The beginning of The Dragonfly…

Along the cobbled quay the summer sunshine lay as light as a leaf.  Colin stood on the wooden pontoon, listening to the gossipy sound of the boats at anchor as they fretted and strained against their moorings.  He checked the Dragonfly’s ropes one last time, tightening and tying off the forward line. It was more of a fidget than a proper check, something to do, a binding and re-binding to make him feel that he might, after all, be master of the situation.  He started to coil up the remainder of the rope, so lost in thought that his movements took on the liberal slowness of a dream: he could go on coiling like this forever, feeling the weave of it, losing himself in the tiny unravellings at its end.  He swallowed, then crouched down and set the line on the Dragonfly’s bow, and for a moment he wished that he could tighten and tie off the terrible thread of events that had brought him all the way to Paris, to the Arsenal Marina, to this meeting. Tighten and tie it off, then cut the cord.

He stood up, holding his fist against his mouth, still thinking.  The faint smell of the canal was on his skin: the vegetable / mineral smell of last year’s leaves and car tyres and diesel oil.  He made his way along the pontoon and stepped ashore.

He shaded his eyes.  At the far end of the basin, he could see the traffic glimmering in the Place de la Bastille.  He looked up and around, all the time conscious that a hundred yards ahead were the stone steps that led up to street level.  He glanced about, looking everywhere but at those steps, taking in the balconied apartments, the office blocks, the charcoal scratchings of trees.  This isn’t about me, he told himself, to stiffen his resolve.  I’m doing it for her. He didn’t say, couldn’t say, not even to himself, I’m doing it for Michael.

When he did look, he couldn’t see her, not at first.  The street above was thronged with office workers on their lunch break. He clocked the bicycles for hire, the road sweeper, a delivery van, two stout old men resting on a bench, smoking not talking; the searing trajectories of the motorcycle couriers which made the whole place seem breakneck, helter-skelter, more than he was used to.  A police car came skidding into view and his gaze swept over the woman with the little girl leaning against the railings watching the boats.  A second car followed and he saw the gendarme gunning the accelerator, swerving past a motorbike to keep up, before he realised he had seen her.

He dared himself to look again.

She was sitting on a huge bag, the sort you can buy in a pound shop, made from shiny woven checked material, like tarpaulin; material that makes a crinkling sound, that leaches colour when it’s wet. His gaze lingered on the bag, while his heart fretted and strained against its moorings. She had on a little denim skirt, some kind of bobbly tank top over a stripy T-shirt and slouched over one eye, a man’s hat of lavender gray tweed, halfway between a beret and a peaked cap. With a painful, flushing rush Colin guessed that it belonged to Michael and that was why she was wearing it; he wanted to assume that, and for a second he found himself longing to dash up the steps and ask her — Is it Michael’s? - to take it from her and hold it, briefly.

He bit his lip.  To tell the truth, he didn’t know what to say to her, or how to be.  Part of him wanted to scoop her up in his arms and hold her tight, but of course that wouldn’t do.  Should he kiss her on the cheek?  Both cheeks?  Should he ruffle her hair, or shake her hand?  Though he was in her DNA, in every fibre of her, every cell, they had no history, nothing to fall back on.

Where to even start?

The woman who was with her glanced at her watch, shifted her weight from one foot to the other and stared along the line of boats towards the river.  Turning back to the child to say something, she looked at him, then looked at him again and half raised her hand, so he knew that he’d been spotted, that he had no option but to raise his own hand in answer, to wave, to hurry along the quay, up the steps, through the security gate and say hello.

“Hello,” he cried more loudly than he meant, breathless from the race to get there.  He held out his hand to the child and an almost at once retracted it, scratching the back of his head instead. “Hello!”  he said again, as though he were offering something which might be refused, “Hello….?”

“Monsieur Aylesford?”

“Yes,” he answered, trying to sound jovial, or even sure.  “You must be Mademoiselle - ”

“Mademoiselle Boulay.”

“Yes.  That’s it.  We spoke on the phone.  Yes.”

“Oui,” With a turn of her head, the woman invited him to look in the child’s direction.  “And this is…”

“Yes,” he answered.  “Yes…”

“This is Delphine.”

Delphine.

Delphine.

“Well,” he managed, nodding, conscious of the stuttering of his pulse.  On the harbour wall he noticed a scrawny pigeon butting at a discarded carton of frites.  There were one or two cemented to the bottom and the bird was trying to climb inside the greasy cardboard, turning its head one way and then the other, beaking after the chips.

The woman said something to the child in French and the child raised her head as if she were already angry with him.  “Bonjour Grandpere.”

“In English,” Mademoiselle Boulay said, in a tone that suggested she was reminding the child of something, a promise or a bargain.

“Hello Grandpa,” Delphine shot the woman a needling glance.

“Hello,” he answered, taken aback by the fact that she spoke English with a French accent, something he wasn’t prepared for, in so far as he was prepared for anything at all.

“Well, then…”

***