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‘What did I say?’ I asked casually. ‘What did I say that you didn’t translate into French for Datt?’
‘Nothing,’ Maria said immediately. ‘Not because you said nothing, but because I didn’t hear it. Understand? I’m not interested in what you are or how you earn your living. If you are doing something that’s illegal or dangerous, that’s your worry. Just for the moment I feel a little responsible for you, but I’ve nearly worked off that feeling. Tomorrow you can start telling your own lies and I’m sure you will do it remarkably well.’
‘Is that a brush-off?’
She turned to me. ‘No,’ she said. She leaned over and kissed me.
‘You smell delicious,’ I said. ‘What is it you’re wearing?’
‘Agony,’ she said. ‘It’s an expensive perfume, but there are few humans not attracted to it.’
I tried to decide whether she was geeing me up, but I couldn’t tell. She wasn’t the sort of girl who’d help you by smiling, either.
She got off the bed and smoothed her dress over her hips.
‘Do you like this dress?’ she asked.
‘It’s great,’ I said.
‘What sort of clothes do you like to see women in?’
‘Aprons,’ I said. ‘Fingers a-shine with those marks you get from handling hot dishes.’
‘Yes, I can imagine,’ she said. She stubbed out her cigarette.
‘I’ll help you if you want help but don’t ask too much, and remember that I am involved with these people and I have only one passport and it’s French.’
I wondered if that was a hint about what I’d revealed under the drugs, but I said nothing.
She looked at her wristwatch. ‘It’s very late,’ she said. She looked at me quizzically. ‘There’s only one bed and I need my sleep.’ I had been thinking of having a cigarette but I replaced them on the side table. I moved aside. ‘Share the bed,’ I invited, ‘but I can’t guarantee sleep.’
‘Don’t pull the Jean-Paul lover-boy stuff,’ she said, ‘it’s not your style.’ She grabbed at the cotton dress and pulled it over her head.
‘What is my style?’ I asked irritably.
‘Check with me in the morning,’ she said, and put the light out. She left only the radio on.
10
I stayed in Maria’s flat but the next afternoon Maria went back to my rooms to feed Joe. She got back before the storm. She came in blowing on her hands and complaining of the cold.
‘Did you change the water and put the cuttlefish bone in?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘It’s good for his beak,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said. She stood by the window looking out over the fast-darkening boulevard. ‘It’s primitive,’ she said without turning away from the window. ‘The sky gets dark and the wind begins to lift hats and boxes and finally dustbin lids, and you start to think this is the way the world will end.’
‘I think politicians have other plans for ending the world,’ I said.
‘The rain is beginning. Huge spots, like rain for giants. Imagine being an ant hit by a …’
The phone rang. ‘ … raindrop like that.’ Maria finished the sentence hurriedly and picked up the phone.
She picked it up as though it was a gun that might explode by accident. ‘Yes,’ she said suspiciously. ‘He’s here.’ She listened, nodding, and saying ‘yes’. ‘The walk will do him good,’ she said. ‘We’ll be there in about an hour.’ She pulled an agonized face at me. ‘Yes,’ she said to the phone again. ‘Well you must just whisper to him and then I won’t hear your little secrets, will I?’ There was a little gabble of electronic indignation, then Maria said, ‘We’ll get ready now or we’ll be late,’ and firmly replaced the receiver. ‘Byrd,’ she said. ‘Your countryman Mr Martin Langley Byrd craves a word with you at the Café Blanc.’ The noise of rain was like a vast crowd applauding frantically.
‘Byrd,’ I explained, ‘is the man who was with me at the art gallery. The art people think a lot of him.’
‘So he was telling me,’ said Maria.
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ I said. ‘An ex-naval officer who becomes a bohemian is bound to be a little odd.’
‘Jean-Paul likes him,’ said Maria, as though it was the epitome of accolades. I climbed into my newly washed underwear and wrinkled suit. Maria discovered a tiny mauve razor and I shaved millimetre by millimetre and swamped the cuts with cologne. We left Maria’s just as the rain shower ended. The concierge was picking up the potted plants that had been standing on the pavement.
