Au Pair

by Fiona McGregor

  I Slept …

  Going Back

  – You are going back soon, Shona?

  – What? I looked up from the book I was reading, then said automatically, Have you finished the exercise?

  I needn’t have bothered asking. Working with Laurent in the week since coming back had been so peaceful that I read half of the time, chatted with him the other half. He had a cold but he’d been brighter and more calm than I’d ever seen him. He passed the book over. Clean, neat writing. One mistake.

  – You are? he asked again, staring at me.

  – Where?

  I felt an uncertain panic, as though Laurent had discovered a secret about me, though I wasn’t sure what the secret was. I hadn’t told him I was leaving. I didn’t know how to yet, and I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t then tell his mother. I didn’t want her to know before she paid me.

  I just had to wait until the end of the month, to get paid.

  – Australie.

  – What makes you think I’m going back to Australia?

  – Your family. How can you stay away so long from them? There are so many.

  – That’s why I can, I smiled. But Laurent frowned.

  – Don’t you like them?

  Ouch, he was pushing my cringe button. This cringe button was something I was born with, I think, or else it was installed early on in my childhood. Installed by the family that would always have me in its clutches was the inability to admit it.

  – Yes.

  – Ah! Laurent looked both sad and happy, and strangely bashful.

  – Of course, I did an elaborate gesture, my brothers are a bit stupid, as you’ve seen in the photo, but, you know …

  Laurent laughed through his teeth. The laugh grew wetter and wetter as he got carried away with the manufacture of saliva. Then the front door opened and Laurent closed his mouth. It was M. and Mme Durebex. M. Durebex stood in the doorway, holding forth an L-shaped arm in a pristine white plaster cast.

  – You see? he said to me. I was just as stupid as you.

  He had been hit by a car. There was a gash down his nose and a nest of scratches in the hollow of his left cheek. A deep purple bruise spread from the cheekbone up to his thinning hairline. His wife helped him up the stairs, her footsteps clipping purposefully over his uneven shuffle. When they reached the kitchen above us, Laurent turned to me, fighting an expression of disgust.

  – His face! he exclaimed.

  Then he began to throw his pen around the room. He picked up his book and let out a histrionic sigh. He held his ruler to his shoulder and narrowed his eyes at me. Pan! Pan! Still not getting a response, he reached across and rapped my cast with the ruler.

  – Does it hurt? he said.

  – You still have a page to read, Laurent. He rapped harder.

  – Does it, Shona?

  I withdrew my arm and put it in my lap. Laurent dragged phlegm up his throat with an almighty rattle. He arched his neck over Punch and Judy, covered in his scrawl, and pursed his lips. A green glob wobbled forth, was sucked back, then wobbled forth again.

  – I suppose it would hurt, I said, holding my cast up. It’s very hard.

  He swallowed his snot, curled his lip, then opened up Punch and Judy. There were a lot of phrases that were identical in French and English, nuances and all, no explanations needed.

  Laurent’s cold got worse that week and he stayed home from school, and I stayed at my home. I wrote to Matthew.

  Life continues back in Paris. I have trumped you with your plaster of Paris sculptures, because now my left wrist wears a sculpture of its own. I’m leaving the Durebex family – too much of a strain and it’s not worth it any more. Are you still coming to visit? My shower cubicle is very comfortable …

  I wrote to my parents.

  I broke my wrist on the last day skiing. At least it’s the left one – like father like daughter, hey Dad? I’m going to resign from my job, but I have to wait till the end of the month to get paid. I’m prepared to wait for more work – Rosa is a start, I’m still teaching her – after all, settling down in Paris has taken so much longer than I expected. Something’s bound to turn up.

  P.S. I’ll take up your offer, Dad. Mum has the number of my bank account.

  I addressed the envelope. I got halfway through the postcode and couldn’t finish it. I had forgotten it, the postcode of the place I had lived almost all my life. So I just wrote, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

  – Show me, show me your plaster! said M. Durebex. Oh, yours is so nice, oh là là là là. Mine’s already been changed twice and I want them to do it again. Here, show me. Oh là là, c’est un chef-d’oeuvre! These Parisian doctors are nothing but a bunch of morons.

