Paris in Love

All over the world St Valentines is a commercial opportunity to sell flowers, chocolates, or saucy undies.   In Paris, love is a round the clock, round the year event. On every corner, and sometimes on one or two specific corners one may see them, the couples who have nowhere else to go-- because both are married, perhaps, or because one is married and the other lives with parents or friends. One can’t avoid seeing them. No matter what weather, they are there, entwined on park benches, welded together on street corners. There is one couple I see each time I approach the doors to my swimming pool. They are, perhaps, sheltering from the cold. But there are others who brave the cold and I see them, legs wrapped around torsos on benches in the Tuileries, kissing deeply while snow flakes fall around them like petals of some blown white virgin rose.

How hard it must be to be lovers who have nowhere to go and no time in which to be together outside their legitimate relationships. And there are increasing numbers of those as separation and divorce becomes more common and easy to obtain (the rate in France has risen to 40% during the past decade) but affordable housing is in short supply. The law caters for it with Gallic efficiency. Children become back packers, spending alternate weeks with father or mother. In one case I know, a father of seven married a mother of three. Thus ten children have to divide their time between two homes: the house of the second marriage is a Grand Central Station for them all. Despite these fearful consequences of such new married love, there is no shortage of bonding between the newly single. More and more couples are however opting to live separately in their own apartments. Will this mean fewer passionate pairs entwined along streets and in parks? Or do the French prefer to share their intimate moments? Paris is exceptional in this. I have lived in many cities but I have never seen this clinging together of couples whose aspect is that of love at the end of the world. However ephemeral their passion, it seems real and intense. Love is now. A stranger can sweep you into his arms on a street corner.

The romantic behaviour of Frenchmen is in their blood and in their mythology. I was having a St Valentines lunch with my French lover who has long displayed his romantic instincts as well as his fervent passion. He buys me underwear so that I now view him as my corsetiere: and he is becoming better and better at choosing the bra styles and remembering the sizes.

Our Valentine lunch was at the Café Ruc, a couple of blocks from my apartment and I was not surprised when he ordered his favourite steak tartar with pommes allumettes. There is something invitingly naughty about stealing your lover’s frites from his dish. Not as naughty as having your knickers stolen if you go off to the loo and he follows you with such intent. My concern is he doesn’t end up at home with my knickers in his pocket.

However, St Valentine's is also important for married couples. I saw some neighbours from my building sitting down to lunch around the time my lover and I were ending our own dejeuner. They are elderly, but sans dout their love is still worthy of celebration. The husband is one of the most handsome men in my quartier. Although white haired and becoming frail, he is clearly a lifelong lady killer. He invariably bows to me as we pass and gives a lingering look from under his brows, a lifetime habit, I feel. His wife, a tiny mouse of a woman who has probably been fighting off attacks from predatory females for decades, never greets me. No wonder they are never apart. As they were shown to their table I was touched at the way M’sieu was gently helping his wife shed her coat and making sure that she was at her ease. He was gallantry and courtesy personified. But he belongs to another generation: and another world of courtesies.

My lover leaped up to pay the bill discreetly, taking his coat and apparently abandoning me, his scarf and his briefcase. I had to follow him with these items. Before pouncing at my nearby apartment, he had to check his Blackberry then switch it off. He had a lot of concentrated passion to get through before getting back to the office.

He had already given me some delightful lingerie, plus black stockings trimmed with red satin bows at their tops and a big box of champagne to keep us going over a number of passionate visits. He is absolutely gorgeous and very, very smart.

A Frenchman can be all a girl really needs. If he’s the right Frenchman. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrr….