A French Wedding Read online

  Helen.

  Helen.

  Dear Helen.

  Max has said her name in his head about ten million times since that day. He knows the texture of it in his mouth without even having to say it aloud. He knows how it would feel to call it out in the middle of lovemaking or to say it in a whisper into the tiny shell of her ear, amongst the dark and tangle of her hair. Max shudders. He feels himself growing harder and presses down on the accelerator.

  Helen.

  Max wills himself to stop thinking about her. It is stupid. It is always stupid. This is the hopelessness of trying not to think about something once you have started. His thoughts tip to the other end of the spectrum, like an hourglass suddenly turned.

  Dad. Fucking Dad.

  See? It’s impossible.

  It didn’t start right away. It started when his mother left, when he was six and a half, or at least that’s how Max remembers it. His mother had been there, he tried to remember – she was a pretty murky, fuzzy kind of memory now – and then she wasn’t there. A click of the fingers. A vanished mother. It was Max’s fault his mother had left; his father told him that often. And because of it his father beat him. It was one of the few reliable aspects of Max’s life. His dad had always been sullen, angry, but suddenly the rage poured out onto Max. His father beat him on the back, on the legs and stomach. He avoided Max’s face. He kicked him down the stairs and once held his head down in the kitchen sink until Max was half drowned. There had been a used-up tin of baked beans in the dirty water. Max’s father stomped on him, threw him against walls, doors and the table and whipped him with his belt. Or the cord of the toaster. Or kettle. He called him the names the kids at school hadn’t made up yet.

  One night Max’s father threw him out into the street. Max was twelve. For a brief moment he was elated, freedom like a bright taste in his mouth. Then he realised he was coatless and it was the middle of a London autumn, almost winter. He walked only half a block, the impossibility of leaving dousing him like cold water, before turning around and trudging back to that wretched green door. Curling himself, shivering, on the doormat, waiting for his dad to let him back in, which he eventually did, at dawn. Max’s very worst moment of cowardice.

  Max swerves. Christ. Was that a cat? Photographs of his mother. So few of them. Grainy ones with rounded corners; she seems to be looking past the camera. Perhaps she has already spotted her other life, the one she is going to escape them for. A photo of her at the seaside pulling windswept hair away from her mouth, wearing an orange-and-white-striped swimsuit. Another of her on a couch, holding Max as an infant. She wears a pale blue dress and black eyeliner and looks, somehow, emptied out. I don’t want this baby. This isn’t my life. There had been no one to tell Max why she left, exactly, and where she had gone. His recollections were strange and mixed up and sometimes his brain pieced memories together out of those few photographs. Hadn’t they been to the seaside together? Eaten ice cream out of cones? Hadn’t she worn a yellow swimsuit, not an orange-striped one? The truth stuck too fast to fantasy.

  Have I passed Rennes?

  Passed?

  Passed.

  Past.

  It is pointless to think about his mother. To wonder. What kind of woman leaves her child? What kind of woman leaves her child with a monster? It was a devil’s trade. Max’s life for hers. It was unforgiveable. Max will probably never see either of his parents again, if they are still alive, will probably never live in England again. Paris is his home now and it suits him. The sky and slate roofs the same colour, the lumps of still-soft dog shit on the pavement, the smell of coffee, of baking bread, of caramel, cigarettes and urine. The women. Neat, with woollen coats, pretty scarves, slender legs in pantyhose. Lips like ripe cherries. Paris will do.

  That woman, his neighbour who lives in the small, ground-floor apartment, Claudine, would probably have something to say about all that. About his family, about the women. Not to mention the coke. She is a social worker. She smiles too much, asks too many questions and is always carrying bunches of fresh flowers. She likes those tall white ones with the blossoms that look like popcorn and smell strong. She’s also a jazz singer, apparently, and has a cinnamon-coloured cat she calls Pedro. Everyone in the building greets her like she is his or her favourite cousin. They don’t greet Max like that. But Max cannot trust a social worker. Particularly one that smiles too much and lives with a man-cat for company.

  The sign ahead reads Saint-Allouestre.

