Bon Voyage, Connie Pickles

by Sabine Durrant

  I still can’t believe it happened. Do I feel guilty? I don’t think I do. I feel so tired, as if I’ve been crying all night—which of course I haven’t. I would have felt guilty if it hadn’t been for Delilah kissing Philippe. But I don’t want D to be angry—and she will be, won’t she? It’ll be awkward for one thing—what with her living next door.

  But I mustn’t think about any of this now. I have to concentrate on the job in hand. I’ve called my grandparents and fine-tuned the details. At 1 p.m. I’m meeting Mother and Mr. Spence and at 1:30 my grandparents are joining us. I still have to get washed and dressed—and get the crudité stain out of the plum top.

  Pompidou Center, top-floor restaurant,

  1:10 p.m.

  I’m here. Alone. I’m suddenly v apprehensive. I wish Mother would get here. The restaurant is v starchy and modern at the same time. It’s like a cross between the fanciest hotel you’ve ever been in and some sort of designer shop, Joseph or something, where the clerks sneer at you when you walk in because they know you can’t afford a shoelace. The tablecloths are white and the waiters are all in black—but not serving black, sort of high-fashion black. When I arrived they all ignored me, so I asked one of them—a man with sideburns and a goatee—if I could sit down and he looked almost affronted.

  Our table is in the middle, not by the window, which reminds me that I haven’t mentioned the one important fact, which is that the view is INCREDIBLE. Paris really is laid out at our feet. You can see everything: the bleached buildings; the gray-tiled roofs; the river, twinkling; Sacré-Coeur, like a white mosque on the hill there—all in a late-spring haze. Ha! And there’s the Eiffel Tower, where in less than three hours I’ll be meeting William for the most romantic afternoon of my life….

  Why hasn’t Mother got here yet? I’m getting very anxious. I’ve changed seats so I can see the entrance. You come up by escalator and then the last bit by elevator and then you walk across a sort of gangplank into the restaurant. Mother should be here any second now. It’s much better that she and Mr. S. should get here first—Julie’s right. I’ll have the chance to break it to her gently.

  Who’s this? Oh no. They’re early! MY GRANDPARENTS.

  Mother’s hotel, 4:15 p.m.

  This is the first moment I have had to write in here since the above. It has all gone wrong. I don’t know what to do.

  Mother is in the restroom. She has been in the hotel restroom for forty-five minutes. Before that she was in the restaurant restroom for one hour and twenty minutes.

  I don’t know what I thought I was doing. I thought I knew what was best for Mother. I thought she just needed to pull herself together, that it would all be wonderful, that she and her parents would fall into each other’s arms and the last fifteen years would just crumble away. I thought she’d just snap out of her bad mood and forgive them. But it seems that fifteen years isn’t just fifteen years—it isn’t just time. It’s layer upon layer of stuff. Just after we got back here and just before she locked herself in this restroom, she said, “It’s not that simple, Constance. It’s not just kiss and make up.”

  I thought it was. I don’t understand. And I suppose that’s how it should be. It was thinking I understood that got me into this mess.

  I can’t blame my grandparents for getting there early. They thought she would be there at 1 p.m. They didn’t know she was going to be delayed in a little jewelry shop in Marais. I’d said 1:30 p.m. but their taxi was early and they were dying of excitement. My grandmother was wearing the little blue suit I’d seen her eyeing in that shop the first day I saw her. My grandfather was carrying a newspaper. I had time, just, to notice the oddity of that— as if he was going to have time to read a paper with his long-lost daughter to fall upon.

  They kissed me. My grandfather was waving the menu around with his spare hand, ordering champagne, and my grandmother was worrying about where to sit—who should sit with their back to the view, etc.—when I saw Mother and Mr. Spence crossing the gangplank. I pushed back my chair—it was one of those high-fashion modern ones that looks like PLAYMOBIL—and knocked into one of the snooty waiter’s heels. A vital second’s delay was spent on apologizing, by which point Mother was coming toward us. This is what happened to her face between the door and the table. 1) Expectant pleasure. 2) Mild bafflement. 3) Confusion. 4) Fury. When she reached stage 4, she turned on her heels and ran, straight past the coat-check and into the restrooms.

