Bella...A French Life

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

  “Wolff?” he queried, the first time my mother walked into his surgery, her hand firmly clutching mine. “Sounds familiar.”

  “We live here. Not in the village itself, but my husband Rodolph and I own and run Le Presbytère.”

  “Ah bon!”

  It was a snort.

  He asked my name.

  “Bella,” my mother replied on my behalf.

  I stood behind her, holding onto her skirt in fear, but at that stage my fear was provoked by the big green apparatus in front of me from which a dangerously sharp drill protruded, and not by the man himself.

  “Come, sit down here, Miss Bella.”

  He pulled me away from my mother and pushed me down onto the brown leather chair under the big green apparatus. I wiggled in order to sit comfortably and one of my plaits - my hair was combed into two plaits those days - brushed against one of his hands which he went to wash under a tap in the room. He did not close the tap properly and for the rest of our visit it dripped water loudly into the stained sink underneath it.

  Not on that visit, but on the next, a week later, Dr Brodard asked my mother straight out at which death camp my father was based during the war.

  “He was in France during the war,” she replied.

  I could see she was trying hard to smile. Not to get angry.

  “So, he was one of those who stole our art works and our wine - and women.”

  He looked at my mother, sniffing at the air, as if he could smell a stinking rotten tooth.

  At that time, I have not yet read those books about the Second World War, so I did not understand Dr Brodard’s rancour and I thought he, like my mother’s family, just did not like the German people, so his remark did not upset me and I therefore could not understand why my mother cried when she told my father about our day at the dentist. Later, after I have read up about the Second World War and the dishy Baudelaire and I were sharing the sandwiches in our lunch boxes, I was the one who cried after each visit to the dentist. I cried because I so fancied Baudelaire and I wanted to become his wife when I was grown-up but feared his father would never accept me as his daughter-in-law.

  Baudelaire - Beau as all in the village called him because of his good looks - and I used to go to the beach. He could swim, but I could not.

  ”You live by the sea and you can’t swim. Explain that one to me, Bella.”

  He said that more than once.

  One day he offered to teach me how. Despite my protests, he dragged me into the sea and with a boy’s clumsiness at wooing, he kicked my feet from underneath me, and when I did not surface, he dived down to find me, and pulled me back to the surface.

  “Merde,” he said.

  He shook his head like a wet dog who wanted to get water out of its eyes and ears. Immediately, he apologized for having used such an expletive, and I, wanting to show him I might not be able to swim, but I was certainly grown-up, called him a bugger, and of course I had no idea what the word meant. As there was no reaction of shock from him, I think he also did not know. The two of us - I never called him Beau because I loved the name Baudelaire and I had already decided that one day we would call the son we were going to produce Baudelaire too - used to kiss, but never did we go further than that. As it is, the kisses were never passionate; they were short closed-mouth kisses, his hands always behind his back and mine hanging uncertainly at my sides.

  When I set off for the lycée in Nantes, Baudelaire too left, but for one of the top schools of Paris.

  “I will write,” he promised.

  It was a promise which he sealed with another kiss, one which was a little longer and with more feeling behind it than those previous ones.

  “I will wait for your first letter,” I told him.

  He never wrote.

  Our paths crossed again in Paris when we were both at the Sorbonne but in different faculties because he was studying politics for a career in the diplomatic service. He was with a girl who I thought was a little plump, which surprised me, because he was so athletic and always stopped me from eating sweets saying it would make me fat and fat was ugly.

  The girl’s name was Anne; her father was a surgeon. Baudelaire told her I was studying medicine.

  “Do you think you will make it? It’s awfully hard getting a medical degree, you know,” she told me.

  I shot a glance at him, but he failed to come to my defence.

  The remark she made at our next meeting hurt me even more. No, hurt is not the correct word: it knocked me sideways.

  “Beau tells me your father was a guard in Auschwitz or somewhere equally horrible.”

