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

by Sophie Meredith

  A young, chubby nurse beamed at me from behind a reception desk covered in burnt-orange corduroy.

  “Mr. Tardy?” I said.

  She waved airily to a side corridor.

  “Down there!” she said, already absorbed in a sheaf of dossiers she had been studying. “Third door.”

  He was in bed and lying back on the pillows, grey-faced and exhausted. He looked at me in disbelief. I felt suddenly shy.

  “How are you?” I asked, formality closing round me like a protective shell.

  I hadn’t at first realised that there were two beds in the room but now the other patient spoke.

  “He’s just had a terrible examination,” he said. “I had the same thing yesterday and they couldn’t finish it because I passed out halfway through….”

  Robert was feebly holding out his hand.

  I went closer and grasped it.

  He shook his head in the direction of his roommate who could not have been a greater contrast to his own wasted figure, hardly rucking up the orange bed cover. The other man was round, red-faced—too red, I realised later.

  “It wasn’t too bad.” Robert gasped. “They let me watch on a screen—it’s marvellous, really you know….”

  “A camera going right through you—from a tube in your thigh up into the heart!” chipped in the room-mate. “And as for expecting you to be interested in the photographs it takes—I couldn’t stand it, I tell you.”

  Robert managed a rueful smile at me. He was apologising for his garrulous companion.

  Fortunately, the bubbly little man’s wife put in an appearance and after the obligatory introductions and polite acknowledgements, we were at last left in peace, if not in privacy. I sat on a high stool, my back to the other couple. I determined to give our doctor a rocketing. I had told Mabiche to see that a private room was arranged,

  Robert was struggling to speak—his breathing seemed painful all the time. I wondered if it were the ghastly test he had endured or one of his previous symptoms.

  “He’s—a super—kid…” he gasped.

  Again he groped for my hand. I could not refrain from surrendering it, but I felt nothing as he mentioned Michel. I had wondered whether I would be overcome by pity, by desire or by hate when I saw him again, or how I would handle his mentioning the boy. It was all remote—as though we were discussing someone quite apart from ourselves—as though we had never known any intimate moments.

  I’ve never been any good around sick people—now I began to feel giddy. I ignored his reference to my son—our son, I thought fearfully as I stood up. I excused myself, said I would keep in touch, distantly wished him luck—took my leave.

  When I told Mabiche of my abrupt goodbye she was angry with me.

  “Why go at all, then?” she demanded. “Hasn’t the man enough to put up with?”

  I could not explain my apparently cold-hearted behaviour. Some external force seemed to be holding me back. It was as though my mind and my heart had been wiped clean of memories. I must not, this time, be in any way impulsive. There was too much at stake. I must hold something in reserve.

  Something In Reserve

  by Gabrielle Parker

  The day of the move was bright and sunny. Julia breathed a sigh of relief, remembering the last time. There had been a steady drizzle all morning, dampening the spirits of the Removal men and the carefully-polished patina of her precious rosewood table. Maddeningly, the sun had shone for the duration of the two-hour journey. Then, it seemed to her at a memory distance of two years, the skies and the van doors had synchronised their opening. She remembered with more certainty the track of mud on the two flights of carpeted stairs…the damp patches left on walls where soggy boxes had leaned…the little puddles where dripping, exasperated men had stood in enforced patience while she tried to direct the placing of a large houseful of furniture into a one-bedroomed flat.

  Julia stepped out onto the small, square balcony with its view across the Seine. She leaned over to see if there were any sign of Maurice. He had promised to come early, before the large van he was to supervise being loaded at the warehouse. Only Maurice could have managed such complex arrangements. Julia glanced around at the orange-trees, carefully wrapped round with polythene, the geranium tubs, neatly stacked. After a mild protest that she should really throw out such minor peripherals—if not the sum total of her current possessions—Maurice had logically formulated an alternative plan.

  “As you know, chérie, I would much rather you…mmmm, ’ow you say it…starting up fresh….”

  “Start a-fresh,” she corrected him. He had insisted from the beginning that she lose no opportunity of helping him perfect his spoken English. Though vague about the nature of his work. and loathe to name the firm he worked for, he had hinted that a merger with a multi-national company was imminent and English, with or without an American twang, would be no drawback.

  “St-ah-te-f’esh,” he enunciated slowly. He paused to absorb the new phrase then continued. “But as you insist on keeping your affaires….”

  He looked around the modest living room. Very soon after her occupation of the apartment, Julia had been forced to accept the truth—that not only was she in a quart jug into a pint pot situation—but that her antiques, inherited from a lifetime’s collecting by her mother, just did not merge with this ultra-modern setting. If she had happened upon a quarter such as Villiers or Sèvres, where the stately proportions of the buildings cried out for the tall, heavily-carved pieces the traditional French housewife so reveres—but here, at Neuilly, the box-like structure in expensive concrete, softened a little by the chestnuts and limes skirting the river—they demanded light, plain furnishings and simple décor.

