The Other Side of Midnight (3 page)

After the funeral, Uncle Ralph said that he wanted to talk to Catherine and her father. They sat in the tiny living room of the apartment, Pauline flitting about with trays of coffee and cookies.

“I know things have been pretty rough for you financially,” Uncle Ralph said to his brother. “You’re too much of a dreamer, always were. But you’re my brother. I can’t let you sink. Pauline and I talked it over. I want you to come to work for me.”

“In Omaha?”

“You’ll make a good, steady living and you and
Catherine can live with us. We have a big house.”

Catherine’s heart sank. Omaha! It was the end of all her dreams.

“Let me think it over,” her father was saying.

“We’ll be catching the six o’clock train,” Uncle Ralph replied. “Let me know before we leave.”

When Catherine and her father were alone, hé groaned, “Omaha! I’ll bet the place doesn’t even have a decent barber shop.”

But Catherine knew that the act he was putting on was for her benefit. Decent barber shop or no, he had no choice. Life had finally trapped him. She wondered what it would do to his spirit to have to settle down to a steady, dull job with regular hours. He would be like a captured wild bird beating his wings against his cage, dying of captivity. As for herself, she would have to forget about going to Northwestern University. She had applied for a scholarship but had heard nothing. That afternoon her father telephoned his brother to say that he would take the job.

The next morning Catherine went to see the principal to tell him that she was going to transfer to a school in Omaha. He was standing behind his desk and before she could speak, he said, “Congratulations, Catherine, you’ve just won a full scholarship to Northwestern University.”

Catherine and her father discussed it thoroughly that night, and in the end it was decided that he would move to Omaha and Catherine would go to Northwestern and live in one of the dormitories on the campus. And so, ten days later, Catherine took her father down to the La Salle Street station to see him off. She was filled with a deep sense of loneliness at his departure, a sadness at saying good-bye to the person she loved the most; and yet at the same time she was eager for the train to leave, filled with a delicious excitement at the thought that she would be free, living her own life for the first time. She stood on the platform watching the face of her father pressing against the
train window for a last look; a shabbily handsome man who still truly believed that one day he would own the world.

On the way back from the station Catherine remembered something and laughed aloud. To take him to Omaha, to a desperately needed job, her father had booked a Drawing Room.

Matriculation day at Northwestern was filled with an almost unbearable excitement. For Catherine it held a special significance that she could not put into words: It was the key that would unlock the door to all the dreams and nameless ambitions that had burned so fiercely within her for so long. She looked around the huge assembly hall where hundreds of students were lined up to register, and she thought:
Someday you’ll all know who I am. You’ll say, “I went to school with Catherine Alexander.”
She signed up for the maximum number of allowed courses and was assigned to a dormitory. That same morning she found a job working afternoons as a cashier at the Roost, a popular sandwich and malt shop across from the campus. Her salary was fifteen dollars a week, and while it would not afford her any luxuries, it would take care of her school books and basic necessities.

By the middle of her sophomore year Catherine decided that she was probably the only virgin on the entire campus. During the years she was growing up, she had overheard random snatches of conversations as her elders discussed sex. It sounded wonderful, and her strongest fear was that it would be gone by the time she was old enough to enjoy it. Now it looked as though she had been right. At least as far as
she
was concerned. Sex seemed to be the single topic of conversation at school. It was discussed in the dormitories, in classrooms, in the washrooms and at the Roost. Catherine was shocked by the frankness of the conversations.

“Jerry is unbelievable. He’s like King Kong.”

“Are you talking about his cock or his brain?”

“He doesn’t need a brain, honey. I came six times last night.”

“Have you ever gone out with Ernie Robbins? He’s small, but he’s mighty.”

“Alex asked me for a date tonight. What’s the dope?”

“The dope is Alex. Save yourself the trouble. He took me out to the beach last week. He pulled down my pants and started to grope me, and I started to grope him, but I couldn’t find it.” Laughter.

Catherine thought the conversations were vulgar and disgusting and she tried not to miss a word. It was an exercise in masochism. As the girls described their sexual exploits, Catherine visualized herself in bed with a boy, having him make wild and frantic love to her. She would feel a physical ache in her groin and press her fists hard against her thighs, trying to hurt herself, to take her mind off the other pain.
My God
, she thought,
I’m going to die a virgin. The only nineteen-year-old virgin at Northwestern. Northwestern, hell, maybe even the United States! The Virgin Catherine. The Church will make me a Saint and they’ll light candles to me once a year. What’s the matter with me?
she thought.
I’ll tell you
, she answered herself.
Nobody’s asked you and it takes two to play. I mean, if you want to do it right, it takes two to play
.

