by Liz Ryan
What? Your parents took over the bank and introduced these new work practices?
‘Oh, look, I was ready to try anything … but the screaming doesn’t seem to be working. If anything, I feel even worse.’
Well, no wonder. You are an idiot, Jim, but never mind. Why not hop on a plane – now, first thing tomorrow – and come over here for a bit of a break? It’s not very exciting, and nothing ever happens, but it’s peaceful and sunny and restful. And after all, the French are usually depressed, so you could all sort of cosy up and be depressed together. As a banker, you might appreciate such economies of scale?
Worryingly, he doesn’t laugh. Instead, he wrestles with his conscience about taking time off at short notice. Eventually, under duress, he agrees that maybe yes, he does need some ‘sick leave’. He is sick, and tired, of all the pointless pressure. Exhausted, actually. A week in France can’t do any harm, and it might do some good. Okay, he’ll hop on his motorbike and take the ferry.
So he does, and when he arrives I’m aghast: the bike is big and burly but Jim, once out of his leathers, looks awful. The absolute incarnation of a stressed-out man with a lot on his mind. Is he actually going out of his mind, seeing this nutty shrink? Is he on the, um, edge of sanity?
‘Well, I was ready to try anything. But it’s not really helping … it’s just costing a hundred euro a session.’
What? You’re shelling out a hundred euro to lie on some quack’s floor and scream? Jim, you’re mad. You should see a shrink!
Reluctantly, he laughs. And says ‘everyone’ is seeing a shrink these days.
Are they? Not in France, they’re not. I’ve only ever heard one person mention one.
‘So what do the French do, then, when they’re stressed out?’
Hmm. Well, they complain loudly and at length, of course, to anyone who’ll listen without charging them a hundred euro. Family, friends, customers, the postman, the man on the phone trying to sell them a new kitchen. They’re really quite democratic about it. And then they go for a long, moody walk on the beach. You know, like in a Jean-Luc Godard movie. There’s usually a dense mist on the horizon and a lone seagull squawking mournfully. And then, well, they go out to lunch.
‘I don’t feel like going out. I’m not very hungry.’
This turns out to be a blatant lie. Several hours later, after an extremely long, brisk, exhausting walk – it felt like Normandy to Provence and back – Jim is ensconsed in a little auberge, nursing his grievances and a kir normand, studying the menu beside a crackling log fire. (Well, a smoking log fire – the French don’t believe in piling on more than one log at a time, and worry if a flame takes hold.)
‘Foie gras with chestnuts and bacon? That sounds good. No, wait, maybe the oysters from Cancale? I love oysters. Oh look, they have tabouleh. It always reminds me of that great holiday in Morocco. No, actually I think I’ll have the cream of salmon and fennel soup to start. And then the … um, let’s see … maybe the veal with wild mushrooms and truffle juice. Or the roast chicken stuffed with sage and apricots. Well anyway, I’m definitely having the hazelnut and raspberry mousse for dessert. Or the white chocolate with cherry sauce. After the cheese, of course. They do cheese before dessert, don’t they? What about wine? Would we manage a bottle of Chablis as well as a bottle of Médoc, d’you think?’
We do our best. In fact he turns in a sterling performance, eating as if for Olympic medals, dispatching plate after plate before, three splendid hours later, snuggling up to a cognac. Musing, he gazes into the fire. ‘What is it about French food? What do they do to it? I feel … I feel nurtured.’
A week later, after several more long walks on beaches, in forests, across muddy fields swept by larks and starlings, there is no further talk of not feeling hungry, nor of work – possibly because his mouth has been too full of omelettes, mussels, gratins, prawns, casseroles, salads, roasts, breads, cheeses, wines, pies, mousses, fruit, chocolates and digéstifs. He has even cooked some of these repasts himself, wrapped in an apron, tea towel over one shoulder, leafing through The Joy of Cooking with sticky fingers. In Derry, his idea of cooking is beans on toast, but here, ‘Well, it’s just a pleasure, isn’t it? All these markets, all these gorgeous ingredients … you can hardly come to France and not cook.’ All mention of the bank, and the shrink, and the screaming has petered out. In fact, he seems to have forgotten all about them.
