by Robyn Sisman
Inside, the noise level rose. Molly was aware of a confusion of tables and people, the scrape of chairs on the wooden floor, a fug of smoke and wine fumes. It was hard to see properly in the comparative gloom. She took a few tentative steps in one direction, peering into dusky corners, then in another. A burst of laughter made her turn, and suddenly she saw a profile she recognized. Breaking into a smile, she stepped toward him with a smile, then paused, uncertain.
He was not alone. Molly saw with a pang of disappointment that he sat in a group of three others, all leaning close and cutting across each other’s conversation in the manner of old friends. Fabrice lounged against the wall at the far end of the small rectangular table, which was scattered with beer bottles, glasses, ashtrays, and plates still bearing the remains of some snack. He was listening to a man with a ponytail, sitting opposite him, who was obviously in the middle of telling a story. Molly felt shy about breaking into their circle, but the sight of Fabrice so close, every detail of his body familiar yet intensely exciting, drew her forward. “Hello, Fabrice,” she said, nervously fingering the edge of the table. One by one, heads were raised in her direction—a girl, two unknown men, finally Fabrice.
“Ah, Molly. Ça va?” He gave her a casual nod. “This is Molly,” he told the others. “She’s English. Here for the weekend.”
They put out their hands for her to shake: the girl, with appraising eyes and curly black hair cut short (Sylvie), a guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a wispy goatee (Olivier), the ponytail man (Henri). “Bonjour,” they said, with polite, fleeting smiles. Molly waited for Fabrice to suggest that his friends move round to make a space for her to sit next to him. But he didn’t. There were no spare chairs anyway. She stood for an awkward moment, feeling foolish. Then Olivier jumped to his feet, and returned shortly with a chair, which he placed for Molly at the head of the table, with himself on her left and Sylvie on her right.
“Thank you very much.” She gave him her best smile and sat down, trying to ignore a tightness in her throat. Fabrice, sitting on the far side of Sylvie, was once again talking to Henri. Perhaps he was still in a huff with her. But it was a good sign that he felt able to introduce her to his friends. If she acted normal and joined good-humoredly in the conversation, he would soon thaw. They could talk properly when his friends left.
Sylvie turned to her. “So, you are English?”
“Yes.”
“From London?”
“Yes.”
“You came just for the weekend?”
“Yes.” Molly tried to inject a sparkle into these monosyllables.
“Have you known Fabrice long?”
“We met on Friday night. At a club.”
The girl raised her eyebrows and turned to say, “Is that true, Fabrice? You went to a club?”
The others picked up on her words, and piled in with questions. They seemed to be teasing him. Perhaps he didn’t normally go to clubs. Fabrice shrugged defensively, muttered something and gave a sheepish smile. Molly smiled, too, though she couldn’t understand what exactly they were saying, and tried to catch his eye. I’m sorry about last night, she wanted to say. Everything’s all right. I love you. But his eyes were lowered as he shook another cigarette out of a squashy packet.
Now they all started talking about clubs. They were great, n’est-ce pas? No, they were boring: you couldn’t talk properly. It was better to go to a bar. But what about dancing? What about . . . ? Molly was losing the thread. They were talking too fast for her to follow. Slangy phrases ricocheted back and forth. “Mais si, c’est de la balle” . . . “Quel con!” Other words didn’t even sound like proper French. She felt like someone who didn’t understand the rules of tennis, watching the ball ping incomprehensibly from side to side. Her lips stiffened with the effort of keeping an interested expression in place.
Olivier glanced at her face and took pity on her. “They’re speaking Verlan,” he said. “You know what that is?” Molly shook her head. It was a kind of slang, he explained, in which the syllables of a word were reversed. Métro became tromé; a bottle wasn’t a bouteille but a teille-bou; her own name would become Lee-mo. It had grown up in the tower blocks that encircled Paris, probably as a code to baffle outsiders, especially the police. Grass, for example, in the druggy sense—l’herbe—was known as “beu-her.” But now Verlan was hip, and peppered the speech of most young people in Paris.
