Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  Although only half the fairy lights twinkled into life, the overall effect was still impressive enough to warrant a burst of applause from Tadpole, her pen rolling across the floorboards forgotten, destined to be found lurking under the sofa months later, its tip completely dry.

  ‘Father Christmas is going to leave presents for you under this sapin,’ I whispered, hoisting her up so that she could admire the decorations at close range, a constellation of fairy lights reflected in her eyes, ‘and under Mamie and Papy’s tree too, and even in England, at Grandma and Grandad’s house.’ In Tadpole’s eyes Christmas hadn’t been carved up, it had simply been multiplied.

  ‘But of course,’ I couldn’t resist adding, ‘only if you’re a very good girl…’

  Amy and I climbed the flight of steps which led from métro Pont Marie to the Quai des Celestins. Buffeted by the icy cross-winds, we were relieved to dive into a narrow, sheltered side street leading us into the southernmost tip of the Marais.

  In milder weather the Marais was one of my favourite places. When I first arrived in Paris, I’d spent long hours padding up and down every single street north and south of the rue Saint Antoine, gazing through ornate wrought-iron railings across formal gardens to the hôtels particuliers beyond. I was reading Dangerous Liaisons at the time, and it was all too easy to imagine the Vicomte de Valmont seated at an écritoire, writing to the Comtesse de Merteuil, or a group of aristocrats in powdered wigs taking a turn around the garden while they waited for horses to be saddled to their carriages. Private residences had given way to museums and offices, or been carved up into smaller apartments, but I never could shake off the feeling that I was stepping back in time when I walked through those narrow streets.

  ‘So, what’s this year’s restaurant like?’ said Amy. We were on our way to the office Christmas meal, a rather tame affair, on account of the fact that it was always held at lunch-time, and you were never entirely sure whether you’d be required to return to the office once the festivities were over.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ I replied with a frown. ‘Nobody’s really told me anything.’ In previous years I’d been in charge of organizing the outing myself but, back in October, when the plans were laid, I was still out of favour with my boss so the task had been given to someone else.

  ‘Things are getting better between you two now though, aren’t they?’ Amy said, gesturing ahead to where my boss’s receding back could be seen amidst a clutch of colleagues. The whole office was on the move; Amy and I were bringing up the rear.

  ‘Yes, slowly improving,’ I said, nodding. ‘Although I still can’t say I really understand what went wrong in the first place, or what has changed for the better now. I’m just going to keep my head down and enjoy it while I can. If things could stay like this until I leave next summer, that would be ideal…’

  It was the first time I’d had a chance to catch up with Amy since the party she’d thrown a couple of weeks earlier, as work was getting frantic with the year end approaching. I’d brought James along – as he’d been staying with me at the time – and Amy had liked him, or at least she’d said she did. I’d been plagued all evening by the nagging feeling that James didn’t quite fit in, but that was hardly surprising. He was forty, whereas most of Amy’s guests were only in their mid-twenties. And at the end of the day, he didn’t have to fit in with my Paris life. I was the one who would be moving, not him.

  ‘Only another six or seven months to go!’ said Amy, lowering her voice just in case anyone might be listening in. ‘It’s going to fly by.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I replied. ‘I want to have a real relationship; I’m tired of waiting.’

  ‘Well, at least James has the freedom to come and stay for weeks at a time,’ Amy said wistfully. ‘I wish Tom could do that.’ Tom hadn’t even made it to her party, and I knew she had felt his absence keenly.

  ‘I am lucky in that respect,’ I said. ‘Although, having said that, he’s not planning to come back until the New Year. I get the feeling he’s starting to get a bit sick of living out of a suitcase.’

  ‘I’ll miss having you around, when you go,’ Amy said, suddenly serious. ‘You’re one of the few people I can really talk to. I know I’ll be able to read about what you’re up to on the blog, but it’s not the same…’

  ‘I’ll visit,’ I said, touched by her admission. It was confirmation, if confirmation were needed, that since we’d cleared the air that day when she was off work ill, our friendship had deepened. ‘And I’ll only be a phone call or an email away. You must come and stay with us too, as soon as we’ve got space. But it’s quite a way off yet.’

