t started innocently.

I was at a loose end and thought I'd walk into town, browse the bookshops and have a long leisurely lunch in Pierre Victoire's. They did a super deal in the middle of the day, three courses for a fiver, and the house red wine was only £5:95 a bottle. I took a manuscript and a small book of poems to read.

Pierre's is popular because it's cheap and the food is good. There were a few tables recently vacated—not yet cleaned—and I dutifully stood just inside the door and waited to be offered one. It was then that the woman wafted in behind me off the street and brushed my shoulder. I half turned. Whatever her perfume was, it was delightful.

"You are alone?" she said, surprising me. "There is a table for two, just there." She smiled and lifted my elbow enough to usher me over. I caught a sideways glance at her face, her shape. She was confident, slim, late thirties I guessed, or a well-kept forty-something and with fantastic, shining blue eyes. A thrill went through me as we went to the table.

"I'll get a menu," she said. I sat down.

When she came back, still smiling, still confident, her eyes still flashing, and handed me the menu, I finally clicked. No, I wasn't the lucky victim of a forward woman's chat-up line, nor was I destined to lunch opposite a woman who was so modern that to suggest sharing a table meant just that. She worked there, or more probably owned the place.

It was the voice I think, the lack of any real accent; I was used to young, blossoming French waitresses, students of English-as-a-Foreign-Language. I had just presumed she was a diner. Some sexy mature woman chatting me up? My God, how could I have been so stupid? I ordered the house red trying not to go the same colour, and as she walked away I thought, "Sheesh, Bill Ford, you're showing your age!" I was rapidly approaching a young-looking fifty and I aspired to being a New Man, but my deep self knew different and a few seconds in a French restaurant had reminded me of my preconceptions.

I grabbed at some French bread and slapped on too much butter, keeping my head down. The butter was cold and I made a terrible mess of the bread.

"Would you like to taste?"

She was back. Her voice was even more sensuous than her walk, her eyes, that perfume. Was this what a year of being partnerless did to a man or was I about to hit some mid-life crisis. Would I like to taste! What?

"Um."

"The wine. It is unfancy but it is nice."

"It'll be fine," I said and looked down at my menu.

She waited. When I realised, I looked up. She looked open, vulnerable, offering, almost, and I thought I was going suddenly mad. Worse, I had an unravelling erection and I desperately needed to move. I was sure my embarrassment was showing and that she could sense it.

"Do you know what you would like?" she said, a hint of a French accent this time. Oh, God, oh, God! I picked the first thing I saw.

"Moules meuniere."

"They are not oy-stairs, but..."

Oh, what?

"No," I said (and thought, 'Thank Christ for that!')

"And Coq au Vin?"

Cock au Van? Oh, please. I'm not nineteen. Please God, stop it.

I nodded weakly.

"An' I will make sure you 'ave only breast."

Enough!

I cleared my throat. "Yes, the mussels, the chicken and."

"Tartattatan?"

"Pardon?"

"Tarte Tatin, it ees a delightfool Frencha tart."

Was I imagining it or was she getting more French? I looked at the menu.

The alternative was Spotted Dick. I cut my losses.

"The tart, yes please." I felt drained.

"Eh, voila!" she said. "And I fill you up!"

Even the sound of the wine pouring was vaguely erotic. I wanted to close my eyes. I kept thinking, what have I eaten, but even three shredded wheat couldn't do this. Bank managers ate shredded wheat. I was a sick man.

She left me. I wanted to move slightly but felt guilty. I looked around me, certain everyone would be looking. They weren't of course. I breathed a sigh of relief and adjusted myself, going from being in acute danger of snapping in half to one of merely dying of acute embarrassment. I hadn't had an erection like this since the night I watched Jane Fonda burn out the erotic torture machine in Barbarella.

Then I saw her, across the room surrounded by light and it was Maria and Tony from West Side Story. If the restaurant caught on fire now, I'd have to burn to death, no way could I get up. Then she saw me. She smiled, and there was the tiniest of nods, and I could have sworn she brushed the front of her skirt. When I looked again she looked away and I thought she gave a little cough. Then she went into the kitchens.

