Bella... A French Life (30 page)

Valentin, who some nights played the piano at the Vaybee and was another cousin of Fred, Frascot and Gertrude, was sitting at the guest house’s piano which had been carried outside for the diners’ entertainment. He was flipping through some sheet music deciding what to play. Honorine, in a black mini-dress and white frilly apron, her feet in silver sandals, walked up to him and bent over his shiny bald head which always had my brother and I, when we were children, giggling, because we called him ‘the pomegranate’ behind his back.  The bald head nodded and its owner flipped back a few pages, bent forward a little, and began to play Debussy’s
Feuilles Mortes.
 

Fallen leaves can be picked up by the shovelful … So can memories and regrets … And the north wind takes them … into the cold night of oblivion… You see, I have not forgotten … The song you used to sing me…

Martine, dressed like Honorine, handed each of us a menu. Jean-Louis was also handed the wine menu.

This song is like us …You used to love me and I used to love you … And we used to live together …You loving me, me loving you …

“What are we going to have?” asked Jean-Louis.

But life separates lovers …Pretty slowly, noiselessly … And the sea erases on the sand … the separated lovers’ footprints …

“May I suggest something this time?” I asked.

“Sure, but don’t you always, Bella?”

The girls wanted French fries and ice cream: no degree of persuasion on the part of their father succeeded in changing their mind. Jean-Louis and I began with a tomato salad and our main course was
filets de merlan au gratin,
one of Gertrude’s specialities and much liked by our English guests, especially when it was served with boiled potatoes. That night we also had boiled potatoes with it.

Valentin played a medley of country songs. Next, and without pausing, he played some French songs. Probably having exhausted his repertoire of French songs, he returned to the country songs, repeating those he had played before.

Jean-Louis called Honorine over and asked her to serve the man a beer.

“To give our eardrums a rest,” he said to me.

Served a tankard of frothing beer and a plate of French fries, Valentin bopped his bald head in our direction. He went to sit on a folding stool some distance away, ignoring the knife and fork Honorine had handed him, preferring to eat the fries with his fingers and licking those each time he had popped a French fry onto his very red tongue.

Jean-Louis and I finished the bottle of
Chablis Grand Cru
Honorine had served us without us having asked for it, but just for, “Some white wine, please Honorine”. When I saw the bottle, condensation on it becoming droplets, I knew it was going to cost Jean-Louis a small fortune. I planned to have a word with my mother for doing that to him.

He wiped away some of the droplets with a finger and pressed the wet finger to the tip of my nose.

“Red,” I asked him, “my nose?”

“Goodness, no! Just flushed.”

-0-

We sat chatting, Charissa and Carmen running around, chasing pigeons which had flown up and were pecking at the leftovers on abandoned plates which Martine and Honorine had not yet cleared away. The two girls had not eaten all of their French fries, and the pigeons, beady eyes staring at Jean-Louis and I, flew to our table and began to peck away at what the two had left. Honorine came to say that the dinner and the wine were on the house. So, my mother was not being nasty at all, but, in fact, very generous. Jean-Louis handed her a twenty franc note as a tip and handed her another to give to Valentin, sitting at a table hungrily devouring another plate of food he had been given: a grilled steak and more French fries. Again, he nodded his bald head, rivulets of perspiration running down it, in Jean-Louis’ direction.

“Goodnight, Doc,” said he to me on passing him.

“Goodnight, Valentin, we loved your playing tonight. Made our dinner a very pleasant experience,” I told him.

“Thanks, Doc. You’re always welcome, Doc.”

“Nice music,” Jean-Louis said to him.

“Thanks, Mr Jean-Louis,” he replied.

-0-

Jean-Louis went with the girls to the ‘Tony of Colorado’ room to help Carmen with the insulin injection. I climbed the stairs to the ‘Rose Window’ room.

Quickly, I changed to a pair of unromantic pyjamas which were too warm for a hot and humid night as that one was.

I chose the bed furthest from the window. I switched off the ceiling light as well as the lamp on my bedside table. After quite a while I heard footsteps come up the stairs. I turned my back to the door.

