Helene felt she needed to sit down. There was, of course, nowhere to sit as all the chairs were strewn with ‘pieces.’ She asked for a chair. She was brought a low-level red leather pouffe shaped like a rhino.
Helene then asked for a glass of water and took the opportunity to study her briefing notes. Her job, Marc had told her, was to be the Brit bitch from hell. And she had to cover the waterfront.
‘Be rude to the doorman, while you’re checking if the windows are clean. What’s in the window? Is it something you’d want to buy? Ask for impossible clothes. Make them run around. They’re supposed to be able to speak English. How good is it? Ask to sit down. Demand a glass of water…’
What fun! Helene thought. I could do lots of this.
She enjoyed watching Snood performing a conjuring trick.
‘Citron vert!’ Snood exclaimed, plunging from display to display, determined to magic up something that patently wasn’t there.
‘Yes, I’m sure we do have – ah!’
Her skinny hand alighted on a creation that seemed to be fashioned from a dishcloth.
‘It’s not lime green,’ Helene pointed out.
‘It’s a greeny beige,’ Snood asserted. Helene awarded her marks for trying.
‘It’s a size too big,’ Helene said.
‘It’s cut very small.’
‘It’s not silk.’
Snood exchanged a pained look with the hovering Braid. ‘Silk? You’ve left it a little late in the season … but I might have something at the back…’
And indeed, from the recesses of the Hub, she emerged triumphant. A silk dress. It was full-skirted, had puff sleeves and was the colour of salted English butter.
Under normal circumstances, never in a million years – but Helene had been told to check out the changing room. She gave the room a big tick. It was spacious, there was a velvet chair, enough hooks for her clothes and bag. And unlike a very famous store in Knightsbridge, the lighting did not make her want to burst into tears at her reflection.
Braid had arrived to assist. As Helene undressed, she noticed Braid’s approving glance at her expensive hold-up stockings, with four inches of lace at the top. Helene allowed Braid to hoist the yellow dress over her head. Then she sat down (as instructed by Marc) and all but disappeared as the skirt billowed up around her chin.
‘Super!’ fluted Braid.
I look like toad in the hole, Helene decided. But, onward!
Declining the dress, she asked if they had any hats. Braid dashed off and returned not with a selection of hats, but just one. The price appalled Helene. How could a silk rose, a feather and a bit of net come to three figures?
‘Isn’t it fun?’ trilled Braid.
Helene asked to be taken to the make-up counter. Marc had instructed her to buy a lipstick, then see how efficient they were at the cash desk.
All the lipsticks were brown. Cinnamon, Russet, Bronze, Liver. Brown.
‘I was thinking, ‘ Helene informed Snood, ‘I was thinking more of a pinky coral.’
‘Corale?’ Snood looked as if she would pass out.
Helene decided to let her off the hook. Time was getting on. She didn’t want to get caught in the Friday rush of homeward commuters. Reappraising the lipsticks, she saw they all had numbers, not names. Helene had loved it when make-up beguiled you with an enticing name. She had been particularly fond of a Revlon nail polish, Cherries in the Snow.
*
Marc was home. As she closed the front door and hung up her pink parasol, she heard him call, ‘How’s my counterspy?’
Elated, she almost floated into the sitting room. ‘It was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. Can I do some more?’
He was sitting at the table. He was looking at her in a way she couldn’t quite define.
‘There’s lots of work,’ he said. ‘Restaurants as well as shops. Not all newly opened places. Some of them have been around forever and start resting on their laurels. If you want to do more, I can teach you.’
‘Are you a good teacher?’
‘Yes. As long as you do as you’re told.’
Helene kicked off her shoes and flopped on the sofa. ‘I got receipts for the T-shirt and the lipstick. Oh, I can’t wait to tell you all about it!’
‘Tell me later. First you have to file your report to my office.’
‘I can do that tomorrow.’
‘Do it now. They’ll be waiting.’
He opened his paperback.
She said, ‘What are you reading?’
