Ignorance (11 page)

What could I do? Nothing. You don't ask your own mother for receipts. My father shouted from his chair opposite her:
merde
! Just leave her alone!

My mother's decline upset me so much that sometimes I could not bear to look at her. I brought her meals on a tray, because she didn't want to sit at table. I tucked her napkin over her front, like a baby's bib. I kept her clean and washed her clothes. I did her cooking for her, and her housework. I found her radio programmes to distract her, brought home magazines for her from church. I told her: you've got to make an effort!

One morning I was so tired, the children having wailed and griped all night, that I lost my temper and cried out to her: why won't you try to help yourself?

She thinned her lips, said nothing. I shouted: no one helps me do anything round here. You're in no fit state to help me. I'm going to have to deal with this all by myself.

Maurice was travelling down towards the Midi, testing out business opportunities, factories, looking at houses. Before he went he said to me: just do whatever you think is right. He sent me cheerful postcards, urging me to hang on, everything was going to turn out well, I just had to have faith. When I wrote to his poste restante addresses telling him how exhausted I felt, begging him to return soon, he wrote back exhorting me to be brave, to stand fast.

I burst into tears. My mother shook her head at me. Her white skull gleamed through her thin grey hair. My father gripped the arms of his chair, turned and said: I can't stand nagging women. Show some more self-respect. My brother, head bent over his science textbook, stuck his fingers in his ears. His lips formed the refrain of his old song: bugger bugger bugger. I wanted to hit him but I restrained myself.

The following afternoon I left the children with my parents and walked over to the presbytery to consult the curé a second time. He said: the nuns are there to help. They helped with the mother and now they'll help with the child. It's all about timing. Now is the moment to act.

He accompanied me to the convent. Reverend Mother, with two of the senior nuns, received us in the parlour. Reverend Mother agreed: let's take the little one immediately. And then we'll have to have her baptised. I said: I'll be her godmother. Poor little thing.

Reverend Mother rang the bell for refreshments. A big black foot pushed the door open, held it wedged. In came a bulky black figure: Sister Dolorosa, carrying a tray. Her cheeks pushed out from her white coif. A smile split her cheesy face. Dear Madame Blanchard! I submitted to her kissing me on both cheeks. Her blistery skin repelled me. I said: dear Sister Dolorosa. So you're still with us. That's very good. She served us with a glass of Muscat each, a couple of macaroons. She stood back, feet splayed out, near the door, grinning stupidly; poised to refill our glasses and plates. She did indeed look like a big black Dolly. A sort of golliwog with huge dingy teeth.

The curé said: I myself shall inform Madame Nérin of our decision. And then I'll see that she goes into hospital. I'll be able to reassure her that little Andrée is in good hands.

Reverend Mother said: my sisters in England understand how to deal with delinquent girls. They'll know how to handle Jeanne if she becomes difficult.

The curé finished his Muscat. Such an unfortunate family! The child's far better off away from them. With one hand he flicked macaroon crumbs from his soutane and with the other he held out his glass: Sister, you spoil me.

I fetched the baby myself. For the last time ever I forced myself to walk through those miserable streets on the far side of the bridge. The wretched grandmother coughed into her handkerchief, turning her face away from the baby tucked in beside her, rolled in a quilt, fenced in by pillows. The damp flat shocked me all over again. Even wearing my fur coat I shivered. That confirmed my judgment: no fit place for a child.

I pushed Andrée through town in my own perambulator. When it began to drizzle I pulled up the hood of the pram. She gazed at me. Not really an appealing child. Pinched little face. Wispy brown hair. She didn't look like anyone in particular, which was just as well. Now, little one, I said to her, leaning forward over the handle of the pram: be good!

The walk from Madame Nérin's flat took perhaps twenty minutes. Plodding up through the grey back streets, I felt weighed down by indigestion. I kept hiccuping. Bending over the iron handle of the big pram, my stomach convulsed, twisted into knots. The road surfaces gaped with potholes, tarmac pocked with deep puddles after the recent heavy rain. I steered carefully around them. We reached the very top of town. I crossed the Place Ste Anne, the pram, its springs failing, jolting over the uneven paving-stones. A scarred and battered space. Someone ought to mend it. Do it up. In its ruined state it upset me so much I couldn't bear to look at it any more. I turned my attention back to the pram. The baby stared at me.

