J. Janes - Hunting Ground

I was pregnant, damn it. Pregnant!

Forgive me-that came much later. The tenement had a narrow courtyard that opened on to the rue Mouffetard. The door to that courtyard was set in a high, wooden wall. Bolts held it shut. Garbage tins and refuse were everywhere on that second day. Cats, dogs, children with runny noses-the poor, they didn’t leave the city like others, but why had they to look at me like that? Their expressions revealed not just suspicion, but also a wariness that was tempered with fear. Yes, fear.

If only I’d known then what I know now.

The entrance to the house was from a narrow, cockeyed wooden shanty of a structure, a slot that jutted out and didn’t face directly down the length of the courtyard but sideways as if ashamed. Electrical cables, fuse boxes, and broken meters lined both walls, but there was no outer door, so it was open to all weathers and all defecators. One went up a short flight of steps then, suddenly, there was a door.

From behind the armour of a bent, wrought-iron grille, the concierge took one look at my outfit, huffed, raised her bushy black eyebrows, and snorted contemptuously.

The rush of garlic and bad teeth overwhelmed. There were clouds of cigarette smoke in her tiny cubicle. To sit all day in such a place … ‘That one,’ she shouted, when I asked for Janine. ‘Hah! She should charge for it. Then maybe she could pay her rent.’

The Himalayas of those stairs began. I thought to count them but soon gave up. The boards were old and dished, and when I reached the top floor and found the room, a note had been left for Jules. À dix-sept heures, chéri. L’Académie Julian . At five and one of the city’s long-standing schools for artists. Chéri … la salope! An art class at a time like this!

Jules, of course, hadn’t been in his office or anywhere near it. I had left a note for him, the suggestion of dinner together, but had they ever made love in that room of Nini’s? Had she cried out in ecstasy to paper-thin walls and flung her head from side to side as he’d pushed her to orgasm, eh? Hairs to hairs?

Above the sink, there was a mirror. Ages old and cracked, of course, but I remember looking at myself in that thing and watching the door behind, fearing it would open in a rush and they’d …

No thoughts of Jules, none at all but …

Later … that came later. Please, you must forgive me.

The silver backing had peeled. Smoke had damaged one quarter of it, and the half-moon of that burn had spread from the lower left out under the glass, brown against the peeling silver and the stains, so that my face appeared as if … I can’t say it, but I must! Tortured. There, at last, I’ve said it.

I had a lovely linen dress then, something very special. Très chic , you understand. Off-white, superbly tailored with an open collar that plunged to matching cloth-covered buttons, buckle, and belt. My waist was slim-how could it have been otherwise with all that slugging to do at the house and in the garden, the children, too, and an unfaithful husband?

I looked smashing in the dress. Half-sleeves, with cuffs, extended to just below the elbows so that the soft tan of summer was exposed. The band of my wristwatch matched the alligator leather of the handbag whose strap was slung over my right shoulder. The hat was fedoralike and in a soft beige. I had added a band of linen to match the dress. Like a lot of women then, I wore the hat tilted to one side with the brim pulled down a little so as to give that sense of mystery. No lipstick. Hey, listen, mes amis, I had good lips, nothing but the best; wore high heels, too, and a coat in case it might rain or get a little chilly.

My hair had been newly washed and brushed-held at the back with a barrette so that it fell to shoulder length but gave some fullness beneath the hat and was very fine, would take the sunlight and become a lovely soft amber, but there was no sunlight in this place. None. Small, pear-shaped earrings, encrusted diamonds, a gift from Jules’s father, were worn. Now why had that old man given them to me? Had I reminded him of someone or had he had a taste for me?

The earrings had been quite old. In my innocence, I had thought they’d been his dead wife’s.

Ten thousand francs? I wondered. Fifteen thousand … How much could I get for them with this war upon us? Let me leave before it became too late. Let me take the children to safety.

The shop was on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, not far from its intersection with the avenue Matignon. I remember thinking that I had to be by myself for a while, but when I came to the shop, those feelings left me. The window was magnificent. Ah, mon Dieu, such things. An Aubusson tapestry was draped over one corner of a Louis XIV lacquered commode. Fabergé and Lalique were cast among the silver and gold, the antique jewellery as if rained from the heavens. A bronze of Rodin’s was draped with pearls. Another bronze-much, much earlier, was by Orazio Mochi who had died in Florence in 1625. Chinese watercolours on rice paper were also there, with blue-white porcelain and jade figurines dating from thousands of years ago, while leaning against one of a pair of late Regency carved beech-wood armchairs, a splendid oil on canvas by Henri Fantin-Latour showed gladioli and roses. Another canvas occupied the opposite side of the window-Renoir’s Vase des Fleurs . Then at the back, raised on an inlaid lime-wood button box and framed by everything, there was a sumptuous nude by Luis Ricardo Falero. La Toilette . A dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty.

The man who had come to stand beside me took no notice of the nude but concentrated on a pair of Dutch parcel-gilt tazza made by Abraham van der Hecken in 1600. Amsterdam … Lovely things. Christ dividing the loaves and fishes. The one tazza was filled with a sultan’s spill of rings, necklaces, and brooches; the other lay on its side as if rolled about in the act of robbery, but why did he concentrate so hard? Why did he give that fleetingly triumphant grin, as if he’d been searching for something endlessly and had suddenly come upon it?

But then he took to looking at me in the glass, and I had to quickly avert my eyes. I confess I found him attractive. It was exciting to have him look secretly at me. It made me momentarily forget the war, the worry, made me feel … Ah, how should I say it? Proud … yes, proud of myself for a change.

He was about … mm, thirty-four, maybe thirty-six? It was hard to tell. Tall and rugged of build, he had a carefree nature about him. The suit jacket was slung over the left shoulder, the shirt collar was undone, the tie askew. In many ways, I have to confess he looked somewhat English, not French, you understand. Italian? I wondered, but from the north, not the south. American … Was he one of those?

The wavy light brown hair was thick and curled about his ears. The brow was high and sloping back from eyes that squinted with mirth, slanting away and slightly downward from a strong and prominent nose. The jaw was square, the chin also jutting out so that when he smiled, ripples folded and creased burnished cheeks to join the furrows that had burst from the corners of the eyes.

That smile … Tommy often gave it in the worst of situations. It was disarming, engaging-so many things, and one couldn’t always tell what was meant.

The lips were as wide as the chin and turned up at the corners a little. Manly lips, kissing lips, even then I noticed this. Most women do, isn’t that so?

We talked a little, neither of us facing the other directly, but he watching me in the glass-the war, what it must mean, Poland, that sort of thing.

I glanced at him several times, gaining confidence. Feeling better, more at ease, I thought, You devil, you’ve been undressing me, but had he really?