almost constantly throughout those two days, however, as it remained bitterly cold outside, and the grate was full of ashes.
October 2010
I made my way through the crowds at the Gare du Nord, accosted by panhandlers all the way, and jumped into a taxi. My train journey had been uneventful. I had simply sat back and watched the French landscape roll by, listening to the beginnings of my piano sonata, which I had managed to get from my computer on to my iPod, scribbling down notes and ideas as I went along. I prefer to compose in the old-fashioned way, with a piano and music notation paper, but I do love gadgets, and I have no objection to using one every now and then. I found the rolling green countryside and the train’s rhythm conducive to such work.
Once again, the city crowds came as a shock, even after London. The taxi took a route that had me lost within minutes, zigzagging along narrow side streets, crossing vast tree-lined boulevards, past cafes and brasseries with rows of tables outside where people sat smoking and chatting, or just watched the world go by.
The receptionist at my hotel on the Boulevard Raspail spoke English better than I spoke French, and she seemed quite happy to do so. I was on the sixth floor, right at the top, and the lift was tiny. You’d maybe get two people and a suitcase in it, at most. Luckily, I had it to myself.
My room turned out to be a tiny suite. Put the studio and the bedroom together and it would probably be about as big as the room I’d had in Hazlitt’s, which wasn’t saying much. Still, it meant that I could spread out and avoid that cooped-up feeling. Being on the top floor helped, too. The studio was fitted with French windows that opened on to a small balcony overlooking the Metro station at the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and the Boulevard Edgar Quinet. When I glanced through the bedroom window, I noticed that it had a fine view of the Cimitiere du Montparnasse, one of those large Parisian cemeteries with elaborate tombs, where famous people are buried. Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, Man Ray, and Camille Saint-Saens, among others, lay just below my bedroom window. Maybe I would overhear their ghosts deep in conversation throughout the night? I decided I would try to find time to have a walk around tomorrow morning.
For the moment, though, my main objective was to track down Samuel Porter, who, according to the address Bernie had given me, didn’t live too far away from where I was staying. I wondered whether he also had a view of the cemetery, and whether it made him think of Grace Fox. It made me think of Laura. I can’t say that Paris was ever our city, but we did visit it together on more than one occasion. Laura’s French was excellent, and she loved to poke around the bookstalls along the Left Bank and go for long elaborate meals at fine restaurants. We would walk for miles and sit outside at boulevard cafes watching the people walk by. I remember once we walked all the way out to Pere Lachaise and saw Oscar Wilde’s tombstone covered in lipstick kisses, and a crowd of kids smoking pot around Jim Morrison’s grave. They were so young they were not even born when the Lizard King was in his heyday.
I wasn’t hungry, but I was in Paris and I felt like a drink, so I took my map and guidebook down to the bistro next door, sat outside and ordered a pichet of red wine from the waiter. It was from Languedoc, and it tasted good. Sometimes I think French wine tastes better just because you are in France. I was surrounded by young people in animated conversations, the girls nervously pushing back their hair from their eyes, the boys gesticulating, all smoking. I had expected the familiar whiff of Gauloises to come my way, but from what I could smell, and see of the packets on the tables, most people were smoking Marlboro Lights these days.
I pinpointed Sam Porter’s address on my map. It wasn’t far away, somewhere in the narrow maze of streets on the other side of the cemetery. I hadn’t wanted to phone him first because I knew there was a chance that it might scare him off, that he might wish to avoid talking about the past and would refuse to see me. But if I just got my foot in the door, I was certain that I could convince him I wasn’t a sensation seeker, a reporter or a true-crime writer, and maybe he would talk to me.
When I had finished my wine, it was a little after 4.30, which I thought was as good a time as any to call on an ageing artist. I cut through the cemetery on a marked path that led between family tombs, some quite ornate, with carved angels, cherubim and seraphim. At the other side, I crossed Rue Froidevaux and found the narrow street of five-storey tenements. Sam’s building was next to a small patisserie, bicycles chained to the lamp-posts outside. I had intended to wait until someone came in or left to get in the main door, but it turned out to be unlocked. He lived on the fourth floor, and there was no lift. With a sigh, I started climbing. The building seemed quite grand and well appointed, but then this was hardly a run-down area of the city. Old, perhaps, but moneyed.
