by Alan Holmes
On the day of the show, Brenda must have stayed at home, perhaps because of a cold, for I remember going to this event without her. Mother showed me where to sit in the bleachers and told me to stay there until she came back to get me. It was the first time I found myself alone in the midst of total strangers, and I remember well how uneasy I felt.
Capitaine Petipas, a retired and bewhiskered cavalry captain, excessively bow-legged from decades of riding—or perhaps from rickets—was the academy’s owner and sole instructor. He started the performance that day by having the students make their horses do a strange in-place trotting which he called “faire le petit pas,” a performance that was apparently his trademark.
After doing an assortment of similar exercises, the group of about two dozen riders started ordinary trotting in close formation. They were going around a large, oval indoor paddock that had once been part of a special training facility for the French Army Cavalry. A fair-sized crowd of spectators was seated on bleachers within this spacious, enclosed building.
By coincidence, I believe, Mother was among the lead riders of the group and seemed to be doing very well. After the riders had trotted around the oval several times, the horses began cantering around the arena, displaying fine form. Then Capitaine Petipas blew his whistle sharply, and all the horses simultaneously broke into a gallop.
Almost as suddenly, Mother seemed to be sliding towards her horse’s rump, and there, without anything to hold onto, she fell off. There was an audible gasp from the spectators, and my immediate thought was of Mother being trampled to death by the twenty horses that had been following her. I watched in horror as the horses kept on galloping, passing over Mother as if she weren’t there.
All the spectators stood up, and I could no longer see what was happening. I pushed my way forward through the crowd, wailing in alarm and anguish. During my struggle to reach the front row, I heard the people start to cheer and applaud. When I broke clear of the crowd, I was stunned to discover the cause of the cheering. Mother was standing up where she had fallen, and all the horses had come to a stop some distance beyond her. I couldn’t understand or believe what I was seeing. Had she perhaps performed a deliberate stunt?
Capitaine Petipas was now running towards Mother, who was looking dazed and disoriented. When he reached her, he held her by the shoulders and shook her, as if trying to coax from her an answer to some question he was asking. Finally, he announced boldly, “Madame Holmes is all right! She has a bruised shoulder, but she will remount and continue with the show!”
The crowd clapped and cheered once more as Mother whispered some discreet words to Capitaine Petipas. Then she left the arena, apparently having indicated to the good captain that she had no intention of remounting and continuing. She had dislocated her shoulder and needed medical attention.
Forty years later, reminiscing (in English) about this incident, Mother told me her side of the story:
“I was trotting along very nicely when all of a sudden my horse shooted out underneath me—I don’t know why—and was leaving me to fall off behind him, which I was doing by falling on my shoulder and on my back. Suddenly I was seeing all these brown shining stomachs flying over me and thinking one of them is going to land in my face. But no! The hoofs were flying fast by my head, so close one froled [coined word, meaning grazed] me, landing on my hairs and pulling them when it pushed them into the soft floor of the areen [coined word, intended to mean arena]. They all were being careful in not putting their horseshoes on me. I thought they were going on forever, and I thought I am probably going to die before they all have passed over me.
“They were old horses already retired from the French cavalry so they were all well intrained and were used to people falling down from the top of them. Capitaine Petipas told this to me later. Finally, they had all gone by me and I realize that I am still alive, so I should now stand up before they come around the areen to ride over me again. Then everybody started clapping as if I had done a marvelous thing, which I had not. What is so marvelous about falling off a horse? It was all the horses that had done the marvelous thing in not galloping their hoofs on me—don’t you think?”
“Maybe the people were clapping for the horses,” I teased.
“Of course! You are right! I had not thought of that!” Mother said, laughing heartily.
That was the last time she went riding, but not on account of the mishap, which she said had instilled in her a high degree of respect for French cavalry horses, but because of a strange episode that happened not long after the riding accident.
