Petite Anglaise Read online

  ‘Bonsoir les filles,’ he said, stowing his coat over the back of his chair. ‘I know you said I could bring a friend, but I’m pretty new in Paris – I’ve just moved here to look for a job – and I don’t know a lot of people. So, I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with just me.’ Sarah and I stood for a moment, our chairs scraping on the mosaic-tiled floor so that he could plant the obligatory bises on our cheeks.

  ‘Your English is really good,’ I remarked shyly. ‘Far better than any of my students’, and very British-sounding…’

  ‘Ah, well, I did a Masters in San Diego,’ he explained, settling into the seat opposite me, ‘but I had a lot of English friends there, exchange students like me, mostly. So I didn’t catch an American accent.’ I grinned at his comical choice of words: he made an American accent sound like some sort of disease.

  ‘I’ll bet there was an English girlfriend too…’ Sarah said speculatively, leaning closer and touching him lightly on the arm. I couldn’t believe how forward she could be sometimes, but I had to admit, grudgingly, that I was interested to hear what his answer would be.

  ‘Well… not quite. There was a girl, but she was Welsh,’ he explained with the tiniest of grimaces, as though the memory still smarted.

  Over the course of the evening I took more and more of a fancy to our guest. He was quietly charming, with a dry sense of humour that struck me as unusual in a Frenchman. Physically, he was the exact opposite of the dark-haired, floppy-fringed types I had always been attracted to, with his fair hair and pale complexion. But attracted to him I was, there was no denying it, and although I could sense that Sarah was equally keen, the more we talked, the more I hoped he would spurn her advances and choose me instead.

  ‘Some friends of mine are playing at the Rex club on Friday evening,’ he said casually while Sarah was queuing for the Turkish toilet at the back of the café. ‘Would you like to come along?’ I wondered whether the timing of his invitation was intentional; whether ‘you’ was meant to be in the singular or the plural.

  ‘I might just do that,’ I replied, picking at the label on my bottle of beer with my fingernails. ‘I love the Rex club. Although I’m not sure it’s Sarah’s cup of tea…’ In actual fact, I had no intention of even mentioning it to Sarah. I justified this tiny betrayal to myself by saying it would be a terrible waste if this boy were to wind up as another notch on her belt when I sensed he might be rather special.

  Years later, Mr Frog never fails to look bemused when I tell the story of how we met. A satisfactory explanation as to why he was responding to a small ad in the first place has never really been found. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his version of events tends to be somewhat abridged:

  ‘Oh,’ he says vaguely, ‘we met in a bar.’

  ∗

  Mr Frog and I moved in together when my stint at the Sorbonne Nouvelle finally came to an end. With some reluctance I left my deux pièces on rue de la Roquette to share his tiny chambre de bonne, a couple of minutes on foot from the Luxembourg Gardens. It was a move born out of pure pragmatism, but we were deliriously happy in our little cocoon, and I rarely complained about the sloping floors, the dodgy wiring or the fact that I had to arm myself with a weighty, medieval key and pad up a flight of icy, tiled stairs to a shared toilet on the next landing.

  That summer I sweated behind the bullet-proof glass of a foreign-exchange bureau, working as a cashier, squirrelling away money for my English sabbatical, while Mr Frog looked for a job. By night we ate at the cheapest bistrots we could find, or went to one of the cinemas at Odéon with discounted tickets I bought at work. On my days off we revisited my favourite haunts together. We wandered hand in hand through the Buttes Chaumont park; made a pilgrimage to Serge Gainsbourg’s grave, strewn with green métro tickets, in the Montparnasse cemetery; we strolled along art nouveau passageways near the grands boulevards or cobbled backstreets atop the Butte Montmartre. Our discussions were punctuated by comfortable silences: we had a connection that seemed to transcend language barriers and cultural differences. Looking into his eyes, chameleon’s eyes which appeared pale blue, green or grey according to his changing surroundings, it all quite simply felt right. A perfect fit.

