Chapter 4: Homage in Catalonia

I made my way back to my hotel still wrapped in that warm glow of pleasure engendered by the love between the two. It was similar feeling I had after meeting Jeanette Courville and her husband; two people with their perfect partner, although in Jeanette’s case she and Ferdi Azarain had had a similar relationship. Maybe we have more than one perfect match in the world, making the chance of finding one for more likely. I had never felt that any girl I had a relationship was my life’s partner although I had loved, in some small way at least, all of the females I had enjoyed a relationship with. Of course I don’t count any of the females I have entertained as part of my duties nor the many one night stands indulged in over the years.

Jacquelynne at the House of Joy in Grenoble was my first love; the first female I fell in love with even though her love was for sale. Chardonnay Du Plessier was someone who I could have loved had she not had that streak of madness. At times we were as close as any two people could be but those times were rare and short lived. With Rosa and Angelica, two girls from the Hotel Kaliphornika, I felt the stirrings of love but Angelica’s love was paid for and in Rosa’s case whatever she felt for me was entangled with what she felt for her impotent husband, and when he regained his ardour my services were no longer required.

Had I not been in the Legion I’m sure I could have settled down with Chloe Roubaix although she was a women who had grandiose plans for the man she married. I certainly was not Presidential/Prime Minister/Nobel Prize winner materiel and would soon have been found wanting by an ambitious wife and sent packing. Amy Baptiste was different, and had she not been in a Sapphic relationship with Chloe we might have joined our disparate halves into a clickable whole. Of course me being a legionnaire nixed any clicks.

But what about now? I was no longer a legionnaire and I was in a relationship with a woman who gave me everything I wanted from a bed partner and could even be my other half. Yolande Faucher and I lived as a married couple during the time I was employed at the Hotel Imperial but she was adamant we could not continue the relationship when I was a guest of the hotel. Of course a solution was for me to move out of the hotel and live elsewhere but then I would have to pay for my accommodation rather than relying on Maurice to foot the bill.

Eventually, as I grew older and my sexual prowess declined so I couldn’t fully satisfy the randy mature women I entertained, I would have to leave Maurice’s employ and find another source of income. With my years of training in hotel work I would have no difficulty getting employment at the Hotel Imperial, allowing the relationship between Yolande and me to continue, hopefully sharing her accommodation along with her body. In fact marriage wouldn’t be out of the question, other than that Yolande was separated not divorced from her husband. But should she receive a proposal of marriage I’m certain the separation would soon become a divorce!

It seemed Fate was working its complicated ritual for as the thought of marriage to Yolande came into my mind a telephone kiosk came into view. A light bulb in my head flashed ‘Ring Yolande!’ It seemed the obvious thing to do for a man contemplating matrimony. I rang the reception desk of the Hotel Imperial Menton ; I would ask to be put through to Yolande at her office in Housekeeping as I knew she would be nearby to answer her phone but as fate decreed, or whatever it is that guides our destinies, Yolande was on duty at reception.

“Hotel Imperial. How may I help you?” Yolande spoke in French but with a slight accent. French wasn’t her first language but I could never quite decide what the accent was.

“Yolande, it’s Philippe...”

“Philippe! Is something wrong?” I heard the alarm in her voice and was cheered by her concern.

“No nothing like that. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“We have been fraternising for over three years and this is the first time you’ve rung when working away from Menton.” I couldn’t tell from her tone of voice if she was pleased or annoyed I had rang but she continued before I could say anything. “Look, there are guests arriving and I must deal with them. I’m on reception duties every Thursday and Friday afternoon. You can ring me then.”

“I miss you, Yolande.”

“And I miss you, Cherie, but I must go.” l was about to tell her I loved her when I heard the click of disconnection.

Maurice was in the hotel lounge looking the worse for wear. “The next time you see me being given Absinthe drag me away, even if it is the Colonel commanding Quartier Vienot doing the giving.” He said when he saw me enter the lounge. “Where have you been? I’ve sat here for two hours awaiting your return.”

I gave him a synopsis of my meeting with Lorenzo Masséna.

“Well I’m glad you’ve made your peace with him. It does one’s inner self no good to hold a grudge; it scours and sours the soul. And you are convinced he is no longer the man he was and his wife has somehow driven out the demon and turned him into a man with whom one could call a friend?”

