French Leave. PENNY JORDAN
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simply to keep the peace, but Livvy’s outwardly placid nature masked a very strong will, and she never allowed Gale to get away with manipulating her the way she did other people. Take this ‘holiday’, for instance…
Livvy smiled as the receptionist handed her her key and explained that if she wanted to have dinner she would have to order within the next hour.
Thanking her, Livvy went up to her room. She would unpack later, she told herself, mindful of the receptionist’s warning. It had been a long time since she had eaten lunch and she was very hungry. Quickly brushing her hair, she grinned to herself as she saw her reflection in the mirror. Leggings and a soft, casual, baggy sweater might be the accepted uniform of nearly every female under forty, but Livvy suspected that if the pupils of Form IV could see her right now her appearance would surprise them.
Fully aware of how very youthful she actually looked for her age, Livvy was always meticulous about wearing formal, authoritarian clothes for school. Soft sloppy sweaters knitted in a fabric that looked as though it wanted to be touched, cut-off leggings in a mass of brilliant colours which complemented the sweater, her hair loose instead of being neatly confined; no, this was not an image of her that her pupils would recognise.
It was amazing how different casual clothes made her feel, how much more relaxed. She enjoyed her job, but the tension of it, the need to exert discipline and to command her pupils’ respect, could be very wearing at times, and it was a luxury to switch off that side of herself and to allow herself instead just simply to be.
A luxury indeed, and one that was having slightly disconcerting consequences, she reflected ten minutes later as she went back downstairs and found herself the subject of some unabashed and frankly appreciative male scrutiny from the two middle-aged men who had just walked into the hotel.
Their interest, flattering rather than threatening, increased her sense of well-being.
The auberge’s dining-room smelled appetisingly of French cooking. The early diners had finished and were just beginning to leave.
Livvy was shown to a small, comfortable table by one of the waiters. He spoke to her in such painstakingly careful English and with such pride that she hadn’t the heart to reply to him in her own perfect French, instead waiting patiently while he stumbled over some of the words, resisting the impulse to help him. She was not here as a teacher, she told herself firmly as she gave him her order.
While she waited for her meal to be served, there was a small commotion in the doorway as four rowdy French youths pushed past the waiter, who was trying to stop them from entering.
To judge from the state of them, if they weren’t actually drunk, then they certainly had been drinking, Livvy reflected. Their voices were loud, the language they were using vulgar and their opinion of the English tourists whose cars filled the car park and who sat nervously at their tables with their round-eyed children were stated in language which was not that which Livvy taught to her pupils.
To judge from the expressions of the other obviously British families dining, although they were aware of the youths’ aggression, their command of the language wasn’t sufficient for them to understand what was being said, which was probably just as well for Anglo-French relations, Livvy reflected as she firmly directed her attention to her own meal and away from the trouble that was obviously brewing.
The waiter had summoned the auberge owner, who now appeared to wrathfully chastise the young men, one of whom, Livvy recognised from their conversation, was apparently his son.
He was younger than the other three, eighteen or nineteen to their twenty-three or -four. In fact they were not as young as she had first supposed, Livvy realised, and because of that potentially rather more threatening.
The auberge owner was still trying to persuade them to leave, but now his son was insisting that they wanted to eat, demanding to know if his money and that of his friends was not just as good as that of the fat British tourists he seemed to favour so much.
The father gave way, casting anxious looks in the direction of the other guests, no doubt hoping that they could not, as she could, understand what was being said about them.
As they walked past her table, one of them, the oldest and most obnoxious, bumped into her table and then steadied himself against it.
Calmly Livvy went on with her meal. Common sense told her that the wisest and most sensible thing to do was not to make a fuss but simply to pretend he wasn’t there.
She had forgotten, though, that he was not the same age as her pupils, and that she was not dressed in her normal authoritative way, and, as he straightened up and made a drunken apology, to her fury she also heard him make a comment about her breasts that was both over-familiar and exceedingly coarse.
It was only the discipline of three years of teaching that prevented her from reacting, not just by furiously objecting to what he had said, but from allowing the hot stinging surge of mortified feminine colour to burn up under her skin.
Like all women, she had experienced unwanted male comments about her body before, but this was different; for one thing what he had said was a good deal more crude than the normal joking and sometimes funny remarks called out by van drivers and building site workers, and for another…
For another, she was unpleasantly aware of the man’s leering enjoyment of her defencelessness, his awareness not just of her inability to physically punish him for his rudeness, but of the fact that the manager appeared too afraid to challenge him either.
The temptation to stand up and demand the auberge owner call the gendarmerie was almost too strong for Livvy to resist, but then she reminded herself that she was on holiday and inevitably any kind of formal charge made now would result in delay to her resuming her journey in the morning.
Much as it irked her, she decided that on this occasion she would simply have to do nothing, other than finish her meal as quickly as she could and leave the dining-room.
Ten minutes later she realised that was not going to be so easy, and wished a little bitterly that she had demanded that something was done earlier, when the hotel owner had still been there for her to make demands on.
The little waiter who had been serving her was plainly terrified of the quartet; the other diners, like her, had obviously decided to finish their meals just as quickly as they could, and as the dining-room rapidly emptied Livvy felt disconcertingly conscious of the fact that she was soon going to be the only other occupant of the room.
The leader of the quartet was still making comments about her to his companions. She tried to comfort herself by reminding herself that he would only feel free to say things that were so vulgar and crass because he did not know she spoke French herself.
As a teacher, she was used to adolescent male aggression and thought she had learned to cope with it, but this was something different, she recognised. He was not an adolescent—here she had no authority…here, as his lewd, disgusting comments were making so plainly obvious, she was just another vulnerable, available woman.
She pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. Much as it went against the grain to be seen to be running away from them, she knew she had to go. The restaurant no longer felt safe; in fact it had become an alien, hostile place. All her feminine instincts warned her to leave. She got up as quietly and calmly as she could, ignoring the comments being shouted at her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her tormentor stand up, but she refused either to turn her head or to be betrayed into showing any fear.
Her room key was in her handbag, but as she heard the restaurant door open behind her she still walked over to the reception desk and asked the clerk behind it,
‘Are there any messages for me? It’s room number twenty-four.’
She knew of course that there would not be any messages, but standing at the desk gave her a legitimate reason for turning round and checking that she wasn’t being followed.
And if she was and he overheard her asking for messages, hopefully it might make him think that she was not, after all, alone.