Mrs P's Journey

by Sarah Hartley

  If Sandor’s attitude towards women earning money appeared liberated, in fact it was only his peasant roots showing. Women were like horses and cattle; if they were young enough to stand and fit enough to walk, then they could work.

  Wrenching off her navy school tie, Phyllis threw it out towards the trailing gulls. She then unknotted her knobbly plaits. Nothing could be done to disguise her English schoolgirl grey, knee-length socks and woollen tunic, however, and at that moment, she realised that her transformation into a woman wasn’t going to be easy.

  Geographically, England and France are not that far distant from each other. But later on, Phyllis would say that it was the peculiar smell of France that set the country apart from its Anglo-Saxon neighbour. When she first stepped down from the boat after it docked in Le Havre, the thin air was tainted with a stench of oysters, mussels and urine. If Tony had been with her, the pair would have screwed up their faces and shouted, ‘Phwoar!!’ much to the consternation of their parents. But the pungent odour could not have unsettled her stomach more than the rank air below decks, which had reeked of sweat, damp and garlic.

  As the other passengers noisily clambered down with their cases, some were embraced by relatives and others were swallowed up whole by the early autumn fog. Phyllis stood motionless on the drizzly quayside, with only the sound of foghorns as a welcome. Her hesitation was fleeting. Even at such a young age, she had an acute sense of reality; her mind did not try to disguise the truth. Bella would have only seen the dark-haired handsome captain, swaggering away from his ferry, and Sandor would have already been swept away in a car, having secured his onward journey by befriending the family with the most opulent luggage and furs on board. Yet for Phyllis, to take in these snapshots – of a trawler man in blue overalls peeing into the sea from beside a little sailboat, to the waddling woman with a basket strapped to her side, calling: ‘Harengs, harengs, harengs frais!’ gave her a true sense that she might, without too much effort, disappear unnoticed into these foreign surroundings.

  These smells and these sounds that were so alien to her then, would in years to come be an instant sign that she had arrived in France, the country where she always felt her artistic temperament could be truly unrestrained.

  All the lost hours chanting French verbs in a sealed classroom were about to pay off. With a nervous voice, her accent a little weak, Phyllis approached a fisherman sitting on a lobster pot gutting cod, and enquired how far it was to Fécamp. He smeared the fish blood on to his apron and wiped his brow.

  ‘Ce n’est pas loin. Dix kilometres.’ He nodded towards the bus, its engine humming, parked next to a warehouse, and filling up with passengers. ‘Dépêche-toi.’ And with that he put down his thick knife, stood up and effortlessly carried her trunk over to the bus.

  ‘Merci, Monsieur!’ With quick little steps she followed his own big strides. ‘Merci, merci, Monsieur!’

  He carefully manoeuvred the trunk on to the bus. That small kindness brought tears to her eyes as the bus trundled over the cobbles and on to the coast road that led north to Fécamp. The love and generosity that had once spilled out so effortlessly from her own family, had appeared now, when she was most in need of it, from a stranger who owed her nothing. He may have been a spitting, rough wine drinking Normandy fisherman, but such kindness was second nature to him. Why was it not second nature to her own family any more?

  How appropriate it would have been if the College had loomed into Phyllis’s vision, its windows fastened with iron bars, its thick walls a heavy brown, its pupils mean and unruly. Instead, her new home awaited at the top of a steep narrow lane, in the wealthy seaport, where the breeze never lost its smell of salted cod. Phyllis was greeted by a pearly grey mansion – the sort that the English would mistake for a château – secluded from the rest of the town by wrought-iron gates enclosing the formal box-hedged grounds. Each sash window was framed by white shutters and a mist of lilac wisteria enveloped the west wall.

  Shuffling on the gravel, an old concierge in tight ankle boots and a baggy white pinafore came muttering into sight, her shoulders stooped. Without a word to Phyllis, she unlocked the gates and pointed her way inside.

  The chilled interior was checked with bright light, the walls white, the air still. The Michaelmas term would not start until the next day. Someone, somewhere, was baking cake. Her moment of calm was slashed by a dog, a Great Dane, that nearly knocked Phyllis off her feet. Slobbering on the black and white tiles, he let out a hollow bark at the funny-looking creature frozen in front of him.