“Yes, definitely. Carole Masséna is goodness writ large and the two of them are a matched pair; their separate halves clicking into a perfect whole. In fact like the two halves of the obsidian half hearts carried by you and Clothilde.”

Maurice’s face lit up in remembrance. “I know from experience how wonderful a relationship like that can be and I’m happy for them both. And Lorenzo Masséna had no hand in our banishment to French Guiana?”

“No, it was all due to his father.”

“So be it. Let’s have some lunch and discuss where we will start the season.”

Over lunch I told Maurice about the bridge tournament held at Narbonne in September.

“Ricardo Frerey’s name is not unknown to me and I probably have faced him over the baize at times. I didn’t know of the tourney in Narbonne and if the prize money is as large as Madame Masséna believes it to be then it will be worth our time to enter the tournament in September.” He paused in thought for a moment. “I had intended travelling from here, or rather from Marseille, to Toulouse...”

“Toulouse!” I echoed, my tone of voice high pitched with tension. I certainly didn’t want to meet Chloe Devereaux or Amy Baptiste; seeing their bliss with Paul Devereaux would be too much to bear remembering what Chloe, Amy and I had shared.

“Is there something about Toulouse that offends you, Philippe?”

“No, it’s just there are people there I would prefer not to meet.”

“Are they habitués of casinos?”

“Not as far as I know, but it was some time ago when I knew them and they might be now.”

Maurice gave an indulgent smile. “I think any former girlfriend, or girlfriends, will have forgotten any misdeeds of yours by now. But as you are averse to Toulouse and as we will be checking out the bridge tournament in Narbonne at the end of the season I suggest we take ship from Marseille to Barcelona and visit the Costa Brava and Cote du Vermillion – there are few casinos along these coasts and even less females available for entertaining but I know of many hotels where high stakes poker games are played. As we will not be exerting our sexual organs as often as usual during a season and as I’m feeling extremely lecherous after drinking too much Absinthe in the Officers’ Mess – I believe the saying is, or should be, ‘Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder – I think we should make pigs of ourselves before setting off from Marseilles. I know of a house that specialises in young girls and I’m sure you have former places and lovers to revisit. So after lunch we will catch the express train to Marseille and once in that city of sin indulge in a night or two of libidinous exercises.”

Which we did!

The sea voyage from Marseille to Barcelona was rough but both Maurice and I were so exhausted by our Marseille nights of energetic sexual activity we slept through most of the journey.

The situation regarding available companions to entertain in Spain was as Maurice had forecast. Although Barcelona had several casinos the numbers of females attending were small and there were even fewer young girls among them. Many of the women at the casinos were, if not out and out whores, probably ‘escorts’ trawling for custom and not mature females looking for lusty studs. Prostitution was tolerated if not actually legal in Franco’s Spain and after his death the status quo was maintained. The age of consent in Spain is 16 and is closely supervised, so it is rare to see a working girl younger than 20. Consequently, Maurice went to his bed alone during our stay in Barcelona but I managed to hook a visiting female tourist or two during the time we were in the city. The paucity of nookie was balanced by the amount of money made at card games, the beauty of the coast north of Barcelona, the so called Costa Brava – the Rugged Coast, and the people of the region who are welcoming, helpful, and always ready for a flamenco although that particular dance was not of the Catalan Region. Six weeks of leaving Marseille we had made roughly the same amount of money we would make in an entire season.

We had travelled inland to Girona, the second largest city in Catalonia and the site of a splendid cathedral as well as being a tourist hotspot and possessing a large casino. The Costa Brava although picturesque with small sandy beaches, rocky coves, tranquil villages and mountain scenery had few casinos and although the towns and villages along the coast were buzzing with tourists they were not the pairs of mature/young females that Maurice and I preyed upon. Most of the unaccompanied female tourists came to the Costa Brava to enjoy sporting activity rather than bedroom activity, although I sometimes managed to indulge in both even if not at the same time.

At first, Maurice was content to play cards with no thought or urge to bury the beefy bayonet, but as time went on his libido, flattened in Marseille, began to stir and he became unusually petulant as his lust went unsatisfied. I believe one reason for our move to Girona was to find an establishment that specialised in young girls even though the age of consent is 16 in Spain and the Guardia Civil, the feared gendarmerie responsible for maintaining law, order, and the morals of the population, were most diligent in ensuring no underage flesh was for sale.

