Bella... A French Life (8 page)

Trust. I wondered whether I could trust Jean-Louis. Trust him, that should I love him, he would not throw that love back into my face.

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Chapter Eleven

Jean-Louis left another message for me on my answerphone.

He said he had a meeting scheduled in Geneva and he wondered whether I would not like to join him there.
Seeing it would give you an opportunity to visit Geneva
. He would have to leave Paris the following morning - Wednesday - but he would be free from the Thursday evening. We would have the weekend in Switzerland.
Let me know. Call
. He left his office number and I called and his secretary gave me the name of the Geneva hotel where he would be staying as well as the hotel’s phone number.

“He’s had to leave today already, but I could call him for you and pass on a message if you wish, Dr Wolff,” said the secretary.

“Tell Jean-Louis I will see him in Geneva. I will make my own accommodation arrangement. I will arrive on Friday around noon,” I told her.

I was not a child; I knew what would be happening in Geneva. And I wanted it to happen.

I arrived on the noon high-speed train. I had booked a room in one of the hotels overlooking Cornavin railway station. Jean-Louis was staying in a five-star on the lake front.

I stood for a long time at the window of my room. Long blue trams pulled up at shelters on the square between the grey-stone station building and my modern glass-fronted hotel.  People poured from the trams, some, wearily pulling suitcases, disappeared into the station building; others shot across the tram lines, and rushed off, away from the station. The Swiss flag – white cross in a red square - which I had seen till then only on photographs, fluttered from the roof of the station and from the roofs of the other hotels on the square. I took a small bottle of mineral water from the mini bar and drank it down in one gulp. In the bathroom I cleaned my teeth and next I went to ask the
concierge
which way the lake was.

Lac Léman was still like a spatter of blue paint on an artist’s frock.
Genfersee.
My father often spoke of the lake and he always called it Genfersee; before the war he studied the humanities at the city’s university.  “Humanities. My arse! Fucking
Boche
!” one of my uncles, misunderstanding what was meant by ‘humanities’, once said and loud enough for all of our guests to hear.

Still in the black trouser suit and flat-heeled black shoes in which I had travelled, I walked along the lake for about half an hour, admired the magnificent glass-fronted hotels, one of them where Jean-Louis was staying, and I admired the blue-rinses of the old Swiss ladies walking their small fluffy dogs along the promenade, and I returned to the hotel and called Jean-Louis.

“What’s your hotel like?” he asked.

“Without doubt, not like yours.”

“Is it bad?”

There was concern in his voice.

“It’s very nice, Jean-Louis. I have a huge window and I can see all of Switzerland from it.”

“I’ve hired a car. I will come pick you up. We will go for tea in Montreux.”

I again cleaned my teeth and I combed my hair and I waited on the pavement.

He drove up and descended from the car - a hired metallic-silver Porsche.

“Glad I am to see you. Thank you for coming,” he said.

We shook hands like two people who did not know each other well.

“Hello, Jean-Louis,” I said. “How are you?”

He gave a little laugh.

“Better, now you are here, thank you.”

He pulled me towards him and his lips rested on my forehead, and it was for more than a fleeting moment. I felt like throwing my arms around him and holding him, but I did not even lift my arms.

“Are you moving on, sir?” asked the hotel’s doorman, dressed theatrically, in a navy blue uniform with red tassels dangling from the tunic’s padded shoulders.

“We’re moving on, yes,” replied Jean-Louis, not a trace of a smile on his face.

We took a narrow side road away from the station and after a few minutes we were on a highway.  The Porsche was comfortable; the seats deep and soft, and the engine silent.  Jean-Louis said a Porsche was his favourite car.

“Do you need the air con?” he asked.

“I’m ok.”

He was again in jeans and white shirt, but he wore a white blazer, and black leather shoes. He must have felt my eyes on him because he turned towards me and his lips smiled. I could not see his eyes because they were hidden behind square-framed, brown tortoiseshell sunglasses. I looked at his hands on the steering wheel. I have always had something about a man’s hands.
The hand has twenty-seven bones of which fourteen are the phalanges of the fingers
: I am quoting from an anatomy text book from my first year at ‘uni’. Jean-Louis’ hands were smooth: there were no bulging veins or scars on the top and his nails were cut round and short and shone like those of a baby. They were not a working man’s hands, the hands of a man who toils the soil or lays bricks, no, they were the hands of a surgeon; yes, possibly the hands of a surgeon.  I fought the urge to lay one of my own on one of them.

