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Noelle

Paris: 1940

On Saturday, June 14, 1940, the German Fifth Army marched into a stunned Paris. The Maginot Line had turned out to be the biggest fiasco in the history of warfare and France lay defenceless before one of the most powerful military machines the world had ever known.

The day had begun with a strange grey pall that lay over the city, a terrifying cloud of unknown origin. For the last forty-eight hours sounds of intermittent gunfire had broken the unnatural, frightened silence of Paris. The roar of the cannons was outside the city, but the echoes reverberated into the heart of Paris. There had been a flood of rumours carried like a tidal wave over the radio, in newspapers and by word of mouth. The Boche were invading the French coast … London had been destroyed … Hitler had reached an accord with the British government … The Germans were going to wipe out Paris with a deadly new bomb. At first each rumour had been taken as gospel, creating its own panic, but constant crises finally exert a soporific affect, as though the mind and body, unable to absorb any further terror, retreat into a protective shell of apathy. Now the rumour mills had ground to a complete halt, newspaper presses had stopped printing and radio stations had stopped broadcasting. Human instinct had taken over from the machines, and the Parisians sensed that this was a day of decision. The grey cloud was an omen.

And then the German locusts began to swarm in.

Suddenly Paris was a city filled with foreign uniforms and alien people, speaking a strange, guttural tongue, speeding down the wide, tree-lined avenues in large Mercedes limousines flying Nazi flags or pushing their way along the sidewalks that now belonged to them. They were truly the über Mensch, and it was their destiny to conquer and rule the world.

Within two weeks an amazing transformation had taken place. Signs in German appeared everywhere. Statues of French heroes had been knocked down and the swastika flew from all state buildings. German efforts to eradicate everything Gallic reached ridiculous proportions. The markings on hot and cold water taps were changed from chaud and froid to heiss and kalt. The place de Broglie in Strasbourg became Adolf Hitler Platz. Statues of Lafayette, Ney and Kleber were dynamited by squadrons of Nazis. Inscriptions on the monuments for the dead were replaced by ‘GEFALLEN FUR DEUTSCHLAND.’

The German occupation troops were enjoying themselves. While French food was too rich and covered with too many sauces, it was still a pleasant change from war rations. The soldiers neither knew nor cared that Paris was the city of Baudelaire, Dumas and Molière. To them Paris was a garish, eager, overpainted whore with her skirts pulled up over her hips and they raped her, each in his own way. The Storm-troopers forced young French girls to go to bed with them, sometimes at the point of a bayonet, while their leaders like Goering and Himmler raped the Louvre and the rich private estates they greedily confiscated from the newly created enemies of the Reich.

If French corruption and opportunism rose to the surface in the time of France’s crisis, so did the heroism. One of the underground’s secret weapons was the Pompiers, the fire department, which in France is under the jurisdiction of the army. The Germans had confiscated dozens of buildings for the use of the army, the Gestapo and various ministries, and the location of these buildings was of course no secret. At an underground resistance headquarters in St Remy resistance leaders pored over large maps detailing the location of each building. Experts were then assigned their targets, and the following day a speeding car or an innocent-looking bicyclist would pass by one of the buildings and fling a homemade bomb through the window. Up to that point the damage was slight. The ingenuity of the plan lay in what followed next.

The Germans would call in the Pompiers to put out the fire. Now it is instinctive in all countries that when there is a conflagration the firemen are in complete charge: And so it was in Paris. The Pompiers raced into the building while the Germans stood meekly aside and watched them destroy everything in sight with high-pressure hoses, axes and – when the opportunity presented itself – their own incendiary bombs. In this way the underground managed to destroy priceless German records locked away in the fortresses of the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo. It took almost six months for the German high command to figure out what was happening, and by that time irreparable damage had been done. The Gestapo could prove nothing, but every member of the Pompiers was rounded up and sent to the Russian front to fight.

There was a shortage of everything from food to soap. There was no gasoline, no meat, no dairy products. The Germans had confiscated everything. Stores that carried luxury goods stayed open, but their only customers were the soldiers who paid in occupation marks which were identical with the regular marks except that they lacked the white strip at the edge and the printed promise to pay was not signed.

‘Who will redeem these?’ the French shopkeepers moaned.

