Living with Strangers (13 page)

By Christmas, life in France is well established and I choose not to return to England for the holiday. Although at times I long to hear English, the general background hubbub in a tune that’s comprehensible, it just seems simpler to stay put
.

Simone and Bernard entertain a great deal; two or three times a week there are several guests for dinner. Whilst I don’t mind the extra work involved – preparing key ingredients and clearing up afterwards – the hardest part is sitting at the table attempting to follow all the conversations at once, translating every word. Sometimes a guest will direct comments to me, will even use English, but as the meal progresses and the wine flows, I slowly sink, wondering whether such occasions will ever improve and whether, amongst so much polished glamour, the quiet dishevelled enigma I must appear to be, will ever have very much to offer.

On Christmas Eve, Simone and Bernard celebrate
Reveillon
, inviting half a dozen friends for a lengthy dinner. The children are allowed up for the meal and I’m to put them to bed while the others go to Mass. Since they are neither tired nor asleep when Simone and Bernard return, I’m once again accused of incompetence.

‘Did you not put them straight to bed – as soon as we left?’ she begins, as if this were the obvious answer and I’ve failed to accomplish even this simple task.

‘Yes, I did, of course, but they’re excited – it’s Christmas,’ I add, in case she’s forgotten. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll stay with them if you like, until they’re asleep?’

‘Oh, don’t bother!’ This is a favourite expression of Simone’s –
ce n’est pas la peine
. I learn that one quickly.

Yet for all this, I love my job – and a job it is; I am under no illusion. I’ve come here to work, as the opportunity has neatly arisen. The work itself bears no resemblance to anything I’ve done before. In a permanent state of learning, still struggling to decode and assimilate the language, I’m often tired, even though my commitments here are few compared with bar work or the long days I spent in London.

The children and I arrive at a perfect blend of communication; where speaking fails we substitute signs. They’re patient and helpful and begin to realise, with some explanation from Bernard, that my inability to understand them is not due to stupidity or deafness. They no longer feel obliged to shout when I ask them to repeat something. Being with Aurélie and Olivier has taught me more French, albeit elementary, than I learnt in all the years at school. I may not be up to rigorous debate, but the basics are secure now: conversation pieces, a survival kit.

For the children too, the mysteries of another language are opening up. I teach them songs and short phrases in English, which they speak with relish, playing with new sounds on the tongue. Aurélie will soon be learning English at school, it’s good to know she might have a slight advantage, something already to build on, and that all she and Olivier have taught me is in some small measure repaid.

*

I also have an ally in Bernard. He remains a consistent presence, often seeking an excuse to practise his English. It’s Bernard who encourages me to have French lessons. He even agrees to pay for them, providing I say nothing to Simone. I’m learning that here too, subterfuge rears its head, playing games with the truth. I doubt I’ll be able to keep the truth from Simone if she asks, but she never does. Of all the bitter exchanges we are to have in the future, the funding of my French lessons is not among them. Above all, I know that the children have grown used to me and draw me more and more into their lives. If Simone can’t deal with that, it’s a risk I will have to take.

Bernard asks about my connection with Gil, fishing a little, trying to find out whether anything other than friendship existed between us. I reply obliquely – yes we we’re friends, but no, nothing more. I am grateful to him; he was instrumental in setting up this episode of my life and I owe him my thanks, that’s all.

‘He’s a nice guy.’ Bernard says. ‘We went to the funeral when his mother died – he arranged it all. Simone’s mother, his aunt Isabelle, was very grateful.’

Yet even as he speaks, I think of Gil’s long, easy shape, his blue eyes looking at me above the steel-rimmed glasses. I could perhaps write to him, let him know how things are, but it’s all gone now, all that time, and I have no wish to resurrect it.

*

Winter here ends early. By mid February, small signs of green and a change in the light take us out of doors again after school and we resume our games by the water’s edge. I keep a deliberate eye on both children, waiting for the next round of complaint from Simone. In the meantime, she and I establish a workable agenda and I tacitly agree to respect her wishes, though only up to a point.

I write often to Sophie. She replies, sending me photos – sweet, shaky things, sometimes in colour – of the house, Molly and Saul in the garden or Paul with a medal for tennis. There are one or two of Adam’s wedding which, in spite of an invitation from Fee’s parents, I don’t manage to attend. Planning and booking seems too much of an effort; I simply can’t bring myself to do it when it’s so much easier not to. I send my apologies, pleading the inability to take the weekend off – it’s a national holiday, the family are going away and I am needed. None of this is true but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter.

