The French Play

By Dr. Erick Hagerstro

A tale of romance and deception. A young English petty thief, Archie, cons a French belle, Candice, and her well off uncle. The proceeds of his crime include an expensive Faberge ring, auctioned in Geneva, with no provenance. He leaves a trail of lies and deception. Archie ducks and dives in Paris and Turkey, before being trapped and brought to justice. But, he has guilt and remorse. Candice thinks she may love him. Archie is a torn soul who grapples with philosophical pain and anguish. Can he come to terms with his distorted view of life and twisted values?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: May 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781984589415

Dr. Erick Hagerstro

Eric was born and raised in Edinbugh. He was educated at George Heriot's School , and graduated with a degree in Economics from Strathclyde University in 1971. He settled in London, after a year in Amsterdam, and lectured in Economics for sixteen years, before studying law at The University of London. He worked as a Legal Adviser in the Highgate Magistrate's court and qualified as a Solicitor in 1993. As a socialist and active Trade Unionist, he became an elected leader of the trade union side in the Ministry of justice, negotiating terms and conditions for over thirty thousand court and administrative staff. He retired in 2005. He lives in North London with his wife and two girls. He is a member of the Labour Party, a remainer, and a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn's vision for a socialist Britain.

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Copyright © 2019 by Dr. Erick Hagerstro.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/09/2019

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

CHAPTER 1

Archie arrived at Gare de Lyon in plenty of time. The station was throbbing. Sudden bursts of life as trains disgorged their passengers onto the platforms. Then a crush of exasperated travellers eager to go on to the next stage of their journey. It was a constant to and fro.

Archie stood above it all at the entrance to Le Train Bleu.

All French life was in a panic below him. A panoply of human activity. Some lovers embracing. Some lost souls retracing their steps. Looking for something or someone. Maybe a lost partner. Maybe the toilets. Some running, some dawdling. Some just standing motionless taking stock. Many were on phones. Other contented souls were sipping coffee or eating baguettes in the cafes that set the boundary to this melting pot. They were enjoying their self-indulgence in the mayhem around them.

Maybe it wasn’t so different from the stations in any big city. But somehow it had the mark of France branded upon it. There was the French smell of course. No longer of anis and Gauloises. No smoking here. But nonetheless distinctive. There was the gesticulation which separated the Gaul from the Anglo. Arms flailing in conversation. Flapping like cornered pigeons. Even as an elaboration for a mobile phone call. And there was also style. These well-groomed, fashionable, suntanned travellers could not be found at St. Pancras or New Street. That, with their food, kept them separate, more than La Manche ever could. It was all this that attracted Archie to France and to the French.

He turned and peeped through the window of the restaurant behind him. He had no money, but he did have a desire to go inside and gorge himself on their famous food and wine. He would die for a bottle of Margaux and a filet mignon. He knew about this place. He had seen stories about the huge cost of refurbishment in the French press. A scandal? That had caused a stir. It was named after the train with blue carriages that had carried the rich and famous south to the Mediterranean. They would sleep in comfort and wake up in the sunshine. That train was no more, replaced by the fleet of TGV monsters that sped south every hour. But it had left its legacy here in this special place.

Archie was on his way south as well. But without the resources of Le Train Bleu set. In fact, he was pretty well broke. The fare to Marseille had consumed nearly all he had, so there wasn’t much left. But he was on his way to the sun where something would turn up.

He stepped inside the magnificent restaurant and smiled at its opulence. It was funny because it was so beyond him. The ceiling had been restored to a modern day Sistine. Classical splendour. Magnificent. Every table laid for lunch was a work of art. Each, with half a dozen glasses for a setting. They shone in the sunlight streaming through the high stain glass windows. The old Train Bleu had bequeathed its name to this fine place. It was a tribute to a time gone by. Here in the middle of the station, its owners, whoever they were, were indulging the smart Paris set. The tablecloths were linen, of course.

How much for lunch? Well, a lot, you might think. He picked up a menu. Main dishes kicked in at around seventy euros. Archie could see no sign of a plat de jour or prix fixe. It looked like straight a la carte. Wall to wall.

A waiter approached. ‘C’est pour manger’, monsieur’.

He was as handsome as could be with his black apron and open smile. His hair was slicked back with gel. He had stepped out of a forties movie.

Archie didn’t do much French, but he got the gist.

‘Non merci, just having a look.’

