Autumn In Paris, With The Visit Of M. Bachelier

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Autumn In Paris, With The Visit Of M. Bachelier

October 15 Not. Well it has been a busy term and Christmas is almost upon us. Amongst our other activities Mireille and I have managed to fit in a certain amount of Shopping. She’s a bit shorter than me, and slim with dark hair and very pale skin while my skin tends towards the creamier side, I suppose. So we can’t swap absolutely everything, and I must admit that la robe BTBG de Grannie looks miles better on her than on me so I’ve given it to her permanently. Meanwhile my adorable scarlet Scottie brooch is taking pride of place on other garments. Very occasionally I let her borrow it for a special treat, as she adores it, too. Tante Thérèse has very kindly fixed a safety chain on it and put a proper catch on it into the bargain, tho noting that this is the sort of stuff you can buy off street vendors in Paris and worth nothing. So I pointed out that in thirty years’ time it would undoubtedly be Collectible and she had to laugh, she isn’t all bad by any means.

    As I say Shopping was definitely on the agenda and too bad that the results were possibly not what all the other students were wearing. (Tees and jeans in dull dark colours would sum it up, topped by dull dark tricots and heavy padded anoraks in the colder months, not thrilling.) And as Dad was now sending regular conscience money I had quite a bit to spend. Added to which when we ran special errands Tante Thérèse or Oncle Albert would very kindly tip us. Not much but it helped. Added to added to which, altho everybody knows Les Puces there are other places where recycled gear is available—in Britain they’d be called op shops. Jolly good!

    So we were able to grace the crisp Paris autumn duly kitted out. We looked so good that I emailed a photo to Egg. (Taken by the obliging Jean-Louis, not a selfie, thanks.) Good old Egg really appreciated it, he emailed back: “Spiffing! Good show, girls!” Plus one of him, Flossie and Crumpy leaning on Magdalen Bridge grinning like anything in their Junior Drones gear, except that Flossie was in his alternative Cambridge half-blue blazer in the wide stripes of palest blue and cream. Alysse had taken the pic and Egg was, he said when I phoned to thank him, very glad to tell me that Crumpy still seemed very interested and in fact had become quite uxorious in his manner. And she seemed to reciprocate. Well hooray! We do keep in touch but hers are usually about obscure points of obscure Classical authors or descriptions of the old buildings of Oxford. Alas, to me one old greyish stone mausoleum is much like another except that some might have pointy hats and some not. Which I kindly didn’t mention.

    And, the Egg added on a wry note, Alysse wasn’t, as had been feared at one stage, at all taken in by Flossie and “his usual flim-flam.” –Yes, scores of them, old chum, he confirmed. All panting to be his little body-slaves. Naturally he only condescended to notice the best-looking, cleanest and best-dressed of them, so long as their daddies had plenty of the folding stuff.

    Yes, well one had to conclude that was F. Nightingale, Esq. and ever had been.

    On second thoughts I emailed Egg to ask if Flossie was overdoing it and he replied soothingly: “No more than usual. Going it a bit, true, but not neglecting his swot.”

    Good old Egg. He’s so decent. It would be far, far more sensible of one to fall heavily for him rather than for a certain Col. John R., wouldn’t it? Unfortunately one can’t manage or manipulate these things.

    And at least Flossie was well out of Mireille’s orbit.

    The term was not without its minor crises, life’s like that. Well more so if you’re a LeBec from the Passage Jacob, true. Naturally Mireille and I didn’t live in each other’s pockets, for one thing our courses didn’t coincide. And of course Bean was quite a long way off during the day doing his viticulture quals, tho very accessible by the Métro (not that I really wanted to hear about the changes).

    So one day, as I didn’t have a class, I agreed to carry out a rather special errand for Tante Thérèse which entailed looking rather more grown-up and sophisticated than—according to her—I usually looked. And I had thought I was doing jolly well with my op shop gear! Bother.

    So she chose the gear herself and did my hair and made me up accordingly.

    Gosh. I looked more like Mum than me!

    Tante Thérèse thought so, too. “The only good thing about your mother,” she informed me grimly, “is her looks. And I dare say they won’t last much longer,” she added with huge satisfaction.

    “Not if she keeps knocking back the gin, no,” I agreed.

    “Gin? O, là, là!”—Mother’s Ruin, eh? Literally, in this instance, come to think of it.—“But today you must look more like her, mon ange,” she ordained.

    Okay, so be it.

    So I sallied forth looking very sophisticated in the direction of le Boulevard Saint Germain…

    I was rather early so I decided to have a coffee somewhere where I wasn't expected. It’s such a very nice area that one can’t really go wrong, if one stays on or very close to the boulevard, so I chose a large café that looked innocent enough, and certainly more than up-market enough to do my outfit justice. There were already quite a few pre-lunch drinkers sitting outside but it was a little chilly, so I went inside and sat down. My mistake.

    I was sipping my coffee peacefully and looking blankly out at the street when an amused male voice said: “Bonjour, Mlle Mélisande LeBec.”

    I looked round quickly, and froze. Commissaire Martineau! And I had the goods on me!

    He gave me what I couldn’t kid myself wasn’t a too-bland smile.

    “Bonjour, M. le Commissaire,” I managed numbly. “I didn’t see you come in.”

    “No, I was sitting over in the far corner,” he replied smoothly. “I rather like this place. –May I sit down?”

    “Yes, of course,” I agreed numbly. Oh, God.

