C'est La Folie

by Michael Wright

  At Rochester airport, where my Luscombe waits on the banks of the River Medway, the place will – at this very moment – be alive with students practising their circuits alongside instructors still groggy from last night’s beer; with rental pilots heading off for a hundred-pound fry-up at North Weald; with aircraft owners taking girls they fancy across the Channel to Le Touquet, hoping to impress them enough to go a little further tonight.

  And then, as I stand on the apron at St Juste, I catch a glint of sunshine on metal, far out in the blue void. The buzz of an aero engine, slowing as it turns downwind. A voice from on-high, crackling on the airport tannoy: ‘St Juste, Golf-Kilo-Oscar, vent-arrière zéro-sept pour un complet.’

  So it’s a British plane. Golf for Great Britain. Foxtrot for France. A solo game for eccentrics who enjoy hunting for lost objects in dense undergrowth (us), versus a stylish dance for couples sensually interwined (them).

  From the ghost aerodrome, there comes no reply. But the crackling voice continues, cheerfully enough: ‘St Juste, Golf-Kilo-Oscar, finale zéro-sept.’ This must be the ‘other’ English pilot they told me about. What was the name? Peter Feste? I know it was something from Twelfth Night.

  The yellow insect of an aeroplane is descending fast in a heavy side-slip – too fast – and I have an impending sense of bursting tyres and bending metal. Standing in the shadows of the hangars, I hold my breath. But at the last moment the nose is kicked straight and the plane appears to hover for a second before settling gently on to the shimmering runway.

  ‘Nice landing,’ I say in English, as the pilot, brushing a few strands of white hair out of his eyes, climbs from the cockpit.

  ‘Nearly wasn’t,’ he says, wandering away from me into the hangar, as if he’d just returned from a dangerous sortie with the Royal Flying Corps and didn’t want to talk about it. ‘But thanks anyway.’

  ‘Peter Viola, I presume,’ I say, to his back.

  He freezes, like someone in a film who’s just been shot.

  ‘I say, you’re not from the Inland Revenue, are you?’ he says, turning round. He grins, regards me with growing interest. Tall, with bright-blue eyes that look younger than his crinkled skin, and a voice straight out of a black-and-white film. I guess he’s about seventy; he looks like a child in a Hallowe’en costume.

  ‘Just a fellow pilot,’ I shrug, ‘hoping to keep my plane here one day.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ His eyes twinkle bluer than ever, as he narrows them. ‘Tu parles français?’

  ‘Oui, bien sûr,’ I reply, hoping not to be struck down by a thunderbolt.

  ‘Well, that makes a change, I must say. I have a good feeling about this meeting. Let’s go and have a coffee, shall we? I’ll take you to the best place in town. By the way, how did you know my name?’

  And so I make my first proper friend in France. Peter is not un vrai français, admittedly, but he’s even more in love with France than I am, and we speak French to each other as we queue at the gleaming stainless-steel servery of the supermarket café opposite the aerodrome. I order a café allongé; Peter, a cappuccino with whipped cream, sugar, chocolate shavings, the works.

  ‘Good evening, Peter,’ trills the girl behind the till, fluttering her long eyelashes and pronouncing the words in such a heavy French accent that at first I don’t even notice that she is speaking English. ‘And ’ow are you?’ Red-haired, petite, pretty as an autumn sunrise.

  ‘Really spiffing, thanks,’ he says.

  ‘Speeffing?’ She looks confused.

  ‘Very useful word,’ he assures her. ‘And you, how are you?’

  ‘Yes, I very speeffing also,’ she giggles. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘All the girls here are lovely,’ whispers Peter, as we carry our coffees to a table by the window. ‘I’m teaching them English. We have some brilliant jokes.’

  The place is almost deserted, save for a handful of grey-haired couples murmuring over the debris of their roast chicken, and as many waitresses wiping tables, beaming and waving at Peter when they spot him. I gaze around me; at the grey formica tables, distortedly reflected in the corrugated-chrome ceiling; at the black-and-purple office chairs, which must have looked dated on the day they were new; at the neon sign announcing Toilettes in racy italics, as if it were advertising a brand of beer. We are a long way from anyone’s idea of an archetypal French rural café. And yet as I chat to Peter in the midst of this grey scene, and the shadows slowly lengthen outside, I can think of nowhere I would rather be.

