Au Pair

by Fiona McGregor

  Even when I did cleaning jobs in Sydney, I never got treated like this. But my egalitarian upbringing was no advantage here.

  A child? Child labour? What came to mind was some sooty-faced ricket-ridden urchin out of Dickens. I didn’t quite fit the bill, in my heated room in a luxurious chalet, so well fed these last two weeks I was having trouble doing up my jeans, my hip bones muffled by fat.

  I lay back in bed, alert, exhausted. I grew suspicious of myself. Maybe I was still a bit of a child. I concentrated on each muscle, I coaxed the tension from my body. This body was young, but it felt so stiff and battered. A pain jabbed from my head down between my shoulder blades. All these rigid, sleepless nights. I wanted to curl up in someone’s arms and cry. I wanted to relinquish the reins. Acknowledging the child in me made more sense of things, but it didn’t make them the way I wanted them to be.

  I looked up at my family photo. Was that really me, straining to see over the verandah railings? I couldn’t remember the day the photo was taken. Those were my eyes, round and dark, but was I the same person? Had I grown into someone completely different? How much of the child in that photo was still with me? How close were those brothers and sisters lined up alongside me?

  I longed to relax into childhood that day, to walk out and not be obliged to do anything for anyone. I wanted to get up and go skiing, alone, to stay out there and eat a hot dog for lunch. I wanted to be back in Paris, living my own life, but there were days and days still to be spent here. They stretched before me, long, boring, arduous, and while I wished they could pass quickly, it was painful to feel time ticking on. It seemed to me that I was losing it, each second dripping from the tap of my resources. I was losing my time to this family.

  And time was important. I had a lot of catching up to do. I’d always spurred myself on, running after my family, keeping up with friends – Matthew, all my friends in Sydney, had been older. Keeping on my toes for the Durebex. Wanting to get older as fast as possible, not wanting to lose any time.

  It was hard work. I was exhausting myself.

  I pulled the bedcovers up to my chin. I looked over them at the dimness. I dozed.

  The long table of polished oak, shoulder height, everything out of reach. Three candles burn on the Advent wreath. The fourth waits, unlit; it has a long black wick. Why put a new one in when a half-used one will do just as well? My sister beside me, all limbs and hair.

  – Stop fidgeting, Nora. Dad frowned. Whose turn is it to read?

  – Mine! said Tom.

  – You read last week, said Paul.

  – It’s Siobhan’s turn, said David.

  I looked up, excited. But David’s smile made me want to cry.

  – She can’t read, said Caroline.

  – Oh, durrr.

  – I can so!

  – That’s enough! said Mum.

  It was the fourth Sunday before Christmas. My last chance. I looked at the missal and my heart filled with dread. Those strange intimidating words in tiny black print. Nora said she would do it with me. She grabbed the missal. I tugged back and began to cry.

  – Cry-baby! Nora whispered in one ear.

  – You can do it next year, Mum whispered in the other.

  A year?

  – David, said Dad, page three hundred and forty. David leafed through his missal. Mum and Dad waited at either end of the table, eyes closed. Mine were open. I looked across the sea of wood at my two eldest brothers. I saw Paul poke David as he began.

  – Bless me father for I have sinne—

  – Daa-vid, it’s not confession! Caroline groaned.

  Paul was sucking back a smile. I hoped he and David would poke each other to death. David was going redder, chin to chest, and Dad was gritting his teeth.

  – Who left the front door open? came the voice of M. Durebex. Mireille? Merde, ils sont tous partis …

  I buried myself under the covers. There was a way of flattening your body to make it look as though no one was in the bed. But the bed was short and I was five foot seven. Too big for this bed, I prayed for concealment; too small for that table, I prayed for visibility.

  David stared at the page, then began again.

  – The Lord will make the house of David secure for ev—

  It corroded into a snort. Paul was quivering, Caroline began to giggle, then Tom grinned around shamelessly, then Nora, then me. An infection of laughter passed from child to child. I was so scared, so seduced.

  Mum opened her eyes, distressed.

