When I Was Young

by Mary Fitzgerald

  I sighed. “I’ll be in England then.”

  He must have caught something in my words, a bitterness, a lack of hope maybe, I don’t know. But he suddenly put his hand out and touched my arm and I felt like crying.

  “Where’s your house?” I asked quickly, swallowing the lump of homesickness, or whatever it was that had overwhelmed me.

  Luc lifted his arm and waved it towards the hill. I noticed for the first time that he had a book in his hand and felt an immediate kinship. “You can’t see it from here,” he said, “but it’s over there, the other side of M. Martin’s vineyard. I was walking on the hill when I saw you.”

  He smiled. “Come and see and have cup of coffee with Maman. She would like that. And you can meet my sister and her children.”

  “I don’t think I can.” I said. “The Martins might think I was being rude. You know, er… going off without telling them.”

  Luc nodded. “That’s alright. You can come over another time.”

  I was relieved. “What’s your book?”

  He laughed and held it out so I could read the title. ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ was inscribed on the spine. “Have you read it?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve read it so many times,” he said. “It’s one of my favourites and I know almost every line by heart. But still I go back to it.”

  “I have books like that,” I said and we grinned at each other.

  As we talked we were strolling through the vines towards the top of the hill. Ahead was the barn that I had noticed from my bedroom window. The afternoon sun shimmered on its red tiled roof and I saw that although the shutters were closed the wooden door swung slightly in the wind.

  “Is that a house?” I asked.

  “No, it’s M. Martin’s grape barn. It’s for storage and I think there’s an old press inside. He doesn’t use it though, now. His grapes go to the co-operative. We have one just like it.”

  A grape barn and a grape press. I was thrilled. This would be something I could write about in the essay that, no doubt, Miss Baxter would expect when the new term started.

  “Oh,” I said, excitement bubbling into my voice, “I would love to see that.”

  Luc stopped and bent to tie the lace on his brown shoe. “I don’t think you should go in there,” he said carefully. “The machinery might be in a bad way and dangerous.”

  “But you could come inside with me.”

  As soon as I said it I realised how forward I was being and that dreadful blush which I could never control flooded my face again. “I mean, couldn’t I just look through the door…it’s open.”

  He straightened up. “Sorry,” he said, “I have to go now. My father will need me to help him and I want to see my sister before she leaves.”

  It was a rebuff and I didn’t know why. Was it me wanting to go to the barn with him or to pay me back for refusing to visit his mother? A girl might have done that, some of them were like that at school but I was confused. I didn’t know about boys and how they behaved.

  He raised a hand and strode off up the hill and I stood like foolish child and watched him.

  The sun blazed down and sweat or perhaps tears beaded on my face as I turned and slowly made my way back through the vines. The trees which stood between me and the river made a welcome area of shade and I sat down on a stump to wipe my face before crossing the bridge. I hated the thought that Étienne or worse, that Mathilde, would see I’d been crying. I hadn’t really.

  My sandals were sticking to the soles of my feet because after lunch I’d taken off my socks in an effort to get cool but now I was sorry. The leather insoles were rough and I was sure that when I removed my sandals my feet would be stained brown. I wished that I had other shoes, plimsolls perhaps, like the ones Grandmère wore. They would definitely be more comfortable.

  A distant sound caught my ear. It was a door slamming and I looked across the river to the house expecting to see Lisette or Étienne coming over the bridge but no-one appeared and puzzled, I stood up. I turned to look back and to my astonishment I recognised the figure of Mathilde in her olive green dress walking down hill through the vines. The door to the grape barn was now shut and on the top of the hill I could see Luc. He was standing there watching her.

  I shrank into the trees, appalled at the prospect of her seeing me and thinking that I had been spying. Quietly I slipped away from the bridge and crept a few yards down the river bank until I was in a sheltered little grove of grey leaved alders. After a few minutes I heard her footsteps on the bridge and even then I waited while my thoughts tumbled over each other as possibilities raced around my mind. What on earth could Mathilde have been doing in the barn? And did Luc know she was in there and didn’t want me to see her?

