Au Pair

by Fiona McGregor

  – Mum.

  – Oh dear, she said, telephones are dreadful.

  A lime-green motor scooter came roaring down the street. The rider wore a lime-green boiler suit with the words Trottoir Net stencilled across his back. He steered carefully along the gutter, vacuuming dog turds into the green boxes behind his seat. The racket put a stop to our conversation. I watched the man do his job, thinking how my mother would have liked a trottoir net for the backyard. All her curses, her fence repairs and plastic bottles, never stopped the Kelly’s dogs from using her front lawn as their toilet.

  The motor scooter moved down to the corner, and my mother’s voice returned.

  – Everybody else will be here for Christmas. We’ll miss you. You know that, don’t you darling?

  Letters

  – Tiens tiens, Sophie! Haven’t you done well.

  Chantale had spent her last pay on a bottle of champagne and a new hairdo – a bright red permanent wave. She skipped through the apartment, waving her arms,

  – I’m free! I’m free!

  – What are you going to do for money? I said, pouring the champagne into coffee bowls.

  – Don’t know, don’t care. Something will turn up.

  We drank the champagne sitting on the floor. Chantale couldn’t believe my luck and wanted to know why the apartment had been empty for so long before me.

  – French are too tenacious, I said.

  Chantale made a face at me.

  – Look who’s talking.

  – I mean, that’s what they said, Chantale. They were worried a French person would insist on a long lease as their right, or might report them for renting illegally. That’s why they preferred a foreigner.

  Chantale seemed a little put out. She lit a cigarette. The cigarettes were a new acquisition, too.

  – That’s not fair.

  – Like you renting me your room, Chantale.

  – That’s different, she said, and fixed me with an icy stare.

  I saw before me the tricky terrain of Parisians and apartment hunting. I saw I no longer had to negotiate it, and felt a weight lift. I chinked my bowl against hers.

  – Did you bring my letters?

  There was one from Matthew, one from my father, and one from Paul. Matthew’s was a big loose scrawl on the back of some flyers advertising a performance.

  I might be making puppets for this play thing that’s happening and I’ve got an idea for a big scrap-metal sculpture. I’m sort of sharing a studio with this guy I met who’s from Melbourne, so that gives me the space I’ll need. London is cold (obviously) but I mean the English are such snobs in general. (Not all of them. I go to this pub where there are some good cockney types.) So I mainly hang out with the Aussies, mate …

  The letter went on like this for a couple more pages, then, at the end, I read:

  You still walk in and out of my dreams, Siobhan. I’m having quite a nice time with an actress called Polly and I know you and me weren’t working out but I miss you anyway. I might go back to Sydney in a few months or I might even come to Paris! I think I would like it better second time around. Could I sleep in your bath? Ha ha …

  – I can get you a mirror for your bathroom, said Chantale. Bruno’s moving and wants to get rid of some things. It’ll have to be next week, though.

  – But I’m going to the Alps, I said, putting Matthew’s letter back in its envelope.

  He had painted the envelope. A wash of ochre and red was the desert, a blue rim the sky. In fine black ink, the letters like kindling, my name and address were scratched into the bottom left-hand corner. In the same black ink, Matthew had scattered the desert with little Aboriginal motifs. Mimi figures capered politely above the horizon. They looked as though they didn’t like it there.

  – Leave me a key and I’ll drop it off, said Chantale. She lay full length on the parquet.

  – Putain, I’m so tired! The less I work, the more tired I become.

  – I’m the opposite. I can’t remember the last time I got a good night’s sleep.

  I opened Dad’s letter. It was typewritten on hospital stationery.

  Christmas greetings to you from Australia. I hope you are enjoying Paris, and that your abode is adequately heated.

  My present to you this year is a proposition of sorts. If you can show me at the end of January that you have saved an amount between three and five hundred dollars, I will double it for you.

  – Oof! Chantale groaned. We’ll have to find you a rug.

  – What for? I like parquet floors.

  – Too cold, too hard.

  – Of course it’s hard. It’s a floor.

