French Leave

by Liz Ryan

  ‘Realistically,’ he replies, ‘no. In France, the system always wins. Hands down, sooner or later, every time. You can’t beat it. Waste of time even trying.’

  When I relay this to my neighbours, many – incredibly – nod in recognition, in resignation, almost in defeat. Personally, I’m levitating with outrage and have to be all but talked down from the church steeple; perhaps prophetically, the church bell happens to toll at the very moment the man snaps his briefcase shut.

  But if protests go unheard, if the system always wins, then France isn’t a democracy at all! It is totalitarian, Nazi, Stalinist!

  Further enquiry into statistics reveals monsieur l’enquêteur to be wrong. One percent of planning protests are in fact upheld.

  One percent. Just so nobody can accuse the state of not listening to its people. Those are the odds you face if you try to change anything in France: one in a hundred. It is a long time since 1968, and many of the rioting students of that year now occupy plush jobs in the civil service, where they can buff their nails to their hearts’ content, chucking today’s protests into some dusty bin before they go out to their two-hour, civil-service lunch.

  And so, at the time of writing, it remains: the mayor versus his village, a vendetta shaping up to endure into eternity. Whatever about liberté and égalité, fraternité has gone out the window, and the next municipal elections are awaited with unprecedented eagerness.

  But will they be in time to get rid of Pierre? Rush matters, and the civil servants might have a nervous breakdown. Let this mayor build what he likes, is their attitude, and if a few mouthy foreigners get flattened in the process … eh bien, all the better!

  This slow-mo strategy seems to be working. The foreigners are talking about selling up and moving to more congenial villages with less tyrannical mayors. So are some of the natives. Far from seducing new settlers, monsieur le maire is driving people out instead, breaking up the community just as all the ‘blowins’ have started to integrate into it, blighting the landscape and sowing dissent. And then one day, he does something else: he hits a four-year-old child a clip round the ear. The little fella wandered into the grounds of the mairie and allegedly damaged a shrub, plucked a flower or somesuch offence right under Pierre’s nose, and Pierre rushed out to ‘put manners’ on him.

  This has turned out to be a grave tactical error, because now the child’s dad – a hefty fisherman – is gunning for Pierre, promising to ‘sort him out’ when he ‘catches hold of him’. Overnight, Pierre vanishes from view and sends his deputy to present this year’s fuchsias at the Mother’s Day drinks party – which, without its traditional host, turns into the merriest in recent memory.

  Minus the mayor, everyone gets on famously, and it’s hugely heartening: maybe all is not yet lost? Especially since word has just reached us of pending matters judicial, which may distract Pierre for years to come … in fact, into his dotage. It is not inconceivable that he may yet find himself a resident in the old-folks section of his own lovely new housing scheme.

  11.

  Let’s Eat Out

  It is a gilded spring day. In the village square, the weekly market is in progress, the stalls overflowing with cheeky scarlet tomatoes, muddy ochre carrots, emerald cucumbers, black logs of freshly baked bread, mauve-tipped artichokes in from Brittany, golden football-size melons up from Cavaillon … amidst it all, an American lady stands transfixed, clutching her husband.

  ‘George! Look! Just look at this!’ Embedding her nails in his forearm, she gapes squeaking, at the scenario, which is indeed picturesque. ‘My God, it’s so, so …’

  Lost for words, she gazes around her as if somebody might furnish the words she can’t seem to find. So gorgeous? So fresh? So natural, so colourful, so healthy, so brimful of nature’s bounty? Indeed it is, madam, indeed it—

  ‘So unhygienic! Look, nothing’s wrapped! Nothing! All this food, out in the open air. Anyone could touch it …’

  They could, and they do. Have done, for centuries. Pummelled the potatoes, pinched the peppers, prodded the pumpkins … And yet, thus far, there have been no reports of death by contamination. Not a single incident of poisoning by peasant’s finger. Apparently, the French have made the great mental leap from market to tap, have latched on to the concept of washing their food before they cook it. Not that they wash the pig’s trotters, or the sausages or tripes; they just don’t pinch or prod those – although the cooking process will kill all bugs anyway. Their confidence is cast-iron, as befits the country that wrote the culinary equivalent of the Kama Sutra.

  Nearby, two English women are debating whether to buy a baguette. One is recklessly keen, but the other holds her back: ‘No, they’re no good, don’t last at all. You have to buy a new one every day!’ But, aghast, the Americans are now confronting an even worse affront. Something far worse than food straight from the farm, with no shrink-wrapping in sight.

  ‘Live chickens! My Lord, haven’t they heard of bird flu?’

  Why yes, they have. Indeed, there was a dodgy moment there a while back, when all the village mayors ordered everyone to confine their free-range poultry indoors. Everyone did. For a couple of weeks. Until they sort of … well, forgot. While the incarceration order was never officially revoked, the chickens eventually just somehow wandered back outdoors, clucking and scratching as if they’d never heard of H5N1. Now, a clutch of them has been rounded up to squawk in their cages this morning, until someone buys them for eggs or, if they’re unlucky wee chickens, for lunch.

  The American lady is literally clutching her bosom, horrified by the spontaneity of it all, the unruly freedom, the apparent muddle. In fact, there is no muddle whatsoever: au contraire, food production is vigilantly monitored and you would be a long time trying to finger the cow that isn’t wearing its Department of Agriculture earrings, neatly numbered, dated and annotated. Sometimes the cows even make a personal appearance at the far end of the marketplace, on the hoof, for sale to the highest bidder provided the vendor can supply their name, rank and serial number. But no, the farmers have not thought to shrink-wrap them. No doubt the quantities of plastic required would up their overheads, and to a French farmer a sou is a sou. (No matter that sous are now centimes, and francs became euros years ago: most French farmers are too busy burning down supermarkets to read all this bumf from Brussels.)

  Twittering in horror, the American lady is led away by George, who seats her at the corner café and orders two Cokes, complete with sugar, caffeine, stabilisers, E-numbers and all those other comforting chemicals. Clearly, the pair are in culture shock, and it’s hard not to smile. Because whatever a French chef might be accused of, abusing his or her ingredients with chemicals will never top the list of crimes. The nearer they are to nature, the better; many of the best restaurateurs grow their own, planting, sowing, digging, pruning, plucking, knocking off the worst of the mud with their elbow before popping them straight in the pot. France must be the only country in the world that can make even a parsnip palatable.

  The country is, as we know, peppered with restaurants. If you joined up all the dots from one to the next, you’d have a virtually solid canvas. However, all that glitters is not necessarily gold, and if there is one glitch in the fabric of French food, it is – not invariably, but alas often – the restaurant in which it is displayed, served and eaten.

  Naturally, French restaurateurs mean well. Take their business most seriously. Indeed, one of their number, the star-festooned Bernard L’Oiseau in Burgundy, went so far as to shoot himself when he suspected that Michelin might be about to strip him of an étoile. They hadn’t actually done it, you understand: the poor man merely feared that they might. (His widow Dominique, evidently of a more pragmatic disposition, rallied rapidly: her biography, Bernard, Mon Mari, was for sale in the restaurant window almost before the organ music had faded away.)

  And they make great efforts to please their anglophone visitors. All are legally obliged to display their menus outside their premises, an
d they make heroic attempts to translate them. Thus you find such delights as ‘chicken roasted in spit’, ‘squabbles’, ‘beef with warships’, ‘puréed shuttles’ and – my favourite – ‘shoddyffed to the cream of her capers’. Since moving to France, my cooking has, without the slightest effort, improved immeasurably, but I have yet to find out exactly what ‘shoddyffed’ might be – perhaps a Welshman might know? – or what capers it has been up to. But in any language, it is virtually impossible not to eat well, and healthily, all in the same melting mouthful. Cookery books beckon like beacons, and even endives acquire allure. (Mind you, I would ban tripes. And Brussels sprouts should be illegal in any language.)

