by Sarah Long
‘How was your day? Did you have chips for lunch?’
She was often struck by the banal nature of her conversation with her children. It would be nice to ask more penetrating questions, but she had come to realise that you couldn’t expect too much stimulating banter from anyone under the age of eight.
‘Mum, do you have a job?’ asked Charles-Edouard as she opened the car door for him.
‘No. Well, I look after you two.’
‘So does that mean you’re au chomage? Madame Pinault says that people who don’t work are called chomeurs and they get money to help them.’
‘No, Charles-Edouard, I’m not unemployed. I choose not to work, it’s quite different.’
‘Why’s it different?’
‘I suppose it’s because I don’t need to work.’
‘Does Daddy pay for everything?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s nice of him.’
Laura felt her self-esteem ebb another couple of notches as she drove off to spend one more evening awaiting the return of her benefactor.
‘Jean-Laurent, does it bother you that I don’t work?’
It was Friday night, and they were in the car, crawling west along the A13 in the thick of the weekend traffic and the pouring rain.
‘You don’t work? But you’re always telling me that you’re busier now than you’ve ever been.’
‘You know what I mean. Is it embarrassing for you that I don’t “work outside the home”, if you want to be politically correct about it?’
‘We’ve been through all this. I thought you were happy pottering around with the children? Anyway, you’re hardly likely to find anything interesting that you can do part-time, and I thought we agreed that it was important that one of us was there for them after school. It’s not as if I’ve got the kind of nine-to-five job that lets me come rushing home to do tea and homework.’
Research meetings with Flavia, of course, came into the quasi-professional category.
‘I know, but do you think I’ve become more boring since I’ve been at home?’
Jean-Laurent didn’t think it was wise to answer this question too directly.
‘You can’t look at it like that. Our lives are different now. We’ve got the boys, things aren’t going to be the same as they used to be.’
‘So you do think I’m more boring?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you do think so.’
‘Look, Laura, now you are being boring. If you want to go out and work a sixty-hour week, that’s fine by me. I’ll stay at home and have a nice time and you can worry about keeping the family in designer trainers and skiing holidays.’
‘Would you really like that?’
He thought for a moment about a life without an expense account. No more meetings in which he could look dashing in his Hugo Boss suits and impress pretty young marketing assistants with his mastery of brand architecture. No more off-site think tanks at luxury hotels. No more lunches with Flavia. He would become like his sad, pussy-whipped friend Jean-Michel, bowed over the pushchair, taking the hoover in for repair while his wife swept off to her high-powered job at the Assemblée Nationale. Poor fucker.
‘No, not really. I don’t think I’d have anything to say for myself.’
‘Exactly. That’s just how I feel some of the time.’
Jean-Laurent braked violently as a Mercedes sports car overtook him from the inside lane. He swore at him, ‘Enfoiré!’, and took his hand off the steering wheel to tap his head in an expression of disbelief. The driver responded by raising an insolent finger in the rear-view mirror. A hot-looking piece beside him had her arm draped across his shoulders. There were no child seats sensibly strapped into the back of this car. No doubt they were off to a little hotel for a weekend of mutual pleasure and self-gratification. Whereas he, Jean-Laurent, could look forward to fixing the dripping tap in the attic bathroom, and possibly digging over the rose beds before sitting down to a tiresome child-orientated lunch with some tedious friends of Laura’s and their new baby.
He sighed as they drew up to the péage and held his upturned hand out to Laura.
‘Got a card?’
She handed him her bank card and he opened his window and fed it into the machine. The barrier lifted and they drove on in silence into the darkness.
Ninety minutes later they scrunched up the gravel drive to their country cottage. It was chocolate-box pretty with its black and white timbers, set in a fairy-tale garden that had seduced them with its mature trees – perfect for the hammock – and whimsical wishing well, now prudently boarded up to prevent disaster.
