A Stranger in Paris

by Karen Webb

  She leant towards me and peered into my eyes conspiratorially. ‘My daughter’s husband, how do you say this?’

  ‘Your son-in-law?’

  ‘Yes, my son-in-law, that’s right. Well, the mother of my son-in-law, she has never washed her hair by herself.’

  She laughed and sat back as if to better gauge my reaction.

  ‘What, never, in all her life?’

  ‘No! Not once. Not ever.’

  ‘But that’s disgusting.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘You do not understand me. She has never washed her hair herself, nor has she ever boiled an egg. She has domestics who do it for her.’

  ‘What everything?’

  ‘Parfaitement. They cook and clean and wash her hair. And if she wants a boiled egg they boil it. The whole house is full of people like you.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘Mais oui. Les domestiques. The servants.’

  Bonne-Maman ran her fingers across her neat bun and pinned back a lock of stray hair. ‘I may not have so many servants,’ she said, ‘at least not here in Paris, but my hair is clean. And I can shoot and fish, pluck the feathers from a pheasant, and make pâté with the liver of a duck. Mamie, she knows none of this. She only drinks tea while her husband lies dying in the back bedroom. He has been dying now for nearly twenty years. My husband, he died in one month. There is no need for such a fuss. But you will see her for yourself, ma petite, soon you will see her for yourself.’

  Bonne-Maman stood up and pushed her chair back to the table.

  ‘You need to wash the children now,’ she said, ‘I will say hello to Florence. Is she in her bedroom alone?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’

  ‘It is always best to check these things,’ she said, ‘one should never assume.’

  Chapter 7

  Clémence and Delphine were wet-haired from their bath. Their afterschool routine was so well engrained that they’d ploughed on in my absence. They’d laid out their school clothes for the next day, packed their bags and lined up their dirty shoes outside the bedroom door.

  ‘The shoes are for you to polish,’ Delphine said coldly, in English. She barely looked up from combing her sister’s hair as I popped my head round the door. I watched her as she fastened a pair of neat, cherry-red slides on each side of her sister’s parting. Delphine’s look was serious and maternal. More maternal than her own mother perhaps, who lounged upstairs in the great unknown quarters of the eastern wing and hadn’t seen the children since they’d returned from school. Clémence was a prettier child than her sister, who had a gaunt and worried look. Delphine and I had still not exchanged a single word of pleasantry.

  ‘Tu me trouves belle?’ Clémence asked, peering into the mirror and stroking her golden locks.

  I smiled. ‘Oui Clémence, très belle. You are very beautiful.’

  Both girls were wearing long nightshirts of thick, sensible cotton. I was surprised at how early they went to bed. The sun hadn’t set, and there was a misty haze hanging over the city of Paris, visible on the horizon from the upstairs window. I longed to go to the heart of the city. For now, I was trapped in this house, part of this family, and without even the money for a metro ticket.

  Baptiste was in the corner of the room, still dressed in his green jumper and check shorts, playing with a train. I laid a hand on his shoulder and pointed to the bathroom. He shrugged me off and ignored me. Clémence said something which I didn’t understand.

  ‘You must wash him; he never takes his bath alone.’

  It was Delphine who had spoken once again, in perfect English with a hint of American.

  ‘Your English is so good,’ I said, hoping a little flattery wouldn’t go amiss. It worked with Clémence, who had been all smiles since I’d praised her looks. Delphine ignored me and continued to work on her sister’s hair.

  ‘Delphine, could you ask Baptiste to take his bath now, please?’ I asked, in a firm voice.

  ‘You tell him,’ she snapped. ‘You’re here to learn French.’

  Clémence, who had divined the problem, jumped down from the bed and grabbed the train from her brother.

  Within seconds the two were screaming and fighting, as Baptiste pulled one of the red hair clips from his sister’s hair which by now was as matted as the first Mrs Rochester’s. Clémence kicked and screamed, but Baptiste back-flipped her to the ground and sat on her pressing so hard on her neck she turned Smurf blue. Delphine looked on from her bedside position with a smug smile that said: ‘Sort that one out, if you can.’

