French for Girls

FRENCH FOR GIRLS

JP Wright

Copyright 2018 JP Wright

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Warning: French ahead.

Do not panic, my dear friend. If you have not word un of French, you will miss nothing that is vital to the story I have to tell, and will be spared the pain of my many errors. Have a skim through it and you will find that you know more than you think you know, and it’s French, so it sounds pretty even if it makes no sense. Have faith: what seems familiar, you know. What you think it means, is correct. These are puddles only, shallow and small enough to skip through or leap across, and there is solid English ground on the other side.

Bonne chance, mes amis. VT.

Nb. Albert’s poem is Tristan Corbière, V’s is Paul Verlaine. Their song is Billy Holliday’s recording of ‘Embraceable You’.

Contents

Prélude

Chez Tickham

red knot

arrival

next day

bobbie’s advice

le marais

a break

daisy chains

disco sneakers

Interlude

Albert Disparu

seaside

annabelle

la ville lumière

at the far end of the thread

about the author

make contact

other works

Prélude

2eme décembre

Cher ami,

Je m’appelle Violet. J’habite près de Hapeney Fen : c’est une petite village dans le sud-est d’Angleterre. J’ai douze ans.

Je vais à l’école « The Abbess Etheldreda College for Ladies » ou « Sainte Audrey’s » Ma professeur demande que j’écris une lettre. Elle dit qu’il est bon de pratiquer ma français.

J’espère que tu répondre.

Cordialement,

Violette Tickham.

18th December

Dear Violet Tickham,

I am happy to read your letter. I live at ‘Les Fontaines sur Seine’ at the Île de France. There is not fountain. It is not a island.

My school is ‘Ecole Irène Némirovsky’.

I have a small sister. She is very bad.

Happy Noel.

Yours sincerely,

Albert Dubois.

7eme janvier

Cher Albert,

Bonne Année ! C’est correct ? Je peux demander ma mère pour aider mon français, mais elle fait trop compliqué. J’espère tu peux comprendre-le.

J’ai une petite sœur aussi. Elles sont terribles, n’est-ce pas ?

As-tu des animaux ? J’ai une poney et un chien. Elle s’appelle « Starlight » et il s’appelle « Marcus ».

Ma sœur s’appelle « puce, tique, monstre, sorcière, crapaud, zit » ou d’autre insultes. Sa prénom est « Tabitha » ; en nos famille nous elle s’appelle « Kitty » parce-que je pense que « Tabitha » est le nom pour un chat. Malheureusement pas : elle est une espèce d’humaine.

Est-ce qu’il fait froid chez toi ? Il fait froid ici.

A bientôt,

Violette.

21st January

Dear Violet,

Thank-you for your letter.

I am afraid your sister cannot be more bad than my sister. Patrice is the most bad one. This morning, when I have tried to read my book, she has climbed on the chair behind me and dropped pencils, pens, and some coins on my head. It is impossible to read some poetry when you have a sister dropping some things on your head. Now, when I am trying to write this letter, she is trying to make the paper into an aeroplane. You will excuse the folded page.

I will try to make my homeworks now, and save this letter later when it has crashed in its flight.

My best wishes,

Albert.

P.S. Yes it is cold, but raining, no snow here.

16eme février

Cher Albert,

Avez-vous le ‘Jour du Saint Valentin’ en France ? Mais bien sûr : tout le monde sait que France est le capital de la romance. Dans une école de filles, c’est ennuyeux. Ma amie Annabelle dit qu’elle avait reçu trois cartes de valentin, mais elle est une menteuse. Elle ressemble à un corbeau, ou un homme faire peur des corbeau (pardon, je n’ai pas le français. Tu m’aide).

J’ai reçu un, seul. De mon père, bien sûr.

Pendant ce temps, je t’assure que ta sœur est un véritable ange à côté de la mienne. Elle a marché, tous les jours de cette semaine, autour de ma chambre, chantant des chants de noël.

« Silent night ! Holy night ! » elle chante. Non, pas chante, mais crie. Et puis elle me demande, « Qu’est-ce qu’une vierge ? »

« Demandez ça a ton professeur, » j’ai dit, « Ou à Sainte Audrey. »

Elle marche, et elle chante, continuellement.

J’espère que tu as terminé tes devoirs, et ton livre.

Bonne chance !

Violette.

27th February

Dear Violet,

You can say épouvantail, but for sure your friend Annabelle cannot be so ugly? If she truly is, then better for you. You will be the more beautiful, and also there will be no crows near you. I am sorry I have not send you a valentine card. I am a bad friend.

