(....... till I end my song)

                                            LIFE IN PARIS

         I had started thinking more about God.   Although I had decided at the age of fourteen that I did not believe in him, and was no longer a churchgoer, my curiosity and my enquiring mind had never let the subject drop altogether.  I had decided to call myself an agnostic, rather than an atheist  –  I just did not know.

         I began going inside the Catholic churches, of which there many in Paris.  Some of them had dim, dark interiors, with perhaps one guttering candle penetrating the gloom, with a strong smell of incense and dust;  others were like stage sets with a blaze of candles, statuary, gold, paintings and stained glass windows, and again the smell of incense.  These made me catch my breath.  I felt I was in fairyland.  I looked at the people kneeling in the pews, listened to the chanting of the priest and the congregation, and I was filled with the sense of devotion which I felt was emanating from them.

         I decided to go and see a priest.  I chose a church near to where we were living.  He was bald, with a large paunch, and looked as though he did not see much of the outside air.  He listened to me quite kindly as I shyly confided my desire to become a Roman Catholic.  He told me that I would need to receive instruction before I could be admitted into the Church.  I made an appointment to see him again.

         When I told my mother, she was horrified.

         “There’s never been a Roman Catholic in the family!” she declared.

         That this was illogical did not seem to enter her mind, since she was an atheist.  My desire, however, plummeted as quickly as it had arisen.  It was not, it seemed, based on any firm foundation.  When I returned to the priest I told him, with some trepidation, that I had changed my mind.  His face immediately became very stern.  He said, in chilling terms, that he hoped “that  Grace would not be withheld from me forever.”  With these words ringing in my ears, I turned my back on religion.

                                    ---------------------------

         I must have met Jean-Pierre on one of my outings with Arlette.  He was an Algerian, what was known in those days as a “pied noir.”  This was a term given to people of European descent in North Africa, meaning “black foot”, who returned to France after Algeria became independent in 1962.  He was also a Jew.

         He asked me to go out with him.  He was small, dark, serious and intense, and some years younger than I was.  I looked younger than my age, and in terms of life experience I was much younger than my years.  He was also ardent and passionate, qualities which appealed to me, so I said yes.

                                    ---------------------------------

         The years went by.  I became tired of working like a slave for M. Woirin, with his endless dictation.  Typing was never my favourite occupation and I was not very good at it.  I applied for a higher grade and began working in the Political Research Section for Mr. Newton.  He was a quiet academic man, very reserved, and there was little rapport between us.  He had health problems, a rather red face, and I knew he kept a bottle of whiskey stashed away in the drawer of his desk.  He liked to take a nap in the afternoon, with a large white hanky over his face and his feet on the desk.  He did not like to be disturbed.  I had as little work to do in my new office as I had had too much in the old, so I became very bored.   At least I had little typing.

         The flat near the Arc de Triomphe was soon giving us problems.  The only outside light we had came in from the courtyard, which was surrounded by other flats and tenants, so we were living in a permanent half light.  The adjoining streets were not very salubrious and my mother did not enjoy doing her shopping there.

         Once again I began the search for a new home.  We found one in a quiet cul-de-sac, rue du Gènéral Clergerie, a stone’s throw from NATO and near the fashionable Avenue Victor Hugo, which was in the 16^th arrondissement. *   The owner was Belgian, which meant that the flat was in perfect order, freshly painted, with all the proper accoutrements, cutlery, china, kitchen equipment, in complete contrast to the French people’s more slapdash approach, who rarely bothered over  such details.

         But it had one great disadvantage, which was that it was very tiny and not really suitable for two people.  It was on the ground floor and was entered through a small garden, straight into the bed sitting room.  There was a double bed, one armchair, a wardrobe and a dining table in the corner with two chairs.  This led into the bathroom, with a wash basin.  Attached to a cupboard door  in the bathroom was a baby Belling electric cooker which folded away into an alcove, where all the cleaning and other kitchen materials were kept.  It was a remarkably economic use of a small space, and for this reason it was priced at a rent that we could afford.

         We were once more seduced by its attractive appearance and location, and setting aside our better judgment,  we decided to move in.  There was simply nowhere else available.

*  ‘arrondissement’ means a district of Paris

        

(.....till I end my song)

                        MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA(Revised)

            All the English girls admired the French girls for their chic and sense of style.  A pencil slim black skirt and tailored white blouse seemed ‘de rigueur’, but when we tried to emulate them we never achieved the same effect.  We were built on a larger scale than the small boned French girls, whose dress sense went back for generations.

         With an expatriation allowance, an allowance for my mother and a much higher salary than I had in London, we were now much better off.  I started buying my own clothes, rather than my mother making them for me, and I began to develop a sense of my own style and what suited me.

         One morning, as I was walking along the corridor, wearing a black and white pleated skirt, white blouse, Chanel style loosely woven black jacket, and a pair of sling back, open toed green sandals which had caught my fancy, I passed M. Woirin.

         “Le deuil sied å Electre” he murmured as he passed me.

         It was a moment or two before his words sank in.  “Mourning becomes Electra.”  He had paid me a compliment!  I smiled broadly to myself.

         I wanted above all to meet French people, they were very hard to get to know socially, so I joined a club which was ostensibly for foreigners to meet the French.  The nearest I got to this was a Rumanian girl called Arlette.  Her parents had emigrated to Paris and she had been born there.  She was about my age, and very friendly.  She was dark, with curly black hair, vivacious, exotic and dramatic.  Although brought up in France, she seemed never to have become fully integrated in French society.  We began to go out together.  We were very different, but we both needed a friend, someone to be with.

