Deborah Grimes

An incurable dreamer in Paris

‘There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.’ (Louis L'Amour)

Rue Galande has come to life. The sidewalk cafés start to fill. Parisians sip their expressos, their pastis, turn their faces to the sun, inhale the heady heat of this July late morning. Then they cock their heads at the sound of rumbling, like fusillade breaking the calm. A roadwork drill on a Sunday? ‘Ooh là là!  C’est pas possible!’  They

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shake their heads and huff and puff and return to their coffee until they see that the source of the disturbance is not a road drill but a woman dragging an oversized suitcase over the cobbles. They crane their necks to get a better look, then the glowering, the throaty growl,  the clicking tongues – ‘N’importe quoi!’ 

I wish they’d stop, just let me move on. But I am a fascinating spectacle it seems, like a creature flung from space. And nothing will make them look away. I grind to a halt to stop the racket. A brief reprieve but it will only prolong the torture so I start moving again, quickening my pace to outrun the basilisk stares, the ooh là làs. I run the gauntlet now,  passing one café after another until I round the last corner and stop to catch my breath.

 This isn’t exactly how I pictured it for my first day back to Paris. I was thinking of a slightly more elegant scenario than this, featuring me in my new red swing dress that twirls at the knee and cinches at the waist, me in my new wedged heels.  Me Maggie striding along a Parisian street with a confident, worldly air. Me, Maggie - Parisienne jusqu’au bout des ongles. To be fair, I hadn’t planned to walk so far in this heat. A short stroll, I was thinking, along the Jardin du Luxembourg just after the airport bus let me off.  Then a taxi the rest of the way to the Irish College where I’ll spend my first two weeks.  But it seems there is a taxi strike. In Paris? Who’d have guessed! Now I’m walking the whole way in the 28-degree heat, my lovely Parisienne glow now turning to undignified beads of sweat.

What was I thinking? 

I round the corner, clear now of the cobbles and the infernal stares. I sigh with relief and as much as I want to stop and bask in the peace, I power on. My destination isn’t far now, only one more street until I reach the place du Panthéon then just a baguette’s toss to home. But my feet are wondering what they’re done to deserve the torture. My ankles too,

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never faring well in heat, are beginning to look like a pair of Christmas hams. I hoist my suitcase and keep going until a little green cleaning van trundles alongside me and hoses me right off the path. I jump back with a squeal, barely escaping a backflip over my suitcase. Really? Was that called for? I continue walking with my freshly hosed legs and turn onto the next street, the Rue St. Jacques. Maybe I’ll have better luck there!

 St. Jacques is a bigger, bustling thoroughfare, big enough, with any luck, to be left alone. It’s also the oldest street in Paris, a street I know so well from where the airport bus would drop me off. Today as I walk and dry out, I think about its history, how in medieval times it was a pilgrim’s street, one of the starting points to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.  It is where countless pilgrims set off with their trusty scallop shells – the symbol of the Camino - swinging from their satchels. Normally I wouldn’t give it much thought but today, despite the  frock and ill-fitting shoes, I feel a little like a pilgrim myself. So I take it as a sign, a little talisman to reassure me that this well-trodden path is leading me to the rickety door of my destiny.  But of course my suitcase is having none of it. It wants to go its own way. It’s got its sights on a slopier street and like an errant puppy barrels off towards it. My hand attached, I’m barrelling after it and I have to engage it in a little waltz until we reach level ground again. I grip it harder now with a chastening look. Then we trundle on together until we turn another corner. There at last we reach the place du Panthéon where the Panthéon itself looms majestically atop the Montagne Saint- Geneviève, its magnificent portico and lofty dome soaring to the sky.

 I stop before it, letting the memories flood back, memories of so many things forgotten, this square, this landmark, these sights and smells and sounds, that first day in Paris all those moons ago. Twenty years exactly. That’s when I stopped at this very spot then, heaving my rucksack from a taxi and gorging on the feeling of adventure as I gazed across at the Panthéon. My future was wide open. I had the glow of destiny.  I had the jitters too. I must have done - my first time away, the doe-eyed innocent

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abroad without a job or an abode or even a contact, just me and my rucksack chock full of dreams. Still, instead of making tracks to where I was staying, I stowed my rucksack at the nearest café and climbed all 276 steps of the colonnades to reach the top. There an endless vista of possibility stretched out before me,  Paris, my new city, my new future where  nothing seemed out of my reach. But then I was only twenty, ready to conquer the world. Now I’m forty. Could I hope to conquer as much?

 The sun is beating down now. I’m beginning to cook and my feet are crying out now, rattling the sabres, pleading – ‘don’t you care?’  And now it seems I’ve gone down a wrong street. I double-back and by the time I circle back to the Panthéon, I’m hot and bothered and very cranky. I need to stop and rest. On the terrace of the café Soufflot would be nice but Marie Claire is expecting me by 12.30pm and if I dilly-dally, she may give my room away. So I pick up a bottle of water and a couple of croissants in the boulangerie  Soufflot and sit  on my suitcase for lunch.  Croissants wolfed down in seconds, I speculate and ponder my uncertain future.  I wonder how different Paris will be this time around. Will I be as lucky? Will the opportunities be the same? Bar a diary of hopeful contacts and an interview with Galignani’s bookshop, I’ve pretty much come on a wing and a prayer. Family and friends wondered if it was wise. ‘Do the interview,’ they everyone said. ‘See how it goes. But maybe you shouldn’t move, lock, stock and barrel!’ I wonder now if they were right. Was it allthis a crazy move? Suddenly my enthusiasm, which was insatiable this morning, insatiable for weeks, even months is seeping out of me and trickling down the street past the boulanagerie Soufflot, past the Café Soufflot. Doubt has now found a tiny gap and is slipping back in, doubt that I made sure to pull up the drawbridge on and padlock the door. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a mistake. I’ve given up everything in Dublin, a lovely home, friends and family, an easy life, a safe harbour, for what feels right now, in this hot and cranky state, like a cockamamie dream.

