French Leave

by Liz Ryan

  ‘And now,’ beamed Natalie, ‘you must come to my birthday party next Saturday night. You must meet my boyfriend and all my friends.’

  And so one party began to lead to another, and those first vital contacts were forged. The first time somebody recognised me at the market, said a cheery bonjour and had a brief chat about the rocketing price of vegetables, I felt elated out of all proportion. It was a milestone. Ditto, the first time the phone rang and the caller was French. Slowly, a door was creaking open.

  However, the neighbours remained cool. In addition to the ones on the right, with whom there was growing hostility over matters horticultural, I’d had to implore the ones on the left to do something about their honking goose. The creature was huge, and trumpeted like a mating elephant from dusk to dawn. It had ended up in a casserole, and its maman and papa had been sulking ever since.

  ‘And besides, didn’t you know?’ somebody finally explained one day, shedding light on what had been, until then, a murky mystery. ‘Single people are viewed with immense suspicion by French spouses. They think you’re out to steal their partners.’

  Eh? Are they so easily stolen? By someone who’s scarcely even noticed them, could barely tell one from the other? Amazed and amused to find myself cast in the role of femme fatale, I tried to explain that all I wanted was a circle of friends with whom I could hang out and have fun. But French men don’t socialise with single women (Ireland is much more relaxed about this), and French women don’t gossip or giggle like Irish women, don’t go off on girly trips or shopping jaunts or enjoy nearly as much freedom: even after their children have grown up and gone, they devote a great deal of time to their homes and husbands. The idea of Thelma-and-Louise days out was received with baffled or anxious frowns, and it took far longer than I had anticipated to grow a circle of girlfriends. Years, in fact. By then, I’d been forced to eat my words and start socialising with other anglophones – who, it must be conceded, were less stiff and often a lot more fun.

  However, if the French are slow to make friends, maybe that’s because they’re judicious, very loyal once solid relationships have been tested and forged. So, taking their time, they began to ask me to occasional drinks, between which we might not have any contact for months. That said, such evenings were always enjoyable, the cocktails invariably stylish and charming – and then six months might go by before we met again.

  Between these encounters, I was starting to discover the many ways foreigners have of winkling each other out. Ex-pats often put up a notice on the board in the local supermarket to the effect that, at Café Sympa next Thursday evening, books will be swopped between those who like to read in English (or Italian, German, whatever). And, although nightlife is limited in rural France, there is always a class of some kind. Somehow, word of my existence had reached a nearby town, where I was asked to give English classes, and although I became friendly with only two of the twenty students in the group, they became delightful friends and introduced me to others. And then, one day in a local antique shop, the proprietor grinned at myself and Rita, the new Irish friend I’d recently made. (After thirteen years in Normandy, she was delighted to meet her first ever Irish neighbour and, incredibly, we discovered we’d grown up only three miles apart in Dublin, even knew some of the same people there.)

  ‘Ah, the Irish ladies! You are no longer alone here, mesdames. Did you know that an Irishman has bought the little white house just up the road?’

  No, we didn’t. Dashing off to the house in question, we found it deserted, but we decided to drop a little note of welcome in the letterbox. Not that being Irish was any guarantee of empathy, but hey, let’s at least get together for a cup of tea some day and say hello?

  Next thing, a beaming chap from Malahide was standing on my front lawn, pumping my hand. ‘Hello, I’m Ken! My wife is back at the house. It’s our new holiday home. I’ve come to invite you to our house-warming barbecue.’ And down he sat, to pour out his life story over the next two hilarious hours. As we laughed at his anecdotes, I was forced to admit the truth of experience over optimism: the Irish are definitely more spontaneous than the French. Warmer, wittier, and wonderfully anarchic. On first acquaintance, we chatted in a completely irreverent way that the French would consider appalling. Hurray! Now I could have Irish friends without actually having to live in the seething cauldron that was Ireland, where the Celtic Tiger was still roaring its head off.

  But this didn’t preclude enjoying French friends too, who have their own positive attributes: maturity, constancy, sometimes great erudition. They are arguably deeper and more philosophical. But it was only when I gave in and decided that a mixture of the two was permissible that life really started to rev up.