We had several financially rewarding evenings in the casino but Maurice grew more and more frustrated. “Merde! Girona is too well regulated; we will move on to Figueres. It is the birthplace of Dali and I would expect the inhabitants to be more avant garde than those of a cathedral city.”

The only Dali I had heard of was the Dali Lama and I thought he had been born in Tibet but I didn’t ask questions of Maurice; he had a sharp tongue when tetchy. We drove the 45 kilometres in silence; I drove, and with little to say I observed the scenery, and the traffic on the road in front and behind me. I noticed an Alfa Romeo some way behind, its distinctively shaped radiator stood out from other vehicles on the road. I thought no more of it until we made a comfort stop; Maurice’s bladder not having the capacity it once had. I pulled into a layby and waited while Maurice did what he had to do.

“The time will come, Philippe, when you will have to find a convenient tree at the most inconvenient time,” he said as he got back in the car. “It’s an old man’s curse to have the heart of a lion, the kidneys of a race horse, and the bladder of a little girl, that and impotency, which if I don’t have sex soon will claim me also!”

I chuckled, glad to see he had regained some of his normal good humour and pulled back onto the highway. A few minutes later I again noticed the distinctive shape of an Alfa Romeo radiator reflected in the rear view mirror. I know the make of car is popular, especially in Italy and to a lesser extent in France, but I hadn’t noticed any since arriving in Spain. To see two, or was it perhaps the same car, in a matter of minutes on the same road was either a coincidence or we were being followed.

The ‘Dali’ that Maurice had mentioned turned out to be the Surrealist/Modernistic painter Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech – rather a lot of names to lay on child, and probably more than the priest who baptised him could remember at the font. Figueres hosts the Dalí Theatre-Museum that displays many works of his art and it was there that Maurice first took me.

Let me say at the outset I don’t know much about art but I know what I like, and ‘Modern Art’ and its pretentiousness leaves me cold. I blame that fault in my character on Chardonnay Du Plessier who tried to shoot me when I expressed a negative reaction to her ‘modern’ paintings. Personally I think a lot of the lovers of modern painters and their works have ‘Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome’ and ‘see’ genius when in reality it is someone having a laugh at Joe Public’s expense. Taking the piss’, as Alfie Hinds would say.

I will say something constructive about the work of Dali; at least I could see what the picture was even if I couldn’t work out what it was about. Maurice, who was of course a fan of Dali’s work, explained that Dali painted what he saw and how he saw it. My retort of “Dali must always have been as pissed as a newt when he was painting!” earned me only a slight rebuke.

“Dali marched to the beat of a different drum, Philippe, as do all geniuses.”

We spent a week at Hotel Salvador, Figueres, where we occupied separate rooms rather than a suite as there was no entertaining of mature/young female pairs taking place. Maurice divided his time between the poker games held in the hotel and examining in close detail Dali’s work in The Dalí Theatre-Museum. I spent my time dividing the legs of a bonny Australian girl by the name of Rayleine and examining in great detail what lay between. Rayleine was staying at a Youth hostel that sounded more Dotheboys Hall than the YWCA and she was more than happy to share my bed – and other things – of a night where, after a day of trekking with her in the foothills of the Pyrenees, I went Down Under.

When Rayleine left Figueres to return to the Land of Oz – via a stopover in Macclesfield, England to see the town from where her mother’s family had emigrated – she hugged me so fiercely I nearly sprang a rib.

“You’re a fair dinkum bloke, Phil. I never been rooted so often and so effectively – bloody bonza! If you’re ever in Wagga Wagga look me up!”

It took me several days to recover from Raileine’s vigorous and exuberant love making.

Maurice and I saw little of each other during our stay in Figueres. He spent his mornings and afternoons in the Dali Theatre-Museum and his evenings at the card table while I spent my afternoons scrambling over the foothills in the Figueres area and my evenings and nights scrambling over Rayleine. The latter was often more exhausting than the former. In the morning after our night time activity I would escort Rayleine to the bus that took her back to the hostel on the outskirts of town and Maurice and I would then meet for breakfast. I always invited Rayleine to join us at breakfast at the hotel but she was adamant. “I have to get back to the hostel to freshen up and do other girly things, besides I’ve paid for a brekky at the hostel and I’m going to scoff it even if tastes like crap!”