by Mary Moody
I gather that Christian and Christiane have both been married before. Christian has a son in his early twenties by a previous relationship, a handsome young man by the name of Giles, who seems to have most of the young women in the village drooling over him. Giles rarely rises before midday, and then comes into the bar for a heart-starting short black coffee, oozing with that ‘just rolled out of the sack’ appearance. Indeed, I notice that in the French cosmetic salons it is possible to buy a hair gel or mousse that creates the dishevelled appearance of someone who has just emerged from their bed and not bothered to brush their hair. I suppose it’s meant to be sexy, and it certainly works for Giles if you consider the number of gorgeous young women who hover around him! Giles works in the afternoons at the local ‘Quad Hire’, a summer holiday tourist attraction where visitors hire four-wheel bikes, grotesque-looking machines with wheels as big as a tractor’s. They roar around the woodland tracks and the back blocks of local farms, making an outrageous amount of noise and causing general disruption; all this is tolerated as the normal summer madness of rural France. Giles has a dog who follows him around wearing the same baleful expression as most of the young women. A leggy brown and white hunting dog called Alf, he often sits in the road so that the truck drivers have to avoid him as well as the beer drinkers. It’s all very casual.
Christian and Christiane also have a ten-year-old son, Guillaume. In between cooking meals and serving drinks, Christiane helps him with his homework in the late afternoon, sitting at one of the tables surrounded by the jolly noise of the drinkers. The attitude to children in bars here is certainly much more casual than in Australia. Children tend to wander in and out, looking for their parents, and it’s not uncommon to see young women with babies sitting in the bar during the daytime. Indeed, a rather plump young mother with a three month-old baby comes every day for several hours; while the baby is sleeping or gurgling happily in its pram, the mother drinks coffee after coffee and smokes cigarettes. It seems a terrific antidote to the loneliness and isolation of new motherhood – she chats and shares a joke with the locals who come and go, especially during the middle of the day when the shops close for two hours and their owners pop in for a quick aperitif. However, I wonder about the smoky, dingy atmosphere in which the baby is spending so much time – locals actually bend over the pram to goo and gaa at the gorgeous little chap, exhaling smoke fumes as they admire his progress.
This cavalier attitude towards health and safety issues is very typical of France. There is a general dislike of rules and regulations and, while Australians accept strict ‘No Smoking’ rules in hotels, restaurants and airports and on public transport, this simply would not be tolerated in France. Sitting on the train to Toulouse one day I am engulfed by fumes from a young woman in the seat in front of me, who chain-smokes the entire way. The moment passengers tumble from the plane into the airport terminal building, clouds of cigarette smoke surround the travellers, who are not obliged to wait until they get out into the fresh air. Bars and restaurants are never smoke-free zones and parents can often be seen smoking inside cars with the windows up and children in the back seat. The same attitude permeates other aspects of French life. While seatbelts are mandatory, they are often not fastened, especially around toddlers and small children. Bike riders don’t wear helmets, and road and parking restrictions are gleefully ignored.
Part of me admires this anarchic behaviour, but the more conservative side of me worries that children, who are often the victims of it, will suffer without having any say.
Most days at Le Relais there is also a young local man, Pascal, who scurries about collecting glasses, wiping tables and carrying drink orders across the road, dodging the trucks without spilling a drop. Pascal has a slightly odd look about him and drives one of those tiny ‘lawnmower engine’ cars that are sold in France to people who can’t get a regular driver’s licence. You see a lot of old people who may have failed their test because of poor eyesight driving to the markets and back in these boxy little vehicles which, I have been told, are hugely expensive and quite tricky to drive because of their odd gearing. However, because of their low horsepower and their inability to reach a speed of more than 40 km/h, they have become a popular vehicle for people who would otherwise not qualify to be on the road. I figure that Pascal has some kind of disability, which is probably also why he has been given semi-permanent work at the bar. It’s a common attitude in rural France to try to find useful occupations for people who may otherwise not be employable. The church bell-ringer, for example, is unable to hear or speak but has great prestige in the village because of his daily ringing of the bell at midday and dusk. I admire the inclusive and accepting attitude of the local community.
It is a curious concept that unlicensed drivers are allowed on the road in flimsy vehicles, no matter how underpowered. Drivers disqualified for repeated drink-driving offences could easily be out there too, but the attitude to such ‘misdemeanours’ is much more casual in France. Even though there is a fear of being caught, it seldom happens. The simple truth, however, is that the road statistics in rural France, especially here in the southwest, are appalling, with more deaths and injuries per capita than anywhere in Europe. It’s a sobering thought.
12
Even though I am busy setting up the tour, I have time to stop and think about my life back in Australia compared with my life as a single woman here. I have been wishing that I had more time here this year, but pressures of work and moving from the Leura house to the farm have impinged and I am due back in October for the release of Au Revoir. This is a daunting prospect because I have been so candid in the writing of the book, exposing my life – and the lives of my family members – to close scrutiny. Although I worked in television for almost a decade, wandering around on camera in a straw hat pruning the roses, it is a very different matter to write a book that reveals intimate memories and feelings.
