The Other Side of Midnight

The Germans would call in the Pompiers to put out the fire. Now it is instinctive in all countries that when there is a conflagration the firemen are in complete charge: And so it was in Paris. The Pompiers raced into the building while the Germans stood meekly aside and watched them destroy everything in sight with high-pressure hoses, axes and – when the opportunity presented itself – their own incendiary bombs. In this way the underground managed to destroy priceless German records locked away in the fortresses of the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo. It took almost six months for the German high command to figure out what was happening, and by that time irreparable damage had been done. The Gestapo could prove nothing, but every member of the Pompiers was rounded up and sent to the Russian front to fight.

There was a shortage of everything from food to soap. There was no gasoline, no meat, no dairy products. The Germans had confiscated everything. Stores that carried luxury goods stayed open, but their only customers were the soldiers who paid in occupation marks which were identical with the regular marks except that they lacked the white strip at the edge and the printed promise to pay was not signed.

‘Who will redeem these?’ the French shopkeepers moaned.

And the Germans grinned, ‘The Bank of England.’

Not all Frenchmen suffered, however. For those with money and connections there was always the Black Market.

Noelle Page’s life was changed very little by the occupation. She was working as a model at Chanel’s on rue Canbon in a hundred-and-fifty-year-old greystone building that looked ordinary on the outside, but was very smartly decorated within. The war, like all wars, had created overnight millionaires, and there was no shortage of customers. The propositions that came to Noelle were more numerous than ever; the only difference was that most of them were now in German. When she was not working, she would sit for hours at small outdoor cafés on the Champs-Élysées, or on the Left Bank near the Pont Neuf. There were hundreds of men in German uniforms, many of them with young French girls. The French civilian men were either too old or lame, and Noelle supposed that the younger ones had been sent to camps or conscripted for military duty. She could tell the Germans at a glance, even when they were not in uniform. They had a look of arrogance stamped on their faces, the look that conquerors have had since the days of Alexander and Hadrian. Noelle did not hate them, nor did she like them. They simply did not touch her.

She was filled with a busy inner life, carefully planning out each move. She knew exactly what her goal was, and she knew that nothing could stop her. As soon as she was able to afford it, she engaged a private detective who had handled a divorce for a model with whom she worked. The detective’s name was Christian Barbet, and he operated out of a small, shabby office on the rue St Lazare. The sign on the door read:

ENQUÊTESPRIVÉES ET COMMERCIALESRECHERCHESRENSEIGNEMENTSCONFIDENTIELSFILATURESPREUVES

The sign was almost larger than the office. Barbet was short and bald with yellow, broken teeth, narrow squinting eyes and nicotine-stained fingers.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked Noelle.

‘I want information about someone in England.’

He blinked suspiciously. ‘What kind of information?’

‘Anything. Whether he’s married, who he sees. Anything at all. I want to start a scrapbook on him.’

Barbet gingerly scratched his crotch and stared at her.

‘Is he an Englishman?’

‘An American. He’s a pilot with the Eagle Squadron of the RAF.’

Barbet rubbed the top of his bald head, uneasily. ‘I don’t know,’ he grumbled. ‘We’re at war. If they caught me trying to get information out of England about a flyer —’

His voice trailed off and he shrugged expressively. ‘The Germans shoot first and ask questions afterwards.’

‘I don’t want any military information,’ Noelle assured him. She opened her purse and took out a wad of franc notes. Barbet studied them hungrily.

‘I have connections in England,’ he said cautiously, ‘but it will be expensive.’

And so it began. It was three months before the little detective telephoned Noelle. She went to his office, and her first words were: ‘Is he alive?’ and when Barbet nodded, her body sagged with relief and Barbet thought, It must be wonderful to have someone love you that much.

‘Your boyfriend has been transferred,’ Barbet told her.

‘Where?’

He looked down at a pad on his desk. ‘He was attached to the 609th Squadron of the RAF. He’s been transferred to the 121st Squadron at Martlesham East, in East Anglia. He’s flying Hurri —’

‘I don’t care about that.’

‘You’re paying for it,’ he said. ‘You might as well get your money’s worth.’ He looked down at his notes again. ‘He’s flying Hurricanes. Before that he was flying American Buffaloes.’