The name that most frequently cropped up in the girls’ sexual conversations was Ron Peterson. He had enrolled at Northwestern on an athletic scholarship and was as popular here as he had been at Senn High School. He had been elected freshman class president. Catherine saw him in her Latin class the day the term began. He was even better looking than he had been in high school, his body had filled out, and his face had taken on a rugged devil-may-care maturity. After class, he walked toward her, and her heart began to pound.

Catherine Alexander!

Hello, Ron
.

Are you in this class?

Yes
.

What a break for me
.

Why?

Why? Because I don’t know anything about Latin and you’re a genius. We’re going to make beautiful music. Are you doing anything tonight?

Nothing special. Do you want to study together?

Let’s go to the beach where we can be alone. We can study any time
.

He was staring at her.

“Hey!…er—?” trying to think of her name.

She swallowed, trying desperately to remember, herself. “Catherine,” she said quickly. “Catherine Alexander.”

“Yeah. How about this place! It’s terrific, isn’t it?”

She tried to put eagerness in her voice to please him, agree with him, woo him. “Oh yes,” she gushed, “it’s the most—”

He was looking at a stunning blond girl waiting at the door for him. “See you,” he said, and moved away to join the girl.

And that was the end of the Cinderella and Prince Charming story, she thought. They lived happily ever after, he in his harem and she in a windswept cave in Tibet
.

From time to time Catherine would see Ron walking along the campus, always with a different girl and sometimes two or three.
My God, doesn’t he ever get tired?
she wondered. She still had visions that one day he would come to her for help in Latin, but he never spoke to her again.

At night lying in her lonely bed, Catherine would think about all the other girls making love to their boyfriends, and the boy who would always come to her was Ron Peterson. In her mind he would undress her and then she would slowly undress him, the way they always did it in romantic novels, taking off his shirt and
gently running her fingers over his chest, then undoing his trousers and pulling down his shorts. He would pick her up and carry her toward the bed. At that point Catherine’s comic sense would get the better of her and he would sprain his back and fall to the floor, moaning and groaning with pain.
Idiot
, she told herself,
you can’t even do it right in your fantasies
. Maybe she should enter a nunnery. She wondered if nuns had sexual fantasies and if it was a sin for them to masturbate. She wondered if priests ever had sexual intercourse.

She was sitting in a cool, tree-shaded courtyard in a lovely old abbey outside Rome, trailing her fingers in the sun-warmed water of an ancient fish pond. The gate opened, and a tall priest entered the courtyard. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and a long black cassock and he looked exactly like Ron Peterson.

Ah, scusi, signorina
, he murmured, /
did not know I had a visitor
.

Catherine quickly sprang to her feet.
I shouldn’t be here
, she apologized.
It was just so beautiful I had to sit here and drink it in
.

You are most welcome
. He moved toward her, his eyes dark and blazing.
Mia cara…I lied to you
.

Lied to me?

Yes
. His eyes were boring into hers. /
knew you were here because I followed you
.

She felt a thrill go through her.
But
—
but you are a priest
.

Bella signorina, I am a man first and a priest afterward
. He lurched forward to take her in his arms, and he stumbled on the hem of his cassock and fell into the fish pond.

Shit!

Ron Peterson came into the Roost every day after school and would take a seat at the booth in the far corner. The booth would quickly fill up with his friends and become the center of boisterous conversation. Catherine stood behind the counter near the cash register
and when Ron entered, he would give her a pleasant, absent nod and move on. He never addressed her by name.
He’s forgotten it
, Catherine mused.

But each day when he walked in, she gave him a big smile and waited for him to say hello, ask her for a date, a glass of water, her virginity, anything. She might as well have been a piece of furniture. Examining the girls in the room with complete objectivity she decided she was prettier than all but one girl, the fantastic looking Jean-Anne, the Southern blonde with whom Ron was most often seen, and she was certainly brighter than all of them put together. What in God’s name then was wrong with her? Why was it that not one single boy asked her for a date? She learned the answer the next day.

She was hurrying south along the campus headed for the Roost when she saw Jean-Anne and a brunette whom she did not know, walking across the green lawn toward her.

“Well, it’s Miss Big Brain,” Jean-Anne said.

And Miss Big Boobs
, Catherine thought enviously. Aloud she said, “That was a murderous Lit quiz, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t be condescending,” Jean-Anne said coldly. “You know enough to teach the Lit course. And that’s not all you could teach us, is it, honey?”

Something in her tone made Catherine’s face begin to redden.