I halted outside the front door of the convent and rang the bell. The baby began whimpering. I jiggled the handle of the pram, hoping to hush her. Soon she would have to learn to comfort herself.

Jeanne

My thirteenth birthday began with a gentle tug on the ear: up, lazybones! My breakfast treat: coffee with an extra dose of sugar in, to mask the bitter chicory taste. Monday morning, the sunbeams showing up the dust on the kitchen window, shaming the bare yard outside, where our two skinny chickens jerked back and forth beside the rabbit hutch. Yesterday’s stale bread: I dipped my tartine into my coffee, softening it. Maman said: what shall we eat tonight? We should celebrate.

I got down her cookery book from the shelf. Her Bible, she called it.
I Want to Cook
, by Brigitte Marisot, the title and author’s name printed in well-spaced black capitals, tall and thin. As a child, desperate for something, anything, to read, I’d studied the recipes, night after night. Juicier than the poems I had to learn for school. I chanted these little songs about partridges, pheasants, capons, pigeons to myself. Other recipes told you how to make sausages from the blood. Madame Marisot, showing you how to dismember a duck, wielded a sabre-like chopping knife. Mrs Bluebeard.

Papa had given Maman the cookery book. For their engagement, she told me. He’d inscribed the flyleaf in brown handwriting: for Liliane, most affectionately, from Josef. The blue cloth covers had begun to work loose, parting from the spine. You could see where the pages had been stitched together with looped and knotted white thread.

Madame Marisot provided opening chapters on food science, hygiene, table manners, kitchen equipment, domestic economy. She adjusted her puffy white hat, her starched white overall, wagged her forefinger. She posed in the centre of a vast white-tiled kitchen hung with shining pans, her
batterie de cuisine
lined up in front of her on a well-scrubbed table. She inspected her troops for dust, for spots of grease. Look sharp! The ladle, egg whisk and wooden spoons stood to attention. The rolling-pin and cake-moulds saluted. The nutmeg-grater and cheese-grater wheeled round smartly.

Since we did not eat meat, because we could not afford it, I turned to the chapter near the end which proposed sample menus, suitable to particular seasons, for vegetarians. I read out the autumn one:
Délicieuses au fromage
, potato purée, Russian salad, pears with cream.

Maman wiped off her coffee moustache. She said: it all depends, doesn’t it. What have we got?

Coughing, she got up, untied her apron. I checked the food cupboard: oil, flour, salt, sugar, a decent-sized heel of gruyère. No potatoes, pears, eggs, beetroot or cream.

I said: I wish I didn’t have to go to school today. I wish I could leave.

Maman said: don’t grumble. You should be glad you’re getting an education at all.

I blew out my cheeks at her: you sound just like one of the nuns. Her hand whirled up. She frowned. Then she poked my ribs: behave!

That evening she came in smiling. She advanced her hand, her fingers petalling around two eggs balanced on her palm. Look what Madame Fauchon’s given me. We’ll have
Délicieuses
for supper, and we’ll have pancakes as well. We’ll be eating better than the nuns do, that’s for sure.

She didn’t want me to complain about being at a Catholic school. She’d been glad when the nuns proposed I continue to stay on, in return for helping with the little ones, because she wanted us to blend in with the Catholics. Just in case of trouble. What trouble? Wait and see.

She beat the Jewish egg yolks into the Catholic flour and folded and beat them together. She flipped discs of brown lace into the air and they looked identical.

She piled the sugar-sprinkled pancakes on a plate. Your Papa used to love these. Don’t you remember? I shook my head. I hardly remembered him at all. A voice telling me stories at night. A blue trouser-leg. The scent of hot grass under a blue sky. Memory failed there.

Maman cleared the table, putting the cookery book back on the shelf: I really must mend it. On to the pancakes she poured a few drops of Liqueur 44: now that you’re a young lady, you can try spirits.

Silly name, I said: why is it called that? Maman said: it’s the recipe, everything comes in measures of forty-four.