  – Shona, his library book! said Mme Durebex. You must read his library book. It’s very difficult, he must learn it by heart, then write a summary. Don’t do any other work today, that’s the most important thing.

  – Look! M. Durebex interrupted. Look at all the lumps on mine. There! he thrust it closer. I’m going to demand they redo it and otherwise I’m going to New York. Pardon? Yes! I’m going!

  – Under the tongue! Suck it till it dissolves! Mme Durebex commanded, placing a tube of medicinal granules into Laurent’s mouth.

  It was like doctoring a sick animal, the way she held her son’s head back and inserted the tube. One of Laurent’s hands went up as though he might like to do it himself, then flopped back down to fiddle with his rubber.

  We were working in the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon. There was a lot to catch up on after Laurent’s absence from school. Mme Durebex went up and down the stairs with her shopping parcels. She came into the kitchen with a large pink handkerchief and placed it over Laurent’s face.

  – Blow!

  M. Durebex doddered in and out of the kitchen in a pair of tangerine pyjamas, complaining there was only Perrier, no Evian. I watched him. When M. Durebex left the room, Laurent said to me through the tube in his mouth, But why you look at my father?

  I said nothing. The tube could have been in my mouth, stilling my tongue. Mme Durebex trooped back in.

  – I’m sick of that shop, charging four times as much as anyone else. Who do they think we are?

  We had been working all afternoon with the kitchen lights on. The dark winter day developed into night without me noticing. I waited and waited for Laurent to recommence working, thinking of the film I was supposed to see at eight o’clock. Laurent sat with his jaws clamped.

  – Keep reading, I said.

  He shook his head.

  – We’re running out of time, Laurent.

  – I’m not allowed to talk. Don’t make me talk.

  I leant over and took the tube from his mouth. Four of the one hundred-odd tiny beads dropped onto the book, and Laurent began to wail.

  – Oh, just pick them up, I said impatiently.

  – MAIS IL FAUT PAS LES TOUCHER AVEC LES MAINS!

  – Don’t you dare scream in my face!

  Mme Durebex stuck her head in the door.

  – Tu lui fais faire ses devoirs, Shona! ET QUE ÇA SAUTE LAURENT!

  You jump, I nearly yelled back at her. Out the window!

  Laurent licked up the granules like a nervous puppy, and we finished reading the book. I explained the story, then Laurent skipped around the kitchen, retelling it with appropriate gestures. Mme Durebex was on the landing talking into the telephone. Her husband approached and began to wave his cast millimetres from her face. This time he seemed more brutal, perhaps because he was unaware of me, unlike the time I’d seen him at the chalet.

  Mme Durebex kept talking into the telephone, M. Durebex kept pretending to hit her with his plaster cast. I watched in amazement. Talk about heavy handed. Laurent stopped mid-sentence. He stamped his foot.

  – But why you look at my father like that?

  – Because I’m sick of looking at you!

  The time for the movie came and went. I’d made a rendezvous with Chantale and couldn’t contact her
as she was already out. She would be furious. I was furious: I had never stood anyone up before. Laurent gazed blindly at the page, searching for an irrelevant word while I urged him to forget it, hurry, finish, write the summary. At the sink, Mme Durebex scrubbed mussels for dinner. Her elbows looked sharp through the pale pink cashmere. Suddenly she exploded. Laurent was writing too much, it was getting late, Claudine had said they only had to write six lines.

  – He only has to write ideas now, I said. They’ll do the composition together at school on Monday.

  – Well, I don’t want that. Tell me the story in six lines, Laurent. RACONTE-MOI!

  Laurent looked around in a daze. He dropped his pencil, he tried to translate. His mother stood over him, shouting, What? What? And at me, Shona, what is the meaning of this? I put my head in my hands, wanting to forget the part I played in all of this. Why was I still here?

  – Why hasn’t he done it, Shona? she yelled. Why doesn’t he understand it?