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But no, I can’t allow this! I spring to my feet and chop off these  thoughts. I chop them off with a cleaver and declare a moratorium on all doubt. It will work out. It has to! As I shove my water bottle  in my shoulder bag, among all my clobber, I spot the bright blue  spiral binding of my film script. I smile, remembering that I brought it with me,  printed out only yesterday. What relief! Now here it is, my faithful companion, my raison d’être in Paris should all else go to pot.  Here it is, all one hundred pages of it, oblivious to the weight of destiny at its feet! Of course I had to pay excess at the airport and I could just as easily have printed it in Paris. But I needed it in corporeal form. I needed it to feel real, as real and solid as the imposing stone of the Panthéon now a hundred yards behind me.

 As I trundle down the rue du Pot de Fer,  I think of that script, how synchronically the idea for it came to me, how euphoric I was, how I spun myself around it like a dervish and felt for the first time ever that I could be a writer. That is until my lovely inspired idea collapsed in a torpor and lost the will to live. But now that I’ve returned to Paris,  the city I love, the city that inspires,  I know it will give my script the kiss of life. As soon as I’m settled (in a quaint little garret, I’m hoping) I will spend my every spare moment in cafés,  drink copious amounts of coffee, perhaps take up smoking, (Gaulois, I imagine) smoking them right down to the ring  until inspiration returns and my trembling fingers spring to life and there once again I’ll feel the butterflies, the chills, the frisson of excitement. In these cafés, my script, laid fallow for weeks, will spring back to life with unstoppable force. In these cafés, in this city, all is possible! Suddenly I’m shored up again. Suddenly everything feels possible – the journey not quite as desultory. Suddenly it feels right, the right place to be, to reinvent myself. To be the creative person I must have been  all along, an artist manqué who never knew. And now is the right time to claim it, a little bit Johnny-come-lately perhaps - mais alors!

Then just on cue, as if to chime in, I hear the swooning voice Gilbert Bécaud,  my favourite French chanteur,  tumbling out of a little sidewalk

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café. Gilbert is singing ‘Je reviens te chercher’ singing it with so much emotion, more emotion than usual, the soaring strings, the wistful lyrics that I’m wondering if he’s singing it just for me.

‘You came back to me. I knew you’d be waiting. I knew we couldn’t be parted for long.’

 The orchestra is soaring to a powerful crescendo and I am soaring with it, floating off on a fantasy above the cobbles off the rue l’Homond and not even Gilbert pulling me by the ankles will bring me back.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t.  My fantasies and I need some time apart. But now that Gilbert is singing that particular chanson, singing it with such incredible ardour, such intensity, my thoughts go straight to J.  It's so pathetic but I just can’t help it. This is J’s city, after all; God knows, maybe even his street; maybe even his apartment just above me as I drag my unwieldy suitcase along the cobbles below. Could J be ensconced on that very terrace out of which my favourite French love song is tumbling, sipping his café noir as he watches me, wondering where he knows me from, where he might have met me? Would he remember it was a documentary film festival? In a remote little corner of west Donegal? In a tiny hotel lobby just as his documentary was being screened? Or would he just remember the very cringy email I sent in the weeks that followed, extoling him to the heavens and scaring him half to death? All these months later, I have imagined and re-imagined how that conversation might have played out if we’d had a chance to finish it…

As Gilbert comes to a swooning, euphonious finale and the fantasy begins to ebb, I can only hope that J never got that email, that it went missing in action or straight to his spam folder and we can start over, cross paths afresh, on the way to the Métro perhaps or in a café much like Café Soufflot or at the Marché aux Puces at Vanves on a Sunday with the two of us browsing through old collectables and rare brocantes as I used to do all those moons ago in Paris. And then, of course, I remind myself that

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I had planned to return to Paris long before I discovered that J lived here. Paris has nothing at all to do with J. I was always coming back.

 As I arrive at Rue des Irlandais, a stone’s throw from the Irish College, Gilbert wraps up and the curtains on my fantasy ring down. I push open the large blue panelled doors of the Irish College and enter. The air just inside is so refreshingly cool and I gorge on it for a moment before preparing myself for the Herculean hike up the winding oak stairs. I am in a lather of sweat by the time I reach the top,  a far cry from the woman who set out from Dublin  this morning, all plucked and polished and preened and dare I say - chic. Marie-Claire, the receptionist, seeing me trapped now between the door and my suitcase, springs out from behind her desk and glides to my rescue.  Beating it into submission, she readjusts the silk foulard around her swan-like, porcelain neck.  Then she stops to look at me, eyes widening, a dainty hand flying up to a horrified mouth.

‘Ooh là là!! You didn’t walk in this heat! I don’t believe it! Non! Non! Non!