Minette’s mother held a dinner party and a séance. After dinner, the guests sat around Madame Danglosse’s large, oak dining table that had been cleared but over which was still draped the tablecloth. Around the table were seated my parents, two other guests, Minette, her brother Xavier, and Minette’s mother. (Madame Danglosse was a widow, so it’s quite possible her deceased husband was present as a ghost.) They all placed their hands palm down on the top of the table while Madame Danglosse went into a trance intended to invoke the spirits that haunted her house.
Here was Mother’s version of the séance, as told to me in English many years later:
“We sat there for fifteen minutes in silence total, wondering what is happening, except that Madame Danglosse was talking sometimes to her revenants (ghosts) in a lugubre (mournful) voice. Then this large, round, heavy table was suddenly lifting itself a little bit from the floor, floating with all of our hands just lying on it. Then Madame Danglosse said, ‘I have reached them. Is there a question you want to ask them?’ She was talking to all of us in the room now, with her habitual voice, of course.
“Dan always likes to joke people who are believing in revenants, and he said to Madame Danglosse, ‘Should Jenny ever be riding a horse again?’ After many minutes of silence, the table started floating in a horizontal way, turning first on the left and then turning towards the right and back on the left again. Madame Danglosse announced that this means very strongly no!”
“I was quite angry with Dan,” Mother said. “He was asking a question which was my right to ask and not his, though I never would be asking such a silly question. So I asked immediately to Madame Danglosse, ‘Can an answer be believed which is about me and which I did not myself ask and is a silly question which I would never be asking?’
“And right away the table shakes in a horizontal way again, left and right like before, which she already said to us means no!
“So I told Dan, ‘You tried to joke the revenants, and now they are joking you!’ And everyone laughed, and Madame Danglosse said, ‘Shhh! Revenants don’t like laughing and they might be leaving us.’
“But Dan just said to me, still in laughing, ‘If it’s your right to ask a question, why don’t you ask the revenants the same question?’
“So I did ask. This time the table turns in a horizontal way again meaning I must not ride, which was an answer I did not at all like, and I made a face which Dan could see.
“Now Dan was saying it’s his turn again to be asking questions, and he said to the table—I mean to the revenants—‘Is the answer to Jenny’s question a correct answer and one which she must believe?’
“This time the table moves up and down strongly. Madame Danglosse now says to me, ‘Because Dan is asking the question in that way, it means definitely yes, and you must believe the answer because if you do not, you will have a terrible accident.’ This answer was clear to me, and I decided then and right there not to be riding again, but I was very angry because I did not believe there would be any danger for me at all if Dan had not first asked the silly question and forced me to ask it again, and the revenant would never know that I am riding again with no danger.”
Mother continued her tale: “When the revenants have gone and the table again is on the floor and the séance is finished, Dan lifted a corner of the tablecloth, and he
said he was seeing there only the four legs. I told him in laughing, ‘What do you expect to find there? Some revenants?’
“He bended down and looked under the table once more. Then he shaked his head, and he said, ‘This table is too heavy to be lifting with just a few knees—I just don’t understand how she is doing this.’ Dan was refusing to believe they were real revenants. Which I did.”
And so it was that Mother ended her horseback riding. But Minette kept on with her lessons; most of her fellow riding students were eligible young men. “I’m not going to miss a chance like this!” she explained.
Shortly after the séance, Mother told Brenda and me about her experience with the spirit world. Upon learning that ghosts had been able to lift a heavy oak table at Madame Danglosse’s house, I resolved I would never set foot in the place again. The next time Minette took us to her mother’s home for safekeeping, I dug in my heels and vehemently refused to cross the threshold. After a futile struggle with me, Minette tried to coax Brenda into entering, also to no avail. Tante Minette was furious, but eventually capitulated and parked the two of us a short distance away at the house of Madame Saïce [rhymes with “mice”].
