~BBW, Romance, ~SWG - a Librarian needs to get past the influence of two tradition bound friends to find her true place in the book of life OR (to quote the author) " Socialist do-gooder discovers food and the pleasure principle, with serious results for her figure - and her friendships."
VIVIENNE MEETS SHIRLEY TEMPLE
You noticed the cheekbones first. High in the face. Prominent. Not to enough to give her the model’s living skeleton look -- Vivienne’s weight was strictly average, along with her build -- but enough to give the face definition and character. Then perhaps you noticed the lively brown eyes, intelligence shining out of them, or the short auburn hair. Or the accent perhaps. American, was it? No, Canadian, clipped and piquant, with a gentle lilt.
In her late 20s, she had recently joined the staff at the Westminster Public Library in London. Everyone liked her: a fresh face at last in a building over-stacked with worthy souls working towards retirement. She had opinions, and if you encouraged her out they would flow, in a left-inclined political direction.
She was always vexed about the sins of the world, social inequalities, the struggles of the dispossessed, immigrant groups or single mothers. It made a bright change from talking about the binding for a new run of periodicals.
She had poise, too, and decorum, and good manners. Nothing slovenly about her figure, either. She went to the local health club once a week, streaking round the track and treading away on the Stairmaster, trim in her black lycra.
For years her weight had scarcely budged from around 126 pounds. Her firm breasts were small, edging towards medium; a male student during her days at London University had once called them pert, which Vivienne did not appreciate. Her tummy swelled slightly with water retention during her periods, but otherwise stayed taut and flat, as undemonstrative as her bottom. Hips? Slightly wider than some other women her weight, perhaps, but that was because of her build, nothing else.
Vivienne offered an attractive package. But you had to be of a certain fibre to become intimate and join the friends she had found on the barricades. There was Kyra, an old friend from Canada, now working in London too. There was Claudia, a French girl, encountered in a local group affiliated to the Socialist Workers' Party.
To be Vivienne's friend you had to be prepared to listen to her analyse and ponder. A working knowledge of Marxist intellectuals helped too. And a willingness to ditch life's basic pleasures for what she considered higher things. Students at college had found this out. Faced with a choice between the latest James Bond extravaganza and a lecture on childbirth methods in Samoa, Vivienne would always pick childbirth. Her suitors dwindled.
Not that having children herself seemed a possibility. Sex and close relationships joined food, fun and relaxation as something kept at arm's length.
"You care so much about other people's lives," her mother had told her once, "but you don't take very good care of your own".
At the time, as a student, Vivienne had not realised what she was on about. Even now, older and supposedly wiser, she was too busy with her new job and the intellectual whirl inside her head to notice the hole in her heart.
Colleagues at the library had rushed to take her on "getting to know you" lunches. She didn't eat lunch. But, always polite, she would have a coffee, perhaps a sandwich. The conversation was often dry: one of her superiors, John, could not be shifted from talking about modifications to the library's classification system. In others she struck more of a spark: Richard, Tony, Arlene.
And Roy. He was not on the staff, but he used the library regularly for research. To many he seemed terminally shy, but Vivienne detected a lively mind buried within. Roy, for his part, noticed the cheekbones, the sparkle, the whole works, and tried to open up in her presence. One day, Vivienne found him poring over a book about the films of Shirley Temple.
"Isn't this wonderful?" He was consulting the book for factual details about the 30s child star, but it was the illustrations that kept him crouched on the floor, transfixed by the pictures of childhood's lost innocence and the well-rounded face of a girl obviously no stranger to chocolate cake.
Vivienne had her own viewpoint. "It looks fascinating, yes. But think how warped that child was, leading such a pampered life in the Great Depression. Here she is looking so well-fed when so many were tramping the breadlines."
"But that's Hollywood escapism. That's why she was popular!"
Roy was tickled by Vivienne's unique slant and wanted to talk more. Could this be the day he would finally find the courage to say the words that seemed so difficult for him, so easy for everybody else?
He found himself saying them. "You're not free for lunch, are you?"
"I don't really eat lunch," she said, "but I could have a coffee with you. I'm free at 1.30. Now I'll let you get back to worshipping at Shirley's temple."
"Why does everyone expect me to eat lunch?" Vivienne thought as she returned to her tasks. She'd never eaten lunch. Oh, occasionally a yogurt or a salad, but nothing that came on a plate, nothing that involved a metal knife and fork. Her appetite was healthy enough, but she had long years of practise in restraining it.
To her it seemed such an indulgence to eat at mid-day. It used money that she didn't have. It was unnecessary for her body's functioning. And she certainly didn't want to get fat. No woman did; no women Vivienne knew at least. All her women friends were slender. Some could be called spindly. Out of all the stirring conversations they'd had none of them had ever been about food.
At the Fox and Grape pub where Vivienne and Roy went, Vivienne's eye spied another library assistant, Roma, tucking into a serious plateful of shepherd's pie. Vivienne looked concerned. She had silently watched Roma over the last six months gain a fair bit of weight; she had watched her waist gradually thicken, her tummy start to bulge, and chubbiness creep over her pretty face. Poor woman, Vivienne thought. To let herself go like that! She used to be quite slim, and now she's chubbier than Shirley Temple.
