Trick or Treat?

by Ray Connolly

  ‘What about Sonja?’ Kathy’s eventual question came like a finger under the eyeball at Ille. ‘Was she your lover, too?’

  Nervously Ille released her grip on Kathy. Then resuming her serenity she began her game: ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Why should I be?’

  ‘Perhaps you are jealous of the men and possibly other women I have known.’

  Kathy paused reflectively: ‘Not the men. Not them at all. Maybe I am jealous of the women. Have there been many women?’

  Ille shook her head slowly: ‘And you? What about you?’ she asked, although she was sure she knew the answer.

  ‘No. None. You’re the only one. I used to think I could never….’ She didn’t really know how to carry on.

  ‘Could never fuck a woman?’

  ‘Yes … something like that. Tell me about Sonja.’

  Ille lay back and pushing her hands under her pillow lifted it so that her head was raised at an angle. Peeping from the top of the sheets one breast was half exposed as she reached for a cigarette on the bedside table, her neck bangles and necklaces hanging Ashanti fashion around her throat. She flicked her Feudor lighter and blew out the smoke in a long thoughtfulness: ‘Sonja was the only other one. But she was not like you. Sonja had had other girls, many of them I think. She preferred girls to boys, but when she came here she came as a friend at first. There was no thought in my mind that she should be a lover. I don’t know what she thought. And then one night, just after I had heard about my brother’s death, she came into my room and began to kiss me, as we did last night. And I didn’t like it at first. But she was strong. Not physically. Just strong in her personality. And she comforted me. We made love, but not like last night. Not like you and I. I was excited but unsure. Perhaps it was a mistake. She never came in again. Then a few days later she said she was going to America. And she left. Sometimes she would write and tell me where she was, and I would write and tell her how I was, if I was happy or lonely, if I was with a boy, if I was missing her or if I was depressed. And then a few days ago she wrote and told me to expect you.’

  Kathy was surprised: ‘You knew I was coming?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But, what did she say about me? We hardly met.’

  ‘Nothing. She didn’t even give me your name. She just said there was someone she felt I would want to know, who would bring me a letter.’

  ‘That’s all she said?’

  ‘Only just that you seemed like someone who was as selfish and self-obsessed as I am. I thought at first she was making a joke. But then you came and I read the note that you brought.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘Just one line, really. It said “Every dove needs a mate. Perhaps this one will be yours.” She would always tease me about the aviary.’

  Kathy lay back and considered the situation: ‘So she was like a pimp for us both,’ she said at last.

  ‘That’s not very complimentary. I think we should remember her as more of a go-between. A match-maker. Perhaps she knew my needs better than I did myself. And maybe yours, too. And she knew that she wasn’t able to fulfil them. Her attitude was too masculine. I think she hated men, although in some ways she was very like one.’

  ‘I thought she was very beautiful.’

  ‘Yes. But perhaps too perfect. Too perfect for any man. That was how she thought of herself.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Oh me. I’ve been pretty enough for lots of men. Too many, I think.’ And with that sudden tone of self-regret Ille fell silent while she contemplated the easy lays of her life. Sometimes, many times, it had just not been worth saying no. ‘I was easy to have,’ she said. ‘But impossible to hold.’

  Kathy went back to the Hotel Raphael to check out that very afternoon. Ille wanted her to move in with her and she was overjoyed at being asked. Today the whole world took on different perspectives. Things she had never dreamed possible were happening to her, and emotions she had always read about and heard about were now beginning to clamour inside her brain. She felt elated and high on excitement, and when she announced to the hotel reception that she would be leaving she found herself blushing, wondering whether the clerk might possibly have guessed her secret.

  ‘There was a message for you, Miss Crawford,’ the clerk said, searching among the room pigeon holes, and passing her a folded sheet of paper. For a moment she thought that Ille might have changed her mind, played a cruel trick on her, and called to cancel their arrangement while she was in the taxi on her way back, and she almost laughed with relief when she read the thinly veiled lechery of a note from Claude Arbus. In her two days in Paris Arbus had been forgotten completely. ‘What about lunch today?’ the message read. ‘Will call about twelve.’ She looked at her watch. That was any moment now. She’d have to put him off. She had to get back to be with Ille.

