petite anglaise

Just a little note to say that if anyone who dropped me a line to say they wanted to come along on Saturday 1st April has not received the meet up details by email, due to my poor dizzy blonde head being all spinny and full of interest rates, please drop me another line on petite.anglaise@gmail.com and I will forward you the info.

…if the offer goes through on my Belleville 2 pièces.

update: it has gone through. OHMYGOD! I’m officially stressed now at the prospect of having to woo banks and look at reams of paperwork. If any kind reader can recommend a good courtier based in central Paris I would love to hear from you!!!

“Now, about Monday…” my boss continues.

I have no idea what is supposed to be happening on Monday. What haven’t I organised? Whose hotel haven’t I booked?

“Monday… Now, let me see…” I reply, in the calmest, most in control super secretary voice I can muster, while hastily opening his calendar in Outlook to see what I’ve missed.

The computer responds at a leisurely pace, mired in the middle of some pesky spysweeper scan.

“Oh, you’re breaking up, can you hear me? Hello? Hello?” I improvise, praying that he is not, in fact, calling from a landline.

And then the window pops up and I notice “[PETITE] OFF” on Monday 27 March 2006.

“Ooh! I’m on holiday! I’d forgotten! What a lovely surprise!” I cry, unable to curb my enthusiasm.

Miss Moneypenny would never have lost her composure like that. I have a lot to learn.

I can almost hear in my boss’s silence his chagrin at having reminded me of my forgotten holiday. There is a good chance that had he not, I would have appeared at 9.07 am sharp, none the wiser, and done a full day’s work.

So. My question is, what shall I do with this day of freedom, which has fallen unexpectedly out of the sky and into my lap?

Suggestions in my comments box please. Preferably inexpensive ones, as the end of the month is approaching.

The door to Mr Frog’s apartment is ajar, so I venture in. The cosy scene which greets me is of Tadpole, seated on the sofa, cheeks a fiery shade of crimson, watching her favourite “Oui Oui” DVD. In stark contrast, Mr Frog, slumped by her side, is an exhausted shade of grey.

Tadpole has been suffering from a particularly nasty cold and tummy upset virus (a French doctor would no doubt refer to this as “gastric flu”, making it sound emergency ward, code red serious) which has been doing the rounds in Paris of late. Mr Frog, due to unfortunate timing, has borne the brunt of the horrorshow nappies and sleepless nights, while I galavant around Paris, full of the joys of Spring.

I take a seat beside Tadpole, while Mr Frog pours me a glass of coffee flavoured coca cola (not bad, but not exactly good either, whatever will they dream up next?) to taste.

We chat, mostly swapping favourite Tadpole anecdotes, and recounting flat hunting experiences, until he recalls something she had told him the previous day which made a lasting impression.

They were looking at the letters of the alphabet depicted on her coloured jigsaw floor tiles, and Tadpole had seized upon the letter “J”.

“It’s a J for Jim,” she announced, proudly.

“Oh yes,” replied Mr Frog, uneasily, wondering what to say next.

“Maman, elle a perdu son ami Jim, et elle pleure,” added my daughter.

“When was she crying?” Mr Frog enquired, concerned.

“Yesterday,” came the reply.

I am amazed. She has not mentioned his name once, not since that first horrible day when she knocked on the door, expecting him to answer. I truly thought she had already forgotten him.

I hasten to reassure Mr Frog that by yesterday, Tadpole actually means two whole weeks ago. Because, actually, after shedding a thousand tears during that first weekend of disbelief, I haven’t cried since. Not once.

There are moments when I fall victim to feelings of overwhelming panic about the prospect of being alone. Moments when I experience little pangs of regret about the plans I have been forced to cast aside. But on the whole, I’m surprised to find that I feel little remorse about this aborted relationship.

The future beckons, pregnant with promise. And I walk slowly towards it, with only the slightest hesitation, and not so much as a backward glance.

The signs were unmistakable. A feeling of buoyancy, of lightness, a renewed spring in my step. That familiar sensation of seeing the city through a filter, bathed in a flattering, glowing light.

Last weekend, I fell head over heels in love.

