by Ray Connolly
Ille paused while Kathy stood up: ‘What’s your name?’ she asked at last.
‘Kathy.’
‘Well, Kathy. Do you like dancing?’
Kathy nodded.
‘I have a friend who is coming shortly. We could all go to dinner, and then if you’re not too tired maybe go on dancing somewhere. You’ll like him. He’s a very nice boy. Very quiet.’
‘Well really, that’s very kind. But you really don’t have to bother….’ The last thing she wanted to be was an imposition on a complete stranger.
‘I want to bother. Really.’ Ille was smiling playfully again. ‘I would like it very much if you were to come with us. Really.’
And so, sitting there on two large cushions floating among the rugs on the floor, like two atolls on a polished ocean, Kathy and Ille became friends. And told each other little titbits of their likes and of their dislikes; of their lives and of their pasts. And Ille explained how her work in an antique shop gave her access to the culture of the Orient with which she had grown up. And how the concierge, Madame Diem, had been an old and close family servant.
And when the time came to go to dinner the young man who was escorting Ille found that her attention had been diverted from him towards her new friend, and though the dinner was pleasant and everyone was agreeable, he noticed that he was becoming more of an onlooker to a growing relationship. And still later when they all three went dancing he found himself squiring two beautiful ladies on to the floor, who looked at each other, although they were supposed to be dancing with him. And even more he felt an outsider as he watched them both performing a sensual game, as hands on thighs they danced and moved in unison, their feet pounding on the floor, their eyes rarely leaving each other.
And later after Kathy had returned to her hotel and Ille was back in her apartment making an habitual love to the boy she thought about Kathy, this selfish, yet gauche and headstrong girl from the United States. And as her lover moved with ever increasing energy and persistence that he might recapture the attention of the woman whose bed he was tonight allowed to share, she entertained romantic fantasies about her new friend. And then remembered Sonja the Dutch girl who ran away from the involvement which she herself had created, but who had now sent this surrogate friend in her place. And after their love-making had finished and the boy next to Ille lay panting and resting, she considered the absurdity of their little act of sex which provided no more than a clockwork orgasm for her, and no affection or reassurance for him. And shortly afterwards he got up and, climbing back into his clothes, kissed her lightly on the cheeks and bade her good night before quietly letting himself out of the apartment.
That night Ille couldn’t sleep. Kathy’s arrival had excited her, with her golden skin and fair, shining hair – a goddess from another healthier planet, she told herself. And too excited to sleep she arose around five and going to a small leather box on a dressing table she took out two small black pills, a compound of opium, that she might sleep and enjoy the dreams they inevitably produced. And before long she was lost in a world of beauty and tranquillity, of clean beaches and flowered fields, where she and Kathy in chiffons and laces played with the doves, and where they bathed each other in mountain pools. And where they were alone, together and contented, and self-sufficient. It was a happy, carefree Technicolor advertisement of a dream that promised riches to come, friendships to be forged, and loneliness to be banished.
They met again the following day: a bright early summer day when Parisians took to the Bois de Boulogne to prepare their skins for the assault that the Provence sun was to make during their August holiday. And together they strolled round the Lac Inférieur, and watched the lovers and elderly, children and horse riders, although in reality they saw no one other than each other, nor heard the sounds of this city park on a summer Saturday. There was so much to learn about each other.
Together they complemented one another in their beauty: Ille all floral flowing serenity, her long dark hair crowned with a wide-brimmed straw hat edged with Michaelmas daisies and balanced with a bunch of red, glowing cherries. Kathy in a white cotton suit, a blue and white scarf tying back her hair.
By midday the sun was hot, and they lay down in a pasture of long grass to allow the sun to bathe their faces and arms. And Ille in a spontaneous show of the uninhibited gracefully pulled up her skirt around her thighs to allow the light to get to her legs. And despite herself Kathy found herself looking admiringly at those legs, and wondering about the boy who had spent the previous night lying between them. He had been truly a spectacularly attractive man, very dark, yet pale, slim and sophisticated, and quite unlike the suntanned brawny beach boys from her home. And although Ille had paid him scant attention, by their mutual attitudes at the end of the evening it had been obvious that they were going back to her apartment to make love. It seemed a confused relationship to Kathy.
