Leo’s godfather, Benoît, lives by himself in an apartment in the sixième.
— You know, Leo, he says. One should always marry a foreigner.
Leo smiles. He has heard this from Benoît before.
— Find a woman whose first language is not English. In my case, naturally, I mean French. This is the way to avoid misunderstandings.
Benoît speaks from experience. He has, successively, married a Greek, a Guatemalan and a Hungarian; until recently, he lived with a Texan. Their months together constituted an interlude of bliss, he says, and he and Mary-Beth barely understood one word the other said.
If you would like to read the rest of this story, please check out Lovers' Lies, the Arachne Press anthology in which it, and many other sexy and lovable stories from the League archives, appears.
~
Fulham. Last night. Late.
Sarah stands by the bedroom door, holding her mug of hot chocolate. She normally wears Leo’s blue towelling bathrobe; tonight she is wearing the pink padded dressing-gown which she knows he dislikes but it reminds her of childhood.
— And you’re sure you won’t come? asks Leo.
— I’m sure, she says.
Sarah watches him zip up the canvas bag.
— It’s for the best, says Sarah. You know it is.
For the best? Is it? Leo wonders if he does know this. Sarah stares at the chocolate in her mug.
— We were going nowhere, she says.
Where did Sarah want to go? Did she say? Was he listening? It’s now too late to ask. It may have always been too late. Leo has an early morning Eurostar to catch.
He lifts the bag off the bed and onto the floor.
~
Fulham. This morning. Early.
Sarah is standing by the kitchen door, holding her mug of tea.
— I’ll be back on Sunday, Leo says. Late.
— I won’t be here, says Sarah. I’ll be gone. To Battersea.
Leo should say something. He doesn’t know what. Something he hasn’t said before. Obviously.
He picks up his bag.
— Well. Goodbye.
— Yes. Goodbye.
He might put down his bag. She might put down her mug. Neither of them does.
— I’ll call you from Paris.
Most of her impatience has drained away.
— I won’t be here, Leo, she says.
~
At St Pancras International.
— Hi. I’m Al.
Al offers him his hand and takes the seat beside Leo. Al is a man in his forties with an open smile, a trim brown beard and bright blue eyes.
— Before you ask, he says. I’m a Kiwi not an Aussie. I’m travelling to a conference in Seville. Ethnomathematics. Do you know Seville? My colleagues are flying out tomorrow. I prefer trains.
As it happens, Leo has been to Seville and can suggest what Al should see. The highlight of his own visit, he remembers, was a walk late at night along an avenue which took him past a succession of elegant pavilions built for the 1929 Iberoamericano Exhibition. Magical. But he has forgotten the name of the avenue which is why he is not going to mention it to Al.
— Ethnomathematics?
— Yes, Ethnomathematics, says Al. Part anthropology, part mathematics. My own field of study is South Pacific navigation.
The master navigators of the South Pacific, Leo learns, were able to cross thousands of miles of ocean without any kind of navigational equipment. Modern navigators require instruments and charts. They must know where they are to know where they are going. But the navigators of the South Pacific have no need to plot their position. They rely on skills learnt during a twelve-year apprenticeship. They are guided by the motion of the stars, the formation of the clouds, the swell of the ocean and the colour of the water. They are, as it were, able to reach their destination without ever knowing precisely where they have been along the way.
— That’s the critical difference, says Al, allowing a pause. There are those who follow a map and those who follow a course.
Leo feels he has been told something significant. Something mystical. Something practical. He would like to have time to take it on board —
But Al has moved on. He is talking about logs and charts, and Greek periploi and Roman itineraria, and grid maps and narrative maps, and precision and projections, and assumptions and omission. While Al talks, Leo wonders. A map or a course? Is he following one or being led by the other? Or neither? Or both? He’d like a minute or two to ask Al questions but the train is approaching the Gare du Nord.
— Do you know the best way to Gare Montparnasse? asks Al.
— Take line 4 to Montparnasse Bienvenue direction Porte d’Orléans, says Leo.
They step off the train together; Al gives Leo his card and they shake hands on the platform.
~
At a bistro in the rue Cherche-Midi, Leo is trying to explain — and Benoît is failing to grasp — the difference between following a map and following a course.
— To me they seem the same, says Benoît.
I don’t have the words to explain it, Leo concludes. Or I haven’t understood enough.
— This is not, I think, the Anglo-Saxon way, says Benoît.
He is amused by his godson’s excursion into the abstract, but he is sorry that he has come without Sarah. He liked her last summer when — coming back from Avignon — they stayed two nights in his apartment. Her French was good, she dressed well and showed an interest in architecture.
— We were going nowhere, Leo tells him.
— Ah, says Benoît. What a pity!
And he asks for the bill.
~
Leo calls Sarah. No answer. He pictures her gone from the flat. He sees her here in this apartment. She is wearing the straw hat that she bought in Avignon. Sarah standing in the sunshine. Singing softly so that only he can hear her.
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
— Although it’s not a bridge, she says. It simply stops.
— It was a bridge. Most of it collapsed.
— And no one rebuilt it.
He notices her brushing her eyes with the back of her hand. Why? She seemed so happy.
Alternative Navigations by Nichol Wilmor was read by Paul Clarke at the Liars' League Bridge & Tunnel event on 14 April 2009.
Nichol Wilmor used to write a regular column for a French magazine but was sacked for being too rude about Tony Blair. He is unrepentant.
Paul Clarke spent all the time he should have been studying, acting. Then all the time he should have been getting a proper job and onto the property ladder, training at Central. Finally, after 15 years of proper jobs, he’s gone back to the acting.
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