Footnotes to Sex

by Mia Farlane

  ‘What do you want me to do about it, darling? I can’t throw him out.’

  ‘No (…). Well, if you could speak to him.’

  That was a waste of time. How much would it cost, May wondered as she threw handfuls of knives and forks into the sink (combining her rage with doing the dishes), if she told him not to call her ‘darling’? Would they lose their bond as a result? Her soul was surely worth that much. It was prostitution to accept such familiarity.

  At about this time across the Channel, in her rive gauche apartment, Francine would be hard at work, tapping out yet another article, to the sound of Mozart, or Bach, or Paderewski. To whatever background accompaniment she had chosen that afternoon. The only other sounds would be those, echoing up from the courtyard, of the occasional friendly exchange between residents.

  Jansen, conflict-resolver extraordinaire, went upstairs that night after work, still dressed in her chauffeur uniform, May noted, which would make her a little stronger. May stood listening at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Hello. I’m Jansen,’ (she reminded him). ‘I live downstairs at number two.’ (Always introduce yourself.) ‘With May. We are finding your music is too loud.’ (State the problem. Start with ‘I/We’.)

  He would be standing there glaring at Jansen – May couldn’t hear anything now, but she could just imagine how it would go: he was limiting his (repetitive) late-night guitar-practice to ten o’clock; surely he could play his sound system during the day?

  Five minutes later, Jansen came back downstairs: it turned out the guitar-player was a carpenter, who had just gone self-employed. He had no idea anyone was home during the day, or he’d never have put on his sound system so loud. He’d recently broken up with his girlfriend. It was Valentine’s Day, and he was just trying to keep his mind off things.

  ‘Amazing! He doesn’t say he’s sorry; he tells you his life story, and hopes to get sympathy.’

  ‘He said he’d keep his music down, but apparently he’s taken on a job for fifty bedside tables –’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘I think we should just move, May. We’re not going to get him to stop, are we? Realistically?’

  ‘So we move? We just accept it, and we move?’

  ‘You can try and talk to him if you want.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Why don’t we just move? It’s not as if you’re even doing the PhD.’

  ‘What do you mean? I haven’t enrolled yet, that’s all.’

  8

  Preliminaries

  ‘Allô, c’est May.’ She was standing in a telephone booth outside the school. It was dark. It was raining. Her hands were cold. Her nose was cold. She couldn’t put her bag on the ground because it would get wet. Perhaps she should have gone home first, got rid of her bag, eaten something, warmed up, and then gone out to call her. But it was too late; she had already dialled.

  ‘Ah, te voilà, toi!’ Francine was eating. May had called her at the wrong time.

  ‘Hello. How are you?’

  Details concerning research for her next book; she’d now been officially invited to next year’s conference in Montreal, but she had decided not to go; winter was dragging. And May? How was she?

  ‘I’m fine. I’ll be in Paris again in a week and a half, on the Saturday; will you be there? I’ll be there at the end of the afternoon.’ The telephone card had one pound forty left on it, which was probably enough.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be here. Do you want to book me in? But of course, you are right. I have other friends in Paris, other people I may want to see.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ninety-eight pence. May was having trouble speaking, and she was feeling self-conscious about her French.

  ‘Well, I’ll be here. Telephone me once you’re in Paris. In any case, I’m not going anywhere.’

  May said nothing. Ninety pence. She should probably get off the phone now anyway: Francine sounded busy.

  ‘You must receive my messages,’ Francine told her. ‘Because I was saying to myself that you should call this evening. Did you receive my message? Do you practise telepathy? Or perhaps it was you sending me a message, and I received it.’

  May sent a wordless response via the moon, to Francine’s apartment. She smiled.

  ‘I have just broken off with a person with whom I’d had a very long relationship,’ Francine went on. ‘Sophie – I had just finished talking to her on the telephone, when you rang. This is perfect – now the phone will be engaged if she tries to call.’

  ‘Should I not –’

  ‘I told her: here is the situation; it’s over – because sometimes it is necessary to clear one’s life of clutter. I am making space for something else. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Francine was making space for her. The unlikely idea shot through May’s system; it was like being injected with caffeine and camomile at the same time.

  ‘Perhaps you will understand later,’ Francine said. ‘So,’ she moved on, ‘this is what I propose: you will call me when you arrive, and I shall let you know where to come and meet me. We’ll go out to dinner. How does that sound?’

  ‘Yes, lovely.’ Would Francine cut May out of her life at some point? Sixty-five pence remaining: she should have bought another phonecard.

  ‘Bring L’Ange et les pervers, and we’ll discuss it over dinner. The angel is a perfect example of gender conformity. Have you read my article “The Transgressive Transvestite or the Chameleon?”?’

  ‘No, I haven’t read it – not yet – because I haven’t quite read the novel yet, and I’m waiting to have read that, of course, before I read your article.’

  ‘Of course, that’s logical.’

  ‘I’ve had a look at it though.’

  (…) ‘Excuse me; I’m eating while I’m talking to you. I’m having an early dinner, and now I really must get off the phone.’