         Arlette was full of enthusiasms which came and went.  Her work, vaguely connected with the arts, was never very well paid and she knew all the cheap places to go to and where one could go for free.  She had lots of casual acquaintances and so in this way I began to meet people.  I remember one occasion when we were having a drink in a café with several others, probably on the Boulevard St Germain.  It was possible to sit for hours in the cafés.  Two women were giving us a psychological test:  we were given a piece of paper with various symbols which we were asked to complete.  One was just a dot, representing the self.  I added lines raying out from the dot and then drew a line round the rays, making a wheel.

         “Ah”, said one, “that means self development.  We haven’t seen that one for a long time,”  turning to the other woman.  I thought nothing of it, I had no idea what that might mean.   But I did not forget it.

         At one time Arlette was working in the Musée du Petit Palais, a fine arts museum just off the Champs Elysées.   She asked me if I would  record for her an English translation of La Fontaine’s famous fable of The Raven and the Fox.  This was to go into a machine in the museum, on which, at the touch of a button, one could hear a version of this fable in several different languages.  I did so, though I did not like the sound of my own voice, it made me think of the Queen, but I was tickled to think that my voice would be heard by people from all over the world.

         Another time I was having a coffee with Arlette in the Pub Renault on the Champs Elysées, a very French version of an English pub, with two of her male acquaintances.  One of them was a palm reader and he offered to read our palms.  This was always an interesting diversion.  He looked at my hand and said: 

         “You are either a genius or you are mad.”

         “How can you tell?”

         “Because your head line is criss-crossed with tiny lines, denoting intense

mental activity.”

         This certainly gave me food for thought, and often, later on, I did wonder if I could be mad.

         My mother and I explored the area where we lived.  From our flat we were soon on the Champs Elysees.  From there we would walk down to the Place de la Concorde, cross its huge expanse and go into the Tuileries Gardens, formally laid out with gravel paths and classic flower beds.  We visited the Orangerie to the left of the gardens, where paintings by the French artist Monet were displayed.  Done in later life when his eyesight was going, these four huge paintings of  the water liles in his gardens were shown, one on each wall, a blaze of colour and light.

         Running alongside the Tuileries Gardens was the rue de Rivoli, with plenty of smart little shops where my mother and I loved to window shop.  There was an English bookshop, WH Smith, with a tearoom on the first floor, which was very popular with the French.  We often went there and had toasted teacakes, but the tea was always disappointing, much too weak.  The French never could make tea.

         Although my mother and I loved the area where we were living, we were beginning to find living in the flat increasingly uncomfortable.  The cooking facilities were inadequate, and my mother loved to cook.    There was nowhere for us to wash up the dishes and we ended up by washing them in the bathroom.  I often went to bed with an upturned pile of dishes, pots and pans in the bath.  My mother was also finding walking up two flights of stairs, laden with shopping bags, too strenuous for her.  We were living in what had basically been a long corridor, with two rooms running off it, one with no window at all.  At first it had seemed like an adventure but the novelty of it was now beginning to wear off.

         I reluctantly began to look around for another place to live.  Flats in Paris were very expensive and hard to find.  I eventually found a ground floor flat with all the proper facilities not far from the Arc de Triomphe, so it was still central and easy for me to get to NATO.  It was not entirely satisfactory, as it was dark and gloomy,  and it was surrounded by dismal little streets, but it seemed we had no choice.  We gave in our notice to the Comtesse, who was surprised and upset, and moved to our new flat.

         It was to be the first of several moves during our time in Paris.

(..... till I end my song)

                                    MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA

           All the English girls admired the French girls for their chic and sense of style.  A pencil slim black skirt and tailored white blouse seemed ‘de rigueur’, but when we tried to emulate them we never achieved the same effect.  We were built on a larger scale than the small boned French girls, whose dress sense went back for generations.

         With an expatriation allowance, an allowance for my mother and a much higher salary than I had in London, we were now much better off.  I started buying my own clothes, rather than my mother making them for me, and I began to develop a sense of my own style and what suited me.

         One morning, as I was walking along the corridor, wearing a black and white pleated skirt, white blouse, Chanel style loosely woven black jacket, and a pair of sling back, open toed green sandals which had caught my fancy, I passed M. Woirin.

         “Le deuil sied å Electre” he murmured as he passed me.

         It was a moment or two before his words sank in.  “Mourning becomes Electra.”  He had paid me a compliment!  I smiled broadly to myself.

         I wanted above all to meet French people, they were very hard to get to know socially, so I joined a club which was ostensibly for foreigners to meet the French.  The nearest I got to this was a Rumanian girl called Arlette.  Her parents had emigrated to Paris and she had been born there.  She was about my age, and very friendly.  She was dark, with curly black hair, vivacious, exotic and dramatic.  Although brought up in France, she seemed never to have become fully integrated in French society.  We began to go out together.  We were very different, but we both needed a friend, someone to be with.

         Arlette was full of enthusiasms which came and went.  Her work, vaguely connected with the arts, was never very well paid and she knew all the cheap places to go to and where one could go for free.  She had lots of casual acquaintances and so in this way I began to meet people.  I remember one occasion when we were having a drink in a café with several others, probably on the Boulevard St Germain.  It was possible to sit for hours in the cafés.  Two women were giving us a psychological test:  we were given a piece of paper with various symbols which we were asked to complete.  One was just a dot, representing the self.  I added lines raying out from the dot and then drew a line round the rays, making a wheel.

         “Ah”, said one, “that means self development.  We haven’t seen that one for a long time,”  turning to the other woman.  I thought nothing of it, I had no idea what that might mean.   But I did not forget it.

         At one time Arlette was working in the Musée du Petit Palais, a fine arts museum just off the Champs Elysées.   She asked me if I would  record for her an English translation of La Fontaine’s famous fable of The Raven and the Fox.  This was to go into a machine in the museum, on which, at the touch of a button, one could hear a version of this fable in several different languages.  I did so, though I did not like the sound of my own voice, it made me think of the Queen, but I was tickled to think that my voice would be heard by people from all over the world.