  If you think you’d love to live in France, do a little self-survey. Are you gregarious? Do you like a game of pool over a pint in the evening? Do you enjoy a fun day out with the girls or guys? Do you pop in to your neighbours for a cuppa? If you’re ill, will somebody call round to see how you’re doing? Do you often drop in to the nearest Texaco at night for milk or cigarettes?

  If your answers are mostly yes, then you are likely to find French society challenging. Fond visions of a romantic thatched wreck half a mile up a dirt track, with only a fistful of chickens for company, should promptly be revised. France isn’t just a country, it’s a state of mind. A state of mind reached by few before the age of forty, and even then only by those who genuinely enjoy their own company, since things sink into somnolence once the holiday homes have been locked up for winter.

  If somnolence is not for you, maybe it’s time to reconsider Marbella.

  7.

  Here is the Snooze

  In la France profonde, winter separates the amateurs from the pros. Anyone can do summer, gambolling on beaches, playing tennis, eating cherries and drinking rosé, but winter takes a streak of steel. The beach cafés shut down and the sugar-beet trucks rev up, trundling through the night, keeping you wide awake until you become attuned to their rhythm, if you ever do. But there is an infallible French cure for insomnia: the evening news. Just switch it on at eight, snuggle down with Claire Chazal and … zzz.

  Claire is the longest-running newsreader since her former lover Patrick Poivre d’Arvor (PPDA, as he’s known) was suddenly sacked. An institution on TF1 – the French equivalent of Ken Hammond on RTÉ – PPDA made the headlines himself when he was slapped with a P45 and replaced overnight by a peppy young blonde, appropriately called Laurence Ferrari. But during my first winter in France he was still cosily ensconsed, reading the news as if it were a bedtime story. The French loved his ‘fireside’ style of newsreading, but it came as a shock to me. I was bewildered. Nothing – explosions, tsunamis, riots, hurricanes – sounded in the least urgent. At weekends, Patrick was replaced by the mother of his child, the equally soporific Claire. Both of them looked and sounded as if they might be reciting recipes for apple pie. Frequently, I dozed off and missed the whole thing – although there are those who claim you can learn a language even in your sleep.

  Of course, you can catch up with the news on BBC, Sky, or any of the English-language satellite channels. So sometimes I surreptitiously switched channels, to stare open-mouthed at whoever was reading the news in London, sounding by comparison as if they were being chased by a rabid Rottweiler. It was like swapping a Morris Minor for a Lexus. I could only assume that Patrick and Claire had been warned that foreigners were watching TF1 and that they’d better speak s-l-o-w-l-y, whereas Sky and the BBC expected foreigners to wake up and keep up, you layabouts!

  When my French started getting zippier I switched to TF2, where the younger news anchor, David Pujadas, was undoubtedly livelier. David was notorious for the drama of his debut, which happened to be on 11 September 2001, a day that kept poor David shut into his new studio without so much as a coffee break for something like eighteen hours non-stop. His weekend colleagues, Béatrice Schönberg and the dazzlingly beautiful Carole Gaessler, were also lively – but, while they manag
ed to stay awake, they didn’t seem to be doing what journalists were supposed to do: grilling their prey for supper.

  Coming from a country where it is the practice for journalists to give politicians a very tough time – preferably not allowing them to speak at all – I was mystified by the sheer politeness of David, Carole and Béatrice. David interviewed Jacques Chirac and actually listened to him. Let him finish his sentences, without interrupting. His style was thorough, but almost deferential. And then Béatrice interviewed Prince Albert of Monaco.

  Until then, I’d only ever seen Béatrice from the neck up. Tonight, she was entirely visible, dressed in a frilly blouse, cutesy little skirt, sexy high heels and an, um, beatific smile. Simpering at ‘Monsignor’, as she respectfully addressed him, she gently fed Albert each question like a marshmallow, nodding sympathetically at his responses and looking as if she might at any minute pat his sweet little hand. But still ‘Monsignor’ prefaced almost every answer with ‘Écoutez, madame …’ – and that was exactly what Madame Schönberg obediently did. Packing all the punch of a budgie, she looked more like a flirty femme fatale than a senior journalist, and I was reminded of the time Jeremy Paxman interviewed Bill Gates for the BBC, lost his bottle in the face of such a big name and – in my opinion – blew the whole thing.

