The Art of Leaving

It's not quite light yet and I'm struggling to make sense of the grey shapes surrounding me. The unfamiliar contours of walls and furniture seem oppressive in the gloom, as if they are closing in on me from all sides. The alarm goes off and my husband stirs beside me, reaching slowly out from under the duvet to silence the noise, but something is wrong. I can't hear church bells. Where is the loud, insistent call to mass that marks the usual start to my day? Silence now. I don't think we're in Paris any more.

We left our rented apartment in the Marais reluctantly, heavy rucksacks and cases containing the remnants of three months worth of life in the City of Light. They were digging up the Rue Rambuteau as we left, an honour guard of diggers and cable layers to provide a parting salute as we trudged to the métro station, sand and cement caking to the wheels of our cases. Where once I had walked with a light step down the narrow staircase leading to line eleven, my gateway to discovering the city, now I slowly and painfully manoeuvred my luggage into the corridors and through the turnstiles to wait for a train that would take me away from there. Through twists and turns and changes we passed through the public transport system and out into the confused glory of the Gare du Nord, melancholy point of departure for us and thousands of others.

The previous day we had queued in the cold outside the Hôtel de Ville, trying to squeeze the last drops of cultural stimulation out of our adopted city by going to see the Sempé exhibition that had just opened. Slowly we filed past cartoons from every point in the long career of the man, examples from books and magazines interspersed with biographical information. I was taken with the idea of Sempé rushing around Paris on his scooter, sketchpad under his arm, recording the minutiae of life, before meeting his intellectual friends for coffee in a St. Germain café. A black and white shot of him at his drawing board provoked a pang of jealousy even, his complete absorption in a loved activity in the unmistakeable setting of a high-windowed Parisian apartment being something that I deeply envied. I thought that a nearby display of books, Petit Nicolas and his friends all lined up, heralded the end of the exhibition, but no. The turn of a corner revealed a vast room filled with original drawings, the distinctive ink and watercolour pieces depicting Paris and beyond, seen through the eyes of a master artist.

The views of the Luxembourg Gardens were achingly recognisable. The broad avenues of trees and the high metal gates, with the smooth pale stone of the Sénat in the background, where I had walked so many times. All of this was just across the river. We could have walked there right away, or taken the RER. It wouldn't have taken long and we could have been in our own little Sempé scene... except that we had to buy a new case and pack and clean every last detail of ourselves out of our apartment, erase ourselves from these streets and these scenes for good. We will remember the city, but will it remember us? The signature Sempé Parisian picture shows an elderly lady in the midst of giant, towering Haussmanian buildings, a tiny speck of a person taking up an insignificant amount of space on a big canvas. It's a big city indeed and people can feel overwhelmed by it, but no matter how tiny they are they are still interesting to Sempé. They are still characters worth drawing in the fascinating setting of the cityscape. They are part of Paris, as we were, once.

It turns out that Sempé travelled a fair bit, turning his keen eye onto people and places from St. Tropez to New York. He seems to have been perpetually bubbling over with ideas, forming several high profile creative partnerships and maintaining a prolific level of output through the years. There was a sense that wherever he went he saw pictures worth immortalising. He noticed the details that told unfolding stories, from the precise blue-green paint hue of a Parisian bus to the overheard snatches of conversation effervescing amidst the tables and chairs of a corner café. Thrown into the midst of the city I made similar observations, each day presenting me with something fresh and new, another aspect of the local colour to muse upon, fall in love with and write about. The long walks by the Seine and afternoons spent stirring hot chocolate and watching the world go by have come to an end, but the narratives will go on. The city will carry on living without me in it. Other people will experience it and make their own memories as they stumble on the cobbles, trying to avoid the cyclists and the mopeds. Other people will become a part of it and live the Parisian way of life in all its intensity. They will be inspired by it. It's an amazing place and I loved being there. I recall it now under the dull cloud of an English November day and as I struggle to rouse myself amidst the drizzle, I smile.