by Gwyneth Rees
‘Holly’s mum says it’s an insult to be called sweet unless you’re lying in a pram wearing a bonnet,’ I chipped in again. I turned pointedly to address Juliette. ‘She reckons Dad mucks up all his dates because deep down he’s scared of falling in love again.’
‘Holly’s mother should mind her own business,’ Dad grunted.
‘But there is sense in what she says, no?’ Juliette insisted. ‘It is scary to fall in love. Especially when you have lost someone.’
Dad visibly swallowed. He never talks about losing my mother. He talks a lot about being with her, but never about losing her. Juliette says it’s typically English not to want to talk about the feelings that you have deep inside. I’m not sure if it’s typically English but I am sure that it’s typically Dad.
Anyway, Juliette had certainly changed things in our house. She was a lot more interfering than all our other au pairs, and sometimes I worried that Dad wouldn’t be able to take it any more and would send her back to France. For one thing, she was always suggesting ways in which Dad could spend more one-to-one time with Matthew in order to promote male bonding.
‘Who does she think she is? Mary Poppins?’ Dad grumbled, the last time Juliette interfered in one of his disagreements with my brother.
‘I can just imagine you flying across from France underneath your umbrella,’ I told her now, as she gave me a hug and asked me what the matter was. But I couldn’t tell her about what had happened in French today. She might go and tell Dad. So I just said I didn’t feel well.
Juliette sighed. ‘Perhaps something very nice will happen soon.’ She stroked my hair. ‘You never know. Your father is an attractive man. He may very well get married again and then you will have a nice new stepmother. Would you like that?’
‘Yes, but Dad won’t ever get married again,’ I said. ‘He still loves my mother too much. He doesn’t want to replace her with anyone else – at least that’s what Holly’s mother says.’
‘What about Holly’s mother?’ Juliette asked, suddenly. ‘She is single too, is she not?’
‘No way!’ I shrieked, sitting up in bed and forgetting all about my meningitis. ‘There is no way Dad and Holly’s mother . . . For one thing Dad hates her!’
‘Hates her?’ Juliette looked even more interested. ‘Hate is a very passionate emotion, no?’
‘You mean aggressive, Juliette!’ I corrected her, but she just smiled, like she knew things that I didn’t about life in general.
‘I know exactly what I mean,’ she said, firmly. ‘Now you – with your bad head – should get some rest, I think.’ And she winked at me as she left my room.
‘Dad!’ I called out, running downstairs as soon as I heard his key in the lock. I’d rested so much after I’d got home from school that I wasn’t the least bit sleepy now that it was actually time for bed.
I had been sitting on the top stair waiting for him. It was already half an hour past my bedtime, which Dad is a bit of a stickler about. He says he has to be a stickler about everything because there’s only one of him, but I don’t know. My brother says he reckons Dad would still be throwing his weight around like an astronaut in a space shuttle, whether we had a second parent or not. I reckon he’s probably right. I mean, I’ll give you meal times as an example. Dad’s really rigid about everything. He doesn’t like us leaving any food on our plates, even if it’s only enough to provide a very small snack for any starving children who happen to be passing, and he likes us to ask permission before we leave the table. And he won’t let me have even the smallest drop of wine to taste, no matter how much I go on about the children in France drinking it and what about European unity? I mean, Holly’s mother doesn’t make a fuss about any of those things and she’s a single parent too, isn’t she? Matty says Dad’s just plain old-fogeyish when it comes to table manners and I think he’s right.
‘What are you doing still up?’ Dad asked, giving me a hug and looking pleased to see me just the same.
‘I don’t feel well. Juliette thinks I should stay off school tomorrow.’ That wasn’t really a lie. I mean, for all I knew, she might think that and just not be saying it because she didn’t want to worry me.
‘Where is Juliette?’ he asked, frowning. My brother was playing some music in his room which didn’t bother me, but I could tell Dad thought it was too loud.
