Chapter 18

I was entrusted to Lisbeth for the rest of the day. Madame Calmelane took me back to her office so that I could fill in the necessary forms. She asked Lisbeth if she would be so kind as to take me to the canteen at lunch time. Divining that overall finances were tight, Madame Calmelane gave me a canteen card charged up with enough francs to buy a week’s food. My mouth watered. Anything but Chinese! French fries, cheese, butter and chips; cutlery that didn’t bend; plates that didn’t sag.

Lisbeth’s English was better than my French, owing to several trips to the States working in various bars and restaurants, and from her time as a ski-monitor on the ski slopes near her home town of Chambéry, where she confessed she had slept with enough English-speaking tourists to perfect her language skills. She was in her mid-twenties, tall and slender with long chestnut brown hair (which, unlike my own, was firmly implanted at the roots), and a deep throaty laugh with the underlying rasp of a chain smoker. She was attractive in an overly made-up way, her naturally oily face plastered in a coat of thick foundation to countenance the shine. Her jeans were tight and her silk top clingy, turning the heads of the openly hot-blooded men in the queue as she bobbed above the switchboard. Lisbeth started by helping me acquire some new vocabulary. Le standard was the switchboard and we were standardistes or receptionists. The main switchboard connected 111 offices spread over the 31st floor, plus the hotline on the 24th floor, where clients called with technical problems from all over the world. The company sold mainframe software packages to some of the largest clients in France: Auchan and Carrefour hypermarkets, La Poste, the EDF national electricity company, etc. As an American company, we were affluent compared to local French businesses. On average, company salaries were thirty per cent above the minimum working wage (le SMIC) and I was to receive a whopping 9,000 francs a month. My previous salary as an au pair was mere pin money at 1,800 per month. If I could keep this job, I’d be able to pay my rent and finally have some money with which to enjoy Paris.

Despite our high working wage, Lisbeth and I were at the bottom of the company food chain. Below us were only two other staff members: Yazid Seridi, a Pakistani man whose English was better than his French, and his side-kick Bertrand Gauthier who smelt like a skunk, because of (what Lisbeth described as) ‘a chronic and incurable and most sad problem with his glands (however often he washes, he will never remove the odour)’. Yazid and Bertrand worked in the mail room and dealt with the packaging of software systems sent out from the office. They lived below ground in the cavernous dungeons au sous sol. This was the lowest part of the building, an underworld five floors beneath the ground floor, reserved for the cockroaches and the mail men. Everyone below ground was male. There were no women in packing. Occasionally Bertrand travelled up in the lift to the 31st floor filling our nostrils with his acrid odour. Lisbeth mimed with a pinched nose how it was every employee’s worst nightmare to be caught in the lift with the unfortunate man, especially if he alighted on the 24th floor leaving his odour behind him so that anyone catching a ride up to the 25–30th floors might wrongly attribute the provenance of the smell to the remaining person in the lift. She kept a special can of air freshener behind reception to fumigate the area post-mail delivery. We chatted at reception in broken English and French during those blissful moments when the monstrous standard drew breath between its ugly screeching howls. Bertrand and Yazid struggled through reception carrying a large box. There were at least fifty paces between us, but Bertrand’s bitter smell hit my nostrils.

‘Poor Yazid,’ I said to Lisbeth.

‘Poor wife,’ said Lisbeth, ‘though they appear happy.’

At twelve o’clock on the dot, Lisbeth unplugged the switchboard and we headed down for lunch.

The Tour Washington had three canteens, each on a different level below the entrance hall and descending in order of importance. Minus one housed a grand-sounding restaurant called Le Musée. Lisbeth told me that she had never eaten there because there was a non-spoken agreement that it was reserved for cadres. I was not familiar with the term, but during my time at Brown & Mclane Software, it was one that would come to haunt me.

We were, it transpired, non-cadres. Cadre was a title given to management and determined by pay scale and position within the company. Cadres were relinquished from the rules and regulations which controlled our lives and were trusted to manage their own time. They had higher salaries, better pensions, longer lunch breaks, and massive egos, considering themselves to be superior to any other living creature on earth. Cadres had graduated from the top business schools or universities in Paris, whereas non-cadres usually left school with little more than a Brevet or Baccalaureate beneath their belts. If that. Whatever the reality of our qualifications, our positions within the company predetermined the level of respect accorded to us from other members of staff, and by society at large. A cadre, it transpired, was not reprimanded for shagging his colleague on the boot of his car in the underground carpark to the same extent a non-cadre might be, if caught on CCTV. An incident between a randy head of department and his assistant filmed on the bonnet of a Peugeot 605 demonstrated such differences with clarity during my second week.

