Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  As we walked along the avenue de l’Opéra towards Havre Caumartin and our final destination – the Printemps and Galeries Lafayette department stores – Amy talked at length about Tom, who still didn’t seem to know his mind as far as Amy was concerned, oscillating wildly between infatuation and indifference. It was soothing to listen to someone else’s problems for a while, instead of thinking or writing about my own. A couple of times I bit my tongue, suspecting that I was feeling too negative – both about men, and about long-distance relationships – to be able to offer Amy any advice of real value. Rejection left a tart aftertaste: whatever I had to say would be tainted by my own disappointment.

  As we drew close to the Opéra Garnier and came to a halt at the first of several pedestrian crossings, Amy turned to me suddenly and changed the subject. ‘So how are you doing? I mean, really? Because brave words on your blog are all very well, but no one gets over heartbreak that quickly.’

  ‘I miss him,’ I said sadly, my voice almost drowned out by the roar of the rush-hour traffic. ‘I miss the silliest things, like the sound of him snoring in the night. It woke me up sometimes, and this probably sounds stupid, but I was just happy to be reminded that he was there.’ Amy didn’t laugh; if anything, her eyes encouraged me to go on. ‘I miss the physical stuff too, of course,’ I said with a coy sideways glance. Since James had left, I’d felt my body reverting slowly back to how it was before, as though the nerve endings had shrunk far beneath the surface. ‘But I don’t want him back. There’s no future for us now.’ I twisted the ring I wore on my middle finger as I spoke, a gift from Mr Frog many years ago.

  The green man had just lit up, and we crossed the road in silence. ‘I have to ask this,’ said Amy when we reached the opposite kerb, our trajectory taking us past the terrasse of the Café de la Paix, ‘even if it sounds cruel. Do you ever find yourself wishing you could wind back the clock to that lunch we had the day before you came clean about James, so that you could do things differently?’

  ‘No,’ I said, without hesitation. ‘I don’t regret what I did. I think it had to happen. If James was never meant to be more than just a catalyst, then so be it. I was unhappy, and I needed a push to do something about it.’ My eyes alighted on a well-dressed couple who were drinking champagne at an outdoor table, their hands interlaced, not two metres away from us, and I almost flinched. When I was pregnant, I remember seeing pregnant women everywhere I turned. Right now Paris was being cruel: surrounding me with happy couples, rubbing salt into my wounds.

  ‘Well, at least now you’re not dashing off to Rennes at every opportunity, you’ll have some weekends in Paris to yourself. That’ll be good for you,’ said Amy. ‘It took me a while to get back on my feet after my break-up – and I certainly wasn’t ready to meet anyone new for a while – but I did force myself to go out, see my girlfriends. It did me a lot of good, although my liver might not agree…’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I need to get out and see more people. Force myself to switch off the computer and live more in the real world. How about I start by coming along with you to the birthday drinks? If you’re sure no one will mind?’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Amy, visibly pleased with herself. ‘I knew you’d come round. But first things first. We need to choose a gift.’

  Crossing the boulevard Haussmann, we pushed open the revolving door and stepped inside the brightly lit foyer of Printemps.

  ‘I saw a billboard in the métro today that made me think of you,’ wrote one of my commenters the next day in a private email to my petite anglaise address. ‘I’ll leave you to work out which one I’m talking about…’ I was intrigued, but too snowed under with work to investigate and, as I scampered around the office binding documents for a meeting, the cryptic message flew clean out of my head.

  That evening I happened to glance up from my book as the train screeched into Gare de l’Est and there it was, displayed alongside one of those Galeries Lafayette posters showing a Laetitia Casta lookalike wearing little more than a liberal coating of baby oil. A poster twice my height depicted a huge pink heart inscribed with the words ‘petite anglaise raffinée cherche compagnon de route pour chanter sous la pluie.’ My book fell into my lap and I brought a hand to my mouth. So that’s what he was referring to!

  I posted a picture of the advert on my blog the next day, describing the jolt I’d experienced at seeing my name writ large across a billboard, even if the advert was really part of a campaign for a loan finance company and referred to a small English car seeking an owner and not an English girl looking for a love match. It soon became apparent from the comments left, however, that many of my Parisian readers had been doing double takes – just as I had – when first they saw the poster.

