French Kissing

by Catherine Sanderson

  Reading between the lines, I suspected it had been a while since Jérémy was involved in anything as successful as Célibataires. When I quizzed him about his current projects, he mumbled something about a play he and a friend were rehearsing and hoping to showcase in the summer. But what interested me about Jérémy wasn’t whether or not he’d achieved – or ever would achieve – some sort of celebrity status. I found it fascinating that he’d walked away from a stable, mainstream career to throw himself into something completely different. It must have taken guts, and I couldn’t imagine any of the men I knew doing something so radical and brave. Perhaps I wasn’t being entirely fair: if Nico had set aside his plans to join the partnership in his law firm and decided, say, to take up oil painting, instead, I’d probably have been the first to try and talk him out of it. Jérémy, on the other hand, had never been bound by family ties. This probably went a long way towards explaining why he looked so youthful at the age of forty-six.

  When the conversation turned to my own job and circumstances – a progression I didn’t welcome, as English teaching was bound to sound dull in comparison – Jérémy surprised me by asking a number of searching questions about the kind of people I taught and the relationships I developed with them. Could it be that this attraction I’m feeling isn’t a one-way street? I wondered. Could it be that he’s as interested in me as I am in him?

  ‘A good friend of mine, Thomas, who has an English father and a French mother, teaches English too,’ Jérémy confessed, a little later. ‘And this awful thing happened to him once…’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I murmured, putting my elbows on the table and resting my chin on my hands, leaning closer. As he talked, I enjoyed focusing on how his lips moved, or the way he gesticulated with his graceful, long-fingered hands. Jérémy explained that Thomas had been teaching Jeanine – a plain, rather plump girl who worked in the human resources department of an insurance company – for a couple of years. He’d long suspected she had a sort of schoolgirl crush on him, but thought little of it until the day he’d returned to work after his honeymoon, wearing a wedding ring. When Jeanine caught sight of his ring finger, the blood drained from her face and she excused herself, claiming she felt unwell. The following week, Jeanine’s lesson was cancelled and Thomas learned, much later, that Jeanine had suffered some sort of nervous breakdown the day after their last lesson. ‘I’ve always thought someone should base a script on that story,’ Jérémy said, with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘I’d write it myself, if I thought I could. Imagine if Jeanine had kept a diary, for example, and documented a fantasy relationship with Thomas. Some sort of bond that seemed real to her but existed only inside her own head…’

  ‘So all those questions before… Was that you trying to milk me for ideas for your future script?’ I said, affecting an offended expression.

  ‘Not at all!’ Jérémy shook his head emphatically. ‘I simply felt it was my duty to warn you about the seven or eight male students who are busy fantasizing about you right now.’

  A few minutes after midnight, Jérémy caught me glancing surreptitiously at my watch and asked me, mock-petulantly, if he was beginning to bore me. ‘Of course not,’ I replied with a smile. ‘I should be getting back, that’s all. The babysitter I’m using at the moment can’t stay out too late. Her parents are very strict…’

  ‘Ah of course,’ Jérémy said, almost to himself. ‘A babysitter.’ It occurred to me that we hadn’t touched on the subject of Lila all evening and, for one heart-stopping moment, I wondered whether he’d forgotten I was a mother and was now having second thoughts about meeting me. But when he spoke again, I realized I needn’t have worried. ‘How about I give you a lift home on my motorbike?’ he continued, as charming as ever. ‘I’ll be able to get you there much quicker than the métro.’

  It was a long time since I’d been on a motorbike. Yves had owned one, years ago, and all I remembered was how uncomfortable I’d been when he gave me a lift from Kate’s to an appointment near his office one day. The ride itself had been exhilarating, although I did panic when our route took us along an underpass which snaked underneath the river Seine and his bike tilted to one side as he leaned into a sharp corner. But it was the mandatory proximity I’d found most unsettling. I hadn’t enjoyed being forced to hold on tight.

