December 1985 Vonelli the Floridian art dealer invited Lizzie and me to celebrate Christmas on the Isle of Wight. I told her about the trip in a Bastille cafe. THe singer and I had been having an affair for the past month. Neither of us pretended that we were serious about our time together. Nobody in Paris bet on our lasting out the year, then again we were more lovers than friends. Our paths had met and joined in many cities. Paris was just one of them.

Her hit song Mais où Sont Passées Les Gazelles?” played on the radio. I had to work at the Balajo on Rue de Lappe later. There wasn’t much holiday spirit on the Rue De La Roquette.

“What is the Isle of Wight”

“It’s the southern most island. Very English. We’ll do the Tennyson Walk in the morning and eat a traditional Christmas dinner at Lord Ventnor’s house.” I signaled the barman from another round of ‘rouge’. Each glass of the tres ordinaire vin rouge cost nine new francs.

“New people. Strangers. Sounds good. And this Vonelli?””

“A good man.”

“As long he is not niice, ca va.”

That summer I had spent several weeks on the Isle of Wight basking in the graciousness of Lord Ventnor’s hospitality. Many people asked what he did. Some thought he was CIA. They thought the same thing of me. I might have been a fuguitive from time to time, but I had a 1980 rejection letter from the CIA to prove I wasn’t a spook.

“I hear a ‘but’.” Lizzie had lived in New York in the 70s and her ear caught my hesitation.

“I’ve spent every Christmas with my parents in Boston.”

“And you are how old?” The singer tangled a long lock with her finger.

“Not a boy.”

“Then it’s a plan. I’ll call Vonelli. He will arrange everything.” We toasted out adventure and I left for work.

THe day of departure I showed up at Gare St. Lazare at 4:45pm. The station was across the Seine from my apartment on Ile St. Louis. The holiday queues at the ticket booths were breaking down into mobs. I spotted Vonelli at a news kiosk. He was looked smitten by prosperity in his tan cashmere coat and his beard had been trimmed to a respectable length.

“Where is she?” Vonelli had our tickets. The art dealer was excited to meet the singer. He liked beautiful women.

“Women are always late.” I planned on any female companion to be at least thirty minutes behind schedule. “But not my friend.”

The singer rang through the crowds of holiday-bound travelers to Normandy. A cigarette hung from her mouth. Her unruly hair was wrapped under a scarf. A heavy coat hid her petite body. Doc Martens shielded her feet from the cold. She lifted her head to acknowledge seeing us. A shroud of tangled hair fell onto her face. Her gloved hand pushed away the matted strands and the singer kissed me on the lips and then pecked Vonelli on both cheeks. Other passengers stared at her. She was famous.

“Let’s get on the train before I have to sign an autograph.” The singer dropped her cigarette on the ground. Her left boot extinguished the embers of the discarded butt. She had studied ballet in Lyons and that the gracefulness of that training showed with her most insignificant gestures.

“I saw you sing on TV.” Vonelli offered to carry her bag. It was twice the size of mine and the singer liked to travel with thick books of philosophy. The art dealer grunted , as he hauled the heavily laden bag over his shoulder.

“French pop stars never sing on TV. We lip-synch the words. It’s good for our voices.”

Lizzie and I entered the Gard St. Lazaire. We walked down the platform to our train. Our breath hung in the frosty winter air. Lizzie exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. The singer loved her Gitanes.

“I know I shouldn’t smoke.” The Paris-born singer handed her bag to Vonelli and lit a cigarette. She was a heavy smoker and her naked skin smelled of tobacco. The Gitanes were hell on her throat and she made no effort to stop. “But I am on holiday and we are taking a big boat. So no more talking about music.”

“So tell me again why we are going le Ile de Wight?”

“To spend Christmas with Lord Ventnor.” Vonelli and Lord Ventnor had been friends, since 1966, when the Floridan dropped out of FU to pursue a career as a pop pianist in London.

“Will there be snow?”

“Maybe, but it is the warmest island in Britain.” The art dealer knew in island well. “So probably not, but it will be cold.”

The three of us boarded the train and Vonelli commandeered a 1st Class compartment. The singer was very pleased with his arrangements and I noticed the warmth in her smile. The same glow had greeted me the first time that she had seen me in Paris. I thought about whether I should be jealous, then decided that Vonelli and the singer made a good couple.

