Au Pair

by Fiona McGregor

  It was perilous skiing, it was more like falling. Moguls heaved and sent me flying, copses loomed, I skied on the brink of a chasm. The red ticker-tape fences were buried. The only sound was the constant close wailing of wind and snow. Everything was grey, grey; I had the impression that gauze had been taped to my eyeballs. I ran into something that came up to my hip. A closer look revealed it to be one of the signposts numbering the run. The snow was so deep, and falling so swiftly, this post would be buried by nightfall.

  There was a time at Perisher when I got stuck on the mountain late one afternoon. I gave up. I watched the chairlift creak to a halt above me. I sat down and cried, imagining the discovery of my body the next morning in the same position, frozen solid. I thought of that now, and of the people who had perished in the avalanche two days ago. One of these humps I blundered against could be the foot of an outcrop, just waiting to unload.

  I hurtled on down. I remembered the ski instructor who’d plucked me off the mountain at Perisher and skied down with me on his shoulders. I repeated to myself the advice of Mme Durebex, Ski with your feet. I said the very first thing I ever heard on the ski slopes, my father’s words, Turn your edges in. Grip! Hard! And I urged myself onwards with the words of my mother, Lean out over the mountain, Siobhan, you won’t fall.

  I reached the last stretch. I paused to get my breath. Now it was easy. I put my legs together, bent forward, and delivered myself down the smooth wide track to the cable car station.

  Then I was flying, and there was impact on every surface of my body. I came to in a tangled heap. Pain began to throb in my right knee and left arm, and I couldn’t get up.

  Two girls were extracting my stocks from the knot of me. Their voices sounded far off and I couldn’t understand any words. It was like drowning, this half walking, half being carried between them to the restaurant near the station. I realised the girls were speaking German. Then it sounded like English, then French, but still I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t talk in any language.

  Sitting at a table, my head resting on the good arm, I heard the thump and swish of boots and parkas behind me. There was a hand on my shoulder.

  – What happened? said Mme Durebex.

  My teeth were chattering.

  – I think one of my edges got caught, I managed to say.

  A vin chaud was put before me, but my hand shook so much I couldn’t pick it up. A piece of snow inside my collar was melting; cold speared down the groove of my spine. I sat up. The pain in my knee and arm increased, it was spreading to other parts of my body, and I began to cry.

  – Don’t cry, Mme Durebex kept saying tritely. You’re a big girl now, Shona. Don’t cry.

  – So what, I sobbed. Big girls cry too.

  She looked around, embarrassed. Beneath the circle of faces watching me, I became embarrassed as well. I couldn’t stop crying, now I’d started. Laurent stood at the other end of the table, regarding me with scorn.

  – Are you all right, Shona? said Mme Durebex nervously. Are you all right?

  – Yes! I said, knowing I wasn’t.

  – Allez, she said to Sasha and the boys. She’s just had a fright. Let’s go and do another run, then come and see how she is in half an hour.

  I was alone in the restaurant. Outside, the storm howled more ferociously than ever. Only mad people would ski in such weather. I bent over and lapped up the hot wine till it was empty enough to be held securely by an unsteady hand. My injured leg was dead with pain and cold, my good one began to quiver. An antenna to my shock-ridden body, it quivered uncontrollably, and the ski boot on its end made a racket on the wooden floor that brought the waitress out to the counter. I smiled at her weakly.

  She offered me another vin chaud. Hearing it said made me want to vomit. Hot and cold flushes rolled through me and I stumbled outside. I saw my hand, stuck in a fey gesture, a lump the size of a golf ball at its base, and I heaved all the vin chaud onto the snow. The queue to the cable car averted their eyes.

  Sasha and his son found me in a daze next to the purple stain. They took me back up the mountain, promising to bring my skis home later. I went down to the centre in the big cable car. Too weak to stand, I crouched in a corner, my right leg stuck out in front of me, tears streaming down my face. I felt like a clochard.

  I limped to the chalet, wondering what to do. I supposed the first thing I needed was a doctor.