And then one day he gets back into his leathers, onto his bike and zooms away: ‘I might as well see a bit more of France since I’m here, eh? Call you when I get down south! Bye!’ Blowing a kiss, he vanishes into the crisp September morning, apparently forgetting that the bank is expecting him back on Monday.
A month goes by. Bar the occasional enigmatic text message, nothing more is heard from Jim, nor from the neighbours, who have said no more about the hedge. It is la rentrée: summer’s over, everyone’s back at work or school, and gardens have taken something of a back seat for the autumn. But finally, one evening the phone rings.
Having biked slowly down the length of France, Jim still isn’t back in Derry. He’s in the Pyrenées Atlantiques, near Bayonne. Where he has, he says, found a house.
To rent? For the winter?
‘No. To buy. I’m staying for good. I rang the bank and quit.’
But Jim, people who quit don’t get any redundancy packages! What are you going to live on?
‘I’m going to do more or less what I did before. Manage people’s money for them.’
But you hardly speak any French—?
‘Won’t need to. I’m going to put an ad in French Property News and on the Anglo France website, advertise to handle people’s accounts and international transactions … you know, foreigners who run businesses here and need an accountant who speaks English. Well, that’s me. So, when are you coming down to see the house? It’s just a small cottage but it has a great garden, really sunny … this is a beautiful area, and the food is fabulous. I think I might do a cookery course when I get settled in, maybe grow a few veggies …’
Not long after this conversation, there is a knock at the door one morning. My neighbour – the female half of the couple – is standing there, smiling the smile of a person who wants something. A smile that puts my teeth on, um, edge.
‘Bonjour! I just thought I’d drop in because, well … my son wants to do some work-study experience in English next summer. At first he thought of going to England, but now he hears he might learn better English in Ireland. So … uh … maybe you would know some companies where he could apply?’
Yes, as it happens, I do. There’s a vacancy at a lovely bank in Derry.
9.
Don’t Mention the War
‘What’s missing?’ I asked a visiting child one day. ‘What do you not see on French streets?’
Fair play to her, she cracked it almost immediately. ‘Litter! No litter!’
For a long time, this continued to be true. The French don’t muck up their environment. Public spaces and buildings are well kept (apart from the dog dirt), filled with flowers, a joy to behold.
But one day I noticed a plastic bottle chucked into a ploughed field. Hardly earth-shattering, but still, new.
And then there was another. And another. Within the space of a few weeks, bottles seemed to be mushrooming everywhere, swiftly followed by graffiti. Graffiti, formerly confined to urban slums and railway stations, suddenly seemed to be appearing on the sides of old sheds, school walls, town halls, all sorts of places it had never been before. Incidents started happening in schools – not as heavy as the stabbings in British schools, but confrontational, aggressive.
With regret, all this was noted in village gossip at the cafés. ‘It’s the kids,’ people started muttering, as if their own kids had absolutely nothing to do with it. ‘They’re losing respect. For their parents, their teachers, the government. For everyone and everything.’
Mild surprise was registered, along with a classic shrug. ‘But there you are, what can you
do?’ I was surprised myself, in this traditional bastion of civilisation where most children are at home in the evenings doing their homework, not nearly as addicted to televised trash or tequila slammers as in many other countries. Up to now, French parents had seemed to be generally in control of their children. The undercurrent of tension was new.
And then one night – wham! – riots suddenly break out. Juvenile riots, first in Paris and then all over France, led by eighteen-year-olds, enthusiastically joined by boys as young as twelve, protesting about unemployment and conditions in their HLM (subsidised housing). Every night for three weeks, cars are torched, more than twenty thousand in all. Bins are set on fire, and when a man tries to point out the danger of this to two of the young arsonists, they kill him. Molotov cocktails are hurled at a hospital; a kindergarten and a sports centre are burnt down; a handicapped woman is trapped in a burning bus. Shops, schools and, bizarrely, car-rental agencies are razed, throwing hundreds of employees onto the dole. Armed guards are put on public transport. Following a sorrowful address to the nation, lamenting it all, a pale president authorises curfews ‘where necessary’ and declares a state of national emergency. Suddenly, we are living in a very different France, one stripped of its parasols and billowing tablecloths.