Roy's voice cut through Vivienne's reverie. "You sure you won't have anything to eat?"
"No, no. I'm not really hungry. This coffee will be fine. I'm at the age when a woman's metabolism can slow down, and can really push the weight up if you're not careful. It's been happening to some at the library." She mentioned no names. She was Canadian. She was polite.
Roy didn't quite know what to say. He wanted to ask for more details -- he appreciated women who fattened up a little -- but was too tongue-tied to press the point. The talk moved on to generalities, each others' work, holiday plans: safe enough topics. All in all Roy thought lunch went well. Vivienne found it pleasant enough; Roy was sweet, but, oh, so shy. As they gathered their belongings to leave, Roma squeezed past Roy's chair, heavy breasts stretching her pink t-shirt, round smiling face briefly framed by a new double chin.
"Hello, Viv!" she said cheerfully, working her way through the lunchtime crush.
"Roma, hello!" Inside her head Vivienne was positioning Roma on the bathroom scales.
"Poor woman," she thought, "she must feel awful."
WHO IS THAT HANDSOME MAN?
And then she met Paul.
Their paths crossed at a dinner at Claudia's place. He was tall, with blue eyes and sandy hair. And he was French. An old friend of Claudia's, he was attending classes at the London School of Economics before taking up a job in Lyon as a community relations officer.
Vivienne took in his appearance, but what really riveted her, she convinced herself, was his mind. Immigrant workers in Paris. The Algerian problem. He knew so much; his opinions were so sharp. She was in love, she decided, with his brain, and over the rice and lentils (Claudia was going through a vegetarian phase) she decided that her prince had come.
Phone numbers were exchanged. They met for drinks after work. They attended lectures, and sat in uncomfortable seats at the Lux Cinema, watching documentaries from Poland. And along the way they ate.
Paul took his food almost as seriously as politics. Neither his size nor his appetite was huge, but he wanted the morsels that reached his mouth to be just so. He was French, after all. Vivienne took to visiting him at the flat where he was staying in the dreary south London suburbs: from unprepossessing corner shops he somehow summoned the necessary ingredients for dishes worthy of a Cordon Bleu chef.
He'd done courses, he told Vivienne, and had worked on and off as a cook. It was a good sideline, and he liked the irony of using money earned in rich people's restaurants to fund the battles for social justice.
Vivienne, used to Claudia's rice and lentils, or her own snatched meals hurriedly assembled after work, found Paul's perfectionism about food unusual, even suspect. To her food was fuel, nothing more. But when he put such effort into creating his chicken à l'orange, it was impolite not to eat most of it. Not that Viv paid that much attention to the delicacies spooned with reverence onto the chipped dinner plates, obviously bought at a charity shop. It was the conversation that mattered.
"Brecht's poems are so cold and clear, aren't they?" Vivienne said one night, spreading butter thickly onto the garlic bread.
"In language, yes." Paul's lilting French accent entranced her ears. His English was good -- just as well, for Vivienne could only hobble along with French half-remembered from high school. Vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation: everything was a struggle.
"But in ideology don't you find him -- what shall I say? -- somewhat soft? In the post-war years in the German Democratic Republic it was good to stay a distance away from the official line of the party. Those communists were such creeps!"
He had picked up the word somewhere in London, and kept on using it. "But in Hitler's Germany -- "
"But don't you think that even there -- ". Vivienne's mind was suddenly distracted by the taste of the chicken speared into her mouth.
"Gosh, this chicken is good. What was I saying? Yes, don't you think Brecht's whole strength comes from his status as a balladeer of the people, not the party?"
"A balladeer?" Paul stretched out the last syllable as though it were chewing gum. "What is a balladeer?"
"A maker of songs. Isn't there a German word, "Liedmacher"?"
A forkful of honey-coated potato interrupted her. "I'm sure my pronunciation is terrible, but --".
Without thinking she helped herself to another potato.
"I admit," said Paul, "no-one is better than Brecht in his understanding of the capitalist -- the capitalist -- ".
He ransacked his mind for a suitably horrid word: "...the capitalist beast!"
"The capitalist beast!" Vivienne laughed.
Brecht was followed by the poetry of Lorca and the agony of the Spanish Civil War. Chicken was followed by a mixed salad with vinaigrette, a cheese platter, coffee, Gauloises, and chocolate cake soaked in rum.
The dinners continued. Soon, Vivienne found herself staying over, living half the time with Paul, half the time in her own small rented flat in north London. The months mounted up. Without realising it, the two had formed a relationship; so much so that when Paul was due to return to Lyon, Vivienne realised that she didn't want to lose him.
Pretty soon she had big news to tell friends and colleagues. She was going to leave her job. She was going to move to Lyon, and try this thing called love. She thought she was wise enough, she said, to be sceptical about the existence of a perfect partner, but she had to admit that Paul was the closest to perfection she had ever met. Things might not work out, but it was worth the try. Her job here wasn't that marvellous, she said, nothing worth clinging to.
