by Mavis Cheek
In her bedroom she pushed the cardboard box and its expensive contents safely under the bed, where she lay, wide awake all night, worrying that the bed would collapse upon it. She was in a twin state of excitement - first for the effect her new self might have on the world, second for the examination. But it was the first which, as the French would say, called up her passion ...
Somewhere, perhaps, the Goddess of Bluestockings, bored out of her skull with it all, went to sleep. Because Audrey never did sit the examination. Having not slept a wink all night she finally fell asleep about an hour before she was due to get up. Which meant that she was late for everything. Late for the Northern line to take her to Embankment, late for the District line to take her to Victoria. Which put her in a rebellious frame of mind. Why did they make you go to Brighton? What was all the fuss about? Why not just give her the job and try her out? And did she want the stinking old job anyway - all those old biddies in cardigans still talking about the war while they made foreign connections for other people and never wanted to travel themselves.
As she tip-tapped her kitten-heeled way along the platform unable to take anything but the smallest of steps due to the tightness of the skirt - the train whistle blew. So far she had not passed one carriage with a spare seat, except the first-class carriages of course. When the whistle blew again she hopped on and began the slow, pushing, prodding journey back along corridor after corridor of the crowded second class to arrive, eventually, breathless and pink of cheek, at yet more first class. Just as she was about to turn away a guard sprang to attention and slid open a carriage door for her.
'Madam,' he said, and saluted.
In she went.
So that was what happened? She might not be dressed like an over-iced cake or a horse but she knew how to borrow a gesture. She gave a little queenly movement of her hand, and settled herself elegantly into the corner by the window. The guard saluted again, and slid the door shut very smartly. She crossed her legs and gazed, from beneath her jaunty little beret, across to the carriage's only other occupant - a man already busy at his papers, his brown leather briefcase flapped open on the seat next to him and his fountain pen in his hand. He was much absorbed.
He wore a dark suit, and white shirt, a slate-blue silk tie and his thinning hair was dark grey. His shoes were black and very well polished and on one finger he wore a black and gold signet ring with an E. She took all this in and as she stared, he suddenly looked up. He raised an eyebrow. Then he smiled. And there was no doubt about it, it was an appreciative smile.
'Good morning,' he said.
And Audrey, completely taken up with her new role in life, said, 'Bonjour.'
To which he smiled broadly and said, 'Je suis ravi de recontrer une charmante bilingue...'
She then looked down at her hands and went a very delicate shade of pink as she answered. 'Merci, je suis flattie, mais je ne pense pas parlez assez bien francais pour meriter ce compliment.'
After which there was no stopping them. The fountain pen was laid aside, the briefcase flap was closed, and the charmante bilingue and the one who was charmed by her, leaned back in their seats and talked. In French. 'If only Patrick could see me now ...' she thought.
The man's name was Edwin Bonnard and he was In Business. Les investissements. He worked in Paris where he had his own offices but he had many British connections. His mother was English and lived as a semi-invalid in a home near Brighton, his father was French, thought he was Maurice Chevalier, and lived dangerously in Nice, Biarritz, Paris and - occasionally - since it was the home of the family chateau - in Perpignan. Obviously Edwin Bonnard was travelling down to see his mother who liked to lunch at the Metropole but he was also interested in buying an apartment on the seafront to save himself the tedium of staying in an hotel on these visits. He was married with two children, both at the Sorbonne. And the elegant linguist?
The elegant linguist - working on an instinct that told her not to speak about Patrick nor about her mother and father and, still reeling mentally from the use of his easy use of the word chateau, not about her humble home either - brought herself back to the realms of reality and explained that she was sitting an examination in French - and why. She felt that to mention the telephone exchange was acceptable. It was, after all, her job - and a very decent one.
He put up his hands in horror at the very idea of the elegant linguist having to do such a thing as sit an examination. He said that her grammar and her pronunciation were impeccable. She explained that unless she passed such an examination she could not further her career on the - she hesitated, aware suddenly that perhaps after all a telephone exchange did not go well with a Chanel suit - business side of things. She managed a little shrug which she felt was quite French and which she hoped embraced the world at large.
The man listened intently, raising an eyebrow here, giving a little sympathetic cluck there, smiling all the time. As they came nearer to their destination he gave a little start as if he had just remembered something, slapped the flat of his palm on his knee, and said, as if he had made up his mind, that he himself was looking for an assistant in his Paris office. Might she consider the position?
The elegant linguist became, frankly, neither. Her mouth was open in quite a large O - and words - English or foreign - would not come. Breathe - she reminded herself - and just about managed it. She distinctly heard her mother's voice saying 'White Slave Trade' but decided that if it was such a thing, at least it was exciting. Better than sitting at home and moping and forever thinking of Patrick. She put her chin on her gloved hand, her head on one side, and listened hard.
