I don’t know why you think I know Paris so well. You talk about places assuming I can see them as clearly as you. You talk about little streets and cafés. You say, do I remember that little place La Palette? On the rue de Seine? No, I don’t. But it sounds like somewhere I’d like. So why not? Lets meet there. If you get there first, order me un petit café, would you?
You’ll know it’s me because I’ll be wearing a chic little Parisian raincoat, belted of course, long boots for the puddles, and a felt hat. It’s a great little hat, that I saw in a one-off shop in Oxford, that sells crazy handmade hats. It’s a pink felt cloche with floppy velvet flowers and an asymmetric brim. Not too practical in the rain, but just the thing for drinking coffee on a wintry late morning in Paris, on the rue de Seine.
It will be tempting to keep checking my reflection in the mirror behind the bar as I arrive, to see if my mascara has run in the rain, but I’ll do it surreptitiously. I don’t want you to think I’m concerned with my appearance. I will have run all the way from the metro, because I wasn’t sure whether I was going left or right at the exit and took the wrong turn. Why do I always do that? And I’m beginning to worry that you’ll have gone by the time I arrive, because we said eleven, and it’s nearly twenty to twelve. I’m not even sure you thought I’d really come. My stomach is churning. Be there. Please still be there, I can see the café now, dripping tables outside the door. They’ve put up a hideous plastic cover from the awning, that flaps in the wind. I can see the gold chairs behind the plastic and old men hunched over a beer. I’ll be calm when I go in. Breathe deeply and slowly. Steamy windows behind the plastic so I can’t see if you’re inside. Be brave. Push open the door.
Thank God for the mirror behind the bar. Mascara is fine. Hat is at a jaunty angle. Cheeks a bit too pink from my sprint and from the sudden bakery heat inside. Breathe. In. Out. Are you even there? If I step out slightly from the queue of people at the bar, I’ll be able to squint past the couples at tables and waiters bearing trays with cups, saucers, silver teapots and steaming coffee. But where are you? Oh God. Have you gone? Did you give up? Did you think I wasn’t coming after all? Oh thank God. There you are. You’re sitting there, your empty cup on the table, newspaper folded and notebook on top. I’m not sure you notice me come in. I’m right behind a man, taking off his heavy coat, hiding me. He stands between me and the rest of the room, shaking off the rain, folding his coat over one arm. I catch my breath, wait for my heartbeat to slow a little. I stay hidden for a moment longer. Gather myself.
And there you are! Still peering out the steamed up window, waiting to see me arrive. I think I get almost to your table before you realise it’s me. I smile a smile that I’m still smiling now. From ear to ear. You smiled the same one right back. And then I am wrapped in your arms and your coat and your scarf is falling on the floor. I don’t know how long we stand there, your arms tight round my waist, mine around your neck, my face buried against yours. You smell of coffee and soap and toast and familiarity. That hug is like a homecoming. And then we sit. We smile. No, we grin like idiots. And our hands reach across the table at the same time as we talk. I nearly lose the sensation in my fingers, wound tightly into yours.
You order more coffee, of course. Double espressos for both, little black coffees with an exquisite, perfect crema on top, steaming hot. I have an almond croissant, because I can never resist when I’m drinking coffee. My favourite. You show restraint and say no. But of course we share it, because actually you can’t resist either. I get icing sugar on my coat sleeve. Naturally. I am messy even here. I start to lick it off, unthinking, but then I realise where I am: in a café on the rue de Seine, Paris. Neither the time nor the place for licking sugar off my coat, I remind myself. But you see what I’m thinking, you’re watching the thoughts flit across my face and you’re laughing at me. You offer to save me embarrassment by licking the sugar off for me. I don’t know whether I decline your offer or not. Either way, there’ll be a sticky spot on the sleeve of that raincoat that I have never sponged off.
And we will talk. Oh my god, will we talk! How long we shall sit there, I don’t know. Perhaps we won’t notice, perhaps time will just pass us by and the sun will carry on in its arc over the sky. You ask me everything. I will tell you. We will be endlessly sidetracked by each other, by the extraordinariness of sitting in La Palette, on the rue de Seine, sitting and talking and laughing. I will have to ask you questions that I thought I’d forgotten. You will have to forgive me that, humour me a little. And what tense will we use when we talk? Will it be past, present or future? Will we stay in the conditional? Would we? Could we? Maybe there will be a whole new tense for just this moment out of time. And as we talk we will rediscover our shared passion for the pleasure in words, just the sheer delight in exchanging words. We will rewrite our own language of intimacy, of words that mean something only to us.
The rain will stop, of course. I know you say that it always rains in Paris and you do love to grumble about that. I shan’t spoil that pleasure for you. I’ll let it rain a little longer. That way, we can shelter in La Palette for a while more, watch people come in and out. See if we can sneak the pocket backgammon board onto the table without being noticed. That will panic me a bit, because I’ll be remembering the time we were thrown out of a café for illicit gambling, when you were trying to teach me how to play. I was incensed, do you remember? Gambling? For goodness sake, I barely understood how to bear off, let alone take a punt on a double and wager actual money. But this time, we’ll laugh in the face of such danger. Because we’re older and wearing better clothes. That counts for a lot in Paris.
