Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  ‘That would be perfect.’ Bastille was familiar territory: close to my very first apartment, and a direct métro from the nanny’s. It couldn’t be more convenient. What a profound relief to have something set in stone at last, to know exactly where and when we would meet.

  ‘Sure you haven’t done this before?’ James’s tone said he was joking. But I wondered then whether there could ever be trust in a relationship based from the outset upon deceiving other people.

  ‘I must be a natural,’ I said, with a brittle laugh, eager to change the subject. ‘Let’s talk about something a bit less dramatic, shall we? How about you tell me about the work you and Eve are doing on the house?’ I lost track of time as we talked. It was so refreshing to hear his voice. Our carefully crafted emails were often things of beauty, but sometimes I worried that it would be easy to get ahead of ourselves, to fall in love with the way our words looked on the page. On the phone we talked of mundane things and that normality was soothing. The conversation was anything but stilted – in fact it felt as though we’d known each other for years. I liked the way his mind worked; the way he seemed to have a thoughtful, measured answer to every question.

  ‘I’m really glad you phoned me, Cath,’ said James emphatically. ‘It’s good to hear your voice. I’m so glad you didn’t wake up the next day and decide to put the whole episode behind you.’

  ‘I could never… Oh! God! They’re back!’ A key was turning in the lock. I’d been so wrapped up in James that I hadn’t noticed the lift clanking to a halt or the footfalls on the landing. Now the front door was already swinging open. I froze, telephone in hand, wondering what to do. There was no time to regain the bedroom. I’d just have to remain where I was on the sofa and brazen it out.

  ‘Got to go now, Mum, they’re back,’ I said brightly, cutting off the call before Tadpole, who clattered along the corridor ahead of Mr Frog, could beg to speak to her grandma. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion and her eyes shone as she rushed over for a hug. ‘You weren’t gone very long. What happened?’ I asked, as Mr Frog appeared in her wake.

  ‘Oh, her nappy needed changing… You’re up then? Ça va mieux?’ His tone was hopeful. ‘Because if you are feeling better, there are a couple of errands I’d like to run on the scooter.’

  The old me might have made a tart comment about shirking responsibilities, about leaving me, quite literally, holding the baby. Today I held my tongue. For once, the parental relay race – passing Tadpole back and forth like a baton – suited me just fine.

  ‘Sure, you go out for a while,’ I said, noting his surprised, pleased expression. ‘Take as long as you want.’

  I wondered afterwards whether my uncharacteristic laissez-faire attitude hadn’t set alarm bells ringing in Mr Frog’s head. But if he did suspect that something was amiss, he certainly wasn’t letting on.

  11. Alibis

  When James’s call came through on my mobile the following Wednesday, I almost blew everything.

  According to my painstakingly concocted master plan, which I had refined somewhat since speaking to James on the phone the weekend before, I was supposed to answer my phone and pretend I was talking to Tata, sticking to a prearranged script. My tone would change from friendly to concerned: anyone within earshot would believe I had a genuine childcare emergency on my hands, giving me a reason to leave early, without having to pretend to be ill myself. What I hadn’t counted on was the nervous giggle which welled up in my throat as soon as I heard James’s voice. I sounded more overjoyed than panic-stricken; it was impossible to keep the smile out of my voice. Luckily, my boss’s door was closed, and those colleagues who normally sat within earshot of my desk had gone for an early lunch, so I didn’t actually have to play to an audience.

  ‘I’m going to set off now,’ I murmured. ‘I’ll probably get to the hotel before you do, so I’ll just wait in reception.’ I took a moment to compose myself, my phone still pressed to my ear. James had called from Montparnasse station. He was in Paris. This was really happening: it was time to throw myself into the fire.

  My phone still in my hand, I stood and walked briskly over to my boss’s office, knocked and poked my head around the door. He appeared to be reprimanding a junior, and the air inside smelled of frayed tempers. My boss turned his head, his expression mildly irritated. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I said hurriedly, ‘but my nanny just called to say she’s ill. I’m afraid I’m going to have to collect my daughter and look after her myself this afternoon.’ The corners of my mouth were already beginning to twitch treacherously. I needed this to be over quickly, before my smile had time to reassert itself.

