by Sarah Long
Disgruntled by these thoughts, she turned her mind to her forthcoming date. Less than four hours to go. At least having lunch with the smooth Dr Bouchard was a bit more Jackie Kennedy than her usual Thursday routine of cupboard sorting and the Carrefour supermarket trip. She had already picked out her outfit, a dove-grey woollen dress; she had laid it out on the bed this morning.
Jean-Laurent was still away at the Lygon Arms, which was convenient, as she hadn’t yet decided whether to tell him about all this. It rather depended on how it went. Obviously it wouldn’t do to mention it if Antoine made any improper advances. In fact, it was probably better not to mention it at all – there was no point and he might get the wrong idea. He might think she was turning into a sad, Madame Bovary-type figure – which would cast him as the poor, stolid old cuckolded husband. He wouldn’t like that at all.
So absorbed was she in her reverie that she turned right instead of left after the pont de Bir-Hakeim and found herself wedged in the traffic jam heading into the city centre. Cursing her stupidity, she sat smouldering behind the wheel until she arrived at the pont d’Alma and was able to peel off and head back against the traffic.
By the time she got back to the apartment it was nearly ten o’clock. Asa was grating apples into a bowl containing carefully chopped nuts and raisins from a packet that Laura had bought in London and had been saving for the Christmas pudding. Damn, she had hoped to spend the morning alone preparing for her lunch, and now she would be forced to subject herself to Asa’s cool, appraising eye.
‘Haven’t you got a class this morning?’ she asked. Like many au pairs, Asa was enrolled at the Institut Français.
‘I thought I’d catch up with some revision at home. It’s so horrid out this morning.’
Home, thought Laura, my home that you so casually refer to as ‘home’. She remembered a consumer guide to childcare that she had read from cover to cover in her anxious pregnant days. ‘Be careful,’ it had warned under the ‘live-in’ section. ‘Her home will be your home.’ How right they had been, though they could have been more explicit and added, ‘She will be hogging the bathroom, burning up the electricity with the sunray lamp and emptying your cupboards of fresh and packaged food, much of which will never get as far as her digestive tract.
‘Very wise,’ said Laura. ‘Look, I’m sorry about our little misunderstanding yesterday. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Asa. ‘I know you are crossing a difficult period in your life, which makes it hard for you to be in contact with younger, more desirable women.’
‘What are you on about? I’m not quite at the menopause yet, you know!’
‘No, but you are resentful of your waning powers of seduction, and wistful for the life you led before you gave everything up for the children.’
She really had to go. Just who did she think she was???
‘Oh, is that right? Tell me, is that your own opinion, or do I hear the sinister overtones of group therapy speak!’
‘Devon tells me it was the same with his wife, before she became reconciled to her role shifting from seducer to nurturer. In fact, she has written a book about it called Fullness at Forty.’
‘Asa, I’m nowhere near forty!’
‘It’s an attitude, not an age.’
‘Oh, do spare me your ludicrous psychobabble. And watch out for that Devon. Now his wife has gone over to nurturing, he’s obviously desperate to take advantage of feeble-minded young girls with eating disorders.’
Asa looked at Laura in disgust over the brim of her tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and left the kitchen.
What on earth had possessed her to employ Asa? It wasn’t as though she had been short of options – her ad on the bulletin board of the American church had brought in quite a few calls.
She could have had a lovely Philippine lady who said she only liked working for English families because they were kinder than the French, so she was obviously a sound woman. Or that German living in Saint-Germain-en-Laye who was desperate to leave the suburbs for a nice city job like this one. She would have been brilliant – you could tell from the way she looked round the kitchen that she couldn’t wait to get the mop out. But she was just a little bit too good-looking; there was no point in inviting trouble into your house.
Asa had seemed like a good compromise: hopefully she’d have a bit of Nordic efficiency without looking too Wagnerian. And she had said she was vegetarian so would do her own food and not eat with them. That was appealing. The last thing Laura had wanted was a silent gooseberry sitting down with her and Jean-Laurent every night; the spectre at the feast intruding in their intimate conversation.
Unfortunately, ‘vegetarian’ had turned out to be a euphemism for ‘bonkers’ when it came to Asa’s eating habits. Laura had obligingly stocked up on pulses, cauliflower, chickpeas, enough roughage to feed an army of horses, then realised that this was only camouflage to conceal the real damage inflicted on her food bill by the newcomer’s weakness for sweet carbohydrates. Within three weeks of her arrival, Laura was praying for the day when Asa would gather up her beauty aids and self-help guides and just leave.
The prayer had been running for two years now, and in her imagination Laura had already enacted the scene of repossessing the bedroom. She would open all the cupboard doors, brush out every last trace, and throw open the windows to blow away all evidence of Asa. It was the human equivalent of cocking a leg and urinating in each corner of the room, staking out her territory once again.
Two hours later, Laura pushed open the door of the Brasserie Stella, a traditional neighbourhood haunt for the well-heeled inhabitants of the seizième nord, and a stone’s throw from Dr Bouchard’s practice. No sign of Antoine, though there were plenty like him: dapper men with neat salt and pepper hair enjoying the consolation of life’s small pleasures as they fastidiously sucked at oysters or sipped their aperitifs while consulting the menus. Perhaps he had stood her up. She felt a wave of relief and thought about leaving, but the maître d’ was already approaching.
