It was in Le Terminus that I met my future partner. It stood directly opposite the station, a handsome restaurant - probably too good for us - with its dark wooden berths, polished brass railings and thick white tablecloths and everything showcased behind a vast window printed with quaint gold letters. We dragged our rucksacks across the street and entered, choosing two high stools at the bar.
I had just rolled a cigarette, which the old men further down the counter seemed to find hilarious, and was fumbling in my jeans pocket for a book of matches, when a flame sprang up in front of me. The lighter was a solid looking thing and the hand that held it superbly manicured and smelling faintly of almonds.
"Good evening, ladies," he announced, "my name is Mister Lister."
His moustache was a pair of asparagus tips. He reminded me a little of Edgar, a whiskered cat who used pay the occasional visit and who, with his poise, his clean spats and bib, had been dignified to the point of ridiculous.
Mister Lister was quite old, forty or so, but with a still definite chin and splendid black eyes. But it wasn't me he was looking at.
"What are your names?"
Michelle introduced herself first, "and this is Betty."
He laughed, nearly forgetting to shake my hand.
"Michel is a man's name in French. I've never seen such a pretty one before."
He ordered cognac for three, which came served in huge bell glasses that begged to be held. Michelle flirted brazenly with Mister Lister. She mentioned that we'd been about to order some food. Mister Lister dismissed the idea of chips and treated us to a five-course dinner. Over coffee he enquired where we would be staying that night. Michelle told him we were planning to sleep on the beach. "So romantic," she said. She was obviously fishing. His offer didn't come immediately though. He sloped off to pay the bill first.
"What the hell are you playing at?" I asked her.
"Look, I'm tired," she said. "I'm prepared to take the gamble he may be a psychopath. Odds are we'll be tucked up in comfortable beds by midnight, rather than hacked into suitcase-friendly chunks."
"What do you mean beds? Maybe I'll get one of my own, but you'll be sharing, that's for sure."
He returned with a little plate of complimentary mints. I took one and sucked angrily on it.
I had to fold myself into his sports car's shelf of a backseat. I was the kid, carsick and resentful. Sharing some confidence I couldn't catch over the growls of the engine, Mister Lister patted Michelle's knee.
We left the town centre, speeding through a warren of green-shuttered backstreets. I gave up trying to commit the route to memory. Soon we were in the blackness of the countryside, lurching over the crests and dips of a coastal road. Like velvet in a jeweler's window, the sky was electric purple and pinned all over with crisp little chips of light. Moonlight gave spooky definition to the parsley tops of a forest to our left.
Mister Lister rolled down his window and the warm air rushed in. We veered suddenly off the coastal road on the ocean side. The track was rocky now, but he didn't slow much, seemingly unconcerned for the bodywork of his car. Coming off the stony track, we began the tree-lined descent towards the villa. He parked the car at the end of the tarmac strip and we walked down a sandy path tripping over roots. The scent of pine was like a homecoming. The ocean bashed the rocks below.
Mister Lister's villa was exquisite, worth an entrance fee. He ushered us into the front room, sunken several feet below the level of the ground floor. We lay on the carpet, a cream shag-pile one, tufty as a lawn gone to seed. He trusted us not to ruin it with the red wine that he fetched from the cellar, good wine too, but wasted on us. Michelle fell asleep at once. Her soft snoring shook her whole body, making her ribs rise and fall. Mister Lister watched her. He found it endearing. He insisted that we carry her upstairs. It was obvious that she had woken up long before we had hauled her up two flights of stairs to the spare room, but she kept up the pretence of alcoholic stupor. The bedroom had twin beds. I had been hoping for my own room, but still. He brought up our rucksacks and left us there. As I brushed the tangles from my hair, I considered his lack of servants. What was he hiding?
A bell was ringing somewhere. It took a while to work out what was going on.
"What time is it?" asked Michelle.
"About one."
"It's not church bells, is it?" she groaned, "no, don't tell me that's him ringing. Oh my God, what an anal retentive."
"We'd better go down," I said.
Mister Lister ushered us out onto the veranda. The breakfast table was set with napkins and weighty silver cutlery. There was a basket of warmed croissants and jugs of coffee, frothy milk and orange juice. Far below, a colony of gulls brawled like tomcats. I leant over the wall to get a look at them. The veranda was cut into the side of a cliff whose drop was almost sheer. Loud pink flowers clung to the chalk. The house stood on a promontory, jutting right out into the ocean. Set back and to the left was the steep clutter of a small fishing village, whitewashed and painful to look upon. I put my sunglasses on. To the right and recessed into the cliff was what looked like a private beach with a single boat moored several feet from shore. The sea was patched with turquoise shallows and inky depths.
