Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

She had come to Paris to die. Not in any of the usual ways by which women put an end to their days – pills, opening their veins, throwing themselves from buildings – but by letting herself fade, little by little, like the flowers on the wallpaper in the crooked stairwell where chambermaids flitted like ghosts. She didn’t know how long it would take; she didn’t suppose it much mattered.

   She listened to the muffled clank of the cage-lift making its laborious journeys between the six floors, and the shurr of brooms in the hallway. From outside the sounds were harsher, crueller: the clatter of plates and pans as the bistros, brasseries and little Oriental restaurants served up their prix-fixe lunches to office workers and students; the aggressive whirr of mopeds as they rounded the corner; the shriek of brakes as traffic approached place de la République. She tried to remember the last time she had eaten, but all her mouth retained was the acid taint of cheap wine and a patina of nicotine.

   Then thuds started up next door: one of the girls dusting the surfaces, no doubt; stripping the bed. She hoped that meant the latest occupants had checked out: the voracity of their lovemaking had oppressed her. Sometimes she hadn’t been able to bear it and had hurried out into the dark streets, deserted save the occasional stray dog or entwined couple weaving through the quartier without a thought for where they were headed, each following an instinct they couldn’t have articulated. She’d get sick of these too – the mindless dogs and oblivious lovers – and turn back for the hotel, hoping the couple in the next room had sated each other for a few hours at least.

   The maids, polite and timorous, unable to speak more than the most rudimentary French, wouldn’t disturb her. She’d made it plain: she’d be here for some time – weeks, perhaps months – but she’d take care of her own affairs, and no one was to come into her room in her absence. She’d leave her sheets outside the door, and she’d pay weekly in advance in cash. If anyone had a problem with that…

   Mais bien sûr qu’il n’y aît pas de problème, Madame, said the manager from behind a smile, running one leathery hand over a cat curled like a croissant in his lap.

   Bon, she had replied; the matter needed no further discussion. She knew that he understood her all too well, that she wasn’t the first to wash up here with the aim of escape.

   No, she had nothing to fear from those soft, shy girls who had no doubt come to Paris with a dream, before the reality of survival took hold. She felt sorry for them, in their pink housecoats, averting their doe eyes and thinking of their babies in their musty two-room apartments in Belleville, of their families back home, across a blue expanse, keeping watch for the monthly envelope that could never contain enough to fill the big black hole.

   But then why should I care? she said to herself. Caring changes nothing. Letting herself fall back onto the bed, she rolled on to one side and let her gaze drift beyond the window. There had been something she had been meaning to do, she thought vaguely, but her mind had jammed, like the cogs in a machine left unused for too long.

   Ah yes, that was it – wine and cigarettes. Like the day before and all the days before that. Yet like all the days before, she lay still on the rough indigo counterpane, feeling her body press down into the mattress, a living thing despite herself. Later, she said aloud through chapped lips. She closed her eyes.

                                                  *

He didn’t know why he had come to Paris. It was a city he had visited once, fleetingly, on a school trip, and it held no personal mythology for him. Not like New York, where he had spent his honeymoon, or Tokyo, where he had concluded the business deal that had made him rich.

   For a moment he toyed with the idea of booking in somewhere expensive – the Crillon, perhaps, or the George V, which he had read about in in-flight magazines over the years. It was there he would have stayed had he been with his wife, whose avidity for luxury might have been temporarily slaked by their marble bathrooms, the fluffiness of their towels, the price of their room-service breakfasts. The hours she had spent poring over copies of Vogue, he reflected, compiling her mental lists of the latest must-have handbags and miracle creams. Yet however much she spent, however much he earned, she was never satisfied, each issue feeding her more aspirations, until she grew dizzy with the effort of trying to keep up and retired to bed with one of her migraines.

   ‘Monsieur?’

   In the rear-view mirror the driver’s eyes fixed him with a bemused expression.

   ‘Où je peux vous emmener?’ he prompted in a North African burr.