‘Bonjour, madame.’
‘Yes, I’m meeting Dr Bouchard. I don’t think he’s here yet.’
She tried to sound as though she met men for lunch all the time. Men who weren’t her husband, whom she didn’t know very well, and whom she had no particular reason to have lunch with.
‘Ah yes, Dr Bouchard, of course. Here is his table. Vous désirez an apéritif?’
How could one possibly desire an aperitif? Really, the French language was preposterously overblown.
She ordered a glass of champagne and hoped he would be paying. He was surely too old to suggest going Dutch.
Two women at the next table were holding an animated conversation, their hard blonde hair sprayed into rigid helmets that nodded emphatically. That was the other hairstyle you got in Paris if you didn’t go for the cropped bob that Laura wore. She wouldn’t mind changing, but at least she knew how to ask for a carré, and although she invariably came out of the hairdressers looking like a blue stocking, she could always ruffle it up a bit afterwards, like she was doing now. She looked at herself in the mirror that disconcertingly ran along the entire breadth of the opposite wall. Not bad for someone teetering on the brink of middle age. Bloody Asa. At least she looked more shaggable than the blonde helmets. Or presumably Antoine thought she did if he had invited her here?
‘Bonjour, Docteur Bouchard!’
He had arrived. Oh God, he was wearing one of those awful green woollen loden coats that fell into an A-line from the shoulders. Catholic mafia coats, as someone had once described them. Luckily the maître d’ was taking it from him, carrying it off to the cloakroom where doubtless many other identical ones were already steaming quietly. He’d have to make sure he didn’t take the wrong one home.
Under the coat he was wearing an immaculate grey suit. He was coming towards her, smiling – an elegant mover, you had to say that for him.
‘Ah, Docteur Bouchard!’ One of the
blonde helmets had intercepted him. In a flurry of smiles and handshakes she introduced him to her friend. Basking in his attention, the women grew animated to an extent that had not been necessary before the arrival of a man at their table. After a few moments he excused himself, and the blonde helmets settled back into the restrained demeanour of Ladies Who Lunch.
‘So’, he said, leaning over to kiss Laura on both cheeks, ‘I am glad you are here. Champagne, an excellent idea, I shall order the same.’
‘They looked happy to see you,’ said Laura.
‘She is a patient of mine, and now I suspect her friend will become one. Women are always grateful for the company of a man during the day, don’t you agree?’
‘Look at me. Dripping with gratitude.’
‘Now you are being sarcastic, but it is true. Women who do not work become lonely, and tire of the company of other women.’
‘There you go again, boosting my ego.’
‘But you are intelligent enough to arrange diversions for yourself.’
‘Is that what you are, a diversion?’
‘That depends on you.’
Laura blushed. This wasn’t turning out the way she had hoped. They hadn’t even looked at the menu yet, and already things were getting a bit heavy. It seemed that there was indeed no such thing as a free lunch. She tried to change the subject.
‘What shall we have? Oysters for me I think, then the pavé.’
‘Oysters, yes,’ he said. ‘Well known for their aphrodisiac qualities.’
‘Although they used to be the cheapest food of all. Do you know that line from Chaucer? “He didn’t give an oyster for that text that said that . . .” Oyster used in that context to mean something entirely worthless.’
‘I am dazzled by your learning. But I shall order oysters as aphrodisiacs, not as worthless objects.’
He was laughing at her. She sighed.
‘Look, Antoine, I’ll be frank with you. I really don’t know why I agreed to have lunch with you. I should tell you that I am very happily married and have no intention of cheating on my husband. As far as I’m concerned, this is just . . . a social occasion.’
He shrugged.
‘Of course it is a social occasion. I too am happily married, so you see, we are in the same position. I would not dream of taking you from your husband. But there is no crime in adding to our happiness, is there? And I think you are happy, are you not, to be having lunch with me today?’
Laura laughed.
‘I suppose so. At least it gets me out of the house.’
‘Thank you for the compliment. Now I shall pay you one. You look ravishing. The first time I saw you I thought to myself, now there is someone I should like to take to lunch. For a social occasion. And here we are.’
He raised his glass.
‘To us.’
She raised her glass. Out of the corner of her eye she could see one of the blonde helmets looking at her with a mixture of envy and disapproval. It was really rather gratifying.
‘To us.’
In fact, she enjoyed the lunch so much that she was mildly disappointed when they stood on the pavement outside and Antoine merely kissed her hand.
‘Au revoir. You have my work number. Ring me when you want us to share another social occasion.’
She watched him as he walked off in his green loden coat, and fought the impulse to run after him with her diary to pencil in the next date. She really wasn’t used to this.
