Paris, Autumn 1963
Alexandra still couldn’t quite control her excitement. She was in Paris! True, it was only for twenty-four hours, but the October day was bright and full of possibility. She loved Paris, although she’d only visited it once, years ago, when her nanny had taken her, so that she, the nanny, could visit her boyfriend. Paris had made a deep impression on her and she was enjoying every moment of being there.
Tomorrow, she would get on a train to Switzerland and go to a finishing school, or whatever her well-meaning, unimaginative guardians thought was a good idea. But today was hers and she’d already done quite a bit of exploring.
She pulled the belt of her mac a little tighter as a gust of wind caught her where she stood at the foot of Montmartre, looking up at the Sacré-Cœur, thinking how beautiful it was. She was about to set off up the very many steps towards it when she heard a little scream behind her. She turned to see a pretty young woman with blonde hair, her hands held against her face in a gesture of horror. There were potatoes and onions rolling away from her feet and a broken string bag in her hand. She was on the verge of tears.
‘I can’t believe this!’ the woman wailed. ‘You think a day has started badly and it just gets worse and worse!’
Alexandra couldn’t ignore her. The woman didn’t seem much older than she was at just twenty, and was obviously very upset. She was also speaking English, albeit with an American accent.
‘Come on! It’s all right. I’ll help you.’ Alexandra crouched down and started gathering up vegetables into the skirt of her mac.
‘It’s so kind of you to help,’ said the woman, sounding slightly less as if she were about to cry. ‘But unless you’ve got a bag, we might as well just leave all this here!’
Alexandra looked at her lap: the woman had a point; she couldn’t walk with all this clutched to her stomach. ‘We could fill our pockets, I suppose. Oh, look at that garlic!’ Accustomed as she was to tight little garlic bulbs, the large purplish item, the size of a tennis ball, reminded her of the cookery course she had recently finished in London. The first thing Mme Wilson had said was how pathetic the garlic was in England. This garlic was very obviously French.
‘Take it if you like,’ said the woman. ‘I have no pockets. I’m never going to get to use it now.’
‘I’m sure things aren’t that bad,’ said Alexandra soothingly. ‘Put what you can in your handbag—’
The woman waggled a tiny box purse in Alexandra’s direction.
‘OK, my pockets, then. And I can put some in my handbag, although maybe not the cabbage.’ Alexandra’s bag was an antique postal bag and was fairly capacious but not big enough for something the size of a human head.
‘It’s so kind of you, but I haven’t got anything I could put vegetables in. I don’t even know why I bought them. I’m supposed to be having a dinner party tonight and I don’t have a menu! I can’t cook and I can’t even shop for one! My husband is going to be so disappointed in me.’
‘Is he quite a new husband?’ Alexandra felt he must be, given how young this woman was.
‘Very new. And at this rate I wonder if we’ll make it to a year. Tonight is the first big dinner party he’s asked me to arrange and I’ve already failed!’ The woman was still distressed but not weeping. ‘Look, can we go somewhere and get a drink? Even just a coffee? I haven’t spoken English to anyone except my husband – and of course he’s American, like me – since we got to Paris. And that wouldn’t be so bad except I don’t speak French!’
Alexandra was naturally kind-hearted and couldn’t ignore the appeal from this young woman who must have been terribly lonely. ‘Why not? Here’s a nice café – have you had lunch? I haven’t. And I do speak French. Not perfectly, of course, but well enough.’ Alexandra was hungry. Keen to enjoy every minute she had in Paris, she had got up too early to be given breakfast at her pension, and had done a lot of walking.
‘Oh! I would so love to go somewhere and not have to fight with the waiters to make myself understood!’ said the woman. ‘My name is Donna, by the way.’ She put out her hand.
‘Alexandra,’ said Alexandra, shaking Donna’s hand briefly. ‘Now, let’s eat.’
When they both had plates of steak frites and a bottle of wine in front of them, and had eaten several mouthfuls in silence, Donna put down her knife and fork. ‘I’ll just tell you my story quickly,’ she said, ‘then I want to hear about you.’
