Golden Earrings Read online

  The waiter tenderly dispatched to dream of what might have been, Gaby turned back to me. ‘So tell me more about the ghost,’ she said, taking a sip of her espresso.

  I held her gaze for a moment, my hand near my pocket. Up until now, the ghost had been an interesting mystery, like a premonition come true or an eerily accurate astrological chart. Once I showed Gaby the earrings, the matter would escalate to a different level: we would both be forced to accept the reality of the apparition; or Gaby would think I was making the whole thing up.

  I drew a breath and slipped my fingers into my jacket pocket. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there is more to this story —’

  ‘Bonjour!’

  Another interruption. This time it was Marcel, Gaby’s latest boyfriend. I let the earrings drop back into my pocket.

  ‘Bonjour!’ Gaby replied, returning Marcel’s kisses. I greeted him too, hoping he was just passing by. Despite the incongruity of their appearances — Gaby in her flamboyant clothes and Marcel in his Lacoste shirt and jacket — it seemed that wherever Gaby went these days, Marcel came too. I had been pleasantly surprised to find her waiting for me at the café alone.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Marcel, lighting a cigarette and signalling to a waitress to bring him coffee. He leaned back in his chair and my hope of having Gaby to myself faded.

  ‘Paloma has seen a ghost,’ said Gaby. ‘In her courtyard.’

  If Gaby had grabbed the butter knife and plunged it into my stomach, she could not have caused me more pain. This was something I had intended to confide only in her. Our secret.

  ‘Ah,’ said Marcel, blowing out a stream of smoke and flashing me a condescending smile. ‘That’s Paloma’s Spanish blood. All Spaniards believe they are haunted by ghosts. A Spaniard without a ghost is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower: one can’t exist without the other.’

  I grimaced. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. I was only half-Spanish — my father was … is … French. And my ghost was real. Not a figment of my imagination. Besides, the Eiffel Tower had been built in 1889, and Paris had existed long before then. But I said nothing because I didn’t want to upset Gaby.

  Despite the besotted way she looked at Marcel, Gaby must have realised he was being insulting. She changed the subject to current events in Spain.

  ‘Everyone in the lecture this morning was talking about the implications of Franco’s death. They predict Spain will declare a state of emergency, and that the students and workers will protest. Professor Audret thinks Republican supporters who have been imprisoned since the Civil War might be released as an appeasement to the people.’

  Marcel smoothed his ash-blond hair. ‘But Juan Carlos has been designated King. The monarchy has been restored and the dictatorship is over, as Franco promised. The Spanish people should be happy now.’

  Gaby cast a glance at me. ‘Perhaps they don’t want a monarchy,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps they want what they had before the war: a democracy — like France.’

  ‘Pfff,’ said Marcel, taking another drag of his cigarette. ‘The Spanish couldn’t handle a democracy … that’s why they had a war. They are not like the French. The Republicans lost the fight because they were divided.’

  I held my tongue but inwardly I was fuming. I was used to this sort of condescension by the French. Marcel’s family had a holiday apartment on the Costa Brava: all he knew of Spain was sun and cheap food and labour. I doubted he ever gave a thought to the police interrogations many suffered; the prisoners who were hung upside down by their feet. The Spanish government might tell the foreign press that political ‘enemies’ were treated humanely, but many of them were garrotted. If Mamie were with us, I knew what she would have told Marcel: ‘The Republicans lost the war because the Germans and Italians helped Franco with planes and troops, while the British and French stood by and did nothing.’ But I found Marcel impossible to engage in discussion. Any comment I made elicited that belittling smile of his, and I would rather remain silent than be subjected to it. For someone who was still living with his parents, he had an irritating habit of speaking as if he were a worldly expert on everything. But Gaby didn’t see that. Or if she did, she ignored it.

  After ordering and eating a salad niçoise with French fries, and smoking another cigarette, Marcel announced that he had an appointment with his supervisor.

  Gaby glanced at her watch. ‘I didn’t realise the time,’ she said, standing up. ‘My next lecture starts in a quarter of an hour.’

