by Karen Webb
It seemed churlish to point out that I was doing most of the skivvying, so I lit another candle instead. We’d filched some empty jam jars from the kitchen for the occasion.
‘We have to get out,’ she said, looking at me intently. ‘We have to run away, live a life of adventure, find love – all of this! Life is slipping between our fingers while I dead-head roses and you fold undies.’
I nodded solemnly. Until that moment I hadn’t seriously considered leaving the safety of the Blanchards’ home and stepping out alone into the big city. I hadn’t even started my French course.
‘We need jobs,’ I said.
‘In theatre,’ Jessica replied randomly, reclining on my bed. ‘I’m going to ring round tomorrow. They must have roles for two English girls.’
I was doubtful but clung to two magic words. Carpe diem.
Why not? Someone had to work on stage. Why not us? Okay, we couldn’t speak French, but I’d studied drama in my first year at university and had been awarded a First for a production plan of Ibsen’s The Doll’s House. Nothing was impossible, was it?
‘And you need a lover,’ Jessica said. ‘I’ve been talking to Delphine and she reckons her mother is jealous of you and Marcel.’
‘You’ve been talking to Delphine! That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing between us, even if I wanted something. Though I admit, I like him.’
‘I don’t believe you. Come on, tell me.’
‘Well, he did come down to the cellar and kiss me, but only the once. And before we left for that bloody awful château, he invited me for a drink … I think.’
‘Where?’
‘On the roof top of La Samaritaine. The department store.’
She was impressed now, telling me that it was only one of the most romantic roof-top terraces in the city.
‘And you didn’t go?’
‘I couldn’t. I was stuffed into Bonne-Maman’s car and driven to the country to pick up dead flies.’
‘More skivvying! You see? This is what I mean. Fate throws opportunity at us, and we are helpless to accept. All because we are in service.’
‘Jane Eyre was in service.’
‘She got out. Anyway, back to Marcel. You must tell him your feelings. Send him a card.’
‘I can’t! I don’t know his address.’
‘Delphine does. Well, she knows where her mother’s address book is.’
‘I wouldn’t dare.’
‘Humph, and you say that after what we’ve seen tonight. – Seize the day! Tell him. Write down on a piece of paper what you want to say.’ She hurled a biro at me from my bag which sprawled open on the bed. Reluctantly I unpinned one of Clémence’s drawings from the back my door and scribbled down my first thoughts.
‘Go on then, read it.’
Dear Marcel,
You seem a very nice man. The first time we met you made me laugh when you sucked your green beans in the side of your mouth. I would like to hear you play the piano one day, if ever you invite me to your flat, and drink tea with you before that on the roof top of La Samaritaine. (If you still want to).
Karen
I handed the paper to Jessica, who read it aloud, a crease forming in the middle of her eyebrows. She crumpled it up.
‘That’s crap. You sound about ten. Write something a bit feisty. Pithy.’
I was too tired to be pithy and reached for my dictionary which had a middle section of pink-paged quotations. It didn’t take long before I spotted a familiar word, almost the same in both languages: architect.
Chacun est l’architecte de sa vie. The architect of one’s own life, is oneself. Or something like that. Perfect! Marcel would appreciate the cryptic intelligence of my words. As our old headmaster had said, brevity is all.
Jessica was satisfied, saying it left enough to the imagination and was subtler than talk of green beans. It was decided. The next day I’d find a suitable card and send it to Marcel, unsigned.
Chapter 14
In the days that followed the posting of the card – the black-and-white Doisneau photograph of a couple kissing – I reached a state of frenzy. Was it my imagination, or was Florence pounding her crutches harder on the parquet floors? When she paid me my weekly wage she was no longer warm or chatty and didn’t invite me for tea, or say goodbye when she slammed the door for her drumming lesson.
‘Jealous,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s obvious. He’s told her. Green-eyed monster.’
Quotes from Othello still peppered our dialogue; remnants of sixth form.
‘But why would she be jealous? She wasn’t jealous of her own husband, so why Marcel? I mean he’s not her lover, is he?’
