Dial M for Merde

by Stephen Clarke

  M and Elodie joined forces to slap me on the back and dislodge the crème brûlée I’d inhaled. ‘It’s a good idea, Paul,’ M said. ‘Elodie can get a room at the hotel, then we can all go to Marseille together tomorrow. You can drop her at the station while I go to my meeting.’

  ‘You have another meeting there?’ I asked, when I could speak again.

  ‘Yes. Why don’t you phone the hotel and ask if they’ve got a room?’

  I went outside to book a second room. I also took the opportunity to put in a call to Léanne.

  ‘A meeting tomorrow? This is it.’ She sounded very pleased. ‘We are coming to the climax.’

  ‘Great,’ I said, though I was feeling a lot less orgasmic than she clearly was.

  After lunch, we crashed out on the small deserted beach below the restaurant. I could sense waves of envy flowing down from the terrace above. How did the Englishman do it, they were thinking, how come he gets to lie there between the two topless babes?

  I didn’t want to be ungrateful, but I would have liked to tell them that our carefree appearance was slightly deceptive.

  I was dozing fitfully when the pebbles by my head began to vibrate. All three of us reached for our phones, but it was Elodie who came up trumps.

  ‘Uh? Who? Qui?’ she answered. ‘What?’ She listened to a long, droning question. ‘No, of course Valéry’s uncle has not responded,’ she snapped. ‘Paul has posed the question yesterday only.’

  Now I knew who was calling. Only someone having Jake’s Franglais inflicted on them would start to talk like that.

  ‘What? Honestly! Without doubt your festival of posy is important to you, but I am in the middle of a catastrophe with my plans of marriage.’ Elodie grimaced, presumably at the way her ability to speak English had so suddenly evaporated. ‘No, I will not pass you Valéry’s number. Leave him tranquil with your festival! What? Come to the marriage? Lobby direct with Dadou? T’es fou ou quoi?’ She wailed the last sentence, but using French seemed to have a magical calming effect on her, because she suddenly began to smile and speak in a conciliatory tone. ‘Sorry, yes, why not come? Bon idea. If you can get a plane ticket. I will tell Dadou to expect you …’ She hung up and giggled. ‘It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘Dadou loves the raggedy, grungy type. I will give him a hint that Jake is gay and we will all have a lot of fun.’

  As if to prove it, she laughed loud enough to scare every fish out of the inlet.

  After a day of good food, sun, wine and swimming, it’s only natural to feel mellow when you finally get to bed. You’ve showered off the salt, the hot water has relaxed your muscles, and you can wiggle your toes beneath the sheets with a real sense that life is worth living. Having a naked woman lying next to you would, to most men I know, count as a definite plus.

  To me, though, M was a threat. I almost wished she wasn’t there. Which was a horrific first in my life. Ever since I’d realized that there were more things that guys and girls could do together than play tag and pull each other’s hair, I’d dreamt of ending every day next to a girl shaped exactly like M.

  And now here I was, living the dream, and I wished I was back with the teddy bears. It was like a punishment invented by the Greek gods. Except that it had been invented by people even crueller than Zeus and co. – the French police. I could have howled in frustration. Instead I asked M, who had just settled into bed and was probably wondering what, if anything, would happen next, ‘Have you told your people you want to get out of the project?’

  She groaned. ‘I really don’t want to talk about work, Paul.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ve tried but they won’t let you?’

  ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Look, do we have to talk about that? Or anything? I don’t want to talk. All I really want is to make love. Can we make love?’

  She shifted towards me, and I froze.

  ‘Elodie’s just next door,’ I objected. ‘These walls are paper-thin. I’m sure I heard her drop her knickers on the floor.’

  ‘I won’t ask how you know what it sounds like when she drops her knickers.’ I could almost hear M smiling. She moved even closer, and an arm slid across my belly. ‘Come on, Paul. We don’t have to rock the foundations. We can be quiet. I bet there have been times when you had to keep the volume down. When you brought a girl home and you didn’t want your folks to know?’ The hand began sliding lower down my body, fingers flicking lightly across my skin. ‘Or maybe you’re on a plane, everyone’s asleep or watching the movie, you’re wrapped up in your airline blanket and your girlfriend reaches under it and starts to give you a little massage?’