  ‘So what brings you to France?’ he asks, wiping a moustache of whipped cream from his upper lip.

  ‘I was too comfortable in London, if that doesn’t sound smug,’ I begin, searching his twinkling gaze for a response. ‘I wanted to make my life interestingly difficult, and to see if I could integrate myself into a new culture. No disrespect to you, Peter, but I’m wary of becoming stuck in some English ghetto.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ He chuckles, folding and unfolding his arms. ‘Do you know, I was just about to say the very same thing to you? I’m so pleased we’ve met. I really do have a good feeling about this. And I’m sure you’ll have a hangar space for your plane in a jiffy. What did you say it was?’

  ‘It’s a Luscombe. 1946; fabric wings; sixty-five horsepower Continental.’

  ‘A Luscombe Silvaire. How wonderful. I used to have an Auster myself. And you’ll love the old boys at the club. Excellent bunch. Oh, I know Marcel can be a bit of an oilrag at times, but …’

  ‘Marcel?’

  ‘Of course, you haven’t met him yet. I think “curmudgeonly” might be the general verdict, although he and I have had some tremendous laughs together. And he deserves some sort of a medal for all the planes he’s crashed.’

  ‘I’m already looking forward to meeting him.’

  Later, after I have exchanged phone numbers with Peter, and he has promised to put in a good word for me with the committee, I drop into the supermarket next door to buy some fish for supper. And here I experience another small epiphany. For the lady behind the fish counter is the most beautiful lady-behind-a-fish-counter I have ever seen. Even in her white wellies and plastic apron, she dazzles. And she smiles at me in a way that no one in France, until today, has ever smiled at me before.

  Our eyes meet and, distracted into largesse, I order two pounds of monkfish. I hope it doesn’t look as if I’m buying for a wife and children. As she sticks the price on the bag and hands it to me, I am questing with my eyes for the gift of another smile, in the same way that the cat will claw at my trouser-leg in the hope of a few more morsels of diet food for porky cats. But my Botticelli in white wellies has already moved on to her next customer.

  Back in England, there are still loose ends to knot, and people I want to see for the last time, before I dive into the deep-end of my French life. Despite the waitresses at the supermarket café, and the lady behind the fish counter, I still have Zumbach’s warning ringing in my ears. In Jolibois, as far as I can see, women appear to go from fifteen to fifty, like caterpillars metamorphosing into moths. In between, they vanish; into marriage and children and jobs in Poitiers or Limoges.

  It’s not that I suddenly want to get married myself. But neither do I want to remain entirely marooned at La Folie; a hermit in his cave.

  I phone a girl called Amy, who gave me her mobile number and email address at a party two years ago. I remember she was pretty and animated and wore a powder-blue dress, and said she was interested in living in France one day. I asked her if she’d like to come flying with me that summer, and yes, she said, yes, she’d love to. And I never phoned.

  Now, with my French future looming, I phone Amy’s mobile. ‘We are sorry. The number dialled has not been recognized.’ So I send an email to her work, little imagining that anyone in London could still be in the same job after two years. In cities, things change so fast.

  I borrow Alfie from Marisa and drive down to Rochester, desperate to fly my Luscombe for one last time before my enforced separation fro
m it. Today is a perfect English summer’s day, and the two ground-staff in their fluorescent yellow waistcoats seem almost alarmingly cheerful as we manoeuvre the plane out of its hangar. Even Nigel, the gloomiest man in Britain, raises a smile when I thank him for his trouble. Amazing, what a difference a little sunshine makes.

  I walk around the Luscombe, doing my pre-flight checks beneath the buzzing drone of aircraft arriving and departing from the busy circuit. Brakes on. Stick tied back. Wheels chocked. Standing in front of the propeller, I haul time after time on its twin blades, until the little Continental finally coughs into life.

  After dragging away the chocks, I climb up into the cockpit and strap myself in, relieved to put on my headset to deaden the deafening clatter of the engine drumming snare-drum rudiments on the steel firewall at my feet. The oil pressure’s good. And when the oil temperature finally begins to rise, I call up the tower.

