by Janey Fraser
‘This is all because of our little chat the other month, isn’t it, ma fille? Because you made me tell you something that I had not wished to.’
‘Made you?’ Marie-France couldn’t help laughing. ‘No one can make you do anything, Maman. You said you wanted to tell me something so don’t start distorting the facts the way you always do. You should have been a lawyer.’
‘Distort the facts?’
It was always the same! Whenever she put her mother on the spot, she would repeat a phrase to give herself more time. It was a clever trick and one which Marie-France herself had adopted over the years.
‘You exaggerate, Maman. Come on. You know you do and that’s why you’re – usually – such fun to be with. My friends love you because you’re different from their mothers.’
It was true, even if the friends’ mothers didn’t trust Collette with their husbands. Still, the compliment had done something to mollify the initial anger in her mother’s face.
‘The letter is from an English au pair agency,’ continued Marie-France firmly, popping on her sunglasses even though they were in the kitchen with its old range and the view out of the window towards the rundown chateau in the distance. Wearing sunglasses indoors was another of her mother’s old tricks she had picked up. It hid your eyes so it was easier to tell a fib. Or two.
‘I’ve applied for a job.’ She raised her chin defiantly. ‘It’s only for six months.’
‘Six months?’ Her mother stood up, gripped the side of the kitchen table and then sank down again, moaning as though in a Greek tragedy. Marie-France leaned across and took her mother’s hands. They were incredibly small, belying her mother’s mental strength, yet also brown from the warm summer sunshine that they enjoyed in this part of France, so close to the Swiss border. Lovingly, she stroked them, as though calming the pulse which was beating furiously.
‘I just don’t want to see you hurt, that is all,’ murmured her mother.
Bon! When her mother reached the tearful, plaintive stage, it usually meant she had given in. ‘I’m not going to be,’ she replied with a strength that she didn’t feel inside.
There was a shaking of those dark curls, which mirrored her own. ‘Ever since you were a little girl, Marie-France, you have put that wall of steel up around yourself. I understand why. But you cannot keep it up for ever. Trust me, I know.’
Her eyes moistened and for one awful moment, Marie-France feared the tears were genuine. But then her mother, in one swift deft move, ripped open the envelope which she had foolishly left on the table unattended.
‘Jilly’s Au Pair Agency,’ her mother read out loud. Then she frowned as she took in the address at the top of the letter. ‘Corrywood? Mon Dieu! I do not believe it. You are going to Corrywood?’
Marie-France’s heart began to thump again as she recalled how she had trawled through every ad online to search for one as near to the place as possible. When she’d found an agency that was actually based in the town, she hadn’t been able to believe her luck. ‘That was a coincidence. I just found it on the net.’
‘Coincidence!’ Her mother leaped out of her chair again, knocking a plate of warm croissants on to the floor, snorting and waving the envelope in the air as though it was a headless trophy. ‘You expect me to believe that! There are hundreds of au pair agencies in England. I know what you have done. You have chosen to go back to the same place where—’
‘Please don’t be upset.’ Kneeling down to pick up the croissants – a good dusting would soon put them right – she spoke soothingly; something she’d learned to do as a child to minimise her only parent’s juvenile and often erratic behaviour.
‘The person – people – in question might not even be there.’ She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture towards the magnificent magnolia tree outside. As a little girl, she used to sit under it and catch the petals as they fell, imagining that they were velvet slippers. ‘They might have moved away.’
‘And if they haven’t? What happens then?’
Marie-France felt a thud of excitement in her throat. ‘Then they will get to know the truth, won’t they?’
Her mother shook her head vigorously so that her tumbling curls quivered in sympathy. ‘I don’t think you’re doing the right thing, petite.’ Her voice dropped. ‘You could break up a family.’
‘So what?’ Marie-France felt her voice come out in a low growl. ‘I do not care. They hurt you. They need to pay.’
Her mother reached for the packet of cigarettes which she had promised to give up on her next birthday. ‘And what about your place at the Sorbonne?’
Marie-France looked away. For as long as she could remember, she had wanted to read psychology and when she had achieved her grades, she’d been so excited. But then had come that long conversation just before her birthday and suddenly all her priorities had changed. ‘I have asked them to defer it for a year and they agreed.’
Her mother spluttered. ‘You did all this without telling me?’
‘It’s my life! No one else’s.’
‘Tu es impossible.’ She stubbed out her cigarette in her bowl even though she’d only just lit it up and turned her attention to the letter. ‘I just hope you will not dig up any worms, as the English say. What kind of home are you going to?’
‘I don’t know yet. That’s why the agency has posted me this letter. It contains details of the families on her books who have expressed interest in me.’
Her mother sighed. ‘Then I suppose, if you are determined, we will have to take a look.’
We? Already her mother was scanning a photograph of two parents and three children, grouped around an assortment of sparkling new-looking bicycles. Marie-France’s heart lurched with jealousy. Look at that kid in front, grinning like that. Bet she hadn’t been bullied at school for not having a father or a new bike.
