The French Lesson

by Robyn Elliot

  “You’ve gone a nice pink,” Katharine observed ruthlessly, winking at him, “thinking about your filthy Frenchman?”

  “Stop it,” Danny said, feeling the telltale flush, his skin turned traitor and blaring out every dirty thought through a loudhailer.

  “Why would he do that?” Katharine, as if to herself, then shooting Danny a sly look, “your man? Why’s he ringing every day, and asking after the guy he said he didn’t love anymore?”

  “Every day?” asked Danny, hoping he didn’t sound too hopeful. Because if it couldn’t exactly move mountains, hope could sure as hell rip your heart open wide, so that a good dose of ice cold reality could be poured into the chasm.

  So, don’t hope, Danny said to himself, just fucking don’t go down that pathetic blind alley.

  “Every day,” Katharine said, “every DAY,” she intoned.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Stop repeating my questions. But, yeah, why indeed?”

  Danny shrugged. “This is Stef. Stef does everything by his own rules. Despite appearances, he and Guillaume are close. And of course Elisabeth is still here…”

  “Only so she can assist Annelise and Caroline with getting you two back together.”

  “What?” Danny cried out, “oh, so this is some project for you all, is it?”

  Katharine rolled her eyes. “Listen to you. God, between you and Stef, I don’t know which one is the most infuriatingly self-centered!”

  “Hah! Talk about bloody double standards…”

  “I wasn’t aware that particular debate had arisen,” Katharine smiled, sweetly.

  “You’ve got to be the most self-centered woman I’ve ever met!”

  “Of course I am, Danny; I’m a barrister.”

  “So am I!”

  “Yes,” Katharine said, patting Danny’s hand in as patronizing a manner as she could muster, “but you’re not a very good one, dear.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be my friend! Jesus.”

  “I am, and I love and adore you, Danny; and I’ve just given you a compliment. The thing is with you, my adorable, sweet faced Danny, you’re too nice a guy to be a barrister. You’re too wonderful a human being, whereas I am a complete and utter cow who loves being the center of attention!”

  “Hmm, you got that bit right.”

  “So what I’m saying, my artist friend, is that between you and your man…”

  “He isn’t my man.”

  “You’re in denial.”

  “About what?” Danny asked wearily, “in denial about Stef, or in denial about how I’m coping without him…”

  “Both.”

  “I gave you that one.”

  “Thanks so much, and if I was in the mood, I would continue in a similar pointless vein, but there’s other things to address here, aren’t there?”

  “Such as the witches of Macbeth sitting around their relationship cauldrons and chucking in their tail of newt ideas about what happy ever after should be, whilst interfering in things that aren’t their business?”

  “Since when has that ever stopped either Caro or I?”

  “Well, yes, that’s a law written on stone tablets somewhere…”

  “And don’t you think it balances it out nicely, that you now have double the interference from Stef's side?”

  “Oh, how ungrateful of me. And I don’t think Stef will see it like that.”

  “Of course he won’t. That’s because he’s a selfish shit but he’s your selfish shit.”

  “He is not my anything!” Danny snapped, and reached for the cigarette packet, picked it up, put it down again, “he’s not my man, not my Frenchman, not anything!”

  Katharine leaned back in her chair, folded her arms. “He’s your man, and you want him to be your man, so he is your fucking man!”

  “That kind of reasoning isn’t especially reassuring, Katharine, particularly coming from the queen of ‘piss on the fire, I’ve had my toast’ school of philosophy, and whilst I appreciate your concern, nothing is helping, o-fucking-kay!”

  “You’ve never been to Paris, have you?”

  “Oh God,” Danny groaned, in exasperation.

  “Stunning, you’d love it; especially this time of year, with all the twinkling lights of Christmas.”

  “Christmas is two months’ away.”

  “Like I said, with all the twinkling lights of Christmas, the shimmering of their reflections on the Seine, walking hand in hand with the person you love, going for a wonderful meal, fabulous wine, listening to the language that makes you want to drop your trousers at the first ‘s’il vous plait’ you hear…ah, Paree...”