And the Germans grinned, ‘The Bank of England.’

Not all Frenchmen suffered, however. For those with money and connections there was always the Black Market.

Noelle Page’s life was changed very little by the occupation. She was working as a model at Chanel’s on rue Canbon in a hundred-and-fifty-year-old greystone building that looked ordinary on the outside, but was very smartly decorated within. The war, like all wars, had created overnight millionaires, and there was no shortage of customers. The propositions that came to Noelle were more numerous than ever; the only difference was that most of them were now in German. When she was not working, she would sit for hours at small outdoor cafés on the Champs-Élysées, or on the Left Bank near the Pont Neuf. There were hundreds of men in German uniforms, many of them with young French girls. The French civilian men were either too old or lame, and Noelle supposed that the younger ones had been sent to camps or conscripted for military duty. She could tell the Germans at a glance, even when they were not in uniform. They had a look of arrogance stamped on their faces, the look that conquerors have had since the days of Alexander and Hadrian. Noelle did not hate them, nor did she like them. They simply did not touch her.

She was filled with a busy inner life, carefully planning out each move. She knew exactly what her goal was, and she knew that nothing could stop her. As soon as she was able to afford it, she engaged a private detective who had handled a divorce for a model with whom she worked. The detective’s name was Christian Barbet, and he operated out of a small, shabby office on the rue St Lazare. The sign on the door read:

ENQUÊTES

PRIVÉES ET COMMERCIALES

RECHERCHES

RENSEIGNEMENTS

CONFIDENTIELS

FILATURES

PREUVES

The sign was almost larger than the office. Barbet was short and bald with yellow, broken teeth, narrow squinting eyes and nicotine-stained fingers.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked Noelle.

‘I want information about someone in England.’

He blinked suspiciously. ‘What kind of information?’

‘Anything. Whether he’s married, who he sees. Anything at all. I want to start a scrapbook on him.’

Barbet gingerly scratched his crotch and stared at her.

‘Is he an Englishman?’

‘An American. He’s a pilot with the Eagle Squadron of the RAF.’

Barbet rubbed the top of his bald head, uneasily. ‘I don’t know,’ he grumbled. ‘We’re at war. If they caught me trying to get information out of England about a flyer —’

His voice trailed off and he shrugged expressively. ‘The Germans shoot first and ask questions afterwards.’

‘I don’t want any military information,’ Noelle assured him. She opened her purse and took out a wad of franc notes. Barbet studied them hungrily.

‘I have connections in England,’ he said cautiously, ‘but it will be expensive.’

And so it began. It was three months before the little detective telephoned Noelle. She went to his office, and her first words were: ‘Is he alive?’ and when Barbet nodded, her body sagged with relief and Barbet thought, It must be wonderful to have someone love you that much.

‘Your boyfriend has been transferred,’ Barbet told her.

‘Where?’

He looked down at a pad on his desk. ‘He was attached to the 609th Squadron of the RAF. He’s been transferred to the 121st Squadron at Martlesham East, in East Anglia. He’s flying Hurri —’

‘I don’t care about that.’

‘You’re paying for it,’ he said. ‘You might as well get your money’s worth.’ He looked down at his notes again. ‘He’s flying Hurricanes. Before that he was flying American Buffaloes.’

He turned over a page and added, ‘It becomes a little personal here.’

‘Go on,’ Noelle said.

Barbet shrugged. ‘There’s a list of girls he is sleeping with. I didn’t know whether you wanted —’

‘I told you – everything.’

There was a strange note in her voice that baffled him. There was something not quite normal here, something that did not ring true. Christian Barbet was a third-rate investigator handling third-rate clients, but because of that he had developed a feral instinct for truth, a nose for smelling out facts. The beautiful girl standing in his office disturbed him. At first Barbet had thought she might be trying to involve him in some kind of espionage. Then he decided that she was a deserted wife seeking evidence against her husband. He had been wrong about that, he admitted, and now he was at a loss to figure out what his client wanted or why. He handed Noelle the list of Larry Douglas’ girl friends and watched her face as she read it. She might have been reading a laundry list.

She finished and looked up. Christian Barbet was totally unprepared for her next words. ‘I’m very pleased,’ Noelle said.

