Ken Mackenzie's Artwork (1 example), Poems, and Stories


Carrie and Ken's Home Page

So? Baking can replace a crumbled head.
Mexican flowers, monarchless, still pollinate.
And I never really trusted Peter Pan.

Nearer home, you no longer illuminate
my room and life each dawn.
But the indifferent sun manages to rise.

And the delegates rose to applaud

The death penalty was needed, he said,
for cannabis smokers and one-parent families

And the conference cheered

Censor the BBC, withdraw
subsidies from impolite artists

Hear! Hear! They stamped on the floor in delight

The unemployed are just idlers, he said,
the workhouse was good enough for my father

And they waved their Union Jacks

Teach the French a lesson, shun the Hun,
stop Pakis at the border, deport Nigerians

The standing ovation lasted 45 minutes

That was a good speech,
a prostitute told him that night

The new autobahn
is no help to the cyclist.

Why do I think of Mary-Anne
when I say this?

A nuclear weapon does not deter
the school bully.

At the back of her neck, a wisp of fur
turns legs to jelly.

Agatha Christie did not try to write
War and Peace.

Blind as Cupid, I sought
to run at her pace.

"Maastricht!" She replied, "Bless you!
Or 'A vos souhaits!' should I say?"
"No! Loving Europe's not the issue.
I love the power – and the pay."

Elect us, and we'll guarantee
jobs for all – well, all of us.
We'll let payment by posterity
make the present prosperous.

You detect something racial?
No! I believe in equality.
It's absolutely clear that all
are equally inferior to me.

I promise "transparency," he said.
But he failed to realise
that this inevitably led
to people seeing through his lies.

To visualize, that is. In fact,
when Michelle phoned with the news,
I sat down. Then rolled over.

In France, a bishop is a clown
(something to do with laicité)
and a queen is just a dame.
The French defence is slow and tame;
not so the Scotch – d4 and claymore.
An ancient Spanish monk, a wily
Sicilian, or the four knights
rushing to joust – these are known
and feared. An apparent young innocent
has oft prepared a killing variant.

Fisher (gone mad, alas) was wont to say
that no one ever won by resigning.
Humble pawns can be ambitious –
they have a lust to expand. Lying
in wait is the dreaded zugzwang.
Life can be a perpetual check,
mates can be stale – but I digress.
Fisher, (gone mad, like Morphy and the rest)
was wrong: to resign from a mess
of pieces en pris can be for the best.

The board of sixty-four squares
is not a world, one must remember.
The other way madness lies. Study for years
can be devoted to a game – just that.
To kill a king is not to be compared
with murdering a father. The play's the thing.
But note that on that chequered board
the most powerful piece is the queen,
but the most important, the king.
Who do I think I am fooling?

Martin looked at his watch as the Metro came squeaking into Saint Lazare. Five minutes before he was meant to arrive at Cynthia's and three stops to go. He was going to be late, but only by a few minutes. She would forgive him that. Perhaps he could blame the Metro. She was sometimes amused by his mistranslated French. "I am desolated - the Metro was perturbed." Except that he had used that before. He was always late.
Next to him in the crowded car a small boy was swinging round and round the centre pole. About eight years old, Martin reckoned. Hyperactive. A future delinquent. Or genius perhaps. The boy stuck out a foot as he swung round and it banged Martin on the knee. He stopped and glared up at Martin. Big eyes, and a shirt that was buttoned up wrongly, so that the collar was higher on the left.
"Arrête!" said his mother wearily. She had a baby on her knee, a shopping trolley next to her seat. A few hairs breaking out of a bun behind her head told a whole story, Martin thought, of harassment and dreams betrayed.
Whoosh! The doors opened as the train stopped. The boy glared up at Martin. Distrustful eyes. Then, alarmingly, he leapt out of the doors and stood on the platform looking at his mother, eyes bright now with mischief.
"Non, Alexandre! Non!" his mother shouted. But she was not too upset, Martin thought. He had clearly done this sort of thing before. The hooter sounded to signal that the doors were about to close and the boy leapt in again, looking triumphantly up at Martin. His mother moved the baby over to the other knee and vainly reached out a hand to cuff him.
Martin decided to ignore him, and thought about Cynthia. That she had invited him round to meet this computer executive man perhaps meant she was willing to consider a reconciliation.
Surprisingly, this had become important to him. "He might offer you a job," Cynthia had said. "It is essential that you are not late." Perhaps something better, he thought, than writing about computers in trade magazines and living a Paris life in which he was late for everything.
The small boy swung round the pole again and again kicked Martin on the knee. The mother made apologetic noises. "C'est pas grave," said Martin, and frowned at the boy. A memory was nagging at his mind of how he had once deliberately pushed a vase off a table when he was six. Crash! And he had succeeded in attracting his mother's attention away from the new baby.
The Metro was coming in to Havre-Caumartin. The woman rearranged the baby in her arms - grizzling and struggling by this time - and prepared to control her shopping trolley with the other hand. She shouted at her son and they descended onto the platform. The small boy stood looking back at Martin, with mischief again in his eyes, alarmingly. "Non!" he shouted. But the boy leapt back through the doors.
"Alexandre!" his mother shouted. The boy looked up at Martin, laughing, and jumped back onto the platform. His mother tried to grab him and he wriggled away. The warning hooter started sounding, and Martin's jaw dropped open as the boy again jumped into the train. Pavlovian, he thought: blow a hooter and he jumps through doors. The boy turned round to get out again, his foot slipped, his knitted hat fell off, and clump! the doors closed.
"No! Stop! Arrête!" said Martin. He saw the mother gesticulating outside the window. "It's O.K! La prochaine!" He shouted, pointing forwards to the next station. "La prochaine! Nous attend -" Then he paused. He wanted to say that they would wait for her but he realized he was muddling it. There should have been a "vous" inserted there. And perhaps a future tense? "Nous vous attendrons," he shouted, but the train was out of the station by this time. That's what happens to exiles, he thought. They get betrayed by future tenses.
He looked down at the boy and saw tears were beginning to spill out of the corners of his big eyes. "No! Don't cry! It will be all right." He put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I promise. Je jure. We will find your mother again. Nous retrouverons (I think) votre mère - ta mère, I should say."
The boy kicked him on the shins, but gently this time. Martin hunkered down to bring himself to the right height and took the boy's hands. "Comment tu t'appeles?" he asked. The boy showed no signs of understanding. "Ta nom? Ton nom, I mean." Then he remembered the mother had shouted at Alexandre. "It's all right, I know. Alexandre, oui? je m'appele Martin." The boy allowed his hands to be held and the tears seemed to be holding up.
We can communicate, in spite of my French. "Quel age avez vous - as tu, that is?" The boy said something that Martin understood to mean that he was seven. "Et moi?" he asked, jollying the boy along. "Quel age? Guess. Devine."
"Quatre-vingt six," said the boy.
"Eighty-six! No! Try again." A glint of mischief was back in the boy's eyes.
"Soixante-huit?"
"No! I am thirty-one. Trente-et-un. And feeling my age just at the moment."
A thin-lipped Frenchwoman leant down to offer some advice in English. "You should have pulled the signal of alarm," she said.
"I should have? Why the hell didn't you?" said Martin. "This has nothing to do with me. I am just an ignorant foreigner. Here," he pushed Alexandre's hand up towards the woman. "Why don't you look after him, if you know so much? Why don't you find his wretched mother?" Then he looked down and saw the tears rising again in Alexandre's eyes.
"No," he said hastily. "It's all right. I won't leave you. I have promised. Je jure."
The train was coming into Opera. Martin took a firm grip on the boy's arm. "Right," he said. "We descend here and wait for your mother. The next train, I have no doubt." Alexandre looked up, tears again running down his face. Martin didn't try to translate. He doesn't understand my French anyway, he thought. The important thing is that he knows there is someone here, caring about him and communicating something.
On the platform at Opera he kept hold of Alexandre's arm and managed to look at his wristwatch. He was now four minutes late for Cynthia. And this was going to take some time to unravel. But he had a real excuse this time - if she was going to believe him.
As they waited, Alexandre began to get restless, pulling away from Martin, and sobbing quietly. Maternal deprivation, he thought. He had learnt about it in his psychology course at university.
"There will be another train soon," he told Alexandre. "Bientot. And your mother will be on it. Not terribly pleased with you, I expect." Alexandre stopped sobbing and spoke softly and rapidly. Martin thought he was saying, "Don't tell my father."
He shook his head. "Things can't be kept secret," he said. "Acts have consequences. We'll ask your mother when she comes. She will know how to deal with it. I1 faut attendre ta mère."
The boy began to cry more earnestly but stopped when the next train pulled in the station. They both looked expectantly as the doors opened and people spilled out. Some football fans in bright scarves, tourists with cameras hanging from their necks, young people punching each other playfully, businessmen carrying briefcases. No mother. The train pulled out again.
"It is all right," said Martin. "She will probably be on the next one. It doesn't do any good to cry, for God's sake. Calmez-vous - calmes-toi, I mean, do I? Soyez tranquil. Oh, stop your noise, will you?" The terrible thought was coming into his mind that if the mother had heard only the word "prochaine," she might have understood him to mean that he and Alexandre would take the next train back to Havre-Caumartin. She was probably waiting there. And if they went back now, she would come forward and they would pass. Murphy's law.
If there had been a phone of the platform, he could phone Cynthia. She would know what to do. But there wasn't. Should he try to find a policeman? Or a man working for the Metro? An official could speak to Havre-Caumartin by phone and perhaps make contact with the mother.
Alexandre was now shouting loudly and tearfully that he wanted his mother. Martin, looking round for a official-looking man, found himself face to face with an earnest young Frenchman.
"You have taken this child from his mother?" he asked, guessing that Martin was English-speaking.
"No!" Martin began.
"That is what he is saying. He is unhappy because you have taken him from his mother. This can be grave in France. The scandal in Belgium, you know -"
"I didn't take him from his mother!" Martin shouted. "I am saving him from the consequences of his own lunatic behaviour." Another train was pulling in. "Here, perhaps she is on this train."
"I work for the social security," the man was saying. "Children are not my truc - how do you say? - but I can perhaps do something. Do you have some piece of identity for you yourself.?"
Martin was watching the people come out of the train. Again no sign of a mother. He started feeling his pockets for his carte de séjour and released Alexandre's wrist for a moment. The warning hooter began to sound.
Martin looked up as Alexandre was nearing the train doors. "No!" he shouted, running forward. The small boy went into the carriage and Martin dived after him through the closing doors, as if in a rugby tackle.
He bumped his shoulder painfully on a central pillar and grazed his knee as he hit the floor. He found himself at Alexandre's feet and he gripped an ankle.
"We are now, he said, "in the wrong train, going in the wrong direction. I have probably broken my clavicle. That man we left on the platform will call the police who will probably deport me, if not send me to Devil's Island. Apart from that, I have almost certainly lost the best girl friend I have ever had and the prospect of a better job. I would cry if I were not so old. For I am hurting."
The small boy looked down at him. The expression of the big eyes, which Martin had seen full of mischief, derision, tears and bewilderment, changed. A crinkling at the outer corners. The expression had become one of tenderness. Alexandre stretched down a hand to help Martin up.
"All right," said Martin, getting to his feet, "so we'll be friends. Amis? Oui? Alexandre the Great. And all we can do now is to get out at the next station and get the next train back to Havre-Caumartin." He made gestures that conveyed this to Alexandre. "And we must hope to find there either your mother - ta mère - or someone who knows something. Now, I wonder if I can find out your second name." They talked all the way back, without either of them understanding much of what the other was saying. Alexandre was calmer now, apparently confident that things would be all right.
At Havre-Caumartin they found that the mother and baby had been taken to a staff restroom. She was in a state of collapse and her husband had been sent for. He was furious with Martin. Why had there been such a delay? his flowing French seemed to be asking. Martin had promised to take the next train back, so why had he not done so? She had waited and waited. Did he not realize how anxious a mother could become?
Alexandre stood close to his mother, who alternately cuffed and cuddled him, and he kept looking at Martin in silence, eyes expressionless now.
Cynthia, when he finally arrived at her flat, would not let him in the door. Her friend had left an hour ago, she said. He needed someone reliable, and so did she. No, she didn't want to hear his excuses, especially not about the Metro. A perturbed Metro could excuse a fifteen-minute lateness, but not one of over two hours. No, she didn't want to hear his complicated story. She had heard his stories before - so often! And she didn't believe those either. She closed the door.
In a bad day, thought Martin as he went down the stairs, there had been only one good moment: when Alexandre reached down a hand to help him from the Metro floor. Could one expect more of a day?