  In her room she tore at her recently arranged drawers and wardrobe, pulling out gowns and jeans and sweaters and underclothes, jewellery and books, and hurling them into her cases in her anxiety to get back. It was almost, she felt, as if the apartment, the aviary and the girl would be gone if she wasted a moment. She was almost ready when the telephone rang.

  ‘Hello. Kathy? Ah, this is Claude Arbus. I am in the hotel lobby. I was passing. Perhaps some lunch?’

  Kathy swore softly to herself. Trust him to turn up. It wasn’t even as though she had particularly encouraged him. ‘Look, I’m checking out right now. It would be nice to see you, but maybe some other time. I mean lunch is out for today.’

  ‘Oh. That’s a pity.’

  ‘Yes. But you know how it is … I mean I already have a date. I’ll call you in a few days when I’ve moved into my new home.’

  Kathy didn’t want to appear rude. She had no need to. But she was desperate to get back to Ille. So with a quick apology she put down the ‘phone, finished packing and called the hotel porter to help her with her bags. A moment later there was a knock on the door. Taking a last look around for any objects she might have forgotten in her headlong haste she ran to open it. Arbus was standing in the doorway, carrying a large bunch of red carnations. In her surprise and confusion at seeing him instead of the bellboy she suddenly felt herself becoming hot and angry.

  ‘I told you. I’m seeing someone. I have to get out of the hotel. And I’m very late.’

  Arbus shrugged his shoulders and looked sheepish. He had such confident charm that he even managed to turn an out-rightly rude rejection into a game of hard-to-get: ‘Of course. But I couldn’t take the flowers back to the shop.’ And with a shy glance at his toes he pressed the bouquet forward into Kathy’s arms.

  With such a display of calculatedly boyish charm, Kathy hardly knew how she could continue her bad humour, and without knowing how to fittingly protest she agreed that Arbus should take her in his car across to Sèvres-Babylone where Ille had her apartment.

  Sitting alongside him in his felt-seated car she almost found herself blushing again when he began to inquire about her new home: ‘This friend of yours … have you known her long?’

  ‘No, not really. We have a mutual friend.’

  ‘I see. It will be good for you. She will be able to show you Paris … the parts of Paris that a young girl like you will want to see.’

  Kathy wasn’t altogether sure whether or not another more sinister meaning was intended with such an aside, but she dismissed her suspicions as evidence of her own creeping feelings of guilt … a guilt which if ever asked she would never be able to properly articulate or explain, but one which must have had indigenous roots in a strait-laced, Calvinist ancestry. While she may have overcome the taboos of sex between men and women, an enormous question mark hung over her deliberate decision to embark upon a love affair with another girl.

  Mentally she tried a little bit of hypocrisy. It wasn’t a love affair. It was a friendship. When you have a love affair with a man you get fucked and that’s final, she allowed herself to think. But was it an affair to sleep
with a woman? Surely it was no more than play: an extension of masturbation. Thoughtfully she tried to convince herself of the logic of her argument, but the overriding desire she felt to return to Ille as quickly as possible pointed at the lie in the centre of her argument. She resolved to consider the matter at some other moment.

  In the drive across Paris Arbus kept up a continual patter of conversation, repeating that his wife was still away and how lonely it could be in one’s own city, and that if she were in need of anything at all she only had to call him. And that if lunch for today was out, then what about dinner tonight? And, well, if not that, maybe tomorrow night? He was a persistent fellow.

  Ille was waiting in the doorway as Arbus’s red car pulled up outside the apartment block. By his expression Kathy could see that he was instantly intrigued by this grave dark girl in a long dark gown and full-length hooded cloak. As Ille spotted Kathy her face lit up into an amused smile.

  ‘Extraordinary!’ was all Arbus could manage to comment.