“I hate the cold.” Lizzie came from Lyon. Winters were winter there. She blew on her fingers and I held her hand. The tips of her fingers were frozen and her hair a crow’s nest from the wind. She never used a brush only her fingers, just like me. Vonelli was bald.

“It’ll be cold, but not like New York.”

The train pulled out of Gare St. Lazare on time. The French were very German that way. We were comfortable in our compartment. It was cold outside. Tomorrow would be Christmas.

“Here’s to Noel.” Vonelli poured champagne into three glasses. The bearded art dealer had come prepared for the journey. We ate foie gras on crispy baguettes, as the train rocked on the rails through the night. Vonelli amused us with humorous tales of sales at the Hotel Drouot auction house.

“The Drouot has its own Mafia. The cols rouge in the black uniforms with red trim come from the same region of the Alps and nothing gets shipped or stored at the Drouot without their okay. This morning one of them said that he couldn’t transport a painting to London, because it was in violation of Christian holiday traditions. 200 francs converted him to atheism.”

Vonelli fawned on the singer and she adored his manners.

“You know how I met your friend?” She pointed at me.

“I stopped her friends from having a fight at an after-hour club.” I hated people bringing up my past as a bouncer. In Paris I was deemed a physionomiste for my talent to recognize faces as much as my ability to decipher if the person was a welcome addition to the melange of personalities within the club. It was not a skill learned in schools.

“You stopped them and then threw me down the stairs.”

“I didn’t throw you down the stairs.” I couldn’t remember the particulars of that night.

“Yes, you did, but I forgave you.”

Vonelli shook his head.

“Bad boy, but that’s why we like you.”

I sulked in my seat for several minutes. The singer sat at my side and admonished me in baby language.

“You want everyone to love you like your momma loved you, but only one woman can do that.”

Vonelli thought that she was very funny and I had to admit that she owned a biting wit. My anger dissipated with another glass of champagne. Snow drifted against the windows. The darkened landscape was covered with white. It was beginning to look like Christmas.

She and I knew each other from that city. The petite Parisienne singer had been a hit on the punk scene. Richard Hell had been her ‘friend’. The two of us had been having ‘une affaire’ for two months.

`

“I wish we were on a plane to South Africa.” She had recorded her LP Zulu Rock there. “It’s summer in Jo-Burg.”

“We all wish we were warm, but we are where we are, besides the Isle of Wight is the Riviera of England,” I replied and hurried onto our car, as the conductor called ‘tout abord.”

“Palm trees?”

“Yes, a few,” I answered, having seen potted palm trees on the island during my visit the previous summer.

The train followed the Seine across the northern basin of France to the sea. We arrived at Gare de Le Havre and strolled the short distance to the port. St. Joseph’s Church loomed over the city.

Vonelli steered us out of the station.

“Le Havre had been a Nazi naval base during World War II. The RAF destroyed the city and afterwards the tower was erected to memorialize the thousands of dead. It’s also the lighthouse for the port. Over a hundred meters tall,” he joked about how the church’s Belgian architect was awarded a medal from his government for his masterful uglification, “Le Havre is the most dreary city in France. Think grey and grim. Concrete and more concrete and no building in the city has more concrete than the Eglise of St. Joseph.”
“Putain Boches.” Lizzie flicked her Gitane into the gutter .
We ate dinner at a fantastic fish restaurant. Several diners asked Lizzie for autographs. The singer was in a better mood than Gare St. Lazare. She even posed for photos with her fans. Vonelli and the singer engaged in a conversation about Sartre. They ignored my comment about his collaborating with the Nazis. I was becoming the third wheel.

It was a short walk along the quai. The air smelled of winter by the sea. We entered the terminal and went to waiting room bar. Everyone were panting cigarettes and I waited the boarding call on the dock. The cold was even damper on La Manche. I returned to the waiting room. Lizzie laughed with a cigarette in her hand. The bearded art dealer must have told the singer a joke. She was a good audience.

We boarded the Viking Valiant an hour before departure. So far neither the singer nor I had put our hands in our pockets. Everything so far had been on Vonelli’s cuff. The pursuer led us to second-class cabins. Once we settled we drank wine in Alan’s cabin.

The ship left five minutes late. We rendezvoused at the stern railing and watched the ferry slip from the harbor Le Havre and France disappear into the night, the light of St. Joseph’s Church the only sign of land, until the fog swallowed it whole.

