Bella...A French Life

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

  On the mount, Jean-Louis and I, the two of us, like the German women, dressed in shorts and tops, and our laced sandals dangling from around our necks, went for a coffee at one of the cafés on cobbled, twisting, climbing Grande Rue, the mount’s only street.

  Again, he spoke of his girls.

  “Carmen has done well at school, but Charissa has received a bad report. Col - their mother - and I are really worried about her.”

  Never could he say his wife’s name. One of my colleagues at Chartreux Hospital even thought that his wife’s name was Col. “What an odd name,” she had said.

  “Have you been to speak to the girl’s teacher?” I asked Jean-Louis.

  “We will do so in September when schools reopen after the summer holiday.”

  Not Col, but we.

  But on that day he and she were no longer a we. He and I were the we.

  “Bella, my dear child, what did you expect?” my mother asked when Jean-Louis and I were no longer a couple.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Mother.”

  “The way you get them is the way you lose them, Bella.”

  “Mother, I did not break up his marriage. Anyway, he is back with her, so no harm done,” I replied.

  After the coffee, Jean-Louis and I hitched a ride on a tourist coach back to Genêts where the Porsche was parked. He allowed me to drive back to Le Presbytère, and, on this road, and about where I am now, I stepped on the accelerator and he grabbed the dashboard as if fearing we were going to plunge off the road, yet, he did not tell me to slow down. His face was flushed with excitement.

  At the end of the day we drove back to Paris and he was behind the wheel.

  Dropping me off at my apartment in the Latin Quarter he did not get out of the car but leaned over me to open the door on my side for me.

  “Bella, why does your mother think you broke up my marriage?” he asked.

  “She also thinks you will drop me for another woman.”

  “Et puis alors,” he said.

  -0-

  Chapter Five

  Getting back from the village, a moment ago, I parked the Mercedes between the Deux Chevaux and the Combi, and here I stand in the kitchen.

  I ought to unpack my market purchases. The pheasant and the hare need to go into the freezer. The chicken I will roast today; it will be food for me for at least three meals.

  Oh, I will do it in a moment!

  I walk to the window to feel the soil of a Peace Lily in a terracotta pot placed on the sill. The plant, already potted, was a gift from Fred this past summer.

  “Not too much water, Miss, but don’t let the soil dry out either,” he cautioned.

  One of its white lilies has started to turn green at the edges as Fred said it would at the end of the current flowering cycle.

  I touch the flower’s spadix. Its yellow powder sticks to my fingers. I wonder whether the powder is poisonous; Fred did not say and usually he points out what is poisonous.

  The plant’s long, curly, pointed leaves are covered in a thin layer of dust. I spray them with tap water and they are shiny again.

  I remain at the window; it looks out onto my Frida Kahlo courtyard. My mother asked me who Frida Kahlo was. My father would have known. In those first years after the war, he, dabbling with Communism, was an admirer of Frida’s husband, Diego Rivera.

  “First a Hitlerite, now a Stalinist. What will he become next? A Jehova Witness?” my uncles commented among themselves.

  -0-

  My parents kept the guest house open all year round. Even my mother, after my father’s death twelve years ago, did so. When I joined her here and suggested that we close for the cold months, she fervidly refused.

  “No, Bella, no. Guests must know that they are always welcome here.”

  The first time I did a winter closing was in 1980, six years ago and after the Paris specialists told me my mother’s lung cancer was incurable. When she and I got back here from Paris where she had been hospitalised and I told her we would be closing for the winter, she did not protest; had not said a word. I presumed she understood that I, as a doctor, knew her death was not far in the future and I would want time to spend with her; time to care for her.

  One evening, death very near, she kind of acknowledged that she understood.

  She took my hand.

  “Bella, dear child, couples do not have children so that they are there to care for them when they are old and ill, but thank you, thank you so much.”

  Her eyes glistened.

  After she passed on, I made my decision to close each winter final. I sent a picture postcard showing the mount’s abbey to all our regular guests to let them know Le Presbytère would be closed each year from the third week of September to the following Easter. Some had heard of my mother’s illness and passing and replied with black-bordered sympathy cards on which were printed or scribbled sentimental words about her being in heaven. Gertrude, without checking with me whether it would be alright, arranged the cards on the ledge above the fireplace in the drawing room and when there was no space left there, on the sideboard in the dining room, exactly as my mother used to do with our Christmas cards. Deep into one sleepless night I, the cards’ sentimental messages irritating me, chucked the cards into a plastic bin liner and dropped it into one of the guest house’s large green dustbins and before Gertrude even realised the cards had been taken down, dustmen had already carted the bins off.

  The first winter with Le Presbytère closed I did not feel alone here. Neither did I feel lonely. I had time to travel. I flew to America. I flew first class and on an open ticket so I could stay there for as long as I wished; the ‘long’ happened to be short because snow storms chased me back home. The following winter, I went to Paris, taking the train from the town of Nantes. In Paris, I caught up with friends. I took nostalgic strolls through the Latin Quarter where I had lived. I went to Chartreux Hospital to look around. The visit provoked such painful memories of the Brissard twin’s death that I ran from the place. The following winter I took the ferry to England and I played tourist in London. I took a coach trip to Bath with what seemed a hundred Japanese tourists, and another coach trip to Dover to see whether the surrounding cliffs were really white. That winter I also took a ferry to the Channel Isles and I returned home with duty free perfume and the telephone numbers of people I had met but who I would never call.