I could try and explain but I am so exhausted now that I could fall into a crumpled heap at her feet. Just as well as with the day that’s in it; with book launches, exhibitions, concerts, Marie-Claire has no time for idle pleasantries. She grabs the suitcase and as graceful of a bird on the wing, hoists it up the spiral oak staircase to the next floor. There she shows me my room, hands me the key and disappears in a fragrant breeze. I enter my new abode, a single room, minimalist, functional, office blue, nothing like my romantic garret but then the pièce de resistance – a large vaunting window that gives out onto a beautiful leafy courtyard. Ah oui, c’est bien Paris! I breathe it in, the sweet, heady scent of lime blossoms, the balmy summer breeze and try to locate the mellow strains of a cello that float across the courtyard from the sheltered cloister opposite – a rehearsal for the evening concert peut-être? I could so easily sink into the swampy embrace of my single  bed and bask in the

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warm glow of the music but no, I am determined to keep moving, to be a flâneur for the rest of the afternoon and see where I end up. But, of course, I never end up too far from my Parisian café, which today, being but a few doors down from Galignani’s bookshop, has to be Angelina’s. Leaving the Irish college, I stroll the familiar streets of the Latin quarter. Free and unencumbered now, I am assailed once more with a sense of possibility. It is not so much that I have returned to Paris but that Paris has returned to me.

 

Angelina’s

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"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." (Marcel Proust)

 The cobbles are so hot now they have me dancing down the street. But I’m not complaining, now that I’m free at last of that recalcitrant suitcase and those crippling wedged heels. And Gilbert is still serenading me, wanting me to know just how much he missed me, that I’ve hardly changed at all. Merci, Gilbert! That’s so lovely to hear.  I cross over to the Rue Rivoli, skipping from sun to shade until I glimpse Galignani bookshop at the far end of the arcade. Ah Galignani’s!  Seeing it now, shimmering in the distance brings a smile to my face.  I feel shored up again and more confident now that my interview there will be the herald of my fabulous life in Paris. And surely it’s no coincidence that just two doors down is Angelina’s. I can  just about glimpse her now too, her

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chocolate brown awning billowing in the breeze, her softly- lit lanterns beckoning me ever closer, casting her spell of enchantment. And is that an accordionist playing La Vie en rose just outside?  I’m hurtling towards her now, sweaty and clammy and glowing like a beacon but ready to fall into her warm embrace. 

 Of course Angelina’s isn’t my only Xanadu of happiness. There are lots of Parisian cafés that I’ve loved and  missed from my days in Paris and first chance I get, I’m be calling on them all. And I’ll go out of my way to find them. I always do.  I’ll give myself blisters, wear my soles thin. I’ll even part company if I have to, if that company is just looking for a fuel stop. But me, I just won’t compromise. Mais non, pas du tout! Right now the heat from the cobbles is rising up from my flip-flops and my swelling up ankles are getting harder to ignore. Still I won’t let them permit even a whisper of the agony they’re feeling until I am sitting in my perfect Parisian café. There ensconced in a cosy corner with my steaming café crème, all will be well again. There my dreams that have been battered and bruised and dragged through a bush will return to me, resuscitated and pulsing with so much life.

 But by the time I reach Angelina’s there’s a queue. I hadn’t expected a queue and now my stomach is growling, drowning out poor Gilbert and growling even louder as I find myself  wedged up against the patisserie counter. I avert my gaze and try hard not to keel over but I can still glimpse the little temptresses glistening up at me from the corner of my eye; chocolate éclairs, truffles, mille-feuilles, all of them flirting their swirly whipped cream heads off. Thankfully I’m saved by the waiter who glides towards me now,  a total Adonis, I have to say, with a  chiselled jaw and luxuriant hair that must have been groomed by Aphoride that morning. I perk up instantly then deflate just a tad when Adonis looks at me, looks around for my party (surely she hasn’t come alone?) then right on cue I get the look, that curious, mildly suspicious, mildly pitiful look followed by that vexing question that  I’ve come to  hate- ‘Vous êtes seule? Of course it’s a harmless enough question, nothing I can have up

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for war crimes but still I’d like to drag it through the streets and hang it from a lamp post because the answer is always. ‘Yes. Here I am. Lonely party. Table for one!’

I smile breezily and follow behind, trying to suppress my rumbling stomach and not draw attention. But I’m feeling self- conscious now, a little visually vulnerable, not exactly à la hauteur for my first day back. If only I had someone with me  right now to take the bare look off me or if  Adonis could just find me a discreet little hidey hole where I can hide for a bit and cool down. But no, he parades me to the very back, passing every table of the glamorous salon set, my stomach growling,  my face no doubt  looking like a seared ahi-tuna and my  ankles, well, I don’t care to look! People are glancing up now,  some blatantly staring. Sweet Mother Divine can’t I get through this day without the stares?

 At last I reach my table, a lovely marble-topped, curly legged table with its own leather Louis XV armchair, I promptly order my croque monsieur followed by my frothy café crème. As Adonis glides off,  I sit back with huge relief and look around. So here I am. I made it back.  A historical moment. I take it all in, every nook and cranny of it; the sculpted boiseries, the vaulted mirrors,  the original paintings - still creaking with haughty grandeur.  I half expected it to have changed a little, older, wiser, jowlier around the edges maybe - little like me? But it hasn’t changed at all and it seems neither has the clientele with their Hermes scarves draped over their lightly bronzed shoulders, hair perfectly coiffed, not a vagrant tendril in sight. They make a lovely tableau and blend in so perfectly  as they sip their tisane à la menthe while Chopin tinkles dulcetly in the background.  In fact this could probably be just about any era, 1990 when I used to sit here, happy as a clam as I people-watched and pondered my uncertain future or  1920 when Coco Chanel would sit  here and people- watch herself. In fact could that Coco over there now, sipping her favourite hot chocolate – l’Africian,  a cigarette smouldering from her slender fingers as she watches the world go by?

