Christmas in Dieppe, 1928
Pigtails and Pernod begins with Simona's regular journey across the channel, heading from Newhaven in December seas to spend her Christmas holidays with her grandparents in Dieppe. Aged just 12 she was already a regular on the ferry, travelling alone six times each year to and from school in Eastbourne. In 1928 there was still a sizeable British community in Dieppe, within which my family were well established.
Simona's grandfather, Brigadier-General William Price (Ginga), had bought the Chalet Caude Cote in Rue Caroline on his retirement in 1924, almost certainly to meet the wish of his wife Mary Price (Ginny). Ginny and her siblings had ended up in Dieppe as children following a period travelling around Europe following the death ("from drink") of their father George Middleton. Her sister Eliza was still living there with her husband Frederick Fairbanks, the American Consul and owner of the first horseless carriage in Dieppe, their younger daughter Kathleen and their nephew and adopted son Johnny Bole.
The Middleton family tree
Almost half of the book is devoted to describing these Christmas holidays. We are introduced to a host of characters who will recur during the memoir: the Chalet's servants Helene and Lucie (who refuses to marry her fiance while the Prices remain in Dieppe), Marie, Leocadie and Louise Boisney the favourite dressmakers of the English community, Mr Smale the vicar of the English church and his sister and Miss Austen the librarian. And, of course, Madame Cousteix, proprietress of the cafe where Simona and Johnny feasted on patisserie whilst Ginny and Eliza had their daily midday snifter.
“It was the winter-time habit of my grandmother and my great-aunt to meet each morning and drink two glasses of porto...Ginny, who had little sense of shame, was perfectly willing to admit to her need of alcoholic sustenance at twelve o’clock. Eliza, on the other hand, managed to treat each daily indulgence as if it were an unprecedented debauch.”
But the real characters of this story are Johnny Bole, the cousin of Simona's mother, and Jacki Nevill, a Christmas guest at the Chalet. Johnny, being just a year older than Simona, was closer to a brother to her and the instigator of many of the incidents and accidents she found herself caught up in. Johnny seemed to know and be known by everybody in Dieppe. Indeed, there seemed to be no family in the town about which he didn't have a tale to tell (it appears it wasn't just Ginny who had a love of the sensational). Continually falling in and out of love with somebody beyond his years and out of reach, this Christmas saw his obsession with everything Catholic, particularly the ornately decorated tombs and shrines in the nearby cemetery.
As for Jacki Nevill, he is described as a "descendant of a family of kings and king-makers, cousin of the Marquess of Abergavenny and 'more royal than the King'", but we really learn little more about who he is, what he did or where he came from. I've discovered today that he was one of my Dad's Godfathers, but didn't attend his christening, sending Ginny as his representative. That certainly sounds like the man portrayed! His arrival at the Chalet for Christmas (it is unclear if he was expected or not) is announced by the arrival of several cases of wine, champagne and other drinks. When he actually appears, his first action is not to greet his hosts, but to ask excitedly whether the Christmas message from Sir William Orpen has arrived, and he seems to create as much chaos in the household as Johnny does.
Christmas evening was spent performing; all members of the extended family taking turns in singing, dancing and playing in the impromptu orchestra or, in Jacki's case, the Dance of the Seven Veils. Simona's solo contribution is a command performance of Shakespeare, that year carefully chosen to be the potion scene from Romeo and Juliet. And so we see the early signs of Simona's thespian future.