Hilly was financially secure. Helene knew that Olly and Hilly had a drawerful of insurance policies covering every eventuality, probably including earthquake. If they were killed in a car crash, Megan would become a very rich girl, with assets that Helene, as legal guardian, would be called upon to administer.
She really didn’t know why she hadn’t bothered with a pension. Time had just drifted by. She remembered, as children, she and Hilly had wept with laughter at a cartoony advert showing a beaming young man proclaiming that he didn’t have a pension. Then there he was in middle age, saying Unfortunately, I don’t have a pension. Finally, the doleful old man: I wish I had a pension.
The advert entertained the girls as much as the one for piles. When they found out what piles actually were, their mirth was unrestrained. Totally off the wall and uncontrollable.
‘Shut it, you two!’ yelled their father. ‘Or I’ll play you a drum solo.’
Drum. Solo. Two of the most dreaded words in the English language. Followed closely by Novelty. Number. But the girls were careful not to push it too far, because, after all, as a man their father was the authority figure, even if, during the novelty number, he was tearing round the room gobbling like a turkey.
And now, in Paris, Jean-Paul was calling the shots. How was she going to handle it?
Well for a start, no hanging around waiting. She had seen that with girlfriends in London, heard endless wailing at Covent Garden lunches, ‘Why hasn’t he rung?’
One girl had made herself thoroughly miserable spending a whole morning trailing her lover and his wife round Harvey Nichols.
‘He didn’t look very happy,’ she reported, with a tilt to her chin.
And Noreen had said, ‘Well which man does look happy going shopping with a woman? Unless you’re choosing something for him.’
What I need, Helene decided, is the Mistress Game Plan. A set of rules. Because if I’m going to be a mistress, I want to be successful at it. So:
Sex. Obviously. Whatever he wanted, when he wanted it. Trouble was, each man tended to have a different idea of what was a turn-on. It was more than bum men or breast men. A particularly hilarious girls’ lunch had revealed one kept woman who was required, every lunchtime, to prepare smoked salmon sandwiches while rigged up in a red satin suspender basque and black lacy mittens. The girls had choked with laughter. ‘Every day? Once a week, okay, but every day!’ I’d better buy Cosmopolitan, Helene decided. Pick up a few tips. That magazine’s wall to wall sex.
No moodiness. No whining, no bad days. Men got enough of that at home.
Perfect grooming, always. Hair washed, nails manicured, skin smooth, soft and smelling lovely.
Show you’re in charge of your domain. Pour the drinks, light the lamps, close the curtains. He may be paying the bills, but this is your home.
Never say a word against his wife. However tempting.
Have interesting things to tell him, to keep him amused.
That meant having friends, but she’d have to watch it because men didn’t want to suspect that you were more influenced by your friends than by them. Still, there was a gym down the road offering stretch classes. In London, Helene had made a lot of friends this way. Witty, charming women, letting their hair down over coffee after class and pitching in to solve one another’s problems. Helene saw no reason why the same shouldn’t work in Paris.
It didn’t work in Paris. Helene found the teacher intimidatingly superior and the music was what she suspected got played on French camp sites. Fortunately, one of the class spoke some English so was able to help when the teacher told Helene to do sit-ups.
‘Please tell her I never do sit-ups.’
‘She says you must do sit-ups.’
‘I don’t need to. I have a flat stomach.’
‘She says you won’t have a flat stomach if you don’t do sit-ups.’
‘Well I’m not doing them and that’s that!’
The girls looked shocked, embarrassed for her. Talking back to the professeur! Unthinkable. And afterwards they speedily just got dressed and dispersed.
Chapter Three
‘Dear Sis, well we got through Xmas even though I managed to lose the sprouts (actually I think Megan hid them.) The town looked very pretty and everything was just as usual. Boxing Day walk on Dunwich beach. Usual howling gale, great fish and chips. Next day we took the old girl for a run up to Minsmere. Olly has found her some new, very light binoculars so she can do her bird spotting…’
Helene was in London, with the swan dutifully adorning her black suit. She had told the agency she was taking an extended holiday, and passed on her flat to Noel.
