Coronet Among the Weeds

by Charlotte Bingham

  We had to wear nylon overalls, and everyone was given a different course to cook. Migo had to make strawberry ice-cream and I had to do pot-au-feu, and this American woman had to do savoury tartlets. They sound pretty simple. But they’re not when you’ve got an old French hag shouting at you. This American woman had to roll out her pastry nine times, and then when she started putting the savoury on to the pastry she was so short-sighted she made neat little piles all over the table instead of on the pastry.

  Migo’s strawberry ice-cream was no picnic either. She had to grind away for hours at this eighteenth-century strawberry crushing machine. That’s the thing about French cooking; they never use anything that hasn’t been around for at least fifty years. And they never wash their saucepans. That’s why everything has a better flavour in France. No, honestly, there’s nothing like hygiene for making things tasteless. And, if they buy a Hoover, they carry on about how marvellous it is, then go back to using a broom. They’re traditionalists really.

  I felt quite happy about my pot-au-feu. It just meant cutting up millions of vegetables and chucking them into a saucepan and leaving them.

  When everything had been cooked we had to sit down and eat it and discuss it. People said pretty feeble things, because it’s jolly difficult to think up things to say about something you’ve seen being dropped round the floor or scraped off a stove.

  I was still feeling happy about my old pot-au-feu when I went downstairs to fetch it. Then I had a taste. It was fantastic. All the vegetables were absolutely raw. They’d been cooking for about three hours so you’d have thought they would have been all right. I turned the gas up and tried to boil them a bit more, and poured in tons of salt, but it didn’t make any difference. I felt pretty keyed up about taking it upstairs and having everyone talking about it. I thought of dropping the dish on the stairs, but it was too much trouble. Besides, I’d have to spend hours and hours picking up every pea. The French never waste a thing.

  I gave them all a big smile when I went in and said,

  ‘I think you’re really going to enjoy this.’

  Then I went round holding the dish while everyone helped themselves. There was a lull before they began to eat. I couldn’t take it. I took the dish downstairs and paced up and down the kitchen, praying. I couldn’t hear any screams of rage from upstairs. Then Migo appeared, carrying the dirty plates and screaming with laughter.

  ‘Quick, run before she catches you,’ she said, ‘she’s broken a tooth on one of your carrots.’

  I flew, tearing off my nylon apron, with small green recipes floating from the pockets. I know I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t chivalrous. I should have stayed and done the decent thing. But I couldn’t have afforded to pay for a Frenchwoman’s tooth. Teeth are terribly expensive in France. Honestly, they cost a fortune.

  We had to find another cooking-school after that. Not such a good one, but they didn’t ask for pot-au-feu. Migo said it didn’t matter about that woman’s tooth because it was only a back one. I said, was she sure it was a carrot that broke it, and she swore it was. Rather funny really because you’d never think a carrot could break someone’s tooth. Migo said it was probably the way I cut them up.

  A huge dark-haired weed called Jeremy rang up one evening and asked me to go out with him. I’d met him at a dance during the summer. I thought he was quite nice then. He’d told me all about wanting to be a monk. I think he must have forgotten about it. I was watching at the window for him the following morning, when he came chugging into the courtyard on a motor-bike. I’d never known a man who went about on a motor-bike before. He had one of those hats and goggles and everything. He took them off and did his hair in the mirror of this motor-bike.

  When he came up to fetch me, I introduced him to Madame. She thought he was swoony, because he spoke this marvellous French. It really was brilliant actually. And there’s nothing the French like better than someone speaking marvellous French. I didn’t listen to his French much though. I just kept looking at his head. He had frightfully smooth brown hair all plastered down, except for one bit that stuck straight up in the air like a flag at the back of his head. It kept on waving about as he talked. I don’t think Madame noticed because she was swooning, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

  After a bit of chat with Madame we went off to lunch on his motor-bike. I sat side-saddle at the back, and he put his hat on again, so I couldn’t see this bit of hair. But when we got to the restaurant he took it off, did his hair all over again and left the same old bit sticking up. I wondered if it was his personal aerial. I made myself stop looking at it during lunch. It’s no good letting a bit of hair ruin your lunch. We talked a bit about what we were going to eat, then I said,

  ‘That’s a jolly good motor-bike you’ve got.’

