Loretta Lawson 01 - A Masculine Ending Read online

  A MASCULINE ENDING

  Joan Smith

  Content

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 1

  It was just before midnight when Loretta’s train finally pulled into the Gare du Nord. It should have arrived two hours earlier, allowing time for an unhurried dinner before she set off in search of Andrew’s flat, but the French railway company had compounded the delay caused by the late running of the ferry by coming to an unexplained twenty-minute halt just outside Amiens. The night was hot and sticky, and the broken air-conditioning in Loretta’s carriage had not improved the tempers of her fellow passengers, several of them small children whose patience had worn out long before their feet touched French soil. The whole journey, far from being the pleasurable outing she had hoped for, had been dogged by petty irritations from the moment she discovered that, contrary to the information given in the timetable, neither the English nor the French train betrayed any sign of the promised dining-car.

  As she walked along the platform of the uncharacteristically quiet station, Loretta hoped she was not too late to find something to eat before setting off for the Left Bank. Andrew’s directions, although precise, had been accompanied by the warning that the flat was a little tricky to find, and she did not relish wandering the streets of an unfamiliar part of Paris on an empty stomach at getting on for one o’clock on Saturday morning. She headed purposefully out of the station.

  Accustomed to travelling alone, Loretta automatically adopted the precaution of walking with the air of someone who knows where she is going, a tried and tested method of discouraging unwanted attention from the sort of men who hang around stations. Across the road from the Gare du Nord, lights were blazing at a small brasserie, and she could see waiters deftly weaving in and out between tables; that restaurant, at least, was still bustling with life. She had last eaten there three or four years before, in the course of a weekend which combined business and pleasure; the business being a lecture she had given at a rather stuffy but prestigious institute, the pleasure an English politician with whom she had been conducting an intermittently satisfying affair. They had eaten at the little brasserie before taking the train back to England, she to her peaceful flat in north London, he to his elegant and unsuspecting wife in his Midlands constituency. The memory of previous visits to the city comforted her, investing its dark streets with an air of familiarity, and Loretta edged past the outdoor tables into the salon, surprised to feel her muscles relax as the door closed behind her. She realized she had been unusually tense since getting off the train, presumably due to the lateness of the hour.

  Loretta caught the eye of the head waiter who, swiftly and without fuss, showed her to a table in the recesses of the restaurant. Grateful that she had been refreshing her French in preparation for the meeting she was due to attend next day, she told him that her train had been late and she was anxious to eat quickly. He summoned a more junior waiter, from whom she ordered steak and a salad, and a glass of red wine. When he returned with the drink, she opened her pink plastic briefcase and took out several sheets of A4 on which was typed the paper she was to present at nine o’clock next morning – a ridiculously early hour, Loretta thought, at which to start a meeting of academics from several countries, including the United States. She could not help but feel that her paper, a feminist discussion on the nature of authorship, would reach more receptive minds a little later in the morning when everyone had had a chance to recover from the travelling they’d done the day before. But the organizers of the symposium, the French members of an international journal of feminist literary criticism, Fem Sap - the wit of whose title was rarely reflected in its content - were untroubled by such heretical thoughts. The conference, on recent developments in feminist thought, would not finish until six and even then, as the majority of those attending slipped away for a congenial evening in Paris, Loretta would be expected to attend a meeting of the full editorial collective.

  The meeting was ostensibly a routine affair, a discussion of papers to be commissioned and authors whose contributions should be sought, but Loretta was braced for one of those intemperate and robust arguments that occasionally disturbed the collective’s deliberations. Schisms arose endlessly among the various alliances formed by European and American feminists, and on this occasion she anticipated a heated exchange on how to deal with the problem of masculine grammatical forms. A group of feminist literature teachers from universities in the United States, backed by a handful of French academics, had come up with a proposal that the editorial policy of Fern Sap should challenge the inherent sexism of French and Italian, two of the three languages in which the journal accepted contributions, by refusing to use masculine endings of any sort. Every verb ending and all nouns, they argued, should be treated as feminine. Loretta, who lectured in English literature at one of the colleges that made up London University, conceded that what they were complaining about was unfair: the way in which masculine past participles were used for groups that included men and women was a historical anomaly. Nevertheless, she feared the change would bring with it horrible confusion, and there was a whole corpus of literature which would either have to be relegated to the dustbin, or mangled out of recognition, if the proposal was accepted. She took comfort in the thought that the radical position was unlikely to carry the day, and also that the English language did not suffer from anything like the same problem.

  Looking up from her paper for any sign that her meal was about to arrive - she had not eaten since breakfast in London that morning - Loretta became aware of the steady and appraising gaze of the man at the next table.

  ‘You are alone, Madame, as I am,’ he said in slightly accented English.

  At once, part of her mind registered two observations: that her French, grammatically correct as it was, betrayed her English origins, and that he had addressed her as Madame rather than Mademoiselle, a courtesy to her age, she presumed, since her wedding ring had been discarded long ago. The analytical part of her brain noted these details, but her predominant reaction was one of irritation, accompanied by a return of the tension she had felt on her arrival at the station.

