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

by Sophie Meredith

  That afternoon, when she reached her own street, Millie found her parking space full of Bill’s Porsche. He considerately backed out to let her in, then drew up beside her and wound down his window.

  “Come on, girl!” he called, thus forcing her to open her window or share his message with the curious passers-by. “Throw a few things in a case and come with me to a ball at the Hilton. I’ll give you a real taste of The High Life.”

  “No thanks, Bill,” said Millie, squeezing out between the two contrasting vehicles. “And you ought to think about living on your own money, not off your father’s.”

  “Why?” demanded Bill, laughing engagingly. “He enjoys seeing me enjoying the fruits of his success. Fruits to the fruit, you see. And he’s dying to meet you. Come on, do.”

  “Oh, Bill.” She could not help smiling at him. “Find yourself a model girl to go with that flashy car. I’ve got to swot up for my interview.”

  She gave him a wave from the area steps and was gratified to see him shrug resignedly and roar off towards the West End.

  Two earnest joggers jogged her memory as they passed by in running kit. I’d better ring Sam, she thought and swung round to ascend the steps leading to the main entrance of the house. She went towards the dark corner where Mrs. Penrose kept the phone so she would not have to dust it.

  A young man was using it. When he noticed Millie, he held the decidedly-greasy instrument at arm’s length and said, “I won’t be long. Just listen to that yakkety-yak.”

  He was the most beautiful thing Millie had ever seen, including the many Davids in Florence. His voice was music in her ears. Her legs felt so weak, she forgot not to trust the rickety old table and sank against it for support.

  “Goodbye!” he said, and though he was addressing his unseen caller, Millie felt desolate at having to hear that final statement from those lips.

  To her relief, he bounded upstairs. He must be a new tenant. Judging by the echoes of his bounds he must be right at the top of the house. In a dream, she dialled Sam’s number.

  “Sam? Millie here. Where? Oh no thanks, Sam, I won’t come and watch—yes, of course I’m pleased you’ve been chosen for the Olympic team but Gymnastics just aren’t my thing…and on Monday I’m…I’ve got…I’m busy all weekend and Monday….”

  Her mind was having trouble focussing on what to do in the next hour, never mind the suddenly dim and distant and totally unimportant Monday. Hazily, she groped her way down to her basement and sank onto her studio couch, spilling books, unnoticed, from her briefcase all over the floor.

  Someone was tapping on the window. It was him. She flew to the outside door and opened it.

  “Would you believe I’ve run out of sugar?” said the Dream in Trousers, as dear Sally would have put it, holding out an empty cup. “No-one seems to be about upstairs, so I came to you….”

  “Come in.” Millie gasped.

  Pulling herself together she said, “I’m Millie Henderson. Can I offer you a cup of tea or coffee?”

  “Tea, please. My, you’re neat and organised,” he said, following her into her cupboard of a kitchen, where everything was indeed immaculate.

  “Yes, I’m well known for it,” said Millie, apologetically as though it were an inherited deformity.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  “I’m a teacher. At St. Philip’s Comprehensive in the East End. I take Maths and P.E.”

  He roared with laughter. “How horrible. How can you work with kids all day? I couldn’t stand it.”

  “No,” whispered Millie, “it can be frightful at times.”

  She handed him a tray with her best china Breakfast Set For Two on it.

  “What do you do?” she asked.

  “A bit of this, a bit of that, nothing much of anything,” he said, making himself comfortable on the convertible.

  “Is this your bed?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Millie, going hot all over. “Biscuit?”

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the last chocolate one.

  “Actually,” he said, scattering crumbs, “I’m a Total Failure. I never last longer than a few months at anything. I’m thinking of emigrating to America.”

  “You can’t!” cried Millie.

  He looked shocked at the desperation in her voice, or was it at being contradicted? She made a second effort to pull herself together.

  “I mean, I don’t think it’s called emigrating when it’s to America,” she said, more calmly. “It’s all to do with Work Permits and things.”