  M was now doing things that would definitely have distracted me from the in-flight entertainment.

  ‘Or you go back to a girl’s place and she shares a room with a friend, so you have to get under the sheets and make love slowly and quietly, without waking up the other girl?’

  Now her whole body was softly caressing me. It seemed to be hovering over my skin like the warm rays of the sun.

  I didn’t move – I didn’t have to – as she climbed on top of me. Then, gently, almost soundlessly, except for faint creaks from the bedframe, restrained moans, and – finally – a pair of almost simultaneous gasps, with my body remembering why it enjoyed doing things like this, I became Mata Hari.

  I fucked for France.

  M exhaled deeply and let her whole weight press on my chest. Both of us were silent for a full minute.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ came a voice through the wall. ‘You can do it again and make all the noise you want.’

  3

  When I got up next morning, M was on the beach below the hotel, phoning. She was listening, nodding, pacing back and forth. I looked down on her from our window.

  My phone started to buzz by the bed. It was Léanne.

  ‘Bonjour, Paul. At last you wake up. You have slept a long time. Does this mean you had a good night?’

  ‘So you’re watching my hotel window?’ I asked, avoiding her question.

  ‘Yes, you can say cuckoo to me if you look at the garden over the beach. But please don’t do this, because M is looking at your window right now.’

  So our every movement was being observed. I wondered if the surveillance included infra-red binoculars, because we’d left the window open last night, and the cops could well have been peering in from one of the buildings on the other side of the bay.

  ‘She is talking with Marseille,’ Léanne said. ‘She is arranging her rendezvous.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘We are sure it is with the man who will accept her … commission.’ She meant the hitman.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You drive M and your friend to Marseille, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I know today was the end of your car-hire contract, but we have – how do you say? – elongated it for you. So you leave as soon as M wants you to, OK? No time for swimming and such luxuries.’

  ‘OK.’ The passivity of last night’s lovemaking seemed to have done something to me. My body had decided to do nothing except take orders from women.

  ‘Come on, Paul, breakfast, then we leave.’ It was Elodie, bursting into the room as if she hoped to interrupt M and myself in the middle of something naughty. ‘I must go to Paris to buy a dress. I will get it today and then return down south to support Valéry.’

  ‘Why don’t you buy one in Marseille?’

  ‘What, buy a wedding dress outside Paris? En province? Quelle idée!’ I might as well have suggested getting married in a mud hut and serving cockroaches at the reception. ‘Allez, Paul, let’s go.’

  ‘OK.’ This morning, a female wish was my command.

  We were on the outskirts of Marseille when Elodie’s phone rang.

  ‘Ah, c’est toi,’ she grunted, and then listened for a few seconds before tapping me on the shoulder. ‘He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘My father.’ She held the phone to my ear and
I heard a very smug-sounding Jean-Marie telling me how brilliant he’d been.

  ‘I have talked to some important friends, I have used my influence, I have contacted my, uh, contacts, and I think that I have something,’ he said.

  Yes, I thought, an ego so puffed up that it could fly him across the Atlantic.

  ‘You know that the President and I have certain things in common?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes?’ The ego, plus the belief that the world would be a better place if everyone spoke French and drove Renaults.

  ‘Yes. For the first thing, we live in the same part of Paris. Before he was President, he was our major.’ He meant mayor. ‘And you know that I represent his political party here?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Yes, but not extreme right.’

  ‘No, I meant right, as in OK.’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Go on, Jean-Marie, what were you saying?’

  ‘I don’t know, you have interrupted me.’ I’d forgotten that you don’t cut in when a Frenchman is asking rhetorical questions.