“I—I don’t understand.”

“Leave her alone,” the brunette said.

“Why should I?” Jean-Anne asked. “Who the hell does she think she is?” She turned to Catherine. “Do you want to know what everyone says about you?”

God, no
. “Yes.”

“You’re a lesbo.”

Catherine stared at her, unbelievingly. “I’m a
what?”

“A lesbian, baby. You’re not fooling anybody with that holier-than-thou act.”

“Th—that’s ridiculous,” Catherine stammered.

“Did you really think you could fool people?” Jean-Anne asked. “You’re doing everything but carrying a sign.”

“But I—I never—”

“The boys get it up for you, but you never let them put it in.”

“Really—” Catherine blurted.

“Fuck off,” Jean-Anne said. “You’re not our type.”

They walked away, leaving her standing there, numbly staring after them.

That night, Catherine lay in bed, unable to sleep.

How old are you, Miss Alexander?

Nineteen
.

Have you ever had sexual intercourse with a man?

Never
.

Do you like men?

Doesn’t everyone?

Have you ever wanted to make love to a woman?

Catherine thought about it long and hard. She had had crushes on other girls, on women teachers but that had been part of growing up. Now she thought about making love to a woman, their bodies intertwining, her lips on another woman’s lips, her body being caressed by soft, feminine hands. She shuddered.
No!
Aloud, she said, “I’m normal.” But if she was normal, why was she lying here like this? Why wasn’t she out somewhere getting laid like everyone else in the world? Perhaps she was frigid. She might need some kind of operation. A lobotomy, probably.

When the Eastern sky began to lighten outside the dormitory window, Catherine’s eyes were still open, but she had made a decision. She was going to lose her virginity. And the lucky man was going to be every maiden’s bedside companion, Ron Peterson.

She was born a Royal Princess.

Her earliest memories were of a white bassinet covered with a lace canopy, decorated with pink ribbons and filled with soft stuffed animals and beautiful dolls and golden rattles. She quickly learned that if she opened her mouth and let out a cry, someone would hurry to hold and comfort her. When she was six months old her father would take her out in the garden in her perambulator and let her touch the flowers and he would say, “They’re lovely, Princess, but you’re more beautiful than any of them.”

At home she enjoyed it when her father lifted her up in his strong arms and carried her to a window where she could look out and see the roofs of the high buildings, and he would say, “That’s your Kingdom out there, Princess.” He would point to the tall masts of ships bobbing at anchor in the bay. “Do you see those big ships? One day they’ll be yours to command.”

Visitors would come to the castle to see her, but only a few special ones were permitted to hold her. The others would stare down at her as she lay in her crib and would exclaim over her unbelievably delicate features, and her lovely blond hair, her soft honey-colored skin, and her father would proudly say, “A stranger could tell she is a Princess!” And he would lean over her crib and whisper, “Someday a beautiful Prince will come and sweep you off your feet.” And he would gently tuck the warm pink blanket around her and she would drift off to a contented sleep.
Her
whole
world was a roseate dream of ships, tall masts and castles, and it was not until she was five years old that she understood that she was the daughter of a Marseille fishmonger, and that the castles she saw from the window of her tiny attic room were the warehouses around the stinking fish market where her father worked, and that her navy was the fleet of old fishing ships that set out from Marseille every morning before dawn and returned in the early afternoon to vomit their smelly cargo into the waterfront docks.

This was the kingdom of Noelle Page.

The friends of Noelle’s father used to warn him about what he was doing. “You mustn’t put fancy ideas in her head, Jacques. She’ll think she’s better than everybody else.” And their prophecies came true.

On the surface Marseille is a city of violence, the town crowded with hungering sailors with money to spend and clever predators to relieve them of it. But unlike the rest of the French, the people of Marseille have a sense of solidarity that comes from a common struggle for survival, for the lifeblood of the town comes from the sea, and the fishermen of Marseille belong to the family of fishermen all over the world. They share alike in the storms and the calm days, the sudden disasters and the bountiful harvests.

So it was that Jacques Page’s neighbors rejoiced at his good fortune in having such an incredible daughter. They too recognized the miracle of how, out of the dung of the dirty, ribald city, a true Princess had been spawned.

Noelle’s parents could not get over the wonder of their daughter’s exquisite beauty. Noelle’s mother was a heavyset, coarse-featured peasant woman with sagging breasts and thick thighs and hips. Noelle’s father was squat, with broad shoulders and the small suspicious eyes of a Breton. His hair was the color of the wet sand along the beaches of Normandy. In the beginning it had seemed to him that nature had made a mistake, that this exquisite blond fairy creature could not
really belong to him and his wife, and that as Noelle grew older she would turn into an ordinary, plain-looking girl like all the other daughters of his friends. But the miracle continued to grow and flourish, and Noelle became more beautiful each day.

