Pearls

by Celia Brayfield

  A glow of animation entered Monty’s lacklustre eyes. ‘She really exists then, Madame Bernard?’

  ‘Certainly she does. Not my cup of tea, of course.’ One of Roger’s most irritating foibles was pretending that he was a man who did not need to pay for sex but was merely generous to his women. ‘But I know a few chaps who’ve been to her little parties and they’re apparently pretty memorable occasions.’

  Monty watched the couple under her eyelashes. They gossiped like an affectionate husband and wife. She looked at Roger, his chin greasy with butter from his asparagus, his eyes shining with the self-importance which she was there to enhance. If I‘m going to do this, she decided, I’ll go the whole hog. If I’m going to be patronized I’d rather it was by a bigger shit than Roger and if I’m going to sell my body I’d like it to be to the highest bidder, not for just enough to get me another couple of fifty-quid deals.

  She shook off her depression and turned her attention to Roger, getting him bouncing with anticipation of the delights to come. Then, when the blonde with Giuseppe Ecole went to the ladies room, she followed.

  They were the only two women in there and there was no time to be diplomatic. ‘Are you one of Madame Bernard’s girls?’ she asked quickly. The woman looked startled, then smiled.

  ‘Do you want to go home and say you’ve met a real live call girl?’ she asked with amusement.

  ‘No,’ Monty declared with all the calmness she could command. ‘I want to be a real live call girl. I think,’ she tossed her head with contempt towards the door, indicating her opinion of Roger, ‘that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’

  ‘Are you staying in Paris?’ the other woman asked, removing a smudge of lipstick from the corner of her mouth with a precise touch. Monty gave her the name of the hotel, her own name and the name in which the room was booked. Then she steeled herself and returned to Roger.

  She stayed in the room the next day and the call came at twelve. They met in the Drugstore on the Champs-Elysées, the blonde, Monty, and another, older, blonde woman who weighed, Monty judged, at least two hundred and fifty pounds. Her fat fingers were crowded with wide, gold rings. Her name was Véronique. They asked to see her passport, then chatted pleasantly about Monty’s life, her family, her boyfriends and her interests. Monty effortlessly fabricated most of the information which she gave them.

  ‘Let me see your hand,’ said fat Véronique, reaching for it with a motherly gesture. ‘Ah yes, excellent, a very long lifeline; the other hand, if you please.’ In the pretence of reading her palms, Véronique pushed back Monty’s sleeves and checked her arms for needle marks. Thanks to Cindy, there were none.

  After an hour, Véronique gave her a level stare and said, ‘You realize much of this work is extremely tedious? You will be good if you look clean and arrive on time, first of all. In this business we don’t like gypsies who are unreliable.’

  Monty nodded and smiled, relieved. I’ve done it, she thought.

  ‘We have to check you out, of course. How long will you be at this number?’

  ‘We’re supposed to be going home tomorrow.’

  ‘So, ask him for your money and stay over a day or two.’

  Véronique telephoned at noon again the next day and gave Monty an address in the exclusive Marais district. ‘We have an apartment where you can stay until you are set up,’ she told her, ‘then this afternoon we will do some shopping.’

  The apartment was in a tall, half-timbered building with a steeply pitched roof. Constructed in the seventeenth century, it now leaned back a few degrees from the quiet street. The ground floor was occupied by a discreetly tawdry bijouterie whose windows were half-obscured with credit-card signs. The apartment was on the first and second floors, a slightly awkward assembly of spacious rooms decorated in white, glass and gilt – or perhaps it was gold-plate, Monty speculated as she put her unused syringes in the mirrored cabinet. She decided to celebrate her new success with a hit – a small one, just to settle her nerves.

  Véronique called half an hour later and took her to an Yves St Laurent boutique, where she opened an account in Monty’s name. Systematically she asked the manageress to bring out dresses, suits, two coats and innumerable accessories, working from memory of the current collection and disdaining to look through the racks. Monty suggested a ravishing, gypsy-style dress in purple lamé, with a laced bodice. Véronique shook her head. ‘Yves makes clothes for two types of woman, the good and the bad,’ she chuckled, ‘but you will find the bad women wear the quiet clothes and the good women dress like whores. I think he does it on purpose – it amuses him.’

