by Ray Connolly
Kathy was surprised that Hélène was so elegant: so chic. Indeed she was surprised by the whole assembly at Galerie Arbus. More of a showroom than a bookshop, or indeed a gallery, the building was of a split-level design, aggressively fashionable in its sparse furnishings and lighting. And no one there, she was sure, could care a penny about early Christianity in North America. If the author was present he must have felt very lonely. It was, she guessed, an excuse for Arbus to have a little party: to meet some people from the Press: to say hello to the odd more worldly churchman, and an excuse for Hélène to enjoy being a publisher’s wife. Whatever Ille or she did at such an occasion was unlikely to shock: the most they would manage would be to possibly amuse. She resolved that when the time was right she should make this clear to Ille and they should leave. But already Ille was engrossed in deep conversation with Hélène. Cautiously she moved into the centre of the crowd, aware that they had caused an admiring flutter of attention among the guests, and seeking the anonymity of the denser gathering to recover from the growing feeling of panic she felt beginning to soak the palms of her hands.
‘You look nervous, Kathy.’ Arbus was standing next to her bearing replacement glasses of champagne in his hands. He offered her one, and taking a couple of paces through the crowd gave the other to Ille, still engrossed in her conversation with Hélène. Still smiling he returned to his prey. ‘I didn’t think I would see you again.’
‘You never called again.’
‘I gathered the impression that your friend didn’t like me.’
‘You’re wrong. She thinks you’re very attractive.’
‘And you?’
‘She thinks I’m attractive, too….’ The joke helped break the tension in the atmosphere, and gave Kathy a much needed breathing space.
‘She’s a good judge,’ he said and together they both turned and looked at Ille.
‘Your wife is very beautiful.’ Kathy felt the confidence she had always known with men beginning to return.
Arbus was obviously pleased and flattered: ‘Thank you,’ he said. Professional adulterers enjoy the reflections of such compliments.
‘You make a very handsome couple – rich, successful, good looking.’ The tone of Kathy’s voice was rising into mockery. This time Arbus was ready.
‘And you too …!’ His comment was flip enough, and Kathy was certain he meant nothing by it other than the chance to show off a little rapid repartee, but all the same she felt the colour rising in her cheeks. When she was alone with Ille their relationship seemed so simple, so straightforward. It was only when faced with the reality of the world outside, with the prejudices she could so easily forget about in the apartment, that she felt herself becoming confused. And yet, she told herself, there was nothing unusual about two girls living together: even sleeping together. It wasn’t that she preferred girls to boys: it was just that she preferred Ille to any boy she had met in Paris: that she preferred the company of Ille to anyone she knew. Their love-making was just an extension of their friendship. She was a naturally affectionate person: a physical person. And she had always shown love and admiration in a basically physical sense. At school, at college and at home there had always been boys to fulfil her need to give affection. Now Ille fulfilled those requirements. There was nothing unusual about that, she was sure. And if indeed it did seem a strange relationship that was merely because she had never before come across the particular emotions she now felt in herself. She hadn’t changed, she was sure. All that had happened was that now she was expressing a wider range of her sensitivities. She still liked men: she still fantasized about them, just as she always had done. And she was sure that once her trip to Paris had grown stale she would return to the United States: return to a situation which she could control, and probably meet some man who would talk her into wedlock. The thought didn’t appeal to her, but it did seem inevitable. Meanwhile her Paris sabbatical was an experiment in living a new style of life: a life with someone who had at once attracted her, excited her and whom she had now grown to love. Los Angeles seemed two million miles away from Galerie Arbus at that particular moment.
Kathy considered Arbus quizzically while she gave herself time to come up with an answer: ‘We’re just two lonely spinsters,’ she said at last. ‘Two lonely girls waiting for our knights on white horses to carry us off to live in a castle. And until they do we’ll just have to keep our virtues in our pockets and our vices under our pillows….’