  Bonne-Maman appeared at the door on cue and pulled the two combatants apart. Clémence, who had retreated into the corner of her bedroom like a Sumo wrestler in the wing, preparing for the next round, was dragging oxygen into her lungs with great noisy rasps. Bonne-Maman ordered me to take Baptiste to the bathroom to wash his hair and tout son corps.

  I ran the bath and Baptiste climbed in. I averted my eyes not knowing where to look. Baptiste seemed too old to be washed by a stranger, but his grandmother was adamant. He stared silently into the running water, still sulking at not having properly throttled Clémence.

  ‘Il faut me laver les cheveux,’ he said, repeating Bonne-Maman’s instructions to wash his hair.

  I squeezed a blob of shampoo onto his thick black locks and he squeaked as the cold liquid hit his warm crown.

  ‘Pardon.’

  There was a jug on the side of the tub which I filled with warm bath water, rubbing the top of his head. He ignored me completely. I tapped him on the shoulder and motioned to him to close his eyes while I rinsed. He closed his thick, doe-like lashes obediently. Hopefully we were nearly finished. It hadn’t been too bad after all. I’d just grabbed a big fluffy towel from the radiator, when Bonne-Maman loomed upon us again.

  ‘Vous avez lavé ses fesses?’

  Seeing my puzzled expression she reverted to English. ‘Have you washed his ass?’ The word shocked me. Bonne-Maman must have seen a lot of American TV to have picked up such language.

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d never washed anyone’s ass except my own. It was a horrible thought akin to changing a nappy. Maybe I was too English around the edges, but all this body contact with strangers was making me uncomfortable. It wasn’t as if I’d trained as a nurse. There had been no mention of bum washing in the job description.

  Bonne-Maman’s back was turned as she mechanically rearranged towels in the airing cupboard. I was thankful for small mercies. It was bad enough having to do the job in the first place, without her beady eyes on me. I reached for the shower gel and poured it into the palm of my hand. Baptiste was driving the sponge up and down the edge of the bath, revving and tooting, lost in a world of his own. He seemed younger than his years. I cast my eyes to the ceiling and dived my hand down into the depths of the water, in the vague direction of his crotch, hoping that a quick splash of water would suffice back and front. I knew I hadn’t touched anything, but surely the hot water would have washed him?

  To my horror, Olivier threw his sponge across the bathroom, hitting his grandmother between the shoulder blades and leaving a wet patch on her turquoise blouse. He started to scream. Bonne-Maman spun around; a whirr of tan tights.

  ‘Mais qu’est-ce que vous faites?’ she thundered, a look of horror etched on her walnut face.

  Olivier was screaming but there were words now too: ‘Elle a touché mon zizi.’ He pointed down into the murky waters as if he’d been stung by a jelly-fish.

  Bonne-Maman stared at me as if I’d just crawled up from the drains.

  ‘He says you have touched his private area. His manhood,’ She was all fire and indignation.

  I flushed scarlet, ‘No! I don’t think so. I mean I’m sure not. Not on purpose at least, even if I did, God forbid. Anyway, I thought that was what you wanted me to do?’

  ‘With your hand,’ she reiterated, ‘he says you have touched his zizi with your hand.’

  ‘Well, how else was I to wash him?’ I was at a comple
te loss, visions of dismissal for inappropriate behaviour whizzing through my mind.

  ‘With a glove of course,’ she said firmly.

  A glove? The woman was mad? She wanted me to wash his bum with a glove?

  Seeing my confusion, Bonne-Maman reached across to the sink and picked up a piece of square cloth. She rinsed it in the water and slipped her hand inside. It was a rectangle no bigger than the size of her hand, consisting of two pieces of material sewn together.

  ‘This,’ she said, flapping the square cloth at my face, ‘is a glove. Un gant. It is placed on the hand to wash. It exfoliates, and it saves the poor boy from embarrassment. This is the way we do things in France. Oh là là. Ces anglaises!’

  * * *

  Bonne-Maman sailed off into the night on her clanging bicycle. I was sitting at the bottom of the stairs cleaning shoes: three pairs of soiled and muddy school shoes, to be precise. There was a cream polish for each: white, for Baptiste’s trainers; black for Delphine’s sandals; and red for Clémence’s.

