One day, I found you seemingly lost in front of a cardboard box you had wheeled over on a metal trolley from the Boulevard Saint Michel. Your hair was tousled and you were smiling. I thought of Gena Rowlands. Of Barbara Loden in Wanda. I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t know you at seven in a pleated skirt and white blouse in Norfolk; I never came across you in a miniskirt in Chelsea in the sixties, but isn’t it better like this?
I opened the box, unpacked the machine, attached the nozzle, plugged it in and set about vacuuming your apartment with meticulous care. You followed me around, laughing. When I finished, you whispered: ‘I’ve been in this place twenty years, and I’ve never vacuumed. You had to appear.’
With this remark worthy of Miss Havisham in her palace of dust, we sat down to talk.
One mustn’t of course become attached. I must forget your phone number, your two home addresses, your email address. I must write without expecting an answer. Believe that silence always wins. Remember that it’s not a scheme or a strategy. Keep heading towards the child you once were.
Swaffham in Norfolk, once a small town. The trains go no further, it’s the end of the line – but country roads push on beyond. Past the rose-entwined gorse hedges that shelter the fields, the long beaches stretch out empty and windswept towards the sea. Brancaster Beach. I walk past The Greyhound Inn and I see the huge granite church and, further on, the colon-naded bandstand with a goddess adorning its dome. It is 1950.
My father has been posted here for two years and I don’t know how to put it exactly, but something is wrong. We are living in a plain, neat little house, furnished with the few bits and pieces that follow us around from place to place. Army life, regimented down to the last detail. Discipline is paramount.
Rather than a ‘sense of ghost’ there’s a ‘sense of unease’. It’s a gentle sort of haunting.
Sarah is sent to boarding school miles away because there isn’t a good school nearby. I feel like I’m losing my sister, my only friend.
And you, mother, you who would sing us those nursery rhymes that I remember still, you who were always so tender and light, how did you cope?
Childhood is a mystery.
I was seven and something happened at school. I remember a disgusting meal. I remember my plate. I remember the checked tablecloth. My hands clenching. My fury. Suddenly I’m getting up. I’m fleeing the dining hall, fleeing the school, running as if wolves are at my heels, running as fast as my father, running for my life.
I get to the house and then I don’t remember what happened. All I know is that I was sent almost immediately to the same boarding school as Sarah. And our parents were left on their own in the little house in Swaffham.
My country is heavy as lead. It drags me down into melancholy. It leaves me with a sense of unease. I look at the neat little houses like soldiers in perfectly straight lines. The lawns perfectly mown. The dogs perfectly trained to avoid disturbing the neighbour. The neighbour so sorry for disturbing the dog. Behind the net curtains I imagine a quiet life. But my unease tells me a different story.
It’s early May now and I read what we’ve written. You’re still here. It’s strange. You haven’t run away, nor have I.
If this is a poem, Christophe, if we end up knowing so few things, if everything is genuinely laid bare, then don’t be angry with me. I’ll add a word, a comma, a breath, and I’ll disappear into the wind.
For as long as I can remember, there were worries about Sarah. When we were reunited at boarding school, she was my ten-year-old sister.
She used to get up at night and sleepwalk, along the corridors, haunted by dreams. Our instructions were clear: do not wake her!
She would take her blanket and a pillow with her. We would find her in the early hours snuggled up in someone else’s bed, my big and little sister. It was a dangerous tale: where were we going to find Sarah tomorrow?
My sister spent hours in front of the mirror trying to understand. She challenged a forbidden taboo and found death before she could find the answer. Mirrors have since been forbidden. The appearance of things must remain an enigma.
Sarah was like a beautiful dolclass="underline" pale porcelain skin, big eyes looking into the future, blonde hair that Mum was constantly combing and smoothing. Sarah was pampered, preened, kissed… She needed looking after. I have this memory of beauty overshadowed by exhaustion, unease and these words: ‘Charlotte, take care of your sister.’ My big and little sister: ‘look after her.’ The classic English novel with a pale child coughing in her bedroom. When she was about five, Sarah was operated on, but she remained fragile all her life, like a flower that is not truly meant for this world.
When he returned from Malta in 1946, my father was posted here and there to different points of the compass. Those were the days when Her Majesty’s Kingdom, like France and America, covered vast expanses of territory.
We moved seven times in thirteen years. Wherever we went, I knew that each new friend would soon be lost. I knew that one day my father would announce, ‘We’re leaving. I’ve been posted to Gibraltar. Or Wales. Or Norfolk.’ And once again we’d pack up our school books and favourite toys, put our furniture into store, fold our clothes, kiss the old times goodbye and not look back. Living like that, Sarah was my one great friend.
It ended up becoming a part of me, like a discipline or a torment: I knew I was going to leave and that I wouldn’t come back.
I stand up straight like the lieutenant my father wants. I submit to orders that make no sense. I carry out duties without knowing what they are. I obey to be loved for the child that I am.
I wear the doll’s dresses that my mother makes. I sleep in curlers to have hair like hers. I smile to be loved for the child that I am.
You’re not easy to describe, Sarah. I circle around you. Around us. Around our childhood, our games, our dancing, our moving homes. Around your beautiful face. Your life eludes me. You elude me.
You were nearly three when I was born. We were still living at our grandparents’ house. I was handed over to a nanny almost immediately because Mum was worried about you. She was afraid and wanted to be by your side every minute of the day.
Afterwards my mother told me that she regretted not having been able to be there for me. It’s true, I’ve always had the feeling of being kept at a distance. And you, Sarah? You didn’t get to know our father until you were three.
Childhood is its own small battleground.
We watch a soldier in uniform come through the door. His face gaunt from so many horrors. Our father has come home. He looks at us but he doesn’t see us. He talks to us but can’t find the right words. Tired of his inadequacy, he retreats into silence.
When he was very young my father had set his heart on joining the Royal Air Force. He dreamt of becoming a young god flying close to the sun, seeking glory above the clouds.
Godfrey Lionel Rampling was tall and strong, and he breezed through the RAF College’s exams. But he suffered from nerves, and when he had to take a simple breathing test, he flunked it.
Devastated, my father had no choice but to join the artillery. He was earthbound, permanently grounded.