  Max rubs his eyes again. He needs glasses but he won’t go to an optician. Helen has glasses she uses for reading now. Round tortoiseshell ones. Everyone Max screws these days is in their twenties with skin lovelier than silk, heavenly and unmarked. No pubic hair. Smooth all over. Narrow waists, hollow bellies. They don’t get old. Helen, on the other hand, is getting old at exactly the same rate as Max. She has lines around her eyes. The skin on the back of her hands has thinned, is becoming papery. But. Oh. All Max wants is to stand in the dark with her. In the dark they will be young again. Then he will run his thumb over her soft, taut lips, unbutton her shirt, peel off her trousers. He will press her against him, sweet skin, full breasts, all of her against all of him. Feel her head on his chest, breathe in the Helen scent of her, tip her face to kiss her so deeply she can hardly breathe. Lift her onto him, carry her to where they can lay themselves down, fill her up till all she can perceive is the sensation of her head brimming with stars. Stars, bright and hot and glittering.

  ‘Helen.’

  ‘Max.’

  Helen will say his name in a whisper that moves through him like a current. Reaching the very tips of him. Perhaps he will cry. Who wouldn’t? The sound that completes a person. Helen saying his name and making him finally feel so whole, so alive that he fears running over. Like a drawing escaping its edges.

  ‘Max.’

  The night suddenly luminous. His head filled with stars too. Startling. Shining. Bursting …

  A car horn blares like a wounded beast, tearing a large rip in his thoughts, causing him to swear and swerve. His head swivels to catch sight of the car headed in the opposite direction, righting itself, the arm out the window, the middle finger raised, the driver cursing. Max’s heart races, his breath is ragged. Braking, he flicks on the indicator, pulling over to the side of the road and bumping over the grass. He blinks and then laughs.

  Max glances at the passenger seat to make sure the small, velvet box is still there. It is. It has rolled into the crease of the chair, the closed mouth of it turned up to him. Max smiles. His plan is safe and so is he. Fear like that never stays with him long.

  Max closes his eyes for a short nap, to sober up. To pull down the screen on the past, his childhood, his father. He drifts into fantasies of Helen. His future. A new decade: his forties. Sleep strokes at his body and his mind.

  He still has an erection.

  London, 1995

  Max very nearly didn’t make the gig. He’d been drunk or hung-over or both. But he got there, getting to gigs being one of the very few things Max could be relied on for, and that was the night there was the record producer in the crowd. They’d almost had a break like that before but it had turned to nothing – all talk and no action, no contract, no cash. Still, it had piqued Max’s interest. It made him think it was possible and encouraged him to get to gigs despite being wasted, getting over being wasted, and all the increasingly fewer shades in between. It made him curious. Just to turn up and see. Besides which, playing music and performing made Max feel the most like himself. There weren’t many things like that.

  They had a big crowd that night. The band had been getting larger and larger crowds, but there was always the vivid memory of playing to just a handful of people, the unease that it might happen again. That night, the place was packed with people shoulder to shoulder, smiling and jostling.

  The gang were there, the usuals, as close to sibli
ngs as Max would ever get. Helen, back from a trip to India, her hair in braids. Lars and Nina. Good old Eddie, of course. Rosie was going to call in later, she had a date. Max couldn’t help but look out for her in that mass, her blonde hair. They weren’t close, Max and Rosie, not like he was with Helen or even Nina, but he felt better when all of them were there. Rosie was dating a doctor, Helen said. Helen also said the guy was an ‘uppity prick’ while Nina reported he was nice enough. Max had never met the bloke but agreed with Helen nonetheless. Helen knew her way around uppity pricks. She was an expert.

  Everything came together that night. They sounded good, real good, and they were tight. And that wasn’t just the booze talking, though it always helped. The band was getting along, best they ever had. The crowd was into it; that didn’t always happen. They were one energised mass, moving together like a school of fish, a murmuration of starlings. The Parlophone guy was there, in amongst it all, not that they knew at the time. When Max squinted and put his palm up against the lights, he could make out the heads he was looking for – Lars was the easiest to spot. Not only was he the tallest but also his smile had a wattage unmatched by anyone else.

