The Price of Love

by Deanna Maclaren

  On Friday evening, Helene strolled up to Saint Germain des Pres under an April sky that resembled Raspberry Ripple. Helene savoured the anticipation: a glass of wine, an amusing supper, then to a café for coffee and a digestif. How civilised.

  Alexis flung open the door of his first-floor apartment. His turquoise eyes glittered as he seized her, dragged her into the bedroom and took her with the velocity of a high-speed train accelerating towards a collision. Accustomed to the delicious langour of Jean-Paul’s lovemaking, Alexis’s prolonged assault came as a shock. He was a fast and furious lover, but he could hold back his climax and when at last they finished, Helene realised through her state of excited fright that they had been hard at it for the same length of time it would have taken Eurostar to hurtle from Paris to London.

  Unsteadily, Helene got herself to the bathroom. Her progress was slow, partly because her thighs were shaking, but more because she was impeded by what she would always think of as Alexis’s piles of junk. Cereal bowls on the sofa and on the floor. The debris of take-away pizzas. CDs strewn everywhere.

  She made it to the bathroom, which looked as if an entire rugby team had just evacuated it. She unearthed a semi-clean towel and wrapped herself in it. Alexis, still naked, was in the sitting room poking at the TV remote.

  ‘I just wanted to see how England got on. Got it on video.’ Jab, jab. ‘Bloody thing wouldn’t work last night.’

  ‘This place is a smelly tip,’ Helene interrupted, removing a pair of offensive trainers from the coffee table and throwing them behind the sofa. ‘I can’t believe you lived like this with Ruth.’

  He shoved the cereal bowls off the sofa and stretched out on it. Nice chest, Helene thought. Good legs. Good all over, really.

  ‘Course not. Ruth had all these shiny cupboards to hide what she called clutter.’ He grinned disarmingly. ‘I s’pose I’m just reverting to type.’

  ‘Well can’t you at least wash your clothes?’

  ‘There isn’t a machine.’

  ‘There’s a laundry near me.’ Valerie Laverie would eat him up.

  She gathered up the cereal bowls and dumped them in the kitchen sink. As she expected, the fridge contained milk, wine and no food whatsoever. The one cupboard contained, for reasons she was never able to fathom, nothing more than a packet of salt.

  ‘Can you cook? Can you even boil an egg?’ she demanded.

  As if on cue, the cricket commentator announced to a breathless world, ‘And we’ve been sent the most gorgeous chocolate cake…’

  Helene grabbed the remote and switched the set off. Alexis didn’t seem at all put out.

  ‘Ruth took charge of the kitchen. But I mean, if she ever had boiled an egg it would have appeared on a plate, in a pyramid arrangement. All her food was like that. Fancy little heaps of things. And sort of, disguised. So you’d think you were aiming at a bit of carrot and it would turn out to be apricot because, so you’d be informed, this wasn’t a stew it was a tagine.’

  What with the energetic sex, all this talk of food was making Helene feel very hungry. ‘Well what shall we do to eat?’

  ‘We could send for a takeaway,’ he said. ‘They deliver sushi.’

  Helene shuddered. A guy on a bike. Transporting raw fish. ‘We’d better go out. Get dressed.’

  He eyed her, the titian woman, imperious in a toga towel. ‘Tell me, when were you last fucked in a shop doorway?’

  Oh God, Helen thought. He was going to start all over again.

  ‘Can’t we just have cornflakes?’ she said.

  Chapter Five

  Surfacing around midnight, Helene struggled to establish whether she’d been involved in a fuck or a fight.

  ‘Come on,’ Alexis was towelling off after his shower. ‘Let’s go out. We can go to VTR.’

  With difficulty, Helene sat up. Hell, what had he done to her? But VTR. It had been on Rory McEwen’s list.

  ‘What’s VTR?’

  ‘A jazz club. It’s not far.’

  ‘Why VTR? What’s it mean?’

  He laughed. ‘Ask Christie.’

  ‘Who’s Christie?’

  ‘The pianist.’

  ‘Will there be anything to eat there?’

  Alexis laughed even more. ‘You’ll see.’

  *

  On the way there, in the lamplight, she asked, ‘You and Ruth. What was the attraction?’