It seemed, according to Mr Edwin Bonnard, that there was nothing much to being a personal assistant. She would have to make sure his diary was kept up to date, know how to answer the telephone (they both laughed at the absurdity of this and Audrey said, with spirit, that she jolly well ought to) and get him to the places he was required to attend, on time. She would have to buy gifts on the right dates, and send greeting and thanks and all that kind of social thing that women were so good at. Audrey looked at him doubtfully. Then she thought of Patrick. Always when she thought of him the word reject floated into her head and made her tap her toes nervously. Reject, reject. But she need not be. She could do this job. After all, she had done all those things for Patrick - once. Remembered when it was his mother's birthday, when the film started, when he should return his library books. Not hard at all. She enjoyed being useful. So she said she would think about it, which - they both understood - meant Yes. Then, buoyed up, Audrey asked Mr Edwin Bonnard (Edwin, please) if he was related to the painter, Pierre Bonnard. She did not say that she had heard of him because she had once had a boyfriend who took her to see some of his work. She just let it trip off her tongue as if the question were entirely her own.
Mr Edwin Bonnard raised an impressed eyebrow this time and smiled. He was very distantly related to the painter but, alas, he had only one small pastel by him, a smaller version of the famous Woman and Dog. Audrey nodded. She remembered it from Patrick's books and she liked it. But when Edwin started to talk about Bonnard's intimate depictions of the Bourgeois, Audrey nervously changed the subject. Patrick used the word Bourgeois a lot too, and she did not want to think about that side of things. Being Bourgeois was not a good thing. And she had a nasty feeling she still was. Whatever the opposite of it, it seemed to Audrey it was largely to do with taking off your clothes and laughing at people who kept theirs on. The Bonnard pictures Patrick showed her seemed like pictures of her parents and their friends and their ordinary homes. Not the proper kind of subjects for art - not like the Elgin Marbles or Leonardo. Patrick used to say these paintings were like bridges - their strength being as much to do with what was hidden as what was shown. Patrick.
To change the subject she asked Edwin about the apartment he was considering buying and she was thinking how lovely it would be to have somewhere of her own to live. A little bedroom, a little separate room, maybe, to eat and read in
, a kitchen, didn't matter how small, and - impossible dream - a bathroom of her own. The sort of place she once dreamed of sharing with Patrick. She imagined the bed, large and lacy, like Lucille Ball's, but it turned into something small and familiar, Patrick's, and she remembered the last time she saw him. It still hurt and she was still his reject.
Edwin suggested that better than describing the apartment, and since he had about three quarters of an hour before he was due to meet his mother's car, perhaps she would accompany him to see it? And they could talk on the way about Paris? He was entirely serious in his offer. It was clear from the way he looked at her that he knew the truth. If she went with him now she would miss her examination. Her heart thudded. She experienced a very peculiar mixture of feelings - fear, excitement, joy - and something else that felt like surrender. She was weary, suddenly, of her old ways. Weary of living a life that looked like a Bonnard painting. Her mother would sit in her kitchen chair by the fire most evenings, and knit. Then, after tea, Dad and she watched a bit of television. Quite contentedly. But just occasionally Dolly would look up at nothing in particular and smack her lips and say to no one in particular, ‘I fancy a little bit of something and I don't know what...' And that was exactly how Audrey felt. She wanted a bit of something and she didn't know what. Maybe what she wanted was a bit of the White Slave Trade? She nodded, and agreed, she would like to see the apartment very much.
There was nothing unseemly about the visit. Not the slightest hint of The Sheikh. She felt slightly disappointed. A little bit of her thought that it would be quite exciting to be made to lie in silken sheets and eat oranges (if that is what they did) - to have her clothes ripped off and be given spangled see-through bloomers and a sequinned bolero in their place. Fairy stories. Fantasy Land. She knew all about living in those. So she said yes in her heart. What did she have to lose?
'It will be better,' he said, 'when we get rid of all these mouldings and cornices and ornamental claptrap...' Audrey felt warmed by the way he said 'we'.
'What do you think I should do with these windows?' he asked. She walked over to them. They reminded her of Madame Minette's floor-to-ceiling windows, only there were many more of them. At the moment they were swathed in heavy, shiny, patterned curtains, as complex as a dowager's dance frock. She thought that she could never live where there were little square windows ever again. She studied them critically and remembered Patrick. Patrick had always wanted shutters and blinds at his windows. 'Shutters’ she said, 'and plain white blinds.'
'Bravo!' said Edwin, clapping.
The estate agent looked horrified. "The apartment is sold with the curtaining’ he reminded his client.
Edwin dismissed this with a wave of his hand.
He told the estate agent he would take the place and he told Audrey, as they strolled back towards the Metropole, with Edwin holding her hand through the crook of his arm, which felt very pleasant because she trusted him now, that she was just the sort of thing he needed to bounce his ideas off. Audrey said, Oh Yes, because, of course, she had been used to that with Patrick. And then she could not help adding, 'But what a shame to waste all that curtaining.'
Then Edwin laughed a delighted laugh and stopped and looked at the sea, still holding her hand in the warmth of his arm. 'What would you do with them if I gave them to you?' he asked.
She said, 'I could make a dress. Well - I could make two dresses really'
"Then they shall be yours.'
