by Robyn Sisman
Alicia turned sharply and raised a commanding finger. “No buts.” Her eyes locked on Molly’s. “This is your first night in Paris—ever. Right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re only here for the weekend. Right?”
“Yes.”
“You want to climb into your PJs and go to bed?”
“No!”
“Okay, then.” Alicia grinned. “Let’s go play.”
And then they were out in the glittery night, walking between shuttered houses, past humpy cars parked bumper to bumper, under tiers of narrow ironwork balconies. The air was as soft as summer. Molly could smell vanilla-sweet drifts of tobacco smoke, the sour tang of urine, hot fat from a crêperie. There were trees everywhere, the glow and bustle of small cafés sprouting umbrellas, the ripple of French on the breeze.
They were on their way to someone’s flat—a French girl called Zabi. Alicia worked part-time in her clothes shop, selling a mixture of retro fashion and Zabi’s own designs. This was just one of Alicia’s many cash-in-hand jobs, which also included dog-walking, baby-sitting, waitressing and bar work, as well as the Rollerblade tours—anything to keep her in Paris, which Alicia pronounced the coolest city in Europe.
“Have you been to lots of countries, then?” Molly asked enviously.
“Christ, yes. Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, all that Eastern Europe stuff. Italy, the Greek islands, Gallipoli—the whole enchilada.”
“Golly.” Molly’s head spun with all the wonders Alicia must have seen—the Sistine Chapel, the Rijksmuseum, Prague, Venice, the Acropolis. “Er, what happens in Luxembourg?”
“Don’t ask me. It was on this stupid bus tour I took when I first came overseas. All I remember is I got bitten by bedbugs in the hostel and spent most of the time itching.”
“And Gallipoli? I’m not even sure I know where that is.”
“Jeez, Molly, don’t you know any history? It’s in Turkey. You Brits sent thousands of Ozzie soldiers to their death during the First World War. Mel Gibson, remember?”
“He can’t be that old.”
“Not fighting, you muppet. In the movie.”
“Oh, right.” Molly gave her head a little shake. Her brain didn’t seem to work properly in France.
But she didn’t care. With Alicia at her side the city was no longer intimidating: each unfamiliar sight gave her an electric charge. Her head buzzed: she felt as if she could walk forever. They had turned onto a wide boulevard now, with cars zipping jauntily back and forth. Beep-beep. Vroom-vroom. Trees marched down either side of it in synchronized step, each trunk embedded in a wrought-iron circle of fanciful design. Street lamps bobbed among the leaves like high white balloons. Silvery fountains spouted from a small park. There were bright cafés nosing out onto the pavement like jolly glass pleasure boats. Molly spotted one of those kiosks she’d seen in countless photographs: a squat minaret the color of a pine forest at night, decorated with lions’ heads and topped by an onion dome. Its sole purpose seemed to be to display advertisements—Le Figaro, Paris-Match, the Comédie Française. She laughed aloud.
“What?” demanded Alicia.
“It’s just so amazing to be here. I feel like Miranda in The Tempest .”
“Who?”
“‘O brave new world, that has such people in’t.’” Molly’s voice throbbed with poetry. “That’s where Aldous Huxley got the title for his novel, you know—though he used it ironically, of course.”
Alicia shot her a suspicious look. “You’re not one of those brainboxes, are you?”
“Well . . .” Molly didn’t like to boast. “Everyone knows Shakespeare.”
“Not in Tullamarine, they don’t,” said Alicia, and added breezily, “I’m not really into culture and all that shemozzle.”
Molly’s eyes widened, though she said nothing. Tullamarine: that must be where Alicia had been brought up. It had a romantic, bushwhacking ring to it. Molly pictured a small dusty town with a water tower and a stray yellow dog pasted against a flat blue sky. It probably didn’t even have a library! She would get Alicia to tell her all about it. But not now. There was too much to look at.
They left the boulevard and entered a maze of side streets, clearly a hip and happening area, with cool-looking restaurants and noisy bars pumping out Latino music. Who else would be at Zabi’s flat? Molly wondered. Would they all be terribly smart and sophisticated? Would her A-level French hold up to a proper conversation? Bonsoir. Je m’appelle Molly. Je suis officier de marketing. What if they were all snorting cocaine? Or discussing Balzac? Or both? She stole a glance at Alicia, shoulders back, head high, striding along like a warrior queen, and tried to copy her careless assurance.