Dark liquid, tasting both sweet and bitter. I swallowed my dessert as fast as I could: it’s like medicine!

To begin our supper we ate the
Délicieuses
: the two egg whites beaten stiff then gently folded with grated gruyère, taken up in spoonfuls, dropped into the pan of boiling oil and quickly deep-fried. To test the eggs’ freshness before she cooked them, Maman held the bowl of beaten whites upside down over her head. Nothing fell out. She always did this, to amuse me, and I always gasped and laughed. One of our kitchen games, which blended us together.

Monsieur Jacquotet had blended in by retiring inside his hermitage-house. Going to and fro from school I would glance towards its façade. Closed shutters and closed door. He didn’t know I’d had my thirteenth birthday and that I was nearly grown-up. I couldn’t tell him. I wished I could.

When he and I met again, I didn’t know what to say. Girls of thirteen didn’t broach conversations with grown-ups they hardly knew. Not in Ste Marie-du-Ciel.

It happened by accident. I walked to school under a pale blue November sky spotted with grey clouds. In the afternoon rain spurted down, drumming on the high window sills. Cooped up in the airless sewing room with a child’s blouse spread over my knees, surrounding the raw edges of buttonholes with tiny blanket stitches, I wanted the walls to crack, let in rainy freshness. My needle, stabbing through cotton, pricked my forefinger. A bead of blood welled. I sucked it. The metallic taste pleased me, gave me an idea. I put up my hand, went to the podium, mumbled to Sister Dolorosa, who supervised the sewing hour, that I had cramps. She swung her head towards me, pushing back her black veil. Under the dark muslin her white bonnet smelled of starch. Inside her coif her cheeks looked soft as ripe cheese and smelled of carbolic soap. She whispered: are you expecting your visitor? I nodded yes. Sister Dolly said: have you got a towel with you? I shook my head. She sucked in her spit with a hiss: dirty girl. Get off home, then.

Sheets of rain fell past my face. I’d forgotten my beret: I put my arms up to shield my head, ran into the square. Wetness hammered my shoulders and nails of rain pierced me. My feet squelched inside my flimsy boots. Water drove down my neck, off my nose, off my eyelashes, soaked through the front of my coat. No separation between me and the weather: I’d dissolved into the rain, become sludge, like melted sugar at the bottom of a cup. Sludge that wanted to dance and go a bit crazy.

The door in the façade of Monsieur Jacquotet’s house swung open like the cover of a book, revealing the black oblong of a page. He stood against it, brightly coloured as a picture in a comic paper. He wore a blue coat, like an overall, flapping open, a yellow waistcoat, a red spotted scarf tied round his throat. He’d cut his black hair short. He seemed thinner. He beckoned to me. Come in and get dry – come into the warm.

The dark passageway smelled of vanilla. Through this tunnel of warm scent I blundered after him. In the kitchen he unbuttoned my coat, drew it off me and hung it up on a hook near the fireplace. He produced a rough towel, blue and grey stripes with frayed ends, threw it over my head and rubbed vigorously at my dripping hair. He took the towel away and considered me. Poor child, you’re nothing but a puddle. Sit down.

I leaned my hand on the back of a wooden chair. The nearby table was littered with little glass bottles, saucers smudged with paint, yellow Ricard ashtrays, red-stained corks, paper bags, boxes of matches, newspapers and magazines. Tables at home in our tiny flat did not tolerate such glorious mess. They invited hands to get busy sorting and piling, sweeping tides of rubbish into waste buckets. They urged dusters and polishing rags to approach. Then they breathed bare and silky for a moment before they got covered with oilcloth or blue linen depending on the day of the week, the time of day. Here, the table could not know whether it was a mealtime or a Saturday or anything. It obviously just got layers added to it. At one end a fluted green glass dish bore the scrapings of what looked like white beans in dried-up gravy. A half-empty pale grey coffee cup held dead flies floating in its scum. Tumblers lined up, crusted with yellow dregs of cider. A crumpled green and white checked handkerchief lay next to a hill of breadcrumbs, mixed in with blue glass beads, a broken string of pearls, bits of gilt, razor blades, slivers of pink soap, small pages with handwriting in red ink.