  Needless to say, I felt no such discomfort seated behind Jérémy. As we rocketed along rue de la Fontaine au Roi I savoured the pressure of my thighs against his, my arms encircling his torso, my head resting against his back. He smelled of leather – he wore a thick, sheepskin-lined jacket – and of a distinctive, spicy aftershave I didn’t recognize, mingled with a hint of something sweet, like vanilla. When he pulled up outside my apartment building and killed the engine I was overwhelmed with disappointment. I hadn’t wanted our journey to come to an end, just yet.

  Swinging my right leg over the seat to regain the pavement, I turned to face Jérémy, fumbling with the fastener of the helmet he’d loaned me, which had been concealed in a secret compartment. ‘Laisse-moi faire,’ he said, kicking the stand into place and dismounting, removing his own helmet and gloves and putting gentle hands under my chin to work the strap free. My neck tingled when he grazed it with the backs of his fingers. Setting my helmet aside, he put his hands to my flattened hair, pulling it back from my face and hooking a stray curl behind my right ear with his thumb.

  I was clear-headed – I’d stuck to my plan and made two glasses of wine last all evening – so while my next move came as a surprise to both of us, I couldn’t blame my sudden bold impulse on the contents of a glass. Looking Jérémy straight in the eye, I put my palms flat against his chest and tilted my face upwards, brushing my lips against his. When his lips parted, I leaned in further, closing my eyes and slipping my tongue inside. All the longing I’d felt, sitting across from him for the past few hours, I poured into that long, exploratory kiss. When I felt his arms sliding around my shoulders and running down my spine, towards the curve of my buttocks, I pressed closer still.

  When we surfaced for air, a few heady moments later, I took a step back, overcome with self-consciousness and anxious to see his reaction. ‘I… I don’t know what came over me,’ I murmured, peering coyly at him through lowered eyelashes. ‘I don’t usually grab hold of men I’ve only just met…’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ said Jérémy, with what I could only describe as a nervous smile. ‘But you’re right, it was rather sudden, Sally. We have only just met…’ I froze. That wasn’t the reaction I’d been hoping for. In my ideal version of our script, Jérémy would have pulled me back towards him, put his lips over mine and forcefully silenced me.

  ‘Well, I suppose I’d better go and “liberate” the babysitter,’ I muttered, reversing towards the front door and raising my hand in a pathetic little wave. ‘Call me if you fancy doing this again sometime?’ I turned and tapped in my door code, my cheeks smarting, refusing to look over my shoulder. Pushing the door open, I lunged inside and let it swing closed behind me with a satisfying, weighty clunk. What on earth had just happened? How could Jérémy regret sharing that sensual kiss?

  The next day Anna called, and Lila and I joined her for a stroll in the Parc de Belleville with her temporary companion, Lotta the Shih-tzu. Anna was dog-sitting as a favour for an absent friend and, despite the unambiguous signage at the park gates depicting the silhouette of a dog with a red diagonal line through its centre, we’d decided to press on regardless. Preferring the hairpin paths cut into the terraced hillside to the flights of stairs Lotta was far too small to negotiate, we meandered upwards. ‘If I see a park warden, I’ll pick up the darn dog and stow it under my coat,’ Anna said with a rebellious shrug. ‘Isn’t that why pocketbook-sized dogs like this were invented?’

  Lila, who had begged to be entrusted with the dog’s lead, was in her element. She and her canine companion trotted on ahead and, apart from a couple of elderly killjoys who shook their heads and tutted, their mouths gathered around thei
r false teeth like stitching pulled too tight, most of the passers-by smiled at the sight of a four-year-old shrieking with pleasure as she walked a tiny mop-on-legs.

  When I brought Anna up to speed about the events of the previous evening, I was relieved to see that her reaction to Jérémy’s behaviour mirrored my own. ‘That’s seriously weird,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘I mean, the way you tell it, he was giving you all these signals, all night long… And so what if you’ve only known each other five minutes! It was only a kiss, goddammit!’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that sort of thing has happened to me,’ I said, thinking back to the evening I’d spent on Manu’s couch. ‘You know,’ I said with a sigh, ‘I’m starting to think that being a mother is a bit like having a “go slow” sign welded to my forehead. I mean, I thought I’d read the situation correctly; I thought I was going with the flow. Now I feel embarrassed, and downright foolish. But it honestly didn’t seem like he was kissing me back to be polite…’

  ‘Maybe he’s one of those old-fashioned guys who likes to take the initiative,’ Anna suggested. ‘How about next time you go out, you let him lead the way?’