  ‘I am alone, Monsieur, because that is how it suits me to be,’ she said firmly. She had learned the hard way that a clear rejection, impolite as it might seem, was the only way to deal with unwelcome advances.

  ‘Pardon me, Madame,’ he persisted, inclining his head towards her in a gesture intended to be at once apologetic and winning. ‘It is only that, in Paris, a woman as beautiful as yourself is rarely seen at this hour without a companion. I merely wished to extend to you the hospitality of my country by inviting you to join me.’

  Loretta regarded the speaker for a moment while she pondered her next move. He looked to be in his forties, but she guessed he was older. His dark hair was slightly touched with grey, his suit well if flashily cut - probably Italian, she thought. He had the air of a man used to giving orders, a company director perhaps, and she recognized that he would not be easily deterred. Her heart sank; she was tired, and depressed by the vicissitudes of her journey from London. She really could not face the fencing match which was bound to follow her civil reiteration that she was perfectly happy on her own.

  Then, a thought occurred to her. There was one move that would completely outflank him, if she could summon the courage to make it. She congratulated herself on her choice of travelling clot
hes; her baggy scarlet trousers and pink T-shirt, selected in deference to the unusually hot September weather, were far more in keeping with what she was about to say than her usual rather formal attire.

  ‘you’ve made a mistake, Monsieur,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘I prefer the company of women.’ The statement was not untrue in general terms, though not in the sexual sense in which she challenged him to take it. His eyes betrayed that she had succeeded in startling him and, for a moment, she thought her plan had worked, that he had been embarrassed into retreat by her directness. But then he rose from his seat, towered over her, and spat in her face.

  ‘Whore,’ he hissed, stalking off towards the door, where he paused to stuff a handful of notes into the pocket of a surprised young waiter. Loretta, frozen into immobility by this unexpected attack, could feel his saliva warm on her cheek as her mind turned over the single word he had uttered. Shocked and exhausted, the only thought in her head was his peculiar choice of insult: it was odd that he had accused her of being willing to sell her sexuality when his real complaint was that it was not for sale - or available on any terms, as far as he was concerned. It would have made more sense for him to have accused her of frigidity. How muddled men were about female sexuality, she thought, for a moment quite detached from her circumstances.

  She realized suddenly that she should wipe the spittle from her face and, at the same time, she became aware of a waiter at her elbow. Squirming with embarrassment, he offered her a large white napkin. Would Madame care to visit the bathroom? he was saying, such a thing to happen in our restaurant! Madame will be so kind as to accept our humble apologies, no question of her paying her bill after such an experience. Loretta found herself trembling, her heartbeat audible in her ears.

  ‘No, please, I don’t want anything to eat after all,’ she protested, speaking in English, unable to gather her wits enough to translate the simple phrase into French. The idea of eating made her feel sick. She stood up, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand, scattering the pages of her paper on the floor. Waiters scrambled to retrieve them, creating more confusion. She seized the pages from the hands thrusting towards her, stuffing them back into her briecase. Then she pushed her way through the small throng of interested onlookers and reached the door, the head waiter scurrying after her with even more apologies.

  Loretta remembered there was a taxi rank outside the station. She could not recall when the Métro stopped running but, in any case, a taxi offered the quickest means of escape from her unpleasant situation. She hastened across the road, narrowly avoiding a speeding car whose driver flung an incomprehensible insult at her from the window as he swerved by.

  ‘Rue Monge,’ she said, throwing herself into the back of the taxi at the front of the rank. The driver set off with such startling speed that Loretta turned to peer anxiously out of the rear window, seized by the fear that she had been followed. Surely her assailant from the restaurant had not lam in wait for her? she asked herself frantically. But there was no sign of pursuit and, recalling other pointlessly hectic taxi rides in foreign cities, she began to calm down. Her nerves, she concluded, were uncharacteristically stretched tonight.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the driver, who wanted to know the number in rue Monge she was looking for. In halting French - her mind was not yet functioning normally - she explained that it was actually a side-turning off rue Monge that she wanted, a street called rue Roland.

  ‘Rue Roland,’ repeated the driver in tones of disgust. ‘Je peux pas.’

  What on earth could be wrong with rue Roland? Loretta wondered. Andrew had not warned her that it was a oneway street, or that there was anything about it that might make access difficult. But she did not feel up to quizzing the taciturn driver. She sat back and looked out of the window in search of familiar landmarks that might render her journey less inhospitable.

  The taxi was crossing the river, although she did not know Paris well enough to recognize the bridge they were using. Its stone walls were*replete with graffiti: the same phrase had been spray-painted at regular intervals in carefully looped, peculiarly French handwriting. ‘Violeurs, nous vous castrerons’, Loretta read, admiring the attention to detail which had placed a comma after the first word. It was not a bad idea, she thought approvingly, only half aware that the sentiment was quite alien to her usual cast of mind.