  ‘You have things in common with the President …’

  ‘Ah yes.’ He was happy again. ‘For the second thing, we are both very interested in, you know, immobile, uh, how do you say?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said, wondering if this boasting was going to last much longer.

  ‘L’immobilier. Houses, apartments.’

  ‘Property,’ I said. ‘Real estate.’

  ‘Yes. We are both part of a deal in our district that is, shall I say, not one hundred per cent conventional.’ He chuckled. He liked that word. ‘We are, if you want, associés, how do you say?’

  ‘Partners in crime?’

  ‘Crime? Who mentioned crime? The President cannot commit a crime. He is immune. It is illegal to accuse a president of crime. And anyway, do you think I could be implicated in something illegal?’

  Which was a bit like asking whether pigeons ever poo on statues.

  ‘Oh no, of course not,’ I said. ‘Sorry I mentioned it. Please go on.’ Both of the girls were staring at me, wondering what the hell we were talking about. I had no idea myself.

  ‘OK, OK.’ Jean-Marie slowly unruffled his feathers. ‘This means that I can maybe have some influence on the President. You understand?’ This wasn’t a rhetorical question.

  ‘I’m beginning to. Go on.’

  ‘You know he is a friend of these aristocratic imbeciles the Bonnepoires? One of them gives him – how do you say? – des pipes. Before the press conferences.’

  ‘Blowjobs?’ Now M and Elodie were even more curious about what was going on. ‘You mean Ludivine, the spokeslady?’

  ‘Yes. And you can criticize French presidents if you want, but they are always grateful to the women who give them …’

  ‘Blowjobs,’ I prompted.

  ‘Yes. Blowjobs.’ He memorized it, as if it might come in useful one day in his political career.

  ‘And this, in combination with our, uh, immobile deal together, can be very useful. Now, I am going to see the President at a soirée tonight. I think that if I talk to him, maybe he can influence the family to keep the marriage on the correct date, the day before Valéry’s birthday. Voilà.’ I could almost hear him applauding himself.

  ‘That’s great, Jean-Marie, but why tell me? Why didn’t you tell Elodie?’

  ‘Huh, we are still officially fâchés. Angry. You can tell her. To me, she would shout and say that I am doing this only so we can get the old vache’s money.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you?’

  He was still chuckling as he rang off.

  4

  M suggested that I drop her off at the Vieux Port, where she’d reserved a room for us, then take Elodie on to the railway station.

  For the first time that morning, I disobeyed a female order, and as soon as M had disappeared into the hotel, I started a rapid-fire apology to Elodie.

  Really, really sorry, I said, but would she be pissed off if I left her to get a taxi and doubled back?

  ‘Why?’ She was surprised more than annoyed.

  ‘It’s M.’ I’d rehearsed my explanation in my head. ‘She’s been coming to Marseille a lot, and every time she comes here, she shakes me off and goes to meet someone. I’m sure it’s another man.’

  ‘Oh.’ Elodie put a consoling hand on my arm. She had clearly noticed the tensions between M and myself. ‘You think she’s going to meet him now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, just drop me on the corner of the main street. I’ll get a taxi.’

  Léanne’s trick had worked yet again. In France, you only had to hint at relationship problems and you could act as erratically as you wanted.

  ‘Call me and tell me how it goes,’ Elodie said as we unloaded her case. ‘And remember – it might not be a man. It could be a woman.’ She poked my ribs to show that she was joking. Or half-joking.

  I left the car in a side street, ignoring the parking meters. Then I nipped back to the Vieux Port and found a doorway from where I could see the entrance to our hotel.

  The hotel itself was four storeys of balconies pointing straight along the harbour. I didn’t know which was our room, but M had said it was high up, to give us a good view and reduce the noise from the bustling nightlife below. She must have checked in by now, I calculated. She was probably in the room, unpacking her essentials, changing into more urban clothes.

  If you had to hang around on a street corner, it was a pretty pleasant spot to do so. The early-afternoon sun was shining straight at me, and a large pleasure cruiser was just arriving at the nearby jetty, idling up to the harbourside with its cargo of smiling boat-trippers.

