French Kissing

by Catherine Sanderson

  ‘Ew! That’s not on, is it?’ I appealed to Ryan, who nodded vehemently in agreement. ‘You might want to think about asking Kate to give that pupil to someone else,’ I suggested. ‘She can pair him with a male teacher if you don’t want to face him again… Don’t worry, she’s used to that sort of thing. It’s never happened to me, but there have been quite a few cases over the years of people making unwelcome passes at their teachers. Haven’t there, Ryan?’

  ‘Passes both unwelcome, and welcome,’ said Ryan, smiling a sly smile. ‘Not to make light of your ordeal, Anna, but I once had a very pleasant experience with a male pupil in a stationery cupboard.’ He put a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t forget you’re under oath not to tell Kate, Sally,’ he said in a stage whisper. ‘I don’t think the boss lady would approve.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ryan,’ I replied, giving Anna a sidelong glance, glad that Ryan had found a way to lighten the mood and make her smile. ‘Your stationery-cupboard secrets are safe with me.’

  ‘I actually happened across one of my pupils on the Gaydar France website the other week,’ Ryan continued. ‘If I remember correctly, he was looking for “un plan cul immédiat”, although I didn’t care to investigate further…’

  ‘Good God! That’s a bit direct! They don’t have options like that in the drop-down menus on Rendez-vous,’ I exclaimed, genuinely shocked. Anna was looking confused and I cast around for a translation. ‘It basically means “a no-strings fuck, as soon as possible”,’ I explained, blushing as I did so. Somehow, using such language in French was easier. ‘Un plan cul’ sounded so much less vulgar to me than its English translation.

  We were still plying Ryan with questions about Gaydar, where nude profile photos were de rigueur and even close-up anatomical shots were not unheard of, when the doorbell rang, announcing Kate’s arrival. ‘You’re just in time to hear about the Tailor-Made pupil Ryan found online in his birthday suit,’ I said, pouring Kate a gin and tonic once she and Ryan had completed the thirty-second apartment tour.

  Kate smiled and rolled her eyes, but she looked weary and a little dishevelled. Her usually sleek hair hung loose and her clothes looked as though they’d been thrown on in haste. It’s not like Kate to let those impossibly high standards of hers slip, I thought to myself, although I refrained from commenting on her appearance, as I knew I always felt ten times worse when someone pointed out I was looking tired or under the weather. Instead I gave her a recap of the highlights of our conversation so far, including my lunch with Delphine and Anna’s close encounter, while Ryan offered her the plate of appetizers and graciously gave up his armchair, sitting cross-legged on the floor by her side.

  ‘I told Anna that amorous advances from pupils were nothing unusual,’ I said, giving Kate a wink. ‘You should tell her about that big-shot businessman you taught, Kate. You know, the one who used to book the centre table in posh restaurants so he could invite you out and parade you around in full view of his friends, hoping everyone would assume you were his mistress…’

  Kate had a handful of CEOs whose teaching she delegated to no one. Apart from replacing us when we were out sick, these were the only sessions she’d kept on, once her language school was up and running and the lion’s share of her time was devoted to admin. Her anecdotes from these lessons had often been a source of amusement when we met for our fortnightly lunches. But tonight, for some reason, she seemed unwilling to play along. ‘Oh, he was pretty tame and harmless, really,’ she said with an exaggerated shrug. ‘But, Anna, I totally understand if you need me to shuffle some teachers around. I don’t pay any of you enough to put up with sleaze.’

  Kate loosened up over the course of the evening, but she still seemed uncharacteristically quiet, to me. If it had been only the two of us, I would have had no qualms about asking her what was wrong, but I didn’t want to put her on the spot in front of Ryan and Anna, and when, a few minutes after midnight, she reached for her phone and called a taxi, I knew I’d missed my chance. ‘Does anyone else want a cab?’ she asked, holding the phone away from her ear while the holding symphony played.

  ‘You’re walking home, right?’ I said to Anna, who nodded and glanced at her watch. ‘Well, in that case,’ I replied, ‘I’m good thanks, Kate. I think I’ll walk Anna to République and catch a métro from there.’