On our right was the lake. Pleasure boats, moored in small marinas, bobbed on the clear water, and a red motorboat pulled a water skier, a young girl - a child still - in a wet suit and crash helmet, behind it. On our left were sloping green pastures where cows, their udders hanging full and low, grazed between rolling green Alpine hills.

Jean-Louis was silent, so I tried to make conversation.

“Looks pleasant.”

We passed a small chalet with a red-tiled roof and red geraniums in yellow window boxes. A woman was hanging wet white sheets on a line in the back garden. Two small blond boys kicked a football out in the front garden.

“Could you live here?” asked Jean-Louis.

“In this chalet?”

“No. Here. Just here.”

“Yes, why not? I could keep a cow and make cheese. Each week I’ll take my cheese to the open-air market. So, yes, I could live here. Happily.”

We drove past a small timber-framed chapel. A bell clanged harshly over the tender hum of the Porsche’s engine.

“Are you religious, Bella?”

“Meaning?”

“Do you believe in God? A God?”

“I believe in ... something ... some power ... some force ...”

“Same here. I have a cousin who is a priest. He is praying for my lost soul.”

We reached Clarens, a village of luxury villas, all with colourful gardens, and within a few minutes, if a sign beside the road was to be believed, we were in the town of Montreux.

We pulled up in front of what could only have been the town’s smartest and most expensive hotel with floors of windows behind wrought-iron balconies which were covered in more red geraniums shaded by reddish-pink tarpaulins.

“We will have tea here,” said Jean-Louis.

A doorman in a red uniform with silver braids told us to leave the car, he would get the car jockey to park it in the car park. A maitre d’ in a well-pressed dark-blue suit escorted us to a table for two on a terrace which overlooked the lake. About a dozen tables were laid for lunch: the table cloths were white, the napkins pink. There was a small glass vase with flowers on each table. The flowers were plastic: once they must have been red but they had faded to orange. The stems and leaves had darkened to brown.

The maitre d’ called over a waiter who was laying tables and taking much care in the task of measuring the distance between a white porcelain plate on a table and the sterling silver cutlery to each side of it. The waiter was dressed in black trousers and long-sleeved white shirt and thin black tie. I noticed his tie clip matched his cufflinks: the hotel’s logo of a small boat with mast and sails on what looked like gold but was probably not. He handed each of us a menu as large as a broadsheet.

I looked at Jean-Louis.

“Are you an habitué?”

“Never been here in my life.”

“So, I can’t allow you to decide what we should order.”

He smacked his lips like a schoolboy on a day’s outing with his class.

“All looks delicious, but shall we say: tea for two and the cake trolley?”

“I am supposed to be on a diet.”

“From where I’m sitting you do not need it. You look ... divine.”

The cakes were French and Swiss: small pastry gondolas filled with cranberries, chocolate
mousse
in small cups made of dark chocolate, meringues filled with frangipane, tiny croissants and vermicelli boats.

I poured the tea. Jean-Louis watched me closely. He said not a word. I picked up one of the meringues and he chose one of the vermicelli boats.

“Why don’t you say something?” I asked.

“Why would you not accept my offer of a room in my hotel?”

“Because.”

“Oh, come on, Bella. You would have had a room of your own.”

He sounded angry.

“I’m comfortable where I am,” I told him.

“Oh, I don’t know! Hell, you are stubborn!”

 He noisily threw his spoon down on the table.

A gull landed on the table beside ours and the waiter rushed over and slapped a white teacloth against the table to chase the bird. It flapped its long white wings as if to fly away but stayed where it was.

“
Woosh!Woosh
!” hissed the waiter.

The gull turned and fixed one tiny beady eye on Jean-Louis and me and, flapping its wings, flew off.

The waiter returned to his previous spot at the entrance to the terrace, the white teacloth folded and hanging over his left arm.