    “You’re looking very smart today,” he said, still smiling. Well he wasn’t old, and a good-looking man, rather chiselled features, slim figure, but my God!

    “Thank you,” I said feebly. Please, Almighty, let the sky fall and I will believe in You forever!

    The sky didn’t fall and he went on: “Waiting for someone, are you?”

    Well, not there, no, thank all the gods that be or ever were!

    “No, it was a bit chilly so I just popped in for a coffee,” I explained idiotically.

    “Then may I offer you some lunch?” –Smiling more than ever.

    Oh, shit.

    “No, thanks very much, but I can’t stay.” –What the Hell was I going to do? Lead him straight to the contacts?

    “That’s a pity, it’s not often I get to have lunch with a pretty girl!” he said with a little laugh. “Could I possibly take a raincheck?” –He’d used the English or rather the American word: for a moment I was blank.

    “Un quoi? Oh—‘a raincheck’.” –Was he on the level? The family would probably kill me if I accepted. On the other hand… Well one never knows, does one, and there is a longstanding rumour to the effect that they relax so much in bed that they spill the beans because the little woman doesn’t count. Um, not that I was specifically proposing to sleep with Commissaire Martineau, but realistically there was nothing against it: he was clean and very presentable, and physically very much my type, and I needed some practice.

October 20 Not. Continuing straight on: On the other hand again he was almost undoubtedly thinking that if he could get me into bed he could persuade me to spill the LeBec secrets. Yes, that’d be it! And quite probably he did fancy me, a chap can’t fake that slight flush along the cheekbones and the brightness of the eyes. But imagining a LeBec was going to talk? Delusional!

    “Hé bien…” I said hesitantly, “I don’t think my relations would like it, they seem to have taken a dislike to you. I can’t see why; I mean they must realise that you understand it’s not their fault if they get a suspicious-looking character or two in the restaurant. It’s only common sense that you’d want to keep an eye on the place. But Oncle Albert seems absolutely paranoid about you. Well maybe he doesn’t like the police because one of his cousins, the one that’s poor Charles-Xavier’s dad, is in prison, but on the other hand,”—hoping this was sounding convincing and that I wasn’t babbling too much—“they all feel that that particular cousin has disgraced the family and won’t have his name mentioned.”

    “Really?”

    I nodded hard, looking—I hoped—very innocent. “Yes. I tried sympathising with Charles-Xavier and he told me to shut up because they don’t like it talked about.”

    “You surprise me,” he murmured. “No, well, I’m sure you’re right!” he added quickly, smiling reassuringly. (He thought.) “So how about this raincheck, Mélisande? –May I call you Mélisande?” he added, still using the polite “vous”, golly.

    “Yes of course,” I agreed. “Or ‘Mel’ if you prefer. What’s your name?”

    “It’s Raimond, Mel,” he replied.

    I couldn’t help smiling. “Nice name. Well okay, Raimond, a ‘raincheck’, then!”

    “Great. May I phone you?”

    Well why not? No doubt he and his cohorts had my mobile number anyway, which is why I never say anything Significant over it, so to speak.

    So it was agreed and he said he supposed he’d better get back to work and I said It’d be further to go these days, wouldn’t it, they weren’t at the Quai des Orfèvres any more, were they, and he made a face and said No, that was right, and his lot hated the new building, tho they had a lot more room, of course.

    “Surely it must slow you down, when you have to rush off to a crime scene? I mean, in those interminable Maigret stories they were always rushing off.”

    His eyes twinkled. “They were, weren’t they? It’s not too bad up in the dix-septième. At least we don’t have to struggle with the traffic jams in the centre.”

    It’d depend where the crime was, wouldn’t it? I didn’t say so.

   He got up, smiling terrifically, saying he would definitely be in touch and he’d look forward to it. Ending on a chummy note: “Ciao, Mel!”

    “Ciao, Raimond,” I replied, trying to smile as much as he was.

    … Help.

    The waiter resurfaced—showed that I was in an up-market place, all right—and asked if I’d like to order lunch, but I wouldn’t. l was tempted to have another coffee but that first one didn’t seem to have sharpened my wits so I just ordered a cup of tea. The waiter seemed taken aback but agreed “Un thé,” and went off to get it.

    When it came I just drank it numbly. I couldn’t have said if it was tea, coffee, or hemlock, I wasn’t even focusing, everything seemed sort of unreal, mental pictures of Raimond Martineau kept interfering with the real views around me of people chatting or sipping or starting on their lunches and my feet were definitely not connecting with anything, let alone the floor…

    Eventually I made up my mind and rang Tante Thérèse. On my mobile. On her mobile, too. Okay, Commissaire Raimond Martineau and your little pals who are plugged into the ether, get this!

    “Salut, Tante Thérèse, c’est moi, Mel! You’ll never guess who I just bumped into!” I said with a giggle.

    “Eugh… where are, you, mon ange?” she asked in a hollow voice.

    I told her the name of the up-market café, it being conveniently printed on their spanking-clean up-market lunch menu right in front of me, and she said—I could hear the sag of relief: “I see. Very nice. So who was it that you bumped into?”

    “The policeman who visited the Resto LeBec, Commissaire Martineau. He’s very good-looking, isn’t he? I can’t see why you and the others don’t like him. He’s really nice: we had a lovely chat and he told me they don’t like their new building up in the dix-septième.”

    “I see… Listen, mon chéri, I was just going to ring you: I can’t meet you for our shopping expedition after all, I’m afraid; so you just have some lunch, okay?”

