Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

I reluctantly chose a suit and was displeased to find Marc-Henri had not relinquished his daytime flannels and cord jacket, his hair like a poorly trimmed hedge. I was less prepared for Wilfrid, in mauve, open-necked shirt and blazer. He suggested we wait in what he liked calling the Grand Salon, actually small and circular, lined with books and eighteenth-century Tuscan landscapes. His guest was late; I could only fantasize further about a Mother Superior with iron handshake and principles achingly inflexible or an Orthodox Archimandrite, fully robed, with glittering crucifix and hat tall as a spade.

The bell rang and, forestalling Lisette, Marc-Henri darted to admit the Presence. Incredibly, we heard a slight, unseen scuffle. I closed my eyes, flinching from the prospects to come, until Wilfrid spoke. ‘This…’ usually so scrupulously polite, he was almost indifferent, ‘is Suzie.’

A slim body with dancer’s neat poise, in black, somewhat scruffy slacks and lilac coat, dark eyes older than the sallow, sketchily triangular face pertly inspecting me from under short, dark, possibly dyed hair with spiky fringe. We were soon chatting about a movie, Barrault’s charm, Michel Simon’s crudeness, and drinking strong cocktails mixed by Marc-Henri, who treated Suzie like a friend whom he had once known too well to encourage my sudden hopes. Wilfrid oversaw us with the benevolent impartiality of a seasoned chairman.

At the table, candle flames quivering against glass, silver, roses, fruit, he, as always, drank sparingly but passed us wines with commendable regularity. Suzie’s animated talk and gestures roused Marc-Henri from lumpishness to joke about La Belle France needing the embrace of the Son of God, at odds with his agnosticism until I realized the latter was de Gaulle. Suzie was laughing, captious, anarchist in her sallies and political convictions or lack of them. Ignoring the Son of God, she told me, with accuracy perhaps only poetic, that she had once ridden in a circus. Wilfrid nodded like a connoisseur, I produced a joke that I remembered too late Marc-Henri had recently made. Embarrassed, reaching for the wine, though my glass was still full, I saw Wilfrid murmur to Suzie, who giggled immoderately, eyes widening at me, admiring or astonished, then, in the flimsy light, beautiful.

Wilfrid avoided my stare. ‘Like most of us Suzie is several people at once. Most of them very well worth acquaintance.’

Marc-Henri was seriously preoccupied with sea trout, not belying my suspicion that he might once have been rebuffed by the most carnal of Suzie’s selves. While she and Wilfrid pattered, I could do little except note her bright, birdy glances and laughs that ranged most of the scales; also her sharp, thinly covered breasts. Wilfrid, too, was virtuoso performer: unlikely to have been a circus artiste, he could have impersonated an indulgent confessor, elegant boulevardier, resourceful diplomat, reminding me of the Sphinx, before recollecting that its riddle had not been difficult.

Afterwards, Marc-Henri grunted then left us, and after depositing liqueurs and granting Suzie permission to smoke – her stained fingers detracted from scarlet nails – Wilfrid receded, pausing under an arch.

‘You both know what the Greeks called tyche . Chance. Fortune. In the blindness of chance, not fortune, I must leave you for a meeting vital though one of minimal importance. Suzie of course will remain until desiring to be driven home, for which preparations are in hand.’

Hard and moist at will, I was swamped by excess of metaphor, swooping over rainbow islands, wine-dark seas, perilous whirlpools. She was agile nixie, knee-deep in froth, trainee Helen, creature of wilful, excitable Paris, decidedly no virgin, scornful of my inexperience. Mother would have judged her Bad Taste or, if in extreme impatience, a Light Woman.

In our first tourney, that first evening, we probed, parried, with jokes, butterfly repartee. Thenceforward, Wilfrid, immersed in Conference details, never directly alluding to her, generously provided opportunities. ‘They’ve sent me tickets for the Jouvet. I cannot attend but maybe…’

Suzie’s incessant smoking betrayed nervousness contradicted by her bold eyes and talk. I was not yet risking my stock northern repertoire: pale summer Priata Beach, gold topping a mast, wild geese outstretched against bruised skies, Pahlen’s expressionless face, wild strawberries, Old Men of the Earth, in Forest, the girl who ran, the Lights, billowing, crystalline, electric. Of not quite assessable age, young, but a femme du monde , she would dismiss these as schoolboy jottings, les petits riens , reducing me to a monkish novice.

We quarrelled over nothings. I hated rain and darkness in movies, she enjoyed both. My greed for fruit she found objectionable, as I did her cigarettes. She thought Michèle Morgan insipid; to me, she was marvellous. Such passages were fire to the spirit, the gift of honeymoon before marriage.

With her, the Conference could be forgotten. Life was too short for ideals. We met in small cafés, all posters and tobacco haze, in Jardin des Plantes under low clouds, in almost empty parks; we sat in remote bars engulfed in the skirmish of muted trumpets, helter-skelter clarinets, erratic saxophones. Parting, we ceremoniously shook hands, though earlier we might have embraced, spontaneously, under a railway arch, applauded by the drop-outs. We joined in rapture at sunlight strewn over the Seine, a kingfisher flashing through the Bois, a tramp in perfect black bow-tie and disgusting blouse. Each hour together was a craze, to be charted, pondered, re-examined like a graph.

I was shy of inviting her to the apartment, for Marc-Henri’s soggy grin, Wilfrid’s particular humour, Lisette’s knowingness. She had not yet mentioned her own, somewhere in an outer Section, though possibly awaiting me to suggest it. Tactics advised delay, sharpening appetite, prolonging the delicious paraphernalia of seduction, though I felt uncertain who would be seducer. Timing was all, and I watched for the signal, a matelot on the shore seeking the white sail. I was unable to dispel bespoke comparisons, the fantasia of breasts, buttocks, small fuzz – was that also dyed? – while I imagined her posing, in gleeful parody, one hand at her breasts, the other guarding or jabbing her vagina, while she contemplated a vase, a painting, and looked solemn as a nun. I was inhabiting a thriller, defying tyche , sha , Tao, Wilfrid’s packet of spells.

Seldom exquisite, in dark-green, tilted student’s cap, she was a poem inadequately translated but retaining the substance, true line, swing. Part of the volatile streets, we hinged our day on Let’s , like a Hans-in-Luck rhyme. Let’s go movie, go shop, go Metro, go drink. Each corner disclosed some trouvé – a concierge like a pile of warm beef, repellent as Baba Yaga, an old gentleman caressing a doll, a blind beggar at Saint-Martin happily, though unobtrusively, reading Paris-Soir . In fashion, she usually wore dark glasses, accenting veiled purposes, which, like her wonder-why exclamations, sudden touch, lowered voice, sparked a possibility glinting like a coin on a rug. She drew life, vigour from Hollywood stars – Lancaster, Curtis, Sinatra, Peck – and she murmured ‘Bogart’ like a ‘yes’ at an altar. Instinctively I left her the pas , overlooking her inconsistencies. One day she desired a trip to Brittany. I mapped a route, but she looked puzzled, then asked, expressionless, whether I realized that Kirk Douglas was a Polish Jew. She mentioned Southern Spite, which, left undefined, sounded ugly. Remembering a kestrel high above the Manor stables, I ventured love for the North, but her frown implied a shape even worse than Southern Spite. Bardot she scorned as a Lard Cauliflower. Sunflowers were haughty, daisies childish, peonies horrid.