  The day felt never-ending.

  After Baptiste’s bathtime, Clémence had led me by the hand to a cupboard beneath the stairs where she had pointed to a wooden box of bristle brushes and cloths, before rushing upstairs to join her brother and sister

  If the children went to bed this early every night, I’d be able to go into town. I just needed to ask Florence for an advance on my wages. If I ever saw her again. The house had swallowed her up and I’d been relegated to the kitchen and the nursery. I wasn’t confident enough yet to seek her out in her private quarters.

  I’d never had to clean shoes before. I squirted liquid erratically at clods of earth. My shoes never seemed to get so dirty back at university. If they did, I’d wash them off in the sea. Sometimes in Aberystwyth sand would collect inside them that I’d tip out into a little pyramid on to the hall floors. But never mud. Not like this. The shoe polish stuck to the wads of earth. Looking into the box, and seeing the wire brushes, it occurred to me that perhaps I should have scrubbed them first.

  I was Cinderella sitting on the steps polishing shoes that smelt of other people’s feet. I had no money, and unlike the children, who had stuffed their faces with pints of milk and wads of Emmental cheese topped with juicy strawberry jam, I had only half a pain au chocolat in my stomach and was hungry. I was starting to feel resentful. Where was Florence anyway? I’d done nothing but iron in a barely ventilated cellar filled with oil fumes, wash children and scrub shoes. The only word of French I’d learnt was poubelle. Clémence had taught me as she held out a snotty tissue and pointed to the dustbin. She wanted me to put it inside – and so whenever I said the word poubelle for the rest of my French life, I remembered dainty little Clémence. She had already learnt about human bondage and slavery, and at the ripe old age of six, already knew that I came beneath her in the pecking order. Clémence of the ‘full glasses of sterilised milk’ and the ‘healthy froth around the lips’; Clémence with her red hair slides and those innocent pale brown eyes who was blissfully unaware of the agonies of love, or shoe cleaning. I was sure that if David and I had children, I wouldn’t want some other woman poking around in my house, observing my every mood. Why couldn’t Florence take care of her own children anyway? She wasn’t exactly overstretched.

  As if in answer to my silent ranting, I heard the tap of my mistress’s crutches on the stairs above (I had started to call her my mistress as pretending I was Jane Eyre helped me through the day).

  Yet now that Madame had stirred, no doubt sensing my silent remonstrations, I wished I’d let sleeping dogs lie. Had I tidied the kitchen sufficiently after tea? Were these shoes looking their best despite the damp clods of mud I’d freshly whitened, polish oozing from every crevice?

  It took Florence some time to descend the long and winding wooden stairs. I contemplated jumping up to help her, but hoped that if I remained seated she wouldn’t notice the enormous splodge of white polish which adorned the step on which I sat.

  As she reached the bottom I shuffled to the side to let her pass, the cotton of my dress soaking up the spilt liquid. Florence’s hair was half-plaited, half-trailing down her shoulders, static from so many hours in bed. She was still wearing her thin spaghetti-strap top and I considered, not for the first time, the flatness of her bra-less chest. Her nipples were quite prominent. It must take a lot of confidence to thrust them out like that; two cherries on a Mr Kipling’s cake.

  My employer had changed into yet another pair of bell-bottoms, bright green and red this time. Christmas Pantomime attire. The bottom of one of her plaits was intertwined with three coloured beads – two red and one green – to match her trousers. Looking down at my own outfit I realised that if a stranger knocked at the door, it would be difficult to tell from our clothing who was the employer and who the employee. I would pass as an extra on Little House on the Prairie with my long skirts and petticoats, whereas Madame Blanchard leant towards ethnic.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the realisation that Florence was sniffing the air. I clicked into focus and observed as she lifted her head up and down like a beagle seeking the scent of a fox, her nostrils flaring as she dragged the air into them with a sudden forced movement.

  ‘Vous avez déjà préparé le dîner?’ she asked. ‘You have already prepared the dinner?’’

