Chapter 2: Living the Life of Riley?

On the face of it I was living the Life of Riley (or Reilly, who was the hero of the ballad that is thought to have originated the phrase). During the Season, from April to August, I accompanied Chevalier Maurice Champignon to spa towns and other favoured holiday locations of Western Europe. I stayed at the most prestigious of hotels, enjoyed haute cuisine, visited the most opulent casinos (where I played a supporting role in the poker and vingt et un games and Maurice made his/our money), and got to screw a slew of women. I also participated in an occasional assassination – what’s not to like!

My major role in the partnership was ‘escorting and entertaining’ (aka screwing) the mature ladies who were the guardians/companions of the young girls targeted by Maurice as his bed companions. These older females were well past the first flush of youth but well preserved, enthusiastically ardent, and highly appreciative of the service I provided them over the week or two of our lecherously licentious liaison. On average I ‘escorted and entertained’ four females during a Season, which might not seem all that many, but you would be surprised how large a libido a mature female possesses. Most of my bed companions wanted, insisted on, experiencing a penis derived orgasm at least three times a night – and when I went around a mature female’s world I had to commemorate the circumnavigation by leaving a token of my passage in each of her voracious ports.

Of course I wasn’t the only gigolo operating on the circuit and many of them were of a younger vintage than me. However the more discerning mature female preferred the experience and technique of a thirty something male rather than the ‘wham bam thank you mam’ of the younger teen / twenty something studs. Fortunately there were always enough randy females of a certain age ‘doing the season ‘and both the experienced older males and the young studs were gainfully, and frequently, employed. The ladies made sure they got their half kilo of flesh and money’s worth. Some mornings, after a particularly gruelling series of voyages, I was hard pressed to complete the hour long circuit training I set myself in the hotel’s gymnasium. Maurice and I kept to a strict regime of physical fitness maintenance and would spend at least an hour a day in the fitness suite of the hotel where we were staying.

It was something of a relief when the season ended in August. My role in the partnership then changed from gigolo to bridge partner, when Maurice and I returned to our base of the Hotel Imperial at Menton from where we travelled to the many local bridge tournaments in the region. We were a successful team and always made much more money than spent on entrance fees. I had casual one-night stands – always wearing a condom-- with young women picked up in local bars who, unlike the mature females I ‘squired’ were more than satisfied with just one, cataclysmic, climax.

At the beginning of November when Maurice left for Morocco my role again changed and I became an employee of the Hotel Imperial. I learned a lot during my tenure and I don’t just mean the astonishing sexual shenanigans shared with Madame Yolande Faucher. During my time as an employee at the Hotel Imperial I progressed from humble maintenance man’s mate through vegetable prepper and cook’s helper, waiter, bartender (where I mastered the art of cocktail making), and even worked at the reception desk on the night shift—the Hotel Imperial was open 24/7. I enjoyed the many and varied tasks associated with the hospitality sector and it must have been while shaking, or stirring, Martinis that I got the urge to open my own bar – sometime, somewhere – in the future. The time spent as a hotel employee was the closest I had ever been to living a ‘normal’ life. I worked regular hours and came ‘home’ to a warm and available female. Although I didn’t move in with Yolande – we both were people who enjoyed our own space – I spent more time in her apartment and her bed than in mine. After the first frenzied nights of catch up fraternisation, i.e. fornication, between Yolande and me left us in sated satisfaction the following weeks/months were spent making love rather than just frantic fucking. I enjoyed both but the former was less wear and tear on my body. Yolande in orgasm was a scratcher and biter as had been Chloe, although Yolande could also be as gentle, tender, and loving as Amy.

My second year of service with Maurice was notable for two incidents; a reassignment in Bordeaux and a visit to Grigor Pavel in the home for retired Legionnaires at Puyloubier.

Grigor Pavel was indeed the Universal Soldier; he had fought in WW1, the Spanish Civil War, WW2, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War, and then had been involved to some extent in the abortive coup in Algiers. Old age, however, is an enemy no man can defeat. The ten or so years since I had last seen Grigor Pavel were etched deep on his face and physique when Maurice and I visited Domaine Jean Danjou, the retirement home for legionnaires at Puyloubier. Grigor now walked, more like shuffled along, with the aid of a walking frame and he had lost a lot of weight. His mental faculties seemed to be functioning well enough although at times, as he swapped reminiscences of Indochina with Maurice, he sometimes confused events during World War Two, when the Japanese had been the enemy and after that war when the Viet Minh, later the Viet Cong, had been the enemy. Maurice would gently correct him and the old man would curse his fading memory.

