The Governesses

by Anne Serre

  The Governesses

  Copyright © 1992 by Éditions Champ Vallon

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Mark Hutchinson

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Originally published in French as Les gouvernantes by Éditions Champ Vallon.

  First published as New Directions Paperbook 1421 in 2018

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Design by Erik Rieselbach

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Serre, Anne, 1960– author. | Hutchinson, Mark, translator.

  Title: The governesses / by Anne Serre ; translated by Mark Hutchinson.

  Other titles: Gouvernantes. English

  Description: New York : New Directions Publishing, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018021518 (print) | LCCN 2018024714 (ebook) | isbn 9780811228084 (ebook) | isbn 9780811228077 (acid-free paper)

  Subjects: lcsh: Governesses—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PQ2679.E67335 (ebook) | LCC PQ2679.E67335 G6813 2018 (print) | DDC 843/.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018021518

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

  The Governesses

  Their hair held firmly in place by black hairnets, they make their way along the path, talking together in the middle of a large garden. Around them, young boys frolic and prance around, chasing hoops under the trees. One of the two women holds a book to her chest. She has slipped a finger between the pages, and her chin is resting on the spine. Her head half-lowered, she has a dreamy air as she speaks. A gleam from her yellow leather ankle boots lashes the grass by the path, then jumps up like a startled hare. The other woman clasps two small valiant hands unencumbered by rings or bracelets, her only ornaments the ten pearl buttons that keep the sleeves of her blouse stretched tightly around her wrists.

  Here they come, stepping up to the large white house. It’s a low-roofed, two-story building, hidden away beneath high trees. Comfortably installed in the salon, they start gossiping with an almost stately air. They’re like queens at this time of the year. The house is empty and they’re preparing for a ball, it seems, the poor little fools — a ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops.

  In the salon, the scene is scantily lit by a single small lamp on a card table at the center of the rug. From the outside you can see the shimmer of the young women’s hair reflected in the French doors. They’re hot, so they remove their brooches and scarves and unbutton their blouses. Tea is brought, which they drink by candlelight. Even in a state of semi-undress, they’re a model of discretion, as smooth-skinned as infants fresh from the tub.

  Eléonore appears to be reciting something. From the outside, you can see her lips move, at times quite forcefully. At other moments they remain parted for a spell. The gleam of her wet teeth is visible in the French doors.

  While Eléonore talks, the other one stretches out comfortably on the settee, swinging her legs over the back then covering them at once with the skirt of her long dress. She eats pastries, snatching them up without looking as finger and thumb reach out at random across the low table, then closing her eyes as she carries them to her mouth.

  These are the governesses. Tomorrow, the family will be back: Monsieur and Madame Austeur, Monsieur and Madame Austeur’s four children, and the little maids, plus one or two friends perhaps. Back from the seaside, back from the beach.

  But before that, there’s the party, a gala more than three weeks in the making. Poor Inès, the governess who has been sent across the road, was in tears yesterday at the thought of missing the party. Asked to look after the elderly gentleman, she was busy making herbal tea in the stuffy, overheated room, and glancing out of the window from time to time. Inès could see the garden opposite, the path surrounded by gray lawns, a tiny corner of the bench concealed in the bushes, and the last little boy searching for his hoop. As soon as the elderly gentleman had gulped down his bowl of herbal tea, slipped on his spectacles and opened his big book, she sat down by the window. In the large gray garden, the tops of the old trees were trembling, and the young trees quivering all over. Further back was the tiny house, lit by a small light in its center. What were her two friends doing? Were they preparing for the party at least?

  In the house opposite, in the dark night of the garden, the governesses are playing cards. Eléonore who seems so straitlaced is laughing like a madwoman. Her cheeks are bright pink. She shakes out her wet hair and tosses her head back. One of the little boys has sat down in a large leather armchair and is leaning on his hoop as though on the rail of a ship’s bridge. He watches the two governesses smoking sleek little cigarettes and playing cards. From time to time, he reaches down and spears an olive in a large china bowl next to the armchair, while holding the hoop steady with his other hand.

  Another little boy is standing beneath the ponderously beating clock. Wearing knee breeches, his hands clasped behind his back, he’s leaning forward slightly to make sure his feet are properly aligned within the floor squares. The right side of his face is concealed by a lock of stiff hair.

  All through the house, on the stairs and landings, little boys march up and down, passing each other in silence. Sometimes a hoop trundles down the stairs and bounces across the wide hall. Only once does it pass through the hall without stopping and on into the salon, catching on a vase on one of the side tables. Whereupon children arrive six or seven at a time to pick up the pieces.

  Were you to base an assessment of the governesses’ professional skills on this particular evening, you would conclude that Monsieur and Madame Austeur had been most remiss in hiring the services of such a scatterbrained band of young women. You would even wager there was something fishy going on.