SEVEN
As their plane touched down at Roissy airport, Flavia looked across to Jean-Laurent dozing in the next seat. She was still entranced by the novelty of seeing him sleep, and was struck by the beauty of his long dark eyelashes. He was dribbling slightly, but four days of intense love-making enabled her to overlook his imperfections. It had been so relaxing to wake up with him every morning, and she was sure it wouldn’t be long before they were together every single day. He must realise soon that she was indispensable to him, and that they couldn’t carry on this charade for much longer. She had already seen some bunk beds that would fit nicely into her spare bedroom for when his children came to stay. She would be good as a part-time stepmother, and the boys would understand that you can’t stand in the way of love. What else was there, after all?
She stroked his cheek, and he opened his eyes.
‘We’re here.’
Jean-Laurent stretched his long legs and squeezed her hand.
‘God I’m tired. You’ve worn me out.’
‘I didn’t notice you complaining.’
He yawned and pulled her towards him, kissing her sleepily.
‘No complaints, that’s true. What time is it?’
‘Three o’clock. Not worth going back to the office. Why don’t we bunk off, see an exhibition. Or we could go shopping.’
She was envisaging a romantic stroll down the boulevard Saint-Germain, maybe taking him into Verbel to show him the bunk beds. They were specially designed for boys, with trains and cars painted on the sides.
He looked evasive.
‘That would be nice, but I was thinking of surprising the boys, going to pick them up from school.’
‘Oh.’ She felt a faint chill of rejection. Still, no point in nagging, that was Laura’s department.
‘You are a good daddy. But won’t Laura be going to get them?’
He shrugged.
‘Of course, but they like it when we’re both there.’
This was not encouraging.
‘I’m looking forward to meeting them tomorrow. Are they as handsome as their father?’
Oh God, thought Jean-Laurent, he’d forgotten about that damned dinner. This was in danger of getting out of hand.
‘Look, are you sure you want to go through with this. You can easily cry off sick.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’ll have to meet them sooner or later, and this will break them in gently.’
Break them in gently? To what? Jean-Laurent had an ominous sense that Flavia was getting the wrong idea.
‘Flavia, I think perhaps we need to discuss this . . .’
‘Sshh . . .’ She kissed him. ‘There’s nothing to discuss. I’m coming to dinner with you and your wife, we’re colleagues, it’s perfectly normal. Don’t worry, I won’t let you down.’
He smiled in relief. That was more like it. Everything was perfectly well balanced as it was. There was no sense in moving the goalposts, Flavia must understand that. They made their way off the plane, past the glazed smiles of the cabin crew who had obediently lined up at the door to wish them a bonne journée. There was a delay at the baggage reclaim area, which irritated Jean-Laurent. Normally he took only hand luggage, which meant he was spared contact with the ordinary traveller. He could sit in the first-class lounge sipping complimentary coffee until the last possible moment, and then stroll casually on to the plane, turning left through the curtain, leaving the little people to pig it in economy (and hopefully absorb the shock in the event of an accident – although Jean-Laurent worried that it might be the other way round).
Once you got off the plane, however, this class segregation fell woefully to pieces if you had baggage to collect. He and Flavia stood and watched the conveyor belt offering up a dismal procession of lookalike suitcases and scruffy holdalls. Eventually his Mandarina Duck suitcase came into view, sealed within a protective polythene sheet which he always insisted upon to prevent its aristocratic corners from being sullied by contact with less prestigious luggage. Flavia’s Louis Vuitton was tucked in beside it, and Jean-Laurent lifted them both on to his trolley.
‘At last, let’s go,’ he said, pushing the trolley in a disdainful way that suggested that trolley-pushing was not something he was used to. ‘My car should be waiting. Shall I drop you off on the way?’
But when they got outside, the car was not waiting. Jean-Laurent irritably punched numbers into his phone to find out what the hell was going on, while Flavia took the opportunity to disappear to the ladies and repair her make-up. From th
e tone he took with the taxi company, you might have thought that this minor inconvenience was of earth-shattering importance, but it paled into insignificance beside the huge embarrassment that was heading his way.
For by a cruel coincidence, this happened to be the day that his wife’s best friend Lorinda had met up for a girly lunch at the airport with her ex-colleagues. She was on her way to take the Air France bus back to town when she spotted Jean-Laurent shouting angrily into his phone. She could have ignored him – he didn’t look in the mood for agreeable conversation – but he was obviously waiting for a taxi, and Lorinda was certainly not about to turn down a free ride.
She came up behind him and gave his bottom a playful squeeze. His reaction was not what she had expected. Without interrupting his conversation, he placed a hand over hers and pressed it slowly against his buttock, gently stroking his forefinger over the back of her hand. It wasn’t until he had come off the phone and turned round to confront his assailant that he realised his mistake. His conspiratorial smile was replaced by a look of frank horror.
‘Lorinda!’
‘So it seems. Were you expecting someone else?’
‘No, of course not! What are you doing here?’
‘Having lunch with the girls. I must say I wasn’t expecting such a warm welcome. We must do this more often.’
Jean-Laurent looked nervously over her shoulder.
‘I’m waiting for my car. I thought I might go and meet the children from school.’
‘Good, I’ll share your taxi. Promise you won’t get fresh with me on the back seat?’
She glanced at his trolley.
‘You’ve got a lot of luggage. I suppose you have to dress for dinner at the Lygon Arms.’