  “Are you finished?” Danny asked, seeing his friend’s valiant attempts at goading him into action as her way of saying I love you.

  “Nearly. So you gaze into Stef’s eyes, which by the way are fabulous, but you know that…”

  “Hmm. Now then, I gaze into Stef’s eyes and he asks me what the hell I’m doing stalking him in Paris and finds the nearest gendarme.”

  Katharine ignored him valiantly. “You gaze into his eyes, and he gazes into yours…”

  “Which is a necessity, for gazing into each other's’ eyes.”

  “And he tells you that he’s so glad you were the one with the courage; you were the one with the courage to come and find him, and tell him that you know exactly what love is, true love, and that you can see it…in his eyes…and you are never going to give up on true love, never, never, never!” Katharine finished, sighing, staring off into space.

  For a few moments, Danny just looked at her, shaking his head in abject disbelief.

  Paris.

  Even the name terrified him. He could speak French fluently now, as long as all he ever said was ‘can I have two glasses of red wine please’ and ‘please can you tell me where’ a) the train station is; b) the toilets; c) where is the nearest police station because I’ve just been robbed?

  Stef had told him enough about Paris to make Danny swallow involuntarily just thinking about it. But Stef was in Paris, he was a Parisian, and if Stef had been with him, Danny would have loved every single minute of being there. Being with Stef, to be precise within the imprecision that is love.

  And Paris could be the loneliest place on earth for the bereft, the heartbroken; sitting on the café terraces, there was always enough time to drink coffee, wine, smoke Gauloise and contemplate facing a future littered with dreams that had been shattered and stamped upon by indifferent fate. Oh God, thought Danny, growing pinker under Katharine’s gaze, I sound like I should be painting my masterpiece in some abandoned warehouse on the left bank, fueled only by my desire to drink as much alcohol as humanly possible whilst remaining vertical and capable of holding a paintbrush. Now he understood why Jackson Pollock went for the screw it and splatter it look.

  “You’re going to Paris, Danny.”

  “I am most certainly not!”

  “Gutless,” Katharine muttered, drumming her fingers on the table, staring at him.

  “You think? I was the one who practically begged him to stay, can I remind you! I took every last scrap of dignity I had, and told him I loved him no matter what…and he looked at me like I was a stranger. You didn’t see him, Katharine; fuck, he was merciless.” Danny winced at the sound of his own voice, trailing off with a barely restrained sob. He’d stopped crying about a week ago, all the hurt and the pain, and the longing for Stef, hermetically sealed in a great void of pain, right bang in the solar plexus. Doubtless heartbreak would manifest as a gastric ulcer, and a doctor would dish up pills. Seeing as happy ever after was not on prescription. I can’t go back to that shriveled up, lying in a corner weeping again, Danny thought; I can just about make voluntary bodily movements with this weight in my guts, but fuck, I don’t want to be sent to the agony corner again.

  “If you go to Paris,” Katharine replied carefully, her words deliberate, “then you just might get an explanation. Don’t you want that?”

  Danny rai
sed his eyes heavenward, sighing. “Of course I do. But I think the truth is more prosaic…he made it quite clear to me, and in the most succinct terms short of telling me to fuck off, that he didn’t love me and he wanted someone else and…and…”

  “He doesn’t want anyone else!” Katharine, taking one of Danny’s hands in hers, “if he did, why on earth would he be calling Guillaume every day…and asking how you were?”

  “Stef is…” Danny hesitated, struggling to find adequate words to express how he felt, that might encapsulate the hurt he felt; Stef is the love of my life. And here I am, living without him. Here I am, unshowered, unshaven and unloved. “Stef is complicated,” he finished awkwardly. Danny was defending him. He’d defended Stef every day for the last few weeks. Defended Stef against Caro, who had threatened to castrate Stef with the bluntest knife she could get hold of, and a rusted one at that; Katharine, in her initial anger, cursing Stef for the lowest, gutless, spineless, and everything else ‘less’ shit to walk this earth.

