by Ray Connolly
As for Ille she appeared to be in a state of happy delirium the whole evening, moving from group to group flirting and teasing, seemingly knowing everyone while being simultaneously the object of everyone’s fascination. Tonight she was the bold and outgoing Ille that Kathy had first seen in the Restaurant de Rue des Saint-Pères, when she had mistakenly tried to dress like her friend. The callous, aggressive Ille, away and high on some private elation of vivaciousness, happy on a caprice, and enjoying all the time the expression of loathing that was forming and setting on the features of Arbus.
Hélène had been right about Kathy and Ille, he gradually realized, as the brandy began to make sense of the questions which were spiralling through his head. They were lesbians. But what on earth could she see in them? And why did they desire to spend so much time in bed with him? He had been made to look a fool, and now they were making fun of his wife. But he dare not tell her. To even admit what he sensed might be their true motives would be to betray to Hélène more than he knew she could stand.
Surely if it were just he that they wanted to humiliate they would have gone about it in a more simple fashion. And what exactly was the relationship between Ille and Kathy? Even if they were lesbian there was no doubt that Kathy enjoyed his love-making. She was always in a hurry. Always quick to reach orgasm. Ille had been different. To her the times in bed were like some long erotic joke which she was playing out, and which was only completed when he had emptied himself into her. If she didn’t like men why did she go to such lengths to fuck him?
As Hallowe’en became All Saints’ Day he refilled his glass, and continued to watch as like dozens of rudely painted Cinderellas the party-goers began to leave the courtyard, the music was turned down and the inside of his home became once more filled with faces and masks.
And at around two in the morning, almost as quickly as it had begun, Arbus realized that the party was indeed now over.
And while Hélène and Ille were resting in the library, their feet up on couches, talking inconsequentially, the maid cleared away the mess throughout the rest of the house.
Outside in the courtyard Arbus could see Kathy still standing motionless, a pale outline against the red glowing embers of the fire. For the first time all evening he walked to the French windows and opening them stepped quietly out, turning to lock them behind him as he moved towards her.
Kathy heard his footsteps on the paving stones, and darting a quick glance at him moved away from the fire into the shelter made by the fig trees, hoping that he might not have seen her. Tonight she didn’t particularly want to have to talk with him. She hadn’t enjoyed herself, and she didn’t like to see Ille in that aggressive and arrogant spirit. She once again felt an outsider in a foreign country. Arbus watched her disappear into the shade of the tree cave and followed her. The lantern there had long since gone out, and it was quite dark. As he stepped inside he turned to look blinkingly at the house. There was no life at any of the windows. No one could see them.
‘Did you think that you would make fun of me, Kathy?’ he asked, his voice biting from self-pity and anger.
Turning she could smell the brandy on his breath. She had never seen him properly drunk before. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she muttered humbly. ‘Didn’t you enjoy the party?’ She was trying to sound more brave than she felt. All she wanted to do was to go home, and be alone once again with Ille, not the confident outgoing Ille she had seen tonight, but the quiet and affectionate girl she had grown to love, and who could still show her kindness and companionship when the mood suited her. Tonight Kathy wanted to be rid of Claude and Hélène Arbus. Forever. Tonight she felt ashamed, not only for herself but also for Ille. Ashamed of what had happened, what was happening, and what also seemed likely to happen. Her mind was filled with unformed premonitions of unhappiness to come, and sadnesses she knew she was unable to prevent.
She moved to walk past Arbus but he was too quick for her and blocking her way, leant with one arm against a branch of the tree. Kathy glanced towards the house for aid, but could see no one. The entire courtyard was dark and empty. They were totally alone.
‘Ille and you … you are lovers, aren’t you?’ Arbus’s speech was slurred.
Kathy almost wanted to laugh. It had taken him so long to realize what she knew had been obvious to Hélène and almost everyone else for months. ‘We make love, Claude, yes. We are two women who like to make love to each other sometimes. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Then you didn’t want to know. There are probably lots of things we don’t know about each other.’
For a moment he was startled: ‘What else is there I don’t know about you two little bitches?’ he demanded.
Kathy gave him a long, reproachful look: she didn’t like being called a bitch by any man: ‘What would you like to know?’ she said defiantly, and then on a momentary whim slid her hands up his chest and around his neck. Arbus didn’t move to return the offered embrace.
‘You’re a slut,’ he said. ‘A dirty little dyke slut.’