  ‘Marcuuus! Marcuuus!’ From her shuttered office, a raspy voice wailed before the formidably short Madame la Directrice – Mme Brettain – came running out to scold her hound. Her limp, sable-coloured hair was tweaked neatly into a chignon, her stomach and bosom were encased in heavy corsetry. The stiff collar of her white lace blouse supported her chins and her black crepe skirt dusted the floor as she walked.

  ‘Marcuus! Quelque fois . . .’ She stopped and did a double-take at what she almost mistook for a gypsy. Before her stood a shrimp of a girl, her sallow skin brightened by a pair of dark, curranty eyes, her unruly hair matted. The girl gave a little smile and a bob of a curtsey.

  ‘Bonjour, Madame. Je m’appelle Phyllis Gross.’

  Her heart, if headmistresses possess such a thing, softened. ‘Where is your mother?’ she asked. Those were the first and only words Madame ever spoke in English to Phyllis. Her disgust at seeing this young girl arrive unescorted was easily translated from the loud snort she let out.

  Phyllis shrugged. ‘Je ne sais pas.’

  However, despite being won over by an English miss, Mme Brettain was not, under any circumstances, going to let on that she had in any way found her amicable. With brusque efficiency Madame assigned Phyllis to her quarters with the servants. The room allocated to her – a tiny, white-walled cell with a bright skylight – had probably once been part of the pantry. The nearest lavatory was a long walk away and daddy-long-legs lurked with the moths in the corners, but it was to be her own, dear space.

  Madame did not stop once to pause or ask her if she understood the instructions she was reeling off with a flip of the hand. Léonie, her adopted daughter, would be given lessons in conversational English during the school holidays. During termtime Phyllis would be teaching English conversation to all the pupils. With her spare time, she could continue her own education.

  Spare time did not make its presence known.

  Léonie, Phyllis noted, was an olive-skinned girl about her own age, whose right eye drooped slightly. Perhaps understandably, camaraderie with a contemporary, who had been brought in as a servant and a teacher, was not advisable. As it was, Léonie was already burdened with the stigma of her mother being headmistress and was reluctant to look out for anyone else.

  And with that as her lot, Léonie must have decided there and then to be difficult. She handed over to Phyllis her first task, a heaped basket of soiled linen. ‘I will show you the laundry room,’ she said under her breath. ‘Voici. À bientôt. There it is. See you later.’

  Maybe then would have been a good moment to break down and cry, but now Phyllis – light-headed with hunger – was finding the challenges that were being slapped upon her, one after the other, quite amusing. She had not so much as lifted a lid on a laundry basket before, let alone seen the chore in action. Without any previous experience, she began to draw vats of boiling water and with wooden forks dropped each item into the steam. After an hour, sweating over lavender-swirled water and foaming bleach, Léonie returned.

  ‘Leave that now, and come with me, please. It’s time for you to eat.’

  At the back of the building and down some green slate steps, Léonie led her into the factory-sized kitchen where Simone, the cook, put a large platter of rabbit meat and wine-fried potatoes in front of her. Phyllis had already felt her insides collapse in on themselves with hunger, yet not long after she had finished eating, Simone would relay to Madame that the English girl did
not display the manners her country was renowned for, as she struggled for over an hour to force down and swallow her food, her elbows pointing heavenwards.

  Settling in took less than a day. What soon became clear to Phyllis was that, ever since she had left The Firs, she had been yearning for somewhere, a place where she did not have to practise so hard not to upset anyone, a place where she might wake up in the morning and not fret about what mean tricks the day held in store for her. Here at the private college were one hundred young ladies; tradesmen’s daughters mixed with those of merchant seamen and shipping magnates. Some of the long-sleeved black pinafores worn as uniform were patched and sun-bleached, while others were newly pinned and trimmed. It did not matter. Nor, for the first time, did it matter that Phyllis stood inches below others her own age, that her shrunken arms belied her boy’s strength nor that her buckled shoes, once smart black patent, looked considerably past their best. Laughter was not restricted to exclusive huddles and the tactile friendship among the pupils was sincere without being overly possessive.