At the office, non-cadres (secretaries, receptionists, packers, cleaners, brown-collar workers, etc.) were obliged to use the formal ‘vous’ when addressing their superiors on the pay scale, whereas cadres could happily use the familiar ‘tu’, both to each other and when addressing non-cadres. I learnt later on, that the informal ‘tu’ could show friendship and familiarity, but when used unilaterally by a cadre it could also underline both inferiority and lower social status. Time taught me that, even when authorised, it was not always a good idea to jump in too soon with the friendly ‘tu’, as it was difficult to revert to ‘vous’ afterwards. An unmistakeable snootiness could be conveyed with a well-placed ‘vous’ enabling a much-appreciated chasm to exist between two parties. In-laws for example.

Later, I would learn that the use of ‘vous’ in situations of intimacy, when ‘tu’ would be the norm, could also heighten the eroticism of a moment, if so desired.

In many ways ‘vous’ was far more flexible.

At the office, mistakes in tense were punishable by decapitation, since the tutoiement of a cadre showed the utmost lack of respect. I was going to have to revise all my verb endings, as clients on the phone had to be addressed in formal French and I’d spent the last few months with the Blanchards using the familiar ‘tu’ form.

Lisbeth, Bertrand, Yazid and most of the other staff members at the office who deigned to talk to me, were non-cadres. I was about to join their ranks, so I needed to know the rules.

I learnt that the office building segregated its diners at luncheon in accordance to their social standing. With Le Musée occupying a rather grand space on level Minus One, there was a second canteen which was used by non-cadres on Minus Two. This restaurant catered for white-collar non-management staff: secretaries, lower-level accountants and technicians. Further below, on level Minus Three, in the entrails of the tower, there was another canteen which served only sandwiches and coffee. This was reserved for the lowest paid of all non-cadres: the packers, cleaners and security services, or the brown-collar workers. There were no seats, the workers huddling round a bar area long enough for a quick snack.

This tiered level of society surprised me. I’d thought that the French Revolution had taken care of all that. I’d imagined that it would be an ‘all for one and one for all’ type of mentality in France, considering the number of heads that had rolled into baskets. Not so. I was realising, first through the likes of the Blanchards and their easy aristocracy, and now through a software company in the heart of the business centre, that class was clearly defined and adhered to. There was a palpable sense at the office (albeit it American owned) of needing to learn one’s place in the organisational chart and sticking to it. Contrary to the mentality I’d grown up with in my comprehensive school, social mobility was not encouraged.

A non-cadre when lying in the gutter (or eating at the canteen three floors below ground) shouldn’t aim for the stars. It would only lead to unhappiness. When I joked with Lisbeth that one day we too might eat at Le Musée on Minus One, she looked at me in horror. Her greatest ambition was to achieve secretarial status, but she had no ambitions to eat caviar on toast from fine china side plates, bemoaning the fact that some of the sales team would struggle to accept her as a personal assistant, having first known her as a receptionist, never mind dining in her presence.

I asked Lisbeth what would happen if we decided to pay more and eat at Le Musée.

‘This would be very bad form,’ Lisbeth said. ‘We might see our boss and she wouldn’t like it.’

‘Is the food nicer?’

‘They have starters, main course, and dessert: pretty cakes with berries on the top, fresh not frozen; foie gras at Christmas. And a Roman statue at the entrance.’

I determined I would eat there one day. Even if I had to take my book and read in a corner by myself.

The food on Minus Two was school canteen fare: chips and lasagne. Hot stodge without a trace of those fine slices of salmon carpaccio that Lisbeth had talked of at Le Musée. Not a place where we were likely to find lemon quarters or bowls of hand-whisked mayonnaise. At least we weren’t huddled round a cheese toastie at Minus Three with Bertrand and Yazid. At least it wasn’t Chinese food.

As I trailed behind Lisbeth, up and down La Tour Washington and around the office, I observed how the cadres held the swing doors open for other cadres. Yet whenever a cadre met us on his travels, he pushed rudely past, allowing the door to swing wildly in our faces. (The majority of cadres, with the exception of Madame Calmelane, were male).

‘Bit rude,’ I said, checking my front tooth.

‘C’est normal,’ said Lisbeth. ‘We are nothing to them. Rien du tout.’

On our first lunch together, Lisbeth ate a hearty lunch, swallowing a couple of yellow pills with her coffee.

