Consolation Read Free

placing my hand against her back, ‘enjoy.’
    She arched her back. Ever so slightly.
    The way her mum did.
    We decided to go on foot. After a few silent streets, where each of my questions seemed to pain her even more than the previous one, she began to fiddle with her iPod and wiggled the headphones into her ears.
    Very well then, looks like I ought to get myself a real dog, no? Someone who’d love me and would literally jump for joy whenever I got back from a trip . . . Even a stuffed one, why not? With big moist eyes and a little motor that would cause his tail to wag when I touched his head.
    Oh, I love him already . . .
    ‘You in a mood, now?’
    Because of her gadget she’d said the words more loudly than necessary and the woman on the crossing with us turned round.
    Mathilde sighed, closed her eyes, sighed again, removed her left earplug and stuck it into my right ear.
    ‘Here, I’ve got something for you that’s just your age group, it’ll perk you up.’
    And there in the midst of the noise and traffic, on the end of a very short wire that still connected me to a faraway childhood, a few guitar chords.
    A few notes and the perfect, hoarse, slightly drawling voice of Leonard Cohen, singing ‘Suzanne’.
    ‘Better now?’
    I nodded my head, just like a moody little boy.
    ‘Brilliant.’
    She was pleased.
    Spring was still a long way off but the sun was working on heating things up a bit, stretching lazily over the dome of the Panthéon. My-daughter-who-was-not-my-daughter-but-who-was-nothing-less-either gave me her arm so she wouldn’t lose the sound, and there we were in Paris, the most beautiful city in the world – I’d finally come round to admitting the fact by virtue of leaving it behind so often.
    Wandering through this
quartier
I loved so, turning our backs on the Great Men, just the two of us, little mortals who could astound no one, amidst the tranquil weekend crowd. Feeling relaxed, our guard down, to the very rhythm of
for he’s touched
our perfect bodies
with his mind
.
    ‘This is wild,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘and you still listen to this stuff?’
    ‘Looks that way . . .’
    ‘I must have come along this very street humming this, over thirty years ago . . . See that shop, there?’
    With my chin I pointed towards the shopfront of Dubois, the art supply place on the Rue Soufflot.
    ‘If you knew how many hours I spent drooling over their window . . . It all set me dreaming. Everything. The paper, the pens, the tubes of Rembrandt. One day I even saw Prouvé come out of there. Jean Prouvé, can you imagine! And, well, on that particular day I must have been waltzing along murmuring that Jesus
was a sailor
and all that stuff, I’ll bet you anything . . . Prouvé . . . when I think back . . .’
    ‘Who’s Prouvé?’
    ‘A genius. Well, not even. An inventor, a creator, an incredible bloke . . . you know, the designer and architect; I’ll show you some of the books. But, um, to get back to our cheery lad, there . . . My favourite was
Famous Blue Raincoat
, haven’t you got that one?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Jeez! What are they teaching you at school these days, anyway? I was mad about that song, absolutely crazy. I think I must have worn the cassette right through from rewinding it so many times.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t remember . . . I’d have to listen to it again, but as I recall, it’s the story of a guy who’s writing to one of his friends, a bloke who’d gone off with his wife at some point, and he was saying that he thought he’d forgiven him. There was something about a lock of hair, I remember, and for someone like me who was incapable of chatting up a single girl, I was such a great lump, awkward and so moody it was pathetic, well, I thought that sort of story was very
very
sexy. As if it were written for me, in a way . . .’
    I was laughing.
    ‘And listen to this. I even pestered my dad so he’d give me his old Burberry, and I tried to dye it blue and screwed