The Woman Nobody Trusted, Short Story

Rainy Day Woman

Patience parts the clouds…

The woman nobody trusted was squeezing every fruit on the stall and Jacques was growing irritated. Most other market-traders had packed up and gone when the rain started; it wouldn’t be stopping, everyone said so. Jacques had decided to hang on until he took 100 francs, the very least he could accept. Que diable, he’d be losing forty just on petrol. His fingers were frozen and the rain was pitiless. At last the woman made her choices and assembled them in a pile.

“How much?” She asked in English of course, why would a woman like her bother to learn the language of France? A woman too proud to drink in the Cafe du Chene, too sinful for church on Sunday, too lazy to walk the half-mile to market. Jacques pointed to her beaten-up Range-Rover, parked badly on the pavement outside the Tabac.

“Open the back and I’ll put this lot in for you. Eleven francs-fifty, but we’ll call it ten Madame, as you are my last customer for today.”

The woman nobody trusted gave Jacques a big smile, counting the coins into his open palm

“You speak very good English.”

“Five years in the Horse Guards, on Parade at Buckingham Palace once a month to honour Her Royal Majesty the Queen. Ah-ten-shun!”

He clicked his heels and flung a salute to his cloth-cap. The rain ran down his wrist into the sleeve of his donkey-jacket. She laughed aloud; white, even teeth flashing for a moment. Jacques’ gaze was drawn to her mouth. For two months she had been coming to market and each time he saw only her mouth.

She said some things but Jacques was too tired and too wet to listen. She had the same wide, full lips as Nadine, the second-best woman he’d ever had. He bent, stacking the fruit into a dry cardboard box under the stall and remembered how he used to crush Nadine’s lips under his own. She had bitten him once; drawn blood from the hand gripping her hair in anger. He’d laughed as Nadine licked his blood from those lips. Jacques believed he had always been a bad judge of women.

Crossing the road to the Range-Rover he realised a large Alsatian was sat upright in the back, watching their approach, ears pointed in suspicion. He smiled and looked the animal in the eye. The hatch swung open and the dog stood, staring from Jacques to his owner and back. The woman nobody trusted wagged her finger like a schoolteacher.

“Sit Raffles- sit! Good dog. This is our friend..?”

“Jacques Vincennes.” He nodded and rain dripped from his cap.

“Isobel Garland,” she replied, and joined him in the shelter of the raised hatch-back as he put down the box of fruit. The dog’s eyes followed his hand into his jacket pocket.

“Alors, monsieur Raffles — j’ai quelque chose pour toi.” Raffles tensed, his tongue fell out and he sat to attention.

“He understands a lot more French than I do.” Isobel Garland grinned as Jacques tossed something small that Raffles snapped out of the air without blinking.

Her eyes were brown and deep and her face came very close as she leaned to pat the Alsatian. Jacques wondered what shape was buried under her waterproof parka. For a moment they petted the dog together.

“Alors. He only understands the sound. I speak the same way to my own dogs.”

Jacques told himself he had known when he saw the swell of her lips six inches from his own, sheltering under the hatchback in the rain. He hadn’t needed the conversation, the exchange of numbers between dog-lovers. He needn’t have waited two rainy days before the walk in the woods in the rain with Isobel, Raffles and his greyhounds. He could have passed on the chichi lunch and cut straight to the wine. But finally they came to sit, to drink and talk nonsense; to admire each other while darkness fell and the streetlamps outside turned yellow, then gold, and like the end of days it rained.

He guessed she was around his own age; not aged, but old enough to understand the crime of wasted time. As she opened a second bottle he closed the shutters that faced the street. She put down the bottle and he opened her blouse. Her naked breasts were surprisingly youthful, nipples red and angry. He shaped his hands around them, gouged his tongue into those lips and her fingers ran down his belly.

Hard he was, so hard she couldn’t let go and clung to him. His hand shot between her legs, wrenched her panties away, while kissing like she was something he already owned, as if his whole self might enter any part of her, without question. And the woman nobody trusted wanted this Jacques to take whatever he wished.

“Fuck…fuck…fuck…”

She wasn’t asking, for he was already on her, inside her before she could think, forcing her to open for him, crashing in so her hips slammed the wall as he fucked. His hard cock was twisting in the meat of her and he was roaring a stream of alien filth into the terrific silence. Now it was only the sound of him she understood, and her mouth opened like every other part he might want and she howled. She came then, with a violence that severed all strength and her body sagged but he kept on fucking, yanking hair, bawling and tearing at her skin with his nails and teeth, unstoppable. Dogs were barking and something dark surged in her blood, which rushed and raced till — near to screaming- she strained from her neck to her ankles and came again, shuddering.

They lay tangled in each other on the bare boards, whispering things and laughing. Jacques told Isobel the name the village had given her.

“The woman who nobody trusts? It’s bloody well not fair.”

“Because you are the woman nobody knows.”

“You know me. You know me now.”

Jacques sighed in contentment.

“I have known you for many weeks,” he confessed, “in here.” He tapped his head.

“You never spoke to me. You never said a word.”

It took Jacques a minute to find an honest answer. He kissed Isobel gently before his reply.

“Patience, ma cherie. I was saving you for a rainy day.”

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