“Don’t get old, Philippe. It plays havoc with your memory and your love life. I haven’t been sexually active for a week, at least I don’t think I have!” His sense of humour undimmed, he then sighed. “At times a man needs a female companion and comforter. I had eighteen years of bliss with Anya, my Siberian Princess, and count the days until she and I are reunited.”

Although I knew Grigor had been married this was the first time I learned his wife had been a Siberian Princess. I assumed he had acquired her during the Czech Legion’s travel a across Siberia, thousands of ‘wives’ and their children accompanied the Czech Legion when it returned to Czechoslovakia in 1921. However I didn’t know Siberians had a royal family and suspected the girl’s father, no doubt the local Hetman of the clan, had ideas above his station.

As I listened to the account of Pavel’s life at war I thought these unique memories should be made available to a wider audience.

“But before you are reunited with your wife, Adjutant Pavel, you should write down your life history,” I said. “You are one of the last of the generation who fought in the Great War.”

“And in most of the wars that followed,” added Maurice. “Philippe is right, Grigor. Your story needs to be told. If you are unable to write at least record your memories onto a tape and someone would be able to transcribe it.”

“Would you be able to write up my recorded memoirs, young Philippe? Your name in the legion was Professor so I know you are an educated man,” Pavel said, his face alight with enthusiasm at the thought his exploits being made for posterity.

I had no literary experience other than writing essays during my degree course, a short and unfinished degree course, but I nodded and said it would be an honour.

“I will have a word with the Commandant of the retirement home before we leave,” Maurice said. “And will ensure Grigor is provided with a tape recorder and sufficient tapes to cover his long and extensive military career.”

We continued to sit and listen to Grigor and drink the locally produced wine for another couple of hours until Grigor showed signs of weariness and fatigue. We made our farewells and promised him we would pay another visit as soon as possible.

Before we departed for Bordeaux Maurice arranged with the Commandant that Grigor Pavel would be given the necessary equipment to record his memoirs and the completed tapes would be sent to me care of the Hotel Imperial.

The reassignment in Bordeaux was accomplished by a simple homemade clockwork explosive device; the clockwork device manufactured by Bear and the homemade explosive by me. The target was a major political figure, a Minister in the government of the Republic, who had been passing information, for cash, to an unfriendly power. Pierre Dubois planted the Improvised Explosive Device under the target’s car that was blown to bits, as was the unfortunate occupant, shortly after setting off to visit the target’s latest and youngest mistress. The government blamed the atrocity on what until then had been an unknown and unheard of terrorist group, the Neo Anarchist Terrorism Organisation. But the deed was done, and no one, other than Maurice Champignon’s team and whomever it was ordered the reassignment, were any the wiser. The funeral of the former Minister was held at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and was a National Day of Mourning.

Tapes of Grigor’s memoirs were sent to me, care of The Imperial Hotel Menton, at regular intervals although I had little time to transcribe them but noted the time scale of each tape. Grigor’s time in Siberia during the Great War and the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Siamese invasion of French Indo China in 1941 and the Japanese coup d’état in 1945 followed by the March to China, the First Indochina War and the surrender at Dien Bien Phu, were recalled, with eye witness accounts of events that were incredible, verging towards the unbelievable. Unfortunately Grigor Pavel died before completing the tape of the final years of his legion service in Algeria and I would need to find out for myself what he had got up to. When Maurice and I attended his funeral at Puyloubier, however, where the old warrior was laid to rest amongst other Legends of the Legion, there was a stack of papers the Commandant said Grigor Pavel insisted should be handed to me.

I knew Grigor had been involved in the attempted coup in Algiers in 1961 and there were plenty of official records available. I hoped there might be further information in the paperwork he had bequeathed me enabling me to complete his memoirs, which I eventually wrote as a fiction novel as no one would believe the truth!

During the third year of my service with Maurice there was another reassignment although I had little to do with it other than some surveillance work and then, along with Bear, keeping the killing area clear of intruders/the general public.It was obvious Bear and I were merely ancillaries in the team, which was fine by me and him. We provided specialised services and equipment; were used to distract the reassignée – as we did with the skiing reassignment – and carried out surveillance on the targets. Maurice and Pierre Dubois were the reassigners, or in plain speech the killers. Maurice did his duty, and if that meant ending the life of a fellow human being then so be it, whereas Dubois just enjoyed killing.