A Family At War, page 37
Roy says it's because we've been responsible for feeding everybody in the British sector of Germany. I think that's unfair. Why should we feed them? We haven't got enough for ourselves. But he says they were starving at the end of the war and much worse than we ever were, and teases that I can hardly complain about not having enough to eat when I've got a mouth full of pork pie.
We're having a picnic this afternoon. We've been window shopping all morning in the Rue de Rivoli, having our heads turned by all the luxuries for sale there - like sumptuous silk underwear and fur coats and shoes made of snake skin - and now we're in the Jardin du Luxemborg, sitting under the trees where it's cool. When we've finished our meal we're going to cut through the back streets to the Eiffel Tower. We've bought a street map so that we can explore on foot. We see more that way and it saves on fares.
We're looking for the Rue de Vaugirard and gazing up at the street names, when I see another plaque on a wall a bit further up the road. We've been seeing plaques all over the place ever since we arrived and they're beginning to intrigue me, so we cross the road to see what it is. And are brought up short by a sudden searing reminder of the war.
It's the saddest, bravest memorial. 'Ici,' it reads, 'est tombe pour la patrie' and immediately below is the name and age of the person who was killed. It was a young man of nineteen. Only a year older than me. How dreadful to be killed so young. There's a simple vase beneath his name, full of fresh flowers. And patterned right across the wall, marking the stone and his memory, is a row of bullet holes. 'Ici est tombe.' I translate for Roy but he's already worked it out for himself. These are plaques to honour the men and women of the resistance who were killed during the liberation, when they rose against the Germans and finally drove them out of their city. Standing there with the peace of the park behind us and the peacetime racket of the traffic buzzing round us, it's unbearably moving. There's the same fierce pride in this city as there is in London.
We walk on to the Eiffel Tower talking about the war and the price so many paid for it. It's four years ago now but still too close for comfort and talking like this makes me feel ashamed to be so happy. And I am so happy. To be loved and to know myself loved, through and through like the name in a stick of rock, not just now and then or when I've been on my best behaviour but all the time, all day long, just for being myself, is such happiness it's almost too good to believe. I carry it about with me all day like a charm.
There are so many pleasures. To wake in his arms with that crazy eye inches away from my face and the smell of coffee rising to us from the courtyard below, to sit by the window at our round table and eat our breakfast together - two big chunks of a fresh baguette with a little pot of butter and a huge pot of coffee - as Madame harangues the maid and people call down from their windows; to step out into the warmth of a summer morning, or to fresh rain and the smell of damp pavements, and know that we have another day to ourselves and can go wherever we please; to dine like princes in our local cafe with a carafe of wine on the table and the waitress greeting us like old friends; to walk thigh to thigh tempering our strides to one another - although how he manages it I can't imagine when he is six foot one to my five foot four; to stop and kiss whenever the spirit moves us - and oh it does move us, so much and so often - and to be approved of. Passers-by step round us, as they do to all lovers, smiling benignly; the concierge calls us her little English lovers. I should like to live here forever.
Today we're going to Versailles. We've been to most of the famous places in Paris now, to the treasures of the Louvre and the cool of the Tuileries gardens, to the place de la Concorde, where we were intimidated by the traffic and hooted at when we dared to try a crossing, to the Ile de la Cite, where we went into Notre Dame and Roy was surprised by the way people were wandering about and talking to one another. It's the first Catholic church he's ever been in and not what he expected. We've bought peaches in the markets of Les Halles and a sixpenny edition of La Fontaine at the bouquinistes. We've walked beside the lake in the Bois de Bologne by day and strolled beside the Seine at night. And now we're on a train and heading for the palace of the Sun King.
There's a military band playing on the parade ground, very raggedly and with lots of wrong notes.
'There you are, you see,' Roy says as we walk across the cobbles towards them. 'They knew we were coming.'
I'm wondering what the Hall of Mirrors will be like. I've heard so much about it and now we're nearly there.
It's a disappointment. The long mirrors are smeared and discoloured, the enormous chandeliers dulled by grease, the gilt work so dirty we can see the grime where we stand. It's survived the war but it hasn't been cared for. And the little theatre where Moliere staged his plays is even worse. We can see how charming it must have been when it was new but now it's tatty, the curtains split, the gilding cracked, the velvet seats faded and grubby and grey with dust.
'How sad!' I say, gazing down at it.
'We'll come back again when they've cleaned it,' Roy promises, 'and then you can see it in all its glory.'
Coming back reminds me of how soon we shall be going away, how soon we shall have to leave our charmed life in this tolerant city. 'Let's see the gardens,' I say.
They are magnificent, laid out in such a variety of patterned flowerbeds that we soon lose count of them. There's a vista wherever you look, long avenues of trees, lines of statues, lots of ornamental lakes, even a grand canal where the Sun King held his boating parties, all designed for the luxury and extravagance of a king and his court and now opened up for the rest of us. I love it. We stroll from one shimmering patch of water to the next, enjoying the reflected blue of the sky and admiring the statuary, here Apollo driving a chariot with four muscular horses each pulling in a different direction, here a golden goddess with purple grapes in her hair and a circle of gaping frogs at her feet, there a mighty Neptune surrounded by attendant sea nymphs. We find a little circular garden embedded in the trees and enclosed by a marble colonnade, white marble columns widely spaced with fountain heads between them. I wonder what it would look like if the fountains were playing.