He always did that. Started well and then ran out of words. He must sound like a pillock. No wonder the French have a problem with the English.

He turned on his heels to make a quick exit and pushed the revolving door too hard. An elderly French lady with a rich weathered look, carrying a tiny ridiculous dog, just stepped back in time. She could have ended up in row nine.

He shouted ‘pardon’, as he streaked down the marble steps two at a time.

‘Marseille’ was flashing on the departure board ‘Voie 11’.

He was now short of time.

He was in Hall 2. Sleek looking trains were closing in on the station. Others were parked. Their snub French noses idling, threatening travellers with adventure. But they seemed to have ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ above the platform entrance. No numbers and not a fucking ‘11’ in sight. There were only half a dozen or so platforms so not a great choice. This was a famous station. With only six platforms? Impossible. There was something wrong here. Seven minutes before his train left. Now he was in a panic. He asked a cleaner who was probably Algerian in his best French, ‘Voie onze?’ He shouted.

The startled cleaner jumped back, paused, as if getting his brain in gear, and pointed down platform ‘A’ and said ‘à gauche.’

It was too late to seek confirmation. Archie was not convinced but had no more options. He ran full tilt down platform ‘A’. It did not look promising. After about fifty meters he saw a row of huge glass doors on his left. Through the smoky glass, he saw another station. Two stations? For fuck’s sake. Of course, this must be ‘Hall 1’.

He heaved through the stiff doors. There were numbers above the platforms. Under the numbers, the destinations.

‘Thank fuck’. ‘Voie onze.’

He just made it with two minutes to spare. TGV s didn’t leave late that was for certain. He went upstairs and found his seat, next to no one. First rate. Upstairs on a train. Can you believe that?

He just made it, but he was content. And seriously sweaty. It was twenty-eight degrees in the Paris streets. Too hot to be in the city.

The train was magnificent. It looked brand new. The seat covers in perfect condition, clearly recently done. The outside appeared to have been polished. The staff, in considerable numbers, wore classy uniforms, stylishly cut. The women were made up as if they were going clubbing. They wore little hats that were most appealing. Perched to the side of tight high hair.

As he had predicted the train departed dead on time. It crept through the Parisian suburbs. Every brick wall that it passed was a canvass of graffiti. That pointless mess of adolescent insecurity, spitting at the trains that dashed by.

The train then picked up speed. In minutes they were at full pelt and into the countryside. It was fast, very fast. He had been told that it could reach speeds of three hundred and fifty kilometres an hour.

He thought that ludicrous. Impossibly fast. Just not believable.

He sat down and breathed a sigh of relief. His neck was sticky with sweat. He was uncomfortably hot. The train hissed at him, gurgled and then a cool breeze took him over. The AC was choking, coughing into life.

He looked around. His co-travellers were ordinary enough. A lad opposite, with jeans and trainers, was reading the biography of Gérard Depardieu. Across the aisle, a couple wrestled with a baby walking it up and down to reach sleep. They took on consecutive responsibility. They both wore that exasperated look of regret. Was the child too young for this trip? Should it have stayed at home with la grand-mere?

Two ladies who clearly had not been able to get seats next to each other gesticulated and smiled at one another across the passageway, in a reassuring way. They mouthed words of comfort. They were protecting each other from panic. They would be separated till Avignon. No one was shifting till then. The next stop. Maybe then, they could settle down together, united at last, for the last lap to Marseille.

Four Americans got on very late indeed. They were in their sixties. Two couples. Already tanned. The men showed their brown legs in shorts. They had so much luggage, they could have been on a world tour. Or maybe carrying all their worldly goods to a charity shop. They spread themselves over the carriage with American disregard and overconfidence. They could be Texans. Archie gave them a quick look over. They looked like experienced travellers and, of course, there were four of them. Four pairs of eyes. Their wallets were bulging no doubt.

At the seat by the door, a young man had come on with a double bass. He had a shaved head and heavy shadow on his chin. It was a bass in a case. He was not a tall man and the instrument was one and a half times his height. Archie had seen him in the station earlier and thought he may have bitten off more than he could chew. He nursed this thing like a baby. He tied it to the luggage rack standing up, next to his seat. Whenever anyone opened the sliding door he leapt up and made a shield with spread arms and little legs in front of the huge thing. He would not let anyone squeeze their luggage behind it either. This caused quite a fuss. But it was a fuss in French, so Archie missed most of it.