“Or is-Par,” Molly quipped, trying to be witty, hoping that Fabrice would notice how well she was getting on with his friend. The Verlan thing seemed to mirror her own nightmarish sense that everything was back to front and upside down. Yesterday Fabrice had made love to her as if she was beautiful and desirable. Why was he neglecting her today? Perhaps he was embarrassed to be nice to her in front of his friends. But why? Though she tried to concentrate on Olivier, to whom she now began to explain Cockney rhyming slang, all her attention was tuned into Fabrice, as he joined in with the others, joking and arguing. She ached to hold his hand and nuzzle the warm skin of his neck, which she could practically feel—almost smell—from memory. She kept trying to catch his eye, but he barely looked in her direction.
“I had a very funny adventure today,” she said abruptly, breaking rather desperately into the conversation. But her story of Janine and the Rollerblades seemed to fall flat. It was difficult to do an imitation of an Australian accent in French. She told them all how funny it was to see poor Janine up-ended in the pond, and brutally forced by Alicia to walk home in her socks, but no one laughed. Molly also realized, too late, that it was not very tactful to tell a story about pilfered Rollerblades in front of Fabrice. Her voice ground to a halt.
“Go on telling me about your English slang.” Olivier leapt gallantly into the breach. At the same time Molly heard Sylvie saying, “Doesn’t Gabrielle like to Rollerblade?” Soon the others were all talking about Gabrielle, whoever she was—where was she? when was she coming back?—while Molly struggled on to demonstrate that, in English anyway, apples and pears rhymed with stairs.
Suddenly she was aware of a waiter standing by her chair, head cocked as if waiting for a response to something. For the first time Fabrice looked at her directly from the far end of the table, and said, “Do you want another drink?”
“No, I’m fine.” At least that’s what she meant to say. But she felt such a confusion of feelings—surprise, delight, a desperate desire to make the right answer, hurt that he hadn’t noticed she’d never had a drink in the first place—that what she actually came out with was, “I’m good.” Je suis bonne.
There was a startled pause, then a snigger went round the table. Even the waiter was trying not to smirk. As Olivier moved in smartly to deal with him, Molly saw Henri Ponytail lean forward to give Fabrice a teasing poke in the arm. “Is that true?” he murmured slyly. “She’s bonne?”
Molly felt herself blushing. There was some joke going on that she didn’t get. Keeping her tone light and a smile on her face, she turned to Sylvie and asked, “What did I say? My French is so hopeless. Did I make a frightful mistake?”
Sylvie waved a hand as if it wasn’t important.
“No, no, tell me,” said Molly. “I like to know these things. Really.”
Sylvie exchanged glances with Olivier across the table. Molly turned from one to the other. “Well?”
Olivier took a breath. “Sometimes—not in this instance, of course—but sometimes bonne is a short way of saying, euh, good to make love.”
“Oh,” said Molly, still not quite understanding. She turned back to Sylvie, who looked at her for a long moment with dark, unreadable eyes, then said in English, “It means fuckable.”
Molly jumped as if she’d been hit. Her arm collided with the waiter’s—he had reappeared to place something on the table. “Pardon,” he said, as if he was at fault.
Fuckable. The ugly word reverberated in her head, crashing and squealing like a car out of control. Of course no one meant her. That stupid Henri was just making a stupid, chauvini
st joke. Fabrice wouldn’t—couldn’t . . . But what was happening now? Sylvie had reached out to pick up a piece of folded paper from the table. She was rummaging in her bag. There was a general shifting and commotion. Molly realized that Olivier hadn’t been ordering more drinks: he’d been asking for the bill.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked Sylvie, feigning friendly interest. Thank God! They were leaving. At last she and Fabrice could talk in peace.
“To the cinema. There’s a Polish film, very classic.”
But now Molly saw that Fabrice had pulled out his wallet, too. He was throwing notes on the plate. He pushed back his chair. Molly’s pulse was beating so fast she was almost choking. “Fabrice, you’re not going, are you?” she called. Though she tried to sound casual, she could hear an undertone of shrill desperation. “I—I need to talk to you. About last night.” She was aware of the other three watching them curiously.