He turned over a page and added, ‘It becomes a little personal here.’

‘Go on,’ Noelle said.

Barbet shrugged. ‘There’s a list of girls he is sleeping with. I didn’t know whether you wanted —’

‘I told you – everything.’

There was a strange note in her voice that baffled him. There was something not quite normal here, something that did not ring true. Christian Barbet was a third-rate investigator handling third-rate clients, but because of that he had developed a feral instinct for truth, a nose for smelling out facts. The beautiful girl standing in his office disturbed him. At first Barbet had thought she might be trying to involve him in some kind of espionage. Then he decided that she was a deserted wife seeking evidence against her husband. He had been wrong about that, he admitted, and now he was at a loss to figure out what his client wanted or why. He handed Noelle the list of Larry Douglas’ girl friends and watched her face as she read it. She might have been reading a laundry list.

She finished and looked up. Christian Barbet was totally unprepared for her next words. ‘I’m very pleased,’ Noelle said.

He looked at her and blinked rapidly.

‘Please call me when you have something more to report.’

Long after Noelie Page had gone, Barbet sat in his office staring out the window, trying to puzzle out what his client was really after.

The theatres of Paris were beginning to boom again. The Germans attended to celebrate the glory of their victories and to show off the beautiful Frenchwomen they wore on their arms like trophies. The French attended to forget for a few hours that they were an unhappy, defeated people.

Noelle had attended the theatre in Marseille a few times, but she had seen sleazy amateur plays acted out by fourth-rate performers for indifferent audiences. The theatre in Paris was something else again. It was alive and sparkling and filled with the wit and grace of Molière, Racine and Colette. The incomparable Sacha Guitry had opened his theatre and Noelle went to see him perform. She attended a revival of Büchner’s La Morte de Danton and a play called Asmodée by a promising new young writer named François Mauriac. She went to the Comédie Française to see Pirandello’s Chacun La Verité and Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Noelle always went alone, oblivious of the admiring stares of those around her, completely lost in the drama taking place on the stage. Something in the magic that went on behind the footlights struck a responsive chord in her. She was playing a part just like the actors on stage, pretending to be something that she wasn’t, hiding behind a mask.

One play in particular, Huis Clos by Jean Paul Sartre, affected her deeply. It starred Philippe Sorel, one of the idols of Europe. Sorel was ugly, short and beefy, with a broken nose and the face of a boxer. But the moment he spoke, a magic took place. He was transformed into a sensitive handsome man. It’s like the story of the Prince and the Frog, Noelle thought, watching him perform. Only he is both. She went back to watch him again and again, sitting in the front row studying his performance, trying to learn the secret of his magnetism.

One evening during intermission an usher handed Noelle a note. It read, ‘I have seen you in the audience night after night. Please come backstage this evening and let me meet you. P.S.’ Noelle read it over, savouring it. Not because she gave a damn about Philippe Sorel, but because she knew that this was the beginning she had been looking for.

She went backstage after the performance. An old man at the stage door ushered her into Sorel’s dressing room. He was seated before a makeup mirror, wearing only shorts, wiping off his makeup. He studied Noelle in the mirror. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he said finally. ‘You’re even more beautiful up close.’

‘Thank you, Monsieur Sorel.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Marseille.’

Sorel swung around to look at her more closely. His eyes moved to her feet and slowly worked their way up to the top of her head, missing nothing. Noelle stood there under his scrutiny, not moving. ‘Looking for a job?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘I never pay for it,’ Sorel said. ‘All you’ll get from me is a pass to my play. If you want money, fuck a banker.’

Noelle stood there quietly watching him. Finally Sorel said, ‘What are you looking for?’

‘I think I’m looking for you.’

They had supper and afterwards went back to Sorel’s apartment in the beautiful rue Maurice-Barres, overlooking the corner where it became the Bois de Boulogne. Philippe Sorel was a skilful lover, surprisingly considerate and unselfish. Sorel had expected nothing from Noelle but her beauty, and he was astonished by her versatility in bed.

‘Christ!’ he said. ‘You’re fantastic. Where did you learn all that?’