  She had lifted her voice and all those who sat around us - it was at a concert at the Olympia music hall - swung round to see who the remark had been aimed at.

  “My father ... my dad ... was in France during the war and nowhere near a concentration camp,” I muttered.

  I did not look at her, and neither at Baudelaire. I looked towards the stage where the musicians were tuning their instruments.

  “Drop it, my love,” Baudelaire said to fat Anne looking with love deep into her black eyes.

  “No, why should I, Beau? Her father was a goddamn Nazi.”

  What was I to reply to that, because, yes, my father was a Nazi; he was in the Wehrmacht fighting for Hitler, so he was a Nazi.

  That was a night I again pulled the blanket over my head.

  -0-

  I take Larissa for lunch at the Vaybee because it is Saturday and I do not fancy eating alone in a restaurant on a weekend day. I also invite Jonny but he does not do lunch; he is watching his figure.

  Frascot says he is glad to see me.

  “You should come in every day, Miss.”

  “Do you want to drive me to drink, Frascot?”

  “He’s homo,” whispers Larissa to me, her eyes looking up from the handwritten menu.

  “Frascot?”

  “Noooooooo! Jonny?”

  Homo – homosexual.

  “I’ve guessed as much, Larissa.”

  “And such a nice guy too.”

  “Sure. Why shouldn’t he be?”

  “His parents do not know.”

  “So, he ought to tell them.”

  “They wouldn’t understand. Deeply religious. Has own pew next door and every Sunday they are there, kissing the Bible and what not.”

  Next door - Notre Dame Sainte-Marie church.

  We order Frascot’s rabbit with three mustard sauces and he serves it in a large copper pot we are to keep sizzling hot on an open flame.

  The rabbit is delicious as always and next we order apple pie with whipped cream.

  “I think I will go down to the beach now, Larissa,” I say.

  “Oh my goodness, Doctor Wolff. Your hair!”

  She throws her ringed hands up in the air.

  “I hope the shampoo and dyes won’t damage those baubles of yours, Larissa.”

  I know the stones in the baubles are not really precious stones: she claims they are.

  “Just glass,” she admits for the first time and winks.

  “Well, I never!”

  “Not to tell anyone though, Doctor Wolff.”

  She winks yet again.

  I drive a short distance along the coast and away from the mount to the cove where Baudelaire and I used to go. He used to dive from one of the jutting rocks while I played in the sand like a child, but with the very grown-up thoughts of the day he and I will be loving parents to our own little Baudelaire.

  I pull up on a grassy knoll and walk down to the beach. The sand is warm between my toes. I sit down on the very rock from which Baudelaire used to dive. I stretch my legs out in front of me so I am able to dip my feet into the clear blue sea. The water is icy, and quickly, with a shiver, I pull my legs back up and hold my feet up towards the sun to dry. I know should I fall into the sea, I, unable to swim, will drown.

  Someone told me Baudelaire did not marry Anne but a diplomatic corps interpreter. I wonder if they have a son
named Baudelaire.

  -0-

  Back at Le Presbytère there is no sign of Colin, but I remember I did not give him a key to the front door, so had he decided to return before nightfall, he would not have been able to get in and might have set off again.

  Ought I give him a key?

  If I do, might I not be making him feel too much at home? But is this not what I want? Just to make sure it is not, that I did not let Larissa make me look good in order to please Colin, I pick up my hairbrush and I brush her blow wave right out.

  At midnight, I go to bed.

  Soon, I hear the drone of Colin’s motorcycle.

  I wait for the click which means he is in the house and he is locking the front door. He goes straight to his room. Steady were his footsteps: so, he has not been drinking. Here at Le Presbytère we always listen for the footsteps to know whether to expect a problem from a guest who has had too many.

  I hear the click of another door.

  Colin has closed his bedroom door.

  I hope to fall asleep quickly.

  -0-

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It is Wednesday and Fred is here to do the gardening.