         Another time I was having a coffee with Arlette in the Pub Renault on the Champs Elysées, a very French version of an English pub, with two of her male acquaintances.  One of them was a palm reader and he offered to read our palms.  This was always an interesting diversion.  He looked at my hand and said: 

         “You are either a genius or you are mad.”

         “How can you tell?”

         “Because your head line is criss-crossed with tiny lines, denoting intense

mental activity.”

         This certainly gave me food for thought, and often, later on, I did wonder if I could be mad.

         My mother and I explored the area where we lived.  From our flat we were soon on the Champs Elysees.  From there we would walk down to the Place de la Concorde, cross its huge expanse and go into the Tuileries Gardens, formally laid out with gravel paths and classic flower beds.  We visited the Orangerie to the left of the gardens, where paintings by the French artist Monet were displayed.  Done in later life when his eyesight was going, these four huge paintings of  the water liles in his gardens were shown, one on each wall, a blaze of colour and light.

         Running alongside the Tuileries Gardens was the rue de Rivoli, with plenty of smart little shops where my mother and I loved to window shop.  There was an English bookshop, WH Smith, with a tearoom on the first floor, which was very popular with the French.  We often went there and had toasted teacakes, but the tea was always disappointing, much too weak.  The French never could make tea.

         After six months living in the flat, we were finding it very uncomfortable.  All the dishes were washed up in the bathroom and I would often go to bed with piles of upturned dishes in the bath.  My mother was finding the flights of stairs difficult, especially with bags of shopping.  We started looking for another place to live, and found a ground floor flat not very far from the Arc de Triomphe, again very central.  It consisted of one large room with a kitchen and bathroom.  Its only disadvantage was that it was dark and rather gloomy.                                    

(.... till I end my song}

                                                                     

                        I BECOME A BRITISH CITIZEN

            I am back at the point where I started my story.  It was my good luck that I had explained my circumstances to the Personnel Officer, and that she had not picked up on them.   It was my good luck that I had been offered a job with NATO, even though I had failed the shorthand test.  Perhaps my good degree tipped the balance, or perhaps they just needed more girls.  I had soon found out that the Personnel Officer had a drink problem, and was not really up to her job.   In fact she left NATO soon afterwards.  In any event, this meant that once I had arrived in Paris, the Organisation bore a certain responsibility for me.

         With the doughty Mme Dreyfus in charge, supported by my boss, M. Woirin, and some senior NATO officials, events were set in motion, and within a few weeks I was asked to present myself at the British Consulate in Paris, where I met a charming lady, Betty Barclay, the British Consul.  I was given my papers of naturalization to sign, in which I declared my allegiance to the United Kingdom, I became a naturalized British citizen, and received my British passport.  After many years of struggle over the problem of my nationality, now, with a little influential pressure, it was all resolved and I was able to get my French ID card and so stay on in Paris.

         My gratitude to Mme Dreyfus and to NATO was unbounded, and still is.  At last I had an official status, I was no longer an alien having to report to the police whenever I changed my address.  This word had been buried deep in my unconscious, together with other words such as ‘illegitimate,’ ‘sinistre’,  'stupid.' Worse still, the French word ‘aliéné’ meant to be mad, insane, deranged!  Thus is our sense of identity formed through outward circumstances.  This sense of identity would continue to be formed and reformed through outward events.  All these inchoate and buried ideas had contributed to my complete lack of self confidence.   Although through my reading I had built up an imaginary world, and created a barrier against the real world.

         I never discussed this with my mother, like so many other things, but I imagine she must have felt a sense of guilt about it.

         We found a place to live after some searching, as accommodation in Paris was scarce and expensive.  Our new address was on the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, just off the Champs Elysées.  The flat, so-called, was in a ‘maison de maître’ or town house belonging to the Count and Countess de Saint Poix who lived in the country.  It was a beautiful house, painted pale eau-de-nil, with shutters of the same colour, with a courtyard presided over by the concierge. He lived in a little cottage at the side of it.   Our living arrangements were slightly unusual:  they had been the servants’ quarters, and consisted of a long corridor which had a toilet at one end, then a small gas cooker halfway along;   this opened out into what was my mother’s bedroom, and off that there was a large room with a bath in it and my bed.  It was by no means ideal, but we were seduced by the glamour of the location and the external beauty of the house.  I was young and still entranced by living in Paris;  it seemed to me  Bohemian and romantic.  Added to which, we looked out onto the back of the famous five star restaurant called Lasserre!

        

         My mother, now seventy three, took it all in her stride.  Still very active, she enjoyed the variety of the French markets and finding her way around the shops.  With her French she was able to talk to the shop keepers and the very extrovert French. She still managed to produce delicious meals for us on two gas rings.

         We were due to move into the new headquarters at the end of the year.  The new NATO building was a large and imposing structure in the shape of an A, situated at the Porte Dauphine by the Bois de Boulogne, so it was a very pleasant, wooded area and not too far out from the centre of Paris.  The move was a huge operation, especially since a large part of the contents were classified Secret.  I had had to sign the Official Secrets Act when I first arrived.  We had to pack all the documents up before we left the old building, then the Staff were given some days off whilst everything was transported to the new building. When we came back to our new office, it all had to be unpacked again.

         The new building now housed not only what was known as the International Staff, but also all the delegations of the fifteen nations which made up NATO, and the Office of the Secretary General.  I missed the old building, with its friendliness and somewhat ramshackle appearance, which gave it a casual, almost carefree feeling. I missed the old cafetaria with its delicious French food.  M. Woirin could no longer jump in through the window, but had to come up the stairs like other ordinary mortals.  We now had a huge canteen, with different caterers, and the food took on the blandness of mass production. We had an office on the first floor, neat and functional.  I felt this was where my life in NATO began in earnest.  Up to then, it had seemed more like a holiday!