Claudia thought her very brave. Kyra thought her foolhardy, and told her so. "But what will you do there? It will be hard finding employment, with your poor French."
"In that case, I will just live with him and be his love, as the poet Andrew Marvell says."
"Marvellous for Marvell, Vivienne, but what about the girl? She was probably bored stiff."
Vivienne could not be budged. Her mind was made up.
She was surprised how many people at the library wanted to have farewell lunches with her. After all, she had not been there much more than eighteen months. But she was touched, and put no-one off with a warning about just having a coffee and a sandwich. She had lunch, proper three-course affairs, stretching into the mid-afternoon.
"Everyone's being so nice to me," she said to Roy in their booth in the Flying Hussar, tucked awayin a Soho street. Their friendship had flourished in a quiet way.
"This is my third lunch this week.". Roy spotted a small swell on Vivienne's tummy, not noticeable before. He also realised she was looking a little rounder in the face. Was Vivienne, the woman who seemed to shrink from all indulgence, actually starting to put on weight?
He was also struck by the number of times that food now entered her conversation. She told him what she'd eaten the day before. She told him what Paul was going to prepare that night. He was dying to mention that he thought she looked a few pounds heavier, prettier too, but could not bring himself to utter a word.
Vivienne herself never raised the topic; she was too busy attacking her Hungarian goulash, laying out plans, and hoping that one day Roy would come to Lyon for a visit.
"Hello, Vivienne! When are you leaving?" It was Roma's voice. She was standing in the aisle, en route to the ladies room, looking slightly plumper than before.
"The end of next week. Maybe we could have lunch? What a nice girl she is," Vivienne added after Roma left.
AT LEAST SHE CAN PRONOUNCE THE WORD 'GATEAU'
There was so much to get used to in Lyon. A new country. A new town. A new flat. A different language. And Paul's stimulating presence night after night. Sharing his bed was no hardship either. During the day, Vivienne had many things lined up to keep her busy. She would read and think: she had come with a stack of books about politics, literature and philosophy. She would improve her language skills. Correct that: she would acquire some language skills. There would definitely be no time to be bored.
The reality was a little different. True, she read and thought and listened to French language tapes. But there seemed so many domestic errands to run, supplies to buy for the barely furnished flat. And food: Paul would write out a shopping list for whatever his gastronomic wonders required. He was very meticulous.
"But I don't know what the food is called. I mean, what on earth is the French for cauliflower?"
"'Choufleur', Vivienne. But I never eat it. It is too boring. Too white and boring. This will be very good for your French. You will learn the colloquial uses, talking in shops. And in the evening, during our meal, we will speak nothing but French. How about that?"
"Excellent," Vivienne said in a wavering tone that suggested it wasn't.
But she knew the food shopping was necessary. So she gritted her teeth, consulted the dictionary, and sallied forth to the local supermarket, the fishmonger, the greengrocer. And yes, the patisserie. There was one opposite the supermarket, with bread, cakes and pastries glistening in the window. Many of the desserts they had in the evenings came from its shelves: Paul, who insisted on cooking himself, had no time in the week to prepare any at home.
Vivienne sometimes supplemented the shopping list with purchases of her own: croissants and pastries filled with jams, delicious cream or chocolate cakes. They were easier to shop for than meat or vegetables. She didn't have to worry about whether they were ripe. Even their French names seemed to roll off the tongue.
And alone in the flat during the afternoon she needed something to nibble on as she pored over her French exercises. Sometimes, tired of that exertion, she would sit back on the sofa and improve her French by watching Paul's portable television, plateful of cake by her side. Game shows, soap operas, gardening programmes: anything that would help her grapple with the language. Old movies, too: Vivienne liked those, except one called 'Boucles d'Or', which turned out to be an American movie starring Shirley Temple. She switched it off immediately.
Sometimes she took her language tapes into the bath, shook in the 'Body Paradise' oil that she liked to use, and sunk herself into the perfumed foam. It was during these baths that she started to notice that she was unmistakably gaining weight.
In London, she had guessed she had gained a pound or two -- there'd been a little surplus fat on her tummy, and a tight feeling round the waistband of some of her slacks. But now, as she soaped herself down, she realised how much fat had been building up around her middle in the weeks since she'd moved to France. As she explored her midriff, she felt her new softness.
She prodded herself, squeezed herself. Her fingers glided over her tummy, the skin silky to the touch from the foam and soap. Goodnesss, was she getting turned on by this?
Impossible, she thought. Looking more closely, she noticed the fat surrounding her navel, which once lay on her tummy flat as a button but now seemed pushed a little way inside by the accumulation of flesh. When she sat up she saw how her midriff creased into several small rolls, bearing down on her thighs.
