Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  I pushed the heavy door open, lifting the flap of our letterbox to peer inside. As I waited for the lift to wheeze and clank its way down to the ground floor I felt for my keys in my pocket. They were heavier than usual, weighed down with the recent addition of James’s set. If only the lift would obligingly deliver me to his front door, instead of my own, where an empty, eerily calm flat awaited me. Mr Frog had taken Tadpole to see his parents for a long weekend, and they wouldn’t be returning until the next day.

  Once inside, I let my bag fall from my shoulder, landing with a clatter on the parquet floor, and made for the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. I was at my lowest ebb, and not even the view from my kitchen window could console me. Paris had come to symbolize everything I wanted to change about my life, everything I wanted to leave behind. The process had begun long before James and I met – work, pregnancy and motherhood had subtly altered my relationship with the city – but now it seemed irreversible.

  I slid down the kitchen wall until my legs touched the cool, brick-red tomette tiles. Crumpled in a forlorn heap, I closed my eyes and took refuge in my memories of the weekend in Rennes, wishing myself far, far away.

  18. Moving

  ‘Catherine!’ said my boss as he flung down his briefcase the following Tuesday morning. ‘Why didn’t you remind me that I had an early start today? I was late for my meeting.’

  I sighed. Only ten o’clock and I was already off on the wrong foot with my boss. I debated whether to point out that the expensive hand-held gadget he carried at all times included a calendar, if only he would consult it, but decided it would be unwise to rile him any further.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, my voice patently insincere, ‘I’ll do my best to remind you the evening before in future, if you really think that’s necessary…’

  ‘I just don’t feel like you’re looking after me as well as you used to,’ he complained, his voice petulant. I rolled my eyes at his departing back. I was becoming increasingly aware of the similarity between secretarial work and caring for a demanding, often irrational toddler.

  My boss had developed an antagonistic attitude towards me over the past few weeks, behaviour which I was at a loss to explain. I’d seen other colleagues suffer a similar fate, but I’d always seemed to have some sort of immunity. But now, suddenly, nothing I did could please him, criticisms rained down thick and fast and, later that day, not for the first time, Amy found me in floods of uncomprehending tears in the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t know how long I can stand this,’ I wailed, taking the tissue she held out to me. ‘Everything I do seems to be wrong.’ I pressed my forehead against the cool windowpane and watched the tourists and shoppers milling about on avenue de l’Opéra far below, wishing I could collect my belongings and join the throng without a backward glance.

  ‘Well, you’d find another job in a second if you did leave, wouldn’t you?’ Amy said reasonably. ‘Although I hope it doesn’t come to that. I just don’t understand what caused the wind to change. You used to get on so well, you two.’ She paused to fill the kettle and flick the switch. For all the years we’d spent in France, some instincts would never leave us. Sympathy is served with tea. No other drink will do.

  ‘Me neither.’ I shook my head sadly. ‘I mean, he does know a bit about the upheaval I’ve been going through lately at home, but I really don’t believe any of that has affected my ork. And if it had, you’d expect him to make allowances, not lay into me, wouldn’t you? Obviously, I’ve always checked in on my blog a fair bit when I’m not busy, to read new comments and even write bits and pieces, but I’m hardly even doing that right now. I’m posting about half as often as I used to, partly because I’m getting paranoid he’ll find out about it and go off the deep end. The problem is, whatever caused all this weirdness, I’m so on edge now that I really am starting to make mistakes. It’s becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.’ I blew my nose, hard, and turned to peer at my blotchy-skinned reflection in the door of a microwave positioned just at the right height to serve as a mirror. What a mess. I couldn’t return to my desk looking like this. ‘The thing is,’ I continued, ‘how can I change jobs now, when I only plan to stay in Paris for another year, at most, before I move in with James?’ Amy knew of my plans, although no one else in the office did – and my boss certainly did not. ‘I need this one thing to stay the same. So much else has changed.’