‘Helene! Get on with it, will you?’
She sighed. ‘Okay. You’re the boss.’
Her laptop was by the sofa. She rested it on her knees and set to work. She was rather pleased with her description of the brown lipsticks. She called them ‘brindled.’ She and Hilly had once played with a neighbour’s brindle kitten.
An hour later she pressed Send. ‘There. Done. I was thinking,’ she closed the laptop and put it aside, ‘who pays for what I did today?’
Marc explained. ‘Where you were today, those designers aren’t there by accident. They have to earn their place in the space. There’s a lot of competition. But having got their stuff into the Hub, they want to know that the store is doing its best for them. So it’s the designers who pay the company I work for.’
Helene considered this. ‘There was only one hat.’ She described it.
Marc nodded. ‘I know that designer. Pushy. She would have paid the Hub for exclusivity.’
He was standing in front of the table in his blue suit, the evening light glinting on his hair. He was in the exact same place as when Helene had first met him.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll get changed.’
‘No. Stay as you are. You look great.’
The way he was looking at her, she felt almost shy.
‘Would you put your shoes back on?’
*
She slipped her stockinged feet into the shiny black high-heeled shoes. Crossed her legs. Uncrossed them.
‘Helene. Come here, will you.’
Slowly, not daring to believe this was happening, she moved across to him. When she was close, she daren’t look at him, in case it wasn’t happening, wasn’t true.
She closed her eyes. And she felt him with slow, sure deliberation undoing the buttons on her jacket. Underneath she was wearing a red-ribboned bra. He slid the jacket down over her shoulders and she heard him drop it on the chair.
‘Helene, look at me.’
She opened her eyes, and looked into his. Don’t make a move, Helene told herself. Not yet.
But she couldn’t repress a frisson of longing as, for the first time ever, he touched her with intent, his hands resting on her bare shoulders. Please, she thought. Don’t let this be a kidding around game. Please let it be real.
It was real.
She knew when he whirled her round and with one hand pulled her firmly against him. Helene could feel the hardness of him. In a confident movement, he slid his hand down the black silk of her skirt, and inched it up, revealing a glimpse of white flesh against the lacy tops of her stockings.
He let the skirt fall back into place. He moved across her hips and began to caress her with a tantalising authority that bewildered her. He had said he knew nothing!
She stood pliant, mentally and physically fluid, willing him not to stop. Please, please don’t stop.
Marc waited until he heard her cry out, felt the spasm of pleasure ambush her. He spun her round to face him.
Then she saw it. The hesitation in his gorgeous green eyes. And she knew. Knew the time had come for her to take the lead.
Time for me to teach you a thing or two, Marc Cordier.
*
They were still in bed when the man in the shop opposite banged down his shutters and went to lunch. They were talking, as lovers do, about when they first fell for one another.
‘The first time I saw you,’ said Marc, ‘I felt clouted. It was like a sock between the eyes. And when you came
near, and shook my hand, you smelt of rain. Your skin, your hair, they were scented with rain. But I thought, well I thought you wouldn’t consider me. That you’d think I was a young twerp.’
My word, Helene thought. If only you knew.
‘And then, when you took me in after the funeral, when I really didn’t want to go home alone, you said, It’s what your father would have wanted me to do. I thought, looking after me, I thought you were doing it for him. I didn’t realise –‘
‘It was for you, Marc. It was always for you.’
‘Oh God. We’ve wasted so much time.’
Helene stirred in his arms. From a standing start, he’d certainly proved to be a quick learner. She could tell he wanted her again, but she was going to make him wait. He’d made her wait long enough.
She kissed along his hairline. ‘So what changed things yesterday?’
‘That suit. You looked so elegant, so poised. I’d never seen you in a suit before.’
Helene groaned inwardly, thinking of all the jeans, frilly skirts and for heaven’s sake, that dreadful puffed sleeved blouse. I was trying to look young, Marc. Young! So you’d think we were roughly the same age.
