With Men For Pieces [A Fab Fifties Fling In Paris]

by Sophie Meredith

  He was hardly settled at his desk, however, when the door opened and a woman sauntered in.

  Although past her first youth, she was attractive in a full-blown sort of way. She was wearing an expensive gray suit and a red blouse, both unbuttoned to reveal an interesting amount of cleavage. Her hair was very abundant and very blonde, beautifully styled. She wore a lot of bright lipstick on her full mouth.

  “Hello there!” she said. “How’s my husband treating you?”

  She picked up an ash-tray, a stapler then a box of pencils in turn, replacing them slightly differently.

  “Have you everything you need?” She threw him a dazzling smile. “I’m Madame Lemoine, by the way.”

  She held out her hand—about level with Michäel’s chest as he had risen politely to his feet. He shook it rather limply—he was almost sure she had expected him to raise it to his lips. She put her other hand over his, trapping it. She threw back her head and laughed at his blushing confusion.

  “My husband speaks so well of you,” she said. She released his hand and perched on the edge of a table, revealing a lot of lavender-coloured lace and a pair of shapely knees.

  “I had to see you for myself,” she said with a provocative glance. She lit a cigarette and offered him the pack. He shook his head—he seemed to have been struck dumb—he was not accustomed to such glamour, to such a heady perfume, to the close proximity of such a voluptuous figure.

  “I’m on my way to Terminal One,” she said, between puffs. “My flight leaves at ten—is there any way I can help you while I wait?”

  Suddenly, she was leaning over him; one hand, nails beautifully groomed and painted scarlet, leafing through the ledger in front of him.

  “Mmm! Nice after-shave,” she said and her voice was husky.

  The door opened and Monsieur Lemoine came in. Non-plussed, she straightened up slowly.

  “Michäel has such attractive—handwriting—don’t you think, chéri?” she said coolly.

  She strolled to the door.

  “I’ll pop in to say goodbye before I leave,” she said.

  M Lemoine handed Michäel the bundle of mail he was carrying.

  “I won’t be long seeing Madame Lemoine to her plane,” he said stiffly. “If there are any problems, just ask Madame Denis.”

  When he had gone, Michäel opened the window and loosened his collar. He felt restless and wandered about the office, opening and closing cupboard doors, investigating shelves with no real interest in their contents. He found difficulty in concentrating on lists of figures, but he had just got himself back into the routine when Madame Lemoine burst in.

  “Au revoir, then—Michäel,” she said. “I’ll be away just two weeks.”

  She pressed his hand and hurried out, calling down to her husband not to be so impatient.

  Michäel looked down at the folded slip of paper she had transferred to his palm. He opened it and saw an address. Guiltily, he thrust the paper into his breast pocket and began furiously tapping out figures on the calculator; shooting out the printed roll at a furious rate till a great coiled heap lay on the carpet.

  * * * *

  Michäel looked up at the elegant apartment block in the Rue de Tocqueville. There were Dralon curtains billowing out of the third floor windows, the shutters were flung back as though in welcome. Michäel could imagine the inside of Apartment 4E: velvet sofas, rose-shaded lamps, a well-stocked drinks table. He could imagine, too, the woman answering the door—in a loose silk wrap gaping open at the front, blonde hair studiously tousled. He knew that the bedroom door would be open to show a glimpse of a king-sized mattress, a fur coverlet.

  Under cover of the deepening dusk, he slipped inside the smart lobby and avoiding the eyes of the curious concierge, read the names under the mail boxes.

  4E was labelled Madame Van Lemberg. Slowly, Michäel walked back to the kerb where he had parked his car.

  * * * *

  The phone was ringing as he entered the office on his final day at the factory. He put down the bulky Report, neatly typed and bound, ready to present to Monsieur Lemoine. He picked up the receiver.

  “Coward!”

  The female voice was harsh and spiteful. He said nothing. The voice went on, spilling out obscenities that Michäel hardly recognised, apart from vulgarly-phrased references to his own doubtful masculinity. Then she slammed down her phone, and Michäel put down the receiver slowly. He glanced round to make sure he had left everything tidy. Then he went across to the Director’s office.

  M Lemoine rose to greet him, his plump face a little anxious. Michäel had got to like the man. They had lunched together several times and the homme d’affaires had opened up a little and talked of his teenage sons, his holidays with them in Brittany, the Zodiac boat he was buying for them this year.