Suburbia was engaged. And disposed of. Then rural France. Squat little villages nesting in valleys were visible from the height of the train. Those lovely pink and brown tiles that looked centuries old. White cows were everywhere. You never see white cows in England. Maybe Charolais? The upper deck gave wonderful views. The fields were tidy in May. The crops were assembled in neat rows, but it was not clear to Archie what was being grown. Some vines for sure. He recognised those. But the rest, just green rows. Maybe courgettes or beans. In some fields, the crops were protected by polythene tunnels. Maybe even here there was an early morning frost?

After a couple of hours, the scenery began to change. It was getting hotter as they floated south. The AC had kicked properly now, and women started to slide their arms into cardigans. The men stayed the way they were. Ladies have to be at exactly the right temperature. Men cannot be bothered disrobing.

The hills were brown and grey. Almost streaked with yellow. The hot rock took on that crusty light baked look and the ground higher up was parched. Goats were strung out across the hillside nodding attentively at their breakfast grass.

A nappy was changed and wrapped up speedily. The baby stopped yelling and settled to its mother’s breast. It would be asleep in five minutes, thank god.

Archie got up and headed to the back of the train. For two reasons really. He wanted a beer and he wanted to have a look at his fellow travellers Where there were lots of people together there was usually an opportunity. Maybe a trusting madame had left her bag open while in the toilet. A purse winking at a thief. Ah yes, Archie was a thief, and working, always working. You never knew your luck. But he saw nothing easy, and the train was too busy.

The train was smooth. It swept around the long bends effortlessly. No need even to steady himself by clutching the backs of seats. Most people were asleep. Some lovely girls nestling towards their boyfriends. Some foetal, some with their mouths open and drooling. Had they known they would have died of embarrassment. The older ones were reading books and magazines mostly.

He bought a beer and had a quick look at the lunch menu. It looked tempting. A bowl of penne with chicken and mayonnaise, a chocolate mousse, and a drink for seven euros. Better than Virgin that’s for sure. But he had little money, so he would have to be content with the remains of the family size Kettle crisps still softening in his satchel.

He was back in his seat with his little bottle of beer which was gone in two gulps. The weather was hotting up for sure. He slipped on his Ray-Bans and took in the speeding countryside. A field of lavender threw up a blueish purple surprise. There were no towns, just quaint villages with bold churches. Some of the village houses had swimming pools so he guessed they were holiday homes for let. Swimming pools in the middle of nowhere? He tried to think about how you would make a pool. A digger, cheap land out here, some tiles but how do you stop the water seeping into the thirsty earth? Concrete or a thick oil skin maybe. And then a filter. They must be pricy. And a little pool house to keep everything in. Then you would need underwater lights. How do you stop them shorting? Clever people builders.

Archie was going south but he had no plan. He just knew he had been in Paris for too long. He had relied on his wits in the past and a few old scams that had kept him alive there. The previous year he had done the Gare du Nord. The English always turned up at the station without coins. They fell out of the Euro Star ill-prepared for the Paris challenge. When they got to the Metro ticket machines, they were stumped. Their wallets were full of fifty Euro notes. There was a permanent queue at the ticket desk where only two French assistants were ever in position. And they were slow. Sometimes it got to twenty yards long.

When a tourist did get a ticket and inserted it at the gate, they would push through the turn-style and the ticket would pop up. The passenger didn’t need the ticket other than to show an inspector that they had not jumped over. At the other end, the exit was simply by pushing through a heavy plastic screen. Archie stood near the ticket barrier and snatched used tickets left by dozy passengers. In a morning he could collect maybe fifty. Security staff were parading around the station, but he was quick and astute. They had no idea what he was up to.

He would take his stash of worthless tickets and tell those in the long queue that he had bought a handful because he was studying in Paris. His mother had died back home, and he had to get back to London. Many tourists knew he was lying, so told him to sling his hook or lowered their eyes and shook their heads. But about ten per cent or so bought the story and purchased a ticket or several at a discount. He would leave the station for a bit to avoid irate dupes. Fifty tickets would earn him fifty euros. Then he was gone. But eventually, security got wind of the scam. They stopped him entering the station and threatened him with the armed cops that occasionally scowled through the foyer.

Ferocious bastards adorned with semi-automatic killers.

When he got to Marseille, he would need something else that would pay for a place to sleep and his food. He had no accomplice and that often was a drawback, He would have to get a girl to work some kind of scam. With a bit of luck, he might pick a pocket and strike lucky with a credit card or a fist of cash.