But at times, I’m overcome with intense longing, waves of sadness, like those that hit me after Josef left. I treasure Sophie’s letters, their tentative, gossamer link with home, and she our courier, our go-between. Yet now within them, there’s a shift, slight and inevitable, a self-involvement as she’s drawn into adolescence, a preoccupation with new passions – her friends, her music and all the accompanying routines and commitments. Her life is opening up just as mine, at the same age, shut down – a lump of knotweed, a glass fragment trapped in a bottle.

Mindful of the promise I made to Sophie before I left, I know I must see her soon or risk losing her trust – of putting her through what I endured at the same age. In my own mind, this is far from the case; she knows where I am, she speaks of me at home, I have not abandoned her. Nevertheless, at dinner one evening, soon after the wedding photos arrive, I find myself asking whether she might visit during her school summer holiday.

‘But you’ll be in Provence all summer,’ is Simone’s response, ‘with my mother and the children.’

This is the first I’ve heard of it. I glance at Bernard for support and, as always, he doesn’t let me down.

‘Perhaps she could come too?’ he says. ‘How old did you say she is?’

‘She’s twelve – but very sensible. She could help,’ I add, hopefully. ‘It’s just… I haven’t seen her for a long time.’

Bernard gets up from the table. ‘Well, I think it’s a great idea – Isabelle has plenty of room. Why not?’

Simone is unconvinced. She never likes suggestions she’s not come up with herself. ‘You’ll have a job to do, it’s not a holiday. But,’ she adds, ‘I’ll phone Maman tomorrow, then we’ll talk about it again.’

The following day, Simone reluctantly agrees; her mother, it seems, has been all in favour from the start.

*

At the end of June the children and I leave for Provence. Bernard takes us down, staying only one night before driving the four hundred miles back again.

Isabelle’s house, in a village which lies to the east of Avignon, has been in Simone’s family for decades. ‘But it was never Simone’s home,’ Isabelle tells me later, ‘She could never settle here.’

We are on the terrace one evening after Aurélie and Olivier have gone to bed. The heat has relented a little; it’s cool beneath a tangled mass of jasmine and bougainvillaea. Isabelle’s welcome has touched me. Gracious and kindly, she bears no resemblance to Simone, though she does remind me of Gil’s mother. It seems, that Isabelle is only too aware of what I have to contend with in her daughter. Simone’s irascibility, she assures me, should not be taken too much to heart.

‘She put down a harsh layer when we left Paris – it’s stayed with her,’ Isabelle explains. ‘After the war, Paris was in a sad state. We had survived the Occupation – but at such a cost.’ She twists her wedding ring round slowly. ‘Paris was angry then – with its lot, with itself.’

‘So you left?’

‘Simone’s sister Hélène was very ill – her heart was damaged.’ Isabelle pauses. ‘It’s a family condition – I think you know about this?’

‘Françoise – Gil’s mother?’

‘And my sister.’

‘Of course – I’m sorry.’

Isabelle smiles. ‘She told me about you. She liked you – said you were good for her son. She was quite upset when you didn’t go there any more – when Gil started seeing that violin player.’

Really? Did I really leave an impression? Had I known, I’d have stayed in touch – it would have meant so much at the time. Another wrong move, another waste.

I turn back to Isabelle’s past – it’s more refreshing than my own. ‘So you came here to help Hélène?’

‘The city was no good for her. By the time we decided to move away, Simone was twelve, doing well at school, happily settled. She remembered nothing of the war and couldn’t bear to leave Paris.’

‘And she blamed her sister?’

‘Simone raged against the world for five years. This sleepy commune we came to live in called her
la Mégère
– they all knew when something had upset her, which was often.’ Isabelle looks across the garden and beyond to the pale mauve sweep of the Lubéron Mountains. ‘After Hélène died, Simone left for university – going back to Paris. We hardly saw her for years, not until she met Bernard. After that, she changed – for the better.’

I can see then why Simone needs to spend so much time in Paris. I almost envy her such conviction, to have a heartland, a place she will always return to, whose pull can never fully be resisted. Like love, I think. Perhaps like being in love.

*

In late July, Bernard comes back to visit the children. He also takes me to Marseilles to collect Sophie. Nothing, it seems, is too much for him where his family is concerned. As part of the entourage that keeps it all running smoothly, I too am included.