We made our way down to the beach with a picnic hamper, his arthritic Labrador plodding behind. Michelle kept turning round to pet him, although in real life she greatly disliked dogs. We waded out to the boat and Mister Lister mounted the ladder with the hamper held high upon his shoulder. He'd had a special hoist made for Rex, and we helped him to winch the mutt aboard.
Out at sea the breeze was brisk. Low waves slapped the sides of the boat, hurling flecks of spittle on deck. It was getting nippy. I wrapped my towel around my shoulders like a shawl and made my way towards the back of the boat, a windless suntrap. There was Michelle, stretched out on the lifejacket bench. Her dress was draped over the back of this and she wore a bikini, the same flamboyant pink as the outcroppings of bougainvillea that sprouted from the cliff wall.
No one was navigating. He crouched at her feet, muttering homemade poetry. She shut her eyes, as though in an ecstasy of listening. He stroked her liquid black hair. Rex thumped the deck with his tail and watched them with pleading eyes.
Mister Lister warmed coconut oil between his palms. His hand hovered over her breast, undecided. The bizarre, proprietorial gestures of men. Jealousy had converted me to the feminist cause, yet I was forced to acknowledge the morbid thrill that stole through me.
They became lovers although Michelle already one, Alex, whom we were supposed to be meeting in Italy. They had an open relationship, which she exploited freely. Alex enjoyed the torture of detail, so all summer long she'd been writing him pornographic letters. She knew that the more jealous she made him, the more he'd desire her. Sometimes she made stories up, or else embellished the tales of flings that were actually nothing to write home about. But I bet she had not told Mister Lister any of this.
They shared the strange intimacy of sleep, limbs muddled in sweat, sheets and mumbled dreams, yet she continued to call him Mister Lister. It was quite kinky.
He took us to Saint Tropez, lavished her with clothes and jewels. He adored her with his gaze, following her curves with a blatant intent.
The close atmosphere of their sex made me nauseous. I had to come up for air. And yet I skulked around for scraps of their affection, just like Rex.
So when Mister Lister bought Michelle expensive proofs of his love, he often bought something for me too and threw the dog a treat. Some of these afterthoughts were very nice ones, and I still treasure the black cashmere sweater.
I was beginning to develop a quite intense crush on Mister Lister. His doomed love for Michelle was the weak spot that made him loveable to me. The more invisible I was to him, the more I craved his attentions. But being unwanted in such circumstances was no real hardship. After all, a large part of my attraction to Mister Lister, I had to admit, was his superabundant wealth, which I could enjoy at secondhand, although secretly I liked to picture myself as the lady of the house.
One evening we attended a party at the nearby summer home of the celebrated American photographer, Earl K Trax. The plaintive sound of violins floated up from the foot of the garden where a Klezmer band was playing. Tea-lights glowed in jam-jars and the branches of the apple trees were strung with paper garlands. Fringed gypsy shawls draped tables that were adorned with posies of dried cornflowers and earthenware bowls full of plump, spicy olives. Throughout the orchard, at the foot of every tree stood bottles of champagne swimming in buckets of melted ice.
We overheard intriguing morsels of conversation, which seemed to promise new and interesting company, but we didn't care. We discarded the fourth stool at our table, naughtily annexing one another's company. The complicity was delicious and I felt fleetingly joyous, and determined to commit the moment to memory. Mister Lister uncorked a bottle of champagne and poured into three painted flutes.
"To love and destiny!" he cried.
"Love and destiny," I repeated, "chin-chin."
"Santé," said Michelle.
We talked and drank and though Michelle did not say much, he didn't seem to notice. She was his muse, his inspiration, and not expected to contribute a great deal beyond her breathtaking beauty. Mister Lister was missing a trick here however, as Michelle could be an excellent conversationalist when so inclined, but perhaps he couldn't afford to fall any harder than he already had. As the dusk's searing pinks and blues bled into night, the tone of Mister Lister's chat became infused with a lazy sentimentality. Michelle shivered and he gallantly offered his coat. She smiled sweetly and fluttered her eyelashes, playing up to his idea of her fragility. Unpinning the giant butterfly brooch from the front of her dress, he carefully fastened the lapels of his coat together.
They each possessed what I did not -- in a word, grace. It involved a sort of flippancy, an old-worldly elegance of word and deed. Their laughter was easy, their manners effortless. Beside them I appeared large-boned, irredeemably plain. Their grace made me clumsy. I knocked over my champagne, but no one seemed to mind.
