Objects of Desire (13 page)

The three men had to laugh at themselves; they were not easily besotted by women. Their laughter seemed to change the subject and somehow bring them back from their erotic reverie into the present. They spoke of politics. Timothy, a political journalist based in Paris but writing exclusively for an American news magazine, always had political tidbits to offer for the interest of his two older friends.

The three had become good friends, bound together in their lust for womanising, and especially because of their partying with Page. They were neither bisexual nor homosexual, yet through their partying with her had learned the excitement of each other’s bodies, gained added pleasure from knowing intimately each other’s sexuality.

The Place de Vosges, a series of handsome, much sought after Paris town houses where once the kings of France’s courtiers and favourites lived, was quiet. Every street was muffled, registering as an intrusion on this special sunny rectangle in the midst of Paris.
The quiet in the house, as in the square, made every sound seem significant.

François was the first to hear the tap of her heels on the stairs, then passing the dining room, the front door opening and closing. ‘She hasn’t said goodbye. Page said she would be back,’ said Timothy.

‘But she never said when.’ That was François.

Several minutes of silence and then Timothy broke it. ‘I must go.’

‘And so must I,’ added Jean-Paul.

François told his guests, ‘You won’t find her, you know. She will have arranged to have a cab waiting close by.’

‘I didn’t expect to,’ said Timothy, and went to his host. François rose from his chair as Timothy extended his hand and offered an invitation. ‘Come to lunch with me? Tomorrow at the Grand Véfours, a thank you for your hospitality, for the best times of my life.’

François had been correct, Page had called for a taxi from his bedroom phone and as she rode away in it from the Place de Vosges into the morning traffic, she looked at the cars and the people, the beauty of the buildings and the glamour of the shops, the chestnut trees just bursting into bloom, the twisted and tortured plane trees turning green with newborn leaves, and understood how finite all this was for her.

She felt happy, a new kind of joy surging from the depths of her soul. Not since the days when she and Oscar had been in love had she felt anything like this. She rolled down the windows and took deep draughts
of air to fill her lungs. Slowly breathing out, she felt herself letting go.

A sense of gratitude for everything she had accomplished, for everything she had been in her life, was there – the good and the bad. Like some invisible shawl, who and what she was wrapped itself around her, embraced her, and she knew that whatever paths she had taken to get where she was with herself, right or wrong, she had done the best that she could and had no regrets. Of the many men who had come and gone in her life, François, Jean-Paul and Timothy, even Hervé, were the men who understood her best, accepted and loved her for what she was, and what she would never be. Never had she felt as deep an affection for them as she did riding away from them and the erotic world they had created for her. Perverse? Maybe so. But that was how she felt.

The sexual party, orgy if you will, such as she had experienced with them the evening before, was still very exciting to her, as fresh and new as it had been the very first time. Sex without guilt, without strings attached or having to pretend. Sex with no past to consider or future to be concerned about. Adoring men and a constant flow of sexual oblivion experienced almost to death could still thrill. But there was more for Page: sex as good as she had had last night but with one man whom
she
could love – that was still missing from her life. She had tasted it once and that had spoiled her forever. What was this extraordinary life
she had carved out for herself if she could not love again?

From her handbag, Page took her mobile telephone and punched in Hervé’s telephone. His assistant Sylvie answered.

‘Sylvie, this is Page Cooper, I must speak to Hervé.’

‘He’s setting up for a shoot, you know how he is. No calls when he’s working.’

‘Tell him he
must
take my call.’

Seconds later Hervé was on the telephone. ‘This had better be good, Page.’

‘I need a favour, Hervé.’

The tone of annoyance vanished immediately. ‘Of course.’

Page smiled to herself. That was Hervé. No questions asked. A real friend, a great lover. ‘You’ve always wanted to photograph me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now. Now, Hervé, please. I’m leaving Paris this afternoon. I will need three prints, and I want to look wonderful. I need them. They’re farewell gifts, thank you notes, mementoes of me … call them what you will. I want to give them to three special friends.’

