I was missing Ivan. I was scared he’d get back with Gail, his ex. She was still after him.
We went out and had fish and chips, and scones with clotted cream. Jana found a hair in her cream. That’s fucking gross, she said. I told her about the time I was wee and we were at a dentist friend’s of Peter’s for dinner and I’d found a hair in my fruit cocktail. I’d been too shy to say anything and had just eaten it. I could feel it in my throat for ages afterwards.
The next morning we missed the ferry to Cherbourg because we slept in. We got to the docks just as the Sealink ferry was floating off. We could have reached out and touched it. Looks like we’ve missed the boat, said Jana. I sent Ivan a postcard. I love you. Jana was scathing.
We got lodgings with a family in Caen. The mother Simone looked like Jeanne Moreau. She warned us that electricity was very expensive and we should never leave the lights on. She had a lock on the phone. Her husband Vincent was a lot older. He’d had a stroke and taken early retirement from his factory job. He shuffled around the house, eating grapes. Their son Jean-Paul had just done his army service and lived in the basement.
That’ll have to go, Jana said, pointing to the poster in our bedroom – Entre Les Trous de la Mémoire, a montage of some anaemic girl and her memories, featuring a cruise ship with symbolic waves; the leaning tower of Pisa; a tree; a pile of books (one of them in flames); a hot air balloon and a mirror. It was horrible but I persuaded Jana to leave it there ‘til we’d ingratiated ourselves a bit more with Simone.
We had to register at la préfecture and get ID cards. Le préfet was like a Peter Sellers character. He glared at us while he stamped our cartes de séjour with a hundred different stamps. We started to giggle and he glimmered us a smile.
We didn’t have any exams and our attendance wasn’t being checked, so there was no incentive for Jana to go to classes. I’d lugged over my huge Collins dictionary and planned to get through everything on next year’s reading list. Jana had started sleeping with Jean-Paul in our third week and preferred to spend her mornings in the basement. She’d roll into the student canteen at lunchtime, boasting that Jean-Paul had asked her to fais-moi la pipe. At first she hadn’t understood what he meant. Jean-Paul grinned. Comme une sucette, like a lollipop.
Louis de Funès, a French comedy actor, had just died, and they were showing all his films. We would sit around the TV, en famille, guffawing at his antics. Vincent would cry and snort with joy. It was the only time he was ever animated.
At the end of September, Abas came to lodge with us. He was from Morocco. He would invite me into his room to eat oranges and help him with his English. He said he was missing his wife. His eyes would fill up and he’d try and sit a bit nearer me on the bed.
In the evenings, we’d go to the Bar de la Fac and eat crepes and get drunk on kir royal with Esther, a student from Cork. Esther was plump and breathless and beautiful. She wanted to lose her virginity before Christmas. Abas was at the top of her list. She thought he was lovely.
One weekend, we went skating. I could skate backwards better than I could skate forwards. I had more control going backwards.
Abas had never skated. He clung to Esther like a toddler, terrified to leave the side of the rink. Jean-Paul and his friend, a lorry driver from Ouistreham, with a thuggish crew-cut, sped round, pissing themselves at Abas every time he fell. I didn’t like the lorry driver and wished someone would skate over his hands.
I had to sit down after twenty minutes because my legs felt weak. I spectated for the rest of the afternoon. The smell of the rink reminded me of learning to skate in Aviemore, Nab skating round effortlessly with his hands clasped behind his back.
I shivered. I felt I was coming down with something.
Nagging pain in spine for last two weeks. Feeling stoned all the time. When I bend down, I feel dizzy.
I’ve only had one letter from Ivan in a month. I’ve written to him every week.
Something isn’t right.
When I go outside, the light hurts my eyes.
Dear Ivan,
I am missing you so much, sweet boy. I think about you all the time and want to kiss you right now. Jana and Abas have gone to Bayeux today but I didn’t feel up to going. I’ve been feeling ill and weird. I might have picked something up in the university canteen. The food is fucking horrible. I’m sure they gave us pigeon last week. They covered it with grated carrots to make it seem healthy. Did I tell you that Simone, the landlady, has arranged a wee party for my birthday? It’s funny, ‘cos she’s really tight-fisted. We’re not allowed to use her real coffee, we have to drink the chicory stuff! We’re scared she finds out we’ve binned that poster she had up in our room. It was really ugly and the drawing pins kept falling out. We’ve also hidden the vase with the plastic flowers behind the wardrobe. We couldn’t stand looking at them anymore. I don’t have much more news, I told you everything in last letter. I’m sending you lots of kisses.
Helen xxx
PS. I am wearing your cosy purple tartan shirt and sandalwood oil. It makes me feel near you. PPS. How’s the band going?
I put the letter in my bedside drawer. I wouldn’t send it ‘til I got a reply to my last two.
One morning during a lecture on Voltaire, it just came over me.
Hot twisting cramps.
I thought I was going to shit myself. I bolted out of the lecture hall and ran to the toilet. I sat there for almost an hour ‘til there was nothing left.
I got the bus home and went to bed. I cried myself to sleep. Jana woke me up rummaging for cigarettes in her bedside cabinet.
There’s something wrong with me, Jana, I said. I almost shat myself today in the Voltaire lecture, and the other weird feelings are getting worse. My head keeps going numb.
She came over and sat on the side of the bed. Maybe it’s hormonal ‘cos you came off the pill. We’ll go to the uni doctor tomorrow.
The next day the university doctor took a urine sample and gave me antibiotics for a urinary tract infection that I knew I didn’t have. He assured me that I didn’t have appendicitis and asked if British people had their appendix on the left side like their cars. He told me to come back in a week if I wasn’t better.
We picked up the prescription and Jana talked me into buying a pink lambswool sweater from Au Printemps that I couldn’t afford. You need something to cheer yourself up, she said.
I felt dizzy in the changing room. The spot-light glared above me. It looks great, said Jana, swooshing the curtain back. You’re so lucky you’ve got breasts.
You’re so lucky you’ve got hips, I replied out of habit.
You’re so lucky you’re tall.
You’re so lucky you don’t feel as if you’re dying.
Is