  The footsteps stopped and cautiously I looked through the trees and saw that she had paused on the bridge. She had turned her head and was looking back at the vineyard. I followed her eyes. There was someone else on the hill now, not Luc, but a man I didn’t recognise. He was too far away to see clearly but I knew from the way he walked that it wasn’t Étienne or even Jean Paul.

  I looked back to Mathilde. She had put her hand up and was smoothing her hair but as I watched her fingers left her head and moved in a little wave towards the hill. Like a tennis match watcher my eyes swivelled back to the hill. The man had gone.

  Half an hour later when I walked across the bridge back to the house seeking the relative security of my room my head was still whirling. I needed time to think and I was lucky. The house was quiet and I met no-one as I went in through the rear door into the empty kitchen. I took a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water. I’ll drink this, I thought and go upstairs. My room will be cool and I will be able to think properly.

  “Ah, Eleanor.” I jumped and nearly dropped the glass. Grandmère appeared from the door to the back corridor. She stared hard at me. “Are you not well?

  “I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Just hot. I’m not used to temperatures like this. It’s much cooler at home.”

  “The weather is hot,” she conceded, “more so than usual. Étienne is concerned about the grapes.”

  “I went to the vineyard just now,” I said, draining the glass. “I was surprised at how very dusty the ground seemed. At home we have a lot of rain. The fields are wet all the time.”

  She watched me as I rinsed the glass under the tap and put it to dry on the board. “Did you see anybody on your little walk?

  I nodded.

  Her face didn’t change but was there a hint of annoyance in the way she picked up the poker and riddled the ashes in the range? “Who,” she asked. “Who did you meet?”

  “Oh, it was Luc,” I said. “Luc d’Amboise. He was in the vineyard. I think he’d been on the hill reading his book and saw me. We talked for a while but then he had to go and help his father.”

  “He’s a nice boy…a good scholar. A boy that any parent would be proud of.”

  Then, I didn’t connect her kind words about Luc with her disappointment in Jean Paul. But now it is so obvious. Jean Paul had nothing praiseworthy about him.

  Grandmère stopped her vigorous riddling and turned back to me. “I’m sure your parents are proud of you too.”

  Proud? I didn’t think so. Mother thought I was pretty useless and turning into a snob and who knew what Dada thought. Although he had given me the money to come on the exchange. So he must love me in his own way, mustn’t he?

  I smiled. “I don’t know,” I said shyly. “We don’t talk like that at home. Besides Mother wouldn’t want me to get a swelled head.”

  “No,” said Grandmère. “Pride is a foolish emotion. It leads a person along a dangerous path.”

  Chapter 6

  Grandmère’s words came into my head as I lay on my bed miserably turning the pages of my book. She used extravagant expressions, I decided and perhaps this was old French. Country French, maybe.

  It was the following day and I had spent the morning with Jean Paul
and his friends in the little town and had returned at lunchtime in despair. Now, in my lovely white room I went over all the events of my brief stay. It was an uncomfortable exercise. No-one had really welcomed me, except perhaps Étienne. Grandmère and Lisette accepted my presence but Mathilde and Jean Paul were openly unfriendly. As far as they were concerned I was an interloper, an unwanted stranger in the house.

  Did I notice that they all loathed each other, then? That there was a poisonous atmosphere in the house? No. I don’t think so. I was wrapped in my own misery and could only think that it was me who had caused the difficulty.

  The morning had started well. I was down earlier for breakfast than I had been the day before, having slept deeply and awoken fresh and ready for an adventure. In the calm of a new day the events in the vineyard of the afternoon before seemed petty. I’d misunderstood, I decided and as I brushed my hair in front of the mirror on the carved wardrobe, I smiled impatiently at myself. Fancy hiding in the trees in case Mathilde saw me. Whatever could I have been thinking about?

  “Good morning, Eleanor,” said Grandmère and as I nodded a good morning I saw that Jean Paul was sitting at the table.