"Girls, dear girls," sighed Mister Lister, "what will you do once the summer is over? I do hope you won't fly away home."
"I have to write my dissertation," I said. "Actually, I was wondering if I could use your library for a while, Mister Lister. I've noticed you have quite a collection of art books."
Now, perhaps for the first time, I had his full attention.
"Are you an artist then Betty?"
"No but I'm an art history student."
He rubbed his chin. His teeth gleamed supernaturally white in the dark.
"It would be an honor. Perhaps I could be of some help. What is your subject?"
I ranted on about De Coitre, Quesneau and obscurantism until the sound of my voice began to bore me.
"And what about you, sweet lady?" he asked, kissing her hand. Michelle looked at him. She leant over and touched the tip of his nose with hers. Then she sat back and withdrew her hand from his quite sharply.
"Well actually, I was going to tell you and now seems as good a time as any - I have to leave tomorrow. I have a rendezvous with my boyfriend in Bologna."
Once it was established that this was no joke, a confused and miserable silence ensued. We left the party early.
"I'm going up to the house," he said, "I'll bring the car around to the front. Meet you in the lane in a few minutes."
Michelle and I shared a room that night.
"Why do you have to be so cruel? You can leave your mark on a man without using indelible ink, you know."
"Hey, how come you're on his side all of a sudden? You knew we'd be going sooner or later."
"Come on, we're having a great time," I cajoled her.
"Look, he's starting to wind me up. There's his Anglophilia for one thing. All that ex-pat colonial nonsense, the G + Ts sipped watching postcard sunsets, the way he tortures those bonsai trees with those fiddly little nail clippers. Also, I hate the way he makes a statement, some total platitude, and leaves it hanging in the air like he's Confucius or whoever. ‘Death, the grand unknowable.' It makes me want to shout, ‘Death, the final frontier' and I don't think he'd even notice."
She was flinging clothes into her suitcase. Guilt made her glib and self-righteous.
"But he dotes on you."
"Yes, it's a bit creepy isn't it? The fun's gone out of it in any case. Boring now, time to move on."
She batted the air quite violently.
"And anyway, Alex is the one for me. Can't wait to see him, tell him all about it. Come on, you'd better get packing."
"I'm not coming."
"What?"
I didn't feel like explaining.
"Oh, I see," she said, with an irritating knowingness, "I get it. You fancy him, don't you? That's what this is all about."
"No I don't, not in the least. I just think this is a shitty way to repay his hospitality."
I lost count of the brushstrokes at this point. I was listening to her upside down, dragging the bristles through my tangled hair.
"Don't get sanctimonious with me sweetheart. What about Ukulele Travis? Or Jean-Yves back in Poitiers? You didn't treat them so amazingly well. And you should remember that without me, you wouldn't have that lovely Valentino dress or the Gucci handbag either. You're no oil painting you know."
I ran at her with the hairbrush, cracking it hard across her cheek. She tripped me up and punched me in the face. My nose was bleeding. We scuffled on the floor, pulling hair and dealing out random blows, a summer's worth of petty resentments purged all at once. Mister Lister rushed in at this point. Perhaps he'd been listening at the door.
We tried to laugh about it later, but things had soured. Lying in bed I told her I'd be staying because I needed to focus on the dissertation. Plus I was tired of being a gooseberry.
"And you're wrong about the handbag, lovely as it is. Material things mean nothing to me."
This was a whopper, but tell me, which was worse - her selfish honesty or my hypocritical tact?
Next day we all got up early. The drive to the station was funereal. We drank short black coffees in Le Terminus and stood on the empty platform. No one spoke. Our elongated shadows made us appear closer than we were. They gathered in an intimate huddle, stretching out across the tracks. When the train finally shunted into the station, Mister Lister tipped Michelle back in a ridiculous tango pose.
"Don't go! Stay and be my wife."
Michelle struggled free and hurried up the three metal steps to the carriage door, but Mister Lister seemed to be holding her luggage ransom.
"There's a letter in this bag with some money in it. My address is on it. Write to me, Michelle. Promise me you'll write."
She must have made some half-hearted vow because he finally relinquished the rucksack. She waved over his head to me. As the train pulled out of the station, he jogged after it. Once it had disappeared from view, he stayed for a long while at the end of the platform, shoulders shrugged in private grief.
The atmosphere inside the house was better ignored. I kept out of Mister Lister's way and spent my days working in the library. The room was vast and airy, yet seemed trapped within its lumbering exoskeleton of shelves, which girdered every wall. I threw open the windows. The sea breeze carried the cries of bickering gulls, a pleasant disturbance.