“Bella …?”

I pretended to be fast asleep. I wonder what the time was, but could not look on my wristwatch: my mom had silenced the grandfather clock.

Jean-Louis undressed in the dark and he sighed when in his bed.

“Bella?” he called out keeping his voice down. “Are you asleep, darling?”

I did not reply.

Soon, he was snoring lightly.

I wondered whether I should wake him, but I did not want what I knew would follow. I did not know the Jean-Louis I had seen that day: Jean-Louis, the father. And I did not have sex with strangers.

-0-

In the morning, after breakfast, we piled back into the Combi. A halo of mist hung above the mount. From the chimneys of the houses of Sainte-Marie-sur-Brecque grey smoke shot into the air. The girls wanted something to eat for when we were driving back to Paris, so Jean-Louis pulled up outside the bakery. Amandine was at her usual place behind the till accepting money from customers who had gone to buy the morning’s bake of croissants.

The girls wanted
pains au chocolat
and ran in to buy some, their father keeping the
Combi’s
engine running.

Amandine saw me through the window and waved. I waved back.

The road to Paris, so familiar to me and having become familiar to Jean-Louis too, seemed long. The girls ate their
pains au chocolat
and stuck their chocolate-covered tongues out at children in the cars we passed. Jean-Louis and I talked about the work which lay ahead in the coming week: Chartreux Hospital had three births scheduled for each day.

“Will it be alright for me to drop you off at your place?” he asked.

We had reached Paris and we crossed the Seine on Pont Notre Dame, tourists, laden with cameras, already massing in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. Just at that moment, as if the Almighty in Heaven was heralding a welcome to the tourists, the cathedral’s bells began to chime.

In front of my building, Jean-Louis descended from the car, took my overnight bag from the back and carried it for me to the building’s door.

“Will it be alright if I leave it here, Bella?”

“Of course, Jean-Louis.”

“I’ll phone you later. Must just get the girls back to Col … their mother.”

The two, having scrambled onto the front passenger seat, which I had freed, they pulled funny faces at me.

-0-

Jean-Louis came back. He did not telephone to say he was on his way: always he telephoned before coming over. My doorbell rang. Three short rings. It identified the caller as him.

“You’ve not turned in for the night yet?” he asked.

He wore a different sweater from the one of the weekend. This one was pink. He had a beige jacket slung over an arm. I had not yet changed into my pyjamas.

“You’ve not thrown my toothbrush out yet, Bella?” he asked next.

On his previous overnight stay he had told me to throw out his toothbrush because he was going to buy another.

“I forgot, Jean-Louis.”

He asked whether I would like a glass of wine. He kept wine and beer at my place.

“Are you having one?” I asked.

“Need it, yes! The girls’ mother … Col … kicked up a fuss because Carmen’s blood sugar was high. She’s blaming me for it.”

I told him to sit down and I will bring him a glass of wine.

“I do not want to drink alone, Bella.”

He never wanted to be the only one in a room to be drinking.

“I’ll join you. I was thinking of having a glass before you rang my doorbell.”

His hair was tousled and his face was biscuit brown from the weekend’s sun.

“Did you enjoy the weekend, Jean-Louis?” I asked.

“I did, but I am afraid the girls spoiled it for you. When one is not used to children then …”

Quite.

He followed me to the kitchen and I told him to choose a bottle of wine from my wine rack.  His choice was a
Saint-Émilion
, one of his bottles, and with a jerk of his head showed me to take the glasses to the living room: he followed with the opened bottle.

In the Latin Quarter a street was never deserted and silent. That night was no different.

Jean-Louis and I stood at my open living room window. Down on the pavement, a young man was scaring girls with a small grey velvet mouse. He pressed something on the mouse when a girl approached and the mouse jumped from his hand and onto her. The girls he scared thus shrieked and jumped in the air, and patrons sitting on the terrace of a bistro, having watched and waited for the reaction, roared with laughter.

We sat down: I, on the settee, Jean-Louis in an armchair. He put his still almost full glass down on the coffee table between the settee and the armchair. He looked from the glass to me.