It hit me first on Friday, when I stepped out of the métro at Odéon. Shivering in the cold as I waited for a friend to arrive for our cinema date, I took in the animated bustle around the monument everyone chooses for a rendez-vous point. Girls waiting breathlessly for a special boy to arrive, smiling shyly when he appeared. Groups of students arguing over which film to see. Mobile phones pressed to every available ear. A buzz, an excitement, which I had long forgotten, but which reminded me of my early days in Paris, of Mr Frog and I when we shared a tiny maid’s room near the Sorbonne, went out in St Germain almost every night.

Saturday, stepping out of an apartment building in the rue des Envierges, I decided to take a detour through the backstreets of Belleville, where it is so easy to imagine the village it once was, with its cobbled streets and few remaining villas with walled gardens. The sky was periwinkle blue, the birds were singing, and I felt my spirits lifting; overwhelmingly glad to be alive.

Later, leaving Le Flore, the taste of a sinful, thick hot chocolate lingering on my lips, I took a stroll along the banks of the Seine, on a whim. A vague, half-formed plan to buy a book, was casually shrugged off in favour of letting my feet lead the way. My boots took me across the Pont Neuf, where I half-smiled at the sight of the couples gathered in its alcoves; bemused to note that seeing them caused me no pain.

Sunday, pleasantly exhausted after a long evening which began with a bar in the rue Montorgeuil, continued with a restaurant, and ended with a pendaison de cremaillère where I met some fascinating people and talked until the small hours, I struck out for a friend’s house near the Park Monceau, a bunch of delicate pink tulips in one hand, a warm baguette under my arm (and flour on my coat, because I haven’t mastered quite how one can do all those things and yet remain immaculate).

Monday morning, despite grey skies and light drizzle, a distracted glance from my kitchen window as I cupped my bowl of steaming café au lait fell on the deep, buttery yellow of the crocuses I had the foresight to plant in December.

Last weekend, Paris opened her arms to me and I fell into them, gladly. Gratefully.

I had forgotten how much it is possible to love this city.

Easing my hand gently out from where it had been lodged – between someone’s left buttock and a standard issue French teenager’s Eastpak rucksack – I glanced tensely at my watch. The métro was taking an eternity to leave each station, the doors failing to close on the tightly packed mass of commuters and student demonstrators compressed within.

I was late for my first appointment with my new destiny; getting progressively more flustered as the minutes ticked by.

Red faced and panting, I finally arrived, complete with Tadpole and pushchair, at the address I had scribbled on the printout. A smartly dressed man with a briefcase awaited us in front of the entrance, and he motioned us inside, although not before woefully mispronouncing my surname.

Tadpole was in a very chatty mood.

“I’m going to help mummy choose a new house today!” she announced. “I’ve got three houses: mummy’s house, daddy’s house and tata’s house! And now I going to buy an udder one!” Normal rules do not apply to Tadpole-speak, a language punctuated exclusively with exclamation marks.

Mr Agent Immobilier raised his eyebrows, probably thinking that 32 square metres of working-class Paris looking onto an interior courtyard doesn’t normally qualify for “house” status.

He rang the doorbell, and a harried looking student answered the door, before scuttling back to her dissertation.

I looked around me, finally able to appreciate, after combing my way through all those petites annonces, what thirtysomething metres really felt like. Tried to imagine fitting Tadpole and me, plus as many of our belongings as possible, into a space half the size of the apartment we occupy, but can no longer afford.

I couldn’t, without resorting to use of the word mezzanine.

The indignity. Thirty four years old this year, teetering on the brink of getting myself 165,000 or so euros into debt, and I will be reduced to either sleeping on a convertible sofa in the living room, or adopting the bed-on-stilts approach in order to share Tadpole’s bedroom.

Obsessed as I may be with clambering onto the first rung of the property ladder, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would have to do so in quite such a literal sense.

I forced myself to pay attention to the kitchen, the bathroom, the electrics, the central heating, but concentration was difficult, on account of a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Because the word “mezzanine”, to me, spelled the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one which I am rather hesitant to embrace. I closed my eyes and let myself contemplate my dream home, a stone cottage nestled in the Breton countryside, one last time.

Then I took a deep breath and let it go.