Noelle’s mother was less surprised than her husband by the appearance of a golden-haired beauty in the family. Nine months before Noelle had been born, Noelle’s mother had met a strapping Norwegian sailor just off a freighter. He was a giant Viking god with blond hair and a warm, seductive grin. While Jacques was at work, the sailor had spent a busy quarter of an hour in her bed in their tiny apartment.

Noelle’s mother had been filled with fear when she saw how blond and beautiful her baby was. She walked around in dread, waiting for the moment that her husband would point an accusing finger at her and demand to know the identity of the real father. But, incredibly, some ego-hunger in him made him accept the child as his own.

“She must be a throwback to some Scandinavian blood in my family,” he would boast to his friends, “but you can see that she has my features.”

His wife would listen, nodding agreement, and think what fools men were.

Noelle loved being with her father. She adored his clumsy playfulness and the strange, interesting smells that clung to him, and at the same time she was terrified by the fierceness of him. She would watch wide-eyed as he yelled at her mother and slapped her hard across the face, his neck corded with anger. Her mother would scream out in pain, but there was something beyond pain in her cries, something animal and sexual and Noelle would feel pangs of jealousy and wish she were in her mother’s place.

But her father was always gentle with Noelle. He liked to take her down to the docks and show her off to the rough, crude men with whom he worked. She was known up and down the docks as The Princess and she
was proud of this, as much for her father’s sake as for her own.

She wanted to please her father, and because he loved to eat, Noelle began cooking for him, preparing his favorite dishes, gradually displacing her mother in the kitchen.

At seventeen the promise of Noelle’s early beauty had been more than fulfilled. She had matured into an exquisite woman. She had fine, delicate features, eyes a vivid violet color and soft ash-blond hair. Her skin was fresh and golden as though she had been dipped in honey. Her figure was stunning, with generous, firm, young breasts, a small waist, rounded hips and long shapely legs, with delicate ankles. Her voice was distinctive, soft and mellifluous. There was a strong, smoldering sensuality about Noelle, but that was not her magic. Her magic lay in the fact that beneath the sensuality seemed to lie an untouched island of innocence, and the combination was irresistible. She could not walk down the streets without receiving propositions from passersby. They were not the casual offers that the prostitutes of Marseille received as their daily currency, for even the most obtuse men perceived something special in Noelle, something that they had never seen before and perhaps would never see again, and each was willing to pay as much as he could afford to try to make it a part of himself, however briefly.

Noelle’s father was conscious of her beauty, too. In fact, Jacques Page thought of little else. He was aware of the interest that Noelle aroused in men. Even though neither he nor his wife ever discussed sex with Noelle, he was certain she still had her virginity, a woman’s little capital. His shrewd peasant mind gave long and serious thought to how he could best capitalize on the windfall that nature had unexpectedly bestowed upon him. His mission was to see that his daughter’s beauty paid off as handsomely as possible for Noelle and for him. After all, he had sired her, fed her, clothed her, educated her—she owed him everything.
And now it was time for him to be repaid. If he could set her up as some rich man’s mistress, it would be good for her, and he would be able to live the life of ease to which he was entitled. Each day it was getting more and more difficult for an honest man to make a living. The shadow of war had begun to spread across Europe. The Nazis had marched into Austria in a lightning coup that had left Europe stunned. A few months later the Nazis had taken over the Sudeten area and then marched into Slovakia. In spite of Hitler’s assurances that he was not interested in further conquest, the feeling persisted that there was going to be a major conflict.

The impact of events was felt sharply in France. There were shortages in the stores and markets, as the government began to gear for a massive defense effort. Soon, Jacques feared, they would even stop the fishing and then where would he be? No, the answer to his problem was in finding a suitable lover for his daughter. The trouble was that he knew no wealthy men. All his friends were piss-poor like himself, and he had no intention of letting any man near her who could not pay his price.

The answer to Jacques Page’s dilemma was inadvertently supplied by Noelle herself. In recent months Noelle had become increasingly restless. She did well in her classes, but school had begun to bore her. She told her father that she wanted to get a job. He studied her silently, shrewdly weighing the possibilities.

“What kind of job?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Noelle replied. “I might be able to work as a model, papa.”

It was as simple as that.

