Weather Reports
by Andrew Hook
You shouldn’t spend all your money on a real expensive straightjacket
—Shep Gordon
November
The average temperature will be 8°C with a high of 10 and a low of 7. Generally cloudy, most days will see a maximum of three hours sunshine. There should be fifteen rain days throughout this month with an expected rainfall of around 60mm.
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When Marianne emerges from the offices of France Bleu Cotentin on Rue Alexandre Piedagnel she is almost blown off her feet. Rain batters the plastic yellow jacket she had plucked off the coat stand that morning, but rather foolishly – for a weather girl – she had forgotten her umbrella. Every characteristic in the port town is dimpled by raindrops: the foaming sea surface, the puddle-reflected buildings, sailors’ bare forearms, and an astonishing array of coloured fabric.
Marianne wishes she might burst into song: to detail this aspect purely and eloquently. Yet unlike the characters in her favourite film – Les Parapluies de Cherbourg – she has neither the voice nor the advantage of lipsynced dubbing. Instead she hurries silently, the wind threatening to sideswipe her legs, as she walks briskly from the radio station where she has delivered her broadcast – passing the umbrella shop that has appropriated the film’s name – and enters a café opposite the garage forecourt. From here, over a medium-sized bowl of coffee within which she dips her croissant, she indulges fantasies of love.
The windowpane is a distortion. Pixelated men examine Cubist motor vehicles through microscopic pieces of cloud condensation nuclei. Marianne adds definition: a curious eye set in handsome skin with engine oil fingerprints; projected innocence of infantilizing one-piece blue overalls juxtaposed against the physical mechanics of muscled repair; rat-a-tat-tat banter that competes with the rain’s tumult; the blissful romanticism of the everyday.
Yet there is not for her an uncomplicated relationship which might someday fracture under the weight of time. Marianne is not a naive seventeen-year-old but greater in years to that of the mother in her signature film. Michel Legrand’s music does not swirl plaintively and majestically into every tremor of her existence. The croissant breaks under the heavy soak of coffee and needs to be extricated – as wet as those forgetful such as her – with a spoon to the safety of her plate.
Marianne sighs. There’s no such thing as a great love, or else, it doesn’t last. Time obscures feelings and memories and what was once indelible becomes lost.
The men choreograph each mechanical action with the assurance of certainty.
Marianne wishes her movements were so exact.
January
The average temperature will be 5°C with a high of 7 and a low of 3. Generally cloudy, most days will see a maximum of two hours sunshine. There should be fifteen rain days throughout this month with an expected rainfall of around 60mm. Snow is possible.
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Once, she had a love.
Marianne had lived with domineering Parisian parents. Not in a version of the city sanitised through film-lore and tourist brochures, but in the northern suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, where gang violence, drug trafficking, and petty crimes were prevalent. Her convent school forbade thought-crime – or so it seemed – and boys were relegated to the auspices of candyfloss fantasy.
Her route to her apartment was littered with detritus: disease-breeding piles of garbage not a temporary inconvenience but an ongoing problem, with little choice but for locals to resort to burning waste in open dumps, on street corners or even in their backyards, releasing toxic fumes that caused serious health problems.
Marianne’s weekends were spent fabricating dodges to escape schoolfriends’ attentions: pressing a lobe against a heated radiator to feign earache, cultivating aristocratic parties where her family demanded her attendance in a gown shaped like a pâtisserie, burrowing into homework to avoid futureshock, safeguarding herself against taunts and tantrums.
Instead, she would perform her chores early morning then slip – often trip – down the echoing communal stairwell – and fairly run against a background of psychological abuse to the sanctuary of the Cinéma l'Écran de Saint-Denis which – amongst the blockbusters – would also show seasons of less commercial fare including – the first time for her, one winter in her fifteenth year, rain clinging her legs to her skirt, her armpit hair dewy and damp – Les Parapluies de Cherbourg.
The continuous music score and the brightly-coloured photography held the properties of acetate fastened over the front of artwork for protection, allowing a sheen of unreality to elevate the film, to superimpose it over the banality and inherent cruelty in Marianne’s life – as she saw it – so that her immersement in the story supplanted her previous existence. Sitting in semi-darkness, amidst middle-aged men and women who were content without recourse to popcorn, Marianne breathed the recitative dialogue and upon leaving the cinema, buoyed by the final surge of Legrand’s music, was surprised to be returned to a Paris where the only chills up her spine came from inclement weather and no one burst into song.
Captured by primary colour, she relived Guy and Geneviève’s tragic – yet honest – relationship on her homeward journey, understanding the cusp of her own budding pubescence was cradled within the tautology of film, the duality inherent in what was watched and was made. This was her great love, her promise, her impetus.