  Maurice did not disapprove of her replacements—he had helped her choose them and had also been instrumental in obtaining a good price for the corner cabinets, the grandfather clock—and even her mother’s humorous little collection of colourful chamber pots. Julia had been staggered by the size of the cheque he brought her, having disposed of the latter objects. She had been able to add a washing machine and tumble drier to her newly-fitted kitchen on the strength of it.

  “I know that it is because of your—femininité, my sweet darling,” Maurice went on. “And of course I love you for this…but I must say to you once more—you will need none of this—I have bought everything you looked on with favour that wonderful day when you consented….”

  Julia blushed as she remembered. He was referring to a day which had really begun right here at three in the morning…after a marvellous evening….

  The evening in question had begun with an apéritif in the Champs Elysées, watching the Cosmopolitan World strolling by, enjoying the first warm evening of the summer season. Watching over Maurice’s broad shoulder for he had his back to the public and made a little island of the pavement table by staring at Julia so intently that finally she melted under his gaze, lost interest in the Arabs and Jews, the Blacks and the Whites, the Rich and the Shabby jostling each other beyond that handsome, virile face with those turquoise eyes staring, staring….

  They had gone on to dine at Garniers’s and Maurice had switched from the rôle of suitor to that of the other French pre-occupation—eating. He had supervised with all the seriousness of his race the ordering, the serving and the consumption of her lobster, her sole, her Roquefort salad, her Ile Flottante. But later, sunk in the deep leather armchairs under the subdued lighting of the American Bar, looking across the walls of the Elysée Palace, he had resumed his silent seduction. Halfway through her glass of Vieux Calvados, Julia knew that she would surrender….

  He had driven her home through the Bois. He slowed down at her request as a ravishingly-beautiful brunette stepped from behind a tree to speak to the driver in front who had just nudged his Citrôen into the pavement and was leaning across the empty passenger seat, winding down the window. Julia was well aware that he was not a lost tourist asking the way to the Eiffel Tower: Maurice had already aroused her cu
riosity about these lissom beauties of the night. But even armed with his knowledgeable information, she was shocked at the deep masculine voice, haggling over terms—or, rather, the two masculine voices.

  “I still can’t believe it,” she muttered, as they drove on. “Why—I’m almost jealous—of that creature’s gorgeous bosom, those shapely legs….”

  Maurice threw back his head and laughed. Julia laughed too, even when Maurice began waving his arms about to emphasise his discourse and turning to face her with no apparent thought for the fact that they were doing eighty kilometres an hour, and the traffic was still thick.

  “…but, chérie, I told you…they are all young men. From South America mostly. And those curves….”

  As he described the prostitute’s shapeliness with both hands, a taxi shot out from the right and a motor-cyclist performed an amazing zig-zag feat to dodge between.

  Julia closed her eyes in self-defence. Still, she comforted herself: If Maurice can survive the Arc de Triomphe, I should have more confidence in him.

  Almost impossible to describe to anyone who has not experienced the nightmare, with fast-moving traffic in streams not only forwards and sideways but diagonally too—the method seems to be to aim for the car most likely to present its flank for collision, then a last-minute swerve, a violent braking—and repeat the performance till you gain the comparative sanity of a boulevard by sliding miraculously through an impossibly-small gap and having, theoretically, only two-directional maniacs to cope with.

  “…those curves are the results of excellent surgery and medicine paid for by the—importers,” finished Maurice.

  She wondered again if all Frenchmen were so well-informed…but, reckless with joie-de-vivre, she leaned back and relaxed as he blatantly drove down the steep ramp into the private underground car park and eased the Porsche next to her Mini. In a cotton wool haze of happiness and wine, all doubts suspended, she led the way to the lift. Maurice stretched one arm to press the button while with the other he encaged her against the carpeted wall of the tiny, intimate, upward-rushing enclosure. Gently, he brought his mouth down upon hers—a last little shudder of fear made her hold back momentarily—then she yielded….

  A long time later, she realised that Maurice had performed an extraordinary feat in keeping one hand on the button which kept the elevator door closed while with the other…. She wondered, giggling, if he had interfered with the mechanism enough to make it necessary to call up the concierge from the little telephone in the corner. But with a sudden impatience, he had made the door slide open, had almost carried her through the miniature entrée and into the bedroom….

  She lay awake while he slept, wondering at her reluctance to partake in such bliss before. But she had been heavily handicapped in life’s swift race, she now realised—a father both religious and a bully—a mother who expressed at length and repeatedly her feeling of being relieved from disagreeable duty by his death—and who made a contented companion of her daughter, perhaps not realising that in this pleasant partnership lay such dangers.

  There had been one young man, but he was as shy as Julia and even together they had been unable to withstand the selfish old lady’s hearty condemnation of Sex and Poverty versus Purity and Security. She had refused to finance a venture Rodney had meekly proposed…and when he disappeared from the scene had been wise enough to refrain from saying “I told you so.” Instead, she had whisked Julia away to the Continent for a long, luxurious holiday, had remarked merely that Rodney had reminded her terribly of Julia’s father in his youth.