  Marcel paid for the food and coffees. ‘Salut, Paloma!’ he said to me. ‘Beware of any more ghosts.’

  That smug smile again; I could have punched him.

  Gaby kissed me on both cheeks. ‘We’ll meet again next week, oui?’

  The moment to show her the earrings had passed. I doubted she would even ask about the ghost when we next met.

  I watched Gaby and Marcel walk down the street arm in arm. Unlike Gaby, my experience with boys was nil. Contrary to popular belief, not all the male students at the Ballet School were homosexual, but with all of us pushed to extremes for limited places, nobody was thinking about anything except dance. When you checked out a male at dance school, the only question you were asking yourself was whether he was strong enough to lift you gracefully. I thought about the private lessons I had arranged with Mademoiselle Louvet in order to prepare myself for the next round of auditions. I simply had to get into the Opera Ballet. I was ruined for anything else. A normal life was no longer a possibility for me: I hadn’t had the upbringing for one.

  ‘Why the long face?’

  I turned to see an elderly woman looking at me. Her hair was dyed flame red and her pencilled eyebrows stood out on her heavily powdered complexion. She had spoken with a Spanish accent but she wasn’t anybody I knew.

  The woman placed her hand on my arm. ‘You’re young! You’re pretty! You should do something to make you happy. Did you ever think about dance lessons?’

  I was too taken aback by the irony to respond as the woman thrust a leaflet into my hand. It was a flyer for a Spanish dance school in Montparnasse: Académie de Flamenco Carmen Rivas.

  ‘Flamenco lessons?’ I said.

  ‘Sí.’ The woman grinned. ‘Come, you’ll enjoy yourself. Make nice friends.’ She gave me a little wave before heading off down the street.

  I made my way towards the Métro station. Character dancing had not been my strength at ballet school, which had surprised my teachers because I was half-Spanish. Perhaps I’d been put off by Mamie’s attitude towards flamenco. I remembered the look of disdain on her face when we had come across a group of street performers on rue de la Huchette. ‘But you’re Spanish!’ I had said to her. ‘I’m Catalan,’ she’d corrected me. ‘Flamenco is from Andalusia. Franco forced the image of bullfighting and flamenco dancers on the whole of Spain, but they are not Catalan traditions.’

  I was about to toss the leaflet in the nearest street bin when the earrings in my pocket tingled, heating up my skin despite the two layers of clothing between them and my leg. The effect reminded me of when I put Diaghilev, my cockatiel, on my finger and scratched his head. His little feet would heat up with happiness like two hotplates. I looked at the flyer again. Come, you’ll enjoy yourself … make nice friends. The beginners’ class was on a night that I didn’t teach at Mamie’s school. I was a devotee of classical ballet, but with the Opera Ballet branching out into more modern choreography, maybe an interest in different forms of dance would look good on my résumé? I tucked the leaflet into my pocket. If I decided to go, I’d have to avoid telling Mamie.

  On the way from the Métro stop to our apartment on rue Spontini, I stopped by the newsstand to pick up Mamie’s journals. Micheline, the vendor, was sitting in her domed kiosk like a bird in a nest, absorbed in a copy of L’Humanité and surrounded by postcards, magazines and packets of cigarettes.

  ‘Bonjour!’ I said.

  Micheline lifted her gaze from the newspaper and pushed her grey curls b
ehind her ears. ‘Ah, bonjour, Paloma,’ she replied, standing up and smoothing down her crocheted vest. She placed Mamie’s copies of Le Monde and Libération on the counter. ‘I have something for you too today,’ she said, reaching to the shelf behind her. She passed me a copy of Paris-Match with Rudolf Nureyev on the cover. ‘When do you start with the Ballet?’ she asked innocently. ‘I want to come and see your first performance. I’ll tell everyone, “I’ve known her since she was a little girl, coming to pick up the newspapers for her grandmother. And here she is now, a star!”’

  ‘Soon,’ I told her. ‘But remember, I only start with the corps de ballet. It will take a lot of work to become a première danseuse, let alone an étoile.’

