A fellow science student with whom I shared digs, Peter Scales, had coerced me to tag along with him and his sibling, Olaf, a young painter. They were twins, but beyond the superficial similarities — identicalities — the lads could not have been more dissimilar in terms of personality. Olaf wore an overcoat like a Prussian cavalry officer, tartan waistcoats and extravagant facial hair. Peter on the other hand was quite happy to be the wallpaper in a room. But it was fun to see the pranks they played, teasing the passengers on the cross-channel steamer, being seemingly in two places at once, doffing their hats first inside the cabin, then on deck, as if a single person had been transported by magic from the first location to the second. We laughed. Yes, I laughed not infrequently in those days.
Our journey had been prompted when Olaf heard that Renoir, Monet and Degas were exhibiting in the studio of the photographer Nadar. This was the very birth of the era of “Impressionism”, you understand — when the word was first used by the critic Louis Leroy to ridicule Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, thereby accidentally naming a movement. “Come on Yorkie!” cried Olaf (I still had quite a pronounced accent from the land of my forebears in those days). “It’ll be tremendous! The colors. You have no idea. These painters will be world-famous one day, mark my word. They’ll be hanging in museums!” I was by no means certain of that, and had little or no interest in art, but his enthusiasm was infectious. How could I refuse? England had become a bore. Disraeli was Prime Minister at the age of seventy. And we were young.
The other ulterior motive was, frankly: I spoke French. Not well, but enough. I’d learned it at my great-uncle’s knee, and though I had hardly any memory of him, the old je suis ran in my blood. Peter even quipped I had a nose like a Frenchman.
So, whilst the brothers sought out paintings that captured the fall of light, I was content to observe the fall of light itself on the architecture of the great city around me, and the atmosphere of boulevards once trodden by revolutionary feet, walls that still echoed with the Communards’ bullets and the cries of shop-keepers taken to arms, shockingly, within all-too recent memory. It was hard to believe: the streets I saw before me were regimented, grand, beautiful, populated by civilised and polite citizens of the modern day, yet behind that beauty lurked a spirit quick to anger and pitiless in its violence.
Having explored the Conciergerie, the grisly staging-post before the guillotine, I found myself walking along the Quai de la Corse with the intention of crossing the Pont Notre Dame to delve into Les Halles, the so-called “belly of Paris”, when I heard a female voice behind me:
“Monsieur!”
Instinctively I turned, and to my surprise the unmistakable scent of lilies hit my nostrils. Indeed, a lily itself was being thrust towards me. Equally instinctively, I pushed it aside, glimpsing the vagabond creature in rags and bonnet trying to force it upon me.
“Non! Monsieur. Monsieur…” she insisted, following me, in fact blocking my path as I turned away.
“Elle mourra,” she said.
I was taken aback. A strange phrase which I instantly translated:
It will die.
For some reason this gave me pause. She gave me pause. What would die? What was she telling me — or warning me of — and why? I felt a prickling sensation of unease across my shoulders, a vestigial memory awakened of the supernatural talents of gypsies….
The beggar girl thrust the flower at me again, her arm outstretched. “Elle mourra,” she repeated.
It will die.
What a fool! She meant that if she did not sell the flowers in her basket by the end of the day they would have to be thrown away and wasted. Laughing at my own stupidity, I took the lily and urgently dug into my pocket for change, but by the time I looked up from my palm she was disappearing into the Place Louis-Lépine. She glanced back from under the trees, the sunlight catching the corners of her eyes like the dabs of a paint brush. Then she was gone. Her act — the simple gift of a flower to a complete stranger — done.
That night the boys and I went to the Café Dauphine, not far from our lodgings in the Rue Quincampoix, and sank several “nightcaps”. They lost themselves happily in their cups, but, intoxicated in quite another way, I could not concentrate on a word they said.
The next morning, after dressing, I suggested we walk through the Marché aux Fleurs, the flower market on the Place Louis-Lépine. The twins humoured me, with no idea my stomach was churning at the prospect that I might not see the girl again. But there she was, standing at her stall, in sturdy workman’s boots, cardigan tied sloppily round her waist, woollen balaclava under her second-hand bonnet, ruddy cheeks and pink knuckles, full lips spare of the gaud of make-up, nattering in a Parisian dialect incomprehensible even to my ear, giving the uncouth males around her a run for their money.
“All right,” said Olaf. “Hi-ho. Go and speak to her, then.”
“I have no idea what the deuce you mean.”
“Do you not?” He laughed, sticking his hand in his waistcoat and making a mime of a beating heart. “I thought he was interested in the botany here,” he said, nudging his brother. “But obviously it’s the biology he’s got his eyes on.”
“Rot.”
“Own up, Yorkie, old boy. It’s not a crime, for Heaven’s sake…”
I turned on my heel, not wanting to show them my cheeks were flushed.
We spent the rest of the day touring the Louvre, but I was beginning to grow sick of their company. Nothing to account for this, other than the fact that their jocular presence prevented me openly seeking the flower seller for fear of incurring their puerile taunts. Yet it was a preoccupation that refused to leave my mind. I was simply unable to banish it.
“My gosh. He really is sickening for something, this lad,” said Olaf later, sipping strong black coffee of the kind only palatable in France. “I think Cupid’s arrow has really struck its target this time…”
I was tempted to punch him on the chin. As it was, I grabbed my coat and returned to the Marché aux Fleurs, buying her a silly gift along the way in reciprocation for the flower she had given me.
It was late afternoon by now and the working day almost at an end. She did not see me at first. I loitered like a felon, content to observe the way she folded the brown paper to make bouquets and made gay little ribbons of rope or twine. Her grace was an attribute that captivated me. She captivated me. The hand upon her hip, the sway of her shoulders, the toss of her head. The ragged edges of her skirts skimming the cobbles. The wisps of reddish hair curling from the soft cleft at the back of her neck. In the end I could not disguise that I was staring at her — and finally our eyes met. I thought suddenly she might find me foolish, but as soon as she laughed and made a little curtsey I felt at ease. I handed her my gift. She looked at it with astonishment bordering on awe, the expression on her face utterly delightful.
“Je m’appelle Sherlock,” I stammered, like a schoolboy.
“Sheeur-loque,” she attempted, waiting for me to continue the conversation, but I could not. My courage punctured by the stray guffaws of some hefty-looking laborers, I lowered my head with embarrassment. In defiance of their ridicule she kissed my cheek. I can remember the warmth of her lips even now, as if a Lucifer had been struck inside me. I felt all at once weak at the knees and as powerful as a steam train. And, even as I fled stupidly, thought: if my next breath were to be my last, I shouldn’t care.