My relief was very short-lived. I wasn't the sort of man who had erotic fantasies, well not during the day at least, not while

waiting for my lunch, but suddenly she was before me, then sitting opposite me, then touching my hand, then speaking softly,

and when I looked again, her eyes were begging me, 'Now, I need you now, make love to me!'

"They are hot and the sauce is dee-liccie-euse."

"What?" I came out of it. Then I saw the dish of mussels and the second dish for shells.

"Your moules meuniere." I looked up into the same eyes, but something smouldered in them, there was a depth there now. "Bon appetite!" she said.

Then I realised. She had put the plate down on the other side of the table and had picked up my table napkin. Now she was making a great show of flapping it, prior to placing it in my lap. Argh! I cleared my throat but kept my mouth closed. I reached out and took the napkin. I could manage myself. This was unmitigated torture. I must have had a wicked childhood.

She went away and I suddenly realised I still didn't know her name, only her walk, the line of her hips, her perfume, her eyes, the sound of her voice. I tried to eat. The mussels were excellent but now everything I saw, smelt, touched or tasted was tinged with sexuality. The opening of the mussels, and inside, and the tang, the sweat softnesses and the sauce, so delicate and.

My lips were wet with the meuniere sauce, my fingers slightly sticky and now I only thought of Jacqueline. I don't know when I first decided her name, Shack-eline, but oh, she was, that was her name. I tried closing my eyes, dabbing my lips and pretending to have some distant and terrifically important thought, but now closed eyes were the key to the kingdom and between visits to a trough of vulvas, Jacqueline was visiting me, incredibly, knowingly, in amber-lit bedrooms, a soft linen bed and oh, oh!

I was torn. Part of me was so acutely embarrassed by my complete failure to control this fantasy, the other part wanted more. I sipped at my wine and, trying for a casual air, looked around me, at the other diners. But now even these were taunting me; the woman in the almost see-through blue sun-dress, the two girls with skirts so short they were like long vests, and the woman who kept leaning forward to whisper only to lower a cleavage which I locked on to like a cruise missile.

I closed my eyes again, the mussels all but finished. Now I welcomed the inner world and this time when Jacqueline came to me she was gentle, her fuller woman's shoulders darker and freckled—I guessed that was her life, one of sun, olive oil, fine wines, eating outdoors and laughing in the evening air, flirting outrageously with the young men, charming the older ones, the local magistrate, the owner of the vineyard. "Oh, Bill!" she said softly.

I'm not sure what, but something made me open my eyes and look up. It was only an instant, but I think I felt eyes on me, perhaps the owners. I had decided she was the owner. That would explain her confidence. Then I saw her approaching with the coq au vin. She smiled professionally, picked up the other dishes and left me to my main course. Naturally I watched her walk away. By now I was a lost cause.

It might have ended there. I drank my wine, ate my chicken, wiped my mouth, drank a little more wine, then, when I was brought my sweet, my little French tart, I ate it quickly and thought about asking for the bill. I had calmed down enough to read some of the poetry I'd brought and now I was a little cooler, was thinking about a coffee. Someone had recommended the anthology but I didn't know many of the Alex Keegans and after some poem about a train which I didn't understand, there was one called The Steak House.

I wish I could eat a meal as her
(across a table sat)
making love to ev'ry mouthful
meat sinking deep inside.
and teasing peas
around a bedroom plate
and finally
consuming them.

She seduced that bloodie meat
she never ate
no, eating isn't that!
she loved and surged and sucked that bread
a long and trembled pole of helpless flesh
sacrificial back
and belly ripped apart.

Hmmm, I thought, been to Pierre's have you? And finally I was able to relax. It should have been all over but that was when Jacqueline, the owner, came and sat down opposite. She had brought two coffees.

She smiled. I looked. I felt a little guilty.

"Coffee," she said.

And then she said, "And how was it for you?"

© Alex Keegan