Thirty-eight
W hen Emma got off the train at St-Rémy-les-Chevreuse the next day, Eric was already there. He was looking towards another carriage, so for an instant she had him in her gaze without him being aware of it. He was of medium height, plainly dressed in a dark blue jumper and grey pants and he carried himself with a natural confidence that matched his manner on the phone. His close-cropped hair was almost the same colour as hers, but a bit lighter, his short beard of a darker brown, scattered with spikes of silver, just as he’d appeared in the photo. When he finally turned and saw her what struck her most was not a ‘thousand-yard stare’ but the laughter lines around his eyes as he strode towards her.
‘Emma?’ he said, and suddenly she felt tongue-tied.
‘Monsieur Perrin,’ she managed as they shook hands.
‘Eric, please,’ he said, ‘we are not formal here in the country.’ He led her to his car, an old but immaculately kept Peugeot van, and opened the passenger door for her. ‘I hope you don’t mind dogs, because he insisted on coming with me.’
Sitting in the back was a beautiful cream Labrador who looked at her with friendly curiosity, wagging his tail and gazing at her with big dark eyes. ‘This is Athos,’ Eric said. ‘Just like in The Three Musketeers ,’ he added, seeing her expression.
‘He’s lovely.’ Emma held out a hand to the dog, who licked it enthusiastically. ‘We had a Labrador when I was a child, and I loved her.’
‘They are loveable dogs,’ Eric agreed, the lines around his blue-grey eyes, the same colour as hers, crinkling with his smile.
This isn’t a man haunted by a lost love or a dark secret, she thought, this is a contented man, at ease with himself and his life.
She gave the dog one last pat and settled herself into her seat. She glanced sideways at his profile as he drove. Did they look alike? She couldn’t tell. His colouring was similar to hers, but so was Paddy’s. An uncomfortable thought occurred to her: maybe her mother was first attracted to Paddy because he reminded her of this man. Quickly, she dismissed the thought, saying, ‘It’s beautiful here.’
‘I never tire of it. I’ve lived here a long time, though I did leave for a few years after my mother died.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘I tried to work this place out of my system by living in the city for a while, doing something completely different. But it tugs at you, this place. The pace of life, the ancient feel of it, the woods … I missed it too much.’
‘So you came back?’
‘And once I was back, I knew that I didn’t have to run any longer. This was my place.’
‘Those beehives you made—they are so beautiful … works of art, really. How did you learn to make such things?’
‘I’ve always been good with my hands,’ he said, smiling. ‘And I’ve always loved working with wood. I whittled a lot when I was a little kid and when I grew up, I thought I might make a career of it.’
‘As a carpenter or a cabinet maker?’ she asked, but he shook his head. ‘No, as a sculptor.’
This was unexpected, and she looked at him, frowning, her mind snagging on something she’d heard. And then she knew. ‘Franck has one of your sculptures,’ she said. ‘I saw it in the photo. It’s very good.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s from long ago. I don’t do those anymore, but when I was living in the city, making them helped keep me sane and—’ He broke off and looked at her. ‘But you haven’t come to talk to me about my woodworking, have you?’
She shook her head.
‘Open the glove box, Emma,’ he went on, quietly, ‘there’s something in there I want you to see.’
Inside was a collection of random stuff and an envelope that she took out, pulling out the photo inside. Immediately her breath caught. She looked at him with wide eyes.
‘Your mother took it, not far from here. I’ll show you.’ He turned left and they were soon on a rutted track leading into the fields. When they got out, she found herself looking at a flowery meadow, with a beech tree in the near distance, and the pointy top of a castle tower in the far distance. She glanced at Eric, her heart beating fast. ‘I have the exact same picture,’ she managed to say, ‘only it’s her in it, not you.’
‘Ah,’ he said, with a long sigh.
She turned over his photo and saw un jour de printemps written on it, in her mother’s firm script. She pulled her photo out of her bag, handed it to him and his expression changed.
‘We gave them to each other,’ he said. ‘It was your mother’s idea that she should have hers, and I have mine. She said it showed what we were to each other, through the eye of love.’ He looked at her with a faint smile. ‘She was like that, your mother. She had these unusual ideas … didn’t like things to be obvious, easily understood.’
‘Yes,’ Emma sighed, ‘that’s absolutely true.’
‘She kept it,’ he said, with a wondering shake of the head. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that.’
‘I never saw it until she died. She left it for me.’
She didn’t want to say any more right now. Instead, she watched him put the two photos together, turning them into a kind of story. In his photo, a younger version of himself is looking up from making a daisy chain, his face alight as he glances towards the person behind the camera. And in the other photo, her mother is wearing the daisy chain … Emma looked at the two of them, captured in sunlight, and there was a lump in her throat as she asked, ‘What happened?’
‘Corinne didn’t say anything?’
She shook her head.
