The Life and Times of Clarence Ponsack

1. Ponsack to Jones: 4 October; Paris, France. 

Dear Jones, 

It is seven o'clock.(Seven nineteen to be precise, though,  by the time I had finished typing this phrase, it was seven  twenty, and it is now seven twenty-one: thus the inevitable flux of time continues, accompanied by the (to me)  meaningless twitter of birds on the roof outside, the sound  of car motors and horns, and the clatter of dishes from the  kitchens of Chez Molo.) We are together at last in the little room near the train station where so many fleeting moments of passionate intercourse between the sexes have occurred over the years, rendering the place unspeakably redolent of sin, adventure and cold fast food. 

“What lovely weather for October,” said Jane, stretching out luxuriously on the green canapé which Andrew had positioned close to the door, her movements promising to reveal things to excite the imagination and prepare the appetite for things to come, though, to be honest, the appetite had already been well and truly stimulated by the two hours we had spent in close proximity on the Eurostar. 

“Liberata! Liberata!” came a cry from the street. 

“What on earth was that?” asked Jane. 

“I don't know,” I stammered. “Sounded like somebody shouting 'Liberata'. Twice.”

“But what does it mean?” she asked, insistently beating her little fist on her little knees, which parted slightly to reveal her thighs, and perhaps a phantom of a ghost of a hint of something else. Her knuckles had turned white.  

“I'm not sure,” I replied, a certain resignation entering into my voice, like a burglar into a posh flat in Soho while the owners are away on holiday on the Isle of Wight. “It could  be some sort of signal.” 

And so it proved. Two gunshots rang out in quick succession. Jane swivelled, as though checking that all her parts were still in working order, and looked over towards the window, then looked at me. 

“Well,” she said, a little impatiently, “Ain't you gonna go and see?” I wondered about this sudden lapse from good  English, but, as I reflected on class, normal diction, Mae  West and the influence of American culture generally, I  made no comment. I had become convinced already during my early teens that the English language was, in fact, no longer properly English, but rather a smorgasbord of disparate elements from a kaleidoscope of different cultures. I moved towards the window, like a poet pulled by a silken string, and looked out. 

“Good God,” I articulated, pressing my hand against my breast as though my heart might leap out at any moment. 

“What is it?” asked Jane, “don't keep me in suspense.”  

“It's Stevens,” I replied.  

“Stevens?” she re-iterated impatiently. “What about Stevens?“

"He's lying in the gutter, in a pool of blood,” I reported.  

“Oh, don't be so melodramatic,” said Jane, flicking back her hair in a gesture which signalled a high level of displeasure. 

“Sorry, Jane, dear, but that's how it is,” I said. “Reality, you know. Sometimes unpleasant, and not always as you would like it to be.”  

I looked again at the scene unfolding below. Two men were approaching from the direction of the station, while a man and a woman, who had appeared out of nowhere, were standing hand in hand on the opposite side of the road to the corpse, gazing over at the scene like two visitors to the zoo admiring the polar bears, but unwilling to advance any further for fear of having their legs bitten off.  

“What's happening now?” asked Jane 

“Why don't you come and see for yourself?” I asked. 

“You know I can't stand the sight of blood,” she replied softly, running her hand down the inside of her thigh as though there were something grippingly erotic in blood letting. “It makes me giddy.” 

“Well,” I said, “One of the men is bending down over the body. I think he's feeling for a pulse.” 

“And the other?” asked Jane. 

“He's lit a cigarette,” I replied. 

“Oh, really!” retorted Jane.

4 

“Really what?” I asked. 

“It's beginning to sound like a cheap novel,” she replied. 

“It's funny you should say that,” I commented, turning briefly to look at her, and remarking, not for the first time, her fine breasts, which seemed to have grown in size due to the excitement of the moment, the nipples gorgeously erect like two policemen at the sudden appearance of their captain in full dress uniform. “Because the man bending down over the body looks just like Jean Gabin.” 