The art books were excellent. I got half of my dissertation done during the first week of Michelle's absence. His librarianship was admirable. There were journals and magazines too on every conceivable art-related matter, then all the Southebys and Christies catalogues, row upon row of them, in clear plastic box files, their spines lined up in perfect order.
Mister Lister spent much of his time moping about upstairs. In the evenings we shared simple fish suppers on the veranda, which he hardly touched. He communicated very little. His bereft expression made me love him differently, with an unexpected tenderness. I wanted to smooth the deep crease that bisected his brow, to caress his pomaded hair and cover those droopy eyelids with Amazonian kisses. I wanted to help him un-think his gloomy lovelorn thoughts. Rex was concerned too, and rested his muzzle on Mister Lister's knee.
Halfway through the second week, Mister Lister dragged himself out of the house. Taking the pair of opera glasses that stood on his bedroom mantelpiece, I watched him from the balcony, ambling with Rex along the margin of brown sand below, pausing from time to time to throw a stick or skim a stone.
I was making excellent headway with my dissertation, and decided to stall it so that I could justifiably prolong my stay with Mister Lister. By now he was going out for whole days at a time and taking the sports car. I lounged around the house wearing nothing but a pair of his boxer shorts. I smoked his cigarettes and rifled through his affairs. In a hatbox I found a stack of love letters smelling of rose oil and tied up with a raffia bow. I lay on his bed to read them, pretending that I'd written them myself. One of the letters had a lock of ginger hair in it, coiled in the shape of a question mark. This habit of separated sweethearts had always struck me as a morbid one -- why not keep teeth or fingernail clippings as mementoes instead? I rolled the hair between my thumb and forefinger. It had a dry, papery feel. The letters were all written in French and many of them were from Mister Lister himself. Perhaps his lover had handed them back at the end of the affair.
The walls of the bedroom were buttressed with Javanese lacquered wood chests, raised patterns on their doors. I found the keys to these chests in the writing bureau by the window. Inside was a lot of expensive junk -- hand carved chess sets, a deck of playing cards with jade backings, several enameled hand-mirrors and a row of diminishing ivory elephants, some so minute they must have ruined some Indian kid's eyesight.
He had traveled, that much was clear.
One of the chests contained files of paperwork, which I went through in a haphazard fashion. I think I was hoping for a diary. The paperwork was so tedious that I almost gave up on it, but my quest to know Mister Lister made me persevere. I found more catalogues from Christies and pages and pages of longhand calculations. There were the deeds to the house and a folder full of receipts. There were magazine cuttings containing Mister Lister's expert opinion on a range of art-related matters. There was a pile of detailed architectural plans, showing floor-by-floor aerial views of a mansion. And beneath these, was a box filled with the strangest tools I had ever seen. I took the toolbox and hid it in my bedroom.
When Mister Lister returned I cooked him a meal. He fetched wine from the cellar and we sat down to eat on the veranda. The sunset was a lurid gash on the horizon, like the first experiments in Technicolor. It had dyed the sea hibiscus pink.
"Love" sighed Mister Lister, "is mainly bitter, rarely sweet."
At that moment the telephone rang. I wished that he'd leave it, as our red snapper starters would get cold. It was Michelle. Mister Lister spoke in a reverential whisper. I hovered in the doorway.
"She wishes to speak to you."
He looked surprised. "Such serendipity" he muttered on the way out, "we mention love and then she calls."
I took the phone.
"Hi."
"Hi. God, do I have to go through him every time I want to talk to you?"
"Well it is his house. How's Bologna?"
"It's great. We're off to Roma tomorrow. Why don't you join us?"
"I have to finish my dissertation."
"You're mad. You could do that when we get back. Oh well. I'd better go now - it's beeping. Bye."
"Bye."
I returned to the veranda. Mister Lister was moody and philosophical.
"Love is cruel," he said, tipping yet more wine into his glass. Because he said it in such a heartfelt tone, the cliché seemed forgivable, another failing for me to adore. Michelle on the other hand, had this theory about the very rich and their lack of originality.
"They get away with it," she complained. "The dictates of novelty and fashion don't apply to them. Everything is a classic."
"But high quality things don't need tampering with," I objected. "You yourself like timeless luggage sets! Expense is the benchmark of good taste."
"That is the myth," argued Michelle. This was on the day of the Saint Tropez shopping trip and Mister Lister had left us at a café to pick up some shopping at the market. She pointed out a passing couple. They were dressed in matching navy blue outfits with a maritime theme, gold buttons gleaming in the sunshine.
