Mme. LeGuarde caught up with her after they’d been home a couple of days. Claire had been beyond conscientious with the children, listening patiently to all their stories of sticklebacks and wading and hammocks and bees, playing and painting with them, and taking them to the new exhibitions. But her soul lived only till five, when she would run to the shop, and he would be there, dragging her into the back room, hiding behind the huge copper vats, kissing her passionately as if he hadn’t seen her for months, insisting she try this or that, a new taste, a new flavor, then a restaurant where he would inveigle her into snails, or foie gras, or linguine with tiny clams she had to pry from their shells, or lobster Thermidor to a backdrop of wildly kicking girls. Then he would take her back to his little set of rooms at the top of Place des Arts, the noises of the street and the streetlamps still bright beneath them, the chatter of French at high speed and cars occasionally whooshing past, and they would make love, over and over again, then he would dress and courteously take her home, dropping her before midnight with a kiss and the certain knowledge that they could do it all again tomorrow.
“My dear,” Mme. LeGuarde said quietly as Claire was preparing to go out, this time in the pale cream stripe. Claire’s back stiffened, as it always did. There was something inside her, deep down, that didn’t feel as if she deserved this, that she was doing something wrong. In her father’s eyes of course, she was. Her polite, stiff weekly letters to her parents, full of the doings of the children and the sights of Paris, gave so little away her mother worried that she was actually terribly miserable and lonely, but surely if she’d been so unhappy she’d have found out a way to make an international phone call. Her mother made sure she answered the phone all the time, just in case it was the operator asking them to accept a reverse charge call and the Reverend said no, he didn’t believe in them.
“It’s all right,” said Mme. LeGuarde to Claire’s back. She was fastening in some tiny emerald earrings Thierry had bought her. She had laughed and said he didn’t have to buy her anything at all and he had said he knew that, really he would like to buy her diamonds like Elizabeth Taylor, but he was just starting out and this was all he could do. They were very small, like tiny green chips, but they matched her eyes and were beautifully set in an antique twist of silver. She would have loved them anyway, because he had chosen them for her. The fact that they were tasteful too made her hug herself gleefully inside. They had made love wearing nothing else but the earrings, and she had giggled and called herself a kept woman.
“You’re not in trouble,” said Mme. LeGuarde. Claire felt relieved. It was ridiculous, to keep panicking like this. Thierry thought she was being hilarious. She was a grown woman. Who could begrudge her her happiness? Claire wasn’t so sure. God was always watching. And so much happiness, so much pleasure. It didn’t feel right, somehow. She didn’t feel like she deserved it. Somewhere in the back of her head, a tiny voice kept telling her she was wicked.
Claire turned around.
“Good,” she said. “You know, the children really are wonderful, Mme. LeGuarde. You’ve done such a great job with them.”
Mme. LeGuarde waved her hand. In her opinion, like that of many French women, children flourished the less their parents interfered.
“I just wanted to say, my dear. We have grown very fond of you during your stay here.”
Claire felt herself blushing and felt awkward. How could they like her, when she had been…when she had been out every night like an alley cat, her inner voice—that sounded a lot like her father—said. “We will be very sad when you have to leave us…in two weeks.”
Mme. LeGuarde was doing her best to be gentle.
“You are going back to school, non? I think that will be right for you. You should continue your studies; you have plenty of brains. University life would suit you.”
“I don’t think so,” said Claire, shaking her head miserably. Most of her energy went on not thinking about leaving. Two weeks was forever. It was a long time. She could worry about it later.
“My father thinks it’s a waste of time. He thinks secretarial school. Or teacher training.”
Mme. LeGuarde frowned. “Well, you are good with children…but don’t you think there are other things you could do? Or other people you might meet?”
Mme. LeGuarde was nothing if not practical.
Claire swallowed, all her happiness gone. She stared fixedly at the parquet floor, not trusting herself to speak. Mme. LeGuarde gently lifted up her head and looked her in the eye.
“I hope you have been happy here,” she said, very clearly and distinctly. “And that when you go home, you will have many happy memories.”
Claire understood, of course she did. She was only a girl. Thierry was barely twenty-two, at the very beginning of his career. What did she think was going to happen, that she was going to stay in Paris and get married?
Of course, on one level, deep down, that was exactly what she thought. Not to go back to school, not to go home at all. She had a silly girlish vision of Thierry and her, her in something from the special, lace-heavy corner of Marie-France’s shop, in a beautiful park on the Île de la Cité…not that they could get married in a park of course; that was ridiculous. And not that she could afford a wedding dress. And they had only known each other a few weeks. The whole thing was ridiculous, impossible. She was too much of a Northern girl not to know that, even if Thierry had even mentioned anything beyond August at all. He had not.
She couldn’t imagine Thierry in Kidinsborough, catching the number 19 bus, walking to the Asian shop on the corner to pick up some supernoodles for supper like the boys liked. She couldn’t see him propping up the corner of the Crown, her dad’s pub, drinking a pint and talking seriously about who was going to score on Saturday. He didn’t even speak English. How would he choke down her mother’s Yorkshires, which shattered like glass or resembled mush? The first time she had eaten glazed carrots at Mortons, she genuinely refused to believe it was the same vegetable they ate at home. He couldn’t come over. The idea was ridiculous.
But Arnaud and Claudette were starting school; she wasn’t needed around here. She had to go back to school herself. And Thierry could afford to neglect his business in August, when there were no galas, no parties, no social set to cater for. That would change for him too, in September; he would have to work harder than ever just to keep afloat. There would be no room for her in all of this. She knew this.