“Oh, she’s just passing through. Connecting planes …”
“Back to Iowa City?”
“What? Oh, yeah, back to Iowa City. Hey, you got a good memory. Imagine you remembering that. What about you?”
“Morocco.” I smiled. “I’m beginning a trip to Africa.”
“Africa … but I thought—”
“You thought I was going to France, right? Well I was, but I changed my mind. I just saw Elly off on the flight to Zurich.”
“Zurich?” She paused for a second. I didn’t stop smiling. Somewhere in midair I felt her complete a somersault. “But I thought she was going to Paris with you?”
No, Indigo was not as green as she was cabbage-looking. Elly had not told her about London. It was supposed to be a secret. It was therefore important that she remember not to know.
“Another change of plan,” I said gaily. “We’ll meet later. In Tangier. Have you ever been there? It’s a wonderful city. Full of pirates and adventurers, smugglers and spies. You’d love it. Well, I must be off now. Who’s minding the store, by the way?”
“It’s closed,” she said, this time without fluster. “It’s nearly eight o’clock.”
“Of course, how silly of me. Well, I do hope your mother had a good trip in Europe.”
“Thank you. And you take care. Sounds like a dangerous place you’re going to.”
“I’ll remember that. Oh.” I turned back. “Remember me to Lenny, won’t you? I was sorry to hear about his father.”
“Yes,” she said, staring unashamedly at me now. “It was terrible news.”
Straight from the horse’s mouth. That much I was sure of now. I smiled once more and headed off down the concourse, feeling her eyes stapled to my back. When I reached the check-in desk, I risked a look back. But Indigo was gone. No doubt checking nonexistent timetables to Morocco. Tall stories. All of them. In answer to my question, the girl punched up Arrivals on her computer screen and confirmed that the last flight from Paris had come in two hours before. I hadn’t needed to ask. All the way to JFK just to watch her mother change planes? Bullshit, to use Elly’s phrase. Maybe she just had mothers on the brain. Which particular voice had she used to fool Elly? And who had given her the information? Mystery Number 435.
I picked up my boarding pass and beloved canvas bag and made my way to the departure lounge.
fourteen
“Mesdames et messieurs. Nous commençons notre descente vers Paris …”
Beneath us the Seine ran like silver thread through the French countryside. I snapped on my seat belt. The boy next to me was twitching to the sound of a Walkman, head back, eyes half closed, a look midway between pain and ecstasy on his face. A cruising stewardess tapped him smartly on the shoulder and pointed to his belt. Over his head we exchanged small smiles of adult exasperation. I was doing just fine, conformity personified. Paris grew larger and more inviting.
Processed through glass tubes and moving walkways, I placed myself behind the inevitable flock of French girls, small boned and fresh skinned, with firm little Gallic noses and clothes which looked as if someone had spent the entire journey pressing them. They sailed through the French Passports Only gate in a flurry of pouts and smiles. I took my place in the EC line, large and English despite my ancestry. The immigration officer studied my mug shot, bored already.
“Quelle est la durée de votre séjour en France, madame?”
“Quelques jours seulement. Je vais render visite à ma grandmère.”
“Bien. Merci, madame. Suivant.”
My canvas bag and I sauntered through, officially accepted. At the baggage reclaim I was joined by my vibrating travel companion. Together we watched as the baggage belt slid by, smooth and empty. My eyes itched from lack of sleep, but I wasn’t tired. On the contrary, I had never been so wide awake in my life. I felt as if I were plugged into some mainline current, which kept me sharp and fizzing. In front of us the belt stopped, then juddered back into life again, as the hole at the back began belching out an unsightly procession of battered belongings, including, eventually, mine. I waited until it reached me, then heaved it onto my trolley, wedging the canvas bag behind it and laying my jacket on the top. I was maneuvering myself away from the belt when someone pushed past me; Willy Walkman, still wired up, a rucksack bouncing off his back and music seeping out of his headphones into the air. I quickened my step, and we approached the exit together. Ahead of us the great divide. Rouge and Vert. I never faltered, simply pulled down the left hand of the trolley and headed for freedom. In the green corridor, a scattering of customs men in shirtsleeves stood lounging against benches, surveying the scene. I walked. Not too fast and not too slow. The surroundings ceased to exist. Ahead of me, through the exit, I saw decades of student essays and gas bills, television licenses and Foyles’s book sales. Nowhere could I find any trace of the inside of a French jail. I was three-quarters of the way to the future when the voice said, “Un moment, s’il vous plaît.”