  “Miss, it was a good rain that fell,” he says.

  “Good, yes, Fred.”

  We are in the kitchen.

  “Fred, I’ve broken our rule this winter. Le Presbytère has a guest.”

  I wait for his reaction, his reply.

  “So I’ve heard. Frascot told me. ”

  Curiosity is written all over his face.

  “Make yourself a bowl of coffee, Fred.”

  Colin has been at Le Presbytère for ten days now. He appears in the kitchen’s doorway and Fred gasps for breath. Why? I can only guess he is struck by the good looks of Le Presbytère’s guest.

  “Good morning, Mr Fred. I am Colin.”

  Fred is wearing green Wellingtons to which dried mud clings and a green plastic apron over white overalls, so obviously he is the gardener I told Colin about.

  Fred asks Colin whether he would like a bowl of coffee.

  Eagerly, Colin accepts.

  “Not a bowl though, Mr Fred. Just a small cup, please.”

  The two go out into the Frida Kahlo courtyard and, sipping their coffee, they walk from one exotic plant to another, Fred telling Colin whatever he knows about each plant. Colin is listening with genuine interest and asking questions. The two men are from such different worlds, yet they appear to be getting on well. It did not escape me that Fred did not like Jean-Louis and that the sentiment was mutual.

  Fred brings the two emptied coffee cups to the kitchen.

  “Miss, Mr Colin is going to help with the gardening today.”

  “Really? He’s a man from the city, Fred, so I would say what he knows about gardening is dangerous.”

  “He climbs mountains, Miss.”

  “Mountains?” I ask. “Are you sure?”

  “He climbed the Eiger, Miss. Told me.”

  “The Eiger?”

  “Yes, Miss. He said it is in Switzerland, Miss.”

  A moment ago I was astonished. Now, I am angry, but not at Fred, but at myself. I have not managed to pierce Colin’s reserve, but my gardener, a man with little education, has done so within minutes of meeting him. What does this make me? A woman with no social skills? A tongue-tied moron?

  “People do. Climb mountains. Climb the Eiger. So what, Fred!” I say.

  I can see Colin through the window. He is yet again saluting me. This time he is doing so with a gleeful, playful, boyish smile. He must have guessed Fred was telling me about the Eiger and he must have seen the surprise on my face.

  I turn my back to the window.

  “I’ll leave the two of you to it, Fred. I will drive down to the village. Buy a few things.”

  Walking across the courtyard to the parking bay, I return Colin’s salute. My salute, unlike those he offered me, is clumsy, my forefinger almost in my right eye. The gesture spreads a smile right across his face, his eyes becoming tiny buttons within a few thin lines.

  “Please do see to it that Mr Colin does not fall from a tree because Le Presbytère’s insurance does not cover such an eventuality,” I call out to Fred, looking back.

  I run down the steps to the parking bay.

  I do not look back.

  -0-

  So Colin climbs mountains. My father also climbed mountains. He was good at skiing too; he was an excellent skier. That this was so led to one of the most painful episodes of my childhood.

  One winter, Miss Jambenoire decided the school would go skiing on the Christmas break. She needed an experienced skier to accompany the children as their instructor. No volunteers came forward: Normans are good at swimming and not at skiing.

  My father was able to ski almost before he was able to walk steadily. His family - Berliners - had each winter taken the train the seven-hundred or so kilometres south to the Bavarian ski resort of Mittenwald. The family owned a house there on the town’s main street - I still have a photo of the house, a white two-storey with a grey slate roof that slanted almost to the ground on one side. In 1941 when Hitler’s Gebirgsjäger mountain infantry was formed, my grandfather Johann suggested to my father, then already in France, that, because he was such an excellent skier, he should request to be transferred to the troop, considered an elite one. By then my father had met my mother and not having wanted to leave her, he ignored his father’s suggestion. Strangely, never did my father ski again. Miss Jambenoire having been in search of a skiing instructor, my mother asked my father whether he would not like to go with the children.

