Chapter 19

Inga was wearing a long black dress and a smile. A long, clingy, black dress, with rivers of blond hair pouring down her shoulders and a smile of childish delight.
Xavier opened his mouth.
Three more days to go. Her suitcase was packed and ready. It told her she was going home. Next to it was large carrier-bag crammed with picture books and furry toys. She was so happy. She was ready for anything.
And stared.
To some people, extreme beauty is terrifying, it’s the top of an ivory tower, something so ideal it’s perfectly unattainable. Behind it, there’s always a human being.
“Er, Xavier?...”
And all he could say was: “You’re not going like that are you?”
Nothing could do justice to the emotional shock he felt just looking at her. Her bright blue eyes were speckled with tiny fragments of grey and green and her…
“I thought we were going out to eat first.”

By the time they got to the restaurant, things had settled down.
They sat and sipped chilled Côtes de Provence.
“When’s your flight?
“Saturday morning, be back home by six.”
“Looking forward to it?” Xavier knew it was a stupid question. He was just hoping she might have one tiny reason for feeling a twinge of sorrow at leaving. But any regrets she may have had were swamped by the happiness she felt at seeing her family again, Sven, her Mum and Dad, her friends, and being able to talk without having to think about each word before she pronounced it.
“But you speak very good French. What do you mean?”
She did. In the short amount of time she’d been in Paris, her childhood memories had all come back. Her intonation was a bit too sing-song, but the overall effect was very convincing.
“It’s just that I feel I have to prepare everything before I open my mouth, I can’t be spontaneous and I don’t always understand what people are saying.”
“Yeah, but even so... How much did you know before you arrived?”
“Well, in fact, my mother’s French, but she stopped speaking it to me years ago...” Inga’s voice trailed off. Why did she? It was something she never knew, something her mother didn’t like talking about either.
For a while, they sat in silence. The food arrived, and Xavier brought her back to the present.
“What are you going to do when you get back?”
“Go to college and do a course in nursing.”
“Nursing! You’d look nice in a uniform.”
“No, not that sort: looking after handicapped children.”
She said it without thinking. She hadn’t got the faintest idea of what she was going to do five minutes ago, just go home and be at home. Then it sort of came to her in a flash. It was so obvious. She knew it was the only possible thing for her to do. She smiled.
“Yeah, been thinking of it for years, time I got started.”
“Why handicapped children?”
“There’s so much pain and suffering in the world and it’s always the children that get it in the neck. And then they grow up and pass it onto the next generation and on it goes. I mean, I can’t save the world, but I can do my bit. Handicapped children just have that little extra reason for getting hurt.”
Xavier gazed at her with a sad-happy look in his eyes. She was different. Maybe... Age-old struggles of hope and negativity dragged themselves out of the bogs of despondency, slipped back in and lurched forwards again. He’d never met anyone like her, and an inconceivable scenario began to detach itself from the gloom of his past. Maybe...
“Shall we go then?”
“Uh? Where?”
“To the catacombs! You’re the one’s wanting to drag me down there!”

Xavier no longer knew where to take her. Like a snake, the feeling had been creeping up on him unawares. He was in love. Everything was different now. The fantasy collapsed and lost its meaning. He wanted her. And she loved him too, he knew it. The little signs of friendship or empathy were transformed into meaningful signals of love. But where to now? His plans had changed but he still had to make sure she didn’t meet anybody else.
They were sitting on a massive block of stone somewhere beneath an old convent and Xavier was explaining all about the cloches de fontis, bell-shaped hollow domes caused by subsidence, when he heard the distant crunch of feet.
“Come on then, there’s one not far from here I could show you.”
Inga wasn’t deaf and she wasn’t a complete fool either. Something was up.
“The woman I was working for told me she’d seen a programme about the catacombs and how dangerous it was. She said you get gangs of yobs marching about with baseball bats and knives and things.”
“Rubbish! She must be talking about the thing they made for the telly. Paid people to come down and look frightening to keep people away. Bloody government propaganda. What made her tell you that anyway?”
“I made up a story for the brats one day and they told their father and he told her and she told me off for filling their heads with nonsense. Not nonsense at all, I told her, I knew somebody who goes down there.” And one of her delicious peals of laughter echoed and sparkled around the vaulted cellars. “Know what she said? Said you’re probably one of them!”
Xavier didn’t find it very funny.
And then neither did Inga. Maybe they did exist, maybe he wasn’t so sure either, or maybe he was and wanted to keep out of sight just in case, maybe...
“Hey, just slip in here and turn your light off for a sec.”
After a few minutes, a group of four traipsed past. Berets and bobble-hats, knapsacks and acetylene lamps, a very faint odour of beer, and no baseball bats at all.
“See!”