  ‘Funny, I don’t live in Paris,’ said Aude, ‘but I was there today and I saw this advert twice. The first time, I didn’t have time to read it from start to finish, and I really thought it was an advert for YOUR blog.’

  Aude could have been sitting right beside me in the métro on my way home and neither of us would have been any the wiser. I was anonymous, I went about my business incognito, and yet there I lingered in the minds of complete strangers. Strangers who knew me only as petite anglaise; strangers who had never seen my face.

  Combing through the visitors’ logs that night, I wondered whether I lingered in James’s mind too. He left no comments, and he wasn’t my only reader in Rennes, so the search was worse than futile. However much I liked to imagine him hunched in front of his computer, reading my posts with a haunted expression, in truth, his thoughts and feelings had become opaque to me now.

  I decided to come clean about these feelings, partly in a bid to smoke James out if he really was silently following the blog, but mostly because I wanted to admit that behind the brave face petite anglaise had been presenting to the world, I was still in pain.

  ‘If you are out there, ex-Lover,’ I wrote, moments before I disabled the visitor log, determined to go cold turkey, ‘then you have the advantage. Because here I am, an open book, with a broken spine. While you, you remain unfathomable.’

  30. Stirring

  The signs were unmistakable: a buoyancy, a lightness, a renewed bounce in my step. The familiar sensation of seeing the world through a feel-good movie filter. I hummed as I walked and, when I caught sight of myself reflected in a shop window, the girl who looked back at me was pale, but smiling.

  It was foolish to let myself feel this way, so soon, but I was vulnerable, receptive; as soft and malleable as putty between warm fingers. I didn’t stand a chance. Paris opened her arms to me, and I fell into them, gratefully.

  It all began on my first Friday evening without Tadpole since James had left, two weeks earlier. Nestling among the latest batch of sympathetic emails from readers I’d spotted a message from Elisabeth-Coquette and we’d made arrangements to see a film near Odéon. Shivering in the cold, my breath fogging before my face, I wished I’d had the foresight to dress more warmly.

  March is a fickle month in Paris. A mild spell lures the trees into a false sense of security, tricking them into yielding their blossoms prematurely. But a cold snap inevitably follows, bringing them brutally back to their senses, arresting their development. I’d been caught out too, and now regretted checking my heavy winter coat into the dry cleaner’s. Digging my hands deep into the pockets of my thin mac, I weighed up whether or not I had time to slip over to the crêpe stand across the road before Elisabeth arrived. I probably didn’t, but the persistent aroma of vanilla sugar and warm chocolate sauce was steadily weakening my resolve.

  I stood waiting for Elisabeth at the base of the statue of Danton, a popular Left Bank meeting point. I couldn’t remember who Danton was, but I noted with a smile that his pedestal had been tagged with space-invader graffiti, the pixels picked out in contrasting mosaic tiles. I was surrounded by young people; their chatter drawing frosty speech bubbles in the air. Lone girls waited breathlessly for friends to arrive. Nervous f
aces and tentative, shy smiles of greeting were reserved for first dates; pouts and reproaches of ‘t’es encore en retard’ for long-term boyfriends. Groups of students, their faces illuminated by the neon signs which blazed above the cinemas and cafés lining both sides of the boulevard Saint Germain, argued earnestly over which film to see, and disjointed fragments of conversation littered the air. ‘Il va être nul, ce film là…’ ‘Tu l’as déjà vu?’ ‘Je déteste Tom Onks…’ ‘Mais si, Ça va être bien…’ ‘OH là là, non, hors de question…’ Mobile phones were pressed to ears tinged red with cold, numb fingers fired off text messages over the airwaves. Strangers asked each other for a light, or even for a cigarette. The air buzzed with excitement. Standing there, alone, I felt something stirring.