  Alexis shrugged. ‘Great sex.’

  ‘Oh.’ Damn.

  ‘The first time we – got it together, she tied us both up. Like, together.’

  ‘Didn’t that require some forethought?’

  ‘Oh, she’d been doing some martial arts thing so she had elasticated ropes, all the gear.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Yeah!’ A little too late, he slipped an arm round her waist. ‘Wasn’t as good as you, though. You, babe, are a pocket rocket.’

  Helene had passed the Hotel Odile many times on her way from Valerie Laverie but she had never noticed the small brass plate indicating VTR on a door leading to the basement.

  ‘Stand close to me,’ Alexis instructed. ‘CCTV. Harry won’t let you in if you’re on your own and he doesn’t like the look of you.’

  As the door buzzed open and they went down the stairs, it was the music that seduced Helene first. That pianist can play a bit, she recognised. His style was clearly influenced by Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson, music her father had played to her, on the rare evenings he was home.

  She was led into a dimly-lit room dominated by the piano and a zinc-topped bar. Behind the bar stood a man in a beige suit. Presumably he’d chosen the colour so he’d be visible to the clientele, but Helene wondered if he’d made a wise choice. Under the flat-topped black hair, his face looked like a slab of beige concrete, while his square-cut jacket suggested a body built for a building site. Not a guy to argue with.

  She smiled winningly as Alexis introduced them. ‘This is Helene. This is Harry Moscow.’

  Harry nodded, expressionless. At a signal from Alexis, he poured two glasses of champagne. Helene sipped it. With Harry watching her, she didn’t dare not drink it but she didn’t want it, not after midnight. She needed a hit, a cognac or some Scotch.

  Alexis and Harry were having a terse conversation about England’s dismal performance in the cricket. Gradually, Helene’s eye adjusted to the low lighting and she noticed round tables, comfy chairs and a banquette upholstered in red plush. She approved the soft ambiance, the shaded lamps. There were clubs she’d been to in London where all through the night everyone wore sunglasses and looked like ghouls, drenched in draining blue light. Then the management could change the lighting at will, flooding the uncomfortable stainless steel furniture with fluorescent orange, giving the clubbers a permatan. Helene was glad she didn’t know any important designers. She had an awful feeling she’d have one drink too many and start an aggressive conversation – ‘And I suppose you can’t even use a couple of sheets of toilet paper without turning it into origami.’

  Alexis took her arm. ‘Come and meet Christie.’

  ‘Love to.’ Anything to get away from the menacing presence that was Harry, behind the bar.

  Christie, seated at the piano, was wearing a panama hat. He had a long, thin face and, as befitted his profession, sensitive hands.

  ‘Christie, this is Helene.’

  Christie Fellowes stopped playing. He looked at Helene not just as if they’d met before, but as if he was remembering they’d had one hell of a wild time.

  Charmer, she thought. Womaniser. Watch it, girl.

  Alexis wandered off to talk to three extremely scantily clad girls. He’d already told Helene there was a lap dance place just down the road.

  ‘What can I play for you, Helene?’

  She hesitated a moment, and then asked, ‘What do you get asked for most, that you simply hate playing?’

  He uttered a groaning laugh. ‘September Song.’ Never ask a musician for that. We all loathe it. And in this city, never
ask for ‘April in Paris.’ It’s a shocking month, actually. Have you seen the weather report? Snow.’

  Then he looked at her enquiringly and indicated the keyboard.

  ‘Just in Time,’ she said. ‘Can you play that?’

  As he played the opening bars, his eyes held hers. ‘Every time you walk into VTR, I shall play ‘Just in Time’ just for you.’

  Helene smiled. What a smoothie!

  When he came to the end she blew him a kiss. ‘Christie, I know everyone must ask this. But what does VTR mean?’

  He grinned. ‘Vamp Till Ready.’

  Seeing her puzzled look he started playing with his left hand the same two chords, one-two, one-two, one-two, while his right hand picked out a vague succession of nothing special.

  ‘If I had a singer waiting to come on,’ Christie explained, ‘and the audience was all fired up, and she wasn’t ready –‘

  ‘Drunk?’ Helene prompted.

