Fiona catches the Orient Express

Fiona, strolling through the pleasant springtime streets of Paris, figured she had plenty of time to get from Montparnasse to the Gare de l’Est. She’d left Jacques with a chaste kiss on the cheek, and Evelyn with a few judiciously chosen comments about how exceedingly silly the raven-haired lady looked without her clothes on, and how dreadful it must feel to be caught in one’s birthday suit before the entire nation of France.

“Gosh, they really can see everything, can’t they? I don’t know how you stand it. I’d positively die of shame if I were you. I’d just want to curl up and sink into the earth. Did you notice how that flower salesman over there is laughing at you? What about that chap with the straw hat and the paintbrush? It must be like a nightmare. There’s hundreds of people in this park, and all of them can see you, and you can’t get away, and you’ve got NO CLOTHES ON!”

Anyway, the Orient Express left in an hour. She’d managed to book a ticket in advance this time. The station was perhaps an hour’s walk away, but much less than that by hansom cab, which should give her plenty of time to do a little light shopping and replenish her wardrobe. The pretty pink dress and the lacy white undergarments she’d gotten from the police station storeroom were very nice, but she could hardly get along with them as her only item of apparel.

It was a beautiful day in Paris. The sun was out. The birds were singing. Respectable bourgeois couples strolled along the boulevards, arm in arm, in straw hats and three-piece suits and exceedingly modest dresses with puffy sleeves. Street sweepers saluted their social betters. Mimes and pavement artists and dealers in hot chestnuts did a roaring trade. Fashionable young ladies peered excitedly into the windows of shops and giggled to each other, while small groups of handsome if somewhat rakish young men lounged on street corners and covertly eyed the girls. All was right with the world.

Fiona felt an enormous sense of buoyant joy and good cheer well up in her breast. She was in Paris, in the springtime! And, with Evelyn out of the way for good, she was practically guaranteed to win her bet! At that precise moment, she felt like she could conquer the world.

She would, perhaps, have felt slightly less confident if she’d known that the dress she’d selected from the police station storeroom was, in fact, a trick dress, designed on the sly by an up-and-coming young fashion designer with a wicked sense of humour, and sold by the bundle at surprisingly low prices in disreputable Pigalle practical-joke stores. And the undergarments were trick undergarments. Made from a special kind of silk, cheaply purchased in distant China, where it was deemed almost totally useless, due to its unfortunate tendency to completely dissolve in the presence of bright sunlight.

Fiona strolled across a well-trafficked public square, surrounded on all sides by cafes where the ordinary folk of Paris took their ease. The sidewalks were crowded with tables. Hundreds of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen from all walks of life sat with their coffee, their croissants and their newspapers, taking in the ever–changing spectacle of the city life. Naturally, since she was an almost implausibly beautiful woman in a pretty dress, lots and lots of people allowed their eyes to linger on her as she sauntered towards a fountain, and paused for a moment, brilliantly illuminated by the springtime sun.

At which point, her pretty pink dress and lacy white undergarments dissolved over the space of about half a second into a few wispy strands of gossamer, and blew away. Leaving poor Fiona standing on the pavement in the heart of downtown Paris with nothing on but her favourite black patent-leather boots.

Her blue eyes went very wide.

“QUELLE HUMILIATION!” she squealed, as the denizens of the crowded cafes broke into a thunder of laughter and applause. It was amazing how much French she’d been able to learn from Constable Jacque overnight. “J’AI PERDU TOUS MES VÊTEMENTS!”

Of course, this only provoked the crowd to laugh even harder. Pierre Prevert, who happened to be sitting nearby with three more of his girlfriends, pulled out a small portable camera he’d invented and started to take pictures.

“NE ME REGARDE PAS! JE SUIS NUE! NUE EN PUBLIC AVEC TOUT LE MONDE SE MOQUE DE MOI! COMME C'EST EMBARRASSANTE! JE NE VEUX PAS QUE TOUT PARIS VOIT MES SEINS ET MES CUL! C'EST LE MOMENT LE PLUS HUMILIANT DE MA VIE!”

A dreadful thought occurred to Fiona.

“ET JE VAIS RATER MON TRAIN!” she added, beginning to run. It was true. She couldn’t catch a hansom cab naked, since they wouldn’t pick her up. And she couldn’t go to buy more clothes from a woman’s clothing store, since they wouldn’t let a naked woman in. And the Gare de l’Est was just under an hour’s brisk jog away. “JE VAIS DEVOIR TRAVERSER TOUT PARIS SANS VÊTEMENTS! TOUTE LA VILLE ME VERRA NUE! JE SUIS UNE FEMME NUE EMBARRASSÉE AVEC SES SEINS ET SES CUL EXPOSÉS EN PLEIN JOUR POUR LE PLAISIR DE TOUS! J'AI ÉTÉ COMPLÈTEMENT HUMILIÉE! JE DÉTESTE LA NUDITÉ EN PUBLIC! S'IL VOUS PLAÎT, PAS LA MARCHE DE LA HONTE!”

“Did you get all that?” said one of Pierre’s girlfriends.

“Enough,” said Pierre, and raised his voice. “LA MARCHE DE LA HONTE!”

“NON!”

“JE VEUX VOIR LA FILLE AUX GROS SEINS ET AU BEAU CUL TRAVERSER LA VILLE COMPLÈTEMENT NUE! LA MARCHE DE LA HONTE!”

“LA MARCHE DE LA HONTE!” All four of Pierre’s girlfriends had taken up the chant. The crowd was picking it up. “LA MARCHE DE LA HONTE!”

“MAIS JE SUIS TOTALEMENT, COMPLÈTEMENT, ABSOLUMENT NUE DANS LA RUE! C'EST UN CAUCHEMAR HUMILIANT! L'EMBARRASSEMENT EST INDESCRIPTIBLE! LA GARE EST À UNE HEURE! JE NE VEUX PAS Y MARCHER NUE!”

“MAIS VOUS DEVEZ! C'EST POURQUOI NOUS RIONS TOUS! HON HON HON! LA MARCHE DE LA HONTE!”

And so poor Fiona Fairweather was left with **** but to trot all the way from Montparnasse to the Gare de l’Est, completely and utterly naked in broad daylight in the middle of the street, with nothing but her hands to cover her big breasts and beautiful bottom, in an indescribably humiliating hour-long walk of shame. Every single person in Paris seemed to think that seeing a beautiful blonde nude Englishwoman scurry from one lamp-post to the next park bench, **** to conceal herself, but on a tight schedule that obliged her to jog right down the middle of countless busy shopping arcades and wide-open boulevards, was almost unbelievably funny. And they were right!

She did make it to the Gare de l’Est eventually, of course, and got aboard her train. But long after it had departed for the distant and mysterious East, countless cries in perfectly comprehensible French kept ringing in her ears.

“REGARDEZ LA FEMME NUE EMBARRASSÉE! REGARDEZ SES SEINS ET SES CUL! QUELLE GRANDE HUMILIATION POUR ELLE! HON HON HON!”