Alexandra was excited all over again the next morning when the train left Paris, but she knew she was in for a long journey and had come prepared.
Donna had insisted on coming to the station with her, and bought two filled baguettes, fruit and a bottle of Perrier water. The previous day, Alexandra had taken Donna to the Left Bank and sought out the famous English bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. She bought a French/English dictionary and two novels for the journey. Donna had wanted to donate the Larousse Gastronomique to her but Alexandra had said it was too heavy to carry and was part of the fixtures and fittings of Donna’s apartment. Their farewells were surprisingly emotional, considering they had only known each other for a very short time.
A few hours later, Alexandra had eaten her picnic, peeling the apples with her Swiss Army knife, which she never travelled without. Across the aisle was a man and his wife and he also had a knife. It was an Opinel clasp knife that he used to attack ham on the bone. It made her little knife seem too dainty for words.
She’d read most of one book (rationing herself so she’d have something for the month ahead) and studied the dictionary carefully, several times. She spent a long time looking out of the window before at last the train trundled into the station.
The scenery, especially latterly, had been wonderful. The countryside had been painted gold by sun and the changing season. She’d passed fields of sunflowers, yellow and brown, and lavender fields, harvested now, so the grey bushes crawled over the hills like fat caterpillars. Grape-pickers in large straw hats, baskets on their backs, gathered fruit from vines that were scarlet in the sunshine. Villages of golden stone clung to the hilltops. And even though it was October, the light – the reason artists went to Provence, Alexandra knew – was still special. While she looked out of the window, she tried very hard not to think about the man in the office, the Comte de Belleville, the children’s father. She did not believe in love at first sight. She may have only been just twenty but she had quite a lot of second-hand experience of love. The various nannies and companions who had looked after her over the years had mostly been young and hadn’t held back from telling Alexandra when their hearts were broken. She had resolved from an early age (she had been about ten) not to succumb to love if she could possibly help it.
Since then she had discovered that being in love wasn’t all bad, but to fall in love with someone you really didn’t know was the height of folly. It was not going to happen to her, however good-looking the man might be.
She’d grown stiff during the long journey and staggered a little as she climbed down off the train. A man in blue overalls, who had somehow identified the English nanny, greeted her in heavily accented French she could only just understand.
‘Mademoiselle! You are late! You must hurry. I am late too now! My name is Bruno.’
‘Bonjour, Bruno. My name is Alexandra,’ she said but he didn’t listen. Instead he took her new little case with her new clothes in it while she clutched on to the airline bag and her handbag. In these two bags were her tools for life and she’d be lost without them.
Bruno seemed friendly, but in a great hurry.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘there has been a small calamity.’
How could a calamity be small? Alexandra wondered.
‘The housekeeper, Mme Carrier, has been called away. Her mother is ill.’
‘Oh? The same as the mother of the nanny?’
Bruno didn’t know or care about the nanny. ‘You will have to cook for the children. But don’t despair’ – Alexandra wasn’t given to despair and she didn’t intend to start now – ‘the gardener will bring you vegetables and fowls. Food from the estate. As normal.’
Although she was struggling to understand Bruno’s dialect and his speed of delivery she heard ‘fowls’ and hoped he meant fairly young chickens, not tired old boilers who were only good for stock. She gave a mental shrug (being in France was beginning to affect her) and thought that maybe the chateau would also have a Larousse Gastronomique. In a month she’d have time to get to grips with it all.
He led her to an old blue truck and put her case into the back which, going by the odour, had last contained animals. She hauled herself up on to the seat beside him. While he went round to get in himself she wondered how Mme Dubois in Paris would have described this agricultural vehicle.
Her chauffeur talked and gestured and exclaimed as they rattled through the smaller roads and lanes until at last the chateau came into view at the end of an avenue of trees.
