French Kissing

by Catherine Sanderson

  ‘Mummy, can you put my hair in two couettes?’ Lila begged, once she was dressed the next morning, holding out a comb and two hair bobbles. ‘I want to look really pretty for Clara’s party… Zino is going to be there, and he’s my amoureux.’

  ‘I see,’ I said with a wry smile, motioning for my daughter to sit on the sofa in front of me. ‘So you’ve got a boyfriend now as well…’

  ‘In the cour de récréation the other day,’ Lila said, turning to give me a coy smile, ‘Zino did kiss my cheek. And one day, when I wasn’t wearing tights, he did touch my leg and sayed it was very soft.’ At the mention of the leg-touching I almost dropped my comb, imagining a grubby little boy’s hand on my daughter’s thigh.

  ‘When you weren’t wearing tights?’ I said sceptically, giving the centre parting I’d created a critical look and deciding that it wasn’t straight but would do well enough. ‘When on earth was that, Lila? You haven’t been to school with bare legs in months.’

  ‘When I was wearing trousers!’ said Lila, looking at me as though I were an imbecile. She touched the space between my jeans and my socks, furrowing her brow. ‘Here, Mummy. How do you say? On my talon? I can’t remember the right word…’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, smiling as understanding dawned. ‘He touched your ankle. Your cheville. Your talon is your heel. I had no idea you had an amoureux.’

  ‘Really I’ve got two amoureux,’ Lila said, as I struggled to position her second pigtail at approximately the same level as the first. ‘There’s Zino, but sometimes I hold hands with Raphaël too. And Jules did try to kiss me, but I said “no” because his nose was running.’

  A little after two o’clock, I tapped on the front door of the address on Clara’s birthday invitation: a seventh-floor apartment in one of the high-rise blocks towering over place Marcel Achard. Once she’d finished giving me the low-down on her love life, Lila had somehow managed to persuade me to dress her in her favourite princess costume, complete with tiara, a get-up which had drawn amused glances from passers-by along the way. As for me, I wore smart jeans, a polo-necked jumper and minimal make-up, and I clutched yet another last-minute purchase from Le Genre Urban: a French translation of the Gruffalo.

  Lila had been invited to only a handful of birthday parties in the past, as most of her classmates’ parents lived in flats as tiny as my own and were unable to accommodate a dozen highly strung four- and five-year-olds. What I did know from my limited experience of such events was that there was an outside chance I’d be invited to stay on for a while, to drink coffee and make small talk with the other parents, rather than dropping Lila off and disappearing. It was an intimidating prospect, as I didn’t know anyone by name. When we dashed in and out of school, we only had time to shoot one another hurried smiles and murmur a ‘bonjour’ in passing.

  ‘Entrez, entrez!’ exclaimed Clara’s beaming father as he threw open the door, revealing a hallway filled with abandoned pairs of children’s boots and shoes. Judging by the noise level, the majority of Clara’s other playmates were already in attendance. ‘Les gosses sont par ici. Clara’s aunt is putting on a puppet show in the salon…’ he explained, motioning to Lila – who’d removed her coat and shoes – to join them. Once she’d skipped through the doorway, without so much as a backward glance, Clara’s father put out his hand to take my coat. ‘We grown-ups are enjoying more adult pleasures in the kitchen. Will you join us for a glass of champagne, maman de Lila?’

  Clara’s parents – Vincent and Cécile – appeared to be roughly my own age and, although their apartment building was ugly on the outside, the interior suggested they had both money and taste in spades. The kitchen, large by Paris standards, was furnished with a range of aluminium, free-standing work surfaces, the industrial feel offset by a number of colourful retro appliances from the sixties and seventies. The orange-plastic juicer and the kitsch, apple-shaped kitchen timer and matching icebox served as helpful talking points for the first few minutes as the dozen or so assembled parents cast around for things to say. Vincent placed a full glass of champagne into my waiting hand only seconds after I joined the semi-familiar throng, and I was relieved when he remained by my side and engaged me in conversation.

  ‘So, I hear you speaking English wiz Lila in ze mornings,’ he said, switching into heavily accented but fairly accurate English for a moment, before reverting back into French again. ‘Ça fait longtemps que vous vivez en France?’