  Why hadn’t I left? Why wasn’t leaving easier? I had to get myself out of here. But looking across the table at Laurent’s long face, his eyes glassy with tears, I couldn’t forget that leaving the job was also leaving him. And there was my pay packet, my bloody pay packet. Nothing to them, but a month’s rent for me.

  Mme Durebex was on the phone to Claudine. Laurent began to weep as she shrieked through the door.

  – It is six lines! It is six lines!

  Laurent was shouting something incoherent. M. Durebex was shouting from his room for everyone to stop shouting so he could hear the television. Loudest of all, Mme Durebex was shouting into the telephone, and back at us through the kitchen door. It was deafening. It was ugly.

  – COME here, Shona, COME and tell Claudine what you’re doing!

  She shoved the receiver into my face.

  There was chaos all around me. I refused to talk into the phone. I consoled myself with the comical vision of a bewildered Claudine on the other end. Mme Durebex slammed down the phone and ordered us downstairs to work.

  Gratefully, we went.

  – Listen Laurent, I said quietly, you’d better work. I’m leaving.

  He began to cry again. I tried to comfort him. I wasn’t sure he was crying because I was leaving, and I was leaving even if he was.

  – Can’t we speak French? he sobbed.

  – Mais bien sûr. Just work.

  He was nearly finished when she came clacking down the stairs. The sound of her heels counterpointed my angry heartbeat.

  – Correct it, Shona, she snapped.

  – He hasn’t finished yet, I snapped back.

  – Correct it while he’s doing it because I’ve had enough!

  Laurent finished and passed it to me. I glared at Mme Durebex.

  – Can you leave us to work in peace?

  She left the room with threats of no television for Laurent. I looked at Laurent’s composition. An illegible jumble of Franglais. Quickly, I wrote another version. Laurent sat there stunned, holding back the tears. I prepared to leave. If I hurried I would catch Chantale coming out of the cinema. M. Durebex was bellowing down the stairs for Laurent to come and eat. Mme Durebex bellowed over the top of him. Then there was clack clack clack, the gunshots of her heels coming down the stairs.

  – Have you finished? Show me.

  – I did it for him in the end, I said contemptuously.

  – Good, she said simply, and patted her son on the back. Laurent, go and eat.

  – In future—

  She swivelled to face me.

  – In future …?

  – I won’t do his work for him.

  – But that’s what you’re hired for, mademoiselle!

  – I’m hired to help him, to teach him, not to do it all for him. He’s going to have to work on his own some day.

  – LOWER YOUR VOICE!

  – Excuse me, but I think Laurent’s just too used to having everything done for him. You don’t even let him dress himself, or blow his own nose. I think it’s ridiculous.

  Her thin lips parted in shock.

  – Ma-dame!

  I went to the door without another word. She said as I left, We’ll talk about this on Monday.

  I doubted it.

  Injuries

  I ran to the station. I could hear a métro pulling in as I ducked under the turnstile. I made it down the stairs and jumped on the last carriage. The door closed on the back of my coat and I wrenched it free. It tore under the arm; lucky I had that suede jacket from the chalet.

  There was a boy in the carriage with his leg in plaster and a woman with a broken arm. The woman’s hand was so white, and the cast from which it came was white, pure white, and she shared with the boy that artificial tan only acquired on the ski slopes. My face was its usual grey-white, judging by my jolting reflection. But we all wore the injuries of the privileged. Surreptitiously, we examined one another.

  I wondered if, looking at me, they assumed I was one of them. I supposed I was in a way. Somehow, I was part of it all still, and it was part of me. Tomorrow morning and for many after, I would insert a spoon from the Durebex’ chalet into my bowl of coffee, and stir the sugar till it dissolved.

  At each stop different people got on, others got off. The people were ingredients in the carriage, and its flavour gradually transformed to a more diverse mixture of races, of wages, of ages, of locals and tourists, as we went towards the fifth. And without me among them, the flavour would have been slightly different.

