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

by Sophie Meredith

  For, at an age when she had ceased to believe it possible, Miss Peasbody had had an Adventure.

  For half an average lifetime, Emily Peasbody had been exactly what she looked—a shy mouse of a person. By profession, a schoolmistress—by destiny, a spinster. Fate had always led her gently along the safest pathways.

  She was born into a respectable family and lived in a remote English village which she hardly left for the first eleven years of her life. Then, there being no Secondary Modern or Grammar School less than an hour’s bus journey away, her parents had scrimped and saved to send her to the more accessible Fernleigh Academy for Girls. This private establishment was run by two unmarried sisters with a preference for mature spinsters on their staff. Their main aim seemed to be to halt progress and model their pupils on their own stable, unimaginative characters. Miss Fanny and Miss Sarah did this, not out of vanity, but out of fear. To avoid trouble by circumnavigating risk was their idea of the surest way to survive. So they equipped their girls to pass examinations and to eschew experimentation. Thus, there was an excellent grounding in The Classics but the minimum of Modern Literature—and no Dramatic Society. There was an abundance of Practical Needlework but little in the way of messy Painting or Pottery. Where a syllabus gave a choice, they veered towards the Formal side every time.

  Emily was bright: with a little extra encouragement she could have obtained a place at University. But being a mild, trusting girl she did not realise that her vague sense of frustration was due to an instinctive craving for more stimulating teaching. Instead of revolting, demanding more inspiring material to nourish her fertile brain, she plodded on, putting her best efforts into the nondescript projects which she accepted as being wisely chosen by her betters. Almost without being consulted as to the procedure she would prefer, she found herself accepted by a Teacher Training College. Guided by the Misses Fernleigh, she had applied to a small all-women’s non-progressive college. Emily found herself deep in the countryside, leading much the same life as before, albeit in a different county.

  However, by a law of averages, there were a few students with sparkle amongst the rather serious, drab majority and Emily gleaned from them a glimmer of an idea of the wider world. She began to form plans about seeking a post, if not a great distance from home, at least in a town—where she could get a taste of Life.

  Kismet could not allow this to come to pass: the day she received her Teacher’s Certificate, her father collapsed and died. Her mother was alone and too distressed to contemplate moving from her familiar surroundings. Emily felt duty bound to cancel her appointment as an employee of Nottingham County Council. She was relieved, though hardly excited, to hear that the headmistress of her own village Primary school had just retired. The staff of three had each moved up one rung of the ladder—and there was thus a vacancy for her.

  The years slipped by: the routine was comfortable. Her mother, more from duty than affection, ran the house smoothly. The work in the classroom was easy and quietly rewarding. Her bank balance grew steadily more substantial. Every summer, she and her mother stayed with relatives near the coast. Nowhere near a noisy resort: a rather stark farm, in fact, whose one advantage was that the fields petered out into the sand dunes.

  Birthdays, like Christmas, came and went without too much fuss. Then, suddenly, Miss Peasbody was forty. She would hardly have felt it as a landmark had not something else happened about the same time. The numbers in the school had been so reduced by mass migration townwards that by now the staff consisted of the headteacher and Miss Peasbody. Two heads had come and gone; now the present incumbent was to retire, a year or two early. She broke the news to her colleague that the school was to be closed and handed her a list of posts available to unfortunate redundant teachers. Miss Peasbody had become as re-locatable as the prefabricated classroom which had been installed three years ago. Neither she nor the now disinterested headmistress thought to question the wisdom of the statisticians who had seemingly been unable to forecast the future of the little school.

