– You are going back soon, Shona?
– What? I looked up from the book I was reading, then said automatically, Have you finished the exercise?
I needn’t have bothered asking. Working with Laurent in the week since coming back had been so peaceful that I read half of the time, chatted with him the other half. He had a cold but he’d been brighter and more calm than I’d ever seen him. He passed the book over. Clean, neat writing. One mistake.
– You are? he asked again, staring at me.
– Where?
I felt an uncertain panic, as though Laurent had discovered a secret about me, though I wasn’t sure what the secret was. I hadn’t told him I was leaving. I didn’t know how to yet, and I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t then tell his mother. I didn’t want her to know before she paid me.
I just had to wait until the end of the month, to get paid.
– Australie.
– What makes you think I’m going back to Australia?
– Your family. How can you stay away so long from them? There are so many.
– That’s why I can, I smiled. But Laurent frowned.
– Don’t you like them?
Ouch, he was pushing my cringe button. This cringe button was something I was born with, I think, or else it was installed early on in my childhood. Installed by the family that would always have me in its clutches was the inability to admit it.
– Yes.
– Ah! Laurent looked both sad and happy, and strangely bashful.
– Of course, I did an elaborate gesture, my brothers are a bit stupid, as you’ve seen in the photo, but, you know …
Laurent laughed through his teeth. The laugh grew wetter and wetter as he got carried away with the manufacture of saliva. Then the front door opened and Laurent closed his mouth. It was M. and Mme Durebex. M. Durebex stood in the doorway, holding forth an L-shaped arm in a pristine white plaster cast.
– You see? he said to me. I was just as stupid as you.
He had been hit by a car. There was a gash down his nose and a nest of scratches in the hollow of his left cheek. A deep purple bruise spread from the cheekbone up to his thinning hairline. His wife helped him up the stairs, her footsteps clipping purposefully over his uneven shuffle. When they reached the kitchen above us, Laurent turned to me, fighting an expression of disgust.
– His face! he exclaimed.
Then he began to throw his pen around the room. He picked up his book and let out a histrionic sigh. He held his ruler to his shoulder and narrowed his eyes at me. Pan! Pan! Still not getting a response, he reached across and rapped my cast with the ruler.
– Does it hurt? he said.
– You still have a page to read, Laurent. He rapped harder.
– Does it, Shona?
I withdrew my arm and put it in my lap. Laurent dragged phlegm up his throat with an almighty rattle. He arched his neck over Punch and Judy, covered in his scrawl, and pursed his lips. A green glob wobbled forth, was sucked back, then wobbled forth again.
– I suppose it would hurt, I said, holding my cast up. It’s very hard.
He swallowed his snot, curled his lip, then opened up Punch and Judy. There were a lot of phrases that were identical in French and English, nuances and all, no explanations needed.
Laurent’s cold got worse that week and he stayed home from school, and I stayed at my home. I wrote to Matthew.
Life continues back in Paris. I have trumped you with your plaster of Paris sculptures, because now my left wrist wears a sculpture of its own. I’m leaving the Durebex family – too much of a strain and it’s not worth it any more. Are you still coming to visit? My shower cubicle is very comfortable …
I wrote to my parents.
I broke my wrist on the last day skiing. At least it’s the left one – like father like daughter, hey Dad? I’m going to resign from my job, but I have to wait till the end of the month to get paid. I’m prepared to wait for more work – Rosa is a start, I’m still teaching her – after all, settling down in Paris has taken so much longer than I expected. Something’s bound to turn up.
P.S. I’ll take up your offer, Dad. Mum has the number of my bank account.
I addressed the envelope. I got halfway through the postcode and couldn’t finish it. I had forgotten it, the postcode of the place I had lived almost all my life. So I just wrote, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
– Show me, show me your plaster! said M. Durebex. Oh, yours is so nice, oh là là là là. Mine’s already been changed twice and I want them to do it again. Here, show me. Oh là là, c’est un chef-d’oeuvre! These Parisian doctors are nothing but a bunch of morons.
– Shona, his library book! said Mme Durebex. You must read his library book. It’s very difficult, he must learn it by heart, then write a summary. Don’t do any other work today, that’s the most important thing.
– Look! M. Durebex interrupted. Look at all the lumps on mine. There! he thrust it closer. I’m going to demand they redo it and otherwise I’m going to New York. Pardon? Yes! I’m going!
– Under the tongue! Suck it till it dissolves! Mme Durebex commanded, placing a tube of medicinal granules into Laurent’s mouth.
It was like doctoring a sick animal, the way she held her son’s head back and inserted the tube. One of Laurent’s hands went up as though he might like to do it himself, then flopped back down to fiddle with his rubber.
We were working in the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon. There was a lot to catch up on after Laurent’s absence from school. Mme Durebex went up and down the stairs with her shopping parcels. She came into the kitchen with a large pink handkerchief and placed it over Laurent’s face.
– Blow!
M. Durebex doddered in and out of the kitchen in a pair of tangerine pyjamas, complaining there was only Perrier, no Evian. I watched him. When M. Durebex left the room, Laurent said to me through the tube in his mouth, But why you look at my father?
I said nothing. The tube could have been in my mouth, stilling my tongue. Mme Durebex trooped back in.
