Et moi, et moi, et moi

She looked just like me. Well, she had black beehive hair, dark lips, winged eyes - all framed by a patchwork headscarf - but everything else was the same. The chubby face, the slim eyes, the toothless smile. Even the long, freckled neck - a paint-smatter of brown across the clavicle. More a collage than a photo - a crude cut-out of my face plastered sixty years into the past.

I didn’t read the caption at first. The visit so far had passed like a daydream - wispy and insubstantial. Art galleries often feel like that. Photography galleries especially. Slow and silent, I had paraded past each photo in a sort of reverential mass. Enthralling. Each image an impossible frenzy of trapped light. Small nooks of Earth and entire people. All the love between them, and the mystery of all the days ahead. 

The likeness, then, only struck me as some mild trick of the light. So I wandered on along the wall to an image of Francoise Hardy. Siren-like, willowy, her face spectacular, her clothes otherworldly cool. And on and on, wading through refractions of the sixties Left Bank: guitars, miniskirts, well-worn paperbacks. Young couples and cafes, nightclubs and rain-grainy parks. All of it melodious, captivating. 

It was only as I turned to leave that I thought to take a photo. I positioned the entire image in the centre of the frame: my young doppelganger, and her lanky beau - his aquiline nose, his riotous hair - with his arm collapsed over her shoulder. And that’s when I read the caption: 

Jacques Dutronc with early girlfriend Jane Hudders, 1965

Jane Hudders. My Grandma. My chest swelled - warm and breathless - in recognition.

I examined the face again, stooping this time to meet her eye. It was miraculous. Like hearing a beloved song in a new key. Bemusement - a startling surge of love. It was her. I was sure of it. I could feel her softness through her raised brows, her dimpled smile. Her Christmas afternoon sing-song playfulness in the tilt of her head.

I stood in the gallery and googled her name. There were only a handful of stray, frayed references. Her resignation from my primary school some twenty years before. Her dormant, bug-ridden Facebook page. I tried again, adding ‘Paris’, adding ‘Jacques Dutronc’. And then - nestled deep in an early-internet article about French pop - one lonesome mention of a foreign young expat in mid-sixties France. A pale, bow-legged busman’s daughter tossed into the whirlwind of yé-yé, beatniks, and student barricades. I tried to picture it: my glorious, grey-skinned grandma - her excessive politeness, her bulbous laugh - taking morning strolls in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Kissing Francoise Hardy’s future husband by the Fontaine Saint Michel. 

It was thrilling, but it all struck me as a little remote. Too much like a daydream. Lives like that weren’t found in my family. We weren’t globetrotters. We didn’t date popstars. We all stayed put. We relished routine and comfort. We hung out with school friends. We holidayed in Spain, or Morecambe. We had visited the same pub every Friday night for twenty years. 

And yet there was her name. And there, no doubt, her gamine, filmstar face. And most ludicrous of all, there - silver-lined - the loving arm of Jacques Dutronc. His uncanny gorgeousness - boyish and indelible. 

Tearing out of the gallery, I felt a rush of childish joy. I found a bench - the plaque on its backrest dedicated to a sister lost young - and called my Mum. 

“Hello?” She croaked. I’d woken her from a nap.

“Did you know Grandma dated Jacques Dutronc?” I blabbered.

“Huh? Who?”

“Grandma.”

“No,” Mum grumbled. “The other name. Jack Dutree. Whatever you said.”

“Jacques Dutronc. He was a famous singer in the sixties. French. I think Grandma dated him.”

“Grandma Hudders?”

“Yeah! There’s a photo of them together in this photo gallery.” 

“A gallery?” she laughed out of her nose. “Oh, I don’t know, love. It doesn’t sound likely.”

“I know, but I swear it was her, Mum. Her name was in the caption. Wait, I’ll send you a picture.”

She hung on the line as I beamed over the image. I heard her thumbs fumble drowsily across the screen. She hummed, hesitant. 

“I still don’t know, love. I think it might just be a coincidence.”

“It’s clearly her!” I protested.

“Not really. She looks just like any other girl in the sixties. And your Grandma never mentioned any time abroad to any of us.”

“Never?”

“Never.” 