  Julia had drifted—preoccupied by her modest success at the Foreign Office, gratified by the smooth life her mother ironed out for her outside her hours in Whitehall. But when she was twenty-nine, the old lady died…just a few days after Julia had been offered a job at the Consulate in Paris. Was it from a sense of impending defeat—did her mother guess that she would be powerless to prevent such a dramatic change in her daughter’s lifestyle? France was all right for holidays, but whenever Julia had shown signs of becoming over-enthusiastic about the cafés and quays, the architecture, the gay, Gallic attitude to life—her mother had warned her that it would never do for such as themselves to live like that permanently.

  So it was not without some bewildered guilt feelings that Julia accepted the post in the sad, lost days after the funeral. And this doubt kept the old lady’s image constantly with her. Thus, she shrank from personal contact with the Consulate staff; she withdrew into her shell when her neighbours made moves in her direction. The girls at the office all seemed so amazingly young, anyway—they seemed to live for concerts and discos. The inhabitants of the apartment block on the Avenue Général Leclerc were hardly less stereotyped—middle-aged ladies with poodles, for the most part, and invariably well-heeled.

  Julia met Maurice when he came to the Consulate in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré to ask for a British passport for his twelve-year-old son.

  It was a complicated story. Young Vincent’s mother had custody of the boy when she returned to England after the divorce. Now she had relented of her possessiveness and allowed him to come back with Maurice who had been paying his bi-annual visit to England. But the English grandmother had been taken ill; the boy must return at once. Maurice was due to fly to the States—could a British passport be obtained at short notice so that the boy could travel alone…?

  Julia arranged it all calmly, routinely. But there was something in the stocky, grey-haired man’s smile as he profusely thanked her through the grille…she knew she would see him again. A fortnight later, he was waiting in the Rue Faubourg, his car double-parked, a pervanche, a traffic warden, in her bright periwinkle-blue spring uniform, capitulating to his charms.

  “Here she is now,” he declared, as Julia emerged. “My important friend from the Embassy…it has been enchanting, Mademoiselle—” He dismissed the plump, middle-aged official and ushered Julia into the low-slung car.

  He roared off past President Mittérand’s residence with the colourful sentries, past Ciro`s, Hermes, Christian Dior…into the Place de la Concorde, along the Tuileries and across the Pont Royal. As they passed the imposing façade of Notre Dame, he introduced himself.

  “Maurice Lemoine,” he said. “You must let me thank you for your splendid…efficience…is that right? Oh, how I wish now that I had make much more of the effort to speak English with my wife…but she was so good at the French…and I am so—’ow you say this—paresseux.”

  “Eff-ish-en-cee!” said Julia. “And lay-zee…but I’m sure you’re not really lazy. There was really no need,” she added shyly.

  He glanced at her shrewdly.

  “I know just the place for someone like you,” he said. “You ’ave been always—shy—yes?”

  Julia nodded but she smiled, too, at his charming frankness.

  “On Ile Saint-Louis, there is a restaurant which…euhh…brings out people,” he said. “We will relax there…get to know each other.”

  The Sergeant Recruteur was indeed impressive to the reserved, conventional Julia. It was a place where the very nature of the food, plus the extrovert personalities of the staff, forced everyone to become speedily integrated. As the huge baskets of raw vegetables—Julia recognised radishes, onions, fennel, peppers—were passed from table to table; as people crammed together, just short of discomfort, asked for the big communal dishes of green lentils, the huge platters of pâtés and saucissons—an easy intimacy was soon established. Julia thus found herself hardly at all self-conscious under Maurice’s skilful questioning—his flattering interest in herself and her past. The house wine, a full-bodied Burgundy, helped, too—for Julia had not the heart to refuse the friendly, comical waiters even if she had been quick enough to notice the constant topping-up of her glass. She climbed some incredibly-ancient wooden stairs under the beamed roof and rejoiced in the quaintness of the loo. The imitation-pewter basins were let into solid oak counters—Julia stared at herself reflected in this mock-medieval décor—and
recognised the revelation of her own prettiness. For that, at least, how could she fail to be grateful to Maurice…then her mother’s face swam hazily in front of her own in the mirror. What do you know about this man, she was saying. He may be the very worst sort—a confidence trickster, a sham, a pimp perhaps! Her mother had shown at times a disturbing worldliness. The hawkish features softened now…the phantom was urging her to—perhaps taste—but to hold something back—to keep a little independence in reserve….

  * * * *

  Here he was now—shouting up his apologies from the street, cursing the crowded Péripherique. Julia smiled down at him, marvelling at his strong, well-proportioned body, his thickly-curling hair. Oh, she had certainly tasted…and no, surely he could never trick her…it would be all right.

  “Are you excited?” he asked, moments later as he let himself in with his own key. “Are you curious?”

  For he had not yet taken Julia to see their new home. He had woken from his sleep after their first night together and crept out to buy croissants for her breakfast. He had brewed her coffee to perfection and outlined his plans as she sipped it in the tumbled bed.

  “We shall spend today in the Boulevard Haussmann,” he announced. “To choose together our furniture…then, I shall leave you while I make the final arrangements for our—déménagement.”

  “Our move.” Julia suppled the translation automatically, but she was aghast.

  “Maurice—you must give me time—give me details—it’s too sudden.”