Bella... A French Life (29 page)

We took separate taxis into Paris.

-0-

Le Presbytère was almost fully booked, so my mother let Charissa and Carmen have the ‘Tony from Colorado’ room which was free. Fred pushed another single bed in there. The only other room that was also free was the one with the rose window.

“Will it be alright if you and I go in there?” I had asked Jean-Louis on the telephone on the Friday.

“Sure. Why not? It’s a lovely little room,” he had replied.

My mother got Fred to push an extra single bed in there too.

Jean-Louis, Carmen, Charissa and I arrived at the guest house at eleven on Saturday morning. Because the Porsche was a two-seater, Jean-Louis hired a Volkswagen
Combi
like that of the Le Presbytère for the weekend: the girls wanted to take their bicycles along.

When we arrived, some of the guests were still having breakfast which was being served out in front of the house under the copse of trees. My mother, helping Honorine and Martine with the serving, was frying eggs and bacon on a gas plate.

“Hello girls,” she greeted Jean-Louis’ daughters.

Bella, what are you doing with a married man, and one who has two children
, the expression on her face asked me despite the broad smile of welcome she had given the two girls.
Mother, I love the man,
was my unspoken reply
.
 

Our overnight bags deposited in the rooms, we drove down to the mount. The girls’ bikes were in the
Combi
, in case they wanted to cycle later in the day. At the mount, the tide out and the mount standing on sand, the two, dressed in jeans and sweaters like their father and I, began to jump up and down: they wanted to go to cycle on the sand.

“Maybe we can go out there, but only later, and not for the two of you to cycle on the sand. We’ll go for a walk. Pick up some shells,” I replied on their father’s behalf.

“No,” Jean-Louis overruled me. “Let’s go for a walk out there. We can climb up to the abbey afterwards.”

The grey, wet sand was cool under our naked feet: we were carrying our sandals and we had rolled up our jeans to our knees.

“Not nice,” growled Charissa after a few steps. “The sand’s all gluey.”

I could have told her.

A little white and black dog found the sand to his liking and was running around yapping and soon snapping at our legs, its teenage owner not caring to restrain her pet.

“Horrible beast,” complained Carmen.

“He’s only playing,” I said.

“Leave it, Bella,” whispered Jean-Louis.

Because of the little dog Charissa and Carmen decided they would rather walk around on the mount. Immediately, we turned back the way we had come and Jean-Louis retrieved a bottle of mineral water from the
Combi
for us to wash away the sand which clung to our feet. I handed out tissues with which to dry our feet. Our sandals back on and our jeans rolled down, we walked along Grande Rue and sat down in a café: the girls were thirsty.

In the café, the four of us sat at one end of a long table. It stood behind a window which looked out to where we had just walked. The little dog was still running around; he was chasing his tail. Sylvain, the café owner and a cousin of Fred, Frascot and Gertrude came over to greet me.

“Pretty girls,” he said. “Yours?”

The question was directed at Jean-Louis.

“All mine!”

He looked proud.

Both girls wanted orange juice and ice cream. Jean-Louis did not object. When I was a child, my mother would have asked me whether I thought money grew on trees and she would have allowed me one or the other, but not both. And Carmen should not have been drinking a sweet soda and eating ice cream. Jean-Louis had a beer. I said I will have some fizzy water.

“My mom hates fizzy water,” stated Carmen.

She was juggling two glass ashtrays.

“You should not be having ice cream,” Jean-Louis told her belatedly.

“Mom said as I was to enjoy myself this weekend, I can eat what I want.”

“We all hate fizzy water,” said Charissa. “My mom never buys it.”

“I like fizzy water and I always have a bottle in my fridge,” I replied, speaking to the wall opposite and not to the three at the table with me.

“Leave it … leave it, Bella,” whispered Jean-Louis yet again.

Using the monk’s zigzag technique, we ascended the steps to the abbey. Charissa and Carmen swung their arms in the air. Some other children followed suit and a few steps later so did their parents, and so did Jean-Louis, and, not wanting to be the odd one out, so did I.