Her thighs, too, were obviously heavier: so it wasn't just shrinkage, then, that was making some jeans a tight fit. And her breasts? She weighed them in her hands, just as she now hefted melons at the greengrocers, under Paul's instructions, to gauge their ripeness. Were her breasts ripe? A little riper, yes. That would tie in with that pinched feeling she was starting to get at the back of her bras.
She knew, of course, why she had been gaining. It was because of Paul. It was because of this food. It was because of love. She didn't approve of her extra pounds; she had always tended to be patronising towards women in the gaining mode. But at the moment Vivienne declined to be worried: there were more important things to concern her, she decided, than some extra padding on her tum.
She checked to see if Paul had any bathroom scales -- she found some, dusty, propped up under the kitchen kink -- but decided not to bring them out. This wasn't going to be an issue. If she stepped up the amount of exercise she took, and reduced her afternoon nibbles, she probably wasn't going to gain any more.
By the end of six weeks, however, she realised her extra pounds were something more than a temporary phenomenon. Her tummy bulge had grown to the point that it was beginning to stop her zipping some slacks all the way up. She began to wear her blouses lose, not tucked inside her waistband. The weather was hot, she reasoned. It was more comfortable that way. But she couldn't deceive herself like that for long. With reluctance, she realised she had better pull out the bathroom scales and learn the worst.
After her long morning bath, she towelled and patted herself dry, lingering over her hips and the little belly starting to swell out from under her breasts. Dusting off the scales, she perched on them gingerly, and looked past her breasts (bigger now, she was sure) down to her feet, wondering where the bouncing needle was going to rest. Not at 126 pounds, that was certain. She blinked. The scales read 142. She had put on 16 pounds. She was over ten stone. For the first time in her life she felt massive. She felt embarrassed. She felt fat.
"I wonder if Paul has spotted any of this?" she thought. She decided she would mention it. She needed some feedback beyond her own thoughts.
That night, as they settled down to salmon smeared with a heavy cream sauce, Vivienne loosened the zipper on her slacks to give her stomach more room to breathe.
"I don't know if you've noticed," she began guardedly, "but I've been putting on a little weight since we've moved here."
She rubbed a hand over her tummy, and felt every new pound.
"Je veux que tu parle Francais!"
"Oh Paul, I don't want to speak French right now. Why do you make everything a lesson for me?"
"Tu as un peu engraissé, oui!"
"Paul!" Vivienne adopted a chiding tone, but was relieved that he seemed unconcerned enough about her weight to make a game of the matter.
"I've noticed you have grown a little rounder, yes. You have not been used to so much eating, I suppose. But it doesn't worry me. You carry the weight very well."
"I'm not sure about that" -- Vivienne recalled how she felt on the scales -- "but it's a relief anyway. I do enjoy all this food, and I must admit I'm not in the mood to diet."
"This ends the discussion, then. Now can we speak French?"
"Oui, mon amour!" Vivienne smiled coquettishly, settling down to the salmon. Paul suddenly saw how her cheeks had filled out, blurring the cheekbones.
That evening, for the first time in weeks, Vivienne felt playful in bed and ready for sex. Paul too seemed interested. Often they spent their time in bed reading: a little light Roland Barthes perhaps, or Agatha Christie translated into French. But their conversation over the salmon seemed to have released the brake on their sexual appetites.
Now that Paul had voiced his approval, or at least acquiescence, Vivienne felt more reconciled to her current shape. She felt a sensual thrill, new and strange, as he roved over her contours, stroked the little flesh heap on her tummy, kissed the nipples on her breasts (now more like melons than ever), and rode her soft body into the golden sunset. Switching positions, she then rode his.
After getting used to the domestic routine, and acquiring some mastery in shopkeepers' French, Vivienne found her days began to slip by. She shopped for supplies. She read her books. She studied. At the weekend, she and Paul explored the countryside, and enjoyed each others' company. Paul still tried to keep mealtimes reserved for speaking in French, but his resistance weakened. He loved the intellectual cut and thrust as much as Vivienne, and that was difficult for her in French.
By now Vivienne had a definite midriff roll round her waist that hung over the top of her slacks and loomed out beneath the tight summer t-shirts that seemed to creep ever higher up her developing chest. She had bought two bras in a larger size, which made things more comfortable, but even with these bulges of fat were forming around their sides.
Of course she realised she was still gaining, but felt little need to take any action, even when the bathroom scales showed she had added a further eight pounds and was now a substantial 150, edging towards eleven stone.
She mused about this. It must, she thought, be in part because she was away from prying eyes. This was happening in France, among people who scarcely knew her, least of all her previous weight and body measurements. It felt safe. There were no recriminations. But what would happen when she went back to London to see her friends, which she was due to do in two weeks' time? She couldn't shrink back to 126 pounds just like that.
She would warn them in advance, she decided. She would write to them and slip in some line about putting on weight. And she would tell them she was happy. The last thing she wanted was having Kyra cackle "I told you so!" or Claudia bombard her with suffering looks. So she sat at the kitchen table, with two apricot croissants by her side aching to be consumed, and wrote brief letters and postcards.
How should she phrase it?