  Still, it’s only fair to say that, when it comes to throwing parties, the governesses are in a class of their own. In every other department of life — as far as one can judge from the time they’ve spent in the service of Monsieur and Madame Austeur — their imagination seems a little sluggish, as though held in check by a bizarre sense of propriety. But the moment a party or a birthday is involved — or any other commemorative event, for that matter — that same imagination, which a second before had been dead to the world, springs to life, opening its arms and shaking its legs about, and then, with an elegant thrust of the hips, diving into the thick of things.

  In acknowledgement of their gift, Monsieur and Madame Austeur, who have done a fair bit of entertaining in their day, have appointed the governesses to a more senior position, albeit one that has yet to be properly defined: “mistresses of games and pleasures,” say, or something along those lines. With their legendary generosity, they have thrown open the upstairs salons to the three young women so that they can install their offices and work spaces there, complete with paper lanterns, hoops, and background actors; “even acrobats, if need be,” graciously added Monsieur Austeur, marveling at their mastery of an art for which he himself, alas, had long since lost the knack.

  Still, one may feel he had been unwise to entrust the governesses with the keys to the bedrooms and back rooms, the first-floor cupboards and dressing-table drawers, without consulting Madame beforehand. Having received no prior warning of their astonishing display, M
adame was most put out. All day she roamed through the gardens in her long gray gown, pulling up flowers by their roots. That evening at dinner, however, after Monsieur Austeur had placated her with a discreet caress between the hallway and the dining room, she was all smiles.

  Today Monsieur and Madame Austeur are at the seaside. Tomorrow they’ll come back with the little maids and one or two friends no doubt, in the long car the little boys are so taken with.

  The festivities always begin in the same fashion. For the first few evenings, the governesses shut themselves up in their rooms, where they have fits of the vapors and palpitations and break out in hives. On one occasion — though only once, it’s true — their fainting fits occurred in the hallway and on the stairs. Monsieur Austeur came rushing over, then went to fetch smelling salts, while his wife Julie stood there, clutching her pale arms at the sight of the governesses stretched out lifeless at her feet. Generally speaking, however, things pass off more smoothly. The governesses blush and flutter their eyelashes at dinner, overturn a soup tureen, burst into tears, and run up to their rooms. At this point Madame Austeur starts humming a sentimental air and darting knowing glances at Monsieur Austeur. “It’s high time they were married, high time they were married,” croons Monsieur Austeur, wickedly. And the two spouses exchange smiles like model parents over their daughters’ first flushes of adolescence.

  But let’s follow the governesses more closely. After all, they’re not sixteen anymore. And they don’t dream much as a rule. So what’s all this playacting about?

  Eléonore and Laura are on excellent terms with Inès. She has a gift for conversation, which they urge her to cultivate, a way with words that “destines her for great things,” as they sweetly put it. From time to time, when the elderly gentleman is taking a nap or playing solitaire, the three of them stroll through the garden together, arm in arm. Inès grumbles that she never has a chance to practice her skills: the elderly gentleman often falls silent, and the other household staff are simply not up to par. Only in the company of her friends can she broaden her knowledge, show off her conversational skills and polish her wit.

  Next they discuss men. It’s their favorite subject when they’re practicing elocution. To hear them speak, you would think they had never set eyes on a man except through the garden gates. They describe the road the men take, and the little waves they give them. They add a few details, embroidering a bit if something significant is missing. They question each other. They compare the men with Monsieur Austeur, look for similarities and differences, and wind up, all three, at the end of the afternoon when the garden is growing cold, pressed up against the gates like dead butterflies.

  They’re not naive, however. Eléonore lived with Tom for six years, Laura has had seven love affairs and Inès a similar number.

  All three are wearing yellow dresses as they stand pressed up against the garden gates at dusk. The road outside the gates has a speed bump, then a bend just after that, but it’s not very practical for gauging faces. Ideally, the passersby need to be on foot. That way the governesses can see them coming and get a good look before they notice. By the time they stop at the gates with their hands in their pockets, the governesses know all kinds of things about them. Inès, for example, knows that this one isn’t her type. Eléonore tightens her belt, perches on her high heels and puffs up her hair. Laura prepares a few questions.

  From time to time, a car pulls up opposite these three large butterflies and a man steps out. His meaning as he waves at them couldn’t be more plain. He rattles the gate and wants to come in. They stand their ground. Sometimes he shouts because he wants them, and then engages them in a terrifying conversation. They reply, together or in turn, though it’s practically the same voice. Sometimes he cries, so they offer him a bottom or a breast, a mouth, a few hands. Since there are three of them, he rushes off to get friends, other men. It’s too good an opportunity to be missed. They come back in cars, ten or fifteen men in all, and whole evenings go by in this way: three yellow governesses pressed up against the gates, and all these men milling around in the gray twilight, in the countryside under the tall trees by the speed bump and then the bend in the road.

  That said, there’s nothing venal or flighty, nothing in the least bit unsavory, about the governesses. No unfortunate rumor has ever tarnished their reputation. What unnerves them, it seems, is the excessive silence of the households they wait upon. For though it’s conducive to reading, thinking and raising little boys who are champion hoop rollers, and to the elderly gentleman’s repose and the waning love of Monsieur and Madame Austeur, there are times when the silence under the tall trees in the garden, in the salons and hallways, is so forbidding that it scares the governesses to be living there. And so they seek distractions.