For now.

I find it incredibly frustrating not knowing what is going through his mind – even if recent events proved rather forcefully that I knew at lot less about the contents of his head than I could possibly imagine, when we were together.

In my mind’s eye, I picture him delivering the news to his parents, his friends, his daughters. People who had met me; fallen under Tadpole’s spell. I try to imagine their reactions. Part of me hopes, cruelly, selfishly, that they are telling him he has behaved like a fool. That he is unlikely to get a chance like that again, in this lifetime. That they cause him to question the wisdom of his actions. To bitterly regret. To be gripped with remorse.

Deep down, I know that his friends will be feeding him the same platitudes that mine do; as everyone always does. It can only have been for the best. It just wasn’t meant to be. It would have been terrible if she had uprooted her whole life, her daughter’s life, to chase an empty, barren dream. Wouldn’t it?

Even if I have conditioned myself to agree with these sentiments, and sincerely believe that we may have been doomed to fail, I still cannot shake off this dull ache I carry around with me every day, which can flare up without warning, in the most unlikely situations, and set about gnawing at my insides.

I hear his voice in my head, marvelling at the softness of my skin, or laughing at something naïve I said, and I stop in my tracks, simply unable to believe that, for him, the bad outweighed the good. Then I replay those other words, those caustic, wounding words, to nip such pointless thoughts in the bud. A form of necessary self torture.

A confession: sometimes, I find myself scrolling through my statcounter, searching for Rennes, Brittany among the current visitors. But I won’t allow myself to call, or email. I simply cannot. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

So, if you are out there, ex-Lover, you have the advantage.

Because here I am, an open book, with a broken spine. While you remain unfathomable.

This advert is plastered across the walls of many Parisian métro stations at the moment.

How very fitting.

The ad is actually for a loan finance company – and I think the “compagnon de route” in question is supposed to be a car, but it did give me a little jolt the first time I saw it, all the same.

I mean, how would you feel if you saw your name across a billboard?

What do you mean, it’s not my name?

I almost signed a cheque “petite” once…

Once upon a time, I suggested a little bloggerers’ get together, in a bar in Paris. About fifteen female expat bloggers showed up, along with one – very fortunate – male, and a good time was had by all. A few months later, we had a picnic in the Buttes Chaumont. I met lots of lovely, interesting people, even if my very noble intentions about keeping in touch with many of them regularly fell a little by the wayside, what with the to-ing and fro-ing between Paris and Brittany I was indulging in.

It’s been quite a while, and I thought it might be time to envisage another meet up. For girls, boys, expats (or not) who blog and would like to meet up for some drinks, at a secret venue yet to be thought of announced. I’m thinking maybe Saturday 1st April, off the top of my head.

Anyone fancy this?

Drop me a comment or email if you do, and I will send out meeting point details by email nearer the time. All suggestions most welcome, but I think somewhere one can partake of small, alcohol-absorbent nibbly things like tapas might be a good idea. (Because, ahem, I’m a lightweight.)

And I’m hoping that, in addition to the usual suspects, we might even attract some of the new Paris-based bloggerers I have noticed commenting in these parts of late?

I bring you this short respite from the melodrama that has been petite anglaise, of late, to ask a small favour, for a friend. If you live in Marseille or Nice, speak English and are very lovely indeed, please contact me on petite.anglaise@gmail.com and I will explain further.

Tadpole trotted ahead of me down the aisle, as I scanned the seat numbers for row number 20. We passed a motley assortment of pensioners, children in full Disney regalia, couples returning from a romantic weekend in Paris – although some looked as though they had fallen out, possibly over the amount of time Madame wanted to spend shopping – and a couple of pin-striped suits with laptops.

After much stopping and starting, whilst fellow passengers grappled clumsily with hand luggage and coats, seemingly in slow motion, we finally reached our destination. Tadpole clambered across to the window seat and started fiddling with her “strap-on”, while I removed my coat.

I turned and saw an attractive man standing behind me, patiently waiting. He must have been allocated the aisle seat, beside mine. Smiling good naturedly, he offered to stow our coats in the overhead locker, before taking his seat. I contemplated him surreptitiously through my eyelashes. He was roughly my age, at a guess, and dressed in well-cut jeans and casual clothes. Hair a little too carefully gelled for my taste. Carrying a laptop, but also a notepad and pencil.

