AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ronan was already moving towards them. He walked up to the man as easily as he might have crossed a pub to greet an old rugby buddy. He gave the man a hearty handshake, slipped him a note. He said something Claire couldn’t catch, then clapped the man on the shoulder. His hand, just for a second, wavered above the little girl’s head, as if he wanted to ruffle her hair, but he didn’t.
Instead, he moved to Claire’s side and took her hand.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked, as they walked away.
‘Ah, yeah, of course I am,’ he said. ‘It’s just that it all seems so .?.?.’
‘I know.’
She squeezed his hand, rubbing her thumb into the warm flesh next to his, and he pressed back.
Claire took a photograph of the glass-covered entrance to Abbesses Métro station. It was like something from a fairy tale, a fabled gateway. A tightly spiralling staircase, lined all the way with Art Deco tiles, led down – and farther down – to the deepest platform of the Métro system. It smelled of engine oil and old age.
Claire took some more photos, then tucked her camera into her backpack and took out her guidebook.
‘This is the platform you see in the filmAmélie.’
‘Ah. It does look familiar alright.’
‘But what you actually see is really a replica of this station that they built outside the city. It’s been used for loads and loads of films. When you see the Paris Métro in a film, that’s usually what you’re seeing.’
‘So the fake’s more famous than the real thing?’
Claire had to think about that. ‘No. The fake is a secret. It’s not famous at all.’
‘But it’s what people see.’
‘The real thing is what’s famous. The real thing isn’t a place where films are made.’
‘It’s just a station, where normal people catch the train to work every day.’
‘It’s more than that, though, isn’t it? Samuel Beckett probably stood on this platform. You could be standing right on the spot where he stood.’
‘Waiting for .?.?.’
‘Don’t say it.’ She laughed.
‘A train, obviously.’
‘Just imagine them .?.?. George Orwell, Picasso, Hemingway. Imagine what they were thinking while they stood here, looking at these very same tiles, listening for the train, just like we are, maybe planning in their heads what they’d work on when they got home.’
‘I’d say Hemingway was thinking he should have taken a lift in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s car.’
A thundering rumble sounded down the tunnel and, pushing air and legends aside, the train arrived. The seats were all taken, mostly by tidy ladies equipped with shopping bags and baskets. Claire stood holding on to a handrail, her body braced against Ronan’s.
‘So, remind me why we’re going to walk around a graveyard?’ he asked.
‘I want to see where Oscar Wilde is buried.’ She paused, then went on, ‘and I want to see Jim Morrison’s grave.’
‘Because you’re such a great fan of The Doors?’
‘Exactly so.’
He raised one eyebrow in a way that she knew he knew never failed to amuse her.
‘Is that meant to be lascivious?’
‘Incredulous, my dear.’ His hand tightened at her waist. ‘Come on, who was he? Spill the beans.’