"I will slay them with my subjunctive," David said to himself. And he repeated it silently, like a mantra, hoping it would still his nervousness.
He was sitting in a leather armchair in the reception room of a French public relations firm waiting to be interviewed by a recruiting panel. It was like being outside the headmaster's office: a heaviness in his stomach, fear that his voice would turn squeaky under stress and that the pool of saliva in his throat would turn into tears. Weeping at a job interview would be something new.
"Don't be a smart alec," his colleague Sheila had advised when they had a rehearsal before he left London. "A quiet sincerity is what you want to aim at. You are a reliable guy, intelligent, witty, but serious. That's the pretence. Let's go through again some of the difficult questions they are likely to ask."
Part of the interview would be conducted in French, he had been told. He was quite proud of his fluency in French and of his accent. His grammar was usually right: he could tell a subjunctive from a conditional. But being quietly sincere was difficult in any language.
The young woman at the reception desk looked up and smiled encouragingly. "I am sorry. We are a little behind," she said.
"C'est pas grave," said David. But in truth it was getting to be serious. His bowels and his bladder felt insecure after all that careful mineral water at lunch.
After bursting into tears, the applicant asked to go to the lavatory. That wasn't going to impress them too much. David straightened his tie ("rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin") and for the fourth time made sure his fly was properly zipped up.
The door of the interview room opened, letting in a wave of talk and laughter, and the preceding candidate came out, throwing a last word over her shoulder. David was astonished to see that it was Antoinette, a young Frenchwoman with whom he had worked in London - was it six years ago? They shook hands. (Should I kiss her cheek? he wondered.) "I didn't know you had applied too," he said.
She seemed pleased to see him. "I'm meeting Fred at that café on the corner," she said. "Why don't you join us afterwards?'
She was bright and sweet, the sexists would say, but surely she was not a serious competitor, thought David. But he was disquieted: for the first time in his life, people younger than him were joining in the conspiracy. He walked into the interview room, feeling as if he were mounting the steps of the guillotine.
An Englishman at the end of the table started by going over with him his schooling and university record. (Why are the English always obsessed with schools? he wondered. Something to do with potty training, perhaps, and anal retention.)
Next a younger Frenchman asked in French about his knowledge of the language. He explained that he had lived in Paris for more than a year as a young man, as well as studying French at university. He felt he would not be able to prepare written material in French without help, but he would be able to take part in discussions, and he would certainly be able to translate French into acceptable English. David found his French flowing satisfactorily (he had rehearsed this reply) and his voice stayed low and in control.
A second Frenchman - an older man, peering at him over spectacles and looking bored - wanted to know how much he was earning at Smith and Weston and how much he thought he would earn in Paris. He asked about some of the big accounts David had handled and grunted enigmatically at David's replies.
The fourth member of the panel was a woman. She was, David knew, Dominique Palisse, an old friend of his boss in London, James Weston. She would have discussed his work with James. He felt his nervousness rise again. She was the real power source in the agency, one gathered. Her hair was pulled tightly behind her head, her face was strong (in her forties, David thought) and her manner was direct. Now the crucial questions were coming, he decided.
Why, she asked, did he want a change at this stage in his career? He was -what? -32 years old, on the threshold of bigger things at the one of the leading British public relations companies. Why move into foreign fields?
She asked the question in English, and David found it difficult to switch languages, stumbling over some words. He also felt compelled to skate around the truth. "One wanted a wider horizon," he said. 'It is necessary now to be a European." Merciful heavens, he thought, but this sounds phony! He decided another tack, one closer to the truth. "Things go well for me at Smith and Weston," he said, "but in truth it is not entirely sympathetic." That was not the word he wanted. Why was he speaking English as if he were a Frenchman? "Compatible," he said, inspired suddenly. "There are strains. It is difficult to think of spending the rest of one's life..." His voice tailed off. He was desperately nervous now, throat afloat with saliva. Had James told her about the insurance Imbroglio? he wondered. Probably not. One insurance company's press statement had been sent out under another insurance company's letterhead. It was a quick way to lose two valuable clients in one hit. Young Monica had gallantly taken the blame - she was leaving anyway. But everyone knew it had really been his responsibility, and that he had standing behind her at the photocopier, gently sexually harassing her instead of watching what she was doing. There had be almost visible cloud over his head ever since. Senior people discussing things in corridors stopped when he passed by.
'But why Paris?" asked the woman on the panel, changing to French. 'Why do you want to live and work here?"
The big one. David decided to ditch his rehearsal reply -"the centre of Europe, the heart of Western civilisation, admiration for the culture..." No. One must find some way of sounding less like a politician on a bad day.
"I lived in Paris as a young man," he said, "as I mentioned to your colleague. And I loved Paris." In fact, I loved Thérèse. he thought, his mind running back out of control while he searched for some suitable words. Thérèse. had helped to operate the telephone exchange at the hospital of St. Louis and she had lived in a studio down the corridor from his in the 19th arrondissement. They were both 21 and incredibly happy, exploring with joy each other's bodies and ideas and languages. Sitting before the interviewing panel, David had an overpowering vision of the two of them running through the rain trying to share a broken umbrella, and then being forced to shelter in the doorway of a boulangerie. It was coming down in cords, Thérèse had said. They had kissed, with the smell of fresh bread all about them.
"It was a magic time." These were the only words David could find. Alarmingly, liquid had moved from his throat to behind his nose and eyes. If he could sniff and wipe his hand across his face, he thought, everything would be all right. But he couldn't. He had to search in his trousers for a handkerchief and, merciful heavens, that looked phony again - quite incredibly phony. He waved his handkerchief apologetically before wiping his nose.
"You are not married, I see," said the woman, looking at her notes. "So there would not be too serious a problem about moving, if you had to."
"No, I am not married," said David. Should I say more? he wondered. She probably thinks I am gay. French women tend to think all English men are gay. It might matter.
"I was almost married in England," he said. Perhaps, he thought, seeing her eyebrows rise, it was a mistake to start on this. He couldn't tell her about Angela - tough, little, continually surprising Angela, who had packed up and left him one day. She did not love him any more, she said, and she was going to live with Simon. He had been - was still - devastated, emptied. That was perhaps the main reason for his need to come to Paris. He could not really hope to find the Thérèse magic again, but he might find a reason for living. "It ended," he said, meeting the woman's questioning glance. "So you see for leaving England there were also..." He wanted to say "personal reasons" but they were speaking French and he couldn't think of the right words. "I mean, one must ... It is necessary ... One found..." He switched to English despairingly. "I also have personal reasons for wanting to leave London." He saw the Englishman on the panel stroking his moustache agitatedly, obviously embarrassed.
I am really making a mess of things, thought David, way beyond the call of duty. All I need now is to speak badly of paté de foie gras and impugn the virtue of Joan of Arc.
It ended soon after that, with the grumpy Frenchman muttering that they knew how to get in touch with him. The receptionist directed him to a lavatory. He found his former colleague Antoinette and her husband in the caf6 and they compared notes, like students after an exam. "I blew it," said David. "Got all tearful and tongue-tied, when I wasn't being pompous and phony. It was the sort of afternoon one wakes and remembers in the middle of the night, one's toes curling."
"I thought I did quite well," said Antoinette. "But it is all academic really, isn't it? A man who works for the company told me that in any event they are going to give the job to Christine Dupont - do you know her? She worked for them before. And she is also the sister of the girlfriend of one of the directors. The regulations say they have to advertise the vacancy and go through the motions, but they made up their minds a long time ago, this man said."
David drank a good deal of wine over dinner. Everything added to the deep gloom that settled over him. The left-bank student eating-house that he and Thérèse had loved was transformed into an impossibly expensive Japanese restaurant. The cassoulet he eventually found lacked taste. Late that night he found himself in a café having an intense discussion with a man who had been in the Foreign Legion. David was talking about the treatment of the Jews by Vichy France. The other man was talking about the Algerian war. It was that sort of conversation - neither listened to a word the other said. "Even now, the beautiful, France finds it difficult to face up to what happened," said David earnestly. "It is very sad."
At about ten o'clock the next morning, the phone next to his hotel bed rang, bringing him panic-stricken to a painful consciousness. It was Dominique Palisse from the French public relations firm. "I was hoping to catch you before you left for London," she said. 'We were able to come to a decision last night. I am pleased to say we are able to offer you the post. Do you want to come in later today to discuss the details?"
"You what?" said David. "But I thought...Someone said...A person called Christine Dupont, or something..."
There was a silence at the other end of the line and David could feel a chill. I am mucking things up again, he thought, clutching his head. Why don't I just shut up? I think she is trying to give me good news.
"I don't know who you have been talking to," said the voice on the phone. "But the fact is that Christine did not want the job, even if we had decided to offer it to her. She is going to get married and go to Quebec. In the event," the chill eased, "your experience and qualifications impressed the panel. Also your sincerity at the interview."
David found himself reaching under the pillow for a handkerchief as he put down the phone. On pleure, he thought. But it was permitted now. The word was the same in the subjunctive, if one worried about these things. On pleure. And he sobbed with happiness.

