Chapter 4 #3
I knew what she meant. It was so wonderful just to take the time to sit in companionable silence, enjoying the fact that here, no one could ask us to do anything.
No one would be demanding food, a lift somewhere, or clean clothes or entertainment.
Fred was off my hands and had been for years, and Ben would be in work, and he was fully able to sort himself out.
We were simply here for us. This was our adventure.
* * *
We hadn’t thought to book an entry time for the cathedral, and when we got to the front of the building, there were huge queues to get in.
Instead, we sat for a while at the feet of the statue of Charlemagne and watched as people milled about and shouted across to each other.
There were tour guides holding up brightly coloured umbrellas, student groups intent on their phones.
Eventually the queues lessened and Anna and I went in for a quick look around while Harriet – who said she had already been there four times on university trips, the last one only about a year ago – sat in the shade with an ice cream and guarded our luggage.
The cathedral wasn’t at all the dark and gloomy place I had expected.
It was huge, bright and beautiful, with countless candelabras and the afternoon light streaming through the windows.
And there was such beautiful stained glass; it seemed incredible to think it had been rebuilt in only five years after the catastrophic fire.
There was the scent of new stone, the echoing noise of hundreds of people walking around, marvelling at the sheer scale of the building, the wonder of the vaulted ceilings high above us, vast paintings and statues.
‘How on earth did they restore this whole thing in five years?’ Anna wondered, ‘it took me three years to decorate my bathroom.’
‘It took the council six years to fix the potholes in my lane,’ I agreed. ‘There must be a lot of clever people in the world.’
‘And a great deal of money,’ Anna added.
We sat then for a while watching all the people milling about, taking pictures with their phones admiring the sheer scale and beauty of the place.
At last Anna checked her watch.
‘Come on, it’s gone five o’clock, we need to find Harriet and get to the station.’
‘Anna, I know I like to be early for everything but it’s only half an hour away, even at our pace,’ I said.
‘Yes but perhaps we could have a little something there while we wait for the train,’ she said enticingly with a wink.
I felt another unexpected leap of anticipation.
This might have been an interesting day but there was so much more ahead of us, and we were absolutely free to make any choices we liked.
My feet were sore and my backpack, which had seemed a reasonable weight when I started out that day, now felt as though it was filled with bricks.
The suitcase wasn’t much better, dragging at my arm behind me like a reluctant dog.
But I was in Paris. I was about to get on a sleeper train to the South of France. This was living!
The prospect of a café and perhaps a glass of wine was very pleasing.
I patted my body belt for the umpteenth time to reassure myself it was still there and my wallet and passport were safe inside and followed my friends into the early evening where lights were beginning to glow along the Seine river.
Were we safe, I wondered, three older women wandering about in a foreign city?
There were plenty of people around but they seemed busy with their own lives and not in the slightest bit interested in us.
Perhaps as I had often thought, we actually were invisible to other people after all.
The traffic was thick along the roads and seemed to move even slower than we were walking.
We saw other people with backpacks heading in the same direction as we were. Maybe these would be some of our travel companions on the train? Although all of them looked a lot younger than us and their luggage much bulkier.
The station entrance was at the end of a building site, so instead of going straight there, and much to my relief, we spotted an unpretentious-looking brasserie just outside the main doors and we went in.
It seemed a lot of our fellow travellers had decided to do the same thing, and eventually we were shown to a table near the middle of the room by a decidedly unenthusiastic waiter and we sat down with the sort of sighs and groans of relief that people our age were prone to make.
He returned quite promptly with menus which were written in English so evidently he had identified us without a word being spoken, which was clever of him.
Then he brought us a bottle of chilled water and a basket of bread, which we fell on with some enthusiasm.
I didn’t realise how hungry I was and those pizzas seemed a long time ago.
Still, we weren’t in a hurry and we sat there very happily with a reasonably priced carafe of red wine to give us strength, as Anna put it.
We clinked our glasses together and all said ‘Santé’ in honour of the occasion.
I felt very sophisticated and cheerful and took a sip of my Merlot which was excellent.
And then across the room I saw him, and annoyingly I spilled a bit of my wine on my shirt in shock.
I recognised him immediately. It was the man from the Eurostar train, the one who had sat next to me in splendid silence all the way, and now he was writing in a notebook with a rather smart-looking pen.