   ‘Where I take you, mister?’

   ‘Er, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I – I don’t know Paris. Take me somewhere with some good bars. Somewhere cool.’

   He could tell by the way the lines at the corners of the driver’s eyes bunched up that he was smirking, and he winced.

   ‘And I need a hotel,’ he added. ‘A cheap one. Someplace to rest my head, you know.’

   The driver pulled away, nodding to the rap that flooded the car when he switched on the radio.

   Somewhere cool, he thought. What was I thinking? He pressed himself back into the seat. Tiredness had made his body something soft, almost boneless, but he knew he wouldn’t find sleep for hours, even when he had secured a bed. Beyond the glass he watched the procession of suburban streets give way to the clutter of the city. Neon signs winked into life as dusk settled over the crowded throughfares where people were shopping at the corner grocers, vegetable stalls and boulangeries. He glanced at his watch and wondered what his wife was doing, whether she was on her way back from the gym or at home, preparing a light supper for herself, not expecting him back before late.

   The car made an abrupt left, and he saw that they were following the banks of a canal, its waters sleek as tar in the twilight. Occasional figures moved beneath the trees, but there were few people about. He thought he might like to take a walk along it the next day.

   The canal ended. Then the driver made a few sharp turns, pulled up on a corner and gestured across the road to a line of small hotels with nameboards bearing two stars.

   ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Can you recommend one?’

   The driver shrugged without turning around.

   ‘Okay, well thanks anyway,’ he said, passing forward a banknote. ‘Keep the change.’

   Crossing the road, he remembered the canal, but by the time he had turned to ask the man what it was called, the taxi had disappeared. A light rain had begun to fall. He made for the nearest hotel, on the corner, with a brightly lit reception visible through plate-glass doors adorned with stickers showing the travel publications that had endorsed it. Inside it smelled of hot chocolate and cats: two Persians were tangled in a basket by the radiator, and a black cat was draped over the front desk like a cast-off fur coat. He stroked its head as he waited for the receptionist to finish his phone call, feeling the creature vibrate with satisfaction, regretting that his wife had never wanted cats, or pets of any kind. Not with my white-linen sofas, she’d say whenever he brought the subject up.

   In faltering French he requested a double room for the night, on the top floor; the place clearly wasn’t booked up, he reasoned, if he decided to stay longer. Taking the keys and shouldering his bag, he made for the lift. There was barely room for him and his bag inside, never mind the maximum of two people indicated on the chart. He pressed the button for the sixth floor and the metal cage rattled up through the building, granting him, as it moved between the storeys, glimpses of deserted corridors.

   He stepped out, closing the concertina metal doors behind him. The lift began another hesistant descent.

   He looked at his key. Room 609. Seeing on the wall opposite an arrow to rooms 609 and 610, he took the corridor on the left and immediately found himself in front of his room. At the end of the short passageway stood Room 610, which he realised must be a corner room. He would rather have had that, he thought, but the effort of going back down and making himself understood was too much. And it was only for a night, maybe two. He opened the door.

   The room was warm and bright, with an aubergine bedspread, gauze curtains fluttering at the large window and a small closet with a shower. Beyond that, rooftops stretched away beneath a sumptuous inky-blue sky that seemed to invite one to reach out and touch it. It was perfect, he thought: why did people pay hundreds of euros to stay in expensive hotels? He lowered himself onto the bed, eyes trained on the lights in the windows of the buildings opposite as they blinked on and off. The sleep he had thought would evade him came fast, as if someone had crept into the room and pulled a warm mantle around his shoulders.

                                                 *

She had lost the afternoon, somehow, although she was sure she hadn’t slept. If she had, it had been a hard, punishing sleep: she didn’t feel rested. A key jangled in the lock of the neighbouring room. She sighed, pushing herself up with both elbows. She had thought it was secluded, this mansard room, but it seemed there was no escape from other people.

