French Kissing

by Lynne Shelby

  I sat very still while he fastened my dress. The sun had moved, and the light was now falling on the bed. I wondered what Alex would do if I sank back onto the cotton sheets. Would he lie down beside me? And undo all those tiny pearl buttons?

  His hands dropped to his lap. ‘If we’re going to eat before we head over to the Marais, it’s going to have to be soon – I can’t arrive late at the gallery.’

  I realised that I’d been holding my breath. Enough, Anna. I thought. Focus on your friend’s photography exhibition which is really important to him and to his career. ‘No, you really can’t be late. You go and shave. I’ll make you a sandwich.’

  He went off. I stood, and smoothed my skirts. When I’d looked up, my dress half-undone, and seen Alex’s dark eyes watching me, I’d been sure he was looking at me in the way a man looks at a woman who is not a female friend – or a photographic model. Apparently, I was once again mistaken.

  Alex was expected at the exhibition an hour or so before the reception, to meet the gallery owners, the guests who were important enough to have a relatively private viewing, and to be interviewed by the media. I travelled across Paris with him to the Marais, so that he could show me exactly where the Galerie Lécuyer, formerly a large residential house, was situated amongst the maze of twisting lanes and cobblestone alleyways that made up this district of Paris. While he networked, I intended to do some more sightseeing.

  ‘This area has some of the oldest streets and buildings in the city,’ Alex said, as we stood outside the gallery. He pointed to an archway leading to a narrow alley ‘If you walk that way, you’ll even see some medieval timbered houses.’

  ‘I won’t go very far,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to get lost.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m kind of counting on your being there as soon as they start letting people in.’ He ran a hand through his hair, and straightened the sleeves of his black, collarless shirt.

  I looked at him more closely. ‘Are you OK? You seem a bit tense.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Knowing my work is about to be seen and judged by some very knowledgeable art critics is somewhat daunting. I feel like I’m a student again, just before my graduation show.’

  I put my hands on either side of his face. ‘You’re a great photographer, Alex. An artist.’

  ‘Not that you’re biased or anything.’

  ‘I should perhaps remind you, monsieur, that I have a degree in the History of Art. I know how to judge a visual image. Even if I’m also your greatest fan. And your very good friend, of course.’

  He drew me close and I slid my arms around his waist. As we held each other, I felt his body relax.

  ‘I should go,’ he said. ‘Wish me luck.’

  ‘Bonne chance.’ I kissed his cheek, and looked up into his eyes. He trailed a finger along the line of my jaw. Then he let go of me, and took a step away.

  ‘Á bientôt, mon amie,’ he said.

  ‘See you later.’ I watched as he walked to blue-painted door of the gallery. He looked back over his shoulder and raised a hand, and then vanished inside. I consulted my map, marked the position of the Galerie Lécuyer with an ‘X’ – I wasn’t taking any chances on letting Alex down by being unable to find it again – and made my way through the arch he’d indicated. The alley brought me to a courtyard, where I did indeed spot a timber-framed house. I walked across the square, through a covered passageway, and into a labyrinth of crooked, narrow streets. Keeping a track of where I was going on the map, I strolled past art galleries and bars, boutiques, and patisseries, old ivy-covered apartments and design stores. Catching sight of my reflection in a gallery window, I thought I looked as though I belonged in this trendy area of Paris. I may have given away my tourist status when I took a photo on my phone.

  My circuitous route through the Marais brought me back to the Galerie Lécuyer in good time. Seeing that the blue doors were now standing wide open, and people were going inside, I followed them. I found myself in a bright, white atrium with a metal staircase leading to an upper floor. To my left, a square archway provided a glimpse into a large room displaying a cobweb of light fibres and a colossal pyramid of brown cardboard boxes – Alex had told me that the ground floor of the gallery was used for installations, not really my thing, but I hoped I could appreciate its intentions. In front of me, two women, one in a multi-coloured mini dress (think paint splatters) that was a work of art in itself, the other in unrelieved black, were welcoming invitees to the exhibition, and directing them up the metal staircase. I went over to them, my invitation clutched in my hand.

