Quest for Louis

Prologue

My troubled daughter has taken to hanging out at my house, which is nice, and her dog comes too. ‘Yayy.’ (Hmm). Today I had my little granddaughter over; she arrived yesterday and slept over last night. My troubled daughter is not here. We were up at five playing music from my laptop, then I am cooking breakfast and she confirms that the poor hockey stick tetra is dead after three days quarantine in a large vase away from the others which were attacking it. She suggests we should bury it. This means that I bury it of course. I put on a solemn expression, agree and take the spade and dig a hole. She brings the vase with the fish and water. She says we could fetch a spoon to get him out. I said it was ok; I could tip the whole lot into the hole. This I do. Fill in the hole. She has gone back inside. I have a very dirty shoe. I suspect it might be more than soil. I am right and so I now have to wash my slipper so that I don’t get stinking dog shit in my house. I knew there were some reasons why I don’t want pets any more. When I get back to the kitchen the bacon is a bit too well done. And oops the computer needs my input. She can’t get the track to play. Computer technician, cook, fish undertaker and shoe polisher all in a few minutes! The life is beautiful. Sometimes a bit hectic and other times almost too peaceful.

Chapter 1

Swivel

I am driving down a familiar avenue when a vehicle ahead of me changes shape. Surely not! I slowed down wondering what I was seeing. It turned out that it was some sort of a carrier truck, which could pick up or put down a phone box and was doing just that. This was a road through a new housing estate and what I saw was the new phone box being delivered. As I was approaching the truck, some part of the back of the truck swivelled on its base to reach out with the lightweight phone box and place it on the verge in front of a shop. The back of the truck then swivelled again and moved on without the phone box. In the distance as I was approaching it had looked like it was changing shape. I drove on thinking that things are not always what they appear. The vehicle did in a way change shape because it swivelled. It’s a bit like life. My crazy life! When the part that moved went back to where it had started from it was changed forever because the phone box had gone, left behind on the verge.

This was years ago and I was still married. However, I am now divorced again and no doubt changed. I did not know at that time that I was about to swivel back to being unmarried again, however, the signs were there. The rot had set in.

Chapter 2

A few months later

It’s a bit sad being single if you don’t want to be, wondering if there is someone out there that, you can love and be loved by, enough, to stay together. I don’t think I am any more selfish than most, in fact I think I may be a bit too selfless if that makes sense, but I have to get out of a relationship if I am feeling overwhelmed by the other person. I like the truism Why do women nag? Answer: because she is not being listened to. I get that. It would just take a bit of listening to each other and a little understanding and then we could both move on together in our lives instead of not listening and not understanding and moving on not together. When I feel that someone is blithely shitting in my nest, without consideration of anyone else, too many times, I am out of there. That sounds easy and final, but it is not easy to extricate yourself from something you hoped might be your life forever. Maybe marriage is just not for me. Maybe I am not assertive enough in the beginning. I put up and shut up and put up and shut up until I cannot put up with unreasonable behaviour any more and then I have to get out. In fact put up and shut up might not be true because I did try and discuss things when it was glaringly obvious to me that thoughtlessness was causing too much pain to me. However, if no one else is feeling any pain, in fact my own true love is the one dealing out the pain, it doesn’t hurt him does it? No, and so he doesn’t need to listen does he? Do I just choose selfish, selfish people as partners? That must be it. Who can explain the energy that becomes falling in love? I am not the only one in the world that likes a challenge. It is not about that anyway, it is about something unexplainable, a mystery, and it’s a bit like trying to explain the existence of God.

My phone rings and it is my friend who invites me to his farm to visit him. It is peaceful down there and I love his horse. I decide to go and make arrangements for a few days holiday.

We have been friends for some time and not romantically linked and so it is not too complicated. I think I may have tried a move towards some involvement a while back, but he manoeuvred out of it. I got over it and so that makes it easy. We have a few things in common but have a lot of things not in common. The problem with a holiday on this farm is you work alongside the farmer. It is fun, outdoors and can take the whole day and it is work. We would stop for lunch and go back to the house to prepare a simple meal. Then at the end of an afternoon’s work we would eat a predictable wholesome dinner of lamb roast, lamb cutlets, lamb chops, cold cuts or lamb curry. David would do most of the cooking and so I would do the washing up. We would watch some television and a video. He particularly liked the Disney Jungle Book and King Louie. We were both learning French and so we would watch a French film. Jean de Florette was a favourite and Manon de Source. We both enjoyed the film and were sad at the outcome.

When we were settled down one evening and I was reading, David put some songs on his cd player by Edith Piaf. He says he is going to live in France for a few years but I have not seen him getting any closer to that. He seems happy. He goes to church on Sundays and if he can’t, because of seeding or harvesting depending on the time of year, and his distance from a church, he watches a mass on the TV on a Sunday morning. I watch with him, when I am there, but with a somewhat different feeling to him I believe about what I am seeing. One time I was there, it was Easter and so it was seeding time in Australia and the preacher guy was doing his sermon on joy, early on Good Friday morning. It was interesting to watch this messenger of God trying to demonstrate joy. He would get bogged down in his talk and his aspect would be ordinary and not joyous. Then, when he remembered the theme of his talk, and only then, he would put on a joyous face and speak a bit more lively. You could see the trigger happening and he would try some more. Most of the sermon was just talk about joy. He didn’t demonstrate to me that he knew what joy is. I wonder if I do? When George asked me what I thought about the programme, I said that I did not think the priest knew what he was talking about. Aren’t they supposed to try and convince you that they know the mystery already? George thought the talk was good and maybe it was, but I am too cynical to accept someone trying to teach us something they don’t seem to understand.