    “But I was looking forward to going shopping with you, Tante Thérèse!”

    “We’ll go another time. Now, get yourself some nice lunch. Eugh—not where you are, perhaps, mon chou, it is a lovely place but it’s rather dear.”

    “Oh,” I said sadly. “Well okay, I’ll try somewhere else. –If I’d known,” I added with a giggle, “I could have had lunch here with M. Martineau, because he asked me!”

    “Comment?” she said dazedly. Oops, I’d gone too far.

    “Yes, truly. He was very polite, I mean it wasn’t a pass or anything.”

    “I see. Well of course it’s a very respectable profession and one can see that he’s a nicely brought-up young man. And quite well paid, and making commissaire at his age, you know, is very good.”

    “Is it?”

    “Of course, mon ange!” she said with a laugh, totally herself again. “Now, off you go, have a good lunch—and don’t dawdle in the cold, Marc-Antoine says the wind is really getting up and the barometer’s dropping.”

    “Okay, then. And you promise we can go shopping another day?”

    “Yes, I said so. A bientôt, mon chéri!”

    “Ciao, Tante Thérèse.” And I hung up, put the phone away in my capacious handbag, left some money for the bill, and departed.

    Back on the boulevard I looked round vaguely and indecisively, and then wandered off seemingly at random to look for another café…

    One can say this for Tante Thérèse: she can think on her feet. And that bit about him being a good catch, which was of course the sub-text, was really, really good!

    And at the appointed rendezvous, having wandered in still looking vague, I met le mec who would collect the goods.

    Le mec was accompanied by son nana, as predicted, but in actual fact neither of them lived up to, or rather down to, these slang expressions. They were both very well dressed. And, it turned out, very well-spoken. So perhaps it was their trade, so to speak, which had prompted Tante Thérèse to use the somewhat pejorative appellations.

    “It’s lovely to meet you at last, Mlle Dupont,” he said.

    Yes well: nobody was kidding nobody, but never mind, there could well be listening ears. The waiters, for one: no matter how fancy the café, and this one was quite glitzy, their ears are always flapping, on the look-out for saleable commodities, so to speak. Which is one of the reasons why, if the bill says “Service compris”, one should take it at its word and not award the dashed little blighters an extra tip.

    “You too, M. and Mme Dupont, after only connecting through the Internet because of our names!” I said with a laugh.

    “Yes indeed,” she agreed eagerly, picking up her cue with no trouble. “I’m Madeleine, of course.” –She would be: there must be a million of those in France.

    “And I’m André,” he added nicely. –Ditto.

    “Anne-Marie,” I replied, smiling. –Five million.

    And with that sorted out, we decided on an apéro before lunch; and perhaps you girls would like to pop off to freshen up first? André suggested.

    Of course we would, so off we popped to the Ladies’ with our huge handbags…

    “Le livre que je vous ai promis,” I explained, handing the book over.

    She thanked me politely, it was so nice of me to have remembered. And I really shouldn’t have bothered to wrap it so prettily!

    And we duly had a pee, washed our hands, checked our make-up and tidied our hair, and she admired the outfit and I admired hers—real Parisian chic, not overdone—and back we went for a nice lunch.

    But alas, André had just been on the phone to his office and they’d been frantically trying to reach him, he’d had his mobile switched off: his maman had been taken ill. So of course they had to hurry off—

    Phew!

    I didn’t really feel like eating after all that, tho I did wonder idly what copain he’d got to pretend to be the office. And whether the mobile was actually a burner. His and the copain’s, come to think of it.

    So I just had the pâté from the hors d’oeuvre list, and a glass of Perrier: somehow I felt that if I had alcohol I might just sit there drinking for the rest of the afternoon…

    By the time I staggered out onto the pavement I couldn’t even remember what direction the nearest Métro station was in, let alone which line to take, but lo! There was le beauf’ de Michel with his taxi just pulling in!

    So I fell into it and the reliable beauf’ took me straight home. As straight as was possible, given the Paris traffic. I began to see why the Police judiciaire’s move to the dix-septième possibly hadn’t been so misguided after all.

October 26 Not. Continuing: Oncle Albert forced a brandy on me the minute I got in, followed by a loud bawling out for poor Tante Thérèse. Even tho no-one could possibly have guessed that the very person in all of Paris that I shouldn’t bump into today would be right there in the café I walked into by sheer chance.

    Mischance, yes.

    Well Raimond Martineau’s suggestion of a date indicated the chap was either keen or he was Spying On Us, as the entire family, including young Colas, in fact especially young Colas, didn’t neglect to inform yours truly. And I was warned sternly to watch my every word and not assume he was on the level every single instant I was with him.

    Mireille, who has very nice instincts, having been brought up right by a provincial maman, had the shudders at the thought of having to deceive him and equally at his possibly deceiving me. I pointed out how attractive he was—and clean, definitely a plus, after the scruffy students we were surrounded by at the university. But she still couldn’t get past its being so underhand.

    The valiant Colas, on the other hand, offered to come on the date with me!

    “What as, a chaperone?” I croaked.

    Oops, he didn’t understand that word: he glared at me.

    Well he’s not much older than Bean Minor, so I didn’t flatten him. “Colas, what excuse could I make?” I asked weakly.

    “You could say,” he said, the shrewd brown eyes narrowing horribly, “that the school’s having a classless day or the teachers are on strike!”

    “Listen, you brilliant brain,” I sighed, “he’s a cop, he has ways of checking your story.”

