The Price of Love

by Deanna Maclaren

  He sat up, and smiled at her. ‘Morning!’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Well you could try goodmorning and did you have a good time with your mates last night?’

  ‘I meant, when you came in. Last night. What happened? I haven’t the least idea.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You were poleaxed on the sofa, rather brilliantly still holding the last of the Chateauneuf du Pape. For your information, this is the strongest wine in France, possibly the world.’

  ‘Oh. What happened then?’

  ‘You looked so bloody miserable. Your face…’

  Puffy. Blotched with tears, realised Helene. How attractive.

  ‘I couldn’t leave you on the sofa. You seemed in such a state, I thought you might fall off, hurt yourself. I thought you’d be better off where I could keep an eye on you.’

  ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘I carried you. I was impressed how light you were, considering you’d just scoffed a whole boxful of liqueur chocolates.’

  Helene clutched her head. ‘Don’t make me laugh. Please.’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Please. And a ginger biscuit. Two ginger biscuits.’

  As he disappeared towards the kitchen, she realised the big question was still unanswered.

  Had anything happened?

  When Helene got up at midday, she saw that Marc had cleared up the wine debris, the peach and chocolate debris, the tissue debris. Anxious to get their relationship back on safe ground, she commented,

  ‘You know, you’re going to make someone a great husband one day.’

  He was cleaning his glasses, so when he looked at her she saw his green eyes flash at her patronising attitude. He put his spectacles back on. ‘Yeah, my father said I should marry young.’

  ‘Well he did.’

  ‘I know, but he married money. I’ve got my career to do, before I can think of settling down.’

  Helene sipped her coffee. When Marc came into his inheritance, she doubted if money would be a problem ever again. However, she appreciated that Marc was determined to get there on his own.

  Jean-Paul’s letter was still lying on the coffee table. Marc followed her eyes. ‘I didn’t read it.’

  She believed him. She wouldn’t have believed Alexis. But she trusted Marc.

  She took the letter to her bureau drawer. Fortunately, despite the teardrops and the peach juice, the letter was still legible. She murmured, ‘Your father, he said to me, the price of love is grief.’

  ‘And you know who said it to him?’ asked Marc. ‘My mother. I heard her. She’s a great admirer of your Queen Elizabeth. And after Princess Diana died my mother read every word about it in Paris Match. And evidently, when the Queen sent a message to be read at a memorial service for Diana in New York, the Queen said, Grief is the price of love.’

  Helene went back to bed with a bottle of water and a packet of paracetamol. When she emerged, mid-afternoon, Marc switched off the TV. ‘Fancy a walk? Clear your head.’ Then to her dismay he went on, ‘I want to get some new pyjamas.’

  He led the way to an Italian shop in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. There, he chose pyjamas in the same style as the others, with shorts, in fine green and white stripes. Italian styling, Swiss cotton, probably German thread, Helene thought. Wasn’t like that when Hilly and I were growing up. Then most clothes were made in England, of wool, easy-care Polyester or sacking.

  ‘I really need a new shirt, but these Italian things are linen. Fabulous to wear but hideously expensive just for work. I’ll wait till next week and go to Hilditch and Key.’

  Helene had seen this place. It was on the rue de Rivoli, near the rue Cambon. ‘Hilditch and Key? Aren’t they a bit stuffy?’

  ‘They simply make the best white shirts,’ Marc said. ‘My father always went there. He said what was good enough for Marlene Dietrich was good enough for him. I’d go along with that.’

  Okay, Helene totted up. So far we know we like Juliette Binoche, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner, Barbara Windsor, Garbo and now Dietrich. Helene was tempted to try him with Doris Day. Get DVD from Amazon, she noted.

  As the Italian manager escorted them to the door, Marc said, ‘I’ve got to get a present for my mother. It’s her birthday next weekend.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  He shook his head. ‘I never know. I mean, she’s got everything.’

  ‘Including nieces, nephews and godchildren,’ Helene said, who if nothing else prided herself on being an inspired chooser of presents. ‘That means birthday cards, sorry you’re sick cards, well done cards, so she probably never has enough. Trust me. Then there are all the thank-you notes –‘

  ‘So basically, she needs stationery?’