At the airport, we stand for half an hour at the arrival barrier, the children wound up with vicarious excitement and the prospect of someone new in their lives. Sophie eventually emerges from the sliding doors with a label round her neck, carrying the little brown suitcase. She gives a shriek as she sees me and I swing under the barrier and hug her tightly, blocking the way.

The weeks of Sophie’s visit pass simply, a round of lengthy meals, tennis on the village courts before it grows too hot and pétanque beneath the huge walnut tree when it does. Isabelle, Aurélie and Olivier sleep in the afternoons, so when we’ve cleared lunch, Sophie and I lie baking on the rough grass in front of the house, until even we are not mad enough to stay out longer. Later, when the day cools a little, Sophie amuses the children while Isabelle and I prepare dinner and settle on the terrace with a long pastis, our conversations held above the wash of
cigales
as it gently grows dark. Isabelle talks of life in Paris, of her family still living there and of those she’s lost – her daughter, her sister and the illness that took them both too soon. I think again of Gil’s mother, of her failing heart, and wonder whether it’s Gil’s inheritance too. Will he also have a life cut short? Why do I even think about him anyway?

In August, Simone comes down with Bernard for a long weekend. Away from work and on her mother’s territory, she’s calmer towards me, but saves the vitriol for Isabelle. We hear them, their voices raised amidst the banging of pots. I see Sophie staring anxiously at the house; it’s nothing she’s experienced before, nothing like the silences at home. If the noise goes on for too long, Bernard takes the children along the path by the olive groves and sits on the slopes until it’s safe to go back. An hour later, it’s all returned to normal – normal voices, normal pitch, Isabelle and Simone in the kitchen cutting up vegetables. I wonder how such verbal violence can fly back and forth, to be dismissed just moments later. Allowed, then forgotten. I think of my own strangled attempt to express my anger before leaving for France, of Molly beseeching me not to shout. I wish so much it could have been otherwise.

*

As the time draws near for us to leave, the weather changes. Storms blow up from the south, sometimes dry, often accompanied by fierce rainfall that batters the flower heads and leaves them strewn and broken like bloodied stars. Sophie goes home a few days before the rest of us, Bernard coming down again to execute the logistics of the family
rentrée
. Sophie cries all the way to the airport, sitting in the back of the car with Aurélie and Olivier on either side, holding her hands. We’re denied a protracted farewell, as she’s whisked away at departures by an Air France official. Sophie turns just once to wave before disappearing through the gates. It’s six years before I see her again.

I turned away from the lake and headed back, trudging up the long hill towards home. Cold and hungry, Chloé started to cry. I wished for a
boulangerie
and a small piece of baguette to offer her till lunchtime, but there was nothing here. We were back among the wide avenues, the long stony driveways, houses set back from the road. My other landscape, my other world. Coming home was never going to be easy.

A lunch of soup and salad was laid when Chloé and I returned. We ate quietly; only Chloé chattered away unconcerned, perched on a chair stacked with cushions. Afterwards I put her for a sleep and Saul too went to rest. Molly and I were once more in the kitchen either side of the table. The cat moved into a patch of sunlight, his purring the only sound in the room.

‘How was your walk?’ Molly picked her knitting out of a basket and counted stitches.

‘Long. I went into town.’

‘Has it changed much?’

‘A little. I see they’ve done up the Moorhen.’

‘It was empty for years after the fire.’

‘I heard there was no insurance – Mike hadn’t paid the premiums. I don’t know what happened to him.’

‘He disappeared – went abroad somewhere. There was an item in the paper. He’s opened a bar in Spain now.’

Another absence, another flight. Josef, Seth, Jean-Luc, Mike. Everyone I touched disappeared.

Later in the afternoon Chloé settled happily again with Molly. She was so at home now, familiar with new spaces and routines. That morning, I had walked away the old anger, recalling a past that now seemed as dim and distant as the childhood years stirred up by the letters. How could I have resented my mother’s warmth towards Chloé? How could I resent the simplicity of Chloé’s response towards Molly?

I made tea and took it into the schoolroom. I wandered up and down, drawn anew to Joseph’s artwork, studying it in detail, perhaps for the first time. Before, it had simply been part of the furnishing. Cartoons, caricatures of our family, still hung along the short wall – Saul with his hair on end, Adam so serious, with a frown like a tyre track. Molly and I got off quite lightly – perhaps Josef couldn’t find enough of interest to parody. But I saw now that other pictures were political – stunning, sweeping line drawings, grotesque images of leading politicians – English, American, French, German – all fifteen years out of office. I was surprised yet reassured to know that the artwork was still here, part of the fabric, that Josef’s presence was still recorded in this way.