  I dismissed my qualms about the lie. I hadn’t discussed my failed audition with anyone except Mamie. After my record at the Ballet School, everyone had expected me to breeze through graduation. That I would be accepted as a quadrille had been taken for granted by my teachers and fellow students. I hadn’t told Mamie yet about my intention to audition again the following year. Mamie said that as long as Arielle Marineau was the ballet mistress at the Opera, I would not have a chance of being accepted. She had tried to convince me to accept the places I had been offered with companies in New York and London, promising to come with me if I did so, but for me there was only one ballet company. It was the Paris Opera Ballet or nothing.

  ‘Whatever you do, it will be magnificent,’ said Micheline, her broad mouth forming into a grin. ‘Let me know as soon as you get the good news,’ she went on, tying the newspapers together with string to make them easier to carry. ‘I’ll open a bottle of champagne.’

  The sincerity of her good wishes touched my heart.

  She handed me the package, then opened her mouth in alarm. ‘Watch out! It’s her again!’ she said, nodding her chin in the direction of the street. ‘Your stepmother.’

  I turned to see Audrey — Hermès scarf around her neck, hair impeccably twisted into a roll — pulling up to the kerb in her Citroën. She had no reason to be in this area other than to pester me. Luckily she didn’t appear to have spotted me yet.

  ‘She’s not my stepmother,’ I told Micheline. ‘She’s just someone who married Papa.’ I gave Micheline two quick kisses. ‘I’d better go. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  I calculated that if I walked quickly but steadily, I might avoid attracting Audrey’s attention and reach the apartment before her. Once I was safely inside, Mamie was hardly going to insist that I open the door to ‘that woman’. It used to be my father who launched these surprise attacks, but I hadn’t seen him for months.

  I was almost at the entrance to our building when I heard Audrey’s heels clacking behind me. ‘Paloma!’ she called out.

  I kept walking. How had she caught up with me? Had she run?

  ‘Paloma!’

  There was a huddle of pre-school children on the pavement, waiting to cross the road with their teachers. The last thing I wanted was a scene. But since it was impossible to avoid Audrey now, I decided my best defence was to be aggressive. I turned around.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘Are you following me?’

  Audrey’s forest-green eyes were unfazed. She waved her hand and I caught a whiff of the woody notes of her Rive Gauche perfume. ‘Bien sûr,’ she said. ‘Of course I am following you.’ She looked at me with the same air of unruffled authority I imagined she used on the staff at her publicity company.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ she repeated, emitting a sharp laugh and shrugging her shoulders. ‘Because you don’t return your father’s phone calls, because you don’t answer his letters, because you refuse to see him. That’s why. You are breaking his heart.’

  I’m breaking his heart? I thought. What about the way he broke mine? Six months after my mother died, he remarried! A new wife. A new stepson. A new life! My mother’s memory swept away as if their marriage — and her long, painful death — had never happened.

  ‘Look,’ said Audrey, reaching into her Louis Vuitton bag and pulling out a music cassette. ‘He wanted to give you this.’

  I shook my head. I felt a mounting outrage that I was still being drawn into this farce, despite having told my father that I wanted nothing more to do with him. I had an urge to grab the cassette and throw it in the gutter. Proud, self-confident Audrey in her peach satin suit must have loved my father a great deal to humiliate herself by approaching me. I had nothing but disdain for her. Six months! Had she been chasing after my father while the surgeons were removing my mother’s tumour-ridden insides? But as suddenly as my anger flared, it dissipated. I felt drained. The appearance of the ghost had distracted me. I didn’t have the energy to be furious any more. Tears pricked my eyes but I quickly blinked them away.

  Audrey’s face remained hard but something in her manner shifted. ‘Go on, take it,’ she said.

  For a moment, it was as if we were two actresses in a play and Audrey was whispering my cue to me. It was typical of my father to make a recording when we could no longer share words. We had always communicated better through music. I took the cassette from her without looking at what was on it, and was about to shove it into my coat pocket when I remembered the earrings. I tossed it into my bag instead.