But there's still the Petit Trianon to see, where Marie Antoinette played at being a milkmaid, so we set off to find it. We've barely walked a hundred yards before we hear the sudden splash of water. The fountains have been switched on. We run back at once to see them, knowing they will be extraordinary.
And they are. Now that water is foaming and rising all around him, Apollo is driving his horses through the waves of the sea. Their hooves splash into the water and white clouds of foam billow behind them. It's a water sculpture.
We can't wait to see the others. There's the colonnade and that's transformed too, enclosed by shimmering white walls of tumbling water, like a bower in a waterfall. We cross the central avenue to see the fountains of Neptune, who now rises in triumph from a swirl of sea foam, magnificently in his element. We stroll back to the golden goddess with grapes in her hair and find her totally and magically changed. Before she was merely a shy maiden standing on a plinth, now she is a goddess spellbound inside a cage of woven water. The frogs still raise their ugly gapes to the sky but now the fountains curve from their mouths to rise over the goddess and fall in a complimentary curve on the other side, and it's all so cunningly contrived that the moving water is woven like white wickerwork. I've never seen anything to equal it.
As we watch, a rainbow grows in the wet air above her head, in a touch of pure and perfect theatre, in this most theatrical of gardens. I have never been so happy in the whole of my life.
It's our last day. Our bags are packed, we've eaten our last petit dejeuner together, left our one-eyed nest under the eaves, said goodbye to Madame and the concierge, strolled across the bridge for the last sunlit time, and now we're doing the last of our shopping, not for fruit and pastries, but for two presents rich enough to placate our mothers. Sops for Cerberus. Not easy because we've very little money left.
We've considered scarves like the fashionable women wear here but decided against them because we've never seen our mothers in a scarf of that kind and it's no good giving them something they'll never wear, flowers are out because they'd fade, scent would be fine but it's much too expensive. Now we've turned out of the Rue de Rivoli into a shadowy square so that we can put our minds to the problem away from the distractions of the crowd. There's a shop in the corner with some very pretty blue objects in the window. So we stroll across to see what they are.
Vases and dishes and statuettes all made in the most beautiful glass we've ever seen, not hard and clear coloured, as you'd expect glass to be, but soft and clouded and moulded into rich swirling patterns, flowers with trailing leaves, cob nuts and partridges, a ring of plump fish curving about the brim of a rounded dish. Now these are different. They're also expensive. We choose a powder bowl for Roy's mother and a dish for mine and they cost us a pound each. A pound, for heaven's sake! Now we're down to a few francs to see us through the rest of the day. It'll have to be a meagre picnic but we're so pleased with our choice we don't mind.
Last picnic, last journey on the Metro with our last two tickets, last look at the Sacre Coeur as the train speeds us away. We've been totally happy in this lovely city and no matter what happens to us next, we shall always have this perfect time to warm us through.
CHAPTER 31
Back to earth with a thud. It seems to me that we've barely been home five minutes before the world rushes in to part us. Roy has to go back to college tomorrow and I had planned to stay in London for a day or two so that we could at least be together in the evenings but there are three letters waiting for me on the hall-stand - my exam results, which are credits and distinctions, a letter from King's confirming that there's a place for me on the Honours English course starting in October, and notification that I have been awarded the grant I applied for. It's not a straightforward award though, that's the trouble, and I can see it causing problems. The L.C.C. will pay me half of it, which will work out at £85 a year, but they expect my parents to provide the other half, and they won't like that. I shall have to go down to Felpham and sort it out.
After such a holiday, it's miserable to be parted but we tell one another I'll soon be back, which is true enough because there's not much of the summer holiday left. I pack my swimming costume, a change of underwear, the letters and Mother's expensive present into one of Gran's shopping baskets and walk to Tooting Junction.
Mother's on the beach when I arrive, sitting by the sea wall talking to Tony Twibell's mother, who's come out for a break from her job in the hotel and is slumped in the sunshine smoking a fag and looking pale as she always does.
'Oh yes,' Mother is saying, 'babies are my life. I've never wanted anything else really. Babies and animals. I just love them. The minute I saw our Carole I had to have her. And of course Pat's such a good little girl. There was no problem there.' Then she turns her head and sees me. 'Hello,' she says. 'When did you get back?'
I tell her and give her my present. She looks at it, but I don't think she's particularly pleased.
'Oh yes,' she says in her dismissive way. 'That's nice.'
'It's very expensive,' I tell her. 'I bought it in the Rue de Rivoli and you can't get better than that.'
She looks at it with rather more interest. Mrs Twibell looks too and smiles at me before she slips back into the hotel. Mother watches her go and then turns her attention to more immediate matters. 'How did you get on?' she says.
'I had a lovely time.'
'I'll bet you did,' she sneers. The expression on her face is so prurient it hurts me. But I'm still wrapped in the protective afterglow of the holiday, still full of myself and happy in my skin. I know what she's after and I know how to withstand her.