"Well, I don't know," Mark said on the telephone. "It's not really my sort of thing. Yes, I did know her at university. We were sort of friends. But that's the point. I mean, I can't..."
He was quiet while the news editor in London talked for some time.
"All right," he said at last. "I'll try to find out where she is in Paris anyway. Yes, I know. It's a good story."
Mark looked across the Paris apartment at Sylvie. "The Dispatch is not interested in sacked bishops, jokes about Toubon, the truth about Tapie, corruption in the provinces or any of the French stories I tried to sell them. They want me to interview Fiona, who is skulking in Paris now that her minister boyfriend has resigned."
"You won't do it, of course," said Sylvie, bristling with indignation, as she frequently did (over whales, the destruction the rain forest, the sins of the capitalist classes, Bosnia, Chirac and most other things). "It is none of our business, or their business. And also, she was your friend!"
"You might say I was a free-lance journalist," said Mark, putting on his Noel Coward voice, as he liked to do when he thought he was going to be witty. "Or you might say I was unemployed. A chômeur, as they put it here in Paris. And chômeurs can't be choosers. Ha! I certainly need to sell a story to Dispatch, who grow impatient about the tiny retainer they pay me. Of course, I won't do anything to harm Fiona. But I might go round to that café in the 17th, I'Entracte, where I am told she has coffee most mornings."
Sylvie snorted. "Chômeurs do not have to be prostitutes," she said. "Nor do journalists. Even."
While waiting for Fiona in l'Entracte, Mark had time to drink two cups of coffee, watch admiringly while two young people played the pinball machine, and reflect on why he was in Paris. He had come because he was tired of working as a reporter for an evening paper in London and it wouldn't send him abroad. He had come because Sylvie had offered to let him share her flat, and perhaps her life. He had come because at 33 it was time he learnt to speak French properly and was able to write serious articles about European affairs. He hadn't come to pester a would-be actress because of her affair with an ex-minister of agriculture.
He was about to go back to the apartment to tell the Dispatch news editor to put his story in the manure, when Fiona walked in.
"Mark!" she said. "Merde! Does this mean I have to find somewhere else to drink coffee? I don't talk to journalists."
"It is all right," he said. "I am not here as a journalist. Just a friend." He felt a slight pain in his lower intestine - the equivalent of Pinocchio's nose, he told himself. But, after all, he had decided not to do the story.
Fiona sat down distrustfully. "I am not going to say anything anyway," she said. "How are you? I heard you were in Paris. Living with some French girl."
"Half-French," he said. "And just sharing a flat." Another twinge in the lower intestine. "Mostly."
They discussed their days together at the University of Sussex, edgily at first. He was shocked at how she looked older and unkempt. She had always been so neat and skirted, with crisp gingham and carefully curled hair. Now she was in jeans, with hair flopping over one eye - and could those be bits of vomit on her blouse? She looked tired.
They began laughing over memories of a party in the garden of a house in Brighton. Annabelle with the lipstick on her tooth had insisted on singing about the foggy, foggy dew and had taken off her blouse later, rather pathetically, as she had an uninteresting bosom. And their friend David had carefully opened a window, leant inwards from the garden and been sick on the living room carpet.
He and Fiona had been close, almost lovers on one occasion, except he had drunk too much and had fallen asleep instead. And then she had got involved with his friend Harry Ellis. "Harry has gone to live in Singapore," she said, as she finished her coffee. "And I think he has decided he's gay."
They went on to have lunch together at the bistro on the comer. "I'm not saying anything, you understand." White wine with the first course made the mood grow melancholic.
"You and Maureen went to live together in London in the end, didn't you?" she said. "What happened to that?"
"It ended, as these things do. That was part of the reason for my coming to live in Paris." He choked on his bouillabaisse. There had also been the question of his sleeping with Sylvie, but there was no need to go into that.
"You know what love is?" she said suddenly. "Love is when you shout a name at night, loudly and in pain."
He did not know how to reply to that. He touched her hand and ordered another bottle of wine. She shouldn't be talking to me, he thought.
"Are things not more possible now?" he said after a moment. I am not interviewing her, he told himself. "After all, he is now no longer a minister, and he's getting a divorce. Is he still in touch with you?"
"I don't want to talk about it," she said.
They were quiet as the waiter cleared away the soup and brought coquelets, with potatoes and beans, plus the bottle of Gamay.
"That's the point," she said, as if they had not been interrupted. "I would have liked him to have said at the beginning, when the first stupid Sun story appeared, 'Yes, I love her. My marriage is finished. And if this means the end of my political career, then tant pis!' But he didn't. What he said was, 'Harrumph!... Private life ... married man ... distorted stories ... not a matter of public interest ... inaccurate ... consulting lawyers ... support of my cabinet colleagues ... no question of resignation ... harrumph! ... I resign.' Which is not quite the same thing."
She sipped the wine. "He got in touch with me then. But l told him to go away. Wouldn't reply to his messages. Then ran away to hide from the journalists."
"I am ashamed sometimes of British journalism," said Mark, hand on his stomach - but this was true.
"Inaccurate was right," she said. "'Minister in love nest with pop star,' they said in one of their bigger headlines. I am not a pop star - I would like to be an actress. And it wasn't a love nest, it was my flat. And the way they bothered me! Outside my flat every day, would you believe? But of course you know all about that."
"It doesn't have to be like that," said Mark. "Journalism is a sort of writing. It can be witty, life-enhancing, making democracy work. French journalists do not intrude in private lives - at least, not of French politicians anyway. I think it should be down to proprietors. There is something wrong, caddish, if you like, about recording private conversations, prying into bedrooms, using telephoto lenses and hidden cameras. But there is also something contemptible about publishing the results of all that. And the British should make clear that we hold such proprietors despicable. An ideal way to show our contempt would be to refuse to buy their papers. Otherwise, we can belch or spit every time we mention their names. Murdoch!" He belched.
She laughed. "That was quite a speech. It means journalists are not to blame. They are just nice innocent young guys manipulated by the wicked proprietors! That sounds a little Dickensian, to put it mildly."
That was what Sylvie kept telling him, in a Frenchified way, whenever she saw the Sunday Dispatch with his stories in it. But it wasn't true. One could be an honourable journalist.
"It is not too difficult," he said, "to distinguish between what is in the public interest - one needs to record a minister resigning, for instance - and what the public is just pruriently interested in, like the details of his love nest with a pop star."
They had cheese to finish the wine, then another glass of wine to finish the cheese. She asked him about Sylvie and he explained that he had met her while she was visiting her English relations in London and had become intoxicated with her neat Frenchness. He became alarmed sometimes by her intensity and frequent anger - often late at night for no discernible cause. "Your fault, I have no doubt," said Fiona. He smiled. How wonderful it was just to lean back and relax! In English.
"I'm just going to have coffee," she said. "You might like their crème brulée. I've just been learning how to make it. With a blow-torch, would you believe? I'm taking a cordon bleu course here in Paris, you know. I'm going to be a chef in some exotic place, like Jamaica, when this is all over."
He had coffee too. And they decided a little brandy as a digestif would not do them any harm.
"I shouldn't drink really," Fiona said then. Mark sat up straight. "I shall give it up any time now."
Mark looked at her questioningly, mouth slightly open. His eyes went down to her stomach. There was no bulge.
"Yes," she said. "It's true, according to one of those test things. You know, little circles with dots in the middle. I haven't told anyone yet."
His look contained a question again.
"That would be sensible, I suppose," she said. "But I can't do it."
"You'll have to tell him."
"I suppose I will. Some time. But somehow it makes things worse now. Like a trap."
She looked as though she was going to cry and Mark reached forward again to touch her hand. "If there is anything I can do..."
"No," she said. "I needed to talk, oddly enough. To a friend. I must go."
"Yes, I did talk to her," Mark told the news editor that evening. "But it was off the record. No, I can't reveal any of it, even indirectly."
"We're talking quite a big story, you realize, Mark. Page lead. With by-line, not to say hundreds of pounds. And it would convince people that it was worth keeping paying your retainer in Paris."
There was an implied threat in the last sentence. "No," he said. Sylvie came behind him and put an arm over his shoulders. "It's not possible."
He and Sylvie went happily hand in hand to celebrate at their favourite wine bar near the Cirque d'Hiver. They met a bunch of Sylvie's friends there and discussed French rugby, and corruption in left-wing circles, and then free will, and free speech, and anarchy and the true place of the state. It was all in French and Mark had drunk enough to allow his French to flow, not correctly but with ideas being conveyed with passion. One of the young Frenchmen had studied Hobbes, as had Mark at Sussex.
"You don't meet young people in London who have studied Hobbes," he told Sylvie as they staggered home, clutching each other. He had never before felt so happily in love and at home.
The telephone woke him, with Sylvie pressed against his back and sharp pains in his head.
"You've heard the news?" said Dispatch's news editor. 'He's committed suicide, the ex-minister. It happened yesterday evening. I am told Fiona was seen at Paris airport flying off somewhere, probably to London, but we won't be able to get at her. If she talked to you yesterday, she must have said something."
The pain had shifted to his intestine.
"This is front page lead stuff now," said the news editor. "Thousands of pounds, never mind hundreds."
"It is also a matter of public interest now, isn't it?" he said, hesitating. "I mean, we are not just prying. When a former minister of the crown commits suicide... There can't be secrets now, can there?"
He felt Sylvie drawing away from him and standing up.
"She has been taking a course on cordon bleu cookery," he said.
"Putain!" said Sylvie.
"And she did say something about how she still loved him. That's relevant now, isn't it?"
"I shall never speak to you more," hissed Sylvie, naked, with sparks coming off her almost visibly. "One word in print and it's over. Finished. You'll have to go."
"There was something else which might be important," Mark said, his hand pressing against his stomach, the cold sweat of decision on his brow. "She told me she was pregnant."
"Wow!" the news editor said. "Pregnant, and we've got it to ourselves, haven't we? With quotes. Write it, Mark. That's a good story!"