‘I’m photographing a princess who for security reasons shall remain nameless. A
Vogue
cover shoot. It’s supposed to happen in an hour’s time but she’ll be late, her plane has only just taken off from London. So get over here now, Page, and I mean
now
, and we’ll have a great time doing it.’

‘Hervé, we’re just heading for the Pont Neuf. I want
the real thing, the grand Hervé portrait – hairdressers, make-up men, dressers, the lot.’

He laughed. ‘So I am at last going to catch you, make you mine forever. Your timing is perfect. The hairdressers are here, and the make-up man, and a rackful of clothes. The dressers are waiting round drinking coffee and doing nothing. After all these years of my begging to snap you, and your distaste for being photographed, what’s suddenly changed your mind?’

‘The end of an era, the beginning of a new one.’ And Page cut off their conversation by the flick of a switch.

Page was feeling depressed, not about herself but about the women who had answered her ad, so many lost women roaming the world looking for a life. It was heartbreaking. When she had placed the ad in the
International Herald Tribune
in the hope of finding two women not unlike herself who wanted to change their lives and share an adventure of discovery and new horizons, she never dreamed how few of them were truly looking for a second chance. Most only wanted to slip back into the world they had known and had been ostracised from for one reason or another. It seemed that all they wanted was to recapture their former lifestyles and the husbands who had abandoned them or died, or lovers who had become bored and dropped them.

She had been one of those women for the last ten years, fooling herself that she was building a lifestyle that had nothing to do with the past. A lie. All she had
done was manage to survive on rather a successful and sometimes rewarding scale, when in truth what she wanted was to have Oscar back and the lifestyle that went with him. She could understand those women, have pity for them, for she had at last come through the pass and into a greener valley.

But if she were disappointed by the women she met who had answered her ad, they were equally disappointed by Page. They had hoped that the woman who had placed the ad was going to be a lady who knew where she was going. One who was planning every step of her future, setting out on a new life which they could latch on to. No such thing. Page was offering nothing except to join hands with women of like mind who were prepared to jump off the deep end into a loose and free existence. No plan except to go where the wind blew them, travel the globe together to get a new perspective, and just live. They each of them would create new lives for themselves and as sisters under the skin might learn one from the other as they learned for themselves, a better way to live and find peace and contentment.

Eleven women she had interviewed, and she had no desire to have lunch with one of them never mind travel the world for a year. Women in their fifties or forties; one had been over sixty but looking more like thirty-two years old. They had Elizabeth Arden faces, Daniel Galvin hair, and work-out bodies. They had been impeccably well turned out; designer labels to keep them warm instead of men. One woman, a
fifty-five-year-old earth mother who had gone through four husbands and was looking for a fifth, and dressed in expensive ethnic, had at least been amusing about what she expected travelling with a couple of women. Beverly Campbell-Royce had her itinerary all worked out: India, Kathmandu, Goa, Eastern Europe. She was in search of yet another new guru, and dope. Dope she told Page was essential to her new voyage of discovery. Dope and young men – rock hard flesh. ‘I’m not ashamed to say, I’m into orgasm.’ Page had wanted to say: ‘Who isn’t, you silly cow?’ But merely told her, when the woman offered a macrobiotic lunch, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

One woman, no great beauty, very bright but spinster-like, rejected Page when told: ‘I don’t care where I go, what I see, who I meet, what I do with my time. I intend to take it as it comes and so will my companions, otherwise there is no point in going on an adventure.’

A Swedish blonde was the one who asked the most interesting question: ‘Why don’t you go alone?’ And Page had answered her honestly. ‘Because I don’t know how. I need friends, companions, who don’t know how to get a new life together either. Together we can struggle through to get where each of us wants to go. Hopefully we’ll support each other, learn from each other.’

It was a bright and sunny day and Page took a long walk through Mayfair, thinking about all those women she had met. She had known it wouldn’t be
easy but was still prepared to carry on with the exercise. She had travelled alone for long enough.