(....till I end my song)

                                 MOVE TO PARIS IN 1959

                              (Revised version)

         I am on my own – in Paris!  I can hardly believe that I am here.  My mother is going to follow me in a week’s time.  I walk about as though in a dream.  It is July when the mass of Parisians take their annual monthly holiday.  The streets are silent and empty.  Most of the shops are shut, the bakeries, the dairies, even some of the smaller cafés.  I walk for miles along the sunlit streets, relishing the symmetry of the long avenues lined with plane trees, the architecture, the tall buildings with their uniform limestone façades and shuttered windows.  I walk along by the river Seine exploring the secondhand bookstalls, the ‘bouquinistes’ as they are called, and cross the bridge over to the Left Bank.  Here the streets are narrower and the buildings older.  I peer through the windows of the many little antique shops, with interiors like theatre sets.  I find the Boulevards St Germain and St Michel and well known cafés like the Café Flore and Les Deux Magots, which I have read about, where famous artists and writers used to congregate and drink and talk.

I sit in the sun with a café crème and watch the Parisians go by.  Everything is fresh and new and exciting.  I feel totally, deliriously happy.

                                    * * * * *

I had replied to the Daily Telegraph advertisement and taken a shorthand and typing test.   I had passed the typing test, but not the shorthand and that seemed to be the end of the matter.

However, a few weeks later a letter came from the Personnel Officer at NATO offering me a job as a shorthand typist.  I wrote back explaining my stateless situation and that I only possessed an Aliens Certificate.  I also told her that my mother was dependent on me and so would be accompanying me to Paris.  I  received a reply confirming the appointment and asking me how soon  I would be able to start.

I had to give three months’ notice to ICI.  Peggy, of course, was delighted  by my news and wished me well, as did my friends.  We gave our notice to our Jewish landlady.  Formerly pleasant, she had for some reason turned against us.  On our last morning in the flat, I had taken our luggage down to the taxi and was just closing the door when she darted out holding my sunhat, remarking tartly that she hoped “the sun would not go to my head.”  It cast a momentary cloud over my mood.

NATO had booked a room for us at a small hotel in the Place  du Trocadéro. This was a large circular area leading off in several directions in the 16^th ‘arrondissement’, one of the smarter residential districts in Paris, not far from the Place de l’Etoile, and it was situated right behind the temporary headquarters of NATO, or North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, to give it its official name.  The hotel was a narrow building with several floors and no lift.   Our room was on the fourth floor.  Every morning the ‘femme de chambre’ brought me my breakfast in bed, a delicious hot croissant and a bowl of milky coffee,  a ritual which I loved.

Then my mother arrived.  I had found a ‘pension’ where we could stay for a while, in a leafy suburb in the 16^th arrondissement, not too far from NATO.  It was an old house with a large, shady garden, run by a kindly, middle aged woman called Mme Lapérouse, who seemed to be permanently worried.  She had a Downs syndrome daughter. We would get our breakfast and an evening meal.

The French people were so different:  they were sharp and quick, extravert, lively and loquacious, I could hardly understand them.  My own spoken French was still halting and slow.  I learnt a new word:  ‘énervé’, which meant irritable or stressed out.  Many French people seemed to be in a constant state of ‘énervement,’ taxi drivers in particular, who would rant and shout, hoot their horns (this had not yet been banned by law), fling up their arms – “que je suis énervé!”  they would exclaim.  No wonder they all suffered from liver problems, their major health complaint. 

I presented myself nervously at the NATO headquarters,  at that time housed in a temporary building annexed to the Palais de Chaillot,  which had been rebuilt for the World Fair of 1937.  It was beautifully situated overlooking the river Seine and facing the Eiffel Tower, with the Trocadero Gardens down below.  NATO at that time was composed of fifteen nations.

 I met the Personnel Officer, a Canadian woman, pleasant enough, who seemed somewhat vague and abstracted.  I learnt that I would not be going into the Typing Pool but straight into an office in the Aircraft Section.  I also learnt the terms of my engagement:  I would receive an expatriation allowance, as well as an allowance for my mother, since she was a dependent, and the salary was way above anything I could earn in England.

I met my new bosses, a Frenchman and an Italian, Monsieur Woirin and General Tenti.  The head of the Section was an Englishman, Mr. Bloss.  M. Woirin  was a French air force  pilot who during the war had fought with the Resistance, and been based in London with General de Gaulle.  He was quirky and manic, often jumping through the windows into our ground floor office, which made me laugh. He had many amusing stories of his time in London, especially the time when he met Mrs. So and so in the ‘Tub’.  

He dictated to me for hours on end  (fortunately I could get most of it in longhand), until one day General Tenti remarked that we “should be put in a cockpit together.”  General Tenti, on the other hand, did very little, and spent most of his time on the phone, chatting up his girl friends. 

I was still in a state of euphoria and  happily  spent hours typing up the work given to me by M. Woirin.  It was only later on that I learnt that none of the girls wanted to work for him, and  that his previous secretary had left in tears.  Luckily I was mostly amused by his eccentricities and I was to find out that he was a very kind man.  He was also a devout Catholic.

The temporary headquarters was a ramshackle building, already falling to pieces, with pieces of straw sticking out of the walls.  There was an old tattered carpet in the main entrance hall, and one day I saw M. Woirin,  running as usual, go flying as he caught his foot in one of the holes.  He called me “a true Christian” as I did not laugh at him.  In truth, I felt much too concerned to laugh.

