Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  Her performance over, Tadpole soon lost interest in the telephone, leaving Belle-mère and me to murmur our tepid goodbyes. With a sigh, I replaced the receiver and went off in search of James. His laptop sat open on my dining table; his clothes tumbled out of his suitcase in an unruly mess on the bedroom floor; the book he was reading – one of mine – lay flat on the sofa, its spine creased down the middle.

  I found James standing over the gas stove stirring bolognese. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I rested my head against his back, the top of my head barely reaching his shoulders. ‘You okay? How did it go?’ He had seen me pacing around the apartment earlier and it was he who had urged me to conquer my nerves and call Tadpole.

  ‘I’m not sure speaking to her was such a good idea after all,’ I said forlornly. ‘I think maybe a clean break is healthier. She sounded all French. And less mine somehow.’

  James set down his spoon and turned to face me, cupping my face in his palms. ‘I know it’s not easy being apart for so long, but the break will do you good. You’ve had an awful lot on your plate.’

  ‘You’re right. I know.’ I smiled ruefully. If Tadpole hadn’t been away, James wouldn’t be here at all. This fortnight was the longest period of time we had spent together. We were beginning to settle into a routine of comfortable domesticity: we cooked; we watched films; we read side by side. While I soaked in the bathtub, he dimmed the lights and lit candles, then led me wordlessly through into the bedroom.

  It was wonderful, but I was painfully aware of how temporary, how artificial it all was. We were living in a vacuum, but real-life obligations would soon come crowding back in. We would travel to Brittany together for a weekend to visit Eve and John, and afterwards James would remain for a fortnight in Rennes with his daughters. I would return to Paris, be reunited with Tadpole, and take a plane to England.

  However much I liked to pretend that this was a foretaste of what life with James would be like, this honeymoon of ours was just another parenthèse enchantée.

  Eve owned a gîte near Saint-Malo, a ramshackle farmhouse converted into apartments which she rented to holidaymakers throughout the summer months. As James brought the car to a halt on the gravel driveway, I put a restraining hand on his arm. This was the most tangible glimpse I’d had so far into the life I hankered after with James, and I wanted to sit in silence for a moment; to let myself imagine this could be our home.

  ‘Lovely to see you,’ said Eve, appearing from around the side of the house, flanked by two yapping dogs. ‘I knew we’d meet again. This is so exciting!’ We followed her around to the back of the cottage where John was setting up the barbecue. Watching Maisy – Eve and John’s daughter – toddling around the garden on unsteady feet, sun-kissed, grimy and deliriously happy, I thought of the freedom I would be able to give Tadpole one day. Playing in the Buttes Chaumont was just not the same. I couldn’t let Tadpole stray more than a few metres away: she might as well be on a leash.

  As the menfolk drained small green bottles of 1664, waiting for the coals to heat up, I volunteered to help Eve prepare salads in the kitchen. Ever since our first meeting in the Charbon I’d looked forward to seeing her again, in theory. But today I couldn’t help making comparisons. She was taller, slimmer and blonder than me; her full breasts strained against her tight T-shirt. I felt like half the woman Eve was. The comparison did me no favours.

  ‘It’s a shame our girls couldn’t play together this time,’ said Eve, over her shoulder. She stood at the wide ceramic sink next to a huge open fireplace, rinsing lettuce under the cold tap. As she bent forwards, I caught sight of a tiny G-string peeping over her worn jeans, and my mind played a cruel trick, superimposing an image of James standing behind her, slipping his hands inside the slack waistband.

  ‘Oh, we’ll be back before long,’ I said confidently, wrenching my mind back to the cucumber I was supposed to be chopping. ‘The summer’s not over yet.’ James appeared in the doorway, a sleeping Maisy limp in his arms. He climbed the stairs to her bedroom with exaggerated care and returned empty-handed, pausing to slip an arm around my waist and nuzzle my neck.

  ‘We’re ready for the meat now,’ called John from outside, ‘and can you bring us another beer?’