"I have gained a bit of weight," she wrote Kyra, " -- strange considering how vigilant I've always been over health and food..."
The die was cast.
Vivienne's Fight for Life
By Swordfish
By Swordfish
VIVIENNE MEETS SHIRLEY TEMPLE
You noticed the cheekbones first. High in the face. Prominent. Not to enough to give her the model’s living skeleton look -- Vivienne’s weight was strictly average, along with her build -- but enough to give the face definition and character. Then perhaps you noticed the lively brown eyes, intelligence shining out of them, or the short auburn hair. Or the accent perhaps. American, was it? No, Canadian, clipped and piquant, with a gentle lilt.
In her late 20s, she had recently joined the staff at the Westminster Public Library in London. Everyone liked her: a fresh face at last in a building over-stacked with worthy souls working towards retirement. She had opinions, and if you encouraged her out they would flow, in a left-inclined political direction.
She was always vexed about the sins of the world, social inequalities, the struggles of the dispossessed, immigrant groups or single mothers. It made a bright change from talking about the binding for a new run of periodicals.
She had poise, too, and decorum, and good manners. Nothing slovenly about her figure, either. She went to the local health club once a week, streaking round the track and treading away on the Stairmaster, trim in her black lycra.
For years her weight had scarcely budged from around 126 pounds. Her firm breasts were small, edging towards medium; a male student during her days at London University had once called them pert, which Vivienne did not appreciate. Her tummy swelled slightly with water retention during her periods, but otherwise stayed taut and flat, as undemonstrative as her bottom. Hips? Slightly wider than some other women her weight, perhaps, but that was because of her build, nothing else.
Vivienne offered an attractive package. But you had to be of a certain fibre to become intimate and join the friends she had found on the barricades. There was Kyra, an old friend from Canada, now working in London too. There was Claudia, a French girl, encountered in a local group affiliated to the Socialist Workers' Party.
To be Vivienne's friend you had to be prepared to listen to her analyse and ponder. A working knowledge of Marxist intellectuals helped too. And a willingness to ditch life's basic pleasures for what she considered higher things. Students at college had found this out. Faced with a choice between the latest James Bond extravaganza and a lecture on childbirth methods in Samoa, Vivienne would always pick childbirth. Her suitors dwindled.
Not that having children herself seemed a possibility. Sex and close relationships joined food, fun and relaxation as something kept at arm's length.
"You care so much about other people's lives," her mother had told her once, "but you don't take very good care of your own".
At the time, as a student, Vivienne had not realised what she was on about. Even now, older and supposedly wiser, she was too busy with her new job and the intellectual whirl inside her head to notice the hole in her heart.
Colleagues at the library had rushed to take her on "getting to know you" lunches. She didn't eat lunch. But, always polite, she would have a coffee, perhaps a sandwich. The conversation was often dry: one of her superiors, John, could not be shifted from talking about modifications to the library's classification system. In others she struck more of a spark: Richard, Tony, Arlene.
And Roy. He was not on the staff, but he used the library regularly for research. To many he seemed terminally shy, but Vivienne detected a lively mind buried within. Roy, for his part, noticed the cheekbones, the sparkle, the whole works, and tried to open up in her presence. One day, Vivienne found him poring over a book about the films of Shirley Temple.
"Isn't this wonderful?" He was consulting the book for factual details about the 30s child star, but it was the illustrations that kept him crouched on the floor, transfixed by the pictures of childhood's lost innocence and the well-rounded face of a girl obviously no stranger to chocolate cake.
Vivienne had her own viewpoint. "It looks fascinating, yes. But think how warped that child was, leading such a pampered life in the Great Depression. Here she is looking so well-fed when so many were tramping the breadlines."
"But that's Hollywood escapism. That's why she was popular!"
Roy was tickled by Vivienne's unique slant and wanted to talk more. Could this be the day he would finally find the courage to say the words that seemed so difficult for him, so easy for everybody else?
He found himself saying them. "You're not free for lunch, are you?"
"I don't really eat lunch," she said, "but I could have a coffee with you. I'm free at 1.30. Now I'll let you get back to worshipping at Shirley's temple."
"Why does everyone expect me to eat lunch?" Vivienne thought as she returned to her tasks. She'd never eaten lunch. Oh, occasionally a yogurt or a salad, but nothing that came on a plate, nothing that involved a metal knife and fork. Her appetite was healthy enough, but she had long years of practise in restraining it.
To her it seemed such an indulgence to eat at mid-day. It used money that she didn't have. It was unnecessary for her body's functioning. And she certainly didn't want to get fat. No woman did; no women Vivienne knew at least. All her women friends were slender. Some could be called spindly. Out of all the stirring conversations they'd had none of them had ever been about food.
At the Fox and Grape pub where Vivienne and Roy went, Vivienne's eye spied another library assistant, Roma, tucking into a serious plateful of shepherd's pie. Vivienne looked concerned. She had silently watched Roma over the last six months gain a fair bit of weight; she had watched her waist gradually thicken, her tummy start to bulge, and chubbiness creep over her pretty face. Poor woman, Vivienne thought. To let herself go like that! She used to be quite slim, and now she's chubbier than Shirley Temple.
