white ones with the blossoms that look like popcorn and smell strong. She's also a jazz singer, apparently, and has a cinnamon-coloured cat she calls Pedro. Everyone in the building greets her like she is his or her favourite cousin. They don't greet Max like that. But Max cannot trust a social worker. Particularly one that smiles too much and lives with a man-cat for company.

The sign ahead reads
Saint-Allouestre
.

Max rubs his eyes again. He needs glasses but he won't go to an optician. Helen has glasses she uses for reading now. Round tortoiseshell ones. Everyone Max screws these days is in their twenties with skin lovelier than silk, heavenly and unmarked. No pubic hair. Smooth all over. Narrow waists, hollow bellies. They don't get old. Helen, on the other hand, is getting old at exactly the same rate as Max. She has lines around her eyes. The skin on the back of her hands has thinned, is becoming papery. But. Oh. All Max wants is to stand in the dark with her. In the dark they will be young again. Then he will run his thumb over her soft, taut lips, unbutton her shirt, peel off her trousers. He will press her against him, sweet skin, full breasts, all of her against all of him. Feel her head on his chest, breathe in the Helen scent of her, tip her face to kiss her so deeply she can hardly breathe. Lift her onto him, carry her to where they can lay themselves down, fill her up till all she can perceive is the sensation of her head brimming with stars. Stars, bright and hot and glittering.

‘Helen.'

‘Max.'

Helen will say his name in a whisper that moves through him like a current. Reaching the very tips of him. Perhaps he will cry. Who wouldn't? The sound that completes a person. Helen saying
his name and making him finally feel so whole, so alive that he
fears running over. Like a drawing escaping its edges.

‘Max.'

The night suddenly luminous. His head filled with stars too. Startling. Shining. Bursting …

A car horn blares like a wounded beast, tearing a large rip in his thoughts, causing him to swear and swerve. His head swivels to catch sight of the car headed in the opposite direction, righting itself, the arm out the window, the middle finger raised, the driver cursing. Max's heart races, his breath is ragged. Braking, he flicks on the indicator, pulling over to the side of the road and bumping over the grass. He blinks and then laughs.

Max glances at the passenger seat to make sure the small, velvet box is still there. It is. It has rolled into the crease of the chair, the closed mouth of it turned up to him. Max smiles. His plan is safe and so is he. Fear like that never stays with him long.

Max closes his eyes for a short nap, to sober up. To pull down the screen on the past, his childhood, his father. He drifts into fantasies of Helen. His future. A new decade: his forties. Sleep strokes at his body and his mind.

He still has an erection.

London, 1995

Max very nearly didn't make the gig. He'd been drunk or hung-over or both. But he got there, getting to gigs being one of the very few things Max could be relied on for, and that was the night there was the record producer in the crowd. They'd almost had a break like that before but it had turned to nothing – all talk and no action, no contract, no cash. Still, it had piqued Max's interest. It made him think it was possible and encouraged him to get to gigs despite being wasted, getting over being wasted, and all the increasingly fewer shades in between. It made him curious. Just to turn up and see. Besides which, playing music and performing made Max feel the most like himself. There weren't many things like that.

They had a big crowd that night. The band had been getting larger and larger crowds, but there was always the vivid memory of playing to just a handful of people, the unease that it might happen again. That night, the place was packed with people shoulder to shoulder, smiling and jostling.

The gang were there, the usuals, as close to siblings as Max would ever get. Helen, back from a trip to India, her hair in braids. Lars and Nina. Good old Eddie, of course. Rosie was going to call in later, she had a date. Max couldn't help but look out for her in that mass, her blonde hair. They weren't close, Max and Rosie, not like he was with Helen or even Nina, but he felt better when all of them were there. Rosie was dating a doctor, Helen said. Helen also said the guy was an ‘uppity prick' while Nina reported he was nice enough. Max had never met the bloke but agreed with Helen nonetheless. Helen knew her way around uppity pricks. She was an expert.

Everything came together that night. They sounded good, real good, and they were tight. And that wasn't just the booze talking, though it always helped. The band was getting along, best they ever had. The crowd was into it; that didn't always happen. They were one energised mass, moving together like a school of fish, a murmuration of starlings. The Parlophone guy was there, in amongst it all, not that they knew at the time. When Max squinted and put his palm up against the lights, he could make out the heads he was looking for – Lars was the easiest to spot. Not only was he the tallest but also his smile had a wattage unmatched by anyone else.

Afterwards, when the band was wet through with sweat, sucking on beer bottles like hungry babies, all of them backstage and stoked, fucking stoked, the Parlophone guy introduced himself. He wanted to see them in his office next week. His name was Bob; the dullest name ever. Which just proved he must be a suit, that he must be for real. Besides, Bob knew his music. Bob talked about The Jacks like he'd been at all their rehearsals, had listened in when they'd made decisions about including this or excluding that. Bob said they sounded like David Bowie and Chrissie Hynde had a love child and that child had been raised by Keith Richards and Stevie Nicks; said they seemed to be the only ones not doing the Britpop thing. He had them nailed. And he wanted them; Max could see it in Bob's eyes. Max knew when a person wanted a piece of him. It was what made him so good with women; he could just tell. Bob gave them a business card each. He wrote down ‘Wednesday 2.30pm' on the back of each one with a black biro that left ink on Max's sweaty fingers. After Bob said goodbye they all fell apart laughing like it was the funniest, stupidest thing they had ever seen or heard. But they knew it was something, Max knew it was for real. Knew it in his bones.