  ‘Rochester Information, good afternoon. Golf-Bravo-Papa-Zulu-Alpha is a Luscombe on the apron; request taxi for VFR local to the south-east; one POB.’

  ‘Golf Zulu-Alpha, this is Rochester Information.’ I recognize the confident, patrician drawl of Philip in the tower, who always reminds me of a ball-by-ball cricket commentator on Radio Four. ‘Good afternoon to you, too. Taxi for runway two-zero via the eastern taxiway. QNH is 1021. Looks like a lovely day for it.’

  ‘1021 and two-zero via the eastern. Thanks, Philip. Golf-Zulu-Alpha.’

  Lining up on the grass runway, stick held back, I make a final scan of the Luscombe’s primitive instruments, remind myself to keep my heels well clear of the brakes, and slowly squeeze the throttle all the way forward. The roar of the engine surges to full power as we begin our bumpy acceleration across the grass. Revs good. Airspeed increasing. Temperatures and pressures still in the green. I push the stick forward to raise the tailwheel and, after a few more seconds of jolting, gently ease it backwards, just enough to allow the Luscombe to release itself from the cool grass and begin a steady climb at seventy mph.

  And then I am soaring over the Kent and Sussex countryside at 2,400 feet, newly struck by the green loveliness of England, with its patchwork fields and dark woods and the tiny white dots of men playing village cricket on a Saturday afternoon.

  My route, unconsciously planned, takes me up over the disused base at Tangmere where Pa used to train pilots in the war, in the days before a French omelette had blighted his life, and down over the white Hs of the rugby posts on the games pitches of Windlesham, where Clara Delaville never did fall in love with me and Amelia Blunt’s breasts made me afraid. It all looks so different from up here.

  In the distance, I can see the English Channel. Beyond it, close enough to imagine, yet too far away to see, is France.

  An hour later, I am once again on the apron at Rochester, wiping flecks of oil from the Luscombe’s cowling, still lost in my own world. Nigel waddles out from the café, muttering about his tea-break, and helps me push the plane back into its dark hangar. I wish I knew when I will fly again. For all Peter Viola’s optimism, I know that the waiting list for the new hangar at St Juste is long. And vintage planes with fabric-covered wings do not enjoy camping outside.

  The following day, amid the cardboard boxes and dusty receipts and wistful memories that litter the house Marisa and I shared in East Dulwich, I play my parents’ old grand piano for one last time before it goes into storage, too. It will be a while before there is space for the instrument at La Folie. I’ll need to turn the dusty stone shell of the summer sitting-room into a habitable music room, before it can make its double-octave leap.

  I shut my eyes as my fingers sink into the familiar weight of the gleaming keys. I play ‘I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’. And then Chopin, the 3rd Ballade, and Schubert’s A-major piano sonata. My parents used to have a scratchy Ashkenazy recording of the Schubert, and it was always the one piece I wanted to be able to play when I grew up. The next time I play it on this piano, we will both be in France.

  There is a knock at the front door. It’s Simon, my heroic neighbour and fellow driver from across the road.

  ‘I thought I heard the piano,’ he says, grinning from the steps. ‘Not getting too sentimental, are you? We’re going to miss being woken up by that thing first thing on a Sunday morning.’

  I grimace. ‘And the drunken caterwauling of Abba songs in the early hours.’

  ‘That too,’ he nods. ‘At least at La Folie you won’t have any neighbours to disturb.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I shall find a few sheep to torment.’

  ‘Fancy a final game of tennis?’ he asks. ‘I know we took your racquets to France, but I’ll let you borrow the Hazel Streamline.’

  ‘Lovely idea,’ I laugh, ‘but I really don’t have time.’

  Simon rubs his chin. ‘Need a bicycle?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’ve got fourteen in the garden, and Helen’s decreed that I get rid of them. Thought you might want one or two for La Folie.’

  ‘I seem to remember that Monsieur Zumbach left me a couple in the barn. But where did you get them all?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Teenage drug-dealers, mostly. They steal them and leave them against the railings in the street.’

  ‘But Simon, just because a bicycle isn’t locked doesn’t mean it’s stolen.’