“Fuck you, France.” The singer gave her native land the finger.

“It’s better than America.” I gave no reasons why and stood with both hands on the railing. The singer leaned into me. The ship’s wake glowed with froth and the stars shimmered with increasing numbers, as the ferry left the light of land. Its prow cut through increasingly larger waves. The singer gripped the railing and leaned over to kiss me. I put my arm around her and we walked back inside. She stripped off her clothing. I did the same.

“Your friend is very generous.” The singer shucked her heavy clothing in the cabin and entered the shower room. It was too small for two people, but she left the door open. The ferry was pitching from bow to stern in heavy seas. Tonight’s crossing promised to be a rough one.

“I guess he had a good year at the Drouot.” I had the feeling that his extravagance was aimed at impressing the frail-boned brunette.

“He seems like a nice man.” Her voice was sappy with dreams.

“He is a good friend.”

Our affair had been on a train to nowhere. It had just pulled into the station and I was getting off. The singer had a new destination and I asked, “Do you like him?”

“He’s cute.” She lathed her body with soap. It was a show with one purpose.

“Really?” No one had called me cute since I was a kid.

“Almost like a Santa Claus in training.” The singer was my age, but looked much younger in our cabin’s dim lighting.

“It must be the beard.”

I reminded myself that she was in my cabin this evening and not his. I staggered into shower. It was big enough, if you stood close.

Thirty minutes later we went to Vonelli’s cabin. We drank a bottle of wine holding onto the table to stay in the chairs. They had been screwed into the deck for just such weather. This was the Channel. The Spanish Armada had been destroyed by this stretch of water and I was beginning to understand why.

“I suggest that we skip dinner in this weather. Always better for the stomach.”

The singer and I concurred with his suggestion. The uneven motions of up-down-sideways-back was testing my constitution and I put down my glass without finishing the wine. This was going to be a long night.

Vonelli suggested that we visit the midship casino. The ship rode down one wave and struggled up another for the same length of time. The spray covered the windows with foam, almost as if the ferry was a half-submerged submarine.

Vonelli and the singer were more interested in each other than the cards in their hands. Their inattention gave the pit boss an edge and the odds of the house shifted against the six people at the table. The balance shifted a minute later, as the power of the sea overcame the inescapable grind of blackjack.

The rhythm of the waves stretched into an extra long descent to the bottom of a nautical chasm and the deck shuddered, as the ferry’s engines fought to climb the steepening slope of a ship-crushing wave. Everyone’s eyes went wide and the bow cleared the crest and the ferry dropped into the next trough in a free fall. I grabbed my stack of chips before floating out of my seat. My head grazed the ceiling and then I fell right back into my chair. Vonelli and the singer were also lucky, but the pit boss landed on the table.

“I think it’s time to call it a night.” The pit boss was visibly shaken by his flight. The rest of us nodded assent to his suggestion. “Go to your cabin and we’ll cash you out in the morning.”

He shouted to close the casino and ordered the passengers to their cabins.

Sorry about this.” Vonelli helped the singer to the door. He had wanted everything to be perfect. We separated to enter our rooms. For a second the singer seemed ready to go with him and if this had been a voyage from Le Havre to New York instead of Le Havre to Portsmouth, then tomorrow night she would have made the move.

“See you two in the morning.”

The singer stripped off her clothing and slipped into bed.

“You like Vonelli?” I asked lying next to her. I hadn’t bothered to take off my clothes. If the ship sank, I wanted to be ready to abandon ship.

The tousled hair singer was nominally my girlfriend and sex calmed her mal de mer. The only other cures were drowning and land.

It was easier sad than done, but after two hours the sea surrendered its fury and the ferry resumed a gentle course to England. The singer and I had sex. Probably for the last time. I caressed her shoulder without daring to touch a more intimate stretch of flesh. The ferry shuddered with a wave slapping the port-side.

“You think this ship will survive.” She was frightened by the ocean.

“I think so. The ships make this trip all the time. They are built for La Manche. Everything will be fine. Go to sleep.”

It was easier sad than done, but after two hours the sea surrendered its fury and the ferry resumed a gentle course to England.

The next morning we cruised on a clam sea. An announcement that the ferry would soon be docking in Portsmouth.

“The Titanic left from here in 1912.”

The famed liner had never reached New York and Lizzie said, “Then we had a bon voyage.”

Lizzie exited from berth and I carried the bags. Vonelli met us by the bow, “How you sleep?” The low coastline lingered under a low grey overcast. We were approaching England.

“Good once the storm ended.” The singer stood between us, although a little closer to Vonelli. She made her choice. The captain had brought his ship to safety. I put an arm around her. She smelled of tobacco. Gitanes as always.

I checked the sky.

“Looking for snow?” asked Lizzie.

I shook my head. The grey clouds bore no threat of snow. There was no sun. Only the damp cold. Vonelli walked away. It was time to getting our

Off the Viking Valiant we walked to the ferry to the Isle of Wight. I told her a story about how terrified my Irish grandmother was on crossing the Atlantic. She laughed at the right moments. Lizzie was a good audience.

The ferry pulled out of the harbor past the Round Tower and the three of us stood at the stern railing. Portsmouth became small and Lizzie held my hand. Hers was cold, but they warmed within minutes. Crossing the Solent took less than forty minutes.

“You said it is like the Riviera. This doesn’t look like Nice,” complained Lizzie.

“Wait till you see Cowes. It’s the yachting capitol of Europe.”

Vonelli extolled our destination’s other assets.

“Queen Victoria lived at Osbourne House. During her reign The Empire was ruled from this island.”

“So the Isle of Wight is like Rome after the Goths burned it.” Lizzie was a virulent anti-royalist.

“Only here there are no ruins.” Vonelli had left the USA in the early 60s. Many people suspected that his art dealer calling was a cover for a more clandestine career. No one knew for sure and Vonelli wasn’t betraying the truth or the myth.
We woke with the announcement that the ferry would soon be docking in Portsmouth.

We got off the ferry and walked short distance to the Cowes Floating Bridge. The chain-drawn ferry idled on the other side of the Medina River. THere was no sight of Lord Ventnor and Vonelli suggested a drink at the Navy Bar. The narrow drinking establishment had been built to service quick drinkers. The barkeep was a relic of the glory years of the British Empire.

Time stopped and we missed two crossings of the Floating Bridge.

Lord Ventnor waited on the opposite bank in a white Irish sweater. His hair was regally coifed by the wind. He shook my hand and embraced Vonelli.

“Welcome to the Isle of Wight.”

Aristocrats have good manners and Lord Ventnor kissed Lizzie’s hand.

She attracted admirers with ease.

“I love your song OU SONT PASSES LES GAZELLES.”

“I am recording a new LP about Soweto” The chanteuse had been in a Paris studio for the last two months. We slept together whenever it was convenient for us.

“Maybe tonight you will sing us a song.”

“Only if Vonelli plays piano.”

A good left hand on the ivories was of one of Vonelli’s hidden talents and we walked to a VW camper.

Ventnor drove his VW van along the coast to his expansive house in Ryde. Vonelli bought lobsters on the way for lunch. They weren’t Maine Larries, but they were red and a very good size.

A Christmas tree was in the corner. Logs blazed in the fireplace. His petite wife was ancien regime from the Sud du Loire and that haute class knew how to read relationships. Bob’s wife installed Lizzie and me in the same room.

I opened the windows. Lizzie didn’t mind the cold. She knew I hated the smell of tobacco, especially from her Gitanes. We made noiseless sex and laughed in the end like criminals having escaped a prison.

After a long lobster dinner accompanied by a deluge of wine Lizzie entertained us with Vonelli at the piano. They were a good combo. It was obvious that they were interested in each other, but I gave them free rein that evening, plus I was too drunk to give into jealousy. We enjoyed the music and at the end of OU SONT PASSES LES GAZELLES Lord Ventnor announced, “Our Christmas morning tradition is the Tennyson Walk. We’re rising bright and early.”

“Nous partons vers le 10. C’est tres tot pour mon mari.” Ventnor’s elegant wife had a better hand on the time. “A polite hour to be on the Walk, so bonne nuit.”

We retreated to our rooms.

“Your friend Vonelli is funny,” she said in bed.

“And a nice man.”

I shut the windows, which quickly steamed up from the heat generated from our lustful celebration of XXXmas Eve, but something was off on this Christmas Eve and I had a fairly good idea what it was. She was falling for Vonelli.

In the morning we woke to the tantalizing scent of bacon, beans, mushrooms, eggs, toast, and tea. Lizzie and I exchanged gifts. I gave her a silver lighter and she wrapped a cashmere scarf around my neck.

“Une petite dejeuner anglais.” Bob’s wife served us a sumptuous breakfast.

The clatter of knives and forks were not interrupted by conversation. Several of shared had hang-overs and no one was volunteering to say whom. Lizzie and I helped clear the table. Bob’s wife waved us from the sink.

“You are guests, plus the faster you reach the Walk, the sooner you will return to dinner.”

A roast beef was in the oven. Vegetables cooked on the stove. Bottles of wine lined the table. There was more than enough for everyone and I smelled an apple pie cooling on the window sill. It was Christmas on the Isle of Wight.

Lord Ventnor was in no condition to drive and his loving wife said, “I’ll take you to the trailhead.”

His teenage son, Anthony, joined us on the walk. He had a favorite Lizzie song, her cover of Arthur Brown’s FIRE. They sang it together and I joined in. It was one of my favs too. The ensuing conversations switched from English to and French. My second language was that of a two year-old. They laughed. I smiled.

His wife dropped us at the Needles cliff top. The tourist park was closed for the season as was the chairlift to the beach. The chalk pinnacles marched off into the sea. Our party got out of the van. Our host’s wife would meet us on the other end. Lord Ventnor waved good-bye to his wife and escorted us to the trail.

“I don’t see any Needles.” Lizzie fingered back her hair. She liked to look natural.

“Who is this Tennyson?”

“An English poet. Famous for THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE and ‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.'”

“No danger of that for us.” She kissed my cheek, almost as if it were farewell.

“I still see nothing.”

We followed Lord Ventnor tramped up the grassy slope to the edge of a chalk cliff and pointed into a fog bank. “The Needles are out there. Let’s get going. We don’t have all day. It’s a good twelve miles to the Brightstone Forest.”

Wind-spawn waves crashed on the sandy shore. Atlantic gusts gushed across the gorse. It was evident Ventnor’s teenage son had a crush on Lizzie. The singer was pretty in a very continental way. She kissed my cheek at the top of the bluff and said, “I like Alan.”

“Like? You said that before.” The word had many variances.

“Yes, like.” Her intonation narrowed them to one. She lit a cigarette. They were never far from her touch. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” It was the truth. We were really just friends. “You two stay here and I’ll go up to London tomorrow to catch my flight to the USA. That work for you?”

“Yes. We will always be friends.” Something on her face said that this exchange was gone more smoothly than she had expected, since women always seek drama. She walked away. I stood there, asking myself self, if this had been a test of my heart. I had no answers as to why I let her walk out of my life and joined the others on the path with Lord Ventnor speaking of Tennyson.

“Some people say Tennyson walked this path during his stay here, but I think it was named for him simply because he lived here.” Lord Ventnor was in good shape for a man his age. He was almost forty. “Me, I walk it once a month.”

“Tennyson made this walk every day. He said it was worth six pence a pint,” Anthony explained, as Lizzie and I followed his father.

“When will you English join the modern world?” Lizzie loved the metric system, since its math was easy for the workers.

We passed the Tennyson monument. A Celtic cross topped the stele. Only one word was inscribed on the stone. Tennyson. None of us bothered to recite a poem. I had some verses from THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE glorifying the glorious deaths of the British Empire. It was Christmas and no one wanted to be remnded of the dead. It was wet and cold.

A sudden gale off Watcombe Bay swept over the rim and Vonelli stood against its force.

“This is the life.” His other words were lost on the wind.

“Get back, you fool,” I shouted to Vonelli. I was almost angry and walked up to him, as if I might push him over the edge, and pulled him back from the cliff. Lizzie ran up to help. They both laughed and I strolled off alone, ever more the fool.

Lord Ventnor asked, “Are you okay? About Lizzie and our friend?”

“I gave her my blessing.”

Lord Ventnor shrugged, acknowledging that this was none of his business.

We descended to Freshwater Bay. A group of fox hunters were assembled before the hotel. Their red coats clustered at the entrance to the bar at Alum’s bay. A fox hunt party was gathering for “What Ho’ before the pub.

“The unspeakable chasing the uneatable,” Lizzie quoted Oscar Wilde’s description of The Hunt.

The horses clopped into the field. They left shitclumps on the parking lot. We stepped inside for a pint. They cost more than six pence. I drank three, comfortable after two to be holding hands with a Guinness rather than Lizzie.