The idea slowly took hold until, finally, at a loose end while my boss was in a late-afternoon video-conference meeting, I decided to take the plunge. Gnawing on a biro – a filthy habit I’ve never been able to kick – I stared out of the window above my desk, deep in thought. I needed an angle. ‘The secret diary of a secretary’ sounded less than riveting and, more to the point, I didn’t much like discussing my job with other people, as a rule. It was well paid, granted, even reasonably challenging, due to the bilingual nature of my work, but I still cringed every time I was called upon to say what I did for a living. I was ashamed of it, when all was said and done. Somewhere along the line I couldn’t help feeling I had squandered my potential, sacrificed any hope of having a career, as opposed to a job, to the greater goal of living in France. The logical thing to do, I decided, was to focus on where I lived instead, the sole aspect of my life of which people tended to be jealous; to write a ‘fish out of water’ account of life in Paris.
All I needed now was a title. I liked the idea of writing under a nom de plume, not because I had anything much to hide, but because it seemed to be an unwritten rule of the game. The name ‘petite anglaise’ popped into my head immediately, along with an explanatory subtitle ‘the diary of an English thirtysomething in Paris’.
Creating a blog was astonishingly simple: in a few short, sharp clicks I signed up for an account, named my blog and chose a rudimentary template. Seconds later, my alter ego was born. All that remained now was to dream up something to actually write about.
It would be a harmless hobby, I thought to myself; my jardin secret; my virtual playground. Little did I know I had just unleashed a force which, within less than a year, would turn my life, and the lives of those dearest to me, inside out.
‘Have you ever heard of Belle de Jour?’ I asked Amy a few days later, easing the filling back into my overstuffed sandwich with a teaspoon. I got on well enough with most people from the office, but as I’d had little social life to speak of since Tadpole was born, there were few colleagues I saw outside work. Amy, a fragile-looking brunette with a porcelain complexion, was the exception: we’d become friendly when she qualified as an accountant and moved up to the top floor, and we’d fallen into the habit of eating lunch together in the office kitchen.
We were seated on the stylish but singularly uncomfortable stools my boss had picked out when he refurbished the office, with our feast laid out on a smoked-glass table. I’d treated myself to an egg and bacon sandwich from Lina’s, the closest thing to an English breakfast I was likely to find on the avenue de l’Opéra, although the egg was mashed with mayonnaise, and the bacon was in the form of crunchy little flakes, too small to be satisfying.
‘Belle de Jour… Do you mean the film, with Catherine Deneuve?’ Amy replied, frowning as I shook my head, my mouth full.
‘No, it’s the name of a blog as well,’ I clarified, once I’d finished chewing. ‘An internet diary thing. I was reading it the other day – it’s addictive stuff, it really draws you in. There was an article about it in the Guardian.’
‘Never heard of it… or of blogs for that matter,’ Amy said. ‘Although “blog” sounds like some sort of nasty disease to me…’ Our conversation drifted away from my latest discovery, which didn’t seem to interest Amy much, and on to more usual subjects: deconstructing the previous night’s episode of EastEnders, moaning about work, comparing French boyfriend stories, or wishing we were outdoors catching a few rays instead of cooped up inside an air-conditioned office so chilly that a cardigan had to be worn at all times. Good, I thought, I’m not the only one around here who didn’t know what a blog was. Keeping my new hobby a secret shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.
I wrote my first entry a couple of days later, off work with a suffocating summer cold. I called it ‘Calpol and Suppositories’ and, though it was hardly a masterpiece, I managed both to be scathing about the French medical profession’s tendency to prescribe pointless drugs for common ailments –many administered via the rectum – and to convey an unhealthy amount of disdain for my job. I read and re-read the four short paragraphs, took a deep breath, and clicked on ‘publish’. I don’t think a single person actually stumbled upon petite anglaise that day but seeing my sentences published online gave me a tiny thrill nonetheless.