Now she was in Peter Jones curtain department musing on what sort of bedroom curtains a mistress would have. She had, in a round-about way, consulted Jean-Paul. He looked confused. ‘Curtains? Madame, I believe, has a little woman who runs them up.’
Helene accepted that men never knew about curtains. Even Noel. His expertise only extended to pastoral Toile de Jouy. Bucolic peasants in weird hats looking thrilled at serving the gentry. Helene knew she couldn’t wake up to that every morning. Anyway, back to the point. A shop assistant was regarding her suspiciously, mouthing the annoying, You all right there?
Leopard-skin print? Knicker-pink satin? Too tasteless and anyway, Peter Jones didn’t seem to offer ready-mades in leopard or slut satin. Left to herself, she’d have gone for a fresh blue and white flowered design, but she’d got to consider Jean-Paul. And no, she wasn’t having anything with a bird on it.
She had no idea, of course, what the interiors of Jean-Paul’s homes were like. There was the spacious apartment in the very fashionable Marais, on the Right Bank, and then Madame’s family home, the grand house in Chantilly. Obviously, she would not have the opportunity to see inside either of them.
Finally, Helene played safe with the curtains, choosing an ivory damask. Then on her way out she saw something that in her old life she would have walked resolutely past. A deep rose cashmere throw.
She’d been prepared to afford, on her legal secretary salary, anything in cashmere she could wear. That was classed as an investment. But something just to toss across a sofa, no, that had been out of her financial reach. But now it was all possible, thanks to her new lover. She hugged the cashmere to her as she made for the cash desk. But before she got there, she spotted something utterly mouth-watering. Another throw, silky and fringed, in subtle shades of old gold and pale peony pink. What luxury. And why not?
Over lunch yesterday, the girls had been deeply envious about Jean-Paul, declaring him to be the dream lover.
‘Have you got a pic? Well can’t you take one with your mobile?’
Gales of laughter. Helene’s incompetance with a mobile was a standing joke. She rarely used it, and Jean-Paul refused to carry one at all.
‘Madame, of course, has one for emergencies, but she’s always losing it at the bottom of her shopping basket when she goes to market. And my son Marc, needless to say, is never off his.’
Texting girls, Helene suspected.
After Peter Jones, Helene had a sandwich lunch in Green Park. It was barely warm enough, but her companion was desperate for a Marlboro. The girl was her replacement at Carstair Cain.
‘D-Day was horrendous. And the day after that, and the day after that. One woman, her husband said, on Boxing Day, as she was dishing up his bacon, he said he was leaving her. So what did she do? She set fire to the kitchen. Because, she said, I couldn’t think what else to do. Next in, a bloke, pin-striped type, and you know what, he brought the wife. The implication was, the dear little dilly he was divorcing wouldn’t be able to find her way, or speak for herself.’
Helene laughed. ‘She’ll clean him out.’
‘Mmm, yes and no. He’s got that Fiona acting for him, the one who did so well for Prince Charles and Paul McCartney. So we’ll see.’
In Green Park the trees looked petrified. Joggers were bounding along wearing what these days were called ‘sweats.�
� How attractive is that, thought Helen. In summer the park would be langorous with lovers, enjoying what her Big Issue friend outside Waterstone’s had termed ‘a quick snog.’ Mind you, having stood in an interminable queue for the M & S sandwiches, Helen appreciated why lunchtime lust had to be conducted at a feverish pace.
*
Back at the flat, Noel couldn’t believe she wasn’t hung about with shiny designer carrier bags. ‘I thought you were doing serious shopping?’
‘I was. I did. But I’ve got Peter Jones to ship everything to Paris.’
‘Ooooh! Get you, ducky. You’ll be cosying up to Cecil Beaton next. You know what he said?’ Noel put on his resonant Noel Coward voice. (Helen had heard him practising in the loo.) ‘I hate to admit, my little house at Broadchalke is used only for weekends … I am seldom able to be here longer than from Friday lunchtime until Tuesday.’
