“Really a complete idiot—”

“Simply can’t blame yourself—”

By now we were laughing. He was laughing. I remembered this same laugh echoing in the stairwell of this building. Suddenly this mishap was nothing to us. We sat up in bed, side by side with our knees up. We were at the top of a mountain pass, companions after a cruel climb, looking down on our future lying spread out below us. I knew there would be slips and stumbles ahead. But I could see the way forward.

—

Before the wedding I got confirmed into the Church of England. My father said, “Paris vaut bien une messe,” Paris is well worth a Mass. The Protestant Henri III of Navarre had uttered these words in 1593, Papa reminded me, on learning that if he, Henri, converted to Catholicism he could make peace with his enemies and rule all France as Henri IV. “And now you, Yvette, are converting the other way!” Papa slapped his knee. “For England, and James! Do you see why it’s so funny?” Then he sighed a long sigh, pushed his spectacles up on his head, his eyes suddenly blurry. “I’ve got plans too.”

I knew what he meant. So many of our friends were gathering themselves.

“Where will you go?” I said, my heart beating fast.

“Nice, I think. But slowly.” He put his finger to his lips. “Not a word yet to Maman.”

—

We married at St. Mark’s. No fuss—definitely no hats. The black-and-white photos show Maman and Papa with teary smiles. Célia, beaming, her skin like alabaster. Peter, the black patch over his missing eye already starting to seem familiar. You can’t see James’s eyes, the midday sun has made shadows of them—of his eyes, and of the hollows in his cheeks. I have a sort of spray of white flowers in my hair—Célia’s idea. In one of the photos I am looking up openmouthed, as if in surprise at these flowers bouncing on top of my head. Tom can hardly bear to look at our wedding photographs because of the unacceptably high incidence of soppiness, but he makes an exception for this one.

—

Saying goodbye at the port would bring on Papa’s angina, he said, so I parted from my parents at home in Cleopatra. But Célia and Peter came to wave us off. In a few months they too would leave, for Adelaide.

Alexandria shrank into a thin white line on the horizon. At the last second it jumped above the sea as if floating in the air, and then pouf, it was gone. It was just a city rimming a bay. There were other harbors to discover, and other darker, deeper seas.

NINE