There was a cafetaria  where we could have lunch, and here I became initiated into the French way of life.  There were starters, small delicious salads, hors d’oeuvres or crudités, then a meat or fish dish, often a grilled steak with ‘frites’ and a tossed green salad, and a sweet, crème caramel, or a pastry or fruit. There were small bottles of wine, red or white.  It was good, simple French cooking and it tasted delicious to me.  We always had two hours for lunch, and this was a sacrosanct tradition in France.  So unlike a quick lunch and a soggy sandwich in London.

We were due to move into a new building in the Porte Dauphine at the end of the year, but I loved that old building and remember those first few months with great affection.

My mother, too, seemed happy to be in Paris.  She had always liked the French and felt at home with them.  She had, after all, experienced much kindness from them when I was born.

A little time had elapsed when I was asked to go and see the Personnel Officer again.  She told me that I would need to obtain an ID card so that I could work in France.  I duly visited the Town Hall as I was directed and presented the official with my Aliens Certificate.  He looked at it and he slowly shook his head.  This would not do, he explained to me.  I needed an official Passport in order to obtain an ID card.

I was shattered.  What was I to do?   My world came crashing down around me, as all my hopes and dreams were dashed to the ground.  It seemed that my mother and I would have to return to England.

     (.....  till I end my song)


                                           MOVE TO PARIS

I replied to the Daily Telegraph advertisement and shortly after I was invited to go for a shorthand and typing test.  My shorthand was not much improved, as I rarely used it, so I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that I had failed the shorthand though I had passed the typing test.  That seemed to be the end of the matter.

However, a few weeks later I received a letter from the Personnel Officer at NATO offering me a job as a shorthand typist.  Overjoyed by this, I wrote back explaining my stateless situation and that I only possessed an Aliens Certificate.  I also told her that my mother was dependent on me and so would be accompanying me to Paris.  I  received a reply confirming the appointment and asking me how soon  I would be able to start.

I gave in my three months’ notice to ICI.  Peggy, of course, was delighted by my news and wished me well, as well as my other few friends.  We only had to give a month’s notice to our Jewish landlady in Hampstead. For some reason, usually very pleasant, she had recently become quite unfriendly, possibly because of a dispute we had had over paying the milkman, and this news did not please her at all.  On our last morning in the flat, I had taken all our luggage down to the taxi and was just closing the door when she darted out holding my sunhat, remarking tartly that she hoped “the sun would not go to my head.”  It cast a momentary cloud over my mood.

We had decided that I would go first to Paris and that my mother would follow me a week later.

It was July, 1959, and I was on my own in Paris!   I stayed in a small hotel on the Place Trocadero which  had been booked for us by NATO.  The NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) Headquarters were not far away at the Palais de Chaillot.  I was not due to report to them for a week, the idea being that I would try and find somewhere for us to live during that time.

It was summer and the sun was shining.  I walked the streets of Paris, taking in the newness of it all, the tall buildings with their uniform limestone façades and shuttered windows.  Most Parisians took their annual holiday ‘en masse’ in July, so very few of the shops were open - the bakers, the dairies, some of the cafés - and the streets were largely empty.  I felt carefree and relaxed, as though I were on holiday myself in this beautiful city.

  I walked along by the river Seine, exploring the ‘bouquinistes’ which lined the pavements. These were secondhand bookstalls selling used and antiquarian books, postcards and old prints, fascinating for any booklover like myself.  (There was no tunnel then running along by the Seine.)   I explored the little antique shops on the Left Bank, peering into the dim interiors which looked like theatre sets. I found familiar landmarks which I had read about, the Boulevard St-Germain, the cafés Flore, Les Deux Magots.  I sat outside the cafés in the sunshine and indulged in my favourite pursuit of watching the world go by.

The French people were so different:  they were sharp and quick, extravert, lively and loquacious, I could hardly understand them.  My own spoken French was still halting and slow.  I learnt a new word:  ‘énervé’, which meant irritable or stressed out.  Many French people seemed to be in a constant state of ‘énervement,’ taxi drivers in particular, who would rant and shout, hoot their horns (this had not yet been banned by law), fling up their arms – “que je suis énervé!”  they would exclaim.  No wonder they all suffered from liver problems, their major health complaint.

I loved it all.  I was totally happy.

Then my mother arrived.  I had managed to find a ‘pension’ where we could stay, it was in a leafy suburb in the 16^th arrondissement, which was a fashionable area of Paris, and not too far from NATO.  It was an old house with a large, shady garden, run by a kindly, middle aged woman called Mme Lapérouse, who seemed to be permanently worried.  She had a Downs syndrome daughter.  She gave us our breakfast and an evening meal, and we settled down into this new environment for a month or so.

I presented myself at the NATO headquarters with some trepidation.  NATO at that time was housed in a temporary building annexed to the Palais de Chaillot.  It was beautifully situated overlooking the river Seine and facing the Eiffel Tower.  I met Katie Goddard, the Personnel Officer, a pleasant Canadian woman who seemed somewhat abstracted.  I learnt that I would not be going into the Typing Pool but straight into an office in the Aircraft Section.  I felt pleased by this, not realizing that it put me at a disadvantage since I would not meet the other girls who would show me the ropes and become friends.

I was still on cloud nine and everything was a thrill to me.  I met my new bosses, Monsieur Woirin and General Tenti.  The head of the Section was an Englishman, Mr. Bloss.  M. Woirin  was a French air force  pilot who during the war had fought with the Resistance, and been based in London with General de Gaulle.  He was  quite manic, often jumping through the windows into our ground floor office, which made me laugh. He told us stories of his time in London,  and of how he met Mrs. Jones in the ‘Tub’.   He dictated to me for hours on end (fortunately I could get most of it in longhand), until one day General Tenti remarked that we “should be put in a cockpit together.”  General Tenti, on the other hand, did very little, and spent most of his time on the phone, chatting up his girl friends. 