‘So that’s where all good modern girls keep their vices these days?’ Arbus had taken up Kathy on a quite innocent slip of the tongue, and given her conversation a heavily sexual innuendo.
Embarrassed, Kathy found herself blushing: ‘Shall we have another drink?’ she said, turning towards a passing waiter.
‘When shall I see you again?’ whispered Arbus, so that his other guests might not be privy to his desires.
And surprised by his honest persistence Kathy found herself saying: ‘Soon.’ Although she had really no intention of ever seeing him again.
Across the small Galerie Hélène was fascinated by Ille. While her own personality balanced controlled hysteria against light-hearted giddiness followed by days of bottomless depressions she found Ille’s calmness and tranquillity both soothing and reassuring. While Hélène’s social position should have placed her in a status where there was no place for self-doubts, she wore her personal fears and massive insecurities like emblems on her sleeve. Ille, the complete antithesis of all this, had an assurity and self-confidence that Hélène found mesmerizing. Immediately Hélène had noticed the gentle compatibility which Ille and Kathy shared: the American girl, thin and boyish, while Ille, slightly older, was so resolutely feminine. Without even speaking to either of them question marks were forming in her mind. As a young girl herself she had enjoyed that camaraderie between girls, that absence of competition, which seemed so indigenously French. In no other country in which she had lived had that co-operative friendliness been so apparent. French women made good companions for each other, she thought. These two, an American and a French girl, were perfect for each other.
Ille opened the conversation: ‘One would never have imagined so chic a gathering for a launching of a religious book,’ she said, half teasing, a quality to which Hélène immediately responded. ‘I wonder what God would think.’
‘I suppose were He here He would see us as a gang of merchants who have turned His temple into a market place. We would be no doubt cast out in a fit of divine wrath.’
‘Or He may be appeased if you put up a collection box marked Peter’s Pence on the gallery door. Tell me, does your husband also trade in indulgences?’
Hélène enjoyed Ille’s anti-clericalism: in her own heart she had occasionally found her husband’s secular fascination with making money out of what she, at least, believed to be archaic superstitions, slightly exploitative, though certainly profitable. To Hélène money in the abstract had a slightly distasteful quality: in the hand, however, its purely practical form was the single commodity for which she held unreserved respect.
‘Do you think you have a need for indulgences?’ she asked.
Ille shrugged. ‘I think I have a need to be indulgent sometimes.’
‘And your friend? Is she indulgent to you?’
‘I think we share our little indulgences. Is that not the best way, between friends?’
‘Your friend is new to Paris?’
‘We’ve been together for three months. We stayed here during the summer that she might learn about Paris. But she didn’t meet very many people because everyone was away for the holidays. That is why she speaks so little French. I think now she will have a better chance to learn.’
‘She is very charming. A little shy perhaps?’
‘Not when you know her well.’
‘Perhaps you would both like to come to tea one afternoon. The weather is still like summer. I like to have friends around in the afternoons while Claude is working. It allows me to lead a lif
e of my own.’
‘That would be nice,’ said Ille politely, wondering what Hélène’s real motives might be, and then dismissing her suspicions as founded on her own views of sexuality. Should an invitation ever come, which she doubted, she would no doubt think of some way of refusing it at the time.
‘I shall look forward to another meeting then,’ said Hélène happily, and with a few more boring and courteous comments and mutual flatteries their conversation broke up as Hélène went to mingle with other party guests, and Kathy found herself back with Ille.
‘Who d’you have to fuck to get out of here?’ Kathy whispered the old cliché into Ille’s ear, just loudly enough for one of the few token clerics to overhear, a resonance and self-confidence brought on by too much champagne.
‘Me, my love,’ answered Ille.
‘Then let’s find somewhere with greater ambience, shall we?’
And with a polite bundle of handshakes she and Ille made their way out of the party and into the warm Paris evening.
‘I told Arbus I’d see him again,’ said Kathy, half testing Ille’s reaction as they made their way along St Germain.