  They were now travelling down a wide avenue flanked by grey stone buildings with blue slate roofs. Loretta saw the skeleton of a street market, its stalls bare and unwelcoming. Andrew had told her to look out for such a market just before rue Roland turned off the main thoroughfare. She was about to speak to the driver when the car came to a sudden halt next to what she took at first sight to be a lay-by.

  ‘Rue Roland,’ stated the driver, jerking his thumb out of the window. She peered anxiously from the taxi, and saw why the driver could not turn into rue Roland: the street was at the top of a wide flight of steps, about twenty feet higher than the road she was in. No wonder Andrew had warned her it was difficult to find; if she had been on foot, she probably would not have noticed that the little street was there. She might have searched rue Monge fruitlessly for half an hour. Andrew liked to credit himself with possessing a mischievous sense of humour but, on this occasion, she thought it could more accurately be described as malicious. It was just like him to give her detailed directions but miss out the one thing she really needed to know. But her sense of justice responded. Andrew had no way of guessing that she would arrive in such inauspicious circumstances. Thankful that she had at any rate been spared a hunt for rue Roland, Loretta got out of the taxi and overtipped the driver, receiving from him a non-committal grunt in return.

  She climbed the steps and found that rue Roland was wide enough to take a car, although anyone driving into it from the opposite end would find their exit blocked by the iron railings that topped the steps. The small street was not well lit, and the walls, far from being covered in sisterly graffiti, reflected a feud between political parties of the extreme left and right. ‘Le Pen Nazi’, the Communists had written, while the right had responded with lengthier insults in a French so vernacular that Loretta did not understand half of it. On either side of her, high buildings rose like cliffs; their lack of adornment and crumbling façades revealed the street to be an unexpectedly poor one for the area. A half-remembered classical image of combat to destruction between clashing cliffs struggled out of the recesses of memory; further evidence, she recognized, of her unusually fanciful state of mind. This sense of formless threat, of being under siege, was an unfamiliar one to Loretta and she began to wish she’d booked into a hotel, as she had intended, before she mentioned her trip to Andrew. But it was now much too late to go in search of alternative accommodation. She made out numbers 8 and 10 to her right - her destination, an elderly apartment block whose address was 18 rue Roland, must be on the same side. Now she was passing a high wall with a building set back behind it, presumably the school Andrew had told her to look out for. She could see no numbers on the doors of the next two buildings.

  As she stepped back to peer up into the darkness, she heard the sound of running feet and raised voices. Drawing back into the shadow of a doorway, she glimpsed a throng of people running across the opposite end of the street to rue Monge. They were gone as swiftly as they had appeared, but Loretta felt a renewed urgency about reaching the safety of the flat. She walked on, still looking for house numbers. Arriving at 22, she retraced her steps to what must be 18, although nothing about the heavy wooden double doors advertised the fact. She took out the keys loaned her by Andrew and tried the largest of the three which, he had said, belonged to the street door. When it failed to turn, she took it out and pushed the door with her hand out of sheer frustration. It swung open, already unlocked. She stepped into a dark hallway and fumbled for the light switch, discovering one of the push-button sort which turns itself off after thirty seconds.

  Loretta took in a curving, almost spiral
staircase made of worn wood before she was plunged into darkness again. Pushing the button a second time, she set off up the stairs for the fourth floor, the last part of the climb lit only by moonlight from the open window on each landing. She noticed that the layout of each floor was identical, three doors opening off the landings into flats. It was a steep climb, and she regretted the lack of a usable lift - Andrew had warned her that the block possessed only an old and creaky service lift, once the pride and joy of the long-vanished concierge but now used only by a few elderly residents who still depended on coal fires. On the fourth floor, she located another light switch and the illumination lasted long enough for her to spot the door bearing the name Gardner, as Andrew had instructed. She had no idea of Gardner’s identity, except that he or she was one of the people with whom Andrew shared the lease on the flat, but the name at least confirmed that she was in the right place. Her journey was nearly over.

  She had been told that there were two locks, both quite stiff: undo the top mortice lock before attempting the Yale, those were her instructions. She inserted a key into the top lock and tried to turn it, only to discover that it was already unlocked. The last visitor to the flat must have forgotten to double-lock the door, she presumed. The Yale key worked after a bit of jiggling in the lock, and Loretta stepped into the flat with a huge sigh of relief.

  She was in a long narrow room, the door she had come through set into the end of one of the longer walls. At the far side, moonlight streamed in from an uncurtained window. The room served as both living-room and kitchen, and she was standing in the cooking area; an old stone sink faced her, a very ancient waterheater presiding over it. Above the tap of the heater she could see a yellowing notice, written in large and emphatic letters. Putting her bags down, Loretta approached and read by moonlight the warning left by previous occupants. This machine is unreliable. It sometimes goes out. Sometimes there is a small explosion when the hot tap is turned on, so always stand back when doing this.’ It was not a promising start to her stay, and Loretta decided to put off a proper wash until the morning, when help would be at hand if the water heater chose to stage a large rather than a small explosion.