The Steppes of Paris (14 page)

He let the pause last as long as was charitable. “Thanks,” he said. There was something he did which had always brought Rosie round, and one or two others before her; it consisted of enclosing her hand in a rough grip and at the same time looking intently but without any expression into her face. The lack of expression was crucial for into it, he had gathered, women tended to read whatever they wanted. Now, like a move he had long learnt in a martial art, he envisaged it and put it into practice on Irina.

It wasn’t a move to use on a woman who wore so many big rings. Irina drew breath and snatched her hand back. “Oich, Edouard,” she exclaimed, “you
hurt
me!” She shook her hand from the wrist, as if to return the blood to her fingers, and she added, with a mixture of reproach and admiration, “I didn’t realise you were so strong.”

They laughed. By misfiring, the move had turned out more effective than if it had come off. And, however botched, an advance had been made. The balance between Irina’s side of the table, where all the advantages of age and sophistication and familiarity with Parisian practices were stacked, and Edward’s had been perceptibly adjusted; it was he who had taken the initiative of touching her.

“Where are we going to eat?” he asked her. “Not here, I hope?” He showed her over her shoulder the dismaying contents of the glass dessert cabinet: frosted sundae glasses of greying chocolate mousse and slices of an inert white pudding sprinkled with chips of a bright-pink sugary substance which had bled alarming colouring over the long-dead slabs.

Irina shook her head. “No, not here. This is just for meeting and drinking our opening drink. No, I thought we should go somewhere a bit extravagant tonight, maybe in Saint Germain or somewhere, to cheer us both up.”

“Fine by me,” said Edward, and then he asked, “Are you feeling fed up too?”

Irina gave an eloquently gusty sigh. “Oh, Edouard,” she exclaimed, “you don’t want to hear about my problems, I promise you.”

“On the contrary,” said Edward, “I do. They make a change
from mine and, if it doesn’t sound callous to say so, I think they’re probably more interesting too.”

“Interesting,” Irina repeated bitterly. “That’s twice now you’ve used that word about me. I suppose that’s what I’ll be to you in years to come, won’t I? An ‘interesting’ far-away postage stamp stuck in your very full album.”

“Say that again?” said Edward.

Irina shook her head but grinned. “You didn’t hear what I said,” she declared. “I have a talent for smelling an end before there’s even been a beginning. So, where are we going to eat, then? What would you like best?”

On her much-ringed fingers, she ran off a list of names, none of which meant anything to Edward but all of which sounded deeply pretentious: Bacchus Gourmand, Le Sybarite, Chez Raffatin et Honorine.

“You choose,” he said. “Really, I haven’t the first idea –”

Irina tutted. “But I need to know what you feel like eating at least,” she protested. “I can’t just pick on somewhere.”

“But you can,” Edward assured her. “I don’t have strong feelings.”

Irina frowned. “Well, I think you should. This is an occasion, isn’t it? You ought to have an image of what you want us to be eating at our first meal out.” She flourished her hands evocatively. “Shellfish with pink flesh and claws, or artistic snippets of Japanese delicacies, or blood-red steaks.”

Edward couldn’t help laughing. “You know, you’re a lot more French than you pretend to be.”

“And you,” retorted Irina, “are every bit as English.” She sat straighter. “You should care about these things, you know, Edouard. Now tell me, what would you prefer; meat or fish, somewhere French or somewhere foreign?”

They ended up going to one of Irina’s regular haunts.

“I can’t get anything out of you,” she concluded grumpily. “At least I know
I’ll
be content there.”

It was also somewhere she was known, of course; it wouldn’t matter that on a Saturday night they hadn’t booked. Now the decision was taken, she downed her port almost in one go and even hesitated when Edward offered her a second.

“No,” she decided. “Let’s go over to the Pré Geneviève now. We may have to wait at the bar there for a table.”

As soon as they stepped out onto the pavement, an empty taxi sped into the Place de l’Ecole Militaire. Swiftly, Irina hailed it and as he climbed after her into it, Edward considered the novel sensation of events proceeding entirely according to his female partner’s wishes. It wouldn’t be something he would like in the long run. With minor but material acts, he would subvert it. But for the moment, he accepted it as an inevitable accompaniment to going out to dinner with a woman ten years his senior. Specifying their age difference like that, for the first time, he looked sideways at Irina and assessed her state of preservation.