He looked at her and blinked rapidly.

‘Please call me when you have something more to report.’

Long after Noelie Page had gone, Barbet sat in his office staring out the window, trying to puzzle out what his client was really after.

The theatres of Paris were beginning to boom again. The Germans attended to celebrate the glory of their victories and to show off the beautiful Frenchwomen they wore on their arms like trophies. The French attended to forget for a few hours that they were an unhappy, defeated people.

Noelle had attended the theatre in Marseille a few times, but she had seen sleazy amateur plays acted out by fourth-rate performers for indifferent audiences. The theatre in Paris was something else again. It was alive and sparkling and filled with the wit and grace of Molière, Racine and Colette. The incomparable Sacha Guitry had opened his theatre and Noelle went to see him perform. She attended a revival of Büchner’s La Morte de Danton and a play called Asmodée by a promising new young writer named François Mauriac. She went to the Comédie Française to see Pirandello’s Chacun La Verité and Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Noelle always went alone, oblivious of the admiring stares of those around her, completely lost in the drama taking place on the stage. Something in the magic that went on behind the footlights struck a responsive chord in her. She was playing a part just like the actors on stage, pretending to be something that she wasn’t, hiding behind a mask.

One play in particular, Huis Clos by Jean Paul Sartre, affected her deeply. It starred Philippe Sorel, one of the idols of Europe. Sorel was ugly, short and beefy, with a broken nose and the face of a boxer. But the moment he spoke, a magic took place. He was transformed into a sensitive handsome man. It’s like the story of the Prince and the Frog, Noelle thought, watching him perform. Only he is both. She went back to watch him again and again, sitting in the front row studying his performance, trying to learn the secret of his magnetism.

One evening during intermission an usher handed Noelle a note. It read, ‘I have seen you in the audience night after night. Please come backstage this evening and let me meet you. P.S.’ Noelle read it over, savouring it. Not because she gave a damn about Philippe Sorel, but because she knew that this was the beginning she had been looking for.

She went backstage after the performance. An old man at the stage door ushered her into Sorel’s dressing room. He was seated before a makeup mirror, wearing only shorts, wiping off his makeup. He studied Noelle in the mirror. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he said finally. ‘You’re even more beautiful up close.’

‘Thank you, Monsieur Sorel.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Marseille.’

Sorel swung around to look at her more closely. His eyes moved to her feet and slowly worked their way up to the top of her head, missing nothing. Noelle stood there under his scrutiny, not moving. ‘Looking for a job?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘I never pay for it,’ Sorel said. ‘All you’ll get from me is a pass to my play. If you want money, fuck a banker.’

Noelle stood there quietly watching him. Finally Sorel said, ‘What are you looking for?’

‘I think I’m looking for you.’

They had supper and afterwards went back to Sorel’s apartment in the beautiful rue Maurice-Barres, overlooking the corner where it became the Bois de Boulogne. Philippe Sorel was a skilful lover, surprisingly considerate and unselfish. Sorel had expected nothing from Noelle but her beauty, and he was astonished by her versatility in bed.

‘Christ!’ he said. ‘You’re fantastic. Where did you learn all that?’

Noelle thought about it a moment. It was really not a question of learning. It was a matter of feeling. To her a man’s body was an instrument to be played on, to explore to its innermost depths, finding the responsive chords and building upon them, using her own body to help create exquisite harmonies.

‘I was born with it,’ she said simply.

Her fingertips began to lightly play around his lips, quick little butterfly touches, and then moved down to his chest and stomach. She saw him starting to grow hard and erect again. She arose and went into the bathroom and returned a moment later and slid his hard penis into her mouth. Her mouth was hot, filled with warm water.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he said.

They spent the entire night making love, and in the morning. Sorel invited Noelle to move in with him.

Noelle lived with Philippe Sorel for six months. She was neither happy nor unhappy. She knew that her being there made Sorel ecstatically happy, but this did not matter in the slightest to Noelle. She regarded herself as simply a student, determined to learn something new every day. He was a school that she was attending, a small part in her large plan. To Noelle there was nothing personal in their relationship, for she gave nothing of herself. She had made that mistake twice, and she would never make it again. There was room for only one man in Noelle’s thoughts and that was Larry Douglas. Noelle would pass the place des Victoires or a park or restaurant where Larry had taken her, and she would feel the hatred well up within her, choking her, so it became difficult to breathe, and there was something else mixed in with the hatred, something Noelle could not put a name to.

