A Stranger in Paris

by Karen Webb

  Henri Martin made a pfff noise. It was a noise that only the French could get away with. It signified utter disgust and was as much about the lip and head gestures as the word itself.

  ‘The agency is meant to inspect my tenants. I ask for three-years’ employment on a permanent contract. Are you on permanent contracts?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  We were both on a trial run. Henri Martin hurled his cigarette over the balcony like a cricket ball. I had the feeling he’d like to throw us both over after it.

  ‘I have been tricked,’ he said. ‘You are stupid girls. Des imbeciles. Des idiotes. The agency has dealings with the Chinese criminal world. I have a friend who has been investigating. He told me to come home and see what was happening. Because they know we are investigating them – this (he pointed in the direction of his empty flat) is my “thank you gift”, along with you two useless individuals. I have not had any rent yet. The deposit you were supposed to pay, where is that? You at least had the decency to pay this, I suppose?’

  We hung our heads.

  ‘So,’ he laughed. ‘I am housing you rent-free, without even a lump sum to pay for any damages.’

  ‘We don’t have much, but we are honest,’ I said.

  Henri Martin looked around the room which was empty bar the two camp beds and an upturned wooden crate, which we were using both as a table and a chair – a multifunctional object in our lives.

  ‘Then it will not take you long to move,’ he said. ‘I will be back tomorrow evening. I must go to the hotel now, since I no longer have a bed to sleep in. I will meet you here at eight. And you must be packed. I will expect my rent.’

  Henri Martin’s visit threw Jessica into a panic. I had never seen her in such a state. She began to throw her clothes haphazardly into her suitcase, swiping her shampoo and make-up from the bathroom.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘We’ll find a new flat. We both have jobs now.’

  She wouldn’t listen. She went out into Paris without her coat and returned to tell me that she had found a Euro-lines coach home to Manchester. It was a journey lasting over twenty hours but it was cheap and would take her north. Our world had crumbled. The only thing she wanted to do was bolt. For good this time. She left from La Place de la République at eleven o’clock that night.

  ‘So, this is goodbye,’ I said. ‘What about your bed?’

  ‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘I want nothing of this life.’

  The difference between us was that Jessica had a home to go back to. Her old bedroom, painted black in the early days of her conversion to existentialism, was still there, waiting for her. I knew there wasn’t a safehouse waiting for me across The Channel, but thought I’d try anyway. I went to a local phone box and called my dad. Although I didn’t know it, he’d met someone and was also in the process of leaving home.

  ‘Can I come back?’

  ‘Your mum won’t like that. We sold your bed.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t wanna come home, kid. There’d only be arguments. What the hell do you wanna come back for? You’ve got yourself a job now, and you’ll have far more fun in Paris than you will stuck back here. I’ll send you some money to tide you over till you get your first wages.’

  ‘All right. Thanks.’

  ‘Bye, kid.’

  ‘Bye, Dad.’

  Chapter 20

  Jessica left the flat around nine that evening, loaded up like a packhorse. I had a visit from Henri Martin to look forward to. He arrived on the dot, walked in and began pacing the room like a panther. He spotted immediately that we were one tenant down.

  ‘Friend gone?’

  I nodded, dreading the next question which I knew would be about money and deposits. He gave a contemptuous snort.

  ‘Come with me.’

  I followed him out of the flat and to the end of the corridor to a door which I hadn’t noticed before. We climbed some stairs and pushed through a fire escape, coming out onto the roof top. Perhaps he wanted to push me to my death.

  There was a small terrace area which overlooked the city towards the Parc de la Villette. I could see the futuristic statues in metal over the slate rooftops of the building opposite. Henri lit a cigarette and leant on the railings. I noticed that there was a small wrought-iron chair in the corner and a collection of cigarette stubs. I wondered how often he came up here. If we had known of this escape route, Jessica and I might have been able to hide from Magwitch and have our picnic dinners up here with the pigeons. It was sad Jessica wasn’t here to share this moment and I felt a pang of sorrow that our adventures together were over.

  ‘I love this view,’ Henri said. ‘Sometimes I come up here and write when I’m home.’