I remember all the first times clearly. The first ever comment, on my ninth entry, a week later, in which I described seeing a cockroach scuttle into the recesses of the office coffee machine. (‘That is nasty, and too much information,’ said Cass, a faceless reader from America.) The first message I received on the petite anglaise email address set up for this purpose, was from a fellow blogger who called himself Tim. The first time another blogger added petite anglaise to their list of favourite reads.
A few weeks later, an email popped into my inbox informing me that the Guardian newsblog had elected to feature petite anglaise as Blog Pick of the Day. I navigated over to their site, nauseous with excitement, to read just exactly what had been said. It was short and sweet – ‘a rather elegant new blog written by a woman who describes herself as a British thirtysomething in Paris’ – but the brief mention brought readers in droves. That day I drifted around the office in a delighted daze, on my own private cloud. ‘Rather elegant,’ I repeated under my breath as I went to the kitchen to fetch a celebratory hot chocolate, smiling a secret smile. No longer ‘just a secretary’ or ‘just a mother’, I was now ‘a blogger’ too. Petite anglaise was a secret I hugged close, something to fortify me through mind-numbing hours of photocopying and typing, through long evenings trapped alone in the apartment while Mr Frog worked and Tadpole slept.
‘I think it’s great,’ said Mr Frog that evening, wresding with a particularly slippery piece of sushi while I sneaked the last of the moist pink flakes of ginger into my mouth. We were on a rare outing, to a Japanese restaurant in the shadow of the Saint Jean de Belleville church. Tadpole was staying with Mr Frog’s parents – two whole hours away by train – while Tata holidayed with her family in Algeria. It was the first time we’d been separated for a whole week and, while I savoured the blissful calm and the opportunity to wrestle back some of my freedom, 1 also felt guilty for admitting, even to myself, that I was enjoying the break. ‘I mean, you’ve only been writing this thing a month.’ He reached for the missing ginger and frowned in puzzlement. ‘And you’ve already had a thousand visitors. It’s unbelievable. I’m sorry I don’t get more chance to read it, but you know, things get so frantic at work…’
‘It’s okay. I know reading has never been your thing – especially in English.’ That was something of an understatement. The most expensive piece of furniture in our apartment was a Habitat bookcase, stacked three layers deep with my paperback fiction. Mr Frog owned five, maybe six books, but to my knowledge had only actually read one of them.
I wasn’t being entirely truthful, because I did mind, just a little. I’d found a hobby I loved; I’d created something of which I was beginning to feel justly proud. Was it too much to hope that he might share my enthusiasm; that he might care about what I was writing? Distracted, I dropped a piece of tuna into the soy sauce, and winced as brown droplets splattered all over my white T-shirt.
Petite anglaise wasn’t really about me, at least not at first. For a month or two I filled the blog with what I hoped were witty, arch observations about life in Paris, describing how the local park keepers loved blowing their whistles, puffed up with their own self-importance, or lamenting the reluctance of the French to clean up after their canine friends. Mr Frog was first introduced in a post about how French women seem to be conditioned from an early age to accept adultery as a fact of married life, a subject prompted by a conversation with Amy about a surreal chat she’d once had with her boyfriend’s stepmother. ‘Mr Frog works late every night,’ I wrote in my closing sentence, ‘allegedly.’
His pseudonym wasn’t particularly inspired, and coining it took only a moment’s thought. But from there it was a small l
eap to begin referring to our daughter as Tadpole, and both names stuck. Slowly I began to flesh out my ‘characters’, describing amusing things they said or did, but I still stopped short of revealing much about myself, unwilling to open Pandora’s box.
One day the following autumn I finally stuck a toe across the line, writing an entry which began with the words ‘Mr Frog won’t marry me…’ I went on to list the pragmatic, unromantic arguments I had come up with in favour of tying the knot since Tadpole’s birth, revolving around inheritances, pensions and house purchases, bemoaning the fact that my rational reasoning had left Mr Frog thoroughly unmoved.
‘I just think it’s depressing that all these scenarios are about providing for each other if one of us dies,’ he’d said on more than one occasion. ‘If I ever do get married – and I’m not sure I will ever want to – I’d like it to be for more positive reasons.’