  ‘Well, if there’s really no other way, then I suppose I’ll have to let you go,’ my boss replied, taking no pains to conceal his annoyance. I felt my hackles rising. He had young children of his own, so he ought to be more sympathetic to my plight, fabricated or not.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, sounding anything but. ‘I don’t have an alternative right now. My partner’s in London for the next couple of days, which doesn’t help matters.’ Another white lie wouldn’t hurt. ‘I’ll ring you in the morning and let you know whether she’s any better. If not, I’ll try and arrange for a sitter…’

  My boss sighed and turned back to the task at hand: I had been dismissed. Pulling the door closed more violently than I’d intended, I heard the glass rattle in its frame. Speedily, I gathered my belongings and charged down the stairs. Unwittingly, my boss had played into my hands by provoking me. With his help, I had played the role of indignant mother to perfection.

  A caged bird freed from the office, I flew down the steps to the métro, praying I wouldn’t cross paths with anyone who knew Mr Frog. I’d told Tata she could only reach me on my mobile so that she couldn’t take it into her head to call me at the office, inadvertently blowing my cover. But as far as Mr Frog was concerned, I hadn’t worked out any sort of alibi. I’d just have to hope I didn’t run into any of his friends. The likelihood was slim, but then I hadn’t expected to see Benoît in Café Charbon either.

  The sweaty mass of rush-hour commuters had given way to tourists, pensioners and pregnant women, and there were plenty of available seats. I sat down next to an elderly lady with thinning, dyed black hair and fierce dots of rouge on her heavily powdered cheeks, taking out my own compact to retouch my – hopefully rather more subtle – make-up.

  A couple of days earlier, shopping for cartons of soup and bread for lunch in the Monoprix supermarket near the office, I’d mumbled an excuse about needing to buy a pair of tights and urged Amy to go downstairs to the food section without me. Once she was out of sight, I’d made a covert detour towards the lingerie section. The only vaguely sexy underwear I owned had been a Christmas present from Mr Frog, and was therefore off limits for my rendezvous with James. Fingering the gauzy fabrics hesitantly, wincing at the price tags, I finally tucked a navy-blue bra and French knickers with a simple light-blue ribbon detail into my shopping basket, before making awkwardly for the men’s hygiene section, in search of a packet of condoms. I hadn’t bought any in over eight years, and many of the brands were unfamiliar. ‘Hansaplast?’ I muttered to myself. ‘Don’t they make sticking plasters?’

  The packet I’d eventually chosen now burned a guilty hole in my bag, and here I was, wearing matching underwear under my office clothes for the first time in months. Not that I felt like a goddess – far from it – I was too busy wishing I’d had the foresight to remove the itchy label from inside my bra.

  The Hôtel Saint Louis Bastille wasn’t as close to Bastille as its name implied, but nearer République, at métro Oberkampf. A narrow building nestling between two stately apartment blocks on the boulevard Richard Lenoir, its stonework was clean, no doubt from a recent ravalement, and it didn’t look seedy at all. In the middle of the boulevard, above the Canal Saint Martin, which ran its furtive course underground, old men sat sunning themselves on benches, sparrows took dust baths at the foot of the plane trees and childminders propelled
their charges along in double pushchairs. For all those people, it was business as usual today. As for me, I felt oddly detached from my surroundings. I saw myself pause at the zebra crossing opposite the hotel as if watching from a great height through the beady eyes of a bird perched in the trees above. While I struggled to play this role I’d only ever seen in films – the Parisian woman indulging in an illicit affair – petite anglaise was busy composing a blog post in my head, simultaneously noting all the details of my surroundings, thinking about how the scene should be written. Without her, I wouldn’t be here. I’d never have met James, for a start. But was there more to it than that? Would I have even contemplated putting myself into a situation like this before she came along?