  Mr. Spence gave a cartoon wince, stretching his mouth apart like Wallace and Gromit, and followed her. I stood, like a lemon. I didn’t know what to do. The worst I’d imagined was shock and anger, that she’d shout at them, or maybe me, but that we’d thrash it out and everything would be all right. But to be honest, what I’d really expected was total joy—hearts brimming, eyes filling—not, at any rate, a locked restroom door.

  My grandmother looked very small and frail. She cast her eyes from me to my grandfather as if expecting one of us to come up with the answer. I said, “I don’t know.”

  I sat back down. My grandmother’s eyes were filling with tears. My grandfather had put his folded newspaper on the table and appeared to be reading a corner of it.

  “I’ll go and see what’s happening,” I said.

  Everyone seemed to be looking at me as I crossed the room past the other diners to the restrooms. They were impossibly modern. You could see the kitchen from them, which was a bit weird. Mother was in a cubicle with the door locked. Mr. Spence was cross-legged on the floor outside. “Come on now,” he was saying. “There, there, now. Come on now. There, there now.”

  It was all awful. It went on for an hour and twenty minutes. Mr. Spence repeating himself over and over again. If I’d been Mother I’d have come out just to shut him up.

  I tried to talk to Mother through the door. I kept saying how sorry I was to have shocked her, how much her parents loved her, and had missed her and how desolated they were that she wouldn’t come out. Mr. Spence broke off his litany to say, “Connie, I think maybe this was a mistake. Don’t want to upset you, but did you think this might happen?”

  “No, of course I didn’t think this might happen, you dildo.”

  Didn’t say that of course. I said, “I know, you’re right.

  It’s a disaster.”

  “There, there now. Come on now. There, there now,” he said.

  My grandmother came and stood a few feet away. I hope when I’m a mother myself (if I ever am, agh) I will have the courage to storm into a room if my kids are upset, to cover them with kisses and submerge them in hugs. That’s all I ever want when I’m in a bad mood, even if I’m pretending to be all self-sufficient and cool. But my grandmother didn’t do that. She stood back and watched. Then she turned and went back to the table, where my grandfather continued to read the newspaper. I began to see how the family rift might have happened in the first place.

  After one hour and fifteen minutes, the snooty waiters started getting even snootier. They had long given up on serving us, though they did deliver the bucket of champagne which sat, undrunk, on our table. At 3 p.m. they told us we needed to leave, as we were disturbing other diners. We had actually been quiet, but it’s true that a queue had started forming for the one remaining stall and the top of Pompidou is not the sort of place to lower itself to lines.

  Mr. Spence got up off the restroom floor and said, through the door, “Bernadette. If you come out now, I will make sure your parents are nowhere near. I’ll take you down to the street and into a taxi and back to your hotel. But we do need to leave now. I’m going to count to three.” He gestured to me to go back to the table—which, unwillingly, I did. I waited a few moments, stroking my grandmother’s bony hand, and then I went back to see what was happening. The door of the stall was unlocked and they’d gone.

  “It’s ridiculous,” my grandmother said as we took the elevator to the ground level. She had stopped crying. “It is so childish. It is typique of Bernadette. And that man with her—ugh.” I had been feel
ing really sorry for her, but this made me angry. I know Mr. Spence is a geek, but I realize now that he’s our geek.

  “He’s all right,” I said. “He’s good for her.”

  “So why did he take her away? From her own parents? He should have forced her to see us. I mean, what is this about?”

  I said I didn’t know. They went home—I promised to call them later—and I got the métro back to Mother’s hotel. She was sitting in the lounge area, crying into Mr. Spence’s shoulder, when I arrived. We did begin to talk but then she got all emotional and angry again and within seconds she was locked in the Ladies. Mr. Spence has gone to get a sandwich—“When a man’s got to eat, a man’s got to eat,” he said. I wish Mother would come out and cheer up. It’s all too grown-up for me. I should stick with my own life. With school and my friends and William.

  OH MY GOD.

  WILLIAM!

  RER, 6 p.m.

