That March, still in pursuit of profound philosophizing, I came across an advertisement in L’Humanité, the Communist newspaper which I used to buy from a street seller, more out of a desire for some conversation than from any interest in Communism. It announced that the playwright Arthur Adamov was to speak at a meeting near the Sorbonne to commemorate the Commune of 1871. Adamov was a cult figure from the Theatre of the Absurd to Bar and me. We were unaware that he had changed tack with a play called Spring ’71 in a socialist realist style, in which scenes from the everyday life of the Commune were interspersed with historical commentary.
Drawn by Adamov’s esoteric reputation, we sat through interminable speeches in a vast hall until a wiry, dark man with hunched shoulders shambled forwards from the wings. Communism, he told us, would not necessarily make us happy; it would, however, enable us to distinguish the problems which were our own responsibility. At last a French person talking like the books! Adamov could have signed me up on the spot on this open-ended promise. But instead he was gone and the hall was echoing with the strains of the Internationale. Nonconformists and non-Communists that we were, Bar and I remained seated as we did for the National Anthem at the pictures in Leeds; no indulgent, hypocritical collectivity for us. Such dissent made us somewhat conspicuous and a young man with a neatly trimmed French student style of beard invited us to have a coffee. He turned out to be a veritable zealot who lectured us about the Cause’ and – just like the Methodist ministers – decided I needed saving.
Not only was I drawing blanks with my endeavours to find Parisian intellectuals, it was even proving impossible to reflect alone. No sooner had I settled on a bench or down by the quais than I would hear a voice in my ear making sexual propositions. I would scowl and try to sound gruff, but as I was not really sure how to be gruff in French, I would usually end up marching off infuriated.
Such incidents were generally annoying rather than alarming. However, one night, returning home along the dark and deserted streets of the Seizième, where I had moved into a maid’s room at the top of an old apartment block, I heard steps behind me. The buildings in the area were tall and set back and the pavements empty, as the rich residents tended to drive home in their cars rather than from the métro Ranelagh. The click, click of soles on the pavement started to go faster. I began moving more quickly. Again the steps accelerated. Fearful that the distance between us was closing, I glanced back. A man was drawing purposefully towards me. It was his intent silence that conveyed menace. At least the ridiculous chat-up lines gave a degree of normality to being accosted. The street was so quiet I could hear him panting as his pace quickened. A cold sweat spread over my brow. I had become prey. Half running, I approached the grey-painted gate on the outside of my building. As I reached the handle, he was so close I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I lunged through the gate, slamming it behind me. That night even the punitive face of the concierge was welcome.
Terror in a city was utterly unfamiliar to me. You could wander around in Leeds at that time without fear. After a month or so, I tried to copy the Parisian women, walking around head held high, without meeting anyone in the eye, and thus achieved a measure of city-type mobility. But it didn’t come naturally, as I remained nosy, keen to know about everyone I encountered. This boundaryless curiosity kept getting me into trouble, but it didn’t stop me wanting to migrate into the souls of strangers. My lack of bearings left me with no idea of what was likely to happen next and I was repeatedly being flummoxed by other people’s attitudes to sex.
The collision of assumptions I was encountering was not about sex alone. I had arrived in Paris just after the referendum in which the majority in France, weary of the colonial war, had voted for Algerian self-determination. That February, French settlers in Algeria, who were bitterly opposed to Algerian independence, had secretly formed the Organisation de l’Algérie Secrete, the OAS. They were preparing to take up arms against General de Gaulle’s government.
My knowledge of the French political situation was hazy and abstract. I had read an exposure of French torture in Algeria, but was confused, knowing that Sartre and Camus, my cultural heroes, had been in opposing camps. As I walked past Algerians held at machine-gun point in the street by the ‘flics’, I would feel a mute personal sympathy for victims with whom I vaguely identified. Yet in the cafés and the streets, it was the North African workers in France who would be my most persistent sexual tormentors.