  I had entered the kitchen from the back stairs and feeling more confident than the night before, walked straight to the larder to get the butter and apricot preserve.

  “Hello,” I greeted them and took bread from the board and poured coffee into the white bowl that had been put out for me. “It’s another lovely day.”

  “You look well today,” said Grandmère, “and we have a little treat for you. Jean Paul is going to take you to meet his friends.”

  I should have known. If I’d looked more carefully at his sullen face and the way he wouldn’t meet my eyes I’d have guessed that this was a forced expedition. The hint of steel in Grandmère’s voice should also have alerted me but it didn’t.

  Foolishly I was pleased. At last, I thought, I’ll get to meet people of my own age. Jean Paul and I will become friends. “Thank you,” I said. “It sounds like fun.”

  He said nothing and continued to crumble a crust of bread into little balls on the table. It was hot in the kitchen and a film of sweat beaded his upper lip darkening the burgeoning moustache. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye while I drank my bowl of coffee. “Will Luc d’Amboise be there? I already know him.”

  For the first time he looked up. “No, of course not.” It was said in a pitying way as though I should have known and I immediately felt embarrassed again.

  “Can you ride a bicycle, Eleanor?”

  Grandmère came to sit beside me at the table interposing her solid body between me and Jean Paul. Her black blouse was open at the neck and her sleeves rolled up ready for the day’s work and I remembered Mother’s instructions about not being a nuisance.

  “Yes, I can. Do you want me to go on a message for you?”

  “No. Nothing like that. You’ll need the cycle to get into town with Jean Paul. He has his velo cycle and you can borrow Mathilde’s ordinary one.”

  Lisette came into the kitchen with an armful of dolls. “Can I go with them? I want to. I can sit on the crossbar.”

  “No,” said Grandmère and Jean Paul at the same time and the little girl pouted and clutching the dolls turned and went back into the hall the way she had come in. I found myself wishing that she could have accompanied us.

  At the café where Jean Paul’s friends gathered, I was greeted with curiosity at first and a small effort of politeness.

  “Cigarette?” Guy, a scrawny seventeen year old pushed one across the small metal table towards me.

  “No thank you.” I smiled, keen to be friendly. “I don’t smoke.”

  The group laughed. There were five of them, three boys and two girls and Jean Paul settled easily amongst them. For the first time I saw him laugh, responding to something one of the other boys said. The remark was repeated behind a cupped hand to the others and they looked at me and laughed too.

  “D’you want a beer?” A waiter who had shuffled out from behind the bar stood beside me. He had a dirty green apron wrapped around his black trousers and a white shirt which was grubby at the collar. A thin cigarette drooped from between his lips.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never had a beer.”

  This drew more laughter from the group and too embarrassed to ask for a soft drink I nodded a yes to the waiter. I should try, I told myself. Everyone else was drinking it and they’ll think me stuck–up or babyish if I don’t. When the beer came, golden and fizzing in a tall glass I took a tentative sip. I didn’t like it. It remained untouched on the round white table until we left.

  The two girls had short dark hair, clipped close in a gamin style which I found very attractive. They looked cool and modern and I wondered if I dared to cut mine. Because of the heat in this little bar my hair line was already damp with sweat and my pony tail felt heavy and uncomfortable where it touched the back of my neck.

  Under the pixie styled hair, Gabrielle and Danni, the girls, had almost identical faces, little pointed chins and sculpted cheek bones.

  “Are you two sisters?” I asked when one of them stopped talking and turned to face me.

  “Sisters?” Danni snorted. “Of course not.” Her feigned anger was cause for more sniggers and I looked at Jean Paul hoping he would say something. But he was giggling too and I squirmed on the metal seat already wanting to run out of the café and cycle away.

  The other girl, Gabrielle stared at me. “Is that the fashion in England?” she asked nodding towards my blue and white gingham dress. She and Danni wore tight sleeveless black jumpers and narrow skirts with slits up the side.