  I wondered why they call it the ‘old port’ – on the whole, it looked pretty recent. Half of the water space was taken up by rank upon rank of new yachts. There were thousands of them crammed into the rectangular basin. One side of the harbour was lined with angular modern apartment buildings, and between the wide café terraces and the waterside was a busy road, constantly growling with traffic.

  The distant entrance to the port was obviously older, though – an ancient castle with sheer walls and a stubby tower that was a sunburnt version of Collioure’s historic willy.

  M stepped into the street, and I shrank back into my doorway. She was wearing sunglasses, and had changed into jeans. She looked right and left, as if checking for observers, then walked briskly towards the nearest junction.

  Next minute, I was swearing in fluent French. ‘Oh merdy putainy crotty shit.’ Well, fluent Franglais, anyway.

  She was getting a bloody bike. Marseille had Vélibs, like Paris, and she was going to pedal off on one.

  What’s more, she obviously had a subscription, because she swiped a card at one of the bike stands, wiggled the saddle and the handlebars to make sure everything was in working order, and pushed out into the traffic.

  I had no time to fiddle about with a credit card and do likewise. Keeping up a steady stream of bilingual swearing, I jogged after her. Luckily, the bikes were the same heavy model as in Paris, so she was having a bit of trouble getting up speed. I reached the street corner only a few yards behind her, and had a little laugh at what I saw next – a hill, leading to an even steeper hill, topped in the distance by a giant golden statue of the Virgin Mary, waving down at me from a veritable mountaintop.

  There was no way M was going to speed up there.

  Sure enough, she began to wind through a grid of dark, right-angled streets. It reminded me of when I’d had to risk my life to keep up with Elodie in Paris. This time, on foot, I was much safer, but I couldn’t say the same for M. Cars were parked on both sides, and the streets were dangerously narrow. She was having to concentrate hard on keeping ahead of the impatient drivers behind her, and there was no way she could look back and see me behind her, dodging past dawdling pedestrians.

  She rode by the Roman-temple Palais de Justice, and didn’t even glance at two bizarre statues of golden cherubs apparently trying to stop t
hemselves falling into a rubbish-strewn fountain. The road was flatter here, and she began to get up speed. I did my best to keep pace, but lost sight of her just before a roundabout.

  The central reservation was a grassy mound with a statue of a frock-coated politician receiving something from Marianne, France’s female equivalent of Uncle Sam. Either she was handing him a parchment or trying to stab him with a baguette. I trotted around the mound, gazing along each exit to try and spot M’s pedalling backside, and drew a blank. A very sexy blank, though.

  On the corner of one exit was something I’d never seen in France before – a women’s sex shop. I’d seen the men’s versions all over Paris, of course – glitzy windows with posters of pouting women, offers of cheap relief in a ‘cabine’, a curtain of plastic streamers protecting passers-by from the sordid goings-on inside.

  This place was completely different. It was a wide, double-fronted shop window, with an uninterrupted view of the interior, and the overriding colours were clean pink and purple rather than the dingy black and red of the guys’ dives.

  On one side of the entrance was a hanging garden of undies, with the emphasis on transparency and strategically placed holes. On the other was a row of little bottles of flavoured lubricants, and a display of things to tickle, massage and penetrate women’s intimate parts. Some of the vibrators had animal heads and faces, including a smily pink dolphin and a grinning blue mouse. Who, I wondered, would want to get shagged by a vibrating rodent?

  ‘You want to go inside, Monsieur?’ A tall girl in a tight black T-shirt and low-cut jeans was standing in the doorway, smoking. One of the shop assistants, I guessed. ‘Because normally, it’s interdit for unaccompanied men,’ she added apologetically.

  ‘Ah, merci, non, je—’ I stopped in mid-stutter. The thing was, I’d seen M inside the shop. She was standing near the back of the store, between the corsets and the furry handcuffs, as if she was waiting for someone to bring out the split-crotch cycling shorts she’d ordered.