  As Anna and I meandered along rue des Archives, the gin and tonics we’d put away insulating us from the biting cold of the November night, I pointed out the Cox Bar, confessing I’d walked past it for almost a decade before the phonetic reality of the name of the infamous men-only establishment had hit home. ‘I read somewhere there are private cubicles in the basement, like in a swingers club,’ Anna said with a smile. ‘I don’t know if it’s urban legend, or actually true. Not that I’ve ever been to a swingers club…’

  ‘If you do ever fancy trying one, all you’d have to do is join Rendez-vous,’ I retorted. ‘I’ve got invitations to places like that coming out of my ears.’ It was true: my inbox had been swamped lately with men trying to persuade me to accompany them to various clubs échangistes. I’d been outraged at first, but curiosity had got the better of me one day and I’d checked out a couple of the most famous clubs’ websites. It hadn’t taken me long to work out it was not only cheaper for a man to gain entry if he had a woman on his arm but, in some clubs, house rules stipulated that lone men weren’t admitted at all. Once I’d realized that, seeing men trawling Rendez-vous for plus ones made a seedy kind of sense.

  ‘Tempted?’ Anna raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Oh God. Not at all,’ I replied. ‘I mean, maybe I’m a prude, but I’m not sure I can imagine going to a place like that with my partner, let alone some stranger I’d met on the internet.’ We walked on in silence for a moment, pausing at the junction where rue des Archives met rue Rambuteau to let a motorbike speed by, then plunging on into the next section of the street, where the pavements narrowed and restaurants gave way to shuttered shops. Anna had rammed her hands deep into her coat pockets and walked with her head bowed; she appeared to be deep in thought.

  ‘Talking of partners,’ she said at last, her eyes still downcast, ‘I agreed to have lunch with Tom last Sunday. He’s moved in with that Dutch woman. And now he wants to file for divorce.’

  ‘Oh Anna, I’m so sorry… That must have been awful… The finality of it, I mean.’ Anna nodded. She’d slowed her pace and, as we passed under a streetlight, her eyes gleamed, as though filled with tears. ‘You do know,’ I added, ‘that if you are ever feeling rotten, you’re always welcome to come over? I mean, apart from weeks like this one – school holidays – you can pretty much always count on me being home with Lila… And if you don’t have the energy for that, you can always call…’

  ‘Yeah, I thought about calling, but I just needed to be alone for a while,’ Anna confessed. ‘I’ll be okay, Sally. I mean, I was expecting this to happen, sooner or later. But it’s really daunting having to organize all this shit in French. I have no clue where I’m supposed to start…’

  ‘I could ask Nico, if you like?’ I offered, feeling guilty that I’d been so busy wondering what was going on with Kate all evening that I’d been less than attentive to Anna. ‘I can see if he’s heard about any good English-speaking lawyers on the grapevine. You never know, he might be able to help.’

  ‘That would be great,’ said Anna. ‘If you really don’t mind.’ She shook her head. ‘I keep wondering how I managed to get myself into this situation, you know. This is so not how I expected my life to turn out…’

  We parted ways – graduating from our usual gauche air kisses to a proper hug – by the wrought-iron railings enclosing the Square du Temple, a few hundred metres short of Place de la République. Resuming my journey, my breath forming white clouds in front of my face, Anna’s words echoed in my ears: ‘This is so not how I expected my life to turn out,’ she’d said. I knew that feeling, all right.

  11

  Once work was over on Tuesday I caught a
métro to Hôtel de Ville, my destination a paved cul de sac in the Marais, not far from Ryan’s. After Catherine and Lila left on Sunday, I’d decided to brush aside my disappointment with Marcus and get back in the Rendez-vous saddle. It wasn’t often I had a whole week of child-free evenings to look forward to, and I rather owed it to myself to make the most of my temporary freedom. Following a short exchange of emails, I’d agreed to meet a French guy who went by the name of Fred37 for a drink at the Café du Trésor. He taught maths at a nearby lycée, he’d complimented me on my French, and his black and white profile photo was really quite promising.