I rarely strike up a conversation with fellow travellers, but today, maybe I would. At any rate, I was thankful to be seated with the only vaguely civilised person I had spied on the flight.

But as I located the Tadpole entertainment kit, consisting of crayons, drawing book, Dora sticker book and story books, I became aware of a certain restlessness in my travel companion. I sensed him casting around as the plane filled up, gauging whether there were likely to be any free seats left, poised to seize his chance as soon as the doors closed.

And sure enough, he suddenly stood, muttering “I’m just going to move and give you some space. No offence intended.”

“None taken,” I replied, head still bowed, rummaging through my rucksack for a wet wipe.

But I did feel a vague pang of disappointment. Try as I might to shrug it off, I couldn’t help seeing this inconsequential little exchange as portentious; the shape of things to come.

Not simply a woman in my own right, but a mother. Part of a package. This little person – the sum total of what is most precious, most valuable in my life – grounds for rejection.

I was tempted to name my last post “epitaph”. A part of me had been brutally severed. My hopes, my dreams now lay smouldering on a pyre. It seemed fitting.

When I typed those brave-faced words, they were an expression of how I wanted to feel, a few days or weeks or months from now. Something to aspire to. Then, somehow, after hitting the “publish” key, I realised I was genuinely beginning to feel that way.

Taking a step back, looking critically at the last few months, I see that much of my time was spent waiting, feeling despondent about being apart, dealing with the guilt of Tadpole’s impending separation from her father, smothering my doubts with a pillow. Negative feelings which crushed my spirits with all their ominous weight, preventing me from enjoying the here and now.

Now I find myself appallingly fragile, but intact, and somehow lighter. I no longer have to do battle with those demons any more; the weight has lifted. Only now do I see, with startling clarity, how impossible it was to continue following that ghost of a dream.

All the same, much of the past few days remains a blur. As I go about my daily business, my mind is elsewhere, playing my favourite memories in a continuous loop, until I’m ready to lay them to rest. On the surface, I laugh and joke, say positive, brave things, make plans for Tadpole and me. I’m going to buy a little flat, I say. On a whim, I’m going to the South of France for a few days, a holiday of sorts. People are rather surprised at how much better I seem, already. An indecently rapid recovery?

But I can barely bring myself to eat. I go to bed only when I’m thoroughly exhausted, so that I cannot lie awake craving his warmth. His touch. All day long there is a fluttering inside my chest, a constant edge of panic I cannot shake off, but which no-one sees.

This morning, in the crowded métro, a couple caught my attention. I saw their embrace out of the corner of my eye, and something inside me twisted, pulled. I couldn’t tear my masochistic eyes away from the woman, the way she looked at her companion, with hunger. I know I looked at him that way too, once. Sometimes, all I wanted was to crawl inside his skin.

Then, when I reached my destination, I saw another woman, elderly, confused. She stood by a rubbish bin, manically tearing up a piece of paper into smaller and smaller pieces, scattering them on the station floor like ragged confetti. Every few seconds she repeated the same two words, in an identical strangled voice, as if a needle were jumping on a record and playing the same disembodied phrase over and over.

“C’était magique.”

It was. It truly was, for a while. But I refuse to believe that it was my one and only shot at magical. Soon, I will renounce living in the past tense, move on.

Soon.

Before we had ever met, we exchanged long, revealing emails, Lover and I. He thrilled me with his words; they drew me to him. There is, to me, a pleasing symmetry in the fact that after trying, but failing, to speak on the phone through his tears and my wails, we took our leave by email. The closing bracket, concluding our parenthèse enchantée.

And now I have read his words, time and time again, I not only understand what happened here, but can no longer flee the inescapable truth that this ending, however wretched, was a necessity.

I will never regret our paths crossing back in May. Wouldn’t trade the panic-inducing intensity of that first evening, and our subsequent hotel trysts, for all the stability in the world. Searing, all-consuming passion; the awakening of those senses which had been dulled in me for the longest time. I felt reborn. Indescribably happy. The future suddenly filled with unexpected promise.

