The Massés Take Louise on Holiday to Greece

The Massés’ Greek holiday with Louise begins as one of Paul’s drunken promises and becomes an episode in which the boundaries between employer, employee, parent, and nanny soften without disappearing. Across Athens and Sifnos, Louise shares the family’s travel and care of the children, learns to swim with Paul, and joins the couple for a rare dinner alone. For a time, she experiences the Massés’ happiness as something that belongs to her too; the holiday’s tenderness, however, remains inseparable from the work that brought her there and from her unequal place within the family.

From a Drunken Promise to a Family Trip

At a dinner party, Paul announces that the family will take Louise on holiday. He is drunk, and Myriam knows the pattern: when he drinks, he becomes crude and indiscreet, invites people she dislikes, and makes promises he cannot keep. The next morning he wakes in his crumpled shirt, still marked by red wine, remembering both his offer and his wife’s disapproving look. He expects Myriam to tease him, point out their bills, and say that he has again been financially irresponsible and careless with Louise’s feelings.

Instead, Myriam surprises him. Holding Adam on the sofa, she asks whether he meant what he said. She sees practical value in taking Louise along: for once, the parents could have a real holiday, while Louise would be pleased to go. The decision thus begins in Paul’s heedlessness but is adopted by Myriam as a way to make family leisure possible. Louise’s inclusion is generous, yet its terms are also clear: the trip promises a holiday to the employers partly because their nanny will be there.

Athens and the Passage to the Islands

In Athens, Louise shares a small hotel room with Mila and Adam to save money. They have laughed through the evening and gone to bed late; Adam has danced in the street on the city’s paving stones while older people clapped for him. Louise, by contrast, dislikes the city after walking through the heat with the children and their complaints. Her attention is fixed on the next day and the islands, whose legends Myriam has told the children.

The stories linger with Louise even though she cannot recall their details. She remembers listening closely to Myriam recount Zeus and the goddess of war, and she is drawn to the tale of Aegeus, whose name gave its blue to the sea. The coming boat journey matters to her as a first crossing by sea. In the morning she has to wake Mila and dress her while she is still asleep; as they travel by taxi to the port of Piraeus, Louise wishes she had written the names of the ancient heroes in her flower-covered notebook, where she could later have thought about them alone.

At the port, heat, traffic, luggage, and uncertainty turn the departure into a scramble. Police try to direct a huge traffic jam, Adam sweats on Louise’s lap, and Paul cannot make sense of the illuminated signs showing the island ferries. When their driver turns back, the family has to pay him and run toward the embarkation point with their suitcases. Travel gives Louise access to places and experiences beyond her ordinary routine, but she encounters them while still performing the practical labor of moving and caring for the children.

Learning to Swim with Paul

On Sifnos, Louise’s fear of the water becomes visible. Mila mocks her for being a baby who cannot swim, and the comment embarrasses Paul; irritated, he resents Louise for bringing her deprivation and vulnerability into the day. He takes the children swimming while Myriam returns to her book. Later, he goes to the beach shop and comes back with armbands, fitting one above Louise’s elbow. He jokes that she is so slight that even children’s armbands fit her.

For the rest of the week, Paul and Louise get up early while Myriam and the children remain by the small pension pool. The two walk out onto the empty beach, hand in hand, and wade until the wet sand falls away beneath their feet and their bodies begin to float. Louise panics each time and gives a small cry; Paul responds by tightening his grip on her hand. Learning to swim is not simply a matter of instruction. The repeated scene makes her fear bodily and immediate, and gives Paul a recurring role as the person who steadies her in the water.

Teaching her to float brings Paul into contact with a body he had scarcely noticed. He supports her neck and buttocks with his hands and recognizes, with fleeting surprise, that Louise has a body of her own. Until then, he had placed her among children or employees rather than seeing her as an adult woman. He notices her freckles, her pale down, and the strands of blond hair escaping the swimming cap Myriam bought her. Yet her reserve and childlike modesty keep his awareness from becoming straightforward desire. The scene registers a shift in attention, not a transformation of their relationship into an affair.

A Rare Dinner and a Brief Sense of Belonging

The pension owner offers to watch the children, who have become inseparable from her own children during the stay. Louise initially refuses: she says she cannot leave Mila and Adam alone, because putting them to bed is her job. The owner points out that the children have been swimming all day and will sleep easily. Myriam and Paul are caught off guard by the chance to go out without them, but Louise eventually accompanies them.

The three walk to the restaurant awkwardly and in silence. The parents have worried about what they will say to Louise and persuade themselves that the dinner will show they value her work. Their conversation stays with the children, the scenery, the next day’s swim, and Mila’s progress in the water. Louise wants to tell them something of her own, any story at all, but she cannot bring herself to speak: she draws breath and leans forward, then retreats into silence. As they drink, the quiet becomes languorous rather than openly uncomfortable. Paul puts an arm around her shoulders and squeezes her in a friendly, encouraging gesture; Louise gazes at him, delighted, but does not dare take his hand.

Back on the terrace, the adults try not to wake the children and laugh together at their own sudden seriousness. Their tipsy playfulness briefly relieves the anxieties that the children introduce into the relations between husband and wife, mother and nanny. But Louise understands that this ease cannot last. She watches Paul look appreciatively at Myriam’s shoulder and sees the couple dance together, Myriam resting her cheek on her husband’s shoulder. Louise longs to hold them in that image, like smiling dancers fixed beneath the glass of a music box, and imagines remaining in the background so that everything can run smoothly.

The scene reaches its emotional culmination in Louise’s conviction that her happiness belongs to the Massés, and that she and the family belong to one another. The feeling is real, but its reciprocity is imagined rather than established: the dinner was arranged to recognize her work, and the intimacy of the evening does not make her an equal member of the marriage or family. As Myriam and Paul say good night and climb toward their room, Louise remains behind. She hears the couple through the walls, and then opens her eyes when Adam starts to cry. The children’s care, which had momentarily receded during the adults’ evening, returns as the immediate fact of her role.

Significance

The holiday places Louise inside the Massés’ leisure while keeping her labor at its center. She shares the hotel room, travels with the children, and spends mornings learning to float beside Paul; even the parents’ rare dinner without the children depends on someone else caring for them. The holiday therefore makes the family’s mutual dependence tangible without dissolving the class distinction between employers and nanny.

Its shifts in closeness are especially clear through gestures rather than declarations: Paul’s hand tightening around Louise’s in the sea, his arm around her at dinner, and Louise’s wish to preserve the couple’s dance. These moments give her a powerful sensation of being included, but they also reveal how much of that inclusion is bound to watching, helping, and making life work for others. The holiday’s central contrast is between Louise’s private certainty of belonging and the Massés’ continuing life as a couple, which resumes as soon as the evening ends and the children need her.