In the Moon Read online

  When I had completed my Herculean task, I took stock of what I had achieved. The waist and crotch were extremely tight, but usable, if only barely. That was precisely the problem, for as I discovered by looking in Mother’s double mirror when no one was home, I was exposing more of my cleft than I considered decent. That four-inch allowance for the waist-to-crotch distance had been at least three inches short of what was needed. Not to worry: I would solve that problem by being careful not to give any onlookers the opportunity to see me from the back.

  The white thread on the dark blue material was an unusual design accent, as were the jagged and unhemmed cuffs and waistline. The flowered pattern for men’s garments was still a few decades off, so that, too, was a fashion novelty. All these minor shortcomings seemed trivial in comparison to the achievement as a whole. I was especially proud of the fact that I had managed it without sewing myself to some piece of furniture, which was remarkable, considering the important role that the dresser drawer had played in my project.

  I carefully planned my entry into the world of fashion. Lunch seemed to be the best time for a grand entrance. Everyone would be there, seated, and in an expectant mood as they waited for Raimond to start serving. With some careful maneuvering and timing I could be the last to enter the dining room before Raimond appeared with the platters. They would all see me enter and gasp with surprise and admiration.

  I waited in the vestibule until the right time and walked into the dining room with studied nonchalance, striving for an effect of casual insouciance, elegance, and ostentation all at once. But by the time I had reached my chair, I was dismayed to discover that no one had noticed me. I immediately muttered to myself, “Zut! I forgot something!” and walked out of the dining room backwards to conceal my partially exposed cleft. Once out of sight, I immediately re-entered the dining room, this time making a loud sound somewhere between a cough and a clearing of the throat to draw attention to myself.

  Father, who was closest to the door, looked in my direction. To avoid interrupting a guest who was discoursing volubly, he said under his breath to me, “Alan, this is lunch and not a masquerade ball. Now go to your room, take that silly thing off, whatever it is, and come back properly dressed.” I wasn’t to be thwarted and at some risk to my semi-exposed behind, I kept on walking past Father to my chair, certain that Mother would notice me. She would proclaim the magnificence of my attire, and her appreciation would vindicate my disobeying Father.

  She did notice and, after a pause to take in what she was seeing, burst into laughter. Soon, the other guests noticed me and joined in the merriment. Thoroughly crushed and humiliated, I retired to the kitchen.

  There, I explained to Raimond and Françoise what had happened. Raimond was immediately sympathetic and, without cracking a smile, said it was a pity they couldn’t appreciate the trousers for what they were, un vrai chef d’oeuvre, a true masterpiece. Raimond was turning out to be the best friend I ever had. He even soothed Françoise, who was out of sorts over my having gone into their room—which was strictly off limits to me—and for having used her sewing stuff. Françoise then gave me my plate of food, which I ate at the kitchen table while she interrogated me further about my tailoring travails.

  After eating, I found that the large meal had only made the tightness of the trousers worse. For a panicky minute, I thought I might never be able to get them off and that I would be cursed with having to wear them for the rest of my life. But a prolonged and painful struggle finally saved me from this dreadful fate. I put on my bathing suit for an afternoon of sand castle building and asked Raimond to put the ill-fated trousers in the garbage bin.

  Since then, I’ve never been keen on sewing, nor have I tried to be in the vanguard of fashion.

  Le Green Cottage (slightly right of center), Hardelot villas, 1935

  Tweet, Brenda, Alain, Aldridge, and Dan, Hardelot, 1935

  CHAPTER 4

  An English Governess and a Golfing Dog

  The end-of-summer trip back from Hardelot to Ville-d’Avray was a long drive in Mother’s slow, low-powered Talbot. So before we left Le Green Cottage, she went to the shops in central Hardelot and purchased a baguette, some ham, cheese and tomatoes. These picnic ingredients, along with some plates, goblets and a few eating implements, were packed into a picnic basket, which was then jammed into the already overloaded Talbot. Brenda, Mother and I wedged ourselves in and pushed off by nine in the morning.