  A younger me had often stood guard by the métro exit here, a Pariscope magazine in her hand, flashing anxious looks at her watch and scouring the crowds for a glimpse of Mr Frog’s blue duffle coat. His chambre de bonne was just a short walk away, at the Sorbonne end of the rue de Vaugirard. Things were so much simpler then: we were both in stop-gap jobs, as opposed to careers, and all we had to argue about was which film we’d rather see, or whether to buy our popcorn salé or sucré.

  My vision clouded by ghosts, I didn’t see Elisabeth approach until she drew to a breathless halt in front of me. Copper curls escaped from a knitted hat and her cheeks were flushed scarlet from the cold.

  ‘So sorry I’m late,’ she said, out of breath, as though she’d run all the way. ‘I got a phone call from the States just as I was about to head out…’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ I replied, brushing aside her apology. ‘It feels so good to be out. I can’t remember the last time I saw a film in this part of town. I’m much more of a rive droite girl, at heart, but I do have a soft spot for this neighbourhood.’

  ‘You certainly seem to be holding up okay,’ she said cautiously, surprised to see me so upbeat. She’d probably thought she was on some sort of mercy mission tonight, playing chaperone to the walking wounded. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened… But it’s great finally to catch up with you. We don’t do this nearly often enough.’

  We watched a film – Capote – giggling like schoolgirls when the Frenchman in the queue in front of us pronounced it the French way, as though the writer’s name had been Truman Condom – then drifted along the boulevard Saint Germain to a no-frills Tex-Mex on a side street which Elisabeth knew well. We talked until the second-hand cigarette smoke made us hoarse, and I lost all sense of time, almost missing the last métro home. Was it the wine, I wondered, as I leaned my head against the windowpane and watched the stations file past, that had filled me with this feeling of tired elation? Or was there something in the air?

  The next morning, on my way to an apartment-viewing, I paused halfway along rue Piat to lean over the parapet and look down on the Parc de Belleville. Landscaped on a steep slope, where centuries ago vineyards and orchards once grew, staircases plunged, pathways spiralled and, beyond it, the rooftops of Paris stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. I should come here more often, I thought to myself. I haven’t even been making the most of my own neighbourhood, let alone the rest of Paris.

  I’d begun actively searching for a new place to live, close to Tadpole’s school and ‘Daddy’s house’. The deux pièces I visited that morning wasn’t quite right, but I was filled with cautious hope nonetheless. The idea of moving, a reluctant, pragmatic decision, initially, was growing more appealing with every passing day. The quest had given me a new sense of purpose. A place of my own in Paris – hadn’t I dreamed of that for years? Instead of running away, I owed my adopted city a second chance.

  Although the air was still crisp and cold, the sky was a cheerful periwinkle blue, and birds chirruped in the branches above. After my appointment, I decided on a whim to take a stroll. Narrowing my eyes, blocking out the cars parked bumper to bumper along the kerbside and substituting the tarmac for cobbles, it was easy to imagine I was walking through a village, far from the capital. Belleville was full of surprises: culs-de-sac of terraced houses with walled gardens hidden in the shadow of high-rise blocks, private courtyards filled with greenery concealed behind heavy double doors, one- or two-storey buildings that had once been farmhouses or workshops in the days when Belleville lay outside the city limits. I wandered without purpose, revelling in my new-found freedom to improvise. The exhilaration I’d felt the night before hadn’t faded. If anything, it was intensifying.

  After lunch, I decided to take a métro over to the Left Bank, to browse in the boutiques around Saint Germain, just because I could. Feeling a bit like a tourist, I ordered hot chocolate in Café Flore, sitting in the panelled room upstairs, where the pace was slower and there were more free tables. It was served in two jugs, one containing chocolate the consistency of molasses, the other filled with frothy warm milk, and I stirred the mixture vigorously, pausing to suck the remaining chocolate from where it lingered on the spoon.

  Shrugging off a vague, half-formed plan to buy books at W H Smith, near Concorde, I drifted along the rue de Seine, passing deserted art galleries and sleepy restaurants. Dawdling in front of the wooden kiosks which lined the riverbanks, I stopped to finger antique postcards and advertising posters, yellowing pre-war magazines and classic comic books, all wrapped in protective cellophane. The elderly stallholders sat on deckchairs, drinking coffee from Thermoses and watching the tourists stroll by, seemingly unconcerned that most people had no intention of actually buying anything.

