Page 36 of Thirty Days in Paris

I shook my head, laughing to chase the tears away. ‘It’s nothing. It’s beautiful, that’s all.’

He picked up my hand and nodded his head. ‘Come on. We have a long walk. We will never get there if you stop and cry at everything beautiful.’

Part of me longed to go inside Notre-Dame, but Olivier seemed set on his plan and so I brushed away my tears and we set off again along the river, then up past the Marais to the Place de la Bastille. Then it was a long walk up through the 11ème until we finally arrived at the cemetery gates. And within them, lining the cobbled pathways, was a tangle of the most elaborate memorials I’d ever seen. Miniature temples, grand mausoleums, obelisks, crucifixes, white marble angels, lifelike statues, intricate carvings, ornate grilles, everything crammed together with no rhyme or reason. Moss softened the hardest surfaces; there were epitaphs in gold letters as long as a chapter of a book; bronze had turned to verdigris.

‘Wow,’ was all I could manage, and Olivier grinned as if to say ‘I told you so’. We meandered along the paths, and he pointed out the graves of Balzac, Proust, Géricault, Molière … I didn’t know much about any of them, but I resolved to find out more. There was Chopin, whose heart was cut out after he died and sent back to Poland, for his greatest fear was being buried alive. We saw the tomb of Piaf, the little sparrow whose songs touched so many hearts, covered in roses. Rossini. Modigliani. And Oscar Wilde. His memorial was starkly modern, a very angular angel, its wings streaming out behind.

‘When he died, he was a pauper, but his friends bought him this plot and had this made for him.’ Olivier looked solemn. ‘The only thing he was guilty of was love.’

It brought a lump to my throat, knowing the writer had been hounded out of England and found his final resting place here. I hoped he’d found peace.

Jim Morrison’s tomb was much less elaborate than most of the others in the cemetery but smothered in gifts left by people who wanted to show their respect to their idol: red roses, candles, bottles, cigarettes, incense sticks, photos, drawings and declarations of love. There was one single glass of champagne, recently poured, and it seemed poignant. A toast for an idol who couldn’t respond.

On our way out, we saw Heloise and Abelard. I didn’t know their story, but Olivier told me the tragic details.

‘He was her teacher, and they fell in love. She had his baby, and he sent her away to be safe. But her uncle was enraged and sent his henchmen to cut off his …’ Olivier pointed towards his trousers. I winced. ‘She ended up in a nunnery, and he became a monk, and they wrote love letters to each other until they died. And here, they are together, at last.’

I gazed down at the two marble figures, side by side with their hands pressed together in prayer.

‘It is a terrible thing, to be parted so cruelly,’ Olivier murmured, and I shivered as a cold chill crept around my heart. Perhaps it was the melancholy of Père-Lachaise, all those stories of lost love and tragic endings, but I suddenly felt a terrible sense of dread. What if I never saw Olivier again after this? What if that was it, my one brief chance of happiness, and something happened to tear us apart, like Heloise and Abelard?

‘Hey.’ He looked down at me, concerned. ‘You’re cold. I’m sorry. I should not have brought you all the way here. We will go somewhere more cheerful. Somewhere you will love. Come here.’

He put his arm around me and held me close as we left the cemetery and headed for the Mètro.

An hour later, we stood in front of a bookshop tucked into a little street on the Left Bank. It was ancient and crooked, painted yellow and green.

‘Shakespeare and Company?’ I read the words over the door.

‘It is perfect for you, no?’ Olivier smiled as he led me inside.

It was a dream come true. Room upon room stacked high with every book imaginable, from an ancient battered paperback to a weighty tome. It had a chaotic order to it, combined with the feeling that if you stayed long enough and searched hard enough, you would find the perfect book for you, wherever you were in your life. It was bohemian and scruffy and eclectic, filled with the spirit of all the writers who had spent time there, searching for inspiration. Hemingway, Anaïs Nin, Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce – the list of literary stars who’d made this their temporary home was dazzling.

I always had a tingling feeling when I went into a bookshop, but here the urge to put pen to paper, to share my thoughts and feelings in words, even if no one ever read them, became overwhelming. We spent more than an hour amidst the shelves, wandering up and down the precarious wooden staircases, running our fingers along the spines.

‘I come here every weekend,’ Olivier told me. ‘It is the place I feel at home. More than my own home. It speaks to my heart.’ He patted his chest.

‘I can see why,’ I said. I’d never been anywhere so sure of itself. It was magical.

I finally managed to choose what to buy. A copy of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, for you could see its spires from the second-floor window, and an illustrated hardback of The Little Prince, which I would share with the children. They might not understand the story, but the pictures were charming and would capture their imagination: the little blond prince in his flying jacket, standing next to his friend the fox. It was all I could afford for now, but I promised myself I would be back, to try something new every time I came.

‘When I come here,’ said Olivier, ‘I just want to live among books for the rest of my life.’

‘So why can’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘I must work for my father. That is my future. But at least I can come here at weekends.’

We stopped in a tiny café on the way back. By now, the light was fading, and I was starting to feel the coldness of November creep its way inside me. It was gloomy with dark wood walls and peeling lino on the floor, and the waiter’s apron looked grubby. I didn’t like to object, as we took a small, rickety table and Olivier ordered for us without even looking at the menu.

Two earthenware bowls of onion soup arrived within minutes and all my doubts evaporated with the steam rolling off the deep, brown liquid. It was incredibly rich, with strands of onion that dissolved into sweetness in my mouth, and chunks of bread smothered in melted cheese that left strings of molten goo. Within moments, I was warm again. I sighed with contentment as I put my spoon back in my empty bowl.

Olivier pulled out a paper bag from inside his jacket and laid it on the table.

‘This is for you,’ he said.

What book had he chosen for me? I opened the bag, intrigued, and pulled out a yellow notebook. I looked at him.

‘It is for you, to start to write. You can’t just talk of writing.’

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