  Around noon, Mother turned off the main road onto the first promising side road and drove until we all agreed on a bucolic spot overlooking the gently rolling hills of the Pas-de-Calais. All around us, small fields of wheat, oats, flax, barley, rye, and hay, contoured in bands and rectangles, formed a patchwork quilt of varied hues. The settings for Mother’s picnics were always wide-open landscapes, which she particularly loved.

  Sitting on an old blanket, surrounded by deep grass mottled with wild poppies, we savored our picnic and were lulled into a trance-like state by the steady twittering of a skylark as it fluttered erratically in the sky above us.

  After a brief postprandial nap, we continued our leisurely drive across this grand landscape, with Mother pointing out things of singular beauty or special interest. If they were crops, she would explain how they were used. If they were castles, churches, or cathedrals, such as those at Amiens or Beauvais, she told us their names and main characteristics. Or she would provide us with the lore and history of the locale we were passing through. I believe she must have studied the route beforehand for she was a steady fountain of knowledge on every trip. I loved this running commentary, which was never dull, and was her ingenious way of keeping Brenda and me from growing restless during the long journey.

  Raimond and Françoise had left the day before we did, riding in the larger, faster Peugeot with Father. He always managed to make the daytime drive in about four hours, which gave Raimond and Françoise plenty of time to unpack the car and finish an inventory at the house in Ville-d’Avray before the three of us showed up the next day. The latter chore was needed at this house, too, because it had been sublet for the summer.

  In those days, Ville-d’Avray was still dans la campagne, (in the countryside), even though it was only fifteen kilometers from central Paris. Ville-d’Avray had no beaches or mountains, but apartment-dwellers from Paris found it an ideal and convenient summer refuge from the city’s bustle and clatter, replete with trees and flowers, suffused with birdsong, and blessed with rural tranquility. Father, who remained and worked in Paris a good part of the summer and who couldn’t stand being alone in Ville-d’Avray, stayed at a comfortable hotel near his office in Paris.

  Father drove from Paris to Hardelot on Friday nights, preferring to drive at night when the main roads were free of local traffic. Horse-drawn farmers’ carts were still the major cause of delay and clutter on main roads in the daytime. At night, the only congestion consisted of rabbits and hares, which populated his headlight beams and often joined him for the rest of the journey, dangling from the car’s radiator grille. Françoise welcomed the arrival of these unexpected riders with her usual excitement and promptly converted them to a civet de lapin (rabbit stew) for Saturday lunch.

  Father once made the 280-kilometer trip at night in three hours. This was before the days of the autoroutes (super highways) and included stretches through the centers of many small towns with crooked streets and complicated intersections. But main roads between towns were dead straight, and Father thought nothing of driving at 150 kilometers an hour. High-powered, superbly sprung cars, such as Peugeots equipped with steel-belted Michelin tires, were already available in France in those days, so the trip was not as reckless as it sounds. In Mother’s Talbot, or later in her Simca, the trip took us about eight hours.

  Our return to Ville-d’Avray was always a shock to me. After the brilliant sunlit open spaces of the seaside, Ville-d’Avray seemed dark and closed-in, as if i
t had grown old and gloomy over the summer. The foliage, light green and lacy at the time of our departure in June, had grown dense and was now a dark shade of green. The effect was heightened by the fact that we arrived in the late afternoon, after the sun had dropped below the tree tops, but before dark. The contrast was striking and made me morose. I recovered the following morning with the arrival of sunlight in the garden. A temporary gardener had been hired for the summer, so that many flowers were still in bloom and the well-trimmed lawn, mottled with sunlit patches, glistened under the morning dew.

  I returned to the Cours Boutet de Monvel that autumn and discovered that the homework load had increased from three hours to four hours a day because I was now in a higher class. It’s hard to say who was more dismayed by the increase, Mother or I; she spent as much time coaching me as I did on my homework. Tweet’s departure had left a gaping hole, and the hunt for a governess once more went into high gear.