  M. Durebex was hunched close to the television in his purple dressing-gown, watching news of the weather I’d just come out of. I knocked softly.

  – Monsieur Durebex? Monsieur Durebex?

  I asked if he knew of a doctor in the village. He twitched as though an insect were bothering him, then bent forward and turned up the television. His glasses were two miniature replicas of the screen. I said again, I think I’ve broken my wrist. Please, Monsieur Dur—

  – No! he shouted, the glasses flashing. No, I don’t know! I don’t know any doctors!

  I limped back into the foyer, feeling the hot prickle of tears. I heard the high singing of Honorée coming from my bathroom. She appeared, chamois in hand, and widened her eyes with pity.

  – I know their doctor, she said. I’ll take you down.

  I nearly fell into her arms. She adjusted the bright cloth around her head and put on some lipstick, then took me out to her deux cheveaux.

  Honorée told me she lived in Paris. She named a part of the banlieue that I’d never heard of. I wondered why she came here to work at all. If she had a job in Paris and she didn’t ski, what was the attraction?

  – I can save money here, she said. And it’s a little holiday for me. It’s peaceful, je suis bien là, all alone. But after a while I do miss my family.

  She told me she had three children. Her sister, who had three of her own, looked after them when Honorée came to Megève. In summer, when Honorées sister went to work for rich people on the Côte d’Azur, Honorée looked after her children in turn. That made six altogether.

  I looked at her in amazement. She laughed, opening her hands over the steering wheel to indicate the size of her family. Her face was so smooth, she didn’t look over thirty. I told Honorée my family was the same size as hers. She grinned.

  – Aaaaahh!

  This gave me confidence.

  – Did you hear M. Durebex when I asked him about the doctor? I said.

  – I know. I heard.

  – I’m sick of them!

  I touched the lump at the base of my wrist. It was cold, soft and firm, like puff pastry that had just been taken from the freezer. I pressed harder, till it hurt.

  – I want to leave, I said.

  Honorée watched the road ahead and I watched Honorée. Her expression didn’t change. Surely what she had to put up with was so much worse than what I did. Where did she get her serenity? I wondered if she could give me the address. Maybe she threw things around when she got home. I hoped so. I looked at her again. I didn’t think so.

  She put on the indicator.

  – Dis, Shona, is anyone coming the other way?

  It wasn’t until I was in the surgery that I remembered I had no money. Sheepishly, I told the doctor. He asked me to sit on the chair and prodded my knee for a while. He made me twist it, which made me wince. It was sprained. He bandaged it, then kneaded the lump of fluid on my wrist till I cried out. He told me it was broken in three places and began to prepare the plaster.

  I never enter a doctor’s surgery without thinking of my father. I feel comforted and alienated, as though I’ve opened a book I’ve read many times, only to find it written in another language.

  Sitting there and tracing the association, the illogicality became apparent. My father worked in a hospital, he was not the one with the surgery; that was my uncle, his brother. My brother, too, works in one. He treated me for a burn there once. But for me, doctors and their surgeries are defined by my father; he is always the first in line of association, he is the blueprint.

  I watched my wrist disappear beneath co
ol whiteness. I felt the bitterness of age, and the helplessness of youth.

  – Perhaps the Durebex could pay, said the doctor.

  – I doubt it, I said sourly. They’re tight.

  In silence, he wrapped the plaster around and around my arm. With the tip of his index finger he drew circles over and over the end of the bandage till the grain of the cloth disappeared.

  – But that’s an idea, I said. Put it on their account.

  I stayed in my room all afternoon, too restless to read or write, too afraid of M. Durebex to venture anywhere else in the chalet. Undressing, having a bath with my arm in a plastic bag, and dressing again, took almost two hours.

  I could have stayed in the bath longer.

  I prowled around my shoebox of a room. I needed one of those spinning wheels they put in mice cages.