Every afternoon for the next week Jacques Page went home after work, carefully bathed to get the smell of fish out of his hands and hair, dressed in his good suit and went down to the Canebière, the main street that led from the old harbor of the city to the richer districts. He walked up and down the street exploring
all the dress salons, a clumsy peasant in a world of silk and lace, but he neither knew nor cared that he was out of place. He had but one objective and he found it when he reached the Bon Marché. It was the finest dress shop in Marseille, but that was not why he chose it. He chose it because it was owned by Monsieur Auguste Lanchon. Lanchon was in his fifties, an ugly bald-headed man with small stumpy legs and a greedy, twitching mouth. His wife, a tiny woman with the profile of a finely honed hatchet, worked in the fitting room, loudly supervising the tailors. Jacques Page took one look at Monsieur Lanchon and his wife and knew that he had found the solution to his problem.

Lanchon watched with distaste as the shabbily dressed stranger entered the door of his shop. Lanchon said rudely, “Yes? What can I do for you?”

Jacques Page winked, poked a thick finger in Lanchon’s chest and smirked, “It is what I can do for
you
, Monsieur. I am going to let my daughter work for you.”

Auguste Lanchon stared at the lout standing before him, an expression of incredulity on his face.

“You are going to
let
—”

“She will be here tomorrow, nine o’clock.”

“I do not—”

Jacques Page had left. A few minutes later, Auguste Lanchon had completely dismissed the incident from his mind. At nine o’clock the next morning, Lanchon looked up and saw Jacques Page entering the shop. He was about to tell his manager to throw the man out, when behind him he saw Noelle. They were walking toward him, the father and his unbelievably beautiful daughter, and the old man was grinning, “Here she is, ready to go to work.”

Auguste Lanchon stared at the girl and licked his lips.

“Good morning, Monsieur,” Noelle smiled. “My father told me that you had a job for me.”

Auguste Lanchon nodded his head, unable to trust his voice.

“Yes, I—I think we could arrange something,” he managed to stammer. He studied her face and figure and could not believe what he saw. He could already imagine what that naked young body would feel like under him.

Jacques Page was saying, “Well, I will leave you two to get acquainted,” and he gave Lanchon a hearty whack on the shoulder and a wink that had a dozen different significances, none of them leaving any doubt in Lanchon’s mind about his intentions.

For the first few weeks Noelle felt that she had been transported to another world. The women who came to the shop were dressed in beautiful clothes and had lovely manners, and the men who accompanied them were a far cry from the crude, boisterous fishermen with whom she had grown up. It seemed to Noelle that for the first time in her life the stench of fish was out of her nostrils. She had never really been aware of it before, because it had always been a part of her. But now everything was suddenly changed. And she owed it all to her father. She was proud of the way he got along with Monsieur Lanchon. Her father would come to the shop two or three times a week and he and Monsieur Lanchon would slip out for a cognac or a beer and when they returned there would be an air of camaraderie between them. In the beginning Noelle had disliked Monsieur Lanchon, but his behavior toward her was always circumspect. Noelle heard from one of the girls that Lanchon’s wife had once caught him in the stockroom with a model and had picked up a pair of shears and had barely missed castrating him. Noelle was aware that Lanchon’s eyes followed her everywhere she went, but he was always scrupulously polite. “Probably,” she thought, with satisfaction, “he is afraid of my father.”

At home the atmosphere suddenly seemed much
brighter. Noelle’s father no longer struck her mother and the constant bickering had stopped. There were steaks and roasts to eat, and after dinner Noelle’s father would take out a new pipe and fill it with a rich smelling tobacco from a leather pouch. He bought himself a new Sunday suit. The international situation was worsening and Noelle would listen to discussions between her father and his friends. They all seemed to be alarmed by the imminent threat to their livelihood, but Jacques Page appeared singularly unconcerned.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s troops invaded Poland and two days later Great Britain and France declared war against Germany.

Mobilization was begun and overnight the streets were filled with uniforms. There was an air of resignation about what was happening, a
déjà vu
feeling of watching an old movie that one had seen before; but there was no fear. Other countries might have reason to tremble before the might of the German armies but France was invincible. It had the Maginot Line, an impenetrable fortress that could protect France against invasion for a thousand years. A curfew was imposed and rationing was started, but none of those things bothered Jacques Page. He seemed to have changed, to have calmed. The only time Noelle saw him fly into a fury was one night when she was in the darkened kitchen kissing a boy whom she dated occasionally. The lights suddenly went on and Jacques Page stood in the doorway trembling with rage.

“Get out,” he screamed at the terrified boy. “And keep your hands off my daughter, you filthy pig!”