  I was aware of several pairs of eyes swivelling my way, their owners’ interest piqued by Vincent’s little bilingual performance. I gave him – and whoever else was listening in – my usual potted history: the summer in Paris which had stretched into a decade when I met the Frenchman, Nico, who was to become Lila’s father. Vincent looked as though he was trying to summon up an image of Nico from the furthest reaches of his brain. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever bumped into Lila’s father at school…’ he said with a frown. ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Ah, c’est normal,’ I replied, with what I hoped was a nonchalant shrug. ‘Lila’s dad doesn’t live with us… He takes her on alternate weekends instead.’ Was it my overactive imagination, or did the ambient temperature in the kitchen cool once I’d shared that particular titbit of information? The women who’d arrived as one half of a couple seemed to edge closer to their respective partners, closing ranks as though faced with a dangerous predator. Would any man who dared speak to me from that point onwards be running the risk of an angular elbow in the ribs? I wondered. Or was I being paranoid?

  The doorbell rang again and the only unaccompanied male in the room – whom I recognized as the father of the ankle-groping Zino – sidled over to the spot Vincent vacated when he left to answer the door. He reminded me of his son, his head a mass of unruly dark curls, his matte-coloured skin suggesting Mediterranean origins. ‘Mon fils Zino is always talking about your daughter,’ he said, positioning himself a little too close for comfort and causing me to take a step back until my back rested against the fridge door. ‘He calls her his amoureuse.’ He looked me up and down in the sleaziest, most obvious way and I felt myself starting to blush. ‘Personally, I don’t blame him,’ he murmured. ‘Good looks seem to run in the family…’

  I laughed nervously and set down my half-full glass, deciding it was time I made my excuses to Clara’s parents and extricated myself from their little kitchen party. I knew for a fact that Zino’s father was married – he wore a thick gold wedding band – and the last thing I wanted was to gain an undeservedly evil reputation among the parents of Lila’s classmates on account of his rather pitiful efforts at flirtation. Stepping back out into the hallway, I retrieved my coat from Vincent.

  ‘Merci pour le champagne,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid I’ve got errands to run…’ I could imagine all too easily the mutterings in the kitchen once I was out of the door. ‘Did you see Zino’s father hitting on that single mother? Poor thing, she didn’t know where to put herself! I’d hate to be in her situation, wouldn’t you? At our age, all the best men are already taken.’ Maybe I was making a mountain out of a molehill, but I’d felt so uncomfortable that I resolved to return not a minute before the party ended.

  Exiting the tower block, I edged past a group of young teenage boys kicking a football around and shouting the sort of obscenities I dreaded Lila learning in the school playground. I’d always found the vast paved square singularly unappealing. It was devoid of any park benches – presumably to discourage tramps or drug dealers from taking up permanent residence – and the children’s playground opening off its west side had been off limits for as long as I could remember, the gates fastened with a chain and a nearby sign claiming the area was ‘temporarily closed’. Just as the rose garden in front of the nearby trade-union headquarters was imprisoned behind railings, the few token bushes and balding patches of lawn dotted around the edges of the square had been fenced off too. It was hard to imagine what the urban planners who had dreamed up this little corner of hell had been thinking.
<
br />   When I left Nico, I’d let a smooth-talking estate agent talk me into viewing a twelfth-floor apartment in the building opposite Clara’s parents’ place; its identical twin. I’d turned down the extra ten square metres of space it afforded, compared to where we lived now, without undue hesitation. Shoebox living – however spacious the shoe box – was not for me. It was old Belleville that I loved, with its cobbled streets and leafy interior courtyards; the few blocks the developers had never succeeded in getting their hands on.

  In the absence of any genuine errands to run, two unexpected hours of freedom now yawned ahead of me. Many of the shops at the bottom of rue de Belleville were open on Sundays, and a host of illegal Chinese street vendors were selling basketfuls of chicken wrapped in banana leaves and plastic pails of blackened, fissured hard-boiled eggs. I toyed with the idea of seeking out some mildew spray to combat the black patches in my bathroom. Alternatively, I could nip down to the kiosk for an English Sunday newspaper – preferably the Observer – and curl up with it, either inside Aux Folies, or in the comfort of my own living room. Undecided, I dithered outside a Chinese restaurant for a moment, staring absent-mindedly at the display of crispy duck carcasses suspended in the window.