‘To keep thin,’ she said. ‘I used to have a fat ass. I was obèse, but now I’m on medication. They are trying to stop these pills now. They say they are bad for the heart – but I’d rather be dead when I’m old than fat like before.’

I noticed that she had that same American twang as Bonne-Maman when she said ‘ass’.

After lunch, Lisbeth said she was going to have a cigarette, or ‘une clope’ in familiar French argo (slang). This also helped to keep her weight down, and was a trick adopted by many of the French women I met. We went back up to the office. There were no rules preventing smoking in the building either in designated zones, or at their desks in the case of higher level management; and this regardless of the pregnant non-cadres who breathed the air around them.

At two o’clock precisely, Lisbeth plugged the switchboard back in. It jumped into life like a rabid dog, bouncing on the desk with the vibration of a hundred calls. The ear-piercing beeps were as strident as a baby hyena left to starve and could not be ignored. There were ten lines down the left-hand side of the machine and all of these were busy. Lisbeth skilfully put each call on hold with a well-practised ‘Bonjour monsieur/madame. Un instant je vous prie.’ I practised the words, wondering if I would ever be able to speak as confidently to the clients as she did. From Lisbeth’s easy banter and the twinkle in her eye, it was easy to see that a lot of the callers were like old friends, although she told me she had not met most of them.

‘Many of our clients are based in Provence,’ she said. ‘but they know me now and we have a little chat when there is time.’

Lisbeth was a confident telephonist, with her flirtatious banter, her deep smoker’s voice and gruff laugh. It was a facade which hid her insecurity. She explained to me in hushed tones that she couldn’t spell, at all, having left school before her baccalaureate. She told me that no-one would give her a chance in life, until she joined this company.

When she wrote messages in a childish hand with unnecessary loops and curls, the nib of her pen pressing deep into the paper, even I could pick up on a few basic mistakes: the use of the ER infinitive where a past participle should have been used. How would she manage with the razor-sharp-tongued women in the secretarial pool? Was social mobility such a good thing after all if it crushed your soul? Lisbeth was happy on reception, her bubbling personality rubbing off on even the dourest of staff members.

She showed me how to answer the calls and to put them through, before deciding halfway through the afternoon that it was time to leave me for yet another ‘pause cigarette.’

‘You see how it works?’ she said. The storm had died down in the last half an hour, following a frenzy of calls from irate accountants up and down the country who realised soon after a lazy lunch that they couldn’t fathom their software package in time to meet their tight deadlines that evening. Lisbeth grabbed her Marlborough Lights from her bag, calling ‘Je reviens,’ as she disappeared through the swing doors. The first call that came through was from the English office in the UK. I spoke to a pleasant-sounding man by the name of Mark Oakes and connected him through to the translation department with ease. Madame Calmelane passed by as I finished the call and smiled, reassured to see the situation under control.

The reception desk was an elegant semicircle which filled half the entrance hall. There was a giant yucca plant in a pot and a small waiting area with black leather sofas and IT magazines on a glass coffee table. The view from the window was spectacular: nothing short of the New York skyline to a country girl like me. Lost in contemplation and praying for Lisbeth’s return, I sensed a presence by my side. It was Yazid. He sidled up to the desk, flicking an anxious look at the double doors which housed Human Resources and Madame Calmelane’s bureau. In his hand, there was a box of yellow Post-its and a box of biros.

‘Je t’ai apporté des fournitures,’ he said, using the informal form of address straight off, which I knew was impertinent. Then, seeing that I didn’t understand the word fournitures, said in English, ‘Supplies, you know, for the office. I brought some. I manage mail and supplies.’

‘Merci,’ I said, and took them from him.

He didn’t leave, but leant on the counter, with a contrived air of ease. It was clear to see that he wasn’t comfortable on management level. Lisbeth had explained that all the offices around us were filled with the heads of sales, and other than the delivery of his supplies, there was no other reason for him to loiter. He should be back in the entrails of La Tour Washington. Yazid gave a nervous twitch as the door opened. A tall blonde salesman in a blue suit passed by with tanned features fresh from the côte d’Azur. We were invisible to him.

‘Do you want to see Lisbeth?’ I asked in French.

‘No, no,’ he said, slipping into English. ‘It is you I want to see. I want to make you an offer.’

I hoped he wasn’t going to ask me out. He must have been forty. He took some time to spit out his load, as the French say, but finally reached the point:

‘You have a British passport.’ This was a statement not a question.

I was surprised. Yazid didn’t oversee paperwork at the office. If I needed to renew my carte de séjour then surely Madame Calmelane would ask me. I didn’t answer and seeing my confusion, he changed tack.