Jean-Louis stroked my hair.

“Bella ... let me tell you ... let me tell you … I find you ... extremely exciting.”

“Jean-Louis, I find you extremely exciting too,” I confessed.

The hand which had stroked my hair was resting on my shoulder. His touch was light.

“For now, Bella, that will do for me.”

We were no longer the only patrons on the terrace, but we might have been. We only had eyes for one another.

After tea we drove away from the town into the snow-topped peaks of the Alps behind the town. The clock on the dashboard showed it was close to five o’clock. It was getting cool in the car and shadows had started to fall over the lake behind us.

“I can drive like this forever,” said Jean-Louis.

The road had narrowed and the Porsche’s automatic gearbox noiselessly switched to a higher gear. We passed a blue and white road sign. It showed we were driving towards a place named Rochers-de-Naye, which, as I read, was 2045 metres above sea level. I looked at Jean-Louis, asking with my eyes whether that was where we were heading, but he ignored my glance and stepped on the accelerator. Montreux grew tinier behind us and the lake grew larger until it was as huge as an ocean.

 Lights had started to go on in Montreux and when we reached Rochers-de-Naye it turned out to be just one two-storey grey stone building. We reached it at the same time as a cogwheel train with no passengers, but which quickly began to fill as waiting backpackers scrambled on for the journey back down the mountain to Montreux.

Jean-Louis parked the car with others in front of the grey building where several people with tanned faces and necks were sitting on a terrace drinking frothy beer from patterned tankards. He asked whether I was thirsty and I said I was not and he suggested we should go for a walk.

“Before night comes.”

He took me by the hand and we walked along a path which led us around the grey building and up a bare hillock of the same grey stone as the hotel and most of the buildings I had seen in Geneva. We walked in silence, his body close to mine and his breath warm and soft in my neck. Behind us the cogwheel train’s engine clanked into motion and the train started its descent.

“Do you know something, Bella, right now I do not care a damn if we have been abandoned here on this barren hill,” said Jean-Louis.

We stopped walking.

“What do you want me to say to that, Jean-Louis?” I asked.

“That you also do not care.”

He did not give me time to reply; he put his arms around me and drew me to him, quite roughly, urgently. And yes, I also did not care if we, he and I, had been abandoned on that barren hill, because I felt an intense desire to remain there, there in his arms. Forever.

The two-storey grey building was a hotel.  I was embarrassed we were booking in without luggage.

“For the night?” asked the receptionist, a confident young woman with a look of having-seen-it-before on her face.

Oh Jesus, the technicalities of sex. Had I blushed? I think I had.

We listened to the receptionist’s directions to our room and the time breakfast would be served the following morning. She chose a key from a board behind her and held it up as if she was showing us a trophy. She had a smile from one ear-ringed ear to another.  Jean-Louis lifted his right foot from the floor as if he wanted to burst into a sprint. To escape the amused young woman or to get to the room she has chosen for us? I tried to make myself as small as possible behind him.

“Second floor,” said she.

“Thank you, Miss,” said Jean-Louis.

“Leave the key with reception, should you go out, Sir.”

“Thank you, Miss,” he repeated.

He was smiling.

We started climbing the wooden twisting stairs: there was no lift.

Halfway up, Jean-Louis felt for my hand. He had begun to take two steps at a time. I could not keep up with his pace. He let go of my hand. I slipped. He looked back. He was no longer smiling. I, on the contrary, had started to giggle, giggle like a teenage virgin. I was of course neither a teenager nor a virgin. My giggling grew louder. Reaching the corridor, I tried not to giggle anymore. I did not want to alert those behind the closed doors which we were passing of our imminent activity. At our room, Jean-Louis, like an inexperienced and nervous teenager, fumbled with the key, struggling to fit it into the lock. Amused, I watched.

He succeeded in fitting the key into the lock and he pushed open the door. He stepped inside. I followed. The room was small, its double bed almost filling it. A bland smell of detergent filled our nostrils. I closed the door and locked it. A ‘In Case of a Fire’ notice hung behind the door. Also a ‘Do Not Disturb’ notice.