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A cigarette (if I only smoked)  is just what I’d like right now to help me ponder my future again, ponder for hours and just let the memories trickle back but my stomach, like a dying walrus now, won’t hear of it, not until Adonis returns with my croque monsieur. I see him now gliding towards me like a penguin on roller blades.  I smile up at him, flashing him a hopeful smile but he  just glides passed with a clipped ‘Il arrive, madame!’ and my heart sinks like a lead soufflé.

What’s this? Adonis has just called me madame!  Surely I misheard. Surely he can see that I’m not madame, that I’m not even in the vicinity of ‘madame’. Madame? Me?  No, no, no it just doesn’t work,  it jars, it irks. It’s an aberration, a bang on the ear. I want to protest, rattle my sabres, Adonis, s’il vous plait, je ne suis pas madame! Of course this could be just the hunger and the swollen ankles  haven’t much helped. Still I’d like to take him aside, explain, just for the record, just so he knows. ‘I am a mademoiselle. I’m a girl. Une fille. Don’t you see?

Of course, I’m aware that I’ve slipped unwittingly over some timeline since I last sat here. But never having been married, not having kids, there are  no markers to proof it, no rite of passage to signal the transition, to assure my ascension me to ‘madamehood’. So why should it count? Of course, I’m aware that at some point I may have to get over myself and when I finally get to have my croque monsieur, madame might be easier to swallow. But no not just yet and certainly not today, my first day back to have this identity crisis on my hands. But I won’t be churlish. I’ll rise above it. Well later  maybe, after I’ve had my croque monsieur and a modest glass of rosé. It’s a little early to drink I know and in this heat, it’ll  go straight to my head but I’m thinking it might give me a little perspective. Anyway by the time Adonis arrives with the  croque monsieur, an utterly pitiful affair, a croque that can only ever dream of being a monsieur, a modest glass of rosé is called for. He sets  down my bijou croque monsieur and flashes a stellar smile. ‘You know that you are sitting in Marcel Proust’s favourite seat, madame!’ He’s still smiling at me,  beaming a strand of perfect pearls, perhaps trying to

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distract me from the pitiful croque monsieur and on top of that, he feels the need to tell me his name – Jean -Baptiste.

What? Jean-Baptiste has spoken? Jean-Baptiste is being nice? If only he’d drop the madame and we might actually be friends. And maybe then I could enjoy sitting at Proust’s favourite table. But all I think of is my tiny croque monsieur which is inhaled in seconds just as Jean-Baptiste returns with my modest glass of rosé. It’s excellent Chateau Sainte Roseline in Provence, he assures me. That’s good to know. I shall bear it in mind but right now I just hope it takes me to my happy place. A few sips later, everything has taken on a warm rosé hue,  even Jean-Baptiste who only moments ago plunged me into a mid-life crisis. Now I’m feeling a warm fuzzy feeling for him especially as he thought put me at Proust’s favourite table.

In fact, I had only been  recently  been thinking of Proust, him and a few of his literary rivals, Flaubert, Balzac, Zola and co whose classics, each of them (well maybe just a few), I promised myself I’d read. And working in Paris’ oldest bookshop (now I'm even more confident about the bookshop!) what excuse could there be? I commit myself now to reading the great French classics, maybe even in French, making notes, filling up notebooks, cultivating myself no end. And what harm to give myself a little intellectual sheen for the many soirées and dinner parties that may come my way, once I get my foot in the door of Galignani’s. Me, arguing, expostulating, gesticulating, saying things like – ‘well, as Proust would say,’  with my new French friends.

As I drain the last drop of my Chateau Sainte Roseline, I decide that Proust will be the perfect excuse for popping into Galignani’s later. While I pick up one of his books - his celebrated  ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ perhaps, I will discreetly suss the place out,  see how I might fit in. As I wait for  Jean -Baptiste to bring my hopefully steaming, frothy café crème,  I decide to google Proust, find out a little more about his oeuvre  so that I can saunter in the door of Galignani’s with a more

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confident air. But I end up reading little titbits instead about his weakness for madeleines which he loved to dip in his lime-flavoured tea. Finding little about his oeuvre, I ponder  instead about the table he sat at, my table,  as he gorged on those little madeleines. And was it in this very place, I wonder, where he  felt the inspiration flow? In honour of the modest little madeleine (soon hailed as Proust’s inspirational muse) I decide to order one of my own. Maybe then I’ll imbibe a little inspiration myself. Or maybe sitting here in his seat, Proust might coo inspirational words in my ear, tell me something I’ve been missing, some kind of coded message  to set me on the right path. An epiphany peut -être.  Or maybe just a few mots frivoles. I take my new notebook and pen  out just instead.

But Proust is uncommunicative. He has nothing right now to impart and I decide a modern madeleine just won’t do it. It will have to be my all-time favourite tarte  à  la framboise. It’s a bit of a splurge, I know but for the first day of ma vie parisienne –  a little splurge is called for.

