Cry to Dream Again Page 2

  Then, at the very end of the Great War, Philippe was killed in an accident in the trenches while cleaning guns, leaving Louise with a baby son, Charlot, and the two businesses to run single-handedly. With a strong vein of rustic stoicism, as well as a good head for figures, she stifled her grief and set to work to amalgamate the épicerie and the estaminet into one enterprise, so that, ever since, the épicerie had held the bar, the tobacco, some groceries and other paraphernalia, enabling women to drink not only coffee, but also something more fortifying, possibly a tricolore, a coffee laced with a shot of cognac, or other alcoholic refreshment if they wished, while the former estaminet preserved its role as a sanctuary for the men to which they could retire with their beer and where they could play their games and read the newspapers. The establishment had recently acquired the added attraction for the villagers of a telephone booth, ensuring more custom and more revenue for Louise.

  When Jacqueline and Shirley appeared in the entrance, laden with baguettes from the bakery, Louise abandoned her customers and rushed out from behind the bar to hug and kiss them. “Ah, Jacqueline, they tell me you are leaving soon! How I shall miss you and my little Chérie!” she exclaimed, twiddling one of Shirley’s curls in her plump fingers. “You know, my little one, my film star, you are even prettier than when you arrived. It’s the fresh country air! My Charlot will miss you so much!”

  Charlot, her son, her only child, had always had a soft spot for Shirley, and these days was positively smitten with her, though she tried to avoid him because he, being a chimney sweep, was always soot-blackened whenever she saw him. Added to which poor Charlot was afflicted by a nervous tic that kept his left eyelid in constant motion, and he also had difficulty communicating because of a distortion in the structure of his mouth. Only his doting mother could understand him, so for other people he had to resort to acting out his meaning, particularly because his handwriting, like his speech, was well-nigh unintelligible. He seemed unperturbed by these misfortunes himself, though Shirley found them unavoidably distracting. She bestowed her sweetest smile on Louise, for indeed she was very fond of her, but had no interest at all in Charlot, the apple of his mother’s eye. Luckily Charlot was out on this occasion.

  Maman and Louise talked nineteen to the dozen for far longer than it took to buy anything. When she was a small child and first came to France for three weeks every summer, Shirley used to while away the time inspecting those shelves that contained everything under the sun, and then to amuse herself she would imagine that the groceries and the fabrics, even the nails and the screws, came down out of their boxes and tins at night to dance together in lines and circles on the counter and the floor. She saw the forks and spades as male dancers leaping across the shop, and thought how exciting it would be if little boys danced as the small items, the trowels, hammers and screwdrivers, while the sweets and the ribbons became little girl dancers in pretty costumes.

  This childish fascination had been replaced by a more adult interest in the conversations between her mother and Louise, which previously she had found boring. Peppered with audible exclamations like “Ah, not really? You don’t say!” or “Unbelievable!” or “How could she?”, it was mostly conducted in a whisper that Shirley had to strain to hear against the chatter of the other customers. It was certainly much more entertaining than any formal interchange with Madame de la Croix could ever have been, because it was nothing more than gossip.

  There had always been the traditional disputes between the mayor and the parish priest and sometimes also between the schoolmaster and the priest; there were the long-standing feuds between families in the village that occasionally erupted into bouts of fisticuffs, and, most interestingly, there were the regular surprise appearances of babies who seemed to come unannounced from nowhere. This was not all, for there were also the night-time elopements of people who were not known to have had any previous close contact with each other. Usually, according to Louise, they left messages for their families saying that they were very sorry, though as she pointed out, that really didn’t count for much. Of course there were multiple illnesses and accidents to be recounted as well. Shirley would try to piece together what was going on from such snippets of information that she could pick up, and in her mind’s eye converted her impressions into a lively fandango of characters, passing each other, jostling each other, weaving in and out of formations, appearing and disappearing, all against a dark, indecisive background.

  Today, however, the talk was rather different, for when, after a good ten minutes of chatter, Louise paused to take a sip of coffee, Maman took the lead, announcing casually that she and Shirley had been to Paris for the day. Louise’s jaw dropped. “Oh, you lucky girl!” she declared, looking at Shirley and forgetting the rest of her tales. “I’ve never been there in all my years! You must tell me all about it – when I’ve served these customers” – and she turned hastily to deal with the queue that had been patiently forming, all the while straining to catch snippets of the whispered conversation. Shirley grasped the opportunity with a childish excitement: there was so much to tell, right from the moment they had left home last Saturday morning. Ted had not been at all keen to join them: a true farmer’s boy, as everyone said, he had insisted on staying at home to help his grandfather on the farm.

  “I’ll take you down to the station in the pony and trap, though, and I’ll come and collect you this evening if you tell me which train you’ll be on,” he offered, as if that was a sure way of putting an end to any further attempts to persuade him to join the excursion.