‘Jacques is very handsome.’ Tentatively Kathy opened the discussion.
The reply from Ille was some time in coming. She simply lay on her back and allowed the sun to wash her face: ‘He is beautiful,’ she said at last. ‘All my boys must be beautiful. He has skin like a woman. He is like my brother. You would have liked my brother. He was a photographer with Magnum – you know, the news picture agency. They say he was killed by an American air-raid on Haiphong. I don’t know. He was a beautiful boy. After that I thought I hated all Americans, not just because of him, but because of what they had done to the East. We lived in Cambodia when I was a little girl and it was such a beautiful place. Everyone was so gentle. Then there was the war and everything changed. When the Khmer Rouge came my parents stayed behind. I still don’t know what happened to them.’
She paused in her story and considered an ant running along her foot. Kathy’s reaction would have been instantly to swat it away, but Ille just stared at it, and putting a finger out allowed it to run on to her hand before it fell away back into the grass and was lost from sight. Above them a couple of wood pigeons flapped into a nearby tree. ‘The birds in my house that you saw used to belong to my brother. He always used to breed doves. He said he would one day breed the whitest dove ever seen. They were his obsession. For hours he would take photographs of them. After I finished school I went to live with him in the apartment, and then when he was lost I stayed. Now the doves have become like a symbol of him to me. And I breed them, too. The parrots were Sonja’s idea.’
The mention of Sonja raised questions in Kathy’s mind. But the uncertainty she felt about her own position deterred her from making further inquiries.
So throughout the day Ille took her on a tour of Paris, to Algerian ghettoes, Left Bank galleries and bookshops, even allowing her a nod and a wink at one or two tourist spots, now bustling with early American holidaymakers. And together they roamed through Paris like happy truants, getting into mischief where they could and running away laughing when the protection of their privilege and beauty was threatened. In an arcade bookshop off St Germain Ille quietly sidled alongside Kathy and dropped a small handbook of nude males into her purse, smiling all the time, while Kathy, who had never gone through the stage of ripping-off from stores, blushed bright pink, and unable to replace the book without being noticed hurried as nonchalantly as she thought possible from the shop. Outside in the street Ille went into paroxysms of delight at Kathy’s strait-laced discomfort, and linking arms with her dragged her into a pavement café for a drink.
‘Why did you do that?’ Kathy was almost angry with herself for allowing her embarrassment to be so obvious.
‘To improve your education. Male physiology is very interesting, but it shouldn’t be sold in books. It should be free for everyone to appreciate. Tonight we will study the pictures together. See how big they are.’ And exaggeratedly she licked her lips in mock excitement.
‘What about now?’
‘Now you tell me something about yourself. It’s your turn.’ Instantly Ille’s giddiness was gone, and there was something strong and quite
unyielding about the way she broached her question. Suddenly she was the gentle interrogator. Kathy knew there could be no hope of lying, or holding anything back. The playful side of Ille had been a transitory, fleeting moment. Now she was calm again, almost grave and a concentrated intensity governed her features. It was an expression which half-frightened Kathy.
Compared with Ille’s past Kathy’s life seemed so dull and ordinary that she was almost ashamed to discuss it. She paused to think for a moment. Ille fixed her with midnight-blue eyes that insisted upon an answer.