Unfortunately the house was situated rather a long way from the car parking area, particularly unwelcome on a filthy November night when you arrived with sleeping children and bags of heavy shopping. Jean-Laurent turned off the engine and slumped back in his seat, while Laura pulled up the collar of her coat against the rain and picked her way across the stepping stones that Jean-Laurent had spent the best part of his summer holiday embedding into the lawn. Laura had wanted him to get someone in to do it, but he had insisted that physical labour was what he needed to counteract the stress of his job. His back had been giving him trouble ever since, though he did not like to be reminded of it.
Laura pulled the keys out of her pocket, opened the door and stepped into the cold, damp kitchen, switching on the lights and the central heating then putting on the kettle for hot-water bottles in a well-practised routine. She then hopped back across the stepping stones, which were really placed too far apart for anyone under six foot two, and lifted Pierre-Louis from the snug cocoon of his car seat. Back across the stepping stones she went with him, into the house and upstairs into bed where he burrowed under his duvet like a small animal. She did the same with Charles-Edouard, puffing up the stairs under his greater weight, then went back to the car to ferry in carrier bags loaded with the weekend’s provisions.
Meanwhile Jean-Laurent was pouring himself a whisky in the kitchen, unwinding after the journey.
‘What’s for dinner?’ It was so cold that his breath hung in a visible cloud.
Laura was unpacking the groceries, still wearing her coat and hat.
‘Soup. Warm us up. Then cheese.’
‘I think a robust Cahors should see us right in that case.’
After supper they climbed up the spiral staircase and quickly changed into their out-of-season country weekend bedwear: pyjamas, socks and sweatshirts that had seen better days. Laura wrapped herself into Jean-Laurent’s folded back.
‘’Night, then.’
‘Goodnight.’
There were, she thought fleetingly, better ways to spend a Friday night.
Saturday morning brought no improvement in the weather. The children sat at the kitchen table drawing pictures of their favourite cartoon characters, while Laura was concentrating on stuffing three different sorts of cheese under the skin of a chicken.
‘It’s boring here, why can’t we get a telly?’ asked Charles-Edouard as he put the finishing touches to his bulbous-nosed Super Mario.
‘You watch quite enough in the week. It should brighten up later, then we can go for a bike ride.’
‘Oh, boring. Can we get a comic?’
‘Maybe this afternoon. Here, take this coffee up for Daddy.’
‘He’s still asleep.’
‘So wake him. It’s nearly eleven o’clock.’
But Jean-Laurent was not asleep. He was sitting up in bed cradling the phone.
‘Oh, nothing. It’s raining. I’ve got to fix a tap, then we’ve got some people coming to lunch. How about you? . . . sounds marvellous. I only wish I could come and help you choose . . . Do you think they’d let me into the changing room? . . . Oh, I see . . . well, you’ll just have to give me a private viewing next week.’
He started as Charles-Edouard came slowly into the room with a bowl of coffee, frowning in concentration as he tried not to spill it.
‘Anyway, got
to go. I’ll call you next week. Ciao.’
‘Who were you talking to?’ asked Charles-Edouard, placing the bowl carefully on the bedside table.
‘Just someone from work. Merci, mon ange, what a big boy you are. Come and read me a story, let’s see how you’re getting on with your reading.’
Charles-Edouard climbed into bed with his father and rubbed his unshaven chin.
‘You’ve got spikeys. Why does your beard stink in the mornings?’
‘It’s not my beard, it’s my evil breath. I’m the big bad wolf and I’m going to EAT YOU UP!’
Charles-Edouard shrieked in delight as his father threw him into the air and caught him in a noisy snuffling impersonation of a wild beast with his prey.
By 12.45 Laura had set the table and the cheesy-skinned chickens were beginning to smell appetising. By two o’clock the gratin potatoes had rather shrivelled up. At 2.30 Laura decided to feed the boys as they were getting hungry and bad-tempered.
‘Where the fuck are they?’ grumbled Jean-Laurent, helping himself to his third glass of pommeau, a potent blend of cider and Calvados that had been devised by depressed Normans as an aperitif to help them get through grey days like this one.