  I boarded my train on Friday evening after work, two days before Christmas, trembling with anticipation. Amanda and Carrie were away with their mother and her new partner skiing in the mountains, so James and I would spend Christmas alone, exactly as I’d hoped. I pictured us eating a candlelit meal for two, retiring early with a bottle of champagne. I’d been looking forward to this trip for three long weeks and now there were only three hours separating me from James’s waiting arms. As the train eased itself out of Montparnasse station, I fizzed with pent-up excitement.

  At first, as the TGV hurtled in the direction of Rennes, I put the tightness in my throat down to the air conditioning. But when my nose started to drip like a leaking tap and my sinuses began to ache, I knew I was in trouble. By the time the train pulled into Rennes station, I was feverish and dizzy and laying my throbbing head on a cool pillow was the foremost thing on my mind.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ I croaked, two days later. ‘I so looked forward to seeing you, and I’ve been too ill the whole time to do anything. It’s so unfair. The only festive thing about me is my red nose.’

  ‘Hey, it’s a pity, I know, but there’s no point getting all worked up about it, love,’ James said reasonably, putting his palm to my clammy forehead. I resisted the urge to swat his hand away. I didn’t want reasonable. I wanted romance and passion; our old intensity. I wanted, at the very least, to see some evidence that my bitter disappointment was matched by his. Where had he gone, the James who sent me all those knee-weakening, eloquent emails back in April? The man who once confessed he was so captivated by the movement of my hips every time I walked across the room that he constantly had to suppress the urge to pick me up and carry me to the nearest bed?

  I collapsed back on to the pillows, clutching a handful of tissues, feeling cheated, robbed. James had broken the news to me that he would be away for much of January, staying with his parents in England and, as I kept repeating, we’d barely seen each other in December. I’d desperately wanted our first Christmas together to be magical, to mean something. It could and should have been perfect. Instead, the weekend had passed by in a feverish blur, and now our time had almost run out.

  ‘Just think, next Christmas you’ll be living here with me, and we’ll laugh about this,’ said James, smoothing back my hair with a paternal gesture which I’d seen him use before, with Amanda and Carrie. ‘Now, you stay there, and I’ll go and make you some more hot lemon.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said weakly, curling into a tight ball of disappointment under the bedclothes when he left the room. I’d asked for passion, and Father Christmas had brought me Lemsip. Try as I might, I couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling – yet another emotion that I wouldn’t be in a hurry to document on my blog – that for James and I, the honeymoon period had come to an end, just as Mr Frog had predicted.

  25. Relief

  ‘You look really tired,’ said Amy as I leaned back in my chair, letting my body sag against the kitchen wall and closing my eyes. I’d listlessly picked over my salad, then pushed it to one side, unable to muster any further enthusiasm. The lettuce was like rice paper in my dry mouth.

  ‘I’m feeling low at the moment,’ I replied, with a sigh. ‘Fed up with being on my own. Just plain depressed. I don’t seem to be able to snap out of it. There’s nothing I can do but ride it out.’

&n
bsp; In the fortnight since Christmas, I’d felt as though I were slowly sinking in quicksand. The world around me seemed different: monochrome, tasteless and bland. Getting up in the mornings, readying Tadpole for her day and dragging my sorry carcass to the office required a supreme effort of will. It was as though a black cloud were following me around, casting a melancholy shadow.

  I’d begun a blog post about my feelings, hoping to chase away the gloom by facing it head on. It had worked, to some extent, when I’d been plagued by jealousy, but this time it didn’t seem to be the answer. I could describe how I felt, but not why. Unpacking my doubts, examining them on the blog in full view of James, would wreak untold damage. Besieged by pessimism, I was too afraid that if I took hold of a single thread and tugged, hard, our whole relationship might unravel.

  James detested his powerlessness in the face of my bleak moods, but there were no words he could say which would magically bring me to my senses. The clouds would lift, or disperse, eventually, of their own volition. Sobbing into the telephone, I craved physical contact, the reassuring warmth of skin. I wanted to rest my head against his chest and hear the steady, regular beating of his heart.