Roy's voice cut through Vivienne's reverie. "You sure you won't have anything to eat?"
"No, no. I'm not really hungry. This coffee will be fine. I'm at the age when a woman's metabolism can slow down, and can really push the weight up if you're not careful. It's been happening to some at the library." She mentioned no names. She was Canadian. She was polite.
Roy didn't quite know what to say. He wanted to ask for more details -- he appreciated women who fattened up a little -- but was too tongue-tied to press the point. The talk moved on to generalities, each others' work, holiday plans: safe enough topics. All in all Roy thought lunch went well. Vivienne found it pleasant enough; Roy was sweet, but, oh, so shy. As they gathered their belongings to leave, Roma squeezed past Roy's chair, heavy breasts stretching her pink t-shirt, round smiling face briefly framed by a new double chin.
"Hello, Viv!" she said cheerfully, working her way through the lunchtime crush.
"Roma, hello!" Inside her head Vivienne was positioning Roma on the bathroom scales.
"Poor woman," she thought, "she must feel awful."
WHO IS THAT HANDSOME MAN?
And then she met Paul.
Their paths crossed at a dinner at Claudia's place. He was tall, with blue eyes and sandy hair. And he was French. An old friend of Claudia's, he was attending classes at the London School of Economics before taking up a job in Lyon as a community relations officer.
Vivienne took in his appearance, but what really riveted her, she convinced herself, was his mind. Immigrant workers in Paris. The Algerian problem. He knew so much; his opinions were so sharp. She was in love, she decided, with his brain, and over the rice and lentils (Claudia was going through a vegetarian phase) she decided that her prince had come.
Phone numbers were exchanged. They met for drinks after work. They attended lectures, and sat in uncomfortable seats at the Lux Cinema, watching documentaries from Poland. And along the way they ate.
Paul took his food almost as seriously as politics. Neither his size nor his appetite was huge, but he wanted the morsels that reached his mouth to be just so. He was French, after all. Vivienne took to visiting him at the flat where he was staying in the dreary south London suburbs: from unprepossessing corner shops he somehow summoned the necessary ingredients for dishes worthy of a Cordon Bleu chef.
He'd done courses, he told Vivienne, and had worked on and off as a cook. It was a good sideline, and he liked the irony of using money earned in rich people's restaurants to fund the battles for social justice.
Vivienne, used to Claudia's rice and lentils, or her own snatched meals hurriedly assembled after work, found Paul's perfectionism about food unusual, even suspect. To her food was fuel, nothing more. But when he put such effort into creating his chicken à l'orange, it was impolite not to eat most of it. Not that Viv paid that much attention to the delicacies spooned with reverence onto the chipped dinner plates, obviously bought at a charity shop. It was the conversation that mattered.
"Brecht's poems are so cold and clear, aren't they?" Vivienne said one night, spreading butter thickly onto the garlic bread.
"In language, yes." Paul's lilting French accent entranced her ears. His English was good -- just as well, for Vivienne could only hobble along with French half-remembered from high school. Vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation: everything was a struggle.
"But in ideology don't you find him -- what shall I say? -- somewhat soft? In the post-war years in the German Democratic Republic it was good to stay a distance away from the official line of the party. Those communists were such creeps!"
He had picked up the word somewhere in London, and kept on using it. "But in Hitler's Germany -- "
"But don't you think that even there -- ". Vivienne's mind was suddenly distracted by the taste of the chicken speared into her mouth.
"Gosh, this chicken is good. What was I saying? Yes, don't you think Brecht's whole strength comes from his status as a balladeer of the people, not the party?"
"A balladeer?" Paul stretched out the last syllable as though it were chewing gum. "What is a balladeer?"
"A maker of songs. Isn't there a German word, "Liedmacher"?"
A forkful of honey-coated potato interrupted her. "I'm sure my pronunciation is terrible, but --".
Without thinking she helped herself to another potato.
"I admit," said Paul, "no-one is better than Brecht in his understanding of the capitalist -- the capitalist -- ".
He ransacked his mind for a suitably horrid word: "...the capitalist beast!"
"The capitalist beast!" Vivienne laughed.
Brecht was followed by the poetry of Lorca and the agony of the Spanish Civil War. Chicken was followed by a mixed salad with vinaigrette, a cheese platter, coffee, Gauloises, and chocolate cake soaked in rum.
The dinners continued. Soon, Vivienne found herself staying over, living half the time with Paul, half the time in her own small rented flat in north London. The months mounted up. Without realising it, the two had formed a relationship; so much so that when Paul was due to return to Lyon, Vivienne realised that she didn't want to lose him.
Pretty soon she had big news to tell friends and colleagues. She was going to leave her job. She was going to move to Lyon, and try this thing called love. She thought she was wise enough, she said, to be sceptical about the existence of a perfect partner, but she had to admit that Paul was the closest to perfection she had ever met. Things might not work out, but it was worth the try. Her job here wasn't that marvellous, she said, nothing worth clinging to.
