The Paris Novel by Anthony McDonald

Author:Anthony McDonald [McDonald, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Anchor Mill Publishing
Published: 2013-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

The morning brought a cloudless blue sky and warm sunshine. It was late when we surfaced and the snow was already thawing rapidly, falling off trees and roofs in lumps as big as duvets.

I was surprised to find in myself no sign yet of the successive waves of self-hatred and guilt that I had expected would set in as soon as day dawned. There would be plenty of time for all that later, I told myself. Those feelings would no doubt steal up on me at a moment of their own choosing, like a delayed hangover – and after last night’s intake I fully anticipated one of those too. But perhaps the situation I found myself in played a role in this. To wake up in a castle in Alsace on a diamantine morning of spring snow was very different from finding myself, for example, in an urban bedsit, making awkward conversation over soggy Cornflakes. And then there was the question of Fabrice. I looked at him sideways as we stood together looking out of the window, both wearing those towelling dressing-gowns again because we had nothing else.

The damage was done. I’d gone to bed with a man, had had sex with that man and enjoyed it. None of that new extension to the fabric of my life could be unpicked. But at least the man in question was a handsome, masculine one, intelligent and affectionate. I still thought so as I looked at him this morning. So it could have been worse. Just.

There was a knock at the door. It was Hervé. ‘I saw you both at the window…’ His face broke into an unplanned grin as soon as he was in the room with us. Perhaps the events of the night were only too legible in our faces, our body language, or even the state of the bed. But then he mastered his facial muscles and handed us the clothes that we'd been wearing when we arrived. They were now dry. There would be breakfast downstairs as soon or as late as we wanted it. Meanwhile the road beyond the gates had been ploughed and the estate manager, who had just finished clearing the driveway, was at the ready with the tractor to take us back to our abandoned car and help us get it moving once more.

As we began to dress, I ran into trouble again with my socks. The two smallest toes would keep snagging; I seemed to have no control over them at all. Fabrice saw this. ‘OK, let me.’ Still naked, he bent down and manipulated my socks carefully over my recalcitrant feet. That accomplished he stood up, then seized me and kissed me. I found myself submitting to this quite philosophically and even kissed him back. After all, it was absolutely certain that we would never again stand naked together like this. ‘It worries me,’ said Fabrice, ‘how you’re going to manage this sock business tomorrow morning when you have to dress yourself.’ And then, partly because of the way Fabrice said that, it began to worry me too.

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