*

Sophie was due back that evening. Much as I longed to see her, I was fearful of the changes that would have grown up between us. She arrived in the middle of supper, calling out as she parked her cello in the hall. I left the table to greet her and we collided in the doorway.

‘Hey,’ she said, flinging her arms around my neck, ‘You’re back!’ She held me away from her then hugged me again. ‘I can’t believe you’re really here.’

‘Neither can I. We’re just…’

‘Adjusting?’

‘You could say that.’ It seemed appropriate for what I’d spent the first few days doing. ‘And look at you,’ I said, standing back. She was almost as tall as me now. In spite of our letters, our promises, the six years since Provence had been a long time. All those growing years I had missed.

Later that evening, as I was bathing Chloé, Sophie came in and sat on the stool in the corner. She bent over the bath, picked up a small plastic boat and filled it with water. ‘I thought it would never happen,’ she said. ‘All of us here doing this.’

‘You didn’t think I’d come back?’ I said.

‘Did you? Did you ever think this was possible?’

‘Not really, if I’m honest. There were too many years – too much ground to cover. It was easier not to think about it.’

Sophie poured water from the boat and handed it to Chloé.

‘
Encore.
’ Chloé said, handing it back.

Sophie dipped the boat into the water again. ‘We missed you.’

‘We?’

She watched the water as it poured from the boat, then looked up at me. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We all did. But you know what Mum and Dad are like – they don’t give anything away.’

Not even to Sophie? So nothing
had
changed.

‘You could have come to see me,’ I said. ‘You should have come.’

‘I wanted to. I really did – that Christmas you wrote and asked me to come again. I just thought you were being kind – that you didn’t really mean it.’

I lifted Chloé from the bath and wrapped her in a large towel. ‘And I thought your life was too full to disrupt.’

Sophie stood up and pulled the plug on the bathwater. ‘Let’s go out, Mum can babysit. I’ll ask her.’

Chloé began to grizzle as I fixed the poppers on her sleepsuit. I took her upstairs, gave her a warm drink and settled her in the cot. She was asleep before I left the room, so much more at home here than I had ever been.

After clearing supper, Sophie and I left the house. For the second time that day I found myself in town; at Sophie’s suggestion, we ended up in the Moorhen. I bought a bottle of wine – a reasonable French Chablis – though the price was anything but. Things had moved on since my days behind an English bar.

The pub was quiet. We found a table in the corner near the fire and sat down, fiddling with coats and glasses. I still struggled to register that Sophie was old enough to drink, but as she sipped her wine, her eyes darting around the room, I realised she was none too comfortable here. She was still very young, and for a moment I was lost again – lost for words, for the years that had gone, for whoever we had grown to be.

‘Papa’s told me about your course,’ I said. ‘He’s very proud.’

Sophie put her glass down. ‘I’m not there yet. Still the exams to get through.’

‘You’ll be fine. You always were.’

‘But it was easy for me – for Paul and me. Our lives have been different. It was so much harder for you. I’ve always thought how brave you were. So… independent.’

Was that how Sophie saw it?

‘I’ll be going away soon – but only to London. Not like you did.’ She made it sound like an adventure; I had never thought of my hasty retreat in that way. She had forgotten the scene before I went – the unfamiliar raised voices in the kitchen. But I had not forgotten, nor had I forgotten the scrap of paper that probably still lay in my desk drawer upstairs.

I changed the subject, back to her music. ‘And the piano – you’re playing that too now?’

‘A bit. I need keyboard skills, so we got it a while ago.’ Then she pushed her glass away and said, ‘Maddie, I don’t want to talk about me. That’s not why I suggested this.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about me either.

‘I want to know what happened after I left Provence,’ Sophie said. ‘Why you left Simone’s, and…’

‘How Chloé fits in?’

Sophie nodded eagerly.

‘It’s a long story,’ I said, half hoping to put her off, at least for the time being. Dragging up the past was one thing – dragging up Jean-Luc quite another.

‘I don’t mind, I want to know – all of it.’

I had guessed this was coming. But then, wasn’t that the point of it all – this trip, this journey back?

‘Ok,’ I said. ‘Where shall I start?’

‘Anywhere you like,’ she said, resting her chin in her hands, leaning towards me across the table. She had scarcely touched her wine. I poured myself another glass and took a long drink. Then I began once more to pull the past from its hiding place.