“Mind the dog-poo.” Alicia yanked her elbow just in time.
The streets narrowed and darkened; the crowds disappeared. Molly glimpsed secret stairways and stone archways decorated like molded pastry. Their footsteps echoed between walls shrouded with vines, making Molly think of spies during the French Revolution. If she edited out the occasional parked car or blaze of electric light, she could be gallant Lady Clearwater helping the Scarlet Pimpernel to smuggle aristocrats to England—or perhaps Citoyenne Clearwater, with a tricolor headband and a knife between her teeth, ready to storm the Bastille.
“Here we go.” Alicia stopped in the shadow of a deep archway. Beyond it Molly could see a romantically ramshackle courtyard with bicycles parked on the cobbles and a skulking cat. Light from an uncurtained window filtered through the leaves of a much-pollarded tree, under which two African men sat smoking on rickety kitchen chairs.
“We’ll have a drink and check out who’s here,” Alicia told her, “then maybe move on somewhere. You’ll love Zabi. She’s totally insane.”
There was a narrow entrance in one of the vine-covered walls. A dim stairway curved upward. Molly cooled her palm on the iron banister as they climbed, inhaling the smell of damp plaster and a distinct undertone of drains. She could hear party chatter, a screech of laughter, the smoochy beat of jazz. On the top floor they reached a door covered in spray-can graffiti. “Zabi’s version of a visitors’ book,” explained Alicia, banging loudly. “See?” She pointed to one of the lower panels where her own name appeared in a lime-green flourish, with orange stars instead of dots over the is. “She says it’s an interactive artwork that will sell one day for millions.”
Molly was wondering just how insane the insane Zabi might be when the door was flung open by an extremely pretty girl wearing a lacy white ra-ra skirt and black fishnets. Barely five feet tall, with burnished hair sheared into a bad-boy crop and a tiny jewel sparkling in the curve of one nostril, she looked like a naughty fairy.
“Alicia! Salut! ” She threw her hands into the air, then pulled Alicia close and kissed her enthusiastically on each cheek. “And who is this?” She turned to Molly. Her bright stare was not unfriendly; nevertheless, Molly felt that, in one laser glance, every millimeter of her body shape and clothing had been expertly assessed. The next moment, before she could even try out a tentative “Bonsoir,” her hand had been grasped and firmly shaken.
Alicia explained Molly’s presence as they stepped inside. Her French yowled and twanged with distinctly un-Gallic vowels, but it was impressively fluent. With suitable hand gestures she outlined the disappearance of her Rollerblades along with the méchante Janine, while Zabi gasped at the horreur of it all. Molly stood between them in a daze. The small square room seemed full of people, all smoking, all talking at top speed in a language that seemed to bear no relation to the one she had studied at school. There was a stuffed owl in the fireplace and a wirework scorpion hanging from the ceiling. One wall was adorned with an enormous poster for a Johnny Hallyday concert dated 2000—hadn’t he died in about 1963?
In a voice at least an octave higher than Molly’s, Zabi called to someone to bring some drinks. Meanwhile, a group had drifted over to listen to the Rollerblade drama. More people shook Molly’s hand—a pair of prancing French girls with flutin
g voices, a black man so elegant and sinuous that Molly could hardly stop staring at his beauty, a Spanish girl called Kiki who designed shoes to die for, an older man, whom Zabi introduced as her guru, dressed from head to toe in white and glowing as if from an all-over spiritual suntan. “I adore blondes,” he confided to Molly, caressing her hair.
“Beer or wine?” asked a voice.
Molly accepted a glass of red wine from a Frenchman with a ponytail who informed her that his name was Didier and that he was a merchant of biological vegetables. “How very interesting,” she replied.
So: she was from England? Didier could tell by her accent. He hoped her poor country was at last recovering from its terrible crisis. Or did it still suffer?
“Not too much,” Molly answered cagily, having no idea what he was talking about. She took another slug of wine.
For his part, he could not imagine the horror of living in a country full of stupid cows.
“Really?” Molly bristled.
Luckily France had taken special measures to keep each and every stupid English cow out of France.
“Well, I’m here,” Molly told him defiantly. “And I’m not stupid.”
