The Paradise Ghetto Page 7

  He wasn’t at the station. Nor did he board the train – at least, as far as she could see. As she settled into her seat and the gentle, rhythmic rocking of the train, she relaxed somewhat, undoing the buttons of her coat. It was mid-September but it was not a cold evening and anyway, the train’s heating was on and made for a warm, almost sleepy atmosphere. She loved September. She thought of the year as being like a deck of cards with four suits – spring, summer, autumn, winter. September was like a game where some of the days were played from summer and others were drawn from autumn.

  She half-dozed, drifting into that strange place between sleeping and wakefulness that travelling often brings on.

  The police had believed her. That was the important thing. At least she thought they had. There had been two of them – the young one at the desk and the second, much older one with a great moustache and kind eyes, that the young one had immediately called into the interview room. She had gone over her story once and then again and again. She had seen how they had done it. They asked her the same questions in different ways. After they had completed the first bout, Fleur had thought she would be free to go, but the older one had said, ‘You know these are very serious accusations, miss. Your father is a very prominent figure in the city.’

  ‘I realise that,’ Fleur had said, ‘but everything I’m telling you is true.’

  ‘Let’s go over it one more time, shall we?’ the older one had said. But he had said it in a kindly way. He had the face and airs of a man who had seen it all – everything, no matter how bad – that mankind was capable of. If Fleur’s story had surprised him, he gave no sign of it.

  And so they did go over it one more time as the younger one scribbled furiously. After the third run through, during which they brought her tea, Fleur was almost in tears. She was weary from the talking, but really it was what she had to talk about.

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’ she had asked in frustration, at the end of that third run-through.

  ‘It’s not that we don’t believe you, miss.’ It was the older one again, the one that did most of the talking. ‘Just that we have to be sure of the facts before we act on this.’

  ‘And are you?’ asked Fleur. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I think there’s definitely something we have to investigate.’

  ‘And so what are you going to do?’

  ‘We’ll pay your father a visit in the morning.’

  It was just as she had hoped. She had deliberately gone in the evening so that they might leave any such visit until the morning. That gave her this evening and night to get away.

  ‘When we do go round in the morning,’ the older one said, and then Fleur saw that he really was kind, ‘will you be there?’

  Fleur shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t think that would be a good idea.’

  ‘No, indeed it wouldn’t. So you’re going to stay with a friend?’ he suggested.

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ replied Fleur.

  ‘Does your father know your friends?’

  ‘Most of them.’

  Then she thought again.

  ‘Actually, all of them.’

  ‘Then might I suggest that it might be good to go to some, er ... other ... different place. I assume you have some money, miss?’

  Fleur did have money. She had been saving for this for nearly a year, steadily putting away the pocket money her father gave her. She had pretty much stopped buying anything except for essentials. Her father had even remarked on it, so that she had had to start spending a little again so that he wouldn’t suspect anything.

  She nodded.

  ‘And it would be good if you could tell us where you’re going to go – just so we can contact you, if we need to,’ the older one said.

  It had been the one moment when she had faltered. Now she really had to trust these two men – that they weren’t, like most other people, in the pay of her father. She thought for a long time and then she answered, ‘I am going to go and stay at the Grand Hotel.’

  8

  It takes Julia the rest of the day to write her chapter. If there are lights in the car they haven’t been turned on, and so it is almost dark and she is having difficulty seeing when she writes that final sentence, ‘I am going to go and stay at the Grand Hotel’.

  She and Suzanne eat some more of their food. Suzanne says she’s dying to read it and will do so as soon as it is light. Julia’s eyes are tired but she is wide awake. She is exhilarated by what she has done and is wondering where it’s going to go next. Part of her wishes there was enough light for her to read it again because she thinks it’s really good and exciting. In fact, not just good – much better than she would have thought possible for a first effort. There is mystery in it and foreboding. There are hints of dark things and plenty of threads that can be picked up later in the story.

  Now that she can’t see the words, it’s hard to stay in the story and she keeps coming back to reality. When she does she just feels terror. It wasn’t so bad when they were setting out but now it is the feeling that each rhythmic clank of the wheels is bringing them closer to what? Something awful. She knows it. She feels it. She tries to keep her fear at bay. She tries to forget that she’s in this car speeding to an unknown destination. But with that fear temporarily out of her mind, she finds that now, she has another fear as well. She is afraid that she will never get to finish this story that she has to tell, that she must tell.

  And now she finds that the more she thinks about that opening chapter, turning the phrases over in her head, remembering how it flows from one piece to the next, picturing the characters – especially the policeman with the moustache and the kind eyes – the more she thinks it’s really not that good at all. It’s boring and pedestrian – little better than an essay she might have written in school years ago. And the characters are stock. Clichés.

  What will Suzanne think when she reads it? Will she be gentle with her criticism? Tactful – trying to say it’s shit without saying it’s shit. Or will she just say it’s shit? What is Suzanne like when she reads? Julia imagines that Suzanne loves literature so much that she wouldn’t tolerate anything second-rate – and Julia’s chapter must be fourth- or fifth-rate.