It wasn’t enormous by chateau standards, but it was still a substantial property. It was square with large, fat towers at either end and seemed to grow out of the soil. It was constructed of huge stone blocks and looked as if it had been designed to withstand anything. Now, creeper that was beginning to turn the colour of fire in the afternoon light covered a good part of the walls. Castellations on the towers could have been decorative or could have indicated the chateau was of a great age, and the hills behind made it seem protected. Alexandra had a sudden strange feeling that it looked like home.
But as Bruno charged up the avenue Alexandra reminded herself that it wasn’t home, the job was only for a month. However, she found her heart was beating faster – she wanted to do a good job. She’d promised the children’s father he could trust her, and she couldn’t let him, or the children, down.
Bruno hammered at the front door of the chateau using the knocker, which was the ring in the nose of a bronze model of a bull’s head. Immediately a deep barking started, obviously from a large dog. Alexandra jumped but Bruno was unimpressed. He huffed impatiently when no one opened it instantly, although it wasn’t long before the big door was dragged back.
‘Ah, bonjour!’ said Bruno as the door opened wider. ‘I have brought you your new nanny!’
The dog, who was indeed large, was black and white with floppy ears and a thin tail, trotted out. He sniffed Alexandra and gave her hand a cursory lick.
Once she knew she wasn’t about to be eaten, Alexandra looked at the three young people who were guarding the door more effectively than the dog. The eldest was a girl of about fifteen wearing slacks and a roll-neck sweater – she could hardly be described as a child. There was a boy, almost as tall but obviously younger, and another smaller girl in a faded dress with smocking and puff sleeves who seemed the only one who was the right age for a nanny. Her heart went out to them. She’d had nannies inflicted on her when she was past the age for it to be appropriate and it wasn’t fun. She understood why the older girl and her brother were looking at her with a mixture of hostility, resentment and defiance. The little girl was anxious, and clung to her brother.
The eldest two looked very like their father, with his hair that was nearly black and his dark, heavily fringed eyes and mouth made for smiling, although they certainly weren’t smiling now. The youngest one looked quite different, with fair curly hair. Her big brother had his arm protectively around her. She must take after her mother, Alexandra thought.
‘We don’t need a nanny,’ said the eldest girl, her chin up, speaking French.
‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said Bruno. ‘But your papa says you have to have one. And here she is. I must go now.’ He ran back to the truck, collected Alexandra’s case from the back and almost pushed her through the door. Then he roared off, making Alexandra feel her only friend had just left her, and was shooting off down the avenue.
Her three charges looked at her and Alexandra looked back. She recognised her young self in their expressions and cast her mind back to nannies she’d got on with – there’d been a couple. She’d liked them because they respected her and didn’t talk down to her.
‘Hello,’ she said in English. ‘Do you speak English?’ She had been told that they did as their mother was English, which was why they’d wanted a native English speaker to be their nanny.
The eldest girl lifted her chin.
Alexandra repeated herself in slow, schoolgirl French.
‘Non!’ said the girl.
Alexandra asked them their names in the same way, slowly with a very English accent to her French.
The eldest girl didn’t speak but her brother said, ‘Félicité,’ using the French form of the name and gesturing to his older sister. ‘I am Henri. And this is little Stéphanie. The dog’s name is Milou.’
Alexandra nodded. That was what Tintin’s dog was called in the French version of the books. If these children knew those books it would be something she could talk about, although she was determined to speak to them in English. They may well not want her to know they spoke English and she decided that she would keep the fact she spoke French more or less fluently a secret too. People were allowed secrets, she felt.
‘I am Alexandra,’ she said in French, and then went back to English. ‘I’m very hungry. Can you tell me where the kitchen is, please?’
‘Non!’ said Félicité, still defiant.
‘Very well,’ said Alexandra, ‘I will find it for myself. Maybe Milou will help me?’
Milou obliged and together they went through the long passage to the back of the house; possibly Milou was hungry too.
The kitchen was large with a huge black range against one wall and a big, scrubbed table in the middle. Next to the range was a small armchair, with a lot of squashed cushions on it. In the corner was a grandfather clock, which ticked loudly. There was a sink, several large cupboards around the walls that almost reached the ceiling and, in front of the range, a rug on which Milou lay down.