“Give the guy a break,” Alicia’s voice rumbled in her ear. “He’s talking about mad-cow disease—vache folle. He runs an organic veg stall.”
Molly clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. Fortunately, Didier seemed to have decided that this was an example of the famous English sense of humor, and started laughing too. Molly felt a surge of adrenaline. She was witty—in French! She grinned at Didier (crazy name—crazy guy!) and raised her glass to her lips again. Oh. It was empty.
Alicia steered her toward a table covered with bottles. “Come and meet Gilbert. He’s lost his job, too—one of those dot-coms. The French piled onto the techno-wagon a little late and just fell off with a wallop.”
They passed the guru trying out his technique on one of the prancing girls, who had stopped prancing and was lying on a sofa among rumpled faux furs. His clasped hands pressed on her stomach. “Breathe, breathe,” he intoned, while she squealed and squirmed.
Gilbert (jeel-bear) was a broodingly handsome guy in designer black jeans, smoking furiously. “I am a martyr of the new economy,” he told Molly, with tragic eyes. “For two years I sat clicking like a moron. I worked ninety hours a week. Lunch was a baguette at my desk—can you imagine? And now—pouf! ” He tapped his ash. “The best I can hope for, it’s a job in one of the ministries with the gray-hairs. I’m going to have to buy a suit.”
“That’s very sad,” Molly agreed, admiring his cheekbones. “Here, have some more wine.”
“You know, you’re a very sympathetic girl.”
Was it the booze or could she hear an electronic tune playing? Molly thought she recognized the “Marseillaise.” Gilbert slid a mobile phone from his shirt pocket and pressed it to his ear. “Chérie,” he pouted, “where are you?”
Oh, well. Molly turned away and surveyed the smoke-hazed room. It was all very different from Minster Episcopi, or even Earlsfield. Travel did broaden the mind.
Zabi got her to sign the front door in purple and silver. A man in glasses, confusing her with Alicia, gave her a brief lecture on the physiology of the kangaroo. French people spoke French to her, and she answered them back. Absolutely no one wanted to know that she was an officier de marketing. There was no quiz on Balzac, though she did find herself drawn into an impassioned argument between one of the prancing girls and the organically minded Didier. Non! insisted the girl. It was only humans who were entitled to possess a donkey. Mais écoute, Sylvie, had not the good Lord created all life? Why shouldn’t an insect—or even a tomato—have its own donkey? What did Molly think? Eventually, Molly clicked that they were not talking about donkeys (ânes) but souls (âmes). Her own soul was stirred by the loftiness of this discussion. It was true what they said about the French being intellectuals. She rather thought that France might turn out to be her spiritual home.
Now Alicia had caught her eye and was waving her over. Zabi was with her, and as Molly made her way across the room she felt, once again, the scrutiny of those black eyes. “Zabi’s talking about going to a club,” Alicia told her. “There’s this new DJ who’s really hot.”
“Great!” Molly’s eyes sparkled.
“Only there might be a problem.”
The problem, Molly discovered, was herself—or, rather, her clothes. This particular club was infamous for its bouncers—les physios—who took a sadistic pleasure in excluding anyone failing to meet their capricious criteria of cool. (“Salauds! ” Zabi tossed her head in disgust.) Molly looked very nice, Alicia went on, in fact, pretty enough to look good in almost anything, but . . .
Molly glanced down at her polyester-mix work suit and the smile faded from her face. She could almost hear the elation hiss out of her, as if from a punctured tire. It was always the same. It was always other people who wore great clothes, had fantastic jobs, went to cool clubs. Not Molly Clearwater, oh no. Once again she felt as though a magnificent play were being enacted on stage—lights, color, drama—while she waited, waited, waited in the darkness of the wings for a cue that never came.
“. . . but Zabi can fix you up, no worries,” Alicia was saying.
Molly turned in confusion to Zabi, who was fluffing out her skirt, looking excited. Fix her up how? Fix her up where? And why? But already she could feel a hand in the small of her back, propelling her across the room. “You won’t believe Zabi’s bedroom,” said Alicia’s voice.
A door was opened, a light switched on. Molly gasped. There was a bed as big as a galleon, a crumbling gilt mirror propped against one wall, a tailor’s dummy half dressed in a zany patchwork coat, and rack after rack of clothes: black leather, white silk, damson velvet, vintage lace and aged denim, boots with buckles, belts with studs, sequins, fur, hats. They couldn’t all be Zabi’s. This was obviously an overspill from her shop.
