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.
