“Souvenirs d'Annette” by Adam Carlton

 

"Annette" - from OpenArt

At that time I was the leader of the LO self-defence force. Demonstrations - manifestations - are often violent in Paris. Flying paving stones, Molotov cocktails, police baton charges. It was not our policy in Lutte Ouvrière to escalate gratuitously; we were naturally averse to infantile ultra-leftism. But if you want peace - well, you know...

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This is how I met Annette. I had taken the metro to a dingy neighbourhood in southeast Paris, to a second tier college where we had a cell. I'd never been there before, had never met any of the comrades.

I met her in a small room, her office (she was a student official). She was seated behind the desk; I was in the visitor's chair opposite, just inside the door. She listened while I explained our planned manifestation; what we needed her college to do in support.

Annette, I still remember you, that day so many years ago. Your pleasant face, curious, interested in why I'd come.Your brown hair, in waves, cascading to your shoulders. You were wearing a salt and pepper jumper, tight over your fetching curves; and faded blue jeans. As we talked, something else accompanied us, weaving its way under our conversation, a tension hinting at possibilities: things to come.

I was holding a pen in my right hand. Casually I reached across, as if to make a point. I gently pushed the cap end into the nest of your fingers and palm. And waited, breath held, as you hesitated, then tightened your fingers around it.

From office to bed took us less than a week.

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I did not know it at the time but Annette was revolutionary royalty. Her elder brother, Jacques was the party leader in Lille. He lived with his wife, Marie, in a large rambling house in the centre of the city. They were distinctive in the local party organisation for never showing the slightest sign of affection towards each other. 

Annette, could I have seen even then a family trait?

I was sent to Lille shortly afterwards to strengthen the leadership team as we continued our project to engage with the workers’ movement. Having nowhere to stay, I was given a double mattress in one of their downstairs dining rooms. Where I proceeded to outstay my welcome.

On one occasion, after months of squatting, Annette arrived from Paris to visit her brother. We immediately hit it off together again and for several nights, Annette and I hugged and kissed and merged our hot and sweaty bodies under a borrowed duvet. Disinhibited we were; quiet we were not. 

Jacques was not amused.

After his sister returned to Paris, things got decidedly frosty: I hastily moved out into my own flat.

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I had come to Lille with Valentina, with whom I was infatuated. She was taller than Annette, slimmer, with long black hair. She dressed stylishly and affected sophisticated tastes. With Valentina, feminism came off more easily than her makeup.

She had originally come down to Paris from the far north, leaving her husband behind. In our revolutionary circles, this did not raise as much as an eyebrow. She said she had been looking for a catch on the Paris leadership team: at some drunken party, her gaze had fallen on me.

At that time I was working on the Paris Métro. I would roll up at the depot at six am, bleary-eyed and exhausted, to be met with knowing banter from the ladies on kitchen duty: “You should get some sleep when you go to bed at night!” 

That was the least priority for me.

So we moved to Lille and then she returned to her husband: j'étais désolé.

“He’s been writing me letters all the while,” she blandly explained. In my blind self-centredness I had never noticed those envelopes lying patiently on the front door mat. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I thought only of her. I knew intellectually I would get over it; but this deep well of loneliness felt like the story of the rest of my life.

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We were walking hand-in-hand in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, the path by the lake. I was back in Paris for a meeting and of course we met up.

I oversimplified just a moment ago. The breakup with Valentina was an agonising, protracted business. First she was going back to her spouse, then she changed her mind, she'd stay with me instead. But that didn't last.

Annette diagnosed Jealousy. “You want to own her, to have her all to yourself,” she said, “That's the kind of bourgeois male chauvinism we're all meant to be fighting against. We're opposed to monogamy in case you forgot. The problem here is you!”

I explained that my feelings were more complicated than that, and in any case, even if I conceded jealousy, I couldn't just turn it off.

In fact what I was feeling was abandonment by the love of my life.

Annette played her trump card: “Yet here you are, walking hand-in-hand with me in the park while you claim to be pining for her. Don't you see the double standard here?”

It's not the same, I wanted to say. But I didn't know why.

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I liked Annette but was not in love with her. Friends with benefits then, although that phrase was not yet in common use.

I remember much later when - equanimity restored - I visited her ground floor flat somewhere in the 19th arrondissement. It was in an old, distinguished house with high ceilings; narrow stained glass windows abutted the front door.

I had not seen her for months but she made me coffee and we talked a little, nothing important.

She put some cushions on the carpet, casually snuck off her jeans and underwear and stretched herself out, as calm and lazy as a kitten. She reached for my hand. I looked at her as we moved together in multicoloured facets of sunshine. Guileless joy on her face. In this moment this was exactly what she wanted: being here, doing this, with me.

I still think sometimes about Annette. Her smooth glide through life. No deep attachments, events taken as they come, never any doubts. She is incarnate of the ideology, a true feminist; and though eternity itself should beckon, not ever for me.

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This short story (not a memoir: fiction!) is not included in my collection of short stories at Amazon.

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You will find my collection of short stories, published on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) here:

"Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations: and other stories" (2019)

and my SF novel, also published on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022).

Feel free to purchase both!

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