The Price of Love

by Deanna Maclaren

  Helene slapped Malveen’s face, tried to grab her tufty hair but it was gelled. Next tactic. She lunged to seize her opponent’s arms. Not fast enough. Malveen kneed her in the stomach, got on top and went for Helene’s throat. She was squeezing and squeezing, her eyes like hot coals.

  Christ, Helene realised. She’s serious. Deadly serious.

  ‘Break it up!’ Alexis was tearing them apart. Malveen was now laughing like a banshee.

  Holding her throat, gasping, Helene staggered off. Alexis raced after her, caught her up. Took hold of her arm. She shook him off, furious.

  She croaked ‘You come round to fuck me one day, then the next, you’re shagging your sister. In public. In broad daylight. Who will it be tomorrow? Your mother?’

  As she drew breath, he spoke fast. ‘Listen. Just listen. Malveen. She’s not my sister. Well, she is, but not – she’s my half sister. Same mother, different fathers. We – we’ve always messed around a bit. It doesn’t mean anything…’

  Helene went nuclear: ‘Is lying a recreational sport for you Alexis? Let me tell you, I’m glad I belted your backside yesterday. I just wish I’d done it longer, and harder.’

  ‘You know, Jean-Paul, there’s something seriously sinister about Malveen. I really thought she was going to do me in.’

  ‘Well you said she’s from St Petersburg. That’s where they finally killed Rasputin. And there’s the Church of the Spilled Blood where some Czar got slain. Then, during the war, St Petersburg held out for eighteen months against Hitler’s army. There was little food. The water was tainted. A lot of the time, the weather was freezing. But they didn’t give in. They’re stubborn and they’re proud.’

  Helene digested this, and went on ‘Then on Sunday, Alexis came round for lunch and started defending Malveen’s right to cut herself. Said if she wanted to abuse herself, that was her right. I can’t tell you how pissed off I was with him.’

  ‘What did Elodie say?’

  ‘She wasn’t there. She’s only just back from her course.’

  Helene straightened the cushions on the sofa.

  ‘The absurd thing about coming across Alexis screwing his sister, is I’d just been thinking about that picture we like. You know, the one of Whistler and the rogues he hung out with and I was thinking I could have gone to bed with any one of them. All of them, actually, all at the same time. And then I come across some unconventional behaviour and I go completely crackers. I felt so shocked. So confused.’

  ‘You felt betrayed,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘And perhaps, I suspect, you are the kind of person who doesn’t like surprises that are going to seriously disturb you.’

  ‘No. Well who does?’

  ‘Oh, some people revel in being upset. In life being chaotic. That’s why artists like to shock.’

  When she came back from Brasserie Lipp and sat alone on the sofa, she considered what Jean-Paul had said. She thought about coming home from school when she was fourteen and finding her father loading his drum kit into the car. Nothing unusual in that. Evenings, he played in a pub jazz band. What was amiss was that he was also heaving two suitcases into the car. She remembered the chilling distance of her father’s blue eyes as he told her he was leaving.

  ‘But what about mum?’

  She meant, what about us, what about Hilly and me? Things will all change, it will all be different, what can we tell them at school?

  Her father chose to take her question at face value. ‘What about mum? Oh, I don’t think she’ll be very surprised.’

  And he drove off.

  Helen put the kettle on, and sat down in the kitchen to wait for her mother. It was a very lonely wait. Hilly was still at school, at Scripture Union. It wasn’t quite five o’clock. Her mother would be in the shop until half past. If she was dealing with a herd of customers, Helen felt she could hardly ring and blurt out, ‘Dad’s gone.’ It might be misinterpreted.

  Her mother and Hilly were both back at six-fifteen. Helen was eating toast, on the verge of tears.

  And her father had been right. Mrs Brook wasn’t all that surprised.

  ‘He’ll have gone off with Margaret. They’ve been having a thing for years.’

  Hilly’s eyes bulged. ‘What, Aunt Margaret? Our Aunt Margaret? Your sister?’ Hilly liked to be sure of her facts.