I was quite happy to spend hours typing up the work given to me by M. Woirin.  It was only later I realised that none of the girls wanted to work for him, and learnt that his previous secretary had left in tears.  Fortunately I was merely amused by his eccentricities and I was later to find out that he was a very kind man.  He was also a devout Catholic.

The temporary headquarters was a ramshackle building, already falling to pieces, with straw coming out of the walls.  There was an old tattered carpet in the main entrance hall, and one day I saw M. Woirin, running as usual, go flying as he caught his foot in one of the holes.  He called me “a true Christian” as I did not laugh at him.  In truth, I felt much too concerned to laugh.

There was a cafetaria  where we would have our lunch, and here I was initiated into the French way of life.  There were starters, small delicious salads, hors d’oeuvres or crudités, then a meat dish, often a grilled steak with ‘frites’ and a tossed green salad, and a sweet, crème caramel, or a pastry or fruit. These things have become commonplace to us now, but then they were all new and different. There were small bottles of wine, red or white.  It was good, simple French cooking and it tasted delicious to me.  We always had two hours for lunch, and this was a sacrosanct tradition.  It was very different from a half hour lunch and a soggy sandwich in London.

We were due to move into a new building in the Porte Dauphine at the end of the year, but I loved that old building and remember those first few months with great affection.

My mother, too, seemed happy to be in Paris.  She had always liked the French and felt at home with them.  She had, after all, experienced much kindness from them when I was born.

I had been in NATO for a little while when I was asked to go and see Katie Goddard.  She told me that I would need to obtain an ID card so that I could work in France.  I duly visited the Town Hall as I was directed and presented the official with my Aliens Certificate.  He looked at it and he slowly shook his head.  This would not do, he explained to me.  I needed an official Passport in order to obtain an ID card.

I was devastated.  What was I to do?  It seemed that all my hopes and dreams were to be dashed to the ground, and that my mother and I would have to return to England.

(... till I end my song)

           FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON MY RELATIONSHIP

                                    WITH MY MOTHER

         I am going to pause here before moving to my life in Paris, to reflect further on my relationship with my mother.

         My mother’s deafness meant that we never talked very much together.  This had been so ever since I came back to her when I was seven.  We talked about everyday, ordinary things, but I was unable to share my thoughts with her in an easygoing way.  I do not remember my mother ever talking to me very much;  she was now often tired and wanting to rest.   She was always a protective and comfortable presence, so we lived together in a more or less companionable silence.  I became used more and more to burying myself in my reading and thinking my own thoughts.

         This meant that I found it difficult to get on with others of my own age.  I found the quick exchange difficult and so remained silent.  I was often left out.  I did not know how to share my thoughts and feelings, often I did not know what my feelings were.  It was easier to write about my feelings than to talk about them.  When I was with a group of people I could never formulate my thoughts about anything, and by the time I had,  the conversation had moved on and it was too late.

         I often felt lonely and unhappy about this, but I never confided in my mother.  I was not unpopular, I was merely considered odd, and every now and then I would come out with a statement which made everybody laugh, thus gaining a certain reputation for wit.

         After I had left school and university, my friends seemed to be much older women.  I think again, as I was constantly with my mother, who was more like a grandmother, I probably seemed rather old fashioned to those of my own age.

         My mother was very proud of my academic successes and was very ambitious for me.  Apart from vague ideas of wanting to write, be a poet, I had no idea what I wanted to do in life.  When I thought about it, I felt that life was about developing oneself, fulfilling all one’s potential, but what precisely that meant I had no idea.  I had no real ambition and my mother was going to be very disappointed.

         I was also quite lazy, mentally and physically.  I picked things up very quickly and had a good memory, so I did well in exams.  I had very little motivation about anything.  I think this was largely due to lack of any external stimulus in my early years, and to the lack of any male influence in my life.  It was many years before I began to realize that I did not know how to think.  Not having a father meant I had nothing to pit my mind against and nothing to live up to.  In my ignorance and callowness I thought I knew it all, and looked down upon my mother, and would never listen to her suggestions or ideas.

         I suffered from almost constant anxiety, a kind of existential angst.  I was always in a state of tension, and overcame this by adopting an impassive demeanour, so that I appeared uptight and wooden.  As a result I often had digestive problems, with a distended stomach, so that I felt constantly uncomfortable.  My mother sometimes joked that ‘my stomach was like a little watchdog.’  It was only through writing that I could express myself, and it was only through books, films and theatre that I could find an outlet for these repressed feelings of mine.

         Unlike my mother, I did not worry.  I was impervious to external events.  My mother, although she had an innate confidence in her own abilities and talents and in herself as a woman (she had had a secure and happy home until her parents died when she was thirty one), was a terrible worrier.  She had lost any religious faith she might have had after her parents died.  The greed shown by her relatives, all good Christians, for their possessions sickened her.   She seemed to worry about everything in our lives which, of course, I could never understand.

         In a way this was not surprising.  Since the time I was four years old she had had to look after us both;  there were no handouts in those days, no benefit systems, she had only her native skills, ingenuity, determination and courage to pull her through.  There was no man in the background, no comforting shoulder, no family, no support any kind.  She could not tell anyone the truth about our situation, not in those days.  She must have told lies, and this must always have lain at the back of her mind.  There was never anyone with whom she could share her secret.  As a consequence, she suffered from high blood pressure and insomnia.