  ‘Well, I think you need to see how things progress,’ said Amy. ‘But don’t play the martyr and let this go on for too long. You do have other options. And if you’re constantly stressed and upset, your little Tadpole will pick up on it.’ I gave her a watery smile. Amy had become a regular follower of the blog since I’d come clean about meeting James, but it felt funny hearing the name ‘Tadpole’ spoken aloud.

  ‘You’re not blogging about this work stuff, I notice?’ Amy raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No!’ I replied. ‘Other bloggers have been fired for less, so I’m not going to tempt fate. Not that anyone from work is likely ever to find the thing, but I think it’s best to play it safe all the same.’ I dabbed at my eyes one last time with a piece of kitchen roll, and released my hair from its chignon, all the better to hide behind. ‘I suppose I’d better get out there,’ I said reluctantly, arming myself with the mug of tea Amy held in her outstretched hand.

  Amy’s words haunted me for the rest of the day. Was I playing the martyr? Maybe, on some level, I felt that after wrecking my family, I deserved to suffer.

  ‘I’m not denying that you’re going through a rough time right now,’ said Mr Frog that evening, ‘but it feels like you might be using these problems to build a case for leaving Paris sooner, rather than later.’

  ‘No. Absolutely not,’ I replied, indignantly. Mr Frog had been sympathetic, at first, when he arrived home from work to find me hunched on the sofa, my head in my hands. But the conversation had quickly veered off course, on to the thorny subject of my possible move to Brittany.

  ‘I know there’s nothing I can do to stop you going,’ said Mr Frog, his voice brittle, ‘but if you take my daughter away to live with him, I’ll hardly ever see her.’

  ‘Of course you’d see her. I’d bring her to Paris to visit and you could come to Rennes too. But there’s really no point in discussing this now,’ I said, feeling nauseous. Every time the subject was evoked, our fragile truce was shattered, and it took time to reassemble the pieces. ‘I told you, I won’t make any decisions for another year. This stuff with my boss is making life horrible right now, but my plans haven’t changed. And they won’t…’

  ‘If you say so.’ Mr Frog still looked unconvinced. ‘You know, it’s one thing to accept that we weren’t working, but it’s very different coming to terms with the idea of this other guy seeing my daughter every single day; taking my place. I hate to imagine my girl hundreds of kilometres away.’

  I noted his repeated use of my daughter, my girl. We both had a tendency to say ‘my’ instead of ‘our’, subconsciously staking our separate claims to Tadpole. I could see Mr Frog’s point – of course I could – but what was I supposed to say? That I would never leave the city as long as he lived in it? That I would forgo any happiness that came my way if it involved a geographical shift? All I could hope was that, over time, Mr Frog would get used to the idea; that we both would. But for now, it seemed safer to skirt around the subject, or stick our heads back in the sand to preserve our flimsy entente.

  Because nothing I could say would make this bitter pill any easier to swallow.

  On the day Mr Frog finally moved across the road, Tadpole and I took ourselves off to a picnic in the Buttes Chaumont, calculated to keep us conveniently out of the way for a few hours.

  In a shady spot under towering sycamore trees we laid out blankets and plates of food on the parched grass. A couple of dozen bloggers had come along, in response to an invitation I’d extended on petite anglaise. After the first soirée I’d attended with Coquette, I’d plucked up the confidence to go one step furthe
r, organizing an event for bloggers who lived in Paris, like me, and who felt happy shedding their anonymity and meeting one another offline. If the truth be told, compiling the list of attendees and sending out access plans had been a welcome distraction from all the stressful things going on in my life just then, so my motives had been far from altruistic. Most of the people who had replied were fellow expats, and women far outnumbered men. For many it was the first time they had met me, let alone the infamous Tadpole, who was delighted to hog the limelight, plied with the choicest titbits from the picnic, lapping up the attention.