  ‘You two don’t half make us work for our dinner,’ said James in mock protest, picking up the tray of sausages and steaks with one hand and two green bottles with the other. Taking a swig of my own beer, I began to attack the tomatoes. This time, I kept my eyes glued to the table.

  Later that night, James and I sat in the huge whirlpool bathtub, my buttocks nestling against his inner thighs, his calves cradling mine. In the absence of paying guests, we were sleeping in the gîte’s master bedroom, a vast open-plan room. From our vantage point in the alcove which served as an en suite bathroom, I could see the ornately carved four-poster bed with its crisp white sheets – our next destination. The warm water was making me drowsy, and I tipped my head back, resting it on James’s collarbone. His hands, cupping my breasts, slid lower, finally coming to rest on my stomach.

  I was suddenly reminded of Mr Frog placing cool, tender hands on my swollen tummy to feel his daughter’s first tiny movements under my skin. ‘Mon écrin,’ he called me – his jewellery case. Tadpole, inside, was his pearl.

  ‘I never thought I’d want another child,’ James whispered, as though divining my thoughts, ‘but I’d love to have a baby with you one day.’ I placed my hands over his, my lips curving into a smile. I vaguely remembered writing a post on petite anglaise, long before James and I met, in which I’d spoken of my desire for a Tadpole #2. Everything that Mr Frog had hesitated over, James seemed to want.

  Our weekend had been perfect, blissful. A fleeting glimpse of the future I craved, a chance to live my daydreams. And now this. This was the icing on the cake. My happiness was complete.

  20. Discord

  ‘Hello,’ I said to James, brimming over with relief. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you since I got home from work.’ In the background, children shrieked and I could make out the distant sound of dogs barking. I’d guessed the answer to my own question before he spoke, and there was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘I’m at Eve’s,’ he replied, confirming my suspicions. ‘I brought Amanda and Carrie over to see her and Maisy. She gets lonely when John’s away. Phone reception is always a bit of a lottery when I’m out in the sticks, sorry about that…’

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than I felt a tidal wave of jealousy gathering force. I bit my lip, drawing blood. It was irrational, this emotion; corrosive and harmful. But I couldn’t help myself. The holidays were over and I was trapped in Paris with Tadpole once more, feeling sorry for myself. Meanwhile James and his kids were spending time cheering up another woman. And not just any other woman: James’s ex-girlfriend, of all people. Even though the evening of the barbecue at Eve’s place had been the high point of our relationship so far, I’d still found myself dwelling on an image of Eve bending over the sink afterwards, wondering whether James’s eyes had flickered towards the space between her jeans and her T-shirt as he looked over my shoulder. I’d never met a woman so comfortable in her own skin, so effortlessly sensual.

  I’d also made the mistake of looking over the early emails James had sent to petite anglaise, re-reading the passages which had so drawn me to him, weeks before we first met. It was into Eve’s arms that James had fallen when his marriage fell apart; she who had healed his pain and made him whole again. The drama of their shared history, the intensity of emotions he’d described unsettled me now. Could our story ever rival theirs? Three whole years she’d spent with James. As I read, I hated myself for wishing I could overwrite whole sections of his past with my blog, destroying his baggage with a single controlled explosion.

  ‘Okay, well, look, you’re obviously busy, it’s probably not the best time to talk,’ I said, my voice tight with disappointment. I’d had another rotten day at work and all I had
wanted was to hear his soothing voice in my ear. Instead, the sounds of merriment in the background taunted me cruelly. I could picture all too clearly the five of them gathered around Eve’s solid kitchen table sharing a cosy meal, and it looked too much like a snapshot of the perfect family for my liking. The petulant child inside me wanted to rail against the injustice of the situation: James was with Eve instead of me; Maisy instead of Tadpole.

  ‘You’re probably right, there’s actually a small person trying to climb up my leg as I speak,’ James said, unaware that he was twisting the knife. He had picked up on my hostility, I was sure of that, but I was just as sure that he was refusing to acknowledge it on purpose, reluctant to be drawn into what he considered a pointless argument.