  It was when I’d made up my mind and begun to stride towards the zebra crossing opposite Aux Folies that I saw a sight which caused me to stop dead in my tracks, left foot on the kerb, right foot in the gutter. Nico was on the other side of the road, flanked by a young woman who could only be Albane. Flanked wasn’t really the right word: Albane trailed a few steps behind him, her head bowed, and it wasn’t clear whether Nico was striding impatiently ahead, or Albane was deliberately hanging back.

  Time seemed to stand still for a moment as I stared at them, oblivious to the cars zipping past. Nico wore the winter coat he’d owned for years, a woollen three-quarter-length Yves Saint Laurent he’d splurged on in the January sales one year with his hefty Christmas bonus. Knotted around his neck was a scarf I’d bought him in Topshop. In one hand he carried an umbrella, in the other a folded copy of the weekend edition of Le Monde. His brow was furrowed, and he looked straight ahead as he walked, confident that Albane, however mutinous she might be feeling, would follow.

  Of course, it was Albane I was interested in. Albane, owner of the breathless, apologetic voice I’d heard on the phone many months ago. Albane, owner of the hair clip I’d once seen lying on Nico’s hall table with its single, captive hair. Suddenly, here she was, hands shoved deep into her pockets, eyes lowered, long, straight mahogany hair covering her shoulders, the tips of her ears peeping out from under a purple, crocheted cap. She was young, slim and beautiful, just as I’d imagined. She had the kind of effortlessly unblemished skin I remembered taking for granted in my twenties, and bone structure that would serve her well for years to come.

  I don’t know how I expected to feel, the first time I saw Nico’s girlfriend. I’d never regarded her as evil incarnate, like that Mathilde woman: she was just the woman – or girl – Nico had turned to when I left him alone. Staring at her now, I felt no animosity, no hatred, and no jealousy. I simply felt numb. Numb, and a little sorry for Albane. I remembered how infuriating it was to follow a self-righteous Nico down the street after an argument, cursing his indifferent, retreating back all the while. After a fight, he could seldom be prevailed upon to apologize. He argued like a lawyer, never deigning to admit he’d been at fault in any way. These kinds of scenes had been part of my life for ten years and were part of Albane’s weekend routine, now. Confronted with this tableau, I realized I didn’t miss them at all.

  Nico and Albane melted into the crowds milling about by the entrance to Belleville métro, but I continued staring after them until long after they’d disappeared, the beginnings of a smile playing about my lips. I might not have admirers beating down my door. I might not enjoy unlimited freedom, like Ryan or Anna. But I’d proved to myself, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that in less than a year, I’d come a long way. And today, that was good enough for me.

  18

  From the moment he kissed my cheek and pulled out my chair, I sensed my date with Jérémy was going to mark a turning point in my Rendez-vous experience. My pulse began to race, my palms were damp and I was giddy with excitement. Chemistry, the elusive ingredient which had been missing from all my previous dates, was finally au rendezvous.

  Here was someone who not only lived up to the promise of his striking profile photo, but exceeded it. His eyes – the colour of the blue/black ink I’d preferred at school – were large and expressive and fringed with long, thick lashes. His clean-shaven face was remarkably unlined and unblemished, and I marvelled at how smooth, how touchable his skin looked. His lips were full, with a pronounced Cupid’s bow, and when he kissed my cheek – and not the air, as so many people did – they felt incredibly soft. There was something endearing about how his hair – once jet-black – was flecked with grey, particularly around his ears. His pale-blue sweater accentuated his broad shoulders and his old-school Levi jeans clung to all the right places. In short, Jérémy was delectable, and as I slid into the seat opposite, every fibre of my being strained towards him.

  My first thought upon seeing him, and seeing how I reacted to him, was relief. It really was possible for me to feel powerfully attracted to someone who wasn’t Nico. The ambivalence I’d felt towards the men I’d met since we’d parted hadn’t been down to some vital component inside me being irreparably damaged. I simply hadn’t crossed paths with the right person; at least, not until now.