‘We left Provence a few days after taking you to the airport. Isabelle packed any spare room in the car with food and drink, which was just as well. The route was really slow, clogged with a million others who always chose that particular weekend to travel home. When we were near Lyon, and hours behind schedule, Bernard turned off the autoroute and decided we should stay the night in a small hotel he knew, tucked away down a side street. We had a room on the first floor – there was only one bed, a chair, a small table and a tall window that looked out over a quadrangle. We had to sit on the floor to eat the last of Isabelle’s food.

‘It was all a bit awkward, really. The children and I shared the bed while Bernard took the armchair by the window. We didn’t undress, or wash, or sleep much for that matter, but in the early morning, Bernard went out to find us something to eat and came back with warm croissants and a carton of juice. It made me think of my trip to Lübeck and Papa on the platform at Cologne, buying breakfast.

‘Before we left, the hotel patron made us coffee, and hot chocolate for the children. It was an odd visit, I wasn’t sure what Simone would make of it all – I just hoped Bernard had let her know what we were doing.

‘We arrived home by mid-afternoon. Simone was out, so I sorted the washing and helped the children unpack. When Simone came back, there was the usual gushing ritual over the children, then she announced that friends were coming for dinner and I was to help her in the kitchen. So I chopped and peeled and washed up while she lined up her dishes, all ready to impress. By eight o’clock, I still hadn’t managed to shower or change or sort out my own things from the trip. That evening I met Jean-Luc for the first time.’

‘And Jean-Luc?’ Sophie said, ‘He’s Chloé’s father?’

I shifted in my seat. ‘Yes. At least, technically.’ I preferred not to acknowledge Chloé’s parentage. I preferred to think of her conception as a kind of ephemeral, out-of-body experience rather than the robust, needy antithesis it had actually been. I preferred her father to be yet another chapter I’d consigned to the big box in the cupboard.

‘But I don’t see him,’ I said, ‘he has no contact with her.’

‘Was that your idea? Does he want to see her – be part of her life?’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘No,’ Sophie said. ‘I don’t suppose it is.’

‘He was… a good thing in my life. For a while, I needed it. Needed him. It just didn’t last – couldn’t have done anyway, even without Chloé.’

‘He was married?’

I nodded.

‘You were his
cinq à sept
– don’t they call it?’ Perhaps Sophie had grown up more than I gave her credit for.

I nodded again. All those early evenings, waiting in the flat, wondering whether he would come, filling up his time after work. The snatched moments, brief words in a corner at the language school, lengthy trysts in his car parked up on the levée, an unscheduled detour to his house and once – just once – a whole weekend.

‘So when did you leave Simone’s?’ Sophie drained the last of the wine into my glass. ‘Was that before or after you started seeing Jean-Luc?’

‘Before. Some time before. I left the following spring – about five years ago. It just became too…’

‘Difficult?’

‘To say the least. The truth was, Simone just didn’t like me. She made things up about the children – things she said were my fault – that I’d done wrong. She started hinting I was spending too much time with Bernard, that she wasn’t paying me to look after her husband. When I think about it now, she had serious problems, just as Isabelle said, but then it was all too much and it was unfair. True, I did spend time with Bernard, he was around a lot, he talked to me. I had very little adult company and I enjoyed it but I never…’ I swivelled the wine glass in my hands, ‘and besides, he really wasn’t my type.’

‘And Jean-Luc was?’

I stared into the dregs at the bottom of my glass. ‘Before it happened, I wouldn’t have said so. But then, who knows? It was a madness, in a way, just something I needed at the time.’

‘Did you ever go back to Simone’s after you left. To see the children?’

‘I tried. Once or twice I phoned but they had a new au pair and she wouldn’t let me speak to them. They were busy, or out with Bernard, or doing homework.’ I thought of Aurélie’s resigned demeanour, her guarded enthusiasm and how she had only opened up as we came to know each other well. She would have had to start again with someone else; she would have been left believing I had forgotten her.

I never saw Olivier again and Aurélie only once, much later, when she was at the
lycée
in town. She was standing at the bus stop one afternoon and I went over to speak to her, but she turned away, pretending not to know me. It was just possible she really didn’t remember; I heard there were several more au pairs after me, but more likely her mother had influenced her, poisoning the memories that might have kept us in touch.

Sophie went to the bar and ordered two bottles of soda water. I could have done with more wine, but there would be an early start in the morning and my head was already thick. I wondered how much further I could venture into revealing intimacies I had kept closed up for so long. But Sophie showed no sign of needing to be somewhere else, and I carried on, trawling through more recent years, bringing her finally up to date.