  Opening the car door for her friend Ille looked Kathy straight in the eye: ‘So already I have competition,’ she whispered, and laughing privately led the way towards the apartment.

  Introductions were saved until they were safely back in the apartment. Kathy would have preferred to have left Arbus at the street door, but he insisted on helping her up the stairs with her cases, and as Ille had already gone on ahead without waiting to meet him Kathy felt that she had no alternative but to thank him gratefully for his help and guide him up to her new home. On the second-floor landing the Chinese concierge watched them silently and without smiling.

  Inside the apartment Ille had already poured a cognac for Arbus by the time the heavily laden couple reached her. Uncomfortably Kathy gestured towards him: ‘Ille, this is Claude … a friend I met on the plane. I was explaining to him why I couldn’t make lunch today … because of our date.’ She looked hopefully towards Ille, praying that she would support her.

  Ille was tact itself: ‘Ah … yes … that’s a pity.’

  Arbus moved forward and shook her hand formally and firmly, and she fixed him with her most engaging smile.

  Kathy chattered on: ‘But he was coming this way and very kindly he offered to help with my luggage.’ She almost felt as though she were making excuses to Ille for bringing this stranger into her home.

  Arbus, all smiles, raised his glass in a silent toast, and moving round the apartment, came to rest at the window of the aviary: ‘Extraordinary,’ he said again, and then noticing Ille watching and waiting to see his reaction, he added: ‘But quite beautiful.’

  Kathy wished to God that he would finish his drink and go, but Ille showed no impatience, and inviting him to sit down they conversed quickly in French for a few minutes, exchanging pleasantries so far as Kathy could tell. Then noticing that Kathy was having difficulty understanding, Arbus turned back towards her.

  ‘Perhaps all three of us could have dinner tonight?’ he suggested, with a dogged charm.

  ‘Well …’ Kathy turned to Ille looking for an escape route.

  Ille ignored her unspoken request: ‘That would be very nice,’ she said.

  And so it was agreed.

  Chapter 3

  The foam from the aerosol can of shaving cream erupted coldly into Kathy’s armpit, and she squirmed ticklishly as Ille rubbed it gently into the stubble.

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Ille, gently bringing the safety razor across the foam.

  ‘I feel almost depraved,’ Kathy said, feeling an embarrassment for the first time. Ille frowned and carried on shaving away at her friend’s hairs, bathing the razor in the washbasin from time to time, and massaging new cream into the flesh.

  ‘You can be very bourgeois,’ was all she said.

  Kathy looked at her with some slight annoyance. She didn’t enjoy Ille’s dismissive attitudes towards her background. Whenever she said or did anything which Ille found conservative or naïve it was invariably blamed on her upbringing. Persistently, Ille showed a deep-rooted antipathy towards Americans.

  Reflected in the bathroom mirror together they made a surrealistic image. Earlier, after Arbus had left, Ille had bathed Kathy, soaking her body in bubbles, lathering her skin, talking all the time about how little Thai girls in Bangkok could turn a simple bath into an experience of sensuous hedonism, and then noticing the slight traces of new hair growing under Kathy’s arms, had offered to shave her. In a sense Kathy felt that this was almost too much of an invasion of her privacy, but Ille’s cool and sage determination had prevented her from protesting. So with a towel round her waist Kathy had watched and waited as Ille produced a razor and shaving foam, left, she half-explained, by a boyfriend who thought he had come to stay, but quickly realized the errors of his presumptions.

  ‘Don’t you ever shave there?’ asked Kathy. When they had first made love she had been surprised to find tufts of soft dark hair hiding under Ille’s arms. On anyone else she might have been repelled, but Ille’s skin was so dark, and the hair so fine that she actually saw it as a new and slightly erotic dimension.

  Ille shook her head: ‘The French are not so obsessed with turning out anti-septic, mouthwashed people as you Americans. I think it more natural for me not to worry about things like that. For you it is a sign of your being feminine, isn’t it? I can understand that too. We have different ways.’

  And without any further rationale she carried on kneading the soap, and very carefully scraping it away again.