    “Um… Go out with him in the weekend and we’ll tell him that they’re too busy at the resto to keep an eye on me!”

    “That’d work if you were two, Colas,” I sighed.

    He scowled.

    “Um… Okay, we’ll make it the weekend and a treat that I’ve promised you and i can’t let you down. That do?”

    Brightening, he assured me that it would!

    So when Raimond rang up all eager, I said that the one day I was free was Sunday and I’d promised to take Colas to the Jardin des Plantes (his choice).

    He gave his nice laugh and said of course we could go there, no problem, et tout et tout. I couldn’t tell whether he was actually annoyed or not. Bother.

    So we went.

    … “Why does he want to see the cactus house?” hissed Raimond, his very attractive grey eyes bulging.

    I shrugged. “He’s suddenly got keen on the things.”

    “I thought he’d want to see the zoo animals,” he said weakly.

    That’s what I’d thought, too.

    So we followed Colas into the cactus display…

    Yes, well. Prickly, eh? Some of them hairy, too. The tall ones were impressive, yes, the kid was right about that. Tho I had an idea that in the Sonoran Desert or thereabouts they grow even taller. Oh, well.

    … “Sorry, Raimond,” I said feebly as we reached home at long last and Colas rushed excitedly inside to tell the family all about it. And to display the cactus in a pot which the misguided Raimond had bought him at the shop which the dashed kid just happened to know would be open today and did have cactuses. Or it is cacti in English? I never know.

    “Don’t apologise, Mel!” the good-natured flic replied with a laugh. “I enjoyed it! Tho I may have nightmares about huge prickly green giants reaching out for me with their spiky arms tonight— Merde! Sorry!” he gasped as I winced.

    “No, it’s okay,” I said weakly. “They are rather like that, aren’t they?”

    “Ouais! So shall we try for another date?” he suggested, smiling eagerly. When he smiles his eyes crinkle up in a very attractive way on which he doesn’t attempt to capitalise, or on any other of his undoubted attractions, unlike some.

    I thought we could try again, so we did. Lunch. Then a dinner.

    Then another dinner and that went so well that in fact I ended up not coming home at all that night…

    Mireille thinks I’m out of my tree, of course, and all the relatives (except the Bean, who knows me better than they do) go round predicting doom, as I’m sure to let something out inadvertently.

    Meanwhile the only things that have been let out inadvertently have been riveting snippets of information about how the flics have almost caught So-and-So who they’re sure robbed that épicerie in the 19ième, and almost caught the voyous responsible for a smash and grab on a harmless Viniprix up near the Périphérique, and almost caught the graffiti genius who defaced the bridge over the canal somewhere up in, I think, the 19ième again—not that far south of the said Périphérique if one looks at the map.

    Yes, okay, Oncle Albert, that area is full of crime and okay, I will not go up there by myself at night. Or ever? Okay, I’m easy. True, Marc-Antoine and Charles-Xavier had several chums who live up the Rue d’Aubervilliers which if one looks at the map… Never mind.

    “It’s all grist to the mill, as they say in English, Oncle Albert,” I pointed out.

    “Hein?”

    Old Oncle Maurice, long since returned from his stint delivering Bean Minor to John in London, at this grunted: “I never heard them say that,” but we managed to ignore him and I explained to Oncle Albert what it meant.

    “Okay, I suppose one never knows what may come in handy…” he sighed. “Just watch yourself, that’s all.”

    I am! I do! I am a LeBec, after all!

    “And just do us a favour,” added old Oncle Alphonse.

    “Yes?” I quavered. The last favour done for him had been A Very Near-Run Thing. But fortunately the flic in question had been fat and slow, they spend too much time sitting in their cars these days, and I’m slim and fast. Also what I was wearing had never seen the light of day in or near the Passage Jacob: that immense area of toilets at Métro Concorde is wonderfully useful.

    “If he tries to buy the kid another of them spiky things, stop him,” he grunted.

    “Oh!” I laughed. Colas’s little attic room was now full of cactuses/cacti in pots and they’d started encroaching on the kitchen, tho so far his efforts to put one on each table in the restaurant had been foiled. Did we want to become known as “Le Resto Cactus?” No!

    “I did try stopping him once, but then he tried to foist a bunch of hugely expensive flowers on me.”

    The old man shrugged and made a rude comment.

    “He’s all right,” I said mildly.

    “Just watch it,” he advised heavily.

    Yes! I am! For Heaven’s sake!

    “And what about your swot?” demanded Oncle Maurice out of the blue.

    “Yes, what about it?” agreed Oncle Alphonse. Both old men glared at me.

    “Far from distracting me, he’s the sort of super-conscientious chap that approves of swotting and believes in passing exams and getting the piece of paper et tout et tout.”

    They sniffed but seemed mollified.

October 31 Not. Continuing: Well as the term wore on I started to wonder if Raimond was finding it a bit odd that he hadn’t been invited to a family meal, but on the other hand perhaps not. Tho he had taken me to lunch with his maman, carefully not explaining about my blood relatives other than to admit that I was one of the family from the Château LeBec. Which went down rather well. She seemed a pleasant enough, boring middle-class woman, very ambitious for him. And was glad to see that altho I was doing a degree I didn’t dress like a scruffy student. Er, yes. Okay. The lunch was very unexciting and she doesn’t believe in drinking wine at that hour of the day. Hard to believe one was in la belle France. However, Raimond seemed to think it had all gone well.