  In the company of my friends, Mr Frog held his own incredibly well. He was sufficiently at ease in my mother tongue to engage in word play or tell jokes – to my delight, and the admiration of my friends. But he also made endearing mistakes, some of which I adopted. We developed our own secret language, peppered with franglais and riddled with intentional grammatical blunders. ‘I’m so hanged over,’ I would groan after a heavy night. ‘My hair hurts.’ Mr Frog gently mocked what he called my ‘disastrous English dress sense’, teased me about my tendency to drink rather more than a French girl on a night out, but tactfully knew better than to dash my confidence by correcting my every gender mistake.

  In turn, I met his friends. We ate leisurely, home-cooked meals with a couple he had known since childhood who had gravitated towards the capital to work but considered city living a necessary evil, their apartment an oasis of calm in the sleepy fifteenth arrondissement. Our names were on the guest list at nightclubs whenever DJs he knew from his university years in Grenoble made guest appearances. Wherever we went I was welcomed with open arms, complimented on my French and accepted as one of the crowd.

  At long last I had found that elusive ingredient which had been lacking from my Paris experience. I was beginning to shrug off the uncomfortable sensation of being a perpetual outsider which had dogged me for so long, observing the Parisians from a distance, as if from behind a sheet of glass, unable to reach out and touch what I coveted. Mr Frog might not be a Parisian himself, but he took me by the hand and led me effortlessly inside.

  The looming prospect of leaving for England no longer terrified me, because now I had not just somewhere, but someone to come back to. During what I jokingly referred to as my exile, we would spend long evenings on the phone, talking passionately in French. I would visit for weekends, and in end-of-term holidays. Firm ties bound me to Paris now. And in a few months’ time, when I returned, I would finally be able to start living my new life to the full. With a new career, and with Mr Frog by my side, I would lay the foundations for my French life.

  I was no longer just any petite anglaise. I was his.

  3. Echoes

  One of the best things about the bourgeois apartment building on the avenue Simon Bolivar where Mr Frog and I lived, seven years later, with Tadpole, our one-year-old daughter, was the shop downstairs – Les Intondables: a hairdresser’s salon with a sense of humour. Everything about the bite-sized boutique smacked of playfulness: the name, which could mean anything from ‘the unshaveables’ to ‘the unshearables’ or even ‘the unmowables’ depending on your preferred translation of the verb ‘tondre’; the sign on the door advertising branches in Paris, Ouagadougou and Gif-sur-Yvette (the French equivalent of, say, Bognor Regis); the naïve swirls of psychedelic paint on the walls.

  It was a far cry from the overpriced salons of the eighth arrondissement, where smug fortysomething Parisiennes parade their designer handbags while an army of uniformed colourists, stylists and head massagers pander to their every whim, circling like vultures, angling for generous tips. Designer fortysomething women and dogs in Chanel coats tended to be few and far between in our neighbourhood. And that was precisely why I liked it.

  Les Intondables also boasted a CD jukebox packed with music I loved, both old and new. Pausing to tear up my junk mail in the dimly lit entrance hall, I would surprise myself by remembering every single word of a vintage New Order track, or find myself grinning as I recognized the opening chords of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. If a song was playing which I couldn’t quite put a name to, I fought the temptation to pop an enquiring head around the salon door. The gregarious girl I once was, who bounded up to DJs in nightclubs, wouldn’t have needed much encouragement. But the woman I’d become had little time for such frivolity, too busy dashing to the childminder’s, to w
ork, and back again, with a detour via the supermarket thrown in for good measure. I was a working mother now, and my life was set to the ticking of an invisible metronome. If I strayed off course, I was afraid I’d miss a beat.

  Passing in front of the salon one Saturday morning in late June, Mr Frog, Tadpole and I returned home, shoulders sloping downwards in defeat, fresh from yet another disappointing apartment-viewing. Our hopes had been riding high when we’d set out: the photographs on the estate agent’s website showed original wood floors and working fireplaces, and on the phone the agent had emphasized the desirable location, with views of the mairie du 19ième and the Buttes Chaumont park. But our enthusiasm began to fade the moment the front door swung open to reveal a series of former maid’s rooms leading off one another with no connecting corridor or central heating, and was snuffed out completely when we spied a sanibroyeur instead of a real toilet in the bathroom, which made an infernal racket when flushed. True, if you leaned out of the bedroom window at a dangerous angle, it was just about possible to make out a sliver of the park and spy the slate roof of the town hall, but, all in all, that was scant consolation for all the apartment’s shortcomings.