  They’re allowed out, of course, but where can they go? They have no family or parents, and not much of a past either, which well and truly died the day they entered the service of Monsieur and Madame Austeur. On that day, they had to put everything behind them, and here is what happened: all the trees they had ever known — the ones in the school playground, for example, and the ones outside grandma’s house and along the road to the beach — came rushing into Monsieur and Madame Austeur’s garden, lining up side by side with the elms and the oaks, and then disappearing inside them. The same thing happened with houses, barns, châteaux, and whole towns. They all came storming through the wide-open gates the morning of the governesses’ arrival, then on into the house, so that by the time the first night had fallen Monsieur and Madame Austeur’s home had swallowed up a considerable quantity of roof beams, tiles, chimney stacks, and still-ticking grandfather clocks.

  Eléonore had gone so far as to suggest that their new life seemed endowed with rather alarming powers. Laura, on the other hand, was delighted to have an entire universe at her fingertips, loved to unwind there, and for a long time would refuse to go out. Her days off would be spent exploring the garden, and even Inès — who pleaded with her repeatedly to come over for tea at the elderly gentleman’s house — had to wait three months before receiving a visit.

  Six in the evening. The sky’s transparent and the garden’s cold. The little boys have disbanded and are drifting around on the lawns. Some are seated in clusters of twos and threes, naked beneath their white shorts and pale-colored jumpers. The day has been arduous and joyful. From dawn to dusk they’ve been running around behind their hoops, screaming and jumping around in the tall grass. The governesses seemed out of their minds that day. They had just given the little boys a good scolding when, by a stroke of ill luck, a ball shattered the glass panes of the greenhouse. Thrusting her head out of her bedroom window, Eléonore glanced round and snapped at her pupils to go and find somewhere else to play. She seemed very busy, and her large brown head immediately vanished behind the net curtains. So they went into the greenhouse, which was normally off-limits, sat down for a moment among the mildewed terra-cotta pots, the hairy-leaved begonias and the gardening tools, and then stretched out under the flowers and told each other stories.

  Arthur claims to have seen the governesses’ undergarments. He was hiding in the bushes when they came along, their long yellow skirts passing over the flowers like candle snuffers. They were pressing their hands together excitedly and whispering. They stopped for a long time by the bushes where the little boy had been lying on his back, daydreaming. They shifted about: a few steps to the side, then back in his direction. Eléonore’s dainty shoes were stained with mud. A corner of her skirt had caught on the brambles — she wasn’t wearing stockings, and the tops of her legs were the color of buttercups.

  Gregory roars with laughter at Arthur’s tale. When it comes to girls, he says, he knows zillions of much funnier stories: the one, for example, about the two little girls who appeared at the garden gates last year. He got everything he wanted, it seems, they came by four times, four afternoons in a row, through the gap in the wall, they remained standing, it’s t
rue — they didn’t want to lie down — but hitched up their blue dresses, moving their arms and legs up and down and turning round as he’d instructed them to do. The tall one was putting on airs, so he picked up a stick, at which point she started turning like the other one. It’s like being at the circus, he says.

  The older boy doesn’t say anything. The night before, unable to sleep, he had stood at the window of his room, gazing out at the countryside for a long time before glancing over at the house opposite, at the far end of the garden. At the center of the house a window was lit. He could make out a motionless figure who, like him, was up late, examining the countryside. It didn’t occur to him to wave at it. Was it a woman? A man? It was too far away to tell. There was something voluptuous about being alone in the expanse of gray lawns, with this other figure up late like him. You couldn’t see the garden gates whose gildings had faded at dusk, leaving a huge gap like an empty stadium between the boy’s window and the house opposite.

  For the party, fifty vases, fifty chandeliers and the same number of lanterns are to be installed. They don’t do things by halves around here. For a party, you need a dazzling array of splendors — the imagination in full flight, overflowing. Not that the governesses needed any reminding of this: on previous years they had clanged so many cymbals and banged so many drums that every man and woman for miles around, and even a few curious dogs, had come trotting over to gaze hungrily at the scene through the garden gates.

  This year, the day of the party coincides with the return of Monsieur and Madame Austeur, so the merrymaking will be at its height. There’ll be a journey in a hot-air balloon, a plane trip, and games in the river and the black garden under the enormous trees. In the house, the windows will remain lit from dusk to daybreak.

  Everyone will rant and rave, dash along the paths and throw their hands up in despair while spinning around. They’re allowed to bring sticks and thrash the air and the grass with a vengeance. They’re allowed to unhitch the horses and gallop through the garden clinging to their necks, to tear through the foliage, then fall in a heap and lie there in the horses’ hot breath. They’re also allowed to dance naked, drink naked, and expose themselves all of a sudden on the front porch, flailing their arms and letting out hideous squeals that make everyone laugh.