Short Story: The Frenchman

Short Story: The Frenchman

The Frenchman

Jean Harlow was 49 years old and was, aside from sharing her name with 20s Hollywood bottle blonde star - an unwelcome by product of her 20 year marriage to Greg - totally uninteresting. She had no career and no marketable skills. She was not a witty conversationalist, nor anything more than an adequate cook. She wasn’t particularly attractive and her sagging body was exactly what you’d expect from someone who’d borne four sons. She was an anonymous middle aged lady who you’d pass in the street without a second thought. She was, in her own assessment, worthless.

Her husband by way of contrast was a highly successful businessman, still good looking with just a touch of grey that of course made him look distinguished rather than old. His career had been on an upward curve for many years and he was able to bring up four handsome boys without so much as a day off work. Years and years ago they made an attractive couple. Now, Jean felt, they might be mistaken for mother and son.

Although her children loved her, Jean found that as they grew up, she had less and less in common with them. When they went on a family holiday, although they never actually excluded her from anything, the things they did frequently left her behind, sitting with a book and a glass of wine, under a parasol, wondering how it was possible to feel lonely when surrounded by five other people, four of whom had once emerged screaming and crying from her worn out body.

There was always a lot of joking in the family. Everybody was laughed at and mocked equally. but Jean couldn’t help but be hurt by the remarks about her weight, or her greying hair or her slightly old fashioned dress sense. The foibles of the other members of the family seemed amusing and eccentric, while hers seemed drab and middle aged. She joined in the joking and the laughter but she felt, in the solar system of her family, she was like a planet gradually spinning out into empty space.

She was somewhat surprised therefore to find herself under the attention of a certain rather good looking Frenchman. She had, on their holidays, got into the habit of taking herself off to a café to enjoy a coffee and chocolate croissant. She would sit for sometimes an hour or more, watching the passers by, or just reading peacefully. She quite liked being on her own, although she would have preferred this feeling of isolation to be restricted to when she actually was alone and not to be there equally when she was surrounded by her ‘loving’ family.

At first, when the Frenchman asked to share her table, she wasn’t very keen. She hoped he wouldn’t want to talk to her, her French being very limited, but after a few minutes he did try to engage her in conversion. Fortunately it was in rather broken English. At first she resented this intrusion, but gradually she felt drawn in and began to enjoy his company.

He peppered the conversation with small compliments to her. She could see through them, of course, but despite their insincere charm she rather enjoyed being called ‘an English Rose’ and ‘a very beautiful lady’ and when she mentioned that she had four children she loved the way he pretended to be shocked and said, ‘But this is just not possible’.

She often varied the cafés she visited but she found herself drawn back to this one more frequently now. The coffee she told herself was particularly good. And more often than not the Frenchman would join her. There was nothing to it of course but she rather looked forward to telling her friends back home about her secret assignations with this charming handsome Frenchman. She even thought of telling the family in repost to their mocking conversations over dinner, but thought the better of it. Why not have a little secret to herself?

On the last day of the holiday she found herself at the café enjoying her final taste of black French coffee, but there was no sign of what she had come jokingly to call her ‘French lover’. He knew it was her last day and yet hadn’t bothered to turn up. She found herself disappointed. She had enjoyed their conversations and while she knew that they meant nothing really, she had come to see him as a friend and she was unhappy that her friend had not bothered to come and say goodbye.

She didn’t stay long, left an overly generous tip, picked up her things and was about to leave when he arrived, dishevelled and dripping with sweat. He said he was sorry – ‘desolate’ - that he was late and begged her to sit down again as he had something important to say. Jean would get much amusement from telling her friends what had transpired. It seemed that he had fallen madly in love with her and wanted her, instead of driving off with her family, to move in with him so that they could be together forever. He would be devastated if she left and he pleaded with her again and again to stay.

She found herself caught between hilarity at the whole ridiculous scene and a faint desire to go along with it. To forget her family and run off with this crazed Frenchman and make passionate love with him for the rest of her life or whatever you’re supposed to do with mad French lovers.