  Jérémy was older than anyone I’d been out with before; outside the age range I’d decreed as acceptable when I joined Rendez-vous. His profile listed him as aged forty-two – backed up by his pseudonym, Jem42 – but when we’d exchanged emails, following my ‘flash’, he’d admitted he’d celebrated his forty-sixth birthday a few weeks earlier. ‘Pourquoi mentir?’ I’d asked him, in my third or fourth email. ‘Or more to the point: why lie and then come clean afterwards?’

  ‘I only joined a couple of weeks ago, but it didn’t take me long to realize all the women I was interested in had keyed in a cut-off age of forty-five,’ Jérémy explained by return email. ‘So I thought I’d bend the rules a little, to help myself over the first hurdle. It seemed a shame to be disqualified before the race had even started.’ His analogy reminded me of my first hesitant steps on Rendez-vous, back in September, when I’d agonized over whether to admit to being a mother. Even now, five months later, I confessed to Jérémy, I wasn’t convinced the decision I’d made – to be upfront from the outset – had worked to my advantage.

  ‘I think that’s one of the big problems with sites like this, with all their databases and search terms and filters,’ Jérémy responded. ‘People can end up getting too focused on who they see as their perfect match, in theory. Whereas out here in the real world, the things that make a person attractive are far less logical. You’re never going to fall for someone because he or she has ticks in all the right profile boxes.’

  I admired Jérémy’s sincerity and, when we arranged to meet for a drink at Chez Prune, the canal-side scene of my first coffee and stroll with Anna, I’d felt cautiously optimistic. Leaving Lila with the babysitter, I’d wrapped up warmly and taken a métro to Goncourt, then walked along the quai, my cheeks stinging in the biting-cold air. When I pushed open the door to the bar a few minutes later, pausing to scan the tables for lone males and comparing them to my mental image of Jérémy’s profile photo, his head was buried in a sheaf of papers. Some intuition – or perhaps the draught from the open door – had caused him to glance up, and we’d recognized one another simultaneously. He’d flashed me a wide, welcoming smile and I’d begun to melt, there and then.

  ‘It was much easier to get a table in here than I thought it would be,’ Jérémy remarked, gesturing at the half-empty bar. ‘I usually hang out at Le Jemmapes, on the other side of the canal. It’s a while since I’ve been here.’ He spoke French with a neutral, educated accent and exu
ded a calm confidence, as though he was entirely at ease in his own skin.

  ‘It’s never been a better time to be a non-fumeur,’ I retorted, stowing my coat, scarf and gloves on the nearby radiator. ‘Which you are, aren’t you?’ I teased, one eyebrow raised. ‘Or did you lie about that on your profile too?’

  ‘Everything else on my profile was the gospel truth, I promise,’ Jérémy replied, turning down the corner on the page he’d been reading and stowing his papers – which looked like a script of some sort – in a rucksack on the floor, by his feet.

  The other thing which had attracted me to Jérémy’s profile had been his occupation. ‘Acteur,’ I’d thought to myself. Now that made a glamorous change from the other men I’d met. ‘Tell me about how you got into acting,’ was my first question, my glass of dry Bordeaux blanc sitting untouched before me. I’d resolved in advance that I wasn’t about to jeopardize this date by drinking too much too soon in an attempt to steady my nerves. Ordering my least favourite drink was the strategy I’d devised to ensure I stuck to my plan.

  Jérémy’s potted history was fascinating. In a former life, he’d been a trader at the French stock exchange, a high-adrenalin job which he’d loved but also found exhausting. He’d retired from that profession at the age of thirty-eight, although he confessed he still played the markets for his own amusement. He’d set aside what he described as ‘a nice little nest egg’ and after taking an extended holiday – travelling around India, Thailand and China – he’d cast around for something else to do.

  ‘I fell into acting quite by accident,’ he explained, pausing to take a sip of his beer. ‘A friend of mine was making her first short film and she persuaded me to stand in for an absent cast member at short notice. I only accepted because I owed her a favour.’ When he described the experience his eyes lit up and he gestured expressively with his hands. I suspected the feeling had been mutual; the camera loving every contour of his face. ‘Afterwards I enrolled in an acting class at the Cours Florent,’ Jérémy said, casually naming one of the most famous drama schools in the city. A couple of years later he’d had his lucky break, starring in Célibataires, a play about a group of single Parisians. An unexpected success, it had enjoyed a year-long run in a theatre near Pigalle.