The Merde Factor:

by Stephen Clarke

  ‘Maybe I was, but you two are geniuses,’ I said. ‘I’d like to marry you both.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like gender equality to me,’ Amandine said.

  ‘I’d do all the housework,’ I promised. ‘Well, the cooking, anyway.’

  ‘Yes, housework isn’t your thing, is it, Paul?’ Alexa laughed. ‘It never used to be, anyway.’

  Suddenly the laughter had stopped. With one remark, we’d switched from being three comrades in arms to a bloke, his ex and a witness to their private jokes.

  ‘Anyway, from now on, we’ll be partners, but in a purely business sense,’ Alexa added, which if anything only made things worse. ‘And I intend to be active – what do you call it? A hands-on partner. Though not literally, right?’

  ‘I think I’d better get back to the office,’ Amandine said.

  ‘No, you stay,’ Alexa told her. ‘Explain things to Paul. I have to go to my bank to warn them that they’re going to get a bit poorer.’

  When she said goodbye, I allowed myself the liberty of giving her an extra hug, purely out of gratitude for saving my bacon, as well as my potato salad, my tea and cake and, well, everything.

  ‘You still like her, don’t you, Paul?’ Amandine asked me when we were alone, sitting face to face.

  ‘Of course. She just saved my life. I love her.’ Which was, I thought, a brilliant way of avoiding the question.

  ‘Do you like staying close to your exes?’

  ‘Well, you were the one who called her,’ I said, then regretted it when I saw Amandine blush. ‘Sorry, that sounded really ungrateful. You saved my life, too. You made it all happen. I’ve never seen anyone get the better of Jean-Marie like that.’

  ‘You’re glad she’s back in your life?’

  I tried to laugh. ‘Well, she has tended to pop in and out of it. A friend of mine once said that we ought to remember the “ex” in the middle of her name. Not that we still …’

  Oh fuck it, I thought. The day had started out so well and now I was screwing it up. Amandine was right – it was weird having Alexa so close to me again. She’d disappeared from my life, then she’d popped up as some kind of shadowy stalker, and now, suddenly, she had a front-row seat. The driving seat, even. It was all very confusing.

  ‘Well, you and I won’t be working together any more,’ Amandine said.

  ‘No.’ I thought about the consequences of this. No more excuses to call each other. Would we still do so? And what would it mean if we did?

  ‘It was fun, though, wasn’t it?’ I said, and looked up to see Amandine blushing as though she’d just got the brush-off. ‘But on the upside, now we can meet up without talking about Jean-Marie. Well, not unless you want to, of course. Obviously, you can talk about whatever you want, including your job. Gender equality and all that.’

  She nodded, staring at me as though I was slightly bonkers. Which I probably was. I knew that what I ought to have said was: ‘Of course I want to keep seeing you, Amandine. I really like you, and not only because you managed to outwit Jean-Marie and save my tea room. You’re beautiful, and really easy to get along with – laid-back and fun, much less touchy than Alexa. But it’s just so complicated with her shadow hanging over us like this … Even so, I think that what I really want to do right now is kiss you, Amandine, but your seat is quite a long way from mine, so I’d have to lean right across the table, in fact I’d have to actually stand up and bend over you, which might freak you out because I’m not sure we’ve got to a kissing stage, and you’ve had all these guys trying to force themselves on you, although I’d quite like to sort of force myself on you too, without the force, if you see what I mean.’

  But all I did was smile and say she had to let me invite her out for a celebratory drink.

  ‘Yes, give me a call,’ Amandine said. She stood up. ‘I must get back to the office.’

  ‘I’ll call you later today.’ I stood up, too.

  ‘Yes, great.’

  She smiled, but it looked slightly forced, and she didn’t look back as she walked out of the door.

  Benoît came over, smiling.

  ‘Would you like some more tea or coffee to celebrate, Paul? Or some gateau?’ he asked.

  No need, I thought. I’m baking my own cake here. A merde cake with merde filling and merde-flavoured merde on top.

  Douze

  ‘Les diamants sur une bague de fiançailles doivent être juste assez brillants pour éblouir la demoiselle par rapport à vos vraies intentions.’