At last Kathy tried to explain herself: ‘Well, I’m from Los Angeles. My father owns some drug stores … mostly in California … and I lived with him mainly. I mean we shared the same house, but after I grew older, say around fifteen or so, he never took much interest in anything I did, which was okay because I wasn’t interested in anything he did. He and my mother split when I was a baby. We never talked about her. You know once she sent me a card for my birthday, and it arrived exactly a month late. She couldn’t remember the month I was born in, although I suppose she got the day of the month right. Anyway, I never saw her after being very small, and she mustn’t have wanted to see us because she never kept in touch. She’s dead now. I’m not trying to say that I was deprived of anything like mother’s love or all that crap though. I don’t think I ever missed her. She was never there, but there were always women around the house, governesses and maids and mistresses. They were pretty good to me as a kid in all the ways that a mother would have been. Anyway, what you don’t know you don’t miss, and I never missed her….’ She paused and wondered where to pick up her threads again. Ille just stared at her: an unblinking beautiful madonna. ‘Anyway I grew up, and went to school, and then I decided to come here. And that’s all my boring little life adds up to….’ She laughed nervously. She knew it wasn’t enough for Ille.
‘And what about men?’ Ille’s voice was almost so low and her expression so grave that Kathy had to lean forward across the table to hear her.
‘Men? Well you know. A couple of affairs, a few one-night-stands. Nothing much. There was this guy, this Bob, I was going with until the other night. He was okay but he was married and he had all kinds of hang-ups. I think he was maybe in love with me. But it got tedious. Well I know he was in love with me. People seem to fall in love with me more easily than I can with them.’
Ille raised an eyebrow: ‘Are you sure?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Might you not just imagine it? Maybe everyone doesn’t fall in love with you.’ There was something banteringly argumentative about the way Ille was talking that annoyed Kathy. How could Ille possibly know anything about her life, and who did or did not love her?
Ille saw the confidence drain from Kathy’s face, a gay, smiling bubble suddenly punctured. She smiled at her, and putting out a hand touched her arm comfortingly: ‘Shall we go home now? Will you come home with me?’
The request was a simple one of friendship. Yet Kathy felt a tremor of exhilaration in the intimacy being offered. Everything that was happening to her was new. She had never met anyone like Ille before, never knowing from one minute to the next what this strange and mysterious creature might say or do. And the uncertainty of her new life fascinated her. ‘That would be nice,’ she heard herself saying, and within moments they had paid their bill and were hand in hand in the back of a taxi.
It was quite dark when they got back to the apartment, but instead of flooding the place with light Ille simply turned on a small sidetable lamp and instantly covered it with a crocheted shawl, so that a dapple pattern covered the one lighted area of the room. Then going into her bedroom Ille left Kathy alone to settle into one of the deep cushions before returning wearing a long loosely fitting white nightdress with lace trimmings. Kathy thought she had never seen anyone look so calm before, and her mind exalted in her friend’s beauty.
When later trying mentally to reconstruct the order of events on that night Kathy couldn’t remember how long they sat there on those islands of cushions staring at each other before they kissed. She couldn’t really remember who made the first approach, although she knew it must have been Ille. Nothing seemed predetermined. It just happened. For long moments they stared at each other, and smiled in the knowledge of their growing attraction and mutual fascination. And when they did find themselves kissing it wasn’t the deliberately exciting carnal kisses of a man trying to seduce a girl, but the meeting of two young and beautiful, complementary and perfectly equal halves. To Kathy there was a tenderness she had never before experienced. Ille was so soft and comforting. And for hours they lay together across the cushions, feeling the warmth of each other’s bodies, and taking pleasure in their shared tenderness. And as they lay and found themselves stroking each other’s hair and faces, and pushing their bodies closer together in warmth and grateful pleasure Kathy thought about the men she had known, and remembered the textures of their skins, and the smell of sweat that grew with their excitement. And she remembered Bob and her behaviour in the jakoozi, and wondered whether he had in fact loved her after all. And all the time she kissed and caressed with Ille, neither one being more forward, more dominant than the other, until at length Ille in a voice that was shaking in anticipation whispered quietly: ‘Will you come into my bed?’