  I’ve ruined everything. I’ve ruined Mother’s weekend. I’ve ruined my grandparents’ old age by bringing them hope and dashing it. And now I’ve ruined any chance of happiness I might have had.

  I am doomed to a life of loneliness and despair. I will be one of those mad cat women with a house full of cats, stinking of kitty litter and old newspapers.

  I had completely and utterly and totally forgotten William.

  Does this mean I don’t love him? Or maybe it just means that until a certain age parents still come first.

  I don’t know where he is. Or what he is thinking. His last words to me last night were, if I didn’t come he’d understand.

  After the shock of remembering, I yelled to Mother through the bathroom door that I had to go out—I wasn’t deserting her, but I had something I’d forgotten to do—and fled from the hotel. I asked the man at the desk and ran to the nearest métro, which was George V—only five stops from the Eiffel Tower. Then I ran, through all the Sunday tourists and all the tourist traps—the people selling battery-operated novelty toys and miniature Eiffel Towers on key rings—to the base of the tower. I didn’t take in much—just the great steel legs and the entrance to the elevator where we’d arranged to meet. It was 5:45 p.m. when I got there. I stood, people jostling around me, feeling lost. Then suddenly I saw a boy over to the left with his back to me. He was wearing a backpack and jeans that trailed over the heels of his shoes. He was talking to a group of other boys, one shoulder slightly raised. The hair was the same, the height. I started toward him, but then he turned and I realized what I’d known already, that it wasn’t William.

  All the trauma of the day and the sleeplessness of the night caught up with me and I sat down where I was and cried for a bit. I was on my own in the middle of Paris. I had promised the Blancs that I would be home for supper. I was miles from La Varenne. Mother was still weeping in her hotel room. William was somewhere without me, convinced I’d changed my mind. Maybe he’d even gone back to Delilah. My grandparents are devastated. It is all a mess. I didn’t know what to do. Go back to Mother’s hotel? Go to Delilah’s? Or my grandparents? Or go back to the Blancs?

  In a daze, I got back to the métro and found the right platform. Here I am now, shunting along on the RER, back late to the Blancs, probably in trouble. I have no idea what will meet me there. Will Monsieur Blanc have drunk himself into oblivion? Will Pascale have made up with Eric? Will Didier still be speaking to me after the near-kiss of last night? Am I going to be in the most abysmal trouble for being so late? Will anyone have noticed?

  I’m going home tomorrow.

  I’ve achieved nothing.

  I haven’t even been up the Eiffel Tower.

  Out the window, the suburbs look gray, not silver.

  RER, 6:15 p.m.

  Oh Lordy. I thought things couldn’t get worse. I’ve just realized the Crying Girl is perched on the next seat along. Except she’s not crying.

  And I am.

  Pascale’s bedroom, 8 p.m.

  I walked up the street to the Blancs’ house earlier, convinced I was in trouble for being late. But when I reached the front door and rang the bell, no one came to answer it. I could hear voices—and laughter—not far away. So I sat on the step and waited.

  After about ten minutes the door opened and Pascale came out. She said, “Oh,” when she saw me as if she’d forgotten I existed. Her hair was freshly washed and she was wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt. She didn’t have her heavy pancake makeup all over her face and her lips weren’t black, but pink. There was pink in her cheeks too. There was something about her— I know, she looked fourteen.

  She grinned. “Constance! You’re back!”

  I felt as if I’d been gone for twenty-four years, not twenty-four hours.

  “Come in. We’re in the garden.”

  I wanted to go upstairs, to lie on my bed. But I followed her through the living room—past the dining table, which was laden with dirty plates and glasses and the remnants of a meal—and through into the garden.

  They were sitting at the table, drinking coffee: Didier, who gave me a formal salute as if our relationship was henceforth to be run on military lines; Philippe, who said, “Hi,” without looking at me; Monsieur Blanc, who got to his feet and brought out another cup and a dining chair for me to sit on; and …yes, Madame Blanc.

  Later, Pascale told me that her mother had come straight home the moment she received Didier’s letter. The tears of her daughter, the pleading of her sons, the desperation of her husband had done nothing. News that her sister-in-law was rearranging her kitchen cupboards, on the other hand, had her back at home within minutes.