“Bella, the girls are going through a tough time.”

“Is it because of Carmen’s diabetes?” I asked.

He nodded.

“But not only.”

“So, what is it, Jean-Louis? Can I help?”

“I feel responsible.”

“For the diabetes?”

“For their unhappiness.”

I walked to the mantelpiece where he had put the bottle of wine. My glass was empty. I filled it. Jean-Louis had returned to the open window: he stood with his back to me. Laughter, almost hysterical, was still rising from the street below. Few lights were on in the buildings across the street. I sat down on the settee.

“I feel so guilty, Bella.”

He still had his back to me.

“You can’t blame yourself for the diabetes,” I said to his back.

“This is not about the diabetes, Bella,” he said firmly and emphasised the ‘not’.

He swung round, but remained at the window, leaning against the wall beside it. His glass was empty.

“What is this about?” I asked.

“It is about divorcing the girls’ mother.”

The patch of sky I could see through my living room window was suddenly starlit.

I wanted to laugh, dance: he was going to marry me!

“You have opted for divorce?” I asked.

“Contemplated it. Thought I should finalise the separation. I spoke to a colleague about alimony. Increasing the allowance I give the girls’ mother already.”

He fell silent. Walked to the mantelpiece and refilled his glass.

“Come sit,” I told him.

Like a child having been ordered to do so by its mother, he sat down, again in the armchair.

“Bella, I am thinking of going back to live with the girls’ mother.”

Jesus! He could not even say her name, but he was going to go back to her!

“Nothing needs to change as far as you and I are concerned,” he said.

He was looking down to the floor.

I said nothing. I had been struck dumb: such happiness one second and such a slap in the face the next.

“I will continue to see you,” he said.

I still remained silent; still could not speak.

“It will just be that I will change my address and my telephone number.”

Outside on the street, a girl shrieked in fear. It is incredible how scared a girl can be of a mouse.

“Bella, I love you. I did not plan this scenario. I want you to know that. To understand.”

I was still silent.

“Bella, say something. For God’s sake, say something.”

I stood up to pour myself another glass of wine.
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and glass of wine.
Who had said this? I had no idea.

Jean-Louis smoked, but rarely. I watched him take a crumpled packet of cigarettes and a lighter from a pocket of the beige jacket, which was hanging over the back of the armchair. Slowly, he took a cigarette from the packet, tapped it against the back of his hand. He lit it, tilting his head towards the lighter in his hand.

In the next few seconds, the acrid odour that filled my nostrils was surprisingly stimulating. Once, in my first year at ‘uni’ I had accepted a marijuana cigarette from a fellow student and no sooner than I had inhaled, was I drifting up to the ceiling. The world looked so beautiful from there, a luminous pink glow hung over the room down below, and I was certain I saw a fairy with long transparent wings flying about. But, was my fall from the ceiling a hard one! All of a sudden, the room was pitch-black and a horrible smell, the smell of a cadaver which I had to watch being dissected, clung to everything. Never had I touched the stuff again.

Would I yet again crash to the ground?

“Jean-Louis, are you offering me the position of First Mistress?” I asked.

The room had gone pitch-black. Yes, yet again I had crashed to the ground.

“Don’t be silly, Bella,” he said, crossing and uncrossing his legs.

He had looked up at me.

“So what are you offering me?” I asked. “Stolen nights? No. Full nights? Of course not. Minutes on the rear seat of your car? But no, your car has no rear seat. So what? A few minutes in an elevator? A few minutes on a service staircase? A few minutes on a park bench? Or what?”

“You are being vulgar, Bella.”

He slumped back into the armchair.

“What you have just suggested to me, Jean-Louis, that is what I call vulgar!”

“Don’t be like that!” he snapped.

He rose and walked back to the window. He leaned out. The only sound coming from the street was from the moving traffic: the young man must have taken his velvet mouse home, a home which was probably a small attic room.

“Bella, I will go. We can talk about this tomorrow,” said Jean-Louis.