  A fleeting image of my former landlady from rue de la Roquette popped into my mind, as I waited for the traffic to thin. She’d always looked sophisticated yet dishevelled when she materialized to collect the monthly rent in cash, as though she had arisen from the crumpled sheets of a nearby hotel bed moments earlier. I could do dishevelled, but sophisticated had always eluded me. It was all I could do right now to prevent myself from surreptitiously lifting my arm to check my shirt for signs of nervous perspiration as I waited for the traffic lights to change.

  The hotel reception was a spacious, stone-paved room, a desk set across one corner, behind which an immaculate and rather effeminate man was sitting.

  ‘Bonjour Mademoiselle,’ he said as I hesitated on the threshold. ‘Je peux vous aider?’

  ‘Er, yes, well, no, I’m just waiting for my boyfriend – he has the check-in paperwork. I’ll just take a seat over here, if that’s all right…’ I lowered myself into a Louis-somethingth chair with patterned upholstery, which looked more comfortable than it felt. Studying my shoes self-consciously, worrying at the already ravaged cuticles around my thumbnails with my index fingers, I wondered if it was obvious that I had skipped work for an afternoon tryst with a lover. Hotel staff must see this sort of thing all the time, I reasoned. It might seem earth-shatteringly momentous to me, but infidelity was banal, commonplace. Hundreds of people were probably moaning and sighing in hotels all over the city at this very moment.

  Registering a movement on the periphery of my vision, I glanced up from my shoes, and there he was, broad frame silhouetted in the doorway, a ragged-looking travel bag slung over his shoulder. Flushed from the heat of the métro, beads of sweat glistened in the cleft above his upper lip. He was cleanshaven and smooth – I’d never seen him this way – and for a long moment I hesitated, wondering what I was doing there, why I was meeting this stranger. Then he smiled, and I recognized the corduroy jacket he clutched in his right hand from the week before, and all at once he was familiar again.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘You made it.’ Unsure how I should greet him – especially in front of an audience – I stood up stiffly and moved to stand by his side at the check-in desk.

  ‘I’ll say hello properly in a minute,’ James said, fumbling in the inside pocket of his jacket for his passport and credit card, while I swayed by his side, feeling light-headed, wishing I’d managed some lunch before I set off. Then suddenly we were free, we were stepping into a mirrored lift; we were alone, at last.

  Much of that afternoon remains an intense blur when I try to recall it: my memory is like a heat-damaged reel of film; only a few selected frames subsist. Maybe extremes of pleasure and pain are just too much for the memory to handle? The images which do remain are out of focus, as though I were standing too close to one of Monet’s vast water-lily canvases at the Orangerie, unable to see the big picture clearly, lost in the individual brushstrokes.

  I know we lay face to face, fully clothed, on the white bedspread, talking in hushed voices for an hour, or maybe two. The queen-sized bed occupied three-quarters of the carpeted room, leaving only a narrow sliver of space around it: there was nowhere else to sit. I know I was overwhelmed with relief to feel my body finally slowing, relaxing, until I was limp in his arms, the exhaustion of a week of sleepless nights catching up with me at last. The guilt I’d been carrying around with me, even while I daydreamed about our meeting, I left outside the hotel-room door, for now.

  ‘You can sleep, if you want,’ James whispered. ‘I’m happy just holding you.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for sleep when you’ve gone,’ I murmured, shaking my head. ‘I don’t want to waste even a second.’

  I know that we didn’t kiss until the afternoon was almost over, minutes before I left to pick up Tadpole. Propped up on one elbow, looking down on me from above, I saw a question in James’s eyes which, this time, he didn’t have to voice. I loved his patience; the fact that he presumed nothing. Here we were, stretched out on a hotel bed, and yet still he sought my permission, handling me with care, understanding my need to dictate the pace.

  I smiled, nodded almost imperceptibly and put a hand to the back of his neck, my fingers stroking the wisps of hair I’d ached to reach out and touch in the bar a week before. I was ready. It was time. I pulled him closer.

  So much excitement and anticipation were distilled into that kiss: a week of waiting, wondering and fantasizing. The kiss I had declined on the street corner after the concert would have tasted of beer and recklessness. It could all too easily have been clumsy, toothy, disappointing. Deferred, it was charged with emotional significance. There was no alcohol haze to hide behind. It was neither throwaway, nor impulsive; it felt measured, binding. Breathless, shaking, lips tingling, I had to acknowledge that it had been worth the wait.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s time for me to go,’ I groaned when my watch started to beep a few minutes later, wishing I’d kissed him sooner.