Claudia thought her very brave. Kyra thought her foolhardy, and told her so. "But what will you do there? It will be hard finding employment, with your poor French."
"In that case, I will just live with him and be his love, as the poet Andrew Marvell says."
"Marvellous for Marvell, Vivienne, but what about the girl? She was probably bored stiff."
Vivienne could not be budged. Her mind was made up.
She was surprised how many people at the library wanted to have farewell lunches with her. After all, she had not been there much more than eighteen months. But she was touched, and put no-one off with a warning about just having a coffee and a sandwich. She had lunch, proper three-course affairs, stretching into the mid-afternoon.
"Everyone's being so nice to me," she said to Roy in their booth in the Flying Hussar, tucked awayin a Soho street. Their friendship had flourished in a quiet way.
"This is my third lunch this week.". Roy spotted a small swell on Vivienne's tummy, not noticeable before. He also realised she was looking a little rounder in the face. Was Vivienne, the woman who seemed to shrink from all indulgence, actually starting to put on weight?
He was also struck by the number of times that food now entered her conversation. She told him what she'd eaten the day before. She told him what Paul was going to prepare that night. He was dying to mention that he thought she looked a few pounds heavier, prettier too, but could not bring himself to utter a word.
Vivienne herself never raised the topic; she was too busy attacking her Hungarian goulash, laying out plans, and hoping that one day Roy would come to Lyon for a visit.
"Hello, Vivienne! When are you leaving?" It was Roma's voice. She was standing in the aisle, en route to the ladies room, looking slightly plumper than before.
"The end of next week. Maybe we could have lunch? What a nice girl she is," Vivienne added after Roma left.
AT LEAST SHE CAN PRONOUNCE THE WORD 'GATEAU'
There was so much to get used to in Lyon. A new country. A new town. A new flat. A different language. And Paul's stimulating presence night after night. Sharing his bed was no hardship either. During the day, Vivienne had many things lined up to keep her busy. She would read and think: she had come with a stack of books about politics, literature and philosophy. She would improve her language skills. Correct that: she would acquire some language skills. There would definitely be no time to be bored.
The reality was a little different. True, she read and thought and listened to French language tapes. But there seemed so many domestic errands to run, supplies to buy for the barely furnished flat. And food: Paul would write out a shopping list for whatever his gastronomic wonders required. He was very meticulous.
"But I don't know what the food is called. I mean, what on earth is the French for cauliflower?"
"'Choufleur', Vivienne. But I never eat it. It is too boring. Too white and boring. This will be very good for your French. You will learn the colloquial uses, talking in shops. And in the evening, during our meal, we will speak nothing but French. How about that?"
"Excellent," Vivienne said in a wavering tone that suggested it wasn't.
But she knew the food shopping was necessary. So she gritted her teeth, consulted the dictionary, and sallied forth to the local supermarket, the fishmonger, the greengrocer. And yes, the patisserie. There was one opposite the supermarket, with bread, cakes and pastries glistening in the window. Many of the desserts they had in the evenings came from its shelves: Paul, who insisted on cooking himself, had no time in the week to prepare any at home.
Vivienne sometimes supplemented the shopping list with purchases of her own: croissants and pastries filled with jams, delicious cream or chocolate cakes. They were easier to shop for than meat or vegetables. She didn't have to worry about whether they were ripe. Even their French names seemed to roll off the tongue.
And alone in the flat during the afternoon she needed something to nibble on as she pored over her French exercises. Sometimes, tired of that exertion, she would sit back on the sofa and improve her French by watching Paul's portable television, plateful of cake by her side. Game shows, soap operas, gardening programmes: anything that would help her grapple with the language. Old movies, too: Vivienne liked those, except one called 'Boucles d'Or', which turned out to be an American movie starring Shirley Temple. She switched it off immediately.
Sometimes she took her language tapes into the bath, shook in the 'Body Paradise' oil that she liked to use, and sunk herself into the perfumed foam. It was during these baths that she started to notice that she was unmistakably gaining weight.
In London, she had guessed she had gained a pound or two -- there'd been a little surplus fat on her tummy, and a tight feeling round the waistband of some of her slacks. But now, as she soaped herself down, she realised how much fat had been building up around her middle in the weeks since she'd moved to France. As she explored her midriff, she felt her new softness.
She prodded herself, squeezed herself. Her fingers glided over her tummy, the skin silky to the touch from the foam and soap. Goodnesss, was she getting turned on by this?
Impossible, she thought. Looking more closely, she noticed the fat surrounding her navel, which once lay on her tummy flat as a button but now seemed pushed a little way inside by the accumulation of flesh. When she sat up she saw how her midriff creased into several small rolls, bearing down on her thighs.
Her thighs, too, were obviously heavier: so it wasn't just shrinkage, then, that was making some jeans a tight fit. And her breasts? She weighed them in her hands, just as she now hefted melons at the greengrocers, under Paul's instructions, to gauge their ripeness. Were her breasts ripe? A little riper, yes. That would tie in with that pinched feeling she was starting to get at the back of her bras.