  ‘We could go to this shop I know. They have everything there, including a pretty box to put it all in. Then all you’ve got to add is a decent pen and lots of stamps. So if she can’t get out for some reason, she’s not going to miss someone’s birthday.’

  ‘I don’t think she’d need the stamps,’ Marc said. ‘The family either live close, or she’ll send the gardener’s wife to the post office.’

  By the time they successfully completed their mission, Helene was feeling weedy.

  ‘What you need,’ said Marc, the recent veteran of three-day university parties, ‘is some soup, some starch and a pick-me up.’

  At the reliable Brasserie Chat Noir they started with the pick-me-up. Helene hadn’t cottoned on before that after his night out with his mates, Marc was feeling fragile too. He ordered Margaritas. ‘They do a decent shot of tequila here. No messing about.’

  When they came out, the sun was about to set over the city. Helene, woozy now after two Margaritas, winced at the lurid sunset. In her opinion, when it came to sunsets, God had lost the plot. This one resembled the packaging on rip-off perfumes sold in Oxford Street.

  She said so to Marc and to her irritation he talked about packaging all the way home. It wasn’t that she had no interest in his job. It was just, oh bloody everything. Losing Jean-Paul, PMT -

  ‘Interesting, this marketing thing, isn’t it’ Marc said enthusiastically as they went upstairs.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said, fearful of expressing what he would call ‘another career negative.’ Instead, she told him about the begging letters Hilly had received from Beryl, the Personal Private Assistant to the Managing Director of Wests Vests.

  ‘Oh, that’s a Mary Lou Bean letter,’ laughed Marc. ‘My boss, he’s American, he told me, when he first started in direct sales a lot of people wouldn’t pay up, so they’d get a tearful letter from Mary Lou Bean saying her boss had put her in charge of this and if they let her down she’d get the chop – Mother to support, Father on Welfare – you can imagine.’

  ‘It worked with Hilly,’ Helene said. ‘She bought two more vests.’

  They spread the Guardian over the table, and Helene lit the lamp. When she was walking down the street, coming home, she cherished the romance of the lamplight in the window.

  What Odette was doing this week was saying farewell, not at all fondly, to the Silver Sands couple. Vernon, she explained, was in charge of front-of-house for this endeavour. He sent the kitchen boy up to fetch the luggage and he gave the bill – which Odette had prepared – to the guest. Then he took the credit card, returned it with a flourish and escorted the guests to their car. All Odette had to do was stand on the steps, smiling and waving and mouthing, ‘Do come again,’ before she belted upstairs to turn out their room for the changeover.

  But with Mr Silver Sand, the system had broken down. He returned to the hotel steps. He was waving his bill.

  ‘Excuse me, dear. Vernon said I should speak to you about this. There’s something I want you to explain to me.’

  ‘Of course.’ Odette confided to Guardian readers that she employed a dulcet tone on such (rare) occasions. ‘What seems to be the problem?’ Odette was proud of this line. ‘What SEEMS to be the problem?’

  �
�Mr Silver Sand was standing with his feet apart and his arms across his chest. He was rocking to and fro.

  ‘Now, dear. Just tell me. Three plus three. What does that make?’

  Odette stared at him. She watched Mr Silver Sand fold his lips over his teeth in a gruesome smile. As the silence lengthened, he continued, patiently, ‘No, come on, tell me. Three plus three. What is it? Or do you add up differently in frogland?’

  He guffawed.

  Odette said nothing. She was seething. She could see Vernon, way down the drive by the Silver Sand car, smiling greasily at the wife. So help me, she told the Guardian readers, I hate this hotel. I hate the public –

  ‘All I want, dear, is to hear from your own lips. Thuh-ree plus thuh-ree. Tell me. Come on, just tell me. Thuh-ree plus –‘

  ‘Six!’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much. That’s all I wanted to hear. Now if three and three makes six - - and we’ve just agreed that it does make six – can you tell me why, on the bill, why you’ve made it nine?’

  Helene thought Marc would never stop laughing. ‘Poor woman. What did you say happened to that hotel?’

  ‘It fell in the sea. I think she wished her husband had fallen in with it. She says he’s in the slammer now.’