  – David!

  David ran from the room, hand over his mouth.

  – Very well, Dad slammed his missal shut. I can see you children aren’t interested.

  He strode to the doorway, then stopped. You’ll come to regret this, he said darkly.

  Anticipating punishment, we fled to corners of the house. I snuck outside. The hot darkening air and the smells of decay coming from the compost heap seemed to encourage this mockery of religion. From the bamboo at the bottom of the garden issued the hysterical giggles of David. Solitary and wild, they could have been the sounds of an animal in pain.

  The sound of children’s laughter. I surfaced from my memory, hearing it still. It was so hot in my room. The crazy laughter of Laurent when he fired his cap gun. The laughter of Hugues when he pinched a toy from Laurent.

  The Advent ritual was never done again, and punishment never did eventuate. We were never punished, we were never beaten, we just lived with Dad’s lingering disapproval.

  What would you do, what could you do, with six giggling children? I couldn’t control one, or two, let alone six.

  But I wasn’t asking so much. And they weren’t my children.

  It snowed heavily all morning. I stood at the kitchen windows, watching it as I prepared lunch. You can get dizzy watching snow fall, it just goes on and on. So many flakes, so many brief lives. Each flake is different viewed up close, each descends with a different momentum and all too quickly is buried by the next.

  If you look at it as a whole, one falling mass, it’s easy, it’s calm and comforting, like a blanket descending. But as I looked at it, a primary school science book opened up in my memory and the pages began to turn. I saw close-up photographs of the crystals that make up snowflakes, the exquisite detail of these ice crystals, how each is unique, while certain idiosyncratic structures then place them into groups. Like species of animals, like families of plants, the crystals grow according to temperature, velocity, moisture; these in star shapes, those more like needles, others in prisms. They could change in mid-flight too, I remembered that, from a star shape to a needle as they joined other crystals to make up a snowflake. Snowflakes, the starfish of a winter sky.

  A gust of wind flung a constellation of snow across my view. It clung for a few seconds, then melted down the glass. I turned on the hot tap to rinse a saucepan and the window fogged up.

  I made leeks with an egg sauce. I cut up cucumbers and made a green salad. There was fish, and still the turkey, offering its ravaged carcass to the fastidious eaters. Their voices echoed through the foyer. I went down.

  Françoise was beating her walking shoes at the front door. Claudine was standing in front of the gilt mirror, hitching up her leggings, puffing out her shirt. She ran her hands through her hair and spoke to her reflection.

  – Right, what’s there to do? Oh, I’m so tired! Fatiguée! Fatiguée! I can’t sleep, I’m sore all over. Ah, it’s old age. Ooooh, comme je suis fatiguée!

  Her husband was in the entrance, hanging up his coat. When Françoise was walking past him into the foyer, and he was sure no one else was looking, he blew me a kiss. M. Laplanche would have been a sloppy kisser, I imagined, and the kiss wouldn’t have gone further than the back of poor Françoises neck.

  – I’ve made the lunch, I said, then walked back up the stairs.

  We all stood in the salon, searching the blur outside for Mme Durebex and the two boys. The snow had risen. The corner of the verandah dipped into it. I stood with my fa
ce against the glass, aware of M. Laplanche behind me. Then they appeared, Mme Durebex ploughing a track for the boys to follow in.

  – At last! said Françoise, and went out to the kitchen with Claudine.

  Suddenly I felt M. Laplanche push up against me. I froze, pinned to the window by his big body. His erection fitted into the small of my back. It seemed like hours before I plucked up the courage to push him away. In those hours I killed everybody I’d ever hated, including myself. I went into the kitchen, still frozen, enveloped in a sort of covering, as though I had been outside in that weather. Françoise was alone. She raised her eyebrows at me.

  – He sure comes on to you, that Rufus, eh?

  – So you’ve noticed? I said nervously. Maybe she had felt that misguided kiss after all. Maybe it had fallen in front of her and she’d trodden in it. I resisted the urge to check the soles of my own shoes.