  All is well here, except Fat Cat got a tick and was unconscious for two days. Your mother is working too hard – some sort of recital with her drama group. It all seems quite unnecessary to me, but she will insist on exhausting herself.

  Keep well, Dad

  Chantale picked up the letters as I discarded them. My eyes flew across the pages, anticipating what was written, anticipating the worst, and getting it. Chantale frowned, her mouth forming each word. Paul’s letter was on onion skin paper, folded twice. The creases were deep and I had to put things on all four corners to keep it open. It was disconcerting to see handwriting so similar to my own. Restrained, agitated, it crossed the page like lines of barbed wire.

  Imagine my horror when I saw Dad bent over in pain. You would think, him being a doctor, an injury like a broken arm would be nothing. But it is his left arm, he is getting older, and the break is near the elbow.

  Chantale gave up reading.

  – You need music here, Sophie.

  I was disappointed to hear about those phone calls to Mum and Dad. You have been unfair in your demands, and ungenerous towards Dad. Kill me for it, but I must tell you this – someone has to. However oppressive you may think our upbringing was (and I know only too well, being the eldest boy, bear in mind it was me and Caroline that broke the barriers), it is no use railing against it. Try and be more positive. It is easy, when you are away, to imagine that things are a lot worse than they really are. It’s not that bad, it’s not as if he’s a child molester or a drunk or a philanderer. He just has high standards. That’s a quality, when it comes down to it …

  – And a television, or at least a radio. You have to know what’s going on in the world, Sophie.

  – Here’s the latest news, I said, waving Paul’s letter.

  I tossed it aside. Like a dying bird it closed in on itself mid-flight and seesawed to the floor. There were photos in the envelope as well, but I didn’t want to see them. I lay on my back and looked up at the ceiling. Cracks ran in all directions, there were stains up there that looked as old as the building itself.

  Chantale poked me in the ribs.

  – So how’s your family?

  – Boring as ever.

  I closed my eyes. I could feel the heat of tears behind my eyelids. It seemed ridiculous, I forced the tears back inside my head.

  – Haven’t you got anything more interesting to ask me?

  – Come on, Sophie, you’re coming out. Let’s go for a walk.

  – I think I’m drunk, Chantale.

  I sat on the floor feeling foolish while Chantale rinsed the bowls and put on her coat. She threw my coat over me, and my gloves into my lap. She wrapped her scarf around me and pulled.

  – Come on!

  PART TWO: Family

  The chalet seemed small. It was built against a hill, with long eaves that sloped back into the snow. I got out of the taxi and walked up the drive. It was neither day nor evening. A dense mist hid my surroundings and muffled all but the crunch of my own footsteps.

  I put my finger on the little orange light next to the front door. Bells tolled and there was a pattering of feet. Laurent opened the door and grinned at the sight of me. I bent to kiss him. He kissed me once. When I offered the other cheek he screwed up the smile on his face.

  – Buuurrk!

  He then skidded off through th
e foyer in his fur slippers, announcing my arrival at the usual Durebex volume.

  I put my bag down in the entrance and took off my coat. Four heavy oval frames hung in a row above the coat rack. Four birds in dreary watercolour peered out at me. A familiar shriek pierced the gloom.

  – Shona? Monte, Shona!

  I followed the voice of Madame Durebex through the foyer. It was immense. A criss-cross of dark tiles showed between the rugs. The wooden panelling bristled with deer antlers and candelabra. There was a couch of maroon velvet beneath a large rectangular mirror. Opposite the couch, a wooden staircase curved in front of a stained-glass window, two storeys high. I walked up it to the kitchen.

  Mme Durebex was cooking pork chops. Monsieur Durebex was pacing about, muttering under his breath. Laurent tugged at my clothes, begging me to go and play with him. When Mme Durebex offered me a pork chop, I told her I didn’t eat red meat.

  – Like me! she exclaimed, and took a step forward as though to embrace me.

  I stepped back automatically. We looked at one another in surprise.