She knew, of course, why she had been gaining. It was because of Paul. It was because of this food. It was because of love. She didn't approve of her extra pounds; she had always tended to be patronising towards women in the gaining mode. But at the moment Vivienne declined to be worried: there were more important things to concern her, she decided, than some extra padding on her tum.
She checked to see if Paul had any bathroom scales -- she found some, dusty, propped up under the kitchen kink -- but decided not to bring them out. This wasn't going to be an issue. If she stepped up the amount of exercise she took, and reduced her afternoon nibbles, she probably wasn't going to gain any more.
By the end of six weeks, however, she realised her extra pounds were something more than a temporary phenomenon. Her tummy bulge had grown to the point that it was beginning to stop her zipping some slacks all the way up. She began to wear her blouses lose, not tucked inside her waistband. The weather was hot, she reasoned. It was more comfortable that way. But she couldn't deceive herself like that for long. With reluctance, she realised she had better pull out the bathroom scales and learn the worst.
After her long morning bath, she towelled and patted herself dry, lingering over her hips and the little belly starting to swell out from under her breasts. Dusting off the scales, she perched on them gingerly, and looked past her breasts (bigger now, she was sure) down to her feet, wondering where the bouncing needle was going to rest. Not at 126 pounds, that was certain. She blinked. The scales read 142. She had put on 16 pounds. She was over ten stone. For the first time in her life she felt massive. She felt embarrassed. She felt fat.
"I wonder if Paul has spotted any of this?" she thought. She decided she would mention it. She needed some feedback beyond her own thoughts.
That night, as they settled down to salmon smeared with a heavy cream sauce, Vivienne loosened the zipper on her slacks to give her stomach more room to breathe.
"I don't know if you've noticed," she began guardedly, "but I've been putting on a little weight since we've moved here."
She rubbed a hand over her tummy, and felt every new pound.
"Je veux que tu parle Francais!"
"Oh Paul, I don't want to speak French right now. Why do you make everything a lesson for me?"
"Tu as un peu engraissé, oui!"
"Paul!" Vivienne adopted a chiding tone, but was relieved that he seemed unconcerned enough about her weight to make a game of the matter.
"I've noticed you have grown a little rounder, yes. You have not been used to so much eating, I suppose. But it doesn't worry me. You carry the weight very well."
"I'm not sure about that" -- Vivienne recalled how she felt on the scales -- "but it's a relief anyway. I do enjoy all this food, and I must admit I'm not in the mood to diet."
"This ends the discussion, then. Now can we speak French?"
"Oui, mon amour!" Vivienne smiled coquettishly, settling down to the salmon. Paul suddenly saw how her cheeks had filled out, blurring the cheekbones.
That evening, for the first time in weeks, Vivienne felt playful in bed and ready for sex. Paul too seemed interested. Often they spent their time in bed reading: a little light Roland Barthes perhaps, or Agatha Christie translated into French. But their conversation over the salmon seemed to have released the brake on their sexual appetites.
Now that Paul had voiced his approval, or at least acquiescence, Vivienne felt more reconciled to her current shape. She felt a sensual thrill, new and strange, as he roved over her contours, stroked the little flesh heap on her tummy, kissed the nipples on her breasts (now more like melons than ever), and rode her soft body into the golden sunset. Switching positions, she then rode his.
After getting used to the domestic routine, and acquiring some mastery in shopkeepers' French, Vivienne found her days began to slip by. She shopped for supplies. She read her books. She studied. At the weekend, she and Paul explored the countryside, and enjoyed each others' company. Paul still tried to keep mealtimes reserved for speaking in French, but his resistance weakened. He loved the intellectual cut and thrust as much as Vivienne, and that was difficult for her in French.
By now Vivienne had a definite midriff roll round her waist that hung over the top of her slacks and loomed out beneath the tight summer t-shirts that seemed to creep ever higher up her developing chest. She had bought two bras in a larger size, which made things more comfortable, but even with these bulges of fat were forming around their sides.
Of course she realised she was still gaining, but felt little need to take any action, even when the bathroom scales showed she had added a further eight pounds and was now a substantial 150, edging towards eleven stone.
She mused about this. It must, she thought, be in part because she was away from prying eyes. This was happening in France, among people who scarcely knew her, least of all her previous weight and body measurements. It felt safe. There were no recriminations. But what would happen when she went back to London to see her friends, which she was due to do in two weeks' time? She couldn't shrink back to 126 pounds just like that.
She would warn them in advance, she decided. She would write to them and slip in some line about putting on weight. And she would tell them she was happy. The last thing she wanted was having Kyra cackle "I told you so!" or Claudia bombard her with suffering looks. So she sat at the kitchen table, with two apricot croissants by her side aching to be consumed, and wrote brief letters and postcards.
How should she phrase it?
"I have gained a bit of weight," she wrote Kyra, " -- strange considering how vigilant I've always been over health and food..."
The die was cast.