And Kathy smiled and nodded, and standing up pulled Ille towards her and continuing her embrace allowed Ille to take her through into the bedroom, where silently Ille undressed her, all the time nibbling at her body with care and loving affection, taking away her blouse and nuzzling around her breasts, perfectly tanned from the sanctity of private sunbathing. And then Kathy helped as Ille slipped her out of her trousers and pants, until naked Kathy stood by the bed, and unfastening her scarf allowed her hair to fall down around her shoulders.
And looking at her Ille considered the long supple limbs and the tiny triangle of bikini-sanctified white flesh and she went down on her knees to kiss and adore that perfect body, while Kathy slipped free the ribbons which held her friend’s nightgown and let it fall free about her feet, so that they were both naked. Kathy tall and blonde and golden, and Ille shorter, dark and wearing three separate necklaces around her throat – three necklaces that Kathy was never to see her without. And slowly they climbed on to the blue gingham of the bed cover and lay together for a long time while their hands discovered each other. And again neither was the leader, and neither the follower. It was as though they both knew what they wanted to be done to themselves. And again Kathy thought of the shortcomings of the men in her life, so often in a hurry, so often ignorant of what she had needed. But Ille knew so well what to please and where to please. And lying side by side their fingers caressed and entered each other, until they both became wet with excitement. And later when Ille turned round head to toe so that they might seek out each other’s bodies with their mouths and tongues they moved and cried out together as they worked to make their first act of love-making their best ever. And before too long they found themselves in the midst of a shared orgasm, first Kathy and then Ille, who had been saving her release for that of her friend. And while the pleasure pumped through their whole bodies they lay thighs and heads intertwined, until fatigue replaced excitement and crawling silently alongside each other and under the sheets they fell asleep. Two lovers. Content in each other’s arms. And they both knew that they were in love. In love in a way that Kathy hardly understood, but which Ille knew they both dearly wanted.
Ille woke first. It was a bright morning of strong, new sunlight, and it made her eyes wince with its brilliance. Rising gently so that she might not wake Kathy she tiptoed to the window and pulled the lace curtains together, an action overlooked in the mutual preoccupation of the previous night, so that the glare was taken off the room. Then slipping quietly back into bed she lay for a long time and contemplated the person next to her, noticing her suntanned back and studied the perfectly even nodules that stood out along Kathy’s curved spine. Kathy didn’t move, and h
er gentle breathing aroused a new sense of desire in Ille. But this morning she didn’t want to make love to Kathy. She wanted to love her. And putting a hand out she stroked the skin of Kathy’s shoulders. And lying in such perfect contentment she wondered what she had done to deserve such happiness. In the warmth of her bed she felt more secure and happy than she could remember, and moving out a thigh she allowed a foot to gently run down Kathy’s leg.
From somewhere in a far-off dream the movement disturbed Kathy and blinking wearily she opened her eyes to find her head lost in the pale blue and white gingham sheets and pillow case. Next to her she could feel the tenderness and warmth of Ille, and she could sense that she was being studied, possibly admired. Overcome by a sudden shyness, she allowed her head to remain buried, her expression to go unseen, while she considered the situation, and the enormous step she had last night taken. Everything was so new to her. She needed time to think about it. The world seemed to have toss-tailed over and last night she had done something of which she might once have thought she was incapable. But still desire filled her; not a desire for myriad orgasms, or erotic new sexual techniques, but to have and to hold on to Ille as her lover. Everything about Ille captivated her. The contradictions in her personality; the quiet confidences with which she approached her life and which were then suddenly burst open by the lunatic antics, stealing hints of a dark, uncontrollable malevolence, and exhibitionist, childish games of playing in the streets.
Ille watched and waited, almost knowing what Kathy might be thinking. She too was perplexed by her own behaviour, and by her own emotions. Although she recognized that behaviour as something she had long known to be inevitably within herself.
At last Kathy turned towards her. For a prolonged moment that seemed as though time had stopped Ille was terrified that the girl she had loved the night before might now despise her, and be reviled by her. But Kathy’s expression told another story. And together their arms went out to each other in a re-consummation of their new affair.