Two months after moving in with Sorel, Noelle received a call from Christian Barbet.

‘I have another report for you,’ the little detective said.

‘Is he all right?’ Noelle asked quickly.

Again Barbet was filled with that sense of uneasiness. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Noelle’s voice was filled with relief. ‘I’ll be right down.’

The report was divided into two parts. The first dealt with Larry Douglas’ military career. He had shot down five German planes and was the first American to become an Ace in the war. He had been promoted to Captain. The second part of the report interested her more. He had become very popular in London’s wartime social life and had become engaged to the daughter of a British Admiral. There followed a list of girls that Larry was sleeping with, ranging from show girls to the wife of an under-secretary in the Ministry.

‘Do you want me to keep on with this?’ Barbet asked.

‘Of course,’ Noelle replied. She took an envelope from her purse and handed it to Barbet. ‘Call me when you have anything further.’

And she was gone.

Barbet sighed and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Folle,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Folle.’

If Philippe Sorel had had any inkling of what was going on in Noelle’s mind, he would have been astonished. Noelle seemed totally devoted to him. She did everything for him: cooked wonderful meals, shopped, supervised the cleaning of his apartment and made love whenever the mood stirred him. And asked for nothing. Sorel congratulated himself on having found the perfect mistress. He took her everywhere, and she met all his friends. They were enchanted with her and thought Sorel a very lucky man.

One night as they were having supper after the show, Noelle said to him, ‘I want to be an actress, Philippe.’

He shook his head. ‘God knows you’re beautiful enough, Noelle, but I’ve been up to my ass in actresses all my life. You’re different, and I want to keep you that way. I don’t want to share you with anyone.’ He patted her hand. ‘Don’t I give you everything you need?’

‘Yes, Philippe,’ Noelle replied.

When they returned to the apartment that night, Sorel wanted to make love. When they finished, he was drained. Noelle had never been as exciting, and Sorel congratulated himself that all she needed was the firm guidance of a man.

The following Sunday was Noelle’s birthday, and Philippe Sorel gave a dinner party for her at Maxim’s. He had taken over the large private dining room upstairs, decorated with plush red velvet and deep dark wood panelling. Noelle had helped write the guest list, and there was one name she included without mentioning it to Philippe. There were forty people at the party. They toasted Noelle’s birthday and gave her lavish gifts. When dinner was over, Sorel rose to his feet. He had drunk a good deal of brandy and champagne and he was a little unsteady, his words a bit slurred.

‘My friends,’ he said, ‘we’ve all drunk to the most beautiful girl in the world and we’ve given her lovely birthday presents, but I have a present for her that’s going to be a big surprise.’ Sorel looked down at Noelle and beamed, then turned to the crowd. ‘Noelle and I are going to be married.’

There was an approving cheer and the guests raced up to clap Sorel on the back and wish luck to the bride-to-be. Noelle sat there smiling up at the guests, murmuring her thank-yous. One of the guests had not risen. He was seated at a table at the far end of the room, smoking a cigarette in a long holder and viewing the scene sardonically. Noelle was aware that he had been watching her during dinner. He was a tall, very thin man, with an intense, brooding face. He seemed amused by everything that was happening around him, more an observer at the party than a guest.

Noelle caught his eye and smiled.

Armand Gautier was one of the top directors in France. He was in charge of the French Repertory Theatre, and his productions had been acclaimed all over the world. Having Gautier direct a play or a motion picture was an almost certain guarantee of its success. He had the reputation of being particularly good with actresses and had created half a dozen important stars.

Sorel was at Noelle’s side, talking to her. ‘Were you surprised, my darling?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Philippe,’ she said.

‘I want us to be married right away. We’ll have the wedding at my villa.’

Over his shoulder Noelle could see Armand Gautier watching her, smiling that enigmatic smile. Some friends came and took Philippe away and when Noelle turned, Gautier was standing there.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. There was a mocking note in his voice. ‘You hooked a big fish.’

‘Did I?’