“Alors,” Zabi steered Molly to the mirror and planted her in front of it. “What do we think?”
Molly thought several things at once—that they couldn’t, surely, mean to lend her special clothes just to go to a club; that she would rather die than undress in front of the terrifyingly chic Zabi; that however hard they tried she was going to wind up looking silly. She had the vertiginous sense of teetering on a precipice, wondering if she dared jump off.
“I totally love this dress.” Alicia, who had been rummaging in the racks, brought over some slippery red thing.
“Tsk, tsk.” Zabi waved it away. Her face was a sharp little triangle of concentration. She slid off Molly’s jacket, and swept the hair back off her shoulders.
“Or this?” Alicia thrust a hanger under Molly’s chin.
Molly stared aghast at a zebra-print dress about two feet long, with a hole where the front should be. “I can’t wear that!”
But even as she spoke she could feel Zabi’s deft fingers at her zipper. The next second her skirt lay in a pool at her ankles. Helplessly Molly stepped out of it. Zabi, with a searing glance at the label, folded it expertly and placed it on the bed. “And the shirt,” she commanded.
Once again, Molly found herself obeying. A familiar figure in chainstore bra and tummy-toner tights stared back at her from the mirror. There was dead silence.
“Look, Alicia,” Zabi said finally, in the tone of a scientist pointing out an interesting phenomenon under the microscope. “The breasts, they are very pretty, non? And the legs?” She fluttered a tiny hand. “One could perhaps do something.”
The two of them walked around her, as if examining a piece of livestock. Molly found the experience unnerving yet strangely thrilling. The nearest she had ever come to being “dressed” was when a languid shop assistant had drawled, “Oh, that really suits you.” (Often this turned out to be demonstrably untrue.) But here she sensed she was in the presence of professionals. Morever, everything was happening to her in a foreign language. There was a soothing impersonality about Fr
ench—the breasts, the legs, the bottom (which, alas, was multiple in French—les fesses)—as if none of these body parts had anything to do with her. French also had a cunning trick of making everything impersonal—il faut . . . on doit—so that it was not Molly who was trying on clothes, but the clothes that must be tried on.
Actually, the zebra dress didn’t look at all bad. Molly felt cheered until Zabi rejected it with one withering glance. Next she tried a slinky black number (“Not black,” Zabi ruled), then pinstripe flares with a creamy chiffon blouse (“une catastrophe”). Garment by garment, Molly felt herself yielding to the seductive narcissism of the moment.
Suddenly, Zabi smacked her hands together. “Gold!” she declared. “With the hair, the skin—you understand? Quick, Alicia, the little skirt. And the crocodile sandals. Ah, I can see it all. I am a genius! Vite, vite! ”
In a moment Molly was stepping into high heels with thin straps that crossed at the ankle. Next, she slid a miniskirt of soft, shimmering gold leather over her hips and drew the zipper closed. It fit perfectly.
“Oops, VPL alert,” said Alicia, pointing to the visible groove in Molly’s hips made by her knicker elastic. “You’ll have to just wear your tights.”
“What?”
“Hurry up or we’ll miss the DJ.”
Molly started to make the necessary tortuous adjustment. Meanwhile, Zabi had skipped over to the racks and was yanking back the hangers, muttering to herself. She returned with a bustier made of shot silk that gleamed bronze and gold where it caught the light. She held it against Molly and sighed. “I am inspired! Of course, the bra must not be worn.”
No underwear at all! She couldn’t go out in public like this. Well, maybe she could. The bustier felt cool and slithery against her bare skin. It hooked up the front, moulding her figure into a miraculous shape.
“You see?” said Zabi. Her eyes snapped with pleasure.
But before Molly could see properly, Zabi pulled her over to a plain wooden chair and tilted a lamp beam on to her face. “A little more drama with the eyes,” she murmured, applying a stub of pencil. “And something at the neck.” She rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a thin velvet ribbon which she fastened under Molly’s hair. “Now, shut your eyes.” There was a hiss, a smell like hairspray, the tickle of tiny droplets on Molly’s bare skin. Finally she handed Molly a jacket of worn velvet the exact colour of coffee beans. “There,” she said, relaxing at last into a satisfied smile, “you are perfect.”
