Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me. Tony Cointreau
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My grandparents owned an entire six-story apartment building, but had kept the largest apartment on the top floor for themselves. When we reached the lobby, it was in total darkness; the light went on for only a few minutes when you pushed a button. If you had luggage or fumbled for your keys, you had to find the button and push it again for a few more moments of light. In the center of the lobby stood a tiny, ornate brass cage that turned out to be the elevator.
Once we entered the apartment, I had no more excuse to hang on to my mother and ventured into a dimly lit foyer. My independence was short lived, however, when I walked straight into a life-sized figure of a Chinese warrior dressed in full battle gear. He was not very tall, but he was large enough to tower over and terrify a small six-year-old boy. After I realized that he was only a statue, I looked around in the semi-darkness and saw that much of the apartment was filled with my step-grandfather’s collection of war memorabilia and the heavy, ornately carved Oriental furniture he had acquired during his years as a French general stationed in China as an army doctor during the Boxer Rebellion.
Afraid to lose sight of my parents amid these relics of another war, I followed them to their bedroom. It had white walls, Louis XV furniture, and some lamps that seemed to give off the only light in the apartment. The nicest part of the room was that my mother would be in it, but even as frightened as I was, I was not invited to share it with her.
Instead, my brother and I were taken to a dreary room in the back, overlooking a dark courtyard. It had two single beds, faded flowered wallpaper that was peeling off the walls, and a bare light bulb of dim wattage in the center of the ceiling. I was already depressed, but my heart sank even lower at being trapped in this squalid room.
The next morning, the sunlight streaming into the front of the house slightly improved my mood, but by midday I was aware that in a few hours, when evening came, my parents would go out with their friends, leaving me alone with my fears.
In the afternoon, after lunch, my parents opened the large French windows in their sunny bedroom, which overlooked the Eiffel Tower, and took a nap. I lay down between them and waited, afraid to fall asleep—I was convinced that after they woke up, got dressed for the evening, and left the house, something terrible would happen and I would never see them again. I tried to be Mother’s perfect little boy and not show my increasing panic. I didn’t scream or cry, but I was sure my parents could see the silent terror in my eyes as I watched my mother prepare to leave me.
As distant and as impatient as she sometimes was, I loved my beautiful mother—with her oval face, large blue almond-shaped eyes, and a natural white streak in her hair, starting at the widow’s peak—more than anything in the world. She was my lifeline. If I were to lose everyone else in my world, I could have survived. But if my mother were to go away and never come back, there was no way I could go on living.
As far back as I could remember, when my mother went out for the evening, I would lie awake and wait for her to come home. Still dressed in her evening gown, she would always bend over my bed and envelope me in the scent of her perfume and cigarettes. Sometimes she would sing silly songs she had learned from her mother. Then she would lean down to kiss me goodnight and cover one ear with a blanket. I don’t know why she covered my ear with the blanket; I think it was something her mother had done for her. After she left me, I would burrow deep down to the bottom of my bed and lie perfectly still for the rest of the night so that the kidnapper in my nightmares would not see me when he climbed through my bedroom window.
The nights in Paris were agony, but the days were not much better. The only time I dared to relax was in the early morning, when I knew that my mother had returned during the night and was safely in bed.
The deep depression and constant terror of losing my mother in Paris continued for two long weeks, until we finally left for Château Brillant, my grandparents’ summer home outside the city of Angers in the Loire region of France. The castle is actually named Château de Châteaubriant; but my grandmother had seen the sun shining on it from afar and decided that she would always call it Château Brillant, which is the name that I have always called it.
Even when we traveled by car, Mother made sure that it was in grand style, and an old admirer of hers put his ancient Rolls Royce at my parents’ disposal for the summer. The Rolls, a relic from another age, even had little bud vases for roses on each side of the back seats.
It was already dark outside when the Rolls rattled through the massive iron gates and onto the graveled courtyard of my grandmother’s château. The servants, who had last seen my mother, my father, and my brother at the outbreak of World War II, were lined up outside the front door. They eagerly greeted my parents and hugged and kissed my brother and me on both cheeks.
Mother attempted to be gracious, but she was tired after the long ride from Paris. At the first opportunity she tore Richard and me away from the friendly crowd and hustled us inside.
I looked around the entrance gallery and saw a massive stone staircase on my right, winding up to the second floor. Facing us was a statue of a Grecian woman; on the left was a huge fireplace.
I was not allowed to linger for long and was taken up to the second floor, where my brother and I were put into a large corner bedroom called the “Throne Room.” It was beautifully decorated, with an enormous four-poster bed that had a tapestry canopy and corner drapes. Large windows opened on the front and side of the house. This place was certainly more to my liking than the dismal room I had been assigned to in Paris.
I was asleep in a heartbeat but it seemed as though only a few moments had passed before Richard and I were awakened by the sound of birds singing—the most beautiful sound I had ever heard in my life. We looked at each other, ran to the window, threw open the shutters and looked out in awe at the endless expanse of woods and gardens. Without a moment’s hesitation, we put on our bathrobes and hurried downstairs, where we unlocked the front door and ran outside to explore.
Our greatest mistake on this first morning was an attempt to tiptoe across the wide swath of gravel in front of the house. Had we been smarter we might have looked for another, less noisy, route. After a few steps we heard Mother’s scolding voice from the second floor: “What are you doing outside at this hour, and waking everyone up by walking on the gravel?” We immediately froze, but as soon as we thought she had gone back to bed, we stepped onto the grass at the side of the building and circled around the property.
Over the years, as we returned from June to September, this vast property would become as familiar to me as the back of my own hand. But on that first day at Château Brillant, there was so much to discover, and every inch was exciting.
Behind the house we found a formal garden that covered an area larger than a city block. There were statues, manicured trees, and mazes of paths lined with pink roses. In the center sparkled a pond with large goldfish. At the far end of the garden there was an eighteenth century pavilion; inside, its high roof was painted like a blue sky with gold stars and drifts of white clouds. Later Mother told us that this was where our great-grandparents would sit and have tea brought to them in the afternoon. I wondered how the servants had managed to keep the tea hot, since the pavilion was so far from the kitchen.
To the right of the house we discovered a tennis court, and next to it, a huge jungle gym. We were still too close to the house to make any noise, so we decided to explore two trails going into the woods. Both trails led to an open circular temple made of marble, with tall columns supporting the roof. It was at the highest point of the property and had benches to sit on to admire the surrounding countryside. From there we followed a manmade stream that crossed through the woods and emptied into an old-fashioned wading pool surrounded by an intricate waist-high wrought-iron fence.
On our way back to the house we came upon the gardens, which contained every imaginable kind of flower, vegetable, and fruit tree. Three greenhouses, each a city block long, were filled with tomatoes and grapes of all colors. It was almost impossible to tear ourselves away from the sweet grapes, warmed by the sun.
Our last stop was at two enormous stone buildings facing the château. Their interiors had been destroyed during the war, and now they were mainly used to house cars. Even what