"How boring, just look at them," she said, slurping Orangina through her straw, her rude staring hardly disguised by her sunglasses. "And what about our very own Sloane Rangers? All this time and they still wear all that shit, pearls and upturned collars, twin-sets and whatnot. It's bloody pathetic. Even the lunatic eccentricities of the aristocracy are predictable. Wealth paralyses the imagination. Try this yourself and see what answers you get -- you just ask someone what they'd do with their lottery winnings. All they can come up with is a string of yachts and cars, holidays and second homes."
Mister Lister was still thinking about love. He had hardly touched his food. His chin slid off of his fist, unbalancing him. If he got too tipsy and maudlin, he would withdraw into his habitual after dinner silence.
"I can assure you that Michelle was not indifferent to you," I told him. "She doesn't really have a boyfriend."
He looked at me with pitiful hope then appeared to dismiss the idea, prey to his own confused reasoning once more.
"Such a free spirit," he muttered, "floating into my life only to drift back out of it again. A celestial cloud."
"Mister Lister, please pay attention. Michelle is no celestial cloud; she's an impostor. She was obsessed with you. At home she had press cuttings all about you, which she stuck into a scrapbook. She knew you lived somewhere around here when we first showed up; she stalked you. I didn't want to indulge it, but I thought I'd better come along to keep her safe."
Now I had him interested.
"She thought you were too good for her. She was terrified you'd outgrow her. She reeled you in. I caught her snooping through your things. She was even wearing your underwear."
"No!" he said.
"Yes," I said. "She read your letters and looked through all your paperwork. She wanted information about your financial situation and marital status. But the more she read, the more the suspicion grew in her that you were actually an art thief. I made her leave. I made her break your heart in order to save your reputation, your liberty, your bank balance!"
I had got carried away. The part about the press cuttings was ridiculous, but a mixture of wine and egotism on both our parts let it pass. Mister Lister looked utterly shocked. He poured yet more wine and we drank in silence.
"Did you see those papers too?" he asked, after a while.
"Yes I did."
I gave him a hard look.
"You are an art thief, aren't you?"
"I collect beautiful things," he stubbornly insisted.
"You're an art thief," I said, pressing my advantage. "Be my partner and I'll tell no one."
He was pacing back and forth now, running fingers through his hair. I let him mutter his way through disbelief - "no, it can't be . . . no, she wouldn't . . . " -- to the quiet of acceptance, before reminding him of my presence.
"I care about you," I said, gently, "so there's no need to worry about what I know or don't know."
I told him that Michelle had become frightened and had even mentioned the police. I compared her hysteria with my own dependable qualities; I'd be calm, discreet, loyal. I reminded him of her many indiscretions, just in case he was thinking of bumping me off.
"You care for me?" he asked.
"Why not? You're a very dignified fellow. You're generous and thoughtful and you have excellent taste. I'd be most honored to formalize the association."
I left him to mull this over and went to fetch the secret toolbox from upstairs. We retired to the sunken room. He lit the fire. I knelt at his feet.
"Come on then, what are these for?"
Mister Lister took out the flim and began, lazily, to file his nails with it. He swanned back on his barge of silk cushions, the jute box open on his knees. He replaced the flim and pulled on a pair of black kid gloves, taken from a compartment inside the lid.
"This here is a gibbert," he said, taking out the gibbert and roistering it about in the natch-lock. "These are a pair of badshanks," he said, extracting from its fitted niche a spindly looking implement, its handle inset with panels of mother-of-pearl. "And this is a dathe", he sighed, quingeing the mekbars open with a practised flick of the wrist.
"And what about your loot?"
"Follow me."
Down to the cellar. A fine place for murder; the ceiling low and arched like a bunker. He typed the combination into a box in the far wall. The door swung back to reveal another fortified door, into which he typed a different combination before using a series of keys to unlock it.
Nodules of depressive yellow light headed every painting. Under glass lay the fragment of a Rigaverio sketch, the detail on the foot enhanced by the age of the parchment, with webbed fissures over painted veins. Art objects housed in Perspex cases. A priceless Mazio turd emerging from an upturned can, the serrated lid and rusted can opener lying useless at its side. A series of Reutensbergs in fawns and beige. And here, the newest addition - an Earl K Trax; one of the rock-star icon series, this one the Very Eve crying tears of blood. He must have stolen it at the party, fooling all. I was impressed. The entire collection was magnificent. I said so and he smiled.
"What excellent taste, you have," he said, finally. "I'd be most honored if you'd consider becoming my partner in crime."