I’d like to think that when we play, we are now evenly matched. All those years of practice on my own, against virtual partners will have paid off. I will begin by losing. You will smile kindly, not really surprised, and you’ll be magnanimous, patronising in your victory. But a game or two later, I’ll be on a winning streak. You will be amazed, impressed and slightly cross. You thought I’d forgotten how to play, that I gave up when I lost you. That I’d not got any better in twenty years. You will be determined to thrash me. For old times’ sakes. There’s a steady clonk of dice in the pot, the clack of magnets as they move around the board. You will be waiting for me to knock your pieces willy-nilly onto the bar, because I never could resist that, and then I’d be whipped. Resoundingly beaten. But today I will be canny. I will be ruthless. I will not be tempted into any easy trap. I shall enjoy this, skipping round the board. And it will be joyous. We’ll be quiet, reading the dice as we tip them out, enjoying the thrill of the perfect throw at the perfect moment. Five and a three to start. Double six, double one. Six and a one. The numbers speak their own language as we play.
As you concentrate on a move, I will watch your face, your hand as it hovers over the board. You’ll look up at me, catch my eye, we’ll smile. But you’ll raise an eyebrow and carry on playing: nothing gets in the way of the game. Time will go by. I will watch you move those wooden pieces, two fingers sliding a pair from one spike to two. I know that I’m a better player than I was. I know I can wait, I can take my time and not rush into immediate moves. The dice don’t scare me like they used to and I can take defeat so much better. If you win a game, I can only learn for the next one. This is the beauty of the game. I can step outside my normal niceness, my desire to please and be sweet and I can be ruthless, vicious, take no prisoners. It’s the only real thing I play to win. So I shall watch you across the board, across the empty coffee cups and the sugary table: and you will smile as you win a gammon. And I take your lovely hand and squeeze. We smile and I know we’re both thinking of old times. You put a ring on that finger once. It took my breath away. It weighed my hand down, made my fingers heavy.
I’m keeping my hat on, though, not because I’m cold, but because it’s a treat to wear. Makes me feel as though I’m acting a part. I’m someone better. Eccentric and beautiful. Tall and enigmatic. You know, feels lIke I can carry anything off with this hat on my head. Something about those velvet flowers, the way they flop. Something winning about the way the brim curves down over my ears, just framing my eyes. I put my faith in this hat. Rain hat, sun hat, it’s my raspberry pink cloche with the damp velvet flowers. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Outside the café, we are walking. We will look into gallery windows. Choose ourselves objects and paintings for homes we don’t live in. We’ll despise some. Laugh at some. Love a few. I ask you to choose me something that will make me laugh. I’m still thinking about my hat. When I glimpse a reflection of it in the shop windows, I can’t help smiling.
The shady street opens out onto a broad embankment. We climb down steps onto the pressed gravel pathway by the river. Barges glide along below, traffic chunters over the bridge ahead. The Seine flows on. What is it about light on water that lifts the spirit? I wonder as we walk along, avoiding little piles of dog-mess in the gravel, between square stone pots of privet.
“So bloody French.” You say, morosely, pointing out the mess. It is, I suppose.
But I’m lost in the spectacle of light on water, in the watery shadows on the underside of the bridge ahead, in the rhythm of our feet walking. I don’t notice the dog-shit. I’m lost in the dream. The dream that takes me to streets I’ve not walked, to cafés I’ve not visited, with the ghost of a dream of a man I once knew. If I close my eyes I can keep walking. I can hold onto the dream for a little longer. If no one speaks, no one moves, I can feel my arm through his arm, his side against my side, shoulders bumping as we walk. I can still smell the coffee, hear the steam shooting through the milk. I can feel the wooden dice in my hand, the sugar on my fingers, taste the almond paste inside the flaky pastry. And I can feel the hat on my head, the pink felt, the cloche, that hat I fell in love with once. The hat that can work magic, a travelling hat for dreamers. A hat with flowers that flop to one side, that still are a little damp from the rain. I love that hat.
One day of course, I will find that hat I fell in love with. Sitting in the window, worn on a wooden head. And no matter the price, I’ll buy it, if I have to beg, borrow or steal. And I shall wear it out of the shop. I shall wear it and wear it. It will take me places. Maybe to the rue de Seine, to La Palette, where I’ll see you sitting drinking coffee, waiting for me. It might take me to the river, arm in arm with a memory, a ghost.
I breathe out slowly, and my breath steams against the glass, obscuring the pink felt cloche. And then he’s right behind me, solidly encased in wool and disapproval.
“Darling, seriously, you don’t need another hat!”, says the other man, steering me away from the shop by my elbow, fingers tight on my woollen sleeve, around shoppers, through the rain. “Honestly. You and hats. I will never understand the fascination.”
Boringly Enough 