My Posting To France Brought A French Wife With It

I got married at 25, hurried because my husband had to report to his new posting in Paris. The bank provided an apartment, a tiny 3rd floor walkup in the right district for expats. My husband's French was passable, mine was non existent so the bank provided for a teacher, a young woman from Strasburg, of Algerian decent. She came to my apartment to teach me the words around the house, out to stores to learn the words of groceries and household goods, to department stores to learn words for shoes and underwear. Week after week.

My husband met her and he was visibly infatuated. It was embarrassing, but she seemed to be able to ignore it. Then one day, when she was teaching me to cook, learning more words and watching her cook, this girl could cook, and she prepared a three course dinner I could put on the table when my husband came home. A storm moved in, it got stronger and stronger, by the time my husband came home he told her going back to her home was out of the question. She needed public transportation and he wasn't going to have her risk it. He would get a car for her, once the storm blew over.

We sat down foe dinner, the three of us. He practiced his French, touching her hand, and touching her chin, telling her she was the 'perfect' wife. Leave aside my feelings, he was totally focused on her. When she and I were cleaning up and she was washing the dishes he walked in and told her he wanted her to be his French wife. He gave her a dishtowel to wipe her hands and he walked her into our room and pronounced her his wife. And with that, she became his mistress, his French wife and because he surprised her she got pregnant. She would have his first born.

In France mistresses are a way of life, and a mistress to a bank officer is a position of status in her community. Pregnant guaranteed her support, a first born even better. I had aa lot to learn. I set out to equal up with her and became pregnant myself. I had the name and the papers, she had her French mystique and his focus. She continued to live in her home with her parents, our children spent all day together, our apartment too small for a us, her goodbyes at night left me lonely. Her French wife obligations took place while I entertained the children.

After five years my husband was set to return to Toronto. We got her a nanny visa, in Toronto we had a much larger apartment. With the children in school we had another set of children. When the time came for a permanent visa her Canadian born son was critical. My husband means it when he says it, she IS his wife, make no mistake about it. I know a lot of French, pretty much fluent. She taught me far more than I expected. Of course I was young, now not so young and wiser and open minded.