  The diamonds on an engagement ring should be just bright enough to blind the girl to your true intentions.

  The Marquis de Sade, who certainly wasn’t locked in the Bastille for being too romantic

  I

  THE SCULPTOR AUGUSTE Rodin didn’t seem to have any women troubles. He would have got on really well with Jake, I decided. In fact, he was probably one of Jake’s inspirations. Rodin would draw or sculpt women in some of the most sexual poses I’d ever seen outside of a Russian website, sleep with most of them, and then get paid for the drawings and sculptures. What’s more, he was also heaped with praise as a serious artiste. Nice work if you can get it. If you want it.

  I was in Rodin’s museum in the posh 7th arrondissement, a chateau-like mansion in a leafy urban park, looking for Jake. I’d called him up after my meeting at the tea room. Against my better judgement, I thought it might be good to talk things over with him, even if I ended up doing the exact opposite of what he suggested.

  Some of those sketches of Rodin’s were hot stuff, and I couldn’t stop myself uttering a few loud puffs of frustration, attracting the unwelcome attention of visitors who were frowning at the pictures of splayed legs and raised buttocks as though they were just lines on a page.

  In the end, I had to leave the house and wait in the garden. Staring at Rodin’s sexploits was not at all good for my brain.

  A few minutes later, Jake wandered out, still scribbling in a notebook.

  ‘Hey, man,’ he said when he’d finished jotting. ‘Good news? Bad news?’

  I gave him the good news about the tea room first, and he gave me a victorious high-five. Then I told him how Amandine and Alexa had engineered it all, and as I described the scene after Jean-Marie had left, he began looking at me with ever-narrowing eyes. By the end of it, he was shaking his head.

  ‘C’est la merde, man,’ was his verdict. ‘French girls. That’s why they call them femmes fatales – because they kill you. You know how they used to execute people in France? They tied a horse to their arms and legs, and then the horses went in different directions. They pulled them in pieces. It lasted hours. And now you’re doing it to yourself with two women – two Frenchwomen. And one of them your ex? Oh man.’

  It was all very well for him to talk, I told him. He was, for the first time in his life as far as I could see, in a monogamous, love-based relationship, and it just so happened that she was from Kazakhstan or Tajikistan or somewhere, rather than France.

  ‘And somehow I suspect you might have had a hand in making your French girlfriends murderous,’ I told him. ‘They’re not all like that. My problem is, am I just fantasising about Alexa because she must still like me a lot to buy half the tea room? And if she wasn’t there, would I find it easier to make a move on Amandine? And are either of them really interested in me, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jake said. ‘They’re French. You have to work it out for yourself. What do we say in English? You made your cake, now lie on it.’

  Thanking him for his wise words, I followed him into the museum’s cafeteria, a chalet on one side of the park. As we perused their selection of sandwiches, I asked Jake what was new with him.

  ‘Oh yeah, man, it’s formidable,’ he said, punching his tray and scaring a couple of aged art-lovers. ‘Mitzi has decroched some sponsoring for a concourse.’

  ‘She has?’ I asked, only half sure what he was talking about.

  ‘Yes, she is a member of a Paris businesswomen thing, and the
y will give sponsoring for a soirée of posy.’

  ‘Another poetry competition?’

  ‘Yes. All we need is a place, a time and some other poets. They will pay for the microphones, the posters, and the publication of the winner.’

  ‘That’s brilliant. Have you asked Marsha about using the shop?’

  ‘Ha!’ was all he said, so I could guess what her answer had been.

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘We can do it at the tea room. We’d have to take out all the tables, but it’d work.’

  ‘You’re a genie!’ Jake told me, meaning not that I was a kind of bottled wizard but a French genius. Suddenly he was hugging me and leaping up and down.

  ‘This is the poetic destiny, man,’ he said. ‘And I have promised myself, if it works, if we have a new concourse, I will write a poem for Mitzi, and ask her to epooz me on that night.’

  ‘Great idea.’

  ‘But only if I win.’