   Her holdall was in the corner, clothes piled in and around it. She
rummaged through them and found a pair of jeans and a dark sweater. Then she splashed her face with water, pocketed a handful of change from the bedside table and left.

   Passing the next room, she heard a man’s snores; she hoped that
meant he was alone. She carried on to the staircase and walked down through the building. A middle-aged couple were leaving their room to go for dinner; behind a few other doors she heard the crackle of TV sets or the hiss of showers.

   The streets shone like dark water. A short walk along rue de Malte brought her to the little late-night grocery, with its gruff owner: she liked that she never felt she had to make conversation with him. She bought a bottle of rosé from the fridge, and a packet of Lucky Strikes. As she was leaving, she turned back, took a bottle of Ricard and some water too.

   Back at the hotel the man in Room 609 was still snoring, but as she turned her key in the lock she heard the creak of his bedsprings. She stepped into her room and closed the door, rustled in the plastic bag for her cigarettes and matches. She lit up, still standing by the door. He had gone quiet again. She took the bottles from the bag, placed them on the rickety bureau and retrieved a tumbler from the shower-room. She uncorked the wine, then thought again and poured herself a glass of Ricard, cut with mineral water. Placing the glass and the ashtray with the burning cigarette on her bedside table, she kicked off her shoes and let herself fall back onto the bed.

                                                   *

   He awoke to the sound of a key in a lock, ran his hand over his cropped head. He felt refreshed, somehow lighter. He looked out at the gleaming roofs, at the amber light spilling from the windows; in one a man on a cordless phone, a towel around his midriff, paced around, gesturing; in another a woman touched up her makeup in her bathroom mirror then pulled on a brown leather coat and rushed for her front door. He got up and moved to the window, and a minute later saw her reappear in the street and hop onto the back of a waiting scooter.

   All at once he wanted to be out there, among these people, breathing in the same night air, feeling the blood beat in his veins again. Reaching for his wallet, he headed for the door. In the passageway he paused, the tang of tobacco in his nostrils. He looked at the door to Room 610. Perhaps it harboured another lone traveller in need of a friendly face to stare at over a beer. Something inside him felt different, untethered, and before he could think again he knocked.

   Closer now to the door, he was certain someone was smoking inside. He knocked again, thought even of trying the handle. Still no answer. He turned and made his way along the corridor.

   Out on the street, he paused, looking at the rundown hotels, bistros and kebab joints, trying to work out which way to head. Catching sight of a group of studenty types at the southern end of the street, he followed them.

   They took him to a long narrow street of cheap restaurants and bohemian-looking bars; he watched them file into one of the latter then carried on, peering through the windows until a large, dark, crowded space halfway up the street took his interest. Foxed mirrors and tatty absinthe posters lined walls clad in old white butcher’s-shop tiles. He looked at the sign: Café Charbon. He went in and took a seat at the zinc. A barman with a shaved head and pierced lip regarded him with slighty raised eyebrows.

   ‘Qu’est-ce que je vous sers?’

   ‘Er – une bière, s’il vous plaît.’

   He glanced around him, then turned and took a sip from the beer that had materialized. She’d be worried by now, wondering why he wasn’t home and why he hadn’t been in touch. She’d be trying to call, leaving anxious messages. He took his phone out of his pocket, contemplated the blank screen then slipped it back inside.

   He brought his fingers to the rim of the glass, drew them around it, watching as the froth disintegrated at his touch and condensation streamed down the outside of the glass. When at last he glanced up, he found himself staring into the eyes of a stranger. His eyes flashed away automatically, but some other instinct made them flit back, to check if the man was still observing him, and it was then that he realized the stranger was him.

   This time he held the stare, asking himself how he had got so old. The flecks of grey at the temples, the lines – when had they appeared? He wondered if children might have kept him young but told himself it wasn’t worth thinking about: he had tried to persuade her to seek help and she hadn’t wanted to, and that had been the end of it. No sense in going over all that now. No sense in rehashing the same niggles, the suspicions.

   ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ came a voice in heavily accented English as he was making to order himself a second beer, and perhaps a whisky chaser. He turned his head, but the woman was looking into the mirror behind the bar, so he had to turn it back to meet her gaze. Perched on the next stool, she was drawing on a cigarette, one hand partially masking her face. When she lowered it, he saw regular features framed by auburn hair that poured down over bare shoulders: her glossy black top stayed up of its own accord, without straps.

   She was watching him in the mirror, her regard a mixture of
brazenness and something akin to defiance. He guessed she was probably drunk, had stormed out on her boyfriend after a row, put on her sluttiest clothes and walked into the nearest bar. He knew that if he liked, he could lead her back to Room 609 and have her any way he wanted. His hand reached over and extracted a cigarette from the packet in front of her, like something independent of him – he thought of a crab making its way across sand. He hadn’t smoked in years, but tonight was something else. Tonight was the first night in years he had sat beside a stranger in a bar and thought about whether he was going to take her to bed.

   He turned to her at last, but she continued to stare into the mirror; he saw she was looking at herself now, rather than him. He pictured her falling onto the aubergine bedspread, eyes rolling back in her head as she peeled the black top up over her breasts and head. Her breath stank, of nicotine and garlic and cheap wine. Had she been a little more sober, he thought he might have invited her back– not to bed her, but to talk to her, find out what had brought her here, to this bar, this night. To find out what had made her come on to him, some middle-aged guy out drinking alone in a trendy bar. Or wouldn’t it have mattered who was sitting on that stool tonight?

   He scattered a fistful of coins across the bar, got up, the unlit cigarette between his fingers. He thought he heard the girl hiss something after him, but he didn’t stop to find out what. For a while he let himself be carried along by the warm tide of young people outside, hoping to be infected by some of their vigour, their purpose, their swagger. Who cared what disappointments and disasters life had in store for them: they were happy here, now, and nothing else mattered.

   Washed back on to rue de Malte, he looked up at his window. It was dark, as he had known it would be, but there was a light burning in the one next to it. He thought of knocking again but told himself that if the person was in the mood for company, there was no end to it in this city. Nobody had to be alone here unless they wanted to.

                                                 *

She heard the lift doors close, footsteps on the threadbare carpet and the rattle of a key. Turning her head on the pillow, she looked towards the door. She hoped he was still alone: if he’d picked someone up, there’d be a racket all night.

   She reached for the bottle. She hadn’t drunk enough, was losing interest even in that. Could she not do this, such a simple thing, properly? Gritting her teeth, she poured a neat glass of pastis, drank it in one. That should do it. Give it ten minutes and then have another, and so on and so forth until dawn’s light came to weave its way through the curtains like the over-eager fingers of a disdained lover.

   From the room came a rhythmic footfall that in some ways consoled her – there was another to whom sleep did not come easy, though she remembered his snores and supposed he may just not be tired. Not everyone was haunted, she reminded herself. She couldn’t imagine what that felt like – to be unblemished, free of regret. To be able to lay your head on a pillow and close your eyes without the darkness rushing in on you like vertigo.

   She sat up with a start, looked towards the door, then shook her head and collapsed back against the pillow. A second low tap had her up and out of bed like a cornered cat. She looked wildly around – her cigarette burned in the ashtray on the eiderdown; she could only have been gone for a minute or two. She stumbled forwards, wrenched open the door.

   ‘What is it?’

   ‘I’m sorry.’ The man stepped back. ‘I’m from next – look, it doesn’t matter. Forget it.’

   He turned, but on the threshold of his room he looked back, conscious that he hadn’t heard her close her door, and saw that she was still staring at him.

   ‘I just wanted to get a light,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. It’s ridiculous – I don’t even smoke, not really. Or not for a long time. But then, I don’t normally go out drinking alone in –’

   He thought he saw a trace of curiosity, perhaps even bitter amusement, flicker across her features.