Once she was old enough to do so, she disengaged from her family and relocated to Cherbourg.
February
The average temperature will be 5°C with a high of 7 and a low of 3. Generally cloudy, most days will see a maximum of two hours sunshine. There should be thirteen rain days throughout this month with an expected rainfall of around 50mm. Snow showers are likely.
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The port town was not the stylised love-nest of her anticipation. Summers were cooler than expected. The traditional activities of the port – passengers, freight, fishing – were in crisis. Precipitation had bled colour from the buildings, the people. Marianne established herself in an apartment at the centre of the conglomeration, the voice-lessons she had persuaded her parents to pay for and her interest in the climate conjoining and enabling her to find employment as the voice of the weather on local radio.
Her day staccato from the demands of presenting each hour, Marianne’s time hopped from the broadcasting office to the café to back again, rainwater dripping from a hastily-closed umbrella to the stand inside the building’s entrance, where drops from each gamp pooled as if they were one body.
This punctuated existence extrapolated the timeframe of the film into one decade, then two. Marianne’s attention not wavering from the distinct possibility of locating romantic love, yet undermined by the stoic expressions of her work colleagues, the temporary expectations of casual encounters, and the limitations of her imagination which discarded opportunities such as a bridge player might with cards when they have a high honour, but prefer that their partner would play a different suit.
The changes in Cherbourg – or the disparity between the actual and the fantasised – tore at the romanticism for something she once had and then lost. She was not alone. This skein of a yarn bondaged many of the town’s inhabitants to the expectation of film. Even in February tourists subjugated themselves in the search for non-existent buildings, concealed in doorways. Marianne could spot them a kilometre away. These lonely – or loved hearts – separated from their ideal as a couple might be dissociated through war. They would drag their heels along rain-slicked streets, their eyes blinking through the proliferation of raindrops, as they implanted their fantasies over this reality, regarded the town through an imagined gauze of primary colours, and left amidst the dissatisfaction that the film itself hadn’t adopted.
Marianne would nod over a cup of coffee, steam misting her vision, at these transient visitors; knowing for certain that if the Cherbourg of the movie were to be located, it would only be through years of patience rather than via instant gratification.
March
The average temperature will be 6°C with a high of 9 and a low of 4. Generally cloudy, most days will see a maximum of four hours sunshine. There should be fifteen rain days throughout this month with an expected rainfall of around 40mm.
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Marianne’s musical knowledge was slight. She could not encapsulate Legrand’s melodies in language, nor even pinpoint the instrumentation used. Her appreciation was less cerebral than internal, a growing hunger for desire that began within the pit of her stomach, and spread outwards – like an antidote – as the music tied with the visuals of Demy’s story and forged ahead fully complete.
Ejecting the DVD from her player, she stood in her functionally furnished apartment. Demy’s colour palette was so vibrant because he used a special Eastman negative film stock. It served its purpose well, but faded and deteriorated rapidly. Marianne pulled her dress over her head, peeled off her underwear. Her surroundings were tired. She entered the bathroom where white cracked tiles mapped an alternate story of construction. Stepping into the shower, jetted water puckered her skin. She regarded these indentations dispassionately, as if each foretold a substitute history and future, as if every depression cloned an independent version of her. She imagined these Mariannes leaving her apartment and entering other lives: either interposing themselves in family situations or carving out their own. How many of them would be happier than her?
She suspected a few.
Towelling herself dry she dressed in wilted flower-patterned pyjamas and left wet footprints on wooden floorboards as she entered her kitchen to make un chocolat chaud. Hot liquid at night – sitting on a late meal of ratatouille – tended to distend her stomach. In years gone by she might have palmed the skin from just under her breasts down passed her bellybutton to the curve of her pubis, however at thirty-five this convex simply reminded her of the corresponding concave within. An inhabitant’s absence.
Abruptly, the cumulative desire for the unattainable broke.
Marianne bent her head, tears falling like raindrops.
Perhaps Guy and Geneviève had actually ended up in the best possible world, or, at least, one more comfortable and secure than the one they were on track to create together. Or maybe not. The point was that either way they would be haunted always by chance, by other lives they could have lived that made them question the one they inhabited.
Her forehead down, resting on her right radius as her interlinked arms lay on the kitchen counter, her hands touching each elbow, as though concealing homework, Marianne sobbed to an imagined background of Legrand’s music as Demy’s shot pulled away from the courting couple, stretching their connection like taffy, until the strands became too thin for observation, and eventually peeled apart, the notes of Deneuve’s singing substitute, Danielle Licari, straining in desperation at the point of severance.
Loneliness embraced Marianne with the full force of unrequited love. Fingers suckered on the worktop she clung limpet to whilst her legs gave way.