‘Three children are too much,’ said her mother firmly. ‘You would not have a moment to yourself. Besides, look at the circles under the woman’s eyes. It is what you get when you have a big family.’
Marie-France knew this was her cue to compliment Maman on her own complexion. The irony was that she knew, all too well, that her mother would swap her exquisite looks in a second for a more conventional lifestyle with a husband and more children.
The two of them spent the next hour going through the forms that the agency had sent in reply to her application. Just as well it was a Sunday morning, otherwise her mother would be working at the chic little dress shop in the nearest town of Sevingy. She had climbed her way up to the position of manageress from sales assistant since Marie-France had started school. During the holidays, the owner – who sympathised with her employee’s situation – allowed her to bring her daughter in and Marie-France would sit for hours in the back room, fingering the beautiful silks and linens reverently. Sometimes, English tourists would come in and she would marvel at how well her maman spoke the language. Perhaps it was because of that that she concentrated so hard on her English at school so that she achieved a high mark in her baccalauréat.
‘I rather like this one,’ said Marie-France, handing her mother a family introduction letter together with a photograph of a sharp-featured woman with two children sitting primly on a sofa.
Her mother gave a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘A teacher? Too bossy.’
Marie-France glared across the old dark pine table. ‘Who’s going there? You or me?’
‘But her dress is like a sack. And she wants you to work two evenings a week!’
‘That’s standard.’
‘Not in my day.’ Her mother sighed dreamily. ‘We had a wonderful time! All those parties! All those young handsome Englishmen.’
‘I thought,’ said Marie-France cutting in, ‘that’s where you went wrong.’
Her mother’s eyes fixed on hers soulfully. ‘You might look gentille, Marie-France, but you have a heart of stone at times.’
She stared hard back. ‘Just like you? And before you start muttering about
respect, remind yourself that you were the one who taught me to stand up for myself.’
There was another deep, dramatic sigh. Standing up, her mother flounced towards the back door, lighting up another cigarette. ‘There aren’t that many to choose from. I don’t think much of your agency.’
‘It’s small.’ Marie-France felt almost defensive of it. ‘I don’t want a big one that just puts you anywhere and doesn’t keep an eye on you.’
‘Rubbish.’ Her mother was puffing furiously now, blowing smoke out into the garden towards the mountains in the distance. ‘You just like it because of where it is situated.’ She picked up another picture; this time of a very skinny woman standing next to a good-looking man with swept-back dark hair. In front of them grinned two children. The girl looked rather cute.
‘Regarde, Marie-France! This one already has a cook and a gardener and a driver and a ten-bedroom house! She wants someone to look after the children in the holidays and then amuse them after school.’ Her mother’s eyes glinted! ‘There is a swimming pool. Fantastique! This is the one for you. There will be no work for you and you can have a holiday at the same time. Trust me, Marie-France. I have an instinct for this sort of thing!’
Marie-France knew all about her mother’s instincts. It was instinct that had made her move out of Paris all those years ago when her daughter was a baby and bury herself, far from her disapproving family, in this tiny village. It was instinct that made her push her daughter into extra English lessons and get a job in a Swiss hotel during the holidays, ‘in order to improve your prospects, chérie’. And it was instinct that made her mother disapprove of Thierry Baccall.
Marie-France had met Thierry at school and, for some years, he had been just a friend. No more than that, she used to warn herself, although there had always been a dangerous spark between them. They were in the same class for many subjects and when she lent him a pencil (he was always losing his) or crib notes for a test (for which he was invariably unprepared), there were times when his hand brushed hers and she felt a thrill passing through her.
Of course, he was not the right boy for her; not with that slightly greasy lock of hair which flopped over his eyes and the noisy motorbike which he drove too fast. When he began dating one of her friends, Marie-France felt sick with jealousy followed by relief when the romance ended after a few months. Then last year, on her seventeenth birthday, when she had had a party in the village hall, he had come up to her without speaking and drawn her to him during a slow dance. After that, they had not looked back, despite her mother.
‘He is not right for you,’ she would say. ‘He is a labourer! Such dirty hands! How can you think of making your future with a man who has no intention of going to university?’
Marie-France, hurt by the barbs, would reply that Thierry was a mechanic; a good one whom she admired for his skills.
‘Both in the bedroom as well as the work shed, you mean,’ her mother would retort and Marie-France would turn on her heels, making no attempt to deny something that was true, and then for a few days there would be a coolness between the two women until they made up.
Now, nearly three weeks after the first batch of family photographs and details, Dawn Green with the handsome husband and swimming pool had sent her a welcome letter, together with a waxy crayon drawing of a daisy (‘The children made this for you!’) as a formal acceptance. Hopefully she had made the right choice but even if she hadn’t, what did it matter?
All she needed was a base for her investigations. Marie-France shivered and not just from the thought of her task ahead. It was also because it was finally time to break the news to Thierry. Until now, she’d kept it quiet from him in case he tried to make her change her mind. So she waited until the following weekend when he arrived as usual on his motorbike to collect her.