‘And you, Monsieur Arbus, are a pathetic, drunken sop … a middle-aged man with a soft belly trying to behave like a young boy: when you started fucking us you thought you’d won a great victory, didn’t you? But do you know what we would do after you left us? We’d laugh at you. We’d laugh together at the stud we’d found ourselves, the stud who always had to get himself drunk before he could face us both and would come in smelling of wine and Aqua Manda.’ Kathy could see the anger building in Arbus’s face, but now she didn’t care. It wasn’t Arbus that she was attacking: it was everything; the whole situation in which she found herself was repulsive. And Arbus, with his double standards and values, just happened to be there calling her names. It wasn’t that she hated him, any more than at that moment she hated herself or hated Ille. But he was there: the tangible fact of her own self-loathing. ‘What do you think of that?’ She was baiting him again. ‘Do you know we planned the whole thing? We both wanted you to come and fuck me, just to see how you would then behave with two girls. We wanted to see whether you were as virile as you thought you were. We wanted to be able to play with your body, so that we might later enjoy the joke that you thought was passion. We both hate you, Arbus. And we always have done.’ Kathy’s voice was now biting with vehemence, building up her courage in herself as she spoke, transferring her own self-hate on to her contempt for Arbus.
He watched and listened in a cold fury. This beautiful fair girl who had seemed to promise so much, was now no more than a vicious and angry whore. His spirit revolted against her and what he had done with her and Ille, but as she spoke and ridiculed him his anger began to produce a new passion in him, a passion that knew no logic, and while she raved at him he suddenly found himself leaning forward, and pulling her towards him he began to push her down on to the wooden bench in the alcove of fig trees. Beneath him her body was soft and pliant, and as he pushed, her wild gabbling stopped, and her eyes opened wide with astonishment. So she thought he was a stud, did she? His mind was now a log jam of conflicting emotions. A stud? Well let her see now what she thought of him, and with one final push Kathy was lying straddled across the bench, her shawl lying open, her legs apart and unresisting. And with a haste borne of anger and disgust he pushed his hands up her legs, pulling up her skirt and further separating her legs until his body was encompassed in hers, and freeing one hand while he held her down with the other he unfastened his belt, and dragging at his fly zip pulled himself free of his trousers and half lifting her, impaled her body on to his. She made no response, no attempt to stop him. She wore no underclothes, nor ever had done that he had known about, and her body appeared to gladly welcome his penetration. And so half-standing and leaning there against the wooden bench he had her for the last time, her skirt hanging down from where their bodies met, his trousers loose around his thighs. If it had been true rape she would have screamed, he told himself. But he knew that despit
e all she had said she was as willing and as eager as he. And with a few rough and anguished heaves he emptied himself into her, gripping tightly that body, and avoiding those eyes which he knew now to be smiling at him, not the nice loving, grateful smile he had once known, but an arrogant, mocking smile, an expression she had learned from Ille, together with a hundred other habits and vices. And as he viciously withdrew from her, he just caught the slightest tease in her voice as she stifled a slight scream of surprise and pain and muttered: ‘Thank you.’
And then for some moments they stood there, and adjusted their clothes, he fastening his trousers, she watching with a curious air of condescension, until at last he was ready, and as she made no move towards the house he turned abruptly and walked back into his home, and the sanctity of the bathroom where he might bathe his throbbing head in a basin of water, and erase any evidence of lust from his body before going in to see Hélène.
For a long time Kathy sat recovering on that bench in the courtyard. Inside her she could still feel the warmth of his body, and then the sudden tear of pain as he had left her. Even before he had moved to take hold of her she had known what her baiting was doing to him, and even been encouraged by it. She’d wanted him to fuck her out there in the courtyard. She’d wanted his brutality to be worked off against her. In some way it seemed to expiate all the things that she had forced him to do, to compensate in some sense for the way she had been treating him. She had no doubt that after tonight he would be out of their lives for ever, but she wondered whether any of it had really to be this way at all. She wondered about everything. And most of all she wondered what was to become of her and Ille, who increasingly was taking on attitudes which frightened and hurt her. And when eventually at around three o’clock Ille left the house and came searching for Kathy across the courtyard she found that she was crying softly to herself, tears of sadness and loneliness, while she thought of her father and wondered what he was doing at that moment in California; and remembered happier days when she and he had spent days in the country together, and when she had been the centre of his life. And she wished that those times could be recalled, brought back for storing and re-living now that she was grown up, and so much in need of happy memories.
And Ille, seeing this quiet sad girl, bedraggled and wet with grief, felt some intuitive inkling of what had happened, and suddenly feeling a great welling sense of fondness inside her for Kathy, put an arm around her and whispered in her ear that perhaps it was time to go home. And together they made a silent way out of the courtyard into the road in search of a taxi to take them home on that feast of All Saints.