I am also worrying about my future with David at the farm, and I am wondering if the move was such a good idea after all. Faced with the prospect of being alone out on the farm with him day after day – as we are now both working from home offices – I seriously wonder if I will be able to cope with his melancholic disposition. It’s many years since I last seriously contemplated the fact that my marriage could be in trouble, but I am starting to think that perhaps my desire to leave him and come to France for extended periods is just the beginning of the end.
I start to fantasise about being a single woman again, perhaps living here in France full-time, working as a writer and only going home to visit my children and grandchildren once a year. A lot of people do it – a lot of people live in foreign countries and only see their family from time to time. A lot of people also end their marriage after thirty years for reasons not dissimilar to the issues I am facing. Our children are all grown up now and independent – surely the separation or divorce of their parents could not be traumatic at this stage of the game?
In my heart I know this isn’t true. Our children would be just as distressed if we were to part now as they would have been if it had happened when they were little children, perhaps even more so. A marriage isn’t simply the union of two people for life. It’s a complex relationship that involves all the people that surround it and are part of it – our children and their partners, our grandchildren and extended families, our friends. What we have created over the years isn’t to be treated lightly, even if I am struggling at this stage to remain happy within the boundaries of the relationship. Part of me thinks that I should stop worrying about everyone else and how they feel and seize the day, striking out for my own personal happiness no matter what the consequences. And the other part of me knows perfectly well that I could never be really happy living away from the large family unit that we have created.
When I was first in France I met and socialised with a lot of interesting men – married men, divorced men, retired men, tradesmen, men who had never married, men who had had a succession of girlfriends, Frenchmen
, Englishmen, New Zealanders, Americans, Canadians. As men or as potential lovers, I didn’t really give them a second thought at the time – except sometimes in disturbing dreams that I realise now, with hindsight, I can attribute to the hormonal fluctuations of my impending menopause. I have always thrived in the company of men, especially en masse. It’s not that I don’t adore my female friends – most women I know have positive qualities that far outshine those of their husbands or boyfriends or lovers. But I have always loved being surrounded by men.
When I was a teenage girl, I had a small ‘gang’ of boys that I used to hang out with instead of the usual gaggle of girlfriends. These boys, many of whom I still keep in regular contact with today, were spotty and lanky and in most cases going through that awkward stage of life when young women were unavailable to them, so they seemed delighted that I was prepared to sneak out of my bedroom window at night to meet up with them and share their nocturnal adventures. Initially there was nothing sexual in my relationship with these boys, although I am sure there was a constant undercurrent of sexual tension that I found exciting. But there is safety in numbers, and being the only girl in a gang of eight or ten boys had its own in-built feeling of security. To be honest, I just loved being the sole female at the centre of this odd assortment of young blokes.
I didn’t have to compete with other girls for attention – and I could flirt to my heart’s content, knowing that I had them wound round my little finger. It was also a reflection of how I felt about myself physically. With a shock of curly red hair, a face full of freckles and a pear-shaped body, I believed myself to be totally unattractive. My voluptuous and more sophisticated girlfriends were all blondes with rich golden-honey tans and smooth fringes and they looked ravishing in their brief bikinis, sunning themselves at the beach. My skin went from snowy white to painful red in the sun, while my freckles darkened and joined together to form deep brown blotches. After a swim my hair sprang into a frizzy tangle, and I was incapable of filling the bra cup of any swimming costume. Psychologists would no doubt say that as a teenager I suffered low self-esteem. I just felt rather plain, which is why I avoided being seen out and about with the gorgeous girls and hung out with the spotty boys instead.
My way of relating to these young men was to become one of them. I wanted to be one of the blokes. I could drink as many beers (often more), smoke as many cigarettes, puff on as many joints, swear and tell rude jokes with the same enthusiasm and even partake of some of the risk-taking behaviour that young men seem to enjoy – driving recklessly in fast cars after an all-night party and walking a fine line between honesty and breaking the law.
I expect that my behaviour during my teens was also connected with my unhappy home life. The atmosphere in the house was far from harmonious, and tensions between my parents made me crave the fun and excitement I enjoyed when in the company of my gang. I really don’t know how I survived my last few years at school. I got very little sleep as a result of our nocturnal roamings; it was not uncommon for me to sneak back home at 4 am, sleep for three hours, then get up and get ready for school. We always managed to scrape together enough money to buy beer, so most days I was not only exhausted but slightly hung-over. Not a recipe for academic achievement!
Eventually, after a couple of years, I did become sexually involved with one of these boys and we ended up living together in a group house for almost three years. But this was all before I met David and started down the long road of our thirty-one-year relationship.
