CHAPTER 37
We were staying, of course, in Thierry’s hotel, and this time it was as proper guests, as we had our earnings now. I did realise that our bills were not as they would have been for the other guests, but then I felt we were more friends than customers. So typical; we ate that first evening on the terrace, looking at the sea, with lemon candles burning to keep the other insects away as the cigalles chanted in the branches around us, and Maman, she could not keep away from the kitchen.

Until the main dish was served, which was naturally cargolade, she was up and down as if she was on a piece of rubber attached to that room. Only when we had finished the course, and there were cheeses, and a glass of the Banyuls red, was she relaxed with us.

Roser and Jaume were with us that evening, and Jaume’s wife, Celestina, and there was much gossip and sharing of news. This was the first time Rollo and my sister had met my newly-declared grandmother, and Roland did not disappoint.

“There is perhaps a range of ladies available for this task, no? Where one can inspect for miles on the odometer, or the condition of the tyres? Perhaps take for a test drive?”

I looked at him sharply, as Roser held back her laughter. “Rollo, dear brother, how does one test drive a grandmother?”

As ever, he was leaning back in his chair, shirt open, that beautiful face smiling as his wife rested against him after the meal.

“It is simple, my sister. We pass, perhaps, a time at the shore, where there are amusements and ice cream, and we see what quality of treat we are served, how well the prospective grand lady delivers treats and gifts. And perhaps, in true Norman wisdom, we have the option to return them, if at Christmas their performance is not quite…”

I do not know whose morsel of bread hit him first, but I threw, and Maman, and Margot was tickling his sides, and it was all very childish and so, so wonderful. We calmed, at last, and Rollo sat upright, his wife’s hand in his, and looked at Roser with a softer smile.

“Roser, we thank you for this. I thought, when I collected my sister from that train, that she was dead to us, dead to the life that had sung in her, and I feel that perhaps all would have been gone if she had not had friends beside her. I thank you, we thank you, her family. We will drink this to you”

And he raised his glass, as did we all, and we turned to her, and said her name, and drank the sweet red wine that had already set my mind slightly adrift from my body. Roser actually blushed, but there were smiles there.

“Rollo, all of you, this girl, she is come to me from nowhere one Summer, she is so gentle, so modest, and a delight…no, Sophie, I speak now, si? And my Jaume here, he know what she is, but no problem is there, for we see what she REALLY is, not what a stupid medico decree. Then she comes back to me, and she is wounded, and so wounded she sees nothing beyond her nose. There are whole years she forgets, they pass, they go, and she does not move with them. And…”

She reached for my hand, and for that of Maman. “I send her home to you, I care, I fear, that she might not have strength to come back, so I must pray to the Good Saviour, and His Saints, that she has the family. And I know the mother, Julienne, no? That she is so strong, and I pray every day for the healing, and…”

She had tears now. “This, this is the hot time, the Summer, but this is my Christmas gift. My little modest girl, returned, whole”

Maman and I embraced her, and Jaume raised his glass.

“May I? A drink, then, to family, for that is what we are and what keeps us afloat in the world!”

Maman had the smile of a devil when she put down her glass.

“Roser, you said ‘modest’, no? Perhaps she is not as modest, now she is whole”

The older woman frowned. “It is not of cobwebs and string, this new thing, is it?”

My own blush was enough answer. Margot had chosen it for me, and it was so small, and so thin, in two parts, but she had insisted. And it was another threshold I had to cross: no longer was there a piece there, an ugly tube, but the reality of my femininity. It resisted still, as I used the devices from the doctors, but it was there and I was healed and whole, as I should have been born. I do not wish to discuss such intimate details, but there are things I must acknowledge, and the presence of new anatomy is one of them.

It is strange; I looked at my piece and I had never wanted it, nor the jewels that accompanied it. I can talk about it, I can say what a deformity it was, they were, and it is gone. Its absence is important, and outweighed only by the many years I had to carry it with me. My new arrangements, though; they are intimate in all senses. That flesh was attached to me, and the new flesh is part of me. To speak, in detail, of it would be like discussing the shape of my mother’s breasts with a random unknown. But it made so many things possible, at least in the area of clothing.

And so we had our time of sun and sand, of the clear water which Maggie shared with me when she was not with her husband, and even though I was without my own lover I took solace and comfort in the knowledge that all four were sharing love and practising its expression. There was a word that spoke to me as I looked at them, how they behaved, how their faces moved, and it was serenity. They had found passion, and then stepped past it, but as they passed they took it up and with them.

I thought long and often, as we lay in the sun or walked in the hills, and it was almost resignation, acceptance. I had finally won my proper anatomy, but the lover, the wonderful man, he would not be there for me. I had grown so tall, and sometimes my laughter was wry but genuine. My feet were large, but my piece, dearest Elle, was certainly not in keeping with them. And then, at last, came the post.

We had made the forms, completed them. I had seen the lawyers, and the functionaries, and my doctor had written his notes, and...we had the post, directed from our sunflower house to our holiday home, and it was there, small, and blue, with a photograph which showed very little paint to my face, but that card, it bore the letter, the sixth in the alphabet, and I wept, of course.

That night was the first time I drank so much that I lost some memories for an hour or two after awakening. We celebrated perhaps too well, but it was the smile on Maggie’s face the next morning that caught my attention.

“Maman…”

“Yes, Maggie?”

“Did you not tell us that when you were first here you looked at Spain, from the road, but did not enter? Because of her CNI?”

Papa smiled. “Ah, yes. Rollo, when must you return?”

“I have but two more weeks, Guillaume”

“Then I must speak with Thierry”

He left us as we lay on our towels, two of us in the infamous cobwebs and strings, and was gone for an hour. I looked at Maman after twenty minutes, and she just smiled. I realised, slowly, that something was afoot, perhaps planned between the others as I slept away my drunkenness. Papa took his hour, and on his return he simply smiled at me, and as I had with my brother I saw why he was so loved.

“Dearest sweet Papa…? You have been planning something, no?”

“I have been researching on the internet, Sophie my sweet, and profitably. We shall go just a little further than you could see from that roadside, and we shall allow Thierry four days respite from our presence”

“Where, Papa?”

“Barcelona, my sweet. We have rooms, we have places on the train”

I was like a small child with my voice, just then, but looked around at the smiles, and calmed.

“You all knew, no? All of you!”

Maggie came to me for an embrace. “We did not know when or if your new card might arrive, and so we researched the places, and the promotions in room prices before the August people, and spoke to the hotel, and…”

My mother let slip one tear only, before she smiled once again. “My darling, you could not go before. Now, you leave France as a woman, but, more importantly, when you return, it is as a woman, and a woman officially recognised as one. You enter your country as we all know you should have entered your life”

We embraced, and she released me to reach into her bag, producing a small red book.

“Besides, Thierry knows the chief of the kitchen at the hotel, and I shall be taking notes for our return!”