Chapter 9
It was beginning to snow as Kathy left the doctor’s surgery, large wet heavy flakes which burst into pools of water as they hit the pavement, and drove against the windscreens of the passing cars. For a little while she paused, leaning against the wall of a building, surprised at the suddenness of the onset of winter. It would now be impossible to get a taxi, she mused. Huddled against the wall for protection she found her fingers tracing the outline of a number of small bullet holes in the stones, just about waist high, and wondered of which war or revolution they were a relic. Through the soaking snow she saw a green bus moving down the avenue towards her, and breaking into a run she reached the bus stop just as the doors were about to close. Four o’clock on a Friday afternoon and the first sleet and snow of winter, and the whole bus was agog with excitement, dozens of schoolchildren making plans for the weekend should the fall continue or hopefully get worse, while the older people watched the way the falling whiteness changed the complexion of their city and wondered in silence at such a sudden transfiguration. There were no seats free, so Kathy hung tightly on to the hand-rail over her head as the bus lurched along Rue de Babylone and then turned into Boulevard Raspail. Nothing the doctor had told her had come as any surprise. She had known for weeks, not because of any physical symptoms because there had been none yet, but some kind of intuition, a belief perhaps in the judgement of fate, had put it beyond any reasonable doubt in her mind. The visit to the doctor had been only a formality, a way of getting some indication of dates and the state of her health. He had been kind, but not particularly interested, and had taken notes of the date of her last period and of the fact that she was single. At last he had asked if she wanted the baby. Unsure of herself Kathy had paused, but loyalty to Ille made her overcome her first spontaneous reaction. But of course, she had said, almost chiding the doctor for doubting her intentions. Of course we want it very much. And so, presumably understanding that she was referring to the father and herself, the doctor had nodded his head in satisfaction, and given her a prescription for some iron tablets and the name and address of a pre-natal clinic where he suggested she register. And making another appointment to see her in a month’s time had bid her goodbye.
Standing, swinging in the bus as it lurched its way back towards the apartment, Kathy wondered what Ille’s reaction was likely to be. Since the night of Hélène Arbus’s party neither of them had been in touch with Claude Arbus, and he had never ’phoned nor suggested another meeting. His afternoon visits to the apartment had ended as quickly as they had begun, and he was never again mentioned. Neither was Hélène, although Kathy was certain that Ille still saw her from time to time, going off for secret lunches about which she would be later deliberately vague. Ille had never asked Kathy exactly what had happened that night in the courtyard, and Kathy had never volunteered the information, although she was sure that in her way Ille must surely know. But since that night a change had come over their relationship. They no longer always slept together, and their love-making was now a thing of habit, more than a matter of passion. Each girl grew more secretive, and retreated further into herself, and although Kathy longed for the time when they had been totally inseparable Ille showed no desire to return to that state. The affection and companionship between the girls remained, and they would share happy hours together, sitting in La Coupole, going to movies and generally wasting away their lives, but neither girl could quite bring herself to admit that emotionally their affair was beginning to crumble. Not that anyone else was involved. Although Kathy felt jealous of Ille’s now secretive but continuing friendship with Hélène Arbus she never questioned her fidelity, and neither did Kathy feel any desire for a new romance with either a boy or a girl. After six months they had fallen into a habit of affection, which left them still friends, but only occasionally lovers.
Neither had Ille mentioned the baby she had once said that she longed for. The trauma of Hallowe’en seemed to have exorcized that particular thought from her head. And because she had never brought it up Kathy had never mentioned her thoughts when she believed she had become pregnant. It was now much more difficult to talk to Ille, and she wasn’t sure just how she might take such news, or whether in fact the bargain they had once made would still hold good. Sometimes she would be afraid of Ille: the depressions which she had once taken for enigmatic silences became more frequent, and the silent day-dreaming was always there. And often in the afternoons Kathy would arrive home from some shopping expedition or merely from one of the lone walks she had become accustomed to taking just for the excuse of an escape from the apartment, to find Ille sitting alone and motionless in the now virtually empty aviary. And Kathy would know that at such times Ille was not to be disturbed.
As she climbed the stairs to the apartment, the elevator once more being out of order, she wondered again just whether she should tell Ille of her news. Perhaps it would be better to say nothing and to arrange a trip to London by herself. Ille was so unpredictable these days that there was no knowing what her reaction might be. When they had last seen each other just before lunch Kathy had given Ille no indication of where she would be spending her afternoon. Although Kathy had guessed that Ille was seeing Hélène again.