But, at the same time, from what Simone’s told me, I’m wondering increasingly whether I would have liked my grandmother Claire if I’d met her. Compared with Mireille, she seems to have been a bit weak and overly preoccupied with the superficial world of Parisian glamour.
She was young, of course, but then so was Mireille so that’s really no excuse. She’d clearly had a hard childhood, growing up motherless and in poverty in a household full of men where she was expected to be the housekeeper from an early age.
So I can understand her longing for a life of luxury and elegance. I suppose that, in that way, she and I are not so different.
And then it occurs to me that maybe it’s been passed down to me in the genes, this fascination with the world of fashion. Is that something I have inherited from Claire? Or is it simply a longing to escape from the reality of our situations in life into a world of fantasy and glamour? Either way, that thought brings with it a very strange mixture of emotions. Because I always thought I was forging my own path, that my ‘passion for fashion’ as my father sometimes disparagingly referred to it, was mine and mine alone. In fact, it became an important part of my identity, a part of my individuality that I clung to in a household where I felt I was scarcely noticed. But to realise, now, that perhaps it’s not unique to me, that maybe it’s one of those threads which run back through generations, makes me feel strangely unsettled.
It’s a realisation that leads me, inevitably, to two further streams of thought and they tangle and knot themselves in the pit of my stomach. The first is reassuring, a sense of connection and continuity, a feeling that I am linked to my forebears in unknown ways; and the second is unsettling, a sense that I am trapped in a family history that I’m not sure I want to be a part of. Is this link to my ancestors a good thing or a bad thing? Who really were these people? And what other legacies have I inherited from them? From my grandmother? From my mother?
My mother. Was that same legacy something that blighted her life with the depression that ultimately destroyed her? Was there some instability built into the foundations of her being that made her crumble and collapse? In my memories, she always had a fragility about her. I remember how she would play me tunes on her beloved piano, amusing me for hours on end with nursery rhymes and teaching me the words of carols at Christmas time; those were happy times, lit by the daylight which streamed in through the French doors leading to the garden. But then sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and hear the strains of something else, the sad notes of a nocturne or the haunting melody of a sonata in a minor key, as she played in the darkness to while away the hours, getting herself through another lonely night.
Thinking of the home where she and I lived, an image flits, unbidden, into my mind of flashing blue lights and hands holding me back as I try to run forward through a door that is slightly ajar. In my mind, I slam that door shut, not wanting to go there again. I’m too frightened. Not yet ready. I need the distraction of focusing on finding out Claire’s story first, before I can begin to revisit the more immediate past . . .
Until now, my family’s history has been an enigma, a tattered tapestry filled with holes. My mother always seemed reluctant to talk about it. Was there some sense of shame that stopped her from doing so?
Suddenly, it seems vital that I find out. Simone’s retelling of her grandmother’s recollections is helping me slowly piece some of my own story together. But lately I’ve been getting the impression that she’s a little reticent to continue the story – often too busy, or out with other friends. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I sense that there’s been a slight coolness between her and me since the evening in the bar when I spent those hours chatting with Thierry. I try to shrug it off – after all, she introduced him as just one of a group of her friends and hadn’t said that there was any particular closeness between the two