  I went into the room adjacent and began to explore the cupboards that lined the wall. There was shelf after shelf of linen: sheets and pillowslips packed tightly, some yellowing with age. I opened the wardrobe to an overpowering smell of mothballs. It was full of designer clothes that had hardly been worn. They were a neat chronicle of the past. A twin set from the sixties, linen flares and long-collared shirts, cashmere jumpers on the shelf above. There was a suede jacket at the end, the colour of crème caramel. I touched it. Soft as crème caramel, too. It was going to be mine.

  Later, I heard skis being stacked against the wall outside. There was the rustle of ski clothes, then Mme Durebex was calling me. I answered without moving from my bed. She came into my room and shrieked at the sight of the plaster on my wrist, the bulge of bandage around my knee.

  Laurent followed her, wide-eyed with horror and sympathy. His mother came over and sat on the bed. Laurent stood by the table, his gaze going from my broken arm to the photos on the wall, then back to my face.

  – Is that you? he pointed to Caroline.

  – No, that’s me. I pointed to myself at his age.

  – Mince! he exclaimed. Are they all your brothers and sisters?

  I couldn’t say so, I could only nod. All of a sudden I was crying again, copiously. A quiet, involuntary overflow of the sadness I’d been accumulating. At that moment there was no more curiosity, there was no more practicality, and definitely no necessity in my being here. The only remaining connection was my uneven love for this boy, an ephemeral sort of love, I saw now, and something quite separate from my wretched situation in the Durebex family. I had to leave, I was sure of that. I wasn’t sure how.

  – Why didn’t you wait for us, Shona? Mme Durebex said. Why did you just take off like that? We were so worried. I told you not to move. I called the ski rescue team – do you know I paid one hundred francs for them to come and fetch you? I called Monsieur twice and he said you weren’t here. Why—

  – I was here!

  – Do you know, she went on, I had my arm put in plaster one year at Megève and when I got back to Paris it turned out it wasn’t really broken. Fancy that!

  She folded her arms triumphantly.

  – I don’t care if it’s broken or not, I said. It hurts like hell.

  She left the room, cursing Sasha – imbécile – for the loss of her money on the ski rescue team. Laurent glanced at the photos again, then followed her. I lay on my bed, watching the snow fall. On and on it fell, endless whiteness; the bank was rising to the eave, smothering the fir tree, and my band of sky was getting narrower.

  Tables Are Turning

  The chalet felt so empty. Everyone had gone. Only the Durebex remained, and M. Durebex would be leaving early the next morning. Laurent skated around the foyer in his socks, singing at the top of his voice to let us know how bored he was. He stopped outside my room from time to time and begged me to come and watch television with him. Finally, I relented.

  In the bedroom next door we could hear Mme Durebex relating the abortive ski rescue attempt to her husband. Laurent cocked his ear, then jabbed me in the ribs.

  – She lie, he whispered. We eat wis Sasha and ski all day, so she know you here. She lie!

  His eyes glinted, and as if on cue his mother came into the room.

  – Ma pauvre! she said to me.

  She sat on the couch, unable to take her eyes off my broken wrist. She wondered what I’d done with my ski ticket. She hoped I’d managed to sell the afternoon left on it. She said I shouldn’t be so sure my wrist was broken. I wished her jaw was, so she would shut up.

  – The doctors in Megève get people like you all day long, Shona. In, out, they don’t give a damn. It’s a factory. They make a mint.

  The doorbell rang, saving me from her. It was Sasha. He gave me a big hug and did that rich laugh that made my legs feel loose. Then he held me at arm’s length and winked.

  – One good thing, Shona, at least we got to know each other today. Now I can take you skiing in St Moritz, eh?

  I smiled shyly. I wished.

  – Where’s Mireille? he said.

  Mme Durebex was in the kitchen getting leftovers out of the fridge. Though it was still early, I went to get Laurent for dinner and took him up to the kitchen to hear Sasha. But Sasha wasn’t laughing, he was arguing politely with Mme Durebex.

  – I didn’t know you’d called the ski rescue, Mireille.

  – We agreed we’d meet, Sasha.

  – We waited for you at the top for nearly fifteen minutes. Aren’t you going to offer me a glass of wine?