  ‘What do you write?’

  ‘Oh, stuff for work; news articles about the war, political articles. Poems sometimes, and the start of a novel. I might pack it all in one day, stay here and write books.’

  ‘That’s what I want to do. But I don’t feel I’ve lived enough yet.’

  ‘I’m guessing you don’t have my money.’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘No surprise there then. Well, it looks as though I’m going to have to put this one down to experience.’

  ‘I can pay you back, when I get my wages.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ve a whole house full of goods to replace. Let’s hope the insurance people are kind. I put it down to good karma. Maybe if I’m good to you, they’ll be good to me. But you have to leave the flat. I’ll give you three days.’

  ‘Merci beaucoup.’

  He looked at me seriously now.

  ‘Oh, and one piece of advice. Don’t tell those bastards where you’re going.’

  I didn’t see Henri again. I liked him and sensed a twinge of regret. I could easily have developed a crush on this philosophic man of letters. He looked like someone who should have been raiding lost arks; a man who, like Icarus, was drawn to danger; someone with stories to tell, and lines of fatigue around his eyes that I fancied were the vestiges of experiences in war-torn countries across the world. It was childish to romanticise. I was no better than Jessica with her precious Dominique Fromentin. I respected the fact that although I was in his debt Henri did not try to take advantage of the situation, while at the same time regretting the fact he didn’t once try. I knew that for Henri Martin, I was nothing more than a silly English girl who couldn’t pay her rent.

  Back at the office I confided in Madame Calmelane that I was being evicted. She sent me to see her second-in-command, a woman called Henriette Fresnel, who was responsible for staff social welfare. Henriette told me that I had the same chin and smile as Jane Birkin, the English actress who had married Gainsbourg, and spent most of the meeting staring at me. Henriette was kind, with muscly legs and an athletic figure. She reminded me of our sports teacher at school; one of those no-frills kind of women who only wore skirts under duress and was happiest in a tracksuit jogging round the park.

  Henriette put my name on a waiting list for an HLM studio flat. HLM buildings were the equivalent of low-rental council flats. The company had a wide reach and could prioritise rentals for its staff. There wasn’t anywhere available but Henriette had a solution.

  ‘I have spoken to Lisbeth,’ she said. ‘She is happy to let you stay in her house in Bezons until we find something. Do you have any objection?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said, ‘if Lisbeth doesn’t mind.’

  ‘She will be glad of the rent,’ said Henriette, ‘though it’s only temporary.’

  I wondered aloud how I was going to get my stuff out of the flat. It would be awful to run into Magwitch now that Jessica had gone. Henriette made a quick phone call and arranged for a kindly salesman with a van to come and help me that evening at six. The company certainly took excellent care of its staff. Six o’clock was prime time for Magwitch visits, but this was not something I could explain to Henriette. I tried to change the time with the man with the van, but to no avail. He couldn’t do
it any later, as he had a wife and family to get home to. I hoped that we could clear out before my ‘gentleman’ caller arrived – if he dared to come back – having organised the stripping of Henri Martin’s flat. I sensed it would take more than this to dissuade him. When we arrived, my colleague, whose name was Bernard, a kindly plodding man with bulbous eyes who wouldn’t be rushed, waited patiently for a space and carefully parked the van outside the apartment door, his warning lights flashing.

  ‘Will this take long?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I’ve packed my bags, there’s only a camp bed which needs to come down, if you could manage that.’

  I’d have to leave Jessica’s bed there. Like Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, the only trace of her that remained was a slight indentation in the sheets.

  ‘Not a problem.’

  My heart raced as we opened the door to the flat. The door-handle was devoid of its customary food parcel. Our benefactor hadn’t graced us with his presence yet. I ran around, scooping up my belongings and stuffing things into carrier bags. We made a first trip to the van and then returned for the camp bed. As Bernard slammed the van door shut I jumped so hard I practically landed on the roof-top terrace. Behind the van door was Magwitch in all his glory, same black-heeled boots, a pair of tight black trousers and a shiny silk shirt badly buttoned, to reveal his protruding stomach. He smiled as if we were the oldest of friends and shook hands with Bernard like a benevolent parent whose daughter was going on a date.