  Helene made some coffee. When she came back she saw that Marc had folded up the Guardian and was taking something out of a long cardboard tube. He unrolled a black and white blow-up poster and anchored the corners with his gold lighter, the ashtray, his coffee mug and the ancient biscuit tin depicting English carol singers.

  ‘The guys gave me the poster last night. I’d forgotten it was ever taken.’

  Helene was fascinated. It was a photo of them, Ripping Velcro, in the days when they’d been a bunch of pleasant boys, having fun. And there, at the keyboard, was a nineteen-year-old Marc, sporting long hair.

  ‘And it’s blond!’ exclaimed Helene.

  ‘I know. My father went crackers. Then I cut it all off into a micro crew cut. And my mother went crackers.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You’ve got lovely hair.’

  Touchable. Heavens, would I like to run my fingers through that hair. All of it. All over.

  He was saying, ‘I was wondering if we could pin the poster up somewhere. Not the bedroom. You don’t want to wake up looking at this lot. Neither do I for that matter.’

  I see, thought Helene. Or rather, I don’t see. Yes, my nights as sofa goddess are over. Clearly, we’re expected to share the bed. But on what basis?

  She slipped into bed, in a nightshirt. Marc was cleaning his teeth. He returned wearing his new Swiss cotton pyjamas, said goodnight and switched off his bedside light.

  Helene did the same and lay in the dark thinking, be careful, Helene. Be very, very careful.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘I could wax it,’ Elodie said, ‘but it’s painful and then you have to wait for it to grow before you do it again. Or he could just shave it off. He’ll have to do that when he starts to go grey. But by then it’ll be some other woman’s problem. And you know, a lot of women find furry men very manly.’

  She pressed down hard on the towel covering the small of Helene’s back. Helene was having a shiatsu massage, which Elodie said would clear her meridian lines. ‘You are stressed, mon ange.’

  ‘Of course I’m stressed! What do you think it’s like lying there night after night with a gorgeous guy who never lays a hand on you?’

  Elodie said, ‘Surely, from time to time, you touch accidentally? I don’t mean in bed necessarily. But in the kitchen, getting a meal ready …’

  ‘Of course. But it never leads anywhere. It’s just kidding around.’

  ‘Can’t you just seduce him? Grab him where it matters. You’ve never had a problem with that before.’

  ‘I know. It’s always been easy, sex. They wanted me, I wanted them, bingo. I’ve never had anyone before who started off treating me like a sister. An older sister,’ she said bitterly.

  Elodie’s hands stilled. ‘You’re falling in love with him, aren’t you?’

  You’re a bit late there, Elodie, thought Helene. I fell in love with Marc when I took him his tea that first morning, and he opened his eyes and I saw the colour of them in the sunlight and I felt I was lying on a rug, on a beach and the rug was pulled from under me, and then I realised I was on the beach but there was never any rug. Just sensation, a rush, a physical rush and an emotional surge, something extraordinary, something life-changing I’d never felt before.

  But come on. All this happened the day after Jean-Paul’s funeral. She’d heard of emotional transference but to go from father to son within twenty-four hours was absurdly unrealistic, surely.

  She had looked down at Marc and told herself to get out of that bedroom. Run. Because he’d noticed she was looking strange.

  But she hadn’t run.

  She’d hung around, tempting him with the promise of bacon butties.

  ‘Get real,’ she said to Elodie. ‘I’m grieving for Jean-Paul. I really am. I miss him dreadfully.’

  ‘I know. But you see, one extreme emotion can act like an electric charge on another.’ Elodie was attacking Helene’s shoulders. ‘We have a lot of electricity in the body. Love, grief, they are not all of the mind. Or the heart. The heart feels nothing. When you feel, you are feeling from your stomach, and through your blood and through your bones. We can’t predict, and we can’t control, when we fall in love. That’s why they talk about a bolt from the blue and Cloud Nine.’ She frowned. ‘I wonder what happens on Cloud Eight? Anyway, when it happens, it happens and you should be glad, you know, that you can feel. I see a lot of women in here, they’re married to rich men, they have maids bringing them trays of breakfast in bed and drawing the curtains and you know what, these women, they are emotionally withered. Constant dissatisfaction. Oh, my boiled egg at breakfast, it was white. I only like brown eggs. Or speckled. Don’t imagine I’m fussy. And the way she draws the curtains! Why does she have to make such a noise! Mon ange, I assure you, even with the Botox these days, I still have to work very hard on their frown lines.’