  Without looking at my invitation, the woman in the colourful mini dress gave me a broad smile and said, ‘Welcome to the Galerie Lécuyer. The award exhibition is on the first floor.’

  ‘Bonsoir, mademoiselle.’The other woman, the one dressed in black, ushered me to the staircase. ‘At the top, please turn to the left and you will see the entrance to the exhibition.’

  ‘Merci.’I followed her instructions, climbing the stairs and turning left into a long, light-filled room, divided into a succession of smaller exhibition spaces, by high partitions. Looking around the first section, I saw that its white walls were hung with close-up photographs of people. Although they were portraits, I knew immediately they weren’t Alex’s work. He was interested in capturing the personality of his subject, but these shots had been edited so that the faces were distorted. Wanting to find him and let him know I’d arrived, I scanned the knots of viewers gathering in front of the photos. They were of various ages, some younger than me, others considerably older. A middle-aged couple, the woman wearing the sort of dress I’d seen in the shops on the Avenue Montaigne, were talking to a young man in scruffy denim, his long hair tied back in a ponytail. A grey-haired man, standing close enough to one photo to make a nearby gallery employee rather nervous, was writing in a spiral notebook. I wondered if he was an art critic. As there was no sign of Alex, I went into the next section of the gallery.

  Here there were more people, many of whom seemed to know each other, and the level of conversation was considerably louder. There was also a bar: a trestle table, behind which a waiter was pouring champagne. I went and helped myself to a glass. The waiter gave me what I thought was a very searching look. For a moment I worried that I’d breached some unspoken rule of exhibition opening etiquette, but other people were helping themselves to champagne, so I decided I was imagining things. Moving away from the bar, I found myself looking at a group of randomly hung monochrome photos no more than a foot square. At first I thought they were abstracts, but as I walked further into the exhibition space, I saw that each individual picture was part of a whole, and if they’d been moved around and fitted together like a jigsaw they would have made a cityscape, a bleak urban wasteland of high-rise tenements and flyovers.

  A man standing next to me said, ‘It’s clever, but also alienating, and ultimately depressing. I can’t look at it for very long.’ He was about forty-five, with longish brown hair, and smartly dressed in a linen suit.

  ‘I find it a very desolate piece of artwork,’ I said, ‘but I presume that’s the response the photographer wanted to evoke.’

  ‘It seems she has succeeded.’ He added, ‘I’m Marcel Guilleroy, Alexandre Tourville’s agent. And you, I believe, are one of his models. I recognise you from his photograph.’ He held out a hand.

  I shook it, and said, ‘I’m Anna Mitchel.’

  ‘I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, mademoiselle. Have you seen Alexandre’s pictures? They are already receiving a great deal of favourable attention.’

  ‘No, not yet. I’ve not seen him yet either.’

  ‘His photos are hanging in the next room. I believe you’ll find him there also.’ He gestured towards the far partition. ‘Á bientôt, Mademoiselle Mitchel.’

  ‘Á bientôt, Monsieur Guilleroy.’

  Marcel Guilleroy turned away, and began talking to the elderly, distinguished-looking man standing on his other side. I took a sip of my c
hampagne, and made my way past the throng now swarming around the bar, and into the next section of the gallery.

  I saw Alex straight away, deep in conversation with a man in his thirties, who was listening to whatever he was saying with rapt attention. I managed to catch his eye and he smiled at me, before resuming his discussion. I was about to go up to him when I remembered that while for many of the guests, the opening was a social occasion, for Alex and the other exhibitors, it was work. Rather than interrupt him, I looked around the room for the picture of me. From where I was standing, it was impossible to see any of the photos as each one was hidden behind a cluster of spectators. I went over to the nearest group, and by standing at the side, managed to get a partial view of the photo they were looking at, which turned out to be a portrait of my favourite author, Verity Holmes. I remembered that Alex had photographed her for The Edge not long after he’d arrived in England – and given me that novel. In the picture, she was sitting at her laptop, her brows drawn together in concentration.