“That was fun,” said Jean-Louis at the top of the steps.

He was sweating: his jersey, wet, clung to his back and I wanted to lay my hands on his back and pull him towards me: he looked so masculine, so manly, so attractive. So sexually enticing.

“Daddy, Daddy,” said Charissa in a sing-song voice, “we’re going to race you down the steps.”

“No, when we’ve had a look at the abbey we will walk down, and we will do so like wise people and not like baboons,” I told her.

“Let the girls be, Bella,” said Jean-Louis sternly and loudly. “They are just little kids.”

Charissa and Carmen jumped around with glee at their father’s support.

-0-

It was hot and airless in the abbey.

We sat down on a long, low, wooden bench, the sunlight from the clerestory windows behind the altar ahead of us, illuminating our faces.

On the stone altar table stood a large crucifix, also of stone. The eyes of Jesus, hanging in His very holy Glory on the Cross, were closed and a cloth covered the intimate parts of this most holy of Christian Holies. A nail with a mushroom shaped top protruded from the most holy of feet; the slim, bony right foot over the left, the nail embedded in the bridge of the foot.
The bridge of the foot is a pyramid-like collection of three bones, the cuneiform, the cuboid and the navicular bone.
Also from my anatomy text book of my first year at ‘uni’. In front of the altar table stood a large basket of drooping flowers: a week or two must have gone by since they were placed in the basket.

An old couple sat down in the pew in front of us. Each clutched a Bible and a Rosary from which hung a small metal crucifix; the crucifixes had started to rust so their owners must have had them for a long time. Drops of perspiration dripped steadily from the man’s ears, and had turned the beige of his shirt the brown of a potato.

Carmen found the man’s wet ears funny.

“Stop,” said Jean-Louis.

He shot an annoyed glance at her.

So he can reprimand his daughters.

“Why are you not a nun?” she asked me.

“Why should I be, Carmen?”

Two nuns with what I thought were sad eyes in their pale faces just, at that moment, walked in, halted in front of the altar, and made the sign of the cross in front of the crucified Christ.

“Yes, why are you not a nun?” Charissa supported her sister.

“Why should I be, Charissa?” I repeated my question.

“You’re not married and nuns aren’t married either,” she offered as explanation. “Our dad can’t marry you because he is married to our mom.”

“I …,” I began.

“Leave it Bella,” Jean-Louis silenced me with a stern whisper. “Come on girls, let’s go have a bite to eat,” he told the two.

We descended the stairs in an orderly manner.

On Grande Rue the girls wanted to look into the souvenir shops.

“You’re not going to buy rubbish,” warned Jean-Louis.

They wanted to buy their mother something and from the made-in-China souvenirs on the shelves they chose a snow globe, the mount inside it.

“Is that not pretty?” cooed Jean-Louis with obvious fake delight.

The salesgirl had turned the snowball over and the fake snow was swimming around the glass globe like small fish in an aquarium.

“Wait, give your mom this from me,” said Jean-Louis.

He put a set of a large embroidered tablecloth and twelve napkins on the counter.

“Can you wrap these nicely too?” he asked the saleslady.

Oh, those will be hell to wash and iron.

We returned to Sylvain’s restaurant and we had
moules marinières
and French fries and when Carmen asked for an ice cream for dessert, Jean-Louis refused to let her have it because of the diabetes and she began to cry noisily.

Quickly, we settled the bill and left.

-0-

We drove along the coast on a winding road only locals knew of and we came to a lay-by and pulled up. Charissa and Carmen had been jumping up and down on the rear seat chanting they wanted to ride their bikes on the beach below.

I sat down on the sand and Jean-Louis walked the two, they, pushing their bikes, down to the water’s edge where the sand was firmer and good for cycling. I watched the three of them: a perfect holiday snap of a father and his two daughters, fruit of his loins, as my mother referred to the little children who came with their parents for a holiday at La Presbytère. The breeze from the sea beyond which lay England and further away the American continent, rustled their hair.

The girls on their bikes and riding over the wet sand, I watched Jean-Louis walk back towards me. He had removed his sandals again and had also again rolled up his jeans to his knees. He kept on turning to look at his daughters; their excited laughter drifted towards me.