  Michäel did not pity the older man, but he regretted just a little that he would never be able to tell him just how loyally he had served his interests. Monsieur Lemoine was leafing through the Report.

  “Excellent!” he said, relief flooding his face. “You’ve done a great job, my boy. And I’ll make sure your boss knows what I think of you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Michäel quietly. “And I hope everything goes well with your new Accountant.”

  “Yes, yes, he starts on Monday,” said Monsieur Lemoine. “And you’ve given him a head start, straightening things up here. By the way, I know….” He broke off and seemed to be fumbling in a drawer of the desk.

  Michäel felt hot all over while he waited for the end of the sentence. Monsieur Lemoine stood up.

  “I know you’ve done…more than I could have expected,” he said. He handed over a small package. “A token of my personal gratitude for…the extra effort you made.”

  * * * *

  Back in his modest studio, Michäel opened the blue velvet box to discover a matching pen and pencil set in rolled gold. He leaned back on his narrow divan and thought of the girl in the café-bar. That morning she had been wearing her jeans and a Michael Jackson tee-shirt. And she had smiled at him.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 21

  I’d been drinking too much. I wasn’t an alcoholic, but I tended to get ratty if circumstances or well-meaning people denied me my glass of white at lunchtime, my early apéritif at six, my second large gin at seven, my bottle of Burgundy with dinner, my digestif afterwards.

  Mabiche suggested that it was high time Beryl came over for a visit. She loved coming to Paris even though London was, she declared, her spiritual home—and the Bahamas, the Riviera, Greek islands—had never figured in her dreams. Sometimes she would leave Natasha to be disgracefully spoiled by Charles and his family, or the ancient but still active aunt and uncle in Bromley. This time she’d brought her along for a spot of Mabiche’s style of Bringing Up Children—which amounted to the same thing. For all her rules and regulations about regular meals, fresh air and discipline, she was an old softy with the two children—who were growing up beautiful, bright and devoted to each other.

  Beryl adored what she called the real London—Billingsgate, Pimlico, Petticoat Lane, Soho—and she and I spent hours exploring similarly interesting corners of Paris. I was always amazed that there were so many quartiers we had still to discover, despite Jacques’ frequent though haphazardly conducted tours. Most evenings we ended up on the Champs Elysées, sipping Ricard at a pavement café, watching the world go by, comparing the characters here with those on the other side of the Channel. We tried out all the restaurants in the vicinity, unashamed to mingle with the tourists, always remembering the golden rule that it was safer to queue for a table at a crowded restaurant than to enter an empty one.

  Many times we ended up in the American Bar at the Rond Point—you could not beat it for comfort and two women were less likely to get “approached” in its hushed refuge. In fact, I’d written “Just Like Home” around someone I’d seen there—I showed it to Beryl and she liked it, but she said I was not writing enough. I was fritterin
g away my life. I must get a hold on myself.

  Just Like Home

  The American Bar at the bottom of the Champs Elysées exudes civilised comfort. The carpet is thick and soft, the armchairs deep and padded. The air-conditioning works, the notices are in English. The lamps, elegantly shaded, cast a soft, flattering glow on the healthy, beautiful people who frequent it.

  Richard C. Neame, Vice President of Onkim International, looked around with pleasurable relief. Two days of lunching, dining and drinking in typical French establishments, a surfeit of draughty pavement tables and unhygienic toilets, had brought him to the brink of homesickness. Not that he had let it show. His host, Alain Lecroq, had gone to so much trouble to lay before him the most showy wines, the most winy sauces, the most saucy shows. Richard had not let on that the whiff of a MacDonald’s had set him off longing for a paper sack of plain french (!) fries, that back home he hardly drank, apart from the occasional beer, that he had not sought out a floorshow in years.

  A frown crept over the plump, benign face of Richard C. Neame as he brooded over the telex that had arrived that afternoon from the Main Plant in Cleveland, Ohio.

  ADVISE POSTPONE RETURN. ITALIANS DUE PARIS WEEKEND. MEETING SET UP. CONFIDENT YOU APPRECIATE IMPORTANCE ITALIAN CONTRACT. JONATHON BUCK, CORPORATE PRESIDENT.

  Richard sighed. He was resigned to a couple more days in this lovely but oh, so foreign, city.

  At least he’d managed to shake off Lecroq. He would spend his evenings in his own way. Tonight he would take in a movie. Star Trek was on, he had noticed. Version originale with subtitles. This would give him the satisfaction of being one of the minority in the audience able to follow the witty exchanges between Spock and Scotty, mostly lost in translation.