  However, nobody else seemed to find fault with Béatrice’s interview, which by French standards was perfectly normale. Why would Béatrice, or indeed anybody, want to give Prince Albert a hard time? Would he have been given a hard time on Irish television? Yes, I asserted, he would. If Miriam O’Callaghan had conducted that interview the way Béatrice Schönberg conducted it, Prime Time would be deluged with howls of protest. Did nobody think that Béatrice had flirted with the prince, or that he’d toyed with her?

  Puzzled frowns. Scratching of heads. Eh oui, perhaps Béatrice had been un peu coquette, but why not? After all, she’s an attractive woman and … well. Gallic shrugs and knowing grins all round.

  And that was the point at which the penny dropped. In France, a pretty face excuses pretty well anything. Romance lurks everywhere. Subtle, sexy undertones, spicing up the news which would otherwise be so depressing, non? Viewers enjoy Béatrice’s good looks (and David Pujadas’s and Laurence Ferrari’s) they savour the fact that PPDA had a doubtlessly delicious liaison with Claire Chazal and, if Claire is now dating a new hunk, hey, for many viewers that’s the real news!

  Officially, France proclaims itself to be above gossip about the private lives of public figures. Libel laws are tight and nobody admits to reading populist magazines such as Gala or Hello! But sales figures indicate that somebody’s reading stacks of them, zillions. I’ve never seen any French journalist fillet an interviewee the way Adam Bolton or John Bowman could fillet them, but then they’re not required to; their first duty is to look good, sound soothing, provoke nobody and, ideally, be photographed cavorting on the beaches of Nice or holding hands in Rome, hitting the headlines when they’re not reading them.

  In the face of such a soporific system, one can start to lose one’s grip on world affairs. I found myself losing track of who had cheated, raped or assassinated whom and instead started foraging deeper into French cultural affairs. Despite increasing dumbing-down and large doses of American-style violence, there are still some fine programmes on French television. While Bouillon de Culture was axed (bring back Bernard!) Thalassa remains intact after thirty years. Every Friday night Georges Pernoud sets sail, taking his legions of viewers fishing in Senegal or factory-trawling in Russia, diving for sea urchins off Guadeloupe – anything and everything to do with the sea. Should cuddly Georges ever fail to wish his fans bon vent with that cheery salute of his, French civilisation might well collapse. A satirical song by Vincent Delerm even depicts the lengths to which a young Frenchman must go to win over his in-laws: ‘Yes, all right, let’s watch Thalassa!’

  On the third channel, TF3, Des Racines et des Ailes (Roots and Wings) is a superb fortnightly documentary tracking anything from the Paris river police to a debs ball in Vienna, from painters to nightclubbers, from the aristocracy to artisans. Stumbling on it by chance one night, I was entranced by its exceptional quality, as well as by its originality (not a soap, not a cloned quiz, a real programme!), only belatedly realising that I’d fallen headlong into the French-TV trap: its presenter, Patrick de Carolis, was droolingly handsome. Charming, erudite, cosmopolitan, sexy, the works. Gazing hypnotised at him, I found myself concentrating with such ferocity that my French was rocketing in fluency. It’s incredible how much you can learn when you are deeply, ardently motivated. But scarcely had I discovered Patrick than the delightful man departed off-screen to become director of France Télévision, a blow from which I never quite recovered. However, his replacement Louis Laforge is quite a looker too, and seems to understand that, in order to keep French viewers hooked, you need bundles of charisma. (A grasp of your subject helps as well, but let’s get our priorities straight.) Strangely, it is very difficult to buy DVDs of Des Racines et des Ailes, or indeed of any French programmes, in the shops. You have to hunt them down in a brochure and send off for them with a naughty frisson as if they were pornography.

