The Kiss of Paris

Chapter One ~ 1952-3

Madame Pelayo bent to kiss her children and then introduced them to Sheena.

“This is Madeleine,” she said. “Although I am afraid we always call her ‘Madi’. She will be seven next week and is already very excited about what she is going to have for a birthday present.”

“A pony cart, Mama! You promised me a pony cart,” Madi cried.

There was no pleading in her voice, rather it was a statement of fact. She already promised to be a beauty like her mother. She had dark hair curled on either side of her face, and tied on top of her head with a huge bow of satin ribbon. Her dress of pink organdie fell from an embroidered yoke to stand stiffly above her bare dimpled knees. She was slim and elegant, moving like quicksilver, and having an engaging manner of setting her head on one side when she asked a question.

The boy was sturdier and much darker. It was easy to see the Spaniard in him and already there was an in-bred pride to be seen in the way he carried his head despite the fact that he was plump and had difficulty in following the quick movements of his sister.

“Pedro is only just five,” Madame Pelayo explained. “My husband adores him and spoils him inordinately. But I am very strict, n’est pas?”

The children laughed at that as if at some great joke and Pedro, throwing his arms around his mother’s knees, held her close to him.

“Now, children, I have to go downstairs,” Madame Pelayo said. “Show Mrs. Lawson where everything is. Show her too how nice and polite and good you can be. All English children are very good because they are brought up so very very strictly.”

“I am sick of hearing about English children,” Madi said petulantly.

“Now, Madi, that is naughty,” her mother replied. “Mrs. Lawson will not get a good impression of you if you talk like that.”

Madi looked at Sheena as if inwardly she murmured, ‘who cares?’ But she did not reply and Sheena smiled in what she hoped was an ingratiating manner.

“I certainly will not tell you how good English children are,” she said. “To begin with I don’t think they are better or worse than any other sort of children. And when I was small my Nanny was always telling me about some children she had been with before she came to me and how good and well behaved they were with the result that I hated them.”

“Did you really?” Madi asked interestedly.

“Yes, really,” Sheena answered.

She saw the interest quicken in the child’s eyes and felt that she had scored at least one point.

But when Madame Pelayo closed the door behind her and she was alone, she felt her heart sink. She really knew so very little about children. She had been brought up an only child and she had had very little to do with other children.

She had gone to school spasmodically. Once for a few terms in Dublin, another time to a small school right down in the South of Ireland and once for only a few months in Cork. For the rest she had picked up things here and there, taking lessons when she could find them from widely diverse types of Teacher and finding that the sum total meant that she was extremely badly educated.

Only one thing had been fortunate. Her mother’s old maid, who had stuck to them through thick and thin until she died of a heart attack when Sheena was eighteen, had been French. Sheena had talked with the maid in her native language from her earliest days, in fact it became so like second nature to her that she often found herself thinking in French.

Old Marie had been in many ways the only mother she had ever known. Patrick always spoke of himself as being both father and mother to her, but Sheena had not been very old before she realised that she had to look after him rather than the other way about.

Poor Patrick! With his prejudices and his enthusiasms, his violent hatred of England and his almost idolatrous love of Ireland. Dear Patrick! With his warm heart, his sweetness and his understanding.

Sheena felt a sudden surge of homesickness come over her. Why had she consented to this wild mad scheme? What was she doing here? As out of place as a cuckoo in a nest, if it came to that, in this exotic over-decorated nursery with two children who looked more capable of instructing her than she them.

She looked round at the elaborate toys, at the dolls’ house with electric light, exquisite furniture and real silver accoutrements which must have cost a fortune, at the rocking horse as big as a real pony, at the electric train that ran through tunnels and stopped at miniature Stations, at the teddy bear, which was as big as Pedro himself, and at the dozens of dolls decked out with tiny ear muffs and dresses trimmed with real lace.

Any of these toys, Sheena thought, had cost more than she and Uncle Patrick had to spend on their food in a month!

And now she let herself be led from the nursery into the rooms that opened out of it. The single bedroom for herself with a fitted dressing table, clothes cupboards that lit up when you opened the doors, thick soft carpets which one’s feet seemed to sink into and a long narrow French window, which opened onto a balcony that overlooked the gardens at the back of the house.

It was all so lovely and so luxurious that Sheena felt she had nothing to say as the children dragged her away to show her their own room and the blue-tiled bathroom that they both shared.

Then, when they felt that she had seen everything and had gone back to her bedroom, they stood looking at her.

“Are you going to make a timetable?” Madi enquired.

“Do you usually have one?” Sheena asked quickly.

“All the Governesses we have had made one,” Madi replied. “But we never kept to it. It would say ‘history’ or ‘scripture’ on the timetable, but Mama would arrive and say ‘come for a drive in the car’ or Uncle Henri would arrive and then Miss Robinson would giggle and forget all about history and the timetable.”

“Well, perhaps we had better not have a timetable to start with,” Sheena said thankfully because she was not certain how to draw one up. “We will just try and arrange your lessons when nobody else seems to want us to do anything.”

“Have you met Uncle Henri yet?” Madi asked.

“No, who is he?” Sheena queried.

Madi looked at Pedro and gave him a little nudge. The little boy had not been listening, but now he looked enquiringly at his sister.

“She doesn’t know who Uncle Henri is,” Madi explained.

Pedro, with almost a sly look in his eyes, smiled at Sheena.