  “Henriette, what gives you the idea I would want to?” he asked.

  His eyes sparkled: he obviously had already thought of it.

  “If you do it, Bella and Marius can go along. I wouldn’t want them to go with just anyone,” she told him.

  That night when I went to the kitchen to fetch a glass of milk, I heard them discuss it when I passed their bedroom. They were speaking in whispers, but a child hears whispering more clearly than the loudest scream.

  The following morning my father put on his best suit for calling in on Miss Jambenoire, the woman who had until then refused to speak to him. She did so again. She told her secretary to tell my father to wait outside on the corridor because she was busy. My father stood out in that corridor for forty-five minutes just like an errant schoolboy waiting to be whipped. It amused the children; walking along the corridor on their way to the playground for their mid-morning break, they mimed a whipping. I must however in all honesty say it was not a gesture of malice on their part, but one of empathy; it was something we all did when one of our mates was sent to the headmistress’s office for punishment.

  Miss Jambenoire did not break her vow of silence towards my father. After having made him wait, she sent her secretary out to the corridor to tell him she did not speak to Nazis. That night I again heard my parents whisper to each other; on that occasion I went to stand outside their bedroom, hoping they would discuss what had happened at the school. Not long was I standing there, trembling in fear they might open the door, when they started to whisper.

  “I thought the war is over,” I heard my father say.

  “Rody, it is,” my mother replied.

  “Not here, not here in the village, it is not,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion.

  He suggested we ought consider leaving for Germany.

  “And leave behind Le Presbytère for which we have worked so hard. No, Rody, we must stand and fight,” was what I heard my mother tell him.

  “Henriette, they will never allow me to forget.”

  “But we love you. I love you, and our Bella and Marius love you,” she argued.

  I ran back to my room because what started in that bedroom then was not for little ears to hear.

  A few days later a letter arrived at Le Presbytère which was signed Bernadette Jambenoire (Miss), Head, Sainte-Marie-sur-Brecque Primary School.

  T
he woman wrote that because of a most unfortunate incident she has been compelled to cancel the children’s skiing trip in the Alps. She did not supply further details, but she and her secretary did not fail to spread the news around the village that the Nazi Rodolph Wolff through his actions had made it impossible for the trip to continue.

  “Say, Bella, are you a Nazi too like your father?” Marie Dumay whispered to me from her side of the bench she and I shared.

  By then there was not a soul in the village who had not heard the story and Vincent Lebar told me that although he would not have been able to ski because of the polio, he looked forward to the trip.

  “The doctor told my mom the fresh mountain air will do my weak lungs a world of good. I may now die because my lungs will pack it in, and Bella, it will all be your father’s fault!”

  Vincent Lebar did not die because my father stopped him from going to the Alps that Christmas: he lives in Paris, a married man with four children. He comes to the village often to put flowers on his parents’ grave; he used to greet me when we passed in the village - said, “Hello, and how are you, Bella?” - but he no longer does so.

  -0-

  In Sainte-Marie-sur-Brecque I call in at the bakery, suitably named Amandine after Amandine, wife of the baker, Olivier Richer, but also after the amandine, the French almond cake, one of Olivier’s specialities. Knowing Fred is always hungry when he comes gardening and that he will be so again today, I am looking for something to buy for lunch.

  I point to a quiche on a refrigerated shelf.

  “This looks just what I am after.”

  “It’s for six, Miss,” warns Amandine.

  “Thanks, Amandine. A quiche big enough for six is just what I want.”

  Yellow curls fall over her face, which is always red from the heat from the back room, where I can see Olivier and an assistant using long flat boards dusted with flour to scoop baked baguettes from a wood-burning oven. I buy all Le Presbytères’ bread and pastries from the Richers because baking over wood and not over gas or electricity, as is the norm these days here in France, gives their bread a crispy yellowish crust and a light interior much appreciated by my guests.