  Mme Durebex was the first French vegetarian I’d met. I wasn’t surprised she wanted to bond with me: people who didn’t eat meat were such a rare species here. It was her vegetarianism that surprised me; it put a kink in that French perfection. I felt like less of a freak. She seemed like more of one.

  – It’s Victor who persuaded me to stop eating meat, said Mme Durebex, serving a pork chop to her husband and son. She added ruefully, And do you know I’ve put on at least five kilos since I stopped eating it?

  – It’s him that did that. M. Durebex pointed to Laurent.

  The family ignored this remark as they would something they took for granted to be true.

  – But you’re still thin, I said to Mme Durebex.

  – Oh, no she’s not, M. Durebex grumbled into his dinner.

  – He’s right, you know. Mme Durebex smiled at me. After all these months in Laurent’s bedroom, it was unnerving to suddenly find myself a participant in the Durebex’ family dinner. A released prisoner, I didn’t know how to behave. It was one thing to have established a working rapport with the mother, to have established something with the son that had become more like playing. But now I was with the whole family, everything felt different, for the head of the family was the father and it was the father that made me most anxious.

  I had never seen M. Durebex this close. His glasses were so thick the eyes behind them were dark blurs. Hunched over his plate, he spoke loudly and erratically, oblivious to any other conversation. I was nervous. I paid attention. He was difficult to understand. He had a Savoie accent, unfamiliar to me, and the skiing accident that had impaired his vision and hearing had also damaged his speech.

  – Why isn’t Nadenne here, Mireille? Hein? Where did you say you were from? What’s her name again, la jeune fille, Mireille? Quoi? I went to Sydney once. Never again. My hotel room looked out onto a brick wall.

  – That’s unusual for Syd—

  – C’était affreux! Mireille, get me another plate! After the meal, I cleaned up with Mme Durebex.

  The kitchen was equipped like a hotel’s. The cupboards around the double sink were filled with every appliance imaginable. There were thick white plates of all sizes stacked under the sideboard and there was a separate drawer for each piece of cutlery: a drawer of forks, a drawer of soup spoons, one of cutting knives, and so on.

  Mme Durebex wrapped the cheeses then put them into the fridge. She closed the door and stood there lost in thought, then she took the cheeses back out. She put them on the platter then covered them with a cloth. She looked at the platter, finger to the corner of her mouth, then she put the entire platter back into the fridge. So many decisions made her flustered. She turned to me.

  – Now Shona, Laurent can play tonight, but tomorrow you work. I want you to work for two hours every afternoon. Entendu?

  Bishop = Fou = Madman = Eveque

  Laurent took me down to the study, a dark room at the far end of the foyer. There was a wall of encyclopedias and all the French classics, leather-bound, untouched. A large desk, like an altar from which you would keep a respectable distance, loomed at the back of the room. Behind the desk, ceiling to floor, hung dark blue drapes.

  Laurent opened a cupboard, pressed a button and Robin Hood burst onto the biggest television screen I’d ever seen. We sat on the carpet and played chess. Between each move Laurent got up and performed the turns and jumps he would do tomorrow, describing to me in loving detail each ski run at Megève, while a dubbed Robin Hood dashed through fake woods in the background. Laurent spoke only in English and it barely contained his excitement about skiing, but I had the impression that skiing was only the vehicle for conversation. Laurent was pacing his English-speaking self and he was keeping up, and this was what was really making him excited.

  He was an aggressive chess player. He planned only one move ahead, and that move was always to take one of my pieces.

  – I take your fou!

  – Bishop.

  – Okay, le fou, c’est beeshop.

  – Fou really means madman, I said slyly. Did you know that? Bishop, c’est un évêque.

  – My oncle is a beeshop! Laurent exclaimed. He wear a big ’at like zis!

  – Really? So is mine. I like the hats they wear.

  I didn’t like the uncle under it. He was a pious old fool, always in black, who used to come to Sunday lunch after saying mass all morning. He didn’t have much left to say to us children. Keep your elbows off the table. Don’t talk with your mouth full. One day Tom put gold powder from an old stash of Mum’s theatrical makeup on Uncle Gordon’s seat. Uncle Gordon went back to the Bishop’s Palace with a golden bum; not even my parents dared tell him.

