Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  When James and I finally awoke, late the following morning, we were ravenous. The fridge was empty, so we ducked into Franprix for provisions. Despite its peeling paint and general air of shabbiness, I was rather attached to my local supermarket. Vigilance was required to avoid picking up food which was just shy of its sell-by date, and buying champagne and spirits meant finding the person who had the key to the locked cabinet near the front door, but Tadpole was always unfailingly popular with the cashiers, who slipped her free lollipops when the manager’s head was turned. Today, however, Tadpole was across the road. Tantalizingly close, yet completely out of bounds.

  As we moved through the aisles, picking up eggs, bread and fresh milk, I looked over my shoulder repeatedly. I had no desire for James and Mr Frog to meet, and half wished I’d thought to make a detour to a different shop. Mr Frog had moved only a few hundred metres away, when all was said and done. This supermarket was still his local.

  I began to breathe more easily when we reached the checkout without mishap. The red-overalled cashier looked puzzled to see me without Tadpole, flanked by a man who was not Mr Frog, but passed no comment. Fumbling for my purse while James packed the bags, I suddenly felt an urgent tap on my shoulder. ‘Isn’t that them over there?’ James said in a low voice, gesturing towards the entrance, where Tadpole was silhouetted against the daylight.

  ‘Oh God! Yes! You’re right.’ I ducked quickly out of Tadpole’s line of vision, concealing myself as best I could behind James’s stocky frame. Mr Frog had no idea what James looked like, but Tadpole did. I could think of nothing worse than her shouting his name and running over for a hug.

  A few heart-stalling seconds went by before the coast was clear. Mr Frog and Tadpole passed through the turnstile a couple of metres from where James and I stood, then moved further into the shop, where they disappeared behind the shelves. I let out a long sigh. It had been an agonizingly near miss. The cashier, who had been watching the scene with unconcealed interest, ignored my outstretched hand and clattered my change down on the metal counter, stripped of her customary smile. It was as though she’d sized up our entire situation in those few panic-stricken seconds and now wished to make her disapproval abundantly clear.

  ‘Did you see how that woman looked at me?’ I groaned, as soon as we were well clear of the exit.

  James shook his head. ‘I was too busy packing the bags,’ he replied, ‘but I’m sure you’re imagining things.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said, my shoulders drooping, as we turned the corner and passed the greengrocer’s.

  It seemed that both offline and online I was going to have to get used to the harsh judgements of strangers.

  19. Honeymoon

  The prevailing climate of tension at work, which kept me on the edge of my ergonomic chair, discouraged me from blogging at my desk. But that wasn’t the only reason I updated petite anglaise less often that summer. Now that Mr Frog had moved out, and our separation was old news, the dust was beginning to settle, the aftershocks coming fewer and farther between.

  My regular readers, on the other hand, had developed a voracious appetite for posts which shocked or thrilled; they visited petite anglaise for a ride on the emotional rollercoaster. My life had become entertainment to be sampled by strangers for their vicarious pleasure, safe from harm, hidden behind their monitors. When I failed to deliver, a rumble of discontent began to make itself heard in my comments box. Where was their daily fix?

  ‘I have plotted a graph,’ wrote Germain. ‘On one axis the number of petite posts per week. On the other axis a dateline. There is a clearly visible fall in the number of posts right about the time “Lover” came along. I wish he hadn’t.’

  Such comments brought home to me forcefully that for some I was just a provider of entertainment, not a person in my own right who deserved a shot at happiness and tranquillity. And yet my life had taken a turn for the calmer, and for me it was a profound relief to feel able to live life more fully offline. I was posting maybe fifteen times a month – half as much as I used to – but the viewing figures showed no signs of dipping, so why not cut myself some slack?

  There were however a few entries I’d been holding in reserve, out of respect for Mr Frog’s feelings. Now that a couple of months had elapsed and the events were no longer so fresh, I allowed myself to describe my encounter with James in the Hôtel Saint Louis. There was no sex scene – petite anglaise was far too coy for that – but I did admit that we had met in a hotel when I should have been at work, and when I was still in a relationship with Tadpole’s father. I wrote the post as a gift to James – just as I’d addressed my break-up post to Mr Frog – committing the powerful emotions of that day to memory so that they could never be forgotten. At the back of my mind, as I pressed ‘publish’, I knew my confession would shake things up, and I braced myself for the inevitable comments box fall-out.