‘Washing her hair,’ I told him. Juliette has her own bathroom next to her bedroom and she tends to spend a lot of time in it after she thinks I’m in bed. ‘Dad, I’ve got a question for you. Do you like brunettes best, or redheads, or blondes?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m filling in a questionnaire,’ I said. ‘In marie claire.’ Juliette always had a copy of marie claire lying about, and in one of them I’d found an article on ‘How To Choose Your Perfect Partner’.
‘Esmie . . .’ He scratched his head. He was tired, I could see that. ‘Esmie, why would you possibly need to fill in such a questionnaire?’ (His hair is dark brown, by the way. With a few grey bits at the sides which Juliette says only make him look more distinguished.)
‘I want to find out who your ideal partner would be,’ I told him. ‘I’ve been making a list of desirable qualities. Do you want to see it?’
‘All I want to see right now is you getting into that bed,’ Dad said. ‘And if your brother doesn’t turn down that racket then that’s where I’ll be sending him in a minute as well. Come on. Upstairs.’
Dad rapped hard on Matthew’s door as we passed. My brother must have known it was Dad because he turned his music down straight away. He’d never do that for me and he always puts up a bit of a fight when Juliette tells him to do stuff too. Matthew, just in case you haven’t guessed by now, is a real pain. He’s fifteen and he thinks he’s really cool. And get this! Holly fancies him. She says it’s really cute the way his fringe flops down over his eyes and she thinks he’s got a bum like Brad Pitt’s. So you see, Holly’s not right about everything.
‘Did you have a good day at work, Dad?’ I asked, as I snuggled down into my bed. I always ask him how his day went. It’s the sort of thing a wife is meant to say, I reckon, and since Dad hasn’t got one, I try my best to fill in.
‘Tolerable, thank you, m’dear,’ Dad replied, in the funny sergeant-major voice he always puts on when I ask him that.
I giggled. Even though I hate Dad treating me like a little kid, sometimes I really like it when he puts me to bed. We don’t tend to see so much of him during the week, so it means I get him all to myself for a few extra minutes.
‘Night, night, sweetheart,’ he said, in his normal voice as he kissed me on the forehead. ‘See you in the morning.’
After he’d gone, I reached out and touched the photo of my mother. I don’t do that when Dad’s watching because I don’t want him to think I’m sad about her. If he thinks I’m sad then he might get sad himself. In the photo, my mother has dark brown hair with no grey bits. I closed my eyes tightly and tried really hard to imagine what her voice sounded like. But no matter how much I hear her talking to me inside my head, I can’t hear her real out-loud voice at all.
By the time Juliette woke me up the next morning Dad had already gone to work. That happens a lot when he’s got a difficult case to solve. Matthew had left the house early too. Recently, Matty and his best friend, Jake, had been hanging round with some boys who were a bit older than them. One of them worked in McDonalds and could get them free breakfasts, so Matty had started skipping breakfast at home and going to McDonalds before school instead. Dad didn’t know about it but Juliette did and she didn’t seem to mind. I reckoned Dad would, because he likes to keep an eye on how much junk food Matthew and I are eating, but I wasn’t about to tell him since this way I got to have Juliette all to myself at breakfast time.
Juliette asked how I was feeling, and I told her I didn’t feel nearly well enough to go to school today, though I reckoned that maybe I didn’t have meningitis after all.
Fortunately she was in
a sympathetic mood. ‘Why don’t you stay in bed and I’ll bring some breakfast up to you? I have an idea that I want to tell you.’
It turned out that Juliette was still fixated on the idea of setting Dad up with someone. ‘If we cannot persuade your father to answer an advert in the lonely hearts then I think we should send one in on his behalf. Perhaps he will feel more confident if these women are the ones writing to him,’ she said, as she set a tray of juice and cereal in front of me and sat herself down on the end of my bed.
‘Don’t you think we should tell Dad before we do that?’ I asked, feeling worried.
Juliette clicked her tongue, disapprovingly. ‘Why? He will never agree. But if it is a fait accompli – how do you say that in English?’
‘A fate-a-cum-plee,’ I said, frowning. ‘But what would we put?’
‘Tall handsome Englishman . . . Wealthy . . . Sexy . . . Something like that.’