‘Philippe Sorel is a great catch.’

‘For someone perhaps,’ Noelle said indifferently.

Gautier looked at her in surprise. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re not interested?’

‘I’m not trying to tell you anything.’

‘Good luck.’ He turned to go.

‘Monsieur Gautier …’

He stopped.

‘Could I see you tonight?’ Noelle asked quietly. ‘I would like to talk to you alone.’

Armand Gautier looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. ‘If you wish.’

‘I will come to your place. Will that be satisfactory?’

‘Yes, of course. The address is —’

‘I know the address. Twelve o’clock?’

‘Twelve o’clock.’

Armand Gautier lived in a fashionable old apartment building on rue Marbeuf. A doorman escorted Noelle into the lobby and an elevator boy took her to the fourth floor and indicated Gautier’s apartment. Noelle rang the bell. A few moments later the door was opened by Gautier. He wore a flowered dressing gown.

‘Come in,’ he said.

Noelle walked into the apartment. Her eye was untrained, but she sensed that it was done in beautiful taste and that the objets d’art were valuable.

‘Sorry I’m not dressed,’ Gautier apologized. ‘I’ve been on the telephone.’

Noelle’s eyes locked onto his. ‘It will not be necessary for you to be dressed.’ She moved over to the couch and sat down.

Gautier smiled. ‘That was the feeling I had, Miss Page. But I’m curious about something. Why me? You’re engaged to a man who is famous and wealthy. I am sure that if you are looking for some extracurricular activities, you could find men more attractive than I, and certainly richer and younger. What is it you want from me?’

‘I want you to teach me to act,’ Noelle said.

Armand Gautier looked at her a moment, then sighed. ‘You disappoint me. I expected something more original.’

‘Your business is working with actors.’

‘With actors, not amateurs. Have you ever acted?’

‘No. But you will teach me.’ She took off her hat and her gloves. ‘Where is your bedroom?’ she asked.

Gautier hesitated. His life was full of beautiful women wanting to be in the theatre, or wanting a bigger part, or the lead in a new play, or a larger dressing room. They were all a pain. He knew that he would be a fool to get involved with one more. And yet there was no need to get involved. Here was a beautiful girl throwing herself at him. It would be a simple matter to take her to bed and then send her away. ‘In there,’ he said, indicating a door.

He watched Noelle as she walked towards the bedroom. He wondered what Philippe Sorel would think if he knew that his bride-to-be was spending the night here. Women. Whores, all of them. Gautier poured himself a brandy and made several phone calls. When he finally went into the bedrom, Noelle was in his bed, naked, waiting for him. Gautier had to admit that she was an exquisite work of nature. Her face was breath-taking, and her body was flawless. Her skin was the colour of honey, except for the triangle of soft golden hair between her legs. Gautier had learned from experience that beautiful girls were almost invariably narcissistic, so preoccupied with their own egocentricities that they were lousy lays. They felt their contribution to lovemaking was simply conferring their presence in a man’s bed, so that the man ended up making love to an unmoving lump of clay and was expected to be grateful for the experience. Ah, well, perhaps he could teach this one something.

As Noelle watched him, Gautier undressed, leaving his clothes carelessly strewn on the floor, and moved towards the bed. ‘I’m not going to tell you you are beautiful,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard it too many times already.’

‘Beauty is wasted,’ Noelle shrugged, ‘unless it is used to give pleasure.’

Gautier looked at her in quick surprise, then smiled. ‘I agree. Let’s use yours.’ He sat down beside her.

Like most Frenchmen, Armand Gautier prided himself on being a skilled lover. He was amused by the stories he had heard of Germans and Americans whose idea of making love consisted of jumping on top of a girl, having an instant orgasm, and then putting on their hat and departing. The Americans even had a phrase for it. ‘Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.’ When Armand Gautier was emotionally involved with a woman, he used many devices to heighten the enjoyment of lovemaking. There was always a perfect dinner, the right wines. He arranged the setting artistically so that it was pleasing to the senses, the room was delicately scented and soft music was playing. He aroused his women with tender sentiments of love and later the coarse language of the gutter. And Gautier was adept at the manual foreplay that preceded sex.