  When I reached the Pont Neuf, I remembered the last time I’d seen it, from the taxi taking me to the bloggers’ soirée, before James and I had even met. I smiled at the sight of couples pressed together in its curved alcoves. Such a stereotype, this obligatory parade ground for lovers, but I was bemused to note that such public displays of affection no longer seemed to cause me pain. It was mid-afternoon now, and the temperature was rising. I unbuttoned my jacket and breathed deeply. The air smelled strongly of spring.

  I walked for hours that weekend, content with my own company, self-sufficient, drinking everything in, my senses overwhelmed. There was such pleasure to be found in the little things: breaking the end off a warm baguette, savouring the contrast between the crisp shell and the warm, yielding dough; brushing half-heartedly at the dusting of flour on my coat; smiling sweetly at a passer-by who mockingly wished me ‘bon appétit’.

  Losing James had left me vulnerable, but in a good way. I was as porous and permeable as the sugar cube I held to the surface of my espresso, watching the coffee rise towards my fingertips. Sipping the bittersweet liquid, feeling its warmth permeate my body, I couldn’t imagine anywhere else on earth I’d rather be. I’d forgotten how much it was possible to love this city.

  ‘You ready for me to take over?’ I enquired as I neared the top of the steps outside Buttes Chaumont station, my phone pressed to my ear.

  ‘We’re still in the park,’ Mr Frog explained, unnecessarily. I could have deduced as much from the shrieks of children at play in the background. ‘We’re about to leave the play area with the slide near Botzaris. Et toi?’

  ‘Just out of the métro, five minutes away,’ I replied. ‘Why don’t you stay on the main path and I’ll meet you halfway?’

  It felt curious, walking through the park without Tadpole, especially at the weekend. The benches which lined the main avenues were the preserve of gossiping pensioners, as always, but the wide avenues favoured by joggers during the week were now overrun with couples and families. I weaved self-consciously around the pushchairs and tricycles, my excitement mounting at the prospect of seeing Tadpole. I’d barely spared her a thought all weekend – growing more and more able to enjoy these short periods of separation as time wore on – but now I couldn’t wait to see her face light up with pleasure at the sight of me approaching.

  I spotted Mr Frog in the distance, walking alongside an empty pushchair which was being propelled forwards as though by an invisible fo
rce. Tadpole had taken to insisting on pushing the buggy herself lately. A frustrating habit, as she often advanced at a snail’s pace or was liable to run other people inadvertently off the pavement, unable to see where she was going. I altered my course now so as to meet the pushchair head on. I could see determined fists gripping the handles, but Tadpole’s head was bowed, her face hidden from view.

  ‘Good weekend?’ enquired Mr Frog with a tired smile.

  ‘Lovely,’ I replied. ‘It was a real novelty to have some time to myself in Paris. And this weather, this light… It makes you glad to be alive, doesn’t it?’

  At the sound of my voice, Tadpole’s eager face emerged from behind the pushchair. ‘I goed on the slide with Daddy!’ she cried, as I swooped down and hugged her tightly for a moment. Then, falling into step with Mr Frog, and with Tadpole between us – still pushing the buggy – we slowly made our way to the park gates, in the shape of a family.

  31. Charmed

  Mr Frog took Tadpole to a family gathering at his parents’ house the following weekend. I panicked as the weekend loomed closer: my renewed enthusiasm for Paris was undiluted, but there was a fine line between enjoying my time alone and feeling apprehensive about how I would keep loneliness at bay. Swallowing my pride, I sent an SOS email to a few of the people I’d met through petite anglaise.

  ‘I’m home alone this weekend – half my office is going to a wedding, and I’m not invited – so, um, I’d love to catch up with anyone who might be free,’ I wrote bashfully. I didn’t enjoy having to beg, but I knew it was up to me to make the first move. I’d been too wrapped up in James to devote enough time to my budding friendships before. But if people were willing to give me a second chance, I was keen to start over.