CHAPTER 34
My life seemed to consist of Summers. There had been the Summer of my rebirth, and the Summer by the sea, and those dreadful Summers when I had hidden from my family, and now it was a Summer of anticipation and adulthood. I was now a teacher, and although my charges were fully grown their language was that of small children. I found it confusing, because while they spoke as infants, the concepts they wished to express were adult. And they were so sweet.

Each of the weeks began on the Saturday morning, when I descended from the small room I had been allocated in a tall building over the cafeteria and bar, and we arranged tables and name badges and long lists of those who were to attend. By noon, as the kitchen staff brought us some plates of small food, the first were arriving. They came by taxi from the airport, or by tram from the railway station, or by car from the ferry, and several in each group came on bicycles laden with panniers and books. There was an hour or two of calm and quiet before their arrival, and then their conversation began to bubble up. Every so often I would hear Pascale or another professor utter the words “In French”, but the process of registering was too complicated for many to do in anything but their own language. That made me smile, for the practice was very helpful to me, in the English.

The afternoon finished with a more formal presentation in the large lecture hall, where we were all introduced, and then each class left with their professor to be shown their room. I had been astonished at the schedule, for they had morning lessons, afternoon lessons, evening lessons before their meal, and syndicates and tutorials after it. If they took everything, they could be working from eight and a half in the morning until ten in the evening. And they laughed, all the time.

Each class I assisted in contained people from all parts of England, even Scotland, and their accents were very strange, so a lot of my time was spent working to improve their vowels, particularly the nasals. It was incredibly intense for me, but it was also a moment of revelation. This was what I wanted to do with my life: teach. Each time I saw an eye light with understanding, it was a warmth in my soul. I had done that, I had made a difference to another person.

There were events most evenings, such as a Norman evening where we served small portions of all our favourite local food (and drink) and then the tall woman with the nose sang songs with a guitarist, and the English tried to sing them too. There was a film in the big hall, and Laurent took a large group on a night walk around the city where he explained the architecture and told stories from our history as the initially large group reduced one by one or two by two as bars and cafés were reached. And they drank, these English, drank as if they were Polish, and on the first Thursday night I saw what Pascale had meant. There was a discotheque, and dancing, and drinking, and much kissing in dark corners, and I was awoken in my small room by the sound of someone making very noisy love the other side of my wall. That happened on all but one of the Thursdays, but it was worst on that first one, for all I could think of was my Benny. I had looks, at breakfast, from the students. They had seen that I did not drink, but that Friday morning I looked just like them, eyes red as if my head were wood.

The evenings were for work, in a way, even if I did not teach the subjunctive or how to separate the sounds of en-an-in-on, because the students knew me, knew my role, and even the gentlest of conversations was help for them. I had to learn to smile again, it seemed, and it started to come more naturally, and grew more so with each hesitant approach.

The nights without discotheques or music I would be joined by Elle, usually with Matty towed behind her energy, or by my sister, once by my brother, and twice by Papa and Maman together. When Rollo came, that first week, I had to stifle my laughter.

There was a woman, one Janet, about thirty five years in her age, and she had chosen me, it seemed, as her confidante for the week. Each meal we sat together, and I made an effort to seek her out so that she would not feel she was haunting me, and the morning after I had been visited in the bar by Rollo she asked me the questions.

“The man, the pretty one last night?”

“It is handsome for the man, Janet”

“The handsome man, yes. He is yours?”

I laughed, as kindly as I could, so as not to offend. “He is my brother, Janet”

I swear faithfully that she sat up straighter, and I knew the next question, so I held up a hand to still her.

“Do you remember the blonde from the day before?”

“The very pretty blonde? The fat one?”

“Er, no. The tall one”

“What did I say?”

“That she had too much flesh, that she weighed too much. Fat”

“Oh, I am desolated!”

“And we say beautiful for a woman like her, not pretty, yes?”

“You are going to say that she is married to him, not so?”

I smiled and nodded, and Janet shrugged, and spoke in English. “Ah well, best see what I can trap on Thursday night, then. Got to be someone with no taste here”

That summed up the weeks, in one moment. They came, they drank, they tried to find a sexual partner, and all the time they studied hard, and laughed. Very, very strange people, but I grew quickly to adore their ways.

Matty was trying, too. Whatever had passed between him and Benny had shamed him, and with Elle’s pushing he seemed to be making his way back into my heart as a friend. My only evening without responsibilities was Friday, so we had a family meal in the City that night, as many as were free, for Rollo was tied to his rota of work. Each meal was a time of so much love I felt my heart might burst, and as it came after an afternoon in which a long tail of English people came to me to ask for a photograph and offer a kiss the emotions were intense.

This was life, as best as I could now hope to live it. Finally, the classes were over, and the last students departed on the final Friday. Pascale came to me as we put away the last of the lists and tables.

“Sophie, may I speak with you?”

“Of course”

We went to a quiet corner of the cafeteria, and she persuaded the kitchen people to provide a serving of coffee.

“Sophie, this has been an interesting period, no? How have you found it?”

I could not hold my smile. “They are wonderful people, Pascale, so full of life! I have enjoyed the time hugely”

She smiled, honestly and broadly. “They say much the same of you, my little one. They have each completed their pieces of paper to say how they felt about the course, and the staff, and all of them say the same things about you: animated, friendly, knowledgeable, helpful, all except one”

“Oh? What did I do wrong?”

Pascale laughed, very loudly. “Nothing. It was just the one woman, who wrote on her paper ‘such a pity her brother is married; nobody’s perfect, it seems’ “

We shared our laughter, and of course it was Janet. Pascale became more serious.

“Sophie, you have a gift, it seems, a talent. I have watched you, and they are right. You know your subject, and you have great love for it, and enthusiasm in its delivery. This is not a normal place, though, for the English here are here because they seek the knowledge you have, with their own enthusiasm. Normal teaching, normal classes, always have those who do not wish to be there, do not wish to learn. That is a different world to inhabit. I would like to make you an offer of employment, as an assistant in one of my schools, the schools I tour as part of my own work. You would be teaching much younger people, children just beginning the move from skipping ropes and dolls towards their Bacca. You would work as an assistant, as I have said, but the work would be counted towards your necessary qualifications and certificates as a teacher in your own right.

“There would be study, of course, and I would be pleased if it were here that you took those courses, and many of the pupils will be entirely little bastards, but I feel that you are infected with the delight that teaching brings. Am I right?”

I was stunned, but she had seen to my soul, and there was but one answer, and I gave it, and she gave back the kisses. I was to be a teacher, in truth and for good, and Maman wept when she heard, but that was not a problem because Papa wept with her, and Margot; Rollo seemed to need some time to look at the flowers in our garden.

Four weeks later, I lay on a wheeled bed, and an African man pushed it down a long corridor towards my final change.