  – At first I thought it was a paternal thing …

  She clicked her tongue. I asked her if she thought Claudine had noticed. Françoise said Claudine was probably too busy noticing herself.

  – Vieux sac, she grinned, showing me her very even, stained teeth.

  Laurent came in. He scanned the table.

  – Oh! There are some good things for once.

  M. Laplanche came in the other door, from the salon. He had a Scotch in his hand. Have a stiff drink, I thought, wondering how it was said in French. He swilled it around.

  – There are always good things to eat, Laurent, he said, then sent me a supportive smile.

  But I wouldn’t be eating any of them today. I went to the sink for a glass of water, and the ritual began behind me.

  Claudine: Eat your cucumbers, Hugues, or we’ll put you to bed this afternoon.

  Mme Durebex: Eat your leeks, Laurent. Here, I’ll cut off the green. (A pointed look in my direction.)

  M. Durebex came up the stairs as I was leaving the kitchen and demanded pasta. Mme Durebex began to fiddle with pots. She burnt herself on a hot plate and reacted automatically.

  – Shona left it on.

  I continued down the stairs. I went into my room and sat at the table beneath the family photos. If Christmas had to be spent with a family, I would have chosen mine any day. I bet they were having fun right now, even if they were fighting. I grabbed a pen and paper and began a letter to Nora.

  Heeeelp! Get me out of here! I came to the Alps to renew my visa and ski. I thought it would be a breath of fresh air, but I spend most of my time in this tiny room, breathing in my own carbon dioxide. Otherwise I’m in the kitchen, breathing in everybody else’s. Theirs tastes even worse. This letter feels like a suicide note, though by the time—

  – Shona! Shona!

  I ignored her shouts coming through the foyer. Her footsteps approached.

  you get this I’ll be—

  Mme Durebex was at my door, asking me to come and ski with her that afternoon. The children were staying in to do French with Claudine.

  The Battle

  It was a curious invitation. I wondered if Mme Durebex intended to buy me a ticket. She approached a man putting skis on his roof-rack. The weather was driving the faint-hearted from the ski slopes. Mme Durebex had told me it was easy to go out in the afternoon and get a ticket from someone who had decided to come in early. You could offer them half of what the ticket was worth. I had tried this a couple of times, but I’d always been ignored. This man simply handed his ticket to Mme Durebex with a smile and refused her money. What did I have to do, bleach my hair? Wear a lemon-yellow ski suit and pretend to be pleasant?

  – Merci Monsieur, she simpered. It’ll do for my jeune fille.

  I followed her down to the ski lifts. It snowed and snowed. Mme Durebex wanted to swap goggles, saying mine were better than hers. I swapped willingly, knowing mine fogged and let in the snow. She jumped all the queues, never ceasing to complain about the cost.

  I vowed if I ever had money like her I would enjoy it. I vowed to enjoy what was left in my bank account.

  We went up the back of the mountain in the fourseater cabin. We ascended through cloud and snow; if there was anyone on the slopes beneath us we couldn’t see them. The cabin stopped. For a long time we stayed there, buffeted by wind, and I felt sure, as I did every time the cable car broke down, that it wouldn’t start again.

  Quite suddenly, Mme Durebex began telling me about her childhood. She talked about the farm in the French Pyrenées where she had grown up. They had struggled to make ends meet; she had lived with her grandparents. Her parents she hardly remembered, both dead in a car crash when she was seven. She told me her grandmother made the best soup in the world. Garlic soup, nothing in it but a few cloves of garlic and some herbs.

  – I’ve never tasted anything like it since, she said.

  She told me she’d grown up speaking Catalan with her grandparents, but speaking Catalan in the classroom, on the village streets, was an offence punishable by law in the French Republic.

  – So you’re bilingual, I said. Say something in Catalan.

  – I’ve forgotten it, she laughed. Her laugh sounded uneasy.

  – Does it come back to you when you visit?

  – I haven’t been back. My grandparents are dead.