I turned my head to see a gray-haired officer heading straight for me. I stopped, my heart making a sudden desperate bid for freedom out through my rib cage. “Excusez-moi, madame,” he said, pushing in front of me and grabbing for the boy with the rucksack, who of course could not hear a word through the throb of New Wave. An excellent choice, officer. The triumph of the bourgeoisie. My heart fell back into place. I tightened my grip on the trolley and walked on. Out through the doors, a sea of faces focused on me, a second of intense concentration lest I should be their loved one. But there was no one there for me. A man carrying a sign which read MADAME JONES smiled hopefully. Oh no, sir. You must be mistaken. I am Marla Masterson, history academic and international cocaine smuggler. You are looking for someone much more ordinary. Triumph got me as far as the taxi rank. A car drew up, and I poured myself into it.
The journey was quicker than usual. August in Paris and the city was empty. The café owner at the corner of rue Jean-Goujon had watched me grow up over annual holidays. He was only too happy to change a traveler’s check so I could pay the taxi driver. He also let me use the phone. The Heathrow Hotel gave the impression of efficiency. Yes, they had a reservation for Eleanor Cameron. But no, Miss Cameron had not checked in yet. She had left only an hour before me. There could be a million reasons why she had not arrived yet. A million reasons. And none of them illegal. No message. I would call again.
Four doors down the rue Jean-Goujon, pressed the bell to Apartment 3. Upstairs I imagined Gem’s hand fluttering to the lace curtain, then ordering Elaine down to open the door. When she saw me, her face lit up.
“Marla … quelle surprise. We had no idea. You ’ave told ’er you were coming?”
I put my finger to my lips. “It’s an impulse visit, Elaine. I’ve come for lunch. How is she?”
She stuck out her bottom lip and shrugged her shoulders. Funny how the French make their bodies so articulate. This gesture said, “Oh, you know Germaine. The same as always.”
I picked up my case and followed her neat little figure up the stairs, catching in her wake a stream of muttered complaints. “… yesterday she accuse me of stealing ’er little ivory elephant. Ze one from Bangalore. Poouf … so stupid. It was there all the time. On the mantelpiece. You speak to her, Marla. I tell her … I will not stand for this. I will leave. Immédiatement.”
Elaine had been leaving “immédiatement” for the best part of thirty years: from the day, in fact, she had first moved in. “Companion for widowed army officer’s wife, newly arrived from India.” She had taken one look at Gem and they had known it would be an adoring hatred, a battle to the bitter end. Elaine might have looked fragile, but she was ten years younger than Gem and tough as old boots. She gave as good as she got.
Through the doorway of the apartment, I saw Gem’s silhouette in the front room, head peering forward out of the armchair, her stick legs stretched out on a stool in front of her like some aging bird at rest. As a child I used to think of her as an ostrich. Now, with her long
slender neck turned to wrinkles and the cloud of white hair, she looked even more the part. Germaine Lemans was one of those women for whom the word indomitable had been invented. She had lived the first fifty years of her life in India, and had never reconciled herself to the newfangled ideals of independence and equality. In 1947, when the colonel died, she had packed up her wealth and come to Paris, where she set herself up as a piano teacher—another family talent I had not inherited. But she couldn’t stand the majority of her pupils (“ils sont complètement bêtes”), and for much of the last thirty-four years she had done nothing. I could no longer remember the last time I had seen her out of the apartment. She was eighty-four years old, but when she chose she had the brain of a woman half her age. It was as well not to underestimate her.
“Marrrlaa.” She twirled my name off her tongue, endowing it with an exoticism which its owner did not possess. “Pourquoi tu ne m’as pas dit, mauvaise enfante.”