Fabrice twitched his watch into view, then gave a petulant sigh. “Okay, you go on ahead,” he said to the others. “I’ll catch you up later.” He subsided into his chair, tapping a hand on the table.
Molly stood up to shake everyone’s hand in the formal French manner, determined to give the appearance of normality. “Very nice to meet you, Olivier . . . Yes, good-bye. Enjoy the film.” Her fingers clung tightly to the back of her chair. She waited until the others shambled out of the doorway, then turned back and took the seat next to Fabrice. He had lit another cigarette.
“Hi,” she said softly, daring to press a fingertip, just for a second, to one of his knuckles. “You’re very quiet today. Are you still angry about last night?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “What do you want?”
Oh, God, he was still angry. “I—just wanted to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Well . . . you and me. Us.”
He pulled on his cigarette. “Us?”
Molly pretended not to notice the coldness in his tone. Her own was upbeat, persuasive, almost jaunty, as she said, “I thought we might do something together before my train leaves. I don’t need to be at the station until six fifteen. Or . . . I could stay on longer, if you wanted.”
“What for?” he grunted moodily. She longed to kiss him back to good humor, to stroke his hair and wrap her arms round his neck, but he was so touchy she feared he might reject her and make things worse.
“Look, I’m busy.” He fiddled with his cigarette packet. “I’ve got things to do.”
Molly swallowed, trying to keep her voice easy and light. “Couldn’t we do them together?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He tapped the packet irritably on the table, glared over her shoulder, then glanced into her face and quickly down again. “Gabrielle’s coming back tonight.”
An invisible hand was squeezing her throat. “Gabrielle? Who—? Why—?”
But she knew the truth even before he said the words. “My girlfriend.”
Molly was keeping such tight control of herself that she was scarcely breathing. “Oh, I see,” she managed to say. She bowed her head.
Fabrice swept back his hair. “Enfin, Molly, what did you expect? I have a life here, naturally. No doubt you have someone back in England, n’est-ce pas?”
Molly forced herself to nod dumbly, staring at her lap.
“Let’s not enact the big drama,” he went on. “We’re adults, after all. You’re not going to tell me I forced you into anything?”
“No, of course not.” Molly made herself look up into his face.
Whatever he saw in hers seemed to enrage him. He was scowling now, almost contemptuous. “You know, I am a little angry with you, Molly. I show you Paris, I take you to my studio, I give you dinner, and what do you do? You betray me to my father.” He was becoming worked up now. His eyes burned with indignation.
“Oh, Fabrice, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“Yes!” He slapped the table. “You try to tell me how to behave. Me, an artist! Who are you to give me lectures, hein? Just a stupid English girl here for the weekend, looking for a Frenchman to fuck.”
Molly recoiled, her jaw slack with shock. A stupid English girl : that’s what he thought. That’s what he had always thought. She’d got everything wrong. Everything.
With a supreme effort she raised her arm and pretended to look at her watch. “Oh, Fabrice, I’ve just remembered. I’m supposed to be meeting someone. I’m awfully sorry.” She pushed herself upright on stiff legs.
He stood up too, and slung on his jacket. Clutching her bag tightly, Molly stumbled through the blur of the café and onto the street. It felt as though she had rocks in her chest.
Outside, she turned to face him. Somehow she forced her features into a smile. “You’d better hurry and catch up with your friends.”
“Yes.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Alors, ciao.” He reached for her shoulders and kissed her swiftly on both cheeks, then walked away without a backward glance.
24
In the Jardin du Luxembourg the leaves were dying. Many had already fallen. They swirled in bright copper drifts and crunched under her feet as Molly turned through the open gates and stepped onto a wide sand-and-gravel path. She had not intended to come. She hardly knew how she had got here. It seemed that automatically, without volition, placing one foot in front of the other like a sleepwalker, she had arrived at the tall black railings, spiked with gold, that guarded this park, and followed them round until she was admitted inside.