“Who's he?” she asked.  

“An important French actor of the fifties and sixties,” I  replied softly, not wishing to rouse her indignation at my discovery of her ignorance. 

“So why is he so important?” she asked. 

“Something to do with his rejection of American values, I  believe.” 

“Don't you know?” she asked. 

“No,” I replied. 

“You're a fine one,” she concluded, bringing her feet up towards her body and picking at something, some imperfection she had found on her knee, apparently unaware, or unconcerned, that the movement had revealed the backs of her thighs, and the swan-like curves of her buttocks. I made as if to go towards her, but she shooed me away: “No, no,” she said firmly. “I want to know how this turns out. What's this Gabin doing now?”

5 

I glanced out of the window. 

“He's stood up,” I announced. 

“And... “ prompted Jane. 

“He's lit a cigarette,” I said. “Now he's talking to the other  chap.” 

“So, is this Chapman fellow dead or not?” 

“Stevens,” I corrected. 

“Stevens, Chapman, does it matter?” she asked. 

“To Stevens and Chapman, certainly,” I replied. She eyed me with the look of a snake about to strike. 

“I'm not interested in your schoolboy observations,” she said. “We came up here to fuck, and all you can do is  recount pathetic stories about your uninteresting cronies from school, and brag about your adolescent affairs with ageing French actors.... “ 

“Well, I can state quite categorically that I never had an affair with Jean Gabin,” I asserted with all the force of truth. 

“And Stevens?” she asked, unwilling to completely release the high ground of moral indignation. 

“Stevens?” I repeated, feeling a little like a skewered piece  of tandoori meat. 

“Yes, bloody Stevens,” she said, continuing her charge, ”Did he get his cock up your bum? Or did you just give him a  blow job?”

6 

“Neither, as a matter of fact,” I replied calmly. 

“So, you just tossed him off,” she suggested. “In the toilets? In your car? In the back seats of the cinema?” 

I saw no reason why I should divulge what had passed between me and Stevens, particularly as he now appeared to be dead,  and there was therefore no possibility of him revealing anything at all about our relationship. 

“You know,” I began, as though reading a script from an  invisible prompter, “it's not really proper for a young woman, a well brought-up young woman, to …. “ 

“Enquire into the affairs of sodomites?” she suggested. We exchanged a look. In that look, there were many interesting packets of information which I realised would take me quite a while to unbundle and interpret. Six weeks was perhaps  

not long enough. But, in the meantime, I think that I had understood that the idea of two men ejaculating simultaneously in a semi-public place had excited her imagination, and that her sexual arousal had now reached a certain pitch. I realised that, in all probability, nothing would now stop her until her itch had been well and truly scratched. 

In short, I decided to abandon Stevens for the more thanadequate charms of Jane's mountains and valleys, clefts,  rocks and protuberances, seeking novel ways to release  their potent odours, all the while encouraging the much to  be desired exchange of body fluids which accompanies the  act of animal copulation, and which secures us in the shared world of dogs, cats and hippopotami.  

I sidled over to the canapé, bent forward, and slid my hand  down the inside of her thigh, taking hold of the seat of her emotions, which was scarcely covered by the fabric of her panties. 

“How do you want me?” she asked, as my fingers manipulated her sex with a sort of proprietorial disregard for the thing possessed. 

“On your knees,” I said. She looked at me oddly, then got off the couch, and kneeled down. “Turn around,” I  instructed. She obeyed. I then pushed her forward so that she was on all fours, lifted her skirt, and pulled down her panties.  

It is one of the views of a woman which I find most attractive, in fact, probably the most attractive. The sumptuous combination of curves, large and small, the delightful presentation of orifices and the delicate shades of pink, pale lemon and purple, produces an effect both aesthetic and erotic. She glanced back at me, wanting no doubt to see the great engine which was about to penetrate her body. I released the shaft from my trousers, and directed it towards her lower orifice. 