'We went right to the top of the Eiffel Tower,' I say. 'It was wonderful. You can see all over Paris.'
She waves all thought of the Eiffel Tower aside. 'That's not what I meant,' she says. 'You know what I'm talking about. How did you get on? What did you do? I want to know what happened.'
I'll bet you do, I think, but you're not going to. Whatever happened, or didn't happen, is personal and private between me and Roy, the way it’s always been. It's nothing to do with you. 'We went to Versailles,' I say, delighted to see how cross I'm making her. 'They switched on the fountains while we were there. You should have seen them.'
'You're going out of your way to be nasty,' she says. 'I don't see why you've come down here if you're not going to tell me anything.'
So I tell her I've passed my exams and got a place at King's and show her the letter about my grant.
She is not pleased. 'What's the matter with the fools?' she says. 'We can't do that. Do they think we're made of money?'
I try to explain that it's calculated on a sliding scale according to how much your parents earn. But she waves my explanation aside.
'Scale my eye,' she says. 'You're not the only one. You tell them that. We've got other children to think of. They can't expect us to pay for you.'
'Don't you want me to go to college?'
She shrugs. 'You can go where you like,' she says, 'just so long as we don't have to pay for it.'
'I'll bet you'd pay if it was Pat.'
'That's a different thing altogether,' she says. 'She's a good girl.'
I'm not going to win this argument. She's going to make me exist on half a grant. 'Is Dad coming down?' I ask.
'Don't think you can get round him,' she says. 'He's got less money than I have. If I can't afford it, I'm damn sure he can't. If you're so keen to go to this college of yours, you'll have to make economies. I'd have thought you'd have wanted to get engaged not gone rushing off to university.'
She sounds so aggressive. Why is she attacking me? No time to find out, for the boys are hauling a boat up the shingle towards us and she's flashing her eyes at them ready to flirt, and that's the end of conversation. Not that there's any point in continuing it because she's made up her mind. I shall have a swim and then I'll write to Roy and tell him what she's said.
The sea is cold but, once I'm over the initial shock, it's pleasant to swim again. Not from the sewer buoy this time. As I wade out Buck strolls down the beach towards me. He's bare-footed and his trousers are rolled up to his knees, so he paddles out to greet me. We stand ankle deep in sea water to talk to one another. He's looking at me so affectionately he makes me feel guilty. I'd forgotten how attentive he was last summer and how he peddled all the way to London to see me when I was ill.
'Look,' I begin, 'before you say anything, there's something you ought to know. I'm going to marry Roy.' I'm jumping the gun because we haven't said anything about getting married - yet. But I feel I've got to be honest.
He's so angry it's dreadful to see. 'You can't,' he says. 'He's going bald.'
His hair's receding at the temples. That's true. But he's hardly what you'd call bald. And anyway, what's that got to do with it. 'I thought you ought to know,' I say.
But he's already turning away from me, splashing out of the sea and running up the beach. Oh dear! I have upset him and I didn't mean to. Now what am I going to do?
But then Carole comes running into the ripples towards me and I forget about everything in the delight of seeing her again. She's so brown and looks so well. 'What have you been doing with yourself?' I ask. 'I've brought you some French chocolate.'
I've got another month's holiday before I go to King's and Roy's at college all day and hard at work most evenings, either studying with me or at his evening classes. I've got my first book list so I suppose I'd better settle down to some work too. It's still warm enough for me to read in the garden, so that's where I go during the day. It gets me away from my mother, who's on the attack whenever she sees me. 'When are you two going to get engaged?' she says. 'High time he put a ring on your finger. You mustn't let him drag his feet.'
Roy laughs when I tell him. 'Got to make an honest woman of you,' he says.
But I find it upsetting. I'd like to get engaged - and married - but not because she's telling me to. That just puts me off. I can't understand why she's being so aggressive about it.
'Not to worry,' Roy says. 'Just get settled at college. That's far more important than a ring. We'll marry when we can.'
But while I'm on half a grant and he's still at college and not earning, it's not likely to be yet. And meantime we see less and less of one another because there's so much getting in the way. I'm beginning to think I made a mistake when I applied to King's. Maybe I should have gone to work and started earning a wage. Then I would have been independent of my awful parents and able to pay my way
It's October and my first day at King's and too late for second thoughts. All the way up on the tube I've been thinking of Miss Davies and remembering the day she told me I would go to university. I thought all undergraduates were upper class and rich then, and now here I am, walking through the entrance into the quadrangle, surrounded by men and women as poorly dressed as I am. A lot of the men are wearing army surplus. And the girls are straight out of school, like me, and wearing similar cheap and cheerful clothes.
The place has changed since I came up for my interview. Now it's more like a building site than an oasis of academic calm. There are workmen all over the quadrangle digging up the concrete with pneumatic drills. They've roped off a duckboard pathway so that we can get in and out and they're making so much noise it's addling my brains. I stop to ask the nearest one how long they're going to be here.
He wipes the sweat from his forehead. 'You new are yer?' he says.
I admit it.