  He had already selected a bottle from the fridge. He poured it, saying, I was freezing! She was too, down there all alone. Then we—

  – You should have waited longer! I was worried about her, Sasha.

  – She didn’t seem to be expecting you when we got back down, Mireille, and I wasn’t going to leave her there.

  She, her, where was my name? Cursory glances were sent my way. Sasha sipped his wine. I wanted him to offer me a glass. He looked at the label approvingly, then topped up his own.

  Laurent hummed happily all through their exchange. Not a scrap of food did he spill, not a rude word did he utter. Mme Durebex nattered on, The ski rescue team, my one hundred francs … She had other francs on her mind too – the ones she would be spending on my plane ticket. The train strike had been confirmed.

  – Stop worrying about your one hundred francs, Mireille! Sasha exclaimed. Go and get changed. I’m taking you out to dinner.

  She left the room and Sasha pulled up a chair.

  – Good skiing today, champ? He ruffled Laurent’s hair.

  – Super! Did you see me do the big jump on the Princesse Noire?

  – I sure did! The backward somersault half-twist pike. Woow!

  I wanted to remind them no one could see anything on the mountain today.

  – But poor Shona, said Sasha, shifting his chair to face me. She didn’t have such a good day skiing.

  I looked up hopefully. Sasha poured himself another glass of wine. Laurent picked his nose, looked at it, then wiped it under the table.

  – At least it happened at the end of the holiday, Sasha said to me.

  What holiday?

  Mme Durebex re-entered in her tight black jeans and lizard-skin boots. She was over twice my age and her legs were better than mine.

  – On y va?

  Jealously, I watched them leave. I ate another piece of tinned mackerel.

  When the front door had closed I said to Laurent, Your mother didn’t lie. You did.

  He played with his cutlery.

  – I want dessert, please Shona. He pursed his lips beguilingly. S’il te plait?

  – You have to make it.

  He examined my arm. It was out of its sling, resting on the table. He twisted his own in imitation. His whole body contorted, his face in sympathy, he began to do everything with his right hand. He limped to the fridge and got himself a yoghurt, then he asked me to get the sugar down.

  – You can reach it.

  He did his exasperated sigh, then limped over to the packet of sugar. He poured it into the yoghurt till it overflo
wed, then plunged the spoon in. Sugar and yoghurt splashed across his face.

  – It’s snowing! It’s snowing!

  – You have to make me dessert as well, Laurent.

  He leapt up, eager to please.

  – What I do?

  – I want banana and yoghurt.

  He peeled the banana with his mouth and one hand, then hacked at it with the breadknife.

  – Put honey in it.

  – Wut?

  – Miel – honey.

  – Okay, I put honey. Hhhooney. Voilà!

  – And there’s some bûche left. We can eat the bûche de Noël.

  He pulled the box containing the cake from the freezer. He threw it around, laughing, till ice-cream dropped on the floor. I laughed too.

  – You have to clean it up, you know, Laurent.

  He looked at me irritably, wanting to understand the joke. I knew exactly how he felt.

  – Tables are turning, Laurent.

  – Wut? Wut you say?

  – Tables are turning. What goes around comes around.

  – Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire?

  – Ça va changer.

  Laurent got restless when the movie was over. He jumped from the couch to the floor and back again. He shook my good foot and growled, doggy fashion. I didn’t even snap back. Seeing as there was nothing else to do, he decided he was hungry again and we went up to the kitchen.

  He boiled himself eggs. It was more of a strain making sure he didn’t burn himself, or drop an egg, or break a plate, than it would have been to make the food myself. All too aware of this, Laurent made performance art of his bad bread cutting. He smashed the eggs, almost raw, on the edge of the plate. He stirred the egg slime with chunks of baguette, then made faces at it. I sat there sagely. I recited the old lines, feeling my plaster cast, feeling as though it encased my whole being, wanting to break out.

  – It’s almost bedtime, Laurent.

  The food went into his mouth and into his lap, onto the table and onto the floor.

  – Don’t make too much of a mess, will you, Laurent. He jumped up and danced out the door.

  – I go and watch the late movie now! Bye!