  Despite the perfect weather – hot, but not too hot, for once – and the effort some of the picnickers had clearly gone to with the food, I was fidgety and distracted, my mind skittering inevitably back to what was going on at home. Not only was Mr Frog humping furniture and boxes across the road with a couple of friends, but I was also expecting my phone to ring at any moment to announce the imminent delivery of the mattress which would replace the one which, by now, must have taken up residence over the road. Tonight, when Mr Frog took Tadpole to spend her first night in his new home, James would be coming to stay with me. He must be getting ready to board his TGV right now, and soon he would be speeding towards Paris. My head spun and I felt detached from the conversations ebbing and flowing around me, unable to play the role of perfect hostess, let alone worry about whether I was living up to their preconceived ideas of who petite anglaise was and how she should behave.

  One thing was certain: I felt at a distinct disadvantage. Many of the picnickers had been following recent developments in my life religiously on my blog. They’d read all about the break-up, for example, about the feeling of anti-climax which followed my announcement to Mr Frog, about the limbo in which we had found ourselves over the past month or so while I waited for Mr Frog to move out, and about my first visits to Brittany, both with and without Tadpole. Fielding intimate questions from semi-strangers about my new relationship or my plans for the future was awkward in itself – although I was beginning to get used to the way people reacted and, in particular, how they often felt entitled to press me for information I neglected to reveal on the blog – but I was unable to reciprocate, and loath to demonstrate how little knowledge I possessed about what was going on in their lives. The polite thing would have been to have done my homework, reading up on everyone’s news beforehand, but there simply weren’t enough hours in every day. As it was, I’d stayed up until after midnight baking a quiche for the picnic.

  When I rose to gather up my belongings – fretting about my mattress delivery, wondering where James and I would sleep if it all went wrong – I was approached by two women with children Tadpole’s age in tow. I’d noticed them sitting on the periphery of the picnic, but they hadn’t introduced themselves properly until now, and I’d been too distracted to wonder who they might be.

  ‘Hi petite, this is Louise, and I’m Caroline.’ Caroline had the remnants of a Manchester accent, and a pleasant, open face, a sprinkling of freckles dotted across her snub nose.

  ‘Ah, yes, I remember your email now. You’re both readers, rather than bloggers, is that right?’

  ‘Yes. I comment on your blog, actually, under a couple of pseudonyms. The main one I use is Mancunian Lass.’

  Caught off-guard, I let out a delighted shriek.

  ‘Mancunian Lass? Why on earth didn’t you tell me before? Oh, I wish I’d known it was you sitting over there all along!’ Mancunian Lass was one of my ‘regulars’ – she must have left almost as many comments as James in recent months. A few days before, she’d left an essay-length comment in which she had gathered all the available evidence and concluded that ‘Lover’ – as I still called him on the blog – was none other than Jim in Rennes, effectively unmasking him and, although neither James nor I had confirmed or denied anything, his cover had effectively been blown. ‘Your suspicions were correct, by the way, Sherlock,’ I added with a conspiratorial wink.

  Louise and Caroline, it transpired, were best friends who had been living in Paris for even longer than I had. Both had French partners, and two young children each. Caroline had begun following the ‘adventures’ of petite anglaise on the recommendation of a friend, although neither she nor Louise had ever read a blog before. Now they confessed to being addicted, and gossiping about my antics whenever they met up.

  ‘When you wrote about splitting up with Mr Frog, Caro phoned me straight away,’ Louise explained with a grin. ‘She knew my internet connection was down. So we found ourselves discussing your personal life over the phone. It’s pretty surreal, when you think about it. Your ears must have been burning.’ It was disconcerting to imagine people talking about my dramas in just the same way my office friends picked over plotlines in their favourite soaps, and I was momentarily lost for words. People had said similar things to me by email, but never before to my face.

  ‘Perhaps we could get together with the kids some time, and let them play together?’ I suggested, once I’d recovered my composure, deliberately changing the subject. ‘I actually have to leave in a minute, but I’d really love to have a proper chat some other time…’

  We tentatively agreed to meet up again, with or without our children, and I left the picnic in high spirits. ‘They talked about petite anglaise on the phone,’ I whispered to myself as I made my way through the park, hand in hand with Tadpole. ‘How bizarre is that?’

  ‘Bonjour Madame!’ said Mr Frog’s new concierge when we stepped inside his building a couple of hours later, her greeting a thinly veiled question. I was a newcomer on her territory, and she seemed to expect me to state if not my business, then at least my identity.

