A Year in the Merde

by Stephen Clarke

  There was one way I'd have liked to worsen Franco-British relations even more, but sadly Jean-Marie wasn't around for me to kill. I don't know if he was just keeping out of my way, but he wasn't coming into the office at all.

  "He is on visits to clients," was all Christine would say.

  Meanwhile, of course, my promesse de vente was ticking away like a booby-trapped bottle in a crate of vintage Burgundy.

  I took the contract to a lawyer that Nicole had recommended. The office was in a chic building just on the other side of the Champs-Elysées. There was a golden shield fixed above the entrance, as if inside you'd find gladiators for hire.

  I explained to the best of my ability what I wanted, and the secretary seemed very interested until she understood that I didn't want her boss to take on the sale. She told me to "attendez ici" and left me to admire the thickness of the carpet and the intricacy of the engraved views of 18th-century Paris hanging on the wood-panelled walls. Legal work obviously paid pretty well.

  Two minutes later the secretary came trotting back, her high heels sinking soundlessly into the carpet.

  "No, I'm sorry, Maitre Rondecuir cannot accept this commission," she said, smiling regretfully. She stood there clasping her hands in front of her crisp white blouse until I'd accepted defeat and was heading for the door.

  "Bonne journée," she wished me, which seemed kind of inappropriate seeing that she'd just screwed up my entire financial life.

  There was only one solution to my legal troubles. The good old English solution to any dilemma that requires careful thought and planning - go and get pissed.

  It was the Saturday before Valentine's Day. What better time to drive an alcoholic dagger through your own heart?

  I went up to Oberkampf, where I'd arranged to hook up with three English guys. I'd first met them at an English pub near my office, and we'd bonded in misery as England struggled to yet another gutsy nil-nil draw against some team of Central Asian part-timers.

  The three guys were a bit more rugby-club than my usual drinking buddies, louder and more boisterous, but at least they preferred sharing jokes and football talk to hassling people about their head of state's attitude to the Middle-East crisis. They were over here working for a telecommunications company, developing something to do with billing that I didn't understand, even after several pints of bitter had loosened up my mind.

  * * *

  They were already well in the swing of things when I arrived at the bar in the rue Oberkampf, a fairly normal-looking cafe that for some reason had been adopted by a young crowd as the place to be. The trendily lit place next door was almost empty.

  "Paul! Just in time for your round!"

  Bob, the loudest of the loud, was yelling at me from approximately two metres away. He was a blond giant, even taller than me, with eyebrows that were nearly white. He and the others were standing by the nicotine-coloured wall midway between the entrance and the bar.

  I ploughed into the smoky throng and reached for my wallet.

  "Sure. What are you having?"

  I shook hands with Bob, Ian - a prematurely balding Yorkshireman - and Dave, a baby-faced Londoner with a permanent grin.

  "Demis all round, and whatever the ladies are having," Bob hollered.

  "Ladies?"

  Bob moved aside to reveal three twenty-something girls, penned in against the wall by the three Englishmen.

  "Ladies, Paul," Dave announced grandly. "Paul…"

  He let the girls introduce themselves, no doubt because he'd forgotten their names.

  "Florence." A small but curvy girl, half-Indian, with long silky hair and an attractive navel.

  "Viviane." A tall White girl with vaguely Asian features and smiling eyes the colour of Cognac.

  "Marie." A dark-skinned Black girl, quite heavily built but slim-waisted. A typical Parisian mix of ethnic backgrounds. And like typical Parisian girls, they all leaned forward to receive two kisses on the cheek. Except Marie, who gave rather than received.

  "Hey, girls, vous n'êtes pas interested in Paul," Dave said. He seemed to have his eye on Marie.

  "No, he's gay, is Paul," Ian told the whole bar. "Lives in the Marais."

  There was much chuckling amongst the British contingent, which was cut short by Marie.

  "No, ee eez not gay, Pol. Ah av fock eem before."

  No one was more surprised than me. Bob guffawed at my embarrassment.

  "Come on, Paul, tell us all," he demanded.

  I held my hands up in ignorance. "I ... uh ..." That was as much as I knew.

