Rosie's War (3 page)

‘Are you sure you know how to change stations in Paris?’ my father asked for what seemed to be the twentieth time.

‘Of course I do. Don’t fuss, Pa. I have reserved seats all the way through. It’s a very simple journey.’

I felt much too excited to worry about any travel details. I wanted to hug and kiss my family but I also wanted to go, to escape and begin my adventure. I already felt detached from my past life, friends and relatives.

‘Have a lovely time, Pat. See you on your birthday.’ My mother kissed me on the cheek.

I got onto the train. Leaning out of the window I said goodbye to Joan and David. I blew Bobby a kiss. ‘Cheer up. I’ll be back in March for my birthday.’

‘See you then, Pat,’ he shouted, blowing a kiss back to me.

‘Bye, Pat, bye-bye!’

The sounds of my family stayed with me as the train began to pull away through South London. I looked out of the window at the flat suburbs. So here I was, just two months short of my twentieth birthday. I had some money and was going to be paid a wage in France. I certainly had no apprehensions. On the contrary, I felt confident about the future and my abilities to deal with life.

I am naturally an optimist and always believe I can get the hell out of a situation if I don’t like it. After all, hadn’t I decided after tea one day (at the mature age of seven) that my carefully selected boarding school was not the place for me? I was found that evening with my bags at the front gates and taken to the headmistress. I calmly explained to her that as I didn’t like her school I now wished to go home.

Surely if I didn’t like my new life in Avignon I could leave just as easily?

I did, in truth, have some fears as I left London. But they were not profound, more immediate and prosaic. How much should I tip the porter? Could I steel myself to go into the dining car alone? What would the waiters think of me?

In fact, I didn’t dare go into the dining car. I don’t know what or how I ate on the eighteen-hour journey from London to the South of France. But I do know that my lack of French kept me awake: in particular, I remember worrying on the journey south from Paris about how you pronounced the ‘g’ in Avignon.

Years later my elder daughter asked me what was I expecting or dreaming would happen in France. I suppose she saw me as a sheltered girl of only nineteen going out into the unknown by myself. What were my hopes, my expectations?

I couldn’t really answer her. Of course, I had the usual romantic daydreams about falling in love. But perhaps the most important thing for me was that at last I was going to be an individual. No longer the youngest and least satisfactory part of a large family or a boarder at school, but simply a young Englishwoman working and living in Avignon.

I had finally gained my independence and was starting my life.

CHAPTER TWO

Settling Into Avignon

‘A
vignon! Avignon! Mademoiselle! Réveillez-vous! On arrive!’

The guard brusquely woke me up.

The train ground to a halt. I looked out. It was dark and cold. Wearily, I collected my belongings and set them down on the platform. There was no one there to meet me. An elderly porter approached and silently took my bags. I was still very dozy.

Suddenly I remembered my suitcases in the guard’s compartment. I tapped the porter on the back.

‘Monsieur! Er … mon … suitcase. En tren!’

I pointed towards the train.

Damn! What was the French word for suitcase? I couldn’t remember! I frantically started to draw large squares in the air with my hands and jab at the train. The porter looked bemused. He smiled and nodded but did nothing.

‘More,’ I shouted. ‘There are more cases. Encore. Plus.’

My French was breaking down completely. At last he seemed to understand, but it was too late. The train hissed and steamed away to Marseille.

I was nearly in tears. I was tired and my beautiful suitcases had disappeared. Why did I have so much stuff when I couldn’t even get it out of a train?

‘Êtes-vous Mademoiselle Say?’ said a man who had by now arrived on the platform. He introduced himself very formally as Monsieur Claude Manguin, my new employer.

He had very little English but quickly understood my distress. With some rapid instructions he arranged with the porter to have my cases sent back from Marseille.

We drove off through the winter air around the great medieval walls of Avignon, journeying in complete silence. I was too tired and shaken by my disastrous attempt at speaking French to the porter to try to make any small talk. Anyway, judging by the look on his face, the last thing Monsieur Claude wanted was a hesitant conversation about my journey. He probably hadn’t relished getting out of bed in the early hours of the morning to collect the new au pair from the station. He was a short, stocky man of about forty, with a head of receding slicked-back hair. He looked very determined and was perfectly polite but remote, driving fast and smoking cigarettes all the way.

I was relieved when we arrived at a countrified and quite unpretentious villa just outside the town. Madame Odette Manguin was waiting to meet me. She quietly showed me to my room so that I could have a few more hours of sleep.

When I awoke later that morning I found that I was in a neat, pretty room that in some indefinable way could never be English. Maybe it was just the light, which even in January had a yellow glow to it, utterly unlike the hard grey of a London winter morning.

Miraculously, my precious suitcases had already arrived. I got up and began to unpack, pulling out clothes to wear that day. I hurried downstairs to find Madame Odette and her children still at the breakfast table.

‘Good morning, Pat. Pour yourself some coffee and come and sit down.’ She smiled and pointed me to an empty place at the table.

‘I hope you managed to get some more sleep. You’ll find that everything starts very early in this house. Monsieur Claude left for work an hour ago.’ She spoke French very slowly and clearly with almost no trace of a Midi accent.

‘Thank you,’ I replied gratefully. Gulping the coffee, I looked across the table at the three children who were watching me unblinkingly.

‘Bonjour,’ I said. ‘Tell me your names.’