  Helene felt, not unreasonably, that her own emotional state should take precedence over these spoiled, privileged women.

  ‘But –‘

  No, Elodie was in charge, and in full flow. ‘Another client, she was widowed, she was distraught, she had to go to the notiare – the solicitor – so he would read to her the husband’s will. She was crying so much, she didn’t even see the notaire, as she sat down. Then, as he started reading, she thought, my goodness, what a wonderful voice you have, and it affected her, and she dried her eyes and looked at him and you know what, they got married!’

  ‘Elodie, the fact is, I can’t allow myself to feel anything for Marc.’ Really, for anyone.

  ‘You already do.’

  ‘I have to repress it. I’m fourteen years older than him.’

  ‘Pfff! You English. In France that is nothing. Men admire women of a certain age. Attracting a woman like that, sophisticated, glamorous, makes them feel deliciously grown up.’

  ‘Deliciously toy boy?’

  ‘I’m talking about intelligent men. Ones like Marc with good jobs, and enough money. The stupid ones, yes, they latch onto the older women and then go off the boil when the women won’t come across with enough dosh.’

  ‘It’s agony. Have you any idea the agony, lying in bed beside him, all buttoned into his fucking pyjamas, knowing I must not lay a finger on him. Not accidentally, not accidentally on purpose, not at all. He sees me as a sister and his father’s mistress. I can’t embarrass him. All I can do is keep it friendly, keep it unalarming. Do boy-girl things and just hope something happens.’

  ‘Well something that’s got to happen is you need DRAINAGE.’

  Drainage? Helene shifted on the massage table. Wasn’t that something men did to cars? The sump?

  ‘Mon ange, you are getting cellulite.’

  ‘What! But I walk everywhere.’

&nbs
p; Elodie sighed. ‘I have seen top women athletes. Volleyball, tennis, squash. They are fit. And believe me, they have cellulite.’

  All this was running through Helene’s head on Saturday evening as she prepared a potato salad. A nice quiet evening in, she thought. Marc had gone to his mother’s in Chantilly the night before.

  ‘What’s Chantilly like?’ she had asked him.

  ‘Well, horsey. Two of the most famous French races happen here. And it’s pretty. Like the leafiest parts of Surrey.’

  ‘You know Surrey? I have an aunt there.’ The notorious Aunt Margaret, who had run off with her father.

  ‘Sure, I know Surrey. One of the Rippers was from there. Every summer, we’d have an expedition up Box Hill. One time, we nearly got arrested for lighting a fire.’

  ‘We did the same thing, on picnics. But we were younger. I wonder what it is about being young, makes you want to set fire to things?’

  Oh, stop right there, Helene. It was sexual. Of course it was. She couldn’t say that and she couldn’t tell Marc about the creepy bloke who’d started talking to the girls she was with, stealing a Marmite sandwich and telling one of them, ‘You know, you’re going to have a very exciting figure when you mature.’

  Helen had asked her friend as they cycled home.

  ‘Are you going to tell your mother?’

  ‘Mum? No! She’d only blame you. She blames you for everything.’

  Helen had wondered if this was going to be the story of her life. Taking the rap when life went pearshaped.

  Marc was lucky, Helene considered. He had a career he enjoyed and a family he saw regularly. Elodie had her job, as did Angeline. Odile was occupied with the hotel, and taking revenge on awkward guests. Harry had the club, Christie his music and Rory McEwen his art. Hilly had Olly, Megan and, heaven help her, the dragon.

  She, Helene, communicated with her family through email and had nothing to drive her. Apart from her cleaning, she had nothing to structure her day, especially now Jean-Paul was gone.

  Helene tipped the still warm cubed potatoes into a dish and poured over a dressing of mayonnaise with Dijon mustard. The finely chopped spring onions would go in later and no, there would be positively no hard boiled egg. She was just about to cover the dish and slide it into the fridge when she heard the most frantic banging on her door.