  ‘Drunk. So the producer would say to me, vamp till ready. You just play something completely uninspired simply to make a noise.’

  ‘Like a church organist at a wedding,’ Helene said, ‘Playing stuff you don’t recognise and can’t sing along to, so he can crash dramatically into Here Comes the Bride when she finally pitches up.’

  She paused. ‘I wonder why Harry called this place Vamp Till Ready.’

  Christie shrugged. ‘Had to call it something, I suppose. What do you think of the décor?’

  ‘Well it’s not Philippe Starck. But that’s no bad thing. What I don’t get is that carousel sandwich thing on the bar.’

  Round and round it went, the white plastic carousel. Round and round travelled liversausage, cheese and cornichons, tuna and tomato, sweating under their glistening cling-film.

  ‘I mean, they’re not exactly tempting, are they? Does anyone ever buy them?’

  Christie said, ‘You’re missing the point, sweetheart. That isn’t just a plastic carousel. That is psychology. It’s not about food, as in stomach. It’s about food, as in thought.’

  Helene watched queasily as she saw Harry jab his thumb into a clingfilmed baguette with what looked like putty oozing from the middle.

  Christie went on, ‘It’s mesmerising, you see. People stand there, watching it go round and round and it gives them something to look at, something to focus on. So while they’re talking, unburdening themselves as people do in bars, they don’t have to look at Harry. They can tell it all to the tuna.’

  And of course, tuna doesn’t answer back, Helene thought.

  Alexis came over and placed a glass of red wine on the piano for Christie. ‘What would you like, Helene?’

  ‘I think I’ll have to wander off home. I’m so tired.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Alexis said, and Christie grinned.

  Alexis insisted on coming with her. Outside her building, he kissed her goodnight.

  ‘Would you like to come to lunch on Sunday?’ Helene asked.

  ‘Can’t thanks. Have to go down to Corbières. Give my mate a hand bashing the house about. I’ll be back on the fifteenth, if you’re free.’

  ‘Yes. It’s a Sunday. It’s my birthday.’

  ‘Good. I’ll have a surprise for you.’

  As he spoke she was tapping in the entry code. And he was standing with his hand on her shoulder, watching.

  ‘How many of these has he given you?’ asked Elodie.

  It was Easter Sunday. Elodie had brought the wine which they were drinking while Helene’s lamb cooked. Elodie was examining Jean-Paul’s latest offerings, a peacock brooch shimmering with a fanfare of emeralds, sapphires and rubies. And a gold heron.

  ‘How many? Five,’ Helene said, with a complete lack of enthusiasm.

  ‘This. What exactly is this?’

  ‘It’s a heron. It’s a hateful greedy bird that swoops on garden ponds and eats all the goldfish.’

  ‘Mon Dieu!’

  ‘Jean-Paul,’ Helene said flatly, ‘says a heron is a triumph of engineering design. But I mean, when would I wear a thing like that?’

  ‘You’re not meant to wear them. You’re meant to put them in the bank.’

  ‘Mmm. I’ll have to get round to it.’

  Elodie said sharply, ‘You’re not keeping them here, are you?’

  ‘They’re in my knicker drawer.’

  ‘But that’s the first place a burglar looks! That and the freezer. Now come on. I want you to give them to me and I will put them in my safe at work. Then on Friday after your massage we go to your bank. Will you trust me?’

  Helene nodded. You had to trust your masseuse. Particularly a French one. They had different techniques to the English. In London, the girls Helene went to had performed complicated manoeuvers with towels, to protect the modesty of her breasts. Elodie didn’t mess around with any of that. Her hands went everywhere, not in a suggestive way, just because she was being thorough.

  Helene checked on the lamb, refilled their glasses and fetched the jewellery which she’d been keeping in an old shoe bag.

  ‘But this is very tasteful,’ Elodie said of the gold swan.

  Helene told her how surprised Jean-Paul had been, back in London, that she wore her black Lanvin suit to work.

  ‘Yes of course,’ Elodie said. ‘If you wear something every day, you must buy quality. Otherwise you look like a rag.’

  She stroked the gold swan. ‘It would look well on black.’