  And then, one sorry night, it was Eurovision. Does anybody, anywhere, watch this idiotic pantomime? No. Nobody at all. Only phantoms, who flit through the ratings while real people go out to dinner, or maybe Latvians for whom it’s a novelty, or … zzz.

  However, it was my duty to watch it, at least this once, in France and in French. Two commentators, a man and a woman, were in charge of it and so, settling in with an anaesthesing glass of wine, I wondered whether this would mean double helpings of Terry Wogan-type wit. Terry was still the Beeb’s commentator at the time and, traditionally, his wit was Eurovision, there seemed no other reason to hear or see the thing.

  This pair were not Terry Wogan, nor Graham Norton either, not even between them. This pair gibbered and chattered, giggled and shrieked through every song, throughout the entire event, getting louder and louder, until finally – hurray! – the songs could barely be heard at all. It was like being locked in a beehive, the whole thing buzzing furiously until – suddenly, ssshh! – the French contestant came on.

  Complete silence. Reverence. As it happened, the French song was sing-along good and its sartorially splendid singer compounded the felony by baring neither boobs nor bottom, which of course meant that France’s chances were doomed. Deeply disappointed, the commentators resumed their shouting contest, the voting put France second last, and that was the end of that panoramic foray into European culture.

  Next, there are the chat shows, excellent when it comes to learning slang. One of the most popular when I arrived was On Ne Peut Pas Plaire à Tout le Monde (You Can’t Please Everyone), a fast-moving panel discussion of recent events hosted by the bright, brash (and again, handsome) Marc-Olivier Fogiel. At first, I couldn’t get to grips with Marco at all. He and his guests seemed to speak on fast-forward, all sounding comically like Donald Duck. While the news offers the advantage of pictures to illustrate the words, chat shows don’t, and all I had to go on was the wildly flailing hands and grinning faces of Marco’s guests. And then one night, after months of baffled persistence, straining to catch even the vaguest drift, I thought I heard a word. Grasped it, quite distinctly. ‘And,’ said Marco. Or maybe it was ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘but’. Whatever it was, it was a very tiny word. But I’d understood it, definitely. And so I owe Marco thanks: if it weren’t for him, my French might still be creaking along at snail’s pace. If you can understand him (he’s now moved to radio, so no more helpful body language), and the smart, snappy, wrangling guests who enliven French chat shows, you’ve cracked it. You’re fluent. It’s like being able to understand Billy Connolly or Ian Hislop on Have I Got News For You. Waiter, champagne!

  Lately there’s been an innovation on chat shows such as Vivement Dimanche (France’s equivalent of The Late Late Show). They’ve got a new simultaneous-translation system enabling ang
lophone guests to participate via little earpieces. On the plus side, this means that you can hear questions in French with answers in English, resulting in some great guests such as the Muslim writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali; on the minus side, it has produced loopers like Lordi, Finnish winners of the 2006 Eurovision. Walled into their monster make-up, Lordi made a virtually watertight case for dropping the new system, turning in a performance that set a new benchmark in inanity. For anglophones, it can also be confusing trying to follow two languages, but the new system is here to stay – even if it’s unlikely to be adopted by the BBC, because after all, who would want to hear anything the French might have to say?

  Meanwhile, kindly friends were sending newspapers from Ireland, under the impression that I must be desperate to know the latest from Termonfeckin, Tallaght and Tourmakeady. Saving up these papers for rainy days, I’d start reading them and … zzz.

  News that had been screamingly urgent on the day had become, by the time I got round to it, jaded to the point of irrelevance. It was like eating last week’s cold tapioca. Worse, it seemed to be cloning itself. Almost everything seemed to boil down to just one word, over and over: disaster. The more I read, the more all the scandals and catastrophes began to resemble each other, varying only in detail – location, quantity, degree of management ineptitude, scale of political fallout. It was amazing to see how little still mattered, no matter how apocalyptic it had been on the day. How little difference any of it made to anyone other than those involved, how little human nature ever changes. As time went by, I found myself reading fewer newspapers, watching less news, callously distancing myself from all the déjà-vu.

  ‘But surely,’ said a former colleague, ‘you must still care? Human lives are involved here! Tragedies! The planet!’