  Back home, Mr Frog held open the heavy wooden door while I tilted Tadpole’s pushchair up and over the stone doorstep into the sombre entrance hall with its peeling paintwork. Our apartment, on the fifth floor of a turn-of-the-century sandstone Haussmann building, was admittedly difficult to beat. The rooms were well proportioned, with oak floorboards and marble fireplaces, and walls so thick that our neighbours were seen but rarely heard. A balcony ran the full length of our floor and south-facing French windows flooded the rooms with sunlight. The only snag was that it didn’t belong to us and, even if the owner could be persuaded to sell, it would be way beyond our means.

  Owning a place had become my obsession, ever since Tadpole was but a glint in her father’s grey-blue eyes. Mr Frog was at a loss to understand why I was so anxious to get a foot on the property ladder: the French – unlike the English – think nothing of renting until they are in their forties. But as property prices in the City of Light continued their dizzy upward spiral, I became more and more terrified that if we didn’t hurry up, we’d miss the boat.

  ‘I still can’t quite believe anybody would be willing to pay that sort of money for a flat with a glorified Portaloo in it,’ I railed, fumbling for my keys. ‘I mean, if people like us are priced out of the market, who the hell actually can afford to buy anything in this city?’

  Before I could launch into one of my familiar rants, an unmistakable guitar riff stopped me in my tracks. I glanced at Mr Frog, who was busy investigating the communal letterbox marked ‘courrier volumineux’ while I freed Tadpole from her safety harness. I could see from the smile dawning on his lips that he recognized the song too: ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ by The Smiths. The English Channel may have lain between us but, in our teens, Mr Frog and I had sulked and skulked to much the same music.

  No sooner had I set Tadpole down on the tiled floor than she began to wave short, chubby arms in the air, prompting me to wonder whether our combined musical tastes hadn’t been woven into our daughter’s very DNA. Without a moment’s hesitation Mr Frog joined her, leading by example, encouraging her to move her legs by executing the kind of moves that would make you howl with shame if you saw your uncle doing something similar at a wedding. I’ve never been much of a dancer myself, especially when sober, but Mr Frog undoubtedly has a gift. From robotic dancing to gyrating like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, his repertoire is vast. Wiggling his hips in the most sublimely ridiculous fashion and swinging an imaginary microphone like a lasso, he urged Tadpole on. ‘Danse! Pivote! Oui, comme ça!’

  Laughing so uncontrollably that tears streamed down my cheeks, I was nonetheless the first to notice a shadow fall across my daughter. The volume of the music and the carpeted stairs, which muffled every footfall, had conspired against us. Seeing my expression change, palms clapped over my mouth to stifle my laughter, Mr Frog stopped, mid-wiggle. Only Tadpole continued her dance, oblivious, as an unsmiling stranger – a man in his fifties with a deeply lined forehead and a mouth which turned down humourlessly at the corners – made his exit, giving our family a wide berth.

  Once the front door had swung closed with a heavy clunk, Mr Frog and I burst out laughing, in the throes of what the French would refer to as a fou rire.

  ‘Did you see his face?’ I crowed, once I’d regained my composure. ‘That was priceless!’

  ‘Your face was a picture too!’ Mr Frog picked up Tadpole and hoisted her on to his shoulders. ‘Did you notice the way he kept his distance when he walked past?’

  ‘He looked scared stiff that he might catch a sense of humour if he came too close! Oh, God, I nearly wet myself…’ Thankfully this wasn’t true in a literal sense and, for that, I had the French state and their free post-natal physiotherapy sessions to thank.

  Mr Frog looked at me with a mirthful sparkle in his eyes and, as we filed into the lift together, I was reminded of one of the things that made me fall for him in the first place – the easy laughter we used to share.