  ‘What’s she like, Madame Bernard?’ Monty asked, as their taxi waited in a queue of vehicles. The narrow street was lined with food shops, whose wares, in oval plywood baskets, were arranged in a fabulous display of colour and texture along the crowded sidewalk.

  ‘Nobody knows. No one. No one has ever met her.’ Véronique was gazing thoughtfully at heaps of oysters arranged on seaweed an arm’s length from the car window.

  ‘You must have met her,’ Monty insisted. The shop owner, seeing the fat woman’s hungry glance and the beauty of her companion, called out to them and opened a pair of long, pale brown shells with his knife, passing them, one after the other, through the taxi window. ‘Mes compliments, mesdemoiselles,’ he called cheerfully as the taxi advanced a few metres.

  ‘Never. Only one woman, in the beginning, spoke to her face to face. One day that woman disappeared, and now Madame Bernard speaks only on the telephone, with a disguised voice. Some electronic invention which makes her sound like Mickey Mouse.’ She threw back her head, displaying a plump, powdery pile of extra chins, and gulped down her oyster.

  Monty, who hated oysters, offered Véronique hers as well, full of curiosity about her new employer. ‘You must be able to guess what she’s like,’ she persisted. ‘You must have got some idea of her, if you’ve worked with her a long time.’

  ‘Certainly.’ Véronique slugged back the second oyster. ‘She’s a very curious personality, I think. She has an extraordinary understanding of people, of personalities. She can always predict how someone will behave. But she is absolutely without pity. If you betray her, she will never forgive. Sometimes, if I have to give her bad news about somebody, I tremble, really tremble, because I know her reaction will be extreme and something terrible will happen.’ The older woman gave Monty a direct stare, making sure her point had been taken.

  She’s just trying to frighten me, Monty told herself with a defiant sniff. ‘Surely you have to be tough in this kind of business?’

  ‘Naturally, but there is a difference between tough and cruel, n’est-ce past? I think it’s very strange, because a woman with so much understanding is usually tender. Madame Bernard is tough, yes; she’s ruthless. At times the only thing one can say is that she is completely sadistic.’ The well-upholstered shoulders in their beige angora sweater shrugged and the long, twisted rope of pearls over Véronique’s vast bosom rattled as she gave a sigh of incomprehension.

  The next day Monty began to panic. The assurance of the whole operation intimidated her, and what had seemed like a fine adventure now appeared as the final step towards self-destruction. What am I doing to myself, she wondered. I’m already doing smack, now I want to be a prostitute. It’s time I got out before I’m in too deep. She never doubted that Véronique would be sympathetic, and was shocked by the explosion that followed her confession that she had changed her mind.

  ‘You don’t play games with Madame Bernard, miss! All the trouble we’ve taken with you! Ungrateful piece of filth!’

  ‘I’ll give the clothes back, of course.’

  ‘Impossible! They will not accept them back! You must pay for them.’

  ‘But I don’t want them. Of course they’ll take them back, most of them are still in their bags, not even unpacked. I’ve returned clothes to St Laurent dozens of times and they never make a fuss.’ Monty was angry now; she had been accus
tomed to treat the St Laurent boutiques like chain stores during her days with Rick and they had always served her courteously, no matter how many times she had changed her mind. ‘You’re just trying to trick me, that’s all.’ Tingling with anger and a fearful foreboding that she had already got in over her head, Monty folded the garments back into their gleaming red and purple boxes and took them back to the boutique. The manageress was absolutely charming and regretted that it was a rule of the house that no clothes could be returned.

  ‘You didn’t have that rule when I shopped here before,’ Monty challenged her, praying that the woman might recognize her face.

  ‘It is a rule for all Mademoiselle Véronique’s friends,’ the girl replied with emphasis. From a drawer, she produced a bill for several thousand francs and trusted Monty would settle it soon. The friends of Mademoiselle Véronique always paid promptly, she said.