  Mrs Brook took the mug of tea Helen had poured, and hunted in the tin for ginger cake. ‘He married the wrong sister,’ she said calmly. ‘You see, Margaret was away doing nursing training and by the time she came home, I was married. He had to marry me because I was pregnant with you. But I saw the way he looked at Marg when he met her. She was younger, prettier –‘

  Sexier, thought Helen. Previously, she had always rather admired Aunt Margaret.

  Mrs Brook left the kitchen, and Helen burst out, ‘So! He never really wanted us.’

  Her disappointment was acute. She had always believed herself to be her father’s favourite.

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Hilly. ‘He did lots of things for us. Remember after our mud fight he sat us both in the sink and cleaned us up and never told mum.’

  Hilly always tended to be pious after Scripture Union.

  Their mother returned. ‘As I thought. He left a note. On the dressing table. It was Margaret.’

  ‘Why didn’t you leave him?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Because of you two.’

  And because Helene could talk to Jean-Paul about anything, she told him on their way to dinner on Thursday.

  ‘Was that the last time you saw your father?’

  ‘No. Hilly’s first wedding. The white one. He insisted on giving her away.’

  ‘Of course. Yes, of course, he’d want that.’

  Her father had brought Aunt Margaret, explaining that, after all, she had known the bride from birth.

  ‘It was a dreadful day. Huge, draughty red-brick church. I was chief bridesmaid done up in some bunchy dress. I didn’t speak to him. At the reception, I just stuck with Robbie and my mother.’

  Jean-Paul took her to La Fontaine . It was warm enough to sit outside by the fountain in the pretty courtyard garden. At the end of the evening, as they were lingering over their cognacs, a man who looked like a rumpled bison came in carrying a white poodle in a wicker basket. He sat down next to Helene and Jean-Paul and settled the dog under the table. Next, from one pocket he produced a small green glass dish. From the other, a sachet of upmarket dog food. As he was emptying the contents of the sachet into the dish, Helene leaned across and said: ‘Monsieur, bon appetit!’

  He smiled. ‘Well you know – times are hard!’

  Jean-Paul took her hand. ‘I love to hear you laugh, Helene. You know, when you first arrived, I was afraid you would be homesick. But when you laugh in that way, so carefree, I know you won’t run away and leave me.’

  They strolled towards the Pont de Sully which would lead him homewards towards the Marais.

  ‘I still think I should escort you home, Helene. I’m old fashioned like that.’

  She laughed, as in the lamplight she reached up to kiss him goodbye.

  ‘I’m very at home in Paris now. Don’t worry, Jean-Paul. I’ll be fine.’

  At the end of the bridge he turned, and as always, blew her a kiss. Thinking about how much she loved Paris brought to mind a game she and Noel had played, the time he brought a gorgeous hunk to lunch. Paris, they agreed, was like the most desirable woman. London was chilly and masculine. Florence – feminine, Rome – masculine. Venice, narrow streets, canals, watery graves, had to be a sinister man.

  And then the hunk piped up. ‘New York! I tell you what New York is. It’s bi!’

  Oh dear, thought Helen, seeing the fury on Noel’s face. Now it had stopped being a game and had turned into a contest. And Noel was a notoriously bad loser. The hunk, she feared, was shortly about to become discarded junk.

  *

  Elodie was back, bursting with energy after her spa break and talking dynamically about ‘raising the salon bar.’

  She
handed Helene a printed card. ‘These are the massages you can have. Some are new. I learned.’

  Helene read that she could choose from:

  Therapeutic massage

  Sports massage

  Aromatherapy massage

  Souma massage

  Shiatsu

  Amma

  Manual lymph drainage

  Ayurvedic massage

  Since Helene didn’t know what three of them were, she played safe and chose the aromatherapy.

  ‘Good. Eucalyptus and juniper,’ Elodie said. ‘Reviving. You look a little tired.’

  Helene told her about the Alexis and Malveen incidents.

  ‘Mon ange, that Alexis, he is selfish, self centred and bad news. Please tell me you are not going to see him again.’

  ‘I most certainly am not!’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘After tea, Sunday.