Alexandra smiled. ‘Go on then.’
‘Well, I grew up in Connecticut. Married young to a very nice man, Bob, who my parents approved of, and then his job sent him to Paris. Which sounds so romantic, and it is really, but not when you don’t speak the language, your husband is out all day and you have no friends. I have no one to talk to except the maid and she doesn’t speak English – and hates me! My parents aren’t happy about me being so far away and keep writing letters asking if Bob can’t be transferred back to the States. Well, it’s my mother, really.’ She paused for breath. ‘That’s pretty much me summed up. Paris is a beautiful city and I’d love to get to know it better,’ she sighed. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘You haven’t told me about the dinner party yet,’ said Alexandra, ‘but I will give you the salient facts about me. I grew up in London and don’t have any parents, although I do have relations who look out for me. I was living a lovely life with friends in a big house owned by my family, and now I have to go to Switzerland.’ She paused. ‘The relations found out I wasn’t behaving in a way they considered suitable, so they’ve told me I must buckle down and do what they say.’
Put like that, it didn’t seem very dramatic, but at the time it had been awful. She’d been away at the wedding of her close friend Lizzie, and had come back with David, fifteen years older and her best friend, to see the house blazing with light. After she had stopped worrying that the house had been burgled, which took about two minutes, she realised her relatives from Switzerland had let themselves into the family property. Her and David’s easy life was over. David didn’t even go back into the house; he went to stay with a friend until the coast was clear. Fortunately the relatives hated London and didn’t stay long, but their orders to Alexandra were clear; she must go to Switzerland the following month.
‘That’s awful that you don’t have parents! But you do have relations? Why didn’t they take you in when your parents died?’ asked Donna.
‘I don’t know, but I’m really glad they didn’t. I had lots of nannies and people to look after me, and I didn’t mind. My relations want what’s best for me, absolutely, but I would never have been happy living with them.’ Alexandra had to have a sip of wine to help her recover from the thought. ‘They’re very straight-laced and buttoned-up. I’m a bit of a free spirit.’
‘Gee!’ said Donna. ‘That sounds so – dashing!’
Alexandra laughed. ‘It was fun, particularly when I met my special friends at cookery school.’
‘You’re a trained chef?’
‘No! Certainly not, but I can cook fairly well now. I did a few professional cooking jobs with my friend Meg, who’s a brilliant cook.’
‘If only she were here now!’ said Donna, obviously remembering the dinner party she’d been trying to forget.
‘Do you mind if I ask you something a bit personal?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Donna. ‘It’s so good to have someone to talk to; I don’t care about being discreet.’
‘I know the feeling. I had a lovely friend who was – is – a man, but girlfriends are a bit different, aren’t they?’
Donna nodded. ‘What did you want to ask me?’
‘Is Bob’s job well paid? I mean, if money is no object, you could find someone who’d cook for your dinner party and you wouldn’t have to worry. I’ve done jobs like that myself.’
‘I had someone! I had booked a chef and then they sent a message to say they couldn’t come. Bob said, “Oh, you can do it then, honey, it’ll be fine.” Then he closed up his newspaper and went to work. His mother always did the cooking when his father had business people over to dinner. He thinks women can do these things automatically, just because they’re women.’ Donna suddenly looked as if she might start to cry again.
‘And you didn’t say, “No, I can’t do it”?’
Donna looked down at her plate in shame. ‘No. I want to be the sort of wife who can cook for a dinner party. I didn’t want to disappoint him.’
Alexandra didn’t reply. She tried not to look reproachful but suspected she had failed.
‘Could you do it for me, Alexandra?’ said Donna, sounding very young and helpless. She was leaning forward, her long blonde hair trailing into her wine glass.
Alexandra thought about the short time she had to enjoy Paris. ‘But you need a proper French chef! There must be hundreds of them. We’re in Paris, after all.’
‘But do you know of any I could contact? The one who cancelled today couldn’t think of anyone.’
‘It doesn’t mean there aren’t any.’