Jessica raised her eyebrows.
‘Oh dear,’ she sighed. ‘You’ve a lot to learn.’
‘No! He can’t be.’
‘Trust me. Delphine more or less told me.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘Alright, maybe. She told me her mother was very close to Marcel. Very protective of him. She suspects the worst and wants you out.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that! I never know what’s true with you: like that story about you masturbating and Axel watching.’
‘Ah, Axel …’
She smiled and lay back on the bed, crushing my carte orange.
Jessica’s comments unsettled me so much, that the next time Marcel came to lunch I was in a complete panic; all fingers and thumbs with the serving bowls, and with a face as red as a baboon’s bottom. Marcel smiled at me and raised his eyebrows. I didn’t dare look in his direction. Florence allowed me to serve the lunch, but I could see from the number of places set that I was not invited. Broody Hugo was back, foul-tempered as always. He didn’t know, or care, what was going on, I was sure. I hovered in the kitchen knowing I was meant to serve dessert. Marcel stood up and brought out a jug for more water. I dropped it. Florence was cross. I was sent to iron.
Now that Florence knew I’d sent the card – I knew that she knew; her whole attitude towards me had changed – I needed to seek new employment. Jessica was right. Our days were numbered. I needed to run before she threw me out. Jessica said girls who ran were called bolters. Doing a runner was a concept she’d picked up from Nancy Mitford novels, and henceforth this was our code name: The Bolters.
To make matters worse, having now thrown myself at the mercy of the Universe, and having grabbed it by both hands and squeezed it hard, Marcel hadn’t called. Or at least no-one had told me if he had. He was no doubt laughing at the silly English au-pair girl and her crush. How old must he be? Forty maybe? Older? It was hard to tell. I was only twenty-one – he must have thought I was as immature as one of the kids. What was I thinking? That bloody film was to blame! ‘O captain, My Captain!’ And what right had Florence to be jealous of Marcel anyway? She should be jealous of Jessica’s candlelit suppers with her husband, but no! Jessica got off scott-free, with green lights all round, practically lighting the corridor to the eastern wing bedroom like a flight path at Heathrow, while I got the cold shoulder.
Jessica said we needed a night out. I’d been paid by a poker-faced Florence, and as in days gone by, my friend had honed in on the Franc notes burning a hole in my pocket. The deal with Jessica was that she wasn’t paid by the Blanchards but given the garden cottage in lieu of work. The Blanchards didn’t appear to have considered how or where she ate, failing to notice that I often cooked an extra portion, or that down in the cellar Mr Blanchard’s dusty wine collection was dwindling and that his whisky bottles were topped up with water.
We found a Chinese restaurant on the square at the end of our street, squeezed in between a BNP bank and a boulangerie. Its main draw was the cheap 50-franc all-inclusive menu advertised on a glitzy board outside.
The restaurant was packed and decorated with the usual golden dragons and red fans. On the wall, there was an electronic montage of a waterfall, in which the water miraculously fell over a 3D rock, and a flock of blue birds soared over a multi-coloured rainbow. As we walked into the
foyer, we rubbed the stomach of a fat red Buddha for luck.
The owners ran the restaurant by themselves. A smiling, nodding couple, they ushered us in like royalty. The man, who was shorter than me, wore boots with prominent heels which clicked on the laminate floor as he walked. His wife, dressed in a tight silk dress, was heavily pregnant. The man showed us to a corner table next to a statue of a golden cat with a waving arm.
‘Let’s hope she doesn’t drop while we’re here,’ Jessica whispered. I knew nothing could come between my friend and her food. Least of all a birthing mother.
It was no more expensive than McDonald’s and a lot tastier. The menu included a bowl of spicy soup, two spring rolls, a helping of prawn curry and a bowl of rice. For dessert, there was a choice between a rock-hard biscuit studded with sesame seeds, or a small helping of tinned lychees. To accompany the meal there was a choice of either a Chinese beer or a small pichet of red wine. We took the wine. Other than a change in menu, there was a purpose to our meeting outside of the house. Jessica had a plan and told me that our days in service were over. The Bolters were about to do what they did best.