  ‘Spent all morning making Megan a witch’s outfit. She won’t even tell me what it’s for, except she has to have it for school tomorrow. I dug out my old black velvet dress that I’d ironed the wrong way so it went all shiny and cut up the skirt for a cloak. But the witch’s hat was a real problem – I was on the point of sending Olly out to steal a traffic cone when suddenly the bit of cardboard and the glue and the velvet all came right, so job done.

  ‘It’s nice of you to say why don’t we all come to Paris but frankly we can’t afford to go anywhere as we’ve just bought batface an electric wheelchair. £6000! We took her to the garden centre for her inaugural drive. Everything was going fine until a coach party arrived. They all had wheelchairs and they all wanted to go to the loo. Red rag to Stirling Moss who of course had to be first in the ladies’. She cut across the leading coach party woman and powered her way at top speed to the disabled toilet, hotly pursued by the coach contingent.

  ‘What’s happened to Alexis? Mum keeps on about have you got a boyfriend?’

  *

  At twenty past five on Tuesday, Helene filled the silver ice-bucket Jean-Paul had given her and settled the champagne bottle into it. She was wearing a peignoir of palest pink silk with delicately laced straps.

  At twenty past six, she turned on the news. Jean-Paul had never been more than five minutes late. Never. But there was nothing on the news that could have delayed him. No flooding, no strikes, for once, in Paris. Anyway, he didn’t have far to come. When he was meeting her he first always spent a few hours in his nearby Galerie des Oiseaux.

  By nine o’clock, Helene knew he wasn’t coming. She put the champagne back in the fridge. Sat on the sofa. Got up. Roamed about. She wanted to go and sit by the window, look down on the street, will him to walk along it.

  No, she told herself. Not that. Not the wistful woman in the window looking like an arty greetings card.

  She checked her emails. One from Noel.

  ‘Overheard on the geriatric ward.

  ‘Frail old lady to visitor, I’m tired of it all. I want to go. But they won’t let me. They have something called a life affirmation policy.

  ‘Visitor: I sympathise, Joan. You must feel like a headless chicken.

  ‘Got to rush, Hel. My Home Group from the church are coming to supper. I’m giving them your cherry trifle. Shan’t tell them there’s red wine AND brandy in it.’

  Two years ago, to everyone’s surprise, Noel had become a born-again Christian. Inevitably, this had led to, ‘The trouble with you, Helen, is that you have no moral map. You live your inner life floundering along in a maze.’

  ‘That’s not true. I may not go to church, but I try to live my life by Christian principles. I don’t want to look back with remorse, or feel I’ve let myself down.’

  ‘But you need support. Everyone does. God can do that for you.’

  ‘Noel, to me it’s all mumbo jumbo.’

  In her Paris apartment, the phone was ringing. Helene raced to it.

  ‘Hello, dear.’

  ‘Oh. Mum. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘No. I was going to ask you the same thing. You didn’t ring on Sunday.’

  Her mother’s voice was muffled because she had a habit of covering her mouth with her hand. Helene reminded herself always to phone her mother. She remembered a girlfriend who moved to a remote part of the south of France in order to paint dead cockroaches gold, and was so absorbed she never answered the phone. So from Norwich, her mother had sent the French police round.

  ‘Sorry, mum. Been busy, busy, busy. Lots of, er, concerts. The French, you know, they love classical music.’

  As she put the phone down, Helene reflected that she had never been to a concert in her life. As Noel had frequently pointed out. But somehow in London there was always something else to do. Okay, she had meant to make the effort and go to Wigmore Hall or a lunchtime performance in a church. But churches tended to be chilly. And was there a loo? Helene’s practical mind dwelled on these essentials which, to her, over-rode the glory of the music. How could you feel carried away by the thrill of a performance when you were busting for a pee?

  Helene was aware that her church antipathy came right down from her father. If required to be in a place of worship, he had refused to kneel, adopting a crouch position in the pew, as if at the starting block for the big race.

  She put the TV on again, just for company, just for noise. Why hadn’t he rung her?

  It was a long night. In the morning, at Angeline’s, she took out her mobile and rang the Galerie. It was on message. Later on, she tried again. Same result. On the way home she went past the Galerie. As she anticipated, it was shut. She hurried home, thinking he’ll be there, he has the key, perhaps Madame was unwell, he didn’t have the chance to phone me…

  Back in the empty flat – and it did seem very, very empty – Helene acknowledged the worst scenario of having a married lover. How would she know if anything happened to him?