  After her first week, Phyllis sent a letter to her father. This is real life, Papa. I have found it at last. I know that you have lost your fortune but I am grateful to have been catapulted into this place. Even rats preen their whiskers while I take my showers. How different from banal Roedean.

  Her memoirs echoed her happiness: How gloriously unlike Roedean it was. In termtime hubbub instead of Roedean’s refined hush; eagerness, including me, to learn – without the derogatory ‘she’s a swot’ and eagerness amongst us teachers to teach.

  The French – or rather this Normandy brand of education – threw its emphasis on the practical, which Phyllis would never have seen at Roedean. Her hands, previously clumsy additions to her arms which excelled in dropping pencils or knocking vases, began to learn their purpose, as she mended deep-sea fishing nets for the local fishermen, embroidered items for trousseaux, learned how to wash, iron and fold linen and clothes correctly, and how to polish shoes. Her mind, that used to wander at any opportunity, grew to understand focus. The blessed hours of tight concentration on hemstitch or embroidering initials on a bedlinen set brought all of Phyllis’s attention into one tiny spot.

  Here, a windy afternoon did not mean a cruel hour of lacrosse on a darkening pitch, praying for rain to come. Instead, the girls and teachers would set off on rambles that might trail into the early evening, as they chatted through the bosky Val de Clercs and moved up to the sailors’ chapel, high above the cliff, where little votive candles and a prayer would be offered to Our Lady.

  It was during this time that other people, like fellow teachers Jacqueline Bannier or Mademoiselle Gondy, began to slip in and out of Phyllis’s everyday thoughts with her permission. Before, other people had bullied their way into her dreams; they were the nuisances, the boisterous intruders in her own happy space. Now she loved her mornings spent with Jacqueline, skimming through the outdoor market up the street, pinching the fowls for freshness, giggling at the squirming piles of fish, bartering for the cheapest price of rich Normandy butter for Simone the cook, or mimicking the husky farmers’ cries of: ‘Peaux de lapins! Peaux de lapins!’

  All at once, these memories mattered. And other people mattered. Other people who were not from her precious family began to have a currency. They too became precious, for the time they wanted to spend with Phyllis and for the time they wanted her to spend with them. Her voice grew louder.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Reaching Back

  The Bannier family were big in ships’ biscuits. They were the second wealthiest family in Fécamp, the first being the Meryons who owned much of the fishing fleet. Jacqueline, who at nineteen was their youngest daughter, had invited her young English friend to spend a few weeks at their summer home in Bec de Mortagne.

  Fortunately, Madame Brettain had graciously allowed the pair to slip off at the start of the holidays, it being accepted that Phyllis had already pushed Léonie well beyond an average standard of spoken English.

  Days spent with her one dear friend, chattering while raspberry picking or gathering mushrooms, or splashing about in the river, could not have been more wonderful for Phyllis. As one further act of friendship, Jacqueline had already arranged for some spare country clothes to be laid out as she felt awful that Phyllis owned one cream blouse and one thin black skirt, that had survived a year of pounding in the laundry.

  Only one thing could have ruined the whole holiday – and it happened the day before Phyllis and Jacqueline were due to set off for Mortagne.

  ARRIVING SUNDAY FOR FORTNIGHT WITH ALFRED. BOOK ROOMS.

  The smile that had covered Phyllis’s face became strained. How could she feel so dismayed about seeing her dear Mama? After a long year without any contact, overcome by sudden guilt, Phyllis had hastily scribbled off a postcard to her mother. Rather foolishly, she seemed to include an invitation to visit her in the postscript of the pretty postcard of the harbour: I do so very much hope to see you and Alfred soon.

  Madame Bannier explained to her daughter that she had no alternative but to extend the invitation to Bella and Alfred. ‘Ce n’est pas un problème,’ she told Phyllis kindly. ‘C’est mon plaisir.’

  Sunday. The water meadows were still asleep. At five o’clock in the morning, Jacqueline and Phyllis had gone fishing for crayfish, then tipped them into a little pail and slowly cooked them in white wine back in the kitchen on the wood-burning stove. By twelve noon, the long table under the apple trees in the orchard was ready to receive the chateaubriands, the trout, and the tarte aux fraises. A good deal of white pressed Normandy linen had been spread out; the tablecloths, the napkins, the cushions and the arabesque awning stretched out on giant poles.