  "Wah you leave me zat morning, Paul? You not Eengleesh gentleman, uh?" Marie whispered something to her two girlfriends, who burst out laughing.

  The penny dropped. I pointed open-mouthed to ner hair, which was now jet-black rather than acid-blond, as it had been when I'd woken up beside her in her bed all those months ago.

  "Loved you and left you, did he?" Dave placed a protective hand on Marie's muscular forearm.

  "Lov? Huh! Ten mee-noots, then he sleep."

  I was now being laughed at by six bobbing faces, and felt even more like getting drunk than before.

  "Yeah, I'm sorry, Marie. It was ... I was ..."

  "You was so queeck, you don't even recognahz me."

  "Yeah, well, I never really got a good look at your face."

  This provoked shocked gasps from the girls and raucous laughter from the boys.

  "You know what I mean."

  "Oh, yeah? Strictly tradesmen's entrance only, was it, Paul?" Bob hooted.

  "Touch your toes and clench your teeth?" Dave added.

  Time to get the drinks, I decided. I pushed my way to the bar, wondering what suicidal instinct had made me want to drown my sorrows so close to the scene of my previous cock-up with Alexa.

  "All French men are a bit effeminate," Bob was bawling when I returned with a trayful of glasses - beers for the boys, wine for Florence, gin and tonic for Viviane and - scarily - a double rum for Marie. Bob was big enough not to care if any of the 20 or so Frenchmen in the bar understood him. A couple of them, in their designer gangsta rap outfits, looked the kind to take violent offence, but he blundered loudly on.

  "Some of them even carry handbags."

  "Des sacs a main?" Marie frowned.

  The girls conferred as to his meaning.

  "Yeah, like tiny little briefcases, with a handle and a strap. Just big enough for their ID card, a camembert and a packet of Gauloises."

  "That's mainly older guys," I pitched in. "Outside Paris. I've seen them out in the country."

  "Ah oui!" Florence got what we were talking about, and described the purse-like bags to her friends.

  "Yes, zat eez old men," Marie said. "Eez not feminine, eez old. Old Engleeshmen have teets like me. But zey are not feminine lak me." She cupped her t-shirt and heaved her breasts in my direction. I looked politely away. I really was not interested in waking up in her bed again. I was happy to see Dave, who only came up to Marie's chest anyway, moving in for a direct eye-to-nipple view.

  As soon as Bob had finished swallowing half of his beer, he climbed back onto his soapbox.

  "What about their names, then? They have women's names like Michel and, and ... what's your boss's name, Paul?"

  "Jean-Marie."

  "Yeah - a guy called Mary! Weird or what?"

  "Yeah," Dave nodded. "You'd never get a British guy with half a girl's name. Like if Bob here was called Bobby Jane."

  "Bobby Sue," Ian suggested, gurgling at the sheer ludicrousness of a creature so bulky and hairy sporting a woman's name.

  The girls, though, were getting a bit pissed off with hearing foreigners knocking the local competition.

  "Nems? Huh! Lak Sean Connery? Connerie is bullsheet," Marie protested.

  "And mah ex, ee was not feminine," Viviane said. "Zat was beeg problem. E ad two, sree girlfriend always."

  "Yes, French men, zey see a woman, she smile at him, he want to fock you direct, allez hop!" Florence said res
ignedly.

  "Yes, guys, surely the most important thing is that French women are so much more feminine than French men," I said, hinting that maybe it would be in the lads' interest to change the thrust of the conversation.

  I aimed my compliment at Florence, but it was Marie who sighed: "Ah, enfin! One of you say somesing pleezant." She grabbed my arm and almost wrenched me off my feet into a congratulatory embrace. "Paul, ee knows, a leetle flattery, zat is ow to get French woman."

  "Yeah, you say somesing nice, please." Florence looked teasingly at Ian.

  "Right, yeah." Ian finally got the message. "It's true, French women are feminine without being too feminist. Like, at work, they seem to be able to get respect without accusing men of sexism, you know? We've got this woman in human resources ..."

  "What, Sandrine?" Bob asked.

