Paris, 1921
T he weeks swiftly became months and, quite without realising it, I began to feel at home in Paris. I had become a part of Sylvia’s little patchwork family and my position at Shakespeare and Company became permanent, or at least I hadn’t been told otherwise. I rented a demi-pension, a room with half board that was close to the shop. On the weekends, having eventually permitted myself to succumb to his charms, I met Armand. He took me to the hidden corners of the city, like the flea markets in Saint-Ouen where rag and bone men who scoured through the garbage of Paris at night sold their wares. He called them les pêcheurs de lune, moon fishermen, which made me smile because I knew that I was caught in Armand’s net and the more I fought it, the tighter his hold on my heart became. Jane, in her letters to me, had encouraged the romance: ‘What was the point in flitting off to France if not to take a lover!’
One bright morning at the end of the summer, when the city was quieter
as the locals retreated to the countryside, I was working diligently in the shop, shelving the latest books to arrive. Sylvia was in the back having tea with an American writer, Ernest Hemingway, discussing a literary evening
they were planning. He was unbelievably handsome and everyone was enthralled by his intense magnetism, but there was something malevolent about him. He adored Sylvia, of course, whose respect was worth more than that of any critic. Still, I couldn’t explain it, but I didn’t like being in a room alone with him. Once, when I was on the ladder putting books on to a high shelf, I found him staring at me.
‘Yes?’ I asked, giving him a direct look that I hoped would shame him into looking elsewhere. It did not work.
‘You ought to be careful, Missy.’
Missy. Honestly. ‘And why is that?’
‘All writers are cannibalistic by nature.’
I wasn’t sure what he was driving at, but it didn’t sound very appetising to my ears.
‘Meaning?’
‘Keep waving that ass around here, you might find yourself a character in one of my books,’ he grinned, openly enjoying my vexation. Honestly, writers could be such egoists!
As I slowly lowered myself down the ladder, Sylvia and another man, a reporter, entered the shop and as quick as lightning, he took a camera out of its case and almost blinded the three of us with the flash.
‘There we are, I will have it in our next edition,’ he said, and the two men left, discussing Hemingway’s bruised fingers, which he said he’d got defending Joyce in a drunken brawl.
‘What was that for?’ I asked, wary of the idea of my photograph appearing in print.
‘Cosmopolitan magazine, they’re printing one of Ernest’s stories.’
I was halfway up the ladder, I thought to myself. I probably wasn’t even in shot. Besides, Lyndon was hardly a reader of Cosmopolitan. Nothing to worry about, I assured myself, and almost believed it too.
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I decided to surprise Armand with a visit, and on my way to his flat I walked past Les Deux Magots, a café fashionable with writers and artists. Its bright green awning stretched out over the pavement and an intricate ironwork balcony wrapped like a piece of lace around the first floor. I caught my reflection in the window, then, for a moment, I thought I saw Armand. I came to a halt and realised that it was him, sitting at a leather banquette beside a woman with cascading chestnut curls. They sat very close and he seemed to be whispering something in her ear, something that deemed it necessary for him to part her hair back with his fingertips. A shock ran through me like a lightning bolt. I don’t know if he sensed it, but he looked up just then and saw me watching him. For some reason, I was the one who felt embarrassed, and I began walking away in any direction. After a few seconds I heard him shouting my name but I did not turn around.
‘Please, Opaline!’ he begged, catching up with me and grabbing my arm.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘But you must let me explain.’
I didn’t want him to explain. It would either be a lie, or worse, the truth and I wasn’t sure I could bear to hear either.
‘Christine, she is an old friend of mine.’
I wanted to cover my ears like a child. Hearing her name made everything worse. He wasn’t to know it, but I had fallen in love with him like falling down a flight of stairs, and it hurt every bit as much. Suspecting this heartbreak in advance hadn’t helped to prepare me for the reality.
‘Armand, please spare me the indignity of this.’
It was as though a cloud passed over his face and what remained was something close to clarity.
‘You are right, of course. I have humiliated you and for that I am sorry. But you must believe me, my feelings for you are deeper than I have ever felt for anyone before.’
‘You might see me as some kind of ingénue, but I know a cheap cliché when I hear one.’ I broke away from him and kept walking.
‘It’s true!’ he called out. ‘You think it is easy for a man to admit to his feelings?’