         Nonetheless, she loved life.  She had worked hard and very successfully at her job.  She loved fashion and made us both beautiful clothes with her clever needlework.  She had a great interest in politics.  She could also be fun in the right circumstances.  I remember, shortly before moving to Paris, we went to see Danny Kaye, the American comedian, at the London Palladium.  My mother loved him.  Afterwards we went for a cup of coffee in a bar and met an elderly American.  I watched them chatting and laughing together.  At one point he said:  “I can see you could be a lot of fun.”  I felt gauche and awkward and slightly jealous.

         So the two of us co-existed, supporting each other as best we could, each of us clinging to the other for our mutual needs.  How often I wished that I had a mother who was comfortable and sensible, and not the hypersensitive, artistic and clever woman that she was.  My mother must have been equally disappointed to have me as her daughter, introverted, moody and nervous.  I know that she only longed for me to be happy, to have friends and to lead a normal life.

         Unfortunately there was never a third person around who might have helped us, standing as a buffer and a mediator between us.

(.... till I end my song)

                                                              ICI

            ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) was an imposing building on the Embankment, halfway between the Tate Gallery and the Houses of Parliament. It was a very different place from J.A. Allen.  Thousands of people worked here, scientists of every kind, statisticians, draftsmen and women, right down to the lowly secretaries, tea ladies and cleaners.

         A lift took me up to the second floor.  There was an atmosphere of quiet activity, soberly dressed men and girls neatly dressed in skirts and sweaters or blouses.  I felt very nervous.  I was sharing an office with Peggy Woodin.  She greeted me warmly.

         “Hello Daphne, how are you?  Let me take your coat.  This is your desk, opposite mine.  There are just the two of us, as you see.”

         She bustled around, settling me in.

         “I’ll take you along to meet your boss, Mr. Nonhebel.  You’ll find he’s a very nice gentleman, very easy to work for.”

         She smiled and put me at my ease.

         Mr. Nonhebel was the head of the Fuel Economy Section in ICI, one of the backroom boys, a boffin.  He was tall and thin, rather bent, with long, ungainly arms and legs.  His face was round and nobbly and he wore a pair of rimless spectacles on his nose.  He always made me think of some kind of insect.

         His room was filled with glass cases from floor to ceiling exhibiting every type of coal and smokeless fuel.  His chief concern lay in examining the effects of pollution on the environment.  His work, along with that of many others, led to the introduction of the Clean Air Act in 1956.

         This made very little impression on me at the time.  I was aware of London smog, and I was in London when Londoners experienced one of the worst smogs of the century in 1952.  I remembered it vividly.  The thick, yellow viscous fog entered every pore of your body, you could not see your hand in front of your face, the traffic crawled, everybody crawled.  Underwear took on a permanent grey tinge.  All that changed after the Clean Air Act.

         The work was very monotonous.  Day after day I came in to the office, typed papers which had very little meaning for me.  Mr. Nonhebel was a reserved man and probably as shy as I was.  There was little communication between us.  Apparently he once asked Peggy if I had a boyfriend.

 The one redeeming feature of the office was Peggy herself.  She had a deformity, a hump on her back, she was quite large and, I think, walked with some difficulty.  She had a broad face with a high complexion;  there was a slight hint of a mustache and possibly a beard.  Her eyes were a warm brown. She also had, and I know this to be a cliché, a heart of gold. She took a genuine interest in everyone who came into the office, and they all shared their problems with her.  She was an excellent secretary.  Her boss received many visitors and she fielded them all with great tact.  Similarly, on the phone, she seemed to know exactly the right words to say.  Her secretarial skills were equally good, and she had a great sense of responsibility.  The office was a lively one and, as usual, I found myself taking a back seat and observing the scene. I felt I was watching a masterclass.

         They say that behind every great man there lies a good woman.  I think that behind every successful businessman there is a good secretary.

         Naturally, Peggy put me at my ease and I was soon sharing bits of my life with her.  To our surprise we discovered that Peggy had previously worked for Frank Hulme, Head of Paints Division, in Slough and he had been married to, of all people, my dear friend, Kate Hulme, whom I had met in Mousehole.  Peggy was thrilled.  She had known Kate from afar, and she represented for her all that was glamorous.  This created a bond between us.

         My heart was not then an organ that was well developed or perhaps I had simply put it in a box and locked it away.  I had little sense of responsibility.  I got into the bad habit of arriving late.  For a long time Peggy said nothing, and then one day she told me off severely.  Because I liked and respected her so much,  I was upset and I did my best to arrive on time after that.

         One grey day I was looking out of the window at the slate coloured river, a pall seemed to hang over the city.  In my mind I heard the words:  “Be still and know that I am God.”  I was startled.  I did not go to Church nor had I any interest in anything of a spiritual nature.  Where had the words come from?  I did not forget them.  I believe that I experienced a moment of consciousness, as it might be described now.

         I made casual friendships with one or two of the younger secretaries, I still visited Alina, and Jean Buchanan reciprocated by inviting me to a meal in her little flat in Hampstead.  She had an attic flat in the house of a friend of hers, Dorothy Simpson, a well known actress on the wireless, as we called it in those days.  She was known as the Edith Evans of the air waves.  Jean’s flat was small and simple.  There were sloping ceilings and wooden beams.  Jean had painted all the woodwork in a deep, vivid blue, and the walls were stark white,  There were cheap, bright rugs on the stained black floorboards, and colorful spreads on the beds. She had one spare bedroom, a living and dining room separated from the kitchen by a screen, and she used her friend’s bathroom on the lower floor.

         I used to love visiting her, it all seemed so artistic to me.  (Nowadays we would call it ‘cool’).  I met Dorothy and her two children.  Dorothy was not glamorous or even pretty.  She seemed like a sensible, middleclass housewife.  Her elder son, David, had had polio as a child and was now in a wheelchair.  He was a lawyer and a clever one.  Her younger daughter, also a Daphne, was an art student who did not live in the house.  Jean adored her and praised her to the skies, which made me feel apprehensive about meeting her.  Daphne had once maneuvered herself into the room of Leonard Cohen in his hotel and they had talked the whole night.