I thought back with a shudder to an incident of humiliation which had occurred earlier that afternoon, as the two of us sat at the bottom of the Blanchard staircase, phone in hand. Using the Minitel (a small machine which was an effective precursor of the Internet, and conveniently listed the name, number and address of any establishment in France) Jessica had sourced the number of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. Florence was at the doctors and the children were upstairs playing cards. Jessica insisted that I was to make the call and offer our services on stage (no less) at the opera house.
‘We can’t sing.’
Jessica waved away my objection with a flick of her wrist. ‘They’ll want people of all sorts. Extras and stuff, you’ll see.’
‘You ring then?’
‘No, your phone French is better than mine.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life skivvying?’
I was about to be massacred – and we both knew it.
‘Avez-vous du travail pour deux anglaises?’ I asked without preamble. (Do you have work for two English girls?)
Stunned silence.
‘Quoi?’ The disgust was tangible in the woman’s voice.
‘Avez-vous du travail pour deux actrices anglaises ?’
The addition of the word ‘actresses’ was optimistic. Jessica had once been turned down for the role of Viola in the school production of Twelfth Night and my parents had refused to let me audition at all, on account of having to be allowed out of the bungalow at night for rehearsals.
‘Non.’
‘Vous êtes sûr ?’
‘Certain.’ The woman growled and hung up thus ending our careers in the Paris opera house before they had begun.
At dinner, I was nervous at any further mention of escape plans.
‘I have the solution,’ Jessica said, producing a rolled-up magazine from her bag and placing it on the restaurant table. ‘Here lies the answer to our problems.’
The magazine was called the Le PAP – or Le Particuliers à Particuliers – a sizeable wedge of a journal advertising hundreds and thousands of houses or flats up and down the country that were for sale or rent. There was an entire middle section on Paris which was divided into arrondissements or districts. Naturally our favourite arrondissement was the 18th – which housed the Sacre Coeur and La Place du Tertre in Montmartre.
Jessica had first shared her vision of her Parisian apartment with me way back in sixth form. The stage set to any arts film based in Paris always resembled Montmartre in our minds, and Jessica’s studio flat was to be located on a cobbled street just off the Place du Tertre, a top-floor apartment under slate rooftops, dotted with fat cooing pigeons. Below there would be a bar (we now knew this was Jacques’ bar Le Tartempion) for late-night drinks and tartare de boeuf to ward off anaemia. Consumption had been eradicated from Paris by the late eighties, to the chagrin of my friend. Nothing would have set off her bohemian image as a writer as much as a good bout of TB. Anaemia would have to do. In this loft apartment, Jessica would write her novel, bashing it out on her old Remington portable, shipped out from England. I’d heard the story many times, but after two glasses of acidic, screw-top wine, I was beginning to believe the dream might come true
I turn to the section marked Paris 18ème. Jessica had brought her lucky pen and we circled the most interesting adverts, concentrating on two-bedroom flats with a separate sitting room. It was clear from the price of rentals that a month working for the Blanchards would barely cover a week in a one-bedroom studio flat, but the magic of The Dead Poet’s Society lingered. If you wanted something badly enough, the Universe would send it to you.
Jessica had all the answers. We would look for jobs temping in the business centre of La Défense – well-paid bilingual positions during which time we could work on our language skills. Once we had secured employment, we would sign a rental contract on a flat the same week, vacating the Blanchard household on the day we started work. I wondered how Florence would cope with school looming on the horizon, if Jessica and I bolted, but I didn’t voice my fears. I predicted my friend’s response: ‘Her look out – not ours. She’ll find some other poor sod.’
By the time the silver bowl of lychees arrived, we had scored most of the pages in the journal. We were the last customers in the restaurant, Jessica claiming you should always get your money’s worth. The pregnant woman had bid us goodnight, leaving her husband to attend to our needs. As if in response to her thoughts, the owner tip-tapped his way to our table bringing over a saucer laden with sesame cakes.