I dabbed at the wine stain on my shirt with a napkin dipped into my water and nudged Anna with my knee.
‘Over there, by that clock. Look, there’s Mr Grumpy. The one who sat next to me on the train.’
She looked around. ‘Where? Him? Is it?’
‘Is who? Who are we looking at?’ Harriet chimed in.
They both swivelled around in their seats to look, their chairs scraping on the stone floor.
‘Stop staring. He’ll see,’ I hissed.
Too late; at that moment Mr Grumpy looked up and caught my eye, and from the way he lifted his chin slightly I could tell he recognised me too. Gosh, I was blushing. How ridiculous at my age.
‘Oh, is that the man on the train?’ Harriet said loudly. ‘The one who wasn’t going to Disneyland?’
I flapped my hands at her to shush.
‘He’ll hear you,’ I said.
Harriet shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Just because he’s handsome doesn’t mean he gets away with being rude. I’m going to give him one of my best hard looks.’
And she did.
Mr Grumpy looked up again just in time to benefit from this, and his mouth twitched with amusement before he went back to his notebook. Harriet might have been able to quell a lecture room last year when she was a professor, but that day it wasn’t working.
‘Croque monsieur,’ I said, shaking my menu at her to get her attention and wishing I hadn’t said anything. ‘I love that and surely here it will be even better?’
The others agreed – after Anna debated a bit about whether we had eaten too many carbs for one day already – that this was a good choice and surely wouldn’t take long to cook either. The waiter came and took our order, still without a word.
‘Parisians are supposed to be like that,’ Anna said, ‘different from French people. Perhaps it’s the same in all big cities. Maybe we should try and speak French more?’
I thought back to my university French all those years ago. I had the terrible feeling that my French was so grammatically old fashioned that I would probably sound like a character in a Jane Austen novel to a Parisian. Still, I would give it a go.
‘Merci beaucoup,’ I said as our food arrived. ‘Cette nourriture a l’air incroyable.’
Our waiter actually laughed at me before he walked away.
‘Gosh what did you say?’ Anna asked.
‘I just said the food looked good,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps I was a bit over the top; after all, it’s just a cheese and ham toastie with attitude.’
We tucked in and actually it was delicious, helped down by the carafe of wine which made everything seem better.
We finished off with another nod to French life, double espressos, because even we knew that to order a latte or cappuccino this late in the day would earn us a positive sneer of disapproval and probably a refusal.
We split the bill and took turns to visit the loo, because at this stage in life all of us knew the importance of never missing an opportunity.
I glanced over towards Mr Grumpy as we left and he was still there, but by then he was head down, tapping away on his laptop. I wondered what he was doing, and being the nosey sort, I would love to have asked, and for a moment I seriously thought about it.
Maybe he was an academic on his way to a high-powered conference and had an important deadline.
I had known all about those once upon a time.
Perhaps he would be presenting some impenetrable paper on artificial intelligence or the bitcoin thing everyone was talking about.
He might be refining his keynote speech.
Or he could be a writer who was working through his final draft, ready for an urgent publication date. What would a man like him write? Spy thrillers or war stories. The biography of some political giant.
Perhaps I could step to one side as I passed him, say something about turning up like a bad penny, small world, having a good day? But he didn’t look up at all; he just carried on typing, shifting in his seat a little, so instead I followed the other two out into the cool evening.
We had a train to catch. It wouldn’t be too much longer and we would be on our way, heading for the south of France.
It had been a splendid day so far, and all our plans were working.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out.
Ben
It’s raining and there’s a cat sitting in a cardboard box in the utility room. It must have come in through the cat flap. Do you have a cat? Should I feed it?
Me
No, and probably not unless you want it to adopt you. The cat flap has always been there. I didn’t install it. You’ve lived with me for nearly a year. Have you ever noticed a cat?
Oh for heaven’s sake! Come on Ben, get a grip.
You don’t have to keep asking me to make the decisions for you.
I would probably have given the cat some tea and found a blanket for the cardboard box, but if I suggested that then I would once again start assuming responsibility for someone else’s actions.
And I didn’t want to do that any longer.
I was already getting into the swing of being away from the daily routine, of seeing new things and enjoying the possibilities I could see in front of me.
I didn’t want to be dragged back to the old way of thinking.
I didn’t want that old life to impinge on this one.
It was a new freedom, and I was enjoying it.
Surely I was allowed a couple of weeks off?