‘Would you mind,’ she said after he had kissed her with the same passion and fervour that he had done on that first night on the dance floor, ‘if we just drove somewhere to talk instead of going out to dinner?’
He raised his handsome eyebrows – solid and dark – and glanced at the window behind her. ‘Somewhere where your mother will not spy on us, you mean?’
Marie-France turned to follow his gaze just in time to catch a flash of her mother moving away. ‘Absolutment!’
Laughing, she put on the spare blue and silver helmet that he had brought for her and climbed up on the bike, clutching the back of his leather jacket and feeling moist the way she always did when their bodies were close. I am going to miss this, she told herself. I am going to miss him so much.
They drove up the winding narrow lane that led towards the mountains, stopping at a high point just above the village but below the snowy peaks. In the distance, she could see the lake which the English referred to as Lake Geneva but which the French called Léman. Gently, he removed her helmet, his thick rough fingers stumbling over the catch, before cupping her chin with his hands and looking down at her. ‘You have something to tell me?’
Her body melted the way it always did when he touched her. Silently, she nodded.
‘Would this have anything to do with the rumours that are flying around the village?’
Rumours? But her mother had promised not to tell anyone the news until she, herself, had told Thierry!
‘Rumours,’ he continued, brushing her cheek with his lips, ‘that you are leaving us to go to England?’
She nodded. ‘I have to. Because …’ She stopped. ‘You know why.’
He nodded. Thierry was the only person she had spoken to about her mother’s revelation and he’d been incredibly comforting. But it hadn’t been enough.
‘I love you, Thierry. I really do. But I have to do this before I get on with the rest of my life.’
He nodded again, pulling her towards him. The cold leather of his jacket helped to cool down her cheeks, which were burning. Then he stepped back. ‘You will come back to me?’ Suddenly, his eyes flickered in self-doubt. ‘You will not fall in love with a rich English lord?’
She laughed. ‘Of course not. It’s you, Thierry.’ Her hands began to unbutton his jacket. ‘You know it’s always been you.’
His hands held her breasts, tracing the outline of her nipples with thick, tender fingers. Usually, this worked for Marie-France. But for some reason, she couldn’t relax. Instead, her mind kept going back to the scene with her mother, a couple of months earlier.
In the early part of her life, Marie-France had thought it was quite normal not to have a father. It was not as though she needed anyone else: she had her mother. Her mad, infuriating but amazing mother who could dance around the kitchen and sing songs with her one minute, and then, with a look, send her to bed without supper if she spoke out of turn.
But when she started school, it all changed. ‘My maman says I am not to play with you because you do not have a father,’ announced one of her classmates.
Marie-France had pretended not to care but when she went back home that night, she repeated the conversation to her mother. Collette’s brow had darkened and the following morning, she had marched down to the small school with her daughter – much to Marie-France’s embarrassment – and demanded to see the headmaster. But the teasing continued so Collette had visited the girl’s mother. Quite what was said, no one knew, but suffice it to say that no one tormented her again.
When Marie-France herself dared to ask why she was the only child in the village not to have a papa apart from one other girl whose father had been accidentally killed during an army exercise, her mother gave her the same tragic dark look she had doubtless given the headmaster and the girl’s mother. ‘He left us,’ she said. ‘Before you were born. I do not know where he is and I do not care.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘He hurt me so much, chérie, that it pains me to talk about it. Please do not raise the subject again.’
So Marie-France had respected her wishes, although it didn’t stop her fantasising about her father. Maybe he was very rich and his family had not wanted him t
o marry an ordinary working-class girl from Paris? Perhaps he had changed his mind and was now looking for them? She spent hours in her room, working out different scenarios in her head. When she was old enough, she decided, she would try and find him somehow. Then, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, her mother brought up the topic, completely out of the blue.
‘It is time,’ Collette had announced, as though it was time for dinner; a meal which usually consisted of a simple bowl of soup in winter or an omelette with salad. Beautiful women like them, her mother had always warned, had a duty not to get fat.
Marie-France had looked up from the floor of the small, snug sitting room with its real log fire where she had been trawling through an exercise book for a test the next day. ‘Time for what?’
Her mother had put down the magazine she was flicking through. ‘Time that you knew about your father, of course.’
Marie-France felt a quickening in her chest as she settled herself at her mother’s feet, not daring to say a word in case she changed her mind. ‘I was a young girl in England.’ Her mother’s voice took on a dreamy tone. ‘I was only eighteen and I fell in love. But after wards, he – and his family – they do not want to know.’
Then she stopped. ‘That is all.’
‘All?’ Marie-France could have wept with disappointment. ‘How can that be all? What was his name?’
Her mother shrugged. ‘That one is difficult.’
‘That is ridiculous! Don’t play games with me. You must have known his name unless … Mon Dieu. Please do not tell me it was a one-night stand.’
‘What do you think I am?’ Her mother had glared at her. ‘If you must know, his name was … it was John Smith.’
So her father was English! Marie-France’s mind began to race. Her mother was going to close the subject. She could tell the signs! It was essential that she got in one more question fast if she was ever going to track down her father. ‘Where in England? Where did he live?’