Noelle thought about it a moment. It was really not a question of learning. It was a matter of feeling. To her a man’s body was an instrument to be played on, to explore to its innermost depths, finding the responsive chords and building upon them, using her own body to help create exquisite harmonies.

‘I was born with it,’ she said simply.

Her fingertips began to lightly play around his lips, quick little butterfly touches, and then moved down to his chest and stomach. She saw him starting to grow hard and erect again. She arose and went into the bathroom and returned a moment later and slid his hard penis into her mouth. Her mouth was hot, filled with warm water.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he said.

They spent the entire night making love, and in the morning. Sorel invited Noelle to move in with him.

Noelle lived with Philippe Sorel for six months. She was neither happy nor unhappy. She knew that her being there made Sorel ecstatically happy, but this did not matter in the slightest to Noelle. She regarded herself as simply a student, determined to learn something new every day. He was a school that she was attending, a small part in her large plan. To Noelle there was nothing personal in their relationship, for she gave nothing of herself. She had made that mistake twice, and she would never make it again. There was room for only one man in Noelle’s thoughts and that was Larry Douglas. Noelle would pass the place des Victoires or a park or restaurant where Larry had taken her, and she would feel the hatred well up within her, choking her, so it became difficult to breathe, and there was something else mixed in with the hatred, something Noelle could not put a name to.

Two months after moving in with Sorel, Noelle received a call from Christian Barbet.

‘I have another report for you,’ the little detective said.

‘Is he all right?’ Noelle asked quickly.

Again Barbet was filled with that sense of uneasiness. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Noelle’s voice was filled with relief. ‘I’ll be right down.’

The report was divided into two parts. The first dealt with Larry Douglas’ military career. He had shot down five German planes and was the first American to become an Ace in the war. He had been promoted to Captain. The second part of the report interested her more. He had become very popular in London’s wartime social life and had become engaged to the daughter of a British Admiral. There followed a list of girls that Larry was sleeping with, ranging from show girls to the wife of an under-secretary in the Ministry.

‘Do you want me to keep on with this?’ Barbet asked.

‘Of course,’ Noelle replied. She took an envelope from her purse and handed it to Barbet. ‘Call me when you have anything further.’

And she was gone.

Barbet sighed and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Folle,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Folle.’

If Philippe Sorel had had any inkling of what was going on in Noelle’s mind, he would have been astonished. Noelle seemed totally devoted to him. She did everything for him: cooked wonderful meals, shopped, supervised the cleaning of his apartment and made love whenever the mood stirred him. And asked for nothing. Sorel congratulated himself on having found the perfect mistress. He took her everywhere, and she met all his friends. They were enchanted with her and thought Sorel a very lucky man.

One night as they were having supper after the show, Noelle said to him, ‘I want to be an actress, Philippe.’

He shook his head. ‘God knows you’re beautiful enough, Noelle, but I’ve been up to my ass in actresses all my life. You’re different, and I want to keep you that way. I don’t want to share you with anyone.’ He patted her hand. ‘Don’t I give you everything you need?’

‘Yes, Philippe,’ Noelle replied.

When they returned to the apartment that night, Sorel wanted to make love. When they finished, he was drained. Noelle had never been as exciting, and Sorel congratulated himself that all she needed was the firm guidance of a man.

The following Sunday was Noelle’s birthday, and Philippe Sorel gave a dinner party for her at Maxim’s. He had taken over the large private dining room upstairs, decorated with plush red velvet and deep dark wood panelling. Noelle had helped write the guest list, and there was one name she included without mentioning it to Philippe. There were forty people at the party. They toasted Noelle’s birthday and gave her lavish gifts. When dinner was over, Sorel rose to his feet. He had drunk a good deal of brandy and champagne and he was a little unsteady, his words a bit slurred.

‘My friends,’ he said, ‘we’ve all drunk to the most beautiful girl in the world and we’ve given her lovely birthday presents, but I have a present for her that’s going to be a big surprise.’ Sorel looked down at Noelle and beamed, then turned to the crowd. ‘Noelle and I are going to be married.’