  "Oh!" Dave's groan of desire told us all we needed to know about Sandrine.

  "Yeah, but she doesn't hide it," Ian went on. "And if you say how good she looks, she doesn't report you to an industrial tribunal for sexual harassment. She just thanks you and asks you if you're interested in a training day on time management."

  "With her, I could manage it any time." Bob got congratulatory high-fives from Dave and Ian, and I felt like the Rollerblade trainer who's just seen his pupils go nose-first into yet another lamp-post. Bob really didn't see that he was doing exactly what it took to go home without a Parisian girl that night. His short-sleeved shirt riding up over a hairy navel, his loud, beery voice, his conversation devoid of any of the diplomatic niceties - feminine touches, he would have called them - that a Parisian girl likes. He was a good-looking enough guy, but just too oafishly English to bed any of the Parisiennes I'd met. Unless he was rich and famous, of course, then they'd all be after him.

  This was too depressing.

  "You know, I might leave you people to it," I announced. Anyway, getting drunk had become too risky with Marie on the hunt. Best to go home while I could still see well enough to make sure I was alone.

  "Oh, yes! We go to different bar. Wiz music, maybe, dance!" Marie's swinging hip almost hoisted me through the window.

  "Yeah, shut up and drink up, Paul, I need you to translate my chat-up lines." Bob's arm clubbed me chummily back down to earth again.

  As we trooped out the door into the cold, refreshingly smoke-free air, Marie's hand clamped itself to my bum. I was beginning to know how the snail must feel just before it gets thrown on the barbecue.

  So I was relieved, some nine or ten hours later, to be sitting up alone in my own bed, drinking strong coffee and enjoying my lack of headache.

  I did feel a little tender down below the sheets, but that was only normal after the drubbing my poor willy had got during the night. I had a look - yes, it was as wrinkly as one of De Gaulle's favourite sausages. Much floppier, though.

  "Un toast ou deux?" a voice called from the kitchen.

  "Deux!"

  There was the scraping of butter on toast from the other side of the wall and then a naked female body walked in, carrying a breakfast tray. There was something rather comical about the way the tray bisected the body - bare boobs above, trimmed pubic hair below - as if it was a completely unsuccessful attempt to hide her modesty.

  "Toast, more cafe, un oeuf a la coque."

  "Thanks, Marie."

  Yes, I'd spent the night with Marie. I was the one who suggested it, too.

  * * *

  At the second bar she'd dragged us to, a dark, mock-colonial clubby place, I'd felt it only fair to tell Marie that she was barking up the wrong tree with me, and explained why - Alexa, Jean-Marie, the maison. And instead of carrying me on to the dance floor, she sat me down and listened to my troubles.

  "Oh, eet eez no problem," she finally said when I got to the bit about the nuclear power station. "I work in bonk, you know."

  "Bonk?"

  "Yes. Crédit de France."

  "Ah, bank, of course." I almost heard the pop as a lightbulb went on in my head. "You work in a bank?" Suddenly, my spirits were lifted by visions of an open safe spurting out enough cash to refund my ten per cent deposit on the house, fund a candidate to beat Jean-Marie in his local elections, and maybe have enough to build a pollution-free wind farm in Trou.

  "Yes. I can geev you - what you say? Conseils?"

  "Oh, advice." Not money, then. My hopes were deflated like a tyre that's been knifed by a drunken hunter.

  "Yes."

  She talked me through her advice. And it sounded plausible, and I began to worship her.

  There was only one more thing I needed to ask her: "Are you going on the big anti-war march tomorrow?"

  "No. Why? You sink ze Americans and ze Breetish, they will stop because we march in Paree? Oh no, ze Parisiens do not want a war, we must stop!" She did an excellent impression of an American war strategist not giving a monkey's armpit about French public opinion on Iraq.

  "But do you agree with your Mister Chirac or my Mister Blair?"

  "Pff! Quelle difference? All ze politicians, zey are like different colours of merde. Pah!" She spat the bad taste out of her mouth.

  I laughed and said that I knew it was still early - about eleven - but did she fancy going back to my place for a spot of amour?