He put his briefcase down on the steps of the hotel and held on to both her hands. 'I will see you back here at five’ he said. He looked anxious. 'And if you get lost you must take a taxi and I will pay.' It was almost worth getting lost for but she had no intention of going very far. Supposing he wasn't there, supposing something had happened and he had gone back to London early, she would have to pay the fare herself and that would be the last of her wages for the week.
‘I think I shall go and look round the Pavilion. That'll do me.'
‘I am so sorry’ he said, 'that I cannot buy you lunch.' He shrugged. The shrug said, 'Mothers'.
"That's all right’ she said. 'And I hope your mother enjoys herself.'
She was still in a state of shock when she walked back later to meet him. She took it very slowly because she was so early, the last hour of the afternoon having dragged almost unbearably. She wanted to be in France, now. She walked back in the lowering light, with the waves gently breaking, the seagulls making their last screeches of the day and the streets bustling with people going home from their work. She felt very happy and not at all guilty at having missed the exam. Indeed, she felt happier than she had felt for years, despite the ache in her heart that was Patrick. How he would have hated the Pavilion. More than anything, she realised, as she walked slowly back, she wanted to stop seeing the world through Patrick's eyes.
They re-met at five. Edwin took her hand and put it in the crook of his arm again and led her up the steps and into the big hotel. It looked very peaceful as well as grand, she thought, after the glaring excesses of the Pavilion. Edwin asked her what she thought of it and she said that, on the whole, she preferred somewhere like this to that.
'I looked at each and every thing that was on show’ she said thoughtfully, 'and I wouldn't have wanted any of it.'
That pleased him. He told her that everything glorious and visionary stopped with the reign of Charles II. Yet another bell rang in her head. 'He liked Rubens, didn't he?' she said (Patrick liked Rubens) -she had tried to like all those fat women but they looked ill to her -very flushed ... 'No’ said Edwin. "That was his father.'
'Oh yes,' she said. 'Now I remember. Charles II was Wren
He looked at her in some surprise.
'I'd like to go to Paris,' she said. "They were Heroic builders, the French. They invited Bernini to build for them, you know.' If she said this slightly parrot fashion he did not seem to notice. 'But though he came and designed a new bit for the Louvre they never used it. But Wren was there in about sixteen-sixty-nine and he saw the plans and he said that the Parisian School of Architecture was probably the best of his day ...'
'You have a knowledge of such things?' said Edwin.
She liked the fact that he was surprised. ‘I helped someone through their history of architecture exam once’ she said in such a way that no further comment was required.
Edwin just said, 'Oh.'
They drank a cocktail in the hotel bar before he deposited her back on a train, with his card firmly pushed into her little Chanel bag, and her own telephone number and address pushed firmly into his wallet. And home she went to tell mother.
Mother, who up until now had thought this French thing was just a bit of a way to get over the miseries, was distraught. 'You can't go to Paris’ she said, horrified and very firm about it.
'Why not?' asked Audrey, serpentining her hips like crazy and pointing out one toe.
'He's a stranger. You'll never be heard of again.'
'He's a very respectable man. He's married with two children at university and he needs a bilingual personal assistant.'
'It will do you no good in the end,' said her mother.
'Why?'
'Because you've got to think about the future.'
Audrey looked puzzled. 'But that's exactly what I am doing,' she said. She changed hips and pointed her other toe. She was beginning to feel a new sensation as if she had actually grown a few inches. 'What's the point of speaking French in London?' she asked. 'Mother - it is a good job.'
'What will people think?' asked Dolly, lost for anything else to say.
Audrey re-angled the beret a little more jauntily, staring into the mirror over the hearth.
'Let them eat cake,' she said.
Her mother stared at her blankly. 'And what on earth has cake got to do with anything? You can't even bake a decent sponge.'
Audrey did not look at her, happily posing and posturing in front of the mirror, like a girl who was not to be pitied.
'And get
that suit back to your teacher before you singe it,' added her mother, feeling that somehow, in some indefinable way, it was the suit's fault.
When all else failed Mrs Wapshott invoked her husband. 'We'll see what your father has to say about this,' she said grimly. But Audrey was unconcerned. 'I'm over twenty-one,' she said, and, she thought, I am Audrey Hepburn.
She handed her mother his card. 'You or Dad can ring him up and talk to him if you like.'
But neither had the courage.
When the parcel arrived Audrey and her mother put it on the kitchen table and circled around it for at least five minutes - prodding and poking and lifting flaps of brown paper, until Mr Wapshott came in and told them not to be so daft and to get on with it. Audrey found the sewing scissors and her mother cut the string. The parcel was addressed to Audrey but that made no difference, Mrs Wapshott pulled the packing apart. By the time she reached the tissue level, Audrey realised what it was. She began to laugh, a forgotten sound.
And a frisson of something called courage, confidence, certainty entered her. He had kept his promise - even in this small, humorous action, he had remembered what he said and stood by it. He had sent her the curtains from the Brighton apartment. He could be trusted.