by Alan Holmes
Mother was puzzled by this question and asked me what I meant. I gave her a full account of my eventful day. Suddenly, she was furious at the school and the way they had treated me. “They left you in a dark, cold broom closet all that time, without even letting you out for lunch? That’s criminal—you wait here in the car!” She got out and walked back up the hill.
Not long after, Mother returned with Brenda in tow. She had apparently given Madame Jaumont an earful and had decided that Brenda, too, should not remain a student in that humorless and ruthless school.
A little later, Monique and Charlie joined us in the car, and we drove home. The two of them sat in the back seat of the car, one on each side of me, but keeping their distance as much as possible, staring straight ahead, and not daring to look at me or say a word. My face was still as black as the ace of spades.
The pain of that day wasn’t over yet. The ink still had to be removed from my hands and face. Mother scrubbed me with a washcloth soaked in lemon juice, intermittently rinsing me off and applying olive oil to sooth my raw skin. Several times the lemon juice got into my eyes, causing me to shriek with pain. Thank God, I would soon be seven, and there would no longer be any danger of my being tempted into another bêtise like this one!
Two weeks later, I received a fountain pen for my seventh birthday. Having now reached the age of reason, I believed that I was automatically protected from committing any bêtises, as one is protected from becoming wet when under an umbrella. The possibilities for bêtises might be all around me, but I would never be tempted again. I was fascinated by the idea of a magical age at which such a change would abruptly take place.
I pressed Mother for more details, which prompted her to name two more magical “ages” I would attain. At fourteen, I would reach l’age de la sagesse (the age of wisdom), and at twenty-one, l’age de la majorité. Thus, I assumed, until I was fourteen, I would be reasonable but not necessarily wise. At fourteen, I would be mysteriously imbued with wisdom, and that would make the going easier, but I would still lack majority, whatever that was. Like reason and wisdom, it was bound to be something helpful in dealing with life. At twenty-one I would emerge like a butterfly from my chrysalis, both reasonable and wise—a shining, splendid, and complete adult possessing full and glorious majority.
It sounded so reassuring in a predictable and orderly way, and I looked forward to these momentous events in my life. At the age of seven, I took these words as the gospel truth because they gave me milestones on which I could depend. Father and Mother were leading what seemed to me an idyllic life, and I was now convinced that before I could lead a full and exciting adult life such as theirs, I still faced a long and arduous struggle before I reached majority, the boundary between childhood and adulthood.
After the inking incident, the Poujets would no longer talk to me, or even to Brenda. Monique had been in my class and probably had not painted too rosy a picture of the incident to her mother. A prissy little girl, Monique was overly neat and fastidious, not the type who would have the slightest sympathy for the likes of me.
I suppose I was viewed by Madame Poujet as unreliable and possibly a bad influence on her children. The Passerelle Raimondoise remained in place, but when I climbed over the wall and tried to talk to Charlie, he did not reply and ran indoors as if he had seen an apparition. Auguste, their gardener, came out and, from a safe distance, ordered me to climb back over the wall. When I told Mother what had transpired, her comment was, “It’s outrageous. They’re treating you like a rabid dog.”
Monique and Charlie had been our only friends, and I sorely missed playing with them. I kept on going over the wall about once a week, but each time I was rebuffed in the same way.
Although the garden at Ville-d’Avray was a pleasant and spacious one, it was also a solitary enclosure for Brenda and me. Our house bore the name of La Closerie, and not without good reason. The word “closerie” means “small estate,” but its phonetic proximity to the adjective “clos” suggests something closed in, which the property certainly was.
The only access to La Closerie from the street was by a two-hundred-foot-long alley bordered by high walls. Large trees on both sides of this alley obscured the sky and gave the entrance to the property an air of dark mystery. The turn-around at our end of the alley was open to the sky, its sunny brightness contrasting with the deep shade of the approach, and I recall thinking, as we entered from the street, that this driveway resembled a tunnel leading to an enchanted place. Upon reaching the turn-around, I could see our lush and verdant garden through the bars of the front gate.
Our flower-filled garden was surrounded by an elegant stone wall and by other neighboring properties so that it had no frontage onto any street. In the center of the garden was the house that, with its symmetry and blue slate mansard roof, resembled a miniature chateau in the classical French style. It had been built by one of Louis XIV’s courtiers, over 200 years before.
The garden surrounding the house covered about two acres and comprised a sweeping front lawn, abundant flowerbeds, several majestic trees of great height, an orchard with numerous varieties of fruit trees, a generous vegetable garden and a huge greenhouse. A wide gravel path curved its way to the front door and on around the house. The rest of the garden was criss-crossed with smaller gravel paths, many bordered by low boxwood hedges. Lilac bushes and other shrubs arranged in clusters on the spacious lawn provided ideal hiding places and little “nesting places” that were ideal for Brenda and me when we played house or hide-and-seek.
