Paris I had my preferred choice, but the darkness fell rapidly and there was nothing to see. The aisle seat was occupied by a formidable Frenchwoman of an age which was becoming increasingly certain, embalmed in a mummy case of arrogantly elegant couture. I never found out her name. Let’s call her Madame Dupont.
I attempted without much success to strike up a conversation. She seemed both unsurprised and not particularly interested to find that I spoke her language badly, but I rattled on anyway, just for the pleasure of feeling the chewy texture of French in my mouth. Madame Dupont listened with half an ear and a vague smile, from time to time dipping compulsively into a designer bag containing moisturizing cream, bottles of Evian, fashion magazines and other accessories. A further accessory, it later turned out, was Monsieur Dupont, a wily-looking old bird who at his wish or hers was seated four rows back, but occasionally stopped off on his perambulations up and down the aisle to mumble something which sounded like a complaint to his wife, who dismissed it with an expressive shrug.
After the meal, which Madame Dupont fastidiously passed up in favour of a selection of deli delights from David’s on Geary, the attendants settled down for the night, leaving us to our own devices. The movie didn’t interest me, so I rummaged around in my coat pockets for the Walkman and tapes I had brought along. I also found the package with the British stamp which I had picked out of the mail on my return to the house. The handwriting on the Jiffy bag was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Inside was another envelope, and a note.
Dear Tony
Here they are at long last, the photographs you requested. Have fun looking through them. Or perhaps it won’t be fun.
Anne
I remembered that during our negotiations about the divorce, I had asked my previous wife to send me the photographs of my early life which had ended up in the formidably organized and catalogued series of albums that Anne used as a shrine to the family life which, despite her strenuous efforts, she had never quite managed to create.
I opened the inner packet, which turned out not to be an envelope, just a sheet of paper folded and taped around the photographs, all of which slid down between my knees, scattering on the floor. I painfully gathered up the ones I could reach, but a few seemed to have slipped back towards the seat behind me. I ignored these for now and settled down to view what I’d come up with.
They were not in any order. The formats all varied too: larger, smaller, square, rectangular. Most were in black-and -white, the rest in assorted styles of unconvincing colour. Some had been bleached out in patches, others had faded overall. I worked my way through them, trying to put names and dates to places and faces. Even when the prints had scrawled annotations on the back, these were usually so recondite as to constitute yet another puzzle. ‘Ides of March ’71 – Eat, you Brute!!!’ I hadn’t the faintest recollection of ever having gone to a toga party, but here was the evidence which proved me wrong.
The photographs came in random bunches, rather like memories, and it took me at least half an hour to sort them into anything resembling chronological sequence. The earliest showed me with Sally, the first girl I had slept with, and only then because she’d been too kind to tell me that when she said I could spend the night, she meant on the sofa. She was kind in bed, too, which I remembered even at the time thinking wasn’t quite what I wanted. It was still a good deal better than the opposite, though, which I came across in due course with . . .
Thea? Bea? Something like that. The shot of Sally and me, taken by one of the people we shared a house with, shows the two of us on a pier in the town where we were all at university. I’m in black, my eyes averted, an existential cigarette smoking moodily between my fingers. Sally looked plumper and
I attempted without much success to strike up a conversation. She seemed both unsurprised and not particularly interested to find that I spoke her language badly, but I rattled on anyway, just for the pleasure of feeling the chewy texture of French in my mouth. Madame Dupont listened with half an ear and a vague smile, from time to time dipping compulsively into a designer bag containing moisturizing cream, bottles of Evian, fashion magazines and other accessories. A further accessory, it later turned out, was Monsieur Dupont, a wily-looking old bird who at his wish or hers was seated four rows back, but occasionally stopped off on his perambulations up and down the aisle to mumble something which sounded like a complaint to his wife, who dismissed it with an expressive shrug.
After the meal, which Madame Dupont fastidiously passed up in favour of a selection of deli delights from David’s on Geary, the attendants settled down for the night, leaving us to our own devices. The movie didn’t interest me, so I rummaged around in my coat pockets for the Walkman and tapes I had brought along. I also found the package with the British stamp which I had picked out of the mail on my return to the house. The handwriting on the Jiffy bag was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Inside was another envelope, and a note.
Dear Tony
Here they are at long last, the photographs you requested. Have fun looking through them. Or perhaps it won’t be fun.
Anne
I remembered that during our negotiations about the divorce, I had asked my previous wife to send me the photographs of my early life which had ended up in the formidably organized and catalogued series of albums that Anne used as a shrine to the family life which, despite her strenuous efforts, she had never quite managed to create.
I opened the inner packet, which turned out not to be an envelope, just a sheet of paper folded and taped around the photographs, all of which slid down between my knees, scattering on the floor. I painfully gathered up the ones I could reach, but a few seemed to have slipped back towards the seat behind me. I ignored these for now and settled down to view what I’d come up with.
They were not in any order. The formats all varied too: larger, smaller, square, rectangular. Most were in black-and -white, the rest in assorted styles of unconvincing colour. Some had been bleached out in patches, others had faded overall. I worked my way through them, trying to put names and dates to places and faces. Even when the prints had scrawled annotations on the back, these were usually so recondite as to constitute yet another puzzle. ‘Ides of March ’71 – Eat, you Brute!!!’ I hadn’t the faintest recollection of ever having gone to a toga party, but here was the evidence which proved me wrong.
The photographs came in random bunches, rather like memories, and it took me at least half an hour to sort them into anything resembling chronological sequence. The earliest showed me with Sally, the first girl I had slept with, and only then because she’d been too kind to tell me that when she said I could spend the night, she meant on the sofa. She was kind in bed, too, which I remembered even at the time thinking wasn’t quite what I wanted. It was still a good deal better than the opposite, though, which I came across in due course with . . .
Thea? Bea? Something like that. The shot of Sally and me, taken by one of the people we shared a house with, shows the two of us on a pier in the town where we were all at university. I’m in black, my eyes averted, an existential cigarette smoking moodily between my fingers. Sally looked plumper and
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