  I also had time to read during these past winters. On my trips to Paris I bought books at FNAC in Montparnasse and in the American bookshop Brentano’s on Avenue de l’Opera, and back here I made an index card for each book and filed the cards in shoe boxes the girl from the village’s André shoe shop kindly gave me. I transformed my mother’s sewing room which used to be my father’s workroom where he made decorative candles as a hobby, into a library room, and in perfect alphabetical order I arranged the books on shelves Fred made for me.

  “You look like a bored woman,” Marius’s wife said, walking into the library room one day.

  “I love books, Marion.”

  Marius married Marion soon after my trial and they are the parents of four beautiful children; two girls and two boys whose names I have a problem remembering. Or rather, I know the names but I get mixed up with whose is which.

  Marius agreed with Marion.

  “All these books, Bella, hell. One of these days there won’t be any space left in this house for guests.”

  Ignoring the two’s remarks, I kept on going to Paris to buy books, but one day, walking into my library room and tripping over a pile of them for which I had no shelf space, I wondered whether my book buying was not out of control. Was it not that I was taking refuge in books? I could crawl in between the words, yes; lose all sense of time and place and the terrible reality of the loneliness of my life.

  When Le Presbytère is open I do not have much time to spend in the library room, but over the past few days, I have been sitting in there every evening, not really reading, just flipping through the books lik
e someone searching for a certain phrase or quotation. Of course, I was only passing time. But I do love the room, love its dark look and the smell of its air which I recognise is the subtle scent of wood and of candle wax, the latter still present from the days of my father’s candle making.

  When the guest house is open, I keep the library room locked because I do not want ‘strangers’ to walk in there and probably leave with a book: guests do so like to explore every nook and corner of the house.

  “How can I dust in there if the door’s locked, Miss?” asks Honorine always.

  “I’ll dust, Honorine,” I always tell her.

  The only thing about the room is that it is silent.

  But, so is the house when there are no guests here.

  And do you know that silence makes the loudest noise?

  It is only two weeks since Le Presbytère has been closed, but already the house’s silence is barking in my ears like a pack of mad dogs.

  -0-

  There are times when Marion - she, the redhead with the large drop earrings and the mini skirts - looks at me with such pity in her mascara-lined, brown eyes. She must think that I, in my comfortable shoes, flesh-coloured tights, skirts of a modest length and unprovocative tightness, is a dried-out old hag.

  “Do you know how beautiful you are, Bella Wolff?” asked Jean-Louis one day.

  It was our first date.

  “One of my neighbours thinks her bulldog is beautiful,” I brushed the compliment into oblivion.

  -0-

  Jean-Louis and I met when he came to Chartreux Hospital to see the baby his sister had just given birth to.

  He stood beside her bed, to me, at first glance, an ordinary man. His hair, brown; his eyes, brown. Of medium height like our compatriots, and slim like them too. It being spring, he wore a yellow T-shirt, jeans and white trainers.

  “My bruv,” said my patient.

  “Hello,” he said.

  He was smiling and something happened to his eyes, they brightened like a child’s when eating ice cream.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  It was as if we were longtime pals.

  “How did my sis do, Doctor?”

  Bruv. Sis. A happy family. Unlike mine; my brother and I never use pet names.

  My shift ended. I was walking down the stairs and I saw him walking along the corridor and towards the staircase. He lifted a hand in greeting.

  “Doctor Wolff - thank you. My sister said you were just great during the birth. She was nervous. First baby.”

  “Women usually are but they do all tend to settle into the process and when it’s their fourth time, they’re sipping tea during the birth.”

  “I’ll tell you what.”

  He lightly touched my arm.

  “What?”

  “I do not know whether hospitals are like schools - where teachers and students are not allowed to ... uh ... mix ... but could I offer you a coffee?”

  “At varsity we are taught not to get personal with patients, not to become involved in a patient’s life.”

  “What a pity, because the coffee in the cafeteria is quite good. I thought it would be atrocious like that of other public places, like railway stations, but no, I was pleasantly surprised.”

  His hand was again on my arm.

  “A coffee would be great, thank you,” I said. “And you’re not a patient, are you?”

  The pretty waitress, her full, round breasts bursting out of her grey frock with her name on its breast pocket - Claire - filled two polystyrene goblets with black coffee.

  “Grab us a table and I will bring these over,” said my patient’s brother.

  Claire handed me two plastic spatula-like white spoons.

  “Sugar’s on the table, Doc.”

  At the table, my patient’s brother took two paper-wrapped lumps of sugar from a metal container. He handed one lump to me.

  “Not for me, thanks.”

  “In that case, I’ll take your lump home. Will save on buying sugar.”

  He winked.

  “Really?”

  “I have a friend who actually does do that.”

  “Perhaps he is poor.”

  My patient’s brother shook his head.