  ‘Jansen and I have been looking at flats – we’ve found somewhere now and we’re moving in less than two weeks, to the new place – so I haven’t had much time,’ May quickly explained. Thirty pence: they’d be cut off soon. ‘I’ll call you once I’m in Paris,’ she said. ‘Bon appétit. I’ll say goodbye now.’ Twenty pence.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. You will call me and we shall speak when you arrive. Au revoir, May. Je t’embrasse.’

  ‘Goodbye. Je –’

  Sunday evening: May and Jansen had finished packing up half the wardrobe and most of the chest of drawers – the summer clothes and what they wouldn’t need for the week – and they were finally in bed together, reading before going to sleep. May was on page twenty-seven of the Delarue-Mardrus novel, and Jansen was reading an article in the Guardian Weekend Supplement about baking double-chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Oh yeah, just to remind you,’ Jansen said. ‘Tamsin will be coming to dinner this Sunday.’

  ‘… La grande fille rauque siffle un taxi…’ (‘The tall girl with the husky voice whistles for a taxi.’)

  ‘If you want to put that into your diary,’ Jansen continued.

  ‘… un taxi…’ May continued reading. ‘… perdu dans les solitudes du Neuilly qui touche à la Seine.’ (‘A taxi… lost in the “solitudes” of that part of Neuilly that touches the Seine.’)

  ‘She’ll be here when you get back from Paris, from seeing Francine.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Hm, she listens when I mention Francine.’

  ‘I’m trying to read!’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’ Jansen went back to her chocolate biscuits.

  ‘No, tell me about it now.’ May shut the book, leaving her index finger in the page she was up to. ‘What?’

  ‘Tamsin’s coming to dinner this Sunday.’

  ‘Okay, but could you write that down for me? I can never remember anything just before going to sleep.’ May opened her book again. It was beyond her how Jansen could continue to seek out the company of such an intensely earnest woman.

  ‘We’ll be meeting up in the afternoon,’ Jans
en told her. ‘And going to the pictures, or an art gallery. I’m finishing work a bit early.’

  ‘So you won’t be able to meet me at Waterloo?’ May looked up from her book. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘We might be able to, Your Majesty. What time does your train come in?’

  ‘Five twenty-five.’ May ignored the attack. In the early days, Jansen used to say it tenderly, and with love; she’d say: ‘May, you don’t happen to have royal blood in you, do you?’ (But perhaps May went a bit far sometimes.)

  ‘Do you want us to meet you?’ Jansen said.

  ‘I don’t want you – plural – to meet me, no. Not if you’re going to be with Tamsin.’

  ‘Okay – you don’t mind not being met,’ Jansen confirmed.

  ‘There’s no point, is there? Because I’m not going to be able to really talk anyway, if she’s going to be there.’ May wanted to be met.

  ‘We’ll see you back here for dinner then.’

  ‘I won’t be able to say anything real with Tamsin around,’ May completed her gripe, although now it was inane to bother. ‘It will all be dull small talk.’

  ‘It’s up to you whether you want to be real or not,’ Jansen said.

  ‘And I really don’t want a late night. I’ve got school the next day,’ May reminded her.

  ‘If this is going to be such an ordeal for you, perhaps we just forget it; I’ll take her out to dinner, and then come home. That way you won’t have to see her at all.’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to see her! Now you don’t want me to see her.’

  ‘Would you like to see her?’

  ‘Yes! And I don’t want a late night, is what I’m saying.’ She didn’t want to see Tamsin, of course she didn’t, but she knew she had to see her, or Jansen would be annoyed.

  They ignored each other for a while.

  ‘You know what this feels like?’ May said, after a few minutes. ‘I feel like you’re being quiet, in order to leave a space, like a blank page, where I’m supposed to think about my excessive negativity.’

  ‘May, you can be very complicated sometimes.’

  ‘I just wish you would now and then make plans that only involved us.’

  ‘We hardly ever see anybody!’

  ‘Yes, okay, but do we do anything special just the two of us?’

  ‘And the Valentine’s dinner?’

  ‘Like stay in a bed and breakfast, I’d love that. You remember that place years and years ago, near the army camp?’

  May had come up from London on the train, it was right at the beginning of their relationship; and Jansen was waiting for her in the car park: she had the driver’s seat tipped right back, and a book was leaning open against her thighs, but she wasn’t reading, she had her eyes shut. May tapped on the window and Jansen lifted her head, without surprise, leaned over and opened the passenger door for May, who met her halfway out of a horizontal. They had a quick pub dinner, and then went straight to the bed and breakfast, a cute little seventeenth-century cottage.

  ‘The doors were tiny; we could touch the ceiling of our room,’ May said. ‘It was like being in a dolls’ house, remember. You said it was like going back in time. And we pulled the mattress onto the floor,’ she laughed, ‘because the bed was so awful!’

  ‘It would be nice if you were slightly interested in seeing her,’ Jansen said.

  ‘I’ve just said: I want to see her!’ May opened up her novel again. ‘Can I get on with my book then, please? I’ve got to get this read before next weekend.’

  ‘I’ll bring her back here for coffee.’ Jansen was stiffly grateful.

  ‘Fine. That sounds good.’ It didn’t sound good, it sounded boring. May went back to her book. She knew she was a horrible person.

