A Piece of the Sky is Missing by David Nobbs & David Nobbs

Author:David Nobbs & David Nobbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1969-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The only brothel he had ever visited.

He had pulled off his deal with M. Bernard and his rookery, his first deal. He felt good. He would return to London on the nine o’clock flight. Now was the time to make the European experience complete. Martin had given him the address. His analyst had told Martin that it would do him good. It hadn’t.

So he did what he would never have dared to do in Soho. He rang the bell that said: ‘Maison D’Amitié (Prop. Mme M. Antoinette).’

The door closed behind him. The roar of the traffic was hushed to a soothing murmur. In front of him was a stone flight of stairs. On the first floor there was another door. He rang the bell. He hoped it wouldn’t smell like a brothel.

The door opened. A comfortable, plump, middle-aged woman stood before him.

‘Madame Antoinette?’

‘Oui.’

There must be some terrible mistake. This wasn’t a brothel.

‘Je suis Anglais.’

‘Ah. Welcome, sir.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I speak the English. I was three weeks from West Hartlepools. A friend of a pen. I stay from her family. I learn the English. Did you know this nice town?’

‘Paris?’

‘West Hartlepools.’

‘No.’

Mme Antoinette showed him into the waiting room. There were wall-to-wall carpets, and flowers on the table. On the walls were pictures of sister establishments throughout France. They all looked identical. He gazed at a bedroom in the Maison D’Amitié, Lyons (Prop. H. de Lafayette). He thought, soon there’ll be drive-in brothels, called Mothels. There was a suggestions box, which he longed to open, and on the table a visitors’ book. Henry Chadwick from Preston had found it ‘very comfortable’. Arthur J. Doornsticker from Maine, USA, voted it ‘the best yet in five countries’, while Spiro E. Bertorelli from New York State thought it good value for money and promised to tell the folks back home. A Swede from Malmo said, if Robert’s scanty Swedish was not mistaken, that he had spent the five happiest days of his life there.

‘Ah, you read the book.’

‘Yes.’

‘Afterwards you will sign. Come now. Do not be on the nervous edge. All my girls is clean.’

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘All decent girls. They like the English. They is not so much demanding. Not like them Germans. Phew!’

Mme Antoinette led him into a back room where three girls were playing cards. They wore green uniforms stamped: ‘Maison D’Amitié’, with their names – Annette, Claudine and Martine.

Annette was thin, with raw red skin and a dead, sad face. Claudine was plump. She looked jolly and homely. Martine was thin, but not so thin as Annette. Brown hair rather than a brunette. Quite a good figure. Doughy skin. Pastry faced. A face that looked as if it had been very attractive until it had been kneaded slightly out of shape by a jealous sister. The forehead and chin a little too flat, the eyes too close together, the nose slightly squashed. But not an unattractive face. It would have to be Martine. He hoped some people chose Claudine, because she was so jolly, and Annette, because she was so pathetic.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.