William Boyd - On the Yankee Station - Stories

One of the problems about being poor is that I can’t afford to send my clothes to the “Pressings” any more. And Mme. D’Amico won’t allow washing in the flat. Dirty shirts mount up on the back of my single chair like so many soiled antimacassars. In a corner of the wardrobe I keep dirty socks and underpants. I occasionally spray the damp heap with my aerosol deodorant as if I were some fastidious pest controller. When all my shirts are dirty I evolve a complicated rota for wearing them. The idea is that I wear them each for one day, trying to allow a week between subsequent wears in the faint hope that the delay will somehow have rendered them cleaner. At least it will take longer for them to get really dirty. At the weekend I surreptitiously wash a pair of socks and underpants and sneak them out of the house. I go down to an isolated part of the beach and spread them on the pebbles, where a watery February sun does a reasonable job of drying them out.

One Saturday afternoon I am sitting on the shingle beach employed in just such a way. I wonder sadly if this will be my last weekend in Nice. The postal strike wears on, I have forty-two francs and a plane ticket to London. Small breakers nudge and rearrange the pebbles at the water’s edge. This afternoon the sea is filled with weed and faeces from an untreated sewage outlet a little way up the coast. Freak tides have swept the effluence into the Baie des Anges. The sun shines, but it is a cool and uncongenial day.

The thought of leaving Nice fills me with an intolerable frustration. Nice has a job to do for me, a function to fulfil and it hasn’t even begun to discharge its responsibility.

I hear steps crunching on the stones, coming towards me. I look round. It is Rida with a girl I don’t recognise. Frantically I stuff my washing into its plastic bag.

“Salut,” Rida says.

“Ça va?” I reply nonchalantly.

“What are you doing here?” Rida asks.

“Oh … nothing particular.”

We exchange a few words. I look carefully at the girl. She is wearing jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. She has reddish blond medium-length hair and a flat freckly face. It is not unattractive though. Her eyebrows are plucked away to thin lines and her nose is small and sharp. She seems confident and relaxed. To my surprise Rida tells me she’s English.

“English?” I say.

“Hi,” she says. “My name’s Jackie.”

Rida has literally just picked her up on the Promenade. I don’t know how he singles them out. I think he feels he has another Swiss girl here. He saw me sitting on the beach and told Jackie he knew an English guy he would like her to meet.

We sit around for a bit. I talk in English to Jackie. We swap backgrounds. She comes from Cheshire and has been living in Nice for the last four months. Latterly she has worked as au pair to a black American family. The father is a professional basketball player, one of several who play in the French leagues now that they’re too old or too unfit to make the grade in the U.S.

With all this English being spoken, Rida is beginning to feel left out of it, and is impatiently throwing pebbles into the sea. However, he knows that the only way for him to get this girl is through me and so he suggests we all go to a disco. I like the sound of this because I sense by now that Jackie is not totally indifferent to me herself. She suggests we go to the Psyché, a rather exclusive disco on the Promenade des Anglais. I try to disguise my disappointment. The Psyché costs eighteen francs to get in. Then I remember that Rida still owes me twenty francs. I remind him of this fact. I’ll go, I say, as long as he pays me in. Reluctantly he agrees.

We meet at nine outside the Psyché. Jackie is wearing white jeans and a scoop-necked sequinned T-shirt. She has pink shiny lipstick and her hair looks clean and freshly brushed. Rida is wearing black flared trousers and a black lacy see-through shirt unbuttoned down the front. Round his neck he has hung a heavy gold medallion. I’m glad he’s changed. As we go in he touches me on the elbow.

“She’s mine, okay?” he says, smiling.

“Ah-ha,” I counter. “I think we should rather leave that up to Jackie, don’t you?”

It is my bad luck that Jackie likes to dance what the French call le Swing but which the English know as the jive. I find this dance quite impossible to master. Rida, on the other hand, is something of an expert. I sit in a dark rounded alcove with a whisky and Coke (a free drink comes with the entry fee) and nervously bide my time.

Rida and Jackie come and sit down. I see small beads of sweat on Jackie’s face. Rida’s lace shirt is pasted to his back. We talk. A slow record comes on and I ask Jackie to dance. We sway easily to the music. Her body is hot against mine. Her clean hair is dark and damp at her temples. As if it is the most natural thing in the world I rest my lips on the base of her neck. It is damp, too, from her recent exertions in le Swing . Her hand moves half an inch on my back. I kiss her cheek, then her mouth. She won’t use her tongue. She puts her arms round my neck. I break off for a few seconds and glance over at Rida. He is looking at us. He lights a cigarette and scrutinises its glowing end.

To my astonishment, when we sit down Jackie immediately asks Rida if he’d like to dance again, as another Swing record has come on. She dances with him for a while, Rida spinning her expertly round. I sip my whisky and Coke — which is fizzless by now — and wonder what Jackie is up to. She’s a curious girl. When they come off the dance floor Rida announces he has to go. We express our disappointment. As he shakes my hand he gives me a wink. No hard feelings, I think he wants to say.

We go, some time later, to another club called le Go-Go. Jackie pays for me to get in. Inside we meet one of Jackie’s basketballers. He is very black — almost Nubian in appearance — and unbelievably tall and thin. He is clearly something of a sporting celebrity in Nice, as we get a continuous supply of free drinks while sitting at his table. I drink a lot more whisky and Coke. Presently we are joined by three more black basketball players. I become very subdued. The blacks are friendly and extrovert. They wear a lot of very expensive-looking jewellery. Jackie dances with them all, flirts harmlessly, sits on their knees and shrieks with laughter at their jokes. All the French in the club seem to adore them. People keep coming over to our table to ask for autographs. I feel small and anaemic beside them. My personality seems lamentably pretentious and unformed. I think of my poverty, my dirty clothes, my shabby room, and I ache with an alien’s self-pity, sense a refugee’s angst in my bones.

Then Jackie says to me, “Shall we go?” and suddenly I feel restored. We walk through quiet empty streets, the only sound the rush of water in gutters as they are automatically swilled clean. We pass a café with three tarts inside waiting for their pimp. They chatter away exuberantly.

Jackie shivers and I obligingly put my arm round her. She rests her head on my shoulder and in this fashion we awkwardly make our way to her flat. “Shh,” Jackie cautions as we open the front door, “be careful you don’t wake them up.” I feel a rising pressure in my throat, and I wonder if the bed has squeaky springs.

We sit in the small kitchen on hard modern chairs. My buttocks feel numb and strangely cold. The fluorescent light, I’m sure, can’t be flattering if its unkind effects on Jackie’s pale face are anything to go by. Slowly I sense a leaden despair settle on me as we sit in this cheerless, efficient module in this expensive apartment block. Immeuble de très grand standing , the agent’s advertisement says outside. We have kissed from time to time and I have felt both her small pointed breasts through her T-shirt. Her lips are thin and provide no soft cushion for my own. We talk now in a listless desultory fashion.