  ‘Do we really need to know this?’ Teresa was quick to complain. ‘Don’t you think some things should be private…? This is personal stuff you are divulging, stuff that I would cringe for anyone to know if it were me… Once you send something out into cyberspace, you can’t reel it back in.’

  Rather than letting other commenters rush to my defence, as they were wont to do, I felt it was time to address these criticisms myself. It was true that I was constantly nudging back my own boundaries, perhaps forgetting that a post written for myself, for James, might be considered too much information by a third party. ‘Why do I write posts like this?’ petite anglaise pondered in reply. ‘I’m not sure I even know myself. To commit certain things to memory. To flex my tiny writing muscles. To romanticize my life. As letters to someone in particular. As therapy. To exorcise guilt. I’m not sure it matters why, as long as no damage is done.’ I was reminded suddenly of the concert where James and I had first met, and how I’d felt as though I was eavesdropping on Eve’s private life as John sang about their relationship. James was a source of inspiration now, and a few thousand people were listening in whenever I wrote about him.

  ‘At the end of the day, whether or not petite wants to discuss her love life or the price of pears in Provence, it’s entirely up to her,’ said Fifi in my defence. ‘Let’s not forget that we are guests here, people. Take your shoes off at the door, and be polite when you leave!’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder whether I should keep on writing petite anglaise,’ I said to James on the phone, later that day. ‘I don’t seem to be able to please anyone. Either I’m not writing often enough, or it’s too personal. I know I shouldn’t let what people say get to me. But I can’t help it.’

  ‘I remember the days before we met, when I used to refresh your page every time I took a tea break,’ said James, harking back to the days when he had been just another faceless reader, and not a character in his own right. ‘But you shouldn’t worry about that sort of thing. Write what you want, when you have something to say, it’s your blog.’

  ‘Did you see the comment Caroline left?’

  ‘Caroline?’

  ‘Mancunian Lass, sorry. The girl I told you I’d met at the picnic. She guessed that the hotel post was addressed to you, and joked that we get kicks out of being exhibitionists. Almost as though we were having sex in a public place. I suppose she does have a point…’

  ‘I love what you write,’ James replied, ‘and I’m flattered when you write about me, but it’s not as if you went into intimate detail… If some people don’t want to read because they feel they are intruding on our private lives, then no one is forcing them. But just remember, you don’t owe these people anything. I’d be sad if you stopped writing – I love reading you – but make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Not because you feel obligated, or pressured, or because it’s some sort of uncomfortable habit you can’t kick…’

  He was right, I knew he was, but I wasn’t sure I was capable of kicking the habit, even if part of me thought I should. ‘I can’t wait for you to get here,’ I said, changing the subject, b
ringing the focus away from petite anglaise and back to us. ‘When you think about it, I’ve known you two months, but if you count the hours we’ve actually spent together, it adds up to so little…’

  The summer holidays were almost upon us and, in Tata’s absence, Tadpole would be going to stay with Mr Frog’s parents. This meant that James was free to join me in Paris for two whole weeks. Mr Frog might have moved out, but I’d been adamant that James couldn’t sleep over while Tadpole was around. She needed time to adjust: she still referred to the spare pillow on my bed as ‘Daddy’s pillow’. It wouldn’t do to rush things.

  ‘Hold that thought,’ James replied, and the longing in his voice made my spine tingle, ‘while I list all the filthy things I’m going to do to you when I get there…’

  James was wearing my least favourite pair of jeans: badly cut, with a mottled pattern that reminded me of a pair I’d owned in the eighties. I felt disloyal and shallow for entertaining such uncharitable thoughts as the métro pulled into Bonne Nouvelle station. It wasn’t his clothes I was supposed to be in love with, and I’d be the first to clamour that beauty isn’t only skin-deep, but I desperately wanted him to make a good impression. We were meeting Caroline and Louise in a bar, then planning to move on to a nearby restaurant for an Indian meal. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen the two women since we met at the picnic; but it was the first time I’d introduced James to any of my friends. That day at work I’d received a breathless email from Louise: ‘Am having a hard time dealing with the excitement of seeing Jim in Rennes!’