  One day, the comedian Jamel Debbouze confessed that he sometimes signs comment books in French restaurants thus: ‘I detest this restaurant. Nicolas Sarkozy’. A cruel, um, caper, since many are magnificent, true temples of gastronomy, especially the ones where reverent silence reigns and you find yourself wondering whether you’re expected to genuflect as the waiters lift the silver lids in concert. A singularly focused race where food is concerned, the French can sometimes be seen demolishing the most fabulous meals with the look of anxious concentration one might normally reserve for, say, one’s tax returns or one’s application for permission to operate an electric toothbrush. All is dutiful hush, and should any minor glitch occur, the restaurateur will be the last to know, since the French firmly believe in complaining only to their friends, never to the patron. An oddity this, since they rarely hesitate to complain about anything and everything else to all and sundry, but there we are. Head waiters just seem to affect them the same way as school principals.

  Food-wise, there is indeed little to complain about. I have been known to clutch my companions in astonishment, we have actually blessed ourselves on tasting certain dishes – I particularly recall a fig-stuffed caramelised pear – so fabulous have they been. As a result, one can easily forgive the dog in the corner of many a local bistro, scratching behind its left ear for fleas; one can forgive the decorator’s inexplicable plunge into 1940s nostalgia, using original materials; one can even forgive the unisex toilets, where, if you’re not quick enough, you are plunged (perhaps mercifully) into Stygian darkness after ninety seconds when the light cuts out automatically. You can even forgive them for not knowing that no, Irish coffee doesn’t work with crème fraiche, only with Chantilly.

  The one thing you really do have to work at forgiving is the service. That puzzled look when you arrive and say: ‘Hi, here we are, name’s Murphy, we’ve booked a table for six at eight?’ That long subsequent powwow, in agitated whispers, with the receptionist or maître d’ or whoever failed to note the booking. The eventual seating at a table for four, by the kitchen, with extra chairs tacked on. And of course the fifteen-minute wait for the menu … which, if you look at it constructively, is good practice for the impending twenty-five-minute wait for the starters, and later the thirty-five-minute wait for the bill, followed by the forty-five-minute wait for the machine to accept your foreign credit card. After all, there’s only so much any one waiter can do in an evening, when he’s in sole charge of a dozen tables and has the hoovering to do too, while waiting for Visa to respond. It’s at moments like this that one ponders France’s acute unemployment problem, because clearly some vacancies remain to be filled in the catering sector. Maybe it’s because each extra employee means the boss having to fill in an extra twenty-seven hours’ worth of paperwork every week, in triplicate.

  Over the years, my research into French restaurants, while never reaching the dizzy heights of La Tour d’Argent, has been diligent. Of course, menus change and staff come and go, but there have been memorably wonderful experiences at La Fermette Marbeuf and Casa Olympe in Paris, at Les Hêtres in Normandy, Le Pelican near Pézenas, La Garaudière near Beaune, Les Crayères in Reims, and in the back of a tumbledown little shop near Saintes, where la patronne kept us prisoner for hours with course after course of a stupendous meal we didn’t even know we were going to have. The chairs were rickety, the mood was jolly, and the food was phenomenal. More than in any other country, it pays in France to peer into dark doorways and forget all about trendy décor – indeed, one of the worst meals I ever had, in London, was in the most exquisitely designed of trendy restaurants, over whose name we will draw a veil.

  All but the most elegant of French restaurants accept children. Usually this is not a problem because, as an Irish friend notes in amazement: ‘They sit up straight, eat their spinach and behave impeccably.’ Only once, at the lovely L’Absinthe in Honfleur, did a shrieking toddler ruin our Sunday lunch as it raced between the tables, tripping up waiters, stampeding like a bull while its parents argued over whose bright idea it was to bring it. I yearned to capture it and carry it, roaring and writhing, into the kitchen for the chef to do with as he would. Don’t get me wrong: I do like children, even if I can rarely eat a whole one. But between us, we would have dispatched that one, filleted and flambéed.