    Personally I was pretty much chilled to the bone: was that the sort of life he envisioned himself settling down to? Ugh! Tho he doesn’t live with her, he’s got quite a decent flat, decorated by himself very tastefully. Nothing extreme, and a few nice old bits and bobs that counteract the rather null modern stuff.

    And he’s got a sense of humour. I must say it’d be very boring going round with a chap that didn’t have.

    He said one evening as we were sipping a belated nip of Cognac: “You know, Mel mon chéri, every time I think of us together I see Colas’s blessed cactuses!”

    Help, was that an epitaph for a relationship?

    “Pas toi?” he added, grinning like anything.

    Er… “Okay, that day at the Jardin des Plantes has sort of stayed with me,” I admitted.

    “Ouais!” He went off in a roar of laughter.

    So maybe it didn’t mean anything after all.

    The time of the eagerly-awaited visit of M. Bachelier was almost upon us, as the weather became distinctly frostier, the street vendors of chestnuts and horrid charred sweetcorn multiplied on the grands boulevards in the early evenings, and the Bean started mentally allocating rooms to the Junior Drones who’d be coming over in December—completely mentally, actually: with the aunts on the job he wouldn’t have any say in the matter.

    So Tante Thérèse decided she and I had better go shopping without delay, the more so as, whatever I might say (I hadn’t said a word), the flic would not have forgotten that when I phoned her from the café on the Boulevard Saint G. she’d promised we would!

    Er… had she? Oh, yes, so she had. Tho I didn’t quite see why this M. Bachelier merited a search for new garments at the grandes surfaces. (Proper Shopping, yes.)

    Horrified gasps from the relatives as I mentioned this point. M. Bachelier was an American! From California!

    Eh? They loathed Americans, what were they on about?

    But you see, the family was French!

    That would figure, it was a French name. But what was so special about him?

    It turned out that he was the descendant of one of the three Jewish families that the LeBecs had hidden in the cellars during the War.

    One family had returned to the quartier, les Feinstein. Their descendants live in the Rue de l’Échiquier, on the far side of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, only five minutes’ walk away (or ten if the traffic’s heavy). Old M. Feinstein, who’s in his seventies, and the last remaining son of the family who were hidden, is a furrier. It was a traditional trade, the district is the old quartier des peletiers, and altho real furs are no longer with-it, one or two old boys are still hanging on here and there in the quartier. But the younger generations are not in the trade. One of M. Feinstein’s sons is a banker, he doesn’t live in the quartier, he’s gone up in the world. The son and daughter-in-law who live with him run a dress shop nearby on the grands boulevards, but their son, who’s in his early twenties, is a lawyer. Their daughter, Marine, works in the shop when she can fit it in, but she’s doing her accountancy quals., she wants to be an accountant and already has a boyfriend in that profession who is doing very well for himself in a big accountancy firm.

    The second family, les Sieff, emigrated to Israel. The old grandmother had wanted to die there, and the son and daughter-in-law decided it’d be a new start for their two kids, a boy and a girl. Only the daughter was still living by this time, a very old lady who still wrote regularly to the LeBecs. Her children and grandchildren were now working their family farm, which produced oranges and avocados, and they sent a crate of them to the LeBecs every Christmas. Even tho of course they themselves weren’t Christians. Lovely people. One could only hope they’d be all right and that the farm would never be attacked by crazed Hamas terrorists. Not that one could blame the dispossessed Palestinians, really. But the sensible thing would be for both sides just to say Well that’s history, and get on with it, trading with each other and helping each other to prosper and offering job opportunities on both sides of the border. Only when were human beings sensible? Oh, dear. But at least so far the lovely Sieffs had been okay.

    The Bacheliers were originally from Russia, escaping to France during one of the many 19th-century pogroms. Their name of course hadn’t been Bachelier at all but they’d had enough of being persecuted and so changed it to something French. The story was that the then head of the family had seen the name over a shop and fancied it, tho whether that was apocryphal, goodness knows. Anyway they’d been Bachelier ever since, but that sort of thing didn’t stop the Nazis, did it? During the War the family had consisted of two grandparents, two parents and three young children, a girl and two boys. At the Liberation the little girl was seven, and couldn’t remember anything but living in the cellar, poor mite, and the boys were twelve and fourteen.

    The parents and grandparents voted for America and eventually ended up in California. M. Bachelier, the father, had been a dentist, but he gave up trying to get his qualifications accepted in America and he, his wife, and his father got what jobs they could and saved up madly until they could afford to buy some land in the Napa Valley. Where they nearly starved but grimly got on with planting grapevines and, to earn a crust until the vines matured, lettuces, with which they did quite well. The eldest boy, Michel, had always been disappointed that he hadn’t been able to fight during the War, and as soon as he graduated from high school joined the U.S. Air Force. He was in it for ages and got to be a Major: at one stage they sent over a lot of photos of him in his uniform.

    All three of that generation have gone now, and the Bacheliers currently running the vineyard and several other profitable ventures are the sons and grandsons of Michel and the second brother, Jules. They’ve always kept in touch with the LeBecs, and the current Michael Bachelier, a man in his fifties who’s a prosperous manufacturing jeweller in San Francisco, does a fair amount of business with or through Oncle Albert.

    The M. Bachelier who was due to arrive in early November was a nephew of Michael and a grandson of the patriarch currently running the vineyard (who I must say sounded a bit like a male version of Grannie). The LeBecs had met him a couple of times before, he’d be in his early thirties now. His first name was Carter, was that a very common first name in English?

