Then Jackie says to me, “Shall we go?” and suddenly I feel restored. We walk through quiet empty streets, the only sound the rush of water in gutters as they are automatically swilled clean. We pass a café with three tarts inside waiting for their pimp. They chatter away exuberantly.
Jackie shivers and I obligingly put my arm round her. She rests her head on my shoulder and in this fashion we awkwardly make our way to her flat. “Shh,” Jackie cautions as we open the front door, “be careful you don’t wake them up.” I feel a rising pressure in my throat, and I wonder if the bed has squeaky springs.
We sit in the small kitchen on hard modern chairs. My buttocks feel numb and strangely cold. The fluorescent light, I’m sure, can’t be flattering if its unkind effects on Jackie’s pale face are anything to go by. Slowly I sense a leaden despair settle on me as we sit in this cheerless, efficient module in this expensive apartment block. Immeuble de très grand standing, the agent’s advertisement says outside. We have kissed from time to time and I have felt both her small pointed breasts through her T-shirt. Her lips are thin and provide no soft cushion for my own. We talk now in a listless desultory fashion.
Jackie tells me she’s leaving Nice next week to return to England. She wants to be a stewardess, she says, but only on domestic flights. Intercontinental ones, it seems, play hell with your complexion and menstrual cycle. Half-heartedly I offer the opinion that it might be amusing if, say, one day I should find myself flying on the very plane in which she was serving. Jackie’s face becomes surprisingly animated at this notion. It seems an appropriate time to exchange addresses, which we do. I notice she spells her name “Jacqui.”
This talk of parting brings with it a small cargo of emotion.
We kiss again and I slip my hand inside her T-shirt.
“No,” she says gently but with redoubtable firmness.
“Please, Jackie,” I say. “You’re going soon.” I suddenly feel very tired. “Well, at least let me see them then,” I say with petulant audacity. Jackie pauses for a moment, her head cocked to one side as if she can hear someone calling her name in the distance.
“Okay then,” she says. “If that’s what you want. If that’s all.”
She stands up, pulls off her T-shirt and slips down the straps of her bra so that the cups fall free. Her breasts cast no shadow in the unreal glare of the strip light. The nipples are very small; her breasts are pale and conical and seem almost to point upward. She exposes them for five seconds or so, not looking at me, looking down at her breasts as if she’s seeing them for the first time. Then she resnuggles them in her bra and puts her T-shirt back on. She makes no comment at all. It’s as if she’s been showing me her appendix scar.
“Look,” she says unconcernedly at the door, “I’ll give you a ring before I leave. Perhaps we could get together.”
“Yes,” I say. “Do. That would be nice.”
Outside it is light. I check my watch. It’s half past five. It’s cold and the sky is packed with grey clouds. I walk slowly back to Mme. D’Amico’s through a sharp-focussed, scathing dawn light. Some of the cafés are open already. Drowsy patrons sweep the pavements. I feel grimy and hung over. I plod up the stairs to Mme. D’Amico’s. My room, it seems to me, has a distinct fusty, purulent odour; the atmosphere has a stale recycled quality, all the more acute after the uncompromising air of the morning. I strip off my clothes. I add my unnaturally soft shirt to the pile on the back of the chair. I knot my socks and ball my underpants — as if to trap their smells within their folds — and flip them into the corner of the wardrobe. I lie naked between the sheets. Itches start up all over my body. I finger myself experimentally but I’m too tired and too sad to be bothered.
I wake up to a tremulous knocking on my door. I feel dreadful. I squint at my watch. It’s seven o’clock. I can’t have been asleep for more than an hour.
“Monsieur Edward? C’est moi, Madame D’Amico.”
I say come in, but no sound issues from my mouth. I cough and run my tongue over my teeth, swallowing energetically.
“Entrez, Madame,” I whisper.
Mme. D’Amico comes in. Her hair is pinned up carelessly and her old face is shiny with tears. She sits down on the bed and immediately begins to sob quietly, her thin shoulders shaking beneath her black cardigan.
“Oh, Madame,” I say, alarmed. “What is it?” I find it distressing to see Mme. D’Amico, normally so correct and so formal, displaying such unabashed human weakness. I am also — inappropriately — very aware of my nakedness beneath the sheets.
“C’est mon mari,” she cries. “Il est mort.”
Gradually the story comes out. Apparently Monsieur D’Amico, sufferer from Parkinson’s disease, was having a final cigarette in his room in the sanatorium before the nurse came to put him to bed. He lit his cigarette and then tried to shake the match out. But his affliction instead made the match spin from his trembling fingers and fall down the side of the plastic armchair upon which he was sitting. The chair was blazing within seconds, Monsieur D’Amico’s pyjamas and dressing-gown caught fire, and although he managed to wriggle himself onto the floor, his screams were not sufficiently loud to attract the attention of the nurses immediately. He was severely burned. The shock was too much for his frail body and he died in the early hours of the morning.
I try to arrange my sleepy, unresponsive senses into some sort of order, try to summon the full extent of my French vocabulary.
Mme. D’Amico looks at me pitifully. “Oh, Monsieur Edward,” she whimpers, her lips quivering.
“Madame,” I reply helplessly. “C’est une vraie tragédie.” It seems grossly inept, under the circumstances, almost flippant, my thick early-morning tongue removing any vestige of sincerity from the words. But it seems to mean something to Mme. D’Amico, who bows her head and starts to cry with light, high-pitched sobs. I reach out an arm from beneath the sheets and gently pat her shoulder.
“There, there, Madame,” I say. “It will be all right.”
As I lean forward I notice that in her hands there is a crumpled letter. Peering closer I still can’t make out the name but I do see that the stamp is British. It is surely for me. The postal strike, I realise with a start, must now be over. Suddenly I know that I can stay. I think at once about Jackie and our bizarre and unsatisfactory evening. But I don’t really care any more. My spirits begin to stir and lift. I get a brief mental flash of Monsieur D’Amico in his blazing armchair and I hear the quiet sobs of his wife beside me. But it doesn’t really impede the revelation that slowly overtakes me. People, it seems, want to give me things — for some reason known only to them. No matter what I do or how I behave, unprompted and unsought the gifts come. And they will keep on coming. Naked photos, cold pizza, their girls, their wives, their breasts to see, even their grief. I feel a growing confidence about my stay in Nice. It will be all right now, I feel sure. It will work out. I think about all the gifts that lie waiting for me. I think about the Swedish girls at the Centre. I think about spring and the days when the sun will be out.…