  But Danny had got there before all of them. He’d thought all those thoughts, he’d raged and cursed Stef, but wouldn’t allow anyone else to. Love was love to Danny, whether Stef was with him or not.

  However, since the cabal had decided that enough really was enough and that Stef and Danny belonged together, the ensuing thaw had seen a slow rehabilitation of Stef on the scale of, say, a king being found in a car park...as if. So the women had hatched their own little scheme. Even Guillaume knew of it. Even Jean-Claude knew, back at the chateau.

  They all knew. Except Danny.

  “Well, okay, lover boy is complicated, it wouldn’t take Sherlock to deduce that one!” Katharine observed, and Danny retrieved his hand, hovering again over the cigarette packet. “Smoke all you want, babe; you’re still going to Paris.”

  “Why? To be humiliated all over again? To see him and his new guy, or guys, all loved up? To be intimidated by waiters, who think my IQ is below the average wine alcohol content and just slightly above the price of a two course meal; oh, and be quite literally lost in fucking France!”

  “God, what a drama queen! You talk about Stef being complicated! Look, you two should be together, so you can out-complicate each other, in between having as much hot sex as possible, and as much loved up ‘here comes the groom’ goings on…”

  “Goings on?” Danny mouthed to himself, giving Katharine a withering look.

  “He loves you.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Annelise is convinced he does, and so am I”

  “So speaketh Zarathustra and Methuselah…which is which, I am too polite to say.”

  “I don’t give a sideways fuck what you think,” Katharine pressed on.

  “I won’t argue with that.”

  “You’re going to retrieve your backbone from wherever you left it, get yourself on a flight to Paris, and tell Stef that you and he are meant to be together forever, and that you both need to stop pissing about like a pair of pissing machines and admit you love and adore each other and are getting married and that’s fucking that!”

  Danny sagged in his chair, staring at his friend. “My God, I wish I had your eloquence, you old romantic…”

  “Don’t wish for the impossible.”

  “Like Stef and I getting back together, you mean?” Danny lapsed into stubborn silence. He folded his arms, to emphasize his determination. Only, Katharine was wearing him down. He was starting to wonder if he could; you know, actually refit his backbone and go and see Stef on his home territory. Whatever was going on, he conceded, it was sure as hell going on in France, and not here.

  “I couldn’t anyway, even if I wanted to…which I don’t,” Danny finished hurriedly, avoiding Katharine’s demonic stare.

  “Why? Something wrong with your legs?”

  “I mean I can’t afford it! If you must know, seeing as I am now a most assuredly ex barrister, and a frustrated, non-painting painter, my income is less than abundant at the moment. And my credit card is groaning with the weight of the debt I’m piling on its flimsy, plastic back!”

  “Oh that!” Katharine laughed, shooting Danny a smug look, and got up, to rummage in her bag, slumped on one of the kitchen tops.

  “Yes, that. The minor matter of me needing to earn some money, and soon, before I find myself not only dumped, but homeless, starving and destitute, whilst renting out my body to overweight men with Viagra powered penises in the hope I can pay for all the drugs I’ll be addicted to,” Danny opined.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, mind. The gamine look is probably really popular with young guys too, and if they’re ugly you can always ask them to put a paper bag over their heads…or your own head, if they object.”

  “Thank you. I’ll bear that advice in mind. What are you doing, Irma Grese?”

  With a triumphant flourish, Katharine fished out of her bag a brown envelope and waved it in Danny’s puzzled direction. “This envelope holds your fate, babe! Or rather, the contents of the envelope.”

  “I stand corrected. Forget Irma. You sound like Chamberlain with his nebulous piece of paper.”

  “Here,” and she laid the envelope upon the table with almost solemn care, watching Danny closely as she did so.

  Danny stared down at it, shrugging. “If it contains photographs, remember I am stony broke, so blackmail is entirely out of the question…”

  “We’ve booked the flight, so you’ve got…” Katharine glanced at her watch, glad this was seeming to be going as planned, “two hours to transform yourself into the sex object that Stef can’t keep his hands off.”

