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Claire laughed. ‘How the hell did you do that?’
‘Lessons of my misspent youth.’ He was still in his charming mode, she noticed.
‘Go way out of that. Maths teachers don’t have misspent youths.’
‘Of course we do. That’s how we wind up being maths teachers: it’s our penance.’
‘Integration, differentiation, expiation?’
‘That’s the job.’
‘Did you have loads of bold sins to work off?’
‘Nope.’ He opened one bottle, handed it to her, then opened another for himself and clinked the necks together. ‘Only good ones.’
‘I don’t know that I like the sound of that.’
His face turned solemn. He took an unnecessarily long swig from his beer.
‘Ah, Ro.’ She was surprised that he took her seriously. ‘I’m only teasing you.’
‘Look,’ he said, drawing her attention to a helicopter circling overhead.
* * *
The lighting up of Paris might have been a choreographed display. The Georges Pompidou centre was the first big building to light up, in a deliberate sequence from internal lights to external, focusing attention on one quirky feature of the building after another. Then, all in one rush, the Louvre was bathed in a golden glow. Streetlights flickered into action. One by one, Parisians arrived home and flipped switches to light up their windows, all to the applause of this rapt audience in the gods. Even the police seemed to play a part, shifting their guns so that their laser sightings flickered above the crowd.
Claire turned to Notre-Dame, expectantly. Its solid mass stood at the centre of their view. One, two, then three pale yellow lights lit up the facade. A helicopter flew over, shining a torch light on the damaged roof, then flew away.
On the hill rising to the east of the city, a large area remained unlit, like a dark thumbprint on the glittering cityscape. It looks like a forest, Claire thought, and tried to picture the map of Paris in her head. She didn’t think there was such a big park on that side. Then, with a shudder, she remembered the absence of streetlights in Père Lachaise. That gaping dark was the graveyard.
She pointed it out to Ronan. ‘I don’t fancy being up there now.’
‘I dunno,’ he said, taking a slug of beer. ‘It might be great craic. Imagine if they all got up out of their graves at night. Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde could be up there right now, sitting with their backs against that winged messenger, discussing lyrics probably, and Chopin playing gently in the background.’
‘No piano.’
He bowed to acknowledge the point. ‘Chopinhumminggently in the background.’
‘Proust looking for his French toast.’
‘The star-crossed lovers having a shag.’
‘Emm, I think Abélard was castrated.’
‘He’s dead – it hardly matters anymore.’
‘That’s a bittooweird,’ she said, but she laughed nonetheless.
‘Yves Montand singing?’ he suggested.
‘Sharing a spotlight with Édith Piaf.’
‘Ah, but now you are forgetting, there are no spotlights, only .?.?.’
‘.?.?. eternal flames.’ She remembered the finality of the place. ‘We shouldn’t laugh.’
‘What else can we do?’ Ronan’s attention had shifted to some activity on the wider step just below theirs. ‘Hey, who’s your man?’
