In the Moon Page 9

  These Char-á-voiles, or, translated literally, “sailing chariots” could reach speeds as high as sixty miles an hour in strong winds, though few people sailed them on such occasions. On weekends, at low tide, we could gaze north or south across miles of deserted sandbars and see what looked like a cluster of white butterflies, quivering as they hovered on the horizon’s mirage. What we were seeing were thirty or more sand yachts in close formation, their speed, towards or away from us, arrested by distance. Before long, they sailed silently past us at great speed, bound for a distant marker on the opposite horizon.

  In a stiff breeze, the windward front wheel of a sand yacht lifted into the air. If it stayed off the ground for long distances, the driver, by holding his sail close-hauled, was achieving peak performance and mastering a delicate balance between the highest speed possible and tipping over. Spills were frequent, but I never heard of anyone being hurt, in spite of the fact that they wore neither helmets nor any protective gear. A spill didn’t disqualify the racer, who usually wasted little time righting the light craft and hopping back on to continue the race.

  Tweet was absolutely fascinated by sand yacht races. I could depend on her to escort me to one whenever I reported to her that a race was about to take place. I think Tweet may have been more interested in the young racers than the racing itself, for she used to hang around them afterwards, listening to them talk of their racing exploits and mishaps and often joined in their camaraderie. Meanwhile, as the sand yacht sails flapped or fluttered loosely in the wind, I was content to sit in the driver’s seat of one of their chariots. Crouched over its steering wheel, I pretended I was breaking a new speed record.

  On calmer days, Father occasionally rented a sand yacht, and I was sometimes allowed to ride along with him for the thrill of my life. My job on these rides was to man the klaxon.

  Father was extremely nervous, especially about the tide pools, which sand yachts usually crossed easily, creating great splashing and plumes of spray. Some of the pools close to the sea’s edge at low tide were sometimes bordered by a sharp drop-off and were considerably deeper than the usual depth of six to ten inches. This made crossing the flaques, particularly at speed, an exciting and wet experience. Occasionally, sand yachts tipped over in mid pool, which happened when they became bogged down in the pool’s soft sandy bottom or when a wheel on one side encountered unexpectedly deep water. Father was so apprehensive of these situations that, much to my chagrin, he never chanced crossing a tide pool in a speeding sand yacht. I had to settle for some fairly tame sailing and just witness the more dramatic spills from afar.

  Within the confines of Le Green Cottage, life was as well ordered as it was out on the beach. With a houseful of guests throughout most of the summer, being well organized was the only way to avoid disrupting Raimond and Françoise in their busy day.

  In the morning, Raimond brought to each bedroom a jug full of very hot water to be mixed in a washbasin with cold water from another jug that was already in the room. Only the master bedroom had both hot and cold running water and a drain in the washbasin.

  Françoise brought my parents and our houseguests a cup of coffee or tea, and for Brenda and me she brought freshly pressed grape juice. These beverages arrived around eight o’clock or whenever Mother had decreed reveille for the household. Half an hour later, we were expected to show up in the dining room for a formal sit-down breakfast.

  Raimond rang a dinner gong five minutes before each meal, including breakfast. Being late for meals was considered extremely bad form. The reason for this punctiliousness was that the day’s activities for every member of the family, houseguest, and servant had been carefully planned and coordinated the night before. A planning conference was part of the dinner conversation, and the ever-present Raimond silently noted the pertinent details.

  The activities of the next day might be playing golf or tennis, loafing on the beach, sightseeing at the fishing harbor in Boulogne, or shopping the elegant boutiques of Le Touquet. The two towns were each about 20 miles away. Sometimes, Mother organized an afternoon drive to Cap (Cape) Gris-Nez, France’s closest point to England. There, we could see derelict gun emplacements which had been built during World War I to stop German warships from using the Channel to reach the open sea. On clear sunny days, we could see the white cliffs of Dover shining brightly twenty-two miles away.

  After breakfast, people went off in various directions to their chosen activity. For those at the beach, where wristwatches could come to a permanent and grinding halt due to sand intrusion, the lifeguard sounded a loud bell at twelve-thirty. This indicated he was going off duty but, more importantly, the bell signified that lunch was imminent and that it was time to hurry home. By one o’clock, the beach was deserted, and everyone was sitting down expectantly at the dinner table, like theater-goers waiting for the curtain to rise.

  While this must sound very regimented—which of course it was—no one seemed to object; everyone took it in stride as a small price to pay for a large choice of pleasant activities interspersed with exquisite repas. The meals were convivial affairs with people taking turns humorously recounting the day’s activities or commenting thereon. Each telling was followed by light-hearted banter, joking and much laughter. I used to watch Raimond working hard to restrain his laughter whenever someone told an especially funny story. He thought, perhaps correctly, that he wasn’t supposed to laugh.