  Miss Peasbody was wavering between two smallish Junior Schools, both a bus ride away from home, when she received a telephone call from a Headmaster of a not too distant town school. He had seen her name on a list; was she interested in a Special Post at his school? Miss Peasbody was puzzled, but he invited her so warmly to come and look over his school that she could hardly refuse. She was horrified on this first visit to discover that it was a very modern and very large Comprehensive School. And that Doctor James wanted her to take charge of a Department. This offer seemed to be mainly due to some pieces of embroidered collage she had done with a specially-gifted group of ten year olds a few years before. They had been shown at a County Exhibition and Miss Peasbody had been persuaded to write a short article for the Catalogue. Doctor James had a bee in his bonnet about the regrettable demise of Handicraft Teaching, which he felt was being swept aside by Cordon Bleue Cookery Courses and Space-Age classes in Cast-Iron Sculpture. He seemed to have read profound educational theorising between the lines in Miss Peasbody’s little essay: it seemed to him she was just the person his school lacked to give an all-round mix of Traditional and Avant-Garde.

  He did not add that there had been scandal and strife in the Domestic Science and Art Departments; the young teachers in question having walked out on him without notice, to found a Hippy Colony leaving him in dire straits just as he was preparing to publish his souped-up old thesis as a definitive Guide to the Profession.

  It was not in Miss Peasbody’s nature to say no—before she knew it, she had signed everything put before her and she was swept into the current of this great factory of a school. She was also plunged into its social life, the hub of which was the Main Staffroom. It took her breath away to find that there were sixty teachers to meet before she began the mammoth task of learning the names of her several classfuls of pupils. She did not encounter all the staff the first day nor even the first week. By the second week she was responding with a new sparkle to the great variety of characters she was now to work with. By the third week she knew she was not cut out to be closeted with teenagers. Her hours in the classroom were fast becoming tortuous. She could not get quickly enough to the staffroom for a reviving cup of tea and a gossip or a laugh with whatever group happened to be sprawled there at the time. She understood now what had at first bemused her—the reluctance of the staff to leave this haven and the prompt way they responded to the bells for Break.

  She did not meet Tony till the fourth week. A Games Master who wanted to write, he had been on a special leave of absence at the beginning of term, attending a conference in Paris. Miss Peasbody was spluttering into her mug in a most undignified way: Jock MacDonnel had just told her a mildly improper story which she suspected had hidden, and really dirty, innuendos beyond her appreciation, about an actress and a bishop. It made her laugh, just by the way he told it. She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Must be a new girl,” said a dark brown voice. “Everyone else’s heard it ten times before, Jock.”

  Miss Peasbody turned round—and was devastated. Tony Palmer, dressed in white tee-shirt and shorts, white teeth flashing in a tanned face, muscles rippling as he playfully punched Jock and demanded an introduction—was too much for Miss Peasbody. His violet-blue eyes fastened on her grey-green ones—and she was helpless.

  Inexplicable as it seemed to their colleagues, Miss Peasbody seemed to have as deeply affected Tony. Ten years her junior and reputed to have a string of glamorous girlfriends though he had hardly ever been seen by any of his co-workers outside school hours, he, too, seemed to be under a spell.

  The looks that passed between them across Assembly Hall, playground or corridor seemed to scorch anyone who was in between. They were drawn to each other like magnets: they lost all sense of time and place when they were together.

  By half-term they had eloped—even though Tony had confessed to Emily that he was long-married and the father of three boys.

  Pooling their s
avings they had raced across to Paris in a fever of desire, quickly installed themselves in a furnished apartment which they hardly glanced at, and consummated their love almost non-stop for seven months. Had she allowed herself to think of anything outside this extasy of passion, Emily might have admitted surprise at her own prowess in bed. Perhaps she had been subconsciously prepared for this late start by absorbing erotic passages of literature that had slipped by her censors—perhaps it just needed nothing more than Chemistry after all. But for these months they were happy—and Tony began his novel in the rare hours when Emily slept. During Chapter Three, he was rather irritated by the dripping of the kitchen tap, but he could not allow himself to break away from his typewriter to attend to it. He was typing in the kitchen so as not to disturb Emily—he could not waste precious minutes wrenching off washers. During Chapter Four, the rattling of the shutters got on his nerves. But by the time the shops had opened where he could have purchased new hinges, he was too absorbed in getting back to Emily from the Boulangerie with her warm croissants. He loved taking her breakfast in bed, gently waking her, watching with pleasure as she savoured the smell of the coffee, the melting crispness of the pastry…knowing that when she had finished they would soon be entwined, glorying in each other’s bodies.