  She sinks into an unbelievably deep sleep. Some time during the night, drifting near the surface of waking, she is dimly aware of the train stopping. She knows she should try to wake up fully but she is too tired – not just from the writing but from everything that has happened since Friday. Whatever the stop was for it doesn’t last very long. The train resumes its journey, rattling relentlessly along, its sounds occasionally changing as it thunders through a station. In part it is the very familiarity of these sounds that makes all of this so frightening.

  Falling asleep again, Julia dreams that she is on a train to the Grand Hotel. When she next wakes it is still night. She is momentarily devastated to find that she is on this train instead. She finds some comfort in thinking of Fleur – Julia and Fleur, their lives running in parallel on two sets of railway tracks.

  9

  When Julia next wakes it is fully morning. Her head is hanging forward and she has a stiff pain in her neck. The endless mechanical rhythm of the train continues. It is like they have always been on this train. She opens her eyes and rubs crusty sleep from them. There is bustle in the car as people eat and go to the toilet and begin another day. Suzanne, sitting opposite, smiles at her.

  ‘You were out,’ she says.

  ‘This brain work is very tiring.’

  They divide the bread they have in two and eat one half. While they are eating, Julia asks about Suzanne’s hero.

  ‘I was thinking of making him a conman,’ says Suzanne. ‘He comes to the hotel because that’s what he does. He goes from one posh hotel to the next, tries to find some wealthy woman to link up with and gets as much as he can from her before moving on. That’s as much as he has of a goal in life.’

  Julia thinks that Suzanne really is making this up and that her hero is
far removed from what Suzanne is like. Unlike her Fleur.

  ‘What will happen is that when he meets your heroine –’

  ‘Her name is Fleur,’ says Julia.

  ‘Fleur,’ Suzanne continues. ‘Fleur – flower. I like that. What will happen is that when he meets Fleur, her goal is going to – eventually – become his goal. So she’d better have something significant that she’s chasing.’

  ‘She does,’ Julia says softly.

  ‘And – obviously – they will fall in love.’

  ‘So tell me more about him.’

  ‘I’m going to call him Dirk. He has brown hair, green eyes, just under six foot, lean.’

  Julia wonders if this was somebody Suzanne knew. A boyfriend, maybe? Did she ever have a boyfriend? Maybe Suzanne isn’t a virgin. Somewhere, on one of those trips, while her parents were working, did she meet somebody? And did they...?

  ‘He is charming, outgoing, extroverted, a ladies’ man,’ Suzanne continues. ‘Has probably never read a book in his life. He’s that boy in your class in school who always seemed to have a girlfriend and usually more than one. Why is he the way he is?’

  When Suzanne asks this rhetorical question, Julia hopes that she won’t ask her why Fleur is the way she is. As Suzanne talks, it is as though she is describing a real person.

  ‘Maybe his family were very poor and he vowed that he would never be like that. He’s European – in the sense that he’s a citizen of the world and his nationality is of little importance. In fact it will never be made clear what his nationality is. Perhaps the most important thing is that he’s not what he seems. So, does that give you a sense of him?’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘And now can I read what you’ve written?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to read back over it –’

  ‘Never mind. I’m dying to read it.’

  ‘I’m very nervous about showing it to you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be. If you love books – and you do – then you know what’s good.’

  Julia hands over the book and Suzanne starts to read. Julia studies Suzanne’s downturned face but can see nothing there. She looks around the car at the other people. She wonders what country the train is now in. She tries not to think about what their destination might be although at this stage, she would give anything just to get off this train. She fidgets. She keeps looking at Suzanne’s face trying to gauge her reaction but Suzanne is deep in concentration.

  Finally, she looks up. She is smiling. Julia has a momentary picture of a sunrise.

  ‘It’s good,’ says Suzanne. ‘It’s really, really good.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I do. There are people in my class in university who couldn’t have written something this good.’

  ‘You’re not just saying it?’

  ‘I’m not just saying it. You turn the key, you get the engine started.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a point in every story where the story gets going – like starting the engine of a car. A lot of writers don’t start the engine for ages – giving lots of background or setting or description. I think you start the engine in the first paragraph. By the end of it I’m hooked. Do you see?’

  Suzanne hands the book back to Julia who reads the opening. Yes, she does see.

  ‘Anything you didn’t like?’ asks Julia.

  ‘Saying the train was like a “strange metal monster” – I thought that was a bit clichéd. You know – overused, ordinary. The kind of thing that a writer would say because it was the first thing that came into her head and she’s too lazy or not good enough to think of anything better.’

  Julia feels a bit stung by this, but then Suzanne adds, ‘You’re not that kind of writer. I can see already that you’re not. You’ll find something better than that. Believe me, Julia – if this is the way you write, then you have a talent. I just hope I can be as good.’

  Julia surges with pride.

  ‘What a good team we’re going to be,’ says Suzanne. ‘But I have to tell you – I was thinking a lot during the night and maybe that’s going to change what we’re going to do.’

  Julia is suddenly deflated again. Deflated and annoyed. Who does Suzanne think she is anyway, making all these decisions?

