Au Pair

by Fiona McGregor

  – I had a good laugh, but in the end I was a bit disappointed.

  I drained my cognac. Chantale’s story only corroborated my theory of revenge. I didn’t tell her what I was thinking because it was a theory I was prepared to have changed.

  – Would he have punished you if he’d known what you’d done?

  – You bet, she nodded. He would have belted me. But it would have been worth it.

  I put my wallet on the counter and ordered more cognac. My passport slipped from the deeper fold. Chantale picked it up and leafed through it.

  – Did it go okay with your visa?

  – Well, here I am, back in Paris for a while. But I’m leaving the family.

  She rolled her eyes.

  – You’re always saying that, Sophie.

  – I am not. Before the Alps I thought I’d last at least six months in this job.

  – Oh, you mean the Durebex. I thought you meant your own family.

  We looked at each other and laughed.

  – My family? That’s another story altogether.

  Leaving

  Chantale must have left them there when I was out. Of course, she still had the key I’d had cut for her before I went to the Alps. There was a rolled up rug in the corner. It was pale blue, a sort of thick woven cotton, with a large red wine stain in the middle. Too long and narrow for the room, when shifted the rug struck a diagonal from corner to corner. There was something on the mattress, as long as a person, wrapped in a blanket. That was thoughtful of Chantale; she knew I needed another blanket. It was heavy. I pulled the blanket away and sunlight telescoped into my eye off the mirror.

  I propped it carefully against the wall. A full-length mirror. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d looked in one. To my surprise, I wasn’t surprised by what I saw. It was just me. Me in jeans and the suede jacket from the Durebex chalet. Me with hair that needed cutting. Chantale could cut it tonight. There was a note stuck to the mirror: Things from Bruno, l’ami Américain. Don’t forget tonight for the painting of the cast.

  I was running late. I had to hurry to get to the school on time. I had spent too long browsing in the African voodoo shop, then I had visited four newsagents and office suppliers. It had taken me almost two hours to find exactly what I’d wanted: a notebook, of just the right size and thickness with a plain black cover and, most importantly, blank pages. No prison bars of grid ruling for me this time.

  Why is it the most basic things can be the hardest to find? In the same way, the closest, most obvious things can be the things you avoid. I caught a glimpse of Sacré Coeur on my way down the hill. Strange and alluring from a distant point, from where it seemed like a mirage, the building repulsed me close up. Eventually, I supposed I would visit it. But I was putting off the occasion.

  I got out of the métro on the other side of the river and went into a patisserie for a packet of bubble-gum. I had a postcard of Tintin searching for Red Rackham’s treasure, and on the back I had written Laurent’s favourite word in English, supercalafragilisticexpialadotious. I didn’t know if I’d spelt it correctly, but then, he would never know either.

  Back to back with the postcard in my pocket was the photo of my family that had intrigued Laurent. I’d brought it with me as a sort of personal token; I still wasn’t sure if I’d give to him. In some ways these things seemed a paltry present, but I couldn’t compete with computer games and electronic cars. Besides, they weren’t me.

  Laurent was waiting just inside the front door of the school, his eyes wide as though he were dreaming, his dark hair on end, all over the place. I ruffled it as we walked back to the métro. So thick, so rich. We walked in silence. Laurent didn’t ask for his usual pain au chocolat.

  The biannual métro strike was due and people had taken to their cars. It was strange to see the platform so empty. We wandered up it, luxuriating in the space. There was a faint breeze, then the métro drew in. We stood opposite one another against the doors, watching the flash of lights in the tunnel. The doors behind Laurent bleated open, and closed, opened and closed.

  We got out and walked towards rue de Babylone. It wasn’t till we reached the corner that I gave Laurent the bubble-gum and the Tintin postcard. He exclaimed with pleasure and reached up to kiss me on the cheek.

  – But I’m not allowed chewing-gum.

  – Just don’t eat it in front of your mother, I said.

  Mme Durebex answered the door with one word.

  – Déjà?

  She was jittery and distant. She began to explain something to me about the composition, but I didn’t hear it. I had already hung up my jacket and was in the bedroom setting up the table for that afternoon’s work.

  – How did it go today, Laurent? she said. No bad marks, I hope?

  – No.

  Looking more bored than I had ever felt, he told his mother they had done no work on the library book at all. When we were alone in his room, I asked him if this was true.