‘Tu aimes les Arabes?’ inquired Dominique, one of the French students who had been at the Brecht play, when I confided my anxieties. Perched on a high stool in a café on the Boulevard St Michel, she spat out the word ‘Arabes’ like a shot of concentrated bile. Her words made me flinch. They conjured up my father booming across the dining-room table about the British Raj, ‘We built them the railroads.’ I was startled to hear someone of my own age echoing my father. From Suez in 1956, I had come to regard colonialism as outmoded and irrational, attitudes imbued from Olga’s liberalism and the shedding of Britain’s imperial past. Former British colonies were gaining independence in the late fifties and sixties and pragmatic Conservatives (unlike Lance Row-botham) such as Harold Macmillan were prepared to accept the wind of change’.
My recoil, however, came not so much from any political response, but rather from a psychological repugnance against categorizing people as inhuman which was deeply rooted in childhood. My mother possessed the snobberies of her middle-class upbringing, but nonetheless had persistently challenged my father’s verdicts on India and ridiculed the anti-Semitism which was rife in Leeds. The only time she had ever slapped me was when I came home from school aged around seven and parroted ‘She’s a Catholic’ about a girl in my class called Margaret. ‘Never say that about anyone.’ And I knew she was right. I liked Margaret. I had been mimicking the voice of the crowd, whom I knew from experience could support the class bully. From being very young I was to acquire the conviction that despising anyone could rebound upon yourself.
I looked at the pretty Parisienne opposite me with antagonism and resolved not to meet her again. Whereupon, with a toss of her brown curls, she admonished me, You must slap them in the face. Only then do they know that you don’t want them.’ Despite my emotional abhorrence and regardless of liberal reason, her words hit the buried resentment which had accumulated from all those encounters with the North African men who had pestered me. I left her troubled and uneasy.
Neither my liberal anti-colonialism nor my subjective rejection of racial prejudice enabled me to grasp the seriousness of the crisis in French society caused by the Algerian war. I was only dimly aware of the hatreds and the violence. I had heard, for example, that the French authorities had committed atrocities against prisoners and that student demonstrators for Algerian self-determination had been subjected to tear gas and beaten by the police with lead-weighted capes. Yet I had no sense of the war as an issue which directly concerned me. It impinged on me in a disjointed manner and remained remote. We had been warned sternly on arrival at the Sorbonne not to go on the manifestations. Bombs were going off in the cafés of the Left Bank but I disregarded them, assuming I wouldn’t be around when one happened to explode.
On reflection it is rather extraordinary that my exceedingly protective father let me go to Paris in the midst of all this. But then I suspect neither the Daily Mail nor the Yorkshire Post was covering the Algerian situation in much detail. Unwittingly it was to be my parents who were to send me into circumstances in which the contradictions of war really did hit me head on and thus into the only real danger which seriously threatened me during my stay in Paris.
My father had hired a Leeds removal firm called Turnbulls to deliver my school trunk. Unused to international transactions, the Leeds company sent it to a freight company’s office on the outskirts of Paris. My journey to collect it took me to the end of the métro line, to arrive in a strange no man’s land of half-built skyscrapers and partially built roads surrounded by rough open grou
nd where new suburbs were being built.
As I had never been to the edge of the city and was uncertain where to go, I asked an old woman the way and was a little troubled when she hailed a young North African man, who nodded confidently and said he would show me. I looked at him searchingly. He was tall, around twenty-three, with Brylcreemed hair and a moustache, wearing labourer’s jeans. I was not sure what to do, but the politeness ingrained into my petit-bourgeois being, combined with my dislike of Dominique’s attitudes, overcame my wariness. It was broad daylight, the old woman had approached him, he was being helpful. Anyway, how else was I going to find my trunk? I hesitated for a second and then followed him.