  Afterwards, when the band was wet through with sweat, sucking on beer bottles like hungry babies, all of them backstage and stoked, fucking stoked, the Parlophone guy introduced himself. He wanted to see them in his office next week. His name was Bob; the dullest name ever. Which just proved he must be a suit, that he must be for real. Besides, Bob knew his music. Bob talked about The Jacks like he’d been at all their rehearsals, had listened in when they’d made decisions about including this or excluding that. Bob said they sounded like David Bowie and Chrissie Hynde had a love child and that child had been raised by Keith Richards and Stevie Nicks; said they seemed to be the only ones not doing the Britpop thing. He had them nailed. And he wanted them; Max could see it in Bob’s eyes. Max knew when a person wanted a piece of him. It was what made him so good with women; he could just tell. Bob gave them a business card each. He wrote down ‘Wednesday 2.30pm’ on the back of each one with a black biro that left ink on Max’s sweaty fingers. After Bob said goodbye they all fell apart laughing like it was the funniest, stupidest thing they had ever seen or heard. But they knew it was something, Max knew it was for real. Knew it in his bones.

  Max told the guys he had to go see his friends; he would catch them up later at the bar they went to when everywhere else was shut. Moving through the crowd was easy, it was back to being a loose thing, composed of separate parts. Max felt pats on his back, an arm slung around him for a moment and a guy roaring something in his ear he didn’t catch but grinned at anyway. They had done good. Everyone was happy with them.

  ‘Max!’ Helen called, running up with her long skirt and twisted hair. Her skin was browner than usual, her eyes shining. Max let her cling to him. Allowed himself a moment to breathe her in, the scent of her skin made up of patchouli, cotton, smoke and soap.

  ‘Good to see you, kid. How was India?’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘I want to hear all about it.’

  ‘I’m going to bore you senseless,’ she warned.

  ‘Never,’ Max said, kissing her cheeks, leaving slick patches of sweat.

  Lars next, slapping him too hard on the back, palm as big as a plate. ‘Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. So proud of you mate.’ His eyes were wide and he looked wasted but that was just Lars. High on enthusiasm. Nina, still on her stool, gave a thumbs-up and a smile that said all that Lars had just beaten into Max’s back.

  Eddie collared Max with his elbow. ‘Look at you!’ Eddie was wasted. He pushed a warm beer in a plastic cup into Max’s hand. Max welcomed it down his throat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked around at them all.

  ‘Guy came to see us. After. Record label guy,’ he said, in purposeful staccato.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Parlophone,’ Max replied.

  Helen screamed; Max caught her in his arms, beer spilling over both of them.

  ‘Shit, mate, shit …’ Lars said, shaking his head.

  Nina got off her stool to give him a laughing hug. ‘This is really happening, hey?’

  Max shrugged. ‘Could be.’ Though he knew it was. Eddie was swearing and doing fist pumps. He almost stumbled into a guy standing by the bar. A big guy with a lot of tattoos. Lars yanked Eddie upright by his shirt and made apologies.

  Helen shifted into the spot underneath Max’s arm, which he hung over her shoulder. She fit perfectly there. Max felt the tiny hairs that had escaped her braids tickling his nostrils as he kissed her head. Everyone was laughing and talking. Max felt as though the blood in his veins was bristling and sparkling, more alive and vibrant than ever. Felt like his body was made of incandescent particles, gold dust, assembled for a moment in his form but for how long, who knew? Felt radiant. Felt invincible. He squeezed Helen closer to him and tried to commit the moment to memory like processing film in the darkroom. The opposite of Max’s usual approach which was to light and burn moments almost as soon as they happened.

  Max felt a finger in his side and turned to see Rosie.

  ‘What did I miss?’

  Helen peeked out from Max’s wing. ‘Max might have a record deal!’

  Rosie checked Max’s face; his smile unshakeable.

  ‘Get out.’

  Max nodded.

  Rosie laughed, just like Nina had done. ‘Well. That is news.’