  To our collective amazement, it was Father who was the first to bring one in. He returned from a business trip to England in the company of an English governess whose advertisement he had seen in the London Times. Miss Parris was a grim-faced, graying, grumpy older woman who had sought the position because she wanted to learn French.

  Right from the start, things did not go well with Miss Parris. The biggest problem was that she knew absolutely no French, so she was no help to me with my homework assignments. Then, Mother and I found life easier if we spoke English to her, which meant that she was not achieving her own goal either.

  On one occasion, Mother couldn’t go to the Cours Boutet de Monvel with me and wrote out detailed directions for Miss Parris on how to reach the school by train and bus. Fortunately, I had previously done the trip by train with Mother on a day when her car was being repaired.

  As it turned out, Miss Parris’ sole responsibilities on this excursion were to be in charge of the money and to pay for our train and bus tickets. When we reached Paris, I was able show her where to exit the vast Gare Saint Lazare and where to wait for the bus. Luckily, Miss Parris had the bus number in Mother’s written instructions because that was the one thing I didn’t remember. But I knew where to get off the bus and from there, the way to the school.

  At the school, Miss Parris was unable to understand a word of the verbal instructions given to the parents. We didn’t discover this problem until we reached home, so I enjoyed a brief day’s respite from homework until Mother made a special trip to the school to get the information we needed.

  On our way to the bus stop for the ride home on the day she escorted me to school, Miss Parris and I walked past a pastry shop. In the shop window was the most exotic display of pastries I had ever seen. Mother and I regularly passed this patisserie on our way to and from the Place de la Madeleine, where she usually parked the car while we attended the Cours Boutet de Monvel. Mother had repeatedly turned down my suggestion that we go in and enjoy un petit gouté (a spot of tea). I had long suspected that the reason for her refusal was that she didn’t want to reward me for an afternoon of daydreaming and embarrassing her in class.

  I now told Miss Parris that Mother regularly took me into the patisserie for tea and pastries because she felt I needed sustenance for the long trip home. Miss Parris, who was by now completely in my thrall, dutifully led me into the establishment and allowed me to choose a superb pastry, and she did the same for herself as she ordered tea for the two of us. Dear Miss Parris complimented me on my choice of a fine tearoom as we enjoyed a delectable gouté. But she almost fainted when the waiter brought the bill for our little regalement. She had barely enough money to cover it.

  At home that evening, we learned that Fauchon’s, the establishment where we had our tea, was the most luxurious and expensive patisserie and tearoom in all of France. When Mother heard about my little caper, she was much amused and congratulated me for my ingenuity and refined taste. But Miss Parris knew I had played a trick on her and was greatly peeved, even though Mother reimbursed her for my extravagance.

  Soon after this incident, Miss Parris complained she was not learning any French and, after just six weeks with us, she handed in her notice. Brenda and I had never warmed to Miss Parris and were not unduly saddened by this news.

  After our governess departed, Mother insisted on giving Brenda and me an extra thorough scrubbing during our regular evening bath; she mentioned that she had recently complained to Miss Parris that she never washed behind our ears (and other places) at bath time. Mother claimed that the rebuke had been the straw that broke the camel’s back and had led to Miss Parris’ departure. I, on the other hand, felt sure that l’affaire patissière had been the straw in question.

  My parents wanted Brenda and me to speak both French and English, and they achieved this more by accident than by design: Father usually spoke English to us, and Mother usually spoke French. During the years we lived in France, Mother almost never spoke English to Father, and he seldom spoke French to her; this was true even when their conversation went back and forth at a rapid pace. I believe they had conversed this way since they first knew each other. Their bilingual communication took place even when Brenda and I were not involved, and the custom did not end until the 1940s, when our family found itself in an English-speaking country. Father spoke French to Raimond or Françoise, and did so very well, though with a trace of an English accent.

