Free Bella... A French Life by Marilyn Z Tomlins Page A

reached it at the same time as a cogwheel train with no passengers, but which quickly began to fill as waiting backpackers scrambled on for the journey back down the mountain to Montreux.
    Jean-Louis parked the car with others in front of the grey building where several people with tanned faces and necks were sitting on a terrace drinking frothy beer from patterned tankards. He asked whether I was thirsty and I said I was not and he suggested we should go for a walk.
    “Before night comes.”
    He took me by the hand and we walked along a path which led us around the grey building and up a bare hillock of the same grey stone as the hotel and most of the buildings I had seen in Geneva. We walked in silence, his body close to mine and his breath warm and soft in my neck. Behind us the cogwheel train’s engine clanked into motion and the train started its descent.
    “Do you know something, Bella, right now I do not care a damn if we have been abandoned here on this barren hill,” said Jean-Louis.
    We stopped walking.
    “What do you want me to say to that, Jean-Louis?” I asked.
    “That you also do not care.”
    He did not give me time to reply; he put his arms around me and drew me to him, quite roughly, urgently. And yes, I also did not care if we, he and I, had been abandoned on that barren hill, because I felt an intense desire to remain there, there in his arms. Forever.
    The two-storey grey building was a hotel.  I was embarrassed we were booking in without luggage.
    “For the night?” asked the receptionist, a confident young woman with a look of having-seen-it-before on her face.
    Oh Jesus, the technicalities of sex. Had I blushed? I think I had.
    We listened to the receptionist’s directions to our room and the time breakfast would be served the following morning. She chose a key from a board behind her and held it up as if she was showing us a trophy. She had a smile from one ear-ringed ear to another.  Jean-Louis lifted his right foot from the floor as if he wanted to burst into a sprint. To escape the amused young woman or to get to the room she has chosen for us? I tried to make myself as small as possible behind him.
    “Second floor,” said she.
    “Thank you, Miss,” said Jean-Louis.
    “Leave the key with reception, should you go out, Sir.”
    “Thank you, Miss,” he repeated.
    He was smiling.
    We started climbing the wooden twisting stairs: there was no lift.
    Halfway up, Jean-Louis felt for my hand. He had begun to take two steps at a time. I could not keep up with his pace. He let go of my hand. I slipped. He looked back. He was no longer smiling. I, on the contrary, had started to giggle, giggle like a teenage virgin. I was of course neither a teenager nor a virgin. My giggling grew louder. Reaching the corridor, I tried not to giggle anymore. I did not want to alert those behind the closed doors which we were passing of our imminent activity. At our room, Jean-Louis, like an inexperienced and nervous teenager, fumbled with the key, struggling to fit it into the lock. Amused, I watched.
    He succeeded in fitting the key into the lock and he pushed open the door. He stepped inside. I followed. The room was small, its double bed almost filling it. A bland smell of detergent filled our nostrils. I closed the door and locked it. A ‘In Case of a Fire’ notice hung behind the door. Also a ‘Do Not Disturb’ notice.
    We had come to a halt a few paces towards the bed. I looked at Jean-Louis. He let his white blazer slip from his shoulders, grabbing it before it hit the bare floorboards which were creaking under our weight, to fling it onto an upright chair beside a small table on which stood a platter with an electric kettle and what would be needed for making coffee or tea.
    I felt a little faint, faint with the excitement rising in me.
    He turned to me.
    “Bella …?”
    He took my head in his hands and rested his lips against my eyelids, gently, but quickly he dropped his head so that his mouth