The girls explore the Quartier Pigalle

"Hello again, girls,” said the first photographer, whose name was Pierre, and who had a very thin moustache. It was several hours later. “What are you doing here in my studio?”

“We didn’t know where to go,” said Fiona, frostily. Every wall of the dark, dim studio was lined with photographs of naked women, often in very compromising positions, and with expressions on their faces that suggested they’d very much like to not be photographed in the compromising positions. “Neither of us have any money, and we don’t have any clothes on, so we can’t go to the bank.”

“Why not go to the police?”

“The French police? We’re Englishwomen.”

“Ah, je comprends. Most likely they would send you to the lunatic asylum, non? I hear the girls there are kept in straitjackets, and made to…”

“We know,” snapped Evelyn, tugging at the raincoat. She and Fiona were sharing it. It was all they’d been able to steal. “We’ve been running around Montmartre for ages. Then Fiona saw your studio, and suggested we go inside and destroy all the pictures you took of us on the platform.”

“How did she know it was mine?”

“Your name’s on the front door, and she’s an avid reader of the Financial Times.”

“A woman after my own heart,” said Pierre, who had the pictures safe in his pocket and backups stored in three different safety deposit boxes around the town. (If you’re wondering exactly how photography worked in the vaguely Victorian time period during which this all takes place, and whether this would even have been physically possible at the time, keep on wondering.) “But, since this has proven to be quite impossible, what shall you do now?”

“Oh, please, mister,” said Fiona, making her eyes big and round. “Will you help us? Please, please, say you will.”

“Hm. Will you permit me to take more photographs of you?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

There was a knock on the door, and a harsh voice barked “Police! We’re looking for two naked female lunatics to send to the asylum!”

“Nothing like that in here,” said Pierre, smiling, not taking his eyes off the girls.

“Well, if you see anything, let us know, and we’ll be along in a jiffy to lock them up. They’ve been running around Montmartre for several hours, exposing themselves to the world. English, you know.”

“Quite,” said Pierre. “Anyway, ladies, I believe you wished me to take some photographs of you. Correct?”

“We would like nothing more,” said Fiona, through clenched teeth.

“Magnifique! You may leave that raincoat in the corner. Horrid old thing.”

“And what,” said Evelyn, as delicately as she was able to manage, as the two girls were shepherded towards a pile of cushions in the corner, in front of an awaiting camera, “do you, ah… intend to do with these photographs?”

“Make dirty postcards, of course. This is Paris!”

“We’re going to be in dirty postcards?”

“Would you rather be in a lunatic asylum?”

“You are a monster and a brute.”

“Oui. Now, bend over. Bottoms facing the camera. Yes, like that.”

“Oh, gosh,” begged Fiona. “Not like that. Anything but that! Please, don’t put me in dirty, filthy pornographic postcards. I shall positively die of shame. Oh, but this is dreadful.”

“Oui.”

And so the two utterly helpless girls, trembling with mortification, had **** but to expose their tender feminine charms for the lascivious entertainment of the leering Continental pervert, who no doubt ate garlic and smelt funny and would run away if there was ever a real fight.

They had to adopt all manner of revealing, provocative poses, each one more explicit and degrading than the last, while the swarthy Frenchmen smirked and fiddled with his camera. Raised bottoms. Arched backs. Pouting lips. Play pillowfights. Fiona even had to lie across Evelyn’s knee and receive a pretend spanking, which rapidly ceased to be pretend as Evelyn took the opportunity to get in a few good whacks.

About half an hour in, some of Pierre’s friends showed up with a bottle of wine. Soon there was a small party going on in the studio, with models standing around gossiping and other photographers getting into arguments about the lighting. The assembled bohemians took every opportunity to giggle at the prim Englishwomen’s discomfort, shamelessly ogling their jiggling breasts and flexing bottoms as they mock-wrestled and did handstands and cupped each other’s breasts from behind.

Finally, as the coup de grace, Fiona and Evelyn were obliged to sit back against the pillows with their hands behind their heads and their legs spread as wide as they would go, presenting their naked pussies to the bevy of smirking bohemians and the camera’s cruel black eye. Pierre took a number of close-up shots, explaining as he did that he made an excellent living by blackmailing innocent and respectable young ladies into posing nude for dirty photographs.

“I get a peculiar pleasure,” he explained, snapping away at the fuming, frustrated girls’ obscenely lewd display, “from sending packets of the resulting postcards to my unlucky victim’s entire social circle. Love, she is a curious thing, no?”

“I wouldn’t call it love,” said Fiona, ice tinkling in her voice as she struggled to ignore the detailed discussion two bearded painters were having about the exact hue of her inner labia. “Lust, maybe.”

“In la belle France, she is all the same, no? Anyway, I believe that is enough pictures for now. I will, of course, give you girls some clothes to wear before I send you off. You have more than earned it.”

“That is certainly the case,” said Evelyn, primly, as a pair of ballerinas engaged in light conversation about the size of her breasts and the athletic possibilities of her hips.

“Even the English must admit that I, Pierre Prevert, and a romantic at heart. Now, where did I put those full-length nuns’ habits…”

“Police! Open up!”

Evelyn and Fiona squealed in horror, and raced towards the rear door of the studio. It swung open, and shut behind them with a thud. Pierre watched them go, a little confused.

“Bonsoir,” said Constable Jacques, stumbling down the steps of the studio with a bottle of wine in his hand. “Am I too late to join the party?”

“No, no, not at all.”

“Did you ever find those naked ladies?”

“I am afraid not.”

“A pity. We figured out hours ago that they’re not lunatics at all, but respectable Englishwomen on some sort of wager. Now all we want to do with them is give them some money and clothes.”