I remember listening to Gorecki on my iPod in a crowded métro carriage, barely able to contain the physical rush of joy I felt from the tips of my toes to the end of every hair follicle, happy tears streaming down my cheeks, oblivious to my fellow travellers.

We shared some perfect moments, he and I. Moments which marked my life indelibly; moments which my present anguish cannot erase.

If only real world worries, doubts and fears hadn’t come crowding into both our minds with the passage of time. If only the dynamics of a long distance relationship hadn’t made us brittle and fragile. If only that first fierce flush of love had stood the test of time, intact, instead of slowly, silently unravelling.

I was aware of a rising tide of uneasiness, gaining ground on me for the past month or so, but couldn’t put my finger on why I was feeling this way. Balked at giving headspace to those treacherous whispering voices. I was so very in love with the dreams we had elaborated together. The house in the country with a garden for Tadpole to play in. The new life away from the city lights. The fresh start. I wrote a little about my confusion, but in guarded, careful terms, for fear of causing further damage. I yearned to see him more often, seeking some sort of confirmation that we were doing what was right. I needed to be sure about July. As sure as anyone can ever be.

So preoccupied was I, trying to quell my own creeping anxieties, I was blinded to the fact that he was having doubts of his own. Quietly wrestling with his demons. Probing, measuring the depth of his feelings. Finding them wanting.

I think there will be moments in every day, for some time to come, when I will feel his absence so keenly that it will crush the very air out of my lungs. Cause me to falter. To feel utterly bereft. Tonight, a memory of him sitting at my dining table, head bent over his laptop, brow furrowed in concentration as he worked, tore holes in my insides. The sight of Tadpole knocking softly at the front door, calling “Jim, where are you?” when we returned home made me wince and grip the door handle with white knuckles. Once Tadpole was in bed, the long evening gaped ahead, the terrifying emptiness no longer to be punctuated by his calls.

But I refuse to be bitter, because love doesn’t come complete with guarantees. Because no-one is to blame here. Because neither of us deserves to settle for less than what we shared at the beginning.

Before it waned.

Lamb – Gorecki

Just when I was starting to wonder where on earth they had got to, I heard a persistent tapping at the front door, at toddler level. I dabbed frantically at my eyes and checked my face in the mirror, not wanting to alarm Tadpole with my blotchy, puffy face.

As the door swung open, I was overwhelmed to see that my daughter was triumphantly brandishing a small bunch of tulips, my favourite flower. For the first time that day, I shed happy tears, deeply touched by Mr Frog’s thoughtful gesture.

He brought my Tadpole back to me early, because he knows, from experience, that she is the best medicine.

“What’s matter mummy?” asked Tadpole, anxiously, when I released her from a long clingy embrace and she noticed my damp cheeks.

“Mummy’s crying because she’s very happy to see you,” I replied, managing a wobbly smile.

“I go get a mouchoir,” she said, maternally, heading for the tissue box in the bedroom and returning with a handful. “Look, I make it better!”

Later, I explained that mummy was feeling “a bit sad”, because her friend Jim had gone home, and we wouldn’t be seeing him, or his daughters, again. She may not have understood, but I wanted her to know that there was a real reason for my behaviour; that she was not the cause.

She listened, solemnly, and then picked up her pencil and continued her colouring, tongue stuck out in apparent fierce concentration. But as I left the room, she looked over her shoulder, said:

“Never mind mummy.”

I remember saying to him, only the other day, that I rarely dream about the people who are most important to me. Only once or twice have I seen Tadpole in my dreams, and never once – that I could recall afterwards – did I see Lover.

Once a person has gone, it’s a different matter. Last night in the early hours I drifted in and out of dream upon dream, every single one inhabited by him. It got so I was afraid to close my eyes; the images which flickered behind my eyelids taunted. Wounded.

First, I heard the familiar sound of his breathing, sensed that he was sleeping beside me, where he belonged. I put my arm out to touch the comforting warmth of his chest.