My favorite garden path was bordered on both sides by a row of closely planted chestnut trees, giving the appearance of a covered gallery as it paralleled the east and north walls of the property and made a sweeping curve where the two walls met. As I ambled down this lane in its deliciously cool shade on a warm spring day, I had the impression of being in a cloister. The chestnut trees formed the columns of the cloister, and the sun-dappled lawn and bright flower beds visible between the trees were the cloister’s courtyard. This shadowed lane created a pleasant balance of light and shade in the overall aspect of the garden, and the chestnut trees hid the surrounding walls, making the garden seem larger than it was.
The high walls around the garden blocked all contact with our neighbors, but did not stop the sounds of children playing beyond them. One of the two neighboring properties on our south side had a large and handsome edifice similar in architectural style to our own house. This once luxurious mansion had been turned into an orphanage. From a third-story window of the children’s home, the orphans watched me playing my solitary games. They often called out to me, but I never answered because Mother didn’t want me to associate with them and had ordered me to ignore them. She maintained that the orphans were mal élevés (rude or uncouth). I obeyed her injunction, and the price for this was an occasional catcall from the orphans. When I heard the happy sounds of their playing in the next-door playground, I sometimes wondered if it might not be more fun to be an orphan.
The other neighbor along the south wall was a White Russian called “Romanov.” For reasons unknown to me, he didn’t warrant the title of Monsieur Romanov, perhaps because he and his family were dirt poor. Mother explained that their poverty derived from the fact that Romanov had far too many children. They lived in a one-story tarpaper shack on a small plot of ground, originally part of the estate that was now the orphanage.
We once had a closer look at the Romanov family when Mother took Brenda and me around to deliver some old clothes as a Christmas gift. About ten children, some very young, came tumbling merrily out of their tiny hovel when we arrived. They were dressed in rags and were conspicuously filthy but didn’t look underfed. We were invited to come into their abode, but Mother declined because, as she later explained, she was afraid we might get fleas or lice. It wasn’t much safer outside. Their dog was friendly and severely mangy. The mutt took an immediate liking to me and kept
trying to lick my face. It was all I could do to fend off his advances. `
The shack the Romanov family lived in was so small that it was difficult to imagine that it could contain even two rooms. Mother later observed that, judging by its shape and style of construction, their dwelling must once have been a chicken coop on the larger estate. From this she surmised that they had neither running water nor electricity. She also observed that the children had to have been spaced about a year apart in age.
The Romanov brood used to sit on the ridge of their shack’s peaked roof, looking like a flock of bedraggled crows. From this roost they could see over the wall and watch me play when I was at that end of our garden. I wasn’t supposed to talk to these children either, but they were much nearer than the orphans, and I often spoke to them if Raimond or Mother were not around. I always found the Romanov children friendly and engaging. I was dying to know what mal élevés was really all about, and I was even somewhat disappointed to discover that they were not rude at all. I very much wanted to discuss my discovery with Mother, but fearing I would be scolded for having talked to the Romanovs, I never did.
The father of this large family later made a name for himself by inventing a silent aircraft engine. It was before the days of radar, and approaching enemy planes could successfully be detected long before they were within earshot by means of gigantic “ear trumpets.” I saw his plane, Le Silencieux Romanov, at the Paris Air Show of 1938. And indeed, the plane maneuvered over us without making a sound. People mistook it for a glider, but we could clearly see the plane was maintaining altitude through the use of its propeller which, according to Father, had to turn very slowly for the plane to remain silent.
Romanov was a freelance inventor, which provided an additional and more interesting explanation for his abject poverty than Mother’s version. The extensive publicity over his invention produced no noticeable change in the Romanov lifestyle.
The garden at La Closerie was Raimond’s pride and joy. He worked out there a good part of each day, often in the rain. Through his efforts, le jardin potager (the vegetable garden) produced a generous supply of vegetables all year round. The garden consisted of four growing-beds, all of them square and thirty feet across. Each bed was fully bordered with low, boxwood hedges, which Raimond maintained were impassable to snails, thus avoiding the need for snail poison.
The escargots gathered in profusion on a remote section of the garden’s outer wall that never saw the sun, and where Raimond enticed them by placing vegetable scraps at the base of the wall. He made sure his snails felt at home by hosing their snail-breeding grounds during dry spells.
Occasionally, Raimond chose the plumpest ones, and he and Françoise regaled themselves with a plate of escargots à l’ail (snails done in garlic butter). Both Mother and Father disapproved of this dish because the whole house, and Raimond himself, reeked of garlic for two days following their repast. So this dégustation (devouring with gusto) only happened when my parents were away. I don’t remember being bothered by the smell of garlic, but I do remember watching the dégustation of snails and feeling a bit queasy.
When our parents were away, Brenda and I ate in the kitchen with Raimond and Françoise. I enjoyed these meals because Raimond never failed to be entertaining. In truth, he was a lot more entertaining than our parents were at table.
Raimond and Françoise always mopped their plates clean with mie de pain (the non-crust part of bread), then turned the plates over and used the bottom side of the plate for dessert. I viewed the practice as an eminently sensible one, but I got nowhere when I advocated its use to Mother and Father during Sunday dinner in the presence of guests. No one present even thought the idea worthy of comment, and a prolonged hush prevailed until Mother brought up another subject. When I glanced at Raimond, I thought I detected a restrained smile and, when he saw that I was looking at him, he gave me the hint of a wink.