  In person, Fred was pleasant-looking but not nearly as attractive as his photo had misled me to believe. His skin was pitted and rough-looking and his nose looked as though it had been broken and badly reset when I saw it in profile, something which hadn’t been apparent on his full-face picture. Dressed in black trousers and a biscuit-coloured polo-neck jumper, he recognized me as soon as I walked into the sparsely populated bar, springing to his feet and offering to help me out of my heavy winter coat.

  After we’d said our ‘bonsoirs’, I resorted to commenting on my surroundings to break the ice, just as I had with Marcus, only this time the conversation was in French. ‘Wow,’ I said, looking around me in astonishment, ‘this place has had a makeover since I was last here! In the old days there were old vinyl twelve-inches decorating the walls, and I think there used to be a DJ booth at the back… It had so much more character than it does now.’

  ‘I can’t say I remember any of that,’ Frédéric replied, looking around at the white-painted walls and red-orange upholstered seats as though he was struggling to imagine what I described. ‘But then, according to your profile, you’ve been living in Paris for far longer than I have, “Belleville girl”. In fact, you probably qualify as an honorary Parisienne by now…’

  I ordered a beer, and as I sipped it, Frédéric asked me the usual questions about how I’d come to live in Paris, and I began trotting out my stock answers, telling him pretty much the same story I’d told Marcus. One question surprised me though, as it was something no one else had ever thought to ask. ‘When you came to be alone,’ Frédéric asked me, his pale-grey eyes never leaving mine, his expression serious, ‘didn’t you ever consider leaving Paris with your daughter and making a fresh start back in England?’

  ‘Um, no. I don’t suppose I did,’ I said slowly. ‘I’ve spent my whole adult life in France, and I don’t think I’d have a clue where to start if I were to return to England today, which town to live in, what to do for a job… And, of course, apart from anything else, I can’t contemplate separating Lila from her father. That wouldn’t be fair on either of them. So I suppose I’ve always seen my future in Paris…’

  When I asked Frédéric whereabouts in Paris he lived, he dropped his bombshell: at the not-so-tender age of thirty-seven, he was living with his mother in Melun, a town half an hour away by train. ‘I realize that sounds bad,’ he said cagily, ‘but let me explain… I used to live in Paris with my girlfriend, you see, and when she left, about a year ago, it was a difficult time… I was signed off work for a couple of months, money was tight and I had to let our place go because it was too big for just me… Anyway, things are much better now and I’m hoping to move into my own place again soon. I’m not some sort of “Tanguy”. It was just a temporary glitch…’

  I smiled at his reference to Tanguy, a well-known French comedy about an ageing single guy whose parents have to resort to increasingly desperate measures to encourage their son to fly the family nest. But, in truth, alarm bells were jangling. I appreciated Frédéric’s honesty – I wasn’t sure that if I’d had some sort of breakdown I’d have admitted it on a first date – but he was obviously fragile, and the way he’d laid his cards on the table from the outset suggested to me that he was looking for something serious. Still on the mend myself, I knew I wasn’t strong enough to shoulder someone else’s problems. I already had someone to take care of, and that someone was Lila.

  Excusing myself to go to the toilet a few minutes later, I stood with my back against the tiled wall and decided I couldn’t face getting a second drink with Frédéric. There wasn’t the faintest whisper of attraction, and the silences were already lengthening between us as we fumbled for things to say. I made a great show, as I crossed the room to return to our table, of frowning at an imaginary text message on my mobile phone. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, unhooking my coat, scarf and satchel from the back of my chair, ‘but something’s come up and I’m going to have to call it a night.’ Frédéric looked crestfallen for a moment, then swiftly pulled himself together and adopted a more neutral expression. He was as easy to read as Lila, I thought to myself: every emotion passed across his face in real time.

  ‘Well, perhaps we could meet again, some other evening?’ he suggested, drawing my attention to the flaw in my getaway ruse.

  ‘Um, yes… Let’s do that. I’ll email you to let you know when I’m free…’ I was aware I was nodding a little too vigorously, and I was far from sure that Frédéric had been fooled by my charade as I stepped outside, leaving him seated at his table, nursing his half-full pint of lager.

  Was there any kind way to extricate myself gracefully from a bad-date situation? I wondered as I retraced my steps along rue du Trésor, winding my scarf around my neck and pulling on my leather gloves. I felt sure it was preferable to cut a rendezvous short, rather than stringing someone along, allowing him to buy me several drinks over the course of the evening and getting his hopes up, only to spurn his advances when the time came to leave the bar.