    Er… no. Possibly in America, however. And what did he do?

    He was a qualified lawyer but he worked as a financial advisor and was extremely successful. Very young to have done so well for himself. He handled all their investments for both the vineyard Bacheliers and his Uncle Michael, et tout et tout…

    Oh really? Light began dimly to filter through.

    He was divorced, Tante Louise added, not quite meeting my eye and trying to sound casual.

    That was right, agreed Tante Thérèse. No children. It had been a mistake: one of those silly boy-and-girl romances the Americans went in for, marrying while they were still at college.

    Uh-huh. In other words he was a bit of an idiot. And they could drop as many hints as they liked, nothing would persuade me to live in America. Let alone with anyone who’d been silly enough to believe that a thing with a fellow student could possibly last. They’d do better to award him to Mireille. Not that she fancied living in America, either.

    So naturally one had to look one’s best, one didn’t want to let France down (Tante Thérèse actually had the gall to say that) in front of an American!

    So why was Mireille being spared? Really, she needed a well-off American husband much more than I did, when you thought about it. I didn’t say so, it would have been jolly well pointless and besides, I didn’t want to victimise her.

    Okay. We went shopping…

November 3 Not. Continuing: As it turned out, for Tante Thérèse herself as well. After a few of my tentative suggestions slash opinions had been rubbished I just shut up. And let her choose whatever she fancied for both of us.

    Well she ended up with something rather overdone, but okay, she thought she was Christmas in it.

    Now this next was interesting. Tho on thinking it over I didn’t report it in the Passage Jacob. When Raimond Martineau put his arm round me and asked me cosily what I’d been doing that day, as I looked exhausted, I explained that I’d been to the grandes surfaces with Tante Thérèse. He laughed and went to get me a drink.

    “So the shopping expedition came off after all!” he said with another laugh, as he poured. He turned, smiling, with a glass in each hand.

    What?

    Yes well. I could only hope my face didn’t express what I was feeling. He remained cheerily undisturbed, so presumably it didn’t, thank God.

    Okay, the family was right—natch. That entire conversation on our mobiles had been picked up by les flics. And Commissaire Clouseau slash Inspector Gadget (Bean’s) had listened to the lot.

    Well gee, guess who was going to watch her every syllable in future?

    As for why I didn’t dump him on the spot— Well One, he was a very attractive chap and I hadn’t met anyone else that appealing in Paris, and Two, he was now so relaxed with me that I was picking up some odds and ends which proved very useful to Oncle Albert…

    Carter Bachelier turned out to be tall and good-looking in a very American way. It’s hard to analyse it but I think it’s something to do with a certain tendency to plumpness around the chin. Not fat, no, nothing so obvious… Bother, I don't think that’s got it. Anyway, brown hair in a very conservative style, very conservative dark suit, again distinctly American-looking, and heavy camel-hair overcoat, ditto. Nothing particularly Jewish about his features, in fact I’d have said he looked more Aryan. Lovely smile, with beautiful teeth. And a very friendly manner which obviously deeply impressed Tante Louise and Tante Thérèse. Mireille, on the other hand, tho she quite liked him, thought him too American. Well, I suppose he was. But a very nice chap, intelligent with a sense of humour.

    He was due to spend several weeks in France, something to do with investment opportunities…

    One of the opportunities seemed to be the club that the LeBecs owned. Nowhere near the restaurant and it didn’t have their name on it and in fact if you looked at the papers it was owned by a company (a “Société Anonyme” in France) which had a different name altogether. The family had owned it for years and years, since the great heyday of the clubs and casinos in the 1920s and 1930s. At one stage it had had Maurice Chevalier himself appearing there! Tho they’d never managed to score Mistinguett. These days it wasn’t so exciting, never having got itself into position as a rival to the Moulin Rouge, and in fact not being in Montmartre at all, so the tourists never found it. The Parisians’ own tastes in evening entertainment had changed over the years and “le club,” as the family referred to it, had never managed to score such luminaries as Édith Piaf or Jacques Brel and certainly no modern pop stars. At the moment it was chiefly patronised by tired businessmen of the travelling-salesman variety, who would order a few drinks, gawp at the bimbo in skimpy garments wiggling on the minute stage, and rarely order a meal or lose much at the roulette table. It sort of fell between two stools, really. Not a proper gambling club, tho it did have a licence, and not a proper nightclub. Oncle Albert was keen to change its image but it would need a lot of capital investment.

    Of course Carter Bachelier didn’t work for a merchant bank with venture capital to invest, but he knew the right people and advised a lot of clients as to what they might like to put their money into. It ranged widely, there were syndicates that owned racehorses and other groups who pooled their funds for something his venture capital pals suggested, and others who would go it alone with something that he’d had investigated very, very thoroughly for them... Private medicine was big in the States, of course, and he had several clients who owned parts of private hospitals. Others might be into wine, and so they had investments in the vineyards of California, not excluding the property trading as Bachelier Vines. In other words, a huge variety of money-making ventures.

    After visiting the club at night to see it in full swing, not really a fitting description of it, unfortunately, he suggested I might like to take him over there in daylight so as he could assess the neighbourhood. Yes, I would, but how this was to be managed without the aunts (a) ordering me to wear something putrid and (b) being totally embarrassing was beyond me.

    “Not if you wouldn’t care to, Mel,” he said nicely, looking anxious.

    “No! I mean of course I’d like to, Carter! Um, look, I’m sorry but I’d better just say this up-front. The aunts seem to want to push me at you.”