  He looked as if I’d hit him.

  ‘That’s not a motor-bike,’ he said. ‘It’s a Vespa. Don’t you know the difference between a motor-bike and a Vespa?’

  I said, no I didn’t, and he spent the rest of lunch drawing engines on the tablecloth. Then he trundled me off to the Champs Elysées, where he was taking part in this Rally. It was just about to start when we arrived. There were millions of Vespas all decorated with garlands of flowers, and practically every nationality in national costume sitting on them ready to go up the Champs Elysées. It was very gay, it really was. I didn’t mind Jeremy’s bit of hair or anything. I just chatted away with all these types. Then a super-looking Italian came up and asked me if I would sit on the back of his Vespa, because the girl he was meant to be taking felt ill.

  It’s very heady stuff driving up the Champs Elysées on the back of a Vespa, kissing your hand to the cheering crowds. When we reached the top I got off and a gendarme sat me on one of the traffic lights. I couldn’t stop laughing. I had that fantastic feeling when you’re going to burst any minute. You just feel you could pick up everything and take a bite out of it like a piece of cake. Great slices of sky, Champs Elysées, gendarme. Everything.

  Jeremy was frightfully peeved because I hadn’t gone on the back of his Vespa. Actually I never found out what the point of the Rally was, because we went off to tea and never rejoined the others again. I was sad because I liked that Italian. I expect he was pretty boring, but you can’t tell if you don’t speak Italian. Even ‘pass the butter’ is exciting if you can’t understand what they’re saying. I went on going out with Jeremy after that. But after a bit I really couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t only engines the first couple of times, I mean he was really interested in them. He really liked the way engines worked and how fast they went and everything. Madame was frightfully disappointed when I stopped going out with him. Mostly because he kissed her hand, and spoke this wonderful French. I tried to explain about the engines, but she didn’t understand. He didn’t talk to her about engines.

  Of course the French absolutely hate the English. They just pretend to be swoony about them so they can spend their summer holidays in England. And once they are in England, they’re a dead bore. No really. There’s nothing you can show them they haven’t got better in old France. And they spend the whole time writing air-mail letters and reading piles of French magazines. Then when they go back to France they carry on forever about how ‘sensationnel’ everything in England is. And pretend they had fantastic romances with men the dead spit of the Duke of Edinburgh.

  Madame had a huge cleaner called Madame Genevieve who loathed the English. Ever since she spent a month in Eastbourne when she was seventeen. She said she’d never recovered. She used to lie in wait for me every morning pretending to wash up while I ate my breakfast. She always said the same thing to begin with:

  ‘Quand j’étais à Eeeesstbourne…’

  Then we’d be off. Every morning we went from croissants to Agincourt. She said everyone knew that the only good thing in England was le cardi anglais and le duc d’Edinbourg. Honestly. She couldn’t even admit that English loos were better than French ones. She said they were just different. She said, ‘l
a coutume est differente, c’est tout’. I’ll say.

  As the weather got hotter Migo went on a lot of these coach trips to stately homes that her club organised. She loves clubs and evening classes and all that. Honestly, she’d join anything. I once went to a keep-fit class with her. It was terrifying; huge women with fantastic muscles skipping about in swimsuits doing dainty gym swinging clubs and skipping ropes and pointing their toes all over the place. I nearly died I was so embarrassed. Migo loved every minute, she said it did her good psychologically. She came out feeling a new and better person.

  She took me on one of these stately home coach trips once. I went with her and this other friend of hers called Birgitte Applestrohm. She was quite a girl, old Birgitte. Very sexy. You could see she was. Even if you were a girl. I mean, often men swoon and you just can’t see what they’re swooning about, but you could with Birgitte. Migo said that she had great hordes of clean American lovers. Very clean and white-toothed with big chests, Migo said they were. She brought one of these types with her on this coach trip.