But I knew this was wrong. He couldn’t be here. However real it felt, it was another of my dreams, and anything was possible. I watched, gripped by an inexplicable terror, as he awoke and stared at me, wide eyed. He held my arm in a vice like grip so I couldn’t pull away, then started coughing a hacking cough, vomiting something black and viscous.

Lover decomposed, disintegrated before my horrified eyes, until all that remained beside me was a pool of something dank and horrible, and all the while I screamed “it’s not real, you’re not here, let me wake up”, clawing at my face with my free hand, biting my own fingers, trying to will myself awake.

I awoke. Saw my arm flung across his side of the bed, which was empty.

Wept.

I was barely through the front door, coat still buttoned, when Lover spoke.

I sat, shoulders hunched, head in hands, on the edge of my bed – in the very spot where Mr Frog listened to similar words back in May last year.

There was nothing further to say, so I asked him to leave. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face, but heard him crying.

I am a rudderless boat turning in dizzy, uncomprehending circles on a sea of noisy tears.

He doesn’t want me any more.

I am subjected to nightmares involving lifts on a disturbingly regular basis.

In last night’s episode, I found myself alone in an unfamiliar lift cabin, when suddenly, without warning, it began to plummet downwards, picking up speed, the air whistling past my ears as the cabin lurched towards the bottom of the shaft. Bracing myself for an imminent impact, back pressed against the wall, I almost wept with relief when inexplicably the cabin ground to a halt, a hair’s breadth away from the bottom, and a woman’s arm appeared through a trap door in the ceiling, beckoning me to safety.

At this point, I awoke and burrowed deep into the sanctuary of Lover’s armpit, heart still racing.

Unsettling experiences involving lifts abound in my mind’s nocturnal meanderings. Cabins which dangle precariously from a single frayed cable, rocking from side to side as I hold my breath and silently pray. Cabins which have no walls, little more than unstable metal platforms, which lurch drunkenly from side to side in cavernously wide shafts as I press myself to the floor, attempting to cling on. Lifts which shoot off in unlikely directions at high speed, or stop at a great distance from the exit door so that I have to jump over a yawning chasm to reach safety.

Bizzarely, in my waking life, I don’t suffer from claustrophobia or vertigo. And taking lifts does not perturb me in the slightest: I should know, I take four of them every single day.

The first is cramped, carpet-lined, and coffin-like and conveys Tadpole and me to the ground floor of our apartment building. I should probably be suspicious of this lift in particular, as I’ve read countless horror stories about the appallingly slack maintenance of lifts in privately owned accommodation in France, and to anyone peering through the lattice work of the lift shaft, it is plain to see that the cables are furry. But, thus far, it has never been out of order for a single day.

The second is in the nanny’s state-owned tower block, which got an honourable mention in a recent post on account of the pervasive odour of urine often to be found inside the cabin.

The third is in the Buttes Chaumont métro station, one of the few Parisian stations which boasts a large capacity lift, on account of how far underground the tunnels run, in the bowels of the earth, beneath a former gypsym quarry. Stairs do exist, but taking them is a fool’s entreprise.

The fourth and final lift which I take every weekday is a modern, marble and mirrored lift which propels my reluctant self to the office every morning.

I have never been trapped in any of the above, nor have I experienced any mishaps while travelling in them, so I can see no logical reason for my brain’s uncanny fixation. But no doubt a psychoanalyst would find interpreting these anxiety dreams childsplay: a powerless petite, watching her life rush past her, spiralling out of control, paralysed by The Fear.

Whatever the reason, what I did not need was for lift n° 1 to utter a deafening groan as it made its descent early this morning, jolting me instantly into a vivid flashback of the previous night’s dream.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” shouted Tadpole, nervously, pupils widening.

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s just a silly noise,” I countered, with artificial joviality, trying not to communicate my disquiet to my daughter, lest we end up having to take the stairs up to the fifth floor on a daily basis if, god forbid, she develops a lift phobia.

Thankfully, the lift arrived at the ground floor without making any further vocal protests, the folding door drawing back to release us only moments later.

“QUICK MUMMY! GET OUT!” shrieked Tadpole, leading me to believe I may not have managed to play it quite as cool as I had hoped.

I stepped out of the lift, on shaking legs, and we went on our way. One down, three to go.