Singular life

Joining the jet set

Petronella Wyatt

There is a fascinating article in the August issue of Tatler. I never sneer at glossy magazines, including Hello!, because they are the social chronicle de nos fours, the Goncourt brothers of the late 20th cen- tury. In 300 years time, historians will get more out of Toiler than Hansard, if Tony Blair doesn't abolish it soon — Hansard that is.

Anyway, the article is entitled 'Lady Lay' (no rhyme unintended). It goes on by way of a preamble, 'her husband left her for another woman. There was only one thing for New York socialite Martha Taylor to do. Learn how to be a whore in the bedroom. And there was only one woman to teach her; Paris's celebrated Madame Claude.'

Oh? One might have thought that when Mrs Taylor's husband left her for another woman the one thing for her to do was to take the bastard to the cleaners. But forget this digression. Mrs Taylor had heard gos- sip about Madame Claude at the couture shows in Paris. 'Her girls were extraordi- nary. They often married members of the international jet set.'

Madame Claude, whose real name is Fernande Grudet, ran France's largest call- girl ring in the Sixties and Seventies. In her memoirs, which were published in 1986, she described how she had found chorus line girls and runaways, selected their lin- gerie and frocks, dictated their hairstyles and make-up and hired tutors to teach them about art, politics and philosophy. Then she matched them up with wealthy and well-born men.

So Mrs Taylor was bound to learn a thing or two. Madame Claude decided she already had enough culture so it was on to the main course. Mrs Taylor was road test- ed, as it were, by Frenchmen. They told her what was what. For instance, what to do if you are having a drink. You turn your full attention on him. Maybe touch him and breathe in his ear. Take your finger and rub it across his lips with a little wine on it. Then look at your watch and say, 'Oh, I must leave you. This has been so nice. Will you call me tomorrow at ten o'clock?'

If he takes you to a restaurant you don't immediately yell, 'The chargrilled beef for me.' You sit down and ask, 'What do you suggest we have?' Learn from Marlene Dietrich, the courtesan's courtesan. When she went to a restaurant with a man she wouldn't take a menu for herself; she and the man looked at it together and she'd lean towards him and they'd discuss what they were going to order. And all the time touching just a little here and there on the hand and the thing — sorry, that was a typ- ing error, I meant the thigh.

Mrs Taylor got her husband back. But one began to wonder, what if the husband had been not American but English? The denouement would probably have been quite different. I have always thought, you see, that Madame Claudism would have bombed in this country. I don't think Englishmen like courtesans. They only really like women who remind them of their dogs. Courtesans against the adage of enthusiasm first, professionalism a poor second.

But, I'm with David Hume; there is noth- ing like a bit of empiricism. Dump the prej- udices. Try it out for yourself. The last few days, then, I have devoted myself to Madame Claudisms — the extra-sexual ones you understand. In every restaurant to which a man took me, I would follow them to the letter.

Herewith an example of a typical outing. My companion of the evening and I sit down at our table. Two menus are placed before us. I do not take the menu on my plate and go off and study it selfishly in a corner as we women are alleged to do. I take the one placed in the gap on the table between us.

This is not a success.

`You've nicked my menu. Why can't you look at your own?'

I say nothing. Suggestively I pick up the one on my plate. 'What do you suggest?'

`Well, I don't know. I hoped you'd tell me.'

Still, there is always the leaning-over to discuss the wine list, the touching of the hand on his arm.

`What on earth you doing with my sleeve? Is there a spot on it? Oh, my God, ask the waiter for some soda water.'

At half past ten, I say, 'Oh, I must leave you. This has been so nice. Will you call me at ten o'clock tomorrow?'

`Leaving already? But we haven't even had coffee. I want a digestif. I call that bloody unfriendly. And I can't ring you at ten o'clock. I'm in a meeting.'

What did I tell you? Madame Claude London would have gone bust in three weeks.

Divorce in the new millennium.