Above the range was a long wooden rack, possibly designed for drying clothes but hanging from it instead was everything that might go in a kitchen apart from furniture. There were copper saucepans, frying pans of every size, ladles, strainers, sieves and what looked like medieval weapons of war, bunches of herbs, tea towels, and a teddy bear who had obviously been washed and hung out to dry.
To Alexandra’s relief, in one corner she saw a fairly modern gas stove next to a large bottle of gas. There was also a large armoire, its door ajar, revealing bowls and casseroles, dishes, plates – everything you might need to eat from or to serve food. But the room was freezing, even though it was only October.
But first things first, Alexandra told herself. It was a long time since she had eaten her picnic on the train.
‘I’m very hungry,’ she said in English and then repeated herself in slow, painstaking French.
Félicité shrugged but Stéphanie, who obviously hadn’t quite taken in the instructions about language said, ‘I’m hungry too!’ in perfect English.
‘Stéphie!’ said Henri, more in sorrow than in anger, ‘we’re only supposed to speak French!’
‘That’s all right,’ said Alexandra. ‘It’s fun to play a prank on someone but it isn’t funny if it goes on too long. What do you want to eat?’
She addressed Stéphie, who shook her head, obviously still embarrassed by her recent faux pas.
‘OK,’ said Alexandra, mostly to herself. ‘Is there a fridge?’
She’d stopped expecting help and so started opening cupboards and doors and eventually found a large larder a short way down a passage. In here she found a pat of butter on a plate, a selection of cheeses and one of the fowls Bruno had referred to. She would think about cooking that another time; now she wanted bread.
Carrying the butter and some cheese she thought was Comté, the nearest thing to Cheddar available in France, she went back to the kitchen. She was pleased to see the children were still there.
‘Where is the bread?’ she said in her loud, slow French. She was trusting that the eldest girl would play the game. Everyone knew the children spoke English, but Alexandra addressing her in French should mean she would have to reply.
Félicité indicated with her head where Alexandra should look. ‘In the pantry,’ she said in English. ‘But it’s probably stale.’
‘When did you all last eat?’ Alexandra was worried. It was six o’clock. Had they eaten at all that day?
‘We had croissants for breakfast,’ said Stéphie. ‘And apples for lunch.’
‘OK,’ said Alexandra. ‘Let’s find some food.’
The pantry was beyond the larder and in it she found a wooden bread bin, in which were a couple of hard baguettes and a pain de campagne.
Hoping she’d find a knife saw-like enough to cut it, she picked up the round brown loaf and took it back to the kitchen. If the housekeeper was going to be away for long, she’d make a few changes; things needed to be a lot handier.
There was a knife on a magnetic rack against the wall. Alexandra sawed through the loaf until she had four decent-sized slices. Then she proceeded to make cheese on toast.
The smell of toasted cheese, and the sight of it bubbling on the bread that Alexandra had put on a round bread board, brought Alexandra’s charges to the table like moths to a flame. When she saw how eagerly they tucked in she cut up the rest of the loaf and used all the cheese to put on top. She hoped them having full stomachs would make them unbend to her a little.
Sitting in a kitchen, albeit a cold French one, reminded Alexandra of her London life, when she and her friends would sit around the kitchen table, eating, laughing, chatting about life. They’d shared the large London house in recent months, making it a very happy place. Could she make this house happy? On her own with three unhappy children? It would be hard. Although Félicité was not really a child any more.
She got up from the table and went to inspect the range. She opened the fire door. ‘Does this work, usually?’
Henri nodded. ‘It needs lots of wood, but yes, usually it works. There’s a wood shed.’
Alexandra smiled at him. If she could get at least one of her charges on her side it would make everything so much easier. ‘Could you find me some wood and some kindling? You know, small sticks to get the fire going. And some newspaper.’
Henri picked up another piece of cheese on toast and set off. Alexandra decided this was not the moment to teach table manners; after all, she had asked him to get the wood. She hadn’t said ‘when you’ve finished eating’.