For two hours they wandered about the rambling passageways, through vaults and hidden mazes, going deeper and deeper then climbing sudden stairs. There were carvings, fossils, pictures engraved in the wall, an altar, a miniature fountain, stalactites… At the bottom of one shaft was something like a lake, and when they shone their torches into it the reflection was a stunning emerald green. At the beginning Inga was impressed, Xavier did know the place well, but now she was beginning to feel hemmed in and claustrophobic. And every time they stopped, Xavier seemed to draw too close. It was neither one thing nor the other. He didn’t actually do anything so there was no way she could make things clear.
Xavier noticed she was getting edgier. Her speech was sharper, almost snappy, and he misinterpreted it completely.
“Are we nearly there, yet?”
“Not far now.”
“You said that half an hour ago.”
Xavier was getting desperate. He refused to understand that all she wanted was to go back up. It was him. She didn’t like him, she never had. And yet, it was his last chance. If he took her out, that would be the end of it, she’d go away and they’d never see each other again. He had to make her want to stay.
For Inga, at last it had clicked, what it was she couldn’t understand about him. It wasn’t his moods or anything, it was his eyes. They were begging eyes, like a dog’s. He looked at her in expectation, she was the one who had to make the first move. He just stood there gawping and waiting. Well he can bloody well wait.
Why the hell hadn’t she realised before? That was why he’d been so helpful, not out of kindness but to make her want to be nice and thank him, or maybe to need him. And I can do without your need too. If that’s what you think a relationship’s based on, no wonder you’ve got no girlfriend.
Her knees were hurting, too. His famous ‘secret passageway’ indeed. Crawling along on all fours for fifteen minutes to show me a heap of bones: great! What next? Christ Almighty! you’ve got to be morbid to like that sort of stuff.
On they went to yet another weird bloody cellar that was damp and dark and daubed with illiterate graffiti. And it was always “on the way”.
The whole thing was hopeless. Xavier’s love was crumbling around his ears and still he persisted in dragging her on. He was shambles of indecision. Maybe she was annoyed because he hadn’t kissed her, because he hadn’t taken her in his arms and told her he loved her. Yet every time he approached her, she became stiff or shone her bloody head-torch into his eyes. No, she hated him. Who the hell did he think he was anyway? She was just being polite, condescending.
As he walked in front, his frustration turned into anger; anger at her, anger at him and anger at the whole fucking world. The resentment was building up nastily. Who do you think you are anyway, you’re no better than anyone else. And whenever they stopped, it evaporated into thin air. Then the silence came down and he didn’t know what to say. Jesus, he wanted her. Didn’t she understand? Paralysed by doubt, he stared and raged inside. He’d had enough.
“Alright then, if you promise it’s the last one.”
Promise? “I promise.” Alright, if that’s the way you want it, that’s the way you’ll get it. Last one coming up, I promise. He stormed forwards and Inga was forced almost to run to keep up with him. “Damn!” she thought, “well, he’s got what he wanted now, I do need him.” At the beginning, she’d made mental notes of the turns they’d taken, but she knew she was completely lost now. Nobody could find their way out of this maze without help. She realised she was entirely in his hands and liked it less and less. When she got out, she was going to find a hotel for the last two nights and that’s an end to it.
He headed north-west, thundering through the mire, kicking up splashes of dirty water. Not bloody good enough for you, am I? Well, we’ll soon see about that. Bitterly, he realised what a bloody fool he’d been, believing she could even like him in the first place.
The ceilings dropped lower and lower. At first, they walked leaning their heads to one side. Then they had to bend their knees. Inga scraped her head on the roof and swore. She tripped on some uneven ground hidden in the mud, then banged her head seriously. It certainly didn’t improve her humour.
Hearing the pained and exhausted “Ow” behind him, Xavier felt maliciously pleased. Serves you right, bitch. Teach you to look down on me.
It was dry again and the ceilings were a reasonable height. Xavier counted ... thirteen.
“Right, we’re there now, last one.”
He climbed up and crawled swiftly along. “You could at least wait for me,” she mumbled to herself as she struggled to wedge her slippery trainers into the uneven stirrup-holes. Muttering something about “getting the whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible”, Inga finally pulled herself up. But when she got to the end of the tunnel, Xavier had disappeared.
It was Guy now. ¶ 1:54 AM