  ‘I know. I just don’t like birds. Then Jean-Paul bought me pearls. A three-strand job. Rather nice.’

  ‘Rather nice! Oh you English. I presume they are real?’

  ‘Oh yes. And I do wear them.’ With nothing else, often. Jean-Paul liked that.

  She went to the kitchen and returned with knives and forks. ‘I’ve just taken the lamb out. Sorry there’s no mint sauce.’

  Elodie burst out laughing. ‘Oh, you English!’

  ‘Dear Sis, I can’t believe you can’t get mint sauce in France. Don’t worry, I’ll get some for you and then you can convince Elodie she won’t die of poisoning if she tries it.

  ‘Had to get the beam of sunshine to church yesterday. What a carry on. Sent Megan across to see if sunnyface was ready and she reported, ‘no, because the kettle mirror was all steamed up.’ What?? Then it turned out that when we set up the annex I really thought I’d thought of everything but I hadn’t thought through that, in a wheelchair, she wouldn’t be high enough to see in the mirror. So typical of the dragon. She complains about all the small things and gets all martyred over the big ones. Megan of course noticed the kettle business ages ago but she’s such a selfish little tyke it didn’t occur to her to tell me.

  ‘Anyway, finally off we go to church. Megan leads the way with the moulting dog. First complication. Dog keeps grinding to a halt and turning round to check on dragon. Olly is pushing dragon. I am trekking behind carrying dragon’s fur wrap, my bag, dragon’s bag and a bag of hot cross buns to stop Megan’s stomach rumbling during the sermon. As you know, Southwold pavements are quite narrow and it’s Easter and crowded so dragon has a marvellous time slashing at tourists with her stick and barking Get out of the way! Can’t you see My Son is taking me to church?

  ‘When we get there we realise we’ve done it again. Forgot that on Easter Sunday there are endless parades so the service starts half an hour early. Big church, St Edmund’s, but thronged and dragon determined to be at the front Otherwise I can’t hear, so what a performance practically mowing down a posse of Cubs to get her in pole position.

  ‘Thank heavens for sophisticated sanity from Sis in Paris. Your Missoni story was very funny. Who was the towelling robe for? We don’t, as a matter of fact, have a Missoni shop in Southwold, but from what I’ve seen in the hairdresser’s ‘Vogue’ their clothes look great on men but never seem to suit women. So who is he?’

  Damn. Helene put down her coffee mug. She’d have to pretend she’d bought it for Alexis. Nothing for it but to tell Hilly about him. Not much. Certainly not everything.r />
  *

  On Tuesday, Jean-Paul arrived with a stuffed owl.

  Watching him placing the glass case carefully on the table, Helene stared at the thing in horror. Surely it couldn’t be for her? Please don’t let it be for her.

  ‘Sweet little chap, isn’t he?’ said Jean-Paul.

  In fact the owl did have a rather endearing face. It was just, well, Helene knew nothing about taxidermy but she did know birds had fleas. So had they got stuffed too, or were they all still hopping over the owl?

  If it had been Alexis she could have said, ‘Get that fucking thing out of here,’ but this was Jean-Paul and she was an ungrateful bitch.

  She said carefully, ‘Are you going to put it in the window of your Galerie?’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, it’s not my thing.’

  She said, ‘I have some champagne. But would you mind if I had a Scotch?’ A large one.

  ‘Of course, chérie. I’ll join you. It was what you were drinking when we first met.’

  ‘And what we drank when we first went to bed.’ Anything to distract him from that wretched owl. Its quizzical gaze seemed to follow her round the room.

  ‘No,’ Jean-Paul went on, as she poured the whisky and added a small amount of water, ‘It’s destined for Deyrolle. That’s a galerie in the rue du Bac. I buy for them sometimes.’

  Helene was so relieved, she was able to regard the owl with something approaching fondness. ‘Considering it’s a bird of prey, it’s got a very delicate look.’

  ‘Exact! Helene, what good taste you have.’

  Helene, what a big stupid mouth you have, she thought, as Jean-Paul raved on:

  ‘That is exactly what Deyrolle specialise in. Delicate stuffed birds in an amazing variety of colours. So chic, so Parisian. They say that only in Paris can you find dead birds to match your wallpaper.’