  Danny spluttered. “What!” and he knew he’d just shrieked. “Wh…what flight?” already knowing, dreading and hoping for the right answer.

  “Two hours, babe, seeing as you need to shower for at least thirty minutes to save your genitals from becoming a nuclear bio-hazard.”

  “Hold on a fucking minute!” Danny picked up the envelope, then dropped it again as if it had burned his fingertips. He hated the way Katharine was looming over him, giving that smug look again. “If this is what I think it is…”

  “Well done, you’ve hit the jackpot, Danny. A flight to Charles de Gaulle which will see you in Paris around 4.30 this afternoon, and a room is booked for you at l’hôtel Guionneau; it’s very nice, mini bar, king-size bed for you and Stef to make up in, oh and there’s a massage service to ease all the aches and pains you’ll get from Stef screwing you into oblivion…”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “Look, the massage service isn’t gay or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about!”

  “I meant the fact that you, oh, I see…I see it now…the lot of you, hmm? Even Guillaume? Jesus, talk about being well and truly fucked…”

  “Not yet, that’ll have to wait till you get to Paris. Exciting, isn’t it?”

  “What? All of you making decisions for me? I’m broke, I told you!”

  “There’s money in there to see you okay, your plane tickets, oh…not forgetting Stef’s address.”

  Danny opened his mouth, but the words didn’t emerge. He stared at the envelope. In there, was Stef’s address…not the chateau, then. In Paris, right bang in the middle of Paris, as Danny would discover, when he opened the envelope.

  Was he living with someone? Was he renting from a friend, seeing as he had so many in Paris? Of course. Someone was bound to have helped him out. Danny knew Stef would have hated going back to stay with his father. He’d wanted to ask Guillaume where Stef was, of course. Some days, he’d paced the floor, up and down, up and down, fighting the urge to pick up the phone and ask Guillaume outright. But he was too afraid to find out if Guillaume would refuse, brotherly loyalty and all that. Or worse, that Guillaume would tell him that Stef had indeed moved on, was seeing other people, and it might be worthwhile Danny getting a life.

  However, now it was evident they’d been plotting the reunion of the century; only the joining together of Tom and Jerry might have
proved more seismic. Guillaume, Annelise, Elisabeth, Caroline and Katharine. Danny presumed Delphine was their French contact in this post war resistance movement; Danny’s resistance to going to France, that is.

  A cold sweat dampened Danny’s hair at the nape of his neck. His heart started shuddering, as if it knew it was about to be kicked and bruised all over again. He felt the familiar constriction in his throat, only there was no Stef to soothe him, gently rub his back and tell me everything was okay.

  Suddenly, the image of Stef that first morning at Guillaume's swam before Danny’s eyes. Sometimes, Stef’s handsome face, or the memory of it, made Danny hold his breath. He knew in Paris Stef would have no shortage of admirers, even in a city of the beautiful. Stef was the elite. He was the most beautiful amidst beauty. Beautiful inside too, yeh, inside, Danny thought. Throughout, right up to the end, Danny had only felt loved, secure and adored with Stef; there was goodness in him, he was decent…only trouble was, Stef’s doctorate was in selfishness.

  I can’t, Danny thought. I just can’t do this. I can’t go through it again, and in Paris at that. His friends might be there, and then they can all have a good laugh at me, doubtless yammering on in French at a million miles per hour about the sad English guy, whilst criticizing my dress sense at the same time, naturally.

  No. If Stef had allegedly been giving a toss about him, Danny surmised, why all the mystery? I mean, if he’s dumped me he’s dumped me and that should be it. Shouldn’t it? He knew Stef well enough now to understand that, when it came down to it, Stef didn’t have attacks of the guilts, and if him ringing Guillaume each day was evidence of conscience pangs, then Danny found himself preferring an entire Stef news blackout; anything better than the possibility, no matter how faint, no matter how tenuous, that love really could find a way...