  A sudden beam of light had appeared in sad little Mémé’s grey eyes when they urged her to accompany them. Without a doubt she would have loved a trip to Paris, but, after a moment, that light had faded when she brusquely announced that there was too much to do in the house and also in her garden, for she had her winter vegetables to plant and more fruit to gather in the orchard. Anyhow, she asked, what would she be doing with Paris fashions? “Ah, no, Jacqueline, Paris is not for me! I’ve never been there, it’s true, but it’s too late for me to be thinking of doing that now!” she muttered. “You two go and enjoy yourselves! I have the washing to do. See, I have the black soap ready here and waiting for me,” she announced firmly, pointing to a pile of laundry, “but first I must scrub those sticky marks off the range.”

  Wiping her hands on her apron, she deliberately turned to the great black range, the source of hot water and the means of cooking the wholesome country fare on which she prided herself. With her back to her daughter and granddaughter, she set to work to subject the already shining surface to a vigorous rubbing with an old cloth. Maman shrugged and made just one further attempt at persuasion – “Allons, Maman, a trip to Paris would do you good; a change of air would make such a difference!” – but all in vain, because her mother declared that the air in Paris could not possibly be better than the air in Trémaincourt, so Shirley and her mother went on their own. There was, of course, no point in asking Pépé if he would like to come. Even after the trip, on their return late in the evening, no one had shown any great interest in their day out, so here in the épicerie was the chance to savour the excitement of that glorious day once more.

  Louise listened, enthralled by Shirley’s description of the wide avenues and their tall, elegant buildings, of the networks of little back streets with their small shops, of all the famous sights they had seen and of the gorgeous displays in the department stores. The city was vibrant, alive with its own dynamism. Although Maman said she did not know Paris very well and had only been there once or twice during the War, she expertly led the way down into the Métro at the Gare du Nord, then, a little while later, up and out into sunlit streets where the whole city was on display. It was like an enormous, breathtaking theatrical set with the Seine sparkling in front of them, the cathedral of Notre-Dame to the left rising majestically up out of its island and to the right, across the river, over the tops of the trees, the Eiffel Tower soarin
g skywards. The whole scene was a glittering interplay of light, colour and motion. Against this backdrop, the smartly dressed people, the traffic, even the river, either came towards Shirley or flowed away from her as she stood transfixed at the centre of that huge stage.

  “Voilà! C’est Paris!” Maman had exclaimed proudly, spreading her arms in a wide gesture at the beauty of the place, the capital city that seemed to belong to her. In England she switched between French and English, depending on circumstances, but in France she spoke only French and forbade her children to speak English, because, she said, they were half French and ought to speak their second language fluently. Ted certainly would have to learn French properly if he wanted to take over the farm at some future date, but Shirley, aware that French was essential to the ballet, had already embraced her mother’s tongue wholeheartedly. Long ago she had realized the advantage that her knowledge of French gave her over her classmates, both in dance lessons and in school, because she could grasp what was required much more quickly and could reply more fluently than anyone else. Here her first sight of Paris left her speechless with delight: ballet was the only language she knew that could do it justice. Paris was, in short, the setting for a glorious ballet in magnificent scenery.

  “You see how beautiful it is, Chérie!” Maman breathed in awe when, rooted to the spot, she gazed all around her. “Let’s see the sights this morning and then look at the shops this afternoon, shall we?” They hopped on and off buses and the Métro, and took in some of the major attractions, though there was no time to go up the Eiffel Tower or linger for long in Notre-Dame. “I suggest we take a boat down the Seine and eat our lunch on board; that will give us more time,” Maman suggested, unusually animated, at about midday.

  Although it was hours since they had caught the train that morning, Shirley was neither tired nor hungry, so bewitched was she by this gleaming city that infected her with its vigorous appetite for life. She was determined to return, but not as a tourist with a packed lunch. No, she would come back as a famous dancer; she would stay in the best hotels and travel not by bus or the Métro, but in a chauffeur-driven motorcar, and she would buy the latest fashions in the department stores. Her mother interrupted her reverie as the boat made its way upstream, “Come on, you must eat if you want to go shopping this afternoon!” She handed Shirley a crusty chunk of baguette filled with homemade butter and garlic pâté and a cup of coffee from the thermos flask. “You need a new pair of smart shoes, so let’s go and have a look in La Samaritaine; it’s a superb department store, and I’ve been longing to see it since it was remodelled a couple of years ago. You’ll love it!”

  Three days later, in Louise’s café, Maman, glancing at her watch, broke into Shirley’s breathless narrative. “Come on, dear, it’s midday; Pépé will be waiting for his lunch and you know he can’t start without his bread.”

  “Oh, Maman, let me just tell Louise about La Samaritaine,” Shirley pleaded.

  “All right, but don’t take long. Perhaps I should be setting off,” said Maman. She bade Louise goodbye and hurried away, for she knew that her father and son would already be seated at the dining table, and her mother would be serving them the first course. Indeed, all Louise’s elderly male customers had long since left the bar and the smoking room, slowly making their way to their homes where they could expect to find the table laid and their dutiful wives waiting to ladle out the soup. The menfolk, husbands and sons, would eat in solitary silence, while the women waited at table, standing behind their husbands’ chairs, ready to serve the next course.

