Free The Steppes of Paris by Helen Harris

maroon and sombre bronze chrysanthemums which Marie-Yvette had told him were the flowers traditionally put on graves. He tried cheering himself by repeating ghoulishly, “La Fête des Morts” but without much effect. As he walked back towards the rue Surcouf through an appropriately low and ghostly mist, it occurred to him that he had been on his own for nearly two months. Short-sighted as it might seem, he had never really thought about loneliness when he planned his exciting life abroad. Now, in the supremely dismal November dusk, it closed in on him. He realised that, since arriving in Paris, he had not spoken to anyone between leaving the paper one day and returning there the next. His evenings and weekends were filled by walks and films and meals and reading, all undertaken in a joyless determination not to give way to depression. He had begun to live according to little, set, single-person’s routines. He had caught himself talking to himself in the shower.
    There was something else he had gone without for two months also. He walked unconsciously faster to counteract the ache of deprivation which started up as soon as he thought about it. Would he have to go a whole year, or two if they kept him here for two, without as much as a stray passing fuck? The prospect was too grim to contemplate; he was bound to find somebody co-operative sooner or later. But, reviewing the few women he had met so far, he had disturbingdoubts: not counting, naturally, Mrs Hirshfeld, they consisted of the predatory American female in the café, Marie-Yvette and Aurore. Aurore was, according to Marie-Yvette, more or less married. The idea of suggesting any such thing to Marie-Yvette or of her consenting, was so ridiculously unattractive that he at least cheered himself up slightly by laughing at it as he turned the corner of the rue Surcouf. The wistfulness stayed with him, though, all evening. When he went to bed, the bed seemed to him for the first time uncomfortably wide and empty. He lay for a long time still aching for lack of anybody there beside him.
    It was humiliating to be so pleased to go back to the paper on Tuesday morning. Maybe Henry guessed his loneliness, maybe it showed; he invited Edward out to lunch to try a new local restaurant.
    As they walked there, Henry asked him, apparently casually, how he was making out. Edward thought he sensed a paternal concern and, over-hastily, he answered, “Oh fine, fine.”
    To his surprise, Henry laughed. “You are? Well, you must be a man of iron, Edward. Most people find this city pretty tough going at first.”
    Edward grinned awkwardly. “Maybe I didn’t have terribly high expectations.”
    “Let me tell you something,” Henry said disarmingly. “You may well find this city is better training in survival techniques than some of the wilder places you might have liked to be sent. I don’t know where was your heart’s desire. But in South-East Asia, you know, in some of those African capitals, everyone bands together. You go out hunting in a pack. Someone gets a lead and you all follow it up. There’s not so much scope for the individual. Whereas here, paradoxically, you can make of it what you will.”
    The restaurant was Lebanese. The owners, eager to woo their new clientele, lavished them with dozens of small dishes to sample, the lunch became extended and their conversation franker than Edward had anticipated.
    Henry asked him if he had any friends in Paris.
    Edward shook his head. In a moment’s honesty which he immediately regretted, he admitted, “That side of things does look a bit bleak at the moment.”
    Henry looked thoughtfully at the bread basket. “It’s a strange business, I know, setting yourself up somewhere when you know you’re just passing through.”
    Before Edward could even wonder what was an appropriate reply, which neither absolutely agreed with nor absolutely refuted Henry’s assumption, Henry pushed a dish of hummous towards him. “Here, make