  “No.” I shook my head. I was going to add that this was my school uniform dress but thought better of it and avoiding their sneering gaze dropped my head. That made things worse. I caught sight of my feet, bare in buckled sandals. They looked impossibly childish.

  “Well,” Gabrielle demanded. “What is the fashion?”

  What could I say? I had no idea. The girls talked about clothes in school and discussed the latest styles all the time but somehow it had passed over my head. Mother wore almost the same clothes every day and I lived in my books where my heroines were dressed in a variety of costumes from the Empire Style of Jane Austen through Victorian crinolines to the thirties and forties of the modern writers. Desperately I dragged an image of Phyllis Franklin into my mind. “Longer skirts and tight waists,” I said hopelessly. Then remembering something Suzy had said added, “I think it’s called The New Look.” Suzy had been talking about that for ages although I wasn’t really sure what she meant.

  The girls nodded. They’d heard of that too and I was relieved but not for long. “Your dress isn’t New Look,” said Gabrielle with a sneer. “It’s like a kids frock.”

  “So, how old are you?” Danni asked, barely restraining a smirking grin.

  “Sixteen.”

  The all laughed again. One of the boys sniggered and not bothering to whisper spoke to Jean Paul in rapid French. I caught a few words… “old enough, mon brave…and pink meat”

  The laughter became hysterical and the ones who had been holding bottles of Stella to their mouths, choked and spluttered beer down their shirts and over the table.

  I thought I must have missed something and still trying to be polite looked for help to Jean Paul hoping he would explain the joke but now he wasn’t sniggering. He was blushing fiercely and had turned his head away.

  Nobody bothered with me after that and for the remaining hour I sat listening to their conversation and smiling inanely as I tried to be part of their youthful group. Jean Paul turned his back to me and spoke mainly to the boy called Guy. At one point they rolled up their shirt sleeves to the shoulder and compared muscles each squeezing the other’s biceps. Jean Paul’s arms were twice the size of Guy’s.

  “It’s hard work on the farm,” said Jean Paul proudly. “You grow strong.”

  Guy grinned. “You? Work? Not what I
hear.”

  Suddenly the mood changed. I learned over the coming days and had probably guessed it already that Jean Paul couldn’t bear to be criticized and his face darkened. “Well at least I don’t mess about with my little sister,” he snarled.

  There was an intake of breath from the group as though something of importance had been said. I looked from one boy to the other and then at the girls. They were grinning excitedly and Danni put her mouth to Gabrielle’s ear and whispered something that made her companion explode into laughter.

  “What did you say?” bellowed Jean Paul, his cheeks burning. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Danni struggled to disguise her grin but Gabrielle wasn’t so contained. Her laughter continued and in between gasps repeated what Danni had said to the boys. I was bewildered. She had said that it was better than messing around with one’s mother.

  Jean Paul stood up, throwing the metal chair in which he’d been lounging to one side. He shot a furious glance at me and shouted “come on, we’re going.”

  He cycled home on his motorized bike at full speed leaving me pedaling like a maniac trying to keep up with him.

  “Wait,” I called. “Wait.” He ignored me and eventually I gave up and left him to cycle away and rode slowly through the pretty lanes where the green smell of wild herbs and flowers filled the air. It gave me time to go over the scenes in the café. There was so much I didn’t understand and I was sure it wasn’t only my lack of French. If these were Jean Paul’s friends it was no wonder he seemed permanently angry, they had teased him almost as much as they had me. And at home the only person he got on with was his mother so it wasn’t surprising that he spent so much time with her.

  One thing I was absolutely sure of. I was just as bad at connecting with people in France as I had been at home. It was me, not them and it had been another disastrous day. No friendship with Jean Paul and the rest of the family too busy with their own lives to pay me any attention. The three weeks of my proposed stay stretched endlessly ahead and I would have nothing to tell Suzy. I shuddered at the prospect of Mother meeting Jean Paul and how he would take to her. And poor Dada. He would be so frightened.