  By dinnertime, things became less tidy. The end of cocktail time was sometimes subject to the vagaries of neighbors, who were occasionally asked to “come over for a drink.” An invitation phrased this way clearly meant cocktails only. But some guests, perhaps hoping that they would be invited to enjoy one of Françoise’s superb dinners, clearly violated this well-established protocol. And thus a waiting game began; the meal had been planned and the table set for eight, not ten people, as an example. It took special circumstances for Mother to capitulate and jostle Françoise’s well-planned preparations. However, it was clear that Françoise understood Mother’s predicament, for she was surprisingly patient and flexible at this hour. But at mid-day it was another story. The difference was that after doing the lunch dishes, Françoise always took a long nap, and understandably, encroaching on her well-deserved rest was more than just frowned upon.

  During the day, Raimond was not always needed at the villa, and on these occasions, he sometimes joined me in whatever activity I had planned at the beach. When this happened, Tweet could join Mother in a round of golf or tennis if Françoise could be talked into baby-sitting Brenda. Much as I loved Tweet, I especially enjoyed Raimond’s company because, among other things, he brought along an adult-sized spade, so the scale of our castle and dam building increased tenfold. Raimond seemed to enjoy all of my beach activities and, as we set out, I could tell by his wide grin how much he anticipated the pleasure of these outings.

  Raimond also came shrimping with me. He brought his very own four-foot-wide shrimp net and a full-sized pail on these expeditions. Once we reached the beach cabin, he took off his shoes and socks and carefully rolled up his neatly creased trousers, exposing his white calves and feet. He retained the black bow tie and the yellow- and black-striped waistcoat he usually wore, but rolled up his shirtsleeves and worked carefully so as not to splash or soil his clothes. These elaborate precautions did not prevent him from being a vigorous and prodigious dam builder and shrimper.

  The two of us usually returned with enough of the larger shrimp for a generous hors d’oeuvre worthy of ten people and, true to form, Françoise greeted our return with exclamations of pleasure. She was obsessed with cookery and could be depended upon to make a bold culinary assault on anything that was remotely edible. The sight of a bucket of little gray shrimp waiting to be cooked sent her into paroxysms of delight.

  The end of dinner always fell well past my bedtime. However, I was allowed to sit with the grownups at the dinner table for the time it took
me to consume a bowl of soup and a small side plate of something else specially prepared for me. Having finished my little repast, I was expected to kiss Father, Mother, and Tweet goodnight, then make a silent, discreet exit and go to bed without protestations. My leaving the table usually occurred at about the time the adults were being served their main course. I once did protest the advent of this preordained departure, and my penance was to be served dinner in the kitchen for a whole week. There, I didn’t even have the solace of Raimond’s company. He was much too busy serving or standing behind Mother, keeping a watchful eye on the needs of the diners. Françoise was also very busy, putting servings on plates and the finishing touches on her various dishes. Brenda, barely three years old, had long since been put to bed, so it was a lonely punishment and one I never suffered again.

  Bastille Day, 1935, was the most special of many memorable Bastille Days because, on this date, I was allowed to remain at table for the entire dinner, until ten o’clock. After the dessert course—consisting of a hastily served méringue glacée—the diners adjourned to the veranda for the demitasse and to watch one of the most spectacular sights I can remember. I suppose, though, that I was already a bit intoxicated by the thrill of staying up so late. The sight of those blazing, whirling, bursting colors of the firework display over the tennis courts in front of our villa was a moment of total bliss and utter perfection for me.

  The day after Bastille Day, Father left on his first trip to America with Aldridge, his boss at Anglo-French, Ltd. Upon their return from this trip in late August, Father and Aldridge were met by Aldridge’s chauffeur at Le Havre, where they disembarked. Since it was a Friday, they drove straight from Le Havre to Hardelot, arriving in Aldridge’s magnificent, brand new, bottle green Rolls Royce convertible. Within minutes, it seemed as though half of Hardelot were crowding around this graceful, gleaming car.

  Raimond decided that the Rolls Royce should be moved into the garage to give it some respite from the curious onlookers. This, unfortunately, proved impossible. The garage was found to be a foot too short. The rear end of the Rolls Royce protruded ignominiously from the open door like a fish’s tail from a heron’s beak, as Mother described it. Worse yet, the chauffeur could not leave the car because he was unable to open the car door within the confines of the narrow garage.

  This crisis produced great mirth and some derision from the gathered onlookers. They raised a great cheer as the car was backed out of the garage, presumably pleased that the object of their admiration was not to be removed from their sight. The car remained out on the street where every passerby seemed determined to touch and caress it to see if it were indeed real. The following morning, Raimond was up at dawn polishing off the numerous fingerprints which now adorned the Rolls. Fortunately, the novelty soon wore off, and the car was eventually left alone.

  Aldridge stayed in Hardelot only a few days. Part of the reason for his visit to Hardelot was that his divorce had been settled. Brenda and I were greatly disappointed by this news for it meant that Tweet was returning to London with her father. We both adored Tweet. Fortunately, she returned for a week every summer thereafter, permanently designated as “our most favorite houseguest.”

  Something which obsessed and bothered me all that summer of 1935, was the fact that I never wore long trousers. When I asked Mother if she would buy me a pair, she told me they did not make them for five-year-old boys. I think her reply was probably correct, in France anyway. This struck me as grossly unfair, and I became convinced that something should be done about the situation. I pondered the problem for quite some time, and by mid-summer, I finally had a clear picture of how I would set about putting things right. However, my plans did involve sewing, an activity that had recently left a rather bad taste in my mouth after I had been expelled for “sewing astray” at that first school I attended. Somehow, the excessiveness of that expulsion only stiffened my resolve; the fact that I might redeem my honor and show the grownup world that I could sew responsibly added further merit to my undertaking.