He led me off the dirt road along a maze of paths through the building site. As we walked and walked, I began to suspect that we were going round in circles. Worried, I looked around. How was I to extricate myself? Who else could I ask? My companion, however, was courteous and reassuring. We arrived at a café. Did I want a drink. ‘Non, non.’ However, he had a wine and insisted on getting me something. I had an espresso. We resumed our walking. Another café. I had an espresso. He insisted on paying. As we left he began asking me, ‘Tu veux pisser.’ ‘Non, non,’ I replied. Why was he going on about the toilet? Hunmanby French had not included slang. ‘Tu veux pisser.’ ‘Non, non,’ I replied emphatically. I was getting seriously worried. Twilight was falling and I was completely lost in a wasteland. I knew I had to get away from this man. I was going to have to admit failure and give up on the trunk for today. Sounding as decisive as I could, I announced it was time for me to go home. Please would he show me the bus stop? He seemed to concur and said he had to ask someone the way. He headed off across a field. I stumbled after him over the uneven ground, the long heels of my stilettos sinking into the earth.
We were in the middle of waste land when he turned round suddenly, grabbed me hard on the shoulder, bent his face towards mine and tried to kiss me. Dominique’s confident pronouncement pierced through blind panic and I slapped him decisively on the cheek. His surprise gained me a second. He loosened his grip. I began to run over the mix of earth and grass. There were some shacks in the next field. I could hear music. Perhaps I could reach people and safety. My shoe came off. I stumbled and fell, and as I tried to get up he came towards me. I was scrambling on all fours over the ground in terror with my shoe in my hand. Then he was on top of me, holding me down. I tried to stab the pointed heel into his head, but he easily grabbed my hand, forcing my arm back. A peculiar relief flooded through me; even in these circumstances the possibility of wounding someone horrified me. I was struggling so desperately I managed to pull both of us a little way over the ground. But he was not letting go of me.
I screamed. I was sure the men in the huts could hear. No one took any notice. He put his hand over my mouth, then his hands were round my neck, holding me down with his body. I kept wriggling and screaming. I could feel his hands tightening around my neck and saw my own panic reflected back in his eyes. ‘I’m going to die,’ I thought. This had not been how I had imagined my life at all. ‘I’m only eighteen. I’ve had no time to live. Only Bar will realize how absurd this is.’ Then instead of terror an extraordinary clarity swept through my consciousness – all those black coffees and the adrenalin of fear. This man is much stronger than you physically,’ said a voice in my head. ‘Stop struggling. Use your wits. You’ve been luckier than him in life. Fight him with the reason you’ve learned from being educated. Use the weapons of your privilege.’
Abruptly I stopped screaming and went still. His grip on my neck loosened. I began to make an elaborate and rational case. Raping me was unwise and would result in unnecessary trouble for him. The French authorities were very strict about North Africans in France. My father was a rich and powerful man in England and would pursue him in vengeance. I was a virgin. There were plenty of prostitutes who would not object to sex. I managed to wiggle my hands free and clasped them firmly between my legs. He was holding me by my shoulders and having a problem keeping me still, while at the same time moving my hands away. Each time he tried I wiggled and reasoned all the more.
He had opened the buttons on his jeans. When I looked down I could see his penis. It was the first time I had ever seen an erection. As a small girl I had glimpsed my father’s stubby penis once in the corridor and discussed with a schoolfriend a theory that short fat men had short fat ones and long thin men had long thin ones, a hypothesis based on our two fathers. When I was six someone’s brother produced one. It reminded me of the tassels on the velour tablecloths old people still kept in their kitchens. But this man’s penis was threatening and I was repulsed by it.
My dark green check Leeds C&A pencil dress had been pushed up in the struggle, revealing the black silky underskirt. All my life I had got into trouble for talking too much. Now some instinct said, Keep talking.’ Danger was making my French remarkably fluent. I still had my hands between my legs, clinging on desperately as I developed arguments to demonstrate that raping me was not a rational act. We were in an impasse. Every time he moved a hand from my shoulder to push my hands away I moved more strenuously. Anything to keep that horrible thing from getting inside me.