  ‘You’ll only propose if you win?’

  ‘Yes, we must let the poetic destiny decide.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Did he honestly think that the audience were going to vote for his obscenities? Or that Mitzi would say yes once she’d heard the poem? The wedding was off before he’d even proposed.

  II

  The French have a thing called la théorie de l’élastique. It’s a subtler version of playing hard to get. The idea is that instead of chasing around after someone, you get them to chase you. For example, where some people might be tempted to ask what their potential loved one is planning, you say instead, ‘I’m going to see a film, are you coming?’ Off you go, and the theory is that the elastic will bring them pinging after you. Alexa was an expert at this. ‘Qui m’aime me suive’ was one of her favourite sayings – ‘anyone who loves me will follow me’ – and you were expected to traipse off after her. Either that or she’d go silent and you’d have to track her down to prove that you were still fascinated by her.

  Well, I have always been useless at twanging the élastique. If you’re interested in someone, why bother playing games? You’re not going to make someone like you more by just ignoring them.

  And anyway, I had plenty of good reasons to call Amandine. For a start, I owed her that celebratory drink. And then I wanted to pass on the good news about the new poetry competition, and invite her to be a judge. We were hoping to get it organised for the coming Saturday. Short notice, but Mitzi was apparently saying that the timing was perfect. Fashion Week would be over, but there would still be lots of journalists on the lookout for quirky Paris culture stories. She was already putting together a press release, which to my mind was way beyond the call of duty, given that she was also meant to be launching her and Connie’s new store. By some miracle, Jake had landed himself a real pearl.

  Anyway, I called Amandine that same afternoon and, after raving yet again about how brilliant she was, started out by asking her when I could take her out for a thank-you glass of champagne.

  ‘I’m going to stay with my parents for a couple of days,’ she told me. ‘It’s my birthday, and they’ve organised a party with my sisters and my grandparents.’

  ‘It’s your birthday? When?’ I felt guilty for not knowing, even though she’d never told me.

  ‘Next Monday, but the party is on Saturday. Can you imagine? Saturday afternoon,’ she laughed, ‘with my grandparents, at my parents’ place, en province.’ This being the withering Parisian term for anywhere not in Paris.

  ‘So are you having a proper party in Paris sometime?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, like last year – I had a canal cocktail party. You know, everyone brings some alcohol and some ice, and we mix as many cocktails as possible before the ice melts, and then throw some pétanque balls around. But it will be a Monday, so I don’t know if many people will come.’

  ‘Well, I’d love to come, if I’m invited?’

  ‘Of course, I’m going to send out an email. You’re already on the list.’

  On the list? Wonderful. Then it struck me that maybe she was playing the élastique game – not mentioning her birthday or her party, and waiting to see if I’d find out. Well, if that was the case, it had worked.

  ‘Do you think you might be back in Paris on Saturday night?’ I asked her. ‘Mitzi has managed to get sponsorship for another poetry competition. They want to hold it on Saturday.’

  ‘Great. Where?’

  ‘At the tea room. Providing Jean-Marie agrees – he’s still part-owner till the buyout goes through.’

  ‘And you’ll have to ask Alexa’s permission, too,’ Amandine said. ‘You promised to consult her on everything.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said, wishing that Alexa and Jean-Marie hadn’t butted their way into our conversation. ‘But anyway, if it does happen on the Saturday night, I hope you’ll be able to make it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s more than an hour by train. And I’ll be with my grandparents, you know …’

  Here, perhaps, a French bloke would have said he’d carry her away on a white horse and gallop back to Paris with her clinging on to his suit of silver armour. But I preferred to let her choose whether she stayed an extra night with her gran and grandad. She probably didn’t see them that often. Who was I to make hoofmarks all over their lawn and kidnap their guest of honour?

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But if you can’t come on Saturday night, we’ll see each other on Monday, right?’

  ‘Yes, Monday.’

  ‘Great. Enjoy yourself with your family. Don’t get your grannie too drunk. She might fall off the table.’

  She laughed happily and we said goodbye. What more would you want from a phone call?

  *

  Next call, Alexa, who was actually answering me today.