It took Alexandra a little while to get the range going and once she had, she realised it would be another matter to keep it in. But it was cheering to hear the crackle of the wood and realise that eventually there would be a little heat. It had been a golden October day but now it was getting chilly.
‘Henri, you must show me where the wood is. I can’t rely on you to fetch it for me.’
‘Mme Carrier used to swear at the range a lot. She struggled to keep it in overnight,’ Henri confided.
‘OK, in which case, I’ll content myself with lighting it in the morning and keeping it going in the day.’ She put on another couple of logs. ‘Anyone fancy hot chocolate?’ she asked. She really felt like a glass of wine but until she had properly settled in and found where it was kept, she’d have to make do. Hot chocolate, served in bowls the French way, would help a lot.
There wasn’t much milk in the large jug in the larder but a thorough rummage through the various packets in the cupboards came up with a mix that only required hot water to make a milky cocoa. Alexandra put some milk into a pan, the contents of the packet, a lump of chocolate and some water and heated it on the stove. Eventually, she poured the foaming drink into bowls she knew were usually used for drinking coffee.
Soon they were all sitting round the table, sipping their drinks. The room was beginning to warm up as was the cheerfulness level. Neither was as high as Alexandra would have liked, but an upward curve was positive.
Alexandra had very little to go on, but thought that Stéphie must be about eight or nine. She saw the little girl yawning a few times. Perhaps Stéphie needed more sleep than the older two and hadn’t been getting it.
She gathered the empty bowls and put them in the sink, resolving to wash them tomorrow. Although it was probably not the official nanny way to behave, she always preferred washing up in the morning when there was sunshine, rather than standing in a dark kitchen when she was tired.
She reached for the teddy. ‘This little chap must be quite tired. I wonder where he sleeps?’
‘He sleeps with me!’ said Stéphie immediately and then looked at her siblings in case she’d revealed too much to their unwanted nanny.
‘OK. Does anyone know where I sleep?’ asked Alexandra. ‘I’d ask Teddy but I’m not sure he speaks English.’
‘He’s called Clive,’ said Stéphie.
‘Oh? That’s a good name. Why is he called that?’
Stéphie gave a little shrug. ‘It’s his name.’
Félicité pushed back her chair, making a horrible scraping noise on the stone floor. ‘The nanny’s room is ready. Mme Carrière did it before she went. We’ll show you.’ She paused. ‘It has a sofa and chairs. You can stay in it.’ Her meaning was clear: Stay in your quarters, Nanny, and don’t come out!
Alexandra flinched inwardly. Had she ever been so completely hostile to any of her nannies or governesses? She felt a flash of shame when she realised she probably had.
‘I’ll just make up the stove and see if we get a bit of hot water out of it. At least we know that Clive doesn’t need a bath,’ she said. When she’d put on logs, fiddled with draughts and levers she didn’t understand, she straightened up.
‘Let’s go!’ Although she sounded positive and cheerful, inside she felt incredibly tired and a little disheartened.
At least the chateau is beautiful, she thought as she followed her charges up the elegant staircase to the upper floors.
Her room, as indicated by Félicité, was one of a suite of rooms designed for children and their personal servants. It wasn’t luxurious but the nanny wasn’t expected to sleep in a garret, obviously. It had a full-height window and a small balcony giving a nice view over the grounds at the front of the chateau, and was large enough to have a sofa and a couple of armchairs arranged around a small table in the window. There was a chest of drawers and a desk against the wall, and the bed was a double with pretty hangings. If she did have to live in it, it wouldn’t be bad. It was fairly simple but it looked clean. The bed was ancient, she realised, but that certainly wouldn’t bother her tonight.
‘Will there be hot water if anyone wants a bath?’ she said to her little group.
‘No,’ said Félicité. ‘The nanny is expected to wash in her room with a bowl and a jug of water.’
Alexandra was keen to get Félicité on her side but this was a step too far. ‘Oh come on! What sort of novels have you been reading? But talking of reading, I wonder if Clive likes being read to?’