“You're circumscribed!” she exclaimed as I introduced the tip into the opening to her vagina, and began to work it gently but firmly up inside her body. 

I resisted the temptation to laugh. “'Sized',” I corrected. “The word is 'circumcised'.” 

“That's what I said,” she objected with a complete disregard for the truth. 

It was, unfortunately, at this point that there came a rapping at the door. 

8 

“Mr Ponsack,” said a voice. “It's urgent. You have to come.  There's been a terrible accident.” 

I withdrew from my amiable partner, and stuffed my penis back into my trousers. Jane got up and seated herself gingerly on the edge of the canapé. She looked up at me. 

“Stevens,” she said. I nodded, and went to the door, which I unbolted and opened. 

Standing in the light of the hall window was Mme Grignac's daughter, Alpuerga, her delicately chiselled features expressing an acute anxiety which she seemed to have been born to express almost continually. I began to think of  Racine, Andromaque, and the noble impossibility of love in a world overpowered by duty.  

“It's Mr Stevens,” she said, looking over my shoulder at Jane. She seemed to understand everything at a glance.  “'E's been badly injured.” 

“Yes,” I said. “What happened?” 

“I don't know. I was doing the washing up when I 'eard two shots. I looked out of the kitchen window, and saw somebody running. Then two men came to the door,” she said, running her fingers through her rather limp hair.  

“And then?” I prompted. 

“Perhaps you should come and see for yourself,” she suggested. “'E was, after all, your … friend.” And what of that? I thought. Friends had died before without importuning me to make statements about their last movements, but I went nevertheless, resigned to face whatever consequences were written into my stars or engraved on my tombstone.  

I turned briefly towards Jane, who was still sitting on the edge of the canapé. A look of frigid mortification had descended like a cloud over her features, and I guessed that leaving her in this condition of significant sexual arousal might have a thoroughly deleterious effect on our future relationship, though it is also true that there are women who like this sort of abandonment mid-stream. They are able, I understand, to treasure their heightened sexual arousal for days, just waiting for the right man or woman to come along to relieve the pressure, unless, that is, they decide to do it for themselves. I have to admit that I cannot personally attest to this, the information having come to me from a precocious girl guide who took to divulging her sexy secrets during our trips along the less frequented stretches of the Grand Union Canal together. These were halcyon days when our sexual response had not yet been filtered through the moral hypocrisy of modern liberal thinking, and was therefore still in its rampant, uncensored, youthful prime.  

At all events, the decision had been made, and I followed my little Andromaque down the stairs. 

“'E was a very interesting man,” she said, turning briefly to look at me as we exited the building. “'E knew a lot of  poetry.” 

“Yes,” I confirmed.  

“The last thing 'e said to me,” she continued, rolling her large brown eyes in a sort of ecstasy of remembrance, “was 'cogito ergo sum'.” 

“Well,” I remarked, rather pedantically, 'That's philosophy rather than poetry.” 

“Is it?” she queried. “You see,” she continued, “I am a very ignorant person." 

"I wouldn't say that," I said, mentally comparing her with some of the very ignorant people I have known. “But perhaps  nobody has really concerned themselves with your  education.” 

“Ah, yes,” she said reflectively, “my education.” Her melancholy repetition of the words seemed to register somewhere in my subconscious. It was as though she had  thrown a pebble into a well, and we both waited for the plop to indicate that the pebble had found water, but none was forthcoming, unless you can count the dog that began barking in the courtyard next door. She turned her eyes, her melancholy eyes, towards the corpse, for such it surely was, which lay on the other side of the road. It seemed that more blood had oozed from the body, further disfiguring the face. I briefly wondered whether it really was Stevens, but my doubts were dispelled by the fact that, a little way from the corpse, spine up, lay a copy of Descartes' Discourse on Method, the very work from which our melancholy maid had just quoted. 

“Look,” I said, “Descartes' Discourse.” 