She collapsed to the floor, cried out, I will wait for you, each syllable punctuation.
April
The average temperature will be 8°C with a high of 11 and a low of 5. Generally cloud-free, most days will see a maximum of six hours sunshine. There should be thirteen rain days throughout this month with an expected rainfall of around 30mm.
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When Marianne emerges from the offices of France Bleu Cotentin on Rue Alexandre Piedagnel she is almost knocked off her feet. The postman who collides with her skids his bicycle sideways against the wall, his right side dislodging plaster that colours his blue uniform white: a tricolour with his reddened face.
“Merde!”
She apologises for no reason. It is him who has hit her. Yet this automatic response softens his features. He dismounts from the bicycle, rubs the fingers of his right hand with his left, where his knuckles have bruised from contact with the brick. The day is warm – as predicted by Marianne – even this early in the morning. He dusts himself down. He might have collided with a woman made of moths as one of flesh. He regards her then, plays through her apology in his mind, recreates the timbre of her voice, then lifts his gaze to the front of the building.
“I know you. You are Miss Marianne Toussaint. The weather girl.”
She blushes at the use of mademoiselle. She is hardly. But.
“That’s me.”
“You are more beautiful that I imagined. For someone who imagines.”
She has no interaction for this.
He sticks out a hand. “Gabriel.”
She finds that she takes it. Unlike the imagined hands of a mechanic, his are as soft as hers, with only paper cuts an aberration.
“I always tune in to France Bleu Cotentin.” He starts, then searches on the ground for his earpiece that was dislodged in the impact. “Here.”
He holds it out. A tinny representation of music buzzes like a jazz mosquito.
“You were right about the weather.”
Marianne nods. She has barely said a word. Is this the interaction she has sought? Is this how it begins?
“I was just going for coffee,” she says.
Gabriel pats his bulging sack. The other one. “I have deliveries to make, but I will be free shortly after twelve.”
Part of Marianne seeks to sing a response, but practically they make a date. Her first coffee of the day is not bitter. Her croissant remains intact. When she delivers the midday weather she is conscious of the heat in her cheeks, the unquestionable expectation.
She glides towards the café. If the mechanics were to observe her – as they have often done, secretly, each harbouring a distinct desire – they would have put aside the longing in their hearts. Marianne enters to find Gabriel already sat. He remains dressed in his postman outfit. He has already begun a light meal of sardines and salad. A bottle of Beaujolais stands between two glasses: one empty, one half-full. He pours as she sits.
“I assume . . .”
“It’s fine.”
She looks at his eyes as she sips. Pale yellow speckles the brown irises like sunspots. Barely-shaven, his face is in shadow. Thick black hair as tight as a beret. She orders a ham salad. Quells her nerves. By the end of the meal, they inhabit companionable laughter. Within a week they have completed the full complement of days in each other’s company. Another week and they have slept together. His apartment tidier than hers, temporary.
As Marianne suspects, he is an itinerant worker. The post office is no career. She brings her heart up to speed, appraises it of the departure central to Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, and hovers around the expected heartache in a state of delicious arousal. For what is love if it is requited? It is nothing, this is her expectation, her want.
It is not the relationship within the film that she coverts, but the film itself.
If their child is a girl, she will name it Françoise.
If a boy: François.
March
The average temperature will be 6°C with a high of 9 and a low of 4. Generally cloudy, most days will see a maximum of four hours sunshine. There should be fifteen rain days throughout this month with an expected rainfall of around 40mm.
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The birth is off-camera. Marianne cradles this newborn, this addition. She is not forced into wedlock. The wait for Gabriel’s return supplanted by her wait for Françoise. Her parents take the news in the manner of a rug-pulled-under obligation to shift up the generational ladder. When they visit, any fractious history is consigned to just that. They bill and coo like doves on love dove.
In the film, Geneviève is absent for the final third. Marianne reclaims her. She records her weather reports in advance. What she loses in banter she gains in time. Françoise is as demanding as a director. Marianne acts into the part: a natural role. The naivety of youth long displaced, she carries a comportment which makes her more – rather than less – desirable to the men in the garage as they wipe soiled fingers down their overalls as she leaves the café, rear first, with the perambulator behind. When this coincides with her recorded broadcast, the men exchange looks, as if realising only now that one person can be created from two halves of another.
Of Gabriel, her expectation is to hear nothing, but in fact he writes. He is in Paris. He is in Algiers. He is in Brest. Occasionally, his letters are padded with Euros, although never enough to buy an umbrella from La boutique du Parapluie de Cherbourg. Not that the store requires his patronage to exist.
He is aware of Françoise just as he knows that the postcodes of the Cherbourg subdistricts of Equeurdreville Hainneville, La Glacerie, Octeville, Querqueville, and Tourlaville are 50120, 50470, 50130, 50460 and 50110 respectively.