‘We were so young,’ he said, ‘but so much in love. For the first time in my life, I felt I had met someone who understood me. At home things were bad—my father in prison, my mother going to pieces, and me trying to keep it together—it was all I could do to keep my head above water. But Corinne had big plans. She didn’t want to stay in France, she had her sights set on faraway places, and she wanted me to go with her. I was hesitant because I was hoping to go to art school, and because I was worried about my mother, who was still very unwell. And I didn’t have the same urge as Corinne did, about wanting to get away. But for a time, none of that really mattered, we just loved being together. Then out of the blue I was offered a place in a great art school in Paris, a course that was for three years, and I accepted it without discussing it with Corinne first. I thought she’d understand, but she thought I was riding roughshod over her plans, all of which would all have to be put on hold. I understand that now, but I didn’t then. I thought she was being selfish, and she thought the same about me. We had a massive fight, and she stormed off.’ A pause. ‘Two weeks later, I heard she’d gone to Australia. We never saw or spoke to each other again.’
‘You didn’t try to contact her?’ Emma whispered.
He shook his head. ‘I knew it was over. It was a horrible fight—it had started over a clash of dreams and expectations but spiralled into conflict over much more fundamental things, like family and home. We’d said terrible things to each other … it had broken something between us that couldn’t ever be repaired.’ He sighed. ‘I never forgot her. But in time I met Marie-Madeleine and found happiness again.’ He looked at Emma. ‘I truly hope Corinne did, too.’
Emma exhaled. She hadn’t even noticed she’d been holding her breath. ‘She did.’
‘Then I am glad,’ he said, simply.
‘Did you end up going to art school?’ she hazarded.
‘For a time. Then I had to return to nurse my mother. After she died, it was my turn to fall apart. I stayed in Paris, but I didn’t go back to my course. I was in a bad place for a while. That was when I changed my name …’ He took a deep breath. ‘Sorry. That was probably more than you needed to know.’
‘No, I am glad you told me.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Shall we keep going now?’
In the car, she thought about what he’d said. There had been no dark secret, no tragic separation of star-crossed lovers, as she’d imagined, occasionally, as a teenager, but a less dramatic yet sadder tale—a clash of dreams that had shown up fundamental differences. And two strong-willed young people so single-mindedly convinced of the rightness of their own position that they hadn’t believed it was possible to negotiate.
Yet, despite all that, my mother chose to have me , Emma thought, overwhelmed for a moment by the idea. Knowing all she did now made it easier, yet harder, to ask him the question. Maybe she shouldn’t. She thought of those two young people in the flowery meadow on that beautiful spring day long ago and knew with absolute certainty that’s what her mother had wanted her to know. That I was conceived there, that day or another like it , she thought, I was made in the love and joy of a perfect moment. And maybe knowing that is enough .
She sneaked a glance at Eric. He must have sensed it, because he turned his head and something changed in his eyes.
He pulled over to the side of the road and said, in a strange, choked sort of voice, ‘How old are you, Emma?’
And she knew then that she had to tell him. Everything. ‘The day before Maman died,’ she began, her voice a little unsteady at first, ‘I got a call from the hospital, telling me she needed to see me, to tell me something important. But I never got the chance to hear what it was.’
Hours later, when Marc-Antoine met her at the station in Paris, she was able to describe to him what happened after she finished her story: how Eric sat without a word for what seemed like a long time, and how the weight of his silence pressed on her like a stone; how she had almost decided to get out of the car and walk back to the station, but then he’d turned to her and said, flatly, ‘I can understand her not telling me, at first. A baby at that stage was the last thing I would have wanted.’ His voice hardened. ‘But never to say anything—not to me, not to you … how could she do that?’
Emma’s eyes were full of tears. ‘You changed your name,’ she managed to say. ‘Even if she had tried to contact you, she wouldn’t have found you.’
‘But do you think she even tried?’ he asked tightly.
‘I don’t know.’ Maybe she did try, maybe that was part of what she was going to tell me , Emma thought. And that made her feel calmer and sadder at the same time. She looked straight at him and said, ‘She was not always easy to understand. But she loved me, and I know she thought she was doing the right thing by not telling me. How was she to know how you would respond, anyway?’ Her throat felt choked but she forced the last words out, hot and ragged, while he sat there in silence, staring at her. ‘And at the end, she was going to tell me, I am certain of that. That photo was on her bedside cabinet. She had it out, ready to tell me the story. She was going to start with that—and that means something, don’t you see? Only she never got the chance to say it.’ She couldn’t keep the tears back then; the grief filling her like a bitter brew. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say, ‘this was a terrible mistake. Please, could you take me back to the station?’
His expression changed. ‘It is I who should be sorry. It was so brave of you to come to me. And what did I do but throw it back in your face? I’m so very sorry, Emma. Will you forgive me?’
She nodded, still choked with emotion, but with the bitterness easing. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘of course.’
She was able to recount the exact words they had both used, describe the feelings that had risen in her, even evoke the way that Athos the dog had nudged his nose against the back of her neck, as if in reassurance. But she struggled to accurately depict the feeling that rose in her when Eric looked at her with his blue-grey eyes, those eyes that were so similar to hers, and said, ‘Emma, I am so very sorry Corinne never had the chance to tell you. But I am glad her photo brought you to me. I can’t ever take the place of the man who loved you from babyhood and raised you as his own. And nor do I want to. But I would very much like to get to know you better. If you are willing.’