  “Oh, well,” he said carelessly, “I’ll worry about all that when I get there.”

  He poked about in the biscuit box and found a Bourbon Cream.

  “Care to come with me?” he said casually.

  “Wh-wh-where?” Millie gulped, sure that he must be able to hear the pneumatic hammering of her heat.

  “Stateside! Yes, say you’ll come. We’ll get married if you like. By the way, my name’s Andy. Andy Gray.”

  * * * *

  Outside the gates of St. Philip’s Comprehensive, Bill and Sam both waited, clutching flowers and chocolates, gift-wrapped.

  John Spiers hurried past to catch his train to Westcliffe, head down, a suspicion of tears in his eyes.

  Next came the Headmaster in his blue Ford Estate, his wife’s golf clubs in the back. So engrossed was he in fuming and muttering to himself he nearly ran the two men down.

  Sally Perkins got the brunt of it as they stepped back almost on top of her.

  “Whoops! He’s in a mood!” She giggled. “Oh dear.” She stared pointedly at the florist’s cellophane and ribbons. “You haven’t heard!”

  The two men were silent, bewildered.

  “It’s no good waiting for Millie,” said Sally, viciously watching the barb enter.

  The two men looked at each other, then back at Sally.

  “Might as well let me have them,” she said, snatching at the confectionery, ignoring the roses.

  “Millie’s run off to the U.S. of A. with a layabout. Came round to my place to say goodbye last night. Brought me all her spare application forms and had the gall to suggest I go on her interview. I nearly did, too, but I thought I’d better hang on here and see how things change. Talking of change—you should have seen her. All the well-groomed, dedicated teacher-citizen stuff tossed out of the window….”

  “Wh-what…” Bill burbled.

  “Wh-who…” Sam spluttered.

  “A very plain, young chap, shorter than you Sam, plumper than you, Bill. Poor as a church mouse but not so holy. And scruffy with it. A dreadful common voice, too. They’re getting married on the ship.”

  A crowd of boys and girls came out of the gates, deep in conversation. The words Our Mod Millie were prominently repeated. They turned left. Sally swung to the right.

  “There’s your Career Girl for you,” she threw back over her shoulder.”

  I replaced the receiver and turned to look at Robert. He was dressed in bathing trunks and the scar was already fading under the new matt of chest hair. His healthy tan helped, too, almost obliterating the two white patches where the electrodes had been left hanging from his belly for five days, ready for a sudden emergency. At the horrible thought of what could have happened, I pulled him down to me on the bed.

  He buried his curly head, now attractively sprinkled all over with grey, in my breasts, fully aware of my thoughts. He began to soothe them away in the way he knew best. We reached our shuddering, blissful climax together.

  “How long will it last?” I whispered.

  “Forever and ever,” he murmured, his lips in my hair which I had grown shoulder length to please him.

  Michel bounded into the room.

  “Come on, Mummy, Daddy…” he yelled. “I want to swim.”

  We looked in at the small kitchen on our way out. Mabiche sat peeling onions at the table, her head grotesquely encased in a hair-drier hood. She waved her paring-knife at us contentedly.

  We went down the
three flights of uncarpeted but well-painted stairs and out of the unpretentious lobby into the Crescent. We crossed the road and went into the Chine. As always, Michel was distracted for a few minutes by the squirrels, tame enough to take a peanut from his hand, and then dart off just a little way to sit munching.

  Robert ruffled my hair.

  “Still the colour of a squirrel’s tail,” he said.

  “Hm!” I grunted. “And they go grey in the Winter.”

  He slapped my backside playfully.

  “Race you to the sand!” he cried and the three of us ran down the cliff path to the beach.

  Rough Crossing

  by Gabrielle Tardy

  It was just after lunchtime in Calais when the grey Citrôen drew up at the Customs checkpoint. Two replete Frenchmen waved on the French-registered car, apparently loth to disturb their digestive processes with questions or searches.