He was becoming annoyed, but my matter-of-fact voice meant he kept getting drawn into conversation and this seemed to defuse things. I played for moments with words. Perhaps before time ran out someone would appear and save me. It was growing dark. We continued to shuffle on the earth and grass. Abruptly he announced that he would kill me and then have sex with me. This had not occurred to me. But my response was the absolutism of virginity. I had theorized myself into an intellectual rejection of virginity. But now I felt utter repugnance. I was not going to have this as my first experience of sex. Running out of conversational ideas, I inquired how he would be able to kill me. He replied that he was carrying a knife. Did I sense he was bluffing? I can’t be sure. But it was some reversion to the dares of childish gang fights in Harehills which made me command, ‘Show me!’, at which point he put back his head and roared with laughter.
I felt the convulsion of his body and saw a white, hot, sticky liquid spreading over my black underskirt. I still had my hands protectively between my legs, but he was getting to his feet still laughing. I was bewildered by the sudden change of mood. He stood over me and congratulated me on my courage. I didn’t think it was courage. I had resisted him because I couldn’t bear not to. Even in shock I could see the irony. The man who a few minutes before had nearly choked and raped me was greeting me as a human being.
He led me over to the corrugated-iron shacks in the next field. Despite being shaken and disorientated, I was sufficiently collected to be appalled by the living conditions of the Algerian workmen. The huts were open at the front with dirt floors; a few had the bright, cheap plastic ribbons you saw in some cafés instead of a door. They had lived all through that winter in these.
A young man stood in front of one, his black hair flopped loosely over his brow. His face was that of a beautiful and delicate bird. He had large dark eyes and long eyelashes. A half-formed thought flickered into my consciousness. What if it had been him? I banished it swiftly, but to this day I am not sure. Was it revulsion against a particular man which had made rape worse than death, or was it a refusal to be compelled? My companion asked him something and I looked hopefully into his eyes, sure that someone who looked so sensitive would help me. His response burned back hatred and disgust. I was contemptible to him. I lowered my eyes. We were enemies, at war because I was a European and thus the same as his French colonizers. I was a woman and a sexually disgraced woman. Some barriers, sometimes, were insurmountable.
My companion, in contrast, had become genial. Very soon we were back in a built-up area with traffic and streets. The normal world had never in fact been far away. I felt bemused by the obliviousness of the familiar. He bent to kiss me at the bus stop. I cringed but the bus was approaching. I was going to be free. I passively consented. He was behaving as though we had been out
on a date. As I stepped on the bus I felt somehow implicated and vaguely indebted – he hadn’t raped me and he hadn’t murdered me. My standards of expectation had been drastically lowered. As the bus drew away I was overwhelmed with relief. I had survived.
My period came early and I anxiously consulted Bar that Monday in the courtyard of the Sorbonne. Did this mean I was pregnant? There were all kinds of tales about sperm getting inside you from your tummy; perhaps they could jump off your skirt. Her term at Bristol had made her more worldly wise about physiology. She reassured me that you only had to worry when it was the other way round.
I was particularly slow on the uptake about the basic mechanics of sex, being devoid of any geometric sense which could relate biological diagrams to reality and short on what was called in Yorkshire ‘common gump’. However, I was not the only one. My generation was still being brought up as if ignorance was akin to innocence. Consequently a rebel minority found ourselves crossing from one extreme to the other over a chasm of unknowing. Even though we were rejecting the trappings of traditional forms of protection, bashing our way out of all acceptable modes of behaviour and heading full tilt towards existential authenticity, we continued to contend with a powerful and disturbing undertow. The leftovers of fifties sleaze still lurked around and all kinds of disconcerting, often humiliating reactions were commonplace. It was a kind of cusp in sexual attitudes; prohibition and permission were shifting but had yet to realign.
There were no clear paths for us to take. On the other hand, the entrances towards sexual freedom had opened and were beckoning, not only among the young intelligentsia but in popular culture. The situation in France, which had experienced neither the puritanism of the Anglo-Saxons nor the same earnest reappraisal, was completely different. The French were also less susceptible to American youth cultural influences. Even though the myth of the Left Bank represented freedom, the reality was that young French middle-class girls tended to be more sheltered sexually than the British or Americans, who were seen as easy targets.
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