  At school, the one subject in which I did moderately well was arithmetic. At last we were working with numbers from nine to ninety-nine. We were now doing additions with carry-overs, subtractions, and even divisions (without remainders), but always with numbers and answers less than ninety-nine. I enjoyed this, but was continually chastised for lack of neatness, about which Mademoiselle de Monvel was a real stickler.

  Despite rather poor performance, I believe I was learning and discovering a great deal just riding in the car to Paris or when traveling by train and the bus on the way to school. The everyday comings and goings of Parisian life fascinated me, as did the appearance of the buildings, the bridges, buses and railways. I was so taken with all I saw that I drew a picture of the two routes we took to school, showing a tunnel for cars and another one for trains. My “map” included the bridges and barges we saw as we drove along the Seine, the treeless streets, and the tree-lined Grands Boulevards. These details were clearly, if whimsically, portrayed in my drawing, and Mother praised it lavishly. But Father criticized it for being “rather badly not to scale.” It bothered him that the little village of Ville-d’Avray was shown as being larger than Paris itself. I was only five at the time, and I don’t recall being hurt or discouraged by Father’s critique.

  It was left to Mother to explain the concept of scale to me. She was very good at explaining things of this kind. She also told me that Father’s comment was prompted by his desire to help me in my next map-making effort and that he was really quite proud of me. She also warned me that Father was basically opposed to praising me in any way whatsoever. “He thinks it will give you a swollen head,” she explained in English, there being no workable equivalent in French. This was her way of saying “give me a swelled head.” I didn’t know the meaning of the idiom at the time, so, with some alarm, I took it literally. Since I believed Father was the wisest of men, I was sure he knew whereof he spoke and resigned myself early on to the fact that I would never receive praise from him. But I wondered why praise from Mother didn’t produce the same disastrous deformity.

  As a result of Father’s criticism and Mother’s elucidation of the subject, I became obsessed with the matter of scale. I don’t mean that I had a precise numerical sense of scale. But I certainly understood that a toy soldier could not, by any stretch of the imagination, get into a Dinky Toy car that was not even as long as the soldier was tall. On this basis, I refused to allow toys of different scale to coexist in whatever game I was playing. I became a purist when it came to scale.

  Something which was cau
sing me some concern at this time, was my gondola. I still enjoyed poling it about the garden but felt quite limited by the fact that I could only do it on the paths of the garden that were level. Going up even a slight hill was out of the question. Each time I lifted the pole to move it forward, the gondola rolled backward and lost all the ground gained on the preceding push. A change was needed, for I longed to navigate my gondola along all the paths that criss-crossed the main garden as well as those of the orchard and vegetable garden—and very few of them ran level. An easier method of propulsion was also wanted. Even on level ground, the poling routine, though romantic and charming, was exhausting.

  It soon became obvious to me that the only solution was to turn my gondola into a locomotive, because they’re not propelled by poling. Instead, I could just push it along while pretending to be a locomotive driver. I visualized how the change could be made by using an old barrel.

  Like the perambulator from which the original gondola had been created, a barrel, no longer used, had been cast aside in the chicken coop. As usual, Raimond listened willingly to my plans. In short order, the transformation was in progress. The old barrel was mounted on top of the gondola’s “hull” to become the locomotive’s boiler. A tin can was attached on top of the barrel for a smoke stack. The pram’s push handle was restored to its original location to make it easier to push the locomotive. Various details such as pistons, connecting rods and train lights were painted on the former gondola hull and barrel to complete the effect of a “loco,” as we called locomotives in those days.

  The initials “P.O.” (short for “Paris-Orleans,” one of the important rail lines of the time) were added in bright red letters to the loco’s boiler, which was painted with shiny black enamel to match the original gondola’s color scheme. This lettering caused a minor, though brief, argument between Raimond and me. I was an ardent fan of the “P.L.M.” (Paris-Lyons-Marseille) railroad, and wanted those three initials. Raimond countered that the P.O. railroad was the one he and Françoise took to visit their son in the Pyrenees, and that was why he wanted those two letters. I could see the futility of trying to match that argument, so I quietly capitulated.