  “Thank heavens for that!” snapped David.

  Not that the Barkers had anything to hide. At least, not anything that was against Frontier Regulations. Neither Sheila nor David was particularly anxious that the world should know about the present state of their minds nor the condition of their marriage.

  “I knew it would be all right!” said Sheila.

  She knew that she sounded smug and that this was guaranteed to rub David up the wrong way but she could not help herself.

  “Don’t get too cocky,” said her husband. “We may have missed our ferry.”

  “Don’t be absurd!” scoffed Sheila. “Those lorries are still rolling on.”

  “Exactly!” said David. “They put the lorries on last.”

  “Oh no they don’t!” she argued. “It’s so long since you roughed it travelling any way other than on luxurious aeroplanes—you’ve forgotten how the other half live. The lorries and coaches go on first. The cars park at the sides and in the corners.”

  She was proved right almost at once as another official in uniform raincoat and cap beckoned them into a queue of smaller vehicles hidden till then by three huge double-decker tourist buses. Annoyed at being proved wrong, David picked up her sarcastic barb about air travel.

  “I see—we’re going to rake up the old business trip row again, are we?” he asked. “Can’t you let it drop?”

  “When you give me a satisfactory explanation…” began Sheila, but she closed her mouth as they drew level with the little hut where they must show their tickets and receive their boarding passes. She continued to hold her tongue as they followed the other cars over the humped bridge and down the ramp into the vast belly of the ferryboat.

  “No need to grip the door handle like that,” snarled David. “I’m perfectly capable of getting us on board without an accident….”

  This was one area where she did not intend to retaliate: David’s car accident, the final straw that had broken his boss’s back, was too raw a subject even for a sparring partner such as Sheila had gradually become.

  “Oh great!” she said instead, as they were manoeuvred into an awkward corner by a young man in an orange boiler suit. “Look at that. Last on, last off—it’ll be midnight before we get to Mother’s.”

  “And whose fault is that, may I ask?” David slammed and locked the door. “I told you to book an overnight crossing. It would have been just as easy to do the Le Havre—Southampton route.”

  Sheila squeezed her way past the other cars to the steep steps leading to the upper decks. Halfway up the first flight she turned and looked down on David.

  “For the tenth time—I told you—there were no cabins left. Have you checked the bay number?”

  David glanced round quickly to see if any of the other passengers had noticed her hen-pecking orders. But immediately behind him was a group of teenage girls returning from a skiing holiday by the looks of their bulkily-padded outfits. And one of them had not done too well on the slopes if the plaster on her left leg was anything to go by. Nor was she doing too well negotiating the steps.

  “Can I help?” asked David, and he took her elbow. One of her friends took her other arm and they half dragged her, hopping and laughing, up the companionway.

  Sheila stood studying the plan of the decks—and fuming.

  “Well!” she demanded. “Did you get it?”

  “C5,” said David wearily. “Now—shall we get in the queue for lunch, the queue for change or the queue for Duty Free?”

  “Hadn’t you better wait and see where the glamour girls are headed?” suggested Sheila bitterly.

  “Oh, don’t start that,” pleaded David. “Let’s go and eat.”

  But he had been right about queues. The one for the Self-service Restaurant curled round inside twice and tailed off into the glassed-in corridor. Besides which an unappetising odour of fried food had just been intensified by the smoky fumes of something burning. The Boutique queues seemed more reasonable so the Barkers joined the one outside the Cigarettes and Spirits window.

  “I must take a packet of Special Filters for Brother Hubert,” said David. “And Aunty Madge likes Drambui doesn”t she?”

  “Don’t forget Mother’s brandy,” said Sheila. “And I was hoping to get Dad some whisky.”

  “Well, one of them will have to do without,” said David. “And it can’t be Madge.”

  “Oh no, of course not!” said Sheila. “We mustn”t neglect old Madge.”

  “Madge was father and mother to me,” muttered David. “I thought you appreciated that….”