I heard more on the matter from Mother in private. “If you think that following the example of people less well brought up than you is a good idea, we might have you eat in the dining room when I am not home, with Raimond serving you there.” Thankfully, Mother never followed up on her threat, but I became cautious about revealing to her much of what Raimond said or did when she wasn’t around.
Perhaps because Mother wanted more time to herself and felt she couldn’t burden Raimond and Françoise with watching over us, the hunt for a governess resumed and, before too long, Mother stumbled on the person who would be our fourth and last governess.
Minette Danglosse was a young woman who lived right there in Ville-d’Avray. She must have been in her late twenties and belonged to a class of women now nearly extinct. She had no education beyond high school, had received no training for anything, had no special skills, no income, no job, and lived with her mother, a widow of modest means. Minette’s stated goal in life was to get married. By her own admission, she was too busy roaming the landscape in search of a husband to become involved in any kind of a full-time job, even if she had possessed the necessary skills.
The arrangement was that Minette continue living in her own home and come to our house only when Mother wanted to be away for any length of time. It was understood that Minette’s services would be required two to three times a week at most, occasionally overnight, and that she would always get at least a full day’s advance notice when she was needed. This arrangement provided Minette with a little pocket money while allowing her the flexibility to continue her search for a husband, something she joked about freely and frequently.
“Minette” is the diminutive of “Minou,” a term of endearment and a name often given to a kitten. However, there was nothing diminutive about the buxom Minette, who was quite statuesque and just this side of plump.
I was especially struck by the beauty of her wavy mane of golden blonde hair. It must have been an especially warm and sunny spring, for Minette generally arrived at our house attired in extremely brief shorts and an even briefer halter, straight from having played tennis. In Ville-d’Avray, a staid, old-fashioned, dressed-in-black Catholic village that seldom saw bare thighs and midriffs in broad daylight, the brevity of Minette’s attire and her deportment generated no small amount of talk.
Mother paid no heed to such gossip and eventually became fast friends with Minette, whom she found lively, entertaining, and a bit vulgar in her speech. Vulgarity is a characteristic that doesn’t easily offend or shock most Belgians, even those who, like Mother, did not normally indulge in it. My own recollection of Minette is that she was heavily tanned and usually glistened with sweat or a sweet-smelling sun-tanning oil, I can’t remember which—perhaps it was both. She was a bouncy, cheerful woman whose presence lit up a room and she laughed a lot and easily.
Minette was a laissez faire governess, so she and I soon came to terms and enjoyed an easy-going time when we were together, usually on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, days when Brenda and I had school only in the mornings. When I had homework to do, Minette was not strict or hard driving, and possibly some of my poor performance at school could have been laid at her door. But who was I to complain?
Minette’s attitude, when watching over Brenda and me at play, was equally lax, so I did a lot of exploring and experimenting with things that Mother or Pia would never have tolerated. I made up for what I wasn’t learning in my homework by what I was discovering in these games. I’m referring to such activities as climbing very tall trees, building “sand” castles out of the dark, rich soil of the vegetable garden, and playing with the garden hose to create rivers, dams and lakes, until I was soaking wet and a muddy mess. While I conducted my mischief outdoors, “Tante Minette” (“Aunt Minette” as she liked to be called) lounged indoors, reading romantic novels, occasionally glancing out the window and waving and smiling at me.
Minette helped me clean up and change my wet clothes without criticism or complaint. All cleaning up took place
before Mother returned, which prevented discovery of what (in Mother’s eyes) might have been unreasonable misdeeds.
Minette would sometimes take Brenda and me to her house and leave us in the care of her elderly mother while she went off on what she called “errands.” Mother eventually heard that these were really des petits rendezvous clandestins et inattendus (brief, clandestine, and unplanned meetings), as Mother delicately described them to me, decades later.
Having to stay at Madame Danglosse’s house always made Brenda and me uneasy because she was a mystic and clairvoyant, who talked of little else besides her experiences with the supernatural. Ghosts and poltergeists, she maintained, frequently visited the Danglosse household. Her house was unusually dark and gloomy, a spooky kind of place. Her black clothing, her tattered and disheveled look, suggested a witch down on her luck, and the only thing that kept this image of her from being totally convincing was her adiposity. I had always thought of witches as being skinny and shriveled up.
Once Minette had left the premises, Madame Danglosse shuffled her Tarot cards and did her best to amuse Brenda and me by telling us our fortunes. We sat there saucer-eyed, expecting a ghost to appear at any moment, but none ever did.
It was Minette who talked Mother into taking riding lessons. The two of them went off to l’Académie d’Equitation Petipas, a riding academy in nearby Versailles, leaving Brenda and me with Raimond and Françoise. After several weeks of lessons, the riding proficiency of the students at l’Académie d’Equitation had improved to the point where their instructor organized an equestrian gymkhana. Family and friends were invited.