‘Go back to the hotel,’ Val said, reading the tiredness in my eyes. ‘Get a good night’s sleep, a proper rest.’ Then, with the beginnings of a smile, ‘You don’t have to play nursemaid all the time, you know.’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’
Coming into the club late one evening, I saw him in the company of an American drummer we’d met a few nights before and a couple of broad-shouldered French types, wearing those belted trench coats which made them look like cops or gangsters or maybe both. As soon as he spotted me, Val made a quick show of shaking hands and turning away, but not before I saw a small package pass from hand to hand and into the inside pocket of his suit.
‘Don’t look so disapproving,’ he said, when I walked over. ‘Just a few pills to keep me awake.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘Of course.’ He had a lovely, disarming smile.
‘No smack?’
‘No smack.’
I could have asked him to show me his arms, but I chose to believe him instead. It would have made little difference if I had; by then I think he was injecting himself in the leg.
The next day Val was up before eleven, dressed and ready, stirring me from sleep.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Just a shame to waste a beautiful day.’
The winter sun reflected from the stonework of the bridge as we walked across to the Ile St-Louis arm in arm. Val had taken to affecting a beret, which he wore slanting extravagantly to one side. On the cobbles close to where we sat, drinking coffee, sparrows splashed in the shallow puddles left by last night’s rain.
‘Why did you do it?’ Val asked me.
‘Do it?’
‘This. All of this. Throwing up your job-’
‘It wasn’t a real job.’
‘It was work.’
‘It was temping in a lousy office for a lousy boss.’
‘And this is better?’
‘Of course this is better.’
‘I still don’t understand why?’
‘Why come here with you?’
Val nodded.
‘Because he asked me.’
‘Patrick.’
‘Yes, Patrick.’
‘You do everything he asks you?’
I shook my head. ‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘You will,’ he said. ‘You will.’ I couldn’t see his eyes; I didn’t want to see his eyes.
A foursome of tourists, Scandinavian I think, possibly German, came and sat noisily at a table nearby. When the waiter walked past, Val asked for a cognac, which he poured into what was left of his coffee and downed at a single gulp.
‘What I meant,’ he said, ‘would you have come if it had been anyone else but me?’
‘I know what you meant,’ I said. ‘And, no. No, I don’t think I would.’
‘Jimmy, perhaps?’
‘Yes,’ I acknowledged. ‘Perhaps Jimmy. Maybe.’
Seeing Val’s rueful smile, I reached across and took hold of his hand, but when, a few moments later, he gently squeezed my fingers, I took my hand away.
Patrick was waiting for us at the hotel when we returned.
‘Well,’ he said, rising from the lobby’s solitary chair. ‘The lovebirds at last.’
‘Bollocks,’ Val said, but with a grin.
Patrick kissed the side of my mouth and I could smell tobacco and Scotch and expensive aftershave; he put his arms round Val and gave him a quick hug.
‘Been out for lunch?’
‘Breakfast,’ Val said.
‘Fine. Then let’s have lunch.’
Over our protests he led us to a small restaurant in the Latin Quarter, where he ordered in a combination of enthusiastic gestures and sixth-form French.
‘I went along to the club earlier,’ Patrick said, once the waiter had set a basket of bread on the table and poured our wine. ‘Sounds as if it’s going well. They want to hold you over for three weeks more. Assuming you’re agreeable?’
Val nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Anna?’
‘I can’t stay that long,’ I said.
‘Why ever not?’ Patrick looked surprised, aggrieved.
‘I’ve got a life to live.’
‘You’ve got a bedsit in Kilburn and precious little else.’
Blood rushed to my cheeks. ‘All the more reason, then, for not wasting my time here.’
Patrick laughed. ‘You hear that, Val? Wasting her time.’
‘Let her be,’ Val said, forcefully.
Patrick laughed again. ‘Found yourself a champion,’ he said, looking at me.
Val’s knife struck the edge of his plate. ‘For fuck’s sake! When are you going to stop organising our lives?’
Patrick took his time in answering. ‘When I think you can do it for yourselves.’
In his first set that evening, Val was a little below pat, nothing most of the audience seemed to notice or be bothered by, but there was less drive than usual to his playing and several of his solos seemed to peter out aimlessly before handing over to the piano. I could sense the tension building in Patrick beside me, and after the third number he steered me outside; there was a faint rain misting. ‘He’s using again,’ Patrick said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Anna, come on-’
‘I asked him.’
‘You asked him and he said no?’
‘Yes.’
‘Scout’s honour, cross my heart and hope to die. That kind of no?’
I pulled away from him. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Treat me as though I’m some child.’
‘Then open your eyes.’
‘They are open.’
Patrick sighed and I saw the grey of his breath dissipating into the night air.
‘I’m not his jailer, Patrick,’ I said. ‘I’m not his wife, his lover. I can’t watch him twenty-four hours of the day.’
‘I know.’
He kissed me on the forehead, the sort of kiss you might give to a young girl, his lips cold and quick. A long, low boat passed slowly beneath the bridge.
‘I’m opening a club,’ he said. ‘Soho. Broadwick Street.’
‘You?’
‘Some friends I know, they’re putting up the money. I thought if Val were interested it would be somewhere for him to play.’
‘What about the police? Isn’t that a risk still?’
Patrick smiled. ‘Don’t worry about that. It’s all squared away.’
How many times would I hear him say that over the years? All squared away. How much cash was shelled out, usually in small denominations, unmarked notes slipped into side pockets or left in grubby holdalls in the left luggage lockers of suburban railway stations? I never knew the half of it, the paybacks and backhanders and all the false accounting, not even during those years later when we lived together – another story, waiting, one day, to be told.
‘Come on,’ he said, taking my arm. ‘We’ll miss the second set.’
When we got back to the club, Val and the American drummer were in animated conversation at the far end of the bar. Seeing us approach, the drummer ducked his head towards Val, spoke quickly and stepped away. ‘It’s not me you have to worry about, you fucker, remember that.’ And then he was pushing his way through the crowd.
‘What was all that about?’ Patrick asked.
Val shrugged. ‘Nothing. Why?’
‘He seemed pretty angry.’
‘It doesn’t mean anything. That’s just the way he is.’
‘How much do you owe?’
‘What?’
‘That bastard, how much do you owe?’
‘Look-’
‘No, you look.’ Patrick had hold of him by the lapels of his coat. ‘I know him. He was busted in London last year, thrown out of Italy before that, jailed in Berlin. He’s a user and a dealer, the worst kind of pimp there is.’
‘He’s OK-’
Patrick pushed Val back against the bar. ‘He’s not fucking OK. You hear me. Keep away from him. Unless you want to end up the same way.’