CHAPTER 33
This was a new experience, for I was dressed formally, at Maman’s insistance and under Margot’s eye, in a cream shirt and dark grey skirt to my knees, flesh-coloured stockings and plain black shoes with a heel of perhaps five centimetres. I had asked her about the stockings. It was warm, almost stifling in the noon heat, and I would have gone bare-legged.

“No. That is not what a polite woman does. Not on a first meeting, not in formal attire. And remember: you must tell them of the hospital time to come. And…no, that would be a bad idea”

“What would?”

“I thought, perhaps, you would pretend that your CNI is damaged, or perhaps lost, but that would be an untruth, and one does not start new employment with that. Maggie, you will please do her face”

Bus, then tram, to the place where it all seemed to have started, the Boulevard Maréchal Juin tram stop by the big shops, where I had been accustomed to go for the books. This time, I was within the circle that the tram makes to turn round, so I had no need to race with the cars across the road. The shoes I wore would have made that a challenge. I felt the fear rise, though. Rollo had pierced my little death, brought me to the world again, and I remembered his words from so many years ago, that we were a world of our own, in our family, secure together against the outside. Now I was to face that world. All of my protectors had business that day, business they could not avoid or postpone, but Papa would meet me for the journey home.

Home. It was true; I had never felt I had a home but for our place with the garden, and it was my shelter, my cover from storms. Papa had come there when I arrived, and he had held me, as my sister, and brother, and mother had done, and I had felt not just love come from him but pride. Sophie was reality in the eyes of two men, at least, and Matty, he was trying.

I walked across the little piece of grass to the street that led to the administration, and there were four or five other people who seemed to be moving the same way. I kept my document case containing my certificates from school close to me, and my voice to myself. I did not know these people, and that was yet a difficulty.

There were more people at tables, and lists, and coffee, and absolutely everywhere were English voices trying to speak, some better than others but many much worse. They were older people, but they were all smiling, and that relaxed my fears just a little.

I presented myself to a tall girl with a large nose and a Paris accent. Her name badge said that she was Claudia. She checked my name against her list, and directed me to a particular room, and I made a knock at the door.

“Enter!”

A smaller woman sat there, perhaps in her forties, spectacles on a cord and dark-haired, pretty in a tired way. Her badge read ‘Pascale’

“Good afternoon, Sophie, I am Pascale Deniaud. Not Madame Deniaud, nor Mademoiselle, but Pascale. We are a friendly tribe here, as we welcome so many foreigners every year. Now…”

She looked down at the papers she had before her. “You have not yet received your degree from Perpignan. Do you know of the result?”

I looked down and blushed. “It was first class, Pascale”

“Excellent”

She moved immediately into English, and while there was a clear Norman accent, and her aspirated T’s needed attention, she was very good. I replied in the same language.

“Sophie, there is one thing I must bring up. It is what the English call an elephant in a room, something that everyone knows about and cannot avoid, but will not acknowledge or discuss. That was your first lesson, by the way. Now, your gender…”

I had done this before, at University, but there I had simply hidden, spoken to none, kept in a smaller world even than the one Roland described. This was a step out into new lands.

“Pascale, I shall be having things rearranged hopefully in a month or two, my doctor has promised. Here in Caen”

“So you still have your…?”

“My piece? Yes”

“The English don’t say that. They might say ‘penis’, or perhaps ‘cock’, and some of them talk about their ‘bits’…especially on the last night here, when they all seem to get very, very drunk. I do believe there is a lot of mutual examination of that area, especially in the small hours of that night”

I blushed, and she smiled. “They are all grown people. They are entitled to their fun, and they are here only for one week, a long way from home. It is natural. Now, you are obviously a girl, despite your extra flesh, so I would have no hesitation in allowing you to use the ladies’ while you are here”

“Use the ladies? What for?”

She laughed aloud. “An English word to mean the water closets for women. I must ask…you are a normal girl? Not a follower of Sappho? In case of problems in the WC?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A lesbian. Oh, there are so many English slang words you will learn, my girl, but I will try to be polite. You do not desire women sexually?”

Once more somebody had tissues to hand to catch my tears, and the story had to come out, but in our own language, and she was just so very, very nice about everything until I was controlled again.

“Sophie, I will offer you this employment. Your English is very good, if slightly formal, and your accent is clear enough. There are two stages taught here, each divided into four levels, and I would put you at the worst level, if I may. They are the students who need the best from our teachers, and so you would work as an assistant to a professor in two groups. You should be aware that there are evening responsibilities as well. We have a night walk in the City, as well as other activities, so perhaps you may accept a student room for convenience, and perhaps you are unaware that the work is actually seven days each week. There is a break, for they arrive on the Saturday and depart the following Friday afternoon, usually a lot more quietly than they arrived, with wooden heads in most cases. It continues to the beginning of August only, so you will be able to have time for…that procedure. Sophie…I will see you in four days, if you wish to accept, and may I just say…oh, boys, men, there are a lot of them about, and they come in all sorts of levels of virtue and value. Enjoy yourself here; find your smiles again, no?”

So many compliments. I walked happily from the office, hearing so much bad language around me, and made my way to the proper crossing for the Boulevard. No running would have been possible, and I was too distracted to cross any other way. There was a Quick by the big shop, and I treated myself to a hamburger and fried potatoes while I awaited Papa. He was already there, waiting; not in the Quick itself, but in the car park, his mobile telephone in hand, and when he sat with me, a hamburger of his own between us, and bound me to secrecy about it before my mother, I nearly wept again. It was like the moments separated in time, those ice creams with my mother at the other big shop. I had a father, and employment, if only for a few weeks. I could almost feel happy again.

“What are they like, these English, my little one?”

“They are variable, Papa”

How sweet it felt to use that word, so easily, so true. “Some of them seem to speak quite clearly. Others…They cannot tell their ‘U’ from their ‘OU’, and there was one, I do not know where he found it, but he spoke like someone from the South, all ‘eng’ and ‘ang’. I think they will be fun”

“And you had no problems over…?”

I steeled my spirit again, and held in my tears. “No, Papa, no. The lady, Pascale, she simply asked, and I told, and she asked if…if I desired women’s bodies, and I now know that I could have made a joke in English, because a woman’s body is all I want, but not in that way. And I…and I told her of Benny, and all was fine”

Papa reached across with a tissue and removed a spot of sauce from my face. “It is not fine, not if you miss your mouth so badly when you think of it, but it is better than it was, no? You have returned to us, almost intact”

He paused and thought. “Things can leave scars, my sweet, and that is good, for a scar reminds us each time that we must make better choices”

I thought of Rollo, and the sperm donor and that scar on his hand. I had Papa, I had Rollo; I could not fail. But I missed my Benny so much.