  ‘Going out?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m leaving.’

  ‘And the other girl – the dark-haired one – she is gone?’

  ‘Yes. Back to England. For good.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Je vois. Well, I need new address, to forward letters – if they come. A few more matters to discuss together, I think, but I see you busy. But we meet again. Soon, yes?’

  ‘I don’t remember the address right now,’ I said, which was true.

  ‘I wait – and you search. Yes?’

  Bernard smiled and patted the man on the shoulder.

  ‘I have it,’ he said. ‘Just a minute.’

  My heart sank. Bernard had unwittingly signed over one of my fingers, if not two. Maybe he’d take an extra one for Jessica, seeing as she wasn’t here. My well-meaning colleague took out a pen and paper from his pocket and pressing the biro firmly into the paper as he methodically inscribed the numbers. He pushed the paper into Magwitch’s hand. Magwitch looked, smiled and pocketed it.

  ‘Until we meet again,’ he said, and tripped off with a tip-tap, like the troll on the Billy Goat’s Bridge. Bernard registered my look of horror.

  ‘Allez, montez,’ he said, and held open the door of the van so that I could climb in.

  We set off. I wanted to hurl the contents of my stomach out of the car window.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bernard said, as we got going. ‘I gave him the address of my ex-mother-in-law. She’s a complete bitch. Let her deal with him.’

  ‘You didn’t give him Lisbeth’s address?’

  ‘Do I look stupid?’

  ‘Thank fuck for that!’

  I sank back into the plush leather seat. Free at last.

  * * *

  Lisbeth lived with her father in a small house under the Bezons bridge. It was a temporary measure, while she waited for the large three-bedroom HLM (or council) flat Human Resources had promised her. Her father wasn’t there; something to do with a new woman. The house was ramshackle, and the cars shook the foundations as they whooshed up on the overhead bypass. There was a miniscule kitchen in the original hallway, bleeding into a living room, off which there was a single bedroom where I’d be setting up my camp bed. Lisbeth had a a double room on the other side of the kitchen.

  She let me into a secret almost as soon as I’d heaved my last bag through the door.

  ‘Extension 111,’ she said, ‘have you seen him?’

  ‘I don’t remember. What’s his name?’

  We often referred to employees by their extension number.

  ‘Rocheran, Charles-Henri.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lisbeth winked. ‘One day, now we live together, I’ll tell you,’ she said with a heavy mascara wink.

  The following week, a group of managers came out of a conference room and shook hands with their clients in the reception area. There was much laughter and false guffawing. A man with salt and pepper hair and round owlish glasses was centre of the group. Lisbeth nudged me and reddened.

  ‘That’s him!’ she hissed. ‘Extension 111.’

  ‘Et alors?’

  ‘I’m dating him. But you can’t tell anyone. He’s a cadre, you see.’

  In between the shrill shriek of the switchboard and the hundred repetitions of ‘Good morning, can you hold the line please,’ Lisbeth explained to me that Madame Calmelane and the rest of staff would disapprove of her relationship because of the difference in status. In other words, Lisbeth wasn’t considered worthy enough to be shagged by someone higher up the in-house pyramid of staff members. There wasn’t an official ban on relationships between staff members – others had met and married, but not out of rank.

  ‘I am not even a secretary yet,’ she said. ‘I’m just on switchboard. Charles-Henri is Head of Sales. And he’s married.’

  ‘Isn’t that the worse part?’

  ‘No! His wife left him, long before we got together. She ran off with another man and abandoned her two children: a boy and a girl. The girl was only six weeks old when she left. She fell in love with another man while she was pregnant.’

  Lisbeth smiled, her face lighting up.

  ‘I love the children,’ she said. ‘They are so adorable. I go to the house to play with them. Charles-Henri lives in Bougival in a mansion. He lives next to Gerard Depardieu’s wife and son. But he’s all alone and sad.’

  I looked at the laughing man and thought how ridiculous it was. If Lisbeth made him happy, why should they have to keep their relationship a secret?