  Shirley took up the gist of her tale again, telling Louise how right Maman had been about La Samaritaine. Not only was it superb but, as far as she could tell, it had no equal in London for its range of goods, for its magnificent wrought-iron staircase and the views from its top floor. They had lingered over the perfumery and the make-up counters and the silk scarves and the leather handbags, before climbing the flights of stairs to the latest fashions and the lacy lingerie and the fabric department with its rolls of satins, silks, cottons and velvets, then the hats and lastly the shoes. “Since we’re here, why don’t we buy you a pair of shoes for everyday and also a pair for your cousin Edith’s wedding?” Maman had suggested. “You haven’t forgotten it, have you? In fact, why don’t we find you an outfit for it as well?”

  Edith’s forthcoming wedding did not merit much mention in Shirley’s account. Indeed, she had forgotten all about it until Maman suggested buying clothes for it, so she merely told Louise that there was to be a wedding in Pa’s family, without going into details. In Paris it was easy for the French side of her character to assert itself, and her French inner voice told her that she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to go to the wedding. Fat, ungainly Edith, so vulgar and so badly dressed, would doubtless look like a meringue on the day. In any case, she didn’t know her at all well. What’s more, Edith was older than Shirley by at least five years, so it was unlikely that there would be many other young people to talk to among her guests, apart from Edith’s sister Thelma, and she was someone whom Shirley preferred to avoid as much as possible.

  “Do I have to go?” she had asked plaintively.

  “But of course you do! She’s your pa’s niece. You must be there!” Maman had exclaimed, thereby putting a stop to all protests.

  “But aren’t you coming? And what about Ted?” Shirley enquired pointedly.

  “Oh,” replied Maman, “Ted will be camping with the Scouts that weekend, but,” she added somewhat vaguely, “I expect I’ll probably come too.”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic,” Shirley answered quickly, scrutinizing her mother with a quizzical eye.

  “Well, naturally I’ll come to support your father, if he wants me there; but you know I don’t understand what those people – your pa’s family, I mean – I don’t understand what they are saying, and I can’t talk to them because they don’t understand me, so I’d prefer to stay at home. Anyhow,” she added, “I think there may be some special function at the Embassy that day. But we’ll see.”

  The question of whether Maman was going to come or not was frankly unimportant in comparison with the prospect of a new Parisian outfit and matching shoes. They had to be worth an afternoon’s discomfort and embarrassment in Birmingham. “All right,” Shirley relented, “I’ll go with Pa.”

  Her reward was a divine sea-green dress with a tiered skirt in a light, silky fabric, followed by a small hat like a turban gathered into a green rose which matched the dress perfectly and sat neatly on her head. “Oh, my goodness! That must be so pretty! I’m sure you’ll look lovely! I can just imagine how your blond curls will peep out round the edges. I’d love to see it, and I’m sure Charlot would too!” Louise exclaimed with a touch of envy in her voice. “So you also bought shoes?” she continued, without noticing Shirley’s grimace at the mention of Charlot. “Your Maman must have been quite carried away!” She fell silent for a few seconds before observing, “She must have spent a huge amount of money.”

  “Oh yes, we bought two pairs and you’re right: they cost a lot,” said Shirley confirming Louise’s unspoken calculations. “But you should see them, Louise! One pair is green and shiny with high heels and pointed toes for the wedding, and the other is in smart brown leather with a slight heel and laces for everyday, so, you see, we really have something to show for our trip to Paris!”

  “And your mother? What about her? Didn’t she want a new outfit for the wedding too?” Louise enquired.

  “No, no,” Shirley replied, remembering how her mother had taken notes of the dresses that had caught her eye, and had even tried some of them on. “No, she said she had plenty of lovely clothes in her wardrobe, and she would be sure to find something there, or will make something that will do – if she decides to go!” As an afterthought she added, “She hasn’t made up her mind whether to come.”

  “Oh, is that so?” Louise commented, raising on
e eyebrow.

  3

  There was a balletic skip in her step, in spite of her wellington boots, when Shirley made her way back up the road to the white-walled, red-roofed farm. Her brother and Pépé were, as expected, already seated at the table, too busy eating to talk, while Mémé and Maman stood between the table and the stove, waiting for the men to finish their meal so that they could then sit down and have their own lunch. The bread had all but been demolished. This traditional, unquestioned segregation at mealtimes annoyed Shirley, who found it difficult to keep her opinions to herself. Mémé worked quite as hard in the house, the dairy, the vegetable garden, the meadow and the orchard and out in the fields as Pépé did, she reasoned, and should be permitted to sit at table with him. Maman, too, deserved better than that, so did she herself, because one day she was going to be famous. This custom was the complete opposite of the way that men, young and old, behaved in the stories she read in her magazines: there, men were unfailingly chivalrous, holding doors open for ladies, pushing in their chairs at table and helping them onto trains and into cars, and would never dream of taking precedence over them. Ted, of course, revelled in the sense of superiority over his older sister that these Gallic mealtimes afforded him. Such behaviour, coupled with the primitive sanitary arrangements and the mud in the farmyard that splashed onto shoes and clothes – not to mention those geese in the meadow – were the rustic aspects of France that Shirley could not endure, and which she refrained from talking about in school. If she ever came to live in France, she would without a doubt have to live in Paris.