  Monty considered simply leaving the clothes and taking a taxi to the airport. She opened her purse and checked that she had the air ticket which Roger had bought for her in her wallet.

  ‘That’s stupid,’ the shop assistant put a confidential hand on her arm and spoke in a low voice. ‘They won’t let you run away. You’ll wind up floating down the Seine, just another “suicide”. Paris is a serious place for a young woman, and these are serious people, do you understand? Thousands of girls come here every year and no one ever hears of them again.’ Monty then remembered that Véronique had not given her back her passport. Grimly she returned to the apartment.

  ‘What do you think I’m doing, lying to you?’ Véronique folded her bloated arms over her chest. ‘It’s you who have lied to us, isn’t it? You thought you would amuse yourself by playing at being wicked. You wanted to see if you were good-looking enough to be a top-class hooker, was that it? You thought we wouldn’t see what you were the minute we laid eyes on you, eh? Don’t you think I know what a junkie looks like? You stupid girls … you make me want to puke.’

  ‘I am not a junkie,’ Monty said with dignity. The late afternoon light was fading and she made a show of switching on the table lamps. Moving with surprising speed for such a fat woman, Véronique snatched Monty’s black leather bag and tipped its contents out on the low glass table. Her pudgy hand pounced on the blue enamel powder compact and opened it with care, evidently knowing what was inside. She picked up the powder puff between finger and thumb and discarded it, flipped up the gauze circle, snatched away the cellophane and waved the half empty container of heroin under Monty’s nose.

  ‘What’s this then? Sweet-and-Low? You haven’t got much left, have you? What were you planning to do when you ran out?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter – I don’t really need it. I just do a bit for fun now and then.’ How the hell did she know where to look, Monty wondered fearfully. She tried hard to think of a way to escape from the trap into which she had so stupidly walked, but her mind was blank.

  An imperious ring sounded from the gilt-trimmed fake antique telephone, and Monty jumped with alarm, wondering who could possibly know where she was. Véronique waddled across the room to answer and her whole body mass seemed to shrink as she listened. Monty’s acute hearing detected a nasal twitter from the telephone line. That must be Madame Bernard, she told herself, folding her arms to stop herself shivering. Véronique replaced the telephone’s earpiece and turned to Monty; her face had blanched under its thick beige make-up and her skin seemed almost green. She was obviously very frightened.

  ‘Someone is coming to deal with you,’ she announced, gathering up her coat, gloves and bag with some agitation. ‘You are to wait here alone. Give me the apartment keys.’

  The fat woman unplugged the telephone and left the apartment clutching it to her chest. Monty heard her turn the keys in the mortice locks at the top and bottom of the door. She ran at once from one window to another, hoping perhaps to find a way out on to a roof or a fire-escape, but every window was sealed. The window in the kitchen overlooked a lead-covered ledge about four feet wide, and although it was now almost dark, she could see beyond it a typical Paris roofscape of parapets and flat-topped buildings over which it would be easy to climb. Monty resolved to smash the window and get away. She could go to the British Embassy, she would be safe there, and she could telephone Cathy to come and fetch her.

  As she ran back into the kitchen with a gilt-legged, velvet-covered stool from the bedroom, the lights in the apartment went out. She put down the stool and flipped the switches in desperation, but they were dead.

  In the deep twilight, she saw the door of a tall kitchen cupboard open, and a small woman stepped through it. She wore a dark mink jacket and a black tailored suit; on her head was a round hat with a penny-spotted veil which almost obscured her face. In the half light, Monty saw a face of masklike stillness, with heavy-lidded eyes which widened with shock as they saw her. With a movement as swift as a lizard’s, the small woman closed the door behind her. Monty had just enough time to see the escalier de service beyond the thick wooden panels, and sense that there was at least one other person waiting out there.

  ‘Who are you?’ Monty demanded, frightened into truculence.

  ‘Who I am is not important,’ the woman said, ‘what I want to talk about is who you are.’ She spoke in English, with a curious, clipped accent that gave her voice a metallic timbre. Slowly, the small, dark woman advanced into the room. She was slim but her figure was rounded, and under the veil Monty could distinguish a heart-shaped, high-cheekboned face and a flat nose like a cat’s. She could have been any age between twenty-five and fifty.