  I felt smug and efficient. There were no flies on me, even if it was my first day.

  ‘Oui, Florence. Not only is dinner made, but the children have eaten it. They are in bed.’

  Florence looked puzzled and sniffed again.

  Maybe she had a cold coming on. Hardly surprising in that skimpy top.

  ‘Mais je ne sens pas le poulet rôti ?’

  Seeing my puzzled expression, she repeated her question in English, a little more impatiently this time.

  ‘I do not smell roast chicken?’

  ‘No, you smell very nice,’ I said. ‘Your perfume is lovely.’ Although in truth my mistress smelt not so much of perfume as sensible soap. I imagined that all French women bathed in Chanel No. 5. Apparently not. There were other ways in which my mistress had failed to live up to the image I held of a Parisian woman. There was her underwear to start with. It was so utilitarian. It made me ashamed of my own laces and frills. The lacy French boxer shorts from Marks and Sparks. Florence wore those wash and fold knickers you slip into your rucksack when heading off camping: the three-in-a-bag in different colours variety; faded pastels and pinks with grey elastic. Clearly not making much of an effort for his Lordship, I’d thought, rolling her knickers into balls down in the submarine that afternoon. I made a mental note never to let my standards slip once I was married. You could never be too careful. After all, a successful business man, like Axel Blanchard, must be surrounded by girls wearing decent underwear and drenched in perfume. My father’s infidelities had left me very wary of the powers of the ‘other’ woman.

  But no matter how sad her knickers were, I could at least reassure Florence, that she did not smell of chicken.

  ‘Tu ne comprends pas,’ she was saying. ‘The house, it should smell of chicken. It is the children’s dinner time soon, and they are having chicken. Poulet rôti with salad. Did you not look in the fridge?’

  This was the first I’d heard of chicken. Perhaps Florence didn’t know that her mother had brought a bag stuffed full of pastries. The children couldn’t possibly have managed a chicken dinner as well.

  ‘Your mother, Bonne-Maman, she came over and we had a big meal,’ I said.

  Florence’s eyes widened. She cast a glance at a thin leather watch on her tiny wrist and frowned, drawing together her thick caterpillar brows.

  She turned from me, swinging back into the kitchen. I set down Baptiste’s sticky trainer and followed her. She flung open the fridge door. The chicken was on the top shelf wrapped in plastic, like a corpse in a mortician’s drawer.

  She turned to me with a look of horror.

  ‘But the chicken should not be in here, it should be in
the oven! The children are going to dine so late. Ce n’est pas possible!’

  ‘But they have already eaten,’ I pleaded. ‘They’ve had their dinner and their bath and now they’re ready for bed.’

  Florence shook her head. ‘They will have to have pasta now,’ she said. ‘It will take too long to roast now. You do not understand, it was not their dinner that they had with my mother. That was le goûter. All French children have it when they come home from school. It is a special treat before homework and dinner.’

  ‘But they ate so much!’ I protested. ‘Cheese, and bread, and jam, and milk, and yoghurts. When are they meant to fit in dinner?’

  ‘Half past seven, eight o’clock at the latest. And then it is story-time and bed,’ Florence said firmly. ‘Axel and I dine alone when they are asleep, and the au pair is finished. Unless one of us is out. We like our dinner to be animated by adult conversation and not disturbed by les enfants.’

  Florence had lost patience with me now. She lifted a heavy-based pan, filled it with water, the sinews of her slender arms straining visibly beneath her translucent skin, and slammed it on the gas rink. She opened a packet of pasta and took a sachet of grated cheese from the fridge.

  ‘This must do for tonight,’ she said, ‘but tomorrow you must be more organised. You must put the chicken in the oven while you are clearing away le goûter. All children require a strict timetable if they are to be happy. Everything must happen at the right time, or they will become, how do you say, énervés? Fractious.’

  My cheeks were burning. I was helpless in this woman’s kitchen. She could manage perfectly well without me. I didn’t even know how to make a roast chicken. Florence looked at her watch again. She unpinned her hair and wiped the back of her neck which exhibited droplets of sweat from so much sudden exertion.