There’s a lot to be said for a younger woman having a sexual relationship with an older and more experienced man. When David and I first got together I was very unworldly and unadventurous when it came to lovemaking. In those early years he opened me up to the joy and passion of a healthy sexual relationship and it was this, I often used to joke, that kept our marriage together when times were tough. Our children were always very aware of this deep affection between us, often catching us in a quick embrace or sneaking off for a cuddle when we thought nobody was around. They made jokes about it, especially when they got into their teens and, instead of being embarrassed by their parents’ unusually passionate relationship, I think they quite liked it. It was better than having parents who had a cold relationship.
During the years I was filming the gardening show with the ABC, my best times were working and socialising with the on-the-road crews who were predominantly men – field producers, cameramen and sound recordists. As a tight-knit team we worked creatively together during the day then invariably let our hair down in the evening over dinner, which would often lead to a night on the town at a disco or karaoke bar. Once again I fell into my old pattern of being one of the boys, kicking up my heels and being a bit outrageous because we were often on location away from our homes and family responsibilities. David never worried about my exploits on the road with the film crews because there simply wasn’t anything to worry about. Just Mary and the boys behaving badly, as usual!
During my adult life I have also enjoyed several very close but platonic relationships with older men. I often wondered if these men were substitute father figures because my relationship with my own father had been so troubled and sad. Even David, who is eleven years older than me, could have been categorised as an ‘older man’ during those early years. I was twenty-one when we first got together; he was a mature thirty-two and had already been through a ten-year marriage that ended not long before I met him. The age difference in the early stage of our relationship was more pronounced than it seems today and I can look back and acknowledge that I was seeking the emotional and financial security that I hoped an older man could offer, in contrast to my unstable background.
My most significant relationship with an older man was with a beguiling, witty and well read Irishman called Paddy O’Shaughnessy who lived two houses down the street from our home in Leura and who became part of our family for nearly seventeen years. Paddy had two adult children from his first marriage and then fathered a son with his second wife Margaret. This young boy, Michael, appeared on his scooter the day we first moved into the house, hoping to find boys of the same age to play with. He virtually lived in our backyard until all the children finished school and left home.
The first time I met Paddy, under the brilliant-pink flowering cherry trees that lined our street, he asked – in his lilting Irish brogue – how I was enjoying living in the mountains.
‘I just love it,’ I gushed. ‘The fresh air, the blue skies, the frosty mornings, it’s wonderful.’
‘And of course the altitude means we are a little closer to God,’ he commented, smiling widely.
I thought I must be living next door to a nutcase or a religious fanatic, but quickly discovered that I couldn’t have been further off the mark. Paddy was totally irreligious, having survived a tough education at the hands of the Christian Brothers in rural Ireland. He was the illegitimate son of a teenage girl who had been abandoned to the workhouse by her parents’ shame at her pregnancy. Miraculously, his grandfather had fetched Paddy home from the institution, leaving his own daughter there, where she somehow managed to get pregnant again and endure the same pain and loneliness. Paddy was reared by his grandparents then joined the British Air Force and spent most of the war years stationed in the Middle East before migrating to Australia, where he worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, like so many postwar immigrants. He always referred to himself as ‘an unqualified success’ because he had forged a highly successful career as an electrical engineer, based on skills learned in the air force, but without any formal qualifications. When we first knew him he was semi-retired and had the most casually laid-back attitude to life.
‘Today, nothing is of the slightest importance’ was his creed. This allowed him to spend many guilt-free hours sitting at our kitchen table, drinking cups of tea and smoking cigarettes, whiling away the hours and days and weeks talking to my mother or playing with the children. In many respects he became the grandfather of the family, and I never tired of his co
mpany – he could call in any time of the day or night and was always welcome. It was a very special relationship indeed.
My other close older male friend was the former cabinet minister, senator and judge Jim McClelland, who lived in the next village to us for the last fifteen years of his life. Jim had the same irreverent sense of humour and fun as Paddy, but also a deep understanding of politics and the human condition that made him a great companion. We spent a lot of time together in his last few years, drinking wine, laughing and solving the problems of the world.
When I turned up on Jock’s doorstep in France more than a year ago we fell into a warm and comfortable relationship not dissimilar to those I once shared with Paddy and Jim. If my relationship with my own father had been dismal, at least during my adult life I had enjoyed the richness and intelligence of some very interesting older men.
13
Gradually, I realise that by taking off to France for long periods of time I am not just running away; I am in fact looking for something. It’s not just a carefree holiday jaunt, it’s a serious attempt to try to discover who I really am after all these decades of nurturing everyone else and virtually ignoring my own needs. In a bookshop before I left Australia I found a weighty tome on menopause and decided that perhaps it’s time I did a little reading and research on the subject. Written by an American woman doctor, the book is full of all sorts of spiritual claptrap that is quite meaningless to me, but between the lines are some simple truths that set off alarm bells in my brain. The feelings that this writer describes in such detail are feelings that are overwhelming me on a daily basis. Her explanation of the changes that occur in mid-life are really very straightforward and seem, to me, like good old-fashioned common sense.
