StoryQuest

Je Reviens by Lorna Read

Welcome to StoryQuest, a weekly publication highlighting short stories of different genres by a variety of talented writers. If you have a short story, I’d love to read it and publish it here. Just comment below. Thanks.

Je Reviens

It was a long time ago, but ever since that night, that sickly-sweet scent has given me cold prickles on the back of my neck and the feeling that someone is watching me. I just have to catch a glimpse of that blue glass bottle and I shudder. And of course, I think of her.

I was a young man then. Young and star-struck, standing outside a theatre on a chilly November night in 1934 as grey fog writhed around the streetlamps. I was staring entranced at a poster showing a beautiful young woman in a shiny blue satin gown that showed off every curve of her voluptuous figure. A golden-brown fur stole slithered across her bare shoulders, and her hair was a shiny cascade of black ringlets. Her eyes, summer blue and long-lashed, seemed to hold mine in their gaze and her red lips, curved in a provocative smile, promised the kind of secret passions of which I could only dream.

Her name was Marcelline. No surname, just Marcelline and she was described on the poster as ‘the singing, dancing sensation from Marseilles’, appearing in a special cabaret act here in central London, for three nights only. I had never heard of her, but that photograph on the theatre poster worked some kind of hypnosis on me and I felt compelled to buy a ticket.

I could scarcely wait for the following night. As I slaved away at my lowly, tedious clerking job, I was willing the hour hand on the big wall clock to move faster. If anything, it seemed to be going backwards. The boss shouted at me and I hardly heard.

Jane, the pretty little typist who I knew was sweet on me, lingered in the office doorway at going-home time. “Are you coming?” she asked

Most evenings, we would walk over Waterloo Bridge together and stop for a moment to admire the boats and the reflections on the water, before parting at the station to take our respective trains home.

“Not tonight.”

I bid her a curt goodnight and, for all I knew, caused a tear of disappointment to spring to her eye. Jane mattered not one jot to me. All I could see before my eyes was the sultry image of Marcelline.

Anticipation throbbed in the air as the lights dimmed. A solo accordion began to play as the red velvet curtains parted to reveal a single spotlight focussed on a pink velvet chaise longue. The backstage curtains parted and Marcelline was suddenly there, dressed in shimmering white, a black veil draped over her head. The audience fell silent as Marcelline sank onto the couch, posing as a weeping woman, while the plaintive accordion notes plucked at our heart strings.

Without looking up, she began to sing. The accordion notes ascended and so did her clear treble, until it seemed impossible for any human voice to sing so high. She held the note, so truly, so unwaveringly, that it was impossible both to breathe and listen. Then suddenly, she leapt up, swept the veil off her face and the whole orchestra broke into a fast, wild melody as Marcelline tweaked a ribbon and peeled off her long skirt to reveal an indecently short, wispy garment beneath.

She danced. It was far more than mere dancing. She moved, whirled and made such high, wide bounds across the stage that I found myself searching for the wires I felt sure were suspending her. Suddenly, she began to sing again and this time the clear voice throbbed thick with lust and longing, as the weeping widow, who had transformed to the wild gypsy, now became a different character entirely, a creature so sexual that I could feel the response in my loins.

I could not take my eyes off her and neither, it seemed, could she take hers off me. Our sights were locked on to one another. She held me in her powerful beam and sang to me alone. I felt humble, spellbound, honoured that, out of all the hundreds of people in the audience that night, she had picked me, the lowly clerk, to be her chosen one, her lover, her witch’s apprentice. Because I felt sure that, as well as weaving musical magic, she was instilling the potent air with darker vapours entirely.

When the show ended, I joined the queue of avid fans at the stage door. We had a long wait. Eventually, in ones and twos, the crowd dispersed until there was just myself and one other chap left.

“Looks like she’s not coming,” he said and, turning up the collar of his overcoat and adjusting his woollen scarf around his chin, he bid me goodnight and vanished into the wispy fog.

Then the door opened and there she was, wearing the same blue dress and fur stole she had worn in the theatre poster. “I knew you would come,” she said in a thrilling French accent. “S’il vous plaît, entrez,” she invited, gesturing me into the ill-lit warren of backstage rooms.

I followed her pert hips that jerked to every click of her sparkly, high-heeled shoes. Her sweet perfume drew me along in her wake, invading my senses. She opened the door to her dressing room and gloom gave way to glitz and bright lights; to tall white lilies and wraps and dresses, stockings and shoes, lipsticks and rouge; to cards tucked around the edges of her big makeup mirror, no doubt billets-doux from would-be, or even current, lovers. I had no reason to believe that I was anyone special. Why had she singled me out? Why me, an uncultured, inexperienced nineteen-year-old clerk who had never been to Manchester, let alone Marseille!

“Je m’appelle Marcelline.”

“I know. And I am…”

“Ssh.” She touched my lips with a forefinger, the long nail of which was lacquered blood-red. It wasn’t so much a touch as a disturbance of the air, a slight, chilly waft between her finger and my lips, rather than the touch of skin on skin.

My head was swimming. “What is that perfume?” I asked her.

She didn’t reply. I felt a gentle push and found myself on my back on a couch swathed in embroidered fabrics and slowly, passionately, she transformed me from a naïve youth into a man.