“Uncle Henri liked Miss Robinson,” he said at length. “Do you think he will like you?”

“Hush, Pedro.” Madi obviously understood enough to realise the impropriety of such a remark.

Sheena, a little embarrassed, turned towards the dressing table and pulled off her hat.

“You run into the nursery, Madi,” she said, “and see if tea is ready. I expect you have tea at this time.”

“We have milk,” Madi answered. “Pedro doesn’t like milk, but Mama says he has to drink it to grow big and strong.”

“Will you go and see if your milk is ready?” Sheena then asked.

The children ran from the room and she sat down at the dressing table. Her hair was uncomfortable, pinned up so tidily with such unaccustomed severity, and she pulled out the pins and taking a comb from her bag combed it free. It seemed to spring out joyfully into its natural waves and curls. For a moment Sheena sat staring at her reflection, seeing not a small heart-shaped face with what Uncle Patrick called its ‘blue eyes put in with a smutty finger’ but instead the dark flashing beauty of Madame Pelayo.

How she would love to be as pretty as that, she thought. Then she heard a sudden tumult from the nursery and without thinking and, still carrying the comb in her hand, she ran into the adjoining room.

The children appeared to be shrieking at something by the fireplace. Thinking that they must have hurt themselves Sheena ran towards them and only as she reached them did she look down in astonishment to see that Pedro was sitting on the chest of a young man who was lying on the hearthrug.

Pedro was being bounced up and down, shrieking at the top of his voice, while Madi was dancing round them both, uttering shrill cries which did not sound unlike an Indian war chant.

Comb in hand Sheena stood and stared and found herself looking into a pair of sparkling eyes above a wide laughing mouth. Then suddenly Pedro was sitting on the floor and the young man was on his feet.

“How do you do? I am Henri de Cormeille and you, I understand, are Mrs. Lawson.”

He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips.

For a moment she was astonished and then she remembered that it was conventional for a married woman in France to have her hand kissed.

“How do you do?” Sheena said. “I-I thought something was wrong. The children were making such a noise!”

“That, I may as well inform you, is their usual reception of their uncle.”

“Then – then that is all right,” Sheena said and realised that she was blushing. It was not only because she was conscious of feeling rather foolish standing there with her comb in her hand but because of the expression in the young man’s eyes. Eyes that seemed to take in every detail of her golden hair falling about her shoulders and eyes that made her uncomfortably aware that she could not meet them and keep her composure.

“I am astonished!” the young man said suddenly.

“Astonished?” Sheena queried.

“Yes. My sister informed me that she was getting a very staid, very proper English Governess. ‘She will be old,’ she said. ‘An old married woman.’ Is there some mistake or have you changed identities with the person who was originally engaged?”

Sheena thought that she must put an end to this conversation. She became aware that the children were watching them and standing surprisingly silent, looking from one face to the other. No wonder Miss Robinson had giggled when Uncle Henri came to the nursery! She could understand that now.

“I am afraid that you are seeing me at a disadvantage,” she said stiffly. “I was just doing my hair when I heard the children scream. But I assure you that I am in fact very staid and very strict.”

“Mon Dieu, I am terrified!” There was no mistaking the twinkle in his eyes or the laughter which seemed to keep his mouth perpetually smiling. “But if I am good, please, Mrs. Lawson, may I stay to tea?”

“Oh, yes, Uncle Henri, stay to tea, stay to tea,” the children cried.

“You see, they are pleading on my behalf.”

“You must do as you think best,” Sheena said. “I am not certain, having only just arrived, whether I have the authority either to invite or refuse you.”

She turned away as she spoke, walked across the room in what she hoped was a dignified manner and disappeared into her bedroom.

Only when she was alone did she allow herself to chuckle a little.

There was no doubt that Uncle Henri was going to be a handful. No wonder the other Governesses had got into trouble over him!

‘I must be very sensible,’ Sheena told herself and then realised, even as she said it, that she did not feel sensible at all. From the moment that she had left the train a sense of excitement had been rising within her.

This was a world that she had never known before – not only Paris with its trees and its buildings, its traffic and its strange people, but also the beauty and luxury at the Embassy. The pictures, the curtains, the carpets, everything was so different from the life she had lived with Patrick O’Donovan with its pinching and scraping, the worry of wondering where the next meal was coming from and – yes, why not admit it – never having anyone except Uncle Patrick to talk to for months on end.

And now in the space of an hour, she had met three people who intrigued and interested her. Colonel Mansfield was serious, rather frightening and yet in his own way definitely intriguing. Madame Pelayo, beautiful and exotic, the sort of person Sheena had imagined existed only between the pages of an expensive magazine.

And now, Henri de Cormeille, gay, debonair and someone she must be careful of, someone she knew, instinctively in her own heart, she would have to fight against every inch of the way.

She went to the window and looked out into the garden. The sun had set and already pale blue twilight was creeping over the sky. There was something magical in the very shadows beneath the flowering bushes below and in the soft dusky translucence of the sky above.

Could this really be happening to her? Suddenly Sheena knew that it was all the prelude to adventure, an adventure so exciting and so thrilling that already she was almost breathless with the thrill of it.

Through the closed door she heard the children laughing and hurriedly she returned to her dressing table.

Quickly lest she should weaken in her resolve to look staid and respectable, she pinned back her hair, striving to brush smooth the springing waves on either side of her temples.

And then, without even another glance at herself in the mirror, she walked across the room and opened the door that led into the nursery.