‘You are not taking a raincoat?’ she asked Maria.
‘No,’ said Maria.
‘Perhaps you’ll only be out for a few minutes,’ said the concierge. She pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose and peered at me.
‘Perhaps,’ said Maria, and took my arm to walk away.
‘It will rain again,’ called the concierge.
‘Yes,’ said Maria.
‘Heavily,’ called the concierge. She picked up another pot and prodded the earth in it.
Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves. This rainstorm pounced hastily like an inexperienced lover, and then as suddenly was gone. The leaves drooped wistfully and the air gleamed with green reflections. It’s easy to forgive the summer rain; like first love, white lies or blarney, there’s no malignity in it.
Byrd and Jean-Paul were already seated at the café. Jean-Paul was as immaculate as a shop-window dummy but Byrd was excited and dishevelled. His hair was awry and his eyebrows almost non-existent, as though he’d been too near a water-heater blow-back. They had chosen a seat near the side screens and Byrd was wagging a finger and talking excitedly. Jean-Paul waved to us and folded his ear with his fingers. Maria laughed. Byrd was wondering if Jean-Paul was making a joke against him, but deciding he wasn’t, continued to speak.
‘Simplicity annoys them,’ Byrd said. ‘It’s just a rectangle, one of them complained, as though that was a criterion of art. Success annoys them. Even though I make almost no money out of my painting, that doesn’t prevent the critics who feel my work is bad from treating it like an indecent assault, as though I have deliberately chosen to do bad work in order to be obnoxious. They have no kindness, no compassion, you see, that’s why they call them critics – originally the word meant a captious fool; if they had compassion they would show it.’
‘How?’ asked Maria.
‘By painting. That’s what a painting is, a statement of love. Art is love, stricture is hate. It’s obvious, surely. You see, a critic is a man who admires painters (he wants to be one) but cares little for paintings (which is why he isn’t one). A painter, on the other hand, admires paintings, but doesn’t like painters.’ Byrd, having settled that problem, waved to a waiter. ‘Four grands crèmes and some matches,’ he ordered.
‘I want black coffee,’ said Maria.
‘I prefer black too,’ said Jean-Paul.
Byrd looked at me and made a little noise with his lips. ‘You want black coffee?’
‘White will suit me,’ I said. He nodded an appreciation of a fellow countryman’s loyalty. ‘Two crèmes – grands crèmes – and two small blacks,’ he ordered. The waiter arranged the beer mats, picked up some ancient checks and tore them in half. When he had gone Byrd leaned towards me. ‘I’m glad,’ he said – he looked around to see that the other two did not hear. They were talking to each other – ‘I’m glad you drink white coffee. It’s not good for the nerves, too much of this very strong stuff.’ He lowered his voice still more. ‘That’s why they are all so argumentative,’ he said in a whisper. When the coffees came Byrd arranged them on the table, apportioned the sugar, then took the check.
‘Let me pay,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It was my invitation.’
‘Not on your life,’ said Byrd. ‘Leave this to me, Jean-Paul. I know how to handle this sort of thing, it’s my part of the ship.’
Maria and I looked at each other without expression. Jean-Paul was watching closely to discover our relationship.
Byrd relished the snobbery of certain French phrases. Whenever he changed from speaking French into English I knew it was solely because he intended to introduce a long slab of French into his speech and give a knowing nod and slant his face significantly, as if we two were the only people in the world who understood the French language.
‘Your inquiries about this house,’ said Byrd. He raised his forefinger. ‘Jean-Paul has remarkable news.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Seems, my dear fellow, that there’s something of a mystery about your friend Datt and that house.’
‘He’s not a friend of mine,’ I said.
‘Quite quite,’ said Byrd testily. ‘The damned place is a brothel, what’s more …’
‘It’s not a brothel,’ said Jean-Paul as though he had explained this before. ‘It’s a maison de passe. It’s a house that people go to when they already have a girl with them.’
