by Ray Connolly
She let herself into the apartment and was instantly surprised. From Ille’s bedroom she could hear the sound of singing: Ille’s singing. But Ille never sang. Nothing was ever fun enough to make Ille break into music. She was by nature a silent person. Quite unsure of what next to expect Kathy moved forward quietly down the corridor, through the living room and waited at the door to Ille’s bedroom. Inside Ille had two suitcases spread open on the rug and was busily packing them, humming and singing gaily all the time. For a moment Kathy panicked. ‘You’re going away?’ she blurted out.
Ille turned in surprise and stopped singing. Smiling she nodded: ‘Yes.’
‘Where to?’
‘Corsica.’
‘With Hélène?’
‘Yes.’
Kathy felt her heart sinking. What new game was Ille now up to? ‘And what about me?’ she heard herself saying.
Ille looked nonplussed. ‘What about you? Well, of course, you’ll come, too, won’t you?’ The last question was flung at Kathy as a virtual challenge. Of course she would go. Ille knew and Kathy knew.
‘Do you want me to come?’
‘Of course I do, silly girl. Wherever I go, you go, too. You know that. Or would you rather stay here? We’ll both stay if you’d rather.’
‘Why Corsica?’
‘Take a look at the weather, my love. I had lunch with Hélène. And we were frozen. Something had gone wrong with the central heating in the restaurant, and she said what we should do was go down to Corsica for a few days. We didn’t get a holiday in the summer, so we can take one now. It won’t be hot, but it won’t be snowing either. The fresh air will do you good. Hélène has a villa in a place called Olméto which is somewhere near the sea. So it’s certain to be quite warm. We’ll be able to go for walks and chase bandits and all the other things they do in Corsica. We both need a break.’
Kathy nodded bleakly. The surprising turn of events had driven the visit to the doctor halfway out of her mind. She sat down on the bed while Ille packed. ‘Are you sure you want me to come with you?’ she asked.
‘I’m sure I don’t want to go without you, my love.’ Ille looked up at Kathy. She was in a good mood and didn’t want any of Kathy’s self doubts getting in the way of her high spirits. ‘Come on. You go and start packing. We’re going tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock from Orly.’
‘What about Claude?’ asked Kathy.
Ille stopped packing, and slowly and deliberately began to zip up one of her suitcases. ‘Would you like him to come, too?’ she asked with a sudden vehemence.
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘What did you mean, then?’
‘Does he know?’
‘About us going to stay in his house in Corsica? I don’t know. I expect Hélène will tell him this evening. It’s no concern of his, though, is it? No concern that he can express anyway.’
‘And Hélène has never had any idea?’
‘No. Why should she? Apart from your little indiscretion with her husband at her Hallowe’en party there has never been any reason for her to doubt any of us.’
‘My indiscretion?’
‘Don’t pretend you’ve already forgotten … remember that romantic interlude in the courtyard?’
‘He raped me.’
Ille turned and stared at Kathy in genuine surprise. She hadn’t expected that. But instantly she was the tough sceptic again: ‘Funny. I didn’t hear you screaming. I always imagined that when girls got raped in the middle of sophisticated Paris they screamed blue murder. Perhaps you whimpered and moaned a little, did you not? Not a full-blooded scream, just a grateful gasp or two of pleasure?’ The mockery in Ille’s eyes was now glowing and full. Every word she spat out was a challenge for Kathy to defend herself, and to defend her recollections of her own feelings and motives. But Kathy could do none of these things. Instead she just stared at Ille wanting desperately to hurt back.
‘Ille, I’m pregnant,’ she said, and held her gaze steady.
For a long moment Ille said nothing, but simply sat there on the floor, her head turned away, her gown flowing around her, and her hair hanging unbrushed across her face and shoulders. Finally when she managed to turn her head back towards Kathy, her face was a mask of hate.