Stéphie nodded assertively. ‘Yes, he does.’
‘Let’s find something he’d like and I’ll read.’ She did remember how much she liked being tucked up in bed while someone read her a story.
Everyone went to Stéphie’s room, which was pretty and had twin beds in it. It had a little bookcase full of books. Alexandra went over to it and read out the titles. ‘Oh! Milly-Molly-Mandy!’ she said and then realised her childhood favourite might be a little young for Stéphie.
‘OK, we can read that if you like.’ Stéphie sounded resigned and condescending but Alexandra wondered if she was secretly happy to go back to a book written for smaller children.
She picked it up. ‘Get your night things on and do your teeth and then I’ll read.’ She discovered that, although she never would have thought of herself as the sort of person who told people to clean their teeth, she was settling into the role.
Stéphie took her pyjamas into the little bathroom and Félicité and Henri got on to the second bed.
‘Are you keen on Milly-Molly-Mandy?’ Alexandra asked.
‘Of course not!’ said Henri.
‘We have to stay with her until she goes to sleep,’ said Félicité, ‘and of course, make sure you’re not cruel to her.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Alexandra, wondering if she should actually supervise the teeth-cleaning and then deciding not tonight.
She wandered round the room looking at things and came across a china model of a horse that was in several pieces. She was examining the head when Stéphie came back. ‘It was an accident!’ she said, suddenly upset.
‘We know,’ said Félicité gently. ‘It’s OK.’
Alexandra put down the horse’s head. ‘I may be able to mend that for you later.’
‘Our last nanny didn’t read to us much,’ said Stéphie. ‘She said we were old enough to read to ourselves.’
‘And of course you are,’ said Alexandra. ‘I understand that. But I still love being read to.’
Henri and Félicité settled on to the second bed while Alexandra lay down next to Stéphie and opened the book.
She’d read one of the stories and then saw that Stéphie was fast asleep. The other two seemed to be enjoying being read to but she asked them quietly, ‘Shall I go on? Stéphie’s asleep.’
‘No,’ said Félicité quickly. ‘Milly-Molly-Mandy is a bit young for us.’
Alexandra got off the bed carefully, so as not to disturb the little girl, pulled up the covers and tucked her in. Then she went to the broken horse. ‘Would you like me to mend this? Would Stéphie like me to?’
Félicité shrugged in a very Gallic way. ‘Stéphie would like it. I don’t care. But it was mine.’
‘I need to get my things up from downstairs,’ Alexandra said. She tried not to look at Henri in a meaningful way but he took the hint anyway.
‘I’ll get them.’
‘You mustn’t take advantage of Henri. It wouldn’t be fair. He’s very kind and helpful,’ Félicité said as he left the room.
‘OK,’ said Alexandra, following him out and making her way to her own bedroom, Félicité trailing behind.
She had brought her handbag up with her. She knew she had glue suitable for china mending in it because she’d found it when looking for make-up, before her interview. She remembered buying it just before her friend’s wedding and it had been kicking around in the bottom of her bag ever since. She took her bag over to the table.
‘If you go and get the horse, I’ll see what I can do.’
As Félicité went, Alexandra realised that in spite of her nonchalant attitude towards it, the ornament obviously meant a lot to her.
Twenty minutes later, Henri and Félicité were sitting on Alexandra’s bed while she sat at the table, scraping glue off the edges of the broken china with her penknife.
‘It is odd for a girl to have a penknife in her handbag,’ said Henri, unable to keep silent about the oddness any longer.
‘It’s a Swiss Army knife,’ said Alexandra. ‘A friend from London gave it to me. He said everyone ought to have one.’
‘Was he a boyfriend?’ asked Félicité.
Alexandra looked up and smiled. ‘No. He is my best friend, probably, but there’s nothing romantic about us.’ She thought about David, who had kept an eye on her and later her friends, in London. He was more like an older brother, and homosexual, something they never really spoke about, so their relationship was never going to be anything different.
‘Why are you scraping all the glue off?’ said Henri. ‘Why put it on if you’re going to take it all off again.’