I made it to the fourth floor without running out of breath, paused for a moment to collect my thoughts, then knocked on Samuel Porter’s door.
At first I thought he must be out. The inside of the flat was silent when I put my ear to the door and nobody answered my first three knocks. It wasn’t the end of the world. I could come back later. But just as I turned back to the staircase, I heard the sound of footsteps, then the click of a lock turning. The door opened, and there he stood. ‘ Bonjour, monsieur. Qu’est-ce que vous voulez? ’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
‘You’re English.’ He stretched and rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s all right. I was just having my little siesta. You need them at my age. It was time to get up, anyway. Do please come in.’
The Samuel Porter I saw before me shattered all my preconceptions. I had supposed, in my imagination, that he was a dishevelled, dissolute, shrunken, whiskered and disagreeable old man, but he was not at all like that. Even though I had just woken him from his slumber, he had the erect posture of a much younger man, was slim but not scrawny, clean shaven, with a lined face, a full head of neatly cut grey hair and lively, slightly rheumy eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses. He was dressed casually in jeans and a mauve-and-white striped shirt, but they didn’t look as if they had come from the local charity shop. No paint stains, no reek of alcohol.
The flat itself was a revelation, too. I had known by now not to expect a garret, but I hadn’t expected anything quite so large – it must have covered most of the floor on that side of the building – or so immaculate, so clean, neat and tidy. Every surface shone. Every book was in its place. There were paintings hanging on the walls, mostly large, colourful abstracts. I didn’t know who the artists were, but I guessed they were all originals. I had to learn not to cling to stereotypes about artists. After all, I was a musician, myself, and hardly wild haired and drug addled. A bit untidy, perhaps, but clean.
He led me to the spacious living room, which had French windows, like my hotel room, and looked out on the tops of the buildings opposite. In the distance, just behind the low-pitched rooftops, I could see the massive monolith of the Montparnasse tour sticking up high into the clear blue sky.
‘Look at me,’ he said, ‘inviting you into my home when I don’t even know who you are. I don’t often get visitors from England here. You could be a burglar or a murderer, for all I know. Or worse. A critic.’
‘I’m not,’ I assured him. ‘Actually, I’m a musician. A composer.’
‘Would I have heard of you?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps. I compose film music. My name’s Christopher Lowndes.’
‘I’ve seen the name. I must say, I have always found music to be one of the most essential elements of film, so I do tend to notice these things. Of course,’ he went on, sitting down and bidding me do likewise, ‘I don’t get out to the cinema quite as often as I used to do, but I occasionally watch DVDs.’ His English was precise and mannered, rather posh, in fact, and there was no way of guessing he was a farmer’s son from North Yorkshire.
I noticed a slight grimace of pain as he bent his knees to sit and wondered whether he had arthritis or rheumatism. Perhaps that was why it had taken him so long to answer the door. It was hard to believe, but I had to keep reminding myself that he was in his late seventies. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I seem to be forgetting my manners. Can I offer you something? A drink, perhaps?’
I didn’t really feel like a drink, but I thought it might be the kind of thing that would break the ice.
‘I usually take a small Armagnac, myself, around this time of day. Purely medicinal, of course. The French doctors are far more understanding about alcohol than their English counterparts. Would you mind? My legs aren’t what they used to be.’ He gestured towards a cocktail cabinet by the door.
I could see glasses and several bottles. ‘Of course.’ I went over and poured us each a small measure of Armagnac and passed him a glass.
He took a sip and smacked his lips. ‘Mm. I used to be a cognac man, you know, but once I tasted this… Nectar of the gods.’ I smiled and we clinked glasses. ‘So,’ he went on, a curious and suspicious glint appearing in his eye. ‘What brings the composer of music for films to visit the ageing doodler of pictures?’