Crossing the Pont des Invalides just before the accident, Fred felt good. He was being a nice guy, driving his colleague Daphne to the Gare du Nord because her mother was sick in England and the Metro was on strike. Paris looked wonderful in the sunlight, the bronze statues on the bridge glinting and the Quai d'Orsay imposingly grey over on the left. The magic of Paris was working, transforming a boy from the East End of London into a European, soon to be an international software expert. It was also repairing his marriage to Margaret, not just because he was away from contact with Christine, but also because it was the city of love. Margaret was no longer just complaining about the dog-turds on the pavement. Her French was improving and she had managed a jokey conversation with the fruiterer. He was also happy about the present he had bought for their two-year-old son Michael - a little leather purse into which he could put things. Michael's delight had left him feeling warmed for the whole morning.
He looked across at Daphne. She was twisting a Kleenex in her lap, still a little tearful. Her mother had been taken to hospital after what was probably a stroke. "I don't know why you had to lie to your wife," she said. She had overheard him talking on the telephone. "You could have told her, or I could have taken a taxi."
This was the only cloud in Michael's sky. "I have to call on a client over by Bastille on the other side of town," he had told Margaret. "Pork pies," he said to Daphne "That's rhyming slang for lies. I didn't like to tell them."
There were two reasons for lying, he told himself. The first was the idiotic remark Harry Ellis had made when they were all discussing the staff party. He had recalled that Fred and Daphne had danced together, adding, "Ou la la, yes!" Margaret had bristled. Needlessly, Fred tried to explain later. He and Daphne had danced together but there was no Ou-la-la about it. Or almost none, he added to himself.
The second reason arose from the phone calls late at night. Twice Margaret had answered and the caller had hung up without speaking. "Wrong numbers," Fred had said. "They happen often in Paris. Like the dog turds on the pavement and the Metro strikes." "Uh-huh," said Margaret, two lines appearing down the her forehead, they had done when she first heard about his affair with Christine. So now that he was with Daphne again, even though it was innocent, he felt he had to lie.
The accident came just as he was turning off the Boulevard Haussman into the Rue La Fayette. "You have gone through a red light!" Daphne shouted. He banged on the brakes and stopped in the middle of the intersection. "It's too late to stop now!" she said. "Idiot!"
Things became confused. Screeching brakes. A police siren coming closer. A high-pitched zing as a car brushed against Fred's rear fender. Fred saw a large blue Renault veer on out of control onto the pavement, braking hard before bumping a lamppost. He stretched over to loosen his seat belt.
"Drive on!" Daphne took hold of his hand. "There is no one hurt. Drive on, for God's sake!"
The engine cut out. "Shouldn't we see if there is anything we need to do?" Fred asked. But he also turned the ignition. He was astonished to see police suddenly surrounding the crashed blue Renault. "They are pulling guns!" he said.
"Drive on!" repeated Daphne, squeaking with frustration. "It is nothing to do with us."
The starter growled ineffectively. "It is flooded," said Fred. "It often happens. But look at all those police! Why do the fuzz want those men?"
"Oh God! I should have taken a taxi! I'll miss my train! And someone will see us." Daphne put her head down in her hands.
That's likely, thought Fred, here at the centre of a city of millions of French strangers. But he could picture Margaret going pale and tight-lipped as she heard about it.
He turned the ignition again and this time the engine fired. A policeman across the road was waving his arms at their car, but Fred drove on.
After he parked his car outside his apartment in the 17th arrondissement, Fred inspected the scratch down the right side - not serious, but noticeable. I shall have to say something to Margaret, he thought. More pork pies.
His son, sitting in a high chair at the table, gurgled with delight as he saw Fred coming in the door. He picked up his new purse and hurled it happily onto the floor.
"That's the new game," said Margaret, picking up the purse before coming over to kiss Fred. "He no longer puts things in the purse. He throws it on the floor. Very amusing."
Fred went over and touched Michael's head. Her felt a twist of pleasure in his stomach. The lavender smell of Margaret soothed him. This is real, he thought. To be preserved.
From the kitchen came the sound of things being washed by Dominique, the young Frenchwoman who helped about the house, and pop music from the radio she liked to play all the time.
"Is that going all right?" Fred asked, glancing towards the door.
"Mmm," said Margaret, balancing her hand. "Comme ci, comme ça. Mostly comme ça. But I think it is going to be all right."
There had been some cultural differences between Margaret's Cheltenham and Dominique's Marseilles - about how loud the pop music should be played and whether bread should be dipped in wine before being given to a baby. She was also always late, on principle, it seemed, which grated when she was meant to be baby-sitting while they went to the cinema.
"She was very excited today," Margaret added. "That radio she listens to said there had been an armed robbery and a chase through the Paris traffic before the men were arrested. Chicago stuff. Not what you would expect in Paris."
"Paris people drive like lunatics even when there isn't a car chase," said Fred. "I got a scratch down the left of our car today. A man scraped past me at an intersection and just drove on. They sometimes seem to think they are in a chariot race. It's not grave, as they say here, but I'll have to take it to the garage."
That was all partly true, he thought. And that must have been why the police were chasing the big Renault.
"I'll get us a glass of beer," he said, moving towards the kitchen, "a pig's ear. We can celebrate Michael's new purse."
About two hours later, when Dominique was getting into her coat to go home, the door bell rang.
Fred and Margaret looked at each other questioningly. "If it is Harry, I'm going to bed," said Margaret.
Dominique moved to open the door. "It is a police," she said as she ushered in a young man holding a file of papers. Her eyes were glinting with excitement.
"Desolé de vous déranger," he said, smiling and holding out his hand. "Je peux parler Francais?"
"Oui, bien sur," said Fred. He took pride in his French, learnt serving in a bar in Calais as a student. Also, he thought, with a knot of dread forming in his stomach, it might help if Margaret did not understand properly what was being said.
Speaking fast, the detective explained who he was and said it was about an incident on the Boulevard Haussman. A police officer had observed a white Volkswagen car in a small collision and had noted the number. The car had driven off but they had found the address from the licensing authorities.
"It is about a car accident," Dominique whispered to Margaret. Fred glared at her discouragingly.
"I thought it was the other car that drove off," said Margaret, who was obviously following what the policeman was saying.
The policeman turned to Margaret and assured her that she must not be worried; this was not an unfriendly investigation.
"Do not unquiet yourself, he says," whispered Dominique.
"It is all right. I understand," said Margaret, shushing her decisively.
The detective went on to say that this was on the outskirts of a most serious matter, resulting in at least three arrests and charges of armed robbery, and they wished to check all the details. But he could understand that to observe such a scene, especially for a woman in the passenger seat (he bowed towards Margaret), was deeply shocking, and they were not taking a serious view of the fact that the car had driven on after an accident - although they disapproved of such a thing. In this case, they were in a sense grateful, because the Volkswagen had caused the accident and made the arrests easier. The detective again smiled and gave a bow.
All that was necessary was for him to confirm the details, he said, and he asked Fred to show him a piece of identity, a driving licence and the papers for the car. He made some notes as Fred produced the papers. Margaret went to stand by Michael, who was watching with wide, fascinated eyes. Margaret's back was stiff with tension, Fred noted.
The detective said they might ask for a statement later, but he thought that was unlikely. He again shook everybody by the hand, and left.
"You can go too, Dominique," said Margaret, her voice icy. Dominique had been standing at the door, moving from foot to foot, excited and eager to have some words about the scene.
"O.K.," she said, disappointed. "A demain."
Michael demanded attention, which was a help. He was banging his empty plate with a spoon, and needed to be changed.
Some minutes later, with Michael sitting in the middle of the carpet, still clutching his spoon and his new purse, Margaret turned to Fred. "So there was a woman in the car, the man said. I expect it was Daphne, yes?"
"Yes," said Fred. "Her mother has had a stroke and she had to go the England and the Metro is on strike and so I said I would give her a lift to the station. That was all there was."
"So why did you lie to me? It is funny, but I knew that was a lie - 'a client over by Bastille.' When one can see you, it is easy to tell when you are lying. Something about the way you hold your neck, I think. But even on the phone - it's the tone of voice, I suppose. Back in the days when you were making up stories in order to go and see Christine, I could always tell what was untrue. But why now? You are not really carrying on with that girl, are you?"
"No," said Fred, straightening his neck. "Not at all. I just wanted to help her because she was crying and her mother's had a stroke and the Metro's on strike."
"And I suppose she's quite pretty, some people might think," said Margaret. "But why didn't you tell me then?"
"I didn't want to worry you. After those phone calls, and what Harry said about the party. And there was nothing in that, I promise you. It is just that I like to dance, as you know."
"You should have told me," said Margaret. "It makes it all so - I don't know - so sordid. Don't tell me about pork pies! These were just rotten lies." She was very pale and Fred felt he had to find some way to stop her frowning, to remove those two furrows like railway lines between her eyebrows. Strangely, he was moved by her posh vowels as she said "rotten lies."
Michael began crawling over towards his father, pulling his purse after him.
"You must just tell me these things," said Margaret. "I will believe you."
Michael held his purse high above his head and then threw it down at Fred's feet. He looked up gurgling.
"Well, I'll believe you sometimes," said Margaret. And they smiled at each other.