She still had that sense of happiness she had discovered in Paris. It seemed to be a part of her life now. She stopped at the tea shop Richoux in South Audley Street and ordered tea and cucumber sandwiches, then sat back and people-watched. Women and more women, not unlike those she had been meeting, not unlike herself. All her adult life Page had known women like these. She had worked for them, dashed in with flowers to brighten their already bright lives, and dashed out again. But she had never had the companionship of women, and somehow now, at this stage in her life, she understood that she had missed out on something. Yes, she would try and find women who needed to have women friends in their second time around in the life game.

She remained a long time in the chic tea room, watching the women come and go and wondering about their lives. Several men took a table near to her and she saw the marked difference it made. The women, including herself, perked up; men did put the edge into being alive. They did make a difference in women’s lives.

Page went with her bill to the cashier and stood next to a man buying a cake. He smiled at her. She knew men’s smiles such as his, and smiled back. ‘For your little girl?’ she asked.

‘No. For me. I have a sweet tooth and no little girl.’

He wasn’t a particularly handsome man, but he had
sexy eyes and a good body, was well dressed in that attractive Savile Row tailoring. Experience had taught Page to recognise a good lover. He was one, and for a moment she was tempted. She left the shop before he did, but he followed her.

‘This is awfully forward, but will you come home and share my cake with me?’

‘How sad for me,’ she said, ‘but I’ve just had tea and sandwiches and I don’t have a sweet tooth.’ And giving him one of her most charming smiles, she added before she walked away, ‘Maybe another day our paths will cross.’ She always left an admirer with hope.

Page sat for half an hour in Grosvenor Square. She thought about that man, the image he had of her, and pondered on something she had never thought of before she received the print of Hervé’s photograph that had arrived that morning. She looked in the mirror every day and thought she knew very well what she looked like, just how attractive she was. Then the photograph arrived and she realised that what she saw was not the same as what other people saw. Hervé had caught an image of her that she did not know. With all the men who had fallen in love with her, those who had chased after her, even the occasional one night stand, still she had no idea how very beautiful and desirable she looked. She really had a different vision of herself from the one that she projected. Did most women? She thought probably they did.

She was just in time for her next appointment.
Maybe this woman would be better. This one she was meeting in the bar of the Connaught. It had been the other woman’s suggestion. Page was just walking up the steps to the entrance when Anoushka came through the door.

‘Page!’ she called out.

She had to think for a moment, having totally forgotten Anoushka once she had given her to Hervé. Nevertheless she was pleased to see her again.

‘What are you doing here, Page?’ asked Anoushka.

‘I’ve come to meet someone in the bar. And you?’

‘I’m staying here. It’s really so nice to see you again, Page. Can we meet?’

‘Well, if you have nothing better to do, then come along and have a drink.’

‘I don’t want to intrude.’

‘You won’t be. I don’t even know the woman.’

‘Oh.’

‘I should explain. I’m interviewing her. I placed an ad in the
International Herald Tribune
: “Woman seeks others who are interested in adventure. A year’s travel in search of new horizons. Only apply if you have left the old ones behind.” ’

‘I wish I’d seen it.’

‘Would you have applied?’ Page asked, a smile on her lips, knowing very well that Anoushka would not have.

‘Well, I am looking for a new life.’

Page liked Anoushka. She had liked her right from the first when they had met at the Café Flore. She liked her still when she had encouraged her to go with
Hervé. She could just possibly be the right travelling companion, thought Page. She had after all been game enough to accept a sexual tryst with Hervé. ‘Well then, come on, let’s talk about it. Champagne cocktails are terrific here at the Connaught.’

Together they walked through the entrance to the bar. The woman Page was to meet hadn’t arrived as yet so they took a table in a quiet corner of the room. Page ordered the drinks. ‘What are you doing in London, Anoushka?’

‘Life can be so strange. We create richly patterned routines for ourselves only to find life has no pattern. I suppose that’s how I happen to be in London again. That and Hervé. It was actually meeting you and him that set me thinking I should do something with myself.’