A father and his daughters
.

They were not my daughters. Would never be. Therefore, what right did I have to sit there with this man and his two daughters?  That was the question mulling in my head. Should his wife and the mother of those daughters not be sitting here?

Jean-Louis threw himself down on the sand beside me.

“Don’t let them needle you, Bella,” he said. “They are good kids.”

He drew up his legs and rested his elbows on his naked knees. He wiggled his toes into the sand.

“I know, Jean-Louis,” I said.

I lay back on the sand.

“Hey,” said Jean-Louis, “one of us must keep an eye on the girls, so do not fall asleep, because I think I will.”

-0-

It was mid-afternoon. The sun shone down on the water. Gulls, sitting on red buoys swaying on the water, began to squawk. I lifted myself up on an elbow. The gulls, half a dozen of them, were pecking at something on the surface of the water alongside the buoys. Soon, one lifted his head and had a small fish in his pointed yellow beak. He fluttered his grey wings and lifted his white body off the buoy and circled above it once, twice and a third time and, wings dipped, made a perfect landing back onto the buoy. Through a clumsy movement - perhaps - he dropped his catch onto the buoy and instantly the other gulls which appeared to have sat there sleeping, came to life, long, thin legs in waltzing movements stepping high. Amid high-pitched war cries, beaks pecked at the small fish and at each other too. Their cries became triumphant shrieks and with a wave of their wings they were airborne. After circling the buoys they flew towards the shore. The small dead fish remained lying on the buoy on which the gull had dropped it and soon a ripple in the sea swept it back into the water.

I lay down again and I closed my eyes. Jean-Louis’ eyes were closed too. Charissa and Carmen’s laughter was approaching.

“Bella?” asked Jean-Louis.

His eyes were still closed.

“Yes.”

“You should not so go on at the girls. Just let them be. Also, I know Carmen should not be eating ice cream and such sugary things, but her blood sugar remains fairly steady with the insulin injections, so she can have a little fun this weekend.
Christ
- she is so young to have something like this hanging over her.”

I said nothing. I sighed, but I remained silent.

“I’ve been thinking,” Jean-Louis continued. “I think we … you, in fact, should not speak to Carmen about the illness after all.”

“If you think so.”

“I know the purpose of coming here this weekend was for you to speak to her about it, but I think it will just make matters worse. If you know what I mean.”

Certainly, I knew what he meant.

“That’s fine with me,” I said.

“Maybe some other time.”

“Sure.”

“Daddy, Daddy!” came the voices of the two.

They wanted their father to see the scallop seashell they had found.

“Are there others there?” he asked.

“Lots!” they said simultaneously.

The bicycles having been thrown down, father and daughters walked off, their feet sinking into the sand with each step and leaving distorted footprints.

I stayed sitting in the sunshine on the sand.

I sat there, the three’s merry laughter in my ears, and I thought of the anxious face of a father in the moment before his child was born, as I had seen in my days at Chartreux Hospital. I thought of the love I had seen in the eyes of a father in the moment he held his newborn child in his arms for the first time; how he held the tiny finger still dirty with the blood of she who had carried the seed in her womb which he had sowed there.

What was I doing having an affair with a married man? A married man and a father?

God, how I hated myself at that moment.

-0-

We drove back to Le Presbytère. Charissa and Carmen, on their knees on the rear seat, were looking back to the mount.

“Well, what do you think of Saint Michael’s Mount?” I called out to them, my voice raised over the noisy drone of the car’s engine.

“It’s ok,” both said.

Jean-Louis took his eyes off the road and towards me and smiled.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“We’ll have something nice to eat this evening, don’t worry. I’m sure Gertrude is going to do one of her specials for us tonight.”

“I’m not hungry!” Charissa called out, having slumped back onto the rear seat, her feet on it too.

“I want some more ice cream,” stated Carmen.

She too was sitting down and her feet were on the back of my seat.

My mom had put a ‘Reserved’ notification on a table under the copse of trees for us.