Awaiting its arrival, I take out my diary, open it to pen the first line but I can’t think of a single thing to write. I look around me, taking  it all in, the dulcet murmuring of voices, the gentle tinkling of teacups until a text comes in from my sister, Jess.  She’s hoping I’m okay. She’s hoping it all works out. She’s wishing me luck, all the luck in the world. A little melancholy sweep in now thinking of her and thinking about  how worried she was about my leaving, her flighty younger sister who took off without ‘a plan’. Now my mind vaults back  to that one and only time we were here in Angelina’s.

 It was the weekend of my twenty-first birthday.  Jess had come on the train from Brussels, my parents, all the way from Dublin. Suddenly I am filled with nostalgia, remembering everything of that weekend, that Baltic Saturday morning I walked the legs off them, pounding every backstreet and boulevard until we ended up here at Angelina’s. My mother’s face lit up as soon as we got here, delighted she was wearing

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her new mohair jumper  while my father took one look inside and did a swift exit stage left, stumbling his way  into the nearest Irish pub. But the three of us were thrilled to be here, my mother most of all. She  loved Angelina’s, the style, the elegance, the endless people-watching. She just couldn’t stop looking, staring really, downright gawking, commenting on everyone, working her way down the room, from table to table, commenting loudly and indiscriminately on the coiffed bouffants, the clothes, the manicured dogs and scoffing her head off.

‘Mam, would you stop staring?’ we pleaded. ‘You’re embarrassing us!’

‘Well, it’s a pity about ye!’ she’d retort and keep on staring until it dawned on her that people were actually staring at her.

‘What the hell are they looking at?’ she snapped, indignant now and becoming a little self-conscious. And rightly enough, they were looking, downright staring as she returned from the loo. Immediately we were  checking for loo roll attached to her shoe or her skirt tucked into her knickers until a waitress murmured in my sister’s ear as she passed.

‘Votre mère est l’image craquante de Catherine Deneuve!’

‘What did she say? my mother squawked, dribbling a little hot chocolate on her new mohair jumper.  A famous French actress, we told her.  Famous in the sixties. Beautiful. A style icon, a sex symbol too. ‘And you do look like her, Mam!’

‘A sex symbol,’ Mam snorted, feigning indifference as she scrubbed the stain off her jumper. But inwardly she was gushing, thrilled to the bones as she lifted her chin and graciously turned to greet her public.

‘A sex symbol! Well, that’s a bloody good one!’

 Sitting here now all these years later, I think of her, my father too, hardly believing that they made that trip to Paris for my birthday. They followed me blindly for two whole days down every boulevard and back

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street then the night of my party they organised a cake and sat like mice in a corner of my  shoebox apartment as it heaved with people, friends from the language school, random strangers, neighbours, music pumping, floorboards thumping, punch so strong we all got legless standing next to it – a  great night, maybe the best.  Maybe the best ever.

 Looking back now,  I can’t help wondering if my parents were happy on that weekend, if they actually got along, or if they knew then, or maybe always knew, that they were never meant for each other. And if they did know then, would they have ever imagined that it could take them so long, not until they reached the age of  seventy before they would muster the courage to part? I feel a jolt of sadness thinking of that weekend and thinking of them now, the divorce that came so late for them, for all of us and the pain for them now in starting all over.  I think about how lost they were before I left, how bewildered by the idea of starting their lives anew. I feel a little maudlin now and I have to snap myself out of it. Surely that’s the last thought  I should entertain on my first day back. So I circle the wagons and look about for Jean-Baptiste who glides towards me now with a beautiful silver tray. Perched on top is my glistening  tarte à la framboise which he sets ceremoniously before me.

‘Pour la belle demoiselle!’ chirps Jean-Baptiste, flaunting every ooze of his Gallic charm. Belle demoiselle? Did Jean-Baptiste just call me demoiselle - as in something approximating mademoiselle? I smile with such relief and all is well again. Jean- Baptiste and I are friends now, well over our earlier détente  and this flirty après- midi mood of his is working a charm. I savour the flirt, every bit of it, even as much as my tarte à la framboise and feel no melancholy whatsoever, just a frisson of delight at this marvel of unbridled deliciousness swathed in succulent raspberries, lighted accented with just the faintest whisper of coconut. I am so excited now that I’ve hardly noticed my café crème arriving and being served with a separate jug for the milk, without its usual frothiness that makes it so delectable. I’m a little disappointed I have to say. This is not the frothy affair I had hoped for, not the café crème I have come to expect, that

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never has a mood swing or a bad hair day but reigns supreme in all its unadorned frothy simplicity. This is not a café crème, mais non, sûrement pas non!  but a café au lait masquerading as a café crème, not even trying to be the least bit frothy. But for today, the day that’s in it, I should try to let it go and contend myself with all the froth in the flirt from Jean-Baptiste and in knowing that the tarte à la framboise will make up for all disappointment making a diary note of this little glitch (Angelina’s - no froth) for next time.

I pause for a moment savouring the aroma of my coffee from my gold-rimmed cup, though little chance of  savouring my scrumptious tarte à la framboise which I have shamefully inhaled within seconds. I sit back now in my intoxicating cloud of coffee delirium with nothing else to do but construct my fantasy of Paris with all the flourishes and detail I can manage of this soon-to-be new life. Today being so warm, they have opened the terrace overlooking the courtyard which is but a stone’s throw from the Louvre and the stunning Tuileries gardens. I am finding it quite a coincidence too that it is so much closer than I remembered, barely two doors down from Galignani’s, where I am soon to have my interview. As I gaze out at the gardens, I am lost in my own world, imagining what it will be like working in Galignani’s and being within a hair’s breadth of all of this.