  Caroline was already seated at a small round table in the front section of the De La Ville café, upon which a candle flickered in a red glass. Two flights of steps led up to the bar on one side, and a restaurant area on the other. On the bar side, huge mirrors reflected the gold-coloured mosaic which covered the whole ceiling. Rumour had it the building had once housed a high-class brothel, which couldn’t fail to add to its cachet.

  The crowd was similar to that of the Charbon: branché, bobo, exuding a very Parisian nonchalant cool. Over the road, next to the Rex cinema, were a couple of nightclubs where I’d been a regular in my pre-Tadpole days. It felt good to be out and about near my old haunts. With Tadpole away, Mummy could play.

  ‘Caroline-Mancunian Lass meet James-Jim in Rennes,’ I said, sliding into the seat next to Caroline’s and catching the waiter’s eye as he hurried past. ‘Caroline works in translation, just like you,’ I added, trying to establish a connection between the two of them which didn’t rely solely on petite anglaise, even if it was she who had brought us together.

  As James and Caroline chatted about their work, I sipped my beer and willed the butterflies in my stomach to be still. I was nervous, and it ran deeper than my usual anxiety about living up to people’s expectations in the flesh, or the trepidation any girl would feel about introducing a new boyfriend. Petite anglaise had written James on to a pedestal. He was her commenter in shining armour, the man she’d fallen for the moment she laid eyes on him, and her words dripped with infatuation. With so much to live up to, the potential for him to disappoint was enormous.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Louise as she breezed in, looking glamorous in smart, knee-high boots and a short skirt. I was rather in awe of Louise, who managed to juggle motherhood with running a successful English-language school. ‘You must be James,’ she said, bending to kiss him on both cheeks. ‘Gosh, this is so exciting. Like meeting someone famous.’

  When James excused himself to go to the toilet, I braced myself for the verdict which must inevitably follow. ‘He seems really lovely, Catherine,’ said Caroline, as soon as he was out of earshot, ‘and he looks younger than I expected, too.’

  ‘I have a theory about divorced men going through a second adolescence,’ I said, with a relieved smile. ‘I’ve seen pictures of James a few years ago, and he definitely seems younger now.’ I looked at Louise quizzically. Surely she must have something to add?

  ‘Mmm. I have to say, he’s not quite what I imagined,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But then again, I don’t know what I did imagine… Is James very different from Mr Frog? Physically, I mean?’

  ‘They’re like chalk and cheese,’ I replied. ‘Tall, dark and stocky versus slight, pale and fair. I ought to tell you his real name, really, we can’t keep calling him Mr Frog all night…’

  I looked up and saw James crossing the room, and for a split second I saw him as a stranger might. If I’d walked past him on the street one day, without the crescendo of emails, the electronic foreplay, would I have even given him a second glance? To what extent had I let myself get carried away by how inherently romantic it was to fall for a reader who had worshipped petite anglaise from afar before he’d even seen my face?

  ‘Another drink before we make a move?’ I said brightly, banishing those uncomfortable thoughts and running my hand along James’s forearm as he dropped into the seat by my side. You can’t divorce a person from the context in which you met, I told myself sternly. It’s pointless to think that way; unhealthy to cross-examine my own motives, analyse my every impulse.

  Once we’d ordered, I nudged the conversation away from petite anglaise. ‘So, how about you two tell me all about how you came to be in Paris in the first place,’ I suggested to Caroline and Louise. ‘You both know so much more about me than I do about you, and it’s time to even things up a bit, don’t you think?’

  That week, with James by my side, my feet barely touched the ground. Nothing my boss said or did could penetrate my armour. All I had to do was think of James sitting at my dining-room table, head bent over his laptop, a mug of tea steaming by his side, and I was immunized against even the most caustic remarks. James’s presence took the edge off the dull ache caused by Tadpole’s absence, too. But two weeks was the longest I’d ever been separated from my daughter, and as the days wore on, my longing grew more visceral.