‘You. You. It was me who wanted a baby. Never you. I want the baby. Why is it you? Why? Why?’ Her voice was rising in despair and anger.
‘We agreed. Remember? It doesn’t matter who has the baby. We’ll share it. It’s my present to you. I’ve always wanted to give you something. All the time that I’ve been living here you’ve been the one who has provided everything. Now I can have the baby, and it will be just like we planned. We always said that whichever one of us got pregnant first should have it, and we’d both be mothers. You remember that, Ille?’ Kathy’s voice was verging on panic. She knew she was near to breaking down. ‘I want the baby, honestly. I always wanted one. So that we could be like a proper family. It will be perfect. Just you and me and the baby….’
But Ille was no longer listening. She felt betrayed. Everything had gone wrong. The games she had played were now rebounding on her, and in her anger she blamed the defenceless Kathy. While they had together been fucking Arbus she had felt safe and certain of herself: but on the one occasion that Kathy and Arbus had been alone together it seemed that Kathy had breached the confidence she had in her. Quite unrealistically, and against any medical evidence that might have been put forward to suggest the contrary, Ille had already decided that that night in the courtyard had been the moment of conception. Only when Kathy had broken the rules could such a thing have happened. Only when Arbus wasn’t shared between them. Her mind, in a turmoil of hate and jealousy, turned lividly against Kathy. The brief game they had played last October had ended badly, she knew, but until now no one had been hurt. No harm seemed to have been done. Arbus had kept himself clear of their lives, and because of his own guilt and humiliation he was in no position to explain to Hélène why she should discontinue her relationship with Ille. And although Ille despised so much of what Hélène stood for she found her a welcome break from the apartment, another woman with whom she could be friends. And although the question of sex had never arisen, she often wondered as she and Kathy made love what it would be like to have Hélène make love to her, and her intuition told her that after their months of meeting the thought had almost certainly also crossed Hélène’s mind, although probably more in the nature of an experiment than of forming a permanent relationship.
But now with Kathy pregnant all their lives were irredeemably changed. Suddenly her friendship with Hélène took on a new and dangerous complexion. Kathy was actually carrying the baby that Hélène so desperately wanted. There was irony for you. When Ille had begun the game back in the autumn her imagination had never actually stretched as far as what would happen if one of them actually became pregnant. True, both of them had fastidiously refused to take any precautions, but still the likelihood of a baby being conceived within that short month of October had seemed pretty unlikely to her. The irony of the situation lanced her: Hélène wanted a baby: she, Ille, wanted that baby: but it was Kathy, Kathy the girl whom she knew to have joined in the game only because she had insisted, who was the one who could now become the mother. It was all so unfair. Her first reactions were to cancel the holiday in Corsica. It would be difficult to face Hélène now, with this new information, but again the fatal attraction of brinkmanship appealed to her. And in her own strange, half-mad way she could see new exciting games to be played, new tricks and new treats for her to enjoy. And the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that it was indeed a captivating thought. But what of Kathy? She looked across at her friend, who was now sitting weeping silently on the bed, and in herself she despised that weakness. ‘For God’s sake, don’t cry, Kathy,’ she heard herself saying bitterly.
‘I think the best thing will be an abortion.’ Kathy was subdued and calm now. ‘You go to Corsica. I’ll go to London. It’s ea
sier there.’
Ille had half expected something like this. ‘Don’t be silly, you’re upset. You can’t break our bargain now. We’ll all go to Corsica. The holiday will do you good. You can’t get rid of our baby. I won’t allow it.’
‘But you know you don’t want me to have it. It was always you who wanted a baby. And I can’t face Hélène now, not knowing about this. I would feel so ashamed.’