– I’m sick of that shop, charging four times as much as anyone else. Who do they think we are?
We had been working all afternoon with the kitchen lights on. The dark winter day developed into night without me noticing. I waited and waited for Laurent to recommence working, thinking of the film I was supposed to see at eight o’clock. Laurent sat with his jaws clamped.
– Keep reading, I said.
He shook his head.
– We’re running out of time, Laurent.
– I’m not allowed to talk. Don’t make me talk.
I leant over and took the tube from his mouth. Four of the one hundred-odd tiny beads dropped onto the book, and Laurent began to wail.
– Oh, just pick them up, I said impatiently.
– MAIS IL FAUT PAS LES TOUCHER AVEC LES MAINS!
– Don’t you dare scream in my face!
Mme Durebex stuck her head in the door.
– Tu lui fais faire ses devoirs, Shona! ET QUE ÇA SAUTE LAURENT!
You jump, I nearly yelled back at her. Out the window!
Laurent licked up the granules like a nervous puppy, and we finished reading the book. I explained the story, then Laurent skipped around the kitchen, retelling it with appropriate gestures. Mme Durebex was on the landing talking into the telephone. Her husband approached and began to wave his cast millimetres from her face. This time he seemed more brutal, perhaps because he was unaware of me, unlike the time I’d seen him at the chalet.
Mme Durebex kept talking into the telephone, M. Durebex kept pretending to hit her with his plaster cast. I watched in amazement. Talk about heavy handed. Laurent stopped mid-sentence. He stamped his foot.
– But why you look at my father like that?
– Because I’m sick of looking at you!
The time for the movie came and went. I’d made a rendezvous with Chantale and couldn’t contact her as she was already out. She would be furious. I was furious: I had never stood anyone up before. Laurent gazed blindly at the page, searching for an irrelevant word while I urged him to forget it, hurry, finish, write the summary. At the sink, Mme Durebex scrubbed mussels for dinner. Her elbows looked sharp through the pale pink cashmere. Suddenly she exploded. Laurent was writing too much, it was getting late, Claudine had said they only had to write six lines.
– He only has to write ideas now, I said. They’ll do the composition together at school on Monday.
– Well, I don’t want that. Tell me the story in six lines, Laurent. RACONTE-MOI!
Laurent looked around in a daze. He dropped his pencil, he tried to translate. His mother stood over him, shouting, What? What? And at me, Shona, what is the meaning of this? I put my head in my hands, wanting to forget the part I played in all of this. Why was I still here?
– Why hasn’t he done it, Shona? she yelled. Why doesn’t he understand it?
Why hadn’t I left? Why wasn’t leaving easier? I had to get myself out of here. But looking across the table at Laurent’s long face, his eyes glassy with tears, I couldn’t forget that leaving the job was also leaving him. And there was my pay packet, my bloody pay packet. Nothing to them, but a month’s rent for me.
Mme Durebex was on the phone to Claudine. Laurent began to weep as she shrieked through the door.
– It is six lines! It is six lines!
Laurent was shouting something incoherent. M. Durebex was shouting from his room for everyone to stop shouting so he could hear the television. Loudest of all, Mme Durebex was shouting into the telephone, and back at us through the kitchen door. It was deafening. It was ugly.
– COME here, Shona, COME and tell Claudine what you’re doing!
She shoved the receiver into my face.
There was chaos all around me. I refused to talk into the phone. I consoled myself with the comical vision of a bewildered Claudine on the other end. Mme Durebex slammed down the phone and ordered us downstairs to work.
Gratefully, we went.
– Listen Laurent, I said quietly, you’d better work. I’m leaving.
He began to cry again. I tried to comfort him. I wasn’t sure he was crying because I was leaving, and I was leaving even if he was.
– Can’t we speak French? he sobbed.
– Mais bien sûr. Just work.
He was nearly finished when she came clacking down the stairs. The sound of her heels counterpointed my angry heartbeat.
– Correct it, Shona, she snapped.
– He hasn’t finished yet, I snapped back.
– Correct it while he’s doing it because I’ve had enough!
Laurent finished and passed it to me. I glared at Mme Durebex.
– Can you leave us to work in peace?
She left the room with threats of no television for Laurent. I looked at Laurent’s composition. An illegible jumble of Franglais. Quickly, I wrote another version. Laurent sat there stunned, holding back the tears. I prepared to leave. If I hurried I would catch Chantale coming out of the cinema. M. Durebex was bellowing down the stairs for Laurent to come and eat. Mme Durebex bellowed over the top of him. Then there was clack clack clack, the gunshots of her heels coming down the stairs.
– Have you finished? Show me.
– I did it for him in the end, I said contemptuously.
– Good, she said simply, and patted her son on the back. Laurent, go and eat.
– In future—
She swivelled to face me.
– In future …?
– I won’t do his work for him.
– But that’s what you’re hired for, mademoiselle!
– I’m hired to help him, to teach him, not to do it all for him. He’s going to have to work on his own some day.
– LOWER YOUR VOICE!
– Excuse me, but I think Laurent’s just too used to having everything done for him. You don’t even let him dress himself, or blow his own nose. I think it’s ridiculous.
Her thin lips parted in shock.
– Ma-dame!
I went to the door without another word. She said as I left, We’ll talk about this on Monday.
I doubted it.