Lace (83 page)

Leaving, Lili stood on the steps outside the dentist’s door. An hour beforehand the snow-covered square had been empty, but now it was a heaving mass of unruly students waving placards
tacked on sticks. According to these, the students were protesting against the abrupt and forced resignation of a favourite left-wing professor, and they were all chanting “We want
Boulin!”

Nobody took the slightest notice of Lili, partly because she looked much as they did. When not in front of the camera, Lili rarely wore makeup and had the useful knack of being able to switch
off her high-voltage glamour and walk down the street unrecognised, in a beige raincoat and a drab headscarf pulled well forward and knotted under her chin.

The novocaine injection from the dentist had left her face feeling swollen and numb. She felt groggy and her eyes started to water in the wind as she gingerly moved down the steps, hanging on to
the rail. Suddenly she found herself pressed back against the stone building she had just left as a young man with a megaphone started shouting slogans and the students’ chant swelled into a
roar. Lili tried to push her way through to the street, but in the swaying crowd this was impossible and twice she was swept off her feet.

As the police started to spread out around the square, Lili pushed harder, surrounded by the student yells of
“A bas les flics! . . . enfant de putain . . . sale vache . . . salope . .
. sale con.”
Lili dropped her purse and found it impossible to pick up. Helpless and suddenly frightened, she tried to push harder toward the front of the swaying, shouting crowd.

She was jabbed hard in the chest by an elbow and then unexpectedly found herself in the front of the picket line, facing a dark line of cops who were removing their capes. The capes of the Paris
police force are weighted in the hem with several pounds of lead; judiciously swung, such a cape can break every bone in a man’s body and yet the agent cannot be said to be carrying a
weapon.

Suddenly the crowd behind Lili swayed forward then sideways, and she was thrown to the left against one of the banner poles; the rough edge of the wood caught her cheek, which started to bleed.
Lili staggered and to prevent herself from falling she clutched at the banner, which read
“Reinstate Boulin!”

It started to snow again, lightly.

The police charged.

The angry, shouting crowd fell back and Lili found herself struggling with a furious cop. She was suddenly more indignant than she was frightened. “
What
do you think you’re
doing? Stop hitting these kids!”

“Shut up!” said the cop, flinging Lili’s banner aside as he roughly started to drag her toward one of the black windowless vans into which angry, noisy students were being
pushed. Angrily, Lili fought back as a wail of sirens announced the arrival of the riot police, who tumbled out of their wired window buses wearing battledress, bullet-proof vests and gas masks.
Carrying riot shields, cans of teargas and flexible rubber truncheons, they quickly formed a line and started to advance on the crowd to Lili’s left as she continued to struggle with the cop.
“Vous faites une erreur
,”she gasped.
“Je ne suis pas une étudiante.”
As she flung her head back defiantly and glared at the man, her scarf fell back
from her head.

“I don’t care
who
you are! You’re a pack of filthy scum,” he yelled, as Lili kicked him on the ankle.

“Take your dirty hands off me!” she cried.

“
Merde!
You little bitch,” he shouted, grabbing Lili by a handful of her thick black hair and reaching for his handcuffs.

As he unbuttoned his fur-lined overcoat, Simon watched the scuffle from the windows of his apartment. The students had deliberately provoked the police and the police had
reacted in the way that French police always react. What else did the kids expect? . . . Wait a minute, he thought. . . . That woman reminded him of . . .

As she tossed her head and glared at the cop, her headscarf fell back and he realised that it was indeed Lili.

Simon ran for the door, leaped downstairs and fought his way across the square to Lili. He managed to insert himself between her twisted body and that of the cop, who still had Lili by the hair.
Above the noise of the crowd, Simon shouted, “Wait . . . there’s been a mistake, officer.”

“Ah, non, alors!
Fuck off or I’ll take you as well!”

Simon knew that French cops are generally accommodating if you treat them tactfully and are careful not to provoke them, so he spoke to the furious policeman as politely as if they were both in
a duchess’s drawing room.

“I hope you realise what you’re doing, officer,” he said. “You do understand that this is Lili, the actress.”

“Lili, my ass,” grunted the cop.