‘Okay,’ she breathed at last. ‘I’ve got matches in here.’

   He could smell the alcohol on her, but it didn’t repulse him. There wasn’t the sense of desperation there was with the woman in the bar, or at least not the desperation to seduce. One look at this woman as she sat in the armchair and poured herself a glass of Ricard told him she wasn’t going to make a move on him.

   He sat on the edge of the bed. She seemed to be studying the
carpet so intently he thought she might have forgotten he was there.
Then she came to, and leaning towards the bureau took hold of another tumbler and waved it towards him.

   ‘Pastis?’ she said.

   ‘I’ll stick to wine,’ he said, jerking his chin towards the bottle on
the bedside table. ‘If that’s okay.’

   She passed him the tumbler and left him to serve himself. Silence
unfurled between them; where normally he would have resisted it, he let it settle around him like a favourite cardigan worn with time. After a few minutes he reached out and poured himself another glass. He drank it down, then lay back against the pillow.

                                               *

He woke to find her beside him, eyes roaming the ceiling.

   ‘Can’t sleep?’ His voice sounded strange to him after so much quiet.

   She shook her head.

   ‘Is there anything I can do?’

   ‘I doubt it.’ Her whispered words fell on him like a caress.

   ‘Was it a guy?’

   ‘Of course.’

   ‘He left you?’ Involuntarily his hand had reached out to touch
her face, but she turned her head away, then sat up.

   ‘We fought, violently, incoherently, in the way only drunk people can. We’d been looking for somewhere to eat but ended up in a bar. On the way back to the room I said – things. Things I didn’t mean.’

   ‘And he struck back?’

   ‘Barely. He looked at me – his eyes – like he was seeing someone
who’d lost all reason.’

   ‘And then?’

   Her eyes scanned the room. ‘Then I sobered up, I tried to take it all back, and all he could say was “You’ve wrecked it, you stupid cow, you’ve broken it.” And I started to act calm, rational. “Look,” I said,

   “We’re getting married, we’re going to have babies.”’

   ‘And what did he say?’

   ‘He said, “It ain’t going to happen.” She slumped back onto the bed beside him. ‘It was the last thing he ever said to me.’

   ‘But surely –?’

   ‘Surely what?’

   ‘In the cold light of day…’

   ‘But he left, you see. He didn’t even take his bags.’ She was looking at a space on the floor by the bureau. ‘He grabbed his passport and boat tickets and left.’

   She closed her eyes. ‘I told myself he needed time, that I shouldn’t run after him. That it would be better to let him return to Dublin and have some time to realise that it hadn’t been me speaking, not
the real me.’

   ‘And when you got home?’

   ‘He wasn’t there. I kept calling him to let him know I had his
stuff, but I didn’t hear a thing.’

   ‘So you went to find him.’

   ‘Of course. And I found out he never showed up.’

   ‘He had disappeared?’

   ‘His flatmate had heard nothing. Nobody had heard anything.’

   ‘Why didn’t you try to find him?’

   ‘Don’t you think I did?’ She sat up, pushed her hair back from her face as she lit a cigarette. ‘I’ve spent five years trying to find him. I’ve ruled out my first thought – that he got killed on the motorbike between Paris and Dublin – because he had ID on him and sooner or later I would have been informed.’ She dragged on her cigarette. ‘No. In the end I had to conclude that he had gone in the opposite direction, southwards, to North Africa maybe, or perhaps even as far as India. Somewhere he knew he would never see me again.’

   ‘You really believe that?’

   ‘It’s as good an explanation as any.’

   ‘And you went looking in these places, on a whim?’

   She sighed. ‘I’ve been all over. And then some.’

   ‘And you’re what –’ He looked around her room, picturing her standing there, face flushed with alcohol, trying to take back her words. ‘You’re here to exorcise ghosts?’

   ‘In a manner of speaking.’

   He stood up, moved to the window. Outside the neon flared and died, flared and died, relentless. In the street a sturdy white man staggered, propped by a Eurasian girl; around her frail shoulders his arm looked like a ham-hock.

