The List of My Desires (9 page)

Let me help you.

My heart leaps. I turn round.

He’s sitting two metres away from me, wearing a white shirt and beige trousers. His feet are bare. I can’t see his eyes because of his dark glasses. I see his mouth. His lips – the lips coloured like a fruit that have just uttered those four audacious words. They are smiling. Then the atavistic prudence of all my female forebears resurfaces.

No, that wouldn’t do.

Why wouldn’t it do? Would it be wrong of me to want to help you, or for you to agree?

My God, I’m blushing. I snatch up my blouse to cover my shoulders.

I’m just leaving, anyway. So am I, he says.

We don’t move. My heart is racing. He’s handsome, and I’m not pretty. He’s a predator. A Lothario. A bad character, I’m sure of it. People don’t speak to you like that in Arras. No man ventures to talk to you without first asking whether you’re married. Or in a relationship with someone. Not this man. He comes in without knocking. Just shoulders his way in. A foot in the door. And I like it. I get to my feet. He’s already standing up. He offers me his arm. I take it. My fingers feel the warmth of his tanned skin. Salt has left white marks on it. We leave the beach. We walk along the Promenade des Anglais with barely a metre between us. Further on, when we are opposite the Hôtel Negresco, his hand takes my elbow; he helps me across the road as if I were blind. I like the sense of vertigo. I close my eyes for a little while; I do as he wants. We go into the hotel. My heart is racing. I’m losing my mind. What has come over me? Am I going to go to bed with a stranger? I’m crazy.

But his smile reassures me. And then his voice.

Come on, I’ll get you a cup of tea.

He orders two orange pekoes.

It’s a light-bodied Ceylon tea, a pleasant afternoon drink. Have you ever been to Ceylon . . . Sri Lanka?

I laugh. I lower my eyes. I’m fifteen years old, a romantic schoolgirl.

It’s an island in the Indian Ocean less than fifty kilometres from India. It became Sri Lanka in 1972, when—

I interrupt him. Why are you doing this?

He delicately puts his cup of orange pekoe down, and then takes my face in his hands.

I saw you on the beach from behind just now, and I was overwhelmed by the loneliness of your whole body.

He’s good-looking. Like Vittorio Gassman in
Scent of a Woman.

I raise my face to his, my lips seek his, find them. It’s a strange, unexpected kiss; a kiss warm with the flavour of the Indian Ocean. It’s a kiss that goes on a long time, a kiss that says everything about what I lack, what he wants, my sufferings, his impatience.

Our kiss is my rapture; my vengeance; all the kisses I never had, from Fabien Derôme in my class in middle school, from my timid ‘Indian Summer’ dance partner, from Philippe de Gouverne whom I never dared approach, from Solal, Prince Charming, Johnny Depp, Kevin Costner before the implants, all the kisses that girls dream of; the kisses before Jocelyn Guerbette’s.

I gently push my stranger away.

I murmur: No.

He doesn’t insist.

If he can read my mind just by looking at my back, now he can see in my eyes how afraid of myself I am.

I’m a faithful wife. Jo’s cruelty isn’t a good enough reason. My loneliness isn’t a good enough reason.

I went home to Arras the next day. Jo’s anger had died down. The children had made toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, and were praising the merits of
The Sound of Music.

But nothing’s ever as simple as that.

S
ince that article was published in
L’Observateur de l’Arrageois
, the world’s gone mad.

The shop is never empty. The
tengoldfingers
blog gets eleven thousand hits a day. Our mini-merchandising site receives over forty orders daily. I’m sent thirty CVs a week. The telephone never stops ringing. People ask me to hold sewing workshops in schools. Embroidery workshops in hospitals. A hospice asks me to give knitting lessons, simple things like scarves and socks. The children’s oncology department of the local hospital wants caps in cheerful colours. And sometimes gloves with two or three fingers. Mado is run off her feet, she’s taking Prosoft, and when I worry she replies, with a nervous laugh twisting her mouth: If I stop, Jo, I shall fall down, and if I fall down I’ll bring the whole place down with me, so don’t stop me, keep pushing me, Jo, please keep pushing me. She’s promised to go and see Dr Caron, to eat more salmon, to hang on. In the evening Jo gets me to recite the rules of nutritional safety and the principle of the cold chain, which he has to know for his exam to be a foreman.
‘Deep-frozen foods’ have undergone the process known as ‘deep-freezing’ in which the maximum crystallisation zone is passed as quickly as necessary, the effect being that the temperature of the produce is maintained (after thermal stabilisation) uninterruptedly at values below or equal to -18ºC. Deep-freezing must be carried out without delay on produce of healthy and marketable quality using appropriate technical equipment. Only air, nitrogen and carbonic anhydride respecting the specific criteria of purity are authorised as refrigerant fluids.

He’s a sweet pupil who never loses his temper, except with himself. I encourage him. You’ll make your dreams come true some day, dear Jo, I tell him, and then he takes my hand, carries it to his lips and says: It will be thanks to you, Jo, all thanks to you, and that makes me blush.

My God, if you knew. If you knew, what would become of you?