  ‘Around here it does,’ he declares. ‘And it seems such a shame just to leave them for someone else to steal again.’

  ‘Whereas if you squirrel them away in your garden, that isn’t stealing?’

  ‘No, because I’m just looking after them until someone needs a bicycle. Such as you, for example, when friends come to stay at La Folie.’

  ‘Simon, I really don’t want your hot bicyclettes. But yes: I hope you and Helen will come and visit very soon.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘We’ll be there. I can’t wait to see the transformation.’

  A week before I begin my adventure, Amy and I meet for dinner. She received my email, after all. And yes, she wrote back, she’d love to meet up for a drink or whatever.

  I’m glad we have agreed to meet under the statue of Julius Caesar at Tower Hill, as I’m not sure I would have recognized her. It didn’t occur to me that she might not be wearing a powder-blue dress. But it’s a perfect summer’s evening, and the gentle breeze plays in Amy’s hair as we sit on a restaurant terrace overlooking the Thames, sipping gin-and-tonics from heavy tumblers clinking with ice.

  ‘I’m so grateful to have this perfect London moment,’ I tell her. The meal is ended, and we are cradling our coffee cups as the darkness falls. ‘You know, the river, Tower Bridge, this restaurant, the twinkling lights, dinner with a lovely someone I hardly know; the sense of life flowing by, that we’re right in the middle of it all here.’

  Amy smiles, staring into her coffee.

  ‘The place in France where I will be living,’ I continue, ‘it’s just so different. And I suppose that’s what I’m appreciating, right now, here, with you. A moment in my life.’

  I’m not trying to chat her up, and I don’t think it’s the gin-and-tonic speaking. I just feel unusually struck by how beautiful the city looks tonight, balanced as I am, Janus-like, on the threshold between two worlds; two different lives. It’s like that moment, just before the end of a long transatlantic flight, when you dare to start talking to the person next to you, and discover that there is more to them than you would have thought possible. Amy, still silent, gazes out across the Thames.

  ‘You know, I think of London as noisy and dirty and full of concrete and stressed-out workers wishing they were somewhere else. But just look at this now. It’s so perfect.’

  ‘This river,’ murmurs Amy at last. And then, brightening: ‘Will you have a garden in France?’

  ‘I will have a jungle which, gradually, I mean to tame.’

  ‘That’s sad. Better to leave it as a jungle.’

  ‘Yes, but if you saw it …’ The words linger in the air. ‘Look, do you think you migh
t come and visit one day?’

  ‘I’ve only just met you,’ laughs Amy, ‘and now you’re inviting me to your French love-nest.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was a love-nest.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘Well, it was just an idea. No pressure. Just a thought.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ says Amy gently, walking to the railings overlooking the river.

  ‘Please don’t jump.’

  Amy doesn’t reply. She is gazing down into the twinkling lights and skyscrapers bobbing and glimmering on the water’s mirrored surface, a mirror flowing out and away, past Greenwich and Rotherhithe, past the shiny-faced men emerging from bars, past the wives looking at their watches as they flick through the channels one last time, carrying driftwood and plastic bottles and dead animals and broken dreams out into the wide estuary and the sea beyond.

  Standing beside her, hands in my pockets, I lean ever so slightly to the right until our shoulders are just touching. London. This breeze on my face. As I gaze up at one of the gleaming office-blocks on the other side of the river, one of the lights in one of the dozens of windows is extinguished. And then, a few seconds later, the one next door lights up. I reach out with my fingers to touch Amy’s hand.

  Hers clasps mine, and we stand like that, watching the river glimmer. It might be minutes or seconds or hours. Then I put my arm around her shoulders, pull her towards me, and kiss her.

  The river looks even more beautiful now, and Tower Bridge is white and purple and blue, glowing in the dazzling lights.

  Goodbye, London. Farewell, ancient river. Adieu, Amy, whom – too late – I have only just met.

  9

  SEPTEMBER: THE NEMEAN LION

  I have a friend who is an eminent psychiatrist, a fact that would undoubtedly have had Great-Aunt Beryl tutting ‘You see? You see?’ into her teacup. And the eminent psychiatrist warns me that human beings tend not to fare well in isolation.