‘It’s to make sure there isn’t any excess to ooze out when I put the pieces together.’ She paused. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any sort of tape? Sticking plaster would do.’
Henri, who was obviously fascinated by the mending process, obligingly fetched a roll of sticking plaster. It was rather old and took Alexandra a while to get into but eventually the little horse was sitting on the table, together once more, his pieces held together by strips of sticking plaster.
‘That’s amazing!’ said Henri. ‘It looks as if he’s been patched up in hospital.’
‘He’ll look better tomorrow when we take the tape off,’ said Alexandra, hoping her china-mending skills hadn’t deserted her. ‘I’ll show you how to do it if ever there’s anything else that needs mending,’ she said to Henri.
When Alexandra had cleared up her things and put the tops back on the two substances involved in the mending, she said, ‘What time do you two go to bed? Normally?’
‘When we like,’ said Félicité defiantly.
‘Oh good,’ said Alexandra. ‘So if I went to bed now, you’d lock up the house and let Milou out? Things like that?’
‘No,’ said Félicité, horrified. ‘You must do that. You’re the grown-up.’
‘All right,’ said Alexandra. ‘But you’ll have to show me what to do.’
Milou had a bed in the kitchen but although he went out obediently enough, barked twice before doing what was required and came back in, the bed in the kitchen didn’t seem to appeal.
‘Does he usually sleep with one of you two?’ Alexandra asked.
‘He’s not supposed to,’ said Henri, ‘but he gets lonely downstairs and howls. It’s a terrifying sound.’
‘Well, if he wants to sleep with one of you, that’s fine. I don’t want howling. I’m really tired.’
‘Does sleeping in such a big house make you nervous?’ asked Félicité, obviously hoping she would say yes.
Alexandra shook her head. ‘In London I used to sleep alone sometimes in a much spookier house than this one.’ She shrugged, although when she was younger, a gap between nannies or companions was something she’d dreaded. She looked at Félicité directly. ‘I had a lot of nannies when I was growing up, sometimes when I was too old to have one, like you.’
Félicité looked away, obviously not wanting to acknowledge any similarity between her and this Englishwoman who’d been inflicted on them.
‘Was your father away a lot too?’ asked Henri.
Alexandra shook her head. ‘No, I’m an orphan. But it’s OK, I never knew my parents.’
‘We’ve got a father,’ said Henri, ‘but our mother lives in Argentina. We never see her.’
‘Oh, that’s sad,’ said Alexandra, probing for information as if it were a sore tooth; she was ready to draw back at any moment.
‘It’s fine!’ declared Félicité. ‘What sort of a mother leaves her children? We don’t want to see her.’
‘It’s handy she lives in Argentina then, isn’t it?’
Henri frowned. He would like to see her, Alexandra thought. But what about Stéphie? When had their mother left? Would she even remember her?
A yawn erupted from nowhere. ‘I must go to bed,’ said Alexandra. ‘I’ll trust you two to brush your teeth and settle Milou for the night. We’ve locked the doors. Time to sleep!’
‘We didn’t shut the hens in,’ said Félicité. ‘The fox will get them if we don’t.’
Alexandra took a breath and refrained from asking Félicité why she hadn’t mentioned this before. ‘Right, we’d better do that then. You’ll have to show me.’
As she followed Félicité and Henri out of the back of the house and into the yard, across the yard to the henhouse, Alexandra resolved to make sure this was done much earlier in the evening. She’d have to make a list of chores for herself.
In the desk in her room was some faded writing paper with a drawing of the chateau on it as well as the address and telephone number. Alexandra dithered for a couple of minutes and then decided it would be a good idea to write to her relations using this paper. She was determined to be more adult about her situation and would start by telling them that things hadn’t worked out quite as she expected, although she admitted to herself that she wouldn’t have been so keen to share this information had she been working anywhere less salubrious and suitable for a young woman of her background. But as she was now in a large chateau, looking after the children of the Comte de Belleville, she didn’t have to worry about this.