“'Oo is Descartes?” she asked. 

“Descartes was a famous French philosopher,” I explained.  “It was Descartes who formulated the phrase cogito ergo  sum.” 

“I think therefore I am,” she translated.

11 

“Or in this case, I do not think, therefore I am not.” 

“Do you really think so?'” she asked. I started to formulate a clever reply, but then thought better of it. Perhaps it wasn't the best time to flex the puny muscles of my wit or to explore Descartes' philosophy in depth. 

“One never knows,” I said attempting to save whatever impenetrability was to be saved either for myself or for  Descartes or for philosophy as a whole.  

Alpuerga pointed out two men who were approaching. One of them was the Gabin I had identified from the window of the apartment. Up close, the likeness was even more striking. 

“This is Mr Delbouis,” explained Alpuerga, indicating one of the men. “'E found the body.” The man inclined his head slightly. 

“A friend of yours?” he asked, looking over at the inert mass that was once Stevens. I nodded. “A philosopher?” he conjectured, indicating the book with a gesture which spoke of a certain self-assurance in the face of adversity. 

“A philosopher,” I confirmed rather absurdly since, apart the fact of having died with a copy of Descartes' Discourse of  Method in his hand, I did not at all know what might qualify him for such an appellation. But perhaps this was enough. 

“Have you … ?” I began. 

“Telephoned the police?” suggested Delbouis. 

“Yes,” I said.

“They should be here shortly,” he asserted. 

An awkward silence ensued, during which my little  Andromaque scratched her arms. 

“I should be getting back,” she said finally. I was reluctant to let her go, but there seemed no good reason to detain her further. In any case, Delbouis took the affair in hand. 

“Yes, miss,” he said. “Don't worry about a thing. We will  clear up here, then me and Charlie will come and tell you  how things stand.” She darted one last look in my direction. 

“Goodbye, Mr Ponsack,” she said, a brief smile passing across her pallid, angelic face. “Goodbye Mr Delbouis.”  Delbouis nodded, and watched her as she went back to her kitchen. 

“Charming,” he said. Charlie, who had been silent up to this point, began to chuckle. 

“Nice bit of crackling,” he said. “Wouldn't mind giving her one. How about you, Jean?” Jean turned again to look after the fair Andromaque who was disappearing through a small door to one side of the main entrance to Chez Molo. 

“Little girl, big cunt,” said Jean. “I know the type.” 

There were by this time numerous other passers-by who had congregated around the corpse. One old lady, very well dressed and with a face marked with an expression of permanent disdain, prodded the unfortunate Stevens with the point of her umbrella, while, on the pavement behind, a boy twisted himself into peculiar shapes, presumably to amuse himself while he awaited the outcome of the little drama that was playing out before him. Delbouis must have thought it was time to return to the scene of the crime, and he urged me forward towards this little group. 

“He's dead, Madam,” he said, addressing the well-dressed lady. The woman levelled her eyes at him like a soldier training his sub-machine gun on the enemy. 

“Are you a doctor?” she asked pointedly. The question clearly unsettled Delbouis. 

“No, but I know enough to distinguish the dead from the living,” he said defiantly. “He's got no pulse.” 

“But you are not a doctor,” insisted the woman with a tone of one about to thrust his bayonet into the heart of the enemy. 

“No,” confessed Delbouis. 

“Then I suggest we leave it to somebody qualified to make  the decision about whether or not he is dead,” she concluded triumphantly. I could not help wondering whether Delbouis had an idea of the form and size of this woman's cunt. 

“Yes, ma'am,” he said with all the air of a little boy who has had his legs slapped.  

An old man, a distinguished old man, with a white beard and the paunch of a bon vivant which bulged beneath his fancy waistcoat, had arrived in the meantime, andseemed  to generally concur in the assessment of the well-dressed lady.  

“Have you put a mirror against his mouth?” he asked.