  We started off early with a picnic lunch, and I wore a straw hat. This American kept on pushing it on to my nose. He thought he was being really funny. He didn’t only do it once. He kept on doing it, and then splitting his sides. I got a bit fed up I can tell you. Then Migo and I were munching away at our sandwiches during lunch and he came gambolling up with Birgitte and practically sat on top of us, under this tree. It gave Migo indigestion them being under this tree.

  ‘They think they’re the latest thing from Zola, full of milky bosom and hidden desire,’ she said to me. ‘Elma’s giving her sun-kissed embraces.’

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, I’m green,’ said Migo, ‘I can’t wait to lie laughing in the arms of a blond beast with a crew-cut, capped teeth, and a popcorn busting out of his pockets.’

  We walked round the gardens after that because Migo was getting a bit cross. I knew what she meant actually. Too clean people make me feel pretty strange. They’re not like people at all; they’re like vegetables wrapped in cellophane. They don’t look like vegetables at all. I once went to stay with some people whose daughter married a friend of my cousin who happened to be there when they got back from their honeymoon. They were both bronzed and very beautiful, and her mother kept purring on about how marvellous they looked together. And how ecstatic they were and all that. But do you know every time I looked at them, I’m not really joking, I felt peculiar. They were so beautiful they didn’t care about anyone. Not even each other. They were the sort of people I imagine old Hitler would have swooned over.

  If you want to know about old Birgitte, she had to marry that drip. Migo said she didn’t want to, she just thought she ought to. Pretty depressing having to marry someone because you’re pregnant. I think she got to regret those sunny kisses.

  I don’t think I’ll ever have to marry anyone actually. ’Course you can’t be absolutely certain about anything, but I don’t think I will. My family don’t tend towards sex really. I don’t think I do either. I mean I find it frightfully difficult to take sex seriously. No honestly. I think it’s terribly difficult to take sex seriously if you’ve got a sense of humour. If you think of any sex maniacs you know, they haven’t got a real sense of humour. They’ve got a sense of fun all right but not a real sense of humour. The tendency in my family is drink. My brother hasn’t got it; I have but he hasn’t. When I was at school I kept vodka in my tooth mug. And once at a house feast I got pickled on cider because I drank all the prefects’, and no one was ever allowed to have it again. They had to put me to bed singing ‘God Bless the Pope’ at least that was what it sounded like.

  The worst I ever got drunk was when my brother came to see me in Paris. He turned up one evening with a very relaxed friend. He was the most relaxed man you’ve ever met. He was so relaxed at Cambridge he got sent down. Anyway, they were feeling very extravagant because they were only in Paris for the weekend, so we rang up a French bird and arranged to meet her at a cinema in the Champs Elysées. She was very pretty this girl. And very smart. The boys brightened up like mad, and I did too. No, really I did. I like pretty girls, they’re much easier to get on with than ugly ones. I suppose it’s because they usually have a better time.

  The movie we went to see was very sad and beautiful. It was the sort of movie that makes you feel lonely inside. Like when you’re in love. You feel all gone inside and empty. That’s when you get this Tendency, because you just make for a bottle to make you stop thinking about this all gone inside feeling. Anyway, I had this feeling from seeing this movie so when we got to the restaurant I started to drink. It was the perfect place, because there were Russian fiddlers and everyone else was pretty tiddly and singing and laughing. It was the sort of place you want to dance a wild fandango before you’ve been there a minute. We had a few vodkas to begin with, and toasted the Tsar. It was splendid except for the French girl.