  Madame Blanc smiled and handed me something. It was a chocolate rabbit wrapped in cellophane. An Easter bunny. It was the first time I remembered it was Easter Sunday.

  “Constance,” she said. “We were worried about you.”

  I wanted to say we’d been worried about her, but I just smiled and thanked her for the rabbit. I could tell everything was okay. Philippe was clowning around as usual. Monsieur Blanc kept emitting short loud barks of laughter, like a seal. Madame Blanc sat in their midst, Didier’s arm around the back of her chair. Her hair was loose, which made her look younger. She was the queen bee back in her hive, her family around her. She looked happy and relieved. She wasn’t, interestingly, wearing her apron.

  She asked if I’d had supper and I said I hadn’t. (Come to think of it, I hadn’t even had lunch. Or breakfast.) She stood up as if she was about to get me something. Monsieur Blanc told her to sit back down and that he would get it. I said, “No. No. It’s fine. I’m not very hungry,” and I had to force him to sit down again. Times, as some old rock geezer once said, they are a-changing.

  It was getting dark and you could see the wind ruffling the flag on the roof of the house in the next street. But it wasn’t cold. Those evergreens are like a wall; they keep the rest of the world out.

  I sat there with them, but after a bit I found I couldn’t keep up with what they were saying. I was so exhausted that all my French deserted me and it wasn’t words I was hearing but a stream of noise. I got up and said I was turning in, but none of them really seemed to notice.

  I looked out of the window when I got upstairs, and they were all still out there in the dark, bundled around the table, chatting and laughing together like a …well, like a family.

  You could say that this diary has a happy ending after all.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  New vocab: A bientôt! (See you soon!)

  MONDAY, APRIL 14

  Pascale’s room, 10 a.m.

  I’m leaving in a few minutes. I’m packed and I’ve walked around the house to check that nothing’s left behind.

  Pascale is taking me to the Gare du Nord and we’re meeting Monsieur Baker—oh, long time no see, Monsieur Baker—at Passport Control. He left a message with Madame Blanc that Julie and I were not to go through without him. He said we needed an armed escort or we’d end up in Luxembourg. It’s not really fair. Left to my own devices, I’d never end up in Luxe
mbourg. That’s Julie’s job, thanks v much.

  I’ve already said most of my good-byes. Philippe, Didier, and Madame Blanc went out to the supermarché half an hour ago. Philippe gave me a big hug and tried to slip his tongue into my mouth at the same time. I swatted him off like a fly. Lord love him. He’s just not boyfriend material. I felt sadder saying good-bye to Didier. He was a kind friend to me while I was here. He said, “Au revoir, la Constance,” and did a theatrical sweep of an imaginary hat and kissed my hand. I could tell he was still hurt because he did that.

  I never got a chance to say good-bye to Monsieur Blanc, just as I never really got to say hello, because he’d left for work before I got up. Madame Blanc kissed me and shook my hand at the same time. I feel warmly disposed toward her, but I don’t feel we ever really met.

  My grandparents called this morning to find out what train I was on. They’re going to see me off, which I’m glad about. It was my grandmother who called and she sounded clipped and more formal than before, as if the shutters were down. She began to say something about Bernadette but I told her I thought it was best if we didn’t discuss Mother. “We’ll keep our relationship separate,” I said. “And then it won’t matter.” I could tell she’d rather I ganged up with her against Mother, but she agreed.

  I have spoken to Mother, too. She called, briefly, last night from Mr. Spence’s mobile phone. It was a bad signal. They were on the Eurostar home, I think. She said she was sorry for having reacted so badly. She said she understood why I did what I did but that I was only a child and that I should not try always to understand her. We both cried a bit and she told me she loved me and I told her I loved her. I wish I could see her. But it’s not long now. Tonight I’ll be in my own bed, with my own cat curled against me and my own brother and sister jumping on the covers.

  No news from William. I called Julie but she hadn’t heard anything. “How’s he getting home?” she said. I told her he was getting the bus. She said, “You’ll see him sometime in the new year, then.”