If there is a big band soundtrack to Françoise’s childhood it is all Marianne’s doing. She luxuriates in this soft creation, this inquisitive mind. Françoise is no pawn for the one selected to be king, but an autonomous being in her own right.
They frequently watch the film together.
For much of the duration, Marianne sees it reflected in Françoise’s eyes.
June
The average temperature will be 14°C with a high of 17 and a low of 11. Generally summery, most days will see a maximum of eight hours sunshine. There should be eleven rain days throughout this month with an expected rainfall of around 50mm.
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Her mother is down from Paris. Babysitting. There is a one day film festival at the Cinéma Le Palace celebrating the Nouvelle Vague. Marianne holds tickets for Godard, Truffaut, Varda, and – of course – Demys.
It has been twenty-five years since she has seen Les Parapluies de Cherbourg on a big screen. There is something in her heart that flutters. She expects it to be greater than her existence. To enfold from the wings of the cinema in an affectionate embrace. Her DVD is a pale copy, almost a colourless imitation, despite the frequency of use.
Within the twilight of the auditorium she notes some of the mechanics have brought their wives. Many other faces are new to her. She has found she lives in a smaller city than the one which exists. As the film begins, and umbrellas parade their way beneath an overhead shot, Marianne recalls her mother once mentioning that they should never be opened indoors.
She sits motionless. Her eyes blink away tears at appropriate trigger-points. She inhabits the screen for the duration. The suspension of disbelief between projected images on a white screen and her corporeal self is sufficient for them to bleed into each other, as though her appearance in the film is similar to discoloration in rain due to the presence of particles too small to see with the naked eye. As the music crescendos during the final scene Marianne finds herself lifted upwards, carried over the heads of the audience – several bald pates resembling opened umbrellas from above – and lurches through the roof of the cinema to tarry awhile above the town – like a drone – operated independently – observing the intricacies of each life underneath her, and – as if on a map – gathers pointers as to how each might have lived in accordance with the vagaries of cinema and their reflections within the played parts of their favourite films.
Upon returning to her body she picks her way between red-velvet chairs and orders an aperitif. Breathless.
December
The average temperature will be 6°C with a high of 8 and a low of 5. Generally cloudy, most days will see a maximum of two hours sunshine. There should be sixteen rain days throughout this month with an expected heavy rainfall of around 70mm.
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There is always a dearth of postmen at Christmas.
Marianne watches snow fall from within the café. Fat flakes she hadn’t predicted. The temperature has dropped suddenly: a plunge. The manner of a revelation.
Opposite, Françoise, freshly collected from nursery, stuffs her face with sweet things. They are having a light tea – goûter – whilst the sky – burgeoning with pale grey – appears to lower as if the closing of an eyelid or through the grainy dissolve from one scene to the next of an old black and white movie.
Marianne is not suspecting Gabriel will appear leaving a singular bicycle track in the snow, nor for him to be accompanied by a miniature version of himself, a François – such tiny boot prints – although an expectation borne of cinema almost forces this as a coda. Instead, she understands how reality and fantasy can merge and then peel away, leaving a thin patina – a film – pressed against each other, so that a memory becomes contaminated and inhabits both camps simultaneously.
In fact, the dissolution of Guy and Geneviève’s romance in her favourite film was a perfect parallel to the way in which she experienced cinema. The sound and visuals on screen in each frame were as bright and overwhelming as anything she had ever encountered in real life, but just one moment later, when a new composition replaced the previous image, what was once definite and vivid began to recede in her mind. After a few moments she might no longer be sure of the position of an umbrella, or a hand, or the contents of a vase on a table top, and a few hours later she could forget that such scenes ever existed, no matter how many times she had viewed the film and become familiar with its intricacies.
It is the nature of recorded film that it creates memories just as it is a memory in and of itself.
And people only ever die of love in real life.
Marianne stands and takes her daughter’s hand, leads her out of the café and into the snow, heading right beyond the frame of existence, where initially idealistic, ordinary people end up having to settle for commonplace solutions to the always risky gamble of taking a main chance on love.
Andrew Hook has had almost two hundred short stories published, with several novels, novellas and collections also in print. Stories have appeared in magazines ranging from Ambit to Interzone. His themed collection of Hollywood celebrity death short stories, Candescent Blooms, was published by Salt in 2022. Recent publications include an SF novel, Body and Soul (Elsewhen Press), a non-fiction book on the film, Union City (Electric Dreamhouse), and his thirteenth collection of short stories, Somnambulant Hearts (Black Shuck Books). A venture into short films resulted in Armadillotown, which won in the Best Experimental film category at this year’s Sykehouse Film and Writers Festival.