  Madame Bannier clucked around the servant girls before taking her place alongside Monsieur Bannier on a long swing hammock that gently rocked them out over the edge of the brook and back again. Wine bottles, tied by string to a rock in the little stream, chinked in the gentle ripple of the cool water. Madame Bannier whispered something in her husband’s ear.

  Bella never arrived.

  Alfred never arrived.

  The dogs never ran out along the avenue of cypress trees to greet the visitors, the gravel on the driveway never crunched with the tyres of a taxi. Jacqueline plaited and replaited Phyllis’s hair. The flies moved in on the food shrouded in lace doilies.

  ‘Enfin. Let us eat. Phyllis, do not worry yourself. Some delay has probably occurred. Your poor Maman will be worried to the pit of her stomach.’

  But Phyllis knew this not to be the case. And she was right.

  Two days later, Bella turned up unannounced. She was alone. Her eyes were red. She did not apologise. She did not kiss Phyllis. The first thing she said was: ‘Have any letters arrived for me?’

  They had not.

  Bella, it seems, had left Alfred painting a Texan millionaire in the Highlands. She had grown tired of waiting in a damp castle library for the rain to lift, so Alfred could depict the man outside in his Stewart kilt. Without saying goodbye, she had flounced off and caught the next train to London. A few days were lost to her before she realised that she had quite forgotten where she was supposed to be next. But after a telephone conversation with Madame Brettain, who had steered her in the direction of Mortagne, all had become clear again.

  Despite her fluent French, Bella left apologies and polite conversation to her daughter. She was beyond leaving any sort of impression and had certainly tossed aside any notions of flirting with M. Bannier. This was sulking – and sulking in possession of a secret supply of whisky did not become Bella one little bit.

  Monsieur and Madame Bannier were not, could not, be won over. But for the sake of the little girl, who never left her mother’s side, they indulged the Englishwoman whose sobbing in the night frightened them all.

  ‘A cheese will cheer Alfred up,’ Bella told her daughter. ‘Then he’ll miss me and come straight away. Send him a Normandy Camembert, darling and don’t dawdle.’
Thus Phyllis was dispatched by her mother to purchase a big, fat cheese.

  After a week of silence from Alfred, neither the lavish teatime picnics carried to the cliff-tops, nor the noisy outings to rock-pool beaches for shrimping and paddling, could trick Bella out of her room.

  ‘You have told them about my dreadful headaches?’ she reminded Phyllis every morning as she fluffed powder across her face.

  Relief came to everyone the very next morning. A whistling boy on a bike from the village was the handsome messenger: BUTLER DUMPED YOUR LOVING PUTRID CHEESE IN TRASHCAN CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT MY DARLING COME.

  Within minutes, a happy pink flushed over Bella as she threw her belongings into three suitcases. The sound of laughter from her room surprised Madame Bannier and such was the joy, even from Phyllis, at her departure that out of the greenhouse, the kitchen and the parlour, the entire staff and family gathered to wave her off.

  In later years, when Phyllis always remembered those invisible but powerful lines like fishing lines, that drew her mother first to her father and then later to Alfred; back and forth and back and forth, they let her spin out, far on her own, and then a single word of flattery, reeled her back in.

  That is why, fifteen years later in 1935, when Phyllis eventually stepped away from her life as a married woman, it felt so very satisfying to not turn back, nor to reconnect – to feel the pull of her spouse yearning for her return, but to have the courage to wait until the line between them fell slack. She had too many memories of Bella, hauling suitcases and hatboxes roughly down the stairs, her hair ever so slightly out of place, her red lipstick and rouge applied with the heavy hand of an angry woman. She would stand, with her hands on her hips, the heel of her shoe cocked at an angle into the carpet as she directed bellboys from her hotel room to a waiting car, or stuffed the entire contents of her wardrobe into a trunk the size of Wales. Her voice higher and louder than normal, Bella secretly longed for someone to stop her, to come and rescue her. But they never did.