‘Noel, I can hardly cosy up to a society photographer who was not only a screaming queen, but happens to be dead. Anyway, Jean-Paul told me, he didn’t want me lugging anything. Chérie, buy what you want, and have it sent. I won’t have you donkeying along at St Pancras. It’s ridiculous, and quite unnecessary.’
Noel was unpacking his stuff. She made a pot of tea and watched in amazement. ‘Noel, tell me, why do you need twenty two pairs of swimming trunks?’
He looked up from his meticulous folding and arranging. ‘Sweetie, it’s because I’m gay. You know I’m gay. Of course I need twenty two pairs of trunks. And actually, I could do with another drawer. Aren’t you taking any of these undies?’
‘No. You can either dump them or wear them. Noel – you will come and see me in Paris, won’t you?’
He hesitated. ‘Oh, Paris! Frankly, for us, Paris is so over. Prague’s the place. And Bucharest.’
He gave her a hug. ‘Helen, you don’t need to import people. You’ll soon make friends.’ And needless to say, being Noel, he had to have the final last word. The stinger. ‘Friends, I mean, apart from your fancy man.’
*
Noel saw her into a taxi in the early morning mist. St Pancras was busy, and Helene was looking forward to a hearty breakfast. She was grateful now that Jean-Paul had insisted on booking her first class on Eurostar.
‘But of course you must travel First. I would expect nothing else. Madame always travels First.’
Madame probably has her own fur-lined compartment, Helene thought, glad she was in good time. The train was going to be crowded, and already there was a build- up of people at the barrier, anxious about missing the train.
Just as she was nearing the head of the queue, she felt herself grabbed round the waist.
‘Darling,’ exclaimed the strange man. ‘There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere.’
In bed, Jean-Paul laughed. ‘I must remember that one next time I’m running for a train. So when are you meeting him again?’
Helene shook her head and smoothed the cashmere throw on the bed. ‘No, he wasn’t in my carriage. He gave me his phone number and said he was getting off at Lille.’
She and Jean-Paul had settled into an agreeable pattern. Tuesdays and Thursdays Jean-Paul arrived just after five, and at 7.30 he took her out to dinner. On Wednesdays, he escorted her to lunch, often on the Right Bank.
‘Where is Madame on Wednesdays?’ Helene enquired nervously.
‘Madame rises early on Wednesdays and goes to the market. Then she is chez nous, preparing for the dinner party.’
Helene envied him this not at all. Dinner parties made her feel trapped. The fraught hostess, the food, predictable, absurdly experimental or something they’d had on holiday. As a woman, you received starvation rations because you were served first by a hostess worried about whether there would be enough to go round. At last it was over, bar the wait for the taxi, and the host exclaiming ingenuously, as if his wife hadn’t put him up to it, ‘I’m sure Jeremy can give you a lift Helen.’ And there she was, lumbered again. No, lunch was much easier, because you could always invent a plausible excuse to be somewhere prompt at half past two, and leave the table.
One of Helene’s favourite streets that Jean-Paul introduced her to on the Right Bank was the rue Cambon. She was delighted to find a W.H. Smith on the corner to keep her stocked with books and birthday cards. Why did the French produce such naff greetings cards? She couldn’t possibly send Megan a card with a blue mouse wearing a frilly apron.
Further up the rue Cambon, near Chanel, were shops with names like Loulou and Fifi, selling the most delectable lingerie. Fortunately, Jean-Paul thought the same way. On Valentine’s Day, he unstuck Helene’s forehead from the window and swept her in.
Within an hour the charming vendeuse had arrayed her in finery befitting her new status in life. A tailored robe in patterned cream silk. A choice of camisoles held at the shoulders by delicate ribbons. Satin evening pyjamas. A bias-cut peignoir in palest pink silk. The vendeuse raised not an eyebrow when Jean-Paul informed her that no, thankyou, knickers would not be necessary.
Everything was wrapped in finest tissue paper and then the glossy bags were decked in blue and silver ribbons. From the shop it was a short step to Flotte, their favourite restaurant in the rue Cambon. Over champagne and a lingering lunch, Jean-Paul asked,
‘What will you do at the weekend while I’m in the country?’