In Noelle’s case he dispensed with all of these. For a one-night stand there was no need for perfume or music or empty endearments. She was here simply to get laid. She was indeed a silly fool if she thought that she could trade what every woman in the world carried between her legs for the great and unique genius that Armand Gautier possessed in his head.

He started to climb on top of her. Noelle stopped him.

‘Wait,’ she whispered.

As he watched, puzzled, she reached for two small tubes that she had placed on the bedside table. She squeezed the contents of one into her hand and began to rub it onto his penis.

‘What is this all about?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘You’ll see.’ She kissed him on the lips, her tongue darting into his mouth in quick bird-like movements. She pulled away and her tongue started moving towards his belly, her hair trailing across his body like light, silky fingers. He felt his organ begin to rise. She moved her tongue down his legs to his feet and began to suck gently on his toes. His organ was stiff and hard now and she mounted him as he lay there. As he felt himself penetrating her, the warmth of her vagina acted on the cream she had put on his penis and the sensation became unbearably exciting. As she rode him, moving up and down, her left hand was caressing his testicles and they began to grow hot. There was menthol in the cream on his penis and the sensation of the cold while inside her warmth, and the heat of his testicles, drove him into an absolute frenzy.

They made love all night long and each time Noelle made love to him differently. It was the most incredibly sensuous experience he had ever had.

In the morning Armand Gautier said, ‘If I can get up enough energy to move, I’ll get dressed and take you out to breakfast.’

‘Lie there,’ Noelle said. She walked over to a closet, selected one of his robes and put it on. ‘You rest. I’ll be back.’

Thirty-five minutes later Noelle returned with a breakfast tray. On it were freshly squeezed orange juice, a delicious sausage-and-chive omelet, heated, buttered croissants and jam and a pot of black coffee. It tasted extraordinarily good.

‘Aren’t you having anything?’ Gautier asked.

Noelle shook her head. ‘No.’ She was seated in an easy chair watching him as he ate. She looked even more beautiful wearing his dressing gown open at the top, revealing the curves of her delicious breasts. Her hair was tousled and carefree.

Armand Gautier had radically revised his earlier estimate of Noelle. She was not any man’s quick lay; she was an absolute treasure. However, he had met many treasures in his career in the theatre, and he was not about to spend his time and talent as a director on a starry-eyed amateur who wanted to break into the theatre, no matter how beautiful she might be, or how skilled in bed. Gautier was a dedicated man who took his art seriously. He had refused to compromise it in the past, and he was not about to start now.

The evening before, he had planned to spend the night with Noelle and send her packing in the morning. Now as he ate his breakfast and studied her, he was trying to figure out a way to hold onto Noelle as a mistress until he got bored with her, without encouraging her as an actress. He knew that he had to hold out some bait. He felt his way cautiously. ‘Are you planning to marry Philippe Sorel?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ Noelle replied. ‘That is not what I want.’

Now it was coming. ‘What do you want?’ Gautier asked.

‘I told you,’ Noelle said quietly. ‘I want to be an actress.’

Gautier bit into another croissant, stalling for time. ‘Of course,’ he said. Then he added, ‘There are many fine dramatic coaches I could send you to, Noelle, who would …’

‘No,’ she said. Noelle was watching him pleasantly, warmly, as though eager to accede to anything he suggested. And yet Gautier had a feeling that inside her was a core of steel. There were many ways she could have said ‘no.’ With anger, reproach, disappointment, sulking, but she had said it with softness. And absolute finality. This was going to be more difficult than he had anticipated. For a moment Armand Gautier was tempted to tell her, as he told dozens of girls every week, to go away, that he had no time to waste on her. But he thought of the incredible sensations he had experienced during the night and he knew he would be a fool to let her go so soon. She was surely worth a slight, a very slight, compromise.

‘Very well,’ Gautier said. ‘I will give you a play to study. When you have memorized it, you will read it to me and we will see how much talent you have. Then we can decide what to do with you.’

‘Thank you, Armand,’ she said. There was no triumph in her words, nor even any pleasure that he could detect. Just a simple acknowledgment of the inevitable. For the first time Gautier felt a small twinge of doubt. But that of course was ridiculous. He was a master at handling women.