Has you been told the news at your school? My class will travel there in the Easter holidays. I look forward to meet you. Perhaps I can stay at your home. You must ask your mother. I am sure we can be good friends. The best part is, I will be safe from the terror Patrice for one week. Today she has taken all my books down and changed the covers one to the next. They are quite folded and two are torn. Of course the words and the poems are not damaged, but I am angry still. I wonder what is the penalty for throwing a sister from a window?

Do you ask your Mother. Not about Patrice, who is beyond the control of humans, but about my visit.

Best wishes,

Albert.

10eme mars

Cher Albert,

C’est trop excitant. Je suis impatient de ton visite.

J’ai demandé à Mama, et elle a dit « Oui » sans hésitation ! En fait, Mama est « francophile ». Elle a été envoyé à une école française, en Suisse. Là, elle a appris la posture et le français. Le français est le deuxième chose le plus important pour elle.

Ne t’inquiète pas de la carte de valentin. C’est un amusement stupide pour les vaches comme Annabelle. Nous sommes philosophes, n’est pas ?

Je comprends ton peine en regard de ses livres endommagés. Ma sœur maligne, inspirée par les histoires de Mama de son école suisse, essaie d'équilibrer mes livres sur sa tête stupide. Bien sûr, ils tombent. Maintenant, je garde tous mes livres en piles sur le sol de ma chambre. Peut-être je vais construire un mur pour arrêter le petit singe. Un mur de livres ; un mur de mots.

Alors, tu verras bientôt toi-même. J’espère la épouvantaille Annabelle et la monstre Kitty ne tu effraies pas directement en France.

A bientôt et bon voyage,

Violette.

Chez Tickham

red knot

Ah, the memories a girl packs away, that seem safely buried. Bimbling about the house on a rainy afternoon, looking for something entirely other, a favourite pencil perhaps, or a migratory sock or bra strap, there is a danger of coming across an explosive device. A trigger to the bursting of a dam to release a flood of memories. A red wire that sparks back to life a long-neglected mesh of synapses, that detonates into sudden suffocating tears, hot prickles and a gasping hollow in the chest. Or nothing at all. I find a rock that must once have been precious enough to carry home from a seaside holiday but now prompts not a twinge. A matchbox rattling with a tiny tooth that means nothing to me. Then my fingers light upon a knotted ribbon that I have recognised even before I bring it out from the back of the drawer. My fingertips remember, my hands remember, my heart remembers before my slow brain tells me what I have found, and by then it is too late.

I am tugged back to an early spring, daisy-speckled Easter, with the sun yellow and the wind blowing from the south, all the way from lavender-drunk Provence. Twelve years old. Memory, that liar we trust against all evidence, tells me that every day was dew-fresh at dawn, the sky blue from horizon to horizon, a few cartoon clouds sailing about up there like candy floss. That the picnic air buzzed improbably with curious insects, up and about much too early if they were really there at all. That the evenings were cool enough for fires to be lit and sat by in the flattering, flickering amber light, with warm apple juice, cinnamon-scented, steaming up our eyes.

Kitty, the dread presence that has shadowed my life for as long as I can remember, is oddly absent from the images that first return to me. She must have been there, and if I dwell too long she will begin to break back in. No account of a time of perfection should allow such a flaw, but what can I do? Well, at least I will refuse to admit her opinions, even if I cannot prevent her presence. Clearly this is to be interpreted history. Clearly, that is a warning, dear friend.

It was a time of innocence, viewed from this distance, when I could still find simple joy in the velvet touch of Starlight’s lips as she daintily accepted a mint from my hand. Father still in the house (though a careful historical account would note the frequency and length of his absences increasing in inverse proportion to the warmth of Mother’s greeting on his return). A golden age, before the spectre of exams; when the onset of womanhood was well advanced, but there were no grounds to suspect that my bum would continue to grow beyond any reasonable demand; when during term-time I did not see the ickle git sister for days at a time; when Garton Grange was home only to Mother, Father, Kitty (worse luck) and the occasional visiting relative – no Paying Guests, no babies, no artists or students colonising the place like ants.

All of which I rehearse less for your benefit, more for mine, in order to delay the assault of the centre of this memory. Hopelessly, impossibly, standing as I am with the frayed little red knot in my palm. Every thread of it links to Albert. The images ravel themselves out.

Walking across the dewy grass to the stile – with Albert.

Pointing out the shapes of the clouds, the menagerie limited by language more than imagination. Cheval, cochon, vache… one becomes the next becomes the next, malgré our wish to keep them hanging there in the gallery of our imagination – with Albert.

Staring steamy-eyed into the fire, having nothing to say and hoping the flush of embarrassment would be hidden by the glow of the flames – with Albert.