There was an approving cheer and the guests raced up to clap Sorel on the back and wish luck to the bride-to-be. Noelle sat there smiling up at the guests, murmuring her thank-yous. One of the guests had not risen. He was seated at a table at the far end of the room, smoking a cigarette in a long holder and viewing the scene sardonically. Noelle was aware that he had been watching her during dinner. He was a tall, very thin man, with an intense, brooding face. He seemed amused by everything that was happening around him, more an observer at the party than a guest.

Noelle caught his eye and smiled.

Armand Gautier was one of the top directors in France. He was in charge of the French Repertory Theatre, and his productions had been acclaimed all over the world. Having Gautier direct a play or a motion picture was an almost certain guarantee of its success. He had the reputation of being particularly good with actresses and had created half a dozen important stars.

Sorel was at Noelle’s side, talking to her. ‘Were you surprised, my darling?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Philippe,’ she said.

‘I want us to be married right away. We’ll have the wedding at my villa.’

Over his shoulder Noelle could see Armand Gautier watching her, smiling that enigmatic smile. Some friends came and took Philippe away and when Noelle turned, Gautier was standing there.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. There was a mocking note in his voice. ‘You hooked a big fish.’

‘Did I?’

‘Philippe Sorel is a great catch.’

‘For someone perhaps,’ Noelle said indifferently.

Gautier looked at her in surprise. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re not interested?’

‘I’m not trying to tell you anything.’

‘Good luck.’ He turned to go.

‘Monsieur Gautier …’

He stopped.

‘Could I see you tonight?’ Noelle asked quietly. ‘I would like to talk to you alone.’

Armand Gautier looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. ‘If you wish.’

‘I will come to your place. Will that be satisfactory?’

‘Yes, of course. The address is —’

‘I know the address. Twelve o’clock?’

‘Twelve o’clock.’

Armand Gautier lived in a fashionable old apartment building on rue Marbeuf. A doorman escorted Noelle into the lobby and an elevator boy took her to the fourth floor and indicated Gautier’s apartment. Noelle rang the bell. A few moments later the door was opened by Gautier. He wore a flowered dressing gown.

‘Come in,’ he said.

Noelle walked into the apartment. Her eye was untrained, but she sensed that it was done in beautiful taste and that the objets d’art were valuable.

‘Sorry I’m not dressed,’ Gautier apologized. ‘I’ve been on the telephone.’

Noelle’s eyes locked onto his. ‘It will not be necessary for you to be dressed.’ She moved over to the couch and sat down.

Gautier smiled. ‘That was the feeling I had, Miss Page. But I’m curious about something. Why me? You’re engaged to a man who is famous and wealthy. I am sure that if you are looking for some extracurricular activities, you could find men more attractive than I, and certainly richer and younger. What is it you want from me?’

‘I want you to teach me to act,’ Noelle said.

Armand Gautier looked at her a moment, then sighed. ‘You disappoint me. I expected something more original.’

‘Your business is working with actors.’

‘With actors, not amateurs. Have you ever acted?’

‘No. But you will teach me.’ She took off her hat and her gloves. ‘Where is your bedroom?’ she asked.

Gautier hesitated. His life was full of beautiful women wanting to be in the theatre, or wanting a bigger part, or the lead in a new play, or a larger dressing room. They were all a pain. He knew that he would be a fool to get involved with one more. And yet there was no need to get involved. Here was a beautiful girl throwing herself at him. It would be a simple matter to take her to bed and then send her away. ‘In there,’ he said, indicating a door.

He watched Noelle as she walked towards the bedroom. He wondered what Philippe Sorel would think if he knew that his bride-to-be was spending the night here. Women. Whores, all of them. Gautier poured himself a brandy and made several phone calls. When he finally went into the bedrom, Noelle was in his bed, naked, waiting for him. Gautier had to admit that she was an exquisite work of nature. Her face was breath-taking, and her body was flawless. Her skin was the colour of honey, except for the triangle of soft golden hair between her legs. Gautier had learned from experience that beautiful girls were almost invariably narcissistic, so preoccupied with their own egocentricities that they were lousy lays. They felt their contribution to lovemaking was simply conferring their presence in a man’s bed, so that the man ended up making love to an unmoving lump of clay and was expected to be grateful for the experience. Ah, well, perhaps he could teach this one something.