  The night that he finished the last chapter, he stacked the manuscript neatly on the kitchen table, propped a loving note to Emily on top, lest she should wake early and go out for a walk by the river. They had hardly been out of the apartment, though Tony talked constantly of the sights of Paris he would show her later. But they were, after all, quite poor—or at least in uncertain financial circumstances. And the weather had been dreadful that whole winter. Tony, too, felt rather ashamed of the poor quarter they lived in. Besides, they had their terrible hunger for each other which could not be sated.

  But now, as he strolled by the Seine and smoked and pulled his collar round his ears and felt the hard pavement under his uncomfortably worn soles he began to worry about Emily having been so isolated. She had made a half-hearted attempt to speak French at first—but had been hurtfully rebuffed by the impatience of shopkeepers—he had taken on most of the shopping when he realised how much she hated being patronised by butcher and baker. And neither of them had felt the slightest need to seek company for social purposes. Why then should he be worrying tonight—after all, he would always be there to protect his darling.

  * * * *

  Miss Peasbody had been fetched to the hospital by three gendarmes, but had arrived too late to hear his last words of concern and affection—Tony, young fit and apparently healthy, bronzed still and slim—had died of a heart attack. Miss Peasbody remembered that her father, old and fat, had died in the same sudden way, leaving her mother desolate. As she was now desolate. But without the cocoon of respectability which had cushioned Mrs. Peasbody.

  For two weeks she, too, was in the hospital, suffering a breakdown.

  But inner resources as unsuspected as her late-flowering ability to attract a lover, made her nervous state temporary. She paid her frighteningly-large medical bill and went back to the apartment. Letters spilled out of the post box. Two were shockingly vindictive. One from Tony’s wife, who had claimed his body and whisked it back to England. The other from her mother, icily unforgiving. There was a heap of bills and official forms. Desultorily, she dealt with these first, taking her time…after all, there was nothing else to do….

  She tore up the two personal letters.

  She passed her days languidly washing out her clothes, cleaning the flat—though she had long conceded defeat to the lavatory—cowering from violent thunderstorms. She spent her nights in sleepless terror and an aching longing.

  Then suddenly one day—summer arrived. Either Parisian Springtime was a myth—or she had somehow missed it. The balcony was the only tolerable place: the other rooms were badly-ventilated and impossibly stuffy.

  There were cars parked in the street and from one just below her feet came a whimpering which rapidly grew into an agonised howling. She saw that an imprisoned dog was trying to force its body through the tiny space left for its breathing at the top of the front window.

  Miss Peasbody, with that essential British obligation to take care of animals, leaned over the railings making comforting noises, trying to persuade the dog to calm down and not struggle.

  A man in a checked shirt and cap, and oily jeans, leaning into the driver’s window of a van further up the road, strolled to the car and released the dog. It shot into the bushes. The sun beat down. The man glanced up.

  “Est-ce qu’il veut de l’eau?” asked Miss Peasbody.

  “Baihn, non!” snapped the man abruptly—but she fetched a bowl of water all the same.

  Thankful for once that she lived on the rez-de-chaussée, Miss Peasbody handed down the bowl. The man grudgingly reached up to take it from her and the dog raced back and drank desperately, then looked up with that doggy gratefulness from those soulful eyes, the same the whole world over.

  “Merci!” said his owner, handing up the empty container. But he could not manage a smile.

  A car swung round the corner, did a frighteningly swift one and a half point turn and hooted. Madame Gaquerelle, Miss Peasbody’s neighbour from across the landing, hobbled out of the foyer with the aid of her stick. Though grimacing with the pain of walking she did not grudge Miss Peasbody a wave before she eased herself into her grandson’s car.

  The dog-owner and his friend in the van, both carrying tool boxes, went through the door into the building.

  Miss Peasbody felt so much better in spirit. She prepared herself a simple meal and ate it from a tray, sitting on a kitchen chair on the small balcony. Her knees were jammed right up against the railings, but she could not bear to leave this healing sunshine.