‘Orgies,’ said Byrd. ‘They have orgies there. Frightful goings on Jean-Paul tells me, drugs called LSD, pornographic films, sexual displays …’
Jean-Paul took over the narrative. ‘There are facilities for every manner of perversion. They have hidden cameras there and even a great mock torture-chamber where they put on shows …’
‘For masochists,’ said Byrd. ‘Chaps who are abnormal, you see.’
‘Of course he sees,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘Anyone who lives in Paris knows how widespread are such parties and exhibitions.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Byrd. Jean-Paul said nothing. Maria offered her cigarettes around and said to Jean-Paul, ‘Where did Pierre’s horse come in yesterday?’
‘A friend of theirs with a horse,’ Byrd said to me.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Nowhere,’ said Jean-Paul.
‘Then I lost my hundred nouveaux,’ said Maria.
‘Foolish,’ said Byrd to me. He nodded.
‘My fault,’ said Jean-Paul.
‘That’s right,’ said Maria. ‘I didn’t give it a second look until you said it was a certainty.’
Byrd gave another of his conspiratorial glances over the shoulder.
‘You,’ he pointed to me as though he had just met me on a footpath in the jungle, ‘work for the German magazine Stern.’
‘I work for several German magazines,’ I admitted. ‘But not so loud, I don’t declare all of it for tax.’
‘You can rely upon me,’ said Byrd. ‘Mum’s the word.’
‘Mum’s the word,’ I said. I relished Byrd’s archaic vocabulary.
‘You see,’ said Byrd, ‘when Jean-Paul told me this fascinating stuff about the house on Avenue Foch I said that you would probably be able to advance him a little of the ready if you got a story out of it.’
‘I might,’ I agreed.
‘My word,’ said Byrd, ‘what with your salary from the travel agency and writing pieces for magazines you must be minting it. Absolutely minting it, eh?’
‘I do all right,’ I admitted.
‘All right, I should think you do. I don’t know where you stack it all if you are not declaring it for tax. What do you do, hide it under your bed?’
‘To tell you the truth,’ I said, ‘I’ve sewn it into the seat of my armchair.’
Byrd laughed. ‘Old Tastevin will be after you, tearing his furniture.’
‘It was his idea,’ I joked, and Byrd laughed again, for Tastevin had a reputation for being a skinflint.
‘Get you in there with a camera,’ mused Byrd. ‘Be a wonderful story. What’s more it would be a public service. Paris is rotten to the core you see. It’s time it was given a shaking up.’
‘It’s an idea,’ I agreed.
‘Would a thousand quid be too much?’ he asked.
‘Much too much,’ I said.
Byrd nodded. ‘I thought it might be. A hundred more like it eh?’
‘If it’s a good story with pictures I could get five hundred pounds out of it. I’d pay fifty for an introduction and guided tour with co-operation, but the last time I was there I was persona non grata.’
‘Precisely, old chap,’ said Byrd. ‘You were manhandled, I gather, by that fellow Datt. All a mistake, wasn’t it?’
‘It was from my point of view,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how Monsieur Datt feels about it.’
‘He probably feels désolé,’ said Byrd. I smiled at the idea.
‘But really,’ said Byrd, ‘Jean-Paul knows all about it. He could arrange for you to do your story, but meanwhile mum’s the word, eh? Say nothing to anyone about any aspect. Are we of one mind?’
‘Are you kidding me?’ I said. ‘Why would Datt agree to expose his own activities?’
‘You don’t understand the French, my boy.’
‘So everyone keeps telling me.’
‘But really. This house is owned and controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. They use it as a check and control on foreigners – especially diplomats – blackmail you might almost say. Bad business, shocking people, eh? Well they are. Some other French johnnies in government service – Loiseau is one – would like to see it closed down. Now do you see, my dear chap, now do you see?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But what’s in it for you?’
‘Don’t be offensive, old boy,’ said Byrd. ‘You asked me about the house. Jean-Paul is in urgent need of the ready; ergo, I arrange for you to make a mutually beneficial pact.’ He nodded. ‘Suppose we say fifty on account, and another thirty if it gets into print?’