  ‘I was thinking about the atmosphere – this plot is actually going to make for a very serious book. I don’t see how we could add much humour, and it could be very dark. I don’t know about you, Julia, but I’ve had enough of serious. There’s been more than enough darkness in my life over the last few years. So I was thinking – what if we wrote a funny book? What would you think of that? That would be even harder to do than the one we were planning but if we managed to do it, it would be amazing.’

  ‘But supposing the story is about something that isn’t funny?’ Julia asks. ‘That couldn’t be regarded as funny under any circumstances?’

  ‘Heartbreak and humour,’ says Suzanne. ‘In some ways that’s even more powerful. It could have an even bigger impact on the reader than just heartbreak on its own.’

  Julia thinks about this. Could that first chapter be rewritten as the start of the kind of book Suzanne is describing? Yes, Julia thinks it probably could. Certainly the same beginning would pretty much work. She’d just have to add a couple of funny observations to it. And she thinks it would still be possible to tell the story she wants to tell. It actually might be good – humour and heartbreak, like Suzanne said – that’s a good combination.

  ‘It wouldn’t have to start out hilariously funny from the beginning, would it?’ Julia asks.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. We could build it as we go. And then bring out the darkness at the end. That would really hit the reader between the eyes.’

  ‘All right then,’ says Julia. ‘We’ll give it a try. I’ll have to rewrite my first chapter a bit. And it means I’ll have wasted some paper.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. What’s most important is that we get a good story. And the fact that we keep changing our mind –’

  You keep changing your mind.

  ‘– means we’re on the right track. We’re getting closer to what we’re really meant to write.

  ‘And let’s not worry too much about the paper either. Maybe when we’re about halfway through it we can see how we’re doing in terms of the paper we’ve used. If it looks like we won’t have enough, we’ll see if we can get our hands on another notebook.’

  Julia’s irritation is brief, fading almost as quickly as it began. She’s happy with the new direction. She starts to wonder about rewriting her chapter but she quickly finds herself stuck. She shakes her head.

  ‘I need to know a bit more about what’s going to happen,’ she says. ‘Even just the title. Is it still called The Murder at the Grand Hotel?’

  ‘I was thinking about that,’ said Suzanne. ‘What about we do it as a farce? We don’t just have one murder. We have lots of them. The Murders at the Grand Hotel. So something like this. Fleur arrives at the hotel. She is running away from something and somebody is pursuing her.’

  Julia feels a funny sensation in her heart as Suzanne says this. Suzanne continues, speaking quickly.

  ‘Somebody gets murdered in the hotel. A young woman. But not Fleur. Maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity. They call the police. On a train to the hotel, Dirk is in the same compartment as the detective who has been called to investigate the murder. The detective is a fat man with a soft spot for cream cakes. But he has eaten one cream cake too many.’

  As Suzanne talks, Julia can see it all. It’s starting to sound funny.

  ‘The detective has a heart attack and dies. Dirk takes his papers – takes over his identity. Dirk has read Sherlock Holmes.’

  Suzanne continues almost breathlessly.

  ‘This is the manner of Dirk’s arrival at the Grand Hotel. So his chapter – chapter two – will be entitled “Mr Dirk ... er ... er ... Hoedemaker”. Like the first chapter of A Study in Scarlet. It’s called “Mr
Sherlock Holmes”.’

  ‘Hoedemaker. The hat maker,’ says Julia.

  ‘I know,’ says Suzanne. ‘I wanted his name to be a bit silly. So the first murder is a mistake. It’s a girl who looks like Fleur but isn’t her. Then the people who are pursuing Fleur arrive. You’ll have to work out why they’re after her. Fleur goes to Dirk to look for protection and this is when their romance begins. Dirk begins his investigation though, in reality, he has no idea what he’s doing.’

  Suzanne is becoming really animated, so much so that several people in the carriage look around at her. She ignores them and carries on.

  ‘However, Fleur’s pursuers think that Dirk is getting close so they commit suicide. Or, no, they have an argument and one kills the other. Or there’s an accident with a gun. I don’t know. I’m not sure yet. But that makes it two unsolved deaths at the Grand Hotel.’

  ‘All right,’ says Julia. ‘You start writing and I’ll see if I can figure out the things I have to figure out.’

  This is how they spend the second day on the train. Julia finds it hard to work all this out in her head. Again and again she tries to work out the sequence of events but again and again, the pieces which she thought she had tied down, seem to float up and fly away from her like runaway balloons. Night comes on and she doesn’t seem to have made much progress. Suzanne, who has been writing all day, has to stop as she can’t see any more.

  They eat silently in the semi-darkness. Suzanne looks exhausted. She pushes up her glasses onto her head and rubs her eyes. Julia is frustrated and anxious. What if they can’t work out where to go next? She is loving this but hating it at the same time. She just wants to go to sleep and wake up with it all solved. As if echoing her thoughts, Suzanne says, ‘It’s really hard, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s really hard and it’s brilliant at the same time.’

  Suzanne nods wearily.