The White Bird by Kerry Foster
The White Bird
You make your own luck – that was what my mother always said.
She meant by discipline and hard work. Making prudent choices. Not this…coming to Paris on my own as a woman in my forties with nothing but a trunkful of books and faded vintage gowns.
And yet here, in this nondescript café opposite the Gare St Lazare, I do feel lucky, for the first time in my life. I have my own tiny room, six floors up, with a view of the Eiffel Tower. A room that is my own, a room where I can think.
I love the café too, L’Oiseau Blanc or White Bird, after a doomed transatlantic flight in which the two French pilots ‘vanished like midnight ghosts’. It has red leather seats and dirty tallow walls, the Art Nouveau aviation prints sprawling between the specials boards making it look tired and racy at the same time.
Most importantly, I don’t have to answer to anyone. No one looks askance at my beloved silk dresses, or asks about my family, or wonders why I don’t wear a wedding ring. I can devour all the books I want, make endless lists, replay conversations that happened, invent ones that didn’t.
But that was me all over, according to my mother. Peculiar, for want of a better word. With questionable social skills. And a CV that was a carefully woven blend of delusion and out-and-out fantasy.
I was also a bad example to Clara, she said. No wonder my daughter had dreamed her way through school. Now she was eking out a living as an artist on the south coast, selling her strange luminous paintings at craft fairs and exhibitions.
And then there was Mark. In him, I had seen a potential soulmate, a poet, a dreamer. My mother, on the other hand, had immediately clocked him as a timewaster at best, and at worst, well… and right enough, two weeks ago, he had walked out, never to be seen again, taking my meagre savings with him. He had always been ambiguous about the future, now I came to think about it.
But if he hadn’t left, well, I wouldn’t be here now, would I? I take another sip of wine and catch sight of myself in one of the mirrored panels above the bar. I look like someone else – someone who isn’t blinkingly apologetic, someone hasn’t given up on magic or beauty.
The door swings open, briefly filling the room with night air and the rumble of buses heading to the Opera Garnier. “Bonsoir, messieurs dames!” Another of the dinner time regulars. He nods in my direction.
I realise that the streetlamps have come on, silently bathing the purple street in pools of smoky light. Another night in Paris.
Yes, you do make your own luck, I tell myself. Starting now.