  A removal van cruised down the road then parked by the small van, blocking its exit route.

  Going to be a proper row when he wants to drive out, thought Miss Peasbody, who had often enough heard the locals, car horns blaring, voices raised in argument about this subject. Not wanting to appear nosy, she went inside to wash out a few blouses, resolving now that she would drink her last cup of chocolate out here if the warmth lasted into evening.

  The large van was just leaving when she returned, cup in hand. Soon afterwards, the van driver appeared and Miss Peasbody felt relieved that she would not have to witness an arm-waving, explosive confrontation. Then out came the dog-owner, who seemed to have more affection for his pet than she had credited him with, because the dog had obviously kept him company while he carried out his repairs.

  They drove away and must have passed the Gaquerelles just round the corner. Grandmother and grandson both waved as the young man helped the old woman across the road and into the building. Miss Peasbody resolved to try to make the effort to have a lengthy chat with her neighbour soon. They had not got beyond nods and waves really, though one day on the stairs, the old lady, eyes full of tears, had tried to say something comforting about Miss Peasbody’s bereavement. But it had been too soon—she had politely but coolly acknowledged the condolences and made no further gesture of friendliness…besides, she had not felt up to the added distress of her Academic French being unintelligible. But today, she had had a modicum of success with the man in the cap—it was not her speech he was trying to reject and she, in her concern for the sweating animal, had forgotten to be unsure of la langue courante.

  There was a sudden shocking disturbance in the hall, doors banging, shouts and screams, her own doorbell ringing. She hurried through to her tiny entrée and peered through the spyhole in the door. It was Madame Gaquerelle’s grandson. She opened the door and he pulled at her to come across into the flat opposite. There, his grandmother stood weeping in the middle of her totally empty apartment. Everything had been taken—furniture, carpets, curtains, television set.

  Miss Peasbody put her arms around the old lady’s shoulder and urged her gently into her own living room.

  * * * * />
  Miss Peasbody recognised one of the gendarmes—he had taken her to Tony. He showed the most patience as she described the dog, the man in the checked shirt, the vans, small and large. But the others seemed to be thinking that she could have done something to prevent the burglary—if she had not been English…and stupid.

  Yet she was not glad when they had gone and she was even more alone than before. Madame Gaquerelle had gone to spend the night with her family. It was suddenly very dark and surprisingly chilly after the searingly-hot day. She wandered about, inventing chores, for an hour then got into bed.

  Immediately all remnants of the optimism and confidence that had crept up on her earlier were gone. She remembered Tony’s masculine body lying next to her. She felt an anguish that she thought had moved one step away crowding back in on her. She gave herself up to a paroxysm of crying.

  Then, as her sobs became quieter and spaced out like hiccoughs, she heard the familiar creaks and rustles, the drip of the tap, the rattle of the shutters—and then, the splintering of wood.

  Rigid, but no longer afraid, Miss Peasbody waited. Submissively, she gazed up as the man, still wearing the checked shirt and cap, came into the bedroom, his face contorted with anger.

  Gratefully, Miss Peasbody stared at him as he plunged the knife into her heart.

  Chapter 24

  The hospital was a strikingly-modern building in brown glass and cream concrete, looking from the other side of the valley near the Porte d’Italie rather like an ocean liner. Inside, the foyer was tastefully furnished and decorated like a luxury hôtel. The lift signs indicated the wards clearly and I pressed the button for 5B. I was surprised that so far no-one had accosted me to demand the nature of my business here. On the fifth floor, I was immediately confronted with a touching scene. A youngish man in a dressing gown was taking leave of his wife and little boy. All three were in tears. The patient did not look too ill but the desperation in the woman’s eyes suggested that her life-centre was being wrenched away from her and that the family had been given little hope of an early reunion. I bit my lip and stretched my eyes and wondered why I had never been as closely tied to a man as that. Even Jacques had held me at arm’s length when it came to the crunch—was it because he had tested me and found me wanting in the quality a man needs at such a moment?