  ‘If there’s a next time,’ I said darkly. ‘Who knows whether I’ll ever hear from him again.’ Inside my coat pocket, my hand was clenched around my mobile. With every fibre of my being, I’d been willing Jérémy to call since I rose that morning.

  When I quizzed Anna about how things were progressing with Alexandre, it was her turn to sigh. ‘I don’t know,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I mean, the sex is lovely. He’s attentive, he’s kind, we have a lot of laughs, we share a lot of interests…’ As she listed his attributes, I noticed how unconvinced Anna sounded. It was as though she’d been badly dubbed. Her words were positive, but her tone of voice didn’t match.

  ‘So what on earth is the problem?’ I was confused. ‘He sounds perfect. Where’s the “but”?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I’m ready to devote all my energies to one person,’ she said. ‘You know, put all my eggs in one basket… I don’t know… Maybe it’s too soon after Tom…’

  ‘Are there other baskets you could be stowing your eggs in?’ I said, borrowing her metaphor. When Anna nodded, I felt a by-now-familiar twinge of jealousy. There was a pupil she liked, she confessed, who had asked her out to lunch. Then there was an American guy: a newcomer to Paris who’d been put in touch with Anna by a mutual friend. ‘It must be something to do with being in the first flush of romance with Alex,’ I said, doing everything in my power to keep the envy I felt from tainting my voice. ‘You’ve got that glow, and it makes you irresistible not only to him, but to other people too…’

  ‘I dunno,’ Anna lamented. ‘Just as I was beginning to find this single life enjoyable, then bam!, along comes a guy who wants to take me off the market. Much as I like him, I can’t help thinking it would have been fun to keep my options open a while longer, you know. To explore other avenues…’

  ‘It’s what we Brits call “Sod’s law”,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘As in Murphy’s law?’ said Anna, looking puzzled. ‘Jesus, you Brits have some weird expressions.’ Absorbed in our conversation, we narrowly missed ploughing into Lila and Lotta, who had ground to a halt on the path in front of us. Lotta had lowered her whiskered chin to the pavement and splayed out her legs, refusing to budge. She looked less like a dog than a miniature version of one of those fake-sheepskin rugs everyone stops to fondle on their way around Ikea. Lila was kneeling in front of her, one hand on her hips, the lead hanging limply from the other. ‘Anna, why won’t she walk any more?’ she wailed. ‘Is there something wrong with her? Is she broken?’

  ‘The pooch is tired,’ Anna reassured her, scooping Lotta up into the crook of her arm. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘I’m tired as well,’ said Lila, sidling towards Anna’s free arm. ‘Please, Anna, can you carry me too?’ On a previous, equally memorable, visit to the park, Anna had given Lila a piggyback, a move which had ensured her enduring popularity.

  While Anna reasoned with Lila, I slowed my pace and allowed myself to lag behind, daydreaming about the previous evening. Jérémy’s unexpected reaction still baffled me, but maybe Anna was right and it was a question of letting him make the next move.

  Once the babysitter had left the previous evening, I’d spent an hour or more Googling his name, lingering over the promotional shots I’d unearthed for Célibataires the longest. Jérémy was pictured in the centre of the troupe, wearing jeans and showing a nicely toned bare torso, while the woman by his side appeared to be naked apart from a man’s shirt. As for his Rendez-vous profile, I’d visited it once, for a couple of seconds, so that I could copy his photo on to my desktop. That way I could stare at it for as long as I liked, as often as I liked, without him being any the wiser.

  19

  Jérémy remained ominously quiet over the next few days, but that didn’t prevent my thoughts from returning to our date with alarming regularity. Whether I was waiting for a métro, watching Lila soak in the bath or tapping my pencil against a table in the gap between two lessons, I kept remembering things. Things that we’d said. The way he had looked. His smell. The feeling of my body against his as we rode home on his motorbike. And, last but not least, that lingering kiss.