  Max put down his beer and drew Rosie in under his other arm.

  It always surprised Max that of the entire memory (which, despite the coke and alcohol flooding his system at the time, Max remembered so vividly) the part he recalled most perfectly was the one that came with the smells of the venue – beer, sweat, smoke and dust – and the sounds – The Cure played loud through the crackling speakers – and the physical feelings of bodies under each arm, blonde hair near his face, Helen’s smooth, tanned arm beneath his calloused fingers. It was the memory that bore Rosie’s earnest face. It was when she said in his ear:

  ‘Max, you deserve it.’

  Chapter 2

  Juliette

  The kitchen has the best light in the house. Especially now, as it moves from midday sun into afternoon light. It falls through the windows in brilliant puddles, shadows cast by the leaves of the linden tree outside, and it moves. Dances, in fact. Over hands and spoons and the worn grey flagstones. Over the bread dough Juliette has made. It is her favourite room in the house. It smells of yeast and flour and a warming oven, but also the stone of the floor, the metal of the taps, the plaited tress of papery, pink Roscoff onions and the copper of her favourite bowls. Even the cast iron and roasted, salted butter scent of the billig, the griddle used to make crepe de ble noir or galettes, that sits on one of the counters. Most people wouldn’t be able to distinguish these things, but to Juliette they are as familiar as the salty-sweet perfume of a lover’s skin.

  Max didn’t update this part of the house – a slate-roofed stone cottage now with a huge extension of blond wood and expansive windows. The kitchen, other than its appliances, is original. The small windows with warped glass don’t have huge modern blinds that whir down when remote controls are pressed. The thick worn wooden beams are a ribcage in the low ceiling. Here the spring light is exactly as it should be in west Brittany, Finistère, the end of the world – sweet, the colour of chamomile tea, and dappled, not hotly and brightly bullying its way into the room.

  Juliette presses her palms on the floured bench top and looks out of the stone-framed windows at the garden. It is bordered by flowering rhododendron bushes, spring flowers in tooth-whites and girlish pinks, established trees that Max left standing, as well as a gnarly and ancient apple espaliered on a fence. In the centre of the lawn is the girl who arrived this morning with Max�
�s friend Eddie. Beth. An American with long, red hair. She has pulled one of Max’s white lounging chairs into the sunniest part of the garden and is arranging herself upon it, magazine between her lips while she scoops her vermillion mane into a bun on top of her head. Juliette squints to make out the pattern on her white bikini – tiny pink raspberries topped with green leaves like winter hats. Eddie comes by now, to lean on the back of the chair. Juliette barely caught Eddie’s name as he rushed to shake her hand before striding into the house, looking around, pointing out the size of everything – huge! – dumping his bag, with fat percussion, in the lounge. Juliette went to the list she’d taped up inside the pantry; where she’d written ‘Eddie and ??’ (Max couldn’t remember the girlfriend’s name). She added Beth. Then, in her mind, not on the list: American. Red-haired. Young. Bikini with raspberries.

  Eddie is English, and from London like Max. His voice reminds Juliette of her father’s. Juliette watches Eddie smearing sunscreen on his face, up to the line of his thick dark hair. He has very pale legs, which poke out from a pair of white shorts that look brand new; the white of the fabric almost matching the shade of his calves. Juliette notices the small crocodile logo on the back, by the pocket. Eddie turns, sees her and waves. Juliette lifts her palm, now covered in flour. He isn’t so bad looking, she decides. It isn’t fair for Juliette to judge the colour of a person’s legs. She has spent the last year here in Douarnenez, gathering seaweed from the beach, cutting lavender, raking leaves and washing windows, her skin browning from Parisian milk-white to Breton café au lait. Even her hair has lightened, now more chestnut than brown, made noticeable from the haircut. Short, curls by her ears and a tiny fringe. She will never again have to lift and twist it as Beth does, and tuck it into a pleated white chef’s toque. She might never wear a toque again. Thinking of toques reminds Juliette of the bread, which she needs to punch down and divide. She pulls the bowl towards her and removes the cloth. The dough rises above the rim in a luscious curve.