As Noelle watched him, Gautier undressed, leaving his clothes carelessly strewn on the floor, and moved towards the bed. ‘I’m not going to tell you you are beautiful,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard it too many times already.’

‘Beauty is wasted,’ Noelle shrugged, ‘unless it is used to give pleasure.’

Gautier looked at her in quick surprise, then smiled. ‘I agree. Let’s use yours.’ He sat down beside her.

Like most Frenchmen, Armand Gautier prided himself on being a skilled lover. He was amused by the stories he had heard of Germans and Americans whose idea of making love consisted of jumping on top of a girl, having an instant orgasm, and then putting on their hat and departing. The Americans even had a phrase for it. ‘Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.’ When Armand Gautier was emotionally involved with a woman, he used many devices to heighten the enjoyment of lovemaking. There was always a perfect dinner, the right wines. He arranged the setting artistically so that it was pleasing to the senses, the room was delicately scented and soft music was playing. He aroused his women with tender sentiments of love and later the coarse language of the gutter. And Gautier was adept at the manual foreplay that preceded sex.

In Noelle’s case he dispensed with all of these. For a one-night stand there was no need for perfume or music or empty endearments. She was here simply to get laid. She was indeed a silly fool if she thought that she could trade what every woman in the world carried between her legs for the great and unique genius that Armand Gautier possessed in his head.

He started to climb on top of her. Noelle stopped him.

‘Wait,’ she whispered.

As he watched, puzzled, she reached for two small tubes that she had placed on the bedside table. She squeezed the contents of one into her hand and began to rub it onto his penis.

‘What is this all about?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘You’ll see.’ She kissed him on the lips, her tongue darting into his mouth in quick bird-like movements. She pulled away and her tongue started moving towards his belly, her hair trailing across his body like light, silky fingers. He felt his organ begin to rise. She moved her tongue down his legs to his feet and began to suck gently on his toes. His organ was stiff and hard now and she mounted him as he lay there. As he felt himself penetrating her, the warmth of her vagina acted on the cream she had put on his penis and the sensation became unbearably exciting. As she rode him, moving up and down, her left hand was caressing his testicles and they began to grow hot. There was menthol in the cream on his penis and the sensation of the cold while inside her warmth, and the heat of his testicles, drove him into an absolute frenzy.

They made love all night long and each time Noelle made love to him differently. It was the most incredibly sensuous experience he had ever had.

In the morning Armand Gautier said, ‘If I can get up enough energy to move, I’ll get dressed and take you out to breakfast.’

‘Lie there,’ Noelle said. She walked over to a closet, selected one of his robes and put it on. ‘You rest. I’ll be back.’

Thirty-five minutes later Noelle returned with a breakfast tray. On it were freshly squeezed orange juice, a delicious sausage-and-chive omelet, heated, buttered croissants and jam and a pot of black coffee. It tasted extraordinarily good.

‘Aren’t you having anything?’ Gautier asked.

Noelle shook her head. ‘No.’ She was seated in an easy chair watching him as he ate. She looked even more beautiful wearing his dressing gown open at the top, revealing the curves of her delicious breasts. Her hair was tousled and carefree.

Armand Gautier had radically revised his earlier estimate of Noelle. She was not any man’s quick lay; she was an absolute treasure. However, he had met many treasures in his career in the theatre, and he was not about to spend his time and talent as a director on a starry-eyed amateur who wanted to break into the theatre, no matter how beautiful she might be, or how skilled in bed. Gautier was a dedicated man who took his art seriously. He had refused to compromise it in the past, and he was not about to start now.

The evening before, he had planned to spend the night with Noelle and send her packing in the morning. Now as he ate his breakfast and studied her, he was trying to figure out a way to hold onto Noelle as a mistress until he got bored with her, without encouraging her as an actress. He knew that he had to hold out some bait. He felt his way cautiously. ‘Are you planning to marry Philippe Sorel?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ Noelle replied. ‘That is not what I want.’

Now it was coming. ‘What do you want?’ Gautier asked.

‘I told you,’ Noelle said quietly. ‘I want to be an actress.’

Gautier bit into another croissant, stalling for time. ‘Of course,’ he said. Then he added, ‘There are many fine dramatic coaches I could send you to, Noelle, who would …’