  They had no friends in common. He had never given her his home phone number. He didn’t carry a mobile. Her only point of contact was the manager of the Galerie. Which was firmly fermé.

  She felt restless, but she daren’t go out, in case he came. She imagined him rushing through the door, full of apologies, affection, explanations. Making it all right.

  She thought back to their last meeting. Had she unwittingly said something to upset him? No, they’d had a happy, very united evening. Besides, Jean-Paul wasn’t a petulant boy. He didn’t play sulky games. If she’d said something tactless, he would have told her.

  Helene slept, fitfully, on the sofa, so she would hear the door, see him if he came in. In the morning, she dodged off from Angeline’s an hour early. Checked out the Galerie. Now the notice on the door was more serious: Fermeture Exceptionelle.

  She crossed the Pont de Sully where she had last kissed Jean-Paul, last said goodbye. Full of dread, she walked up to the Place des Vosges, to the brasserie where she and Alexis had sheltered, the morning after the snow.

  Then, it had looked like something out of a film. It still did. But this was a very different film. Her heart banged as, on the adjacent side of the square, she saw them. Four men and three women, all in black, the women heavily veiled. Helene recognised one of the men, the manager of Jean-Paul’s Galerie. Her instinct to come here had been horribly right.

  In the brasserie, the waiter who had once rushed her an emergency glass of water saw her looking at the mourners as they passed through the ancient oak door leading to their courtyard.

  ‘Monsieur Cordier,’ he said. ‘Tragique.’

  She whispered, ‘What happened?’

  ‘On Sunday. He returned from the country with Madame, and had a heart attack. They could do nothing.’

  Helene ordered a double espresso and threw it down. It was lunchtime, but she couldn’t eat. Inside, she felt as if her entire compass had gone wildly out of kilter. Where was north, where was south? She had no idea. What’s the time? Don’t know. Who was she? Nothing. Nothing without him.

  And she was bleakly conscious, sitting there alone, that
to his family, returning from his funeral, she was nothing. If any of them should glean a shred of information about her (Helene had her doubts about the manager of Galerie des Oiseaux) well, she would just be one of those embarrassments to be swept under an expensive Cordier carpet.

  The mistress, clearly, was firmly excluded from the family funeral and, no doubt, knowing the French, from the formal gathering afterwards. How could it be otherwise? What role could she play? How could she contribute, apart from, perhaps, with permission, handing round the vol au vents.

  Helene felt she no longer recognised herself. It was like catching sight of yourself in an unfamiliar mirror and thinking, Who is that awful woman? Why is she looking so bad tempered?

  Or one of those dreams where you are trying to find your way home and suddenly there’s a river where there wasn’t a river before, and the familiar road isn’t as you remember it, it’s longer, miles, exhausting miles longer.

  The confusing images swirled and eddied, reflecting her distracted state of mind. When she got to her feet she swayed, rockily disorientated.

  Helene left the brasserie and started to walk. She did the easy walk, up and down by the river. She did it twice. She didn’t appear to be in step with anyone. Everyone, students, tourists, office workers, seemed to be either overtaking her or pushing the other way. The crowds were overwhelming. Helene was five feet two, and all these strangers seemed bigger than she was. She wondered if they made petite people like her any more. A good percentage of the boys were, frankly, fat while many of the girls were hulking. And did they ever stop fiddling with their hair?

  No doubt in the grand interior of the Hotel Meurice on the rue de Rivoli your typically chic Frenchwoman, your Angeline, would be perched on a gold chair, nibbling daintily on fresh asparagus, disdainfully dismissing the offer of fattening vinaigrette or hollandaise.

  But here by the murky river, everyone was barging about, stuffing their faces with gauffres and sickening-smelling frankfurters. Still, at least, unlike parts of London, the shop doorways weren’t inhabited by bleary-eyed winos. Jean-Paul was adamant that most Parisian down-and-outs were herded into accommodation on the outskirts of the city, so if they were tempted to contaminate the elegance of the capital, they had to take public transport, which they couldn’t afford.