He smiled. ‘You have just arrived in Paris, n’est-ce pas? Do you have a place to live yet?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘That’s all sorted.’

If only he knew.

‘Ah,’ said Yazid, ‘that’s a pity. I could have helped. I know of a house, there are many rooms within.’

A bit like God’s house then.

‘No, I’m quite alright,’ I said.

‘This is your first job?’

‘Yes.’

‘Before that?’

‘I took care of three children for a French family.’

Yazid jumped on this piece of information.

‘Not much money. An au pair yes?’

‘Yes, it was very badly paid,’ I said, ‘that’s why I’m so grateful to Madame Calmelane for giving me a chance.’

At the sound of her name Yazid jumped into action, abandoning his stance as casual loiterer, spurred on like a Shakespearian messenger who was afraid that if he didn’t get on with it, he might be felled at any moment.

‘I cut to the point,’ he snapped, ‘but this is confidential. If you repeat this, I will be angry, très faché, and we don’t want to get off on the wrong foot, right?’

More threats. I was terrified enough as to what our Chinese benefactor might do, without Yazid starting. I didn’t say anything, wishing Lisbeth would hurry back. Even a client call would have been a relief.

‘I can give you money,’ Yazid said, ‘money that you need to live here in Paris. But you would have to do something for me.’

‘Really! Whatever do you think–!’

‘It’s not what you think,’ he said quickly. ‘You mis-understand, there is no sex involved. I am not this kind of man. In a way, you would be doing something good and kind. I don’t know how many days you will be here, or if you stay for good. But I’m saying this now and the offer remains.’

‘I don’t understand what you want from me?’

‘Your passport,’ said Yazid bluntly. ‘I know people, many people that need to get into the UK; good people, who want to work hard and make a living there. Not France. They want to go to England. Social Services are much kinder there.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘You give me your passport,’ he said, ‘and you wait one month. This is very important. Très, très important. You wait one month before going to the Embassy and saying to the officials there that you have been very stupid. You had not realised your passport had gone from your purse. You must have dropped it. You make a declaration to the authorities, and all is well. Money will be given to you: £10,000. Not from me, but it will come. Pounds you understand. Not francs.’

I tried to speak but Yazid silenced me with a raised hand.

‘Do not give me your answer now, there is no obligation. If you do not wish to, then we say no more about it. But it is a very generous offer. I ask only that you think seriously of your answer.’

I thought about Yazid’s proposition for all of five seconds. It was not the first time in my life that an indecent proposal had been made; one which was morally questionable. Back when I was dating Steve I had been offered £5,000 to pose naked for a magazine with a graduation gown draped around my shoulders. Shocked to have been asked at the time, my inner devil whispered that it was just the amount I need to cover my Barclay’s bank overdraft. I knew it was something I would never do. Nevertheless, Steve’s reaction had annoyed me: ‘It’d be alright if I was the only one to see it,’ he’d said. ‘Bit of a laugh really, and we could do with the money. But what if my father were to see it?’

I’d asked Steve how likely it was that his father would purchase a copy of Parade magazine.

‘Well, likely enough,’ he’d replied. ‘He’s partial to the odd girlie magazine, you know.’

‘Hypocrite!’ I’d said, keen to provoke a dispute.

‘No, I’m not,’ he hissed, ‘and you know it. You can’t have your fiancée in this kind of a magazine.’

Faced with this deal from the Devil, I knew I’d no more sell my passport that I would pose naked in my graduation gown. I gave Yazid what I hoped was a cold stare. I was proud of my newly acquired passport with its deep blue cover and inner inscription where the Queen both Requests and Requires that I be allowed to pass freely without let or hindrance, and afforded such assistance and protection as may be necessary. I felt that Her Majesty was with me, caring for me on a daily basis, whatever French life might throw at me, and I wasn’t about to betray that trust.

I wondered what Yazid was up to. The news was alive with the first Gulf War and there were talks of new terror attacks and of Scud missiles landing on French soil. There was increased security of late in Paris, and people in the metro wearing T-shirts which said, ‘Non à la guerre.’ Madame Calmelane had told reception to be wary of all unmarked packages arriving at reception. As an American company, we were a target.

I thought about Yazid and the house in Paris with the many rooms which he had to offer, and the people who wished to gain access into the UK. Did they mean to be good citizens? Or did they want to infiltrate the country for sinister reasons? I wondered if there was something about me which attracted weird proposals: first our mysterious benefactor, and now this. As the French said, I must have ‘pigeon’ written right across my forehead.