While she was in the middle of a furious dispute with Gabriel, Pauline discovered she had lost her Filofax.
The dispute had begun in Chez Jean-Pierre, a student eating-house on the Left Bank, after she had bad-temperedly stopped eating her hache parmentier. It was not up to the usual Paris standards, lacking taste and without enough meat. "A bankrupt shepherd's pie," she said. Gabriel did not laugh.
"Oui," she said to the hovering waiter. "je suis fini." She was too tired to have a row in French, she decided.
"It's not 'Je suis fini.' It's 'J'ai fini'," Gabriel said, sounding pleased with himself. The French couple at the next table smiled at each other.
"I don't need you to correct my French," she said, "particularly not loudly, humiliatingly, in public."
"There are avoir verbs and être verbs, as you know".
"Of course I know, for God's sake! And I know two and two makes four. I also have been living in France."
"But finir is not an être verb."
"Aah!" She started drumming her fingers on the table. The French couple, who were dealing with their addition, were watching with open interest now. He went on.
"'Je suis fini' means I am washed up, exhausted or suchlike."
"That's it, Gabriel! You don't know when to stop. You are like an oil tanker running out of control. As sensitive as the average rhinoceros."
"'Je suis tombé is right, interestingly. 'I have fallen."'
She lifted up her hand and banged it on the table. As it came up it touched the wine bottle, spilling wine over Gabriel's trousers., "Merde! It will stain! I've just had them cleaned!" He pushed his chair back, bumping into the French couple, who were on their way out, openly laughing now.
"You don't need to laugh," Gabriel said to them. "And you do need to watch where you are going. Idiots!"
"je suis desolé," said Pauline. "I am sorry about my companion. He is American. Americain!"
"De rien," the Frenchman said, continuing on his way, still laughing.
"You don't have to apologize for me," hissed Gabriel. "Ever. Don't ever do that! That I can't stand."
"Sensitive, all of a sudden," said Pauline. "You know, the real reason you think you can be rude is that you are an American, even if you are a hyphenated Italian-American."
"It is the British who think they can be rude. That's what they are famous for, one of the few things they are good at - cricket and being rude to foreigners."
"More basically, it is because you are a man that you think it is necessary to be insensitive. And because you are insecure about being a man - ah, you don't like that! Some men, real men, can express their maleness and also be polite."
She reached for her handbag and it was then that she realized from its weight that her Filofax was missing. She started burrowing into it, as she often did. "Oh my God! My Filofax - it's not here!"
"That's important suddenly. We are just getting to an interesting point and we have to start worrying about a wretched address-book!"
"It's not a wretched address-book - it's my life! The way to get in touch with all my friends, my contacts for work, here and in London, my history! Perhaps I left it when we had a drink at the Quatre Saisons. I went to make a phone call there, didn't I? I'll have to go back." She plunged again into her handbag to make sure it wasn't there.
"It's wonderful, isn't it? You are so good at organizing everyone else, but you can't organize your purse so that you can find anything."
"This is crucial. You are too much of an ox - klutz, they would say in your New York, yes? - to realize it, but I have to find it." She pushed her chair back.
"'It is interesting that the Lost Property Office in English is the Found Property Office in French."
"It is not interesting! I have lost my Filofax! Monsieur!" She waved at the waiter, who ignored her.
"And that the French for walkie-talkie is talkie-walkie." She began to put on her coat.
"I don't have any money with me," he said. "And they don't take credit cards here. I told you when we came in."
"I should just walk out. Monsieur!" The waiter continued to ignore her.
"They accuse women of being bitches, but cats are a better comparison." He continued in his teaching mode. "Sensitive because they don't care a hell about the rest of the world. They can be tolerant because what others do is not important. They can sit there purring sensitively, licking themselves. Or is your case diving into that disorganized purse."
"Monsieur!" She waved her hand again. "I'm going to walk out anyway."
"I'm going to walk out first!" And he did. His telephone numbers, she remembered as she strode hurriedly back down Boulevard St. Germain, were in her Filofax, both that of his tiny apartment in the 17th arrondissement and that of the language school where he taught. Not that I will ever want to phone him again, she told herself. And I could probably remember his home number if I thought about it. But she never did remember numbers: she always looked them up in her Filofax.
So he might be lost to her. Tant pis! There were other fish in Paris, less cold and arrogant. French fish, perhaps.
But what about her other friends? She had promised to phone Margaret, to talk about the trouble she was having with her husband. And back in Britain, all her former fellow-students from Sussex University. All gone! She didn't even know her own number at the advertising agency. Nor that of the soap company in Lille she had promised to get in touch with. And then there was Robbie, back in Nottingham with the wife and daughter he had always promised to leave. Suppose she changed her mind and wanted to get touch with him again? That number was gone too. Her heart missed a beat as she turned up towards the medical school. But no! She had undoubtedly been right to come Paris and to try to find a new life. To hell with Robbie!
That new life was partly recorded in her Filofax, notably in the little coded references she had made after her first nervous meeting with Gabriel. And all that new life was now lost, left in a café. It wasn't important, she told herself, so far as Gabriel went. He had turned out to be impossibly American. Arrogantly, insensitively American! She didn't want to get in touch with him, even if she were able to.
She turned into the Quatre Saisons and waved a greeting at Nicole behind the bar. Nicole's eyes lighted up in recognition, and she pointed to a young man sitting in the corner.
He was busy reading her Filofax! Indignation mixed with relief. There was so much that was private and personal - the dates on which she regularly had to start getting worried about being pregnant, for instance.
She walked over and sat opposite him. Good-looking in a French sort of way, she noted. Black curly hair that was carefully-barbered. Hazel eyes that looked almost feminine. Was he gay? she wondered. Either that or married. Good-looking men always were. She held out a hand for her Filofax.
"C'est à moi, " she said.
"You are English," he said. "I can speak English. A little. I found this at the side of the telephone. Nicole said you would probably return. Otherwise, it was necessary to find your address."
"It has much that is private," she said, putting her hand forward more insistently.
"'G3' at the beginning." He looked lubriciously questioning. "And then 'G 1O' many times."
Gabriel! She noted that when she had thought of Robbie on her way to Quatre Saisons, the cliché "her heart missed a beat" had seemed exactly appropriate. But at the reminder of Gabriel, it was not her heart that was affected but her stomach. And it did not miss a beat: it churned. She reached forward and pulled the Filofax from his hand.
"Can I buy you a drink in gratitude? she asked. " Voulez-vous boire quelque chose?"
They both had a glass of wine, and then he paid for another and she bought one "for the route." She learnt that he was a graduate student of philosophy and that he would probably end up teaching, but that he wanted to be a writer. He adored Stendhal, whom she admired too, and had tried and failed to read and appreciate Jane Austen. "Emma," she said, "is one of the high points of Western civilization." They smiled at each other more warmly.
He wanted to take her to dinner, but she explained that she had already eaten after a fashion - failed hache parmentier. He explained that there was a festival of the films of Jean-Luc Godard at a nearby cinema and asked if she would come with him later that week. She smiled again: Gabriel hated Jean-Luc Godard. Going to À bout de souffle would be a sort of revenge. But she was disturbed to find the usual visceral movement at the thought of Gabriel. She ordered another round of drinks "for the route."
He told her that his girl friend had gone back to live in Sweden. Life was very difficult. People shouldn't go to live in Sweden. He went on about his friend and her eyes glazed over. Then he put his hand on hers. It was a light, finely boned hand, with long sensitive fingers. Suitable for playing the piano, she thought. Gabriel had a large, solid hand, suitable for digging up turnips. She took her hand away and found there were tears in her eyes.
"Je suis desolé," she said. "II faut partir."
She was still crying, without sobs, just tears rolling down, when she arrived home. Her answering machine was blinking.
"'I just wanted to say I am sorry I was crabby," his voice said. "I will buy you a new Filofax."
She looked up his number and dialled it. "Crabby? You were pompous, rude, insensitive, intolerably male-chauvinist-piggish!" Pause. "But all right. I accept your apology. And I am sorry if I was grumpy."
"Grumpy? You were ... you were English! But all right. It is good of you to apologize. I know of a Paris store where I can get a new Filofax."
"There is no need. It's been found." Pause. "What I need is a new life."
"Perhaps that can be arranged too. Can I come over there?"