  Nonetheless, the stunt I’d just pulled wasn’t a million miles away from the vanishing acts I’d witnessed on Rendez-vous chat, and I remembered how I’d fumed when someone I’d been talking to had suddenly signed out, giving a flimsy excuse or, indeed, no excuse at all. Would I prefer a date to nip a rendezvous in the bud if he found himself regretting his decision to meet me? I supposed it was a question of perspective: one person’s cowardly was another person’s exercise in damage limitation. My gut feeling was that prolonging the agony was senseless: when I met someone new, I could often tell within seconds if I wanted to get to know them better. And if I didn’t, my free evenings were too scarce a commodity to be frittered away in the wrong company.

  When I paused at the end of the street and glanced at my watch, I found it was only quarter past seven. I couldn’t face catching a métro home, just yet. The idea of a post-date post mortem was appealing, but Ryan’s phone went straight to voicemail, and I thought I remembered Anna mentioning something about going to the cinema. I didn’t feel like calling anyone else and decided to take a stroll through the Marais on my own, instead. Heading north along rue du Faubourg du Temple, I turned into rue des Rosiers on a whim.

  When I’d first moved in with Nico, our Sunday pilgrimage to this neighbourhood had been a non-negotiable part of our weekend routine. First we’d queue for takeaway falafel, served inside tinfoil-wrapped pitta bread and overflowing with colourful salad garnishes, topped with chunks of deep-fried aubergine. Once we’d eaten those, seated on a park bench in the Square Langlois, we’d head to one of the nearby kosher bakeries to round off our Sunday lunch with cheesecake and coffee. Passing ‘L’As du Falafel’, I hesitated for a moment, sorely tempted to take my taste buds on a trip down memory lane. But it was freezing cold, and the idea of eating takeaway food alone in the street at night time wasn’t half as appealing as it would have been with an accomplice. With a heavy heart and a rumbling stomach, I continued on my way, taking a right turn in the direction of Hôtel de Ville and a métro home. So much for revelling in my freedom. At this rate I’d be ensconced on my sofa before the clock struck eight.

  True to my prediction, shortly after eight I kicked off my shoes, set a plastic bag containing takeaway noodles, a napkin and chopsticks down on the coffee table and cast around for the remote control. At first I couldn’t find it; it was hidden behind the screen of my open lapt
op. Stroking my finger across the track pad caused it to wake from its slumber, and I felt another stab of guilt as I saw Frédéric’s email confirming our date in the foreground. I was about to close the window by clicking on the cross at the top right-hand corner of the screen – the ‘tiny kiss’, as Lila called it – when a pop-up window appeared, stopping me in my tracks.

  ‘Manu _solo veut vous inviter au chat,’ the message read.

  ‘Does he indeed?’ I said, out loud. ‘Well, it’s about time. I “flashed” him at least three days ago…’

  Manu was a thirty-three-year-old single dad whose profile I’d come across quite by chance on the ‘Who’s online now?’ page. I wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to get his ill-lit, black and white profile photo past the site’s moderators, given that much of his face was in shadow. But his annonce blurb had appealed to me because, in some ways, his life seemed to mirror my own. ‘In my bathroom cabinet, you’ll find condoms,’ he’d written, ‘but also infant cough medicine and Spiderman plasters. My walk-in wardrobe doubles as my seven-year-old son’s bedroom when he visits. I live a dual existence – bachelor one day, Papa the next – and while it’s not always easy, I’m not unhappy with the cards life has dealt me so far…’ Scanning his words for the second time, I was struck by how much more confident and together he sounded than poor, damaged Frédéric.

  ‘J’aime ton profil,’ Manu typed as soon as the chat window loomed into view. Apparently he wasn’t one to stand on ceremony: there wasn’t a ‘bonsoir’ or a ‘ça va?’ in sight. ‘Dis-moi,’ he continued before I’d had a chance to make any reply, ‘t’as un truc de prévu demain soir?’ As a matter of fact, I had no plans for Wednesday evening, or indeed for the rest of the week.