    He grinned. “Yeah? Never fear, I’ll catch you okay!”

    Yes, hah, hah. I smiled feebly. “No, but you know what I mean.”

    “That’s okay, Mel, I have aunts, too,” he said nicely. “And great-aunts. And a Jewish mom!”

    “Got it,” I admitted.

    “Mom’s last effort,” he said reminiscently, “was a real pleasant woman of about my own age whose dad’s in merchant banking and whose mother’s a distant relative of the Rothschilds.”

    I swallowed, in spite of myself.

    “Uh-huh,” he agreed, his eyes twinkling. “I had to point out that the woman who shares her apartment is more than just a roommate.”

    “Oops!” I said with a laugh.

    “Yeah; only it won’t deter her for long.”

    “No, they’re all like that!” I agreed.

    “So you will come?”

    “Yes, of course!”

    Then I had to report to the aunts and get into the gear… Oh well.

    Carter thought I looked real sweet so either he had no taste at all or he knew nothing about fashion or he was just being polite, and rather unfortunately those excellent manners of his, pretty typical of that American socio-economic group, made it impossible to tell which.

    Le beauf’ de Michel of course was called into action, and he duly delivered us to the quartier in Q. So we got out—it was a crisp, fine day, with the sun shining, so the place was at its best—and had a look around.

    “Gee, it looks a real nice neighbourhood,” he said on a weak note.

    “Yes, it is. Well lots of apartment buildings, of course, but very solidly built. And, um, I don’t know how well you know Paris, but the little clump of shops is very typical. Each neighbourhood would traditionally have its own little market, you see, where the locals would do their grocery shopping.”

    “Sure, all the big old cities are the same,” he agreed amiably.

    The club occupied part of the ground floor frontage of one of the typical apartment blocks, its door being beside the big main door that during the day stood open to allow access to the inner courtyard. It was quite a usual arrangement: the building next to it had the same set-up, except that it had a boulangerie on the ground floor. Handy: one could just nip downstairs in the early morning to grab the croissants for breakfast and the baguettes for lunch.

    “The company actually owns the freehold, right?” he said, eyes narrowed slightly.

    “Of the club? Yes.”

    “Uh-huh…” He looked thoughtfully up at the building and then along the street. Finally he said: “I think I saw some brass plates along there. Shall we check them out?”

    “If you like,” I replied feebly, wondering why on earth?

    He was right, three buildings along there was a series of brass plates. A doctor, a dentist, and a physiotherapist specialising in sports medicine.

    “You haven’t got toothache, have you, Carter?” I ventured cautiously.

    “Huh? No!” he said with a sudden laugh. “No, nothing like that. See, these here brass plates are indicative of the social status of the neighbourhood.”

    “Oh, right. Well there’s some more on the other side.”

    So we sussed out the other brass plates—of which, I now saw, there were quite  a few. There were several small businesses, assorted, a tax accountant—Carter nodded approvingly—and a solicitor—another nod.

    “Do you think it looks good?” I ventured, as he turned to stare across the street at the premises of the club.

    “Yes, I do. Tell me, where would the proprietors of the offices live, Mel?”

November 8 Not. (Tho almost.) Continuing straight on. Er… Hard to tell what he was looking for, here. “Well traditionally most would live here. The business would take up one or two rooms and the rest would be their flat—sorry, apartment. Um, these days I’m not sure. I’d think in this sort of neighbourhood most of them would live here, not just work here.”

    “Uh-huh. Sounds okay…” he said vaguely, watching as a mother with an infant in a pushchair, the sort that folds up, apparently rang a bell on the building the doctor was in, and then went in.

    “That looks respectable, don’t you think, if a mum’s taking the baby to the doctor?” I ventured.

    “Yeah, good sign.”

    “Um, if you’re thinking it might be the sort of neighbourhood where the inhabitants would get up a petition or something against having a busy club in the street, I wouldn’t worry. I don’t think the Parisians are like that. Of course if it got very noisy or there were drunks all over the street they might call the cops, but I don’t think they’d object in principle.”

    “No? Good.”

    We were just about to get back in the taxi when a big black car drew up on the other side of the road. The driver got out and held the rear door open. I goggled. A suit got out, turned, and helped out… A tall Black guy who then proceeded to lean on a crutch. He was wearing the sort of anorak that shrieks “With-It, man!” not to say “Pretending I’m fifteen years younger than I actually am,” basically black but smothered in red and white advertising matter. Plus the sort of tracksuit trousers that yell “Street-Cred, man!” And a baseball cap—yelled and shrieked: quite. What on earth?

    Beside me, Carter was heard to gulp. “Gee, that’s Matthias Colby!”

    Yes? Fascinating.

    “Is he—yeah, he is,” he breathed, as the fellow was then ushered tenderly into the building with the doctor’s, dentist’s, and physiotherapist’s brass plates. “Wow. That sports medicine guy sure must be the guy to see!”

    Yes? Fascinating.

    We got into the taxi and le beauf’ de Michel immediately said to Carter: “T’as vu? C’était Matthias Colby!” Well he didn’t pronounce it the way Carter had, Parigot being his natural dialect, but that was it.

    “Ouais, c’était bien lui!” beamed Carter.

    They beamed at each other.

    “Okay, I’ll bite. Who is he?” I sighed.

    “She doesn’t know a thing about sports,” le beauf’ explained. “He’s the footballer, of course, Mel!”

    Oh, really? Fascinating.