‘Cadeau de la maison,’ he said. ‘On the house.’
‘Merci,’ Jessica replied, slotting the biro behind her ear and taking a bite. ‘Très généreux de votre part.’
The man hovered a moment and leaning over the table, looked at the journal spread out between us.
‘You look for place to live,’ he ventured in English, with a heavy Chinese accent.
‘Yes,’ Jessica said, her lips thick with crumbs from the sesame-seed cakes. ‘We’ll be starting work in Paris soon and are looking for a place in the centre. Paris 18ème, no doubt. Somewhere near the Lapin Agile.’ She picked up her glass and tilted it, fully aware that it was empty.
‘Nice cakes,’ she said, swallowing down one last hard morsel. ‘A little dry perhaps?’
The man scuttled off, his feet clipping the floor. He returned almost immediately with a full pitcher of red wine.
‘Again, on the house,’ he said.
How generous he was! If he was this kind to all his customers, there wouldn’t be much room for profit. After all, we had only paid 100 francs between us (the equivalent of about £10 or less) and we’d been ensconced there for at least two hours.
The man poured us each a full glass. It was a different cru from the first bottle, full-bodied and fruity, leaving our tongues the colour of bilberries. My head was swimming and as I stared at the picture of the moving waterfall, and listened to the jangling music on a loop, I started to feel hypnotised. Jessica, who hadn’t spent the whole day ironing, and cleaning the children’s bedrooms, was wide awake and quickly fell into a serious sounding discussion with the man. I caught the tail end of what they were saying.
‘My cousin very serious agent immobilier. Good realtor. Do you good deal as customers of mine.’
While I had been sailing beneath a Canton sky filled with blue birds, Jessica had written down a name and an address of a real estate agency on a red paper napkin and set up an appointment for the next day.
‘Ten o’clock tomorrow,’ the man said and clicked away.
‘We don’t have any money,’ I pointed out. ‘Why bother?’
She shrugged. ‘I explained that. Anyway, he says we can sort it out later.’
‘Sort what out later?’
‘The rent, silly.’
‘
Are you sure?’
‘Course I’m sure. We asked and we have received. When you start to live your life by celestial rules, wondrous things can happen. And this is just the beginning!’
* * *
Next morning, I met Jessica at the garden cottage at nine o’clock sharp. We wanted to make a quick getaway. My household duties didn’t officially start until 2 pm, but if Florence saw me she might ask me to sort out the odd-sock basket or something, my presence a dangerous reminder of a hundred jobs that needed doing.
Thoughts of a romantic Parisian flat had kept me awake all night. It seemed incredible to think that somehow there could be a solution to our problems without a deposit or a salary. But then the Chinese restaurant owner, with his pregnant wife, seemed to be a steady family sort. It was clear he’d taken one look at us and seen that we were the genuine scholarly type. The Universe had stepped in to help us. Jessica was right. It had guided us to the restaurant and granted our wishes. It had convinced the restaurant owner that he should give us a chance. Our Faith has been repaid. It was Universal law: ask and you shall receive!
I found Jessica dressed in a tight black skirt and an off-white blouse, which looked suspiciously like her old school uniform shirt. She was wearing high-heel shoes that I’d not seen before (I had an awful feeling they might be Florence’s from her pre-hippy, pre-drumming days) and had morphed into a pretty good copy of Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny with a pair of thick black glasses on her nose, picked up from Oxfam. She didn’t need glasses but liked to dress the part and had a vast array of accoutrements to hand for most occasions.
‘I want a serious bilingual assistant look.’ she said. ‘Got to make sure there’s nothing of the nanny about me. No egg on the collar.’
‘It’s been awhile since there’s been any egg on your collar.’
‘Metaphorically speaking. Anyway, I’ve been in close contact with you, and before I know it, it’ll be flat shoes and flared skirts and my biorhythms all set in time to the nursery clock.’
She was right of course. I was starting to know without looking at my watch that it was time for le goûter.