I also admitted to feeling a twinge of jealousy whenever I was called upon to spell out my daughter’s surname, which I did not share. There was nothing in the substance of what I wrote that I hadn’t already discussed with Mr Frog a hundred times in private, but here I was suddenly inviting comments from strangers on our personal life. What on earth was I trying to achieve? Did I secretly hope to shame Mr Frog into popping the question? Did I think he would read the indignant comments left by my readers and suddenly see the error of his ways?
‘If you go down on one knee and produce a ring and say “Please marry me because I can’t live without you,” would he say yes?’ wondered Zinnia, a fellow blogger who’d become a regular commenter. ‘Why don’t you call his bluff?’
‘We could always make him jealous?’ suggested a commenter who called himself Watski, presumably in jest. ‘How about it?’
‘I hope you don’t mind what I wrote today,’ I said to Mr Frog when he arrived home that night, looking up warily from my computer screen where I was busy tweaking the new template I’d spent many a long evening designing in shades of dusky pink, cappuccino and chocolate. The banner picture across the top was a view from our balcony at sunset, on to which I’d superimposed the words petite anglaise. The letters were not quite evenly spaced, but I was childishly proud of my handiwork, all the same.
‘Mind what? I haven’t read it, I’m afraid. Work is so crazy at the moment.’ He set down his keys and cigarettes with a clatter on top of the marble fireplace, and glanced at the screen over my shoulder. ‘It’s looking good though. It’s really come along since I last looked.’
‘I wrote about marriage today,’ I said, my right hand gripping the mouse tightly, my left worrying away at the loose hem of my skirt. ‘You know, about how we don’t agree on whether it’s necessary. It’s a bit more personal than usual. Not that anyone actually knows who we are, of course…’ The only people other than Mr Frog who knew about the blog were my parents: I hadn’t been able to resist letting the cat out of the bag when my blog was mentioned in the newspaper.
‘Oh, you go ahead and write whatever you want. It’s your blog. I’m just glad you’ve found a hobby you enjoy,’ said Mr Frog magnanimously, removing his suit and donning his pyjamas. He left the room in search of a late-night snack, and I heard the fridge door open, the hiss of a bottle of beer being opened. I returned to my tweaking, much relieved. Hadn’t he pretty much given me carte blanche to do as I pleased?
Spurred on by Mr Frog’s benevolent indifference and the supportive emails and comments I was receiving in ever-increasing numbers, I began pouring more of myself into petite anglaise. I found the experience unexpectedly cathartic, and this encouraged me to dig deeper inside myself, secure in the knowledge that no one actually knew who petite anglaise was. Unflinching honesty became my calling card. I documented my dissatisfaction with my job, the guilt I felt when I admitted that I had no desire to be a stay-at-home mum, and the feelings of jealousy which surfaced when Tadpole clamoured for her father, clearly her favourite parent. And when I sounded off about the long hours Mr Frog worked, or our dithering over whether or not to have another child, even my discontent with my relationship with Mr Frog occasionally escaped from its hiding place between the lines, however much I tried to hold myself in check. The blog was an outlet; writing a strangely liberating experience. Here was a way to process my thoughts and emotions; a safe place to get my frustrations out of my system without doing anyone any harm. My negative feelings often evaporated – albeit temporarily – as soon as I pressed ‘publish’. It was easy to forget that every time I vented my spleen, my words appeared across thousands of computer screens in chocolate-brown font.
My online persona was wittier and sexier than I could ever hope to be. Petite anglaise’s words were scripted and edited, her every move choreographed, whereas in real life I often stumbled over my words, and my humour was as hit and miss as the next person’s. My readers couldn’t see whether my socks matched, or whether my highlights needed touching up, and they seemed to assume I was elegant and poised, as though some of the glamour they associated with Paris had rubbed off on me, too. I wasn’t about to set anyone straight – I enjoyed projecting this new, improved version of myself; this person I longed to be. Being popular as petite anglaise online took some of the sting out of feeling so lonely and hollow, so taken for granted at home.