  ‘You’ve no right to keep me here,’ Monty continued, stepping back unconsciously as the woman advanced. ‘I want my passport back and I want to go home.’

  With another movement so quick it seemed like a sleight of hand, the woman opened her black crocodile handbag and gave Monty her passport with a black gloved hand.

  ‘You can go when we’ve finished our little talk,’ she said, gesturing Monty into the drawing room. They sat face to face on the white sofas and Monty felt the woman’s eyes scanning her face intently, probing every pore. Monty stared back, trying to see into the woman’s face, feeling more and more intimidated.

  ‘Who are you? Are you Madame Bernard?’ Monty demanded.

  ‘Madame Bernard does not exist.’

  ‘You would not be able to say that unless you knew who she was.’

  A brief smile, like a gleam of winter sunshine, touched the perfectly painted, cyclamen-pink lips.

  ‘In your passport you call yourself a singer. Why do you want to be a whore?’ The question was pitched in the kind of even, reasonable tone Monty had heard Cathy use when she was negotiating a difficult deal.

  ‘I don’t want to be a whore, I’ve changed my mind. Anyway, it didn’t seem to be too different from what I was doing already.’

  To her surprise, the woman picked a malachite case from her bag and offered Monty a cigarette. There was a brief struggle, over the stiff table-lighter. ‘Do you know what will happen to you if you live that way? Let me tell you.’ The cigarette was smouldering, unsmoked, between fingers tightly swathed in black suede. ‘You cannot sell love, and you cannot buy it either. It is not a commodity which can be traded. When you love, you give yourself. If you try to trade yourself for money – or for security, or social position, whatever it may be – soon you can’t love any more.’

  Monty gave a short, hard laugh. ‘Anything for a quiet life.’

  Suddenly the woman was very still, as immobile as a reptile on a rock. Monty sensed that she was very angry. ‘When you can’t love it’s like death in life,’ she said slowly.

  ‘A quick fuck’s got nothing to do with love, anyway,’ Monty argued, confused by the intense emotional atmosphere. The woman made no reply and the words echoed in the silence and mocked Monty with their truth.

  ‘Why did you want money so much that you would do that to get it? You have talent, I think? You have a career, don’t you?’

  ‘N
o. Yes. The thing is … I just couldn’t handle it. Everyone wanted me to do something I couldn’t or be someone I wasn’t and …’ Monty suddenly found her tongue loosened and she talked, pouring out all the terror and pain and struggle of the last year. The woman sat as still as a statue, occasionally asking a short question in her strange, ugly voice.

  ‘So, the drug made you forget how difficult your life was?’ she said at last. Monty nodded. ‘What about the past – has life been that hard before?’

  ‘A few times, not quite the same. Why are you asking?’

  ‘Because I want to know. Continue, please, tell me what happened.’

  Now Monty was mesmerized by this steely personality and she talked on as if she had been hypnotized, about her songs, about Rick and the Juice, about Simon, about her father. When she began to relate the story of her abortion she felt tears begin to run down her cheeks and wiped them away with her sleeve.

  Finally she faltered into silence, her heart stripped and raw, feeling drained and feeble. The apartment was completely dark and she could not see the woman’s face or her reaction.

  ‘Why don’t you stop taking this drug?’ the woman asked in a neutral tone.

  ‘I can stop easily,’ Monty said, believing this to be true with at least half of her mind.

  ‘Then why don’t you? You’re throwing your life away.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘I think you are, my dear.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I understand better than you. I hope you never need to understand the things which I have to know.’ The voice was suddenly as soft as silk. ‘Let me make you a proposition. I know a place in California where I can send you for treatment, and if you are prepared to accept their help you will be able to stop.’

  Violently, Monty shook her head. ‘That’s not necessary. That’s ridiculous. Why would you do something like that? It’ll cost thousands.’

  The voice changed, indicating a smile. ‘Let’s just say I have made a lot of money and I can choose how I spend it.’