   ‘I can’t forget,’ she said, as if to herself. ‘I’ve tried sex with strangers, books, drugs, you name it. I’ve convinced myself he’s happier there, wherever “there” may be. I’ve had to; I couldn’t have coped with not knowing. But as for me – I’m just sick of trying to make a life for myself in the face of all the could-have-beens.’

   He was afraid to look at her, afraid of her pain. ‘I should go,’ he said, turning for the door. He gestured back at the window. ‘It’ll be light before too long.’

   He heard the flare of another match, the gurgle of liquid. ‘What about you?’ he heard her say as he grasped the doorhandle.

   He turned, eyes quizzical.

   ‘What’s your story?’

   ‘I don’t have a story.’

   She smirked. ‘Oh, but you do. It’s in your eyes. You’re looking for answers.’

   ‘Answers?’ He couldn’t hold her stare.

   ‘You don’t need to know the questions, to be looking for answers.’

   He hesitated for just a moment, then he turned and walked out of the room.

                                                    *

He had walked, he felt, for miles, but with no map to guide him he couldn’t have reconstructed his route, nor did he know how long it was since he had left the hotel. The monotony of his steps had lulled him into a kind of torpor, but then the monuments emerged from the dawn haze and he watched the doused pavements begin to shimmer.

   He followed the Seine far beyond the point where he recognized any names, past the ponts de l’Alma, d’Iena and de Bir Hakeim, trying to summon the will to flip open his mobile and check his messages. Then he hailed a taxi and asked to go to Roissy airport. As the car headed up avenue Kléber, he rested his head back, trying to put the girl out of his mind. There’s nothing you can do, he said to himself, like a mantra. You can’t help someone like that.

   The taxi swung right, jolting him from his rêverie; a stern grey edifice loomed on his left. At its base, rendered tiny and insignificant by its bulk, stood a young boy, alone, a navy school rucksack on his back. It may have been the distance between them, but it seemed that the boy was staring right back at him.

   The car was already turning onto the Champs-Elysées when he leaned forward and shouted ‘Stop!’, pushing some notes at the driver, jumping out and running back up towards the Arc de Triomphe. But the concourse surrounding it was empty, and he halted. Behind him he could hear the purr of the taxi’s engine.

   He climbed back in and shut the door.

   ‘Sorry,’ he said to the driver. ‘Thought I saw someone I knew.’

   He settled back into his seat, but as they pulled away he risked a last glance over his shoulder. The boy was there again, watching him depart. Forty years, his face seemed to be saying. What did you do with your life?

   He wanted to get back out of the taxi, run the few hundred metres separating them and take the boy in his arms. I’m sorry, he’d say.
Let me start again. I’ll do better next time. I promise.

   But he knew the spell would break the minute he opened the door, that the boy would be gone. And so he turned and looked straight ahead, and he only moved once, to lean forwards and whisper to the
driver:

   ‘Forget the airport. Take me to the Hôtel de l’Espérance, rue de Malte.’

   As the driver nodded, he took his mobile out of his pocket and threw it out of the window, watching as it smashed on one of the freshly washed and glittering pavements.

                                                     *

The room was empty, and he availed himself of the opportunity to check into it – a month to start with, he’d said, handing over his credit card, and then he’d see how he’d go.

   She’d taken her things, which was hopeful. It suggested she hadn’t gone to throw herself from the top of the Tour Eiffel, that she had rediscovered, if not something to live for, then at least a curiosity about the world. It suggested she might be back, one day, to fully confront the demons this room held for her.

   He stood, alert to the scent of her – the maids hadn’t had chance to clean the room, but he’d said that didn’t matter. Then he moved to the open window, inched back the curtain and looked out into the awakening streets.

   ‘Maybe I can help you forget,’ he said, and he listened as the breeze took his words and carried them up over the rooftops like the last traces of a dream.

                                           THE END