  ‘I’d like to turn out the light now.’

  ‘I’m reading – five minutes.’

  9

  In Paris Again

  ‘I have already ordered, for I am as hungry as a wolf,’ Francine said.

  May took off her coat and put it on the back of her chair. ‘Me too,’ she said; then, ‘Bonjour. Bonsoir, I mean.’ She sat down.

  ‘You look very well,’ Francine observed. ‘Your hair’s grown a little. It suits you far better. Now you must leave it to grow.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘You will have to experiment.’ Francine looked at May, and smiled at her.

  May smiled. She blushed. She picked up the menu and smiled into it as she flipped through the pages. Eventually she asked, ‘What are you having?’

  ‘A tomato salad as a starter, and pasta.’ Francine took some bread from the little basket on the table, ripped off a piece, and put it into her mouth.

  The waiter appeared, with the starter. He placed it in front of Francine. Then he turned to May. ‘Would you like to order?’

  ‘Yes, I would like the salmon, please,’ May said, pointing to the dish on the menu.

  ‘No starter?’ Francine asked her.

  ‘No. No, thank you.’ May said this to the waiter.

  ‘No salad?’ Francine was surprised.

  ‘Yes, a salad. Yes, please.’ May changed her mind.

  ‘A tomato salad, perhaps?’ the waiter suggested.

  ‘Yes, please. No, a green salad, rather.’

  ‘Very good.’ He left.

  ‘You will forgive me. I am not going to wait for you.’ Francine began eating.

  May looked around the restaurant. Every table was taken.

  ‘Ah yes!’ Francine said as she forked another segment of tomato. ‘I knew I had something to tell you: I have just finished a most wonderful novel, by a new writer, Anne Béranger; it is her first novel.’

  ‘Anne Béranger – I might have heard of her. The name sounds familiar perhaps…’

  ‘That would surprise me very much, given that the novel is not yet published; it is her manuscript that I have just read. Superb. She is an excellent writer.’

  ‘Oh.’ May nodded and tried to look impressed.

  ‘She is a star rising into the firmament,’ Francine continued.

  May nodded again.

  The waiter arrived with the salad. ‘Une salade verte!’ he announced, and he left again.

  ‘She will be coming to my book launch in April – because I have invited her of course – so you will have the opportunity to meet her. She’s an old friend of mine.’

  May said ‘Mm’, and smiled, to look interested.

  ‘Just before Easter,’ Francine went on. ‘You will be on holiday.’

  ‘Yes. But I’ll come to Paris before then – in two or three weeks?’

  ‘Is that a question?’ Francine took another piece of bread and dabbed it in the oil and tomato juice left on her plate.

  ‘No, I mean, well I’m not sure: probably in three weeks, I think. Or two.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll give you this anyway.’ Francine wiped her hands on her napkin, and pulled a thick folder out of her bag.

  ‘Is it Anne Béranger’s novel?’

  ‘These are the rest of my essays,’ Francine said, handing them to May. ‘The ones that have not yet been published but that will be out in April – in my collection. You are going to be able to read them and come to the launch with questions to ask me.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d see myself as capable of asking questions at a book launch.’ May put the folder straight into her bag.

  ‘You are afraid of saying something stupid.’

  ‘It would be difficult to speak at a book launch, especially in French.’ May stared at her salad. She should start eating.

  ‘Especially when one is shy,’ Francine said.

  ‘It’s the language, too.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Give yourself excuses.’

  ‘No, French is not my language, so it’s difficult for me.’ May took a piece of bread and placed it next to her bowl of salad.

  ‘It is a lack of willingness; a lack of courage above all. Language has absolutely nothing to do with it.’

&nb
sp; ‘It really is more difficult.’

  ‘Are you not going to eat your salad?’ Francine asked. ‘You haven’t started it yet.’

  ‘Yes.’ May picked up her fork. Then she said, ‘I can talk more easily in English. It depends on the situation, as well. With Jansen, for example, I talk a lot. Because we know each other well, and we talk all the time. She talks, but I talk much more than she does. And yet, I think she’s more of an extrovert than I am. We really are very different.’

  ‘Fortunately, or there would be no interest in your being together.’

  May started her salad.

  ‘You read well,’ Francine told her, and she broke off another piece of bread.

  ‘Thank you,’ May said, because that was polite – not that she was sure she’d understood the compliment. Francine seemed to be saying – if that was possible – that she was quietly impressed with the various notes and letters she’d had from her; May felt as if she’d just been told she was beautiful; she felt light; she felt perhaps even liked by Francine. ‘And thank you,’ she felt flattered, ‘for the essays.’ It was as if, in an understated way, Francine had told her she liked her. ‘Actually, I haven’t yet finished reading L’Ange et les pervers,’ May thought she’d better tell her, ‘but I’ve got it here with me, if you need it back…’

  ‘Return it to me when you have read it. In three or two weeks.’

  They left the restaurant at about ten thirty. May asked, ‘Would you like me to walk with you back to your apartment?’

  Francine said, ‘Yes, you can walk with me. And will you carry my bag, too?’ She smiled and held out her bag.