She turned to face his inspection with a radiant smile.

“Are you hungry?” she asked him.

And because it was something he tended to do anyway, because her question seemed to him to be addressed to a needy child, he shunted along the back seat of the cab towards her and snarled in assent, avidly snapping his teeth.

The waiter at the Pré Geneviève showed them to a table almost at once, greeting Irina fulsomely and expertly relieving her of her heavy coat. Beneath it, Edward was almost distressed to see, she was more dressed up than ever before. She had on another six-cylinder dress, black this time, and decorated with an impressive collection of bruising silver bits and pieces, which matched the big rings he had earlier crushed on her hand.

She strutted ahead of him to their table, and despite his recurring dismay at what he had let himself in for, he couldn’t help enjoying having someone swing their hips so consummately for his benefit. He reached the table in her wake, another novel sensation, and watched how skilfully she went through all the expensive-restaurant rituals: lowering herself onto the waiter’s manipulated chair, responding politely to his briefing on the day’s special dishes, and receiving gracefully her shaken linen napkin into her lap. Somewhere in the middle of all this, it occurred to Edward that the evening’s likely culmination was as good a means as any of redressing the balance.

They read their menus diligently. The Pré Geneviève, Irina explained seriously, was a
nouvelle
cuisine
restaurant. She liked it for the refined, ethereal quality of its cooking; you
didn’t leave the table weighted down by a ballast of sauces, doughs and creams. Your palate was exquisitely treated, but you could float away from table afterwards unencumbered by what you had eaten. Edward felt depressed. He also felt that, coming from someone as eminently material as Irina, this affected fondness for light, insubstantial meals was fundamentally dubious.

Around them, the restaurant was crowded with smart Saturday night diners. He had imagined, at some point, that getting to know Irina would bring him a share of Paris society. He now wondered whether this would be the case, for the distance between him and the other diners didn’t seem to be reduced by Irina’s presence. He sensed that she was just as alien and excluded from their midst as he was, and as if she sensed his misgivings but was determined to make a virtue of her predicament, she pronounced, “The only drawback is the
bons
bourgeois
who flock here to eat without putting on weight.”

Edward smiled appreciatively. At the tables to both sides of them, tidily dressed young couples were aping their parents’ heyday. They were visibly well matched; socially and physically homogeneous, paired to perpetuate the status quo. To Edward and Irina’s left, a sharp-featured woman lovingly fed yellow mussels from her fork to a sharp-featured man. It made Edward feel, just briefly, exceedingly uncomfortable. For he had an inkling of what he and Irina must look like to the biology-textbook couples; ill-assorted and incompatible, a pair plainly destined for a short, presumably carnal career and, should they be foolish enough to imagine for a moment otherwise, a sticky end.

Once they had ordered, the only remaining pretext for not facing the situation before them was gone. Irina took a great gulp at the white wine the waiter had uncorked before them with a flourish and treated Edward to a deep significant look.

“We discover each other in the depths of winter,” she announced. “Such a cold, miserable time of year and yet in the middle of it such unexpected warmth.”

‘Jee
zuz!
’ thought Edward. If there was one thing he couldn’t bear in the embarrassing business of the emotions, it was a running commentary.

“You sound like a commercial for the Gas Board,” he teased her.

Irina flushed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have your stiff upper lip, Edouard.”

“I’ll say,” Edward agreed.

He hoped to discourage her from any further declarations but she tossed her pinkish hair and told him, “I say what I feel and I
feel
warm.”

“Well, great,” said Edward, and added meanly after a moment. “You look it.”

One moment, he was chuffed and turned on by the splendid female achievement in front of him; the next he wanted to put her down. It seemed to him that only by periodically dropping obstacles in her tracks could he delay the onrushing advance of the female locomotive. Which was at the same time perverse, since he enjoyed the knowledge that its delivery was for him.

Irina made an exasperated tongue-slapping noise. Although it was not in any particular language, it reminded Edward unexpectedly vividly of her Great-Aunt Elena.