         The whole family was brilliant.  The father, Evan John, was a historical writer who had written the best selling novel Crippled Splendour.  He had committed suicide, which of course had cast a shadow over the family.  I did meet Daphne, I found her a strange girl with intense eyes, and difficult to like.  I felt intimidated by her.  She was a talented artist and some of her paintings were on the walls. Jean was very much her confidante. She was having therapy, but, as Jean said, she ran rings round all of them. I could see why she would not want to talk to her mother.

         Jean always prepared the same meal, lamb stew with vegetables, fresh fruit salad and a bottle of cheap red wine.  She did all the talking, so all I had to do was make appropriate noises.  She was a voracious reader and talked, with great enthusiasm, about the books she was reading. One of her favourites was the series called Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell.  Over time my listening became automatic and my mind would wander.

 She was also an ardent socialist.  I had no interest in politics, but listened patiently to her views, expounded with great passion.  Occasionally, she would talk about her lost love and her eyes would fill with tears and her voice would break.  She must have found me the ideal listener.

         I saw Kate from time to time, when she was in London.  At one time she was working at Harrods as a saleslady in the dress department;  she also modeled the clothes, as she was tall and slim.  I once met her daughter, Juliet, who was about twenty one and completely different from Kate, small and dark.  She had just become engaged to the son of a lord.  Kate was thrilled about it.

She began to work abroad, in Bermuda, France or Spain, working as a cook housekeeper for well to do families, and I saw her less and less, until finally we lost touch altogether.

My mother and I had moved from our flat in Clapham Common to a rented room in a large and comfortable flat in Hampstead, belonging to a Jewish couple.  We were to share the kitchen and bathroom facilities.  This arrangement seemed to work quite well, even though we were sharing a bed sitting room.  We enjoyed the location and being near the Heath.

As I had an Aliens Certificate, I still had to report to the local Police Station whenever I moved to a new address.  I had become used to this and took it as a matter of course.  Nothing could be done, it seemed, and it was only a slight inconvenience.  I told Peggy, of course, and I confided in one other friend in ICI.  She was older and a draftswoman, and a sympathetic listener.

Now that we were living in Hampstead I started going to the Everyman cinema, which showed unusual and classic films.  I always went on my own.  I saw all the early Ingmar Bergman films, I was fascinated by their imaginative scope and lunar qualities;  I saw Russian films:  their romanticism and soul quality filled some void in me;  I saw French films:  here again their realism and clarity and wit appealed to another side of me.  I did not have a friend with whom I could share these interests.

My mother took a keen interest in politics and we both joined the Conservative Party.  I had none at all, but I was content to accompany her to their meetings, as it gave her an opportunity to meet people.  One of the members gave a Garden Party in their home to which we went.  It was summertime, my mother was dressed in one of her homemade dresses and wore a large picture hat.  She looked very elegant, with her upright bearing, and her slim ankles. Beside her, I probably appeared quite nondescript, I tended to slouch, with my head down and forward.  I had quite sturdy legs, which I was quite conscious of.  My chief feeling on these occasions was to be invisible.

A small lady, neat and businesslike, darted forward.

“Oh, are you the Duchess of -----?”  she breathed excitedly.

 I don’t know who was the more disappointed among us.  However, in the cloud of celebrity generated by this mistake, my mother had the whale of a time.  I enjoyed it too, as an onlooker.

I felt I had to volunteer my services to the Party.  There was an election coming up and I was asked to do some canvassing.  This did not entail much more than ringing doorbells and asking people which way they were voting.  To my horror, at one place I was asked to come inside and talk. On taking the lift I emerged into a roomful of people, obviously a dinner party.  There was no escape.  They sat me down on a chair and flung questions at me, none of which I could answer.  I sat in misery until they eventually tired of the game, and I was allowed to leave.  That marked the end of my involvement in politics.

We had a small manual sewing machine on which my mother made all our clothes.  We often spent Saturdays scouring the stores for materials.  We would go to Liberty’s in Regent Street, Dickens and Jones, John Lewis in Oxford Street, and sometimes Harrods in Knightsbridge.  I trailed round after my mother, feeling mostly bored, but giving an opinion from time to time.  All the stores displayed pattern books, by Vogue, Butterwick and others.  We would pore over them before buying a pattern.  Many people in those days made their own clothes.  It was before mass production and cheap clothing.

I was no good at dressmaking whatsoever.  My mother spent hours at the machine.  As I took little interest in my appearance, she mostly took charge of my clothes, some of which I liked, others not so much.  I would have preferred to buy my own, but we could not afford them.

Thinking back, there was little communication between us.  I think this was due partly to my mother’s increasing deafness, so there was little casual conversation.  My mother’s age made her seem more like a grandmother, so there was a generation gap.  Our interests were very different too.  I was engrossed in my intellectual inner world.  My mother had a much greater interest in what was going on in the world:  she read the Daily Telegraph, she read thrillers and romances, she had her cookery and her sewing, and she did all the shopping for food.

I was idly looking at the Jobs Vacant section of the Daily Telegraph one day when I saw that NATO in Paris were looking for secretaries.  I became very excited.  To work in Paris!  That appealed to me.  The Paris which I had passed through on the 14^th July on my twenty first birthday had lodged itself in my heart and my memory.  I had never wanted to be a secretary. My typing was adequate, my shorthand inadequate, and I had had no secretarial training whatsoever.  On the other hand, I had no idea of anything else I wanted to do, and I did have French, which must surely be an advantage.

“Mummy, look at this.  Should I apply?”

She looked at it.

“Why not?” she said.

Her spirit of adventure and love of travel tipped the balance.