Madame Saïce, whom Brenda and I already knew, was only a slight improvement over Madame Danglosse, but at least her house wasn’t haunted. Madame Saïce was a graying woman whose usual attire was a dark gray, pinstriped, somewhat soiled and tattered tailored suit that no longer quite fit because she had gained weight over the many years she had owned it. She was an elderly spinster who was guardian and surrogate mother to her niece, Simone. The latter was the love child of Philippe Narnier, Ville-d’Avray’s only doctor. A month after the baby was born, her mother left Simone with Madame Saïce on the pretext that she had errands to run and had then disappeared, never to be seen again. Docteur Narnier, Simone’s alleged father and a bachelor, had turned to Madame Saïce for help. The child, who was about my age, had been in her care ever since.
At the time, I didn’t know that Simone’s parents had not married; I knew only that she had no mother, that Docteur Narnier was her father and that Madame Saïce was her aunt. I assumed that the doctor came home to the Saïce household in the evening, which in fact, he didn’t. Not only did he not live there, he apparently never came to visit his young daughter.
Docteur Narnier was a youngish, dark-skinned and a very good-looking Tahitian native. Mother said he looked like one of the figures in a Gauguin painting. Simone was a frail, pale-skinned little girl who bore absolutely no resemblance to her strong, swarthy father. I was too young to appreciate such details at the time, but now wonder if Narnier, rather than being the scoundrel his peers took him for, had done a noble deed by falsely owning up to being Simone’s father to spare the child the stigma of illegitimacy. At the time, illegitimacy was still an extremely burdensome cross to bear.
I also heard (much later) that Minette had an affair with Docteur Narnier. “But it did no good for her,” Mother said. “Such a pity for Minette—he was a rich man and so handsome. It was also sad for poor Simone who would be enjoying living with her father and a better mother than Madame Saïce was being for her. I think Minette was not thinking at all on that side of it when her affaire was going on and would be changing her mind about marrying him when she is seeing that she is suddenly becoming Simone’s mother.”
Simone was an anemic and sickly child. Over-pampered and continually nagged by the overwrought Madame Saïce, Simone must have led a miserable life. This situation was hardly conducive to enjoyable visits to their household.
Madame Saïce had no garden, and there was precious little to do indoors. Simone was so cowed, timid and nervous that it was impossible for her to play the game of crapette, a card game simple enough for young children to enjoy. Mother had brought a deck of cards on our second visit, for it was clear that Madame Saïce didn’t own anything as frivolous or potentially enjoyable as playing cards.
When Mother, Brenda, and I arrived at Madame Saïce’s house, it always seemed to be time for Simone to take a spoonful of cod liver oil. It was as though something about our arrival made Madame Saïce think of cod liver oil as a way to fortify Simone against whatever germs we had brought in with us. Worse yet, Madame Saïce’s idea of hospitality included the notion that she was obliged to give Brenda and me a spoonful of the foul tasting oil, which made us gag. “It’s absolutely the best thing for you, and you can’t go wrong taking a little dose,” Madame Saïce explained as she went to the kitchen for extra spoons.
Mother stood there, more amused than alarmed, as I refused Madame Saïce’s offering and clenched my teeth when she tried to push the spoon into my mouth. Madame Saïce had experienced such resistance before and knew the appropriate countermeasures. Her tactic was to pinch my nose and jam the spoon into my mouth as soon as I let out a yelp of protest. Much of the stuff spilled on my clothes and onto the floor. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop Madame Saïce from repeating the performance on our next visit.
Every time this happened, Mother appeared bemused and indifferent to our plight. I think she agreed with Madame Saïce that the cod liver oil couldn’t harm us and might even do us some good. I remember once asking Mother, “If the stuff’s so good for children, why is Simone such a sickly little girl?”
“We just don’t know how much more sickly Simone might be if she didn’t get her cod liver oil,” was Mother’s reply, to which my rejoinder was, “Or how much less sickly she might be, for that matter.”