‘And I promised a little meeting with his wife,’ said Ille. This prompted Kathy to stop and think for a moment.
‘D’you think they’re swingers?’ she said at last.
‘What are swingers?’
‘You know, wife swappers … a modern marriage and all that.’
‘Perhaps. Pity one of us isn’t a man. We could have had a good time there,’ said Ille.
‘Which would you prefer? Him or her?’
Ille thought for a moment: ‘Both together might be entertaining.’
‘He wouldn’t want that. You can bet your boots he’s a real chauvinist pig when it comes to his own wife.’
‘But she might. How old is she? Thirty-five … thirty-seven? Very well preserved. A woman at that age is like a coiled spring. She’d do anything for variety.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘No. But it’s nice to think,’ said Ille, and stealing a quick kiss from an amused Kathy, she led her into a bar while they planned the remainder of the evening.
‘You know,’ said Kathy, after a further bottle of champagne had been opened and shared between the two of them, and further bubbles of high spirits had broken down additional reservations of character, making an adventurer of the timid, ‘You know the one place you’ve never taken me in Paris is a dyke club. I want to see a dyke club. They don’t have them in Los Angeles, and it’s a thing you always hear about when people talk about Paris. The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and dyke clubs. They’re the three tourist places to visit. Well I’ve seen the other two, but we’ve never been to any good clubs.’
‘But we have. We went to Regine. That’s very sophisticated. And to Rasputin. That too.’
‘Yes. Yes. But never any dyke clubs. France is the first country in the world to have a Minister for the Feminine Condition – yet you won’t take me to see that feminine condition unshackled by man’s grubby competitiveness.’
‘You wouldn’t like them, my love.’
‘You’ve been there?’
‘Of course. Everyone has.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘It’s a mistake. Forget it.’
‘But I want to go.’ Kathy was becoming exasperated at Ille’s reluctance to show her this side of Paris. The idea of clubs just for girls fascinated her.
Seeing the resolution in the eyes of her friend, Ille backed down: ‘All right. If that’s what you really want. Tonight I’ll give you an education. There are three or four well-known clubs. We’ll visit them all. But if you don’t enjoy yourself, don’t blame me.’
‘Of course I’ll enjoy myself.’ Kathy couldn’t imagine what Ille might be intimating.
‘All right. They’re all near Montparnasse. So we’ll get a taxi there. And then we can walk.’
And so it was decided.
The first club, Ma Tante, would have been quite jolly, had there not been such an enforced air of old-fashioned gaiety about it. It was early and there were few clients there, and all Kathy could think was that it would make a marvellous set for a Fellini film. Designed entirely in thirties art deco (original, not mock) the main attraction of the place was a three-woman band, a group of faded elderly ladies with close-cropped and dyed hair wearing ill-fitting men’s suits and playing ‘As Time Goes By’ on piano, a tiny drum set and clarinet. In a way they looked like three circus clowns. To Kathy’s way of thinking it was a rather seedy, pathetic establishment, but the regulars there seemed happy and contented and all the while the band smiled happily among themselves, and the manageress, another lady with very close greased-back hair, was charm itself. Together Kathy and Ille ordered a bottle of champagne and listened patiently to the band, those three powder-puff faces, smiling a welcome at them from the adjacent rostrum. It was a happy club of people who knew and understood and accepted without embarrassment what they were. And indeed the only distasteful element of the club was the pervading presence of a young woman in a pin-striped suit who gazed hopefully and continually at Kathy for several minutes.
‘Satisfied, now, my love?’ Ille hadn’t finished her champagne, but she wanted to be off. There was a nervousness about her in this situation which Kathy had never before encountered.
‘D’you think she fancies me?’ said Kathy, half gesturing to the silent girl watching her.
Ille looked at her: ‘She’s probably a boy pretending to be a girl dressed as a boy because she can’t decide which way to jump. You get gigolos in places like this prepared to be boys or girls depending upon appetites. She probably thinks you’re rich because of your clothes. To me she looks like a mass of sexual confusion. Maybe she’s what you need.’