I didn’t respond. In the silence, I traced the hallowed entrance to the gallery - the ionic columns, the carved stone awnings draped in moss. One of countless emblems of London’s absurd ego. Dwarfed as I was by the edifice, it all began to feel a little fantastical. 

From the end of the line, my Mum’s voice re-emerged, soft. “Why don’t you just ask her?”

I sighed. “You know why, Mum.”

“Why not? There’s no harm trying. And she’s not too bad with memories from a long time ago.”

She can barely remember your name, I wanted to say. Her own daughter. 

“I don’t know, Mum. I don’t want to stress her out,” I said. “It’s fine. You’re probably right anyway.”

We talked about my plans for the day, my tube and train journey back to the hotel. The whole time I stared up at the gallery. It struck me as a sort of sanctuary - a rich haven for memories, defying truth and time. 

—

A day after I got home, I visited my Grandma. I usually visited a couple of times a week. We would talk a little, but mostly cooked together, shrouded in her latent quietude. I loved it. A sanctuary of fried garlic, fresh bread and easy silence.

She was already in the kitchen when I arrived, peeling sweet potatoes. She was swaddled in a fleece dressing gown, her short white hair damp from a shower. Her frame was tiny, the arc of her drawn-on eyebrows impeccable. I greeted her and kissed her cheek. It left a sharp perfume on my lips. She smiled a relieved smile - it read like love, or remembrance. I asked how her week had been. She mumbled something about the supermarket, about the home care team. She’d watched a lot of films, she said, but couldn’t remember which. 

I spoke briefly about London - the speed and sound and grey - before we sank into our cosy silence. I lost myself to the fundamental loveliness of washing, peeling, chopping. I was mystified by the lush rustle of the knife as it pushed through vegetable flesh. My hands seemed far away as I contemplated the kindest way to break our spell. 

“Grandma,” I began, turning from the counter top. “Have you ever been to Paris?”

“Hmm?” she chirped, turning to face me.

“Paris, Grandma. Have you ever been?”

She squinted her eyes, her face creased in bewilderment. Countless wrinkles - a glorious cacophony of lines. 

“Paris?” She echoed, her lips moulding slow around the sound, as though brand new. 

“Yeah, Paris in France,” I said. “You know, the Eiffel Tower. Notre Dame.”

It was a long while before she spoke again. 

“Oh, I don’t know, love.” Her eyes were large and frantic. She seemed desperate to return to the comfort of her cooking. “I’m not sure…” She muttered, her words fading. 

“That’s okay,” I said, and let her turn away. She began chopping again. Not for the first time, I was bludgeoned by her strange new frailty. The weight of everything she had lost - of all the memories we used to share, now all mine. What was the use, I wondered, of life, if not to remember? So often, memories are easier to cherish than moments of living. 

I felt a sort of petulance rise within me. Pathetic, really, but I couldn’t give it up. The image of my Grandma wandering the Left Bank - drunk, cackling, headlong in love. The invented memory of her Paris apartment - a south-facing chambre de bonne strewn with the detritus of adolescent girlhood: perfumes, records, make-up, letters from home. Its tiny window looking out onto the rooftops of Paris, chimneys like disordered teeth, sprawling and forever. I needed to know for sure. Because if she couldn’t remember it, I at least wanted to remember it for her. 

I dried my hands on a towel and pulled my phone from my pocket. I typed in his name. 

“Mind if I play some music, Grandma?” Dozily, without turning, she shook her head. I turned up the volume and chose the only title I could translate: 'Et moi, et moi, et moi'. Immediately, it was delightful. It was pure sixties - the choppy guitar, the hedonistic drums. It was fuzzy and Kinksy, and Jacques Dutronc’s voice was a languorous drawl. Lost to it completely, I began bopping my head.

It took a few seconds - a few whirls of that playful refrain - before Grandma reacted. The movements of her hands slowed. She, too, began nodding her head. I watched on, enraptured, as her hips loosened and swayed. Then, just as Jacques Dutronc began droning on about vegetarianism, and whisky - and something, I gathered, about South Americans - my Grandma started humming. And then, still with her back to me, standing in her kitchen - some sixty years after her most halcyon days - my Grandma started singing. Her worn voice gold and young again. Her eyes closed. Her Parisian French undeniably perfect.