  – Yes, he nodded. Yes, Shona.

  He showed me his books. And it was true.

  – So, all that fuss over nothing? He grinned and bit his lip.

  Laurent was happy because finally, after weeks of trying, he had managed to go cross-eyed. There was hardly any homework – we finished early.

  I went up to the kitchen to get my pay. Mme Durebex was making her special vegetable soup. She had kept her word and sacked Nadenne. I suppose it was a strain for her. My pay was two hundred francs short, just like the very first time.

  – To pay some of the doctor’s fees, Shona. Mme Durebex moved her hands. They charge a fortune in Megève, you know, though it’s worth it, and now with Monsieur and his arm broken as well. He’s going from doctor to doctor here in Paris – c’est tellement cher!

  Well, my news was going to make her sorry.

  – I’m leaving, I said, feeling portentous. I can’t teach Laurent next month.

  – Really? She looked at me in surprise.

  From downstairs came the sound of the front door being opened and Claudine’s voice.

  – Bonjour mon petit. Comment tu vas?

  – Ça va, ça va.

  Mme Durebex turned back to her vegetables. Victory made me feel magnanimous and I was slightly sorry to be letting her down. She had liked me – she’d told Françoise, she’d told the Dutchman, and she knew Laurent liked me. His television was suddenly turned up and there was an exclamation from Claudine.

  – Mais qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?

  – I’m sorry, I said to Mme Durebex. But I’m giving more English lessons and I’m going to work at the Musée Picasso.

  An impressive enough lie, I thought. Mme Durebex’ knife rocked back and forth over a bed of parsley.

  – That’s all right, Shona, she said without looking at me. We usually get a new jeune fille every six months anyway.

  That stood to reason: six months like these wouldn’t leave anyone feeling very jeune. We were a renewable species. I felt so robbed. I could hardly even get angry; I felt like someone who’d had their wallet stolen from their back pocket in a sleazy bar. Mme Durebex was smiling at me now, that familiar brittle smile that meant pleasure or irritation, or both. Claudine came into the kitchen carrying a huge bouquet of flowers and the same sort of smile as Mme Durebex’ stretched above them. On her it was recognisable as false pleasure over real irritation. It felt like something was about to break in here. I backed out, saying hallo to Claudine, then goodbye.

  – You can let yourself out, can’t you, Shona? said Mme Durebex, busying herself with the flowers Claudine had brought her.

  – Mireille! Claudine said as I left the room. You’ve got my suede jacket!

  – Quoi?

  – It’s hanging in the entrance. I thought I was dreaming when I saw it! Et ça fait des années que je la cherche!

  Oh my god, oh my god, how could I have been so stupid and worn what I’d stolen back to its owner, and back to the wrong owner, I was hearing now. Claudine was right, she wasn
’t dreaming. There it was, hanging in full view over the Durebex’ coats.

  – Mais qu’est-ce que tu racontes, chère Claudine?

  – I’m talking about the jacket Jean-Marc made for me, chère Mireille. I’d hardly worn it.

  – You’re not accusing me of stealing it?

  – And what’s this photo? It was in one of the pockets.

  – I don’t know, it looks a bit like St Tropez.

  – Ah, you see?

  – But it’s not our house, Claudine, and I don’t know this family!

  I went into Laurent’s bedroom trying to remain calm. Laurent was throwing a model aircraft around while the Roadrunner made skid marks across the television. I had to escape before I was caught, I had to say goodbye to him properly, I was never going to see this boy again. But my mind was all ungathered and all I could concentrate on was the possibility of my disclosure. I wiped my sweaty palms on my thighs and turned down the television.

  – I won’t see you again, Laurent.

  He stopped and wrinkled his forehead. The aircraft crash-landed in a corner.

  – Why you go, Shona?

  – It’s just time. Time to move on.

  He went and lay on his bed. The Roadrunner bleated with glee as his hapless pursuer drove off the edge of a cliff. Laurent stared up at the ceiling.

  – Allez, Laurent. Je t’embrasse.

  He turned to the wall, frowning, then he turned back to me and held his arms out. I hugged him, then kissed him twice on each cheek. Four kisses for good friends.

  – Au’voir, he said solemnly.

  Tears rolled from my left eye onto the white pile carpet in the entrance. I could hear the argument clearly from here.