14 

“Are you a doctor?” asked the well-dressed lady, preparing another fusillade. 

“No,” replied the man, “but I once worked in the geriatric ward of a lunatic asylum. We used to put a mirror up against the mouth of any of the inmates who looked a bit dodgy in the morning. If it steamed up, we knew he wasn't quite dead.” 

“People have been known to die for several hours before being resuscitated,” interjected a young man who had arrived on a bicycle. 

“Has anybody called the police or an ambulance?” asked another young man who was clearly a man of some importance to judge by his made-to-measure suit, his well-manicured fingernails, his impeccable coiffure, his whiter than white cuffs, and the clipped tones of his confident, authoritative voice. It was evident that he was used to ordering people around, and had studied the art of getting people to do what he wanted them to do. I imagined him standing in front of a mirror practising his moves, like Hitler. Maybe, I thought, I could take one or two hints from this individual on the art of self-aggrandisement. 

“I called the police,” said Delbouis. 

“How long ago was that?” asked the well-dressed young man. 

“About five minutes,” replied Delbouis. The man took out his mobile phone, one of the most expensive available. Charlie had come up beside me. 

“What do you think?” he asked.

15 

“About what?” I asked. 

“Is he a fagboy?” 

“Undoubtedly,” I replied. “Gay as a parrot.” Charlie seemed satisfied with this simple simile, and gave another of his distinctive chuckles, reassured in his own narrow view of the world that separated gay from straight, good from bad, cowboys from Indians, though, frankly, whether the man was gay or not seemed to me both irrelevant and impossible to tell. In fact, watching him more attentively as he busied himself with his phone, it seemed to me that he would be capable of most sorts of sexual engagement, be it homosexual, heterosexual, active or passive, and that if one put him into one category, he would respond by quickly jumping into another, then back to the first when he had had enough of that, and so on. You know the sort of fellow, I am  sure. Yes. Androgynous. Hermaphroditical, changeable,  interesting, but fundamentally unreliable, with a narrow regard for his own self-importance, which, of course, is by no means unusual, but can be extremely tiresome. 

It was as this young man was pushing the buttons of his phone that a police car arrived. This was no doubt in response to Delbouis' earlier call, but the sequence of events made it appear that the fashionable young man had worked some sort of magic, and as he clearly understood,  appearance is everything. He seemed momentarily to grow in stature, as he sucked in the admiring glances of those around him, then turned to smile at the approaching police officer, who promptly pushed him to one side and knelt in front of the corpse. 

I won't go into all the details of official procedure which a tedious bureaucracy dictates should apply in these cases. I  explained to one of the two policemen that I was with a young lady in a room that overlooks the scene of the crime, that the deceased was an Englishman, and known to me, that I had heard somebody shout 'Liberata' twice, then two gunshots, and that by the time I arrived at the window to see what had happened, Stevens was already lying in the gutter, and the two men, Delbouis and Charlie, were approaching from the direction of the station. He, of course, asked what I did next, which put me into a little embarrassment. 

“Well,” I said, giving the man the look of male solidarity, “you know, officer, l'amour...” He, of course, understood immediately. “It was only when Mademoiselle Grignac came knocking at the door a few minutes later that I abandonethe pursuit of Eros, and descended with her to see what had happened.” 

At this point, he wanted to know all about Mademoiselle  Grignac, and I was persuaded to lead him to the kitchen where she worked, while his companion stayed with  Delbouis and the corpse.  

We entered the little room by the door below and to one side of the main restaurant entrance. Here, amongst the dirty pots and pans, is where my gentle Andromaque spenther days, meditating on fate, duty and the inevitability of  death whilst cleaning the dishes. I wondered if she ever found relief from the drudgery of her occupation, and resolved to find out more about how she spent her days,  whether she ever had a day off, and, if she did, where she went to spend her free time. 