“No, officer, look again,” urged Simon. The cop looked sideways at Simon, calm in his fur-lined vicuna overcoat. Then he looked at Lili in her torn raincoat, her black disheveled
hair, her puffy face, swollen mouth and bleeding cheek, her nose and eyes red from the wind. She looked just like the rest of them, he thought. What the hell would a famous actress be doing in this
mob? Nevertheless, he paused to consider, the handcuffs dangling from his right hand. He’d better make sure before he snapped the cuffs on her, because after that he wouldn’t be able to
change his mind.

Simon said, “I would be happy to accompany this lady to the police station with you,” and he whipped off his coat, revealing his immaculately cut, pale gray Cerutti suit. He draped
the coat, minkside outward, around Lili’s shoulders. “
Smile
,” he managed to whisper as he did so. Reacting as if to Zimmer’s direction, Lili somehow managed to draw
herself up six inches and flash a gracious smile at the officer who had been trying to put the handcuffs on her. Simon, still behaving as if all three of them were in the foyer of the Ritz, pulled
out his visiting card and presented it to the officer, who looked at him again more carefully. Yes, he thought, this guy certainly
looks
like Simon Pont—he’d often seen him on
television—and his clothes were unmistakably expensive. He’d better not risk it.

He took his hands off Lili and muttered, “Well, you’d better get her out of here!”

Left shoulder leading, Simon forced his way through the swaying crowd, protecting Lili with his body and leaving the puzzled-looking policeman standing with handcuffs in one hand and
Simon’s visiting card in the other.

Once inside his first floor apartment, Lili started to shake again from the tension. “My God, Simon, it was terrifying when they charged!” She couldn’t talk properly because
her mouth was still swollen.

Simon gently lifted the coat from her shoulders. “
What
were you doing down there?”

“Leaving your dentist. I was in there for over an hour. Then before I knew what was happening, I found myself in the middle of that mob and . . . I was helpless . . . I couldn’t
understand what was happening. Then suddenly that cop attacked me.” Lili caught sight of herself in the cherub-encrusted hall mirror. “No wonder he didn’t recognise me! I look
terrible.”

“You don’t to me. To me, you look wonderful.”

Lili peered at herself. “I think I’ve got a black eye. Zimmer will kill me on Monday . . . I don’t know how you can say I look wonderful, Simon!”

He gave a Gallic shrug of the shoulders. “I like you without makeup. I like seeing the real you.” He added, “You ought to have some tea; sweet tea is how to treat shock.
Let’s go to the kitchen.”

He took her hand and led her through his apartment. She noticed the rich, dark colours, the book-lined corridors, the antique horse portraits, the cozy, luxurious warmth.

The kitchen, gleaming with copper saucepans and smelling of fresh herbs, was a country-style kitchen executed by John Stefanidis for a price that no peasant could afford. Simon pulled a walnut
rocking chair forward. “Sit down and let me wash the blood off your cheek.”

Lili collapsed onto the chair. “I feel awful,” she snuffled. The Charvet silk handkerchief was whipped out of Simon’s breast pocket. A runny nose merely made Lili look more
vulnerable and appealing. He liked the idea that very few people had seen her so defenseless, he thought, as he boiled the kettle and then served tea at one end of the long, pine harvest table.

“I don’t take sugar.”

“You do today. Four lumps.”

Reluctantly, Lili reached forward for the sugar bowl at the same time as Simon reached forward to push it toward her, and for a moment their hands met. Lili almost gasped as she felt the light
touch of his warm flesh, unexpected and thrilling. Incredulous, her swollen lips slightly apart, she stared up at him. Simon stared back at her in the same way, a blank look of surprise on both
their faces. Then Lili’s caution about men got the better of her and she jumped to her feet. She didn’t want to get involved with anyone. Clumsily, she started to button up her
raincoat. “I really ought to get back home and go to . . .”

Simon walked across to the window and stared out of it with his hands in his pockets and his back to her. “Yes, of course, you must go,” he said.

Lili sat down again. Then she stood up again. He turned from the window and she took a step toward him, her hand automatically outstretched to say good-bye, as is the French custom.

Simon took her hand. But he didn’t let it go.

As Lili nervously tried to pull her hand away, she said jokingly, “I can’t leave without my hand, Simon.”

“You can leave without it or stay with it.”