  She wouldn’t drink a thing. She sat looking very po saying she’d just have a lemonade. My brother’s friend thought she was sweet. I didn’t. I thought she was a drip. I can’t bear people who won’t be super and wild when you should be. I started talking to everyone and singing. ’Course the more po this girl looked the more wild I got. You know how you do, if someone disapproves. Luckily the boys joined in, so she faded away into a corner until we were very, very tiddly indeed. When we got out of the restaurant she went home by herself in a taxi, and we tried to think where we’d left the car. But this relaxed boy kept on saying to my brother,

  ‘Your sister looks just like Gertrude Lawrence.’

  And we’d all stop thinking about the car and scream with laughter. In the end we got a taxi and went to look for the car. We couldn’t find it, so we went to the boys’ hotel instead. They went upstairs to get something, and I sat in the hall and waited for them. There was an old woman trying to persuade the man behind the desk to let her take a boy with her upstairs. I think she was going to seduce him. Anyhow the man wouldn’t let her. I didn’t blame him. She was screaming drunk and foul. I went to the mirror and did my hair. Suddenly I looked from her face to mine. It was awful. Honestly, I looked as beastly as she did. I thought, I’ll end up like her. It starts off like this. You get drunk because you feel all gone inside, then you end up like her. Probably worse. Lying in a gutter somewhere with people spitting on you. I’ve never been tiddly like that again. I’ve often wanted to be, but I haven’t. Tendencies are no joke.

  I’ll tell you another thing that gives me that all gone feeling. Strauss waltzes. You know, when I dance one of those waltzes I think I’m going to die. Only I don’t, I go on living, and that’s much worse. My last evening in Paris I danced one of those waltzes with the Count. Then we walked round Paris for hours and hours. Pretty corny I suppose. But I wanted to remember Paris exactly as it was then. Then, when I was seventeen. So that when I’m eighty and crippled with age and disillusioned and bitter, I’ll have Paris to look at as if I’m seventeen. Disillusion and bitterness won’t matter. I’ll have one huge beautiful thing to look at without sadness. I’ve often wondered if you could do that with a person. Just remember them as they are when you love them most, and keep that in front of you and never notice when they’re ghastly. ’Course there’s always the risk I won’t get embittered. But it wasn’t a risk I could take with Paris.

  I stood and watched the dawn break over Paris from the Sacré Coeur. Even the Count shut up. It was unimaginable. Cold and silent. And the sky like – I don’t know – heaven, I suppose.

  5

  When I got back to London, my mother said I had to do a secretarial course. I wasn’t too pleased about that I can tell you. I said I didn’t want to do a secretarial course. And she said, well, what did I want to do? I said I wanted to be ‘discovered’. She said, doing what? So I did a secretarial course.

  My real trouble is I’m absolutely normal, and I’ve got no ambition. Don’t think I feel all right about being normal, because I promi
se you I don’t. I don’t go about being smug about it, honestly. It’s not just now I’m normal. I mean I haven’t just begun to be normal. I’ve been completely normal my whole life. Honestly, ever since I was born.

  I suppose it began when I was born. First of all I was completely healthy. I wasn’t purple, and no one was worried about whether I was going to live or anything, and my mother didn’t hate me. It would have been all right being healthy if my parents hadn’t wanted me, but they had. That was a bad start. Then when I got a bit older I was good-tempered and had a good appetite, and did perfectly normal things like running away from school. It’s been a great burden to me. Being normal. And I’ve never had a neurosis, no really, not one. And no complexes either. So that’s why I submitted to doing a secretarial course. And if you want the truth, that’s the worst thing about doing a secretarial course. Having to be normal. And going round with everyone else who is being normal and doing a secretarial course too. It worried me no end, going round with these normal people. But I didn’t do anything about it to begin with.

  My mother knew about me being in love with this actor, but she didn’t do anything about it until one evening when we were alone. Then she began to ask me what happened in Paris. I didn’t know what to say. When people talk about things they seem to distort them. Everything gets boiled down to motives or generalised. You just feel an enormous cliché: the eternal young innocent in love with the older man. And it’s not that at all. You know you’re the old, old story, but that’s not it. You’re not really innocent, he’s not really old. It’s just that he’s perfect.