‘Well, I realise that. But how would we find one in time for tonight?’
Donna had a point. ‘I agree it is very short notice – but there must be agencies we can try.’ Alexandra, who considered herself resourceful, realised that it would be nearly impossible to find a chef to cook in a private kitchen at such short notice if you had no contacts.
‘Would you do it for me?’ Donna pleaded, putting on all the charm, using skills that no doubt worked well on her father and Bob. Alexandra found she wasn’t immune, either. ‘If you’re not a trained chef, you have at least cooked meals before,’ Donna finished.
‘The thing is, I only have today to see Paris …’ Alexandra paused, thought for a moment – and decided that Switzerland and all it represented could wait. She had some money stashed away in the inner pocket of her handbag, traveller’s cheques she’d bought with the money she’d earned in London. Her relations knew nothing about it. She’d use that to spend a little more time in Paris. She was already booked into a very reasonable pension. She could send a telegram, tell her relations she had met a friend in Paris and was staying for a bit. After all, they’d done without seeing her much for years. A few more days wouldn’t make a difference. And where better to improve her French than in Paris?
She smiled at Donna. ‘OK, I’ll do it. But with you, not for you, and I don’t want to be paid. The thing to do here is to buy your way out of trouble! The French are brilliant at ready-made food. We’ll buy pâté, lots of cheeses and a gorgeous dessert, and then all we have to worry about is the bit in the middle.’
‘You make it all seem so easy,’ said Donna. ‘I am so glad I met you. You look so glamorous, but you’re so kind. I’d have thought you were French if I didn’t know otherwise. Is your scarf Hermès?’
Alexandra nodded. ‘It was a present from my uncle. When he came over to London last month, he realised I wasn’t a child any more and gave me something I really wanted to wear.’
‘With your mac, the belt, you look sort of—’
Alexandra sighed. ‘I know. I’ve always looked different from other people my age. I’ve always gone my own way a bit, fashion-wise.’
‘I was going to say you’re like Audrey Hepburn. You’re so – cool. And very stylish.’
‘Honestly? So! Let’s finish our lunch and then sort out your dinner party. We may need to buy a shopping bag or two!’
But she couldn’t throw herself into shopping and cooking until she’d dealt with sending the telegram to the people who were expecting to meet her off the train in Switzerland the following day. First, she had to compose the perfect message so her plan to stay in Paris for a few days would seem to them like a good idea. Then she had to send it, which probably meant finding a large bureau de poste.
They stayed at the restaurant table, and Alexandra took out a dog-eared notebook which she had previously used to write down details of the antique bits and pieces she used to buy and sell as a money-making hobby when she lived in London.
‘Can I help with the wording?’ asked Donna after she’d watched Alexandra cross out a few attempts.
Usually Alexandra was good at telling her relations what they wanted to hear. When she’d lived in the family house in London, she had managed to keep hidden from them for a long time the fact that she had had no paid female companion. But this telegram had to imply that what she was doing was exactly in alignment with what they wanted for her. As their primary concern was that her French wasn’t good enough (they considered it too colloquial and rustic), this was what she now focused on, while emphasising she was only delaying her arrival in Switzerland by a short time. She had considered saying ‘a few days’, but then decided not to be too specific.
‘No, thank you, I think I’m there. What do you think?’ She read her efforts out loud.
‘Great! And while you’ve been doing that, I’ve had a wonderful idea. We’ll phone it through to Bob’s secretary and ask her to send the telegram. Then we don’t have to wait any longer before getting going on the dinner party.’
It didn’t take much persuasion for Alexandra to agree to this.
‘After all,’ said Donna, ‘it’s a tiny thing compared to bailing me out of my predicament. You only met me on the sidewalk, we’re not even friends!’ She frowned. ‘Well, I hope we are now, but you know what I mean.’
Donna had also located the telephone in the bistrot so once Bob’s secretary, whom Donna described as ‘scarily efficient and not at all attractive’, had had the telegram dictated to her, Alexandra and Donna were free to shop. It was going to be an enjoyable afternoon.