‘What I’d like is what I did in London. Have some friends round for Sunday lunch. But of course, I haven’t had time to get to know anyone.’
‘You mean Parisians are unfriendly and rarely invite anyone home?’
‘Well it’s partly my inadequate French. I was thinking of going to language school.’
‘You’d be better off reading Paris Match with a dictionary. Or go to the library and read some children’s books in French. It’s a more natural way of learning.’
‘But a school – ‘
‘You wouldn’t like the French education system. It’s rigid. Allows no room for imagination. They rely on tests, tests, tests. That’s why I sent my son to university in England. God knows how he got his degree. He seemed to spend most of his time playing in a band.’
‘Called?’
Jean-Paul sighed. ‘Ripping Velcro.’
Helene thought this was rather good, but this obviously wasn’t the moment to say so.
‘What does he do?’
Oops. Now Jean-Paul was scowling. She guessed, beneath the charm, there seethed a pessure-cooker temper.
‘I wanted him to work with me in the business. The jewellery side has really taken off. Coloured stones are fetching fortunes at auction.’
Helene fixed on a smile, thinking of her Valentine’s present. Another brooch. Four miniature love birds in diamonds and sapphires, snuggled in a gold nest.
‘…but he’s doing something in market research. Don’t ask me what.’
‘Will he join in the dinner party tonight?’
‘No, no. Marc has his own wing of the apartment.’ He checked his watch. An antique, with a plain gold face and leather strap. Helene was fond of it on him. ‘I must go. Madame will be expecting me to organise the wine.’
It was raining and dusk, the car lights gleaming yellow through the gloom. The Flotte manager had called a taxi and Jean-Paul assisted her in with her beribboned bags.
‘Thank you Jean-Paul. For a wonderful lunch and, well, everything.’
He kissed her lightly on both cheeks. ‘A demain, chérie.’
As she waved at Jean-Paul, Helene laughed as she remembered Noel calling him her fancy man! You’re showing your age, Noel. He had always been cagey about how old he was, but Helene reckoned mid-fifties.
Fancy man stacked up with floosie and matinée idol. They were redolent of places like the Melody Club and the Starlight Room where her father used to play. Helene and Hilly were never allowed to go because, their mother said ominously, too many of the men there wore brown suede shoes.
*
She’d had an email from Noel asking for the recipe of her cherry trifle. W
hat cheek. She recalled Noel wolfing down a second helping as he informed her that she had no intellectual integrity. Helen found it aggravating, this way Noel had of starting conversations, ‘The trouble with you is…’
This particular spat came about because he called her a Luddite (mobile phone, thicko attitude) and Helen had said that actually, she had no idea what a Luddite was.
‘That’s because,’ Noel said, ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber hasn’t yet written Luddies – The Musical! And it’s no good glaring at me like that. You don’t go to concerts, you-‘
‘I read!’
‘The only stuff you read is heavy on relationships, emotional complications. You’re not interested in the philosophical argument, the existential …’
Helen’s eyes roved guiltily to her copy of Hello stuffed under the sofa.
‘I go to the cinema, Noel. I saw a French film last week at the Renoir.’
‘Only because you were on the pull.’
‘Well what about you,’ Helen punched back. ‘How much intellectual integrity is there in those bushes up on the Heath?’
‘There’s more to boys than bottoms, Helen. We do have conversations. Wide ranging.’
She couldn’t deny, he was remarkably well-read. One Christmas, she was wrapping presents and for some reason asked him, ‘Ulysses. What’s it about?’
Before she had reached the sixth present, he had distilled for her the meaning of James Joyce’s great work.
‘Yes, but should I read it?’
‘No.’
Now, he watched her finishing up the last of the trifle in the glass bowl. ‘That was stupendously delicious. What was in it?’
‘Half a bottle of red wine. We can have the rest with the cheese.’
Noel had brought the cheese. He was the type who would travel half way across London to find the right coffee, the perfect Mont d’Or. She came back from the kitchen to find something woolly and round and lime green on the table.
The Price of Love Page 4