‘But that’s lying!’ I protested. ‘Dad isn’t wealthy, or . . . well . . . any of that other stuff!’ I felt a bit embarrassed at the very mention of the word sexy in connection with my dad.
Juliette waved her hand dismissively. ‘Of course we must put those things! You do not want him to sound boring, do you, and attract all sorts of boring women!’ She shuddered.
‘But Juliette. We have to tell Dad the truth. We have to tell him we’re doing it!’
Juliette snorted. ‘What is this English obsession with always having to tell the truth? What your father does not know cannot upset him. What he does, can. It is simple! After all, there is plenty of time for him to be upset after he finds out what we have done.’
Unfortunately, Juliette’s arguments stumped me.
‘Anyway,’ she added, as she walked out through the door. ‘Your father is lonely. Anyone can see that!’
And that got me thinking. I thought about all the evenings when Dad sat downstairs on his own watching television after my brother and I had gone to bed. I remembered all the holidays we’d been on in the past, where Dad had sat on his own on the beach with a book, while my brother and I had raced around enjoying ourselves on the sand.
Dad was always alone. That was just the way it was. I’d never thought of him as being lonely.
But what if Juliette was right? What if he was?
The next day Juliette took me to the doctor, who said there were a lot of viral infections going around, so I might have caught one of those. I’d started to feel very sick again that morning and I’d nearly thrown up in the waiting room. Our doctor took my temperature, looked at my tongue and peered inside my ears with this metal instrument that I thought she said was called a horror-scope but maybe I didn’t hear her right. Anyway, I moaned a bit and said I felt sick while she was examining me, and when she got me up on her couch to feel my tummy I made sure I groaned as soon as she touched it. She looked a bit dubious but wrote me a sick note anyway and said I may as well take the next day or two off school just to be on the safe side. And as soon as I got out of her surgery, I felt much better.
Dad and Matthew had another of their rows that evening. This time it was over whether or not Matthew could get his nose pierced.
‘Come on, Dad. Jake’s getting his done.’ Matthew had him cornered in the kitchen which is never a good idea. Dad tends to get pretty cross if he feels like he can’t escape from us easily. ‘I won’t wear it to school. Just if I’m going out.’
‘Yuck!’ I said. ‘Then you’ll have a big hole in your nose at school! That’s disgusting!’
‘In my day you only ever got your nose pierced if you were a punk rocker,’ Dad said, lightly, pouring himself some coffee. ‘You’re not thinking of dyeing your hair pink as well, are you?’
‘Dad, I wish you’d stop pretending you know stuff!’ My brother glared at Dad like he couldn’t believe he hadn’t died of old age years ago. ‘Jake’s dad doesn’t interfere in his life all the time!’
‘Jake’s dad says it’s Jake’s nose so he has the right to do what he wants with it,’ I added, helpfully. I’d been witness to a rehearsal of how Matthew was going to broach this one with Dad and in my opinion that bit shouldn’t be left out.
Dad started to laugh.
Matthew grunted, ‘Shut it, Esmie!’
‘Did I say your brother’s nose didn’t belong to him?’ Dad joked, reaching across to pinch mine between his fingers and do a pretend nose nab. ‘Yours, on the other hand is all mine!’
I shrieked as he started tickling me.
Neither of us noticed how cross Matthew was until we heard the front door slam.
Dad sighed. ‘I tell you, Esmie. I’m dreading having you turn into a teenager too. Having one in the house is bad enough, but two . . .’
‘I’ll probably be even moodier than Matthew when I’m a teenager because I’m a girl and my hormones will be more ferocious,’ I informed him, solemnly.
He smiled. ‘Really? What gave you that idea?’
‘Juliette.’
‘Juliette. Well, you can tell Juliette from me that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. After all, she’s never been a boy, has she?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, I have. Believe me, I know.’
I found myself thinking about Dad as a teenage boy. It was very difficult.
Juliette came into the kitchen, then. She must have overheard us because she was smiling. ‘I bet Matthew would like to hear about you as a boy,’ she said, lightly.