  Afterwards, he would slide into a booth and order an uncomplicated steak or even a burger. And no toffee-nosed waiter would be hovering near the ice-bucket, making Richard’s evening clothes seem…inadequate.

  Then, early to bed with the second-hand copy of John O’Hara short stories he’d spotted on a stall when Lecroq was showing him round the Marché des Puces. Maybe he would put through an extra call to Alayne. They’d agreed that he would ration himself to two calls. One on arrival, one to confirm his return flight. But what the heck! His hôtel bill would be modest: he’d only used the place to sleep. And he needed that contact with home…the assurance that his comfortable, warm house, with its two freezers crammed with pumpkin pie and ice cream, its efficient plumbing, was intact and waiting for him. Along with Alayne, of course, and the kids.

  A girl had come in and was perched on the edge of a nearby couch, looking at him. A beautiful girl, tall, tanned, better covered than these skinny French dames. But it was her wide, generous mouth that labelled her in Richard’s eyes as a fellow compatriot. Plus the fact that she looked as though she showered at least once a day. All the expensive perfume in the capital couldn’t cover the stale odour surrounding these Continental females.

  She smiled at him and put a cigarette between her peachy lips. She made an endearingly-futile gesture of opening her handbag without really searching inside. Richard leaned across, flicking on his lighter.

  “Merci Monsieur! Très gentil de votre part!” she said and Richard was exasperated to find that he had been wrong. The accent was genuinely native, even to his ears.

  He lost interest—though he had been on the point of submitting to the stirrings of attraction to that long, blonde hair (Alayne was dark), those smooth honey-coloured limbs showing through slits in that tight skirt.

  Almost immediately, her eyes lit up as she spotted two men approaching. One was greying, stocky, handsome. The other was a beautiful youth, hung about with gold jewellery. They pulled her, laughing, to her feet, exchanged the regulation four kisses of greeting each, jabbered away in machine-gun French, whisked her away.

  The waitress was hovering. Reckless with disappointment at his own lack of judgement, to say nothing of the loss of some half-formed idea of a little harmless flirtation, Richard ordered a Scotch. His third. Surreptitiously he slipped a small white pill into his mouth before his next swallow. Maybe if he took a raincheck on dinner this evening, he would get an undisturbed night. No waking in a sweat around three in the morning with that deep, distressing cramp. This heavy, puffy feeling in his stomach must be due to the unaccustomed whiskies on top of the over-rich diet that had been forced on him over the last couple of days. Doc McFlannery back home had agreed that his on and off symptoms could be acute indigestion (due to acidic changes rather than to Alayne’s cooking). But all the same, he’d have those other tests the doc had suggested when he got back. Must be in good shape for the big trip next year. That was the way to see Europe…with Alayne along to keep an eye on him…and all the other couples from the Country Club to jolly things along, to keep the spirit of America going strong. And they wouldn’t hang around in any one spot too long. The intention was to do Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France and the U.K. A round trip.

  Yup, tonight he’d see the movie, then go straight back to the Holiday Inn. He gulped down the rest of his drink. The hostess smiled her goodbye. Her face swam in a haze for a moment.

  * * * *

  Richard emerged onto the wide pavement and stood for a moment looking across at the trees that shrouded the Elysée Palace. Those dark shapes moving furtively amongst the bushes would be the heavily-armed police he’d seen earlier swarming around the front of Mittérand’s residence, sinister in their all-black uniforms. He’d spotted several bus-loads waiting just around the corner in the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré. Lecroq had been showing him the Changing of the Guard. Richard had always connected such ceremony with Buckingham Palace, but there they were, right across the street from shops with famous names like Hermës, Cardin, Dior…well-drilled fellows, too, with a lot of scarlet in their uniforms, plumes and all in their helmets. Further on, his heart had lifted in pride as he saw the American flag flying outside the Embassy and a real, home-grown Marine stationed in front, facing out over the Place de la Concorde. Then they’d come full circle back to this little park with an unfriendly looking C.A.S. type, holster bulging, under practically every tree.

