Page 140 of The Ringmaster’s Daughter

‘Nothing Will Die’, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Eighteen

Fin

Spring has arrived. It’s 1946 and there is a promise of warmth from the very first opening of a daffodil in the park. I have just enjoyed my twenty-eighth birthday and there is a lightness in my step that I have not felt in years.

The grass is full of picnickers at lunch, enjoying the thaw and the brightness of colours that the park has to offer. Birds flit, seeking worms and taking crumbs from leftovers. I sit on a bench and watch ducks swim on the pond; now and again I throw a chunk of rye bread to them. If Miriam were here, she would scold me and tell me I was wasting food.

Bertrand talks of coming to visit me and perhaps staying. Paris, he says, is not the same after the war; he cannot look about him without feeling fear. New York might be right for him. I would, of course, enjoy his company; a piece of my old life that could fit into this one.

Miriam asks me why I took such a long lunch break and if I will go and watch Freddie sing tonight. Ever since she met him, she cannot stop mentioning him, and if I am honest, I have seen that giddy light in his eyes too. I wonder if they will ever admit it to themselves. I do hope they find a way.

In the meantime, I dry-clean the suits and dresses of the rich Upper East-siders who have been loyal customers for years. By three o’clock, Miriam’s daughter Sarah is back from school and asks me if she can play in my workshop. I tell her she can’t, not without me. She pouts and I laugh at her. We go to the back room, my workshop. It is nothing but chunks of wood, some chisels, and a few knives I keep locked away. On one shelf sits a collection of horses carved from driftwood, which I found on the banks of the Hudson. On another shelf are miniature people; one taller than the others, one shorter, one with bulging muscles and a sword in his hand, one wearing a top hat.

Sarah likes the man with the top hat the most, and makes him direct the horses in a show for us. Whilst she plays, I work on another figure, one with her arms outstretched ready to grasp the trapeze that flies towards her. This piece has taken me so long. It is never right, never finished.

‘You are done for the day then?’ Miriam stands at the doorway. She is smiling, so I know she is joking with me.

‘I’ll close up,’ I say. ‘Go home.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

Miriam takes Sarah’s hand and she waves goodbye to me. I wave back, already looking forward to seeing her face tomorrow.

Once Miriam leaves, the shop is quiet. I switch between cleaning and my carvings and running to the counter when the bell over the door rings to alert me to a new customer.

We close at five. At a quarter to, the bell rings as I am carving the curve of Frieda’s back. It makes me jump and I take a wedge out of it. I throw it on the floor – it will never be finished.

The customer is already piling a jacket on the counter and bending down to fetch something else.

‘It’s got a stain. From ice cream, of all things. Ice cream on wool! Can you get it out?’

Her voice is rich and accented. I like it.

‘I can.’

I bend down myself to find a new slip, and when I stand up again to fill it in, she is standing straight, staring at me, her mouth open.

Then: ‘Michel.’

My heart is beating so fast I think I am going to pass out. There is no air left in the shop, in the entire city.

‘Maman!’ A voice breaks the spell. A small girl is at her heel, tugging on her coat. ‘Maman!’ she says again.

‘Frieda,’ I say, as if I was expecting this very moment for years.

‘Michel,’ she says again.

‘Mamannnn.’ The child is irritable.

‘I thought—’ we both say at the same time, then smile, then shake our heads – mirror images of each other, confused, happy, scared.

She bends down to the child and says something to her. The child goes to the green plastic chairs we have for people to wait on, and she climbs up, her pudgy legs swinging as she turns her head to look out of the window.

‘They told me you were dead,’ I whisper. It sounds wrong to say it in English. I say it again in French. ‘But you are here.’