 In my fantasy, J, of course, is a regular to the bookshop and breezes in one morning looking for a particular book in the fine art section. And I happen to be there in that section too, alone and referencing or maybe doing a spot of dusting and looking, as it happens, my very best in a dress I picked up in the Bon Marché department store. Initially, I don’t see him, so busy I am in my new role of bookshop assistant. And considering that he has not seen me since that all-too-brief moment months ago in Donegal there is a chance that he may not remember me at first. Still, our eyes lock over a book display of fine art books, both of us - drawn to each other, J‘s deep and soulful green eyes showering me with a fuzzy warmth, lighting up every nook and cranny of my being. 

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Then suddenly there is something in his eyes, a flash, a recognition, a kindred intent and before long it comes back to him.

‘It’s you!’ he says, his green eyes really gleaming now.

‘Yes, it’s me! It’s really ME!’

He is curious that I am living in Paris now and amazed that it happens to be one of his favourite bookshops. He apologises for not replying to my email (Merde!  I was hoping he didn’t get it!) Anyway, he had been travelling, researching his next documentary among the Huli Wigmen tribe, I think he said, of Papua New Guinea. Wi-Fi had been a little patchy, he tells me and he is only just back. There is a spark, I can feel it. He feels it too, so much spark we may set ourselves on fire. He suggests coffee, somewhere more low-key than Angelina’s perhaps, a local, friendly café (with hopefully better froth) and he whisks me off to it on the back of his motorbike. Yes, in this fantasy that I have buffed and polished and preened to perfection, J definitely has a motorbike.

I eventually leave Angelina’s, high on my fantasy and the sudden rush of sugar from my tarte à la framboise and the madelaine before that and before I know it, I have my nose pressed against the window of my favourite bookshop - Galignani’s.

Galignani’s is such an enchanting place, a perfect haven to lose all track of time in, imagining all those great writers who wheeled in and out of its doors, hallowed its walls and whose opuses now adorn its dark wood-panelled shelves. And now, after all my years traipsing in and out of the hushed and stilled world of Galignani’s, I have finally returned to do my interview and, with any luck, find work. Just thinking of it now, I feel my heart expanding like liquid gold in my chest. I feel the planets aligning, my dreams conspiring and beating a path to my door.

Suddenly the door swings open and, peeling my nose from the window pane, I slip inside. A if drawn in by an invisible thread, I am lured further

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and further to the labyrinth of shelves at the back of the room, all hallowed, regal and softly- lit. I meander through the aisles, my fingers skimming over the tops of books, the aromas of aging print. I pick one up to sniff while glancing surreptitiously over at the staff, watching how they interact, wondering if they will like me, if we’ll actually get along. One of them looks at me, smiles, asks what I’m looking for.

 ‘Proust’, I tell him confidently.  À la Recherche du temps perdu’

 ‘Volume one, Swann’s way?’ he enquires.

What? There are volumes?

I nod confidently and he whips it from the shelf right next to him, leading me to the till and I follow, thinking how efficient he is, how quickly he located Proust  and chuffed, of course, that he presumed I’d be reading in French. As I shadow Christophe, watch his moves, pick up tips where I can (could this soon be me?) an immaculately dressed woman with a spectacular blonde bouffant, glides past me. She has the air of the manager, the woman who contacted me months ago and I am falling over myself to appear friendly and bubbly, smiling at her, perhaps in hindsight a little too brightly. She stops, looks at me for a moment, wondering why I’m smiling so much; how she might know me. I beam even more and move closer. I proffer a handshake, my face composed into an expression of puppyish eagerness.

‘Vous êtes Madame Leclerc?’

Realisation flashes in her flawless blue eyes.

‘Ah, vous êtes Maggie ?’

’Oui, je suis Maggie!’

This is definitely a good sign. She seems to know me. But then there is the small collapse of the face and the tight, rictus smile.

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‘We sent you an email, Maggie. You didn’t receive it?’

‘An email?’ I say. ’Really?’ Ah bon?’

I haven’t received any email or, at least, I haven’t checked this morning. The email, she explains, with much regret, was to inform me that my interview has been cancelled.

‘Cancelled?’ I say, my heart pummelling to the ground with an ungainly thud.

‘Annulé?’ C’est bien annulé?’

‘Annulé,’ she says with a sorry shake of the head, indefinitely so and apparently no chance of another.

I am struggling to take this in, to even cobble together a reply to make sure I haven’t misheard her. But it seems I haven’t. The interview is cancelled, the job is gone and with nearly every other bookshop doing much the same, my chances are slim elsewhere. The recession, it seems, has kicked in with gusto.

I stand outside Galignani’s in a daze of bewilderment, clutching my  volume of Proust.  How can this be happening? How can the fantasy I have been clinging to be snapped so ruthlessly from its mooring? This interview had been the motivation to come to Paris. This woman with the impressive blonde bouffant had contacted me so long ago, months in fact. She seemed so keen to meet me; she even wanted more references. How soon could I come, she wanted to know. I had become very attached to what I was sure would be my new place of work. I had hitched so many wagons to this version of my future that I had even figured out how I would wear my hair each day in that perfectly haphazard way other French women wear it, or, the odd time, in a bouffant, a little like hers. And even more importantly, I had decided what I would wear on my feet. Obviously, being on them all day, my footwear would have to be

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comfortable but certainly not frumpy; a pair of dainty ballerina pumps perhaps plutôt chic! And I had decided that I would wear  mostly dresses, the half dozen or so I have brought with me, just waiting to be showcased in my role as bookseller in Galignani’s. But now, puff! It’s over. Madame Leclerc’s brusque few words have taken a sledge hammer to my Parisian dream.