The catalyst for the riots? Two immigrant youths who were electrocuted after breaking into a power station, allegedly while being chased by security guards. Nobody is sure exactly what happened, and no clarification is forthcoming.
Watching all the chaos erupt on television, I’m astonished. Simply cannot imagine a situation in Ireland whereby violent riots, all over the country every night for weeks on end, would be greeted by the Taoiseach with such a sad sigh, such handwringing despair. If thousands of disgruntled young hooligans were systematically wrecking Tralee, Drogheda, Naas, Galway or Buncrana, would he simply send in a few extra police and hope for the best? Would the government not impose order?
I’d say it would. But here in France, the right to riot is sacrosanct. Remembering the exacerbating effect of the hard line taken against rioters in 1968, France is holding its fire, tiptoeing around the disaffected youths and throwing its hands up in despair.
‘Where did we go wrong?’ the nation laments. ‘What have we failed to give these boys? What is it they want?’ A reasonable question from a nation that gives housing, education, financial aid and masses of sports facilities to natives and immigrants alike – and one that draws a response from a young riot leader.
‘We want work!’ he yells. ‘Our slums are disgusting. It’s not enough to just repaint them!’
Indeed. Unemployment is rising and lots of people want work. Lots are actively looking for it. Lots have qualifications or experience or both. Many immigrants living in slums want to clamber out of them, and are doing their best to improve their lot. Not all are out burning the place to the ground. And not all of the rioters are even genuine, as it turns out.
‘We’re enjoying this,’ a teenager admits on radio. ‘We’re tanking up on whisky, pulling up our hoods, going out and having fun.’
This is when I first learn the word casseur, or professional hooligan.
Meanwhile, the benevolent burghers of the brutalised towns and villages are attempting to clear up, scratching their heads in bewilderment as they survey the millions of euro worth of damage. It’s going to take a lot of taxes to repair all this. The prime minister offers the rioters an olive branch: henceforth, they will be allowed to leave school at fourteen (the minimum leaving age was formerly sixteen) to take up trade apprenticeships. Since they claim they want work – well, now they can train for it earlier.
A baker appears on the news. ‘Dolt! Dimwit! Is this how he tackles a national crisis? France is on the brink of civil war! And anyway, what makes him think that employers want to hire babies? We want apprentices of sixteen or seventeen – old enough to have a bit of sense.’
At the market next morning, a clothes seller concurs. ‘France,’ he says darkly, ‘is being bullied. We have a tradition of letting ourselves be. But I for one will never employ bullies, nor deal with them.’
This response is, however, out of tune with the general view, which seems to be that ‘the young’ must be humoured. If they want to leave school at fourteen, then so be it. If their parents can’t control them, pity the poor parents. If the immigrants’ native countries can’t entice them to stay, then France must entice them. Social workers spring up all over the media, deploring the plight of the school-burning ‘poor children’.
A town councillor erupts on the news. ‘But this is ridiculous! Grown adults are being intimidated by infants! Our sanctuary, and our hospitality, are being abused by kids trying to bully the entire country! Has the government no strength, no resolution, no authority?’
Apparently not. The riots continue. Perhaps it is government policy to let this safety valve blow off steam? After all, the rioters are doing more damage in their own neighbourhoods than anywhere else. Nonetheless, the international business community starts cancelling meetings. Tourists cancel holidays, investors start pulling out. As Northern Ireland can testify to its cost, nobody wants to put their money where there’s mayhem.
Heavily, France sighs. ‘Terrible. Appalling. But there we are, what can you do?’