I approached and kissed the parchment skin of her cheek, then sat myself next to her, digging out from my bag the California crystal I had bought for her and holding it up against the window till the sun flickered a hundred colors around the room. She clapped her hands like a child, then forgot it instantly.
“You look tired,” she said, this time in English, which was not as perfect as her French. “You are unwell? What is wrong with you?”
I explained the all-night flight, carefully introducing Elly and the possibility of her arrival.
“But of course I remember her. Such a sweet girl. So dainty.” Gem had always despaired of my big bones, which she saw as some kind of genetic betrayal. “Well, I will not ask ’ow long you will stay. Young people can never answer this question. We shall take it one pace at a time. But now you must change your vêtements. We will take an early lunch, and you have been traveling too long in one garment. Entiens?”
My grandmother was one of the original exponents of the clean underwear theory. I have no doubt that when Germaine is told she is going to die, her last act will be to change her clothes. And the Grim Reaper will just have to wait for her. In this case, though, she was right. As I stood up, I too could smell the dried sweat on me, evidence of an adrenaline turned sour.
In the spare room, I did what I had come for and stashed away the treasure. In the top of the wardrobe, at the back of the cupboards, there was a small cubbyhole, the place where as a child I had hidden plates of food stolen from the kitchen for solitary midnight feasts. It had been a precarious business then, constructing a pile of books on top of a chair in order to reach. Now I could do it on tiptoe. The place was thick with dust. Nothing had been put there for years. I shoved the plastic bags right to the back, till they were lost in darkness. The only person in the world who knew where to find them was me. Then I showered, changed my clothes, and called London. It was midday, and she still had not checked in. This time I left my name. “Tell her Marla called. Ask her to ring me. The minute she arrives.”
It was around this time that my invincibility began to desert me, to be replaced by a creeping, corrosive fear. Lunch was traditionally served on trays in the living room, each one accompanied by its own set of engraved condiments and a small carafe of wine. The first half glass made me drowsy, and I dropped the saltcellar. Germaine watched me, hawk-eyed, her small silver knife darting in and out of the fish carcass. The conversation followed accepted lines. She asked me questions and I sidestepped them. She had been waiting for ten years now to hear me announce my marriage, and her patience was beginning to wear thin. So was mine. I sat listening for the phone. Why hadn’t she called? Something had gone wrong. The Regency clock chimed 1:00 P.M. I used the excuse of clearing away the first course to closet myself in the study.
This time the receptionist had a different tale. Miss Cameron had booked in half an hour before. Yes, she had got my message. But she had also left strict instructions not to be disturbed. By anyone. But this was an emergency. The woman hummed and hawed. A matter of life and death. She asked for my name and told me to hold the line. Two minutes later the answer came through. Miss Cameron did not want to speak to me. I put down the phone to find that my hand was shaking. Elly wouldn’t speak to me. My sense of triumph exploded, launching slivers of fear like shrapnel into my brain. Behind me I heard the door to the study open and Germaine’s voice crack the air.
“Marla. Qu’est-ce que tu fais? Le repas n’est pas fini. Viens immédiatement.” Mealtimes were sacrosanct. Even my grandfather had been pukka enough to wait until after supper to die.
I turned. She must have seen it in my face. “Quoi! Tu es malade?”
I shook my head. “Grandmère, I have to leave. Forgive me. I have to go to London.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now.”
We stood for a moment in the darkened room, shutters drawn to protect the brocade against the sunlight, a place of childhood memory and security. And I felt, just for that instant, an absurd desire to tell her, everything, all of it, as if her instinct for survival might somehow allow her to comprehend something that her upbringing couldn’t. But the moment passed. I went to her and put out my hand. She took it almost angrily, squeezing it hard between her bony fingers and making a small, clicking sound with her tongue. Then she said, “You always were a most peculiar child. Always too much silence. Too much”—she gestured to her head—“too much living here. It was not good. You and this Elly—” She broke off. “So, you must go. Something so important you cannot finish your repas. So go. But you remember. I, Germaine Lemans, am old, but not stupid. Faites attention, Marla. You are sometimes very careless with your life. It will bring damage. Bien … go.”