It was much, much later when she brushed my cheek with her red lips and told me it was time for me to leave. I stood up and almost fell over again, I was so light-headed. She conducted me to the stage door and I staggered as the chilly air slapped me in the face. I remembered my earlier question. “That perfume…?”

Just before the door closed, she said, in a breathy whisper, “Je Reviens.”

Next day was Saturday. I worked my half day as normal, then walked to Gamages department store at Holborn Circus and bought her the largest bottle of Je Reviens that I could afford, then went to a pub and made one pint of ale last several hours.

At around eleven-thirty, I approached the stage door to find I was the only man there. By midnight, the fog has grown so thick that I could barely see the door. In despair, I knocked. My knocking grew into a desperate pounding, until I heard a gruff male voice shouting, “All right, all right,” and the sound of a door being unbolted on the inside.

The burly middle-aged man who faced me was wearing a thick jumper beneath a shabby brown suit and was palming sleep from his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did I wake you?”

“Caretakers never sleep,” he lied. “So what can I do for you, young man? I suppose you lost your wallet or left your briefcase under the seat, in which case you’ll have to come back on Monday, when the girl in charge of lost property will be here.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I’ve come to see Marcelline, to give her this.”

I held out the bottle in its shiny turquoise box, criss-crossed with a blue satin ribbon.

“Marcelline?” His incredulous frown would have seemed comical if it hadn’t struck me with such a feeling of goose-pimpling apprehension. “But don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

He marched me round the corner and pointed to the poster bearing the image of the woman whose passionate spell I had fallen under just two days earlier. Pasted diagonally across it was a white banner and, in the weak orange glow of the fog-swathed street lamp, I could just make out the words: Cancelled due to bereavement.

“She didn’t mention anything to me yesterday,” I said, puzzled. “So who died? Her husband? Her mother?”

“Her. She did.”

I felt myself sway and grabbed at the wall for support. “Wh-when?” I stammered. “What happened?”

“Last Thursday. A train crash in France as she was on her way here. Don’t you read the papers?”

“B-but… I saw her on stage on Friday! I really did! I’ve probably still got my ticket stub to prove it! I was there in the audience and afterwards I came to the stage door and she…” I was gibbering in my confusion and grief. This whole thing was mad. The caretaker had got it wrong.

“Look, young man. It’s late, you’re probably drunk and you’re more than likely getting your days and your showgirls mixed up. I can assure you that Marcelline’s show never took place because sadly, the girl was dead.”

The bottle of Je Reviens slipped from my numb fingers…

I awoke to find myself in a hospital bed. A nurse in a starched white apron was bending over me. I heard her call, “He’s awake” and a doctor with a stethoscope dangling round his neck came striding over.

“You’re in St Thomas’s Hospital,” he informed me. “You were found lying unconscious outside a theatre last night. You have pneumonia, but don’t worry, lad, we’ll soon have you fit and well again.”

The nurse smiled at me as the doctor applied the stethoscope to my chest and as she took down details of my name and address, she kept sniffing. I could smell it too.

“What’s that scent?” I whispered, still too ill to speak properly.

“It’s Je Reviens. It’s my favourite. I’m not wearing any, though. How odd…”

During my period of convalescence, my mind kept on returning to that passionate night with Marcelline. Had it really happened, or had I dreamt it? Perhaps my illness had been coming on for a few days and I had hallucinated the whole thing. But I really had bought the bottle of perfume. The receipt was in my wallet.

I never found the ticket stub, though. Perhaps I lost it, or maybe the theatre usher who tore the ticket as I entered failed to give it back to me.

*

I survived the war and married in my thirties. Jane, of course. She never gave up waiting for me, though sadly she passed away nine years ago. We had two children. Now, I am a great-grandad! I can’t believe that I am ninety years old today! I know my family have planned a party for me later.

I like my room at the nursing home. It has a view of the garden. Rose bushes grow thickly outside the window and today, on this warm July morning, I have asked the carer to push the window wide open so I can smell the flowers from where I sit in my armchair.

Their sweet fragrance is filling the room, overpoweringly sweet and cloying, reminding me of something else… something from long ago. A name is on the tip of my tongue, on the fringe of my memory, but every time I reach for it, it ebbs like the sea.

I must have dozed off, because it’s growing dark now and a bit misty, and a chilly draught is blowing through the window, filling the room with that sweet, suffocating scent. I have cold prickles on the back of my neck and the feeling that someone is watching me.

I reach for the button to summon a carer but, before I have even pressed it, a woman is standing there. She’s not one of the carers – or, if she is, she’s one I have never seen before. Perhaps she has come to my party. She’s beautiful, with long, black, wavy hair and cherry-red lipstick, and she seems to float across the room in her blue satin dress. As she smiles at me, her blue eyes sparkle and I feel as if I know her from somewhere.

My heart begins to thump and race as I rise from my armchair. Her arms reach out to me and I grasp her soft, smooth hands.

“Je reviens,” she says. “Mon cheri, je reviens.”

THE END

Lorna Read has worked as a rock music journalist and has edited a romantic fiction magazine. She is a songwriter, poet and freelance editor and has had over twenty books published for children and adults. Born in Liverpool, UK, she now lives in west London with a ginger cat called Charlie.