I take one last look through Galignani’s window as people mill past me. All of a sudden, I don’t belong there and I am the Little Match Girl, standing out in the cold (or right now, the sweltering heat) looking wistfully in at the future I will not have. All of a sudden, I am a lost and unanchored, unsure what street to take next or what my next step should be. Even J, so tangibly close only moments ago, seems lost to me now too. I wonder how he can find me now. I wonder if I can ever find him. Galignani’s has a different feel about it now - now that my new life has dropped away. Even Angelina’s, as I pass it moments later, has lost all its lustre. I feel I may not return quite as soon as I thought.

 

Le Caféothèque

‘Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love (Rumi) 

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My good friend Marianne, la vraie Parisienne, takes me to Caféothèque a few days after my dream of working in Galignani’s so unexpectedly came a cropper. She is not in the least surprised when I tell her. Getting a half-decent job in Paris, she says –

‘C’est le parcours du combattant’ – meaning a sort of snowball’s chance in hell.

Marianne, a wispy blonde beauty who could charm the birds from the trees, is French to her fingertips and never ever sugar-coats. She is telling me to let it go, forget it, spouting words of common sense wisdom, innocuous words that bear no ill-will, but right now I just cannot bear to hear them. Still, I nod my head and smile.

‘Yes, yes, I know, Marianne.  Sure, it obviously wasn’t meant to be.’

While on the inside I am blocking my ears and barricading the door against these cruel, vexing words. How can I tell her that I am still clinging desperately to the scaly cliff- edge of my Galignani dream while her words are taking a claw hammer to it?  I decide not to tell her about the email I have just sent Madame Leclerc, plea- bargaining her down to a few part- time hours. And probably best I say nothing of the email I will be following up with her as soon as I get home. But for now, Marianne has come all the way in from the suburbs to see me, something she doesn’t get to do often and the one thing she can hang her hat on is how easily I can be appeased by a Marianne- style café tour.

 

It has also been awhile since I last saw her, two years at least since she moved back to Paris. We had been good friends back in Dublin where she had lived for six years, but her long-held dream had always been to return to Paris, her city, to open her own café couture. It never much surprised me. She had longed to have her own business here she could combine her skills at dress-making and design and teaching people to

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sew with her passion for tea and coffee. I have always admired Marianne’s practical side, the sagaciousness of her and the sheer determination that exudes behind such a waif-like, ethereal carapace. She is so clear about what she wants. She has put all she has into this venture, run the gauntlet under her own steam, trying to get it off the ground. It hasn’t been easy. Yet she won’t give up. Her stamina is astounding.

Marianne takes me to the first café on our café tour, an Arabic -style coffee house with a French twist which  has recently opened in the 4th arrondissement. Marianne did her barista training here and tells me matter-of-factly:

‘This is the best coffee in town, Maggie!’

She banters away with the owners, Gloria from Guatemala and her French husband, Philippe, who pride themselves on offering the world’s finest coffees which they import from small plantations all over the globe. There are numerous passionate nods and shakes and tilts of the head, oohs and ahs and loud gesticulating of the hands and puffing of cheeks as Gloria tells her she has some new coffee beans from Columbia. They discuss the origins and properties and quality of the beans and Marianne is so excited she can barely control herself. I am a little less passionate about coffee beans, but more so about the ambiance of the place, being, I suppose, a café as opposed to a coffee connoisseur. There is a small bar area in the back with floor to ceiling coffee shelves, a cosy area for dining, where Gloria tells us they will soon be holding small, intimate concerts. I instantly perk up and see myself very soon returning.

As we sit down with our coffees in our comfy leather tub chairs, Marianne recounts with such passion the hour-long tasting involving vials of scents commonly found in coffee. She describes the coffee as having just the right consistency, just the right temperature and is clearly aghast when I tell her that mine could be hotter.

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‘Ooh  là là ça se fait pas, Maggie!’ That isn’t done.’

I have committed heresy to even suggest such a thing. But the temperature of my coffee aside, I do like the feel of Caféothèque. It is intimate, charming and as comfortable as someone’s sitting room. I reckon it could be the place to meet interesting people. Marianne suspects what I mean by this is a man.  She arches a savvy brow.

‘Trouver un homme à Paris, Maggie. C’est la parcours du combatant!’

In other words, a snowball’s chance in hell. But doesn’t she know I have just come from Dublin where there is an equally abysmal snowball’s chance.  Marianne breaks into a wry chortle and rolls her eyes conspiratorially.

‘Je me souviens trop bien, Maggie!’

Marianne, just turned thirty-five and drop-dead gorgeous, remembers the lamentable Dublin dating scene only too well. Still, about me leaving all that behind, she seems baffled.

 ‘But why Maggie?  You had a good life in Dublin. Loads a friends, a good job.  Une pension, Maggie – Ça alors!’