That day I had played with the horse and the working dog. I loved the horse and he seemed to like me too. After I brushed him he followed me all the way up the paddock, as close as he could get, breathing down my neck. It was nice. George is a loner and yet not alone because he lives with God and his animals. They are not what I would call pets. The dog is not allowed inside and the horse can go days without seeing anyone.

This one specific evening I remember, George played some music and, my life changed, or at the least I gradually got into the start of a major swivel in my life.

I was singing along to Edith Piaf and I got lost in my thoughts. I lose myself in my memories for a while and wonder where he may be. It was if I were dreaming but it was all true. It had all happened.

I wonder if he is still alive. Apparently I suddenly laughed out loud. David asked me what was on my mind. I tell David that the music reminds me of someone I used to know. I explain that I met a French sailor before I was married and he did crazy things He would sing, jump ship and ask me to marry him after knowing him for a short time. He would sing some Edith Piaf songs and also sing along with Françoise Hardy when Tous les Garcons et les Filles would play at the nightclub, on the radio or just in his head. After a few days of knowing him I asked him whom he sang most like in French singing so that I could buy an album to remind me of him after he had gone and he said he sang most like Charles Azanavour. I had not heard of the great Chas at that time. I now have everything he recorded. I went out and bought an album by him that was completely in French. I would play it each night and go to sleep by it.

He asks me to tell him more so I do. This was my first step, unless it was the music, towards trying to reconnect with Louis.

Chapter 3

The Story

I said it might be a long story and he shrugged, we had time. I started to explain that I had kept my French sailor secret for all those years. Who else could I tell? My husband? My kids? Tell them that they might not have been born had I chosen that someone else? Why would I want to tell anyone anyway? It was nearly thirty years ago and I was over it wasn’t I? I thought I had forgotten him.

I told George how I had met him over a whirlwind few days. It was a very long time ago, before I was married. I also explained that what was surprising me right now was that I remember him so well. I had been going out with, who was to be my first husband, for two years when he, Neil, moved to another part of Arabia.

I lived in a port town in the Middle East. I lived with my family and worked there in an office. I was invited to dinner with some French officers. Their ship was in for repairs. I explained this social thing to George. There were not many girls in Aden and so we were often invited to lots of events. In fact there were a number of lists in Aden and if you were on them you would receive invitations to all sorts of visiting ships to have dinner and drinks on board. This French ship, however, was not like the usual visiting liner, did not visit Aden regularly, probably did not have huge staterooms for entertaining and did not know about any lists. A friend at the port, a friend of Neil’s, asked me if I could find some girls for an evening with some French naval officers. I have always been interested in anything French and even went to a French convent in Bethlehem for a while, when my father was seconded to Amman in Jordan. My mother once said I should have been born French. I know what she means, I think my love of France and the French started when my uncle taught my cousin and me some French words when I was not much older than a toddler.

In Aden I was technically free and not seeing anyone and so I rounded up a few girl friends and I went along too. I was almost about to get married but then Neil had left and we had not come to any understanding of a future together and we had only agreed to write now and then. We had been together in our leisure times for two years and now nothing.

For our night out with the French officers we went to the Al Casino, which was a restaurant and cabaret. I cannot remember the meal, or much about the others that were there. I danced all night with a tall, dark and handsome Second Captain. He knew all the European dances, some of them in the style of the cha cha. I had learned the cha cha in a Dance school in England the year before. He sang to me as we danced! His voice was like Charles Aznavour. (She, Un garcon). He introduced me to Tous les Garcons et les filles de Mon age (Francoise Hardy). He sang it with such passion. I have since learned the words and it was about being alone when one’s soul is in pain when everyone else around had someone to be hand in hand with. So tragic! He was tragic. He would stare at the floor between dances and sing along with the band. He was intense. He monopolised me, jumped ship to see me again and sent a letter to propose to me. Yes, all of that. Hard to believe I was thinking.

"Wow! David! Talking about this I remember his name! I am surprised that I can remember his name. I have tried to remember the names of some of my old friends and classmates and people I have known and sometimes I cannot remember. Pourtant, here I can remember his name.

I went along David, I said, Because I was a bit short of social commitments right then as my boyfriend had disappeared from my life and the invitation sounded interesting."

It sounds like he made a big impression on you. I agreed and said, It was an amazing night as we danced almost all the time. I love dancing. I particularly love dancing with a good dancer. Louis was fantastic and if he was making it up I was sufficiently mesmerised to be hoodwinked into believing his dances were all the rage in Europe at the time. I thought I was living the ‘in dancing’, moves straight from Europe.

Chapter 4

That was how I met Louis. "Louis told me he was divorced and had a son. I guess he was thinking of them when he sang with passion. It was a great night for me. No strings. We just danced and danced until it was time to go. Instead of moping around missing my boyfriend I was having a great time. I can’t remember who decided the evening was over. I had lost interest in all the others. Louis wrapped me up in his intrigue. I remember getting into the cars afterwards. We were apparently taking the guys to their ship. My sister said she was driving my car! She is like that. She decides what is best for her and takes it. Not this time though! I found the gumption to refuse. Louis had already jumped in my passenger seat when he saw it was my car. It was an open car and I could only take one. I drove him to the compound where his ship was. I don’t know where all the others went. We sat and talked and he did not want to go. I