  ‘Hey, we’ve got plenty of time,’ James replied, putting a finger to my lips. ‘There’s no hurry. I’ll have a glass of wine waiting when you get back, and we can pick up exactly where we left off.’

  I took the lift down to reception alone, my heart pounding. Soon I would return. But first I had to collect Tadpole, get her fed and bathed and ready for Maryline to take over. Thank goodness Mr Frog hadn’t been free to babysit, I thought to myself. How on earth could I have faced him with James’s kiss still warm on my lips? The next few hours would feel like the longest of my life – the waiting exquisite and excruciating in equal measures – but my reward, when I returned, was that I would stay with James until the small hours.

  When Maryline arrived, maddeningly late, I found something about the way she looked me up and down unnerving. Could it be that, as a woman, she was able to sense what Mr Frog had failed to pick up on? Was she noting the unusual amount of care I had put into my appearance, for once, on a night when Mr Frog would not be accompanying me? Or was the guilt I was struggling to fight back, now that I was alone, clouding my judgement and making me paranoid? Whatever the truth of the matter, I was glad to close the front door behind me and rest my burning cheeks against the cool mirror of the lift as it plunged downwards.

  The man on the desk recognized me immediately when I strode into the hotel reception for the second time that day, despite the fact that I’d changed out of my work clothes and applied fresh make-up, in keeping with the alibi I’d given Mr Frog, that I was going to a party. He waved me straight upstairs, and I knocked quietly on James’s door, anxiety flaring up when he didn’t answer immediately. What if he had got cold feet and left? But no, there he was, hair damp from the shower, a tumbler of red wine in his hand.

  ‘I’m a bit late,’ I smiled shyly, ‘but here I am.’ Stepping inside, I pulled the door softly closed behind me.

  Midnight came before we lay naked between starched white sheets and I felt the full weight of him, smooth and hot against my skin. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ James whispered. ‘Because we don’t have to, today. I can wait…’ Putting my finger to his lips this time, I shook my head, my other hand moving lower, leaving the impurity of my intentions in no doubt.

  ‘You’re crying!’ he said, afterwards, touching my cheek with his finger, brush
ing away silent tears. I didn’t speak at first. I wanted to focus every ounce of concentration on savouring the half-forgotten sensation of being at one with my body; aware of its power; desirable. The thin film of sweat covering my skin, mine and his. The aftershocks rippling through me.

  ‘I’m not sad,’ I said at last. My voice sounded languid; so different as to be barely recognizable. ‘I’d just forgotten, what this, what any of this, could be like.’ Our timing had been faultless; every single movement had been delicious. All the excitement of discovering new terrain was mingled with an unexpected feeling of familiarity, of rightness.

  ‘Forgotten? What do you mean, forgotten?’ He looked puzzled. ‘How long has it been?’

  I buried my face in his shoulder, seeing the perfect crescent of my teeth marks, suddenly embarrassed. ‘Too long. So long I’d forgotten what my body was for.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said James incredulously. ‘Why?’

  How could I explain? Whatever it is that makes it possible to touch another person in a sexual way, Mr Frog and I had lost somewhere along the way. On the rare occasions when he or I had tried to initiate something, instead of arousing me, his touch irritated, or tickled, and I had to suppress the urge to swat him away like a fly. He protested he was too tired; I claimed I wasn’t in the mood; eventually we both gave up trying. Talking about it seriously meant acknowledging deeper problems, so instead it had become a sort of feeble joke between us. I even remember raising a glass to toast a year of celibacy. There didn’t seem to be any way back for us. It was nobody’s fault. But something vital had been irretrievably lost.

  In the company of good friends, I would poke and prod, in vain, for signs that other people’s sex life had burned down low, wondering if it was normal for every relationship to dim to friendship over time. But now that my slumbering needs had been awakened, I suspected I would no longer be able to settle for chaste hugs and the occasional lingering peck on the lips.