  A small woman with a wizened face, her coarse, dark hair pulled back severely with a tortoiseshell clip, she wore a floral-print overall over her clothes. She had waylaid us the moment I set down the Miffy bag containing Tadpole’s pyjamas and clothes for the next day and hoisted her up to press the intercom button for Mr Frog’s apartment. I felt sure the dustbin bag she clutched in her right hand had only been a pretext to scuttle out and get a better look at us.

  ‘Bonjour Madame,’ I replied. ‘J’emmène ma fille chez son papa.’ I paused, unsure of how to continue, willing Mr Frog to buzz us in without delay. How should I introduce myself? How much information would constitute too much? ‘I live nearby,’ I added, leaving her to draw her own conclusions, no doubt staring in disapproval at our retreating backs.

  Mr Frog greeted us at the front door, bending to gather Tadpole into his arms for a hug, but did not beckon me inside. His hallway was littered with empty cardboard boxes and assembly instructions for flat-packed furniture: he had obviously been busy. Shifting Tadpole on to his right hip, he dug purposefully in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a set of keys to our apartment with his left hand. ‘No, you keep those,’ I said quickly, making no move to take them from him. ‘I’d prefer you to have a spare set, for emergencies.’ He nodded, and reached to unhook the strap of Tadpole’s overnight bag from my shoulder. ‘OK, well, I’m going to get going then.’ I kissed Tadpole on the cheek and glanced at my watch, wondering if James was close.

  ‘Expecting company this evening?’ Mr Frog said sardonically.

  ‘I’m just seeing a friend,’ I replied evenly, determined not to rise to the bait in front of Tadpole’s watchful eyes. Turning to leave, I raised my hand and gave father and daughter a feeble wave. I had planted a kiss on Tadpole’s cheek, but Mr Frog I dared not touch. This was really it. Mr Frog and I no longer lived together.

  Back home, I was wriggling into clean clothes, fresh from the shower, when James’s text message arrived. ‘Is the coast clear?’ it read. ‘Can I come up?’

  My eye glued to the peep-hole, I flung the front door open as soon as the lift drew level with the fifth floor. James was hot and bothered from the métro he disliked so much, his short hair damp and dewdrop beads of perspiration outlined across his forehead. A shabby rucksack with one broken strap, chewed by Eve’s dog, dangle
d from one shoulder. I flew into his arms, caring little that his embrace was clammy.

  ‘So?’ said James when at last I let him go, leading him by the hand along the corridor and into the living room. ‘How was that picnic? And did your new mattress arrive?’

  ‘The picnic was great, although I was pretty distracted,’ I admitted. ‘As for the mattress… Well. That’s a bit of a sore point. The delivery guy called to say he had the wrong one in his truck. So, no mattress. We’ll be on the sofa bed tonight, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Hey, it’s not the end of the world,’ he said, smoothing my furrowed brow with his fingertips, a gesture which reminded me of Mr Frog, who used to try to erase my frowns in a similar way. ‘You don’t have to make that face.’

  ‘Oh, I know it’s silly,’ I said ruefully, ‘but I wanted so badly for our first night here to be perfect.’

  ‘It is. It will be. You’ll see. Although before we go any further, I am going to need a shower.’

  He shrugged his rucksack to the floor and removed his T-shirt, using the balled-up fabric to mop his brow. ‘All in good time,’ I said, noticing the way the sweat pooled in the indentation above his top lip. ‘But first you have to admire my view. The sky is a bit hazy, with all the pollution, but I think you get the general idea.’

  ‘The picture from the blog,’ he exclaimed, a smile slowly spreading across his face. ‘When I think that I’ve been looking at this view for months, since long before we met… And now I’m here, with you, seeing those rooftops for real. Talk about déjà vu…’

  ‘There’s no going back now,’ I warned, ‘not now that you’ve stepped inside.’ Unbuttoning his jeans, I slipped my hands inside, my palms cupping his buttocks. ‘About that shower,’ I whispered. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to have to wait…’