  “He is a lawyer. I am a lawyer too.”

  “Do you plead for the life of serial killers?” I asked.

  Again, he shook his head.

  “I am a contract lawyer. I work exclusively for the big conglomerates.”

  “So you need not nick sugar lumps.”

  “Neither would you, being a doctor and all that. But tell me, why did you choose to become a paediatrician?”

  Why? I thought it would be pleasant working with babies.

  “I played mummies when I was little.”

  I had thought of that for an answer just at that moment.

  “Only mummies? Or mummies and daddies?”

  “No daddies, no. I was ahead of time. My mummies were all single.”

  “So, if you are a mummy, do I take it that there is no daddy?”

  “I’m not a mummy.”

  “Neither am I.”

  I laughed at his witticisms and so did he.

  “But I am a father,” he said, no trace of a smile on his face anymore. “I have two daughters. I’m ... uh ... their mother and I have split. I live on my own.”

  “I live on my own too. I’m single. A spinster. That hideous word. Spinster. What do I spin?”

  He nodded.

  “I see what you mean.”

  He offered me another coffee but I declined it and I told him I ought to be going and I left and he remained sitting at the table and at the door I turned round and I saw he was standing at the bar talking to the busty Claire. I had not asked his name, and neither had he asked mine. My first name, that is.

  The following afternoon, signing in for my shift, I saw that his sister and the baby were discharged that morning.

  I put the guy out of my mind.

  A week later he called ‘Maternity’ and left a message for me to call Jean-Louis.

  That evening, I dialled the number.

  “Now, I know your name, Jean-Louis,” I said.

  He asked me to have dinner with him.

  -0-

  Chapter Six

  It is Sunday. I could have slept in this morning, but I woke at six, and knowing I would not be able to fall asleep again, I got up.

  These September mornings are cool and misty and as I was shivering in my cotton nightdress I put on my black ‘house’ jersey, the one I bought ages ago at the Prisunic shop which is next to Le Drug Store Publicis on Place Saint Germain-des-Prés in Paris. I am ashamed to admit I never wash this jersey because each time I wear it, I decide it is in such a dreadful state that I am going to chuck it out with the domestic waste, just as I chucked out the sympathy cards I received on my mother’s passing.

  I am standing at one of the two bay windows of Le Presbytère’s drawing room. I am sipping my first coffee of the morning. I warm my cold hands against the bowl. I always fill a bowl to the top. This is where I always come to stand when I have guests but want a moment for myself.

  The villagers say this house is haunted.

  In the time when my father was still alive some guests spoke of an owl having hooted outside their bedroom window all through the night.

  “What the hell do they expect?” my father always asked my mother.

  “Exactly! They are out in the country here and there is nothing abnormal about an owl hooting. Or a toad croaking. Or a dog barking.”

  Those guests never returned.

  According to my mother, long before the guests’ complaints about abnormal activity in and around the house, I already behaved as if I were communicating with someone only I could see. She told me that I used to stand in my cot looking to the corner of my bedroom, my eyes wide open with fear, but also with interest, and on some nights I just could not fall asleep. She said I tried to climb from my cot and each time they tried to get me to
stay in the cot, I pointed to the corner of the room as if I wanted to tell them I wanted to go there. Marius, as my mother told me, had no such problems with his room.

  “It’s the bloody nuns,” said my father.

  “It’s the bloody Huns,” retorted my uncles.

  The ‘Huns’ was reference to my father’s Nazi past.

  The ‘nuns’ was reference to the house’s past.

  Once, as the name Le Presbytère implies, this house had a religious connection. It used to be a rest home for nuns.

  Not always did my parents tell our guests about the nuns, and now neither do I, but here, in the wall above the bay window, is a small round recessed niche. It is empty. Not always was it so. If I pull over a chair and stand on it so my eyes are parallel to the niche, I will see a series of minuscule holes, holes as if dry rot is attacking the house, but as I know, the holes form a crucifix.

  “There was a cross here in the niche. Gave me the creeps,” said the old man before he had sold the house to my parents.

  “What did he do with the cross?” I asked my mother.

  “He burnt it.”

  Always, my mother, who said she believed in nothing, crossed herself.

  -0-

  I have drunk my coffee.

  I would like to refill the bowl, but I am going to resist the temptation. Gertrude always says, quoting Father Pierre: remove the temptation and you remove the sin.

  Behind the house the sun is rising. I can tell because the house is warming up, and in the distance, down below on the mount, a beam of sunlight is again reflecting off Archangel Michael’s outstretched wings.

  As I can see there are as yet no cars or tourist coaches on the causeway linking the coast to the mount. I know, soon the tourists will start driving up.

  Maybe a car with someone looking for a place to stay will come driving up here, hoot when they drive through the gate - all do this and I still have to figure out why - and drive slowly up my gravelled driveway which is lined with tall trellises from which droop pale jasmine, clematis, honeysuckle and climbing roses. As I always do, I will apologise for their unnecessary drive up the hill, and I will invite them in and offer them something to drink, a coffee if they are Americans, a cup of tea should they be English. And when they drive off, I will wonder whether I am doing right, closing for winter.