  Amy pushed back her chair and moved purposefully towards the kitchen cupboard. After rummaging around behind the packets of tea favoured by our French co-workers – herbal infusions claiming to possess all manner of miraculous slimming and ‘draining’ properties – she produced a large bar of dark chocolate which had been concealed at the back of the shelf. ‘Here, have a piece of emergency chocolate,’ she said, setting it in front of me. ‘Sometimes it really is the only cure.’

  ‘You know what the worst thing is?’ I continued, peeling back the copper-coloured foil and breaking off a single square. ‘I’ve been awful to James. I twist his words, push him away, hold petty things against him… It’s really nice of him to spend a fortnight with his parents in England while his dad is convalescing. But I’m making him feel guilty for doing it…’

  ‘The recommended dosage is two squares,’ said Amy sternly. She sounded more like a school nurse administering vile-tasting medicine than a friend offering chocolate and, in spite of myself, I let slip a smile, albeit a feeble one. ‘I’m sure he knows it’s only depression talking,’ she added, taking a couple of squares of chocolate herself, then sliding the packet back across the table towards me. ‘So he can hardly hold that against you. But isn’t there some way you can get yourself over there? Visit him while he’s in England?’

  ‘I don’t think his parents need a toddler around right now,’ I said doubtfully. Mr Frog was going to be away for two consecutive weekends. His timing couldn’t have been worse. ‘But having said that, his parents do live quite close to mine…’ The germ of an idea had been planted, and as soon as my boss went into his afternoon meeting I started making enquiries.

  ‘I’ve got great news!’ I announced as soon as James picked up the phone that evening. ‘I spoke to Mum earlier and she offered to babysit the weekend after next! I could fly over on Friday, meet my parents at the airport, then come to stay with you, and meet your parents. If you think that would be okay of course…’ I faltered. What had started out as a triumphant, gleeful announcement had fizzled out into a cautious question, my confidence faltering at the halfway mark. Supposing he said no? What then? His father was ill, and James was ostensibly there to help. His parents might not appreciate a social call. There was an excruciating pause, and I held my breath anxiously.

  ‘Okay? Of course it’s okay, silly girl. That’s fantastic news! Mum and Dad would love to meet you, and there are so many people from home I want you to meet!’

  ‘Oh, thank God! For a moment there…’ I was so relieved I laughed out loud. Tadpole, who was splashing in the bathwater by my side, looked at me with interest. As much as I’d struggled to hide my gloom from my daughter, she was as attuned to my moods as ever. Instinctively, she seemed to know that all those other smiles I’d forced hadn’t been the real thing, whereas the one I wore now was unmistakably genuine, and her grin now mirrored my own. ‘The logistics will take a bit of working out, of course,’ I added, my happiness clearly audible, ‘but I’ll phone Mum and Dad back now, we just need to iron out the details.’

  ‘Fantastic. Well, get your flights booked straight away in that case. Listen, I have to go now, my mother’s putting dinner on the table, but that’s great news. I’ll phone a few friends later and see what I can organize.’

  ‘Will do!’ I promised. ‘Thank goodness it all worked out. The idea of not seeing you all month was horrible.’

  As I lifted Tadpole out of the bath, I caught myself humming a favourite song. The stormclouds were scattering. I would see James in just over a week’s time. Not a moment too soon.

  Grabbing Mr Frog’s keys the day before I was due to travel to England, I bundled a protesting Tadpole out of the front door, praying that she wouldn’t pull the previous day’s stunt, which had consisted of rolling around on the carpeted floor and screaming at a pitch calculated to set my teeth on edge. Full-scale tantrums had become a familiar part of our daily routine, and I pitied our neighbours.

  ‘I want to finish my jigsaw, Mummy!’ Tadpole shouted indignantly, ignoring the finger I had pressed to my lips.

  ‘Later, darling,’ I muttered, secure in the knowledge that by the time ‘later’ came, she would have forgotten our exchange. The lift rattled its way down to the ground floor – the noises were getting worse, surely it must be ready for a service? – and after strapping Tadpole into the pushchair, I set our course for ‘Daddy’s house’. Mr Frog was away on a business trip, but he’d forgotten to attach the rain cover to Tadpole’s buggy when he dropped her off at Tata’s the previous morning. The skies were looking particularly ominous, and no doubt the forecast for Tadpole’s weekend in Yorkshire with her grandparents wouldn’t be much better, so I’d hastily phoned his mobile earlier that morning to ask permission to drop by and collect the cover in his absence.