  I got off at Odéon. More people with injured limbs, but these were sitting on the ground, begging, their plaster casts so worn and filthy they had become just another rag on their bodies. There was a flicker of recognition between us as I limped past, my arm in a sling.

  I hurried up to the street, and down through the Quartier Latin to the cinema. Sure enough, just as I arrived, people were coming out. And Chantale was among them. I called out to her. She spun around.

  – Alors? she glared.

  – I’m sorry. I got stuck at the Durebex, I panted.

  – I waited for you for half an hour. We were supposed to go for a coffee, Sophie!

  – I couldn’t ring you, Chantale. I’m sorry.

  – I’m still freezing from standing outside all that time! It’s freezing!

  – Don’t yell at me! I’ve just been yelled at for the last three hours. And I feel like I’ve sprained my knee again running to meet you.

  It was less than freezing, it was minus four. It was the beginning of a long cold winter. Chantale folded her arms tightly around herself and examined the movie posters. She had had her hair cut up around her ears. It was pale brown, her natural colour. She looked sombre and vulnerable. I tugged her scarf.

  – Come on, why don’t we go for a coffee now? I said.

  She wouldn’t move. She sulked, not looking at me.

  – Come on, Chantale. Cognac?

  We had our cognacs standing at the zinc counter. It stung the lips pleasantly. Chantale told me my limp suited me. Chic, she said, facetiously. She was the only facetious French person I ever met. She said she wanted to paint my plaster cast. She described a sort of fish that would suit the shape. The rim around my hand would be its mouth; my hand would emerge like a five-pronged tongue. The arm would be covered in scales of green, blue and gold. It sounded like a good idea to me.

  – I knew this woman who broke her neck, I told Chantale. The cast went from her neck to her waist. She had it cut so it looked like a designer garment. It was really elegant.

  – A work of art, Chantale nodded. That’s what your arm will be.

  She ordered more cognac. She looked at me in sudden disbelief.

  – It’s incredible they kept you there for five hours without a break. You didn’t even get to have a snack?

  I hadn’t thought of asking for one. I’d nicked a couple of madeleines when we left the kitchen. It made me think about what I’d taken from the chalet and I told Chantale.

  – Mais c’est bien! she ch
eered. You took revenge, then.

  – Sort of. But in the end it just felt like payment. I only took things that I needed. It was like I was giving myself a bonus.

  – You deserved it, she nodded.

  I swilled the cognac in my glass. The reflections shattered. To me revenge was not one event fixed in time. Revenge was more of an emotion than an act. It occurred to me that I had been taking revenge all along, and I would probably continue to do so for the rest of my life.

  I got no comfort from this, but I resigned myself to it.

  – My apartment’s great, I said. Fitted out courtesy of the Durebex. I just have to buy another blanket, then it’ll be luxury. The revenge was worth it.

  – Je te raconte une histoire, said Chantale. Once I took revenge on my father. He was painting with gouache, and he only ever bought the most expensive paints. So guess what I did, Sophie!

  Chantale put down her glass and narrowed her eyes. Her face was hot with cognac. The barman raised his eyebrows at me. I raised mine back. Chantale went on.

  – I got a pot of Indian ink and a syringe, and when he was out I went to his paint box and stuck the syringe into each tube, et voilà.

  – No!

  – And when it came out of the first tube he thought it was bad paint, and he took it back to the shop and had a fight with the man. Then he used another colour and it was in that too, and another, and so on.

  I pictured Chantale’s father laying out his palette, the nasty surprise each time he squeezed a tube of paint. We hung onto the counter, helpless with laughter.

  – He would’ve kept finding your revenge for months, Chantale.

  She stopped laughing and swore.

  – No, the thing is, he never did realise. He went back to the shop, and had another fight. He demanded a whole new set of paints, and he got it. I was with him. So he didn’t realise it was me, which meant he kind of missed the point.

  I wiped my eyes and asked her why she had done it in the first place.

  Chantale stuck her tongue in the glass and licked the last of the cognac.

  – I don’t know, she shrugged. Lots of little reasons.

  – Did you get what you wanted?