And, over time, it was as though petite anglaise really did begin to write a part of me back to life. The girl I used to be – who had reluctantly taken a back seat while I grappled with the realities of work and motherhood – grew stronger and more confident with every post. Petite anglaise leaped off the screen; she lived and breathed; she cast a shadow. Together we walked taller. The blog made me more attentive to my surroundings, gave my life added texture.
Mr Frog, although he readily admitted he was relieved I’d found a pastime which deflected my attention away from the long hours he was spending at work, seldom took the time to look through this virtual window on to my soul. If some of my entries were cries for help, pleas for attention or thinly veiled warnings, then they were futile, because no matter how many people read my words, no matter how many people commented on them, the one person they were intended for didn’t appear to be paying attention.
‘I teased Mr Frog the other day that I could be having a torrid extra-non-marital affair, writing about it in the public domain, and he would still be the last to know,’ I wrote wryly in my comments box in December, six months after the blog’s inception.
That evening I braced myself for an indignant reaction which never came. I don’t believe Mr Frog ever read those words.
5. Contact
‘Atishoo!’ sneezed Tadpole as I held a spray of pale pink blossom under her nose for her to sniff. The petals were scattered by the blast; confetti drifted gently down to settle on her jeans. I felt perversely pleased that she had sneezed in English, rather than with a French ‘Atchoum!’ France: nul points; Angleterre: dix points. Only the other day I’d lamented on my blog how thoroughly her father tongue had gained the upper hand since her most recent stay with Mr Frog’s parents – or Mamie and Papy as she called them – so every syllable of English I could coax from her lips right now represented a small victory; music to my Anglo-Saxon ears.
It was March, and petite anglaise was now nine months old. Stripes of gentle sunlight filtering through the wooden shutters and the insistent cooing of pigeons had woken me earlier than usual that morning and, filled with spring optimism, I had slipped on my new, powder-blue mac, the fruit of a hasty lunch-time shopping expedition, for its inaugural outing. I’d fallen in love with its racy apple-green lining, regardless of the fact that it was invisible to everyone but me.
‘Knees ’n toes?’ pleaded Tadpole, referring to her new favourite song. Her second birthday was looming, and her speech had advanced in leaps and bounds since I first started writing about her on the blog. I often thought to myself how glad I would be one day that I’d documented her progress, preserving snippets of our conversations for posterity.
‘Hmm,’ I said, casti
ng about for alternative entertainment, ‘it’s a bit tricky to do the actions to “knees and toes” while I’m pushing your buggy… How about we count instead?’
We had been practising numbers over the past few days: counting toys in the bath, apples in the fruit bowl, fingers and toes. At first, Tadpole only smiled while I did all the work, although I knew she was recording everything, her eyes following every movement of my lips. Then, sure enough, one day when I was listening with half an ear, she counted all the way to ten unaided. The only sticking point seemed to be the number four, which she always said twice, for good measure.
‘One,’ I began, pointing out a parked car, its bonnet grazing the back bumper of the van in front in typically Parisian, too-close-for-comfort parking style.
‘Toe, free, four…’ continued Tadpole, pointing in a vaguely similar direction. ‘Four, five, six, sefen…’ She paused, running out of steam. There was no shortage of cars to count: scarred, nicked and splattered with the evidence of pigeons roosting overhead.
‘After seven comes eight,’ I prompted.
‘Ett… nine, TEN!’ Tadpole cried triumphantly. Bringing the pushchair to an abrupt halt, I leaned over, brought my upside-down head level with hers, and touched my lips to the tip of her nose.
As I raised myself upright again, I noticed Tadpole’s finger still pointing at ‘ten’ and the truth finally dawned. While I had been counting promiscuously parked cars, my daughter had been diligently counting the dog messes of varying sizes and shapes which we swerved to avoid. Such were the joys of city living. At least I’d get a good blog post out of it, I thought, smiling to myself. Tadpole was arguably the most popular character on the blog these days, while Mr Frog was mostly conspicuous by his absence.
Petite Anglaise Page 5