  – I don’t have any grandparents either, I said, by way of exchange. It was the most dramatic detail from my childhood I could think of. The laws of language I’d grown up with, the cultural conflicts, the strict diet, all paled in comparison with those of Mme Durebex. Next to her I felt like a dull old colonial.

  The cable car lurched on. We began to move as well, rubbing our hands together, stamping our feet, getting our goggles ready. I shifted in my seat, wanting to get a good look at Mme Durebex, coloured now by her childhood. Her sources helped explain her. The dark Catalan eyes and olive skin, the horror of and desire for money, the generation gaps in her family, the privilege of education. She was similar to my own parents in a lot of ways, and had come from something so different. She rubbed a viewing hole in the condensation and looked through it.

  – I don’t want to go back, she said. It’s another life. I always wanted to live in Paris, ever since I was a little girl. But you know, I wouldn’t exchange my childhood for anything. It’s very hard for a child in a lot of ways, growing up in Paris. That’s why we take Laurent out of Paris as often as we can.

  I wanted to ask her if she thought Laurent liked Paris. It was on the tip of my tongue to use her first name, it seemed inappropriate to call her Mme Durebex after her confessional. I saw the profile I knew well already, the small nose, the groove down by the corner of the mouth like a barrier of some sort, the large eyes beneath brows that had been plucked so much for so long you could have counted the hairs remaining. She was a likeable person.

  She began to bat at something on her thigh.

  – Oh zut! The stain’s still there and I only got these back from the dry-cleaners yesterday. Look, Shona, can you see?

  – Oh yes, I said, though I couldn’t see anything.

  – C’est pas vrai! I spent fifty francs getting these pants cleaned; no, sixty. C’est un scandale! They’re thieves!

  I followed Mme Durebex down the Black Princess. She skied like a bird, rapid neat hops, glissades around moguls. I went in her path, squinting through the microcosm of snowstorm in my goggles. My hands were frozen, my nose ran, and icicles formed on my chin. I tried to copy her moves, but my legs would not form them. Mme Durebex stopped at the bottom of each slope and waited for me. Then we conferred on which way to take down.

  – Oh là là, I can’t see a thing.

  She pulled off her goggles and rubbed them.

  – These goggles aren’t any better, are they, Shona?

  – No.

  We exchanged an ironic smile.

  – It’s hard keeping up with you, Madame Durebex. I can’t manage those fast turns, and I can’t see a thing either.

  – Ski with your feet, Shona, she said. It’s the feet that count.

&n
bsp; We battled our way down. Each run took at least half an hour. After the last Mme Durebex skied back to the chalet, leaving me to buy bread and milk.

  Walking back up the road in the mist, I heard a dog whimpering. It materialised: an alsatian chained to the bumper bar of a Porsche. In its struggle to free itself, the dog had wrapped itself even tighter in the chain. It was shivering, one leg twisted in the air. When it heard me it twitched against the chain and began to bark. I put down my skis and went to help it, but as I got nearer the whimpers turned to snarls. I retreated and continued up the road to the chalet.

  When I walked in Claudine emerged from the study rolling her eyes.

  – Shona, you can finish the French with them. I’ve had enough. And then do an hour of English.

  The boys followed her out, demanding food.

  – But you only ate lunch a few hours ago! Claudine said.

  – It’s Shona’s fault, Mme Durebex said to her, as though I couldn’t hear or understand. She had nothing prepared for lunch.

  I undressed in my room, furious. And so! Only a couple of hours ago she was skiing with me, talking to me like an equal. I shouldn’t have taken it personally; she had just wanted a companion, anyone would have done. I felt like such a sucker, grabbing at those moments of friendship.

  I was called up to the kitchen and given a plate of bread, salami, cheese and chocolate to take down to the boys. Que des choses dégueulasses! All those disgusting things the boys should never eat. I went into the study to give the English lesson. I went into battle.

  The first manoeuvre was to feign sleep. They rolled around the floor.

  – We sleep! We sleep in English!

  I separated them. I gave a dictation of twenty words. Throughout this they laughed, talked, burped, imitated me; they ran around the room then collapsed with mortal illness’.