But he had in mind a big con. Some ruse that would bring him a substantial amount of money with which he could travel and see the rest of Europe. That was the objective and the reason he was moving south to the wealth of the Med.

CHAPTER 2

Archie was a professional thief. Well, professional in the sense that that was all he did to earn a living. Since he had left school at sixteen, that’s all he had done. He had worked in a restaurant for a bit, but he got caught nicking a bottle of twenty-year-old malt, so that job ended, fortunately without the Old Bill being told. Since then he had developed his craft, building up experience and hanging out with other petty thieves. He became very accomplished. Careful at assessing risk. But he wouldn’t do violence. Well, not real stuff. He occasionally would snatch a handbag or a phone but there normally would be no resistance. Surprise was the thing. If the victim was relaxed the bag would slide off nicely and Archie would be gone.

No one could have predicted the way Archie had turned out. His mum and dad were respectable folks.

His dad was a civil servant but who hadn’t done well. He was a clerk really, but preferred the title ‘clerical officer’. He did routine stuff in the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fishing, now DEFRA. He did a lot of filing at first but in the computer age, his job had changed. There were few files now apart from old stuff in the basement of their building in Victoria. He wasn’t paid well and so they could only afford a council flat in Wandsworth. That was home for Archie. It dictated which schools he went to, and who his mates were, growing up. And, according to him his life chances.

His mum, though, had made one of life’s big mistakes. She had fallen for Archie’s dad and got pregnant at nineteen. Her dad had been an inspector in the Met. He was ambitious for her. She had just started at university reading Sociology but had to give it up to look after Archie, and a couple of years later, his sister, Sophie. Archie had inherited his dad’s deep blue eyes and black bushy hair.

That had done it for his mum as a young woman. His dad had been in trouble with women all his life.

A series of affairs had destroyed the trust in their relationship and had sapped his mum’s confidence. She suffered from postnatal depression after Sophie was born and she never fully recovered. She had been depressed all her adult life, feeling worthless and struggling to get out of bed in the morning.

Archie was handsome like his dad. He had grown up as a tall young buck who never had a problem getting a girl. They chased him at school and fantasised about going out on dates with him. In the school corridors, they pulled to the side to watch him go past admiring his long legs and broad shoulders. He had bags of confidence and was naturally clever. He got that from his mum. He was also funny. But everything was too easy for him, so he never really got out of first gear. He had no interest in school, apart from playing football and the girls. But he did like reading. He read every night before drifting off to sleep. His tastes had developed over the years. English was the only subject he really enjoyed at school thanks to Mr Alan Fotherington. The kids all called him just ‘Alan’. Alan was only twenty-five and wasn’t like the other teachers. He encouraged all his classes to read, and advised the willing ones, to try a variety of authors he thought they might enjoy. He always had five minutes for Archie at the end of class to talk about his current book. He wasn’t afraid to recommend books with torrid sex scenes or very bad language. This was the 21st century after all.

Charlie, Archie’s best friend at school, taught him how to nick things. At first, he was scared but little by little he learned the basic rules of thieving. Be quick but don’t rush anything, be calm and carry a special blank look when things got tricky. Get away from the incident and don’t go back to have a look. The main rule though, was to deny everything, even when faced with incontrovertible facts. Charlie was eighteen months older than Archie and even at the age of fifteen had been inside. Well, Young Offenders Institution, to be precise. He had messed up trying to pick a pocket and as luck would have it, a guy on the same bus was an off-duty PC.

The duty solicitor advised him to plead guilty in the Youth Court, so he did. His mum came with him but held her head in her hands and cried, all through the case. Charlie had let her down and her family. The old fucker in the chair went on about having to teach children lessons and protecting the public from ‘scum’ like him. When the bastard used the term ‘scum’, there was a hush in the court. The lawyers turned and looked at each other, shaking their heads in disbelief. The legal adviser jumped up and had a quick chat with all three magistrates. Her back was to the court so no one could hear what she said. The Chair announced, ‘we will retire briefly, before giving our decision.’ The wingers looked furious when they stepped out. The legal adviser went with them.

Charlie told the solicitor that using a word like that to a defendant was surely grounds for appeal. The brief blanked him and said ‘you pleaded guilty mate. No chance.’

So, Charlie got three months in Feltham, a YOI establishment near Hounslow.

Afterwards, he came back to school but only for a few months. Charlie and Archie picked up again