Feeding mints to Starlight, though I had done it many times before, and would since – but always in memory now – with Albert.

As the clouds, so the memories: one becomes the next becomes the next. I try to look away, but I can feel them still. If I close my eyes, they are projected there. I am twelve again.

It would seem I have rather given my story away already, but let us take a little longer to recall the few days that were the most thrilling in my life to that time. I will give you my memories as I have them, and you will have to trust that I am being truthful enough. Meanwhile, I should be grateful if you would remember that age – still only twelve, a child – and judge me kindly.

arrival

Long before the charabanc of exchange students arrived, I had constructed from the letters a clear image of Albert. From the letters, but more from my imagination and from bits and pieces of French film, posters, adverts. The ideal French boy. Quite tall and slender, with hair inclined to foppish length, dark, but not the oiled plumage of his southern cousins. A hawkish nose, of course, and sad dark eyes staring away into a memory. Soft, sallow skin. Long artist’s fingers, flawless nails and a lounging posture. One does not imagine bulging biceps in tight white cotton, when dreaming of a gallic homme ideale. The lank-maned Italian would display a chest broad and well coated. A German, of course, would have polished skin taut over efficient muscle; further east and the muscle will be more thickly padded, a hint of the solid, aggressive belly that will soon come. Your Dutchman will be husky, ruddy and cheerfully space-occupying. A Dane steely and wiry and intense, with steely wiry specs and steely wiry intellectual rigor. Our French boy, though, must have a more romantic or philosophical intellect, which is better suited to metaphysics than to engineering. Regarding life more with sorrow than with disgust, he studies it to accept it, not to force change. He will have imbibed with his mother’s milk a firm grounding in art, philosophy and wine.

Whatever country you find yourself in, it is easy to pick from the faces around you one you will recognise as being prototypical for the whole nation, disregarding the fact that you have chosen one from hundreds, all the others rejected for not being typical enough. But we are tribal cave-dwellers and are suspicious of strangers, so we reassure ourselves that we know them and put them in their little boxes. Be stylish, be quaint, be invasive, be brusque, be lazy, be careless. But be what we tell you to be. These are the rules, and they apply with particular strength to the French, across the channel at whom we have been glaring with fear, pity, hatred, envy, incomprehension and disgust for centuries. And, (whisper it and do not tell king Henry) also with never-to-be-admitted grudging admiration and a sense of inferiority that we conceal with john-bullish beef-roasting boastful scorn. Inferiority partly because they are fortunate to occupy a country that is larger, warmer, more mountainous, more thickly forested, and endowed with longer, wider rivers, but also in the face of an inborn knowledge of art, film, food, and above all a certainty of who they are. Or so it seems from this side of the sea. There is a reason we have had to borrow from French savoir faire and insouciance. The latter, mind you, seems to me to be an excuse, set out in advance in case of the failure of any project: if I am not committing myself wholly to this, then I risk no loss of face. This is not an existential threat to me . The heart can be kept carefully hidden, and who will know then, if it gets cracked?

Even the largest rivers sensibly wind about on their journeys: meanders are their shrugs – very well, I shall take this path, where the soil is soft and no great rock blocks my progress, and it matters not to me as the sea will no doubt wait. So, our Frenchman is like a river then? Absolutely itself, knowing not just how to do but how to be. Full of hidden depths and fish. Wet around the edges but able to sweep you away. Something like that; and with thoughts something like these, I prepared myself to be swept, waiting with the rest of my form for the bus to arrive.

It was the first day of the Easter holidays, and we were all packed up and ready to go home. This was in the days when I was boarding still, though home most weekends. I was in third form, and the Kitty-witch had not yet been afflicted on poor old St Audrey’s, though no doubt her prep school teachers were already sending letters to warn of the terror that was to come in September. Reckless, the first form teachers were smirking and shaking their heads at the desperation of her current warders and imagining that a poor timid little new bug would pose no threat to them, despite my having warned them when I was in first form myself. They had chuckled complacently in the same way at prep school when I had explained to them that I had a younger sister whom my Mother had tried to smuggle into the house in disguise as a kitten, but who had turned out to be a devil. I had warned them that she looked more-or-less like a human child, but they should not be fooled. They had smiled and nodded and failed to prepare for the hurricane. Now they were beginning to look around and survey the wreckage, mutter under their breaths ‘just one more term’ and look longingly at the calendar and drinks cabinet, and wave flags across the playing fields at their senior school colleagues to let them know of the coming catastrophe.

No less a catastrophe for me. The social stigma of having a younger sibling in school would be crushing, especially with such a sibling as Tabitha, which is the Tickham minor’s real name