When the proffering of cod liver oil was over, Madame Saïce usually turned her attention to the peeling of a tangerine, something else she was apparently convinced would ward off a possible invasion of germs. Brenda and I detested those tangerine wedges almost as much as the cod liver oil. It wasn’t that we didn’t like tangerines, but the whole house already had a strong medicinal smell, which seemed to emanate from Madame Saïce’s hands. They reeked so much of disinfectant that just being near them overpowered the pungent, pleasant smell of the tangerine wedges.
The Saïce household was also overheated, dark, and profoundly gloomy. Madame Saïce left her faded olive-green velvet curtains permanently closed, saying she believed that sunlight bleached the upholstery and carpet. She had apparently never opened her curtains, for if she had, she might have noticed that all her windows faced north and therefore never admitted the sun’s rays.
Mother’s overt sympathy and concern for Simone prompted me to ask her how Simone could survive under such conditions. Mother promptly replied, “The poor child! She is so used to it, and she has never known anything else.” It’s quite possible that Simone had never left Madame Saïce’s household since the time when she had arrived as a tiny infant and that she had no idea that an outside world even existed.
I once proposed to Mother that we invite Simone to our house, so she could play with us in the garden. I feel obliged to admit that this seemingly charitable proposal was motivated by a desire to deflect our next visit to the Saïce household. When mother acted on my proposal, Madame Saïce surprised us by accepting the invitation.
On the appointed day, Madame Saïce appeared at our door without Simone, explaining that the weather was much too cold for Simone to leave their house, and that she had left her with the woman who came to do the housecleaning. It was, in fact, a warm, pleasant spring day. Brenda and I had been outdoors all morning, wearing only light clothing. Simone was not ill, Madame Saïce insisted—she just didn’t want to take chances on a chilly day like this one. Simone might catch something—it was just too risky. Madame Saïce, it seemed, was quite willing to brave the frigid outdoors herself and was happy to partake of an especially fine afternoon tea that Mother had asked Françoise to lay on for the occasion.
After Madame Saïce’s departure, Mother opened the windows to get rid of the lingering smell of disinfectant that had trailed Madame Saïce into the house, and as soon as the offending party was out of earshot, she vent
ed not only the dining room but her anger as well. “That stupid old bat! She’d rather leave the child indoors, breathing-in clouds of dust stirred up by that inept servant of hers.”
Except for our cousins in Belgium—and the next-door Poujets when they were not ostracizing us—Simone was the only other child with whom we associated. The only compensation we had for our lack of playmates were Françoise and Raimond. He took a real interest in Brenda and me, and sometimes participated in our play. And when it rained and I couldn’t be outdoors, I spent many happy hours in the kitchen watching Françoise as she prepared meals, asking her a thousand questions about what she was doing. She was always happy to answer me and to elaborate on the whys and wherefores of cooking, at which she had become an expert. Sometimes she even let me perform some of the easier, safer kitchen chores. Everything she did to prepare our fine meals fascinated me, and the cooking knowledge I learned at her side serves me to this day.
Alain attains the Age of Reason (7th birthday), Ville-d’Avray, 1937
Brenda, Jenny, Jock, Lottie, and Alain, Hardelot, 1937
CHAPTER 7
An Airplane Crash and Some Bloodletting
When I was about seven years old, Father started taking more of an interest in me. Years later, when I asked why he had been so aloof during my early years, his explanation was, “Babies and infants are quite unapproachable to the average man and are best left to the care and company of women, who generally seem to understand them better.”
Over breakfast one Saturday morning, Father announced that he wanted to see if I could catch a ball. I wondered why he thought I might be able to achieve this since no one had ever thrown me one. I did own a ball, a large blue thing about the size of my head, an ancient and unused Christmas present from Auntie Gladys, Uncle Bob’s wife, who lived in England. I had, in fact, once taken a careful look into what possible use this ball might have, and had noted that it rolled and bounced. I found this mildly amusing, but grew bored with this activity and didn’t enjoy having to chase after it when I threw or kicked the beastly thing. When it rolled into the flower beds where it wreaked havoc, Raimond joined me in my dislike for it. As a result, the ball resided, abandoned and disgraced, in a corner of the garage.