Parts of this story are drawn from my life, such as my childhood, and my father's life. It had a lasting effect on me and my ability to interact with people. The rest is my (vivid) imagination, for I have not yet found my Muse.
A note to those who take great delight in telling me that my sentence structure is wrong: There is a difference between English and French sentence structures. For this reason, and because she is French, Monique's dialogue follows French, not English sentence structures.
*
I, Ben Symonds, grew up in a semi-dysfunctional family. I was the youngest of three sons of a part-time father and a strong willed but very private mother. Demonstrations of affection were few and far between, and this resulted in me becoming socially awkward, especially around the opposite sex.
My father, while not an alcoholic, was a binge drinker who would come home from work on occasions very drunk. My mother's reaction to these events was to warn my brothers and me to 'keep away from your father for a while'. We were to later find out that these events were his efforts to blank out the seemingly regular traumas that resulted in his being continually suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, long before it was given that name. He would eventually suffer a nervous breakdown that he never fully recovered from.
I have to admit here that English was, along with Maths and French, my least favourite subject at High School, but I was an avid reader and was to become a prolific but mediocre author. That was until she came into my life.
Her name was Monique and she was, as I was to soon find out, French. I had watched her and already decided that, if we had lived in another era, she would have been a jazz singer, eking out a steady income in smoke filled bars and night clubs, where her rich throaty voice would hold her audience spellbound.
I noticed her at a party that I had been encouraged to attend. She was dressed in black except for a bright pink scarf knotted loosely around her throat. She was tall and slim, her olive complexion went with her black hair and brown eyes that roamed ceaselessly around the room, even while she talked to someone. Her eyes settled on me for several seconds and she extracted herself from the man who was trying desperately to hold her attention. He stared after her as she weaved her way through the other guests and headed for me.
"You interest me." She said as she arrived in front of me, her eyes looking through mine into my soul.
"Oh." I could think of nothing more to say to her.
"You stand here on your own, not making conversation with anyone, but you know everyone."
"What do you mean, I hardly know anyone here."
"But you do know them. I see you looking at them, you observe them and you make up stories about what you see in them. You are a writer, no?"
"I try to be, but I'm not much good at it."
"But no, you are good, you know people, you see them, you listen to them speak, not so much for what they say but how they say it. You may not yet have the ability to construct stories around what you see, but it will come, and when it does you will be a great author."
"I wish that I had your confidence in my abilities."
"What story have you made for me?"
"Now you are trying to embarrass me."
"No. I watch you watching me and I feel it in me that you have already created a story about me."
"Well," I began, not knowing whether to tell her the story that I had in my mind, or just make something up. "I had thought you to be Italian or Spanish, but now that I have spoken to you, I would say that you are French, from the south of France. You are, I think, a singer. If not you are an artist or something like that. You are very self-confident, and I don't need to tell you that men find you attractive. I think that you have come to Australia in a professional context, probably for a short time, but have decided to stay. That decision might not be because you love this country, but most likely it was to be with someone, a lover. But you are no longer with that man."
"How do you know it was a man?"
"I have seen how you interact with both men and women, and I am sure that women, you do not find them sexually attractive."
"You are right of course. I came to be with a man, a musician, but it was not to be. I found professional work while he did not, and this was something that his ego would not permit, so he went back to Paris."
"I would like to hear you sing."
"You shall. I leave here soon to sing at a club, you must come with me."
"I would like that." I was rapidly running out of things to say to her, but then I remembered the bottle of wine on the floor beside my feet. I stooped and picked it up. "Would you care for some wine?"
She held her glass for me to fill and sipped it. "This is good wine, but it is not French."
"No." I decided to bung on an Aussie accent for her. "It's good Aussie piss. We Australians are getting pretty good at making the stuff. We don't all drink beer you know."
She had a great laugh and it wasn't just the throatiness of it that I found great, she laughed with her whole being, her eyes, and her body. "I think that you are lucky in this country, your good wine is so cheap." She took hold of my hand and moved close to me, so close that I could feel the warmth of her body and smell her perfume. I knew that this was not going to last, once she got to know me, really know me, the excuses would start, she would no longer want to see me or be with me.
At around 10 o'clock she touched my arm. "Wait here for me." She left and I thought that this was it, I wouldn't see her again, but then she was back. "Come, you will hear me sing." She had gone to fetch her bag and coat and returned to me. The man that she had been with glared at me and made to come over to us, but she tucked her hand under my arm and turned her back on him in such a way that he knew that it was hopeless to pursue her.
The club was one of those intimate venues that held no more than a hundred patrons, all seated at tables sipping wine and chatting quietly with each other in voices so low that those on neighbouring tables could not hear the conversation. Monique kissed me on the lips and went to prepare for her set.
The band consisting of a guitarist, pianist, drummer and saxophonist moved onto the small stage. The pianist moved the mike closer and said in hushed tones. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome onto the stage, Monique." There was polite applause from the patrons and she came onto the stage, walking to the mike she adjusted it to her height and waited for the band to begin. The pianist clicked his fingers four times to count them in and the song began, it was a jazz rendering of 'la Vie en Rose' made famous by Edith Piaf but sounding nothing like Piaf. To my ears, that are admittedly tone deaf, she sounded better. The applause at the end of the song was a little more enthusiastic. By the time that she had completed her set the audience were clapping loudly.
At the end of her set she stepped off the stage and walked back to our table. "That was really very good." I enthused, hoping not to sound too phony.
"I think not so good, I find it hard to concentrate with my lover here."
Oh Christ, which of the men in the audience is he? "Your lover, which one is he?"
"It is you Cherie." She chuckled on seeing my expression. "Did you not feel that?"
"No, I can't say that I did." There was disappointment on her face. "But then all I could think of was how good you sounded and how out of place I felt, sitting here like a shag on a rock."
"This shag on the rock, what does this mean?"
"It means that I don't fit into this scene."
"But Cherie, you must embrace this, you must say to yourself; 'I am different from all of you and proud of it, I do not need to be like you.' You are different so why should you not see that difference as a good thing?"
"Because I don't have your confidence."
"Come Cherie, you will take me home." She stood up and held her hand out for me. As we reached the door she stopped me. "Now Cherie, did you not feel every man's eyes on you as you walked out with me? You have something that they can only dream of." She kissed me.
I hailed a passing cab and we soon arrived at her building. In the lift, on the way up to her floor, she put her arms around my neck and kissed me, only breaking the kiss when the lift pinged to a halt and the doors opened. She led me down the passage to her flat and handed me her keys.
It was an artist's type of flat, there were things scattered around the place, a coat draped over the back of the sofa, a pair of shoes on the floor where they had dropped after being slipped off. There were dishes in the sink and the remains of a meal on the bench top. While it was untidy, it was also clean. She took a couple of flute glasses from a cupboard and a bottle of proper champagne from her refrigerator. "Some champagne to celebrate." She deftly opened the bottle without splashing a drop and poured us each a glass. She touched her glass to mine and sipped. I sipped my bubbly and thought how much better this was than the cheap sparkling wines that seem to get thrust on us at parties, drinkable but hell, what a hangover.
"This is very good. What are we celebrating?"
"We celebrate our first night together, is this not something to celebrate?"
"I'll drink to that, but, let me tell you that this is the first time a woman has celebrated her first night with me, or any night with me." I decided to stop talking around then and to cover my confusion I picked up the champagne bottle, shit, a Pol Roger.