  * * *

  I soon settled into Lisbeth’s house, with an assurance from Henriette that I wouldn’t have to wait long for my own apartment. On our first weekend together Lisbeth got up early to make hot croissants, with jam and butter, fresh from the oven, pouring steaming black coffee into mugs. Warm croissants were something Jessica and I had dreamt of at weekends, as we broke hard lumps of sesame-seed cake together. It was one of those French moments that reminded us we were in Paris, like hot onion soup before the cinema, or pancakes with hot frothy chocolate in the Tuileries, while pigeons pecked around our feet.

  Lisbeth plugged in a small electric oven and placed the croissants carefully on the grill. We were busy drying our hair in the other room and putting make-up on by the mirror when a strange smell wafted in, followed by a hideous squeaking. We searched the room but found nothing. It was only when Lisbeth opened the grill that we saw four croissants neatly laid out, and next to the fourth, lined up in perfect symmetry, a dead mouse freshly toasted to death. It was my first experience of mice. Horrified, Lisbeth donned a pair of gloves and disposed of the corpse, insisting we eat the croissants anyway, though the death scene on the grill had spoilt the romance of the moment. She was nervous that morning, checking her watch every five minutes. Charles-Henri was due at the house at any moment.

  He arrived late that afternoon, swooping her up into his arms to apologise for the delay. After a few sucker-fish movements on the fullness of Lisbeth’s lips, Charles-Henri greeted me in a friendly manner quite unlike his usual pompous work manner. I was surprised he didn’t mind the full-on kissing with me in the room. As I sat on the small, squashed sofa, he loomed over me at an unfortunate angle to plant a kiss on my cheeks, thrusting a huge erection encased in a pair of tight jeans into my face. Frolicking with a staff member at the lower end of the company’s organisational chart had apparently not had a negative effect on the man’s libido, and desire bounced from the walls of the tiny room. After much slobbering and pawing,
the couple departed for the evening, Lisbeth wrapped around her lover like a seahorse to its mate.

  I checked out Lisbeth’s wardrobe for a pretty dress. She’d said I could borrow anything I liked. I wanted to look my best tonight. I was off on a ‘date’ of my own. I’d been invited to visit a barge in the suburbs of Paris where the river Seine flowed into the Oise. It belonged to an Englishman called Jay Allaway who worked on the 24th floor of our office. He was a tall, good-looking man in his late twenties with a crest of shiny jet-black hair and an impressive set of perfect white teeth. He was also a cadre.

  Jay was restoring the barge, which was moored up north where it was much cheaper than any mooring under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. His project, once the boat was finished, was to give up his flat and live there permanently. Life near the water’s edge was something which appealed to my romantic side. I used to fantasise about a house in Cornwall, or life on a barge.

  It would be a relief to communicate in English again. Since Jessica’s departure my life had been led in pidgin French. My language skills were still cringe-worthy, and at the end of a long day massacring the language, my head ached. There were times when I loathed hearing French, and no more so than when I switched the radio on in the morning. Living in France at this time, meant learning French … being French. There was no choice. I suffered for my language skills. Hair loss and eczema were tiny details in the process. If I could speak French, anyone could.

  But that night my date with Jay was a welcome opportunity to slip back into English. Even with Lisbeth, whose English was good, I was aware of speaking slowly and clearly so that she would understand every word, avoiding any typically English idioms or expressions.

  As Jay drove and the bustling city of lights fell behind us, we chatted and relaxed to music. He pulled off the main road and headed down towards the riverbank. It was almost dark. We were in a quiet country backwater, the riverbank lined with weeping willows. It was hard to imagine that Paris was only an hour away. We climbed on deck and Jay took out a can of thick black gloss. He lit a small oil-lamp and began to paint. The outside world vanished into a thick blanket of inky darkness far from the shrill beep of the switchboard, the lamplight casting its mellow glow onto Jay’s face as he painted. The boat was called Le Rival. Concentrated on his brushstrokes, his voice rich and soft, Jay told me that he’d grown up on the boat but that it had been sold on by his father many years ago.