Kathy felt deflated: ‘Cheek. Let’s go.’
‘Home?’
‘No. You told me there were others. Tonight I want to see Gay Paris …’ And then realizing she had made a joke the moment after she had said it she repeated it. ‘That’s it, gay Paris.’
Again Ille saw no point in arguing. Yet within her she felt a strange premonition of unhappiness to come. Kathy was pushing her desire for experience faster than her emotions would be able to take it. An anxiety hung over her.
‘Okay then, we’ll go to Medusa Et Moi. You’ll like it there – they have a strip show. But I think it’s mainly for tourists these days.’
They arrived just in time for the climax of one of the many strip shows, and as they found their seats in the darkness Kathy found herself watching mesmerized as two virtually naked girls went through a routine of simulated groping of each other, running their hands and fingers along each other’s G. strings, stroking the nipples of each other’s breasts, and caressing with increasing fervour the contours of each other’s bottoms. Then just as she imagined the G. strings were about to be ripped off the lights suddenly went out, and to a rather bored and disappointed applause the girls fled the stage. When the lights came on again she had a chance to observe her surroundings. Unlike the other club, where the only man present had been behind the bar and had clearly doubled up as bouncer when necessary, there seemed now to be a preponderance of men, tourists, no doubt getting their kicks out of seeing young girls maul each other.
A waiter in a dinner suit came across to take their order. At first Kathy thought he was a rather plump boy, but as he leant forward, putting his face close to Ille’s to hear her order, Kathy realized with rather an unpleasant shock that the waiter was a girl, smooth cheeked and wearing false eyelashes. This disturbed her slightly. The suit didn’t make the girl look attractive. On the contrary, waddling about like that she appeared more like a little old man: a grotesque little penguin. Ille noticed her expression of surprise: ‘Still enjoying yourself, my love?’
In no way was Kathy going to back down now. She had come out to see girls’ clubs, and that was precisely what she intended to do.
‘Let’s see another floor show,’ she said, determined
more than ever to enjoy herself. And so they waited while another act took the floor, this time an ugly parody of a fight between two Pigalle street girls, who, armed with handbags and belts, went jealously at each other as a long preliminary to tearing off each other’s clothes that they might further titillate their audience. Some tourists in the small audience appreciated it, but for Kathy it was much as boring as the first act. This time it was she who made the first move.
‘One more, and then we’ll call it a night,’ she said, obviously disappointed.
‘The next club is for those who are really serious about girls.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Ille pondered how to explain, and decided that it was easier not to bother: ‘You’ll see.’
Of all the clubs for girls in Paris La Belle Mort is probably the most famous. Ille had been drawing back from taking Kathy there for a variety of reasons. Once inside there was no knowing how Kathy would respond, or how she would see herself. But Kathy was insistent.
Outside the club all the windows were boarded over with black painted shutters. Ille rang the bell and waited: ‘Maybe it’s closed tonight,’ she said with more hope than assurance, but as she finished talking a beautiful Asian girl in a silk sari opened the door.
‘Come in,’ she smiled and as they entered she took both of their hands, and ran a finger along the inside of each of their wrists, which sent a tingle of unexpected pleasure throughout Kathy.
At first sight the club was like any discothèque anywhere in the world. A few young men hung around the bar, and further back another boy played a selection of rock records over the sound system. The Asian girl led them to a table and took their order. Only then did Kathy notice that all the couples dancing and all the people sitting wallflower-like around the side of the small polished dance floor were girls. Not butch, masculine, ugly girls: but pretty, attractive, feminine ones. Beside Kathy and Ille sat a blonde and a tall and statuesque black girl, her hair cropped tight to the shape of her head, her neck long and graceful. So attractive was she, in fact, that Kathy found herself looking admiringly at her. After a moment the black girl noticed and returned her gaze, unsmilingly.