  I heard a woman say, ‘It is as though Tourville has photographed the actual creative process.’

  Her companion said, ‘I am usually bored by figurative art, but this – this is different. This is good,’

  A stout matron speaking American-accented English, the one person I’d heard not speaking French, said, ‘Only a Frenchman could photograph a woman who has reached her half-century and make her look so magnificent. I must have this Tourville guy photograph me for my fiftieth birthday.’

  This was my friend Alex they’re talking about. I turned away from Verity Holmes – whom I happened to know was in her seventies – with a smile on my face, and moved on. Walking past two young men, I was aware that both of them were nudging each other and openly staring at me, which I thought very unsophisticated behaviour considering the venue and the occasion. Deciding that I was flattered rather than annoyed – they were very young, probably photographic students – I ignored them, and headed across the room to a photo which for the moment had only one other viewer. It turned out to be a shot of a little girl sitting on the branch of a tree reading a book. A small plaque gave the title of the photo as Véronique Reading, and I recognised Hélène’s elder daughter from the picture she’d shown me the day before. Given the angle at which the photo had been taken, I couldn’t see how Alex could have got the shot unless he too had climbed the tree – before common sense told me that he wouldn’t have sat a child up so high, and that it was his skill that had created the illusion of height. I studied the picture for some time, noting the dreamy expression on the little girl’s face, the way she seemed to float between the sky above her head and the ground, seemingly a long way beneath her. I thought about how it felt to lose oneself in a book, particularly when you’re young and the stories you read are almost as real to you as everyday life. Alex had precisely portrayed that feeling in this photograph. I wondered how he could capture such emotion through the lens of a camera.

  Aware that a number of viewers were beginning to gather behind me, and conscious that I was in the way of those who might be potential customers or curators of Alex’s work, I moved away from the photo.

  By now, people were streaming into this part of the gallery, many of them gravitating toward the group that had collected in front of a photo hanging on the far wall. Seeing that Alex was currently surrounded by about a dozen men and women, all talking animatedly and with many wild gesticulations, I too made my way to the far end of the room. Hovering on the edge of the crowd, I heard snatches of conversation, words like ‘formidable’, ‘extraordinaire’, ‘merveilleux’, ‘incroyable,’ and ‘exquis’ and, in an American accent, ‘awesome’ Edging my way forward, I finally managed get through the crowd, and stand in front of the artwork that Alex had entitled Anna Awakening.

  I’d thought the photograph beautiful when Alex had first showed it to me on his laptop, but now, seeing the picture blown up and hanging on the wall of an art gallery, I felt its impact anew. The play of light and shadow over the girl’s body – over my body – the expression on the girl’s face as she first caught sight of the rose, the emotions and the narrative that the image conveyed, all of this combined to make an extraordinary visual image. I heard a male voice say, ‘The photograph obviously depicts a sexual awakening’ and a female voice say, ‘No, it is more than that, it is a picture of a young girl awakening to all the possibilities of life and love.’ When Alex came to London, I thought, he woke me up. I was sleep-walking, and I didn’t even realise it.

  I became aware that someone was standing very close behind me, and I caught an oh-so-familiar masculine scent.

  I said, ‘Hey, Alex.’

  He moved forward so that he was standing next to me. He took my hand, and it was as though an electric shock passed between us. I felt his breath on my neck as he put his mouth close to my ear.

  In a low voice he said, ‘Here we have Anna Awakening, by the French photographer Alexandre Tourville. A nude female figure lies on a bed. The artist has captured the moment she awakes after a night of love. The picture is one of a number of photographs that Tourville took of his friend Anna Mitchel while he was living and working in London.’

  I said. ‘Is the girl in this photo actually me?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You created the image.’