    Many riveting details of the career of M. Matthias Colby were then exchanged between Carter and le beauf’, all of which they both seemed to know already, which didn’t prevent their enjoying the session tremendously.

    “So if he plays for France, where did he get that name from?” I groped when they seemed to have run down.

    Okay, more riveting details but it boiled down to (a) one does not have to be born in the country in Q. to play for its sports team (why call it its team, then, one may well ask), and (b) he was born in Belgium—that would certainly explain the “Matthias”—of mixed race parentage. One side of the family was originally from l’Afrique (le beauf’). It would have been, yes. “The Democratic Republic of the Congo,” murmured Carter. Oh—right. The Belgians had been heavily into the Congo at one stage, that figured. Tho personally I wouldn’t want to emigrate to the country that had brutally colonised and victimised my people—however. Well it was really good that he was doing so well!

    I voiced the thought and Carter smiled upon me approvingly and said in English: ”Sure is, honey.”

    And le beauf’ agreed more tersely: “D’ac.” And pointed out that we didn’t want to go back to “les vieilles”.

    Er—no. How true.

    He’d take us somewhere nice for lunch instead! How about that place on the Boulevard Saint Germain, Mel?

    What?”

    Where you were when you rang la Thérèse that time, he added quickly. Okay, he knew it all, but then if you’re an old hand in the quartier and you drive a taxi into the bargain you would know it all. Well, not all: no-one except Oncle Albert knows that, I’m quite sure, not even the two old great-uncles, but More Than Enough.

    I could hardly point out in front of Carter that there was a good reason for my not fancying lunching there, could I, and that it was a six-foot cop with chiselled features and a personal interest in yours truly.

    Cryptically le beauf’ noted: “It’s Wednesday.”

    Er… Oh! Yes, the day the cops had their big morning meeting with the bosses to Report and then adjourned to the nearest bar up in the 17ième to recover.

    “Yes,” I said happily, “so it is! The place shouldn’t be too busy, then!”

    And off we went. The beauf’ didn’t refuse Carter’s too-generous tip when we got there, but one couldn’t blame him. The man’s suit alone must have cost more than your average taxi driver pulls down in a week.

    Well Raimond was right about the lunch being good there: we had a lovely meal and then, as it was such a fine afternoon, walked “all the way”, in Carter’s terms, down to the Place St. M. and over the bridge to gawp at Notre Dame de Paris. Inside as well, the tourist season being well and truly over. He declared it gives you the sort of feeling that you never get in a building in the States. It would do, yes: all those centuries of souls worshipping in it. Not to mention having been designed and built to the glory of God in the first place, even if one doesn’t believe in any sort of god (Mel) or comes from an even older religious tradition that doesn’t have quite the same one (Carter).

    Then he said he knew of a nice café where we could sit and have some refreshment if I fancied it. He thought it wasn’t far but he wasn’t absolutely sure how to— Well he guessed it was a place a lot of Americans went to in Paris, Mel—with a sheepish grin.

    Okay, the same dump on the Rue de Rivoli that Uncle Flossie favoured. So we sat there and sipped first coffees and then apéros.

    And I reflected on all the water that had flowed under the bridges of the Seine since that fun day out with Flossie and the old boy…

    Carter got rather keen after a couple of drinks and put his hand very warmly over mine and said with a laugh it was a real pity that the family was expecting us back for dinner, so I agreed, with the sort of breathless laugh that one does, that yes, it was. Well—another day, huh? he suggested, his warm brown eyes twinkling like anything.

    I agreed, and he solemnly checked his diary and suggested dinner tomorrow?

    Well yes, why not? He was very attractive and I felt I needed more experience.

    Funnily enough next day at the Resto LeBec no-one objected to my going out with Carter Bachelier and in fact the aunts immediately had a demarcation dispute over what I should wear. Tante Thérèse’s Louisette, who’d come round to help in the kitchen, ordered them robustly to let the girl choose her own dress, but it was water off a duck’s.

    So I had dinner with Carter and went back to his hotel room with Carter and went to bed with Carter. And a super time was had by all.

    A couple of days later Carter had a whole afternoon free, so as it was a glorious fine day he suggested hiring a car and driving out a bit, maybe take in the Bois de Boulogne? And did I think Mireille would like to come? He’d noticed the poor kid didn’t seem to get any treats, he said kindly.

    Yes well, a very decent chap and it was a pity, really, that tho I liked him very much and really enjoyed sex with him I couldn’t envisage ever settling down with him.

    So Mireille and I put on our best autumnal gear, deaf to the aunts’ protests, at least I was and my example gave her courage, and Carter collected us, and off we drove. A trois.

    Or as the brilliant Bean noted later in English, sniggering like anything: “Two strings to his bow!”

November 12 Not. Continuing: At the end of the week the same Bean pointed out privily that me taking up with Carter was probably not going to help persuade him to put his clients’ moolah into any venture of Oncle Albert’s let alone “that run-down club”, his expression: he didn’t strike him, Bean, as that dumb.

    “Funnily enough, Bean, old chap, I’m not doing it for Oncle Albert!”

    “Okay, you’re not. Um, what about Raimond Martineau, tho, Mel?”

    “What about him? Can’t a girl have two strings to her bow, same as a chap?” I said with a laugh.

    “So you’re not serious about him?”

    “What, le flic? No, of course not! And I’m not serious about Carter Bachelier, either!”

    “Good,” he replied in relief. “They’re okay but I don’t know that I’d want either of them for a beauf’.”

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