She dropped my hand and made a small shooing gesture. In the doorway I turned and spoke to her back. “Grandmère, there is one thing you could do for me.” She did not move. “If Elly calls, tell her I’m coming.”
Where there had been triumph there was now only terror. In London it was raining. A soft summer rain, which hung so low over the city that as we finally broke cloud the runway pushed up to meet us. I was sick of airplanes, and sick of airports. Any glamour had long since seeped away. On the flight I could hardly keep my eyes open. Elly wouldn’t talk to me. The weight of my exhaustion seemed suddenly insupportable. It was only anxiety which kept me upright. We came into Terminal 2. A different customs hall from the one she would have passed through. I had to force myself not to run through it. Outside there was a queue for taxis. I stood in the rain and waited. The driver was disappointed by the closeness of the fare and left me to wait while he applied for a reentry ticket. I sat in the back with the proverbial rat gnawing at my entrails. The Heathrow Hotel took ten minutes along a rain-soaked dual carriageway. It was a ghastly affair, sitting like some Battlestar Galactica in the middle of nowhere, a large circle of boxes, Elly in one of them. At the reception desk I asked for her room number.
“Three-twelve. But …”
“She’s expecting me,” I said, and if I had been at the receiving end of my voice, I would not have argued either.
At the door I knocked. Loudly. “Elly, It’s me, Marla.”
No answer. “Elly, let me in.” Silence. An absurd scene flashed through my mind: me, shoulder to the door, splintering collarbone against wood to gain entry into an empty room with the French windows open … but my mind refused at the last fence of fantasy. I was about to start kicking when I heard a small noise from behind the door. Then a click as the lock turned. I stood still and waited. But nothing happened. I put out my hand, turned the handle, and went in.
The room was in shadow. She was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out onto a slate gray sky. I was reminded of Gem’s daily vigil. When one has finished living, all one can do is sit and watch. I willed her to turn around, to say something, anything, but she seemed oblivious of my presence. I walked to the end of the bed and sat down, studying her profile in silhouette. We sat in silence. It seemed like forever.
“Hello, Marla,” she said at last, quietly.
“How was your flight?”
The sound of a stranger. I felt my heart pound with fear. “Elly, what happened?”
“I would have thought you already knew. Wasn’t that why you took them out of my luggage?” Now she turned to face me, and now I was stung by the whiplash in her voice. “It was you, Marla, wasn’t it?”
No time for half-truths now. I took a breath. “Yes. It was me.”
“How did you find out?”
“J.T. I called him that last afternoon in New York, and he told me.”
She nodded slowly, as if the movement caused her pain. “What did you do with them?”
“They’re safe. Safe and nearby. Elly, for God’s sake tell me what happened.”
“What do you think?” she said sharply. “You want the whole story or just edited highlights? They searched me. They searched everyone. Three hundred people. X-rays, the lot.” She paused, frowning hard, back in a crowded customs hall with a suitcase full of cocaine. “And they knew just what they were looking for. Oh yes. The woman two places in front of me was carrying a child with a bag full of toys. When they found a set of rubber balls, they had her in the back room so fast it made your eyes water. I realized then it had to be a setup. And that I had to be carrying more than sawdust.
“Funny. I’d always thought I’d be OK when it came down to it. That the adrenaline would get me through. But I was so frightened I was nearly sick. I could hardly keep my hand still to unlock the cases. And all the time I kept seeing Lenny’s face, smiling me good-bye. The end of an affair. My God … I couldn’t believe it. Not even Lenny … I stood there waiting for them to find it. Waiting for his hand to close over the plastic bag. Except, of course, it never did. He went through both cases, smiled at me, then asked me if I’d mind repacking them myself to save time and moved on to the next one. And I knew then it had to be you. I had checked the bags after Lenny left. No one else had been near them. No one else knew. You had been so strange that night. Suddenly it all made sense. Except for one thing.” She broke off with a harsh little laugh. “If you had taken them, that meant you knew what was really inside. And if you knew, then why the hell hadn’t you told me?”