 She slopes her blonde mane over one shoulder, pushes her funky glasses  up her nose and leans in. ‘Ooh là là, Maggie!’, she repeats like a martyred Madonna. 

But haven’t I told her? And many times over? Doesn’t she know more than anyone that I always hoped to come back? And doesn’t she know how much sense it made to leave? I was hardly going to stay, not at forty, doing the same teaching job I was tired of, my love life in a permanent state of suspended animation. I wanted something new, a new scene, a fresh landscape, something to make me feel alive, anything than to feel I was frittering it all away,  spending weekend after weekend sitting in, dreaming up an alternative life - while the flower of my youth withered

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on the vine! And of course, I was disappointed about the kids thing, on top of the relationship thing, on top of the being eternally single thing.

Marianne looks at me and nods sagely. ‘I know, Maggie. I know.’

I relax now. I feel heard, understood. Marianne understands. Of course she understands. Marianne and I are  sisters-in-arms. Marianne and have travelled this same road.  But then I get that look again. I feel it coming. Marianne is about to rain on my parade then douse it with lighter fluid.

  ‘Mais Maggie, pourquoi Paris?’  Paris c’est l’enfer!’

‘Because I love Paris, Marianne!’

Of course I don’t tell her about the destiny part, that I’m hoping that its all meant to be, written in the stars, my preordained life raring  to kick off. Marianne, ever practical, ever sovereign in her domain, if she were drinking her smooth Columbian coffee, would have it spray right out of her nose.  Well no, that wouldn’t happen with Marianne. She would probably just arch a savvy brow, huff and puff a little and change the subject to our more creative endeavours.

With that, we leave Caféothèque and I am dragged to a nearby teashop where Marianne is planning to purchase the first of her teapots for her café couture. There is no curbing this woman’s enthusiasm. She is every bit as excited about the tea as she is about the coffee and chats for another hour with the owner while I melt into a pool on the floor. As we finish our tisanes, Marianne admits she is really nervous about her café venture.

‘Est ce que c’est fou?’ she asks. ‘Est ce que je suis tout à fait folle’? Am I crazy?’

No, I say because  I am all on for adventure and risk and being utterly foolish. She smiles, links my arm as  we air-kiss the owner goodbye and leave the teashop.  The conversation now turns to something lighter,

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breezier - bank accounts. Marianne is keen  to know if I’ve managed to open one. I tell her yes.

‘You did? Ah bon. That really does surprise me, Maggie!’

She doesn’t believe for one second that I could have opened a bank account in Paris without the slightest hitch. Surely I can’t have escaped the dogged quagmire that is French bureaucracy. With that, she waltzes me out the door and across the street where she is taking me to a little bistro she knows called Chez Julian. It is her favourite bistro in all of Paris, although she has never actually eaten or even consumed a drink there. And, clearly, she has no intention of doing so today. We enter the bistro and Marianne makes no bones about having come in for a snoop. She swanks around the salon drawing in a reverential breath at the sheer opulence of it with its grand mouldings, its immense gilded mirrors, the intricate mosaic floor, its ‘Flower Ladies’ painted on pâte de verre which Marianne informs me is a technique of kiln-casting using finely cut glass added to a binding mixture. She smiles contentedly, her culture craving sated, and is ready now to leave. The waiter looks on, astounded at our audacity.

‘Won’t you be dining with us today, Mesdames?’

Marianne shakes her head and smiles with a self-assured ‘Non merci, au revoir Monsieur’ and steers me back onto the street. The waiter rolls his eyes in disdain and marches after us to shut the door. Marianne, as ever, unfazed, grabs my arm and instead of going right, we are taking a sharp left down some other street where she tells me eagerly that a new milliners shop has just opened.

‘They do all sorts of quirky hats and vintage accessories!’ she trills, tailgating me through the crowd.

‘But Marianne, I have far too many hats as it is. I can’t afford another one!’

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Marianne looks askance at me, eyes widening, hands flying up in that overly- theatrical way of hers.

‘Mais, NON, Maggie, we are not going to BUY the hats!’

But of course, what was I thinking? How could I forget for a minute that buying something that can be made with deft little fingers would be flying in the face of Marianne’s integral moral fibre. A creator to the bone, it would pain her terribly to part with her money for something she can touch, feel, examine up close and then go home and make. I, on the other hand, am a mere mortal consumer with no such talent, but a terrible weakness for hats and, in no time at all, I am out on the street – the proud owner of a lovely straw panama with purple tulle poppies stitched to one side of the brim. I turn to Marianne who is looking quite vexed – her usual moue now a tight little grimace.

‘Maggie, I shouldn’t have brought you here,’ she shrieks grievously. ‘Now you have spent all your money on this hat and these tulle poppies that I could have made for you myself!’

But there was nothing she could do once I set foot inside that hat shop; nothing she could say once I crossed that threshold and let myself be seduced into flitting away my week’s budget on yet another frivolous hat.

As we round the corner, I am in an altogether better mood and thinking my move to Paris may have been worth it just to find this hat. But Marianne has gone off now on some other train of thought. She stops to fix me one of her frank, penetrating stares and so I steel myself for what’s coming.

‘Maggie, I cannot help thinking that it would have been better for you in the South of France where the weather is better and the people are friendlier. What about Montpellier or Nice, or maybe even Toulouse?’ Didn’t you like Toulouse?’ queries my well-meaning Job’s comforter, who

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surely can’t be serious. I look at her agog. But Marianne, I’ve just arrived in Paris !’

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