While Noelle was getting dressed, Armand Gautier went into his book-lined study and scanned the familiar-looking worn volumes on the shelves. Finally, with a wry smile, he selected Euripides’ Andromache. It was one of the most difficult classics to act. He went back into the bedroom and handed the play to Noelle.

‘Here you are, my dear,’ he said. ‘When you have memorized the part, we shall go over it together.’

‘Thank you, Armand. You will not be sorry.’

The more he thought about it, the more pleased Gautier was with his ploy. It would take Noelle a week or two to memorize the part, or what was even more likely, she would come to him and confess that she was unable to memorize it. He would sympathize with her, explain how difficult the art of acting was, and they could assume a relationship untainted by her ambition. Gautier made a date to have dinner with Noelle that evening, and she left.

When Noelle returned to the apartment she shared with Philippe Sorel, she found him waiting for her. He was very drunk.

‘You bitch,’ he yelled. ‘Where have you been all night?’

It would not matter what she said. Sorel knew that he was going to listen to her apologies, beat her up, then take her to bed and forgive her.

But instead of apologizing Noelle merely said, ‘With another man, Philippe. I’ve come to pick up my things.’

And as Sorel watched her in stunned disbelief, Noelle walked into the bedroom and began to pack.

‘For Christ’s sake, Noelle,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t do this! We love each other. We’re going to get married.’ He talked to her for the next half hour, arguing, threatening, cajoling, and by that time Noelle had finished packing and had left the apartment and Sorel had no idea why he had lost her, for he did not know that he had never possessed her.

Armand Gautier was in the middle of directing a new play that was to open in two weeks and he spent all day at the theatre in rehearsals. As a rule when Gautier was in production, he thought of nothing else. Part of his genius was the intense concentration he was able to bring to his work. Nothing existed for him but the four walls of the theatre and the actors he was working with. This day however was different. Gautier found his mind constantly wandering to Noelle and the incredible night they had had together. The actors would go through a scene and then stop and wait for his comments, and Gautier would suddenly realize that he had been paying no attention. Furious with himself he tried to focus his attention on what he was doing, but thoughts of Noelle’s naked body and the amazing things it had done to him would keep coming back. In the middle of one dramatic scene he found that he was walking around the stage with an erection, and he had to excuse himself.

Because Gautier had an analytical mind he tried to figure out what it was about this girl that had affected him like this. Noelle was beautiful, but he had slept with some of the most beautiful women in the world. She was consummately skilled at lovemaking but so were other women to whom he had made love. She seemed intelligent but not brilliant; her personality was pleasant but not complex. There was something else, something the director could not quite put his finger on. And then he remembered her soft ‘no’ and he felt that it was a clue. There was some force in her that was irresistible, that would obtain anything she wanted. There was something in her that was untouched. And like other men before him Armand Gautier felt that though Noelle had affected him more deeply than he cared to admit to himself, he had not touched her at all, and this was a challenge that his masculinity could not refuse.

Gautier spent the day in a confused state of mind. He looked forward to the evening with tremendous anticipation, not so much because he wanted to make love to Noelle but because he wanted to prove to himself that he had been building something out of nothing. He wanted Noelle to be a disappointment to him so that he could dismiss her from his life.

As they made love that night, Armand Gautier made himself consciously aware of the tricks and devices and artifices Noelle used so he would realize that it was all mechanical, without emotion. But he was mistaken. She gave herself to him fully and completely, caring only about bringing him pleasure such as he had never known before and revelling in his enjoyment. When morning came Gautier was more firmly bewitched by her than ever.

Noelle prepared breakfast for him again, this time delicate crêpes with bacon and jam, and hot coffee, and it was magnificent.

‘All right,’ Gautier told himself. ‘You have found a young girl who is beautiful to look at, who can make love and cook. Bravo! But is that enough for an intelligent man? When you are through making love and eating, you must talk. What can she talk to you about?’ The answer was that it didn’t really matter.

There had been no more mention of the play and Gautier was hoping that Noelle had either forgotten about it or had been unable to cope with memorizing the lines. When she left in the morning, she promised to have dinner with him that evening.

‘Can you get away from Philippe?’ Gautier asked.

‘I’ve left him,’ Noelle said simply. She gave Gautier her new address.

He stared at her for a moment. ‘I see.’

But he did not. Not in the least.