The noise of traffic faded. She walked down a broad avenue in the hushed shadow of trees, so dense and closely planted they formed high walls of dark, mottled green. Her boots stepped in and out of puddles of sunlight. She was aware of trainers jogging past, the brisk strut of high heels, the erratic patter of children’s shoes, bouncing under rubbery legs. But she kept her head bowed to hide the tears that squeezed from her eyes. Her arms were wrapped tightly round her ribs as if she was cold.
Stupid, stupid girl! How could she have ever imagined that Fabrice cared about her, even loved her? In his eyes she was just an easy lay, a casual fuck, bonne. To think that she’d worried if she was intelligent enough for him—as if he cared two hoots about her brain! To think that she’d stripped for him in the name of art, lapped up his flattery about her “sensational” body, willingly made love in a stranger’s flat, then preached to him about morality! He must have been laughing himself sick all weekend. At this very moment he was probably regaling his friend Henri with the hilarious story of her gullibility. These English girls: what pushovers. One empty compliment, one smoldering glance, and they’re anybody’s. Luckily they all go home on Sunday night, ha ha.
Molly fumbled in her bag for something to blow her nose on, but all she could find was a leaflet from the Rodin museum. She blew her nose on it anyway, and dropped it into an elegant dark green urn that seemed to be a bin. Good-bye, Fabrice.
But how cruel he had been, to leave her without a shred of pride. She pictured herself as a figure on a high, sunny cliff, blithely walking along the edge, dizzy with happiness, eyes starry with her own fantasies, ignoring all warning signs—until he had simply reached out and casually pushed her over. “Just a stupid English girl looking for a Frenchman to fuck.”
He must be right. As usual, she had romanticized everything, elevating their relationship to love. In his eyes there had never been any relationship in the first place: no meeting of minds, no spark of enjoyment, no “twins of sorrow.” In fact, their “relationship” had turned out to be exactly the thing that had always seemed most repugnant to her: sex without feeling, a one-time bonk. Go on, say the word—a shag.
Molly felt sick, and lifted her head quickly to gulp in fresh air. To her surprise, a pony was ambling past, led by a rough-looking man with a bandanna round his neck. A small girl sat on it stiffly, just managing to contain her pride and excitement with a furious, quelling frown. Her parents walked by her side, alternately murmuring warnings and approval. Now Molly coul
d hear a repetitive, echoing sound like corks popping, and turned her head to see white figures running and leaping behind a high, wire-netting fence: they were playing tennis. On the other side of the path a group of men stood round a boules court, grave as judges.
The park was coming alive around her. Half of Paris seemed to be out for its Sunday stroll: noisy families, elderly women still smartly dressed from church and Sunday lunch, young men with jackets slung over their shoulders, even a policeman, very spruce in navy blue, with a pale blue stripe around his chest and a Charles de Gaulle cap. She passed a leotarded woman practising t’ai chi, two men leaning over a chessboard, girls sitting with books on their laps and bare legs propped to the sun on a second chair. Most of all Molly noticed the couples, drifting with their arms wrapped round each other, kissing on benches, stopping in quiet spots beneath the trees to hold hands and stare into each other’s eyes. Their happiness taunted her.
Up ahead, like the light at the end of the tunnel, was an open space where a jet of water sparkled in the sunshine. Molly remembered why she was here. “A friend.” Could that be true? Was it a joke, a hoax? She stepped into the sunshine and paused by an urn at the top of a broad flight of steps. She was looking down on a large, ornamental pond, where children guided toy sailing boats back and forth with short sticks. Around its edge people sunbathed, read and gossiped on green metal chairs scattered between clipped orange trees and African palms. The whole area was encircled by raised stone balustrading, decorated with urns and statues. Molly could hear laughter, the splash of water, bees humming sleepily among the flowers. On the far side of the pond, a stone staircase, mirroring her own, led to a shaded avenue. To her right, another avenue provided a long vista to a distant domed building. Something about the scene, supremely artful yet almost comically alive, tickled a corner of her memory. This reminded her of something. What was it?