  I set about looking for suitable fabric and, in a cupboard in a little-used guest room, I found some material that was predominantly dark blue and had a pattern of small yellow flowers. The piece had curtain rings along one edge but appeared big enough for my purposes. Although I wasn’t exactly pleased with the flower pattern, it would have to do.

  I sneaked into Françoise’s room, where I found a pair of sewing scissors, a needle, a thimble, and a spool of white thread on her dresser. These items I commandeered each day, taking care to replace them carefully after every sewing session exactly as I had found them. The jig would have been up if she had noticed anything missing or out of place.

  First, I cut off the strip where the curtain rings were attached and then cut a rectangle I deemed to be the correct size. The width of the rectangle had to be equal to my waistline, plus a little extra for a seam (I didn’t know the term “seam”, but I had noticed this detail on my existing shorts and understood the concept). The length of the rectangle quite clearly had to be the distance from my waist to my heels.

  Cutting in a straight line proved to be a nearly insurmountable challenge. In fact, I cut into the curtain so erratically that the piece was rendered useless. Fortunately, there was a second curtain in the cupboard. Before launching into that piece, I did a good deal of practicing on the botched curtain. Also, I put to good use a yellow pencil from the box of colored pencils I had won in the sand panel contest. I used the edge of a drawer (from a dresser in the guest room) as a ruler and found that having a well-defined yellow line to follow on the blue material made cutting in a straight line somewhat easier. My cutting still wasn’t truly straight, but at least I could spot my “wanderings” before the whole piece was irrevocably ruined. My labors eventually produced an acceptable rectangle, if I were willing to overlook its wiggly, jagged edges.

  I folded my rectangle in two and sewed together the two edges opposite the fold line to produce a “tube,” the girth of which was my waistline. That done, I laid my tube flat on the floor, folded it lengthwise at its midpoint, and stamped and danced hard on the new fold so as to make a distinct crease. I then opened the flattened tube on the floor once more, and marked with my yellow pencil the crease that my dancing and stamping had created. I had thus bisected the piece. Again, I didn’t know the terms “bisect” and “crease” but understood what they were meant to achieve.

  Then came some more sewing. This time, the track of my stitchery was up that bisecting yellow line, but about half an inch to one side of it. At first, my stitches were small and almost neat, as if done by a sewing machine, but I soon lost patience, and the stitches grew gradually larger as I worked my way along an invisible line parallel to the yellow line. Eventually, my stitchery was closer to basting.

  When I had progressed along all but about four inches of the full length of the tube, my stitching made an abrupt and deliberate u-turn. This crucial point was to be the crotch of the trousers, and the four-inch length I mentioned was my estimate of the distance between my belt line and said crotch. I now proceeded to sew back down beside and parallel to the yellow line, but half an inch on the other side of it. Two weeks later, when I had completed this last step, all that remained to be done was to take a pair of scissors and ever-so-carefully cut my way up the yellow line to the crotch point where I had made the u-turn—et voilà! I had myself a pair of long trousers. The whole job had taken me about a month.

  If four weeks from the first idea to the end result seems an excessively long time, the reader must remember that tailoring my trousers was a covert operation. I didn’t want to arouse suspicion by spending long periods of time in that unused guest room. Besides, I had other important things to do. There were sand castles and dams to build, sand yacht races to watch, whole mornings taken up in gymnastics, and shrimp to catch. Also, I had to steal and return the sewing implements each time, which had to be done with time-consuming stealt
h. I often had to wait for Françoise to finish cleaning rooms in the surrounding area before the coast was clear.

  Last but not least, there was the problem of needle threading. I had seen Mother do it and therefore knew it was something that was humanly possible. Nevertheless, I found the task incredibly difficult; some days I never started any actual sewing because I couldn’t thread the beastly needle despite innumerable tries. I eventually discovered a way around the problem, but I soon found it was far from an ideal solution.

  When, after days of trying, I finally succeeded in threading the needle, I cut a piece of thread about ten feet long from the spool. I was reasonably sure this was enough thread to see me through the entire project without ever having to thread that wretched needle again. The drawback to this method was that with each stitch, I had to place the empty dresser drawer on my work, so it would stay put as I walked the needle across the room, pulling my thread through the material. I also had to spend considerable time untangling the thread after each stitch; the extra amount seemed to have an innate tendency to form a rat’s nest every time I turned my back on it. Though awkward, this method was still easier than threading a needle each time I started work and, being the lesser evil, I persevered with it.

  Fortunately, Françoise had numerous needles in her pincushion, so I didn’t see the need to return the needle each day. Returning the needle with all that loose thread hanging from it would have been a major problem in itself, not to mention how suspicious it would have looked on Françoise’s dresser. In its second week, my trouser-making project had all the earmarks of a bad dream. I seriously considered abandoning it but somehow found the courage to persevere.