  Kathy changed the subject: ‘What did you think of Arbus?’

  Ille shrugged; that careless Gallic gesture which might have meant anything.

  Kathy tried again: ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Ille was concentrating hard on a fold of skin.

  ‘Enough to fuck him?’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Again the non-committal reply. And then the counter punch. ‘And you?’

  ‘I might have done before. But not now.’

  ‘Now you prefer girls.’

  Kathy felt awkward. She didn’t want to hear Ille say that: ‘I prefer this girl. I mean I like men. I’m heterosexual.’ In her embarrassment she was beginning to gabble, trying to convince herself as much as Ille. ‘I mean I’m not a …’ she didn’t want to say the word. ‘… You understand, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Ille was being reassuring. ‘You said I was the first girl… ?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And the first boy?’ It was almost like an inquisition.

  ‘Why d’you want to know that?’

  ‘Come on, tell me.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s think. I was fifteen and it was in a log cabin at a summer camp in Colorado. He was eighteen and black. He was the volley ball champion that year. Now he’s a peanut salesman at Disneyland.’

  ‘So you were ravished by a negro volleyballer.’

  ‘No way. He was seduced by a Caucasian minor. I told everybody afterwards. And he was so proud. I think he fucked half the girls in camp after that. He was the total athlete. Perfect body.’

  ‘He must sell a lot of peanuts.’

  Again Ille was teasing her: ‘What about you?’ demanded Kathy, as Ille turned her round to begin under the other arm.

  Ille shrugged dismissively: ‘No. There was never anyone. I kept myself pure for you.’ She laughed to herself.

  ‘Come on. Tell me: It’s only fair,’ said Kathy.

  ‘The first time was not interesting. Not really. I was sixteen and going to drama classes. And one night my professor was taking me home and he stopped his car in the Bois de Boulogne and that was that. I liked to pretend afterwards that I’d really been raped. But I wasn’t. He would have stopped if I’d asked him. I could make him eat out of my hand. He would do whatever I wanted. I had never thought about it much until then, but as soon as he started I wanted to know what it was like. It was a kind of deliverance for me, but it didn’t mean anything emotionally one way or the other.’ She paused. Then her face lit up. ‘Wait … I have a better sto
ry. When I was eighteen I was staying with my parents in Phnom Penh and this little Cambodian boy was in love with me. I knew it. He would follow me around and wait for me to come home. He lived in our house because he was the son of our housemaid. And one day it was very hot, and we were alone in the house. And I began to play with him. You know what I mean. He was so beautiful. I love little boys. He was probably only twelve. They are so innocent and pure at that age. We were playing on the verandah. And I asked him what he would like most in all the world, and he said he wanted to see inside my bedroom. So I said he must come inside with me. And I took him up there. He was shaking with fear, so I told him to lie on my bed. And I stroked his hair. He was so timid. So frightened of me. But I knew he wanted me, although he must have been very confused. And so I had to make love to him. He was the most beautiful boy I ever had. And when we had finished he went outside into the garden and picked me some flowers and brought them to my room. But he wouldn’t come in again. He never did. That was the first and the last time. You like that story?’

  Kathy pursed her lips, watching Ille through the mirror as she shaved off the last of the lather from under her upturned arm: ‘I’m not sure. It makes you sound like a vamp – corrupting a little boy.’

  No sooner had she uttered the words than she realized her mistake, and instantly she felt a sharp nick of pain as the razor caught in a fold of her skin. In the mirror she watched as a bubble of blood appeared on her flesh and spread across the soap, like ink on a blotting pad.

  ‘Oh, my love, I’m sorry. You moved.’ Ille was instantly regretful. And chattering apologies and sympathies she dashed off to the kitchen to fetch some ice cubes. ‘This will stop the blood,’ she said, and holding up Kathy’s dripping arm she pushed the ice sharply on to the open wound. Kathy jerked with pain and shock, but Ille was holding her. ‘It only hurts for a moment,’ she said. ‘Don’t cry.’ And she smiled banteringly as Kathy blinked back reflex tears.