‘Nonsense. When you get to Corsica you will forget all your American bourgeois standards.’ On the surface Ille had recovered from her anger and jealousy very swiftly. She wouldn’t let Kathy get out of it so easily. She would be made to suffer. Perhaps it was possible for Kathy to have the baby, and for her, Ille, to keep it. Her mind began to wander at the wild prospects and irrationality took control. Kathy was carrying her baby, she told herself, and no one was going to rob her of it. And falling into this half dream world of what might happen in the months ahead Ille went silent again, and continued to pack, although now she didn’t sing any more. And since she felt a sense of dismissal Kathy returned to her own little white room, and pulling out her own cases began to get together her belongings.
Ille didn’t speak to Kathy again during the rest of the afternoon and evening: and each girl remained in her own room packing her cases.
To Kathy it seemed like the end of one stage in her life, and instead of just packing those things necessary for a holiday in Corsica she packed every single thing she had. She didn’t know why: it just seemed the thing that she ought to do. Then at about ten o’clock, feeling hungry she went in search of Ille. She now felt half-frightened of her friend, while simultaneously experiencing a new sense of superiority over her: it was she, after all, who had conceived, and the knowledge of the baby growing inside her gave her a slight, and perhaps false, sense of strength.
There was no sign of Ille in the apartment, which was unusual, because before she went out she would always leave information as to when she might be expected back. Disturbed, and feeling more lonely than ever, Kathy returned to her own room and wondered what to do. She hadn’t eaten since lunch-time and she was hungry, but she knew there was virtually nothing to eat in the kitchen and the idea of wandering alone into a restaurant at night frightened her. Although her French had improved over the months, she still hated the disadvantage she felt when she found a word she couldn’t understand, or when she was unable to make herself understood. And because of Ille’s perfect English there had been little necessity to ever take the learning of the language seriously. Opening that week’s copy of Pariscops she thumbed idly through the pages, once again a tourist girl in Paris. She was eating for two now, she thought to herself, then laughed harshly at the absurdity of the situation in which she now found herself. Undecided on what to do she put down her magazine and pulling on a coat ventured out of the apartment and down into the street. The snow storm had now turned to a drizzling rain, and she took her scarf out of her pocket to protect her hair from the wet. Quickly she made her way to the Metro station at Sèvres-Babylone, and peered through the glass windows of the bar there on the corner. Inside the occasional man was drinking a beer or a coffee, and a group of girls and boys, all younger than herself, were talking animatedly together. Their very friendliness towards each other frightened her away. She didn’t want to be a foreign girl in a foreign city tonight, and have people look at her. Across the road was the Hotel Lutetia Concorde, home, she knew, of many hundreds of American tourists. On no more than an impulse she crossed over the street and glancing into the restaurant climbed the steps into the entrance lobby. Although it was mid-December there was still a large collection of fellow Americans milling around. At the bookstand she bought a copy of the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune, and Time and Newsweek, and retracing her steps made a confident entry into the restaurant. When she had first arrived in Paris she had wanted everything French: tonight she wanted to be reminded of home, she wanted to be in the midst of things with which she was most familiar. She looked round the restaurant. Most people were just finishing dinner. In no way could it be compared with a restaurant in California, but it did have that stamp of internationality across it which ensured that everyone would speak English, and that she would not feel too much of a stranger. And certainly half of the people eating there were from across the Atlantic. Just seeing them gave Kathy a sense of well-being and security: and for a time she felt that she was beginning to rediscover her own personality, a personality lost in the months she had been with Ille. From an Italian waiter she ordered a large steak and a half bottle of red wine, and feeling not at all self-conscious she began to read her newspaper. And, as she read, it suddenly occurred to her that during all the months she’d lived with Ille she had been cut off from the rest of the world: they had no television, and rarely listened to the radio, and Ille never took a daily paper. The nearest either of them had ever got to reading matter had been Pariscops, so that they might know what was on at the cinema, and some of the fashion magazines. For six months Kathy had managed to remain in virtual isolation in Ille’s apartment, knowing nothing of what was going on around her, unless the news had happened to take place virtually on her doorstep, as when a bomb had gone off in St Germain des Prés. Half hiding behind her papers she ate her steak, and once more became aware of something that she had missed for some months. Single men were eyeing her from other tables: when she was with Ille she expected people to look, more in amazement at the way they both behaved, but tonight she had again become a prospect for an easy lay, she thought. The prospect amused her, but she carried on reading. There were so many things of which she had been aware, but which she had not followed, and the paper and magazines were full of subjects in which she was sure she ought to be better versed. For the first time in months she felt once again like an American.