The gendarme began to question her about the events, which she recounted very prettily, at least, as prettily as the events allowed, explaining that she had heard the shout,  then, a few seconds later, the gunshots. When she turned to look out of the window, she had seen a woman dressed in a long skirt fleeing towards the little alleyway which runs along by the side of Chez Molo, into which she quickly disappeared. The only point of contention between us was the word that had been shouted twice just before the gunshots. According to Mademoiselle Grignac, the word was 'Libertada' not 'Liberata'. 

“At all events,” I said, “It means the same thing, first in  Portuguese, then in Italian.” 

“So what does it mean?” asked the gendarme. 

“It is the past participle feminine of the verb 'to liberate',” I  said. It was clear from his expression that further elucidation was required. “It means 'liberated', but it  indicates that it is a woman speaking.” 

“Liberata,” mused the gendarme. “So we're looking for either a Portuguese or an Italian woman with revolutionary  or terroristic tendencies.” 

“Possibly,” I concurred. Far be it from me to question the reasoning of a public servant, though there were clearly several points one could have raised to bring his hypothesis into some doubt. 

He proceeded to record our particulars, taking out a small pocket notebook and a pencil to do so. 

He was a cumbersome man, and, in the space available in Alpuerga's tiny kitchen, which was, in reality, more of a corridor than a proper room, and full of dirty plates, dishes, knives and forks and so on, his size was becoming increasingly problematic. He was standing by the low door which led back out into the street. The disproportion between him and the door gave the impression that he was, in fact, a giant. I could not tell whether Alpuerga, who was  standing next to him in front of the sink, which had practically disappeared under the cover of dirty dishes, pots and pans, was impressed or intimidated by him. Possibly  both. She started scratching her arms, which may have indicated that she did not know what to do next, while he continued to mark things in his notebook, once or twice staring thoughtfully out of the single, dirty window pane which was situated high up above the sink, and through which he could see the little crowd that had gathered around the corpse. 

He took his time, occasionally returning to a particular word  to reform one or more of its letters, while Alpuerga and I  waited like two acolytes, our time at his disposal as he completed his investigations, such as they were. 

I was standing on the other side of Alpuerga, occasionally glancing up the stairs which led into the restaurant proper, from whence came, from time to time, the pleasant rumour of diners, eating and chatting, laughing, in short enjoying their midday meals. I got the impression that although the giant had finished what he had to do, he did not want to leave. He stood with his notebook in hand, waiting for something to occur to him that he might ask. 

At length, he gave up and put his notebook away. He looked first at Alpuerga, then at me, as though attempting to size us up. I wondered what might be passing through the lumpen matter that constituted his brain. 

“Are you staying in Paris, Monsieur?” he asked finally. 

“Yes,” I replied. “For a few days anyway.” He nodded slowly, adding this fact to the scanty information he had already gleaned from us. Then there was a call from the street.

“Franzl! Franzl!” Our friendly giant half-turned. 

“Yo!” he called. 

“What are you doing?” asked the voice. 

“Taking particulars,” replied Franzl. 

“Well, hurry up,” said the voice. “We've had another call. They've found another body.” 

“Will do,” replied Franzl. He turned back to us. “Nothing but bodies today,” he said in a jolly tone of voice, clearly relishing the fact and the confirmation it gave of his own importance. “This will be the third.” He then turned and left. 

I will confess to feeling a certain frisson at Alpuerga's proximity, and I quickly canvassed what possibilities lay open to me. She had stopped scratching her arms, but I  think that this meant that she was about to start work on the pile of dishes that lay before her, rather than anything more exciting. 

Curiously, my erection had returned. I looked at her, my little Andromaque. How we could enjoy strolling together through the museums of Europe with Baedeker's guide in hand as she sucked up the knowledge that I had acquired from my extensive reading of the classics. But, despite my best efforts, the primary idea that returned to grab hold of my imagination was the little dictum of Gabin / Delbouis:  'Little girl, big cunt'. 

More of this next time.

20 

Affectionately, 

Ponsack