“How’s your family?” he asked.

This time, Irina’s sigh verged on a snort. “Edouard! Do we have to talk about my family? Just when I’m enjoying getting away from them and into a real
tête-à-tête
with you. How’s
your
family?”

Edward grimaced.

“Why didn’t you enjoy Christmas with them, actually?” She went on vindictively. “Let’s talk about that.”

“OK,” Edward said. “Point taken.”

But somewhere along the line Irina had felt insulted enough to want to get her own back. “No, I’m interested,” she said, with a nasty artificial sweetness. “Remember you’re only the second Englishman I’ve ever properly got to know. This is educational for me.”

“Who was the other?” asked Edward.

Irina smiled archly. “Answer my question first.”

“England’s far too close,” said Edward. “Do you understand that? I never wanted to get sent somewhere such a short distance away I could go home for Christmas. It rubs in how pathetically
near
I am. It makes being abroad at all
seem a complete farce. You see, I wanted to get sent to South America, or somewhere radically different: new place, new climate, new culture. Being booted down the road to Paris was bad enough; going home made me absolutely desperate. There was everything and everyone I had wanted to get away from virtually next door.”

Irina contemplated his troubles serenely. “Where will they send you after Paris?” she asked.

Edward cheered somewhat. “That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question,” he answered. “Hopefully, after such a non-starter first time round, it’ll be somewhere pretty decent next time. There are two schools of thought, really; either they’ll send me somewhere French-speaking, but much further away, of course, maybe French West Africa or somewhere in Indo-China, to capitalise on what I’ve acquired here. Or they may just possibly look kindly on my fervently expressed desire and send me where I want. In which case, Rio de Janeiro, here we come.”

“And that would be when?” asked Irina.

“Oh God, the sooner the better,” said Edward. “The earliest possible would be next summer, I suppose. I mean, I wouldn’t actually have been here a full year until September, but they’d have to give me a bit of notice to make the move, and for Henry’s sake too. They’d probably let me know where I was going in July or August, with a bit of luck. Although in this game you never can tell, of course. They might just say, ‘Want you in Brazil tomorrow, Wainwright.’ Or there is the possibility, which I don’t even want to think about, that they may want to keep me here for a second year. In which case, God –” he shook his head.

“The other Englishman was seventy-something years old,” Irina said. “His name was Blenkinsop.”

She recoiled, hurt and puzzled, when Edward burst out laughing. “What’s funny about that?”

“Blenkinsop’s rather a funny name,” Edward excused himself.

“Is it?” Irina asked stiffly. “I don’t think so. I think it’s rather a soft and gentle name; if I had a Siamese cat, I would call it Blenkinsop.” She caressed the name: “Blen-kin-sop.”

“Who was he?” Edward asked conciliatingly. The trouble
was, he could all too easily imagine Irina owning a Siamese cat called Blenkinsop and it wouldn’t be ridiculous at all.

“He was an acquaintance of the family’s,” Irina explained primly. “He was a business associate of my grandfather’s in Russia, and after the Revolution he went back to live in England, by the seaside. When I was about fourteen, my mother sent me to stay with Mr Blenkinsop, to learn English. It was the most wonderful month; I have never forgotten it.”

Two plates sparsely decorated with the elements of their
entrées
were set in front of them: each held half a dozen minutely arranged mouthfuls which symbolised rather than constituted a course. Edward’s depression over the meal deepened and he felt irritated when Irina exclaimed, with what seemed a quite artificial brightness, “
Ah,
comme c’est
joli!
”

“Why was it so wonderful staying with Mr Blenkinsop?” he asked. “What happened?”

“Well, it was my first time abroad alone. I felt right on the edge of adulthood; it was terribly exciting. And Mr Blenkinsop behaved to me as if I were an adult, a grown-up woman, and there weren’t sixty years separating us. Little things: he held the doors open for me, he helped me to put on my coat. No one had ever treated me like that before; I felt the belle of the ball. I think he had no notion really that I was still a child. He used to take me up to London to the theatre and to eat in restaurants and he behaved towards me just as if I were his partner; chocolates, compliments, flowers. Fourteen years old, imagine, I was in ecstasy!