With dinner over she debated with herself whether to have a cognac at the table or whether she might take it in the bar, but as she got the general message that the waiters would dearly like to close down the restaurant for the night she adjourned to the bar, still wondering at her rediscovered Americanism. She could have gone straight home to look for Ille, but she wanted just a few minutes more among her own people, and she didn’t doubt that the bar would have a healthy quota of her fellow citizens in there taking their nightcaps. She chose a table adjacent to some high stools and settled down to watch the people. Just in front of her, a middle-aged couple, she, all tightly curled, rinsed auburn hair, and he a dark and dapper man in his sixties, were drinking together: she was talking, he listening. It was middle America at a bar in a Paris hotel. To Kathy it seemed like a welcome breath of home.
‘… well I think if that’s what Hal wants with his life who are we to stand in his way, Harold,’ the woman was saying. ‘Lots of young people these days don’t know what they want to do, so we should be pleased that our boy does have some … some direction. And it’s a good honest direction at that. We should be glad that he didn’t turn out to be a drop-out or hippy or something worse. At least he’ll be earning his keep, and a decent one at that….’ The man didn’t answer, but nodded unenthusiastically into his bourbon. ‘Maybe in a few years’ time he’ll come round to seeing things in a more adult way … more the way we see things, and he might come in with you then. You’re still a young man. You can still run things without his help. You know that, don’t you, Harold?’ Again the man nodded. By now Kathy was intrigued as to what this errant son might be planning to do with his life. ‘You know Diana Pagett’s boy just took off when he got out of college and no one ever saw him again, although I did hear he was working in some kind of art shop on Lexington Avenue. At least Hal isn’t planning on doing anything so silly. I say just leave him be for a while and he’ll come round to our way of thinking. You can’t tell them anything at that age. Maybe it was my fault, always impressing on him that he go to Sunday school every week. Maybe I pushed him too far….’ At this point poor middleaged Harold shook his head kindly, which seemed to satisfy his wife,
because having been consoled and reassured that the errant ways of her son were in no way her own fault she carried on with her post-rationalization. ‘Anyway he doesn’t know for sure that he has a vocation in that direction. I think it quite likely that he’ll be back with us before Easter, wanting to take his place in the company. And he knows it will always be open for him.’ Again Harold nodded. ‘And then there’s always that Rose-Marie Bauccio; you don’t expect Rose-Marie is going to give up without a struggle do you … ? honest to God I really don’t think Hal is meant for the Jesuits. He’ll be out of that seminary just as soon as he finds he can’t sneak off to Howard Johnson’s whenever he feels hungry….’
Harold nodded glumly and ordered another round: Kathy could hardly contain herself from laughing. Their son was going to be a priest instead of following in the good family tradition of making money. Today a priest in America seemed only one step up from a hippy. They both took the vow of poverty.
Leaving Harold and his wife to drown their sorrows Kathy left the bar, and putting on her coat again made her way across Rue de Sèvres back towards Rue de Dragon and her home. A little tight on her drink and no end amused by the monologue she had overheard she was again looking forward to seeing Ille. Perhaps they would be able to iron out their differences: to settle Ille’s jealousies, and to resume their relationship. That was what she really wanted. The news about the baby had given her a self-confidence that had been missing for some months, and her shoulder-brushing with people from her home country had re-established her own identity in her mind. She almost felt homesick, she thought, which was something she had never before experienced. Perhaps instead of Corsica she and Ille should fly to California for Christmas, she thought whimsically.