F
ROST HAD LEFT
a pattern of white lace that veiled the gray rooftops of Paris beyond the bedroom window. Snow started to
fall, the scene grew paler and less distinct. Inside the bedroom Simon gently tickled Lili’s toes, often a prelude to his lovemaking. For two years now they had lived together here in her
flat in peace and relative quiet. Never in his life had Simon known such calm happiness. To his astonishment he found Lili undemanding. Apart from moments of sudden rage when she saw some lie
printed about herself in the papers, Lili was quiet and liked a quiet life. They read a lot and listened to music, and Lili still painted on Sundays.

Simon wiggled Lili’s left little toe. He started to stroke her thighs, to feel the little dark forest. On Sunday mornings he liked to wake her like that, and she loved to drift back to
life, conscious of erotic sensations that slowly deepened into passion. Now, eyes still closed, she fumbled sleepily for him.

Later he brought in a tray of coffee. Lili sat up, gazing as she did so at a small oil painting that hung between the two windows opposite the vast cream bed. It was a picture of a twisting
mountain river that she had bought the week before from Paradis in the rue Jacob.

“I’m not sure I like that, hanging there,” she pondered. “It’s too small to see from this distance, but it’s so pretty. It reminds me of the river when I was
a child at home; you couldn’t see it from our chalet because it was in a deep gorge and we weren’t allowed to go there, but my brother Roger often took me. We used to catch trout there
and splash in the shallows.”

Her voice softened as, holding her bowl of coffee in both hands, she gazed at the picture opposite the bed. “There was a rickety old suspension bridge over it; the water was very deep in
the middle, always ice-cold and very clear, always twisting and turning, always rushing and noisy, especially in the spring when the snow was melting on the mountains.” She took a sip of the
café au lait, not taking her eyes from the picture. “It was always prettiest in the early morning when the mountain slopes were covered with silver mist and the far hills just a smudge
against the sky.” She shut her eyes and smiled. “It used to be very quiet, except for the rushing water and the whine of the sawmill in the valley, cutting pine planks and stacking
them, ready to metamorphize into another little chalet in no time at all.”

“I wonder if you realise how constantly you dwell on the past,” Simon said, with mild irritation. “Why aren’t you thinking of building a future with
me?
We could
build our own chalet in Switzerland with the planks from that sawmill. And you could start your own family, instead of always harking back to the one you lost. We’ve been together nearly two
years now, and I’m damned if I understand why you won’t marry me.”

“Such an old-fashioned idea.”

“And a good one. I want a commitment, Lili. It’s 1978, I’m thirty-five and I want children. What puzzles me is that I know
you
do as well. Yet time and again
you’ve wriggled out of talking about this. Is it that you don’t love me? That you don’t believe I love you? That you don’t want to commit yourself because you’re
afraid that if you do, I’ll dominate you like Serge and Stiarkoz and that bastard Abdullah?”

“No, it’s not that.” She was hesitant. “It sounds so silly. I just don’t feel
settled
. You know where
you
belong, but I don’t” She put the
empty coffee bowl back on the tray. “Most women long to have a baby by the man they love and I’m no exception, Simon.” She looked at him—a sad, long look. “A baby
would be a new life, my rebirth, a wiping-out of the pain of the past, a fresh start with a family of my own.
Don’t think I don’t want that. I long for it.
But how can I have a
baby, how can I take on such a responsibility, when I’m so unsure of myself, when I don’t know who I am? I want my baby to feel rooted, settled. So I want to wait until this
restlessness of mine has passed.” Her voice shook, then hardened. “But it hasn’t and sometimes I’m afraid it won’t. I don’t think it will disappear until I know
who my parents are. And although I desperately long to know, at the same time I’m frightened of finding out. Because they might be—oh, unpleasant in some nasty way. After all, they
abandoned me.” She sighed. “Anyway, it’s probably impossible to trace them. It’s hopeless.”

Simon said thoughtfully, “No, I’m sure I can fix it for you—or at any rate, I’ll try. . . . At least if you found your real parents, you might stop looking for substitute
parents in almost everyone you meet. That’s why you’re so vulnerable to these exploiters you inevitably attract.” He drained his own bowl of coffee, put it down and said, “A
man has only to say something in a reassuringly avuncular voice and you think he’s Santa Claus; you’ll sign any paper he puts before you. But Santa Claus doesn’t exist, so stop
looking for him, Lili.”