I turned and gave him a scornful look. ‘It’s difficult to explain in English.’ ‘Do your best.’
‘The way you make me feel, it’s wonderful but it’s also a problem. It makes me vulnerable and that is not something I’m used to. So I flirt with other women to prove … something. J’en sais rien.’
‘That makes no sense.’
‘Not out loud, no. But in my head, I felt like I was staying in control.’
I couldn’t think of how to respond. It was such a terrible excuse it must have been the truth.
‘What you saw just now, I was ending things with her.’
I looked away, trying to shield my emotions from him. I had my pride, after all. Was he just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear? The human heart does not weigh these cold facts. It sees hope in the impossible, love where perhaps there is only desire. It acts without rhyme or reason. His arms were around me now. I stood motionless as he continued with his soft, comely words, how I was all that mattered to him now.
‘Will you come with me? We can talk better at my apartment.’ Of course I would go. I was willing to make believe with him.
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He lived in an area of the city called Montmartre. We walked under the gleaming white domes of the Sacré-Cœur that kept watch over the city, and followed the cobbled street into a bustling little square. Place du Tertre was like something from a postcard – elegant buildings with shutters rose above restaurants and cafés, and artists lined the perimeter, selling their wares cheek by jowl. He turned the key in the lock of a blue door and we climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Once inside, neither of us seemed sure what to do. A small table and two chairs stood invitingly in front of the long window overlooking the square and he gestured for me to sit.
‘I will make us some tea.’
He arrived back at the table with a silver tray bearing an antique silver teapot with ornate patterns and little glasses printed with gold writing, which looked to be Arabic. However, it was the scent of sweet mint that surprised me the most.
‘Have you ever tasted Moroccan tea?’ he asked.
I shook my head and watched as he lifted the lid of the teapot and stirred a copious amount of thick leaves into the hot water. Then he set about the ritual of pouring the tea into the glasses from an impossible height. My eyes widened as he held the teapot further and further away from the glass on the tray and he tried not to laugh.
‘It is the traditional way,’ he replied simply, before handing me the glass.
I blew on the surface of the golden-hued tea and let the exotic flavours fill my nose.
Some musicians had begun playing in the square, gitane music, with a rhythmic guitar and virtuosic violin. It filled the spaces where our words could not. I had spent the entire time searching the room for somewhere to hide my gaze: the silk rug on the floor, the strange leather slippers by the door that came to a point at the toe, a small wooden table with a gold inlay
of Moorish design. Finally, I looked back to him and realised he had been staring at me the entire time. Without breaking his gaze, he stood up, took the glass from my hand and placed it on the tray beside his. Taking my hand in his, he raised me up and I stood so close to him that I could breathe his breath. He bent his head and my lips parted of their own volition. I felt his warm tongue inside my mouth and my only thought was of wanting more. We held each other tighter and I had the sensation that I wouldn’t be close enough unless …
‘Opaline,’ he said huskily, breaking my chain of thought. ‘Yes?’
‘Tell me if you wish to stay or leave,’ he said, his breath heavy. ‘For I fear I will not have the chivalry to ask you again.’
All mental activity had ceased. For the first time in my life, my sensuality took the lead.
‘Stay.’
The room was narrow, just large enough for the brass bed. A voile curtain fluttered in the breeze from the open window. It was almost dark, save for a low candle guttering in the corner on a table.
All of those years in my adolescence, how I worried that I wouldn’t know what to do! If only I had understood that there is no ‘knowing’. Only instinct. His body glowed golden in the candlelight, the sweat on his skin like an aphrodisiac to me.
‘Did it hurt?’ he asked.
‘Only a little,’ I replied. Pain is the price of pleasure, I had read somewhere once. I was no longer a virgin. The thought startled me momentarily, replaced by a deep sense of having crossed a threshold. We lay there together for hours talking. It was late when he walked me home and I hoped to sneak past my landlady unnoticed.
There was no light, save for the moonbeams softly coming through the tall windows. Every creak on the stairs was like a cannon blast and I bit my
lip, praying that no one would hear. When I reached my room, I locked the door behind me and flopped down on the bed. I could see my reflection in the mirror of the dressing table opposite, half ghostly in the moonlight. I grabbed my pillow and hugged it tightly to me. That’s when I saw it. My brother’s walking cane beside the door.
