Elle me dit

Que je suis belle avec mes taches de rousseur. I can't work out whether she likes me around or whether she thinks I should get a life because twenty five year olds don't hang about with sixty eight year olds. But I want to hang about with her. Today I could have gone out earlier, I could have seen people- but I didn't want to, because she's the most interesting. I come home for lunch because I like talking to her, I go out with her because she's interesting to see things with, I don't know whether she feels like it's too much. I hope not. She mentioned that A seemed to be here all the time and always returned- I hope she doesn't think I'm like that too. I don't want to be cloying.

I think that she might want someone to care for. She worries about A because he doesn't like the food here, because he doesn't want to absorb Paris. And she likes helping people absorb things, maybe too forcefully- she can't accept that there are other ways of doing things. She wants to be the best at the alliance, and she worries. And I worry too. I worry about her coming back at the usual time that she comes back and waking her when I'm loud and clattery and whether she's OK if I hear banging in one of the houses joined to us, and whether she's alright on the tube. Though she always is. I worry because I like her. And she said she worried about me, when I didn't come home until really late one night- she worried. I thought that was lovely.

Today, she rolled my hair into a chignon and said, 'tell me if it hurts' when she put in the open-ended grips. It didn't because she's very gentle. She showed me her powder and brushed it onto my face and smiled. She's so willing to share things, her coat, her shoes... and I don't find it irritating because she's kind and French and a bit of a know it all, but lovely with it. It's odd, not to find this brand of care irritating- but I don't, yet. I don't know whether she thinks of me as a gangling sort of person that needs a helping hand, or a replacement for her daughters, or a living doll that it's interesting to be around, or someone she can mould, or someone she can be kind to. Or all of those things.

She's so brave and so easily hurt. She goes to teach in a place for teens with problems, and a girl had a hard time the other day- and R felt bad about it, I knew, because she mentioned it three times. Partly because she was worried about the girl, and partly because of the language she used. She didn't go into detail, she simply said that it was 'grossier'. And oh, how I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her she was strong and brave, and for that so sensitive... and that I wanted desperately to protect her from these things, even though she's independent and lives and wants to do them. Not protect, I don't want her to stop doing what she likes, I just want to give her a safe place, to comfort her when things aren't what she wants them to be. And she's fun. She runs round museums with me and makes me laugh and wonders at the displays that are like fireworks and says, 'it makes me sad because I know it'll soon be gone'. In France, I feel like people are always saying small things that give away their personalities. She fears things going, and braves it all the same. She told me I could go if I ever found something that suited me more, and I said thanks, and that she could tell me to go if she needed her own space back- because maybe she does need it back sometimes. She doesn't mention her husband. Her children come, sometimes- less often than she'd like. She was sad when her first daughter left home.

We've started to have habits together. At least, they've become habits for me. I go to her room and watch TV, she comments along in French and asks if I understand. She cooks, with my help, and I help her wash up. We go shopping and I take the bags. If one of us eats an apple, we usually offer the other person the other half. The same applies to chocolate and cake, and anything we cook. We sit in the kitchen and eat. We laugh about my habit of eating a ridiculous amount of cake and analyse A's behaviour. She puts my hair in a chignon, when I ask. We drink tea in the evening and usually smoke a cigarette together at least once a day. We don't speak on the tube; we read companiably. I recite poetry, she corrects, I repeat the corrections. When we're especially pleased with each other, we give each other a peck on the cheek. I did this the other day before departing for school, and she said, 'ah, tu es gentille'. I've got a friend that lost her hair, and she'd just spoken about losing her hair once, and how people think it's something else and how the back of her head looks like a pig's skin (it doesn't. But I wouldn't care if it did). We begin to call each other, in the style of Sherlock Holmes, 'ma chere', before each of our names. We do this in a Sherlock-Holmes tone, but I am meaning it differently. And she'll never know. But at least she's got someone who's appreciating her, albeit furtively, and expressing it without romance.