"It rains dogs and cats," said Véronique proudly. "That is idiom, yes?"
Martin sighed. "Cats and dogs," he said. "Idiomatic. It is raining."
"Why?" asked Véronique, blinking behind her heavy glasses. She always asked why.
"It has to do with Descartes and post-deconstructionism," he explained. "Not to mention Derrida." He saw a drop of water rolling down the window like a tear. Outside on the Paris street, it was coming down in cords. I must find something to do other than teach English, he thought.
"You pleasant with me?" said Véronique, uncertain about whether to be indignant.
"Joke," said Martin. "I am sorry. But to return to our present tense muttons. There is a subtle difference between 'I live in Paris' and 'I am living in Paris.' I will explain." But instead he put his head down on his arms and sobbed. The real question was, why did he live in Paris?
His mother had said, "At 31, you have to decide what you are going to do when you grow up."
And so he decided to leave his London job in public relations and come to Paris. He would write dark novels about how the laundry-basket squeaked, discuss existentialism in the Deux Magots, contribute witty free-lance articles to important publications, and fall in love with French girls.
Instead he taught Véronique with the heavy glasses, and sometimes helped Shelagh from Ballymurphy with her Sunday paper contributions.
"They would be happier if you were more experienced," Shelagh had said that morning. It was boring to go into details, he told her. The indisputable fact was that he had written about soccer brilliantly in the student newspaper, once had an honourable mention in the New Statesman's literary competition and twice had letters published in the Financial Times. What did they expect for the price? Mencken?
"Well, I don't know." said Shelagh. "But they say it is an important story and we do need a male to go into this dodgy bar. I will explain."
In the purple gloom of the bar, a jukebox shone in the corner like a lighthouse. Martin could discern three young women and a man draped on bar stools. This is Paris, he thought, trying to still his nervousness. Ou la la, and all that.
One of the women came over to him. "Do you want to buy me a drink?" she said in French, putting a hand on his arm and leading him to the other end of the bar. "Perhaps you want to buy a bottle? It is better. Or else they give me Perrier and charge you champagne!" She laughed. "We could go and sit in the back there, if you want."
Martin swallowed. "Oui," he said. And then, "Josephine? Are you Josephine?" She stiffened. "No. My name is Marie." The blonde behind the bar leant forward to explain that the bottle cost 800 francs. Marie put a hand on his knee. "You are American?" she said in English.
Just ask for Josephine, Shelagh had said, and then ask her about Donal Mulligan. "Our sources say that he calls in to see her every time he is in Paris on the way to the European parliament in Strasbourg. We need to confirm that. Don't spend too much money." It had sounded easy. But so far 800 francs had only got him the wrong girl.
"English," he said.
"I have a cousin who lives in Brighton," she said, moving closer. Her scent disturbed him.
"Josephine," he managed to say again. "Is she not here?"
"Why do you ask for her? She is busy with that man." She indicated the other end of the bar. "My name is Marie. I am more pretty."
It was probably true, he thought, disturbed now by her tight-fitting pull-over. He swallowed again. "I need to talk to her," he said. "About a man called Donal."
"Donal without a 'D', he always say." She laughed. "He is amusing. Sympa. You are a friend of Donal without a 'D'? That man with Josephine will go soon and you can talk to her. But let us drink some more champagne."
Josephine, when she eventually arrived, had cold eyes behind her professional smile. "But you are not Irish," she said after he had talked for a little while. "I do not think you are a friend of Donal. I think you are a journalist. You will ask me questions and then you will make an excuse and leave. That's what they say, yes? I do not talk to journalists." She walked away.
"So are you going to leave?" asked Marie, pouring out some more champagne.
"I am not really a journalist," he said. "More a writer."
He reported back to Shelagh, who phoned her news editor.
"You'll have to go back," she said. "They need a signed affidavit, their lawyer says. Even then he's not too happy. And your expense account is ridiculous, they say. Nobody asked you to pay 800 francs for a bottle of champagne. And what's this 600-franc present? For information? Don't be silly."
"All right," he said. "I'll get an affidavit." He felt the familiar gloom gathering in his head, as always when he made a promise he knew he was going to break. "But you'll have to give me some expenses. It costs money just to breathe in that bar."
The scene was the same. Josephine at the end of the bar, talking to a different man this time, Marie coming forward and putting a hand on his arm, and the girl behind the bar producing a bottle of champagne without his asking.
"I don't think Josephine wants to sign that," said Marie, looking at the typescript Martin had produced. "She doesn't like."
"It doesn't really say anything," said Martin. "Just that Donal Mulligan sometimes comes into the bar. They want a piece of paper, you see. The lawyer. Perhaps you could sign."
"No. I do not like either. And he is not my friend, Donal without the 'D'. But I have a piece of paper. It fell out of his pocket and I found it. You will pay money? I will fetch it."
He took a gulp of champagne. Then Josephine walked past, also on her way out of the room, brushing past his attempts to greet her. "I do not talk with journalists." And the man from the other end of bar approached.
He was a big man, in a suit and tie, Martin noted. Red cheek-bones, as if he had been standing in the wind. "Mr. Mulligan does not like people who ask questions," he said. "And Mr. Mulligan's friends do not like people who ask questions. Do I make myself clear?"
Martin tried an ingratiating smile. "I just wanted to establish the facts." I must not whine, he said to himself. After all, Shelagh had said, Mulligan was a politician who campaigned on family values and all that. "Public interest," he said. "The facts. He campaigns on family values." He swallowed.
"I think I do not make myself clear," the man said. "The facts have nothing to do with you. He campaigns on family values because he is a family man. Three children. What else he does is not your business."
"The freedom of the press," said Martin. That would sound more impressive, he thought, if my voice had not broken on the last syllable. It was also a sentence that needed a verb.
The man stepped forward and punched Martin in the stomach and then cuffed the side of his head as he doubled up. Martin fought to get his breath back. There was little actual pain, but he needed air.
v "He has friends, Mr. Mulligan," the man said, rubbing his fist, "some of them not too gentle, not polite at times. You may have heard of people being shot in the kneecap."
"Are you threatening me?" Martin was astonished to hear himself ask. What a stupid question!
"Just offering some advice." The man stood back, looking thoughtfully at Martin, as if he intended buying him. He then punched Martin's face. Martin's head jolted back and he fell to the floor, aware of blood coming out of his nose. He was too excited to feel much pain, and he struggled to get to his feet. There was something else he had to say to this man, he knew. If he could think of it.
A burly Frenchman came running out from behind the bar.
"It is all right," said the man, "I am leaving. There was a matter we had to discuss."
Marie helped Martin to a chair in the back room, produced a serviette to mop up his bleeding nose and poured some champagne. "You will have an eye in the pocket, do you say?"
"Black eye," said Martin. "It is not grave."
She also showed Martin a piece of paper she said had fallen out of Donal Mulligan's pocket. It said: :"Two pints, and no milk for the rest of the week. Regards, D. Mulligan."
"You will pay me money?" asked Marie.
Shelagh was not impressed. "What usually happens in cases like this," she said, "is that the person we are attacking furiously denies things, demands withdrawal and apology and issues a writ. The next thing, the lawyer was telling me, is that we produce some evidence, everyone hums and haws, and then we reach a settlement. Perhaps we publish a little 'correction' low down on an inside page. No one wants to spend huge sums of money in a court. But what we must have is some evidence to frighten them at the beginning there."
"What about the fact that the girls talk of 'Donal without a D'? They couldn't make that up. And there's the note. So it isn't an affidavit, but it is documentary evidence. And my black eye! Why should the man thump me unless it is all true? Should I photograph it? I could get a doctor to look at my stiff neck."
"I'll talk to them again," said Shelagh, picking up the telephone. After talking for some time, she put a hand over the mouthpiece and said to Martin: "He's not impressed with the note to the milkman.
" More talk on the telephone followed, mostly with grunts on her part. Then she look over to Martin again, hand on mouthpiece "He wants to confirm that you didn't pay this woman for her services. You didn't sleep with her?"
Martin hesitated, blushed, realised he had betrayed himself with one tiny moment of silence. "Oh, my God!" said Shelagh.
"I didn't actually sleep with her," he said, but Shelagh had turned her attention back to the telephone.
"They are not going to publish anything," Shelagh said as she out down the phone. "The fact that you paid money decided them. 'I made an excuse and left' is not just a cliché. The thing is that if it ever came to court, you might be cross-examined and they would ask you, 'Did you pay money to this prostitute for her favours?' End of case."
"We should have taken a high moral tone from the beginning," said Martin, stroking his black eye. "The chap was right. It is not our business. We should have said, 'I have some principles.'"
"If you wrote the story, which of course they won't use, it might help to get you some expenses, though nothing like the amount you are claiming," said Shelagh.
"No. I'll just have to work harder to earn the money I lost," said Martin. "I have some principles."
"Today is raining dogs and cats," said Véronique. "That is right?"
"Cats and dogs," said Martin. "And you can't say, 'Today is raining.' Please don't ask me why."
"I know," said Véronique, smiling behind her thick glasses. "It is difficult, the present. Today rains cats and dogs! Yes?"
"Yes," said Martin. "And tomorrow also, probably."