  ‘Okay, well, maybe we can speak when you get home? I’ll be up until late…’

  ‘Ah, well, the thing is, we’re going to stay here,’ James replied apologetically. ‘There’s plenty of room, and the girls have a riding lesson tomorrow in this neck of the woods anyway…’

  Something in me snapped. I couldn’t not say anything. How could he sleep over at his ex-girlfriend’s house, while her boyfriend was away? I didn’t care how convenient the arrangement might be. It wasn’t that I thought anything would happen between them. But it just didn’t feel right.

  ‘Well, do enjoy your cosy evening with your ex,’ I said, my voice laced with poison. ‘I do hope your sleepover is worth jeopardizing our relationship for.’

  I slammed down the receiver to rob him of the opportunity to have the last word, and promptly burst into tears. What had I done? If there was a relationship ‘self-destruct’ button, I felt sure I had just pressed it. Long-distance arguments are hell: we couldn’t kiss and make up; I couldn’t make him a cup of tea, or put a hand on his arm by way of silent apology. I’d just have to wait until James called back; I was too stubborn and proud to pick up the receiver myself.

  A few hours later, resigned to the fact that the phone wouldn’t ring, I tried to exorcise my jealousy the only way I knew how: by writing about it. I wanted petite anglaise to make my apology: she had a knack of expressing complex feelings so much more vividly than I ever could on the phone. James could reassure me until he was blue in the face, but irrational jealousy wouldn’t bow to reason or logic. I wanted him to know that I was painfully aware of the danger it could represent if left to fester. Together, petite anglaise and I would confront my feelings head on. If there was one thing James professed to love about my alter ego and me, it was our disarming honesty.

  I bared my soul, up to a point, but my ugliest, darkest thoughts I kept off the page. Writing brought the usual clarity, and I came to understand as I typed that it wasn’t James’s close friendship with Eve that pained me, it was the affection he lavished on Eve and John’s daughter, whom he’d known from birth. James got along with Tadpole just fine, but anyone could see that he loved Maisy deeply. I knew it was early days, that love for a child – even your own – doesn’t develop overnight, but I couldn’t help wondering whether he would ever feel as close to my daughter as he did to Eve’s. The thought was a malignant tumour eating away at my insides.

  So the truth petite anglaise told, in this instance, was not the whole truth. ‘I’m not jealous of anyone in his present,’ I wrote on my blog. ‘It’s his past I have a problem with.’ Not only did I fail to admit that Eve still posed me a problem in the here and now, but I edited all mention of Maisy out of the final draft. It was then that I realized the rules of engagement had been subtly altered now that my lover was hanging on my every word. Writing honestly, using the blog as therapy, needed to be weighed against the damage I could wreak if I revealed too much. Petite anglaise might have brought us together, but she could just as easily be our undoing.

  Once I’d finished, I decided to give Amy a call. It was past eleven, so if she didn’t pick up the phone straight away I resolved to hang up. But my luck was in: she picked up on the first ring.

  ‘Hi, what’s up?’ She sounded dejected, or weary, or both.

  ‘I just had a horrible fight with James,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t wake you, did I? Is it a bad time?’

  ‘You know what, I was about to go to bed, so if you don’t mind, you can tell me about it tomorrow,’ said Amy. ‘Unless I end up reading about it first.’ I was momentarily stunned by her words. They seemed so unnecessarily harsh. What was going on?

  ‘Er, okay. I… I guess we’ll speak tomorrow then,’ I stuttered. ‘Sorry if I caught you at a bad time…’

  I hung up and stared at the phone accusingly, wishing I hadn’t taken it into my head to call anyone. This evening, it seemed, I was hell-bent on destroying everything I touched.

  The office was quiet the next morning, my boss away on a business trip. Amy had called in sick, which made me feel even worse about our exchange the previous evening, and my ‘get well soon’ text message elicited no reply. And although supportive comments were pouring on to the blog thick and fast, commending the honesty with which I’d tackled the thorny subject of jealousy, there was still no word from James. Unable to endure his silence any longer, I shut myself in the ladies’ and called his mobile. He picked up at once, and I was profoundly relieved to hear that his voice bore no trace of the previous night’s impatience. ‘Hey, special girl. Feeling better today?’

