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She leaned forwards, trying to bring the tower into focus while at the same time excluding an ugly satellite dish in the foreground. Stretching to the limit of her flexibility, she leaned into his hand, feeling the certainty of his grip. A gentle wave of oohs and aahs rippled around the crowd as the tower lights came on, first a few at the extremities, and then a whole twinkling network across the structure.It’s lovely, she thought, and heard the same sentiment echoing around her in multiple languages.
Turning to Ronan, she tucked her camera beneath her arm and prepared to jump. ‘Ready?’
‘I’ve got you,’ he said.
She stepped off the wall, letting her body slide through his hands to the ground. They stood there, amid the clicking cameras, chests and bellies and thighs and foreheads pressed together.
‘Thanks.’
‘Avec plaisir, madame.’
An agile photographer with a long lens leaped onto the wall above Claire’s shoulder, so they moved apart and a few steps away.
‘Dinner?’
Claire couldn’t be sure whether that was an offer or a plea. ‘Could we watch the lights come on for a while?’ she asked.
Ronan compromised by offering to go buy a couple of kebabs while she found a good spot on the steps below Sacré-Coeur.
The cathedral steps were almost filled up when she got there. She edged between groups of teenagers and backpackers and excused herself repeatedly in French and English until she found a space right at the centre of the steps, a couple of rows down from the top. The atmosphere was one of restrained festivity, of a polite concert audience waiting for a classical pianist to appear on stage. She wondered if it was a new crowd of people every night, if all these people, independently and spontaneously, had the same idea. Maybe it was mentioned in some guide to Paris, or maybe it was just the obvious thing to do. There was something atavistic in it: get to the top of the hill before dark and watch for lights. There was satisfaction in learning the lay of the land and security in the proof that there were other people out there, living.
There was comfort, she thought, in the evidence of prolonged human endeavour. Look at me, the city seemed to say. I have been here since this bridge was built, and this buttress and this bookshop.Paris, Claire thought, made you feel a part of some greater thing – not that you belonged there, you with your scruffy runners and your freckles, but that you belonged to Paris, that the city owned a tiny part of you and the same tiny part of every other soul sitting on those steps, mesmerised.
Claire had spread her bag and cardigan at her side to keep a space for Ronan, but when he arrived, he sat on the step above, directly behind her, corralling her body between his legs.
‘Sorry I was ages,’ he said. ‘There was a massive queue.’
‘It’s alright. I was just waxing philosophical to myself.’
‘Sit on your cardigan,’ he said. ‘These steps are cold.’
He reached into a paper bag and handed her a hot, foil-wrapped parcel.
‘Oh my God, that smells good.’ She realised quite suddenly how hungry she was.
‘You’ve got hot sauce and, I think, because the guy in the shop did an act of his head exploding, I’ve got the hotter sauce.’
He held out his kebab, and she leaned over and took a bite, catching dripping sauce in her hand.
‘Oh .?.?. yum.’ It took a few seconds to process the taste of juicy meat, yoghurt, fried onions, some sort of coleslaw and then, at last, chilli sauce hitting her tongue.
‘Hah.’ She opened her mouth, waved her hand in front of it. ‘Hoh!’ She couldn’t form the word but mimed drinking.
‘Water?’ Ronan was laughing at her now. She took the near-empty bottle of lukewarm water from him and drained it.
‘Sweet divine God,’ she gasped, regaining the power of speech, and wiping tears from her cheeks. ‘He wasn’t joking, your man with the exploding head.’
Ronan waved a hand and gestured to one of the hawkers weaving through the crowd with crates of beer.
The man smiled and walked over. ‘Deux bières, six euros, monsieur?’
‘Deux bières, trois euros.’ Ronan turned on his most charming smile, and the man laughed warmly. It was all part of the game.
‘Mais non, monsieur, cinq euros.’
‘Cinq euros, trois bières, offre finale.’
The man put his hand to his chest, as though his heart was broken at such effrontery, but then he reached out and took the proffered fiver, then passed a pack with four bottles to Ronan.