  In Paris, waiters are notoriously snappy, in more ways than one. Waiting is regarded as a noble profession, they do it efficiently and are paid well in the busy bars, cafés and restaurants. In the provinces, however, things move more slowly. I once watched in awe while a waitress cleared our table plate by plate, glass by glass, ferrying two items at a time across the street from the waterfront to the kitchen in her fists. She was just a summer youngster, nobody had suggested she use a tray and, well … French schools put more emphasis on philosophy than initiative. A tray simply hadn’t dawned on her.

  We tipped her anyway, because she meant well, but it comes as a shock to many tourists, especially Americans, to discover that tipping is not expected. At most, a euro or two for really brisk, friendly service, a fiver in a ritzy restaurant, but service is already built into the bill and anything else is entirely voluntary. ‘Voluntary’ means (a) the waiter has really made a difference to your enjoyment or (b) you’re a big group who’ve made major demands. Being rowdy, changing your mind or requesting translation all count as being demanding, and you should reward accordingly. But you’ll never find a line left open on your credit-card slip for a tip (which amazes my Irish friends, accustomed to meekly paying for service twice), and you’ll never have the experience I once did in New York, where a waitress chased me down the street shrieking that I’d forgotten her tip – for serving one coffee that cost one dollar. In France, you don’t tip unless you’ve spent at least twenty euro, and, far from being ingratiating, over-tipping is embarrassing.

  However, the one thing that no money seems able to buy is a smile. Is it that all the waiters’ feet are killing them? Is it that famous French reserve, often interpreted as frostiness? Is it the entire industry’s exasperation with the thirty-five-hour week, which restaurateurs say is ruining them? Or do they really regard eating as the religious ritual it sometimes seems to be? Probably it’s a combination of the whole lot. But don’t despair. The food is usually so good it’ll put a smile on your face if not theirs, and as yet there’s no law against that. (Though the government seems to be working on it.)

  One night, a local restaurateur brought a tray of digéstifs to our table, unbidden, before we left. What, we wondered, had we done to deserve this delightful gesture?

  ‘You talked,’ he said, ‘out loud. You smiled and laughed and brightened up the atmosphere of the entire evening. Everyone enjoyed it more because you were here. I love it when you Irish come in – you always seem to have fun, and so everyone else does too.’

  So, don’t be intimidated if things are subdued when you arrive. Just create your own atmosphere. The French don’t mind at all – in fact, they love to see people enjoying themselves, even if they’re genetically programmed not to show it.

  Meanwhile, back to basics. It is a rainy Sunday in late October, and the last apples have been pressed for cider; now we’re into mushrooms. The leaves are falling on a landscape that reflects the colours of the mushrooms themselves: ivory, rain grey, straw yellow, cinnamon and
slate. Huge heaps of cloud fill the low, broad sky, and tiny, booted figures clump across the treacle-textured fields, sweeping methodically from side to side in green waxed jackets, leather gloves, feathered hats and green wellies, carrying broken guns over their forearms. Sometimes they stop, sit down on folding stools, take a slug of something warming from their hip flasks and wait intently, peering into the mud, their red-collared retrievers alert and panting, ears pricked for orders, alongside them. Mainly – but not exclusively – male, these are the local hunters, out shooting partridge. Their hunt has none of the drama of the once-resplendent English hunt, with its scarlet jackets and halloo’ing horns: it is low-key, vernacular, smudged and muffled behind the curtain of rain. And yet, it is beautiful. A tableau, a vestige of country life as nature intended, richly organic. One of the hunters is a neighbour, and I stop to say hello; a profoundly traditional farmer, he shakes hands, or rather fingers, as is the custom when your hands are dirty, while his companion reins in the dog, a fine muscular Labrador full of energy, looking as if he knows he is exactly where he is meant to be.

  Just last night, there was a programme on English television about ‘problem dogs’, sent off to learn manners at a ‘dog borstal’ with their no-less-problematic owners, most of whom simply didn’t seem to understand their dogs’ canine nature. One of the dogs, a big buster called George, had become unruly because, at ten months old, he was cooped up indoors all day with no more than a short urban walk for exercise. Looking at this other dog now – they resemble each other like cousins – I can’t help thinking how lucky he is by comparison, loving every moment of this busy, challenging day out in the open Norman countryside, with a master who knows why he owns him.