  ‘But I don’t want to tell you how to respond to it. All I’ll say is that the original title of the picture was Woman Awakening, but the photographer changed his mind.’ His mouth lifted in a smile. ‘If you’ve looked at this photo long enough, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I can come back and admire myself later.’

  Alex led me around the partition on which Anna Awakening was hung, and into the next white-walled room. Here, there were fewer people examining the photographs. Several heads turned as we walked past.

  ‘People are staring at you,’ I said to Alex. ‘The renowned French photographer Alexandre Tourville.’

  ‘No,’ Alex said. ‘They are looking at you – the photographer’s beautiful model.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Seriously, Anna. Almost all the people who’ve been talking to me about my work this evening, including the gallery staff, have been more interested in the photo of you than any of the others. Obviously, they recognise you.’

  ‘Actually, now you come to mention it, your agent introduced himself and said that he recognised me from the photo. And I’ve noticed other people looking at me ever since I came into the gallery.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Not right now. I can see that it might become tiresome if it happened all the time. Not that that’s very likely – I’m not about to take up modelling as a full-time career.’

  We continued walking until we came to the final section of the gallery, where a woman with short iron-grey hair was studying a spectacular landscape of snow and ice, large enough to cover half the wall. Hearing our approach, she turned around, and I saw that she was in her mid-forties, with piercing blue eyes.

  Alex said, ‘Caroline, may I introduce you to Anna Mitchel, my childhood penfriend, and now my model. Anna, this is Caroline Gauthier, who in the year I was her assistant, taught me everything I know about photography.’

  ‘Not everything,’ Caroline said firmly. ‘The shot of Mademoiselle Mitchel hanging in the next room shows me that your photographic skills have progressed considerably since you worked in my studio. Your photographs have an emotional and intellectual depth that I find lacking in the other images I’ve seen this evening. I’ll be extremely surprised if the Lécuyer Award isn’t yours.’

  ‘Merci,’ Alex said, quietly. ‘Your good opinion means a lot to me.’

  Caroline gave me an appraising look. ‘I can certainly see why Alexandre chose to photograph you, and why he chose to show Anna Awakening in the exhibition.’

  ‘It’s a great photo,’ I said. ‘But only because Alex is such a talented photographer. I usually look awful in
photographs.’

  ‘Do you really? You surprise me.’ Caroline glanced at her watch. ‘I’d love to stay for the presentation, but I have a plane to catch.’

  ‘I know you have a crowded schedule,’ Alex said. ‘I really appreciate your taking the time to come here tonight.’

  ‘My pleasure, I assure you, to see the work of one of my former assistants on the walls of the Galerie Lécuyer. I always told you that you’d go far. It’s good to be proved right.’

  They exchanged air-kisses, and Caroline swept off.

  ‘So,’ Alex said, ‘what do you think of my mentor?’

  ‘She’s very direct,’ I said. ‘but I liked her – and what she said about your work.’

  ‘She’s had an extraordinary career.’

  ‘So have you.’

  ‘Not like Caroline. Not yet.’

  From behind us, Hélène’s voice said, ‘There you are, Alex. We’ve been looking all over for you.’

  Alex and I swung around to see his sister, with a man of around her age and an older couple.

  Alex’s face broke into a delighted smile. ‘Anna, these are my parents, Caitlin and Guillaume, and my brother-in-law Raymond. Hélène, you know already.’

  We exchanged the usual greetings – in a mixture of French and English – and Caitlin Tourville gave her son a hug.

  ‘It’s so good to see you,’ she said. ‘And looking so well. London obviously agrees with you.’ She turned to me and smiled. ‘After all the years that you and Alex have been exchanging letters, and it’s only now that you have come to Paris. It’s wonderful to meet you at last.’

  ‘I’m so pleased to meet all of you,’ I said. It was, I thought, very easy to see where Alex got his good looks. His mother was a beautiful woman, dark-haired, tall and slim, and although I knew she was in her late fifties, she could have been a decade younger. His father was an older version of Alex himself, with glasses, and hair that was still thick, if shot through with grey. They were an exceptionally attractive family.