  Sheila shrugged and almost lost her balance. The ferry was pulling out of the harbour, turning in fact in its berth, and those passengers who had not yet laid claim to seats swayed into each other or clutched at bulkheads. David caught hold of his wife and instinctively drew her close to protect her from a reeling, giggling crowd of school children, making the most of the rolling movement to jostle and push each other. Sheila looked at David. In his eyes, she recognised a look she had not noticed for a long time….

  The metal blind flew up behind them. Vending had begun. David ordered whisky, brandy and cigarettes.

  “Let’s take a look at the bar,” he suggested.

  It was crowded but there was room to squeeze in at one end. They clamped their plastic bags between their feet and David asked for two gins. Sheila looked round at the figures sprawled on sofas, tables, piles of luggage. Many faces were already taking on a greenish tinge. Outside, the grey sea merged with the fog-hung sky—pale shapes loomed up occasionally which could have been ships or just swirls of mist. The boat rolled and she hooked her free arm over the rail to steady herself for her first sip.

  She felt better for it and looked to see how David was coping. The lurching of the small vessel should be no problem to an ex-sailor, but David did not look at all well. He was turned slightly away from her and she followed his gaze suspiciously. Was he looking at the young girl he had helped up the steps? But no—Sheila realised he was looking at no-one in particular—he was trying to hide his grey, drawn face from her.

  Suddenly, her heart lurched and it was nothing to do with the movement of the waves. She was remembering when she had last seen him looking so ill. It was just after his operation in the Hôpital Laënnec in Paris. With all the tubes and wires hanging from his terrible puckered chest scar. And at that time, too, he had tried to hide his suffering from her. He had been so brave—why, at the mere words “open heart surgery” she had felt faint. But how courageously he had borne it, and the long frustrating period of convalescence afterwards. And the losing of his job….

  It was all so long ago: so many things had happened since. The new job that took him away from home more and more. The letter she had found in his suitcase as she unpacked his dirty laundry. His brief avowal that it was an innocent memo from his secretary—that she had misunderstood the wording. And though she had wanted to believe him, she had never been sure.

  “Would you like another?” he asked now. “A sandwich or something?”

  His knuckles were white as he gripped the rail. She
could see that he would rather be anywhere than near food and drink and people already beginning to vomit in corners.

  “Nothing for me,” she said. And she added, in an unofficial attempt to save his face—“I’d like to get out of here. I’m feeling a bit queasy.”

  “Let’s take a look at the Perfume Shop,” he said. “Aunty Madge used to like something—I know—Miss Dior—seemed quite wrong for her, but still….”

  “All right—in a minute,” said Sheila. “But look—there’s a couple of seats—by the porthole. Let’s rest a little.”

  They pushed the two haversacks, hung about with boots and tin mugs, unceremoniously to the floor and sank into the seats.

  David put his head in his hands.

  “I can’t go through with it, Sheila,” he said.

  A sharp retort sprang into Sheila’s mind, but she quashed it at once. He looked so wretched. When he was cocksure and sparring with her in bitter argument, she could hold her own. But now, feeling fit herself and totally unaffected by the rough sea, it seemed so unfair to take advantage of David’s evident sea-sickness.

  “What else can you do?” she said quietly.

  “It’s so humiliating,” he said hoarsely. “To ask for the old job back. To admit that I’ve—failed.”

  “Circumstances were against—us,” she said. “No-one could have foreseen such a run of bad luck. Now it’s up to you to make things happen.”

  “Some of it was my fault,” he said, his voice choked and faint. “I took the decision in too much of a rush—I didn’t give you—us—time to think things through.”

  “I knew what I was doing,” she admitted.

  A violent movement of the unrelenting sea threw her close to him again.

  “I wanted what was best for you,” she whispered. “And if a job in France meant leaving my family, settling for a less nice home for a while—plunging into the deep end of the language problem—well, I did tell you I was all for it.”

  “I know,” he said.