‘In that suit, you looked everything I’d always wanted in a woman. That I never thought I could have.’
‘Okay, but you’ve been holding out on me, Marc. You said you’d never had a girlfriend. Then you come on to me like you’ve been undressing women all your adult life.’
Laughing, Marc hugged the pillow. ‘In a way, it’s been a bit like that.’
He told her then about the university vac job he’d had. It was in a West End store that Helene knew. It was an irritating place, constantly changing its name and its image. One minute it was like a bazaar and then a month later it was doing major posh. Marc’s last stint there coincided with the swanky phase, and he was put to work on the designer fashion floor.
His job was to remove the clothes from all the mannekins – they were called bodies – adorning the floor, so that Zoe from the display staff could dress them again. Marc and the zany Zoe had to do this early every morning because the store buyers were convinced that some customers came in every day and liked to see a fresh look.
‘The first time, Zoe had kitted out the model with stockings under the skirt. Zoe was very thorough. So I got the skirt off, and was tugging at the stockings and Zoe was shrieking I was doing it all wrong, these were expensive clothes, those were Wolsey stockings…’
Helene nodded. ‘The best.’
‘I know. They’re what you had on yesterday.’
Helene held his hands still. ‘Go on.’
‘So Zoe taught me how to undress the body. I had to sort of make love to it, because she said that showed respect. Then one thing led to another, and she let me play with her. She showed me, week after week what to do, what a woman likes. Wouldn’t let me fuck her, though. Too much CCTV. So basically, until eight o’clock last night all I knew about women was how to undress them, and how to play.’
‘And now you know a lot more,’ Helene said, moving down the bed.
*
Helene went out in the afternoon to do a quick grocery shop, and on the way back called in on Elodie. She was just finishing a manicure for a girl sitting by the window. Because the girl’s nails were wet, she asked Elodie to take the euros from her bag. The bag, resting on the table, was in the shape of a green tartan sausage dog.
Obviously from the Hub, decided Helene. What with the stuffed owl, the rhino pouffe and green Doberman handbags, they should rename it the Menagerie. She should have suggested it in her report for Marc.
Elodie looked across at her from the cash desk. ‘What’s up?’
Helene punched the air. ‘Result!’
‘Well thank heavens for that. Everything all right?’
‘Terrific.’
‘Good. So I’ll leave you alone tomorrow.’
‘No, do come. Marc likes you.’
‘Look, you’ll be stroking one another and if he’s out of reach, you’ll be stroking the kitchen units. You’re in love. Go and enjoy it.’
*
They did. They drove to Versailles and hired bicycles to see the park. Progress was somewhat wobbly, because each time they came to a turning, Helene had to dismount and start again and Marc was in fits.
‘At least we’re laughing,’ Helene said. ‘In Paris all the cyclists look so grim.’
They cycled up to the Petit Trianon, a small mansion with a farm where Queen Marie Antoinette had played at being a peasant milkmaid, dreamily unaware that in a short space of time, the peasants would be baying as her head was chopped off.
In Paris, Marc showed her his haunts. Not far from her beloved Flotte, he introduced her to Le Souffle. From the name, Helene had imagined it to be strictly a girls’ lunch place, so she was surprised to see a complete mix of people, all ages, including a portly middle-aged businessman who consumed with relish a black pudding souffle, followed by a raspberry souffle and three glasses of chartreuse. Helene and Marc could hardly contain themselves when he had difficulty finding his way out.
Next came a restaurant in someone’s sitting room. The food was dire but the woman owner was so charming, the place was packed every night.
‘What a stunning girl,’ Helene said, as they left. ‘Do you fancy her?’
He shrugged. ‘Girls like that, they remind me of those boxes of chocolates, all done up with ribbons and bows and looking luscious. But if you don’t happen to have a sweet tooth, that sort of thing just leaves you cold.’
Doris Day was far more of a hit, especially as she was looking sassily athletic in her cute beach shorts.
Marc was appalled that Helene hadn’t been inside the Pompidou Centre.