  ‘A little,’ I conceded. ‘I wrote some stuff, and that helped.’

  ‘I thought you might,’ he replied. ‘I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, mind. I’m at the stables. But I think I can imagine the gist of it.’

  ‘And you’re not cross with me?’

  ‘No. I’m really not. But you do know you have nothing to worry about, don’t you? I just hope you’re not planning to ask me to stop seeing Eve. She may be my ex-girlfriend, but she’s also my best friend, and it’s an unusual situation, I’ll admit, but it’s just the way it is.’

  ‘I’m not that much of a fool. I’d never ask you to do that,’ I said indignantly, although the thought had briefly crossed my mind.

  ‘Anyway, we can talk about this face to face next time I see you, on your birthday,’ James said, putting an end to the discussion. ‘Concentrate on looking forward to that, please, instead of creating problems where there are none.’

  Mr Frog was due to collect Tadpole that evening and I had no plans of my own, so I decided to drop in to see Amy on my way home. As she lived all the way out in Vincennes, at the end of the number one métro line, it wasn’t so much dropping in as making a huge detour. Amy raved about how wonderful Vincennes was, but it had always reminded me of a rather bourgeois retirement village. She’d better be in, I thought to myself grimly as I buzzed the intercom on the gate. I’ve come an awfully long way just to find out the meaning of one throwaway remark.

  When Amy opened her front door in her dressing-gown she looked astonished to see me. Her skin was pale and the smudges under her eyes had made a comeback. ‘Hope you don’t mind me popping by,’ I said hesitantly. ‘But I was at a loose end and I wanted to see how you were. When you didn’t reply to my text, I started to worry…’

  ‘Oh, that’s very sweet of you,’ she said with a wan smile, ‘I probably forgot to charge my phone, nothing more dramatic than that. But come on in. I’ll stick the kettle on.’

  Before the kettle had even boiled I’d learned that aside from a rotten cold, the real culprit was Amy’s boyfriend. She saw Tom about as often as I saw James, but he was blowing hot and cold, driving her mad with his ambiguity. I sipped my tea and interrupted little, letting her get everything out of her system. After I’d risen to make a second cup I decided the time was ripe to broach the subject of last night’s call.

  ‘On the phone last night, you sounded a bit annoyed with me…’ I began tentatively.

  ‘I may have been a bit sharp,’ conceded Amy, looking down at her tea for a moment. I set down my own drink, sensing that she was about to say something important. ‘I suppose,’ she continued, ‘I’ve been feeling like things have got a bit one
-sided lately. I don’t know if it’s this blog of yours. You get very wrapped up in your own dramas. You’re really good at unburdening yourself, but I’m not sure you pay enough attention to the people who are right in front of your nose, and their problems… Last night I just wasn’t in the mood to listen. I had problems of my own.’ I remained silent for a moment, digesting what she’d said, colour rising to my cheeks. Her words stung, but I knew they weren’t unjustified. I was guilty as charged.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a terrible friend,’ I said, blinking back tears which had sprung from nowhere. ‘You’re right, I know. I have been far too self-absorbed lately. It’s always me, me, me. I should probably think about laying off the blogging for a while…’

  ‘There were a couple of times when you wrote about something and I kind of wished I’d been invited too,’ added Amy. ‘Like that picnic, for example. I felt a bit left out. I would have liked to come along.’

  ‘I wish you’d said something earlier,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It never even occurred to me that you’d want to come. Come to think of it, I have been keeping my petite anglaise social life separate, but I’m not even sure I understand why. But I promise, next time I organize something you’ll be the first to know.’ I was being a little disingenuous, because I did have some inkling as to why I tended to keep people like Amy – who had known me long before petite anglaise – out of the equation. Supposing I did act differently with my blogging friends – more confident, more self-assured – she would notice this and comment on it immediately. I wasn’t sure I’d be entirely comfortable with my two worlds colliding.