‘I am Henri,’ said the eldest in English. He was tall and slim, with fine features and brown hair swept elegantly away from his forehead. A real ladies’ man for the future, I thought.

‘Pleased to meet you, Henri.’

‘But my friends call me Biquet,’ he continued. ‘I am ten. I like playing ball and swimming. Don’t you think my English is good?’

‘Very good.’ I smiled. ‘I can see that you will have to teach me French.’

He smirked. Perhaps it was at the wonderful thought of him being the teacher. It struck me that I might have some trouble with him. Very spoilt. He continued by introducing me to his siblings, pointing first to the little blonde girl with ringlets who was intently chewing on a piece of toast.

‘This is Catherine. She’s five and she likes ballet.’

Well, that seemed very clear. I began to think through what I could remember from my own ballet crush at the age of eight.

‘You will have to show me all your dancing steps after breakfast.’

Catherine smiled but said nothing. She couldn’t understand me.

‘And this is my brother Jean-Pierre. He’s seven and his ears hurt.’

The little boy was wonderfully sweet. He had a thatch of fair hair set on a wide face. His two top front teeth were missing, giving him a goofy smile. He nodded his head politely.

‘Oh dear,’ I said, looking towards Madame Odette.

‘Don’t worry,’ she replied, patting Jean-Pierre on the head. ‘He has mastoids in cold weather but I find a good, thick cap keeps the pain away.’ She rose from the table.

‘Now come along, Biquet,’ she said. ‘It’s time for school and we have to show Pat the way. She will collect you this afternoon. You two can come as well.’ I don’t think that the younger children were very keen on accompanying us to school but they obediently trooped after their mother.

So began my new life with the solid, bourgeois Manguin family. I would settle quickly into the household, with the children choosing the nicknames of Patoun and Meese for me.

Monsieur Claude, the son of quite a famous artist, was a commercial traveller for a chemicals firm selling
potasse d’Alsace
(potash). He would start for work early each morning to visit his local customers. He was a busy man of few words and I was to have little to do with him.

His wife was very different. She was not considered a proper Manguin, coming as she did from Paris. She was amusing, talkative, intelligent and unflappable. She was to become my security over the months ahead.

Madame Odette was also very elegant. She was probably in her mid-thirties but to me she seemed much younger. Dark haired, immaculately groomed and with beautiful make-up, she had perfectly shaped eyebrows that might have belonged to a film star.

Compared to her, I felt all the clumsiness of my tall, big-boned body. I was not fat, far from it, but I was very athletic with a large frame and a big bust. I still had all the energy and awkwardness of a schoolgirl who hasn’t quite come to terms with her body. Unlike Madame Odette, my movements were gawky and ungraceful. I was certainly, despite my smart suitcases, the antithesis of French chic.

Within a couple of days of my arrival, Madame Odette took control of my wardrobe. She went through all my clothes, seemingly as a matter of course.

‘Patoun, what is this colour?’ she said, holding out my treasured suit that I had recently bought with such pride in the Marshall & Snelgrove sale.

‘Cyclamen,’ I said weakly.

‘Yes, ma petite, I know what it is.’ She smiled at me pityingly, as though at a rather feeble-minded child. ‘But how can the English do this to such lovely material?’

I had little defence. The colour was dreadful. She put a number of my outfits on the bed.

‘We’ll dye these dark blue, Patoun. If you could buy two packets of dye before you fetch Biquet we can do it first thing tomorrow.’

I did what she asked and a few days later we went to Madame Simone, the dressmaker in town. She did what she could with the shape. My transformation was underway.

As for the three young Manguins, my first impression of them had been correct: they were very well behaved and would prove easy to look after. My initial reaction towards Biquet had also been right: he was certainly spoilt. But I found that I could keep him under control with the threat of reporting any misdeeds to his father. It was Jean-Pierre who quickly became my favourite. He was a delightful little boy, always very worried about being teased over the large woollen hat that completely hid his ears.

My duties as an au pair were not exactly onerous. I was expected to get the children up in the morning and dress them. At night I bathed them and put them to bed. Taking Biquet to and from school was one of my main duties. The two younger children often accompanied us on these trips. I was also expected to give Biquet piano classes of a sort and daily English lessons.

There was no general housework to do, as Peggy had promised there would be. Madame Odette was far too organized to need a rather inept English girl to help her run the house. At most I would be asked to do some mending.

The two younger children were left very much to their own devices during the day. I would sometimes be asked to keep an eye on them. This proved an easy enough task once I had enlisted my mother’s support from London. Throughout that first winter a steady stream of cards and children’s books arrived, much to the delight of Jean-Pierre and Catherine. The latter, in particular, was thrilled to find out the names of the seven dwarves in English. ‘Atchoo, non. Sneezy, oui,’ she would say delightedly to anyone who would listen.

Apart from these tasks, the time was largely my own. I knew few people, especially of my own age. It was quite a lonely existence but I was content with this. I would spend much of the day reading on my bed, from where I could look out on to the apple orchard below. A couple of times a week I cycled into town for an afternoon matinee at one of the cinemas, with only a scattering of other people to keep me company in those vast, art deco buildings. At the weekends I would play tennis across the river at the sister town of Villeneuve lez Avignon or mix with the Manguins’ friends who came to supper. But I had little in common with these people who were, for the most part, much older than me. My evenings were often spent babysitting.