‘It’s ugly,’ she protested. They were on a boat, eating plums.
‘Helene, it’s got the biggest collection of modern art in all France.’
Then he was shocked that she hadn’t visited Notre Dame.
‘All those tourists,’ Helene said. ‘Cluttering up the place, having their pictures taken. How tacky is that?’
‘But it’s what you do,’ he insisted. ‘In every city there’s a thing that you do. Like in London, you have to go on a red bus. Even my mother’s been on a red bus.’
Well bully for you, Christiane, Helene thought, hoping it was one of those bendy buses that infuriated the taxi drivers.
‘And in Paris,’ Marc went on, ‘you have to get kissed on a bridge. We’ve got thirty eight bridges.’
‘Excellent,’ Helene said. ‘Will I get kissed on all of them?’
‘I think,’ he said, ‘we’d better get cracking.’
‘I’m too quick, aren’t I,’ Marc said later, placing glasses of chilled white wine on the bedside table.
‘Not unusual,’ Helene said. ‘Most men have to do counting, to slow themselves down.’
‘Counting? Counting what?’
Helene thought back to various conversations during her Life of Crime.
‘Well I did know one guy … he used to recite to himself the winning races of a greyhound called Ballyregan Bob.’
‘Go on.’
‘A lot of men use football results.’
‘Oh, gallant. A woman’s pleasure at the mercy of whether Chelsea hammered Arsenal last Saturday. Anyway, what delaying tactics do they use in the summer?’
‘Dunno. Aussie pools?’
Finally, she told him what Odile had confided:
‘Vernon used to shoot off in five seconds, Naturally, I complained and instructed him to find the pause button. So he used to think of coach parties and rows of neat, self-catering apartments because, he said surely no one would do self-catering on their honeymoon.’
Marc and Helene didn’t return to VTR, but she did introduce him to Odile in the snug. Odile signalled her approval by giving him his whisky in a Baccarat glass. No Brit tourist tat for him, Helene noted, observing a new T-towel of Prince William on the bar.
Suddenly, it was August. H
elene had been led to believe that the entire city decamped to the coast, with the Autoroute du Sud crammed with competing cars and in the capital, everything shut so you couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread. But it was really families with children and the leisured retired who vanished to the beach. The rest of Paris were able to enjoy their own beach, Paris Plage, a sandy haven, complete with potted palms, on the banks of the Seine.
Helene had, at last, persuaded Marc to appear there, in public, wearing his new Vilebrequin swimming trunks, minus T-shirt. She made a point of running her fingers across his chest, playing with all the hair.
‘Do you want me to shave it off?’ he asked.
‘Do you want me to have my breasts made bigger?’
‘No! They’re you. I love you as you are.’
‘Exactly.’ She tickled his feet.
He kissed her. ‘I thought I was ugly. I thought no one would want me.’
Those girls, Helene thought. Those spiteful girls had a lot to answer for.
‘You know, Marc, if you’d had a sister you’d have got used to being teased.’
‘I did have a sister. Elizabeth. She died before I was born.’
Helene was amazed. ‘But Jean-Paul. He never –‘
‘No. He only ever talked about her to my mother.’
She remembered then, Jean-Paul’s tone of voice when she’d been talking about Hilly’s first wedding and their father insisting on walking her down the aisle. ‘Of course,’ Jean-Paul had said. ‘Of course he would want that.’
She thought of his kind, distinguished face in the photograph she dusted every day. And Marc beside him, unusually without his spectacles, so you could see the intense green of his eyes.
‘The gardener’s wife took the pic, and made me take my specs off,’ Marc said as they strolled back to their quartier, their favourite bar, for a Sunday evening aperitif.
‘There’s a car in the background. Was that the one your mother had?’
The old banger, Jean-Paul had called it, recalling that he used to put the brakes on his lust by imagining taking the engine to pieces and putting it all back again.
‘How do you know about the car?’ Marc asked.
The Price of Love Page 20