"That's what your mother always said, isn't it? No condition is permanent. I seem to remember that you kept quoting it too." His wife Clare pushed back her chair and walked out onto the balcony. Paris lay calm in the darkness beneath her, with car lights tracing lines down Avenue Hoche.
"It is true," he said, putting down his wineglass and following her. "Though I can't see that it is relevant now."
The phrase had haunted his life. He often thought of his mother sitting beside his bed in a blue floral nightgown, smelling of lavender and holding his head because he had been crying over a preparatory school crisis: He hated Miss Dunn and Driscoll was bullying him. "No condition is permanent," she had said. And it was true. Soon he was promoted from Miss Dunn's class, and Driscoll found someone else to bully.
He had later used the phrase while visiting his uncle who was in hospital, dying of lung cancer, so they said. His uncle had gathered breath to laugh. "You mean," he said, "that soon I will either get better, or die. And that's meant to be a comfort!" He began to choke with laughter. This in fact cleared something, set the disease into remission, and his uncle recovered.
Then, he remembered, Clare had once said, while pressed against his back in bed, "I think no one is as completely happy as us." He had replied, "No condition is permanent." He tried to explain that this was a joke, but she had not been amused then, nor later when she found out about Penelope.
They were now close to agreeing on divorce terms and had decided to meet to sort out the last details, thus saving lawyers' fees. Everything was to be divided about equally. As she had moved in with Gerald, he was to keep the apartment, calm and spacious by Paris standards, with its splendid view from its six floor. (If you leant over the balcony, the agent had stressed, you could see the Eiffel Tower.)
The sticking points in their negotiations were over the value that should be put on his considerable life insurance and on the widow's pension that she could have expected if she had remained married to him (he had long years of service behind him at an international marketing firm).
"I mean," he said, holding onto the edge of the balcony, "my mother probably thought of marriage as a permanent condition. That has proved not the case. But there is nothing temporary about divorce."
"It is remarkable," she said, leaning out and turning her head, "but the Eiffel Tower is lit up in a different way."
"Nonsense," he said. "I saw it on the way in."
"No. A sort of cross thing. It must be a feast day or something. Why don't you look?"
He leant out to see. She put her hands under one shoe and heaved. One condition is permanent, she said to herself. Then she ran screaming to-a neighbour's door. "Au secours! Au secours!" she shouted. "My husband has fallen from the balcony!"

Coming away from the graveside after his mother's interment in Paris, Tom felt like Joseph Cotton at the end of The Third Man: he was going to meet someone, or someone would walk past, and all would become clear. He had felt the same after the burial of his That time there had in fact only been a dog that tried to bite him. This time he saw a woman with hair falling over her eyes drawing close to him and clearly summoning up courage to talk.
He recognised her as a friend (client, hanger-on) of his mother, a slightly mad Frenchwoman who talked endlessly about her problems and had driven him away from his mother's bedside in the past. "You think she is intolerably vulgar," his mother had said. "In fact, she needs our help. She needs someone who will listen. It is not much. But, of course, you have your poetry to attend to."
The two parental deaths were different, one quick - a stroke while his father struggled bad-temperedly in the snow to get the car into the garage - and the other at the end of a long illness that she was always reluctant to admit was serious. And his reaction was different. Even as a child, he had been puzzled rather than warmed by this gruff man who smelt of whisky and made difficult jokes about the cricket scores. Could he really be my father? And what had possessed mother to become involved with him? With adolescence came the disturbing idea that his father was perhaps sexually attractive, or had once been. Could it be true that one's mother was interested in sex?
With her, over the years of suffering while she lived in Paris, in spite of her endless parish committees, progressive campaigns (to protect the environment, save the whales, end the death penalty, bring peace and justice to Ireland, South Africa, Croatia, Rwanda, agree to rights for the Basques and so on) - in spite of so much that he disagreed with, and in spite of the tiresome stream of visiting priests, nuns and people in need, there was warmth between them.
She forgave his storming out of the room sometimes and then going off to live in his own Paris garret. "You have your poetry to attend to," she often said. She took pride in his published works, though she did not agree with what they said, or understand them. Part of her progressive philosophy was the tenet that parents did not try to impose a life style on their children. She even tried to accept his lack of religion.
Once, after he had left her bedside because he could not stand the talk of her other visitor, she phoned him to say: "Perhaps one day when you are in front of St. Peter, you will say, 'I did not listen to this woman - and thus prevent her from committing suicide - because I had my poetry to attend to.' And you will show him a poem." She paused to cough. "But I sometimes wonder," she went on, "whether St. Peter attaches so much importance to poems."
When he had walked away from his father's funeral, he had felt an emptiness, a gap. But this time there was pain, and also a guilt that he knew would not go away for years. He could have visited her more often, he could have tried harder to understand her compassion for almost everything that lived.
As he got to the gate of the cemetery, the woman with her hair falling over her eyes touched his arm and said in French, "There are many people who will miss your mother. I was hoping to ask her advice today, as it happens. I have this problem." She went to explain that her lawyer thought she could sue her garage because they had not fixed her car properly. But before that could happen, the bill had to be paid. Her ex-husband had said he would pay it but he hadn't, and now he wouldn't answer his phone.
Tom took her arm. "Let's have a cup of coffee in the café over there and discuss it," he said. He looked over his shoulder at the sky above the gravestones. "I will attend to my poems later, mother," he said silently. "Tell St. Peter."

