Proust

 

When he asked me to marry him, I knew that my dreams of a proper British academic life would come true. We had settled down immediately and his lecturer’s salary at the university was just enough to cover a small cottage in the back of an old church near a graveyard. I was 22 and had just graduated and my head was filled with dreams of musty 1930s books and vicars and rambles in the countryside. He was 48, already losing his hair and developing a bit of a stoop. But I loved him – or rather the idea of him- my dreamy academic. My childhood in India had left me plenty of time in old library of my girls’ school to read old books.

 

When we scrimped and saved for holidays, we found a cheap hotel in the Algarve where we went every year. His idea of fun was to read these Proust novels to each other. One day he told me that when we finished the books, he thought that we should start over from the beginning. And that’s when I saw the next 10 years of my life stretched out before me – the same as the last ten. I realized I had never seen the world. I had never figured out my own story. So I said to him – we’ll never finish these books. And then I packed my bag and left him.

Childhood Scenes

My mother straightened the collar of my blouse, tugging at it and licking her finger to wipe away a bit of chocolate smudged around my mouth from the candybar given to me as a bribe on the drive to the airport. "Now be a brave girl and don't embarrass us," she instructed. She stepped back and looked at me with a critical eye. 

"Why did you put her in that get up" my father asked, lifting a skeptical eyebrow and lighting a cigarette. I glanced down at my blue polka dotted suit - a bit tight and very shiny. The shorts showed my pink thighs, a bit chaffed from the vinyl car seat and goose bumped from the cool Irish rain. "They're French! We have to show them that we have some style!" she tutted at him, "we can't be sending her off to France in some dungarees!" "sure, but they aren't in Paris," he exhaled, "they live on a farm in the countryside." 

My mother ignored him and turned her attention back to me. "You won't understand a thing they say," she lectured. "You had better do us proud. You will make your bed every morning the minute you wake up. Don't eat fast, gobbling down your food like a starving piglet at the trough. And for god's sake, keep your hands and face clean." 

I didn't understand why I was off to the French cousins. Just last week I had been running around in the park, thrilled that school was over and now I was standing in the airport in this hot tight suit clutching a small bag with my belongings- told that I was on my way to France on an airplane. 

The stewardess came over and pinned a name tag to the jacket, pushing the floppy frills of the blouse out of the way. "Don't you look as a cute as a button," she smiled with a chipper cold voice. I frowned. My mother kissed me on the cheek and my father patted my head. 

"Don't forget!" my mother called after me as she waved, "Say Bahn Jar when you get there!"