  The door swung open and Tadpole darted inside, immediately at ease in her home from home. I paused on the threshold. It felt wrong to be there without Mr Frog, as though I were an intruder prowling around a stranger’s home. My own apartment had changed little since Mr Frog’s departure, but his was the embodiment of his fresh start, filled with furniture he’d bought without me. Stepping inside was akin to trespassing on his new life.

  I spied the pushchair cover immediately, but didn’t bend to pick it up just yet. Instead I drifted into the bedroom, following Tadpole’s lead. The room was sombre, the shutters at half-mast. The rumpled covers on Mr Frog’s futon bed I recognized; the Dora the Explorer pyjamas laid out neatly on Tadpole’s pillow were new. There had been talk of buying her a proper bed, but for now she was still using her travel cot, with the addition of a thicker mattress. It made the arrangement seem temporary, even though six months had elapsed since Mr Frog moved out.

  So engrossed was Tadpole in the book she had picked up as soon as she entered the room that she didn’t notice when I slipped away, this time with no valid pretext. Curiosity had gained the upper hand: I was snooping now.

  I stole into the kitchen, the least ‘lived-in’ room, the surface of the gas hobs so spotless that I suspected they’d never been used. Packets of chocolate biscuits and sweets littered the work surfaces – precisely the sort of junk which Mr Frog used to sneak into the shopping trolley at Franprix when he thought I wasn’t looking – and I was willing to bet that if I opened a cupboard I would find some of the dried noodles he’d lived on when we first met.

  I drew the line at peering inside his cupboards, but paused, remembering the tiny room we shared on rue de Vaugirard with its sloping floor. We’d travelled a long road since then, but from what I could see today, Mr Frog had reverted to his bachelor ways as though the clock had been wound back eight years and we had never happened. Hearing Tadpole’s footfalls approaching I suddenly felt uncomfortable, as though I were about to be caught doing something I shouldn’t. ‘Sweeti
e? Time to go now!’ I called. Retracing my steps I scooped up the rain cover, grabbed Tadpole’s hand and stepped back out into the stairwell.

  But the glimpse I’d been given into the world Mr Frog had rebuilt from the ashes of our relationship haunted me for the rest of the day. I was reminded of just how much I’d put him through, saddened by the loneliness I’d sensed as I stood in his kitchen. Compared to what Mr Frog had endured, my post-Christmas gloom suddenly began to look trivial. I might be lonely now, but in six months’ time I’d have everything I’d been dreaming of since I first met James last May. What on earth did Mr Frog have to look forward to?

  ‘Friday is gin and tonic night in this household,’ said Jane the following evening, busily slicing lemons while her husband, Nick, poured a generous helping of gin into glasses, the waiting ice cubes crackling enthusiastically. ‘You’ll join us, won’t you, Catherine?’

  ‘It would be rude not to,’ I replied gamely, looking around their kitchen, trying to pinpoint what it was that made it so quintessentially English, despite the fact that most people in both France and England shop at Ikea these days.

  A curvy brunette a few years older than me, with a dry sense of humour and attractive laughter lines around her eyes, Jane seemed happy with the cards life had dealt her, and rightly so. She’d met Nick, a dashing entrepreneur, in her mid-thirties, and they were now married, with two young children, who’d just been put to bed. The fleeting twinge of envy I’d experienced when James and I walked into their tastefully decorated townhouse was quickly neutralized by how down to earth the couple seemed. They’d done their best to put me at ease the moment I crossed the threshold; it was impossible not to warm to them.

  Nick was one of James’s oldest friends. They’d attended school together as teenage boys, not far from where Nick and Jane now lived, and had remained close throughout James’s exile abroad. It was fascinating to watch James unwind in their presence; to witness the years falling away. I’ve always thought that, in the company of their oldest friends, people get back to the basics of who they really are, so I’d been eagerly looking forward to the insights this trip to James’s home town would bring.