Abruptly, something clicks in my mind. The memory of a dinner party down in the Midi, where I once got my knuckles rapped for asking how France feels about Germany, nearly seventy years after the war. This question wasn’t random: it was triggered by the sight of a war memorial in the village square. A memorial to the men of the village, all of whom had been shot one morning by the Nazis, from the youngest lad of nine to the eldest pépé of ninety-two. On the day I saw the memorial, the square was buzzing with German tourists, sunnily shopping. A German friend had told me that some Germans like to spend money in France as a kind of apology ‘for what our grandparents did to their grandparents’.
But my query fell on stony French soil. ‘The war,’ I was frostily informed, ‘is over.’
Well yes, of course it is. I just wondered whether any of the shopkeepers ever look at all these German tourists and wonder—?
‘Germany is our friend now. We work together for European integration.’
Good for you! But is it ever difficult?
‘We know Germans who come to France every year to donate blood. This is how sincere Germany is about entente cordiale.’
Giving blood sounded like a nice gesture and I was happy to hear that, even if France was determined to forget the war, Germany evidently still remembered, and regretted. But I couldn’t say this, because around the table everyone seemed to be shrinking back. I sensed a distinct frisson of … what? If intuition was to be trusted, something that felt suspiciously like fear. Certainly unease. They declined to discuss the subject further, leaving me wondering why. But the message was clear: today, political correctness reigns, we are all polite to each other, how rude of a foreigner to mention the war!
Sorry. It’s just that I’m Irish. I come from a country where we express our political views with considerable candour, intensity, and often humour. We’ve never forgiven ‘the bloody Brits’ for the Famine of 1847, and maybe never will. We know that’s rancorous, but at least we can laugh at our rancour. In all but the dourest of bars, people can say what they feel, and nobody clams up when asked a straightforward question.
Which leads me to wonder if France is still, just a little, very slightly, afraid of Germany? Anxiety seems to creep into the atmosphere at the very mention of the war. One day I innocently had a drink in a local brasserie, where somebody must have spotted me, because I was thereafter given to understand that ‘locals’ do not patronise this bar ‘where the grandparents were collabos’. Then the subject was swiftly changed.
And is France also afraid, now, of upsetting its immigrants? And the countries, perhaps of future importance, that they come from? It certainly seemed to be taking a very muted approach to these riots, which were now in their
thirteenth night. The cities were all knee-deep in broken glass.
I couldn’t help getting the impression that yes, France is fearful. French people don’t have feisty political discussions of the kind I’m used to. If I want one of those, I have to look to my Polish or English neighbours, and it usually ends in hoots of irreverent laughter. We’re used to giving each other a hard time, and giving our politicians one too: whereas, when French journalists interview politicians, they nod and smile and never heckle. French politicians don’t get a real roasting, and if they want to dissemble, they can. Red herrings? Eh oui, with a nice sauce!
Back to the riots. Good news. Only six hundred cars were torched last night, as opposed to twelve hundred the night before. Only one school was destroyed, and only ‘a handful’ of firemen were injured. I remark on this excellent progress to François the bartender as he serves up my café crème. Furtively, he glances round, visibly wondering whether to risk a candid comment. We’ve known and liked each other for quite a while now.
‘D’you really want to know what I think?’
Yes, please. A bit of straight talk would make a refreshing change. Besides, what’s that bit in the constitution about liberté?
‘I think the prime minister’s mad. Letting kids leave school at fourteen is criminal.’
I agree. But what’s his angle on it?
‘It’s deceiving them. It’s letting them think their rocks and riots are achieving something, whereas rocks and riots aren’t real weapons at all. Education is their only real weapon. And now they’ll get less of it than ever. They won’t realise until it’s far too late that, the day they wrecked their schools, or left them, they wrecked their only hope. The government is literally making fools of them.’
A father of two children, he goes on to expound further on how education is the only key to progress. How very young apprentices are ‘bound to be exploited’, and lowering the school-leaving age will thrust them into a workforce which is way beyond them. ‘Next thing,’ he says, ‘we’ll be sending eight-year-olds up chimneys, like in Oliver Twist. And the eight-year-olds will be delighted with the fun of it, the freedom of not going to school … until they realise what’s been stolen from them. Then we’ll see real riots.’