  Peering across again, he decided that maybe at this time of night some of these shapes were more likely pairs of lovers strolling, entwined, in the warm night air. Love, or rather sex, seemed to be taken for granted over here, like an after-dinner digestif. It had been midnight and still pleasantly mild when Lecroq had taken Richard to look at some famous square, the Place de Vosges as he recalled. They had strolled around the ornate arcades and then Lecroq had paused. He’d seemed to be waiting for Richard to speak. Richard had made what he judged to be suitable comments on the splendid architecture. But then he’d suddenly got the message that his host was waiting for him to request some other kind of entertainment. They’d had the Culinary Tour, the Architectural: he was muttering now about the Bois de Boulogne. Richard hastily informed him that he had a pile of reports back in his hôtel room, that he really ought to glance through them before tomorrow’s meeting.

  That was another reason he’d been so relieved when the suave, bearded Frenchman had excused himself for tonight, mentioning a previous rendez-vous.

  “I’ll be fine, just fine, Alain,” he’d insisted, thinking again how odd it was that this guy’s name sounded so like his wife’s. “I wouldn’t dream of putting you out…how could you have known I’d be kept hanging around an extra day…no, go ahead, keep your appointment.”

  He’d gotten the strong impression that the date was with a woman. And not the plain, scraggy little wife Alain had brought along on one of their tourist trips.

  Richard turned back towards the most exciting road in Paris. The Champs Elysées, all lit up, was a-buzz with life. He stared into a window full of leather goods. The shop was still open. He toyed with the idea of buying a purse or some little knick-knack for Alayne. But the thought of coping on his own with the haughty young woman sitting just inside the door at a broa
d, heavy antique desk…much more chic than a counter…and she, too, was much too chic…it was all too much for Richard. Alain had at least smoothed the way for him during his modest shopping sprees. A couple of Eiffel Tower brooches for the girls—corny but adequate. A key ring for young Rick. He’d get perfume and stuff for Alayne at the airport. All he wanted now was the quiet oblivion of the dark cinema.

  Now he was on the edge of the pavement amongst the milling crowds. Taxis blared away at young motor cyclists, performing daring feats, without benefit of crash helmets, on the six lane highway. In the distance, the proud, solid outline of the Arc de Triomphe. Now there, the traffic was really crazy. Richard had gripped the edge of his seat and closed his eyes as Alain had whizzed him round the famous Etoile in his Fuégo one lunchtime. Yet the guy had seemed totally non-plussed by cars and coaches speeding towards them from every direction. He’d kept up the French driver’s ingrained habits of turning his head ninety degrees to face his passenger every time he spoke, taking his hands off the wheel every other word in the gestures so necessary for French conversation.

  Richard’s eyes slid in embarrassment across the images on three huge posters displaying the Act of Love more blatantly than he’d ever seen it portrayed in the occasional girlie magazine he picked up at his dentist’s. With relief he spotted a giant blow-up of Captain Kirk, against the infinitely innocent background of Space and the Starship Enterprise. It was directly opposite. He joined a crowd of Japanese tourists waiting to cross the broad, nightmarishly busy road. He moved forward when they did, but as he stepped off the pavement, he felt a tight band of pain around his chest. He stumbled and fell. The driver of the Citrôen slammed on his brakes, but he could hardly miss….

  They carried the unconscious and rather heavy man with the crew-cut into the nearest bar. Richard opened his eyes to find himself lying on littered, grease-spattered linoleum, under harsh uncompromising naked light bulbs. Ugly flimsy metal chairs and tables had been pushed back to give more room. A whiff of urine came from under the scuffed, peeling door, combining with the scent of anisette and cheap red wine. Bending over him was an assortment of the unattractive, sick-looking people of Paris, referred to with pride by Lecroq as “characters.” A ragged clochard with black fingernails had pushed himself to the front of the group and was leering down on Richard while vaguely patting his clothing. Richard was not sure whether this was an opportunistic search for loot or a genuine attempt to ascertain if his heart was still beating. An elderly tart with thick make-up plastered over her hawk-like, ravaged and none-too-clean features was offering him a drink from a smeared glass. A hideously-deformed old man was inadvertently pinning down Richard’s left arm by dint of his crutch being caught up in the sleeve. A young albino boy stared down with the crazed eyes of an addict. A cruel-faced Arab stood astride Richard’s legs, a black-faced simpleton hopped about trying to get a better view. A pock-marked woman of indeterminate age in a soiled sari clutched an emaciated baby, its eyes rolling glassily. A heavily-mustachioed waiter, his long apron brushing Richard’s face, looked on with impatience, not so much at the morbidly curious gawping public, but at the inconvenient and bulky shape of Richard, now vainly opening and closing his mouth but failing to make any sound.