  – Jean-Marc’s clothes are dreadful, anyway, Mme Durebex said haughtily.

  – I don’t care, it was a souvenir.

  – Well then, what difference does it make whose wardrobe it hangs in?

  Mine was the one where it would be happiest. I took the jacket off the hook and put it on. Then I let myself out.

  – Oh écoute Claudine, ça suffit, non? Je me fous de ta veste!

  Building

  I walked down to Invalides. Soon the vast lawn I crossed would be floodlit, and the lights on the Eiffel Tower, further down the Seine, were coming on. I crossed the Pont des Invalides to the Right Bank. Most of the pedestrians were coming the other way, coming home from the city. They looked tired, it looked like the end of their day. I was leaving my work and my day had only just begun.

  Sometimes I imagine Paris from above: my view swoops down and skims its rooftops, and the city looks to be carved from a mass of grey stone. I am a dark dot moving along the narrow streets after the Madeleine, lines etched in its ancient face, and the river I leave behind is its mouth, turned down at the corners, or up, depending on which way you face. Looking back, it was up.

  I reached the tenth. Cinema neons and palatial fast food restaurants marked the length of the boulevards. I headed over them to smaller streets. It was dark now and the bars were getting crowded, warmly lit like brandy. I zigzagged my way across and up, discovering back lanes I’d never seen before, squalid and lively, losing myself in the old passages, finding myself on rue St Denis.

  I looked at my reflection in a shop window I passed. This jacket fitted me perfectly; I couldn’t imagine Claudine wearing it. She’d think she was dreaming when she went back downstairs and found it wasn’t there. I thought about the photo of my family I’d left behind, and the tears soaked up by the white pile, and other parts of me that would remain with the Durebex. Things they wouldn’t notice till later, if ever.

  Perhaps they’d know it was me and try and trace this jacket, but they didn’t have my new address, or my phone number. Perhaps, like Laurent and so many others, they’d look at the photo and think Caroline was me. I saw faxes come shrieking out of her machine just when she’d set up an office back in Sydney. No sooner repatriated then expatriated.

  My left glove kept falling off, nudged by the rim of the cast. I was in a hurry to have it painted – the white plaster was staining my clothes, and Chantale had said she’d finish it with a sealer. I tried out different movements to locate the pain in there – levering the fingers one by one, twisting the wrist, so tightly bound it was more a psychological than physical twisting, straining the muscles down my arm through to my hand – but the break seemed to have disappeared inside the plaster, deep inside the bone, to somewhere unreachable. I was left with a feeling of shame and pleasure, as though I’d succeeded in fooling someone. Decoration seemed appropriate.

  Two women came out of a building in front of me. An older and a younger. The similarity in their gait and their four high cheekbones gave them away as mother and daughter. They passed me, arguing.

  I felt like one of these buildings. You could see the outline of the original design, now warped, and the balconies had been redone; soot darkened the grooves between each stone. Out of sight a lift had probably been installed, and on street level the shopfront was new.

  To me these buildings were like members of a family. They just kept being renewed over the old foundations, they couldn’t help but change and they couldn’t change what they were built on. Each event, each inhabitant left a mark.

  I was late, it was cold, and my knee still hadn’t healed. I stopped at a crêpe stand for a ham and cheese crêpe, then I walked up to Barbès-Rochechouart. The métro was running after all. Why was everybody so sure there would be a strike?

  I put the last piece of crêpe in my mouth and through the hot plume of my breath I watched a métro pull out. One by one the blue-lit carriages emerged from the station above.

  Salut Barbès.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE: Alone

  Work

  Misbehaviour

  Things

  Rules

  Households

  Style

  Money

  Teaching

  Little Lies

  Away

  Segement

  Sunday Lunch

  Words

  Etrangers

  Une Honte

  Waste

  Expatriots

  Achievement

  Letters

  PART TWO: Family

  Bishop = Fou = Madman = Eveque

  Visa

  Cousins

  Thieves

  On the Mountain

  Christmas

  Trapped

  La Bouffe

  Children

  The Battle

  Plaisanterie

  Breakdown

  Wood for the Fire

  New Year's Eve

  The Fall

  Tables are Turning

  Revenge

  I Slept ...

  Going Back

  Injuries

  Leaving

  Building