"I hate the dative," said Peter, looking up from his coursebook. "There should be a law against it." Gretel laughed. Then she came over and kissed him.
Peter felt the electric shock her laugh always produced in him. It was mostly this laugh, he realised, that was mostly responsible for bringing him to Austria and into a language school to learn German.
The laugh had a gurgling sound to begin with, not unlike a happy baby noise, and then a trill of joy, related to the skylark's song. He had heard it first on a bus in Birmingham. She was sitting behind him, talking German to a girl friend, and the laughter made him turn around. She had blue eyes, of astonishing candour, that seemed to light up the back of his head. He was dazed for two days. Then he happened to meet Gretel at a friend's house and she laughed at their shared memory of the bus. That was the beginning.
She laughed a lot - at the things he said, which was flattering, at her English mistakes, while they were making love, which could be disconcerting, while speaking to a friend on the telephone, and at inappropriate times in the cinema. He was always enchanted.
"She is a pretty girl," his mother said disapprovingly, "but I don't see why you have to go to Austria after her. What will you do there? Why can't she stay in Birmingham?"
"Austria!" Carol, his agent, said. " Of course, a free-lance industrial designer could theoretically work in the middle of the Sahara. Except that it is necessary to meet the clients sometimes. You have enough work commissioned to last a few weeks. But what's going to happen then?"
Gretel said, "How can I explain why I am laughing if you do not speak German?" And then in a more serious moment, "How can you say 'I love you' if you do not know me in Austria? That is me, in Dornbirn, in Voralberg. That made me. That you must understand if you are really to love me. In German."
And what about living in Birmingham? She laughed. "My friends are there in Dornbirn. And my family. There it snows in the winter and the mountains are beautiful. With fir trees white at the edge, you understand? And we go skiing on the weekends. Before Easter we parade in the streets, with floats, and guggen music. What do you do in Birmingham? You sit in the pub drinking beer and talking about cricket!" she laughed.
It was the pub that brought the moment of decision that led to his buying a ticket to Dornbirn. He had previously explained to his friend Richard that this was different from his previous love affairs. "It is not just that the love itself is wonderful beyond belief," he said. "It's" - and he stumbled in trying to find the words - "It's that she seems to be in touch with a light, or something. It sounds absurd. But I really believe that this is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. If I lose her, I risk losing a meaning I was beginning to find for my life."
And in the pub with Richard and Gretel, he said he had bought a book to help him begin to learn German.
"The only words of Austrian I know," said the five-thumbed Richard, "are 'Vienna Schnitzel' and 'Nazi Anschluss.'"
Peter had laughed and Gretel did not. Peter made the mistake later of trying to defend Richard. "It was just a joke," he said. "And you must understand Richard's uncle was killed in the war. It had an effect. Anyway, it is still necessary for Austria to face up to the Anschluss and all that."
"I was born in 1973, and I don't have to 'face up' to anything," said Gretel. "And I hate your Richard, you understand, and his jokes and the Birmingham pubs!"
In Dornbirn, he found a furnished flat and was able to continue working on his new design for a vacuum cleaner. And he learnt German twice a week in the evenings. Gretel was living with her parents and this made the loving more difficult, as she would not allow it at home. But she intoxicatingly came to his flat at times.
At her house people spoke German most of the time, which was also difficult for him. Sometimes in the Vorarlberg dialect, which was impossible for him. Her father, a retired chemist, could manage some English but there was little he wanted to say to Simon, or to anyone. He liked to sit in a corner smoking his pipe and reading the newspaper. Her mother, on the other hand, talked all the time but the only English she could manage was "Thank you." Gretel translated sometimes. The fact that her mother regularly said the same thing three or four times helped him to understand.
"She says thank you very much for taking so much trouble with teaching me English," said Gretel.
"Thank you," said her mother, nodding emphatically. More German followed.
"She says it is important for my work with the travel firm," said Gretel, then she got tired of translating. But Simon's German lessons allowed him to understand that she was saying, again and again, that things would be different when Gretel gets married. Who needs English then? And it was different for Hans. An accountant did not need English, thank God!
Hans? The other thing that worried Simon was the frequent presence of Hans, the same age as Gretel, with short cropped hair and heavy boots that he took off when he came into the house. He often made Gretel laugh with one or two German words, and her laugh seemed less enchanting to Simon at those moments.
"You must not worry about Hans," Gretel told him. "We were children together, and my mother always thought I should grow up to marry Hans. She still thinks so. But I did not think so." She laughed. "His is an important family in Vorarlberg. His grandfather was a big army man - a hero at Stalingrad, with a lot of medals."
"It is funny," said Simon, "but I was brought up to believe that the heroes at Stalingrad were the defenders."
Gretel did not laugh. "There were heroes on both sides," she said.
And what about her mother's conviction that the only thing between him and Gretel was language lessons, that he was an English teacher?
"It is difficult to translate 'freelance industrial designer' into German," said Gretel, laughing.
That evening Carol his agent phoned to say that it was essential that he came back to Birmingham to spend some time with the clients. He also spoke to his mother on the phone. "I have met her parents and I get on very well with them," he said. "Her father has a moustache and smokes a pipe - an old-fashioned sort of guy. Doesn't say much, but he speaks quite a lot of English. No, we haven't decided to live in Austria. Yet. I'll have to come home in a few weeks for a visit, on business. I'll see you then."
He and Gretel had moments of tenderness. Simon was moved at the way pedestrians in Dornbirn stood waiting at the side of the road until the traffic light changed, even though there wasn't a car on the horizon.
"It is to give an example to the young," said Gretel. "Vorbild is the word, your teacher will tell you." They held hands as they crossed the road.
His German improved. When asked at her house to choose between two sorts of cake - Topfentache or Apfelstrudel - he was able to say that he liked both, all was equal, or gleich. Except that (as he realised immediately he had spoken) he mispronounced the vowel, saying "gl-ee-ch" instead of "gl-aye-ch". This made Hans laugh immoderately and he repeated it to Gretel, who also laughed unrestrainedly. She told her mother, who was also amused. Simon was less than enchanted. "What is so funny about that?" he asked. Gretel recovered her breath and explained. "The way you said it is wrong in High German, as you realised, but it is the way we pronounce the word here in the Vorarlberg dialect. So the way you said it sounded very amusing!"
"Ha, ha," said Simon.
The real crisis came when Gretel, Hans and Simon went walking in the Alps on the Swiss side of the border, the summer sunshine on their backs, the smell of pines in their nostrils and the humbling huge crags rising up on each side. "We don't have air like this in Birmingham," said Simon, smiling as he helped Gretel up onto a path.
Gretel, who had driven them to their starting point, had taken charge of their passports to show them to the border official. While she was walking next to Hans, she saw the passports in her handbag and returned the two men's to Hans. In his turn, Hans prepared to give Simon his. They were clambering down to cross a small mountain stream at this point. Hans stumbled on a rock at the moment he was holding out the passport towards Simon.
"Give it to me!" Simon shouted anxiously. Then realising that Hans spoke almost no English, he tried, "Gibt mich!"
"Mir!" said Gretel from the other side of the stream. "It takes the dative."
Hans looked over towards her. Both started laughing, and Simon's passport slipped from Hans's hand. Simon stood aghast as it tumbled over the rocks and bushes, it seemed in slow motion. Then he scrambled down, falling and grazing his knee, and managed to catch the green booklet just before it fell into the water.
The other two were still laughing when he limped up towards them. "That was lucky," said Gretel, giving a final little gurgle. Simon had a flashing vision of how in the future that gurgling sound could become a serious irritation.
His agent had left an even more urgent message on his answering machine. He spoke to Gretel on the phone and started packing. "The landlord," he explained to Gretel when she came over to see him, "wants to know when I am coming back. If, on the other hand, I am giving up the flat, I must pay him notice."
"Hans keeps asking me to marry him," said Gretel. There were some minutes of bleak silence between them.
"I have learnt the German word for marrying," said Simon. "Verheiraten. I suppose it takes the dative if I want to say 'marry you', like 'dir verheiraten'?"
"No," said Gretel. "It takes the accusative. 'Dich'." She gave a very little laugh.
A little later, Simon knocked on the landlord's door. "I won't be coming back," he said.