  She did. So we did.

  When we got back, she immediately undressed us both and insisted we took a shower together. We did all the usual soapy, sexy, lathery stuff in the cramped and creaking shower cubicle, and then, when we'd rinsed off, she showed me why she'd wanted us both to have all-over clean bodies. An imaginative girl, Marie, and not just where banking strategy was concerned.

  I went to see my bank manager at the first available opportunity - 8.45am on the following Tuesday. My bank, like many shops, was closed on Mondays.

  I explained why the maison was not such a good investment after all, and that I wanted him to refuse my application for a mortgage. He warned me that I'd have to pay some "frais de dossier" - admin charges - but when he looked them up on his computer it turned out they'd be about as much as a decent bottle of champagne. Tough, I thought, I'll celebrate with one bottle instead of two. The bank manager checked on the promesse de vente that the deadline for refusal wasn't past, and told me he'd inform the seller's solicitor that the deal was off.

  We smiled and shook hands and I was out of there ten minutes later, a free man.

  The problem was, how to deal with Jean-Marie.

  Go marching in there with a triumphant grin on my face?

  No, he'd put me down as a "hysterique".

  Ask why he'd tried to betray me, his loyal English protégé?

  No, he'd put me down as a naïve dickhead.

  Mention à propos of nothing that I'd decided not to buy the house his friend Lassay had found for me?

  No, Lassay would tell him all about our conversation, so he'd know I was being coy.

  Jean-Marie didn't broach the subject when he returned from his mysterious travels, so I did what any self-respecting Parisian would have done after a narrow escape from the clutches of a lying, treacherous con artist.

  I shrugged and said nothing. C'est la vie. Parisian life and all its hypocrisies went politely, discreetly on.

  If anything, our relations got slightly better - he was less overpoweringly chummy when I saw him, and seemed more respectful towards the man who'd out-manoeuvred him.

  Seemed being the operative word.

  Marie and I didn't buy each other Valentine's cards, but then, as she said, we weren't in love, we were lovers. We were each other's "cinq à sept", she said, that is, the person you meet to make love with between five o'clock in the afternoon and seven, before you go home to your spouse. Although these days, with flexible working hours, you can do it more or less when you want.

  It was, Marie informed me, just one of France's unique sexual traditions.

  For instance, they call an overnight bag a "baise-en-ville" - "screw in town" - meaning that it contains just enough luggage to take when you want
to go to Paris for a night of illicit sex.

  And on itemized phone bills, only the first few digits of the numbers that you have called are listed - this is to protect married people who have been careless enough to phone their lover from home. True.

  Then there was the porn.

  Of course I'd hired the odd film in my time, and during my lonelier moments I'd surfed for free home movies on the web. But everything was so much less furtive in France. Porn mags were advertised openly in newsagents' windows. Obscenely graphic comic books were on sale in every bookshop. And hardcore, penetrative, ejaculatory porn was on mainstream TV, on one of the six basic terrestrial channels, pretty well every week. Marie had a whole collection of videos that she'd recorded off the TV. These included the "news" programme just before the movie, which was usually about who was making which new film, or which new porn starlet had made her screen debut. There were profiles of creepy-looking directors (we fast-forwarded them), plus clips of half a dozen films in production, and interviews with the stars as they masturbated to keep things going between scenes.

  Keeping things going - that's basically how Marie used porn. With the condom effect, after a couple of outings (or innings) my spirit was willing but my flesh was weak. Well, not weak exactly, just less motivated. So Marie would slot in a video and we'd watch together.

  If the droop in my motivation happened at a time when there was a porn movie on TV, we'd watch it live. And one Saturday at midnight, we switched on to find a group interview with all the usual actors, and the word "Liberté!" flashing on the screen.

  The actors were all naked, and their spokesman hardly seemed at all distracted by the fact that he was getting a blowjob as he read from his autocue. About a dozen French porn stars were lounging on an immense four-poster bed. The girls were showing us their most intimate piercings, and the guys who weren't speaking had the tools of their trade draped casually across their thighs or pointing up towards their belly buttons.