  ‘Your father’s fiftieth birthday is in January,’ Audrey said, mistaking my acceptance of the cassette as a softening of my stance. ‘I’m throwing a party for him. You know it would mean everything to him for you to be there.’

  The nerve of her! Throwing a party? Did she think she was Mama? I stepped away from Audrey and put my hand on the entry door. ‘He has friends,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘He has you. He doesn’t need me.’ I strode into the foyer and let the heavy door slam shut behind me.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Audrey called after me. ‘He needs you more than anyone!’

  I stood in the foyer a moment, trying to catch my breath. Why couldn’t Audrey — and my father — leave me alone? He needed me. It was always about my father’s needs first. Always! My mind flew back to the choking grief I had felt at my mother’s funeral, while my father sat dry-eyed in the car next to me, talking about his upcoming concert in Berlin and humming the theme of Schumann’s ‘Piano Concerto in A Minor’ under his breath. Was it because of Audrey that he had been so composed? Because he knew that he wouldn’t be alone? I leaned against the staircase, shutting out the earlier memories of my father’s deep, resonant voice; his promises to always protect his ‘darling little girl’.

  Our apartment could be reached from the foyer, or from a set of stairs at the rear of the courtyard. I decided to go through the courtyard, half-hopeful and half-afraid that the ghost would be waiting for me again. But there was no one — or nothing — there.

  A wrought-iron chair stood amongst the pots of the herb garden. It was cold to touch, but I sat down on it anyway. The apartment building, with its iron balconies and mansard roofs, had been erected in the nineteenth century. I looked up at the stone walls and the dormer windows, built by workmen long before there were formal unions and compulsory safety equipment. A breeze tickled my cheek and I felt the flow of history pass through me. How many people had lived in this building over the past century? It must have been hundreds. I saw men leaning on fireplaces; women chatting in parlours; maids opening windows to air rooms; children and dogs tumbling along corridors in games of hide-and-seek. Yet, with all that record of life, I had seen no ghosts here except for today: that one Spanish spectre. Everyone else’s presence had vanished. It occurred to me that in one hundred years’ time, if the human race hadn’t perished from an atomic war, another woman might look up at the windows and feel no trace of me.

  The sound of something scraping jolted me from my thoughts. I turned, but it was only Mamie’s friend Conchita coming through from the foyer with her mail.

  ‘Ah, hola!’ she said, when she saw me.

  As usual, she was looking chic in a two-piece blouson dress and matching salmon-pink shoes. She was nearly seven
ty years of age, and had the knack of giving the appearance of wealth while not having a cent to her name. She’d replaced the missing diamonds in her wedding jewellery with white paste so her rings still sparkled with brilliant effect, and she remained impeccably groomed by giving the girls at the beauty salon deportment lessons in exchange for her weekly hair and nail appointments.

  ‘Conchita’s never accepted her change in circumstances,’ my mother had once explained to me. ‘And Mamie hasn’t the heart to break her fragile grip on reality. Conchita’s always been taken care of; she has no idea how to look after herself.’ It was Mamie who organised the twice-weekly deliveries to Conchita’s apartment from the grocer and baker. ‘Otherwise, I’m afraid she uses the meagre life insurance payments her husband left her to buy more hats instead of feeding herself,’ my mother had said.

  Mamie owned three of the apartments in our building. Owning property in Paris’s sixteenth arrondissement should have made us wealthy, but we only appeared so on paper. The apartment that I shared with Mamie was mainly taken up by the ballet studio, so our living area was only forty square metres; and the apartment on the ground floor was given rent-free to Conchita. The other apartment, a three-bedroom place where I used to live with my father and mother, was let out to an American businessman and his family, but the rent from it went into my grandmother’s fund for supporting elderly Spaniards who had never been able to rebuild their lives after coming to Paris when the Civil War ended. The building had never had a concierge. Having been betrayed by that Parisian icon during the Second World War, my grandfather and the owners of the other apartments, a Jewish family, had agreed not to have one. ‘It’s better to bear the inconvenience or be robbed than to be betrayed,’ my grandfather used to say when visitors complained about having to call from a telephone booth if the front door was locked.