  ‘Don’t tell me, Paul,’ she said before I’d had a chance to open my mouth, ‘you’ve decided that you don’t want to be in business with a woman and you’ve sold out to Jean-Marie?’

  ‘I have no problems working with women,’ I said.

  ‘Working with us, yes. It’s just all the other stuff you have problems with, right?’

  ‘Very droll. Anyway, thanks again for playing white knight,’ I told her. ‘I’m assuming white knights can also be female,’ I added quickly.

  ‘I don’t know, Paul. Joan of Arc was accused of being a witch for wearing men’s armour.’

  ‘Yes, well, times have changed, thankfully. Which is why I’m calling. I wanted to consult you on something, in your new role as co-owner of My Tea Is Rich.’

  ‘You want the waitresses to be naked?’

  ‘There are no waitresses. We only do counter service, as you would already know if you were a conscientious owner.’

  ‘OK, topless bargirls, then.’

  ‘I can see our meetings are going to be fun, Alexa,’ I told her. ‘And very long.’

  ‘Sorry. Please go on.’

  I told her about the plans to hold a poetry competition in the tea room.

  ‘Your girlfriend’s not going to be there, is she?’ she asked.

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes, you only have one, I presume. The mad Australian.’

  ‘New Zealander,’ I corrected her. ‘Marsha’s not my girlfriend any more. If she ever was. We split up the other night, remember, when I came to see you after the last poetry competition?’

  ‘You split up? I knew you had an argument with her, but I didn’t know you split up. Honestly, Paul, if you split up with a woman every time you had a row, you’d never have a girlfriend.’

  While she was laughing at her satirical jibe, an idea dawned on me. A rather disturbing idea.

  ‘You mean’, I said, ‘that you thought I was still in a relationship with this woman who was aggressive as hell towards you, who insulted you …?’

  ‘If you remember, Paul, you insulted me too, by saying I wanted to close down the tea room with my racist friends.’

  ‘OK, but even though you thought I was still going out with Marsha, you decided to st
ep in and save the tea room?’

  ‘Yes, I don’t see the connection.’

  Bloody hell, I thought. And I’d accused her of being a vindictive ex. She wasn’t a white knight, she was a business angel, in the truest sense of the word.

  III

  When I turned up at the tea room on Saturday afternoon, Benôit welcomed me with a rare burst of emotion. He wasn’t the most outgoing of blokes, no doubt a reaction to his dad’s main characteristic of putting it out as much as possible. Or former characteristic, I should say. All that was finished now, n’est-ce pas?

  ‘I’m so happy that we’re not going to become a diner,’ he told me in French, pronouncing diner ‘dine-AIR’. ‘It would have been a cata-stroff, une idée complètement stupide,’ he added, looking over his shoulder as though he was frightened his dad might be recording the conversation. ‘But I am wondering, if we start doing burgers, must we translate “burger” into French? It is “un burger”, so customers will think we are treating them like idiots. But if we don’t, will the government fine us again?’

  ‘That’s exactly the kind of thing that will be dealt with by Alexa from now on,’ I told him, and we began decorating the place for a poetry competition.

  I hung a few festive balloons and ‘Poetry Nite’ posters over some arty close-ups of vegetables sunbathing in an idyllic English garden, and then went to help Gregory, who had double-parked outside the tea room with his sound gear. It was a sultry day, so he was of course showing off approximately 80 per cent of his skin, the only parts covered up being the soles of his feet in his flip-flops, and his groin and buttocks (well, the bottom half of his buttocks, anyway) in tight khaki shorts. Here in the posh huitième I was tempted to suggest he tone it down a bit. But most of the people passing by ignored him – just another body delivering something – so instead I thanked him for coming along, and carried my share of speakers, amps and cables.

  Jake was a less welcome addition to the team. As soon as he arrived, he began hopping about like a frog on caffeine, asking if he could sound-test the mics with his poem, complaining about the lighting, worrying that the packed rows of chairs might distract him – if people got up and down to order drinks, it might ‘derange the concentration on my posy’, he said. Deranged was right.