Chapter one

THE BEGINNING

I know about it now and there is no unknowing for any of us. I had a trigger that set my fingers tapping across the keys. It is my first time in France (the land my father loved so much) since I found out about it. My partner and I are in Paris, a city we had enjoyed separately and now want to share with each other.

Paris, the city of romance. The French, the lovers of Europe. Beauty surrounds us in the architecture, the clothes, the smells that escape the cafes and restaurants, and the sounds that pulse out of the organ at L’eglise de St-Pierre; we are entranced. There is the hustle and bustle of the streets of Montmartre, vendors touting their wares. We smile as we wander and wonder, hand in hand.

But beneath the veneer of the city are the cracks, the imperfections, and the slight smell of urine wafting up from the warming streets. The beggar with plastic bags upon his feet for shoes. The stark metaphor in Gare de Lyon, as we search for a map we can take away, to find only a vending machine for condoms, speaks boldly of the reality beneath the charm of the city, a metaphor of the city; maybe there is another metaphor there too.

I see beneath the intellect, the beauty and charm to the cracks beneath, the feet of clay, and relate it to my father, the man within.

We expect too much from the city of lovers; perhaps I expected too much of my father. I loved him too much, and now he has let me down and is not here to face the music, to see the damage he left behind him.

I cannot help but think of him here. When he was alive and I arrived in France, I would always phone and say, ‘Je suis arrivé en France, Papa’, and I would even hear his smile down the line. It is even more present here in Paris, the thought of him, the place he went from boy to man, a place he knew so well, and I want to talk to him, to shout at him. I want answers from him as I go over and over in my mind the stories he used to tell of that French side of his life, mining for clues, looking for signs of the man I did not know but thought I had.

Of course, you know Paris well, Dad. That was where you did your military service, at Le Bourget, thel’armee de l’air, following in your father’s footsteps – and such footsteps they were.

I remember the stories you told me as I wander these streets. You explained why you were here. You could have done your military service in England or in France. As you were a French national, you made an active choice to do it in France, but they did their military service at 21 and you were all of 18.

I remember you telling me how the other men teased you when you arrived because of the copious, nay, voluminous underwear that your mother had sent with your kit to make sure your private parts were kept safe from pressure. The men in your hut were tough lads, older than you, wise to the ways of the world. What a boy you must have seemed to them.

You said that rules in France are made to be broken. That triggers some thoughts now. You told me how you climbed over the wall to get off the air base to enjoy the delights of Paris. Did it begin then, I wonder? This young man away from home for the first time, handsome in his uniform, did you discover how women were drawn to you then? How easy it was for you? Too easy, perhaps. I had not thought of it before, so young and with Paris at your feet.

There was that night when you were caught on your way back to the base by an officer when you should not have been out. He piled you and your friends into the back of his car and smuggled