But she kept a straight face, told him she loved her husband and could never contemplate leaving her children, that she was deeply sorry because she liked him very much – that part of it was at least true – but regretfully she would have to turn him down. He insisted on giving her his address and telephone number written on a napkin. They kissed briefly and she set off back to the packing, the squabbling, the irritations as her family prepared to return home. As she sat in the car watching the French countryside rush by, she remembered teenage romances when parting had seemed such agony. In adulthood she could see how almost farcical those romances had been but there was an excitement about them that never seemed to re-occur in adult life. And yet she felt just a trace of that excitement now.

When she resumed her life back at home, everything seemed to have become somehow drained of colour. The depth of husband’s lack of interest in her became increasingly apparent. There were no compliments to counter the ironic mocking, never anything to indicate that she was anything more than a housekeeper, cook and casual friend to him. She yearned for the physical contact she had had with her boys before they became awkward distant teenagers and she wished that once in a while they’d cuddle her or even sit close to her on the sofa.

She told all her friends about the Frenchman and that she was still thinking of packing her cases and going to live with him. They asked if he had brothers or friends so that they could all take up French lovers and disappear together. They all had a good laugh about that.

Almost exactly one month after the family had come back from holiday, Jean decided to take the matter in hand. On a day when the rest of the family were safely out of the house, she packed her bags, loaded them in a taxi and left home to make a new life for herself far away from her husband and four children.

She left two notes. One to her husband explaining that she had not been happy for a long time, that she was sure he no longer loved her and that it would be best for all concerned if she left. The second was to her four boys, to whom she apologised for not saying goodbye, said that they weren’t to worry and she would be in contact soon. She left a post office box number so that they could write to her if they felt the need. She made no mention in either letter of her French lover.

She was quite amazed how quickly the first letters came. She read the letters from the boys first. She was surprised at how emotional they were. She had over the years begun to believe that the only emotions her children were capable of were anger, sulkiness and elation over some football team or other winning. But these were sad, vulnerable letters, especially from her youngest which started and ended with pleas for her to come home. She cried a little when she read these. The she put them back in their envelopes and placed them into the right hand top drawer of her ancient wooden dresser.

The letters from Greg too were a revelation. They were angry at first. He’d obviously questioned her friends and found out about the Frenchman. He just couldn’t seem to grasp how such a thing could have happened and, even if she’d felt the need to leave him, he couldn’t see how she could bring herself to leave their children. But gradually the tone of the letters changed. He began to mention how much he’d neglected her. He’d begun to see things just a little from her point of view. He said he had come to realise how empty her life must have been in the last few years.

He told her how chaotic their lives had become. Mrs Harris had left in disgust after a week refusing to even enter the boys rooms which were littered with food and smelly unwashed clothes. The boys squabbled constantly and he could see their eldest leaving the place forever. He’d had to open an account with the pizza delivery service and had taken to buying new clothes just so he’d have something clean and ironed to wear for his meetings. People at work had remarked on his dishevelled appearance but worse than this, he was finding it hard to keep his mind on his job at all. Errors, unthinkable two months ago, were becoming commonplace and he was beginning to fear for his job.

But the biggest revelation in the letters from Greg was their passion. They were full of declarations of love for her, something she hadn’t heard since before they had been married – and then only when he’d been slightly drunk. Now as the anger faded and the desperation eased, his letters were filled with the things about his wife that he loved – little details that she would never have believed he would even have noticed. All those years, when he seemed to be entirely indifferent to her, he had been thinking about her, but only now, when it all seemed to be late, was he acknowledging the fact. The letters always ended ‘I love you. Please come home. Greg’

Then one morning, when she had finished drinking her coffee, eating her croissants and reading her letters, she went to put them in the top right hand drawer of her dresser and found the drawer was too full to close. That’s when she decided to go home.

They greeted her like some long lost hero back from the war. The boys crowded round her, with even the oldest ones desperate for a hug. And Greg held her so tightly she thought she wouldn’t be able to catch her breath and he kissed her in a way he hadn’t done since they were teenagers, and maybe not even then. There was no anger, no recriminations and she could have, if she’d chosen, been waited on hand and foot by her newly adoring family. But she didn’t. She just set about putting her house and family back into order and while she expertly worked the Hoover into dark forgotten corners she found herself smiling and then laughing that she could obtain such joy from such a dull and mundane task

Of course it might have better if the Frenchman had been something more than a figment of her imagination, but then, as Jean herself explained to her friends, listening in open mouthed astonishment, you can’t have everything can you?