  After coming up with all manner of elaborate theories to account for his behaviour, I moved on to inventing reasons why he hadn’t yet got in touch. Mindful of Anna’s words in the park, I was determined not to take matters into my own hands and contact him myself so, in the meantime, I gazed doe-eyed at his photo for a few minutes every evening, willing him to call. On one occasion I wasn’t proud of, I even logged on to Rendez-vous and sifted painstakingly through the list of members who’d inspected my profile since the evening we met, searching, in vain, for his pseudonym.

  When I wasn’t mooning over Jérémy, I had plenty of other things to occupy my mind. It was mid-February, and Lila’s school holidays were already upon me. Nico’s parents were on holiday in Mauritius – a wedding-anniversary gift from Philippe to Catherine – and Lila was staying with me for the full two weeks and attending the Centre de Loisirs. I’d suggested to Nico that he might like to take a couple of days off and spend some extra time with his daughter, in addition to his usual weekend stint, but he’d made a feeble excuse about his workload, forcing me to conclude that he hadn’t turned over a new leaf, after all. Instead, he’d spoken to his sister, who was planning to take Lucas to Disneyland Paris for the day. ‘Sophie’s quite happy for Lila to tag along too,’ he’d told me over the phone. ‘I’ll pay for the ticket.’

  The most unexpected development, however, had come in the form of a phone call from Mum, a week earlier. ‘I thought maybe I’d pop over and visit you and Lila while she’s off school,’ she’d announced, out of the blue, at the end of one of our of late rather stilted fortnightly phone calls. ‘I haven’t seen your new flat, and I fancy a ride on the Eurostar, now it leaves from Saint Pancras and it connects so well with the trains to and from Yorkshire.’

  ‘What about Dad?’ I said, surprised to hear Mum talking in the first person singular. ‘Wouldn’t he be coming with you?’

  ‘Oh, he’s got a lot of work on at the moment,’ Mum said airily. ‘So I thought I’d come on my own.’ Nonplussed, I told her to book whatever suited her best. I could hardly dissuade her from visiting, and I knew Lila would be delighted to spend some time with her grandma. A few days later, she’d called to confirm she’d be visiting for two days in the second half of Lila’s holidays.

  ‘When my mother comes to stay I can never get the woman to put her feet up,’ said Ryan, when I met him for a quick baguette and gossip session after morning lessons had ended on the first Thursday of the school holidays. ‘Honestly, there’s no parting that woman from her Marigolds. If I turn my back for five minutes, you can be sure she’ll be busy scouring the u-bend of the toilet, or she’ll have found cobwebs in places I’d never dream of
looking… But tell me about this date of yours. Anna said something about a guy called Jérôme?’

  ‘You mean Jérémy,’ I said, wondering idly when Anna and Ryan had got together behind my back. I filled him in on the details of my date and Jérémy’s failure to call, despite what Ryan referred to as ‘that kiss’, using his trademark airborne quotation marks. ‘Someone better must have come along,’ I said with a shrug of resignation. ‘That’s always the danger with Rendez-vous. If my inbox is filling up with unread mail from other men, it stands to reason that Jérémy can’t be short of admirers either…’

  When I set down my sandwich and told Ryan Jérémy’s disturbing story about Thomas the English teacher and Jeanine the obsessed pupil, it was difficult not to apply the moral of the story – that you never can tell what’s going on inside someone else’s head – to my own situation. Supposing Jérémy turned on the charm with all his dates, offering them a lift home on his motorbike; mussing up their hair… Maybe I was the one who had endowed his every gesture with far more meaning than he’d intended: I’d been so drawn to him that I’d desperately wanted to believe the feeling was mutual.

  So when my phone began to vibrate in my bag – just as I was about to tuck into a strawberry tart – my first thought was that the caller must be Kate or Anna. Catching sight of Jérémy’s name, I froze. ‘Oh my god, it’s him,’ I shrieked, shooting Ryan a panicked, rabbit-caught-in-headlights look. I was about to flip open the phone and take his call when Ryan put a dissuasive hand across mine, shaking his head. ‘Let it ring a little while longer,’ he said authoritatively. ‘And then, for goodness’ sake, don’t let on you know who it is. Programming a guy’s name and number into your mobile after your first date isn’t what I’d call playing things cool…’