Dad smiled and said, drily, ‘Thanks for the insight, Juliette,’ before brushing past us out of the kitchen. It was a pretty ordinary thing for him to say but there was something about the way he said it, and the way he hurried away, that made me feel sort of cut off from him. Dad gets like that sometimes – as if he doesn’t want you to know what he’s really thinking or feeling.
‘Do you still think Dad’s lonely?’ I asked Juliette. ‘I mean, he hasn’t said he is.’
‘Of course he has not said it. He does not want you to know that.’
I frowned. Was that it, then? Was it when Dad felt lonely that he hid his feelings from us?
‘I don’t want Dad to be lonely,’ I said to Juliette.
Juliette looked at me. ‘Well, you know what to do about it, then, don’t you?’
DAMSEL IN DISTRESS SOUGHT BY DISHY DETECTIVE, EARLY FORTIES. MUST LIKE CHILDREN AND ANIMALS.
Juliette looked a bit doubtful as she read out the advert I had come up with after several hours of carefully studying all the ones in the paper. ‘But what is damsel in distress? And what is dishy?’ she asked.
‘Dad’s a sucker for women who need his help,’ I explained. ‘Especially if they’re pretty.’ It was true. Dad is always stopping to help if one gets stuck in a stalled car, or if he spots one alone wrestling with a puncture, or if he’s walking past one who can’t open her car door in Sainsbury’s car park because she’s got a baby in one arm and three bags of shopping in the other. I reckon if he met one whose life was in danger and they needed resuscitating, it would make his day! ‘Dishy means handsome, only it’s better than putting handsome because it begins with “d” and all the best adverts have all the words starting with the same letter.’
‘Do they?’ She looked like somebody who suddenly realizes they’re not such an expert at something as they thought they were. ‘But this other part . . . this in distress . . . We do not want to attract women who might be too . . . too . . .’ She couldn’t think of the English word for whatever it was she was trying to say and in the end she gave up. ‘And what is this about animals? There are no animals here!’
‘No, but I’d really like a dog!’
‘But I am not sure your father would want a dog . . . or a lady in distress.’
‘It’s not a lady, Juliette, it’s a damsel! Trust me on this one, OK!’
Juliette still looked dubious.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this at all,’ I said. ‘Dad will be pretty mad.’
Juliette seemed to rally. ‘Of course we must do it
. Your father may be angry but it will not last long. Not when he falls in love and is happy again. Your father is far too cautious in these matters. He needs our help to take a reesk.’
‘A risk?’
‘Yes! A reesk.’ She looked pleased at the thought. ‘After all . . .’ She grinned. ‘What is lurve without reesk?’
‘A whole lot less hassle?’ I answered, smartly.
Juliette clicked her tongue, shaking her head in disgust. ‘Such Englishness.’ She snatched the piece of paper from me. ‘I will send this to the newspaper tomorrow. Now . . . do you think you are well enough to go back to school this afternoon?’
I gulped. We had double French at school that afternoon. Suddenly I felt dizzy again. I had a tight feeling in my chest. ‘Juliette, I need to lie down,’ I gasped, clutching the part of my chest where I reckoned my heart should be. I could feel it thumping. Was it normal to be able to feel your own heart thumping or did that mean you were about to have a heart attack?
‘I will leave you to recover,’ Juliette said – pretty coolly, I thought, considering that she was meant to be in charge of me, which presumably meant she wasn’t supposed to let me die if it could possibly be avoided.
I told myself I didn’t care. As Juliette turned to leave my room, I closed my eyes and concentrated hard on hearing my mother’s voice instead. I could almost feel her looking down on me from heaven. ‘I won’t ever leave you, darling,’ she said, and her voice was perfect. It was all throaty and beautiful and it reminded me of . . . I don’t know . . . the voice of Bambi’s mother or something.
‘Esmie!’
I opened my eyes. Juliette was staring at me from the doorway.
‘What is wrong with you?’ she said, crossly. ‘You act like you are in a trance!’
I giggled. I liked the thought of me in a trance. I closed my eyes again, stuck my arms out horizontally in front of me like a sleepwalker and droned, Dalek-like, ‘I-am-in-a-trance. I-do-not-want-to-talk-to-you. Do-not-disturb-me.’