They spent the night together again. When they were not making love, they talked. Or rather Gautier talked. Noelle seemed so interested in him that he found himself talking about things he had not discussed in years, personal things that he had never revealed to anyone before. No mention was made of the play he had given her to read, and Gautier congratulated himself on having solved his problem so neatly.

The following night when they had had dinner and were ready to retire, Gautier started towards the bedroom.

‘Not yet,’ Noelle said.

He turned in surprise.

‘You said you would listen to me do the play.’

‘Well, of – of course,’ Gautier stammered, ‘whenever you’re ready.’

‘I am ready.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to read it, cherie,’ he said. ‘I want to hear it when you have memorized it so that I can really judge you as an actress.’

‘I have memorized it,’ Noelle replied.

He stared at her in disbelief. It was impossible that she could have learned the entire part in only three days.

‘Are you ready to hear me?’ she asked.

Armand Gautier had no choice. ‘Of course,’ he said. He gestured towards the centre of the room. ‘That will be your stage. The audience will be here.’ He sat down on a large comfortable settee.

Noelle began to do the play. Gautier could feel the goose-flesh begin to crawl, his own personal stigmata, the thing that happened to him when he encountered real talent. Not that Noelle was expert. Far from it. Her inexperience shone through every move and gesture. But she had something much more than mere skill: She had a rare honesty, a natural talent that gave every line a fresh meaning and colour.

When Noelle finished the soliloquy, Gautier said warmly, ‘I think that one day you will become an important actress, Noelle. I really mean that. I am going to send you to Georges Faber, who is the best dramatic coach in all of France. Working with him, you will —’

‘No.’

He looked at her in surprise. It was that same soft ‘no’ again. Positive and final.

‘“No” what?’ Gautier asked in some confusion. ‘Faber does not take on anyone but the biggest actors. He will only take you because I tell him to.’

‘I am going to work with you,’ Noelle said.

Gautier could feel the anger mounting in him. ‘I don’t coach anyone,’ he snapped. ‘I am not a teacher. I direct professional actors. When you are a professional actor, then I will direct you.’ He was fighting to check the anger in his voice. ‘Do you understand?’

Noelle nodded. ‘Yes, I understand, Armand.’

‘Very well then.’

Mollified, he took Noelle in his arms and received a warm kiss from her. He knew now that he had worried unnecessarily. She was like any other woman, she needed to be dominated. He would have no further problem with her.

Their lovemaking that night surpassed anything that had gone before, possibly, Gautier thought, because of the added excitement of the slight quarrel they had had.

During the night he said to her, ‘You really can be a wonderful actress, Noelle. I’m going to be very proud of you.’

‘Thank you, Armand,’ she whispered.

Noelle fixed breakfast in the morning, and Gautier left for the theatre. When he telephoned Noelle during the day, she did not answer, and when he arrived home that night she was not there. Gautier waited for her to return, and when she did not appear he lay awake all night wondering if she could have been in an accident. He tried to phone Noelle at her apartment, but there was no answer. He sent a telegram that went undelivered, and when he stopped at her apartment after rehearsal, no one answered his ring.

During the week that followed, Gautier was frantic. Rehearsals were turning into a shambles. He was screaming at all the actors and upsetting them so badly that his stage manager suggested they stop for the day and Gautier agreed. After the actors had left, he sat on the stage alone, trying to understand what had happened to him. He told himself that Noelle was just another woman, a cheap ambitious blonde with the heart of a shopgirl who wanted to be a star. He denigrated her in every way he could think of, but in the end he knew it was no use. He had to have her. That night he wandered the streets of Paris, getting drunk in small bars where he was unknown. He tried to think of ways to reach Noelle but to no avail. There was no one he could even talk to about her, except Philippe Sorel, and that, of course, was out of the question.

A week after Noelle had disappeared, Armand Gautier arrived home at four o’clock in the morning, drunk, opened the door and walked into the living room. All the lights were on. Noelle was curled up in an easy chair dressed in one of his robes, reading a book. She looked up as he entered, and smiled.

‘Hello, Armand.’

Gautier stared at her, his heart lifting, a feeling of infinite relief and happiness flooding through him. He said, ‘We’ll begin working tomorrow.’