The twins have asked me to make waxed laces into little bracelets for them to sell in their salon. Every time someone has a manicure we manage to sell some little thing, says Françoise. So after that piece in
L’Observateur
, bracelets from your place will sell like hot cakes, adds Danièle. I make twenty. They’re all sold by that evening. With the kind of luck you have, say the twins, you really ought to play the lottery. I laugh with them. But I’m afraid.

I’ve invited them to our house for dinner today.

Jo is charming and funny and helpful all evening. The twins have brought two bottles of Veuve Clicquot. The bubbles in the wine, bursting on our palates, loosen our tongues. We are all mildly tipsy. And when you’re tipsy your hopes and fears always rise to the surface.

We’re nearly forty, says Danièle, if we don’t meet a nice guy this year we’re all washed up. Two nice guys, Françoise specifies. We laugh. But it’s not funny. Maybe we’re fated to stick together, like Siamese twins. Have you tried online dating? asks Jo. You bet. All we met were the weirdos. As soon as they find out we’re twins, they just want a threesome. The thought of twins gets the guys excited, they suddenly think they’ve got two pricks. How about trying separately? suggests Jo. We’d rather die, they cry in chorus, before falling into each other’s arms.

Glasses are topped up and emptied.

One day we’ll have a big win, and we’ll tell all those poor guys to piss off. We’ll treat ourselves to gigolos, use them just once like Kleenex, then off they go! Into the bin! Next! They roar with laughter. Jo is looking at me; he smiles. His eyes are shining. Under the table my foot has just found his.

I’m going to miss Jo.

He’s off tomorrow for a week at the HQ of the Nestlé Group at Vevey in Switzerland, to finish his foreman’s training and become a unit manager at Häagen-Dazs.

When he gets back we’re going for a weekend at Cap Gris-Nez to celebrate. We’ve promised ourselves oysters and a big platter of
fruits de mer
. He’s reserved a big room at Waringzelle Farm, only five hundred metres from the sea, where we can watch thousands of birds taking off for warmer countries. I’m proud of him. He’ll be earning three thousand euros a month, and from then on he’ll be part of the bonus system and have an insurance deal with a better company.

My Jo is getting closer to his dreams. We’re getting closer to the truth.

How about you, Jocelyn? Danièle suddenly asks my husband, her voice slightly slurred because of the wine. Haven’t you ever fantasised about having two women at once? Laughter. I pretend to take offence for the principle of the thing. Jo puts down his glass. With Jo, he replies, I have everything I need. She’s sometimes so greedy that it’s as if she
is
two women at once. More roars of laughter. I tap him smartly on the arm. Don’t you listen to him! He’d say anything.

But the conversation is out of control, and reminds me of the discussions we have in summer, under the shade of the pine trees at the Sourire campsite, with JJ and Marielle Roussel and Michèle Henrion, when the heat and the pastis combined make us lose our heads and talk frankly about our regrets, our fears and what we lack. I must have the best collection of dil-does in the world, said Michèle Henrion with a sad smile last summer. At least they don’t leave you after fucking you. And they don’t go limp, added Jo, drunk as he was.

In time, as all women know, desire is amputated from sexuality. So we try to revive it, we offer it provocation in the shape of audacity, new experiences. In the months after my return from the Centre Sainte-Geneviève in Nice, our desire evaporated. Jo replaced it with brutality. He liked to take me quickly, from behind, hurting me. I hated that, bit my lips till the blood came so as not to scream with pain, but Jo was listening only to his own pleasure, and once he had ejaculated he quickly came out of me, put his trousers on and disappeared into the house or the garden with a non-alcoholic beer.

The twins are drunk when they leave, and Françoise has laughed so much that she has even wet herself slightly. Jo and I are left alone. The kitchen and dining room look like a battlefield. It’s late. I’ll clear up, you go to bed, I say. You have to leave early tomorrow morning.

Then he comes over to me and suddenly takes me in his arms and holds me close. Close to his own strength. His voice is soft, whispering in my ear. Thank you, dear Jo, he whispers. Thank you for everything you’ve done.

I turn pink; luckily he can’t see that. I’m proud of you, I say. Go on, go to bed or you’ll be tired tomorrow. The assistant manager of the factory is coming to pick him up at four-thirty in the morning. I’ll make you a thermos flask of coffee.

Then he looks at me. There’s a touch of sadness in his eyes. His lips are placed on mine, they open gently, his tongue slides worm-like into my mouth. It’s a strangely sweet kiss, like a first kiss.

Or a last one.

L
ist of crazy notions (with eighteen million in the bank).

Close the haberdashery shop and go back to studying fashion.

Get a Porsche Cayenne.

A house beside the sea. NO.

An apartment in London for Nadine.

A 34C bra, I’ve lost weight. NO NO NO. Are you crazy or what? Well, like I said, this is a list of my crazy notions.

Lots of stuff from the Chanel boutique. NO.

A full-time nurse for Papa. (To have a new conversation with him every six minutes!!!)

Put some money aside somewhere safe for Romain. (He looks like he’ll end up badly.)