‘They rang from Evreux to say they had to stop to feed the baby. They should be here by now.’
‘Can we get our comics now?’ asked Charles-Edouard, licking the last crumbs of chocolate cake from his plate.
‘No, we’ve got to wait for Harry and Susie.’
Harry was an old school friend of Laura’s brother who had been sent to work in the Paris office of his bank three years previously. Laura had never cared for him, but he had been persistent in inviting them to his parties, which were ghastly braying affairs, full of British expats clinging together in the face of Johnny Foreigner. Laura had never invited him back, as she was unable to think of anyone to have with them, and thought that it would be better to have him here in the country, where a cosy foursome looked less like an insult to his present-ability.
Harry’s wife, Susie, like the wives of many bankers who could afford the luxury, was a Creative Person who had taken a course in Interior Design at Parsons College in Paris. She had done up quite a few apartments for Harry’s colleagues, who were too busy making money to be interesting themselves but who compensated by paying Susie to hang up lengths of hand-painted hessian. They especially appreciated the signature chandeliers she made out of old bath taps, which invariably provided a talking point during dinner parties. Susie’s most recent creative outlet, however, was a baby called Paris. This child was, to put it mildly, the focus of her life.
‘They’re here,’ announced Pierre-Louis from his vantage point on the window sill above the kitchen radiator, which he had long ago identified as the only warm place in the house. Laura watched through the rain as Harry climbed out of the grey BMW and fussed about in the boot until he came out with a large striped golf umbrella. Opening the passenger door, he held the umbrella over Susie and the baby as though she were a visiting foreign dignitary. There was not enough room for them both on the stepping stones, so he squelched alongside her on the grass, her confident, Sloaney stride easily taking in the too-wide gaps between the stones.
‘Laura, I’m so sorry we’re late. We had to stop for the baby, and then we found this wonderful pottery in Bernay.’ She held out a parcel in the hand that wasn’t attached to the baby. ‘Here, can you take this? Careful, it’s fragile.’
‘Oh, thank you, is it for me?’ Laura knew the pottery, which used only beautiful natural blue-green dyes.
‘No, it’s for my study actually, but it’s quite delicate and I didn’t want to leave it in the car in case we forgot about it and it got broken.’
She gave an appraising glance around the kitchen.
‘Well, this is very cosy, I must say. Etruscan Red, Sugar Bag Light and Mole’s Back. Don’t you think there’s something reassuringly nineties about the National Trust paint range? Harry, could you bring in the playpen, please?’
She turned to her husband who was busy ferrying in what seemed to be a disproportionate amount of luggage for an overnight stay.
‘Let me take your coats,’ said Laura. ‘Jean-Laurent, can you organise some drinks?’
‘No alcohol for me, thank you, I’m still breastfeeding,’ said Susie. ‘Do you think we could just move that table a fraction? Then the playpen will fit in.’
Harry obligingly shoved the kitchen table into the corner of the room to make way for a large wooden playpen that took up at least half the floor space.
‘I didn’t think you could buy those things these days. I thought they were supposed to be damaging to a baby’s psyche,’ remarked Laura crossly, straightening the plates on the displaced table which was now rammed up against the radiator.
‘You probably can’t – that was Harry’s old one that his mother gave us.’
Even at that age, thought Laura, Harry’s bottom must have required giant-sized accommodation. He stood up now in his massive green corduroys and entered into a playful air-punching routine around Charles-Edouard and Pierre-Louis who stared at him coldly. Laura thought he looked like a page from the Johnnie Boden mail order catalogue, the one that used photos of its well-bred customers to promote trousers boasting plenty of room round the seat for gentlemen of traditional build.
Undiscouraged by the boys’ stonewalling of his display of camaraderie, Harry turned to their father.