  Laurent narrowed his eyes suspiciously; I realised I was smirking.

  – But we are Catholic, he said huffily. We don’t eat meat the Friday. Just today because my father want.

  What sort of Catholics were they? I heard my father’s thinking. Not sticking to the rules. Softies, that’s what he would have called them. What’s the point? he would have scoffed.

  – I know, Laurent. I’m a Catholic too, I mean, I was brought up a Catholic, but …

  I hated having to say this. Surely it was as evident as my country of origin. My little scrap of Catholic pride suffered when I wasn’t included in the flock; my other scraps of Catholic disgust got indignant when I had to explain I didn’t run with it any more and hadn’t for a long time. That had to be made clear. At times like this I wished there were more obvious ways of being a Catholic without having to be one. Asian eyes, for instance, idiosyncratic pigmentation. A Semitic nose wouldn’t go astray.

  Laurent frowned at me.

  – But you are vegetarian, so it’s more easy.

  I rolled my eyes. This only made me want to become a carnivore again. I could remember no sinful pleasure in eating meat. Meat was just meat, and I’d always looked forward to Fridays.

  – We used to have fish and chips on Fridays, I told Laurent enthusiastically. It was the only time we were allowed to have junk food.

  Laurent let out one of his brusque, guttural sighs. I felt the cultural gap widen. What was the point in trying to tell him anything?

  I moved my pawn to threaten his king.

  – Check!

  He breathed fast through his teeth and glared at the board.

  – I get your prawn!

  – Pawn. Prawn means crevette.

  Laurent swept his queen across the board in a move I hadn’t anticipated. Then he put the captured pawn into his mouth.

  – I EAT your prawn!

  – Pawn, Laurent.

  – No! Prawn! It’s Friday!

  I laughed and Laurent expressed his pleasure by cramming all the captured pieces into his mouth, then jumping on me for a wrestle. The door opened and M. Durebex hurried into the room wearing a silk dressing-gown of regal purple. Quickly, we disentangled ourselves. M. Durebex went to the tele
vision and switched channels, cursing he had missed the news.

  We sat quietly and contemplated the board. Laurent’s face still bulged with my pawns, my bishop and my knight. M. Durebex turned up the volume. He was so close to the television that half the screen was hidden from our view. Glancing at his father, Laurent put his hand over his mouth. The chess pieces plopped onto the carpet, one by one, glistening with spit. Silently, I applauded him.

  I moved my castle; once again I had Laurent in check. He did an outlandish move with his king.

  – Laurent, the king can’t move like that!

  Sullenly, Laurent put the piece back.

  – Why not?

  – I didn’t invent the rules of the game, I replied wearily.

  There was footage of student demonstrations on the television and M. Durebex’ hearing-aid let out an authoritative whistle. Laurent regarded the board crossly.

  – But it’s stupid! Why can not the king move better if he is the most strong?

  M. Durebex turned around suddenly.

  – Shut up! I’m watching the news!

  I realised at that moment I was in danger. Laurent thought he was. He jabbed my spitty bishop into the carpet. He looked as though he were going to cry and I softened.

  – Laurent, I whispered, look hard, there’s a good move you can do.

  His face cleared and he moved his bishop with a shriek.

  – Check!

  – SHUT UP! shouted M. Durebex.

  I looked glumly at the board. It was actually checkmate. I hadn’t realised. Stupid of me to assume Laurent needed help.

  I put the pieces back into starting position.

  – Shall we play again?

  Nadenne did not arrive the next morning as expected, nor on Sunday. There had been train strikes, but my train had gone and at lunch-time on Monday Claudine Laplanche arrived with Hugues. They had taken the train too. I was ordered to ring Nadenne in Paris more than once, and conducted one-way conversations with his wife, who spoke only Tamil. Over and over again I said, Where is Nadenne? Où est Nadenne? while Mme Durebex rushed about preparing lunch and her husband raved at the table to no one in particular.