  How the years had scurried by, with accelerating speed, since first we met. We’d never married, so there was no seven-year itch to speak of, but the earth beneath us had shifted, almost imperceptibly at first, until hairline cracks began to appear and slowly widen. I hugged moments like this one – increasingly rare these days – to me tightly, storing up the good times and hoping against hope that they might be enough to keep us going.

  ‘You likely to be finished in there any time soon?’ I set down the plastic feeding spoon I had been holding for a moment, listening intently for any sound emanating from our tiny bathroom. There was no reply – none of the vigorous splashing noises that usually accompanied Mr Frog’s weekday morning ritual – only the whine of the extractor fan as it laboured noisily to evacuate dense, steamy air from the windowless room. I contemplated Tadpole’s porridge-coated cheek and sighed. It rather looked as though Mr Frog had fallen asleep in the bath again. It was Monday morning, two days after the dancing incident, and once more we had become slaves to our respective routines.

  ‘Poor Daddy is very tired,’ I remarked to Tadpole, torn between irritation and pity, then put a hand to my mouth, stifling a yawn of my own.

  One unforeseen advantage of having a small child was that it gave me the excuse to talk to myself to my heart’s content and pretend it was for my daughter’s benefit; for the good of her English. Tadpole’s repertoire of words was limited to a few animal sounds and two-syllable words like ‘Mama’, ‘Daddy’ and ‘doggy’, so our exchanges could not by any stretch of the imagination be called conversations. Yet in spite of this I had fallen into the habit of providing a running commentary whenever I was with her, a continuous narrative in which, for some reason, I always referred to myself in the third person.

  ‘Mummy’s not feeling great either,’ I added, rubbing sleep from the corners of my eyes. It had been a rough night. Mr Frog, whipping the bedclothes into a frenzy and occasionally muttering incoherent phrases, had been dreaming about work. I knew this because his weary tone of resignation was unmistakable: it might have been 3 a.m., but what I’d heard was definitely one side of an imaginary telephone conversation with his boss at the advertising agency.

  Tadpole, punishing me for letting my attention wander, grabbed her spoon and flung a dollop of porridge in a perfect arc. It landed on the dark-purple sofa, splattering copiously on impact, and she giggled at my horrified expression. Spurring myself into action, I dabbed at the viscous white blob with a bib, snatched a furtive gulp from my now lukewarm bowl of café au lait and prised the offending spoon from her grasp. If I was to arrive at work anything like on time, she and I would have to be fed, dressed and out of the front door in ten minutes’ time. Our chances were not looking good: Tadpole wore pyjamas and a nappy, which, if my nostrils could be trusted, needed changing. I was still naked under my bathrobe.
r />   Through the arched window to my left, the envy of everyone who visited our home, the rooftops of Paris were spread out before me, suffused with a warm, honey glow. Light bounced off metallic chimney stacks, the bold Legoland colours of Beaubourg stood out against the sea of slate and stone and, further away, the spires of Notre Dame and the dome of the Panthéon rose up majestically, appearing deceptively close to one another from this perspective. The Montparnasse tower, usually the most distant recognizable landmark, was temporarily invisible, shrouded in a haze of early morning pollution.

  But the glorious view – the very reason I fell for our apartment when we’d hunted for a larger space to rent, an avocado-sized Tadpole ripening in my belly – merited only the most cursory glance that morning. I looked without really seeing, concerned only with second-guessing the weather, trying to gauge how we should dress.

  The gurgle of water spiralling down the plug-hole signalled the end of Mr Frog’s bath and, sure enough, he emerged from the bathroom seconds later, his compact frame enveloped in a towel. His face was drawn and tired; his jaw clenched tightly. It pained me to see how much he had aged in the last few years: long hours at his desk had leached the colour from his cheeks. The boy I’d fallen in love with had eyes that twinkled like the illuminations on the Eiffel Tower, he kidded around, and never failed to see the funny side. The man I lived with now was a pale, grey-scale shadow of his former self. We shared a home, slept side by side, and yet we were trapped in separate routines, a widening gulf between us. Just as I looked out of my window without seeing, I took Mr Frog’s presence, or absence, for granted without really feeling. All that remained were echoes of how we used to be.