‘So, Jean-Laurent, how’s fatherhood treating you? Hell at the weekends, isn’t it? Au revoir golf! Still, wouldn’t be without them, would we, little monsters? I always say, it’s changed my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. A sea change for the better, and come hell or high water, that little chap will always mean the world to me. I’ve already laid down a case of claret for his twenty-first. Bloody marvellous!’
He accepted a glass of pommeau and raised it to the fat toddler who had now been parked in the playpen. Laura remembered how her mother had donated her old playpen to a school fête where it was used to house a baby pig. You had to guess its weight to win a bottle of champagne.
‘Cheers! Up your bum! Bottoms up and down the hatch!’ roared Harry, downing the pommeau in a single draught.
‘He’s definitely got my chin. And hung like a donkey, of course – no doubting the paternity of that little fellow, I can tell you!’
He held his glass out for a refill then turned to his hostess.
‘What about you, Laura, still keeping the home fires burning?’
Laura ignored the question as she put the charred potatoes and collapsed-looking chickens on the table.
‘We can sit down now, lunch is ready. Susie, you’d better go on the end with the baby, and Harry, you go opposite her. Jean-Laurent and I will squeeze in next to the radiator.’
After lunch, Susie retired to her bedroom with the baby, and Jean-Laurent and Harry took the boys off to the local town to pick up some comics. They intended to call in at the farm afterwards to stock up on Calvados for Harry’s cellar. You could be sure that none of it would make its way on to his hosts’ table. Laura cleared the table, folding away the maps that had been brought out to assist in planning an itinerary for tomorrow morning’s drive, and moving with difficulty around the obstructive playpen.
She had just finished washing up when Susie emerged, carrying the baby, who was swaddled up like the Michelin Man.
‘Still slaving away, you naughty girl!’ she said, as if Laura’s single-handed clearing of the kitchen was an act of pure self-indulgence. ‘Why don’t you come out for a walk with me and Paris? I want to show him his first cows now it has stopped raining. By the way, is there a problem with the heating? The radiator in our bedroom doesn’t seem to work.’
‘It probably just needs bleeding. I’ll have a look.’
‘Thanks. I wouldn’t normally worry, but Paris has had a bit of a cough. You did say you had a cot for him, didn’t you?’
‘Oh yes, I need to dig it out of the barn.�
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‘Are you sure you won’t come with us? We’re going to walk down the lane so we can meet Daddy on his way back, aren’t we, little man?’
‘No, I’ll take a look at that radiator, then there are some things here I need to get on with.’
‘As you like. We’ll see you later then.’
She handed Laura a small orange plastic bag that felt slightly warm to the touch.
‘I don’t know what you want to do with this. I couldn’t see a bin in the bedroom. Bye, then. Do let me know if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?’
She strapped Paris lovingly into his buggy and pushed him out into the garden.
‘Look at that, Laura,’ she called through the open door. ‘Look how he’s staring up at the sky – you can just tell he’s going to be creative. I can still remember lying in my own pram watching the patterns of the clouds. It starts so early, if you’re an artist.’
Selfish bitch, thought Laura, tossing the nappy into the bin. She made up the spare bed, fixed the radiator, got a fire going in the chimney place and washed the salad for supper. She then hunted through the dusty pile of broken pieces of furniture and assorted rubbish in the barn until she came across the cot, dismantled into an alarming number of pieces. It was a major operation to assemble it in the guest bedroom and by the time she had finished the others had returned, the two boys triumphantly waving their comics, trophies from the material world.
Jean-Laurent disappeared upstairs, saying he needed to make a few calls.
‘Oh, that was lovely,’ sighed Susie, dropping into the most comfortable armchair in front of the fire. ‘Darling, would you change him, please?’
‘Hen-pecked or what?’ guffawed Harry happily. ‘Lucky Jean-Laurent’s not in the room, can’t be seen skivvying for the wife in front of a Frenchman, they all think we’re pansies as it is!’
He raised his son in the air and pretended he was a red devil stunt aircraft, dive-bombing through the salon.
‘Did you get your Calvados?’ asked Laura.