  I missed the mewls of protest she made when I woke her in the morning. I missed pulling her golden ringlets straight and watching the corkscrews reassert themselves when I let go. The memories of her tantrums receded, the good outweighing the bad. When she was with me, bedtime often couldn’t come quickly enough. But when we were apart, the sight of a fair-haired toddler in the street made my lungs constrict. There was no escaping the fact that there was a Tadpole-shaped hole in my life.

  ‘Allô?’ I said hesitantly.

  Craving the sound of Tadpole’s voice, I’d finally mustered up the courage to telephone the ‘in-laws’, or ‘out-laws’ or whatever I was supposed to call my daughter’s French grandparents.

  It was my first shred of contact with the beaux-parents since I’d asked Mr Frog to move out, and every muscle in my body was taut. Did they hate me for wrecking their son’s home? How much did they know, or suspect, of what had really happened? The news, when it came, must have been a dreadful shock. When we’d visited, Mr Frog and I had always put our quarrels on hold, papering over the cracks, presenting a united front.

  Tadpole answered the phone. Or at least I supposed it was my daughter. Her voice – distorted by the telephone and unbearably distant – sounded like that of a little French stranger. ‘Allô? Maman? Regarde! Un bobo!’ No doubt she was showing the offending scrape or bruise to the telephone, convinced I could see as well as hear. Muffled sounds of a scuffle ensued, and Mr Frog’s mother appropriated the handset.

  ‘It’s just a scrape on her knee,’ she explained hastily. ‘She was running too fast and tripped on the terrasse. You know what she’s like…’

  ‘Oui, oui, bien sûr…’ I replied. ‘I never worry when she’s with you. I know she’s in good hands.’

  Now that she had wrestled the phone from Tadpole’s fingers, small talk would be necessary. This was the moment I had been dreading. We’d got on so well in the beginning, my bell-mère and I. A fizzing bundle of energy, Mr Frog’s mother was perpetually in motion, congenitally unable to sit still. The kitchen was her domain and despite her own sparrow-like a
ppetite, she’d always taken great pleasure in fattening me up. At family gatherings the womenfolk exclaimed over what a rare and wonderful thing it was to see a young woman who liked her food and rarely refused a second helping. But as my relationship with Mr Frog soured, my enthusiasm for visiting his parents also waned. On my last visit I’d feigned a migraine and taken refuge in Mr Frog’s childhood bedroom with a book.

  ‘Vous allez bien?’ I enquired cautiously. I hadn’t always been consistent about addressing Mr Frog’s parents with the polite ‘vous’ – after a few glasses of Beau-père’s best Bordeaux, a careless ‘tu’ would often slip out – but I was determined to handle her with kid gloves today. Our relationship had subtly changed, and there was no sense in adding grammatical insult to injury.

  ‘Ravie de voir notre petite-fille,’ she replied diplomatically, ‘Et vous?’

  The stock response I’d learned at school was ‘très bien merci’, and the words tripped gaily off my tongue before I had time to censor myself, a reflex over which I had no control. I slapped my palm to my forehead. I had no idea whether my belle-mère knew of James’s existence, and she almost certainly didn’t know he was with me now, while her own son licked his wounds across the road. But for decency’s sake, I really ought to have dampened down the happiness in my voice.

  ‘Bon, je vais vous repasser votre fille,’ she replied stiffly. Had I caused offence, or was she, like me, simply anxious to keep our exchange mercifully short?

  ‘Maman?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Mummy. What have you been up to, darling? Are you having a nice time?’ Tadpole replied in French and, although I managed to decipher the words ‘swimming pool’ and ‘bells’, the rest was incomprehensible. I decided to try a change of tack. ‘Why don’t you sing Mummy a song?’ I suggested. ‘Maybe an English one?’ If there was one thing my daughter loved, it was being given an opportunity to perform. I was treated to a reasonably accurate rendition of a French nursery rhyme called ‘Une Souris Verte’ in which a green mouse, caught by the tail and dipped first in oil, then water, miraculously turns into a piping hot snail. Tears welled up in my eyes at the sound of her faraway voice.